Birthday Fic 1 - for kel_fish
...Right. Well, I'm just going to go crawl under a rock now, because I'm a total idiot who got this done way after it was due. Because I suck. I SUCK.
Title: The Tree
Author: Lost Forevermore or Woebegone121
Rating: R for language and themes, maybe?
Pairings: Axel/Sora
Genre: Romance
Disclaimer: If I owned it, Kingdom Hearts would be a musical.
Warnings: Slash, language, possible themes, dubious editing, and I wrote this at two in the morning.
Summary: High school AU. Sora's birthdays through high school, Axel's various adventures in love, and a tree. For
kel_fish .
The first year they’d claimed the tree for their own was Sora’s freshman year, when he was just past fourteen and just short of being able to legally drive with his mom in the front seat, slamming on her invisible brake pedal. It wasn’t a particularly impressive tree, and there was nothing really exceptional about it. It was just a big, old oak tree, planted sometime when the school was first built and dinosaurs roamed the earth, right by the circle drive where kids got picked up every day. There were names and dates carved into the bark, something the school bitched about every single year, mostly proclaiming true love that fizzled out and the sexual prowess of girls who’d graduated years before.
Granted, there were a few good stories about the tree - a couple of lynchings way back when, a suicide or two - though they were hardly ever true, mostly considering that the best stories tended to take place back before the tree even existed. It made the perfect senior prank spot, its branches seemingly made for draping toilet paper over, easy enough to climb for those that wanted to lob water balloons at unsuspecting underclassman. It was desired as a hangout by every clique that still had the misfortune of being unable to drive themselves out of school, as it was the only tree in front of the school and was therefore special. The first week of the year often started with mini-turf wars of sorts, where different groups would stake it out every afternoon, and whoever looked the toughest would get it. It was sheer luck that that was the same year that Riku decided to try being goth on for size - and yeah, he could pull scary off pretty well - as well as the year that Axel started to hang with them.
Axel was infamous, one of those names that you knew, but most didn’t want to be associated with. He looked the part of the tough upperclassman pretty well, his hair spiked in a way that reminded Sora of Knuckles from Sonic the Hedgehog, and a leather motorcycle jacket being a staple in his everyday attire. He’d forged his parents’ signature and gotten the diamond tattoos on his cheeks when he was fifteen, downtown at some shady tattoo parlor that actually let fifteen-year-olds get away with forging their parents’ signature. He’d come along sometime during summer school, had attached himself to Roxas for reasons only known to themselves, though Sora had a sneaking suspicion it involved tagging the restrooms with the answers to the end-of-summer-school math final. And then he’d started hanging with Sora too, which kind of floored the brunet, because he knew he was a little bit dorky, even if his brother was cool.
School came around and Sora figured that was probably the end of it, because he’d met Axel’s crew once or twice, and they didn’t seem like the types to let a dorky, sunshine-rays freshman in on anything, even with a pretty cool brother. But the first day came and went, and when he and Roxas moseyed outside to enjoy their freedom, Axel was waiting for them, back against the rough bark of the old oak and completely alone. He grinned when he saw them, asked how they’d enjoyed their first day of prison. Roxas answered, because Sora suddenly couldn’t, not when Axel had reached out to ruffle the brunet’s spikes. Roxas said something and Axel laughed, left his hand on Sora’s head for a minute, unintentionally, before pulling it away.
And that was how the rest of the year went for Sora, he’d survive through the day and Axel would be waiting for them, back against the trunk of the old oak, the tree claimed without contest. Axel messed with his spikes and teased him about something or other before he went into a deep conversation about delinquency with Roxas that Sora pretended not to hear. November rolled around, then December, and they sat and huddled together in a group while they waited for their respective rides to pull up - there was no way they were going to wait inside and risk giving up their tree - and Sora may have noticed once or twice (or three or six or twenty times) that Axel radiated heat like a stove, and that whichever side was pressed up against the redhead tingled for a little while after they’d left. The middle of March saw Axel meeting them at the tree and dangling car keys in their faces, doing a strange victory dance before they’d all piled in Axel’s brand-new secondhand Kia.
