[Fic] Axel/Roxas--- The Discovery of Space
Title: The Discovery of Space
Series: Kingdom Hearts
Pairing/Characters: Axel/Roxas
Rating: PG-15 or so for language and drug abuse.
Total length: 4,942
Summary: Because sometimes, long distance relationships do work.
Author's Note: This knocks off my "looking for a postage stamp" square for
mundane_bingo. (Card is here if you're curious.) rudy_flamthrowa prompted me for that particular square, "long distance relationship, they can make it work." I... got a little carried away.
♥♥♥
It's been seven long months since Roxas' family had dragged him off into the middle of buttfuck nowhere and it had started driving Axel crazy halfway through the third week, so needless to say, after seven months he's getting to the point where he'd sell his liver for a chance to see the kid.
Of course, he'd known what he was getting into from the start, known before Roxas had even told him that the kid's family moved around just this side of way too fucking much. Roxas had grimaced as he told him, whispered about delivery services and how he'd been in twenty-two different schools since Kindergarten. He looked like someone had maimed his cat. So Axel had punched him in the arm, called him an idiot, and told him it didn't matter, that they'd make it work.
♥♥♥
He'd met Roxas shortly after Valentines Day at the candy store he worked at, watched as the kid had sauntered in with his friends all clustered around him, as they'd laughed and giggled and heaped piles of discounted candy onto the register to be bagged. And Roxas had just stood there, hands in his pockets and scowled around at the rainbows of skittles, jelly beans, and m & ms. He'd glowered at the 32 flavors of chocolate, gagged at the Swedish fish and starbursts, grimaced at the carnival peanuts, and made faces at the carefully constructed truffles.
Finally, after ten minutes of cajoling from his friends he'd lifted a single box of Redhots from the heaped display and tossed it onto the growing pile sitting on the counter in front of Axel. From the moment he'd smirked at Axel, red lips curving deliciously around the words "I don't like sweets that much" Axel had known that he wanted the kid.
He discovered Roxas' name in school that Monday, when the kid had shuffled into his study hall almost twenty minutes after it had started, clutching tight to a worn skateboard, scowl warding off any laughing comments about his tardiness. Like most schools, they'd stopped introducing new students back in Elementary School, choosing not to force the transfer students into even further embarrassment, but Axel had been sitting close enough to the teacher to hear that "Roxas" was a new transfer from the Islands, that he was a sophomore and had a twin brother named Sora.
Axel remembers the way he'd frantically shoved Demyx under the table so the musician could crawl into the seat across from him, how Demyx had complained so loudly that his whining voice had caught even the teacher's attention. His ears had gone vaguely red in embarrassment when the teacher had grinned, her lips quirking up and her green eyes amused when she'd said, "Well, apparently there's a free spot next to Axel now. Why don't you go sit there, Roxas?"
Roxas had just shrugged, traipsing the short distance and sliding onto the uncomfortable seat next to Axel, so close that their knees knocked together. Axel had frowned and thought that never happened when he'd been sitting next to Demyx. Roxas had uttered a short "S'up?" and nodded to both of them, before scrutinizing Axel with a perplexed look on his face, a look that had cleared seconds later to be replaced by simple recognition. "Aren't you-?"
"Candy shop, ya." Axel muttered, poking idly at the calculus homework he'd been ignoring for the first half of the period. Idly, he scribbled an equation onto the paper, not even sure if he was writing the answer under the correct problem. Beside him, Roxas shifted, his skateboard knocking against the side of the table as he shoved it beneath his feet. He looked back up at Axel and grinned, the expression so utterly different than the scowl that Axel spent another minute just staring at him before he realized the kid was talking.
"-so, do you wanna go out some time?" the kid was asking, idly drumming his fingers against the surface of the table.
Axel's pencil snapped, the tip of it shooting off like a kamikaze bomber into the middle of the aisle. Logically, it probably wouldn't have made any noise, but in Axel's head, the explosion was deafening. Across from them, Demyx muffled his snorts of laughter with the back of his hand. The grin was fading, the corners of Roxas' mouth shifting just a bit into a smirk and this sophomore was asking him out-
"Sure," he'd said, smiling back a little stupidly. And the rest, as they say, was history.
♥♥♥
Of course, it wasn't. History that is. The months had passed, and despite the initial what the fuckery of a sophomore asking a senior out, and oh, what an absolute scandal; they'd been good together. Really good in fact, hitting it off immediately after that first "date" which had pretty much consisted of getting kicked out of a concert and spending the rest of their time making out in the back of Axel's Pinto. Just like that, they'd been inseparable. Their friends had stopped trying to invite only one of them somewhere after the first month, giving up on trying to convince Roxas that Axel was too old for him, or convince Axel that Roxas was too young and that he'd only get bored.
They finished out the school year, and in June, Roxas had grinned down at Axel from the bleachers and texted him incessantly all through the Graduation Ceremony. Axel had almost missed it when his name had been called, only launching to his feet after Roxas had texted him "Dude, wtf, you're up."
They'd spent the summer making trips back and forth to the beach, eating Sea Salt ice cream, dropping acid and smoking chronic out Roxas' window, dutifully pretending that they weren't seeing a plethora of talking animals whenever his parents came up to check on them.
And then Roxas was being shunted back into school, blinking blearily around for that first week and Axel had a full time job at a smoke shop down the street. They were both kind of busy, Roxas being a junior, the school administers already shoving college down his throat and Axel working 9-9, and occasionally grabbing the night shift too.
But true to Axel's word, they made it work. Instead of catching bus 48 back home after school, Roxas caught bus 138 to Axel's apartment instead, doing his homework on Axel's worn, weed scented couch and occasionally getting up to sell a 40 when the stoners came knocking. They'd given up on being surprised about a high school kid greeting them at the door instead of Axel long ago, about a week after Roxas had started coming over, when he'd opened the door, eyes bloodshot and perpetual grin on his face and muttered "Nickel, Dime, or do you need something more?"
