This Frenzied State [5/?]
Jun. 1st, 2009 09:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chokethewindTitle: This Frenzied State [5/?]
Rating: M
Genre: Drama/romance
Pairing: Axel/Roxas (AU)
Warnings: Abuse of miscellaneous Final Fantasy characters. Seriously. Any mischaracterization is obviously all my fault.
Summary:When Roxas stands on the edges of buildings, he tries to see into some eternity. When Axel stands on the edges of buildings, he tries to see how he'd survive a fourteen floor fall.
Author’s Notes: So basically the week before last my life sucked hard (car broke down, home problems, what have you) and this past week I went on a roadtrip through California. So, that’s why this took so long. You may now nom on me. Any errors in this are all mine, I’m sleepy and should probably just wait to finecomb this but I feel that since I have time I should put it up. I haz no beta, so blame is all mine. If I had a beta, you could blame that person. In fact, I’m just gonna say I have an imaginary beta and you can blame her. She reads a lot of porn and thus, her brain is shot.
Okay, annd this title comes from the song Response by the band Barcelona. Uploaded the track here if anyone wants to take a listen. They're really quite amazing. Have fun.
Sidebar, I went to Japantown in San Francisco this past week and saw Sora and Riku and Mickey Play Arts. Why no Roxas or Axel? I was saddened. Also, 358/2? Niiice. Sidebar, out.
The bus station was crowded. Roxas had stopped smelling like smoke, thanks to his mother’s perfume that she had sprayed on him when he had least expected it. It was still impossibly unbelievable to him that she refused to acknowledge her condition: she had a hospital bag always packed and sitting in the closet by the door, strap always standing sprightly up so she could sprint to her car and race to the emergency room. To her, it wasn’t part of a condition: it was simply always being prepared when her bad health decided to turn south on her. It was tragic, really, the amount of time she spent in the hospital. She could have such a full life and she often talked eagerly about the places she wanted to visit, like Australia or India or Canada. She had always wanted to go to Canada and eat a waffle with maple syrup, just so she could say she had eaten maple syrup in Canada. Just once in her life, and it was all she wanted.
Roxas considered it especially tragic that she could fly for free (his job, while incredibly boring and suicide provoking, had some more than enough perks) and refused to because she was simply afraid of when her health would fail her. What if it failed her, oh heaven help her, while she was in India where people left babies out on the corners to die and the only doctors around would be doctors charging her thousands and thousands of yuris to simply give her two herbs to grind together over her forehead to make her heart attack stop? No, if her doctor couldn’t go with her (and what doctor in his right mind would?) then she wasn’t going to go, anywhere, ever.
In any case, she had squirted the highly potent concoction onto his hair when he had passed out on the chair for a few minutes and he hadn’t woken up until she had thoroughly doused him with the lilac smelling stuff. He had raged at her and she had simply looked at him with those big blue eyes and nearly cried, because it wasn’t her fault, she was trying to look out for him, trying to make sure he succeeded in life and got a good career because he’d not yet had one and his father had, and didn’t Roxas want to make him proud?
It had caused a headache that wasn’t helped by the lilac smelling perfume and in fact, he was quite aggravated by it. He could already tell that he was irking some of the people he was sitting next to; they were pointedly rubbing their foreheads and describing in very clear detail about how perfume always made their heads hurt and they wondered if they could kick the offender off the bus or at least shower him/her with another type of spray that wouldn’t give them a headache. Roxas was quite content to not move, however, and he wondered if they knew it was him or they were just raging at the world in general. Roxas generally considered himself a happy person with a tendency to lean more often toward unhappy times. He generally considered everyone else to be unhappy people with tendencies to be either happy or bitch a lot, like the ones sitting around him.
The morning air was dewy and the bus was scheduled to depart in twelve minutes. At least the bus was still here. He could see it through the glass windows, people cleaning it out and making inspections to the tires and underneath. At least it was here, because one of the last times Roxas had taken the Greyhound, it had been an hour late and it had smelled suspiciously like Lysol by the time they were able to stow their luggage and take their seats. He had been running late then and so he was boarded nearly last and got the happy privilege of sitting next to the bathroom, where the smell was the worse, and he’d nearly passed out from the fumes by the time he had arrived back in Sunnydale. It had been a long, painful bus ride and Roxas was determined to never, ever have to sit in the back again, something he’d stuck good on for the past few rides he’d taken. Right now he was fifth in line to board, which very nearly guaranteed him his own seat. The line actually wasn’t very long and it was probably because it was a Thursday morning. Who usually went out on Thursday mornings? Until now, not Roxas.
The double doors slid open and Roxas surged forward, standing impatiently as the others stowed their cargo underneath. He was the second on and made a beeline for the first set of seats, firmly planting his backpack in the one he wasn’t occupying and staring down the line of passengers who were shifting through the door. It only took another minute or two and a quick glance behind him said most of those seats were filling up. The group that had been sitting around him sat behind him and then quickly stood up, muttering something about lilacs and headaches and Roxas thought they should just go and cry to their mothers, because it wasn’t his fault that his own mother had doused him with her expensive perfume that he had gotten her for last Christmas. Him being doused with it truthfully hadn’t been the intention in buying it, either.