As it turns out, Kias don’t look any tougher with hand-painted flames up the side, no matter how drunk you were when you painted them on.
Sora turned fifteen waiting for his mom to pick him up at the police station, because apparently teenagers had curfews and stuff, and midnight was past it. Roxas had quickly figured out that hitting on the cop did not, in fact, get you out of a ticket - instead it got you a severe look and a ride in a police car. Riku taught them all that staying quiet was the best course to take all around. Axel learned that tickets were expensive, cops didn’t like cop humor, and that he was grounded for the next two months.
And if Axel’s hand was in Sora’s while they quietly freaked out about the fact that they were in motherfucking booking until their parents got there, and Riku and Roxas were in the other cell and therefore too far away to see them quietly freaking out while they were in motherfucking booking, well, that was between them, the cell walls, and the security cameras.
They staked the tree out in sophomore year, too, Axel still waiting for them underneath it despite the fact that he probably should have been in detention. Sophomore year was the year that Sora remembered mostly as when Roxas met Hayner and suddenly Sora was only seeing his brother half of the time he used to, and it stung a little. Roxas tried, tried really hard to make sure that Sora felt included, and Sora didn’t ever let him know that he was feeling a little bit neglected. He figured that Roxas had put up with him for barely fifteen years (and nine months) and deserved a little bit of freedom - he and Roxas weren’t the same person, after all, just two halves of the same cell once upon a time, and Roxas still had video game tournaments with him on the weekends. It was okay, even if it took some adjusting.
Eventually they fell into a rhythm that was easy - Sora would meet Axel, Roxas, and Riku by the tree, and eventually, Roxas would break off to go skate with Hayner, and Axel would drive Sora and Riku home. That was the year that Axel started touching him more often, hanging an arm off Sora’s shoulder like a good friend, walking just close enough that Sora could feel Axel’s heat like a furnace, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Sora rode in the backseat of what they called the flaming Kia, and it was always just himself and Axel once they’d dropped Riku off, but the front seat next to Axel was empty.
He’d left it empty at first, just out of habit, but it was weird trying to talk across the seats and above the music. One day in mid-December, he’d decided that whatever, Roxas was off with Hayner, and therefore he’d lost shotgun. He’d climbed over the seats in the middle of a conversation at a red light while Axel watched and laughed at Sora just a little. Sora grinned and they went right on their way, but at the next red light, Axel had leaned over and tugged Sora’s seatbelt across the brunet, clicking it closed without a word, long fingers brushing across Sora’s chest. From then on, Sora figured out that if he conveniently “forgot” to put on his seatbelt when he hopped into the front seat, Axel would do it for him without breaking stride.
They didn’t talk about Roxas until February, when Axel suddenly asked where Hayner lived. Sora had responded cautiously, wondering if Axel was planning on torching the house or something because it seemed like Axel hadn’t been taking the sudden drop in attention from his partner-in-crime well. But Axel had simply pulled up to the curb where Roxas and Hayner and the other two whose names Sora could never remember were sitting and stuck his head out the window.
“Hey, kids!” he shouted. “Get in the car!”
Roxas was up without a word, and the other three followed suit, albeit much more cautiously. “Your dog missing?” he asked with a smirk.
“Nah,” Axel replied. He suddenly reached out and grabbed Sora’s wrist, holding it up for Roxas to see. “But I’m holding your brother hostage until you and your little minions get in the car and go for pie.”
It was amazing how many people you could fit into the Flaming Kia.
Sora turned sixteen in the backseat of the Flaming Kia, out of gas because Axel had suddenly gotten the idea in his head that Sora needed to go to a White Castle two hours away for his birthday and forgotten to fill up the tank before he left, somewhere on the side of the interstate. Axel’s older brother was on his way, supposedly, and hopefully they’d be out of the night soon, because the story of the Hook had been drilled into Sora’s brain by Riku and Roxas, and who said ghost stories weren’t true? Midnight rolled around, Sora turned sixteen, and they fell asleep huddled in the backseat, back-to-back where they could watch for murderers coming after them.
And if Sora woke up once or twice with Axel’s warm weight beside him instead of behind him, well, that was between them and the Flaming Kia.