Axel got home at nine usually, and sometimes they went out for a bit, clubs or concerts or the occasional tryst to the park, but most of the time Axel just threw two microwave dinners in and they watched reruns of Friends, grinning stupidly at the television and making fun of Rachel's spoiled kid routine and Phoebe's mystical idiot vibe, and just generally remarking on the hotness of Monica.
They fell asleep to the sound of the lady upstairs screwing her most recent boyfriend into the mattress, making sleepy comments about her running a brothel and her latest partner's prowess in bed judging by the sounds of her faked orgasms. Axel usually got up to make them breakfast in the morning, french toast and bacon or a homemade egg and cheese biscuit, a stark contrast to their nightly diet of frozen dinners. Sometimes, if Axel was feeling particularly generous, he'd use the "special" butter when he made their breakfast and he'd drive Roxas to school while the kid stared vacantly out the window, silly grin stretched wide across his face, pressing a sloppy kiss to Axel's mouth before sliding out to join the rest of the zombiefied students. Other times, Roxas would curl sleepily into Axel and convince him to skip breakfast, just this once, and they'd sleep in until the school's warning bell was ringing, and then scarf down some dry toast while Axel broke the speed limit trying to get Roxas to school on time.
October rolled by and on Halloween they got ridiculously drunk and woke up with hangovers the size of three soccer fields and some small, dark haired girl pillowed between them. Like the cowards they were, they chose to sneak out of Axel's apartment first and hope that she wouldn't trash the place or steal Axel's stash while they were gone. Luckily for them, she didn't, taking the one-night stand with a saint like kind of grace and even going so far as to find Roxas at school and tell him that it was okay. No one was more surprised than Roxas when all three of them became something like friends.
Christmas passed in long cold fronts, snow storm after snow storm and the power constantly getting knocked out. Neither of them were particularly festive beyond making the special kind of gingerbread men and tripping out on the couch, huddled under the blankets and watching a marathon of Lifetime Christmas movies, but the night before Christmas, Sora and a couple of his friends broke into Axel's apartment while they were out--- tping the place with Christmas lights and mistletoe and wrestling an eight foot tree through the door, decorating it with freshly rolled joints, wrapped and unwrapped condoms, and pack after pack of cigarettes spread out like little gems among the regular baubles and lights.
When Axel had gotten home, he'd almost cried when he'd seen the tree, quickly calling Roxas up to tell him that he had the best brother ever, and please, oh please, Roxas, I'll trade you both of mine for him.
On Christmas morning, they made laced sugar cookies, decorated them with burning Christmas trees, naughty looking angels, and the occasional rapping penis; ate a shit ton and just sat around watching the snowflakes out the window. There was a particularly memorable moment when they returned home from the only Chinese restaurant still open on Christmas, Axel's thighs hot and wet from the sauce leaking out onto it, both rosy cheeked from the cold and still riding a truly ridiculous high. When Axel crossed the threshold into the apartment he'd immediately started to shimmy out of his jeans, sliding them down over his scorched thighs and Roxas had watched with rapt eyes, fingers already creeping towards his own fly and asked, "Why are we getting undressed?" with a voice thick with the kind of confusion and arousal that only a truly great high can achieve.
They'd laughed about it over noodles and moo shu pork and afterwards Axel had slid Roxas' jeans from his hips and licked a long line down his chest, eyes dark with intent.
The rest of winter rolled by in a haze of melting snow, Roxas scrutinizing college websites on Axel's old PC with bloodshot eyes, a pair of ridiculous glasses with huge black frames perched on his nose. Occasionally, Axel would offer a suggestion from the couch between threats toward video game characters, yelling about how he couldn't possibly achieve any kind of stealth mission in that particular area. Roxas would roll his eyes, but hum appreciatively, typing something new into the search bar while halfheartedly sucking at the joint between his lips.
They had their first fight on the anniversary of the day they met, and didn't talk for three days until Sora showed up clutching a bag of old horror movies and popcorn and holding a fistful of his brother's hoodie. They weren't even halfway through Attack of the Killer Tomatoes before they were making fun of it, hands clasped between them on the couch.
March was the month of Roxas and Sora, because their birthday was on the Ides of March, and Axel fell over himself trying to get the brothers a decent pair of presents. In the end, he wound up just getting them a bunch of shit, given to them in sporadic bursts over the course of the month. A new pair of headphones for Sora on the second when his broke unexpectedly. That new band t-shirt that Roxas had been eying on the fourth. An ounce of the best kush in town on the tenth. A new bowl for Sora and a new bong for Roxas on the twelfth, bought at a discount from work. A jumbo box of condoms for Roxas on the fourteenth. In fact, he's pretty sure that the only thing he'd gotten for them on their actual birthday was mindblowingly fantastic sex, and as it was, that was only a gift for Roxas. So to make up for it, he bought Sora an Xbox 360 and got Roxas an assortment of games. And thus, the tradition continued for the rest of the month.
It happened in the beginning of April, just 13 months, 21 days, and 8 hours after Roxas had enrolled in their high school, they got the fateful news. Roxas' parents sat him and his brother down at breakfast and told them that they'd be moving to a small town called Gongaga near the coast and would be gone before the week was up.
Sora had been mostly nonplussed, because he was easy going and friendly and made a ridiculous amount of friends everywhere they went. His facebook boasted that he had 3,011 friends, all from varying corners of the world, Axel would know, because he was one of them. But Sora had eyed his twin worriedly, because he wasn't an idiot. Roxas on the other hand, was horrified. Or at least, Axel thought that he probably was, judging by the annoyance coloring Roxas' voice when he'd told him this. The way he'd bitten his cuticles and looked anywhere except Axel, masking his fear with a look of total nonchalance. Axel had stooped close and wrapped his arms around a bony waist, pulled Roxas flush against him and grinned into his ear when he said, calm and rational, "Roxas, Roxas, Roxas. I told you. We'll make it work."
