Fic-- Dust and Glass Streets (1/2)
Jul. 28th, 2008 04:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chokethewindRating: R
Word Count: 5, 078
Characters: Roxas, Axel, Demyx
Warnings: Swearing, character death
Summary: Whoever hires waiters for the graveyard shift is mentally unstable. That's what Roxas thinks. When he meets Axel, that is. (AU)
Author's Note: I met an ambulance driver at my work two months ago. It took me awhile to figure out what I wanted to say about that.
The inspiration and title came from the song "A Story for Supper" by the band Lydia. I've uploaded and you can download the demo version of the song here-- if you like what you hear, check them out. They are amazing.
“Green light,” Roxas said, thumping the dash with his hands. “Green light!”
Demyx’s hand did a little chopping motion up and down next to the turn light handle, as though he couldn’t decide on whether to turn it or not. In a situation where one was not sitting at a light that had just turned green, this might not be such a problem. As it were, they were, in fact, sitting at a light that had just turned green, Demyx was not sixteen and sweating while the driver instructor glared at him, and they were currently holding up traffic while sitting in an ambulance. Demyx was twenty three. On most occasions, he still acted like he was sixteen.
“Demyx!”
Finally Demyx flipped handle up and yanked the ambulance around the corner, seemingly oblivious to the hail of horns behind them. It was odd, one would think, since it was about two in the morning. Maybe not so much, it was Saturday night. Which, Roxas knew, was code for “calling all freaks.” He hated Saturdays, which almost as much passion as he hated Fridays. He was only twenty, he shouldn’t hate party days this much. There was something to be said about that, but right now all he had were words for the blonde currently aligning the car in the turn lane.
“What are you doing?”
“I hate it when you snarl, Rox, your outlook on life is absolutely bleak,” Demyx said, still oblivious to the fact that he had very nearly caused a twelve car pileup at the quietest intersection in the city. “I’m driving down Broadway—is there a problem with driving down Broadway? Is there something better we can be doing that doesn’t involve driving down Broadway?”
“I don’t know, saving lives,” Roxas snarled, slumping back in the seat and kicking his feet up on the dash. When he had been eighteen and he had enrolled in his first EMT class, saving lives had sounded pretty awesome; saving lives was a noble goal, and he was young and had nothing better to do and being noble sounded like a pretty good way to kill time while being brave and heroic and manly. Saving lives, though, had turned into hating drunks and old ladies and the kids who tripped on their fancy ass skating shoes and took a headlong dive into the pavement. He’d yet to save a life, as far as he could remember. Most of the time he wanted to take a life; usually the drunks were the first, because usually they crashed into mailboxes and parked cars and didn’t wear seatbelts and sometimes found themselves flush up against the window. Roxas was not a violent person; Roxas was a logical person and the logical feeling for that situation was to want to beat the hell out of them.
That wasn’t in his job description either.
“I’m hungry,” Demyx said, snatching up the radio. “Can we stop and eat something?”
“We got on an hour ago!”
“Yea, well, my mommy didn’t make me breakfast like yours.’
“I am not going six hours without another break when we got on one hour ago.”
“Please? I’ll buy. I’ll take you somewhere fancy, make a real woman out of you, come on.”
“Fuck you.” Roxas crossed his arms over his chest, shoved himself as far into the seat as he could, and sighed as dramatically as he could.
“Name the place, sweetheart.”
“In the backseat, right now, oh baby, oh baby,” replied the younger blonde, rapping his knuckles against the window, and watching a carload of energetic young men speed by in a gray Mustang, their music rattling the window he was trying to make bloody with his hand. “My youth, it taunts me,” he said morosely, mostly to himself.
Demyx snorted. “Right, because speeding around and crashing your daddy’s car makes life worth living. Give me back my youth, please, and let me make a fool out of myself.”
“Are you going to take me to dinner or what?”
“You’re a needy little bitch.”
“Bite me.”
“That’s hot.”
“Were you born a slut or did your mom teach you her tricks?”
“Why, jealous?”
“Fucking just stop somewhere!”