Junior year saw Sora with his own car keys in mid-October, but he kept on walking out to the tree anyway, in spite of the fact that Axel was a senior now and didn’t have a last period anymore. It was habit, he told himself, probably, just like it was totally just habit for Axel to hang around for an hour until Sora showed up, just to shoot the breeze.
That was the year that Sora allegedly made out with Kairi under the bleachers - even though it had never happened, because, frankly, Sora didn’t even like girls, and he was very sure that Kairi was a girl. He’d tried to explain this to Riku - who was now well out of his goth phase and back to normal jeans and t-shirts - but Riku’d just stomped off angrily. Riku had apologized for not believing Sora two weeks later, but the damage was done. Sora still grinned whenever Riku came around, but Riku started coming around less and less, until it was finally just a simple wave and a smile shared across the hallways and the occasional party invitations that were never RSVP-ed.
Then it was just Sora and Axel. Axel slowly began to fill in all the spaces that Riku’s drifting and Roxas’ independence had left, calling Sora up in the middle of the night for things like, “How do you get the chunks out of tomato soup?” and “Hey, there’s a hard rock video marathon on,” and “Dude, I found Waldo in my Cheerios!” He started showing up on the weekends, too, until it was like he lived there from Friday night to Monday morning, and Sora woke up every weekend to Axel with his hair down and occasionally, Axel without a shirt. That was the year they started running as close to curfew as they could, running red lights where they could get away with it, doing sixty-five down Main Street just because they could.
That was the year that Axel totaled the Flaming Kia - though it totally wasn’t his fault, he’d insist, no matter what the insurance claim said - and the year that Sora became Axel’s official chauffer. They ditched prom and went to the movies instead, and miraculously passed all of their finals. Spring Break rolled around and while they didn’t quite manage to convince Sora’s mom that they totally needed to go to the beach, they did manage to convince her that camping twenty miles away wouldn’t result in kidnapping or murder.
Sora turned seventeen stretched out under the stars, tent abandoned for the thrill of being “one with nature,” as Axel put it, with Axel warm beside him and closer than a best friend probably should have been. “Happy birthday,” Axel yawned when his watch started beeping at exactly midnight. Sora grinned and hummed the birthday song until Axel reached over and whacked him upside the head with the words, “Shut up, you can’t sing.”
It somehow erupted into Sora retorting, “Make me!” and scrambling up and away from Axel as the redhead lunged for him with a grin. It didn’t take long for Axel to catch him and pin him down, clamping a hand over Sora’s mouth to cut off the off-key tune.
And if Axel took his hand away, leaned down, and kissed Sora breathless, well. That was between them and the stars.
The shock came senior year. It didn’t occur to Sora until the end of the summer that Axel was done with school and headed off to college, when Axel was packing and then he was leaving. And yeah, he was only maybe an hour’s drive away, but he wasn’t in the house ten minutes away from Sora’s, and that made all the difference. This time, there was nothing to fill in the empty spaces on the weeknights but long phone calls and emails, of stupid, mundane things that got funnier as the night progressed, and the phone bill skyrocketed - probably had something to do with the way he kept waking up with it next to him on the pillow, Axel shouting, “Good morning, sunshine!” into the phone in a ridiculous voice sometime around five.
The hardest part was the tree. It stood mostly empty, now, like it was waiting for them, even though Sora was the only one who ever went and stood by it anymore. No one else moved to claim the tree, like they knew it was just rightfully his and Axel’s (and Roxas’ and Riku’s, no matter where they were now). Eventually, Sora stopped going over to it, because Axel was an hour away and if he wanted to be home in time for curfew, he’d better start driving as soon as he could.
Spring Break came around again, and Sora turned eighteen in Axel’s dorm room, with Axel’s forehead against his and a grin on his face. The atmosphere was heavy and tense in the best way possible, and Axel’s mattress kind of sucked, frankly, and the dorm room was messy and he was pretty sure that pile in the corner was alive, and he was supposed to have been back at his own place an hour and a half ago, but it was Axel and he didn’t care about anything else.