Roxas had sighed against the skin of Axel's neck and relaxed against him, because yes, Axel was stubborn as a mule when it came to the things he promised and they would definitely make it work.
♥♥♥
That fact still doesn't stop him from being annoyed about it though, huffing angrily and saying awful things about Roxas' mother under his breath as he digs through all the shit on his computer desk in search of a damn stamp. The desk, virtually untouched since Roxas had left, laughs at him- the screen of the PC gleaming darkly and Axel thinks it's kind of fucked up that he's so upset about this that he'll start assigning traits to inanimate objects just to cover up the sound of silence.
Without Roxas, his apartment is bleak, desolate; his bed too cold in the morning, his couch without its protective covering of heaped blankets now that Roxas isn't around to complain about the cold. His fridge is no longer a healthy mixture of frozen and breakfast foods, gone is the fresh fruit, the eggs, the milk and the bacon, replaced by a ridiculously unhealthy amount of Hungry Man and Stouffers boxes. Even the resident stoners of the complex inquire about the cheeky blonde between deals, asking Axel to pass on their greetings as they grin and press crinkled billfolds into his hands.
Life other than that moves along at a slow crawl; he gets up, skips breakfast, goes to work, and comes home again. It's like a hook has gone into his life, tearing out that little piece of Roxas and leaving a gaping hole in his place. It hurts, but they have their ways of communicating.
Which brings him back to the fucking stamp. Roxas had bought him a whole roll of them the day he'd left, sticking them onto the very top of the desk and saying, "Yes, Axel, snail mail is boring, but I want my goddamn dorky letters."
They have web cam and Skype, which they use whenever they're both at home at the same time, but sadly that doesn't happen very often. Mostly, they communicate through inane, stupid text messages at random hours of the day and the occasional drunken (and sober) phone calls. He'd gotten a text from Roxas earlier that day saying something about the ridiculousness of quantum theory and how they shouldn't teach physics in high school. Axel had laughed out loud, too busy imagining Roxas puzzling over his physics homework without him to care that he'd startled the old lady in the corner that had been checking out a pricy glass bong in the shape of a cat up until now.
He'd scribbled out half the letter on the back of a receipt that a customer had left behind, the black ink of his pen bleeding through the other side to blur the list of items, the line " Balance 101- Black My Scale, $199" mixing into the "green - 2 chamber waterpipe, $57" beneath it. After his letters had gotten illegible towards the bottom, his manager had glared at him, pushed grey streaked hair away from his scarred face and slapped a stack of computer paper onto the counter in front of him. The rest of the letter had gone on that.
On the way back he'd stopped at the store, buying a package of white envelopes and grabbing a couple packets of ramen while he was at it. He'd bypassed the stamps entirely, thinking of those retarded Tetris stamps sitting on his desk and headed home.
He's bending down to look under the desk when his cellphone rings, and he whips it open, singsonging "Well, hello, babe" before he even checks the ID. There's static over the other side of the line, and for a second he's horrified that it might be his manager, calling to ask him to come in for the night shift, or ever worse, that maybe it's one of his brothers, calling from wherever the hell they are these days. But nope, there's a breath like a sigh and then Roxas is humming "Hey Axel," into the phone, voice low and delighted, only a little bit distorted by the crackle of static. Something on Roxas' end crinkles, and Axel thinks he might be laying down on his bed, sprawling atop his homework. There's a comfortable silence where they just listen to each other breathe, the seconds passing and Axel shimmies under the desk, wedges his hand behind it to feel around and- shocks himself a bit on the exposed wires. The bite of electricity causes him to yelp, jerking his arm back so fast that his elbow collides with the desk, and he curses, sucking his fingers into his mouth and rubbing at his elbow.
"What are you doing?" Roxas laughs, sounding amused and Axel curses again before responding. "Looking for those damn stamps," he says, still scowling down at the circuitry even as he scrambles out from underneath the desk, falling back to sit on his haunches.
"You lost them already?" he asks, and Axel can almost see the smirk through the phone, wide and knowing, because Roxas had probably expected this. "Yes, already," he spits through his teeth as he glances around the apartment. Roxas laughs and another voice bleeds through on his end, too quiet to be anything more than indistinct gibberish.
"Sora says you lose things too much," Roxas is saying, and Axel grins, "Sora's one to talk," as he makes his way across the room. Carefully, he starts sorting through the bags of weed and empty boxes of takeout on his coffee table, reaching around a container of lo mein and past a nickel bag. He thinks he might be able to see the stamps, sitting in a pile of weed and change atop a pizza box, but when he grabs it, it's just the receipt for the Indian takeaway he'd had last week.
Roxas is still laughing at him in his ear, and when he finally speaks, he sounds a little bit breathless, "I left another package in your kitchen drawer. The top one closest to the pantry."
At that, Axel stops picking through food, grimacing down at the containers before picking them all up in one big sweep of his arms and taking them into the kitchen. He toes the lid of the trash can up with his sneakers, stuffing the containers in and slamming the lid down on them when they start to overflow. He opens up the door, and there they are, a package of stamps with a beaming Ariel on the front, twining her red hair around a fork like spaghetti.
"Love ya, Roxas," he sighs, ripping one off the roll and attaching it to the envelope. He bends over the counter and scribbles the addresses onto the paper, pocketing it after he's given the ink a moment to dry. His coat's draped over the back of the couch, the old army one Roxas had sent him for his birthday back in October, and he slides it on before slipping out the door, shutting and locking it behind him. Larxene's halfway down the hallway, reclining back against the wall, cigarette clenched between turquoise tipped fingers. She raises the cigarette in a lazy kind of salute, nods at the phone and says "Tell the midget hey," around a mouthful of smoke.