Demyx responded by signaling at the last second, yanking the wheel sharply to the right, cutting off two cars, hopping part of the curb, and sliding less than gracefully into the nearly empty parking lot. A couple of horns could still be heard from the street; Roxas opened his door and leaned out, but there was no smoking wreck waiting to explode and ignite a deadly fire that would consume the entire block.
He hadn’t really expected that to happen, but maybe he could save a life in that scenario, and even if Demyx had caused it, it would be far more interesting than whatever crappy cheeseburger this joint was going to offer up.
“It’s really funny how people lower your premiums when you turn twenty one,” he said, conversationally to his partner as they approached the entrance, “considering that you drive like a sixteen year old girl texting her best friend about the boy in Art class.”
“It’s actually the girl in art class,” Demyx said, opening the door. “And there you go, buttercup, after you.”
“You’re so gay.”
“Takes one to know one, sweetie.”
Not for the first time Roxas considered throwing his fist in Demyx’s face. Every time this particular urge struck him, however, he would remember that Demyx talked smart but was too much of a girl to actually fight back much and what was the point of punching something that wouldn’t fight back? He would just hurt his hand and then he’d have to sit out for a couple of weeks and he couldn’t pay rent and he’d disappoint his father and Demyx would have a broken nose or a black eye and never let him forget it, even if he completely deserved it. He would rather just punch a wall, because at least it wouldn’t whine at him for the rest of his life.
“Why, hey there ladies,” came a voice that wasn’t from Demyx, but sounded, at the moment, equally annoying. “Haven’t seen you around in awhile, Demy.”
“I only bring special dates here, Axel,” Demyx replied, as Roxas ignored him and studied the waiter that had greeted them. He was very thin—Roxas could practically see his hip bones and that look was hardly attractive on girls, let alone men. He was taller than Roxas was—not that it was particularly difficult feat to accomplish—and had wild, spiky red hair that was swept back into a barely contained ponytail. His eyes were either prettily green or freakishly green—paired with the smudgy little black tattoos underneath each, Roxas thought he was a freak, a very tall, lanky, too skinny, badly tattooed, unkempt freak. He ranked right up there with the drunken idiots who slammed their cars into light poles. He probably worked this shift to facilitate his drug deals, smoked a joint every half hour, and kissed his mother with his god awful swearing mouth.
Not that Roxas was judging. He just made assumptions and ran with them.
“So where would you lovebirds like to sit?” the waiter, Axel, asked, eyeing Roxas with a crooked smile on his face, all his teeth perfectly white and free of cocaine cracks—maybe he was snorting the crack, or maybe he was spending all the money he made from drug deals on impeccable dentistry.
“Oh, somewhere out of sight, please,” Roxas said, flashing his own perfectly white, cocaine-free smile. “Demyx and I, you know, we like our alone time. If you get what I’m saying.” He threw his arm boldly around Demyx’s shoulders, and Demyx immediately squirmed away, out of his grasp.
“There’s nothing to be ashamed about,” Axel said, reassuringly. “You two are in love. You should be proud! You should sing! You should dance in the streets and let the moon know of your desire and passion!”
“Why are you so ashamed, Demyx?” Roxas said, quickly amending his picture of Axel to include a depressed theatre major who had never made it to the big leagues and improvised in front of his customers to still tell himself that he was amazing, one day he would make it big and he was an artiste, it was the rest of the world that didn’t understand him, why was he was misunderstood, and one day his name would be in lights so help him god, but in the meantime he smoked pot to get by. Axel had that kind of face—a theatre, ready to be dolled up with blush and eyeliner type of face, really.
“I, uh, just take us to our table,” Demyx said, quickly flashing a bright smile at a group of close high school girls who had turned around to listen after Axel’s loud proclamation. “Axel, please.”
“Your boyfriend is so cute,” Axel said, winking at Roxas and punching Demyx in the shoulder. “He’s nothing to be ashamed of, Demy. Really.”
“For fuck’s sakes, I’m leaving.”
“Oh, like hell you are,” Roxas growled, and grabbed Demyx’s arm, dragging him after Axel. “You were hungry, you made us take our break now, so shut up.”
