Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts does not belong to me!
AN: Yay for backstory! Alright! Yes! Ok, so when I posted up the last chapter, something strange was going on with my email alerts (was this happening for you guys too? I posted it sometime last week, and I just got the Carbon Copy alert, well... yesterday. Or the day before.) Either way, hopefully it will work right this time! I missed logging into my hotmail account and having 20 emails from the fanfiction bot (waaahhhh, oh well. I got more homework done, as it were...) My day was, shall we say, not made. Then they fixed the alerts and I got 14 of said emails, thus making up for the past few un-made days by one extra-made day. XD
Thank you all for reading, reviewing, alerting, or faving, or pretty much just being all around cool beans. Random side note: Every once in a while I get a review seeming to think the story is ending with whatever chapter it is - don't worry! The story is not ending yet! There is plot to be had, I promise it will appear! When it is nearing the end, I will mention something. How could the story end with so many loose ends - Axel and Riku hooked up, Axel is in danger of dropping out, Roxas has lesbian friends just waiting to appear in person... Eee, now I'm excited all over again! XD
Annnnnyways, hope you guys enjoy the chapter. Next one should be up fairly soon. Thanks again!
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"Beer and ketchup."
Riku leaned back against the counter and let the fridge close on its own, raising his eyebrows at Sora. "No wonder he's so damn skinny, if that's all he has to eat."
Sora sighed. "This is a bigger job than I thought…"
A loud beeping noise alerted the boys that the first load of laundry they had put in was done, and Sora headed for the laundry closet, narrowly missing Roxas as he came out of Axel's room.
Closing the door quietly behind him, Roxas peered around the corner into the kitchen, where Riku was now putting a new bag in the trash can.
"How's the cleaning going? Can I help you guys with anything?"
"Well," said Riku, "It's going alright. Sora's got the laundry covered, which was most of the mess in Axel's room, although his desk looks like it was hit by a nuclear bomb… Then there's the bathroom, which, well, let's just say I don't think those tiles were originally green. That's pretty much it, other than this front room, which is kind of a disaster, and the kitchen is clean because it's completely empty. Check out his food supply."
Roxas opened the fridge, sighed, and let it close. "I see."
"So I'm thinking that maybe once Sora's got the next load of laundry in, we could head out to a grocery store and pick up some food for him, and you could get started on the whole living room/kitchen area while we're gone," Riku said, gesturing to the area around him. "It shouldn't take us too long to get food, and I figure you probably want to stay here, right?"
"You and Sora stocking Axel's fridge sounds like a disaster waiting to happen," Roxas said, smiling at the thought of a fridge full of kimchi and fried tofu.
"What, it's not like he's a particularly picky eater," Riku replied, shrugging. "We'd just get normal food."
"No kimchi."
"What's wrong with kimchi? I love kimchi!" Riku looked vaguely offended.
"Axel hates kimchi. I'm trying to think if there's anything else you should desperately avoid... I guess that's it. Just don't get a bunch of food that you love that no one else likes, ok? It'd just be a waste."
"God, Roxas, I'm not the one you have to say that to. If it was just Sora going, then maybe it'd be a good warning…" Riku rolled his eyes and got up off the counter as Sora rounded the corner with a full basket of clean laundry. "Sora, we're gonna pick up some food. Roxas can put the clothes away, right?"
Roxas nodded, taking the basket from his brother's hands. "Have fun, you guys."
The door slammed shut behind them, and Roxas quietly took the laundry basket into Axel's room to put the clothes away. Axel was sleeping soundly underneath his blankets, and the sunlight filtering through the window was enough light for Roxas to work with. Setting the basket down in front of Axel's dresser, he knelt down alongside it and shivering, pulled one of Axel's hoodies from the clean laundry. It was black and clearly well-worn, and it was still warm from the dryer as Roxas pulled it over his head. The arms were too long on him, and the ends of them flopped around until he pushed his hands through, bunching them up at his wrists so he could effectively use his fingers to fold the rest of the laundry. He smiled as he folded, listening for the occasional cute noises that Axel made in his sleep and looking around at the mess.