"The harpy says hey," he grins, just loud enough that she can hear him, grumbling her discontent to the empty hallway around her. Roxas laughs just as Axel's shoving the apartment door open, shivering as he gets a face full of snow. "God, I can't believe you're in the fucking sub-tropics," he complains, boots skidding a bit on a patch of ice clinging to the surface of the parking lot. Roxas makes an amused noise, "Mm, yes, it's quite toasty here. Sora even went surfing in the cove the other day," he says, and Sora says something in the background. Axel can only just make out the words "wicked", "sweet" and "riptide", but whatever he says makes Roxas chuckle indulgently into the phone.
When Axel reaches his car, it's to the sad sight of three inch thick snow frozen to her and Axel sighs again, switches the phone to his other ear, so he can hold it between his shoulder and cheek. It takes three tries to pull his door open, because the ice has frozen it shut and Axel hates winter.
The key's in the ignition and he's flipping through stations with one hand and reaching back to grab the ice scraper from his back seat with the other all while Roxas regales him with tales of how much it sucks to be a waiter.
"-nd it's this shitty little crab shack on the beach, and it sucks cause it's like a fifteen minute drive and this town is too small for the tips to be that great, so the cash I make is barely enough for the gas back," he's saying, and once again, Sora's tinny voice echoes through the phone. Axel smiles fondly and wonders how many times the kid has sat through this spiel.
"-pplied for a job at this cafe though. It's a small one, but it pays eight bucks an hour and tips, so if I get it I might actually get my money's worth." Roxas says, and he sounds so pleased that even though Axel's scraping ice off his car in fifteen degree weather he can't help but grinning. Above him, the sun comes out from behind the clouds, and Axel has to squint because the light turns the snow blinding.
"How's Sharp Shooters?" Roxas asks, and Axel immediately launches into a tirade of how Xigbar had cut his hours on accident and then expected him to work a double to make up for it. "-and the lazy fucking asshole is just too busy getting stoned with Demyx to work the shifts he fucked up. Fucking pedo."
"Though," he starts, tone softening, "I was thinking. There's this tattoo parlor down the street that Kairi's sister works at, yanno, the one I got my cheekbones at, and it's pretty sweet." He cuts across the traffic a bit faster than he should, rolling his eyes as his wheels skid temperamentally against the ice. "Anyway, Namine thinks my tribal designs aren't too shabby, so she's putting in a good word with the manager for me." he grins, and on the other end Roxas makes a surprised, happy sound.
"Think you'll get the job?" he asks, and there's a tapping sound echoing through the phone, probably Roxas drumming his pencil against something.
Axel laughs, honking when an itty bitty teenager talking on her cell phone cuts him off. He thinks about yelling at her, but her terrified look at the sound of his horn is probably enough, because she flicks the phone shut and waves back at him in apology. Mollified, he turns back to the phone, "I have no idea, Rox, but I sure fuckin' hope so."
Quiet reigns once more and Axel hums along to the opening notes of Smells like Teen Spirit while listening to Sora and Roxas bicker on the other line.
"I got a drum set," Roxas says, and his tone is that mix of proud and possessive that he gets when he's talking about his skateboard. Axel grins.
"You been drivin' your mom crazy with it?" he asks, and Roxas can almost see him nodding an affirmative before realizing that Axel can't see him. "Yeah," he says, as Axel's pulling into the post office parking lot. He drops the letter into the mail box, because fuck if he's gonna get out.
He's thinking nasty thoughts about the mailman when he turns back onto his road, because the fucker drops shit off in the mailboxes all the time, but apparently thinks that it isn't his job to take letters to be sent. And then Roxas asks quietly, with a hint of confusion, "Hey, dude, where are you?"
"Post office, man. Just dropped off a letter." Roxas curses and Sora snickers and for a second Axel wonders what the hell they're doing, because the sounds echoing through his speakers sound like they're tromping down a hallway. "Why?" he asks, suspiciously.
"Nothing, just curious." Roxas says, and he's turning into his parking lot, almost plowing into Marluxia's thunderbird when his back tires skid in the snow.
Larxene's still standing in the hallway when he makes it upstairs, but she's smirking now, another cigarette clenched in one hand and oddly enough, a shot glass in the other. This time, she salutes him with the shot glass, and her smile is just wicked enough that Axel's a little afraid that while he was out she might have broken into his apartment.
His keys clank as he pulls them out of his pocket and he eyes the door with a critical eye, looking for any signs of forced entry. The welcome mat, a charming thing that he'd gotten from his brother, Reno, that reads Come back with a warrant in blocky black text glares up at him, a little out of place but otherwise unharmed.
Roxas' line is silent and Axel pulls back to eye it, grimacing at the faint lost call blinking slowly back at him. He's already dialing as he pushes the door open and-
Sora barrels into him, knocking him clear out the door way to crash into the flimsy wall of the hallway. Shit, if the plaster's cracked he is going to be in so much shit- Larxene cackles and the sound echoes down the hallway, loud and crowing. She grins over at them, knocking back the shot and shouting, "You owe me five bucks, kid!" before finally slipping back into her apartment.
And that's when it hits him, that if Sora's here, then that means-
Roxas laughs at them, leaning back against the open doorway, and regarding them with such affection that something curls in Axel's chest; something happy and pleased and just a little bit elated. Sora chuckles against his ribcage and mutters, "We're just visiting for now, staying for about a week or so, but we turn eighteen in a couple months and then... well..."
Roxas says firmly, "Sora would be coming too. We're both sick of moving around," and Sora whispers, quiet and a bit hesitant, "Would that be okay?" chin still digging into Axel's chest. They're doing the twin thing, where they echo right after each other, one thought ending and the next coming out of the other's mouth and sure, maybe it would be a bit awkward, being with Roxas and having his brother live with them, but he likes Sora well enough and well, it's worth it-
He means to say yes, means to reassure Sora that it's perfectly fine, means to push himself up and hug Roxas and never let go but all that comes out is, "I can't believe you assholes let me send that letter."
And when Sora laughs, breath washing over his collarbone, and Roxas' mouth crooks up into a lopsided kind of smile- well, then Axel really knows that they'll be okay. That waiting another five months won't be so bad because he has something to look forward to. And that makes it okay.
