Summary: For Roxas Ars, waking up in a hospital after being in a week long coma is the least of his problems. It's the five months before the accident that start the trouble. Because the real trouble is not being able to remember them. Not why he's suddenly living in another city, how he got the job of his dreams, and just who does this guy think he is, anyway? His boyfriend? Yeah, right...

Disclaimer: I have not been off fighting for my right to own Kingdom Hearts and its plot/characters. I have been teaching Japanese to 5th graders.

I was dreaming when I wrote this/ So sue me if I go too fast

Notes: Alright, here it is. The last chapter. The twist here at the end was the second scene I thought of when I initially planned this thing out. I even considered making it into its own separate oneshot, but I'm glad I ended up keeping it until this chapter.

I am also running a special contest of sorts. A prize will be awarded to the 127th reviewer of this story, so leave your email address with the review to be considered!

"Why would you do that, Roxas? I don't get it."

Riku looked as though he wanted to punch me. I decided to beat him to it. "Don't go hypocritical on me, Riku. You haven't exactly been honest about your feelings, either."

He scowled at me, nursing the shoulder I'd hit.

"I kissed him, Roxas."

I blinked, not expecting this. "What?"

"Sora. When we were kids. Remember that night you ran away from home and we went looking for you? You were hiding in the secret place the whole time but Sora was convinced that you'd drowned. I... I was trying to comfort him, I guess. Get him to calm down." He shrugged. "I was almost fifteen and Sora was doing all these things that made me feel... You know how he seems to need to hug people and be close to them. It drove me crazy trying to figure out what I was feeling. I finally got it that night. I loved him so much in that instant. I kissed him. And when it was over I felt like I'd betrayed him. I felt like I'd ruined him. He didn't even say anything, just stood there staring at me. So I ran. I ran to the dock and then he was there, behind me, with you. I didn't go back to the island after that, and he stopped going, eventually."

I made a move to punch him again, but withdrew and walked around him to pull out some leftover pasta, shoving it in the microwave.

"Okay. I get it. But you're an ass. That was years ago. You've never done anything to hurt Sora, or else he would have told me and I would have hurt you." I dug through the utensils drawer and found a fork, tapped it impatiently against my palm. "He loves you. I don't see how you can see that and just ignore it."

"Now you're being hypocritical. We're both scared, Roxas," he insisted.

I shook my head. "What do you mean...?"

"I'm scared that if I tell Sora that I love him... that somewhere down the line I might hurt him. I'm scared that I might love him more than he loves me. I'm scared that if it ends, our friendship will end, too."

The microwave chimed and I pulled the container out, stirred the contents and closed my eyes, remembering. The alfredo sauce. Axel made me this pasta the day after I'd given him a spare key... there was a blank, but the smell was keeping the initial train of thought there.

"So what do you think I'm afraid of?"

"You're afraid that even if you do remember – and I think whatever happened last night has triggered your memory into recovery – you're still not going to be the same person Axel met and fell in love with the first time around. You're afraid that you might end up loving him more than he does you."

I morosely poked at the pasta. "I started to remember some things," I admitted. "Before he even kissed me, I felt... déjà-vu, I guess. I knew he was going to wait until Art kissed Jenny in the movie. I know that he always does that. I remember the last time he made me this pasta. I... I think I remember him telling me that he loves me."

Satisfied, Riku leaned back in his chair. "But you told him you didn't feel anything."

"I felt..." I paused, trying to summon back the rush of burning on my skin.

"Your face explains it well enough," he remarked, smirking. "You look really happy underneath all the 'I'm scared I might screw this up'."

I cleaned out the container, thinking. "Promise me this: you'll make a move already. Tell Sora you love him. And I'll tell Axel what I really felt when he kissed me, once I can figure it out."

He considered for a long moment and then groaned. "Deal."

***

I remembered more now. It hadn't all come back to me at once, but every moment felt less uncomfortable, and when I was allowed back on a board the next day I took to it immediately and naturally. When practice was over some of the other guys who I remembered at least by face and personality congratulated me and asked if I thought I'd be able to compete at the next regional to defend my title. Hayner was waiting for me once I left the park, and as we walked and he rambled on about something Seifer had done to piss him off, I suddenly stopped and asked, "Hey, are you going to give me back my camera, or were you hoping that I'd never remember that?"

