#writing this I have NO IDEA how Axl could have fallen for Lexie lol

[helmes-deep]

Prompt: Sue finds out that Sean has liked her for years.

“Ughhh, why did I ever let you drag me and Lexie to this?” moaned Axl. His limp body folded further into his seat as his head slumped over the restaurant table, forming a sad-looking mop of dark curls.

“Oh please, Axl,” scoffed Sue from the other side of the booth. She and Lexie, who was sitting next to Axl, were administering the four menus. “You know we barely get enough time to see each other anymore since we’re all so busy. This was the perfect opportunity for us to not only spend quality time together as friends and family, but to also enjoy a romantic evening with our significant others.”

“UGHHHHHH, distant family members should never be forced to go on double dates with one another—it’s unnatural!!” groaned Axl. His fiery protest faded as his bent figure slumped slowly back into the booth. “Especially on Valentine’s Day…”

Sue couldn’t help giving her brother an irritated eye-roll, but she also couldn’t seem to wipe the worry from her concerned eyebrows. She didn’t like to admit it, but Axl had been right: she hadn’t expected for it to be this busy on Valentine’s Day. Their troupe had waited in line for a little over an hour in hopes of enjoying a nice, festive dinner together, and had only just been assigned their table a few minutes ago. Apparently, they hadn’t been the only ones who’d come up with the idea of having a pleasant evening dinner with their loved ones as a way to take a break from their busy schedules. The whole restaurant, which was a fairly popular, local eatery, was packed with couples who had probably gotten the exact same idea hours ago.

Sue’s anxious eyes turned to scan the expanse surrounding their group’s booth, taking in the entirety of the restaurant’s over-crowded seating area as another low grumble escaped Axl’s lips. For a moment, Sue saw nothing but a boisterous mix of laughing, chattering,  and smiling faces before her eyes caught sight of someone appearing out of all the noise, making his way through the maze of cramped seating and tables.

“Hey, guys, what’d I miss?” Sean asked, appearing at their table. “Sorry it took so long for me to park the car; the line outside was really long so I had to find another parking space, and the heavy snow out there made it hard to see so I had to go down two more blocks.”

“I’m dying!” Axl wailed, his face momentarily bobbing up from the edge of the table before sinking back down again. “I need food…”

“Not much,” said Sue, substantiating Axl’s alarming response with a much more sane answer. She scooted over to let Sean slide in and take a seat beside her, handing him the menu. “We just got our seats here; they haven’t come over to take our orders yet.”

Sean nodded as he took the menu from her and started browsing through it. For a moment, things seemed to pick up again as a few waiters headed toward their table, but then quickly turned to help out other customers. The four sat uncomfortably at their booth for about another fifteen minutes trying to get any waiter’s attention before Axl threw up his hands and groaned again.

“Argghhh, what are they doing in there—roasting a polar bear?!” Axl asked out loud in clear, vocal frustration.

“Oh, I know, I know!” Sue suddenly piped up in excitement. She had to do something before her over-the-top brother completely imploded. “How about we all play a little game while we wait for someone to come by and take our food orders?”

“Oooh, that sounds fun!” Lexie responded with delight as Sean nodded. Lexie’s face then quickly became perplexed. “But what kind of game should we play?”

“Hmmmm… well, it needs to be entertaining enough so that we’d all be interested, but still boring enough so that we won’t get too interested—just enough to help us comfortably pass the time until someone comes over to take our orders,” Sue wondered aloud. “Oh! I know! How about we each get to think and ask the rest of the group a question that everyone at the table has to answer individually? Aaannd the question has to have something to do with our relationships,” Sue suggested with a small smile. “In order to keep in-line with the Valentine’s Day theme.”

“Oh oh oh! Me first! Me first!” Axl shouted, his whole body suddenly bolting up as he enthusiastically waved his hand. Because as lame as he thought this game was, Axl was dying to do anything that would take the attention away from his starving stomach. “I get first dibs on answering whatever is the first question!”

