Summary: I've been on top of the world, since about six months ago, marking the first time I laid eyes on you.

Pairings: AxelRoxas, et al.

Disclaimer: If I owned Kingdom Hearts, I would not be making fanfiction about it. 'Cause all this would already BE in the game.

Author's Note: Happy Non-denominal Gift Day! (No, seriously, that's what my school calls it. Aside from one of my friends, who calls it "International Free Stuff Day"). Hope y'all were merry and responsible. I greet you with some stone-cold lovin' that is Akuroku for the holidays. Aaaanyways, I would, y'know, update my other stuff but I thought, "Hey. it's the holidays. Time for giggles and so on." So, yeah, here it is.

I. It Kinda Stings

I guess it all depends

I'm still a little crazy all the time

But I still try to hide it

That's still mine.

-Marianas Trench, "Shake Tramp"

Situations had a habit of being routine in Axel's life; something that could not be helped no matter how much he willed it not to be, or how hard he kept his back flat against the metaphorical Door of Mundane. He went to school, he worked at his job, he made grades high enough so that there wasn't a nuclear explosion of "What kind of grades are you bringing in this house?" from the parental units. He hung out with his friends. They spent time in McDonalds being cynical and stuffing their faces with all the buns and partially hydrogenated oil they could find. Then, he went home to irritated parents at a time most commonly labeled as "coming home at this hour on a school night, goodness, Axel, where's your head?" He would shout something about not being a kid anymore, he was sixteen and no, they did not need to keep tabs on him all the time. His mother would fake tears, Axel would feel bad, and she would order him to go to bed before she threw something at him. Then, he'd stomp angrily up the stairs to his room, where he could play Columbian Necktie until his sister tried to punch a hole through the wall. It'd be his cue to open the door, screech something appropriately teenager-ish, like: "No one understands me!"

Axel would fall asleep in a fit of irritation.

And it would begin all over again the next day.

But now, his family was attempting to shake things up a bit by suddenly proclaiming at the dinner table, "…Auntie, Axel?"

Axel looked up, momentarily bewildered by being addressed as a female relative, and replied eloquently, "Unnh?"

"You want to spend your school's break at Auntie Tifa's, right, Axel?" his sister asked, widening her eyes at him. She casually turned the bowl of mashed potatoes towards him, where she had craftily sculpted, 'SAY YES STUPID'.

Axel dug into the potatoes with gusto, lobbing them onto his plate with enough force to splatter his darling baby sister's glasses. "How come?" he asked, tucking his legs under his chair so Kairi couldn't kick him with all the misdirected rage her skinny little legs could harbor.

"Daddy and I have a conference in Japan to attend." His mother explained, wiping at her mouth daintily. She squeezed her husband's hand before turning to her offspring and adding somewhat heartlessly, "Axey, you and Kai can't come."

"Yeah?" retaliated the eldest of her wounded offspring, savagely forking baked squash into his mouth. "How's that? Where in Japan are you going?"

"Japan." His mother said, as if he hadn't heard before. "A conference in Japan."

"I know, Mom, I'm just asking as to a specific location as to where you and Stephen are going. Yanno, in case Kairi has an asthma attack or passes out from her anorexia or somethin'." Axel snarled. Hearing that his mother and her new hubby were embarking on an overseas trip was making him feel a bit agitated. And Japan? That just made it worse. He wanted to go to Japan. He wanted to meet that one guy who made that one really cool movie! Well, he couldn't remember what they called it ("Really Cool Japanese Cartoon With Cute Girls And Awesome Fight Scenes-ko?"), but it didn't lessen his desire any more.

"What Lara means, champ," began Stephen in his warm, comforting tone, "is that we didn't have enough money to send you and Kailey with us. Besides, champ, you don't even speak the language."

Stephen was not a bad man. He was just relatively idiotic, and had a bad habit of calling Kairi "Kailey" instead. Which was better than Axel; he got Champ instead. Or Buddy, but only if Stephen actually managed to muster up some friendly, "I'm-not-angry-but-I-could-possibly-be" irritation.

"KONICHIWA!" thundered Axel, waving his fork around and dropping greasy greens into Kairi's lap. "SAYONARA! WASABI! MITSUBISHI! HONDA ACCORD!"

"Axel." Began his mother, in her very best 'stop-acting-like-a-fool-before-I-have-to-exact-punishment-on-your-poor-unfortunate-soul' voice. "You can't go. So shut up already."

And there was a God because he did and his mother smiled peacefully, and Stephen continued his pathetic charade of pretending to be a real father and Kairi proceeded to whine about her teenybopper life at school.

Ah, normalcy. It does the heart good.

