Hey, all! So, this is another theme for R-girl's Other Kinds of Love challenge. This time, the fic is for my good old friend Last One Left 0, whose birthday is coming up, so I wrote this. Consequently, she is my beta on Kingdom Hearts, but as this is a giftfic, I couldn't really have her beta it. If the characters are REALLY OOC, I apologize - I did my best.
Now, as for how the story is, it's an AU. Axel and Saïx are brothers, and both are in their 18-20's. Saïx is more like 20, Axel's 19. Axel is at college, Saïx is at an asylum, and in college, Axel is room mates with a 19-now-20 year old Xigbar. Yes, the ages are wacky - I know. I couldn't really help it, so please don't complain that much. Thanks. Also, excuse the horrid title...suggestions for improvements are MORE than welcome...
Anyways, this theme is cake, and it involves Axel and Xigbar's birthday, and...well, you'll see what happens. Enjoy, and review if you can. And to Last One...Hippo Birdie, Xiggy!
"Really, Flamesilocks?"
Xigbar was sprawled on his bed in the dormitory, glaring at his spiky-haired roommate through one eye, hands behind his head lazily. Axel shrugged from his position on his own bed, meeting the Freeshooter with a steady and unremorseful gaze over the pirate cake sitting on the coffee table in the center of the room. "Yes, really, Xigbar. Happy birthday."
Xigbar made some kind of indiscernible grunt. "Thought I told you I didn't celebrate getting old," he said, eye slitted as he stared at Axel.
"You did," Axel replied. "And I told you you were going to this year."
Xigbar growled, contemplating the merits of summoning his arrowguns and getting rid of his obnoxious roommate, and then he remembered that it wasn't worth the ammunition – or the time in Xemnas' office – to get rid of him. Instead, he chucked the nearest lethal object he had on hand at Axel's head. At the moment, it just so happened that that object was some dictionary that felt like it weighed as much as the librarian's over-glorified dictionary thing. A Lexicon, he'd said.
Axel's eyes widened as the projectile went flying towards him, and he quickly ducked to avoid getting beheaded by the book, giving an undignified yelp, then cringing as the book connected instead with the wall. He was almost afraid to look and examine the damage. There was probably a dictionary-sized hole in the wall, like a personal mail slot. He wasn't sure he wanted to know.
Moving his arms from where they'd instinctively gone up to cover his head, Axel glared at Xigbar. "Was there some purpose to that?" he snapped.
The one eyed man gazed coolly back. "Call it justified revenge, Flamesilocks," he chuckled.
"Justified revenge?" Axel sputtered. "I got you a cake and you just tried to cave in my freakin skull!"
Xigbar shrugged. "I don't like cake."
Axel glared, grumbling under his breath at his roommate then shaking his head. "Too bad. Just for that, you're eating some."
Xigbar chuckled. "How? That cake looks like there's going to be nothing left to eat after the number of candles you've got on it," he told him, gesturing to the pastry in question. He had a point. The pirate ship looked like it had just had an unfortunate day at the business end of more than a few cannonballs, and was riddled with holes filled with candles. "How old do you think I am, anyways?" he asked, counting the number of candles and looking up around the time he got to fifty. Didn't we already clarify that the streak in my hair is dye? He thought.
"You said you were 90."
"Ninety? As if. I'm nineteen, twenty now," Xigbar replied.
"Oh," Axel shrugged, remorseless. Xigbar would've been willing to bet that there had been no misunderstanding, and this was Axel's way of trying – and failing – to be clever. "I heard ninety. So I put ninety-one candles up."
Xigbar truly was contemplating if it would be worth summoning his guns and possibly getting in trouble, but once again, he decided that he wasn't in the mood for a boss fight today, though Axel probably wouldn't have been able to put up much of one. Instead, he reached for another textbook, smirking when Axel instinctively ducked. "Scared?" he taunted.
"On guard," Axel corrected. "Fine line between the two." He walked over by the coffee table the cake was sitting on, picking it up and migrating it to the nightstand by Xigbar. It was only then that the one eyed man noticed the lettering on the cake.
"Happy birthday figbar?"he asked incredulously.
Axel shrugged. "They misheard me and I couldn't fix it today. I figured you only have one eye – fifty-fifty shot of you not noticing." Xigbar glared, and Axel grinned.
"You know," Xigbar pointed out, "I only need one eye to aim and shoot you."
Axel shrugged. "You wouldn't anyways. You enjoy my company too much." Xigbar made some sort of indiscernible grunt as his roommate reached into his back pocket, pulling out, of all things, a microtorch.
"What's the flamethrower for?" he drawled.
Axel smirked in response. "Have to light the candles somehow."
Xigbar glared, but didn't say anything. In his mind, he was already calculating how to best get his revenge on the pyromaniac, turning over some ideas in his head. It was nearly four minutes later before the microtorch had managed to ignite all ninety-one candles. Some of the first candles were already halfway melted.
