In a nutshell.

It all started out one day when Axel and Roxas were playing a game. The game was easy: call out the word 'penis', and whoever can do it the loudest is the winner. To be fair, the pair had only known each other for a week or two. But in that time, they had spent all their time together, getting to know each other very well.

But not well enough, evidently.

"Penis!" It had started out innocently enough, before escalating.

"Penis!" Axel called out a little louder, watching as a young kid a few metres away tugged on his mother's arm and looked at the happy almost-couple.

The game continued for almost ten minutes until it seemed that they weren't the only ones listening.

"PENIS." Roxas shouted, and a little girl dropped her lollypop with a scared look their way.

"PENIS!" Axel managed to get out, before a mother walked up behind them and patted the tall redhead on the shoulder.

"Excuse me?"

"Yes, miss?" He asked politely, as Roxas listened awkwardly.

"Could you please refrain from shouting out that word?" She asked, so kindly that the two teenagers couldn't help but feel bad. "It's just, it's scaring the children..."

"Yeah, that's fine, miss. We're sorry." Roxas apologised quickly, concern written all over his face.

"Thank you, boys. Have a good day."

"You too." They replied as she smiled and walked off.

A long, awkward pause stretched on before Axel smirked and said in a low voice, "looks like I win, yo."

"Pfft, I'll win next—" And that's when Roxas noticed it. "Wait, did you just say 'yo'?"

"I didn't, trust me!" The redhead's voice was panicky, and the blonde wasn't convinced.

"Right..."

"What 'chew thinkin', man?" Axel muttered under his breath. "Word..."

"I heard that!"

"Huh?" He swallowed hard. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Something's not right..." Roxas studied the other with narrowed eyes, before looking at his watch. "Well, I uh, have to go. Told my parents I wouldn't be out late."

"It's midday..."

"Yeah..." 'Roxas, you idiot,' he thought. "Just remembered I had to go help them with something. Sorry!"

"Bye, Roxas." Axel sighed as the other walked of quickly.

/.../

Roxas felt bad for leaving Axel like that. But he needed advice, and he knew that if anyone could give good advice it would be Olette.

It took a while for him to get it though, as it seemed Olette was preoccupied with a certain dirty-blonde haired friend of the two.

"Hayner! This piece of cake's a better friend than you!"

"Olette, jeez, calm down!" That was definitely Hayner's voice – Roxas recognised his friend immediately.

"I mean, the cake doesn't ignore me to fight with other enemies as a form of attention because they really like—"

"Huh?"

"It has more time for me than you seem to with all your flirting with Seifer!"

"What are you on, woman?"

'It'll definitely be there for a while if someone kept eating so much of it...' Roxas thought, too bewildered to really consider why they were arguing about that particular subject. He was brought out of his senses when his best friend, Hayner, came storming out of the house.

"Rox! Oh man, am I glad you're here..." The messy-haired blonde teen looked at Roxas with a look of extreme confusion.

"Yeah... is it safe?" Roxas pointed to the door with his thumb, nervous about facing Olette.

"Depends. When'd you last see her?"

"Um... Yesterday. She let me copy her homework."

"Well, that's good enough. Looks like you're safe, then." Hayner grinned, patting his best friend on the back, encouragingly.

"Yay..."

Hayner left an apprehensive Roxas to brave Olette all on his own.

/.../

"So, Olette, I was hoping you could give me some... Advice..." Roxas said, hesitantly.

The two were sitting in Olette's living room, the teenage girl drinking a hot chocolate. After a short sip she asked, "About?"

"Well, the thing is..." The blonde started, before explaining the Axel situation to his close friend, detailing his recount perfectly.

"Hm. You know what we should do?" She sat straighter in her seat, "We should have an intervention!"

So that's what they did. Fifteen minutes later, Hayner, Axel and Pence had joined the two, and were now curiously waiting for Olette to finish her hot chocolate, which had now cooled down substantially.

A few minutes later, she said, "Done guys!" and everyone was brought back to their senses.

"So, what's so important here that we had to come straight away?" Axel asked. Hayner had been uncharacteristically quiet, still scared of Olette from their previous argument.

"Well, I've heard from a certain somebody," the brunette girl stared obviously at Roxas, "that you had a certain, um, slip up today..."

"Maybe he misheard?" Axel nervously ran his hand through his hair.

"Mm. No. You're not getting out of this one..." Olette smiled, and the redhead sighed.

"It's just... it's just a bad habit of mine. You know, something I picked up from my family."

"Wait, what'd you pick up?" Hayner interrupted.

Roxas said quickly, "He's a gangster at heart. He just won't admit it!"

"Hey, my dad was a pimp, I'll have you know!" the redhead raised his voice slightly in indignation. "He's, well... retired now... but it's still hard to undo another's influence on you!"