That was the year that Sora got accepted into a college two and a half hours away from Axel’s, but Axel still grinned and said he was proud of him, long-distance relationship statistics be damned. That was the year that Sora’s parents informed him of the divorce, and Axel did the hour-long drive to meet Sora - Roxas having long ago stormed out to vent at Hayner. That was the year that Sora came out and drove halfway to Axel before he turned around and came back, because yeah, Axel would take him in, but Axel also wanted him to work it out with his parents. That was the year Axel broke his arm at a party. The year Sora finally knew what he wanted to be when he grew up. The year he realized that he was kind of maybe in love.
That was the year Sora graduated. Axel met him by the tree when it was all said and done - Sora walked out of the gym and there he was, back against the bark, so much the same but so different at the same time. He walked over and leaned next to Axel, the redhead automatically draping an arm around Sora’s shoulders. Sora looked up and, yeah, there was still some toilet paper stuck on the branches, but he wasn’t about to go up and pull it down. Climbing it had been a pain in the ass the first time - literally.
“So,” Axel said eventually, his hand resting lightly on Sora’s shoulder. “You’re a big kid, now,” he sang quietly, to the tune of the old Pull-Ups commercial, and Sora grinned. He’d been grinning all day, really. He figured that getting to leave high school was something that just made you smile.
“Yep,” he replied, and slipped an arm around Axel’s waist. “I can pick out my own clothes and everything now.”
“No, you can’t.” Axel patted his shoulder. “But we let you try anyway.”
Sora rolled his eyes but let that one slide, much too happy and content to get into a poking war with Axel at the moment. People were leaving, saying goodbye, all around him. Riku had caught him in the gym just before the ceremony and informed him that his cap was tilting thanks to his spikes, and Sora had pointed out that Riku’s dress went great with his hair - it felt just like it had back when Riku still came around to seemingly simply take up space on Sora’s couch, and that in itself was their farewell. Sora and Roxas would never really say goodbye - the twin thing kind of meant you were stuck with the other guy forever. And Axel…
Sora was pretty sure he’d never say goodbye to Axel.
But the tree? The tree was probably going to be the hardest to bid farewell to.
“Dude, it’s a tree,” Axel said when Sora voiced that particular opinion, but he looked up at the branches and the toilet paper as well.
“Didn’t you miss the tree at school?” Sora asked. “The tree missed you.”
Axel lifted his free hand and ruffled Sora’s spikes. “Sora, don’t be living vicariously through plants. Next thing you know, you’ll be eating sunshine for breakfast and being smoked by kids all over the country.” He looked at the tree again. “…But if we’re still speaking in metaphors, then yeah, I missed the tree.”
“I’m gonna miss the tree,” Sora said quietly.
Axel rolled his eyes in that way that meant that he was secretly finding Sora very adorable, but was much too tough to admit it. “Sora, it’s a tree. You wanna cut it down and make a table out of it or something? So you can have the tree wherever you go?” He paused for a moment, then got a strange look on his face. “…How about we’re not in metaphors anymore? This time I meant the tree literally.” Sora laughed, suddenly getting a strange image of Axel as a table with a doily draped over his spikes, and Axel pushed away from the tree, taking Sora with him. “Seriously, though. You’re attached to a tree.”
“And you’re attached to the license plate of the Flaming Kia!” Sora replied when he could breathe again.
“It was my first car!” Axel insisted, and managed to look as though Sora had severely offended him. “It was special.”
“Yeah, well,” Sora replied, looking at the tree again. “The tree’s special too. It’s where…” He paused, for dramatic effect, and then continued in a stage whisper. “I fell in love!”
“So it’s the Love Tree, then?” He pulled Sora to him again. “I don’t know how I feel about you and the tree, Sora.”
“It’s just a tree, Axel. Don’t be jealous.”
And Axel laughed and tugged him toward the car, waving goodbye over his shoulder at the tree. Sora grinned and went, waving goodbye as well. And if they both looked back at it briefly, and if they both remembered leaning against it through the seasons, and if they both thought of the times that they’d snuck a few kisses in it when no one was looking, or the time that Sora had fallen out of it and right onto Axel and had broken his arm in three places, or the time that Axel had jumped out of it and scared the holy crap out of Sora and Sora didn’t speak to him for the whole night, or the time that, or the memory of, or the day that…
Well. That was between them and the tree.