When he finally finished, he stood up to get a closer look at the seemingly tornado-stricken pile of, well, stuff on Axel's desk. A lot of it was pictures, old papers from school, movie stubs, soda cans, beer cans, just plain trash… Laying on top, however, Roxas noticed a few yearbooks which, upon further examination, revealed themselves to all be open to pictures of Roxas.
My 6th grade class… This one's 7th… 8th… He's got out all his old yearbooks…
Noticing writing by his 6th grade picture, he pulled the yearbook closer to read it. His face was circled, with the letters "WTF" scrawled beside it. Roxas groaned. That was the year he had had a buzz cut for school pictures – the picture looked nothing like him now.
Let's see… if I was in 6th grade, he would be in… 7th? 8th?
Flipping through the later grades, he finally located Axel's name at the bottom of the 8th grade class picture. Back row, 3rd from the left…
Roxas snorted as he found Axel in the picture. One arm was thrown around a shy-looking teacher's aide, the other was giving a thumbs-up beside a fake excited grin. Out of sheer curiosity, he flipped to the very end, looking to see what people had written. Spotting the name "Demyx", he began to read a messy yearbook message written in pink pen.
Ax Ax AX(hoe-bag) you are my sunshine. ok that was lame. i cant believe you skipped my grade you smartass now well never have classes together EVER AGAIN. fuck you bitch! Just kidding u know I lurrrvs you babe. Have fun in HIGH SCHOOL a YEAR BEFORE ME and uhhh I hope you think of me when your fucking hot HISCHOOL boyzzz. bitch! I loves u Ax PARTY LIKE A ROCKSTAR
Xoxoxo slutface (demyx)
ps: like omg keep in touch this summerrrr! bcus i don't see u like every day…seriously tho every single girl who has sined your yearbook has wrote that KIT or HAGS or some crap... bitch your taking too long to sign my yearbook so im stalling. Ummmmmmmmmm lets stay fuck buddies, k? k. OMG YOUR FINALLY DONE OK BYE from slutface. Even tho i already wrote that.
Roxas sighed, attempting to not feel loser-ish for still being a virgin when Axel had a fuck buddy in 8th grade, and trying desperately not to feel jealous of Demyx for having cute, affectionate nicknames like "slutface" and "hoe-bag" with Axel when all he had was "Rox" and maybe "kid." From across the room, Axel made a small sleepy noise and turned over, uncurling his body to lay on his back and pushing one of the blankets off in his sleep. Only momentarily distracted, Roxas soon turned back to the stack of yearbooks that sat unopened, getting back to the days of elementary school. Grabbing one at random, he calculated the year to be Axel's 2nd grade year, and eagerly found the page with his class. Axel was easy to find – he was taller than all of the other kids, and leaning on a small blond boy's shoulder. Demyx again… The boy he was holding up bunny ears to looked strangely familiar – light hair, narrowed eyes, slightly exasperated expression… Riku? Roxas laughed out loud at the sight, only made better by the eager young Sora clinging to his arm. Axel moved again, snuggling against his pillow, and the rustling of the blankets pulled Roxas out of his thoughts.
Putting the yearbook back where he'd found it, he filled the empty basket with dirty clothes to put in the washer and headed back out of Axel's room to continue cleaning.
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"Riku! Riku, let's get kimchi! I love kimchi!"
Riku shook his head, grinning. "Roxas said no kimchi, So. Remember, we're shopping for Axel, not for us."
Sora glared at him, sullenly pushing the cart along the aisle. "Who doesn't like kimchi?"
"Axel."
"What a moron!"
Riku turned around and raised his eyebrows at Sora. "Are you serious? I think that must be the first time I have ever heard you say something directly negative about someone without it being accompanied by some half-hearted compliment."
"He has a nice smile," Sora grumbled, angry to be denied his lovely kimchi. "A nice, moronic smile."
Riku shook his head and grinned, approaching the deli counter. "What kind of meat should we get him?"
"It's not that his smile is moronic, it's a nice smile, it's just… it's…"
"Uhh, could I get a pound of roast beef?" Riku asked, cutting off Sora's mumbling monologue, which only trailed off when they entered the empty Bread & Cereal aisle.
