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The interviews were the worst part of the whole ordeal, but necessary.
Axel understood that, of course, but he actively hated the repetitiveness of it.
With a passion.
Damn, they could've been out doing something else, like rehearsing, writing new material, watching the grass grow, the paint dry, anything. Instead, they had to answer always the same questions: "Comedy on Mello stage? What made you do that?", "Why the choice of singing in dialect?", "What does Kaj stand for?".
"Do you remember your first kiss?".
Axel startled, pulled out of his reverie.
...Well, at least this was an original one.
'Do you remember your first kiss?' was an interesting question if you were Axel Åhman. You see, he had the memory of it, just, he didn't know if it was real. He really doubted it was, it wouldn't be the first time he made up a memory, dreamed it up, or made some other people's memories his own.
But this particular memory was such a special one that Axel didn't care if it was fake. It was too good to let go.
He remembered it so clearly, vividly, as if it were happening right in front of his eyes.
Summer, the pines and birches casting a shadow on him, sitting on a wooden bench right in front of the lake, peaceful and quiet. He recalled going there to escape the impromptu loud reunion of families that happened on that day: his parents had met a couple of other families they knew while out for lunch, so they decided to unite and eat together.
Too many people for his liking.
He sighed, content, while observing the water, until a sound alerted him: a broken twig. He remembered turning around and seeing one of the boys about his age, the kid of one of the families, walking out of the trees and into the clearing he was in.
There went his peaceful solitude.
"Hi"
"Hey," Axel answered, before looking back at the lake.
The kid sat next to him, watching Axel's profile, taking in the short super blonde hair, round glasses, thin as a twig, shirt tucked inside the belt, curled up on the bench. Axel wasn't particularly talkative, but the boy was, apparently, and enough for both of them.
"You come here a lot?". No hesitation, like they were simply resuming a discussion they had interrupted minutes earlier.
"Yes".
"You like this place". It wasn't a question. The other boy was observant.
"Yes".
"You like to be alone?"
"Yes".
"You come here often?". This kid was rapidly getting on his nerves.
"Yes".
"You like the lake".
"Yes".
"Can I kiss you?"
"Ye- what!?" he turned to him, his neck almost giving him whiplash.
"Can I kiss you?" he repeated, like he was asking something completely mundane, for example, if he had brushed his teeth today.
"Why??", his high-pitched screech surprising Axel more than the boy's bluntness. The kid shrugged.
"I saw you at lunch, you were quiet. I like you. You're pretty. Can I?".
He remembered looking at the boy, his giant smile that seemed to cover at least 60% of his round face. He found himself nodding after a beat, nervous: he had seen people kissing, of course, in his family, on TV, and even if very very young, he was curious to know.
He looked at the boy expectantly, and he remembered the weird knot in his stomach out of nowhere.
The kid leaned in, closer and closer, before detouring and kissing his cheek, smacking loud, then retreating and looking at him, happy as a clam.
"Thank you!", he said.
Axel paused, exhaled and chuckled.
"Oh, that! Oh, ok, sorry, I thought you meant the other one". He froze. He had no idea if other kids were even supposed to know about these things; maybe he was the weird one.
He should learn to shut up.
"The other cheek? Ok", the boy stretched and kissed the other cheek. Axel could feel to this day the sensation of his face on fire, and an even bigger smile pulled out of him. He shook his head.
"No, not the cheek, the kiss, the other kiss". "Which other kiss?". "You know...the other other one," he gestured, moving his hand.
The boy looked at him with a blank stare. He remembered the distinct sensation of warmth in his chest when looking at his lost expression. He was... cute.
"This one," he said, before kissing him for real. A brief kiss, just a press of lips on his. Maybe two.
When he retreated, he remembered that the kid looked like someone had plugged him into a socket: his smile could've powered up the whole of Vörå.
He didn't expect the kid to lean in and kiss him again, copying what he had just done, before sitting back straight on the bench. "I liked that," he declared, all blushy. "Yea, me too", he replied, awkwardly.
They looked at each other for a long moment before snorting and giggling loudly. They couldn't stop laughing.
Amidst laughter, he remembered hearing a woman in the forest calling for someone by his name. Probably the boy.
"Jakob?? Jakob, where are you?".
Axel heard her first, and turned to ask him.
"Is that you? Jakob?", He pointed to the forest on his back with his thumb.
He nodded. "Yeah, it's me. What about you?".
"I'm not Jakob" he deadpanned.
The kid, Jakob, laughed like it was the best piece of comedy he had ever heard in his life. Not many kids his age understood Axel's sense of humor, but he had made Jakob laugh out loud, and he decided that he liked that feeling. He was his favorite thing in the world, in fact.
"No, I mean, what's your name?".
"...Axel".