Title: The Tree
Author: Lost Forevermore or Woebegone121
Rating: R for language and themes, maybe?
Pairings: Axel/Sora
Genre: Romance
Disclaimer: If I owned it, Kingdom Hearts would be a musical.
Warnings: Slash, language, possible themes, dubious editing, and I wrote this at two in the morning.
Summary: High school AU. Sora's birthdays through high school, Axel's various adventures in love, and a tree. For
kel_fish .
The first year they’d claimed the tree for their own was Sora’s freshman year, when he was just past fourteen and just short of being able to legally drive with his mom in the front seat, slamming on her invisible brake pedal. It wasn’t a particularly impressive tree, and there was nothing really exceptional about it. It was just a big, old oak tree, planted sometime when the school was first built and dinosaurs roamed the earth, right by the circle drive where kids got picked up every day. There were names and dates carved into the bark, something the school bitched about every single year, mostly proclaiming true love that fizzled out and the sexual prowess of girls who’d graduated years before.
Granted, there were a few good stories about the tree - a couple of lynchings way back when, a suicide or two - though they were hardly ever true, mostly considering that the best stories tended to take place back before the tree even existed. It made the perfect senior prank spot, its branches seemingly made for draping toilet paper over, easy enough to climb for those that wanted to lob water balloons at unsuspecting underclassman. It was desired as a hangout by every clique that still had the misfortune of being unable to drive themselves out of school, as it was the only tree in front of the school and was therefore special. The first week of the year often started with mini-turf wars of sorts, where different groups would stake it out every afternoon, and whoever looked the toughest would get it. It was sheer luck that that was the same year that Riku decided to try being goth on for size - and yeah, he could pull scary off pretty well - as well as the year that Axel started to hang with them.
Axel was infamous, one of those names that you knew, but most didn’t want to be associated with. He looked the part of the tough upperclassman pretty well, his hair spiked in a way that reminded Sora of Knuckles from Sonic the Hedgehog, and a leather motorcycle jacket being a staple in his everyday attire. He’d forged his parents’ signature and gotten the diamond tattoos on his cheeks when he was fifteen, downtown at some shady tattoo parlor that actually let fifteen-year-olds get away with forging their parents’ signature. He’d come along sometime during summer school, had attached himself to Roxas for reasons only known to themselves, though Sora had a sneaking suspicion it involved tagging the restrooms with the answers to the end-of-summer-school math final. And then he’d started hanging with Sora too, which kind of floored the brunet, because he knew he was a little bit dorky, even if his brother was cool.
School came around and Sora figured that was probably the end of it, because he’d met Axel’s crew once or twice, and they didn’t seem like the types to let a dorky, sunshine-rays freshman in on anything, even with a pretty cool brother. But the first day came and went, and when he and Roxas moseyed outside to enjoy their freedom, Axel was waiting for them, back against the rough bark of the old oak and completely alone. He grinned when he saw them, asked how they’d enjoyed their first day of prison. Roxas answered, because Sora suddenly couldn’t, not when Axel had reached out to ruffle the brunet’s spikes. Roxas said something and Axel laughed, left his hand on Sora’s head for a minute, unintentionally, before pulling it away.
And that was how the rest of the year went for Sora, he’d survive through the day and Axel would be waiting for them, back against the trunk of the old oak, the tree claimed without contest. Axel messed with his spikes and teased him about something or other before he went into a deep conversation about delinquency with Roxas that Sora pretended not to hear. November rolled around, then December, and they sat and huddled together in a group while they waited for their respective rides to pull up - there was no way they were going to wait inside and risk giving up their tree - and Sora may have noticed once or twice (or three or six or twenty times) that Axel radiated heat like a stove, and that whichever side was pressed up against the redhead tingled for a little while after they’d left. The middle of March saw Axel meeting them at the tree and dangling car keys in their faces, doing a strange victory dance before they’d all piled in Axel’s brand-new secondhand Kia.
As it turns out, Kias don’t look any tougher with hand-painted flames up the side, no matter how drunk you were when you painted them on.