He blinked and laughed, grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me a little, demanding to know what else I remembered. I shrugged.

"Not much, man. But I know I lent my video camera to you. What for, I dunno... and I remember that next week my phone bill is due... and I think I remember us meeting Pence for the first time. He was helping Olette move a couch in, wasn't he?"

"Their 'favorite' couch, now," Hayner affirmed, smirking a split second before we pretended to gag. Olette was like a sister to us. Once the awkwardness passed we vowed to make sure the couch would be all Pence had left if he ever broke her heart.

"He loves her, though," I said, as though to assure us both. "He really does."

Hayner scoffed. "Love." He looked uncomfortable for a minute and spun his skateboard wheels while I dug through my pockets for the house key.

" 'Ayner?" I prompted, feeling like he was about to tell me something utterly scanny. I wasn't wrong.

"Well, you know how Seifer's really been pissing me off lately...?" he began weakly.

I grinned. "Serious?"

He looked taken aback that I didn't need an explanation and looked around almost bashfully before turning a hard glare on me. "Dead."

I wanted to laugh, but I knew how sensitive he was under the tough exterior. So I just opened the door and let him in, inviting him to drop hints and details over a game of KeyBlade Hero II.

The love story of Hayner and Seifer wasn't a conventional one, as anyone could have guessed. It was about fists and almost friendly insults. It was about the day no one stuck around to see who would win their latest struggle match and Seifer screwed the rules and knocked Hayner down. Painfully. It was about a staring contest and Hayner joking "Why don't you just kiss me, already?" only he wasn't really joking and thank Yevon Seifer didn't need to be that smart to figure it out. It was about Hayner nailing him square in the gut when it was over and demanding that they have a rematch the next day because they had a score to keep, dammit.

"On second thought..." I said, when we were worn out of video games for one day, "Maybe I don't want my video camera back."

Hayner scoffed, but looked embarrassed, so I tackled him to help him get it out of his system.

About an hour after Hayner left, Sora showed up, looking like Destiny Islands in bloom.

"Riku says you 'promised', Roxas, whatever that means," he said when I pressed.

I groaned and fell back onto the couch, unable to fight the smile though my insides were quickly being knotted up by nerves. "That asshole," I muttered. "I wait years for him to hurry up about it, and just when I wouldn't mind him taking his time..."

Sora flopped onto the couch and landed a friendly punch to my shoulder. "Be happy for me?"

I laughed. "Of course I am. For both of you. I expect Riku to stop being so uptight, too. You two were so much happier before you stopped going to the island."

Another punch, to my stomach this time. We nearly fell off the couch wrestling and laughing.

"He had to go back home," Sora said softly. "But I'll be meeting him on the island tomorrow night." He looked as nervous as I felt.

"Okay... so. Since this is a video journal I have no idea how to start. I don't think I'll let anyone watch these, either. I guess I can start out by saying why I'm doing this. Yesterday I signed a contract to skate pro with Organization XIII. It's pretty much a dream career. I'm lucky that my friends and family were supportive of it, but I'm living pretty much on my own now."

Roxas hit the pause button and exhaled. The video camera had been a gift from his new employers, and he figured that he'd use it to record his moves and revaluate them later. But the strange urge to document a sort of video journal came to him. He hit the record button again, made sure it was angled so that his face wasn't visible – he didn't mind handling cameras, but he had a weird thing about seeing his own face on film – and continued.

"I guess if I get really good at what I do, someone might be interested in this for something. But I just feel the need to document this... I guess I'd call it a new phase in my life.

Tomorrow everything starts. I get a training schedule and a board to compete on – Organization XIII has some of the best boards in the industry, but I can't get anything customized until I've been under contract a year or if I get a sponsor who signs me to a full endorsement. It sound more complicated than it is. Finally, some magazine wants to interview me. I'm not worried about it because I've been told what to expect and it's only a short one to usher me in.