Series: Kingdom Hearts
Pairing/Characters: Axel/Roxas
Rating: PG-15 or so for language and drug abuse.
Total length: 4,942
Summary: Because sometimes, long distance relationships do work.
Author's Note: This knocks off my "looking for a postage stamp" square for
mundane_bingo. (Card is here if you're curious.) rudy_flamthrowa prompted me for that particular square, "long distance relationship, they can make it work." I... got a little carried away.
♥♥♥
It's been seven long months since Roxas' family had dragged him off into the middle of buttfuck nowhere and it had started driving Axel crazy halfway through the third week, so needless to say, after seven months he's getting to the point where he'd sell his liver for a chance to see the kid.
Of course, he'd known what he was getting into from the start, known before Roxas had even told him that the kid's family moved around just this side of way too fucking much. Roxas had grimaced as he told him, whispered about delivery services and how he'd been in twenty-two different schools since Kindergarten. He looked like someone had maimed his cat. So Axel had punched him in the arm, called him an idiot, and told him it didn't matter, that they'd make it work.
♥♥♥
He'd met Roxas shortly after Valentines Day at the candy store he worked at, watched as the kid had sauntered in with his friends all clustered around him, as they'd laughed and giggled and heaped piles of discounted candy onto the register to be bagged. And Roxas had just stood there, hands in his pockets and scowled around at the rainbows of skittles, jelly beans, and m & ms. He'd glowered at the 32 flavors of chocolate, gagged at the Swedish fish and starbursts, grimaced at the carnival peanuts, and made faces at the carefully constructed truffles.
Finally, after ten minutes of cajoling from his friends he'd lifted a single box of Redhots from the heaped display and tossed it onto the growing pile sitting on the counter in front of Axel. From the moment he'd smirked at Axel, red lips curving deliciously around the words "I don't like sweets that much" Axel had known that he wanted the kid.
He discovered Roxas' name in school that Monday, when the kid had shuffled into his study hall almost twenty minutes after it had started, clutching tight to a worn skateboard, scowl warding off any laughing comments about his tardiness. Like most schools, they'd stopped introducing new students back in Elementary School, choosing not to force the transfer students into even further embarrassment, but Axel had been sitting close enough to the teacher to hear that "Roxas" was a new transfer from the Islands, that he was a sophomore and had a twin brother named Sora.
Axel remembers the way he'd frantically shoved Demyx under the table so the musician could crawl into the seat across from him, how Demyx had complained so loudly that his whining voice had caught even the teacher's attention. His ears had gone vaguely red in embarrassment when the teacher had grinned, her lips quirking up and her green eyes amused when she'd said, "Well, apparently there's a free spot next to Axel now. Why don't you go sit there, Roxas?"
Roxas had just shrugged, traipsing the short distance and sliding onto the uncomfortable seat next to Axel, so close that their knees knocked together. Axel had frowned and thought that never happened when he'd been sitting next to Demyx. Roxas had uttered a short "S'up?" and nodded to both of them, before scrutinizing Axel with a perplexed look on his face, a look that had cleared seconds later to be replaced by simple recognition. "Aren't you-?"
"Candy shop, ya." Axel muttered, poking idly at the calculus homework he'd been ignoring for the first half of the period. Idly, he scribbled an equation onto the paper, not even sure if he was writing the answer under the correct problem. Beside him, Roxas shifted, his skateboard knocking against the side of the table as he shoved it beneath his feet. He looked back up at Axel and grinned, the expression so utterly different than the scowl that Axel spent another minute just staring at him before he realized the kid was talking.
"-so, do you wanna go out some time?" the kid was asking, idly drumming his fingers against the surface of the table.
Axel's pencil snapped, the tip of it shooting off like a kamikaze bomber into the middle of the aisle. Logically, it probably wouldn't have made any noise, but in Axel's head, the explosion was deafening. Across from them, Demyx muffled his snorts of laughter with the back of his hand. The grin was fading, the corners of Roxas' mouth shifting just a bit into a smirk and this sophomore was asking him out-
"Sure," he'd said, smiling back a little stupidly. And the rest, as they say, was history.
♥♥♥
Of course, it wasn't. History that is. The months had passed, and despite the initial what the fuckery of a sophomore asking a senior out, and oh, what an absolute scandal; they'd been good together. Really good in fact, hitting it off immediately after that first "date" which had pretty much consisted of getting kicked out of a concert and spending the rest of their time making out in the back of Axel's Pinto. Just like that, they'd been inseparable. Their friends had stopped trying to invite only one of them somewhere after the first month, giving up on trying to convince Roxas that Axel was too old for him, or convince Axel that Roxas was too young and that he'd only get bored.
They finished out the school year, and in June, Roxas had grinned down at Axel from the bleachers and texted him incessantly all through the Graduation Ceremony. Axel had almost missed it when his name had been called, only launching to his feet after Roxas had texted him "Dude, wtf, you're up."
They'd spent the summer making trips back and forth to the beach, eating Sea Salt ice cream, dropping acid and smoking chronic out Roxas' window, dutifully pretending that they weren't seeing a plethora of talking animals whenever his parents came up to check on them.
And then Roxas was being shunted back into school, blinking blearily around for that first week and Axel had a full time job at a smoke shop down the street. They were both kind of busy, Roxas being a junior, the school administers already shoving college down his throat and Axel working 9-9, and occasionally grabbing the night shift too.
But true to Axel's word, they made it work. Instead of catching bus 48 back home after school, Roxas caught bus 138 to Axel's apartment instead, doing his homework on Axel's worn, weed scented couch and occasionally getting up to sell a 40 when the stoners came knocking. They'd given up on being surprised about a high school kid greeting them at the door instead of Axel long ago, about a week after Roxas had started coming over, when he'd opened the door, eyes bloodshot and perpetual grin on his face and muttered "Nickel, Dime, or do you need something more?"