The driver strolled up a second later and Roxas sighed happily, leaning back in his seat and ready to close his eyes and get in a good two hour nap on the way back. Nobody was pulsing over the seat next to him, no one was bothering him, the air was actually semi cool and he had extra room to stretch out. He deserved this seat, didn’t he? He left one hand cautiously on his backpack, in case someone tried to snatch it up and run off with it to the bathroom. Maybe the lilac haters would snap it up and be knocked unconscious on the way to the bathroom by the smell and Roxas could laugh triumphantly in their faces. Alright, maybe he wouldn’t do that, but he’d want to. There was nothing like laughing in the faces of lilac-haters.
He heard the bus rumble to a start and he put his headphones on without thinking too much about it, or about his mother, and about how next week he’d be making this same trip. It wasn’t the first time in his life that he’d wished Sunnydale was big enough to have some type of major airport. The closest was in Brooklyn and there was nothing he could do about it, he supposed. He’d just have to move to Brooklyn but, as always, he banished that thought from his mind because moving to Brooklyn meant moving closer to his mother where she could unexpectedly pounce on him and spray him with her pleasant lilac perfume and he’d hate himself for days on end because of her ever constant tirade of how she just wanted him to succeed and do well in his life and shouldn’t he be trying to make his father proud?
Yes, exactly, that’s what he’d always wanted to do, make his father proud, because what good was a life if you couldn’t live to serve the memory of your dear and departed ancestor? He was sinking into the seat a little further, hand on the backpack going a little bit slack, and he could feel something like a cloudy dawn trying to reach and creep surreptitiously over his brain. He let it, because he should sleep, but he was falling into the annoying sleep, the one that lingered on the cusp between unconsciousness and alertness. Shouldn’t he be trying to please his dear and departed ancestor, and shouldn’t he be taking responsibility of his ill mother and trying to please her and help her and be there for her when she was sick, even if it was every other day? What kind of son was that? It was troublesome and he remembered his father, vaguely, and there were still words floating on the breeze and they were three words and they were probably something as corny as I love you but Roxas hoped they were something as noble as You’re doing fine because then he wouldn’t have to worry about anything again, or worry about how the hospital his mother always stayed at was seventeen floors and that you could get to the roof and the padlock was a flimsy little one and that it would give with a kick and that there were absolutely no pigeons around the hospital because the hospital seemed to have a beef with pigeons and had either set up poison traps on the roof or at least released some type of majestic predator bird… he wouldn’t have to worry about any of that, because he was doing just fine, just—
“Hey buddy, is this seat taken?”
Roxas nearly jumped out the window when the voice intruded upon his semi-sleep. His head, in any case, went banging into the glass and he cussed, rubbing it as he looked blearily up into the person that had interrupted his sleep. The guy standing there was probably a little older than Roxas, and bone-thin. He was wearing a thick hoodie and carrying a backpack, but the things that got to Roxas were both the tallness and the flaming red hair that was falling messily all over his face. He looked weary and was currently standing there, trying to get into the seat that Roxas had fought for and was not about to give up.
He tried to wait it out in some sort of pathetic confusion but the guy didn’t move, and Roxas finally gave in and glared at him without much malice in it and said, “Fine, yea, of course.” Grabbing his backpack he threw it on the floor in front of him and pushed that under the seat, scooting over as far as he could into the window, though it didn’t look like this guy would be a problem. Rail thin, and when he sat down, the gap between them could fit a small child.
“Thanks a lot buddy,” the guy said, putting his own backpack on the floor in front of him and starting to flit through it. “I was running a little late, had a plane that decided to take a circle around New York for a little sightseeing and then finally landed and I’m like, oh, come on now, I have a bus to catch, gee.”
Oh, no.
This guy was the one of those guys. Of everything Roxas could have gotten.. of all the ones that could have sat next to him… he would have taken the lilac haters, he would have taken his own mother—or not, she was just as bad, she was also one of those guys—over this one. He wasn’t obnoxiously loud and even what he was saying wasn’t so bad but…but…but… he was still just sitting there blabbing on about his morning and Roxas was not in the mood.
“Oh, that’s nice,” Roxas offered, reaching under his own seat to pull up his backpack again and retrieve his headphone and music player and maybe that would make him shut up.
“Yea, I know, I’m glad I got here in time. It’s not like I have anything to do today, but I mean, I want to go home and sleep… I flew back from Los Angeles and while it was quite a lovely flight, I’m looking forward to sleeping a little.”
“Me too,” Roxas said forcefully, digging frantically around in the bottom of his bag for the MP3 player.