Here are some things I will never talk about in an interview: my love life, embarrassing childhood memories, political leanings. I've only been in love once for real, and I knew the guy all of ten minutes. I once asked my mom if my grandma was a boy or a girl and I never lived it down. My liberal and conservative tastes change from election to election anyway.

Yeah.

Another gift from Organization XIII was a Coliseum and about fifty video games. And Hayner's coming over."

"This is where it gets serious. I haven't made one of these in over a month, since I made the first one. Don't question my calendar math. I could be wrong. The thing is, I might have decided to blow this off after that, but something happened about an hour ago that made me realize I should keep this up, if only for myself. In fact, I'm going to hide these video files."

The video window showing Roxas's seated torso slowly filled with the detailed body of a custom made board. The belly of the deck was emblazoned with an intricate design of two keys wound in flames. The trucks were probably the strongest alloy, and the wheels spun like a dream.

"This is what a custom board looks like. It's tailored to my tricks, and since the last video I made talks about why I can't have one for at least six months at the very least under contract, I think I should explain how I got this one. In case I forget."

Roxas's face suddenly dipped into view, eyes bright, the bridge of his nose and the apples of his cheeks flushed.

"I don't want to forget, anyway."

The face disappeared.

"I nearly got run over today. Just rolling around the street, leaving the skate park. There's been some hype about me, so I figured I'd get the street out of my mind before people start recognizing me. A limo turning the corner without looking as it was about to come down the hill. I bounced off or something. Lucky. My board went under the limo and got cut clean in half by a bread truck or something. I was mad, naturally. So I picked up the pieces and opened up the limo door, because whoever was in there was going to get an earful."

Here Roxas paused and brought up the new board again, spun a wheel.

"No lie. Before I started chewing the guy out I got a pretty good look at him. He was... interesting. I think I carried on yelling just so I could absorb every detail of his appearance. I think I got in and demanded he buy me a new board just so I could keep looking. Not that I'm attracted to him. It's just... that weird maybe feeling you get right before you start fantasizing about someone. Like, innocent fantasies.

He's tall, built like a circus acrobat – all lankiness and hidden sinew – has the reddest hair I've ever seen, and it's like a mane. The eyes, though. I guess it's pretty close to jade green. They've got to be fake. He treated me like he'd probably treat any kid off the street but seemed really amused by whatever it was I was saying.

This was the amazing thing. I went on autopilot and talked naturally without caring what I was saying. I only do that with my brother and sometimes Riku. Never Hayner. Hayner is a certain way and I sort of guard my words with a code we're comfortable with. Riku never really responds to it like it bothers him. But this guy... I wanted to keep talking to him. I felt like I was performing, but I was really just being more myself than I'd been in a while. It gave me a sort of high."

A long pause.

"If I thought I was going to see him again..."

The First Day without Sora or Riku around to hold my hand and prompt me when I start remembering something was strangely easy. I picked up a board from the hall closet, a beautiful one with solid chrome trucks and a key and flame design on the underside of the deck. The wood was ground down at the nose and the griptape was somewhat scratched, but as soon as I was on it I knew that it was my favorite one. It was the one I competed on. When I remembered, I almost felt bad for taking it out to the streets.

Hayner was at the park, as I thought he would be, Seifer standing some distance off. They were both trying to look as though they were disgusted to be within ten feet of each other. I laughed inwardly.

"Roxas! Someone's going to see you!" Hayner said before I could start teasing, pushing me into the public bathroom. "Don't you remember who you are?"

The realization of my mistake hit me immediately. I'd forgotten to wear a heavy jacket and a helmet and the non-prescription glasses.

"Oh... you came up with that disguise. I remember now."

"What good does that do us now?" he fired back. "Okay. So it's not that big of a deal, but your boss doesn't like you coming to public parks without letting your trainer know. I could be in big trouble if someone gets a picture of us and your manager thinks I talked you out here."

I peered around the stone wall that divided the bathroom from the water fountains, seeing Seifer approaching.

"We need a solution fast, General. Your boyfriend is heading this way, too."

Hayner groaned and punched me in the shoulder. "Wait a sec, Rambo." He leaned around the wall and made a few gestures that were apparently enough to assure Seifer that things were mostly under control.

"Okay. I'll just go to your place and get your disguise for you. Give me your key."