Axel got home at nine usually, and sometimes they went out for a bit, clubs or concerts or the occasional tryst to the park, but most of the time Axel just threw two microwave dinners in and they watched reruns of Friends, grinning stupidly at the television and making fun of Rachel's spoiled kid routine and Phoebe's mystical idiot vibe, and just generally remarking on the hotness of Monica.
They fell asleep to the sound of the lady upstairs screwing her most recent boyfriend into the mattress, making sleepy comments about her running a brothel and her latest partner's prowess in bed judging by the sounds of her faked orgasms. Axel usually got up to make them breakfast in the morning, french toast and bacon or a homemade egg and cheese biscuit, a stark contrast to their nightly diet of frozen dinners. Sometimes, if Axel was feeling particularly generous, he'd use the "special" butter when he made their breakfast and he'd drive Roxas to school while the kid stared vacantly out the window, silly grin stretched wide across his face, pressing a sloppy kiss to Axel's mouth before sliding out to join the rest of the zombiefied students. Other times, Roxas would curl sleepily into Axel and convince him to skip breakfast, just this once, and they'd sleep in until the school's warning bell was ringing, and then scarf down some dry toast while Axel broke the speed limit trying to get Roxas to school on time.
October rolled by and on Halloween they got ridiculously drunk and woke up with hangovers the size of three soccer fields and some small, dark haired girl pillowed between them. Like the cowards they were, they chose to sneak out of Axel's apartment first and hope that she wouldn't trash the place or steal Axel's stash while they were gone. Luckily for them, she didn't, taking the one-night stand with a saint like kind of grace and even going so far as to find Roxas at school and tell him that it was okay. No one was more surprised than Roxas when all three of them became something like friends.
Christmas passed in long cold fronts, snow storm after snow storm and the power constantly getting knocked out. Neither of them were particularly festive beyond making the special kind of gingerbread men and tripping out on the couch, huddled under the blankets and watching a marathon of Lifetime Christmas movies, but the night before Christmas, Sora and a couple of his friends broke into Axel's apartment while they were out--- tping the place with Christmas lights and mistletoe and wrestling an eight foot tree through the door, decorating it with freshly rolled joints, wrapped and unwrapped condoms, and pack after pack of cigarettes spread out like little gems among the regular baubles and lights.
When Axel had gotten home, he'd almost cried when he'd seen the tree, quickly calling Roxas up to tell him that he had the best brother ever, and please, oh please, Roxas, I'll trade you both of mine for him.
On Christmas morning, they made laced sugar cookies, decorated them with burning Christmas trees, naughty looking angels, and the occasional rapping penis; ate a shit ton and just sat around watching the snowflakes out the window. There was a particularly memorable moment when they returned home from the only Chinese restaurant still open on Christmas, Axel's thighs hot and wet from the sauce leaking out onto it, both rosy cheeked from the cold and still riding a truly ridiculous high. When Axel crossed the threshold into the apartment he'd immediately started to shimmy out of his jeans, sliding them down over his scorched thighs and Roxas had watched with rapt eyes, fingers already creeping towards his own fly and asked, "Why are we getting undressed?" with a voice thick with the kind of confusion and arousal that only a truly great high can achieve.
They'd laughed about it over noodles and moo shu pork and afterwards Axel had slid Roxas' jeans from his hips and licked a long line down his chest, eyes dark with intent.
The rest of winter rolled by in a haze of melting snow, Roxas scrutinizing college websites on Axel's old PC with bloodshot eyes, a pair of ridiculous glasses with huge black frames perched on his nose. Occasionally, Axel would offer a suggestion from the couch between threats toward video game characters, yelling about how he couldn't possibly achieve any kind of stealth mission in that particular area. Roxas would roll his eyes, but hum appreciatively, typing something new into the search bar while halfheartedly sucking at the joint between his lips.
They had their first fight on the anniversary of the day they met, and didn't talk for three days until Sora showed up clutching a bag of old horror movies and popcorn and holding a fistful of his brother's hoodie. They weren't even halfway through Attack of the Killer Tomatoes before they were making fun of it, hands clasped between them on the couch.
March was the month of Roxas and Sora, because their birthday was on the Ides of March, and Axel fell over himself trying to get the brothers a decent pair of presents. In the end, he wound up just getting them a bunch of shit, given to them in sporadic bursts over the course of the month. A new pair of headphones for Sora on the second when his broke unexpectedly. That new band t-shirt that Roxas had been eying on the fourth. An ounce of the best kush in town on the tenth. A new bowl for Sora and a new bong for Roxas on the twelfth, bought at a discount from work. A jumbo box of condoms for Roxas on the fourteenth. In fact, he's pretty sure that the only thing he'd gotten for them on their actual birthday was mindblowingly fantastic sex, and as it was, that was only a gift for Roxas. So to make up for it, he bought Sora an Xbox 360 and got Roxas an assortment of games. And thus, the tradition continued for the rest of the month.
It happened in the beginning of April, just 13 months, 21 days, and 8 hours after Roxas had enrolled in their high school, they got the fateful news. Roxas' parents sat him and his brother down at breakfast and told them that they'd be moving to a small town called Gongaga near the coast and would be gone before the week was up.
Sora had been mostly nonplussed, because he was easy going and friendly and made a ridiculous amount of friends everywhere they went. His facebook boasted that he had 3,011 friends, all from varying corners of the world, Axel would know, because he was one of them. But Sora had eyed his twin worriedly, because he wasn't an idiot. Roxas on the other hand, was horrified. Or at least, Axel thought that he probably was, judging by the annoyance coloring Roxas' voice when he'd told him this. The way he'd bitten his cuticles and looked anywhere except Axel, masking his fear with a look of total nonchalance. Axel had stooped close and wrapped his arms around a bony waist, pulled Roxas flush against him and grinned into his ear when he said, calm and rational, "Roxas, Roxas, Roxas. I told you. We'll make it work."
