A/N: I...was not sure where to put this. A few fellow writers and I decided to try our hand at a KH figure skating AU and the concept works a lot better on AO3 than it does FFN. Essentially, we've got a collection going. There'll be multiple stories of various lengths and character perspectives set in one common, totally AU world. It revolves around a rivalry between Axel and Roxas but there will be other pairings, most prominently that of Sora and Riku (FFN user tisshuuame is writing Sora and I'll be handling Riku eventually). This can be read as a stand-alone piece, but it might be helpful to read Axel's alternating viewpoint chapters, which FFN and AO3 user silvermyth wrote, entitled Waiting at the Boards (especially since I included references to a flashback in the second half of this chapter that is more fully explained in Axel's opening chapter). If you like the AU, I believe you can follow the collection directly on AO3 too. It's called "Iced".

Otherwise, enjoy some grouchy figure skater Roxas in this offering because that's what I'm currently serving. Sorry not sorry about the insult, Sora.

001: OFF DAY

November 2015

If there was one thing about which Roxas was certain, it was that axels were bullshit, whether they were triple jumps or obnoxious, redhead senior men show-offs. After his sixth consecutive fall that morning, he was also beginning to wonder if the ones he'd landed at Pacific Coast Sectionals a week earlier happened to be nothing more than a pair of flukes at this point.

It'd been a full week of mistakes, of wonky take-offs, embarrassing sit-downs, and flipped out, awkward stumbles. His shins burned, hips no doubt bruised to the bone after repeated falls. But nothing compared to the embarrassment of having one's coach order you back to doing doubles under the guise of not sustaining a serious injury.

It definitely wasn't a good sign on the lead-up to Nationals.

After the last hard fall on a single forty minute freestyle session, he also hadn't had much of a choice. Terra wasn't a hard-ass in general, but after a decade and a half of private lessons Roxas knew him well enough not to argue when he adopted one look in particular.

Terra was apparently also familiar with Roxas' expressions. As Roxas pushed himself back up onto his feet, the look Terra was sporting shifted from sternly no-nonsense to one inching closer toward sympathy.

"There's nothing wrong with reviewing the basics. And you do have a double axel near the end of your program that needs to be strong. It's worth shifting gears to work on it for a session or two."

Right. Sure. If Terra believed this qualified as a successful pep talk, he was more delusional than the judges who'd thought Axel Cendres' inartistic scratchfest of a Sectionals long program warranted a components score in the distant ballpark of 70.

So, double axels. Okay, no problem. Roxas shot off three in quick succession, looking to the boards where Terra was perched after each one to see if he had any comments. Every time, it was just a thoughtful look and a hand gesture indicating he should do another. As far as Roxas could tell, there was nothing objectively wrong with his attempts. A jump he'd mastered at twelve, it wasn't difficult for him, even if he'd never been a fan of the forward take-off.

After jump three, he finally got a reaction. Bracing the boards with hands on either side of him, Terra pushed himself back onto the ice and glided over, careful to avoid crossing paths with the handful of other elite skaters who were sharing the session with them. He passed Roxas, coming to a gradual stop at the side of the rink where each jump had just been executed.

Dutifully, Roxas followed. At the edge of his vision, he caught sight of younger boy setting up a jump. Near center ice, he was following the blue hockey markings, traveling on a slow back outside edge. Although the step forward was tentative, the rotation that followed was tight and solid. After three and a half rapid-fire revolutions, the boy landed cleanly, and Roxas bit the inside of his cheek to keep from uttering a string of expletives Terra'd no doubt make him pay for in triple program run-throughs later if he ended up overhearing.

It was just, the guy had only starting working on that jump, like, three months ago, and they'd already begun comparing him to Ventus in terms of innate ability. It'd taken Roxas a base minimum of double that time to start standing up on the same element. By now, he already knew that merely having a champion older brother couldn't make up for those who possessed a lot more natural talent than he'd ever boasted in this sport. The knowledge didn't make him any less irritable, however.