Jakob smiled. "I like it", he said, before standing up and waving, walking back to his mom.
Now, of course this memory must be fabricated, Axel rationally knew that, just like the memory of him sitting behind the steering wheel and driving down the hill in his parents' car: he just wanted it so much that he fantasized it.
He was too young.
He knew that, everyone knew that, he had even said it in an interview, maybe.
Still, it hurt a bit, he felt like he was missing something he had never experienced, just like it happened every time he listened to the 80s music he loved so much. Longing for something he had never lived.
He came back to the present, where Kevin was getting to the end of his answer. Thank god he had them to take up the mantle when he zoned out. Also, it was a weird question to ask during an interview for Melodifestivalen, if he was perfectly honest.
Jakob was next, and they all knew about his first kiss: he remembered clearly, Jakob had come to school the next day after his first kiss, and he had practically vibrated when sharing the news.
Axel wasn't vibrating in the least.
If he was honest, he thought he didn't really like the girl at all.
He sighed and waited for him to start answering the interviewer. Jakob was taking longer than usual.
Weird. He was always the talkative one of the three, usually starting the answer before the question was even over.
Axel looked up at him, and he saw him looking down at his hands, smiling fondly. He looked almost sad.
"My first kiss was at... 7? No, maybe 8? In front of a lake. It was peaceful."
Axel sat up straighter and kept his eyes on him. Then he looked at Kevin, who was sporting his same confused expression. Jakob's first kiss surely was at least at fifteen. They remember it well.
"We were kids, I remember we were sitting on a bench at a... family reunion? Maybe? And I was the one that asked for the kiss. Again, we were kids, it was innocent. But it was sweet." he concluded, half smiling.
He looked resigned, if not sad. Like something he had lost.
He couldn't be talking about Axel. He couldn't possibly. He stared at Jakob as if he could read his mind if he focused hard enough.
The interviewer caught none of the stares happening in front of him between the three of them, and he went on asking Jakob if the person was still in his life.
Jakob smiled wider, this time a real one. "Yes", he said proudly.
Axel was following the interview like a tennis match, waiting for more details.
"Will this person be watching you during the final?"
He saw Jakob giggling.
Giggling.
Giggling while bringing a hand behind his neck.
"Highly likely yes".
Axel's eyes were glued to him until Kevin cleared his throat and waited for Axel to answer the question. It was his turn. And Jakob was still not looking at him. At all.
"I...I don't remember mine, I'm afraid, sorry," he replied, eyes belatedly going to the interviewer, "I have very bad memory".
He could feel Kevin's eyes drilling a hole in the side of his head, and he turned his eyes to avoid looking at him, but not before noticing Jakob bowing his head further and his shoulders dropping slightly.
_____________
"I didn't recall that one being your first kiss Jakob, wasn't it with that girl, whatshername...", Kevin started, snapping his fingers in the air, as soon as they were out of the room.
"Uhm, oh yeah, I just remembered it," Jakob mumbled.
Lies.
Axel always knew when he was lying.
The kid couldn't lie to save his life. He adored that about him.
The whole car ride was silent, Jakob on the passenger seat looking out of the window, Axel in the backseat looking at him and trying to make sense of it all, and Kevin driving, completely clueless.
He dropped them at the studio, with the promise of coming back with pizza after going home to take a shower. Axel and Jakob waved and walked in.
They all had the habit of leaving their change of clothes all in the same place so they didn't have to hop house to house to collect every item just to start a studio session.
They started undressing, Jakob stubbornly keeping his back turned to Axel. Axel sighed and pulled the hoodie over his head.
"Why did you lie?" he asked, putting the glasses back on.
He saw Jakob stopping his movements before answering. "What? What do you mean?". "To Kevin, just now". A pause. Too long a pause.
"I wasn't. That's just. It just came to me today," his voice muffled by the hoodie he was pulling over his head.
Axel went to help him, easing the hoodie down his torso. "Lies, Jakob. If that's not a lie, would you care to repeat that to me while looking me in the eyes?".
Jakob fiddled with the hem of the hoodie, turning around and looking at Axel, puppy eyes in full force, fixing his hair but managing to mess them up even worse. Never failed to give Axel the butterflies, this combo, even after all these years.
Damn.
Jakob looked unable to say anything. He just stared. So Axel started.
"The lake, bench, family reunion?" he began, his hands trembling, "I thought it was a fake memory, Jakob." The other man stood still in the middle of the room, listening, frozen.
"All these years I looked at you every day, every day of our lives and thought I had imagined everything". Jakob's eyes widened, breath picking up, panicked. "You remember?", he exhaled.
"You know that I have fake memories, and you never said anything. Why?". He didn't mean to sound as hurt as he did. "Years of swimming lessons, football, school, but it never came up once?".