Roxas had sighed against the skin of Axel's neck and relaxed against him, because yes, Axel was stubborn as a mule when it came to the things he promised and they would definitely make it work.
♥♥♥
That fact still doesn't stop him from being annoyed about it though, huffing angrily and saying awful things about Roxas' mother under his breath as he digs through all the shit on his computer desk in search of a damn stamp. The desk, virtually untouched since Roxas had left, laughs at him- the screen of the PC gleaming darkly and Axel thinks it's kind of fucked up that he's so upset about this that he'll start assigning traits to inanimate objects just to cover up the sound of silence.
Without Roxas, his apartment is bleak, desolate; his bed too cold in the morning, his couch without its protective covering of heaped blankets now that Roxas isn't around to complain about the cold. His fridge is no longer a healthy mixture of frozen and breakfast foods, gone is the fresh fruit, the eggs, the milk and the bacon, replaced by a ridiculously unhealthy amount of Hungry Man and Stouffers boxes. Even the resident stoners of the complex inquire about the cheeky blonde between deals, asking Axel to pass on their greetings as they grin and press crinkled billfolds into his hands.
Life other than that moves along at a slow crawl; he gets up, skips breakfast, goes to work, and comes home again. It's like a hook has gone into his life, tearing out that little piece of Roxas and leaving a gaping hole in his place. It hurts, but they have their ways of communicating.
Which brings him back to the fucking stamp. Roxas had bought him a whole roll of them the day he'd left, sticking them onto the very top of the desk and saying, "Yes, Axel, snail mail is boring, but I want my goddamn dorky letters."
They have web cam and Skype, which they use whenever they're both at home at the same time, but sadly that doesn't happen very often. Mostly, they communicate through inane, stupid text messages at random hours of the day and the occasional drunken (and sober) phone calls. He'd gotten a text from Roxas earlier that day saying something about the ridiculousness of quantum theory and how they shouldn't teach physics in high school. Axel had laughed out loud, too busy imagining Roxas puzzling over his physics homework without him to care that he'd startled the old lady in the corner that had been checking out a pricy glass bong in the shape of a cat up until now.
He'd scribbled out half the letter on the back of a receipt that a customer had left behind, the black ink of his pen bleeding through the other side to blur the list of items, the line " Balance 101- Black My Scale, $199" mixing into the "green - 2 chamber waterpipe, $57" beneath it. After his letters had gotten illegible towards the bottom, his manager had glared at him, pushed grey streaked hair away from his scarred face and slapped a stack of computer paper onto the counter in front of him. The rest of the letter had gone on that.
On the way back he'd stopped at the store, buying a package of white envelopes and grabbing a couple packets of ramen while he was at it. He'd bypassed the stamps entirely, thinking of those retarded Tetris stamps sitting on his desk and headed home.
He's bending down to look under the desk when his cellphone rings, and he whips it open, singsonging "Well, hello, babe" before he even checks the ID. There's static over the other side of the line, and for a second he's horrified that it might be his manager, calling to ask him to come in for the night shift, or ever worse, that maybe it's one of his brothers, calling from wherever the hell they are these days. But nope, there's a breath like a sigh and then Roxas is humming "Hey Axel," into the phone, voice low and delighted, only a little bit distorted by the crackle of static. Something on Roxas' end crinkles, and Axel thinks he might be laying down on his bed, sprawling atop his homework. There's a comfortable silence where they just listen to each other breathe, the seconds passing and Axel shimmies under the desk, wedges his hand behind it to feel around and- shocks himself a bit on the exposed wires. The bite of electricity causes him to yelp, jerking his arm back so fast that his elbow collides with the desk, and he curses, sucking his fingers into his mouth and rubbing at his elbow.
"What are you doing?" Roxas laughs, sounding amused and Axel curses again before responding. "Looking for those damn stamps," he says, still scowling down at the circuitry even as he scrambles out from underneath the desk, falling back to sit on his haunches.
"You lost them already?" he asks, and Axel can almost see the smirk through the phone, wide and knowing, because Roxas had probably expected this. "Yes, already," he spits through his teeth as he glances around the apartment. Roxas laughs and another voice bleeds through on his end, too quiet to be anything more than indistinct gibberish.
"Sora says you lose things too much," Roxas is saying, and Axel grins, "Sora's one to talk," as he makes his way across the room. Carefully, he starts sorting through the bags of weed and empty boxes of takeout on his coffee table, reaching around a container of lo mein and past a nickel bag. He thinks he might be able to see the stamps, sitting in a pile of weed and change atop a pizza box, but when he grabs it, it's just the receipt for the Indian takeaway he'd had last week.
Roxas is still laughing at him in his ear, and when he finally speaks, he sounds a little bit breathless, "I left another package in your kitchen drawer. The top one closest to the pantry."
At that, Axel stops picking through food, grimacing down at the containers before picking them all up in one big sweep of his arms and taking them into the kitchen. He toes the lid of the trash can up with his sneakers, stuffing the containers in and slamming the lid down on them when they start to overflow. He opens up the door, and there they are, a package of stamps with a beaming Ariel on the front, twining her red hair around a fork like spaghetti.
"Love ya, Roxas," he sighs, ripping one off the roll and attaching it to the envelope. He bends over the counter and scribbles the addresses onto the paper, pocketing it after he's given the ink a moment to dry. His coat's draped over the back of the couch, the old army one Roxas had sent him for his birthday back in October, and he slides it on before slipping out the door, shutting and locking it behind him. Larxene's halfway down the hallway, reclining back against the wall, cigarette clenched between turquoise tipped fingers. She raises the cigarette in a lazy kind of salute, nods at the phone and says "Tell the midget hey," around a mouthful of smoke.
