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He was named after a figure skating move.  He knows that much, but no more, his father never talking about his mother, never letting him see any of the old videos of her, not even once.  He digs them out when his father isn't home and watches her, spellbound, too caught up to hear the key in the lock.  He goes to bed hungry and in tears, that night, too worried from his scolding to wonder what was so wrong about wanting to see his mother skate.  She was beautiful, flawless, even when she put a foot out of place, and the jumps, the jumps were terrifying and gorgeous all in one moment.  He doesn't understand why his father has locked all those feelings away, along with his love, along with his caring and any sense of duty to his child.  It is a long time before he can bring himself to ask.

When Axel is sixteen, he knows two things.  One, that his mother was the most kind-hearted, beautiful, skilled woman on the planet, and two, that he killed her.  His father is not sparing with the facts, and lets him feel every inch of that blade, as surely as if he held it himself.  His mother was perfect, and he killed her, simply by being born, simply by existing, and his father hisses at him when he drinks, swears at him and screams that he wished it could have been the other way around, that his child had never been, just so he can have his wife back.  In the mornings, Axel cleans up the broken glass and they don't talk about it, no mediator, no common ground.  The are strangers sharing a house – no, it would be better if they were strangers, but they're not; bound to feel familial ties even when they can not stand the sight of one another.  This way, they try to be out of the house as much as possible when the other is home, and Axel wishes like hell that they had a shed, a summerhouse, anything, so that he could live there, instead, eating cold Chinese food and not having to think about the man in that house who is supposedly his father, and yet doesn't care at all.

When he's at college, Axel watches figure skating videos as often as he can.  They're not all his mother, not now, and anyway, very few of those are up on the internet, with the age they are.  He finds himself unable to watch the women's skating, too raw, too used to his mother and he compares every one of the skaters to a dead woman he never met, so he watches the men's, instead.  If anything, he finds it even more impossibly beautiful, and that's when he realises, having never had the thought before, that he simply doesn't see the attraction in women.  He doesn't bother to tell his father.  They don't speak anymore anyway, and this would just be like calling him to hammer the stake home into his heart, the old fool more vampire than anything else, sucking pleasure and love out of any situation.  No, Axel will not tell him that he won't be bringing a girl home any time soon, because he won't be going home, not if he can help it.  He stays in and watches the skaters, and soon knows enough that he can scoff when the commentators are clearly wrong.  He never wonders if the obsession goes a little too far.

His company are one of the Winter Olympic sponsors and so, of course, they get some complimentary tickets, to sit in a box with champagne and petit-fours, a view unrivalled by the seating, for the skating.  He's up in the box with a load of women, and none of them question why he's there, because they know their figure skating, mostly, and they know his last name – hers, not his, never his, not after that – and they make their own conclusions about why he wants to watch.  He hasn't watched much of the recent Worlds, because he's been caught up with work, but he recognises a few faces, older now, coming to the end of their Olympic careers.  And then there's the Danish entry, a boy, no more than nineteen, certainly, who dances like the very ice is his playground, like a Robin Goodfellow on skates.  He's playful, like he's laughing at the whole event, and Axel loves every second of it, always watching for the slip of footwork, but the kid's as good as his smile says he is, and it never comes.