Sora turned fifteen waiting for his mom to pick him up at the police station, because apparently teenagers had curfews and stuff, and midnight was past it. Roxas had quickly figured out that hitting on the cop did not, in fact, get you out of a ticket - instead it got you a severe look and a ride in a police car. Riku taught them all that staying quiet was the best course to take all around. Axel learned that tickets were expensive, cops didn’t like cop humor, and that he was grounded for the next two months.
And if Axel’s hand was in Sora’s while they quietly freaked out about the fact that they were in motherfucking booking until their parents got there, and Riku and Roxas were in the other cell and therefore too far away to see them quietly freaking out while they were in motherfucking booking, well, that was between them, the cell walls, and the security cameras.
They staked the tree out in sophomore year, too, Axel still waiting for them underneath it despite the fact that he probably should have been in detention. Sophomore year was the year that Sora remembered mostly as when Roxas met Hayner and suddenly Sora was only seeing his brother half of the time he used to, and it stung a little. Roxas tried, tried really hard to make sure that Sora felt included, and Sora didn’t ever let him know that he was feeling a little bit neglected. He figured that Roxas had put up with him for barely fifteen years (and nine months) and deserved a little bit of freedom - he and Roxas weren’t the same person, after all, just two halves of the same cell once upon a time, and Roxas still had video game tournaments with him on the weekends. It was okay, even if it took some adjusting.
Eventually they fell into a rhythm that was easy - Sora would meet Axel, Roxas, and Riku by the tree, and eventually, Roxas would break off to go skate with Hayner, and Axel would drive Sora and Riku home. That was the year that Axel started touching him more often, hanging an arm off Sora’s shoulder like a good friend, walking just close enough that Sora could feel Axel’s heat like a furnace, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Sora rode in the backseat of what they called the flaming Kia, and it was always just himself and Axel once they’d dropped Riku off, but the front seat next to Axel was empty.
He’d left it empty at first, just out of habit, but it was weird trying to talk across the seats and above the music. One day in mid-December, he’d decided that whatever, Roxas was off with Hayner, and therefore he’d lost shotgun. He’d climbed over the seats in the middle of a conversation at a red light while Axel watched and laughed at Sora just a little. Sora grinned and they went right on their way, but at the next red light, Axel had leaned over and tugged Sora’s seatbelt across the brunet, clicking it closed without a word, long fingers brushing across Sora’s chest. From then on, Sora figured out that if he conveniently “forgot” to put on his seatbelt when he hopped into the front seat, Axel would do it for him without breaking stride.
They didn’t talk about Roxas until February, when Axel suddenly asked where Hayner lived. Sora had responded cautiously, wondering if Axel was planning on torching the house or something because it seemed like Axel hadn’t been taking the sudden drop in attention from his partner-in-crime well. But Axel had simply pulled up to the curb where Roxas and Hayner and the other two whose names Sora could never remember were sitting and stuck his head out the window.
“Hey, kids!” he shouted. “Get in the car!”
Roxas was up without a word, and the other three followed suit, albeit much more cautiously. “Your dog missing?” he asked with a smirk.
“Nah,” Axel replied. He suddenly reached out and grabbed Sora’s wrist, holding it up for Roxas to see. “But I’m holding your brother hostage until you and your little minions get in the car and go for pie.”
It was amazing how many people you could fit into the Flaming Kia.
Sora turned sixteen in the backseat of the Flaming Kia, out of gas because Axel had suddenly gotten the idea in his head that Sora needed to go to a White Castle two hours away for his birthday and forgotten to fill up the tank before he left, somewhere on the side of the interstate. Axel’s older brother was on his way, supposedly, and hopefully they’d be out of the night soon, because the story of the Hook had been drilled into Sora’s brain by Riku and Roxas, and who said ghost stories weren’t true? Midnight rolled around, Sora turned sixteen, and they fell asleep huddled in the backseat, back-to-back where they could watch for murderers coming after them.
And if Sora woke up once or twice with Axel’s warm weight beside him instead of behind him, well, that was between them and the Flaming Kia.
