[ I M P O R T A N T ]

Have you read till chapter 5 of "The Extraordinary Emotion Between You And Me"?

If you have, then awesome! You will now understand why the hell some things turned out the way they did, easily! (including Lyle and Ryker's backgrounds because I can't find a way to bring that in here now, sorry) ❤️

AND why some things are ABOUT to happen in the future chapters, as well :)

[ E D I T E D ]

DEDICATION:  KuroDaisy :))

[28]: "Kincaid-Remington."

"I hate to ask you this right now," I took a deep breath and smiled in lieu of greeting when Axel looked up, sitting down beside him on the bleachers. Gideon followed suit and sat on the other side, giving me a nod of encouragement. You can do this, Harvey. "But, did you decide something? I want to give you all the time you need and leave you alone, trust me, I do, but there's a guy dying over there. And I know you. You're not indecisive like me. You must already be sure of what you're about to do."

Axel sighed, putting his forearms on his thighs and leaning forward to rub his palms across his face in an act of utter weariness. After a couple of seconds, he looked up with a desolate face, and I had a sinking feeling in my gut that I knew where this was going.

"I do." He shrugged, looking away.

"And?" I nudged his shoulder with mine, "Do you want to tell us, or . . . ?"

"I only see him as my friend." He confessed in a low whisper, and Gideon inhaled sharply.

If Gideon was reacting like that, then that could only mean that Ryker was so invested that he was going to be devastated.

Oh, God. It's all because of me and my stupid mouth.

STUPID, HARVEY! STUPIDDDDD!

"Yeah, enough of that." Axel slapped the back of my head and shook his own with a dejected smile, "It was bound to come out, anyway. At least this way, it's nipped in the bud. He can't like me that much. We've only known each other for a week and a half."

"I know, but still."

Gideon cleared his throat, turning both our attention to him, "If you're "nipping it in the bud", it's not a big deal, right?" His words had a sarcastic quality to them, as if he was just humoring us, "All you'd have to do is put up with a little embarrassment on both sides. Why do you look like you're about to divorce somebody, then? If you haven't noticed, we're the married couple here." He gestured between him and me with a sly look, making me want to blush and hide my face all over again.

He made it sound like we were really married.

Axel's cheeks flushed at that. He made a sound at the back of his throat like he was supremely uncomfortable, rolling his shoulders and trying to hide his face in his palms.

Wait, what the hell?

"No, no, no." I shook my head, prying his hands away from his face, "What is it? You're telling us, or we're getting it out of you."

"I'm just worried about him hating me, okay?" His lips curled down in melancholy, "Ryker and Lyle are great people. And they're so thick that if Ryker decides he doesn't want to be friends anymore, Lyle is also going to hate me forever. I'm worried about losing two great people in my life. I'm worried about splitting our group in two." He sighed, "Nothing will ever be the same."

I was silent of a couple of seconds, processing everything he had just said, "And . . . ?"

"And, what?"

"Are you straight?" Gideon asked bluntly, raising one brow with a sharp tilt of his head.

Axel's pale skin tinted with color, giving me a guess of what his answer might be. "No."

"Well?" I urged him on, raising my eyebrows.

"Well, why don't I like Ryker, then?" Axel voiced out my non-verbal question, raising his eyebrows back at me for confirmation.

"Exactly." Gideon snapped, his mouth hard.

Okay, either he's protective of Ryker, or he's just in a bad mood.

I was betting it was the former.

"Well," Axel repeated, looking down at his hands, "I . . . I wasn't sure about this until recently, but, I know that I, um. I have—well, I kind of like a guy?"

My eyes went wide as I turned to meet Gideon's dark grey ones in surprise. He looked just as shocked as I was, but suddenly, it was like a light bulb went off in his head, and his frown was back with a vengeance, "if you tell me that it's Lyle, I'll seriously pummel you—"

"No!" Axel exclaimed, cutting him off. Woah. Until Gideon had said it, I hadn't even considered the possibility. Now that I thought about it, it did seem like something that could've possibly happened. Lyle was a great-looking guy, and Axel was as close to him as he was to Ryker.

At least, from what I could tell.

I guess it had been proved, though, that I was sometimes so wrong that I wasn't even in the periphery of what was right.

"Who is it?" I asked gently, shooting Gideon a wordless plea to remain silent.

He complied with a stiff nod and looked away.

Looks like he's going to be pissed at Axel for a while for accidentally hurting his friend . . .

"Uh," Axel peered at me hesitantly, rolling his bottom lip into his mouth in contemplation. He looked about as unwilling as a vegan asked to eat meat.

"Fine, you don't have to tell me now if you don't want to." I put a hand on top of his and squeezed. And because I couldn't help it, I added, "I mean, it's not like I tell you every single thing I feel."