Quietly stewing, Roxas tried to refocus on his coach who was studying the tracings of each of his jumps. Knowing Terra could lose track of time while considering nuances that were only visible to him, Roxas glided forward, came to a stop next to him, and made an attempt at speeding up the process.

"My landing was kind of screwy on the last one."

He was treated to a vague smile, then a more definitive shake of Terra's head.

"Your landings aren't the issue here."

Okay…

Still eyeing the ice in front of him, Roxas waited for Terra to supplement. When instructions didn't seem to be forthcoming, Roxas tried a different angle.

"Did you want me to do another?"

Straightening, Terra shook his head, gaze traveling to the center of the rink. For a moment, both student and coach watched as the only other male skater on the session tried another triple axel along the middle hockey circle. He'd picked up a little speed from his prior attempt, the subsequent landing not as smooth but secure enough to tack a small blur of a double toe onto the end of it. Nearby, Roxas heard clapping. A quick scan of the boards revealed two girls standing by water bottles and a tissue box, gloves balled up and stowed under their arms so they could applaud Radiant Edge FSC's latest skating prodigy.

He already had Ven's old fan club, Roxas noted. Fantastic.

"Do you know why Sora can save jumps like that, even when his timing's a little off?"

Because he's three feet tall and weighs less than the shit I took this morning?

Taking in a long breath to subvert the acerbic comment before he gave voice to it, Roxas glanced over at Terra.

"He rotates really fast?"

"True, but that won't save a jump when it starts with…"

Terra trailed off, brows rising as he waited for Roxas.

"…a poor take-off."

As Roxas finished the sentence, Terra smiled.

"Exactly."

With a tilt of his head, he glanced back down at Roxas' ice patterns.

"You're missing the skid that initiates the jump's rotation. It's actually a small miracle you get enough height to complete it with such consistency."

Roxas followed his gaze. Sure enough, only one tracing had even the slightest hint of the requisite, telltale checkmark.

"You're also sinking into the circle," Terra continued. "It's something you can get away with on the double but the triple isn't as forgiving if you don't make sure you lead with a strong left shoulder."

Roxas said nothing but knew Terra was right. The axel'd always felt unnatural to him, the forward take-off unstable in comparison to his other triples. While every other jump worked off pre-generated momentum, the axel took strong technique.

"Watch this shit, motherfuckers!"

And cockiness bordering on outright indecent, he begrudgingly admitted, thoughts momentarily turning to none other than Sectional silver medalist Axel Cendres.

The metallic clang of the locks unhinging near the zamboni garage signaled the end of the session. As others exited the ice, Roxas headed to the boards to collect his own skating supplies, Terra following a few strokes behind him.

"I'm going to check in on Aqua's off-ice stretching session with the intermediate and novice kids." Making a grab for his blade guards, Terra sped off, leaving Roxas to scramble after him, while pointedly ignoring the bored look gracing the face of the rink's zamboni operator. "Let's meet at lunch. There's something I want to go over with you."

By the time Roxas hopped off the ice and slipped on his own skate guards, Terra was halfway down the hall toward the ballet room, an old pro at balancing on quarter inch skate blades after decades of practice.

Not in the mood for superficial small talk or the girls' endless club room gossip, Roxas trudged over to one of the public benches and plopped down to unlace his skates and give his feet some air before the next freestyle session he was scheduled for. Maybe the first crappy session didn't indicate anything more than muscle soreness after a Sunday off the ice, he told himself. That would make sense, actually.

Taking into account the last full week of terrible falls and jump-related fuck-ups, however, Roxas had his doubts.

o - o

"…Asahi fired her, practically on national television."

"Roxas."

The voice had been resonate, his name almost purred between lips that curved into a natural smirk. Coupled with newfound proximity as Axel halved the distance between them, from there quickly halving it again until they were mere inches from each other, Roxas hadn't had time to think, let alone jerk away from the hand that had caught his chin between thumb and index finger.