Junior year saw Sora with his own car keys in mid-October, but he kept on walking out to the tree anyway, in spite of the fact that Axel was a senior now and didn’t have a last period anymore. It was habit, he told himself, probably, just like it was totally just habit for Axel to hang around for an hour until Sora showed up, just to shoot the breeze.
That was the year that Sora allegedly made out with Kairi under the bleachers - even though it had never happened, because, frankly, Sora didn’t even like girls, and he was very sure that Kairi was a girl. He’d tried to explain this to Riku - who was now well out of his goth phase and back to normal jeans and t-shirts - but Riku’d just stomped off angrily. Riku had apologized for not believing Sora two weeks later, but the damage was done. Sora still grinned whenever Riku came around, but Riku started coming around less and less, until it was finally just a simple wave and a smile shared across the hallways and the occasional party invitations that were never RSVP-ed.
Then it was just Sora and Axel. Axel slowly began to fill in all the spaces that Riku’s drifting and Roxas’ independence had left, calling Sora up in the middle of the night for things like, “How do you get the chunks out of tomato soup?” and “Hey, there’s a hard rock video marathon on,” and “Dude, I found Waldo in my Cheerios!” He started showing up on the weekends, too, until it was like he lived there from Friday night to Monday morning, and Sora woke up every weekend to Axel with his hair down and occasionally, Axel without a shirt. That was the year they started running as close to curfew as they could, running red lights where they could get away with it, doing sixty-five down Main Street just because they could.
That was the year that Axel totaled the Flaming Kia - though it totally wasn’t his fault, he’d insist, no matter what the insurance claim said - and the year that Sora became Axel’s official chauffer. They ditched prom and went to the movies instead, and miraculously passed all of their finals. Spring Break rolled around and while they didn’t quite manage to convince Sora’s mom that they totally needed to go to the beach, they did manage to convince her that camping twenty miles away wouldn’t result in kidnapping or murder.
Sora turned seventeen stretched out under the stars, tent abandoned for the thrill of being “one with nature,” as Axel put it, with Axel warm beside him and closer than a best friend probably should have been. “Happy birthday,” Axel yawned when his watch started beeping at exactly midnight. Sora grinned and hummed the birthday song until Axel reached over and whacked him upside the head with the words, “Shut up, you can’t sing.”
It somehow erupted into Sora retorting, “Make me!” and scrambling up and away from Axel as the redhead lunged for him with a grin. It didn’t take long for Axel to catch him and pin him down, clamping a hand over Sora’s mouth to cut off the off-key tune.
And if Axel took his hand away, leaned down, and kissed Sora breathless, well. That was between them and the stars.
The shock came senior year. It didn’t occur to Sora until the end of the summer that Axel was done with school and headed off to college, when Axel was packing and then he was leaving. And yeah, he was only maybe an hour’s drive away, but he wasn’t in the house ten minutes away from Sora’s, and that made all the difference. This time, there was nothing to fill in the empty spaces on the weeknights but long phone calls and emails, of stupid, mundane things that got funnier as the night progressed, and the phone bill skyrocketed - probably had something to do with the way he kept waking up with it next to him on the pillow, Axel shouting, “Good morning, sunshine!” into the phone in a ridiculous voice sometime around five.
The hardest part was the tree. It stood mostly empty, now, like it was waiting for them, even though Sora was the only one who ever went and stood by it anymore. No one else moved to claim the tree, like they knew it was just rightfully his and Axel’s (and Roxas’ and Riku’s, no matter where they were now). Eventually, Sora stopped going over to it, because Axel was an hour away and if he wanted to be home in time for curfew, he’d better start driving as soon as he could.
Spring Break came around again, and Sora turned eighteen in Axel’s dorm room, with Axel’s forehead against his and a grin on his face. The atmosphere was heavy and tense in the best way possible, and Axel’s mattress kind of sucked, frankly, and the dorm room was messy and he was pretty sure that pile in the corner was alive, and he was supposed to have been back at his own place an hour and a half ago, but it was Axel and he didn’t care about anything else.
