give me love like them

[Fenris]

Axel's lips were still tingling as he placed a cigarette between them. His hands were trembling.

>> Axel Fontaine continued from Expanding Your Horizons

The bell had rung, class was about to start, and under the bleachers was a particularly stupid place to be. Not that Axel had any problems cutting class. Hell, it was because he cut class so much that he knew exactly how stupid he was being; he knew all the best spots to not get caught and he knew the fields were a goddamn trap. You'd think no one would have so little to do that they'd have the time to scour the grounds for kids who didn't feel like getting their daily dose of mandatory education, but you'd be wrong. The system always finds a way, and also there were like coaches and shit who actually spent class time around here and they'd rat you out as soon as any hall monitor would. It was with all of that firmly in mind that Axel went to light his cigarette, his hands fumbling uncharacteristically with his favorite lighter. He cursed under his breath, and barely caught the cigarette with his free hand when it inevitably dropped from his mouth. At least he escaped one indignity today.

Eventually he lit the stupid thing, and he took a pull so long and hard that he choked on it, sputtering smoke.

Jesus fucking Christ he was a mess.

He wasn't sure what he'd expected when Hel had dragged him off. Something important enough for them to lie, which made it something important enough for Axel to drop everything, not that he wouldn't have done the same if they'd wanted to talk about some random bullshit. Hel was priority number one, always. No matter what.

He noticed his hands were still shaking as he took another drag.



He wasn't expecting this. Okay, he knew about Kara, sort of, he knew that she was bad news, kind of, but the details were always fuzzy. His protective instincts kicked in sometimes when he saw Hel clinging to their phone, their fingers stumbling over rapidly-written messages, their eyes welling up, because it was always her, every single time, but Hel always, always explained it away, and at this point his position was just plausible deniability. If Hel said she wasn't doing things wrong, he'd accept it. It was too easy to see otherwise, he wanted to see otherwise, he could force himself to see otherwise, it was such an easy excuse. It wouldn't be wrong, if she was hurting Hel. It wouldn't be wrong to steal them away, then, right? He'd be the hero. But Hel didn't want that, Hel said it was okay, and he wasn't a hero, he was just this asshole who couldn't accept that someone else was making them happy.

Hel could say whatever they wanted, and they did, they defended her like always, and Axel understood, he guessed. Hel had known Kara for longer than they'd known him. She was something too important for him to touch. But Hel had shown him all the evidence he needed, this time. The message logs said less than the tears they were holding back when they handed him their phone.

"Babe. You don't have to put up with this." That felt like the right thing to say at the time. That seemed like the one truth that Axel could hold on to, no matter how much Hel blamed themself, no matter how much pain they were in: they didn't have to do this. They didn't have to deal with her. They could block her number and every part of the internet they two of them spent time on and everything would be fine and all Axel had to do was convince Hel that it was the right thing to do. To push past their self-blame and every hesitant apology and every "she's upset" and "I did something wrong" and get them to see the obvious truth. He was right, he had always been right, why the fuck had he been doubting himself?

They shut him up, the way they always did.

"She says the same thing about you. I've gotta realize how it looks. I can't keep letting you do this to me. I deserve better than you."

He'd bristled, and snapped at them, and regretted it a moment later, but god did he hate Kara for doing this to them, convincing them that he was the bad guy, convincing them that he was doing something wrong when the thing he wanted most in the world was just to show Hel that they deserved better. They did. They deserved so much better than Kara. They couldn't let her keep doing this to them. They had to realize how it looked...

He hated her. The discomfort he felt didn't matter, because it was her fault. Fuck her.

They'd been friends a long time, Hel and Kara, and from what he'd gleaned Kara didn't have much, and that weighed on Hel endlessly. Like it wasn't okay, it wasn't right to leave her alone when she didn't have other friends. Axel had tried that tact before, reminded them that she wasn't their responsibility, that her happiness didn't mean more than hers. He tried it again, to no avail, or rather, to tears.

Hel's tears always melted him like so much ice before a flame.

Axel held them, stroked their hair, the way they always did when the darkness caught up to them, the way it always seemed to. He didn't want to hate her. He didn't. He wanted Hel to be happy, they were supposed to be happy, Kara was supposed to make them happy. And the moments that she did and Axel saw Hel glowing with joy he could fucking kiss her for giving them that. But those times seemed to come so rarely. And Hel talked so much about what they owed her, what good friends they had been, how much Kara needed them, and so little about how they loved her. But Axel couldn't fight them, anymore. He let them speak. His comments were mild. His rage had dulled to embers.

They pointed out that neither of them exactly knew what a proper relationship looked like, and he couldn't argue with that. His had been a long series of trainwrecks; who was he to lecture anyone about how bad their relationship sucked? Felt kind of hypocritical. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe everything was fine, and maybe, yet again, he just wanted Kara to be evil. Maybe he still just wanted to be the hero.

"Y'know, if we keep fucking this up for everyone else, maybe we should just date each other already?"

That didn't even faze him.

"Yeah, yeah, very funny."

"Huh, weird. Wasn't joking."

That did.



Axel didn't realize how long he'd left his cigarette untouched until the burnt filter touched his fingers, prompting a yelp as he dropped a solid column of ash to the ground. He stomped it out, cursing under his breath. He'd wasted a cigarette and the only free moments he'd get outside until class ended and for what? His instinct was to fish out a second, but he'd risked being under the bleachers for long enough. He tracked a route the way only a proper delinquent could, planning a course for somewhere to wait out the rest of whatever class he was missing (English? maybe? he genuinely had no idea). His head was swimming. His steps were almost unsteady. For once in his life, Axel Fontaine felt off-balance without any intoxicants to blame it on.

It was worth it, though.

He'd keep the way Hel's eyes looked when his lips pulled away from theirs in his mind for the rest of his life.


>> Axel Fontaine continued in are you having a bad time?