“Yea.” The guy put down his backpack and ran his fingers through his hair, slumping back into the seat like a kid. At least he wasn’t fat. Small blessings. Even if they were politically incorrect small blessings, they were still small blessings. “Do you smell that? It smells….like flowers.”
Roxas eyed him dangerously and contemplated his options for escaping the current situation. He tried to subtly look over the seat but height was not an advantage in that and he wasn’t able to adequately see if there was anywhere else to move. If the guy had taken the seat next to him, though, it was probably a safe bet to say that the two seats on either side of the aisle were all at least occupied by one person and he wasn’t going to be able to recoup his own two seats. Lame. Lame lame lame. Could he break the window and jump out? He felt his heart deflate when he realized that the bus was rolling to a start now and was pulling out into traffic and to jump out now would be suicide. Great, just what he wanted. And besides, there was work in a few hours and after that he still had to go to Demyx’s damn party but at the moment that wasn’t looking so bad, because anything with alcohol at the moment was going to be damn well worth it. He could, of course, go back and sit next to the lilac hating people just to spite them.
“Yes, I know, who knows what that could be,” Roxas said shortly, still unsuccessful in finding his music player.
The guy smiled. “I’m not complaining,” he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his sweatshirt. “I’d rather smell that than say, oh, a sweaty, hairy guy. Not that I’m saying there’s anything wrong with sweaty hairy guys. Flowers are just more pleasantly fragrant. Or least, in my opinion. Is that a little too gay of me?”
Roxas looked at him with a loss for words.
“Sorry, I guess that was a little too personal. What are you looking for?”
He had zipped up on pocket in frustration and was now pawing agitatedly through the other, nearly shoving his face in it. “Just my music player,” he replied shortly, hoping that the guy would take the hint and leave him alone.
But of course not, because those guys only had room in their brains for one thing and that was, of course, to keep talking.
“Need a light?” the guy volunteered, and from his pocket came a lighter that was shoved ungracefully in his face.
Roxas gave him a look. “Why would I need a lighter?”
“To get light? I mean, your backpack’s pretty dark. Not that I’m knocking the backpack or anything, but shadows do that to you, or at least, that’s what I hear.”
“No, I’m fine.” Could he sound colder? Could he maybe make his voice sound just a little bit more deeper? “Really. I’m fine. Thanks, though.”
“No problem.”
The guy seemed content enough to leave him alone for a second, a second in which Roxas was able to conclude, with quite a sinking heart, that damnit, he didn’t have his MP3 player. He wanted to close his eyes and scream because now he could very clearly remember where it was. He’d taken it out in his mother’s hospital room to put it on while she sniped at him. He could hide the buds under his hair and she would never know that while she was singing at him to get a better job and get back in school that he was listening to music with thrashing guitars and screams. He always made sure to listen to those tracks when he was visiting her. When she had made a particular startling point and looked at him for support, he’d pulled them out of his ears and set it on the counter to cover the fact that had, in fact, not been listening at all.
And now they were back in Brooklyn and probably hanging off the ears of some orderly.
“Fuck,” he said, quietly, slumping bonelessly back into his seat because honestly, what now? It was a shame they weren’t in London, because he had never tried jumping off a two story bus before and who knew what kind of shiny happiness that brought along? Who wouldn’t want to jump off a shiny two story bus into a pavement that was flying by in a blur?
“Can’t find it?”
Roxas again fixed him with a pointed look, one that seemed to fly completely over his head. He was looking at him with genuine concern, however, so Roxas sighed and ran his own hand through his own messy hair. “Nope. Think I left it at my mom’s. Damn.” He made a half-shrug, trying to find a successful way to close the conversation. “Oh well. I can sleep without it and I’ll just get it next time I see her. I can really sleep without it though,” he reiterated, already pushing his head toward the window.
“You can borrow mine,” the guy volunteered.
“No, that’s fine,” Roxas said in alarm, but the guy was already yanking his own backpack up into his lap and unzipping one of the pockets. Roxas spluttered a few more times, trying to get him to stop and explain that really, that was completely unnecessary but the guy was persistently ignoring him and still going through his bag in complete and utter disdain for what Roxas was saying. A moment later he emerged with his own MP3 player and offered it to Roxas.
“No, no, I’m fine,” Roxas said hastily, shaking his hands and shying away from the outstretched gift. “Really, I’m fine.”
“Don’t be ungrateful, kid,” the guy said, but he was grinning.
“Really,” Roxas said, now annoyed. “I’m fine. It’s yours. You keep it.”
“Suit yourself.” That obnoxious grin was back on the guy’s face and Roxas looked bleakly out the window. They weren’t even to the highway yet and he had another two hours to kill with this guy. Would he really leave him alone and just let him sleep? Not that sleep was probably going to happen because contrary to what he had explained, sleeping did not come easily to him without music, usually. He attributed the first drowsy thoughts when he’d first gotten on the bus to pure exhaustion but that was gone and he was awake now, thanks to this clown. That’s exactly what he looked like. He was tall, incredibly skinny, had flaming red hair, big green eyes, and was very, very pale. A clown.