He could see Jakob's eyes saddened at his words, before answering. He knew he hated disappointing him. "I was a loser enough at the time, I didn't want to add the 'oh, do you remember as kids' story on top of it. I wanted to be cool. In your eyes."
Axel always admired how fast Jakob's cheeks could turn red.
"We met again and you never brought that up, Axel, I thought you didn't want to talk about it, or maybe you forgot-". "I never forgot it. Never forgotten you." Axel blurted, interrupting him, "I genuinely thought it wasn't real."
Jakob's face went through a dozen different emotions before settling on sadness. "I'm sorry. I truly am, I never even thought about this possibility.", he tried to convey all his sincerity through big blue eyes.
As if Axel even needed that to forgive him anything.
Jakob sighed and walked backwards to sit on their sofa, elbows on his knees and head in his hands.
His leg couldn't stop bouncing.
"So where do we go from here?" he started, talking to the floor, teeth worrying his bottom lip. "I don't want to make it weird for us to be in the same room, god, it's the last thing I want, the last, believe me, we're friends first and foremost, right? And, and...we're in the middle of this Mello thing, ugh god it couldn't've happened at a worse time, I should've shut up".
Axel was watching him blabbing in silence, observing his nervousness, how he bounced his leg, how he hadn't stopped talking since the moment he sat down on the sofa, not even to take a breath, and how he was still not looking at him. Axel hoped and prayed to the god he didn't believe in to be reading the situation right and that he was not about to throw a twenty-year-long friendship down the toilet for this.
He took a deep breath and walked to the sofa, sitting down beside Jakob, who slowly turned his face to him.
He was worried. Maybe he wasn't wrong after all.
"Can I kiss you?".
He had a front row ticket to Jakob's eyes dilating at his words. His mouth did that adorable smile of his, where he starts smiling but not really, giving his face a dreamy stare, the one-sided smile that Axel found irresistible.
"...wh, what?".
"Can I kiss you?", he repeated, shrugging with one shoulder, "I like you, you're beautiful".
Jakob smiled wider, eyes crinkling at the corners. "It wasn't 'beautiful', it was 'pretty', to be precise," he chuckled.
The fact that Jakob remembered the exact words of their first encounter, so many years ago, gave his heart a squeeze. Axel's gaze softened, he lifted a hand and held Jakob's cheek, thumb grazing his skin.
"You're beautiful, though".
He saw Jakobs' chest filling in almost to the exploding point, his smile getting bigger and brighter. Axel kept staring at him intently, until Jakob nodded, exhaling an almost imperceptible "...yes, of course you can".
Axel felt his blood thrumming in his veins when he leaned in and pressed his lips softly on Jakob's fuller ones.
Finally. It felt like breathing for the first time.
He cupped his face to turn him fully towards him on the sofa, to deepen the kiss further, to finally live his memory.
Brain still catching up with the moment, Jakob's hands stayed mid-air, between them, not sure where to put them, not knowing if he could touch or not, until Axel intercepted them and brought them to rest on his shoulders, before resuming his place, holding Jakob's cheeks and jaw, thumbs grazing the skin.
Jakob hummed, smiling into the kiss. One hand left the place on Axel's shoulder and curled behind his neck, threading his hair, and eliciting a moan that sent chills running down his spine.
This was his best friend.
He was moaning.
Because of HIM.
He was kissing his best friend.
Jakob groaned, getting even closer to Axel, almost climbing on his lap to deepen the kiss, cradling the other's face in his hands, feeling him pliant against his palms, relaxed, something weird for his constantly controlling friend.
Their mouths molded perfectly, tongues rolling against each other, the room quiet except for the rhythmic soft smacking of lips meeting.
They parted to breathe, but none of them got more than a couple of inches away from the other, foreheads touching.
Axel moved, cupping his face gently and pecking his lips again, two, three times more, making Jakob smile and scrunching his nose. Axel kissed that, too.
"This was a very different kiss than the last one," Axel breathed against the other's smile, which was almost blinding being this close.
"The first one you mean", Jakob bantered, eyes searching his, clear and transparent, like water. Axel couldn't resist planting another small kiss on his lips.
"Thank you for choosing me that day, Jakob." Jakob sighed deeply, held Axel's hands on his jaw, rubbing them gently.
He nodded. "I really liked you," he said as an excuse, blushing slightly.
A pause.
Then Axel broke the silence.
"...Am I still pretty though?".
Jakob looked at him, snorted, and broke into his usual loud laughter, brightening the whole room, eyes scrunched and head thrown back, almost out of breath.
Axel stared at him, transfixed, a small involuntary smile budding on his lips.
Yes: making Jakob laugh was still his favorite thing to do, even after all these years.