[--]

"Ma hates me. She's sending me away to a foreign country, where they believe in cannibalism and the occasional stabbing of infants." Axel griped into his phone, willing his friends to show some friend-like companionship and tell him that he was absolutely right, his mother was a cold little shrew, and Stephen was ugly and fat and horrible.

"AKA to your aunt Tifa's?" Selphie translated. He could hear the grin in her voice and decided to indulge in a few violent daydreams in which he forced her to trek to Auntie Tifa's and spend what should have been a joy filled vacation there. Axel sniffed and told her to shush, waiting for his other friend to show a bit more sympathy than that traitor Selphie had.

"I have no sympathy for you." Leon said shortly.

"BENEDICT ARNOLD!" Axel screeched into the receiver.

Selphie giggled into the phone, sounding very much like a chipmunk hyped up on caffeine pills. "Leon the Lion has to work at Psycho Cid's for break.'Cause he's on probaaaation. Again."

"What'd you do?"

Leon began, "Well, I—", but Selphie cut him off with a shriek of, "He totaled his dad's car! This is what, the fourth time? Leon's goin' for a record!"

"Whhhyyyy?" Axel bleated. "Leon, I need a ride to Selphie's!"

"What for?"

"So I don't have to go to Tifa's!"

"I like her!" Selphie interjected. Axel barked something that was both unintelligible to all of those participating in the conversation, but also happened to sound quite threatening. So, Selphie decided to shut up, just in case Axel decided to execute his threat—whatever that might have been.

"You would like her and yanno why? Because she's weird. LIKE YOU."

Selphie snickered maniacally for a few seconds, and then slammed down the phone, cluing Axel into the fact that a) Selphie Tilmitt was a vicious harpy b)Leon was going to be of no help unless he persuaded him and c)his friends sucked. Big time.

"Le-on, buddy, have I told you how much I love you?"

The brunet snorted. "I'm not giving you a ride anywhere. I'm either going to be at Cid's, or at my girlfriend's. Don't cry into your pillow about it, but the last thing I want to do is spend every waking moment with your psychotic mug. "

"Baby, you cut me with that last one. You cut me deep."

"Deep enough to die? But Christmas only comes once a year." Leon said bitingly, and he too slammed down the telephone, leaving Axel to moan and gripe for approximately two minutes before the phone rang again.

"Heartbreak Hotel, who's this?" he said, twirling the cord around his finger.

"Axel, it's Kairi."

"…Hi? Aren't you in your room?"

"Yes. I just wanted to tell you something very important."

Axel felt his sorry excuse for a day melt away into nothingness as he cooed, "Aw, I love you too, Kai."

Kairi gave a rather unladylike snort of disdain. "No, moron. I just wanted to tell you to shut up 'cause I can't hear my new CD over your howling."

"Ouch, Kai. That burns. I'm feelin' the pain. I could die, from such verbal wounding."

"Promise?" she sneered. She clicked off, allowing the dial to greet her brother's ears.

[--]

They managed to leave the next day with minor accidents, which included but were not limited to Axel's reluctance to board the train, Kairi squawking abut leaving her iPod speakers behind (which in actuality was hidden by Axel, who had no desire to listen to "Hot N' Cold" for three hours), and their parents obvious happiness at seeing their children leave.

"Bye-bye! Mommy and Daddy will write you!" Lara squealed, waving her purse at them energetically. Axel smooshed his face against the window, making obscene faces at the parental units in retaliation, until he gained the wisdom to open the window and shrieked, "Way to pawn your kids off to a sister you don't even communicate with anymore! What an awesome mother you are!"

The woman who had given him life, had mopped up his tears, had placed gentle kisses on every one of his scrapes as a child, gave him a wide smile and flipped him off.

"It's not that bad, Ax," Kairi said in a feeble attempt to dislodge her brother's surliness as the train shuffled away from the station. "Auntie Tifa's not, like, a serial killer or anything. She's not that bad. Well, except for that time when she tied a bunch of sparklers to your hair and made you run around the block, but that's only 'cause you made her mad." Upon seeing her sibling's face droop even further, she brandished her magazine, slapping him upside the head with it. "Look, get over yourself. Tifa won't hurt you. And if you think I'd let her, you've got another thing coming." Kairi said firmly. She looked like quite the bruiser in her too-tight jeans and neon sweater, chin tipped up to show that she meant Serious Business.

Axel felt himself overcome with affection and small joy and other warm-n-fuzzy feelings for his sister and ruffled her hair. "Aw, Kai, you're all heart. Knew you loved me."

Kairi twisted away from him, folding her bony knees underneath her as she re-opened her generic teen-girl magazine. "Okay, whatever. Don't touch the 'do." She flicked past the pages in her magazine. "Wanna find out if your crush is into you?"

And so, Axel's Cruel and Unusual Punishment That He So Totally Didn't Deserve birthed itself in the shape of Seventeen magazine.

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