"It's okay, Axel, we're here to help..." Olette leaned forward and put a comforting hand over his, "...Cake?"

"Huh?"

"Do you want some cake?"

"No, thanks..."

"Sure? It's really good."

"No, really, it's okay..."

"Guys, what are we gonna do about it?" Hayner interrupted.

There was a short silence as everyone looked at each other and thought. Axel interrupted awkwardly, saying, "It only happens when... when I get really into the moment, you know? When I don't concentrate on it..."

"Hey guys," Hayner snickered, "Wonder what'd happen if we got him drunk?"

"Yeah," Roxas laughed, before scowling, "Oh no, what if he was having sex, and he got really lost in the moment and he... he started speaking gangster?"

In the awkward silence that followed, the clicking of a camera could be heard as Pence took another photo for the Memories album. As it quickly developed, the short teen took a pen out of his pocket and scrawled on the white area underneath, 'Roxas gets first pubescent thoughts'.

The silence was broken as Olette giggled and pointed out, "Roxas... only you'd think about that sort of thing with Axel."

/.../

It had been a week since the initial interrogation. Everyone thought that Axel was going great with his process, until he got a little bit irritated and didn't consider his words.

It was all Seifer's fault for starting a fight with Hayner. Everyone was waiting for them to confess to each other how much they didn't actually hate each other – far from it – but their disputes were starting to annoy others.

"Well guess what, Lamer!" Came Seifer's voice, and the trio didn't have to see him to figure out that he was wearing his usual signature smirk.

"What, asshole?"

"I'm gonna beat you at Struggle so bad you won't be able to walk in weeks!"

Olette rolled her eyes and whispered to Axel, Pence, and Roxas, "I can imagine something else he'd rather do to make him unable to walk in weeks..."

The three looked at her in surprise, as she raised her eyebrows and shrugged.

"C'mon," She said, "at least it'd make them stop arguing. We need to go to the beach!"

Roxas noticed Axel's odd posture from the corner of his eye as the redhead slouched, seemingly irritated. His suspicions were confirmed as he took a quick stride forwards towards the bickering pair and shouted, "Shu'up, a'right? B'fore ah bust a cap in yo' ass!"

"Axel..." Roxas groaned. "We've gone over this!"

"I'm sorry, I just... I don't know!" Axel held his forehead in his hand, "I forgot..."

"Did he just..." Seifer said, incredulously, before Roxas had a chance to reprimand the other. "Did he just talk like a gangster?"

None of the other five teenagers answered, instead looking at each other as if to say 'not again...'.

"He just... oh man, he..." The blonde bully started laughing, which eventually encouraged everyone else to laugh at the situation.

Everyone else except for Roxas, of course, who was still staring at his redhead companion with a mix of irritation and frustration.

/.../

With the next week came Riku's little brother's birthday, and Riku invited a bunch of his friends over to keep him company while many six and seven year old children screamed and had fun.

This left Riku in the room with Sora and Sora's brother Roxas, Axel, Hayner and Pence. But Riku's brother soon joined them to talk to Sora, who was not-so-surprisingly good with kids.

"Zexion!" The brunette called out, "How're you going, little buddy?"

"Good." The stubborn child gave a small smile. "I want cake."

"Oh, do you? Well, don't tell Riku, but..." Sora looked at Riku with a mischievous smirk, pretending that the silver-haired man couldn't hear them. "I only came for the cake... and to see you, of course!"

"Yep. It's chocolate."

"Really? I love chocolate!"

"Same."

As Riku watched Sora amuse his brother, he thought, 'Well, if we ever adopt kids... he's the mother.' He was brought back to his senses as Sora blew a raspberry with closed eyes, making Zexion giggle childishly and try to copy the facial expression.

"Let's see if we can try to imitate Riku, Zex!" Sora happily exclaimed, looking down at the younger kid.

"Ffffffff." Zexion huffed, letting some air out of his lungs as a goofy frown formed on his face.

"Fffff." The brunette copied, making sure to slouch a little extra to exaggerate it.

"Oh, guys..." Riku laughed, rolling his eyes slightly with a raised eyebrow.

"Don't worry, we love you Riku!" Sora dragged out his best friend's name, opening his arms wide and attacking the other with a hug. "C'mon Zexy! Join us!"

Hesitating slightly at first, Zexion joined the three-way hug, as the others in the room laughed.

"Yay, that's better!" Sora giggled, paused, then said in a lower voice, "found your ticklish spot!"

Riku and Zexion both squirmed away from them as Sora grabbed the two brothers, but Sora instantly stopped as he realised that the two brothers' ticklish spots weren't at the same height, therefore he had just accidentally grabbed something else of Riku's. Instantly blushing, the two best friends awkwardly stood there, blushing.