“Stop fighting!” Axel barked, finally leading them to a booth a little out of the way and out of the sight of the now gossiping girls. “Lovers shouldn’t fight. You two should have sex and make up instead.”
And Roxas promptly turned red and sat down, grabbing the menu and unfolding it, practically hissing as he did so, “Can I have a glass of water?” Axel wasn’t the quietest type in the world. Maybe he did LSD. Maybe he was hallucinating. Maybe he really did think that Demyx was his boyfriend and they were, in fact, going to have hot sex that very night, and he was jealous and so he was letting the world know. He amended his mental picture of Axel to include a hit of acid and bright disco lights, along with an orgy and boys who had hair like girls who liked to make out with other boys.
“I, I need to make a phone call,” Demyx sputtered, and went towards the door. “My usual, okay, Ax?”
“Be a man and stop ordering Mickey Mouse pancakes, Demy,” Axel called after him, loudly in the mostly subdued diner, “you’re twenty three, I mean you stopped using your night light last week, might as well that other big leap into adulthood.” Demyx flipped him off over his head as he escaped through the door they had just come through; the high school girls looked curiously toward Roxas’s table and he slumped in the seat, rapping his knuckles on the counter, much like he’d done to the window in the ambulance.
Axel took the opportunity to slide into the empty seat across from Roxas, dropping his notepad on the table and kicking his feet up. “So hey, I’m Axel.” He stuck his hand across the table; Roxas cocked his head, but hesitantly took his long fingers and shook. “Demyx and I used to work together. We still hang out sometimes, but he’s been pretty scarce lately I guess. And you?”
“Uh, my name’s Roxas,” Roxas said, awkwardly, leaning back against his seat, still knocking against the cheap wood. “So uh…. you work here?”
“Oh, no,” Axel said dismissively, waving his hand, “I just like putting on the uniform and walking around and jotting shit on a notepad like I know what the fuck I’m doing. It’s just for fun. I really enjoy it. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend my Saturday nights.”
“Shut up,” Roxas said huffily, starting to read the menu again. “That was stupid.”
“Do you think I’m joking?”
Roxas stared at him.
Axel widened his eyes, lifted his eyebrows, and shrugged his shoulders. “I am being very, very serious Roxas. I am being the most serious person you have ever met. I do not work here. I’ll let you in on a secret.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Okay, so, really, they’re keeping me hostage here. I’m really an Iranian, and I was sold into slavery because my good for nothing father lost me in his horrible gambling ways and he had nothing left to sell because he’d already sold my mother and my sister and so he sold me and they had to dye my hair and give me contacts to disguise my identity because really, I was stolen in the first place from my parents, who are top secret government agents working to prove that aliens are real.”
Roxas amended his picture, bit his lip, erased the picture completely, and instead pictured a schizophrenic lunatic.
“AXEL!”
The voice came from the kitchen and Axel jumped about eight feet in the air, off the seat, grabbing his notepad and going toward the kitchen, shouting back, “WHAT? I’M WORKING.”
“I’M GOING TO FIRE YOU, YOUR PLATES HAVE BEEN UP HERE FOR SIX MINUTES!”
There was general quietness, and then some mumbled words, a little more shouting, and Axel returned to the dining area, dropping the plates off to the table of teenaged girls. Roxas watched him refill their drinks, smile his schizophrenic smile, and then return to the seat across from him, practically hunkering out of sight of the kitchen.
“So you don’t work here?” Roxas said casually, widening his eyes, raising his eyebrows, and shrugging his shoulders.
“Of course not,” Axel said, madly scribbling something on his notepad. “Why do you think that? You don’t believe me?”
“Can I have my glass of water?” Roxas said, in exasperation, now alternating between tapping the table and tapping the floor with his foot.
“You’re living dangerously with a choice like that,” Axel said, again shooting up from the seat and heading toward the drink station but not before sliding his notepad across the table underneath Roxas’s nose. Roxas watched him go incredulously, and then read what he had written on the paper.
My parents are aliens—do you think I’m joking, circle Y or N