"Stop fucking around," Axel had said, fixing him in place with eyes that were almost smoldering with effortless, conveyed confidence.

"I mean, who does that?"

He'd wanted to say something snarky, to step away and leave Axel standing in the changing room with nothing to show for his bravado beyond a second place medal and the knowledge that even a solid arsenal of triples hadn't been enough to surpass artistry and smoother transitions and better spin positions.

Instead, he'd hesitated, transfixed by the intense look Axel was shooting him, found himself wanting to study the sharp features and inked markings that had made the guy a crowd favorite since he'd first appeared on the scene seemingly out of nowhere last year. Whatever expression his features had ultimately settled on seemed to have been telling, because the next thing Roxas knew, Axel's mouth was on his.

"It's just so…public. You know?"

Did he ever.

At first, he'd tried to resist, to push against Axel and disentangle them both. Pressing one hand against his chest only served to provide a hint of the well-defined pectorals under Axel's simple costume button-up.

From there, he'd been essentially fucked.

Between the shock that he was being kissed and Naminé's unanticipated entrance came a more gradual realization, one that took longer to settle after he'd made a grab for his Zuca bag and scrambled back out into the hall. It pretty much came down to the fact that, no question, he'd been kissing Axel back.

"Roxas?"

"Roxas."

So deep. Evocative. Why was that voice affecting him like this?

Maybe it was the shock of a kiss he hadn't seen coming. That had to be it. Nothing more.

He hoped.

"Is everything alright?"

"Stop fucking around."

Well, what the hell kind of response was Axel expecting when he was outright verbally pissing on jump technique he'd learned over the course of a decade? He hadn't sacrificed a normal childhood and every moment of free time as a teenager just to take pointers from some guy who couldn't tell a mohawk from a choctaw. Axel was a skater past his prime, a one season wonder, Roxas told himself as a means of comfort. Two, at most if he managed to avoid tearing his labrum pulling those slipshod jumps straight out of his (admittedly well-defined) ass with such irritating consistency each competition.

"Hey, Roxas..."

A gentle hand on his shoulder sent a prickle of surprise down one arm, and it was all Roxas could to not to knock his bottle of Dasani straight off the table in front of him.

"What?"

He glanced over at the girl beside him. From the look Olette was giving him, his response had come out harsher than intended.

"I just wanted to see if you were okay." Her eyes darted quickly to the others with whom they were sharing a table. Roxas followed her gaze and realized most of them were not so subtly staring back, no doubt as a direct consequence of his latest comment. "You seem kind of distracted today, is all."

"I'm fine. Just tired."

He looked down at the salad he hadn't so much as touched in the last half hour and stabbed into some spinach leaves with a plastic fork to illustrate.

Totally fine.

Lucky for him, Sora saved the day by entering with a flourish T-minus two seconds later. Before now, Sora hadn't been someone Roxas ever would've found himself grateful to see. He chalked it up to nothing more than a freak occurrence, before spearing a cherry tomato and inserting it whole, without fanfare, straight into his mouth.

Locating Roxas, Sora grinned, then made an exaggerated gesture indicating he wanted Roxas to get up and come sit with him. With a sigh and a barely suppressed eye-roll, Roxas made a swipe at his lunch, muttered a few words of farewell to Olette and the others, and plodded a path over to RE-FSC's junior circuit up-and-comer.

As soon as he was close enough to see the table, he eyed Sora's lunch choice with an arched brow.

"Better not let the coaching staff see you with that." He waved a hand in the general direction of Sora's chicken sandwich, yogurt cup, and glass of milk, before taking a seat two chairs over. "You'll never hear the end of it if you start growing fat rolls or losing your jumps."

Sora blinked, bemused before he connected Roxas' hand movement with the platter of food in front of him.

"Oh, it's cool. Terra signed off on it."

He offered Roxas a smile, which Roxas didn't return.

"He told me to eat lots of protein and double up on strength training since I'm going to start working on quad toes soon."

Of course he did. It figured.