"How come no one else wants to buy cereal?" he asked idly, picking at his fingernails.
Riku sighed and ruffled Sora's hair, giving him a quick peck on the cheek. "You seriously need to stop talking, So."
Heeding the other boy's advice, Sora resorted instead to singing softly to himself as he trailed Riku up and down the aisles. "Ri, I'm learning this song for music class, and we're gonna have a sort of recital-type thing in an assembly for the whole school in the spring, and I'm gonna be singing, isn't that cool? I'm kind of scared, though."
"Don't be scared," Riku said, focusing more on the price difference between generic and name-brand yogurts. "I'm sure you'll be good. Do they make everyone sing or what?"
Sora shook his head. "It's sort of a… free-form class. You can do whatever you're good at, as long as it's musical-ish. Demyx is in it with me. It's fun, and I needed another art credit, so… yea. I didn't know we were gonna have to perform for the school, though."
"Does he even eat yogurt?"
"You're not listening, Riku."
"Yes I am!" Riku looked up, putting both kinds of yogurt back on the shelf. "Singing. Music class. Stage fright."
"I've got a Christmas present for you!" Sora exclaimed, suddenly remembering what he had left in the car.
"God, your train of thought just completely derailed, didn't it?" Smirking, Riku added: "This isn't like your Hanukkah present for me, is it? 'Cause that was cool. Really cool."
Sora shook his head, smiling. "No, this is like… an actual present, not just sex."
Riku looked mildly disappointed, but still intrigued. "Cool. I'm excited."
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Roxas wiped his hands on his jeans, finally satisfied with the state of the living room. The space heater had finally started to really kick in, so he wasn't freezing anymore, and he had managed to unearth a vacuum cleaner from the laundry closet. Without all the trash, the room seemed clean but rather empty. The dryer beeped again, letting him know another load of laundry was done.
Perfect timing. Finish a room, fold more clothes…
After pulling the clean clothes into a basket, he slowly opened the door to Axel's room again, trying to be as quiet as possible before the redhead came into view – sitting up, awake, and smoking a cigarette.
Roxas smiled, plopping the basket down on the floor and sitting down on the bed next to Axel.
"My head is throbbing," Axel mumbled, pulling the blankets tighter around his shoulders.
Resisting the urge to tackle the redhead to the bed and cuddle him into oblivion, Roxas simply fidgeted. "Sorry. Maybe you should have considered that before, you know…"
Axel blinked slowly, putting out his cigarette before lying back against his pillow.
"D-D'you want a hug?"
Axel smiled faintly, nodding from his horizontal position. Succumbing to his urges, Roxas crawled on top of him, wrapping his arms around the older boy any way he could and resting his head on Axel's shoulder.
"I like hugs," Axel murmured, snaking one arm up around Roxas's shoulder.
"I think you're still drunk," Roxas said, laughing a little at Axel's slightly bewildered expression.
"Just a little…"
Shaking off Axel's arm, Roxas sat up, straddling the other boy's chest. "You should sleep," he said softly, leaning down to kiss Axel's forehead.
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"My head."
"Your head?"
"It hurts."
"Oh…" Roxas idly rolled the chain on Axel's neck between his fingers. "Do you have any Advil or anything?"
Axel shook his head. "Come here," he said, pushing Roxas off of his chest and holding up the blankets. "Come in here with me."
"I gotta keep cleaning, Ax."
"Bullshit! Come here." Axel sprung into action the same way he had the first morning they had woken up together, dragging Roxas close to him and wrapping them both up tightly in the blankets. After a moment of silent cuddling, he spoke again. "Hey Rox?"
"Yea?"
"Can we fuck? Like… now?"
Roxas snorted. "No."
"What? Why not? It would brighten my shitty day…"
Roxas leaned back to make eye contact and smiled, unable to keep a straight face as Axel's hopeful expression came into view.
"Ax, remember how I wouldn't let you kiss me until it was a really good, special, romantic, Hannukah moment?"