“So where are you headed?”
Oh, no. More. Conversation.
“Up north,” Roxas said shortly.
“Oh, me too,” the guy continued, seriously. “I’m going to visit my aunt. Haven’t seen her in awhile, I’m a bit nervous. I kind of just wanted to go home and curl up in bed, though. The last few days have been rough.”
Roxas nodded in what could have been sympathy or a brave attempt to keep a straight face that was not full of murderous intentions. The guy slumped further back into his seat, swinging up his long legs to rest against the banister that lined the stairs that was right in front of them. Roxas saw the driver’s eyes twitch, but then refocus on the road. Great. Not only was he stuck with an idiot sitting next to him, the driver didn’t even care that he was plaintively breaking the rules. And if the driver didn’t care about that, then what else didn’t he care about? Stop signs? Red lights? The speed limit? The cars in front of them? Heaven only knew what kind of trouble they were going to crash into.
“Have you ever taken one of these before?” the guy continued, still in that conversational tone that Roxas never wanted to hear again.
“I take them a lot,” he replied, again as shortly and curtly as he could, finally dropping his backpack to the floor in defeat and sliding it back underneath the seat.
“Yea? This is my first time. I usually fly places but this place is sort of out of the way I guess. Which is okay, I’ve never been on a bus before. It’s sort of exciting.”
If riding in a bus packed full of perfectly unknown, smelly, strange people was sort of exciting, Roxas really didn’t want to know what kind of dull, pathetic life this guy led.
“Are you trying to sleep?”
The question was completely unexpected and Roxas forgot all manners and simply stared at the guy sitting next to him, who was watching him with those earnest green eyes. He was sort of smirking, but it had no malice or bite to it, or at least none that Roxas could see.
“What,” he said, after Roxas had simply stared at him for a good ten seconds, “do I have something in my nose?”
The question was said so seriously that Roxas couldn’t help but make a chuckling sound that quickly turned into an embarrassed snort. “No, no, you’re fine.”
“Oh. Well, are you?”
Roxas almost took up the staring position again but remembered what had happened last time and instead shook his head, remembered what he had been trying to do himself originally before this clown had sat next to him, and then nodded, fervently. “No. I mean, yes. I am trying to sleep. Don’t know if I can though. I don’t do well without music.”
Well, fuck him in the backseat.
The guy raised an eyebrow. “And here I was, offering you my soul practically and you were over there just denying it. Here, I’m not going to use it.” And he again extended the music player in his hand. “I mean, if you find my music offensive that’s one thing, but just clear out denying it is just plain mean. I mean, I could be giving you heart and be dying over here and you’d just be like, no thanks, even if you needed it and there I’d go and just pucker up and kick the bucket for nothing. You’ve got to put things into perspective like that sometimes. No need to feel bashful, kid.”
Sort of mesmerized by his voice and the fact that he could simply keep talking for so long, the “kid” part snapped him out of his daze. The guy probably only a year on him, two tops. But the speech, or whatever you called the pattern that the words coming out of his mouth were in, sort of stirred him and he took the MP3 player out of the guy’s hand, being careful not to let any of his skin linger more than was necessary. One innocent touch and watch, this guy was going to turn into a creepy stalker who would smile at him quite suggestively once they were off the bus and suggest a hotel room and then Roxas would have to call the cops and frankly, no thanks.
“Thanks,” he said, which still came out shortly and he tried to remedy that by saying, “I really don’t have to, you know. I’ll be fine.”
Again with that raised eyebrow. “Didn’t I tell you that I’m giving you my heart and all this has to be put into perspective?”
This time Roxas was a little annoyed, and instead just muttered, “Yea, I got it. Thanks.”
“No worries. You know how to work it?”
It was the same as Naminé’s, so he nodded and said, “Yea, I got it. Thanks.”
The guy waved his hands. “Go ahead and go to sleep. You look like you need it.” A pause, and then a hastily added, “I mean, you just look tired. I’m sure I look tired. My hair feels kind of deflated too. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.”
For the first time, Roxas sort of actually smiled. “No, I got it. I look like shit. Don’t worry, you do too.”
For a second, Roxas felt like he’d said the wrong thing and that this guy was now going to fly off the handle and either A) strangle him or B) start molesting him right in front of that damn bus driver who would probably be content to either A) let it keep happening and pretend he didn’t see it or B) turn around to watch and simultaneously crash the bus into a barricade. But no combination of those options happened, and the guy just smiled back. “Yea, I know. I hear that a lot.”
