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Cloud waited for the other shoe to drop.
It happened too soon.
Leon started spending more and more time at Cloud’s -- it just made sense to them as he still had yet to close on his own apartment with Sora. It was a fast transition, but neither of them minded; Sora and Roxas each had their own space and Leon and Cloud shared their’s.
It felt too good to be true. Sleeping with Leon, Cloud felt… protected. Safe. He hadn’t realized how much he missed the feeling.
The last time he experienced it was during his enlistment.
But spending time with Leon brought back flashes of memory he’d forgotten about -- memories of a dark haired man with deep skin and fluorescent blue eyes.
Leon was strong and warm, and he smelled like coffee, and his hands were calloused and rough against Cloud’s, and if Cloud closed his eyes he didn’t always see Leon in his mind’s eye.
When they slept, Cloud sometimes rolled over and expected to see a faded scar on Leon’s jawline, but it was never there. He expected glowing eyes, not Leon’s soft gray ones. Long, black hair instead of soft brown.
When Leon changed clothes, Cloud expected a barrage of scars to adorn his skin, pockmarks of bullet holes and the nicks of blades, but for all of Leon’s scars, he never had them .
Eventually, though, the shoe did drop -- just not in the way he expected.
Leon always kept a wary eye on Axel. Cloud understood why. For so many years, Axel lived fast and hard, making money doing the jobs no one talked about. A mercenary, if he wanted to sound professional. A fixer. A hitman. A thief, a sneak, a bodyguard, a killer. He learned how best to get under somebody’s skin and live there, to use their own lives against them.
Cloud understood Leon’s distrust. It made sense. Though most of Leon’s military past was a mystery to Cloud, he understood enough to know that Leon was a man of loyalty. Axel, however, was loyal to a select few people: himself, above all else, and then Saix, and Roxas, and Cloud. In that order.
By all accounts, his loyalty to Cloud made little sense, even to Cloud himself. They met as Cloud stumbled along the streets outside Midgar, hardly in his right mind, covered in blood over ill-fitting clothes, a vacant expression in his eyes.
Back then, Axel didn’t know Cloud , but he knew of Cloud. He knew of Shinra’s runaway subjects, he knew the lengths they were willing to go to get them back. He’d been propositioned on multiple occasions to find them, to collect them, to eliminate them.
And something inside Axel opted not to give him over.
He took care of Cloud. He used his connections to see him taken care of. He provided food, shelter, and care. He kept Cloud off the grid, and then, when Cloud was finally able to take care of himself, Axel kept the targets off of his back.
Then, Roxas entered their lives.
Cloud had no idea why Roxas was so important to Axel. If he asked, Axel would only claim that kids are the future. He deserved the best chance he could get. Sometimes, though, he and Saix would talk about their past -- and every so often, they visited an unmarked grave in the neighborhood they grew up in. Cloud never asked about it.
Leon, though, didn’t know any of this. He understood enough to know that Cloud and Axel trusted each other if not with their own lives, then with Roxas’s -- and that was good enough to them both. Leon , however, did not have the same feeling of camaraderie when he looked at the redhead.
“We’re the same, you know,” Axel told him one evening. Cloud stepped out for a moment, taking a phone call that left Axel and Leon alone in the shared living room.
Leon could feel his attention hone in on him like a beacon in the dark. He glanced over at Axel, saw him sprawled out over Cloud’s sofa, his too-long limbs hanging over the armrests, his eyes shut against the dim ceiling light.
“Whatever,” he muttered, not liking Axel’s implication.
But Axel snorted at the comment. “You act like you’re better than me, but we had the same job. We did the same things.”
His eyes stayed shut as Leon stared at him. He believed that Axel was a merc, but to openly declare it? To insinuate their situations were the same?
“I knew from the second we saw you in the Square,” Axel continued. He flitted his fingers in the air, playing against a melody only he could hear. “Cloud did too, but I don’t think he got the whole truth of it. He likes to think the best of people, you know.”
“And what’s the whole truth?”
“Oh, stop pretending,” Axel said. Finally, he looked up, and his eyes were startlingly green in the dim light. The tattoos under his eyes drew his expression upward, forcing an intensity onto his expression that Leon didn’t think he would have been able to maintain otherwise.
He pulled himself upright and stood up, drawing himself to his full height in front of Leon where he stood leaning up against Cloud’s kitchen countertop. Leon wasn’t intimidated by him, but he could understand how someone would be. Axel, like this, wasn’t the Strife family friend he’d come to be. This was a predator inspecting his prey.
Leon met him directly. His arms remained crossed over his chest. “We’re not the same,” he said evenly. “I did my job, and that’s it.”
“So did I,” Axel insisted, brows raising. “A job. It’s as simple as that. You think you’re better because you wore a flag on your shoulder?”
Leon didn’t answer, but he felt his skin buzz with frustration. Axel was doing this on purpose, he knew. He wanted to make him angry. He wanted to understand Leon, finally, to figure out what made him tick.
Axel leaned closer to Leon, a genuinely curious expression replacing the faux quizzical one. “What was your final straw, huh?” he asked. “We all have one in this business. That one target we couldn’t hit. The mission that broke the camel’s back. I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” he crooned.
Leon stayed silent. Footsteps shuffled in through the front door, but they continued staring at each other. Leon’s fingers itched to reach for the blade he kept hidden on his ankle, but as soon as the thought crossed his mind Axel grinned. “Not today,” he said. “Pulling a weapon on an unarmed opponent isn’t honorable , Squall.”