"Yea, so this is a special, romantic, Christmas moment!"
Roxas shook his head, trying not to laugh at Axel's now forlorn face. "It's really all you think about, isn't it?"
Axel shrugged, then leaned back to stretch his arms. "A guy needs to be touched sometimes, you know?"
Roxas's face brightened. "Well, that's something completely different, if you just want to be touched. That's not sex, that's just touching. Ooh! I can give you a massage!" He climbed atop the redhead again, holding his shoulders down. "Beggars can't be choosers, Ax. Do you have like… lotion or something?"
"Under the bed."
Roxas raised his eyebrows but reached an arm down anyway, feeling around until his hand found a bottle of lavender scented lotion. "Even I'm not this gay," he remarked, teasing Axel as the flowery scent filled the air. Rubbing a bit into his hands, he motioned for Axel to turn over, then began to massage the older boy's shoulders.
"Oh… that's alright, I guess," Axel mumbled, his head resting on his arms. "Ask me questions. I feel like talking."
"Hmmm…" Roxas bit his lip. "Alright. Tell me about your mom."
"No. New question."
"Ok, tell me about your dad."
Axel sighed. "Rox, my mom was a hooker. She has no idea which guy knocked her up. There were too many."
"You'd think she'd remember that hair color…"
Axel laughed. "Yea, we used to joke around about it, it must be a recessive gene or something. Whatever, it doesn't matter anyway, whoever the guy was, he was lame enough to hire a hooker, so…"
"So where did crack come into the picture?" Roxas asked, figuring he was on a roll.
"Ugh… well, ok, when she found out she was pregnant she had to stop, uh, hooker-ing, for a bit… And so she was dealing while she was pregnant for a while, but then once I was born she went back to just being a whore, but then high school started and books were expensive, and everything costs money, and… yea. She never tried to hide it from me that she was a whore, but she never talked to me about dealing. I knew she was doing it, but I think she didn't want me to know. We have a weird mother-son relationship, I guess… I used to hate when she'd be gone all night, though. Seriously, I once made Demyx stay over for like a week straight in 8th grade. I didn't want to be alone at night."
"Bet you two had fun," Roxas said sullenly, kneading at Axel's lower back. "You seem awfully… close."
Axel opened one eye, looking at Roxas over his shoulder. "What, are you jealous or something? Of Demyx?"
Roxas mumbled under his breath, looking down and avoiding Axel's eye. Axel laughed, then laid his head down again, relaxing.
"Rox, don't be jealous of Demyx. We are close, though – I guess that's what you'd call it… I… He's just always been there for me, with me, and he didn't make fun of me when I told him about my mom, and we just… I dunno, we were friends as little kids, and as we got older, we just got closer. His parents used to fight a lot and when he'd get in the middle, he'd get pushed around, so he would end up staying over here a lot just to be away from that, and I loved it, because then I wasn't alone. We got older and I started getting stoned a lot, and he'd sell it to me cheap and make sure I didn't do anything stupid, or if I did, make sure he was there to laugh at me… Demyx is probably the reason I kept my grades good up until mom got arrested. He'd make me do my homework and stuff even when I didn't feel like it, which wasn't so bad. I used to really like doing math problems. When I was younger… We haven't seen each other as much lately, but when we do, it's like nothing's changed. He still gives me weed, and he still takes care of me, and I still just get all calm and stuff when he's around."
"So… were you ever, you know…?"
"What, like, together? As in, was he my boyfriend ever? No. I mean, well… You get to that age where you start to wonder about stuff, and you kind of… experiment. We did that. I mean, Demyx was my first… everything. We used to, well… I'd get upset about something, and he'd be all calm, and I'd get stoned and we'd fuck, but he liked it too, so it was all good. When I wanted to master blowjobs, he was the one I practiced on, and vice versa. Stuff like that. There was one period of time where we were doing that… a lot. But we were never officially like, together, or whatever. We just always knew that the other was there, if we ever wanted to do anything, although by the time high school started we had, you know, branched out to other people. There was never any weird jealous stuff going on, although Demyx would tell you otherwise. He had this awful boyfriend once, who treated him like shit, and I had to, uh… step in, and put an end to it. Dem thinks I was jealous, but it's a load of shit, I just knew the guy was a tool when Dem started coming to school with bruises all over him."