Roxas just offered a smile, and started to mess around with the MP3 player while the guy pulled his hood and started to burrow as far back as he could into the seat—more than he already was, which was really quite a futile gesture. There was something to be said about clowns, maybe. Roxas had never been fond of them as a kid. It was a bit cliché but they had never floated his boat or rocked his world. He supposed that had to do with his mother a lot. Her hair today had been deflated, but when Roxas had been growing up that hadn’t been the case at all. Azuela Hart was fond of many things, but most of those things were cosmetic and of all the cosmetic things a woman could undergo, she enjoyed dyeing her hair the most and so Roxas had seen it through many shades and styles, and along with the pale makeup and bright, popping lipstick she used to wear, she had sometimes looked so very much like a clown that the other kids would laugh at Roxas.
Not that he ever really considered the laughing, but it was something when he could sadly look at his mother and think that they were right.
In any case, the guy sitting next to him seemed to have given up the conversation now that he had successfully surrendered the MP3 and was pulling up his hood and leaning his head to the other side. Roxas tried not to look so guilty as he thumbed through the choices; the guy had given it up willingly, after all. His heart and all that. The choices weren’t so bad; Roxas was one of those who was under the impression that the type of music a person listened to said a lot about their personality and flipping through the choices on this player spoke a bit to him. He was mostly an alternative fellow with some heavier and lighter tastes, but Roxas was happy to not have to file through too many options. They had somewhat same tastes. After awhile he settled on a blue-sy type singer with a throaty voice that was soothing and mournful all at the same time. He rested his head against the window, watching the gray morning slowly now start to turn into dawn.
The guy in his ear was quiet and soulful and a little bit of vengeful, or at least that’s what Roxas heard, and the gray world outside the window was slowly turning fuzzy, like it had when he’d first gotten on this bus a little while ago. The sky was turning darker shades of gray and the orange and purple had mostly disappeared but Roxas could remember a time when those shades had always been there, like an eternal sunrise, and he could remember a happy hand on his head as well as a strict voice, like the scratchy, gruff tone in his ear now, and now it turned to a low growl, more of a threat than a promise, and the hand that had been on his head lifted and it was replaced by cruelly manicured fingers that pried and closed, hard, into his scalp. The gray sky disappeared, slowly, and turned into a bright sun that was slowly starting to fall from the sky and like before, he could hear words, but they had multiplied, and they were going through his head, again and again and again, just as the gray sky faded from view, he’s dead.
__
The kid had an animated way of sleeping, Axel would give him that. The moment his face had fallen against the window there had been weird noises coming from his throat and it had to be hell for the girl that slept next to him at night, because they were constant, and he couldn’t shut his eyes tight enough to block them out. He pondered waking the kid up, but that seemed silly now that the sole reason he’d forked over his MP3 was so that he could go to sleep. Axel had slept plenty on the plane, but he tried to shut his eyes and drift away again anyway, because now he had nothing to keep himself occupied for the next few hours. The kid looked like he had needed it, though, at least more than Axel had needed it. The silky little whimpers the kid was emitting were starting to drive him crazy and he pried his eyes open a few minutes after closing them, admitting defeat in the face of an unconquerable foe.
The gray sky was starting to lighten over the horizon and Axel shifted in his seat to get his phone. He flipped it open and tried to access the internet, but the signal was all wrong so he tried to file through the pictures and see if there was anything worth looking at that he hadn’t looked at in awhile. There weren’t very many, and there were none of his dad, but there were a few of Reno a few months back, when Reno had come to visit Cloud. He had been very frank about the whole affair and Axel hadn’t blamed him—Cloud was one of his best pals and Axel got to see him a lot, whereas Reno didn’t, so Axel better buzz off if he wanted to keep his pretty face intact. Axel had called Reno a pervert for checking his little brother out and Axel had gotten decked for it anyway.
It occurred to him while he starting to really get into his game of a bouncy yellow ball and the center of the earth and some chick (who the bouncy yellow ball just couldn’t give up for dead because damnit, bouncy yellow balls never did) that he should probably check his phone contacts. He paused it in the middle of a really juicy moment involving a Venus fly trap and a terrified expression and started to roll through the contacts, pausing on the contact he had wanted to be sure he’d had. She wouldn’t be too surprised when he dropped in on her, he reckoned at some length, because of all the members in his family, she had shown him the most interest and the most care, sometimes even more than his own mother, who was happier to simply just drown her sorrows in some whiskey. He hadn’t visited her in her own home since before he could remember—she’d always make the trip to Brooklyn to come see him—and he didn’t have her address. How could he explain his sudden appearance? He didn’t know. He was already booked for this evening, but he had all day to kill and he’d like to kill it with her, because she was the only one who apparently was going to answer the question he’d nearly killed Reno to answer.
He pushed the call button and pushed it up to his ear to listen. It must have been a cell phone, because something—or somebody—was singing in his ear in an high pitched shriek and he immediately remembered that his aunt was, for all intents and purposes, one of those women who enjoyed rap music and black men. It wasn’t that Axel was discriminatory—on the contrary, he was the least discriminate person he knew but he was still human, after all, a human being, and people could fall directly into some categories sometimes. His whole deal with his categorization was that if you fit into obvious categories, then there of course, had to be less obvious ones. So his aunt fit into “single white female, cat lady” quite obviously on the surface; below that, she fit into the “wanna be gangster with a Glock and some bling” quite well also. It was more amusing to him than anything else and when he had brought it up on her last visit—about six months ago—she had very well taken off his nose for daring to ask. He’d kept his mouth shut ever since.