The declaration came with an excited bounce of Sora's knees, and Roxas took a moment to check his frustration long enough to offer a nod. It wasn't Sora's fault he was practically tripping over his own feet lately, after all. A junior skater, Roxas also didn't consider Sora genuine competition. Having qualified out of Sectionals, they were both set to compete at Nationals, just not at the same level.

Then again, Roxas mused as he made a second attempt at finishing his salad, he hadn't considered Axel a threat last year and now the guy was only placing behind him at Sectionals due to a foul-mouthed technicality, most likely. For all he knew, Sora'd be giving him a run for his money in a season or two as well.

"I mean, I'm totally stoked," Sora continued speaking between bites of his sandwich, "but I still need to work on my edge quality and presentation. Feeling the music is way harder than it seems, you know?"

Making a non-committal sound, Roxas reached for his water bottle. Artistry had never been a problem for him, was in fact one of the few things he really got lost in during practice when his music filtered across the ice at the start of his programs. Staying on his stupid feet during jumping passes was where his own personal hang-ups generally fell. Literally.

"Nice to see you two eating together."

Roxas glanced up just long enough to see Terra approaching, skates off and laptop tucked under one arm. He also caught the tail-end of Sora's corresponding grin and supposed he was fortunate not to have seen it full on. Kid had a smile with a wattage that bordered on blinding and he was generous when employing it. No wonder he'd quickly become popular since switching training facilities.

Terra gestured to the seat between them.

"May I?"

Letting Sora do the scooting to make room, Roxas merely looked down at his lunch but said nothing. He heard more than saw Terra set his laptop on the table in front of them, also noted the pleased comment about Sora's choice of lunch food before he changed topics.

"The Sectionals videographer was kind enough to send me an advance digital copy of the senior mens long."

That got his attention. Straightening, Roxas glanced at his coach, over to Sora and quickly back at Terra. For his part, Sora was leaning forward, forearms flat on the table, eyeing the screen with eagerness.

Roxas, not so much.

"Uh, do we have to do this here?"

And, like, in front of the human personification of Friendship is Magic, for that matter?

Ignoring Roxas, Terra was booting the video analysis system the rink had paid a small fortune for a few years back.

"If Sora does well at Nationals, he very well may move up to senior next year. This will be educational for both of you."

Yeah, but only embarrassing for one of them, Roxas suspected, bracing to see a digital version of himself in his long program's opening pose in short order.

He got an earful of the six minute group warmup announcement instead.

"We can probably skip this part," he said, holding back a sigh. "Pretty sure I landed everything."

"It's not your jumps I want to revisit."

Eyes still fixed on the computer screen, Terra lifted a finger to the trackpad to pause it at the exact moment when the camera caught Roxas twirling his finger at Axel Cendres half a minute in.

"Feel like explaining this to me?"

"Sure." Salad abandoned, Roxas crossed his arms and leaned back into his chair, legs straight and knees locked beneath the table. "The guy's a cocky jerk-off and someone had to tell him."

Beneath a shock of auburn hair that looked in dire need of a PR stylist in its own regard, Sora's eyes widened at the insult. Beside him, Terra merely shook his head.

"Not professional. You know the warmup is just as much about ignoring other skaters' mind games as it is preparing to compete."

Roxas scoffed.

"If you think that was the reason I fell out of the back end of that combo, it wasn't."

"What I think is it was a poor choice, given how many people were in the audience." With a final scan of Roxas' paused image, Terra began scrolling through the rest of the warmup footage, even past the beginning few seconds of Roxas' program. "You have an image to maintain, as I expect does Axel."

For lack of an adequate comeback, this time Roxas chewed on his tongue a little but kept quiet. What he wondered, however, was how far Axel Cendres would go to maintain that picture of an on-ice bad-ass he seemed hell-bent on portraying. His choice of program music and simple, unbeaded costuming was one thing. Kissing a competitor after taunting his technique in the locker room? It seemed a bit of a stretch, so what the heck had that been, exactly?