I started to search my pockets for it, then remembered something crucial. "Uh... if someone sees you, which is likely, since there's a doorman for all the penthouses in my building, it might be suspicious, especially since the only other person besides me who has a key is Axel. And I didn't set the alarm, either. So if you get caught with my key and the alarm doesn't even trip..."

"... we could be in an even worse situation."

He nodded. "Okay, so call Axel."

Tell Sora you love him, and I'll tell Axel what I really felt when he kissed me, once I can figure it out. "He's probably busy." I really didn't want to talk to him at all unless it was to talk about my feelings, and I'd been avoiding that all day.

Hayner smirked. "Yeah, right. Take a look."

I followed his finger through the cinderblock cartwheel and spied a tall figure in a black jacket and hood leaning against a chainlink fence across the street.

"Huh?"

"He knows you pretty well. Whenever you'd' get permission and an escort to come here he'd take his limo to within a block and walk the rest of the way, especially if you were both having a busy week. Never crossed the street, though."

I heaved a sigh. "Alright," I gave in, digging my phone out and scrolling through the contacts. Out of curiosity, I cued up Axel's information. Under a smallish picture of him wearing a loosened tie, sitting behind a desk were three other numbers besides the cell: work, desk, and home. Under that was a small blinking post-it that opened a memo reading "Axel owes me five minutes tomorrow morning." I banked that for later, not knowing what it meant, and dialed the cell. He picked up on the second ring.

"Hey... I don't want to bother you or anything, but I need a favor."

On the other end – and I knew without looking across the street how his eyes would dart to the left, following the upturn of his mouth – he grinned and half chuckled. "You're never a bother, Roxas. What do you need?"

I felt something drop from my lungs to my stomach.

"Roxas?" he prompted, sounding concerned.

"When... when did you last say that to me?" I asked, feeling the memory surfacing.

"I don't remember," he confessed, sounding less nonchalant.

"Well, it triggered something, so it must be something that's important to me but I didn't tell you..." next to me, Hayner rolled his eyes. I kicked him lightly in the shin. "I'll remember soon enough, anyway... tangent. I sort of left the house without thinking to call my trainer or my manager, and I'm at the park with Hayner."

"Give me ten minutes," he said without having to ask any other questions.

"Okay. This is serious."

Roxas lowered his face slightly to get his expression in the frame before backing away. "I'm... Well, again. I didn't think I was going to make another one of these, and this will probably be the last one. I don't have enough time to explain everything that's happened since I first met Axel, understood that he's interested in me, and... he kissed me. That was weeks ago, though. I don't have time to explain everything he's done since he first kissed me to make me feel like this. I'm... I'm in love."

The chair swiveled for a moment, Roxas's hands in his lap fidgeting.

"Okay. So now I have to tell him. I mean... he tells me every day at least twice, and more than that if he can get away with that, and he never looks disappointed when I don't say it back. But this is the first time I'm going to say it to him. I need the setup to be sort of... special."

Roxas's head dropped into his hands. He groaned.

"I'm gonna go to his office in about an hour, take him lunch. And when he comes over tonight... I'll tell him then."

Another long moment of chair swiveling. "I wrote him a song." Tentatively, he began to hum, then cut himself off.

"I need to sing it now to make sure I've got it right, anyway." He scooted the chair back and turned to the side so that most of his profile was captured in the frame, and began to hum again, huskily and softly, dragging out the first word, but not painfully. When he was finished, he reached over and shut off the camera, leaned back in his chair.

***

"Uh... hey, Larxene. Is Axel in his office?"

The tall blonde lady at the secretary's desk turned away from the computer. I'd only seen her a couple of times and never talked to her, so I didn't know what to expect from such a polished, intimidating person. She gave me a haughty once-over and made to pick up the phone.

"I wanted to surprise him with lunch," I interjected. She smiled, a little cattily.

"Oh?" she leaned forward on her elbows. "That's sweet of you. Go on in. He's rewriting some contracts and could probably use a break."