"The harpy says hey," he grins, just loud enough that she can hear him, grumbling her discontent to the empty hallway around her. Roxas laughs just as Axel's shoving the apartment door open, shivering as he gets a face full of snow. "God, I can't believe you're in the fucking sub-tropics," he complains, boots skidding a bit on a patch of ice clinging to the surface of the parking lot. Roxas makes an amused noise, "Mm, yes, it's quite toasty here. Sora even went surfing in the cove the other day," he says, and Sora says something in the background. Axel can only just make out the words "wicked", "sweet" and "riptide", but whatever he says makes Roxas chuckle indulgently into the phone.
When Axel reaches his car, it's to the sad sight of three inch thick snow frozen to her and Axel sighs again, switches the phone to his other ear, so he can hold it between his shoulder and cheek. It takes three tries to pull his door open, because the ice has frozen it shut and Axel hates winter.
The key's in the ignition and he's flipping through stations with one hand and reaching back to grab the ice scraper from his back seat with the other all while Roxas regales him with tales of how much it sucks to be a waiter.
"-nd it's this shitty little crab shack on the beach, and it sucks cause it's like a fifteen minute drive and this town is too small for the tips to be that great, so the cash I make is barely enough for the gas back," he's saying, and once again, Sora's tinny voice echoes through the phone. Axel smiles fondly and wonders how many times the kid has sat through this spiel.
"-pplied for a job at this cafe though. It's a small one, but it pays eight bucks an hour and tips, so if I get it I might actually get my money's worth." Roxas says, and he sounds so pleased that even though Axel's scraping ice off his car in fifteen degree weather he can't help but grinning. Above him, the sun comes out from behind the clouds, and Axel has to squint because the light turns the snow blinding.
"How's Sharp Shooters?" Roxas asks, and Axel immediately launches into a tirade of how Xigbar had cut his hours on accident and then expected him to work a double to make up for it. "-and the lazy fucking asshole is just too busy getting stoned with Demyx to work the shifts he fucked up. Fucking pedo."
"Though," he starts, tone softening, "I was thinking. There's this tattoo parlor down the street that Kairi's sister works at, yanno, the one I got my cheekbones at, and it's pretty sweet." He cuts across the traffic a bit faster than he should, rolling his eyes as his wheels skid temperamentally against the ice. "Anyway, Namine thinks my tribal designs aren't too shabby, so she's putting in a good word with the manager for me." he grins, and on the other end Roxas makes a surprised, happy sound.
"Think you'll get the job?" he asks, and there's a tapping sound echoing through the phone, probably Roxas drumming his pencil against something.
Axel laughs, honking when an itty bitty teenager talking on her cell phone cuts him off. He thinks about yelling at her, but her terrified look at the sound of his horn is probably enough, because she flicks the phone shut and waves back at him in apology. Mollified, he turns back to the phone, "I have no idea, Rox, but I sure fuckin' hope so."
Quiet reigns once more and Axel hums along to the opening notes of Smells like Teen Spirit while listening to Sora and Roxas bicker on the other line.
"I got a drum set," Roxas says, and his tone is that mix of proud and possessive that he gets when he's talking about his skateboard. Axel grins.
"You been drivin' your mom crazy with it?" he asks, and Roxas can almost see him nodding an affirmative before realizing that Axel can't see him. "Yeah," he says, as Axel's pulling into the post office parking lot. He drops the letter into the mail box, because fuck if he's gonna get out.
He's thinking nasty thoughts about the mailman when he turns back onto his road, because the fucker drops shit off in the mailboxes all the time, but apparently thinks that it isn't his job to take letters to be sent. And then Roxas asks quietly, with a hint of confusion, "Hey, dude, where are you?"
"Post office, man. Just dropped off a letter." Roxas curses and Sora snickers and for a second Axel wonders what the hell they're doing, because the sounds echoing through his speakers sound like they're tromping down a hallway. "Why?" he asks, suspiciously.
"Nothing, just curious." Roxas says, and he's turning into his parking lot, almost plowing into Marluxia's thunderbird when his back tires skid in the snow.
Larxene's still standing in the hallway when he makes it upstairs, but she's smirking now, another cigarette clenched in one hand and oddly enough, a shot glass in the other. This time, she salutes him with the shot glass, and her smile is just wicked enough that Axel's a little afraid that while he was out she might have broken into his apartment.
His keys clank as he pulls them out of his pocket and he eyes the door with a critical eye, looking for any signs of forced entry. The welcome mat, a charming thing that he'd gotten from his brother, Reno, that reads Come back with a warrant in blocky black text glares up at him, a little out of place but otherwise unharmed.
Roxas' line is silent and Axel pulls back to eye it, grimacing at the faint lost call blinking slowly back at him. He's already dialing as he pushes the door open and-
Sora barrels into him, knocking him clear out the door way to crash into the flimsy wall of the hallway. Shit, if the plaster's cracked he is going to be in so much shit- Larxene cackles and the sound echoes down the hallway, loud and crowing. She grins over at them, knocking back the shot and shouting, "You owe me five bucks, kid!" before finally slipping back into her apartment.
And that's when it hits him, that if Sora's here, then that means-
Roxas laughs at them, leaning back against the open doorway, and regarding them with such affection that something curls in Axel's chest; something happy and pleased and just a little bit elated. Sora chuckles against his ribcage and mutters, "We're just visiting for now, staying for about a week or so, but we turn eighteen in a couple months and then... well..."
Roxas says firmly, "Sora would be coming too. We're both sick of moving around," and Sora whispers, quiet and a bit hesitant, "Would that be okay?" chin still digging into Axel's chest. They're doing the twin thing, where they echo right after each other, one thought ending and the next coming out of the other's mouth and sure, maybe it would be a bit awkward, being with Roxas and having his brother live with them, but he likes Sora well enough and well, it's worth it-
He means to say yes, means to reassure Sora that it's perfectly fine, means to push himself up and hug Roxas and never let go but all that comes out is, "I can't believe you assholes let me send that letter."
And when Sora laughs, breath washing over his collarbone, and Roxas' mouth crooks up into a lopsided kind of smile- well, then Axel really knows that they'll be okay. That waiting another five months won't be so bad because he has something to look forward to. And that makes it okay.