"Better make this snappy," Axel muttered under his breath, stuffing the microtorch back in his pocket. "Happybirthdaytoyouhappybirthdaytoyouhappybirthday toFigbarhappybirthdaytoyou," he speed sang. "Now hurry and blow out the candles before something explodes. Oh, and make a wish," he added in a sugary voice, specifically to annoy Xigbar further. The plot was effective, though it barely showed on the older man's face as he attempted to blow out the candles. He smirked as nearly a third went out – then was further confused when they quickly reignited.
Grunting, he tried again, to the same result. Meanwhile, Axel had burst out laughing, and was doubled over, leaving Xigbar to suspect that the candle's malfunction had very little to do with him and quite a bit to do with his folded-up roommate. He glared, noticing that the smoke was rising and the candles were still burning strong. In fact, blowing for nearly a minute had produced no result, and the earliest candles had all but melted into the cake. Axel noticed too, and he sobered as the first whiffs of smoke hit the alarm, reaching over and grabbing his waterbottle off from where he'd tossed it on his bed, quickly uncapping it and dumping it on the small wildfire raging on Xigbar's cake.
The good news was, the candles went out. The bad news was, the cake didn't fare well either.
Waterlogged and dripping, the pirate ship had certainly seen better days. It looked like it had been tossed around in a monsoon, shot at repeatedly by enemy fire, and then attacked by a wax company with flamethrowers.
"Well, there goes thirty bucks in cake and trick candles," Axel muttered under his breath.
Xigbar laughed at his friend, jerking open the window so smoke could drift out. "Well," he said, "The S.S. Figbar won't be getting far." With the smoke clearing, it was almost comical. As if Axel would have been able to pull off that prank. He was good, but Xigbar had a certain tendency of being able to outsmart him somehow, every time. He leaned back with a smirk and a grin. "All that planning, down the drain." If he hadn't been smiling like the Cheshire cat, his regret almost could've passed as sincere.
"Not all of it," Axel replied, coming up from where he'd been rummaging in one of the tubs under his bed for a trash bag. Carefully, he gave a sarcastic salute to the cake in question, then pushed it into the bag to die a quiet death in the garbage. "I have a back up plan."
Xigbar watched with a raised eyebrow as Axel plodded over to his mini-fridge, opening it and pulling out a box of ice-cream bars. Pulling out two, he tossed one a little harder than necessary towards the one-eyed freeshooter. Xigbar caught it almost without trying and raised an eyebrow at Axel. "Sea-salt ice cream?" he asked.
"Just come over here and try it," Axel muttered, opening the window farther and climbing out to sit on the ledge, legs swing over it. Xigbar grunted in response, then after a few minutes, followed him, narrowly missing hitting his head on the window as he came out.
There was silence for a few moments before Xigbar spoke. "Some reason we're eating salty-but-sweet ice cream on a ledge while smoke from an ignited cake drifts out the window behind us?" he asked.
Axel shrugged. "Tradition. Used to do it with my brother, Saïx, before he moved away, and then I did it with Roxas for his birthday." There was a brief flash of pain across Axel's eyes, and Xigbar knew why. Saïx hadn't moved away. He'd been sent off to a mental asylum after going Berserker on some random strangers, and was probably going to spend the majority of the next several years in a loony bin. Word got around, and that wasn't exactly a secret.
He didn't comment on it. He was too tired to deal with the boss fight that would surely ensue. "So now I'm getting the same treatment as Tiger?" he asked sarcastically, biting on his ice-cream.
"Yup," Axel replied, looking out at the sun as it set. "Enjoy it."
"I'll try. But free ice cream, what's not to like about it?" Xigbar replied, leaning back against the window pane.
Axel didn't respond. Instead, he continued to watch the sunset. Eventually, Xigbar spoke again. "And how did I really end up with Figbar on that cake? Pretty hard to mix that up with Xigbar," he said suspiciously. At that, Axel smirked.
"They found a way," he replied.
"You told them my name was Figbar, didn't you?" the Freeshooter asked, already knowing the answer.
"Maybe," Axel replied in a tone that confirmed what he was saying.
Xigbar shook his head. "Why?"
"Hey, you don't have a monopoly on the bad nicknames," Axel replied with a shrug. Xigbar scowled, then bit down on his ice cream again. I'm going to have to think hard on how to get revenge for this one, he thought.
In the meantime, Axel was talking again. "Hey, Xigbar, bet you don't know why the sun sets red."
"No, but I'm sure I'm about to find out," Xigbar replied nonchalantly.
"Actually, no," Axel said. "I was wondering if you knew. Vexen'll kill me the next time I don't have the right answer in his class, and I was spaced out during that lesson."
Xigbar laughed. "You're on your own, Flamesilocks," he said with a smirk.
"Dang," Axel huffed, gnawing on his own ice cream. There was silence between the two again, and then Axel continued. "So what, you're twenty now?"
"Yep," Xigbar replied. "Not 91."
Axel snickered, and Xigbar barely restrained from pushing him to his demise off the window sill. He was almost certain he could make it look like an accident. Still, annoying as Axel was, it was much harder to antagonize a corpse and enact decent revenge on it. Then he tuned back into the conversation just in time to hear Axel finish his statement.
"Happy birthday, Figbar," the redhead said, gnawing on the stick that was the only remainder of his ice-cream.
Come to think of it, maybe pushing him off the ledge isn't such a bad idea after all….