1: going up
Axel squeezes the can of Sprite, feels the aluminum bounce back against his numbed fingertips with a metallic pop. The sun is just beginning to stain the night sky orange and Axel, who is past shivering and entering the realm of hypothermia, waits quietly.
Sitting on the roof since 5 AM is probably one of the stupidest things he has ever done, he thinks, fingers clenching in his pockets and eyes stuck resolutely on the horizon. It's right up there with eating four jars of peanut butter in one hour and driving his father's car through the garage door. The only difference is nobody dared him to sit up on the roof and freeze his ass off.
He tries to remember why he is up here to begin with, and hazily remembers lying in bed at 4 in the morning and wondering what a real sunrise looked like. At 4 in the morning, a lot of his ideas make sense.
He's so damn stupid when he's tired.
School starts in an hour but the air is icy and clean and burns in his lungs. He wonders idly if his ass has frozen to the tiles by now, because it kind of feels like it has. The newspaper boy whizzes by his mailbox on a squeaky bike, tires wobbling on the slick asphalt, and something vibrates inside of Axel's pocket. He sticks in one clumsy hand to fish out his cell phone, flipping it open without glancing at the tiny call screen.
"Roxas." A puff of white comes out of his hoarse throat and he watches it dissipate with interest. When he was younger, he used to pretend that it was cigarette smoke, and he was in the mafia. That was before his mother caught him at it and gave him an hour-long lecture on how movies glorified criminal activities and how smoking kills you from the inside out. She showed him pictures of skeleton-people who were diagnosed with lung cancer and even now he can't look at a cigarette without feeling sick.
"Hnh." Only half his mind is listening to the voice on the other end of the line because the sun has suddenly become much more interesting, bleeding the sky red and gold and glorious over his neighbor's roof across the street.
If he squints, everything is going up in flames.
"Yeah," he mumbles during a pause. "I'll be over in a few minutes. See ya."
The flat dial tone sounds for a few moments before he flips the phone shut. He can never be the first to hang up, and he should feel pathetic and girly only he doesn't because it's Roxas.
The streetlamps flicker off in pairs down the street and he hadn't even noticed they were on and he arranges his stiff limbs to stand up, finally out of excuses. It takes a moment of fumbling to open his bedroom window, but it slides up noisily and he lowers himself back in, shoes hitting the carpet with a crunch of rocks and twigs, things stuck onto the bottom of his rubber heels. Vacuuming is added onto his mental list of chores to do this weekend.
"Axel?" His mother's soft voice, calling from the other side of the bedroom door. He snatches up a sweater and pulls it over his head, praying she doesn't come in when he looks half-dead and thawing. "You up yet? Breakfast is ready."
"Yeah, Mom." A quick glance at the mirror on the wall makes him glad she can't see him right now. His eyes are too huge and dark in his thin, bone-white face. "Almost." He brushes back a lock of limp hair and frowns at his reflection, willing some color to return. Right now he just looks three kinds of dead.
"All right. See you downstairs." His mother shuffles down the hall in her bedroom slippers and he almost sighs in relief before catching himself and tearing through his clean laundry for another jacket to pull on because he's still freezing his ass off.
It is Monday according to the brand new calendar taped onto his wall. The start of a brand new week. He grabs his backpack on the way out and pounds down the stairs, taking the steps two at a time. Maybe something interesting will happen now that the year has just started once again.
He's not holding his breath.
x
"Did you catch the game last night?" A cheerful voice penetrates through his foggy mind and he resists the urge to lash out in a blind rage. He isn't five anymore, he tells himself. He shouldn't need to resort to violence anymore.
Besides, the voice is stupidly, annoyingly cheerful, so it can only belong to one person.
"Fuck off, Tidus. Nobody cares about the sick little games you play by yourself." Axel doesn't bother lifting his head up from his desk because he can just see the grin on the other boy's face – wide and easy and blindingly white. Tidus's teeth are perfect ever since the guy got braces back in middle school and –
Axel has got to stop thinking about Tidus's goddamn smile.