That's just the heats, and when Axel's out at a bar, getting drunk the way only he can – two half pints and a shot, he's never had a head for his alcohol, never had the chance to – he spots him, the Danish boy, alone, nursing something long and vicious looking, and orders himself another beer, sliding into the booth.
"Hi, I saw you skating today."
The boy looks at him and raises and eyebrow, and Axel just knows he wants him to believe he doesn't speak English, but he knows better than to fall into that trap.
"You're spectacular.  You'll win."
The boy rolls his eyes.
"My name's Axel."
This does get him a reaction.
"You're seriously trying," he says, with no hint of an accent, "to pick me up by saying that you're named after a skating move.  Smooth.  That lie got you into bed with many of us, has it?"
For a second, Axel's just confused.
"Uh, no, I'm… well, okay, I was named after a skating move, but…." He hands the boy his driver's licence, and sees the scoff before he gets to the last name and freezes.
"You were Yuna's boy." He says, quietly, "And you're here, watching me skate.  Should I be flattered?"
"I just like watching skating." Axel murmurs, "My father never let me watch any when I was younger.  Got company tickets to be here."
"So Yuna's boy says I'll win.  What will you give me if I do?"
Axel's flustered, immediately on the defensive.
"I didn't, I mean – I wasn't trying to…."
"One night with Roxas, the Olympic gold medallist… Axel.  Meet me after the scores."  With that, the boy drains his drink without so much as a shudder, hands him a keycard, and leaves, without so much as a goodbye.  Axel has no idea what to do next.

He doesn't have time to make the choice.  The office need him back, and he flies home early the next morning, the keycard still in the pocket of his jeans, and he wishes he'd got the chance to see the final, to see even the smallest amount of it, or to let Roxas know why he wouldn't be there when the kid inevitably wins.  He has done nothing about his sexuality up until now, and feels he would have been perfectly happy doing nothing about it for the rest of his life before Roxas lit a flame under him, and now he itches with the knowledge that he could have had him, could have tasted and shared success, if only work hadn't called, if only he had known how to take a few risks.  That was what he admired most with Roxas' skating – the way he dared, pushed the limits and kept on going, never seeming to think about the price he might pay for his stunts.  Axel isn't like that, at all.  Axel just keeps plodding on in the same job, the same flat, the same rut, over and over, until he isn't sure he's living at all.

It's all over the news when he gets home.  The first place is surprising, to say the least, and then the rest of the podium is utterly disgraceful, Axel has no idea why the standings went so wrong until the end of the day, when Elena claps him on the back.
"Bet you're glad you weren't there to watch that Danish kid fall, right?  Messy business."
Axel heads home in a state of shock, logs on and pulls up the recordings of the free skate finals, watches through Roxas' routine, and there it is, the timing off in the middle of the triple axel, the landing, the fall, and there's bone through his flesh, easily having broken his hip, femur, arm, wrist, and most likely collarbone.  He doesn't understand what happened, as the camera cuts away as they scrape him off the ice.  Axle can't help but think that maybe, had he been there, he might have been good luck, might have helped Roxas avoid that slip, could have done anything useful.  He knows, in his heart of hearts, that it would have been the same, either way, and he would not have been able to get near the blond, not with hospital regulations, not with the media crowding outside.  He bites his lip as he shuts the machine down and goes to bed early, like always.  Same rut, over and over.

Roxas doesn't skate at Worlds next year.  Or the year after.  The year after that, he's back, Axel hears, but he can't watch, can't bear it; to see that casual elegance, that lack of fear so totally erased, to see his Roxas – and when did he become his, he wonders – become a shell of what he was… he can't face it.  He ignores the coverage until it's all over, and the headlines tell him that Roxas was a close third to a Russian and a French skater.  It's better than he'd hoped, having seen that fall, but it doesn't do to hope.  He still can't bear to watch the routines from Worlds, scared that what he'll see won't be the Roxas he misses, the Roxas he wanted to win, so badly.  He's scared he'll see his father's fear looking out from those too-blue eyes.

Once again, tickets to the Olympics are on offer, but Axel declines, this year, lets Rude and Reno go in his stead, because they want to see the downhill skiing and the snowboard cross, and who is he to stop them?  He stays behind his desk and works late, as late as he can to avoid having to go home and see the coverage, to wonder what Roxas is doing, and whether he ever thinks that the night they could have had was lost.  Axel knows he's selfish, to think that the night when you almost ended your career should be a night where you missed sexual passion, but he knows how they would have fitted together, that they would have burned in all the right ways.  Perhaps it isn't what Roxas thinks about, but it is in Axel like wildfire, now, spreading, and he can not watch what might have been skate rings around the others.  He checks the news when he knows the skating is over; no bad falls, a few missteps and slips from some, and Roxas took gold, like he should have done four years before.  Axel smiles at that, and doesn't think any more of it.