“Unarmed, my ass,” Leon countered.
Squall .
He didn’t want to think about how Axel knew his name. His real name.
“Axel?”
From the entryway, Roxas stopped short. Behind him, Sora’s eyes flitted quickly between Axel and Leon, unsure. Roxas looked warily on at the pair. “What’s going on?”
“Just some business, kid,” Axel said. His eyes still held too serious of an expression for Leon to drop his guard, but his eyes flicked between him and Roxas carefully. Did Axel’s shoulders tense up at Roxas’s voice, or was he seeing things?
“What kind of ‘business’?” It wasn’t Roxas who asked, but Sora.
Axel’s eyes narrowed, still staring at Leon. “Adult business,” he said, his niceties dropping. His words were cold, and his eyes flashed dangerously. Even Roxas took a half-step back at his tone, arm reaching out in front of Sora as if to protect him.
Returning to Leon, Axel said, “Your business is yours until it starts to bleed into his life. I can’t keep him safe from your bullshit, too.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sora chimed in.
“What are you talking about?” Roxas argued.
“Promise me,” Axel said, ignoring the boys, stepping closer to Leon, their chests only inches apart. “Keep your shit away from him or I’ll handle it for you.”
In his periphery, Leon watched both kids stare on -- Roxas angry, Sora frustrated.
There was so much they couldn’t explain, not even to Roxas.
Leon met blazing green eyes with his jaw clenched tight. So close, he could feel Axel’s breath on his face with each exhale, but it remained steady. A calm fury.
Coolly, he said, “I’ve got my shit handled.”
“You know, you say that, but you’re wound up tighter than my ass.”
Axel leaned away just as Roxas stepped forward to stand between them. His face was red -- but he faced Axel and held out a finger, as if to reprimand him. He stood nearly a foot shorter, and he was almost fifteen years younger, but Leon saw a resilience in him that made him wonder just how similar to his father he was.
“ Axel ,” he snapped. “ You don’t get to give him the shovel talk. Leave him alone.”
Axel returned to his general jovial, joking demeanor in only a split second. He grinned at Roxas, his lazy drawl returning. “I have to trust my gut, kid,” he teased. “Can’t blame me for wanting to keep you guys safe.”
“Yeah, well, I know what your definition of ‘safe’ is,” Roxas grumbled.
He turned his back to Axel and faced Leon -- and Axel’s facade fell, his eyes cold as they bored into Leon’s. It contrasted sharply with his casual words, so casual Roxas didn’t turn around to see him out. “Since you have it all covered, I’m gonna head out. It’s date night and Saix doesn’t like to be kept waiting, you know.”
As he backed out of the room, he grinned suddenly at Leon. He pulled the pin out of his hair, letting loose the unruly mane and shaking it out. He admired the pin before tugging on the handle, revealing a thin knife hidden into the pin’s sheath.
Leon felt his lip curl in anger. Unarmed, my ass , he thought again. It was only Sora’s hand on his forearm that stilled him from lunging forward.
Axel winked. The front door shut and closed behind him.
“What the hell was that all about?” Roxas demanded suddenly, spinning on Leon.
Leon wondered, for a moment, what Roxas knew -- about Cloud, about Axel, about Leon and Sora. How much of their lives he’d shared accidentally, how much Sora told him, thinking they were innocent words.
“I think,” Sora said, “Axel was telling Leon to watch himself around you two.”
And it broke Leon’s heart, not for the first time, to hear Leon come out of Sora’s mouth, to hear the way it sounded so foreign when he’d been Squall for so long. Not Squall anymore, not while they hid. Stayed safe. Kept quiet.
It’s for the best , Quistis had pleaded.
“Yeah, I got that part,” Roxas agreed, “but he looked like he was about to take you out.” He looked at Leon differently, though. Warily. “He said he hasn’t done that in years.”
As Leon sat back down, Roxas dropped his bag on the floor and walked slowly towards the kitchen. “So you know his history?” he asked Roxas. Sora sat down beside Leon, shrugging out of his overcoat and pulling books out of his bag.
“Enough of it, I guess,” Roxas answered carefully, whether to spare Sora or to test the waters of Leon ’s reaction, he wasn’t sure. “He has a history. Axel was a fixer… basically,” he said.
“A fixer,” Leon repeated. He shook his head. If that’s what Axel wanted to refer to his work as -- to a fourteen year old, no less? Whatever. He shook his head. “He and I aren’t anything alike.”
“Don’t judge Axel so harshly. He’s been through a lot. We all have.” Roxas came back in from the kitchen with a glass of water and plopped down on the sofa on Leon’s other side. His hair fell in his face as he did, and Leon was struck once again with his and his father’s resemblance.
Something Axel said nagged at the back of his mind: his final straw. The target he couldn’t hit. It was powerful enough to pull him from his criminal life, but how did it land him here , with Cloud and Roxas of all people?
But he also thought about something else -- some one else. He glanced down at the ring on his necklace, and he closed his eyes. Tried to center himself.
Sora reached over. Grabbed his hand, where it reached up to tug at the necklace, an unusually somber expression on his face. Too old for a fourteen year old, too wise, too knowing.
“He might not be such a terrible person, but he sure has a funny way of showing it,” Leon finally said. “We all have shit to deal with from our past. He’s not special.”
Roxas shrugged. “He knows. He just… he needs to protect what he has left, I guess.”
At that moment, Cloud returned, his phone in hand. He knew, from their faces, that the other shoe had dropped.