"Nope." A heavy thump, which means Tidus has set his backpack down next to Axel's desk and plans to stay.
Fucking why? he feels like screaming. Only he's not a girl, so he just glowers down at his desk and hopes Tidus gets the message.
"Wakka's sick," Tidus explains, too cheerfully. "You're the only one I can talk sports to. None of the other guys care."
"Uh…No." Axel has had enough and lifts his head up so he can glare at that stupid smiling face instead of the desk. The change is less than satisfying when he realizes that Tidus looks even happier now that they are making eye-contact. "Those guys, they care. They care about football and baseball and maybe soccer, but blitzball? Gayest freaking sport on the planet. I bet you and Wakka are the only guys in the whole country who actually follow it."
And, oh, it is worth it just to see that smile slip and the slightest crease of a frown take hold on Tidus's face. Misery loves company, he thinks viciously.
"Fine," Tidus mumbles, and kicks at his chair leg. "Maybe I'll just sit here and talk to myself. Happy?"
"It's like my birthday came early," Axel sneers, and is abruptly distracted by the arrival of Roxas standing by the doorway. As Axel waits for the other boy to push through the rest of the class, he says absently, "The Abes totally suck this year. No way they're gonna win with a freakin' girl as their goalie. She let in, jesus, how many shots last night?"
Tidus breaks into a smile and tells him, "Ten," before Roxas finally pushes through a throng of giggling girls and drops into a seat on the other side of Axel, who really is too nice of a guy.
"Hey," Roxas says. His hair is dripping into his blue blue eyes, and Axel grins as the boy pushes it back and out of the way. Roxas showers in the morning on Mondays; a random fact that Axel prides himself, as Roxas's best friend, on knowing. "Sorry about making you print out my homework last night." If anyone else had asked Axel for help, they would gotten told off with the additional threat of a beating. It's Roxas, though, so Axel doesn't mind.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Take the grade like a good little nerd." He pulls out a few crumpled sheets of paper and checks the name at the top – yes, it's Roxas, - before handing them over.
"Thanks." Roxas takes them out of his hand and tries to smooth the sheets out on his desk, even though everyone knows that the teacher doesn't care if it's written in freaking Martian as long as something is turned in.
The bell rings and a rumpled looking substitute stumbles into the room, apologizing for getting the wrong room number from the office and asking if anyone could tell her what the assignment was from last night so she can collect it. "Please?" she adds in a small voice.
It is bordering on pathetic when she scans the room and is met with a few giggles. Some guys don't even bother paying attention to her and start talking loudly.
"Anyone?" she says desperately, trying to raise her voice above the growing clamor.
Axel glances over at Roxas, who has his nose stuck in an English book and is probably ten chapters ahead of the class because the kid is weird like that.
"Nothing," Hayner tells her, just as Axel says, "Respond to the questions at the back of the workbook."
Her head snaps to Axel and she smiles in palpable relief. Showing that much emotion is a big mistake in a classroom full of teenagers, but he doesn't tell her that. "Thank you! Can everyone get out their responses so I can collect them?"
Big surprise: Axel doesn't actually care about the assignment. At all. (He wrote three paragraphs about his imaginary dog. Who could shoot flames. And it was awesome.)
It's, just –
He knows Roxas probably spent an hour at the library typing it up or researching or whatever it is Roxas does to get an A on freaking everything. It is totally worth the glares and the grumbles of suck up when he places Roxas's homework (Axel writes in an A with his pencil) on top of his own and hands it in for the substitute to collect.
"Fuck you" he mouths at Hayner, after the sub has turned her back. He has a feeling that his ass is going to be kicked in the near-future.
"Huh?" Axel glances over to Roxas, who has finally looked up from his book and seems to have realized that the class is doing something else, since he is suddenly searching for his homework. Axel sticks out one long leg and kicks the base of Roxas's desk, grinning when the boy jumps a little.