There's a knock at his door a few weeks later, on a weekend, which just reminds Axel that he should be working from home, not playing Minecraft and listening to bad remixes of Lady Gaga songs, so he goes to answer it, grumbling under his breath.
"You never came to see me." Roxas says, when he opens the door, and Axel's floored, honestly, by his perfection, by the glint of mischief in those eyes, by the smile on his face, "I thought you might have forgotten, but then I thought, who could forget me?"
Axel reaches forward and pulls him inside before someone can realise he has the Olympic gold medallist at his door.  Once it's safely closed behind them, he reaches a hand out, carefully, and brushes it down Roxas' face, skin still so pale, and takes the lack of response as a yes as he leans in to kiss him.  Roxas kisses back, hungrily, and Axel recalls something his father said, late at night, meaning to hurt.
"Never marry a sportswoman. You will always come second."
But Axel's here, and he's needed this, needed Roxas, and this doesn't feel like coming second, not to anything, not to anyone; this feels like first, gold, premiere, standing high atop the podium with a screaming crowd in his ears.  He kisses Roxas again, and knows that this is what he should have been doing for four years.

Axel never works the Olympics again, although Roxas only competes in one more, and they become known faces in the crowd, watching the next generation of skaters.  Roxas wins gold his last year, too.  It's the happiest moment of Axel's life – right up until Roxas proposes from the ice, and he says yes.  When the journalists follow them home, Axel takes great delight in swearing at them, and Roxas just laughs, eyes shining, and pulls his lover back inside the flat, and Axel can see, clearly, that love for skating he'd always shown in his movement has not left him, it's just been transferred.  Now all of that love is for Axel.

Description
He was named after a figure skating move.  He knows that much, but no more, his father never talking about his mother, never letting him see any of the old videos of her, not even once.  He digs them out when his father isn't home and watches her, spellbound, too caught up to hear the key in the lock.  He goes to bed hungry and in tears, that night, too worried from his scolding to wonder what was so wrong about wanting to see his mother skate.  She was beautiful, flawless, even when she put a foot out of place, and the jumps, the jumps were terrifying and gorgeous all in one moment.  He doesn't understand why his father has locked all those feelings away, along with his love, along with his caring and any sense of duty to his child.  It is a long time before he can bring himself to ask.

When Axel is sixteen, he knows two things.  One, that his mother was the most kind-hearted, beautiful, skilled woman on the planet, and two, that he killed her.  His father is not sparing with the facts, and lets him feel every inch of that blade, as surely as if he held it himself.  His mother was perfect, and he killed her, simply by being born, simply by existing, and his father hisses at him when he drinks, swears at him and screams that he wished it could have been the other way around, that his child had never been, just so he can have his wife back.  In the mornings, Axel cleans up the broken glass and they don't talk about it, no mediator, no common ground.  The are strangers sharing a house – no, it would be better if they were strangers, but they're not; bound to feel familial ties even when they can not stand the sight of one another.  This way, they try to be out of the house as much as possible when the other is home, and Axel wishes like hell that they had a shed, a summerhouse, anything, so that he could live there, instead, eating cold Chinese food and not having to think about the man in that house who is supposedly his father, and yet doesn't care at all.