That was the year that Sora got accepted into a college two and a half hours away from Axel’s, but Axel still grinned and said he was proud of him, long-distance relationship statistics be damned. That was the year that Sora’s parents informed him of the divorce, and Axel did the hour-long drive to meet Sora - Roxas having long ago stormed out to vent at Hayner. That was the year that Sora came out and drove halfway to Axel before he turned around and came back, because yeah, Axel would take him in, but Axel also wanted him to work it out with his parents. That was the year Axel broke his arm at a party. The year Sora finally knew what he wanted to be when he grew up. The year he realized that he was kind of maybe in love.
That was the year Sora graduated. Axel met him by the tree when it was all said and done - Sora walked out of the gym and there he was, back against the bark, so much the same but so different at the same time. He walked over and leaned next to Axel, the redhead automatically draping an arm around Sora’s shoulders. Sora looked up and, yeah, there was still some toilet paper stuck on the branches, but he wasn’t about to go up and pull it down. Climbing it had been a pain in the ass the first time - literally.
“So,” Axel said eventually, his hand resting lightly on Sora’s shoulder. “You’re a big kid, now,” he sang quietly, to the tune of the old Pull-Ups commercial, and Sora grinned. He’d been grinning all day, really. He figured that getting to leave high school was something that just made you smile.
“Yep,” he replied, and slipped an arm around Axel’s waist. “I can pick out my own clothes and everything now.”
“No, you can’t.” Axel patted his shoulder. “But we let you try anyway.”
Sora rolled his eyes but let that one slide, much too happy and content to get into a poking war with Axel at the moment. People were leaving, saying goodbye, all around him. Riku had caught him in the gym just before the ceremony and informed him that his cap was tilting thanks to his spikes, and Sora had pointed out that Riku’s dress went great with his hair - it felt just like it had back when Riku still came around to seemingly simply take up space on Sora’s couch, and that in itself was their farewell. Sora and Roxas would never really say goodbye - the twin thing kind of meant you were stuck with the other guy forever. And Axel…
Sora was pretty sure he’d never say goodbye to Axel.
But the tree? The tree was probably going to be the hardest to bid farewell to.
“Dude, it’s a tree,” Axel said when Sora voiced that particular opinion, but he looked up at the branches and the toilet paper as well.
“Didn’t you miss the tree at school?” Sora asked. “The tree missed you.”
Axel lifted his free hand and ruffled Sora’s spikes. “Sora, don’t be living vicariously through plants. Next thing you know, you’ll be eating sunshine for breakfast and being smoked by kids all over the country.” He looked at the tree again. “…But if we’re still speaking in metaphors, then yeah, I missed the tree.”
“I’m gonna miss the tree,” Sora said quietly.
Axel rolled his eyes in that way that meant that he was secretly finding Sora very adorable, but was much too tough to admit it. “Sora, it’s a tree. You wanna cut it down and make a table out of it or something? So you can have the tree wherever you go?” He paused for a moment, then got a strange look on his face. “…How about we’re not in metaphors anymore? This time I meant the tree literally.” Sora laughed, suddenly getting a strange image of Axel as a table with a doily draped over his spikes, and Axel pushed away from the tree, taking Sora with him. “Seriously, though. You’re attached to a tree.”
“And you’re attached to the license plate of the Flaming Kia!” Sora replied when he could breathe again.
“It was my first car!” Axel insisted, and managed to look as though Sora had severely offended him. “It was special.”
“Yeah, well,” Sora replied, looking at the tree again. “The tree’s special too. It’s where…” He paused, for dramatic effect, and then continued in a stage whisper. “I fell in love!”
“So it’s the Love Tree, then?” He pulled Sora to him again. “I don’t know how I feel about you and the tree, Sora.”
“It’s just a tree, Axel. Don’t be jealous.”
And Axel laughed and tugged him toward the car, waving goodbye over his shoulder at the tree. Sora grinned and went, waving goodbye as well. And if they both looked back at it briefly, and if they both remembered leaning against it through the seasons, and if they both thought of the times that they’d snuck a few kisses in it when no one was looking, or the time that Sora had fallen out of it and right onto Axel and had broken his arm in three places, or the time that Axel had jumped out of it and scared the holy crap out of Sora and Sora didn’t speak to him for the whole night, or the time that, or the memory of, or the day that…
Well. That was between them and the tree.