everything rushes back, in an instant. the same, but different. they’re not kids anymore and his chest isn’t filled with the six year old butterflies that’d made a home of him back in new york. his stomach does swoop, though. different. not too dissimilar to the feeling he used to get when he packed his bag for camp or it’s mimic, three months later, when he was boarding his flight back to georgia. it’s a silent alarm, a reminder of how much he craves those destinations where he’s cemented his place.
behind the tears, his eyes are alight with curiosity and… something else as the familiar pet name falls from axel’s lips. without a shadow of a doubt, he knows that there’s still room for him, somewhere between axel’s ribs. the space may be a few stubborn inches smaller than drew remembers it being but it’s still his.
another place to call home. maybe he can squeeze.
there was a time where that word made him swoon. he can’t count the times it made his cheeks burn, knees turning to jelly. he’s been a lot of things to a lot of people, since he left axel behind him, but never anyone else’s baby. they’ve both left each other marked, he supposes. under all of the scar tissue, there’s still a place for axel, too. he just hadn’t cleared out the cobwebs, recently.
drew’s fingers twitch against his jaw, thumb dragging a bit higher across axel’s wet cheek, pushing tears to the wayside. “i’d take you crying over you gone, any day.” he doesn’t fully understand what looking a gift horse in the mouth means, but he knows he doesn’t want to do it. not now. not with him. “i’m already soaked,” he adds, chasing another half-laugh. “you could cry me a monsoon and i’d stick around.”
when one wobbles, they both shift slightly off balance but he rights them in an instant. he doesn’t know the details of what’s going through axel’s head, wreaking havoc on his body and almost sending him toppling over, but drew knows that it’s his turn to be the strong one, this time. so, steady and silent he stays, until the urge to draw him in closer grows too strong. he untangles their joined hands to pull axel into his chest.
“i missed you, too,” he says, voice regaining it’s telltale watery quality. their shared summer isn’t something that plagues him often, anymore. it comes quietly, sometimes knocking him flat when he least expects it, but there’s no denying that it’s true. drew missed him, even in moments he hadn’t realized it. “i’m okay,” drew confirms with a nod, lips drawing themselves into a small smile. “i’m good, actually. i don’t really do real danger, anymore but i– i’m good.” he only hopes that axel will say the same, despite the inkling he’s fighting off that he won’t. “are you?”
i’d take you crying over you gone any day. for it being only a sentence, it packs enough emotional punch to potentially send axel off-footing again; at least, it would, if drew weren’t a step ahead of him and ready for it in a way that axel’s never quite been ready for anything. “yeah? bet,” axel says through what’s now more of a laugh than it is a whimper, impossibly brightened by his promise, even if just for the moment.
there’s an ache when drew lets go of his hand, but it doesn’t have time to sink in his chest and make a home before he’s reeled in to an embrace he’s only had access to in dreams, and axel feels lighter than any substance has ever been able to make him. stunned, he stills at first; like if he makes one wrong move, drew might crumble all around him — but one, two, three beats pass and he hasn’t, and when his arms hesitantly curl around the small of his back, he’s still there. the way he nuzzles into where his face meets drew’s chest after is as instinctive as it is natural.
it comes as another shock when he’s told that he was missed, and with that comes another wave of guilt — he expects to feel a lot of that, maybe for the rest of their lives for as long as drew here with him, not gone, he’s not gone, he can’t get over that, not gone — and axel cranes his neck up against drew’s wet shirt to look at him, like gauging his expression would make it any less difficult to comprehend. ( spoiler alert, it doesn’t. ) at least it looks like he means it when he says he’s good, and axel starts to smile at that, thinks about saying something like you deserve to be good and i’m so, i’m so, i’m so glad, baby, but the spread of his lips halts at the halfway mark when drew uno reverses him.
he wishes he hadn’t looked up. it’d be easier to hide the look in his eyes, easier to stick to script for are you good and shoot him a grin and that signature me? i always am! that he would back then, too. at least he meant it sometimes, back then; even if drew always knew if he didn’t mean it, anyways. he was tricky, like that — or he just knew him better enough, huh? there’s not a lot that’s the same between them, but axel’s willing to bet that hasn’t changed.
caught in the headlights with his chin tilted up at him, axel stalls over his answer, hyper-aware of the seconds that pass and make whatever he has to say a lot less convincing. it’s while he’s staring up at his face, his sweet — sweet fucking face that he gets a little lost in it all, and suddenly his hand is reaching up to cup around the delicate skin, only hoping against hope that the scarred skin of his touch isn’t too rough for it somehow. his lips take his focus for a few seconds too long, and axel forces his gaze to meet drew’s, only then realizing how long he’s been silent. he just… doesn’t care? looking at him now, he doesn’t care if he’s good or not, so it doesn’t — it doesn’t really matter. all that does matter is closing the distance between them, what little there is of it left, and axel pushes himself up as high as his toes will take him and —
he kisses him. axel guides drew by the cheek closer to him until their lips meet, and he doesn’t think about what alcohol content might still coat his tongue, he just presses his mouth to his with more delicacy than he thinks he’s capable of. his head is screaming with the want to deepen it, to swim in it, but he stops, pulling himself back enough that drew can get away if he wants to and lingering in case he doesn’t; a wordless you don’t have to, in a gesture.
he keeps his eyes closed so he doesn’t have to see him make the decision.