His digital doppelgänger was setting up for his triple axel. The three of them watched as he stepped forward, arms pulling back, take-off knee bending then straightening as he took off. One, two, three and a half revolutions and he was back on the ice, the jumps height modest, its landing run-out a little slow but not terrible by any stretch of the imagination. It'd been one of his better attempts, actually, yet Cendres had still mocked it. Remembering the exchange just made Roxas wish he'd had the balls to sucker punch him for even considering the comment.

Or maybe just kiss him harder. Thoroughly fuck his life at the moment for even somewhat wanting a repeat of that.

Roxas wasn't naive enough to believe Terra was going to sit and let them watch his program without comment. Sure enough, he stopped the recording, then moved the timed scroller back to Roxas' axel take-off before splitting the screen, re-loading the video, and pausing playback at the beginning of Axel's program.

No. No, no, no to the nth degree. Do not want.

"You both do your axels at a similar angle to the camera so this comparison should be helpful."

Oh, he did not just say that.

Sora's eager expression implied otherwise. A matter of seconds later, Terra had both videos lined up to the jump's take-off. A few setting tweaks and the Roxas Strife and Axel Cendres of a week earlier were performing the same jump side-by-side like a duo of janky looking same-sex pairs skaters.

It was official: technological advancement could go straight to hell without passing go or collecting $200.

To add insult to injury, Terra restarted both videos.

"Remember the skid we talked about that initiates rotation? Take a look at Axel's left foot the moment before his blade leaves the ice."

Grudgingly, Roxas did. And, yeah, he saw the difference, in both height and trajectory. He just wasn't willing to admit it. Still slouching in his seat, Roxas added a scowl to his growing collection of physical subordinations.

"So, he's got a good take-off but crappy everything else. All his landings are so scratchy he's lucky he's skating to something loud enough to muffle them."

Terra seemed nonplussed.

"I looked at the components breakdown, and he did get marked down for the rougher landings." Terra nodded, willing to concede this one thing in Roxas' favor. "But the grades of execution on his technical elements score more than made up for it. You eked out that top placement by a point-difference so small it was a win that was essentially negligible. The placements could've been swapped without anything even close to a public outcry."

He played the videos again while Roxas stewed silently next to him.

"And this should be irrelevant when it comes to wanting to improve your own jumps anyway. I need to know you're strong enough before I even consider adding the quads you've been practicing into your programs next season."

At the mention of quad jumps, Sora visibly brightened.

"You'd really have a chance of beating Riku Asahi with a quad in your program!"

This time, Roxas couldn't suppress the eye-roll.

"No one's come close to Riku's scores since Ven retired. At this point, he's got Nationals in the bag so it's pretty pointless to waste time speculating."

Abruptly, Terra stood. Without a word, he snapped his laptop shut and took a step away from their table as both boys looked up with surprised expressions. It was Roxas who Terra addressed when he next spoke, however.

"If that's the mindset you're going to approach your training with for the next two months, quit while you're ahead and do something more productive with your time and money."

As Terra leveled an incensed look at him, Roxas stared back, stunned. Terra was about as low-key as coaches got, was also usually tolerant of Roxas' caustic remarks. Now, he just looked exasperated, possibly angry.

"I was joking," Roxas said, brows rising a little as he eyed his coach and tried to get a better read on him.

"Then maybe it's time to grow up. You're almost twenty; start acting like it." Terra's expression softened only marginally as he turned to Sora. "And you should get prepped for your next on-ice session. I'll take Kairi first so you have a chance to warm up before we run through your short."

Sora nodded, opened his mouth like he was planning to respond even, but Terra had already turned and was well on his way out of the lunch room. This left Roxas more or less alone, beyond his half-eaten salad and a junior level boy with levels of optimism that were objectively grating, not to mention two more freestyle sessions that afternoon, his requisite daily stretching, and some off-ice cardio a little later in the evening.

Plus that kiss he still had to mentally make sense of over the next few months leading up to Nationals. Fun.