“All right, I’ll ask first,” Sue said. She paused to think for a second. “Okay, here’s my question: when was the first time you fell in love with your significant other?”

“Well, the first time I fell for Lexie was…” started Axl, trying his best to entertain the question. Talking about this kind of touchy-feel-y stuff had never been Axl’s strong point, but he could talk a dog into buying one of his business products if he really wanted to, so he tried his best to consider his answer to Sue’s proposed question. Axl scooted closer to Lexie and put his arm around his girlfriend, pulling her close. “Uhhhh… I think it was a little bit right after I’d divorced April? Sue had told me that Lexie really liked me all of a sudden, and for a second, I was a little weirded out…” Axl shifted in his seat. “So then I decided I’d go over to that St. Patrick’s party to find Lexie and talk to her. So I walked all the way over where they were having the party, searched high and low in the crowd for Lexie, and when I finally found her and spotted her just a few feet away from me, I thought—”

Axl turned to Lexie with an earnest, fond look in his eye that most probably hadn’t thought he was generally capable of, while Sue and Sean looked on with expectant faces.

“She’s… really… cute, and… I’m a cool guy, right? I’m glad she likes me; I really need to break up with April so we can go out sometime,” Axl finished lamely. Axl turned to give his date the warmest smile and most lovingly deep gaze, a look that perhaps much better communicated to his audience his clear and true affections for his girlfriend than his story had been able to express.

The intense anticipation on Sue’s and Sean’s faces quickly faded as Axl had reached the end of his tale, but Lexie only smiled and giggled like an excited, lovestruck girl anyway.

“Mine was when you rescued me from falling in your Winnebago that time me and Sue had to stay over at your guys’ place one night,” Lexie responded, her smile growing wider. Axl’s sincere smile grew with hers, and he pulled Lexie closer into him as they both went in for a quick kiss.

“All right, I’ll go next,” Sean offered happily. Everyone’s attention turned to him as they watched Sean sit still for a minute, pondering his answer to the question. Finally, after a long moment, Sean quickly answered. “Fifth grade—elementary school dance.”

“Wait, realllllllyyyyyy??” Sue gasped in shock, leaning a bit out of her seat to look over at her boyfriend with a startled look of surprise.

“Yeah, what?!” Axl echoed, immediately looking up from the empty straw wrapper he was currently playing with.

“Oh, yeah, totally,” Sean answered. He seemed quite confident and sure in his response. “I think I was in fifth grade, and you were in third. We were having that annual Christmas show at our elementary school. You were in that pretty pink dress, and I thought you looked really cute and you were really funny your class came up to present, and you were trying really hard to keep up with everyone else during the dance.” Sean gave a little laugh, recalling the memory. “And then later, during the party, when I was looking for Axl, I spotted you crying in the corner of the classroom because one of the kids had taken your candy cane.” Sean gave a deep breath and shook his head. “And… I don’t know what happened… But at that moment, all I could think about was ‘Axl’s sister is a really nice and sweet person, and I don’t ever want to see her cry like that again.’ So then I went to look for the kid who had stolen your Christmas candy. Found him and knocked him out, but it turns out he’d already eaten your candy cane so I ended up giving you mine instead.” Sean shrugged. “I think I had a bit of a crush on you for about a week after that, but I didn’t really think much about it because we used to play with each other all the time so I thought whatever I was starting to feel toward you was normal for childhood friends… I guess, even though I knew I was feeling a bit differently about you back then, I didn’t really know what to call it since you and I were so young and we were all just kids… but now, looking back, I think… I think that’s when I just started to realize… that… I liked you a lot.”

A brief pause filled the table as everyone became quiet, clearly touched by Sean’s sincere, thoughtful, and (for some) very surprising answer. Sue gave Sean a wide smile and reached for his hand, beaming as she told him how sweet his story was.

“And I thought Sue liking you since middle school was worse,” Axl replied with a half-smirk.