There was no answer to the phone but there was a perky message saying to leave a voicemail and she’d get back whenever she damn well felt like it. Knowing his aunt, that might take awhile, so he just told the machine that he was in town for a bit and needed a place to crash if that was okay with her and to call him back, hopefully before dark. That might give a sense of urgency to the phone call but knowing her, it might just as well not. For the first time since he’d disembarked the plane with a clear purpose in mind, he felt a little queasy about the entire prospect. He wasn’t so worried about actually finding a place to stay should she not return his call—he had enough cash and he really didn’t care if he missed his class tomorrow or the next day, really—but he felt a little queasy at the prospect of actually sitting her down and discussing with her what he had wanted to discuss.
It wasn’t that she wouldn’t give him the answers he was looking for. He hardly ever pried and when he tried hard enough, she melted underneath his looks like he was on fire and she was some poor snowman with inadequate dry ice to keep her going. He wasn’t worried that she might call up his mom, even if his mom actually talked to his aunt, and even if she rarely spoke to Axel. The answers sort of scared him, because he’d be forced to take what Reno said as truth and heaven knew that if Reno was right or showed kindness about anything, then there was something definitely fishy about the entire situation. His brother would never do any harm or hurt someone on purpose, but doing something this… well, noble, was different from him. The very fact that he’d have to go underneath his mother’s watchful eye and defy her was impressive enough alone. And why would his mother even accept the money?
Axel shifted in his seat again, turning distractedly away from the boy who was speaking gibberish in his sleep at his side. The sky out the window was starting to lighten, though the low clouds were still turning the sky mostly gray and there might actually be rain in the forecast, with the way things were looking right now. Maybe it would start raining and the bus would crash because frankly, Axel had smelled something quite wrong when he’d first stepped into the bus and it hadn’t been the lilac scent that the kid next to him had seemed to be doused with. No, he was watching the driver very, very carefully, and while he didn’t necessarily fear for his life, he did sort of fear that he was going to lose precious daylight hours because the driver was going to need to pull over at the next Arby’s and just let loose into their value menu. There was that option, and the storm option, which also might make him pull over and cite it was too dangerous to drive to take a nap, while the pavement dried in the next few minutes. Precious daylight hours to waste and all that, and it wasn’t even that he really adored them, he would just rather find his aunt’s house in peace before the night came and he was totally stuck.
Well, he wasn’t totally stuck. He had a backup should that plan fall through and while he wasn’t necessarily putting all his eggs into that single basket, he might as well prepare for the worst. Which might also involve a motel since he wasn’t sure what the policy about meeting complete strangers was but he was sure it was something about “feeling uncomfortable” and escaping before that uncomfortable situation turned completely odd and erotic and totally not what Axel had wanted to do tonight. There were things he wanted to do tonight and those things had a very high alcohol level.
The kid was still mumbling when Axel tuned back into reality and he looked over at him for a second, wondering what he was dreaming about. It didn’t sound like anything good and Axel wondered where he was going and why. He had a penchant for doing that, especially on airplanes, and this was sort of an airplane, a grounded airplane. Maybe the kid was going to a funeral. Or maybe he was going to pick up his girlfriend or a pet ferret. Maybe he had twenty seven pet ferrets and maybe he had a tattoo that had that number on him somewhere. All twenty seven had had different names of course but that would take up too much space and he wanted this tattoo to be beautiful and simple and he couldn’t just get one drawing because he loved them all equally so he had just put the number because it was very simple and it would remind him all of the time of those ferrets he’d lost and loved and would never lose, at least in his heart anyway.
That was a good story, Axel thought, turning over and putting the hood back on his head, so that his back was to the kid. He let his head rest against the semi-soft material of the seat, looking out the window into the gray morning for a second. That was a good story, he thought, closing his eyes and trying not to concentrate on anything at all, but maybe he was just going home. That must be a good feeling. To just go home. Despite the sleep he’d gotten on the plane and despite the fact that he really wasn’t into sleeping right here next to a complete stranger—he’d gotten his own two seats on the plane damnit—he felt his eyelids already sliding shut. Less energetic than he’d though and he’d have to get a damn Red Bull in Sunnydale, whatever the hell that town was called. Must be nice, to have a home in Sunnydale.