When he's at college, Axel watches figure skating videos as often as he can.  They're not all his mother, not now, and anyway, very few of those are up on the internet, with the age they are.  He finds himself unable to watch the women's skating, too raw, too used to his mother and he compares every one of the skaters to a dead woman he never met, so he watches the men's, instead.  If anything, he finds it even more impossibly beautiful, and that's when he realises, having never had the thought before, that he simply doesn't see the attraction in women.  He doesn't bother to tell his father.  They don't speak anymore anyway, and this would just be like calling him to hammer the stake home into his heart, the old fool more vampire than anything else, sucking pleasure and love out of any situation.  No, Axel will not tell him that he won't be bringing a girl home any time soon, because he won't be going home, not if he can help it.  He stays in and watches the skaters, and soon knows enough that he can scoff when the commentators are clearly wrong.  He never wonders if the obsession goes a little too far.

His company are one of the Winter Olympic sponsors and so, of course, they get some complimentary tickets, to sit in a box with champagne and petit-fours, a view unrivalled by the seating, for the skating.  He's up in the box with a load of women, and none of them question why he's there, because they know their figure skating, mostly, and they know his last name – hers, not his, never his, not after that – and they make their own conclusions about why he wants to watch.  He hasn't watched much of the recent Worlds, because he's been caught up with work, but he recognises a few faces, older now, coming to the end of their Olympic careers.  And then there's the Danish entry, a boy, no more than nineteen, certainly, who dances like the very ice is his playground, like a Robin Goodfellow on skates.  He's playful, like he's laughing at the whole event, and Axel loves every second of it, always watching for the slip of footwork, but the kid's as good as his smile says he is, and it never comes.

That's just the heats, and when Axel's out at a bar, getting drunk the way only he can – two half pints and a shot, he's never had a head for his alcohol, never had the chance to – he spots him, the Danish boy, alone, nursing something long and vicious looking, and orders himself another beer, sliding into the booth.
"Hi, I saw you skating today."
The boy looks at him and raises and eyebrow, and Axel just knows he wants him to believe he doesn't speak English, but he knows better than to fall into that trap.
"You're spectacular.  You'll win."
The boy rolls his eyes.
"My name's Axel."
This does get him a reaction.
"You're seriously trying," he says, with no hint of an accent, "to pick me up by saying that you're named after a skating move.  Smooth.  That lie got you into bed with many of us, has it?"
For a second, Axel's just confused.
"Uh, no, I'm… well, okay, I was named after a skating move, but…." He hands the boy his driver's licence, and sees the scoff before he gets to the last name and freezes.
"You were Yuna's boy." He says, quietly, "And you're here, watching me skate.  Should I be flattered?"
"I just like watching skating." Axel murmurs, "My father never let me watch any when I was younger.  Got company tickets to be here."
"So Yuna's boy says I'll win.  What will you give me if I do?"
Axel's flustered, immediately on the defensive.
"I didn't, I mean – I wasn't trying to…."
"One night with Roxas, the Olympic gold medallist… Axel.  Meet me after the scores."  With that, the boy drains his drink without so much as a shudder, hands him a keycard, and leaves, without so much as a goodbye.  Axel has no idea what to do next.

He doesn't have time to make the choice.  The office need him back, and he flies home early the next morning, the keycard still in the pocket of his jeans, and he wishes he'd got the chance to see the final, to see even the smallest amount of it, or to let Roxas know why he wouldn't be there when the kid inevitably wins.  He has done nothing about his sexuality up until now, and feels he would have been perfectly happy doing nothing about it for the rest of his life before Roxas lit a flame under him, and now he itches with the knowledge that he could have had him, could have tasted and shared success, if only work hadn't called, if only he had known how to take a few risks.  That was what he admired most with Roxas' skating – the way he dared, pushed the limits and kept on going, never seeming to think about the price he might pay for his stunts.  Axel isn't like that, at all.  Axel just keeps plodding on in the same job, the same flat, the same rut, over and over, until he isn't sure he's living at all.