"Way to guilt trip me, man." Axel chuckled drily, but quickly got a serious look in his eyes. He turned to me, meeting my curious gaze head-on, "It's Talon."

What the what!?

Oh man, I did not see that coming.

"Talon!?" Gideon exclaimed in disbelief, looking utterly befuddled. "Talon I-don't-know-my-boundaries-I-flirt-with-others'-husbands Beckett? That I'm-secretly-out-to-steal-my-captain's-position-but-I-pretend-to-be-nice clown!? Why, why, why!? Ry is a million times better than him!"

"Calm down, Gideon." I reached around Axel to pat my outraged husband's shoulder lightly. Great, thanks to Gideon's continuous usage of that word, I'm now calling him my husband in my freaking head. "Let him speak."

"He's not all that bad, Gideon. From what I know, at least." Axel shook his head and leaned back, his posture radiating resignation, "I—uh, I was confused about my sexuality so I kind of did some exploring on my own last summer. That's when I met him."

I was offended on so many levels that it wasn't even funny.

"So, that's why you went on unusually long mountain bike rides every freaking day the entire summer. Even my mom always said that you were up to something fishy." Only after I said it did I realize that I had just mentioned my mom casually. I waited for the sharp slash of pain that sliced me in half, but it never came. Instead, there was a duller throb of loss and a reminder of that hole in me that would never completely heal. But, it didn't make me feel like I was about to die.

I realized then that I had been wrong to try and avoid their mention altogether, that I had to get used to bringing my family up more and more so that I can slowly learn to live with the happy memories.

Their stories deserved to be told.

That was the only way I could keep them alive. I couldn't keep avoiding talking about them forever.

Gideon stood up and crossed over to me, occupying the bench on my other side. He casually put a hand on my knee, looking up at Axel with a 'go on' gesture.

Axel shrugged and complied. "As I was saying," Gideon gave me a squeeze of appreciation when Axel started talking, probably so he wouldn't notice. "Talon is kind of nice. He was very understanding when I told him about my home situation."

"What situation?" Gideon interrupted, confused.

I was a little thrown off, too. As far as I knew—and I knew a lot—there wasn't a "situation" at Axel's place.

"Er, it's my Dad." Axel shrugged as if it was no big deal. "He's super open-minded, and he's completely cool with same-sex marriages and everything."

"Yeah? We know that." Gideon's hand trailed down my thigh to grab my hand, which was resting on my knee. He linked our fingers casually, and my heart went tha-dump. Woah, there. "We met him at our wedding."

And there it was, that tone of his that made everything so real.

"Yeah," Axel's smile became a little forced, "It's just that he's cool with other kids "doing that" as he puts it. "Thank God my son is not gay"." He made air quotes as he mimicked his Dad's deeper tone, sighing. "He's very cool with any change as long as it's not me."

"Axel, man, I can't believe I never knew," I wrapped my free arm around Axel's shoulder and gave him a comforting squeeze before pulling back, "Why didn't you ever tell me?"

"Ahem," Gideon cleared his throat, looking between the two of us with an awkward expression.

"What?" I was annoyed at his interruption.

"I guess I should remove myself from this BFF conversation?" He stood up, letting my hand go. I rolled my eyes and grabbed his forearm, pulling him back down, "Axel, you don't mind, do you?"

Axel rolled his eyes, "Of course, I don't. I know married couples tell each other everything. Including stuff about their best friends. You might as well hear it directly from me."

"Axel!" I blushed and was about to admonish him, but Gideon beat me to it with a grin, "Cool."

Axel shook his head and turned back to me. "So, where was I?"

"Why you never told me about your sexual escapades."

"Right," He grinned slightly at my terminology, but went back to explaining, "I didn't know how cool you would be about it." He rolled his eyes, "'Til a couple of weeks ago, you were the "straight" QB, remember? Of course," He interrupted me when I opened my mouth, taking offense to the fact that he'd assume I would ever be not okay with it. "Of course, I knew that you wouldn't hate me or anything, I trusted you that much, but what if things got weird between us? What if you had ended up being dumb enough to assume that just cause I'm pan, I might come onto you and, I don't know, suddenly be "in love" with you?" Axel shrugged with an amused look, "You can't blame me for being paranoid, Harvey."

"Okay, okay." I rolled my eyes back at him, "Now that we've established I'm dumb, why don't we get to the part where you didn't come out to me after I came out to you?"

"Man, this is entertaining," Gideon mumbled as he mimed shoving a handful of popcorn into his mouth and chewing.

I slapped his hand away. Dork.

"Wellllll," Axel looked at me hesitantly, "You were just dealing with so much and," He glanced at Gideon quickly, "And with your dumb ideas to drop out of high school and get three jobs and everything, I just didn't find the right time to tell you. If you hadn't had so much on your plate already, I'd have found it easier to come out."

Uh oh. Way to throw me under the bus there, buddy.