“Axl!” Sue exclaimed, clearly still very embarrassed and horrified at her brother revealing her adolescent feelings for her childhood crush.

“Whaaaat?? You were always making those ‘googly eyes’ at Sean whenever he was over—like that time he came over to play video games with me for our class project,” Axl retorted, scrunching up his nose in brotherly disgust at the remembrance of his sister’s painfully obvious feelings of love. “Not to mention that ridiculous poem you wrote for him in junior high.”

Sue could only splutter in response to her brother’s brazen reply as Sean looked up from the table in complete surprise.

“That poem was about me?!” Sean exclaimed. The recognition, as well as smile, on his face grew wider.

“Wait, you read it?!?” Sue cried out with utter shock, terror, and panic in her eyes. She immediately turned to Axl. “Axl, did you give Sean my poem?”

“What? No! Please, I sacrificed my dignity for your stupid, dorky-girl fantasies!! I did not claim to dot my i’s with butts for this!” Axl shouted back, trying hard to defend himself in a very incoherent manner. Sue and Lexie exchanged odd looks.

“Wow, I had no idea you felt the same way about me when we were just kids,” Sean thought out-loud, clearly fascinated and mystified at the revelation. He turned to his girlfriend. “You should have told me; I would have asked you out to a dance much sooner.”

“I can’t either,” Sue laughed in response, the same level of surprise and mystified fascination layering her voice. Her eyebrows then crinkled together slightly. “Still… I can’t believe we started liking each other when we were both so young…” Sue looked up to Sean, concern and slight worry echoing at the back her voice. “You… don’t think it’s weird??”

“Nahh, we played a lot together as kids,” Sean replied matter-of-factly. “I think it’s kinda cute, and probably normal for people who spent so much time together, anyway.” He looked to Sue and smiled, squeezing her hand with firm re-assurance. “Besides, if anything, I think it kind of means that, maybe… we were always meant to be with each other.”

Sue’s face brightened up and she smiled, returning Sean’s honest words and sweet gesture with a loving squeeze of her own and a bright look. Sean gave her an encouraging smile and leaned over to give her a quick kiss on the lips. Lexie squealed at the couple’s antics, delightedly and affectionately choking her boyfriend’s arm.

“Word, you two make me sick,” Axl said, rolling his eyes in utter disgust. His stomach growled. He angrily threw away the straw wrapper, missing his intended mark before quietly muttering under his breath. “I should have never, never allowed you to convince me to come to this.”

DID YOU SEE WHAT HAPPENED YESTERDAY NIGHT?!?!?!? DID YOU SEEEEEEEEEEEEEE?!?!?!? OH MY GOODNESS I’M SO HAPPY IT FINALLY HAPPENED AND THEY’RE BOTH TOGETHER!!!!! IT WAS REALLY THE MOST PERFECT PAIRING-UP I COULD HAVE EVER POSSIBLELY IMAGINED!!!!! *SOBS TEARS OF JOY*

I’M SO SORRY IT’S BEEN SO LONGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!! But I really struggled with this one: I’ve been working on it for the past two weeks and in the process, I actually ended up writing a totally different story for this prompt because some parts to this one just weren’t working out (I finally did get it to move in the direction I wanted to, though :‘3). I also started working last week, so had to take a break from writing in general for a little bit. Good news is that I have the first drafts of the next two stories/prompts I want to post done, so hopefully those will come out a lot faster. I also might post the extra story I ended up writing for this prompt because I did like how that one turned out (it just didn’t seem to quite fit the actual prompt). *fingers crossed the next two stories come much faster than this one*

BUT YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS PLEASE TELL ME IF YOU LIKED THIS STORY OR WHAT YOU THOUGHT ABOUT LAST NIGHT’S EPISODE OR OF YOUR DONASUE FEELINGS IN GENERAL I STILL CAN’T STOP SPAZZING OVER THE WHOLE THING LEOL!!!! 😭❄️💕

Send me a prompt and I’ll write a short Sue x Sean fanfic about it leol (closed)

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