Inwardly, I relaxed. Outwardly, I still felt like a cornered mouse. "Thanks, Larxene," I added hastily and took the short hallway, hesitating half a second before I opened the door. Axel jerked backward a little, a thick binding of paper in his hands. "Larxene, I don't want – " he began, sounding as though this was an automatic response to the door opening unexpectedly.

He smiled. "Ah. Drastic measures." At my confused look, he explained. "She tries to get me to stop my work and get something to eat, but it's Sunday. I want to be finished early so I can be with you."

"And I've brought you lunch."

"I guess I could take a fifteen minute break, then. Are you staying?"

I glanced around furtively. "Just a minute, really. I needed to ask you a favor." His eyes darted to the left, following the upturn of his mouth.

"What do you need?"

I pushed a few papers into a neat pile and sat on the edge of his desk, reaching out to hook my fingers in the knot of his tie. I was stuck a little speechless by how much I wanted from him, not just the simple thing I was going to ask.

"Roxas?"

"First, loosen this." Ignoring his mutterings of a tie fetish, I went on. "Then... take your time with this, okay? I want you to finish so that I can keep you longer tomorrow morning."

With a whole afternoon of skating behind me, I felt better about confronting Axel. There were still little things bothering me, like how long he would really be willing to wait, all over again, for me to be able to tell him I loved him. If I could. Hayner caught up to me at home after a car came and picked me up. I guessed that he'd walked with Seifer, but didn't ask. I'd probably robbed them of the few hours they could have spend pretending to hate each other for the whole park to witness.

"But you're going to tell him that you definitely feel something for him?" he asked.

"That's the plan. I just hope I don't disappoint him for those feelings not being so strong. Or worse, get his hopes up too high."

Hayner poked wearily at a video game controller. "That sucks, man." He wasn't exactly an eloquent person, but I know he got the impact of what I was feeling.

"Hey... did you find anything on your computer that could help you trigger the remaining memories?" he asked suddenly.

I sat up. "Oh... right. Pence went and rebooted it for me since I forgot the password, but I haven't had a chance to fire it up again."

He leafed through my pile of video games, holding up a copy of Reverse Rebirth. "While you do that, mind if I borrow this?"

***

I entered the password I had reset earlier and tried to decide between checking email and going through my personal files. The email inbox was probably swamped, so that was out. I found a few of my trick diagrams scanned into a program that averaged out the statistics of every possible measurement from the force of my launch to the angle of my board to the pipe and would have wasted the whole night on it if I didn't know there were other things to be looked at.

There was a whole file of pictures of Hayner and I at the first competition where I must have gotten the attention of an Organization XIII scout, there was a file of old pictures of Sora and me on the beach, a whole file of picture of the indoor park where I trained, and a last folder full of different shots of Demyx, Pence and Olette, Yuna, and Axel. There weren't an overwhelming number of pictures of him, but they seemed more deliberate than others.

Axel cooking.

Axel in his office.

Axel looking out the window of his limo.

All of them were tagged with a red symbol like a chakram. When I hovered the mouse over it unintentionally, it acted like a link, so I followed it. Two things came up, a document small enough to make me curious, and two separate video files.

"Roxas? Are you feeling alright? Maybe Sora should be here instead of me... or Hayner."

I shook my head. "I'm feeling alright."

"You sure? I can cook something. You look kind of pale."

"I need to tell you something. We... we need to talk." By the way he tensed I knew I'd said the wrong thing.

"I think I know what you're going to say," he began, not meeting my eyes.

"I remember the first time you kissed me," I said, effectively cutting across his speech. "I remember how we met, and I remember that we... that we were going to let the media find out about us when you came back from Demyx's first tour."

Axel just stared.

"I lied... the other night. When I said I felt nothing. I did feel something, and I wanted to tell you today. I didn't think that before you came I'd find something to trigger it all back."

"What do you mean?" It was hard to tell if he believed me.

"The first time you kissed me, you..." I took his hand and guided it to the side of my face. I felt the burn of his fingertips brushing against my jaw. "And later when I wanted to describe it... it's like I was being burned alive."

He pulled back as if stung, but the familiar smirk was tugging at his mouth. I took a deep breath and slowly found the rhythm of the humming in my throat and let it form a verse.

When I finished, he pulled me close, the smell of him making my heart stop.