He could already imagine the signs, those picket type ones, the ones that said, “Just imagine, if you lived here, you’d be home already.” Axel wasn’t one for the home sentiment. And he really wasn’t fond of the entire “I have no home so I must be full of woe” stereotype either. But there were times, and they were rare, but it was when he was on a sky bus or apparently now on this ground plane, rare times like this when he would sit and he would think and he would imagine that he would be going somewhere called home. There weren’t many good associations with that word in his brain, but he thought if there were and if he ever got them, they’d be rosy, and sort of yellowed with light, because he could remember a time when they were. He was small and sitting down and someone was running that hand over his hair and he’d been crying and he was teary-eyed, green eyes full of dew drops, but that hand had been soothing, just like that gray sky out the window. He could see it through his thin, fluttering eyelids, but his head was slipping down the seat now, further, and he could fall out of the seat, like he’d fallen off his skateboard that day, fallen and skinned his knee, and that hand had been there, going soothingly through his hair and there had been that lofty, sort of quiet and gentle and strong voice, repeating those three words over and over again, and it hadn’t been I love you, no, it hadn’t been that at all because those words were foreign and thick and they had been a long time in coming and he’d put his faith in them. He’d put a lot of stock in you’ll be okay. and even if it wasn’t and never was, he believed it anyway.
Rating: M
Genre: Drama/romance
Pairing: Axel/Roxas (AU)
Warnings: Abuse of miscellaneous Final Fantasy characters. Seriously. Any mischaracterization is obviously all my fault.
Summary:When Roxas stands on the edges of buildings, he tries to see into some eternity. When Axel stands on the edges of buildings, he tries to see how he'd survive a fourteen floor fall.
Author’s Notes: So basically the week before last my life sucked hard (car broke down, home problems, what have you) and this past week I went on a roadtrip through California. So, that’s why this took so long. You may now nom on me. Any errors in this are all mine, I’m sleepy and should probably just wait to finecomb this but I feel that since I have time I should put it up. I haz no beta, so blame is all mine. If I had a beta, you could blame that person. In fact, I’m just gonna say I have an imaginary beta and you can blame her. She reads a lot of porn and thus, her brain is shot.
Okay, annd this title comes from the song Response by the band Barcelona. Uploaded the track here if anyone wants to take a listen. They're really quite amazing. Have fun.
Sidebar, I went to Japantown in San Francisco this past week and saw Sora and Riku and Mickey Play Arts. Why no Roxas or Axel? I was saddened. Also, 358/2? Niiice. Sidebar, out.
The bus station was crowded. Roxas had stopped smelling like smoke, thanks to his mother’s perfume that she had sprayed on him when he had least expected it. It was still impossibly unbelievable to him that she refused to acknowledge her condition: she had a hospital bag always packed and sitting in the closet by the door, strap always standing sprightly up so she could sprint to her car and race to the emergency room. To her, it wasn’t part of a condition: it was simply always being prepared when her bad health decided to turn south on her. It was tragic, really, the amount of time she spent in the hospital. She could have such a full life and she often talked eagerly about the places she wanted to visit, like Australia or India or Canada. She had always wanted to go to Canada and eat a waffle with maple syrup, just so she could say she had eaten maple syrup in Canada. Just once in her life, and it was all she wanted.
Roxas considered it especially tragic that she could fly for free (his job, while incredibly boring and suicide provoking, had some more than enough perks) and refused to because she was simply afraid of when her health would fail her. What if it failed her, oh heaven help her, while she was in India where people left babies out on the corners to die and the only doctors around would be doctors charging her thousands and thousands of yuris to simply give her two herbs to grind together over her forehead to make her heart attack stop? No, if her doctor couldn’t go with her (and what doctor in his right mind would?) then she wasn’t going to go, anywhere, ever.
In any case, she had squirted the highly potent concoction onto his hair when he had passed out on the chair for a few minutes and he hadn’t woken up until she had thoroughly doused him with the lilac smelling stuff. He had raged at her and she had simply looked at him with those big blue eyes and nearly cried, because it wasn’t her fault, she was trying to look out for him, trying to make sure he succeeded in life and got a good career because he’d not yet had one and his father had, and didn’t Roxas want to make him proud?
It had caused a headache that wasn’t helped by the lilac smelling perfume and in fact, he was quite aggravated by it. He could already tell that he was irking some of the people he was sitting next to; they were pointedly rubbing their foreheads and describing in very clear detail about how perfume always made their heads hurt and they wondered if they could kick the offender off the bus or at least shower him/her with another type of spray that wouldn’t give them a headache. Roxas was quite content to not move, however, and he wondered if they knew it was him or they were just raging at the world in general. Roxas generally considered himself a happy person with a tendency to lean more often toward unhappy times. He generally considered everyone else to be unhappy people with tendencies to be either happy or bitch a lot, like the ones sitting around him.
The morning air was dewy and the bus was scheduled to depart in twelve minutes. At least the bus was still here. He could see it through the glass windows, people cleaning it out and making inspections to the tires and underneath. At least it was here, because one of the last times Roxas had taken the Greyhound, it had been an hour late and it had smelled suspiciously like Lysol by the time they were able to stow their luggage and take their seats. He had been running late then and so he was boarded nearly last and got the happy privilege of sitting next to the bathroom, where the smell was the worse, and he’d nearly passed out from the fumes by the time he had arrived back in Sunnydale. It had been a long, painful bus ride and Roxas was determined to never, ever have to sit in the back again, something he’d stuck good on for the past few rides he’d taken. Right now he was fifth in line to board, which very nearly guaranteed him his own seat. The line actually wasn’t very long and it was probably because it was a Thursday morning. Who usually went out on Thursday mornings? Until now, not Roxas.