"Oh…"
Axel motioned for Roxas to sit up a little so he could turn over. Stretching out on his back, he smiled. "You gotta get both sides."
Roxas lowered his hands, hesitating as he tried to avoid Axel's ribs, which stuck out further than he remembered.
Axel's smile vanished. "Yea, pretty creepy, huh? Kinda disgusting, I guess…" Self-conscious, he pulled one of the blankets over his chest to cover up.
"No, Axel, I just…" Roxas trailed off, gently pulling the blanket away and apprehensively running his fingers along the protruding bones. "What does it feel like?"
Axel shrugged. "Feels like your hands."
Roxas explored the various surfaces of Axel's chest, feeling the dips between the bones and the soft skin over his stomach. "Ax, why didn't you say anything? This… it's not healthy."
"It's usually not this bad. I just didn't have as much money this month as I usually do. Why do you think I eat so much every time I go to your house?"
Roxas looked suspicious for a moment. "This isn't one of those binge and purge type things, is it? You're not like… bulimic, right?"
Axel snorted and whacked Roxas's arm. "No, Rox, I'm not bulimic. I'm just poor."
Roxas laughed a little, kissing Axel's collarbone softly. "Sorry, sorry… I just worry about you sometimes." He paused, then continued: "So, you said you and Demyx just always know the other is there if either of you wants to, uh… do anything. But what about now? What if he came up to you tomorrow and said he wanted to fuck? Would you?"
"He wouldn't do that for two reasons. One, because that would put me in a position where I'd have to say no to him, and neither of us wants that to come up. Two, because he would never ask me to cheat on someone I'm going out with. Rox, you think he doesn't know how crazy I am about you? He's the one that told me to stick with you even though it'd be forever 'till I got some action, because he could tell when I was talking about you how much I like you. Plus, even if by some strange chance, he did ask me, I'd say no. But he wouldn't ask."
"Good. Because you're mine." Roxas grinned before leaning forward and capturing Axel's lips in a rough kiss. When he tried to pull back again, he found that Axel wouldn't let him, and he smiled into the kiss as he settled down on the older boy's chest, any traces of jealousy quashed.
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"It's… er… it's wonderful!" Riku tried to look excited as he desperately tried to figure out what exactly he was holding. It appeared to be a small-ish, dark red… blob of yarn.
"You like it?" Sora looked overjoyed, bouncing up and down a little in the passenger's seat of Riku's car outside the grocery store. "Try it on! I-I felt bad about ruining your other one, so I made this one to make up for it… I hope it's the right size though, I wasn't sure…"
What of mine has Sora ruined? Arrgh…
His head spinning, Riku smiled half-heartedly and felt around until he found an opening in the blob. It's… it's… he ruined… my hat! He ruined my hat! This is a hat?
Pulling it onto his head, Riku turned to Sora. "How's it look?"
Sora's grin widened even more. "I knew the color would look good with your complexion! It makes you look really tan, Riku, look!"
Riku leaned his seat back and craned his neck to see his reflection in the rear view mirror, realizing after doing so that he could have simply moved the mirror. He had to admit, as strangely lumpy as the hat looked in his hands, it spread out on his head and made him look only slightly silly. Proud of his quick thinking, he grinned at Sora. "It's great, So, really."
Blushing, Sora stared at his hands, then looked up. "Well, c'mon, the ice cream is gonna melt and the milk is gonna go bad if you don't hurry up to Axel's…"
Riku grinned, ruffling Sora's hair before he started up the car, heading for Axel's apartment.
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AN: Hum dee dum. A bit filler-ish, but I had fun writing. I'm kind of madly in love with Axel, so you'll have to excuse me for writing obsessively about him! XD Demyx is growing on me as well, he's such a cutie. Hope you liked this one, next chapter should be up fairly soon! Thanks for reading, and reviews are always (greatly) appreciated!