"Could you stay tonight?" I asked, holding my breath once the question was out. I felt him tense up, and then relax.

"Need me to hold you?"

I nodded, burrowing against his chest.

We put on Only Sunsets out of habit, but I spent more of it than normal just looking up at his face. When the end came, I kissed back with fervor, running a hand through his hair and tightening in the heavy strands at the back of his head, remembering that he liked that.

***

Sleep came too easily and too quickly.

"Axel... aren't you supposed to be cooking me breakfast?"

I felt him shift beside me, and his arm tightened around my shoulders, a voice breathing above my forehead, "We'll go out and get breakfast today. Or lunch. Whenever we decide to get up."

I relaxed, moving my legs around to untangle the sheets.

"Axel... I remember."

He chuckled against my hair. "I know. You've been telling me since last night."

I found his arm and twisted it enough to make him shift back and look at me. "Aren't you happy? You tried really hard to get me back."

He pulled me back to him, touched his lips to my temple. "Of course I'm happy. I haven't held you like this in nearly two months."

"I'm not going to forget again."

"I know."

The curtain was half drawn, and within a moment I could see the outline of his torso more clearly.

"Axel..."

He shifted until he was leaning over me, hearing the difference in my voice.

"What is it?"

I reached up and knotted my hand in the fabric of his undershirt, pulling it up along his spine. "Take this off?"

He raised an eyebrow, but held my gaze until I didn't falter and sat up, discarding it.

"I've never seen you without your shirt on. Always wanted to."

"Really..."

I touched a dark jagged scar under his collarbone. "Tell me about this one. I need more things to remember you by."

"I got in a fight while Demyx was on tour. Fans mobbing. I'm not a bodyguard or anything, but I got pushed around a bit and at some point we were being held back from our car by an improvised chainlink fence. I got thrown against it. Stabbed me."

Tentatively, I pressed a kiss to it.

He had more little scars, a few that were barely visible. I asked about them all.

"What about this one?"

I trailed my finger along it, as it ran just above his hipbone, ending where his pelvic crease softened. I felt heat stir between my legs. The scar was faint, but it was the biggest.

"That one..." he said quietly, cautiously lifting my leg to drape it around his, "That one is special."

Bravely, I tightened round him, leaned in, my mouth open against his neck. His back arched slightly. "Roxas."

"Tell me why it's special?"

"I... I saved a kid's life... once," he faltered. "I was... I think I was twelve. There was a kid, skating around the trolley tracks. He got stuck. The trolley was coming. He was maybe six years old. I pulled him out in time, grabbed the front rail and swung out of the way and into a scrap metal cache before I got squashed as it went through the tunnel."

I slowed my ministrations, shifting back comfortably enough to look at him.

"Seriously?"

He smiled softly. "Kid even wanted my picture. For saving his life. When he saw that I was bleeding, he nearly had a panic attack."

"And then he took you to a nurse. She stitched you up and gave the two of you a sea salt ice cream," I finished.

Axel leaned up on one elbow, mystified. "I never told you this story."

I sat up, too, feeling the numb fire spreading over my arms.

"Axel..." I started, then reached over him for a small shoebox on the shelf bridging my headboard and my dresser. It didn't take long for me to find the small Polaroid shot underneath a few movie ticket stubs and some seashells. A fleshy pale blur took up the right bottom corner, and the line was distorted, but a figure in a green T shirt with a leftward smirk and a head of vibrant red hair that leaked up into the top left corner of the picture was clear enough.

***

"I can't believe I forgot."

Notes: Thank God that's over. Chapter was a monster to write. That last scene and the very first scene of this entire fic were what I first thought of when I had this idea, so everything in between had to come from somewhere. That's what usually happens when I have these big ideas.

Anyway. This is the last fic I'll be posting on FFnet, possibly ever. All my other stuff will be posted to my writing LJ from now on. In light of that, I'm holding a contest. The 127th reviewer who leaves me their email address with the review will be contacted by me for the opportunity to win a special prize: the composition book where I've been handwriting a lot of random scenes both published and not. If you are the 127th reviewer and cannot accept the prize, then it will go to the 128th reviewer and so on.