"Already turned it in, bitch."
"Oh." Roxas turns to face him with a smile that is twisted and tired and kind of perfect. "Thanks. Asshole."
The rest of the period is spent playing hangman with Tidus while talking to Roxas whenever Tidus gets stuck on a letter (about every two seconds).
The substitute has long since given up on trying to make the class do the assignment. She also made the mistake of asking Axel for help "controlling your peers, because they really do seem to like you". Axel called her something that made Tidus smack him on the back of the head ("She's a lady!") and Roxas roll his eyes, hiding a small smile that Axel notices all the same.
He is pretty sure that, judging by the way she is glaring a hole into the back of his head, she hates him as much as his full-time teachers do. Maybe the faculty can bond over it during lunch.
He'd love to help her make some friends.
"Um. Can I talk to you? Like, outside?" Kairi, with her big mascara eyes and silky sweet-scented hair, is standing next to Roxas's desk, staring down at her shoes like it's the most interesting thing in the world. Axel sneaks a quick peek and is disappointed to see a pair of ordinary Vanns.
Roxas tears his gaze away from his book (seriously, nerd) and blinks up at her with his big blue eyes. Actually, Axel thinks, looking between the two faces, they might not make such a bad couple. She's definitely cute enough.
"Um. Sure?" And Roxas definitely has no clue.
Axel leans over to hiss into Roxas's ear, "She's gonna ask you out, dumbass. You better say something 'cause this?" He nods in her direction and she flushes prettily, shoots him a nervous smile. "Doesn't happen every fucking day."
Roxas's eyes grow wide and Axel tries not to laugh because Roxas almost never freaks out. "Oh," the blonde says weakly, glancing over at Kairi and then back at Axel. "Oh."
Roxas stands up awkwardly and follows Kairi out into the hall, casting Axel one last desperate glance before she leads him out the door. Only Roxas can make that look like an execution.
"Hey, are you okay with that?" Tidus bursts out, leaning over Axel's desk and clearly invading his personal space with no remorse at all. The bastard. "I kind of thought she liked you."
"What, Kairi?" Axel thinks about all those times people confused them as siblings, with their matching red hair and too-pale skin, and makes a face. "Sick! That would be like dating my sister."
Tidus shrugs and leans back in his own damn chair. "Dunno," Tidus muses aloud, and Axel wants to tell him to stop thinking. It's wrong. "I mean, if they do go out, then Roxas won't hang out with us so much."
Axel thinks: You mean he won't hang out with you so much. Roxas will always have time for Axel. This is one of the things he can always count on, like the sun rises in the morning, or their chemistry teacher is a total bitch, or Roxas will always be his best friend
"It won't change," he says confidently, scoring his name even deeper into the desk with a pen.
What he really means is:
I won't let it.
x
Axel spends the rest of math worrying about what Roxas will say to him at lunch, and how he should respond. Encouraging, like a best friend should be, he decides. Fuck.
Go get 'em, tiger.
Wow, you bagged a real hottie.
Congratulations! I'm gonna kill you if you just replaced me with a freaking girl.
He groans in frustration at the list of stupid things his brain can come up with before deciding to let fly with whatever comes to the top of his head. It is, most likely, the worst thing he can do, but it worked once in English, when the teacher asked him in front of the whole class why he didn't finish his assignment like everyone else and he had lied. A lot.
Lying to Roxas is different, though, in the way that Axel can't actually do it.
He hopes that all of this worrying is over nothing. Axel went out with Larxene back when making out in the hallways and seeing some movies was going out, and he doesn't remember any major changes
(But there was this one night he never told anyone about, in the backseat of her older brother's car, when she looked up at him with her lipstick smudged and one bony white shoulder glowing in the dark, like she was just waiting for him to do something, so he leaned in and kissed her and it had felt soft and wet and wrong -)
"Axel?" Sora pokes him and he growls, batting the hand away. "The bell rang. We can leave now."