Like how you just threw Ryker? My conscience whispered back.

You've got a point.

"Wait," Gideon put a hand up, his mercury-colored eyes wide. "You wanted to take three fucking jobs and drop out of high school instead of marrying me? What the hell, Rem!? Am I that hideous!?"

Rem? Can I just say, 'cuteeeeeeee'?

"Gideon—"

"Uh, guys," Axel called, shoving my shoulder to get my attention, "Ryker and Lyle are here."

"Awesome. This is not over, Harvey." Gideon whispered as we stood up and waved at them, making a part of me want to chuckle with how cute he was being, while the other huge part was dreading Axel's exchange with Ryker.

"I never said it was, husband."

~

Lyle had wanted to stay back and observe Axel and Ryker's interaction from a distance because he so badly wanted to yell "I told you so", when Axel and Ryker "finally made out after Axel admitted to his inner gayness". The look on our faces had alerted him to the fact that things weren't about to go well, so he had stayed anyway to meet Ryker after it was over.

We had only just taken a few steps away from him after saying goodbye, when the sound of rapid footsteps echoed across the empty area. I spun around just in time to see Ryker crash into Lyle's arms with an expression so devastated that it chilled me to the bone.

A sob broke out of his chest as he buried his face in Lyle's neck and cried, and the shock of seeing him lose it was so sudden that it took me a second to add up the facts and conclude what must've happened.

"Ryker didn't start crushing on Axel just recently, did he?" I swallowed as I sought Gideon's hand automatically, trying to stop my heart from hurting at the scene in front of me.

"No . . ." Gideon sighed and squeezed my hand. I saw Lyle blink rapidly as he turned his head into Ryker's side and hid his face, almost as if the pain his friend was in, was affecting him as well. He tried to soothe Ryker enough to get him to leave, but Ryker was too far gone.

It was incredibly shitty, this feeling of helplessness when you can do nothing to alleviate the pain someone dear to you was in. All you could do was hold them and mutter platitudes, hurt along with them for their loss, and hurt for them in the process. But it was nothing compared to how bad the other person was feeling, because it was only a shadow of how they really felt.

You can do nothing to make things alright.

Nothing.

Just like your dead family can never be brought back.

"I'm guessing he was either in love or somewhere close to that."

"Yes." The sadness in Gideon's tone made me want to wrap him in a cocoon of blankets and lock him up to keep him safe forever.

Sadly, that wasn't possible.

"Do you want to . . .?" I nodded in the direction of Lyle and Ryker, but Gideon shook his head and sighed, "No . . . They go way back. Like way back. I mean, all three of us are best friends, but they've known each other since they were in freaking diapers. Sometimes, their connection runs so deep that even I feel like an outsider." He shrugged, and I realized that even in this facet of his life, in his friendship with the duo—the only good human contact he'd had—he had been unintentionally pushed out of their circle. While he pretended like it was no big deal, it had taken its toll on him, nothing major, but like the water in a river chipping off tiny pieces of the huge rocks in them.

My heart hurt for all he had endured.

"And, I guess this is one of those times." Gideon turned to look at me, his expression morphing into confusion upon one glance at my face.

"What—"

I cut him off by throwing my arms around his neck. Gideon let out an 'oomph' of surprise, but he wound his arms around my lower back, nonetheless, "Hey, what—"

"You're a strong person, Gideon Kincaid," I mumbled into his shoulder, making him stiffen in surprise.

"Why—"

"Gideon?" I pulled my head back to look into his eyes, "Just shut up and take my compliment."

He chuckled, and his eyes were suspiciously glassy, like he was on the end of his emotional tether.

Good, because so was I.

"Okay," He said as he pushed my head back into him, and I snuggled into his neck with a happy sigh.

Well, being friends with this complicated human sure was nice. If I'd known this, I'd have buried that hatchet a million years ago.

"You got one thing wrong about that sentence, Harv."

Harv. Hm, I liked that. No, scratch that, coming from him? I loved it.

"Shut up, Gideon. You are strong, don't you dare deny—"

"Not that part," He chuckled, "The part about me. I'm Kincaid-Remington."

I pulled back in shock, "But no one is around—"

"Shh." Gideon put a finger on my lips, "We're a team, Harvey. You and me."

"A team," I repeated, testing out the words as a wide grin spread across my face. Somehow, those words made so much sense.

I liked that. In fact, I liked that a lot.

Question: Anyone been in Axel's position to let down someone, or in Ryker's position of being let down?

As for me, I've never been in either. I haven't had a strong crush that lasted more than an hour yet.

Something is wrong with my brain, I think. Idk.

Sooooo, hope you liked this chapter. this was AXEL's side of things to what happened in Ch5 of Ryker's story.

If you're enjoying it so far, please do,

VOTE, COMMENT, AND FAN! <3