"That erm, that wasn't my—" The silver-haired teen started, but was cut off by the other.

"Yeah." Sora coughed and looked at the ground.

The awkward silence stretched on for a few moments as everyone in the room stared at the two.

"Zexion, dear?" Riku's mother called from another room. "It's time for cake, come on!"

"Yay!" The lilac-haired kid ran excitedly out of the room.

Later on, after all of Zexion's friends had gotten a piece of the large chocolate cake, Riku and his friends went to get their own share.

Roxas, who had been chatting with Axel for a lot of the time, had been proud of his close friend's progress on the whole speech issue.

But no one realised how good the cake was going to be. That's why, when everyone tasted it, they came dangerously close to losing themselves in the moment.

Except for Axel – he was too far gone. He mumbled so soft that only Roxas could hear, "This cake is a bitchin' motherfu—"

Roxas' spoon clattered with his plate.

/.../

The third week, and Axel was showing a lot of improvement. With the amount of fun the group of friends had had, going to the beach often and spending the most of the last couple of weeks of summer vacation, Axel had had plenty of opportunities to voice his strange habits. However, he had not, which had made Roxas sort of proud of the effort he had put in to influence this change.

And, of course, the amount of times that he had slapped the redhead as a form of discipline.

While at the beach for the billionth time that summer, everyone seemed to pair off a little. Even Seifer had joined them, dunking Hayner and vice versa, the two laughing happily. Pence and Olette were sitting on the sand, Pence taking pictures of his friends and scrawling descriptions underneath. Being slightly better swimmers than the rest, Sora and Riku were out a little further than the rest, chatting and dunking each other happily.

Axel and Roxas had paired off, and were frolicking in the salty water in between conversation. Dunking his head underwater quickly and rubbing his eyes with a laugh, Roxas said, "You know Axel, you're really getting better at this! Maybe we could go do something fun and celebrate, or something."

"Word!" Axel exclaimed, before stuttering, "I-I mean, uh, that'd be really fun!"

Roxas dunked him as hard as he could.

/.../

It was the fourth and final week of the challenge, and this friendly meet up was different to the rest. It was just the blonde and the redhead, sitting unusually close at their usual spot on the Twilight Town clock tower. This was unknown to Hayner, who they could see below.

"I see he's gotten quite close to Seifer, there." Axel chuckled, and Roxas happily hummed in agreement. By this time, Hayner and Seifer were Struggling closer than usual, the taller blonde straddling the other strangely, the blue bats pushing against each other.

"Wow, hey, what are they doing?" Roxas asked, as Seifer seemed to be leaning down, getting closer to Hayner. From the high angle they were at, Roxas and Axel couldn't really tell what was going on, but soon they saw Pence and Olette taking a picture, the former taking a picture of the two.

"It's good that Pence is taking these photos… It's gonna be funny seeing them when we're older." Axel mused.

"Yeah." Roxas agreed. "It's funny, though… I wonder what it'd be like in the future."

"What do you mean?" The redhead looked at the other. "We'll all be friends, and I'll be here with you…"

"I'd like that." The blonde smiled, turning his head slightly and realising just how close they were.

"Maybe I'll be here with you... as, you know, more than friends?"

"Yeah, that'd be good." Roxas smiled even wider, and Axel nervously leaned in as the blonde closed his eyes. He faintly thought to himself, 'Oh no, what if he gets really emotional again and says some weird gangster thing and ruins the mood?' But luckily, no such thing happened.

As their lips met, the kissed awkwardly, before a click was heard from a couple of metres away. Parting quickly, the pair turned to see Pence waiting for a photo to develop before looking at them.

"Sorry guys, Olette made me..." He scratched the back of his head sheepishly, as the two laughed. "Man, two in one morning? What a coincidence."

"Yeah, she'll be happy 'bout that for a long time." Axel said, bemused, as the two agreed.

"By the way, she says she wants to do something today, so we're going to her house now. See you there?"

"'Kay." The two answered in unison, and Pence apologised for the interruption and left.

"Well, c'mon, Rox." Axel stood up, and helped Roxas do the same. The blonde felt excitement welling in his stomach as he realised that the redhead didn't let go of his hand.

The two left their spot and went to meet their friends, slightly nervous about the questions going to be asked about what was going on between the two.

My friend and I were playing the penis game while walking down a main city street at night. Apart from that, I have no idea where this came from... :D It came out weirder than I expected, too, haha. Oh, and I don't hate how gangsters talk or anything like that. I just think Axel would sound funny like that. C:

But yeah, I'd love to know what you thought of this! Hope you like it, thanks a lot for reading! :D