"Lunch?" Shit. "Cool. Awesome. I love food."
Axel dashes out the door with the desperate hope that he will come up with something amazing before his best friend tracks him down and breaks the god awful news.
x
Roxas's fingers are thin and bony and look like they'll break if Axel squeezes them too hard. He realizes this as he watches the other boy pick apart a sandwich, probably intending to lay out its remains and catalogue it like they did in bio last year. It was the only lab Axel got an A on.
The silence is actually getting kind of scary.
"I thought you liked peanut butter sandwiches?" He has known the guy for ten years, so some things get picked up. Plus, he'll say anything to avoid talking about the G-word.
(Girlfriend. Not the other one. Jesus.)
"I do. I'm just not hungry." Roxas slides the sandwich-y remains across the tabletop. "Want it?"
Axel takes one long hard look at the mess on top of the paper bag.
"Dude, I think your sandwich is trying to puke its guts out."
"Uh... yeah." Roxas is looking up at the sky, at nothing in particular. "It probably is. Wanna feed it to the seagulls?" On cue, a couple of the steroid-big birds flap over to their table and start screeching in voices that are the total opposite of the birds in Disney cartoons.
A flash of inspiration hits Axel and he says, "Yeah, actually, I really do." He flips a piece of bread over to the amassing horde and grins when two birds start fighting over it. Maybe he could start a betting ring or something.
Roxas, absently swinging his legs in time to no beat, asks him out of nowhere, "Are you okay?". In his mind, Axel is praying fervently for Roxas to accidentally kick over a seagull with an ill-timed swipe, so maybe that's why he doesn't the change going over the other boy's face.
"Yeah, sure." His eyes are glued to the dirty sneakers and the approaching birds when he says, "Why? Are you?"
The hum he gets in response is the least helpful thing in the world. Just as Axel opens his mouth to say so, Roxas slips his bony hand into Axel's and, yeah, he kind of forgets what he was about to say.
"Rox?" Axel's thumb experimentally rubs in gentle circles and he can feel the slight bones shifting under his fingertips. "Kind of thought you were going out with Kairi, man."
Kind of thought you were straight, man.
Roxas shrugs. "Nah. I turned her down, but it's cool. She said she doesn't really care. She just wanted a date for the next dance or something." Axel feels distinctly sorry for Kairi and her horrible, horrible lies, but then promptly forgets all about her when Roxas leans against him and their shoulders touch.
Axel wonders if he should be worried right about now.
"Sooo….you gonna ask me out?" He grins widely and nudges Roxas with a sharp elbow, watches the other boy flush and shift away.
It wouldn't be that big of a deal, Axel decides. He could make the jump from best friend to boyfriend. He doesn't mind either as long as he gets to hang out with Roxas and -
Wait.
Axel wonders if he should have seen this coming.
"All right," Roxas mumbles, looking down at his tattered shoe laces. He's acting like Kairi now, only way hotter. "Do you want to go out with me?"
"Are you serious?"
"Yeah. Kind of am." It's cute how Roxas looks so nervous about this when Axel had been there after Roxas's mom left with two suitcase and a note on the fridge door, was the one to let Roxas sleep in his bed after they watched The Ring (twice) and promised not to pick up the phone while he was asleep, had walked Roxas to school every morning for the past ten years even though their houses are two miles apart and in completely opposite directions (though, to be fair, he hadn't known that the first time).
He wonders how long Roxas has been worrying about this, and why he didn't pick up on it sooner.
"Fucking yes," Axel says and throws an arm around Roxas, knocking their knees together painfully. "Let's go out."
Roxas smiles up at him like he has just saved the world and he knows:
This is right.
x
The world has a sick habit of getting back at Axel just when he is at his highest.
next: coming out, angst, more bad writing