It's all over the news when he gets home.  The first place is surprising, to say the least, and then the rest of the podium is utterly disgraceful, Axel has no idea why the standings went so wrong until the end of the day, when Elena claps him on the back.
"Bet you're glad you weren't there to watch that Danish kid fall, right?  Messy business."
Axel heads home in a state of shock, logs on and pulls up the recordings of the free skate finals, watches through Roxas' routine, and there it is, the timing off in the middle of the triple axel, the landing, the fall, and there's bone through his flesh, easily having broken his hip, femur, arm, wrist, and most likely collarbone.  He doesn't understand what happened, as the camera cuts away as they scrape him off the ice.  Axle can't help but think that maybe, had he been there, he might have been good luck, might have helped Roxas avoid that slip, could have done anything useful.  He knows, in his heart of hearts, that it would have been the same, either way, and he would not have been able to get near the blond, not with hospital regulations, not with the media crowding outside.  He bites his lip as he shuts the machine down and goes to bed early, like always.  Same rut, over and over.

Roxas doesn't skate at Worlds next year.  Or the year after.  The year after that, he's back, Axel hears, but he can't watch, can't bear it; to see that casual elegance, that lack of fear so totally erased, to see his Roxas – and when did he become his, he wonders – become a shell of what he was… he can't face it.  He ignores the coverage until it's all over, and the headlines tell him that Roxas was a close third to a Russian and a French skater.  It's better than he'd hoped, having seen that fall, but it doesn't do to hope.  He still can't bear to watch the routines from Worlds, scared that what he'll see won't be the Roxas he misses, the Roxas he wanted to win, so badly.  He's scared he'll see his father's fear looking out from those too-blue eyes.

Once again, tickets to the Olympics are on offer, but Axel declines, this year, lets Rude and Reno go in his stead, because they want to see the downhill skiing and the snowboard cross, and who is he to stop them?  He stays behind his desk and works late, as late as he can to avoid having to go home and see the coverage, to wonder what Roxas is doing, and whether he ever thinks that the night they could have had was lost.  Axel knows he's selfish, to think that the night when you almost ended your career should be a night where you missed sexual passion, but he knows how they would have fitted together, that they would have burned in all the right ways.  Perhaps it isn't what Roxas thinks about, but it is in Axel like wildfire, now, spreading, and he can not watch what might have been skate rings around the others.  He checks the news when he knows the skating is over; no bad falls, a few missteps and slips from some, and Roxas took gold, like he should have done four years before.  Axel smiles at that, and doesn't think any more of it.

There's a knock at his door a few weeks later, on a weekend, which just reminds Axel that he should be working from home, not playing Minecraft and listening to bad remixes of Lady Gaga songs, so he goes to answer it, grumbling under his breath.
"You never came to see me." Roxas says, when he opens the door, and Axel's floored, honestly, by his perfection, by the glint of mischief in those eyes, by the smile on his face, "I thought you might have forgotten, but then I thought, who could forget me?"
Axel reaches forward and pulls him inside before someone can realise he has the Olympic gold medallist at his door.  Once it's safely closed behind them, he reaches a hand out, carefully, and brushes it down Roxas' face, skin still so pale, and takes the lack of response as a yes as he leans in to kiss him.  Roxas kisses back, hungrily, and Axel recalls something his father said, late at night, meaning to hurt.
"Never marry a sportswoman. You will always come second."
But Axel's here, and he's needed this, needed Roxas, and this doesn't feel like coming second, not to anything, not to anyone; this feels like first, gold, premiere, standing high atop the podium with a screaming crowd in his ears.  He kisses Roxas again, and knows that this is what he should have been doing for four years.

Axel never works the Olympics again, although Roxas only competes in one more, and they become known faces in the crowd, watching the next generation of skaters.  Roxas wins gold his last year, too.  It's the happiest moment of Axel's life – right up until Roxas proposes from the ice, and he says yes.  When the journalists follow them home, Axel takes great delight in swearing at them, and Roxas just laughs, eyes shining, and pulls his lover back inside the flat, and Axel can see, clearly, that love for skating he'd always shown in his movement has not left him, it's just been transferred.  Now all of that love is for Axel.