The double doors slid open and Roxas surged forward, standing impatiently as the others stowed their cargo underneath. He was the second on and made a beeline for the first set of seats, firmly planting his backpack in the one he wasn’t occupying and staring down the line of passengers who were shifting through the door. It only took another minute or two and a quick glance behind him said most of those seats were filling up. The group that had been sitting around him sat behind him and then quickly stood up, muttering something about lilacs and headaches and Roxas thought they should just go and cry to their mothers, because it wasn’t his fault that his own mother had doused him with her expensive perfume that he had gotten her for last Christmas. Him being doused with it truthfully hadn’t been the intention in buying it, either.
The driver strolled up a second later and Roxas sighed happily, leaning back in his seat and ready to close his eyes and get in a good two hour nap on the way back. Nobody was pulsing over the seat next to him, no one was bothering him, the air was actually semi cool and he had extra room to stretch out. He deserved this seat, didn’t he? He left one hand cautiously on his backpack, in case someone tried to snatch it up and run off with it to the bathroom. Maybe the lilac haters would snap it up and be knocked unconscious on the way to the bathroom by the smell and Roxas could laugh triumphantly in their faces. Alright, maybe he wouldn’t do that, but he’d want to. There was nothing like laughing in the faces of lilac-haters.
He heard the bus rumble to a start and he put his headphones on without thinking too much about it, or about his mother, and about how next week he’d be making this same trip. It wasn’t the first time in his life that he’d wished Sunnydale was big enough to have some type of major airport. The closest was in Brooklyn and there was nothing he could do about it, he supposed. He’d just have to move to Brooklyn but, as always, he banished that thought from his mind because moving to Brooklyn meant moving closer to his mother where she could unexpectedly pounce on him and spray him with her pleasant lilac perfume and he’d hate himself for days on end because of her ever constant tirade of how she just wanted him to succeed and do well in his life and shouldn’t he be trying to make his father proud?
Yes, exactly, that’s what he’d always wanted to do, make his father proud, because what good was a life if you couldn’t live to serve the memory of your dear and departed ancestor? He was sinking into the seat a little further, hand on the backpack going a little bit slack, and he could feel something like a cloudy dawn trying to reach and creep surreptitiously over his brain. He let it, because he should sleep, but he was falling into the annoying sleep, the one that lingered on the cusp between unconsciousness and alertness. Shouldn’t he be trying to please his dear and departed ancestor, and shouldn’t he be taking responsibility of his ill mother and trying to please her and help her and be there for her when she was sick, even if it was every other day? What kind of son was that? It was troublesome and he remembered his father, vaguely, and there were still words floating on the breeze and they were three words and they were probably something as corny as I love you but Roxas hoped they were something as noble as You’re doing fine because then he wouldn’t have to worry about anything again, or worry about how the hospital his mother always stayed at was seventeen floors and that you could get to the roof and the padlock was a flimsy little one and that it would give with a kick and that there were absolutely no pigeons around the hospital because the hospital seemed to have a beef with pigeons and had either set up poison traps on the roof or at least released some type of majestic predator bird… he wouldn’t have to worry about any of that, because he was doing just fine, just—
“Hey buddy, is this seat taken?”
Roxas nearly jumped out the window when the voice intruded upon his semi-sleep. His head, in any case, went banging into the glass and he cussed, rubbing it as he looked blearily up into the person that had interrupted his sleep. The guy standing there was probably a little older than Roxas, and bone-thin. He was wearing a thick hoodie and carrying a backpack, but the things that got to Roxas were both the tallness and the flaming red hair that was falling messily all over his face. He looked weary and was currently standing there, trying to get into the seat that Roxas had fought for and was not about to give up.
He tried to wait it out in some sort of pathetic confusion but the guy didn’t move, and Roxas finally gave in and glared at him without much malice in it and said, “Fine, yea, of course.” Grabbing his backpack he threw it on the floor in front of him and pushed that under the seat, scooting over as far as he could into the window, though it didn’t look like this guy would be a problem. Rail thin, and when he sat down, the gap between them could fit a small child.
“Thanks a lot buddy,” the guy said, putting his own backpack on the floor in front of him and starting to flit through it. “I was running a little late, had a plane that decided to take a circle around New York for a little sightseeing and then finally landed and I’m like, oh, come on now, I have a bus to catch, gee.”
Oh, no.
This guy was the one of those guys. Of everything Roxas could have gotten.. of all the ones that could have sat next to him… he would have taken the lilac haters, he would have taken his own mother—or not, she was just as bad, she was also one of those guys—over this one. He wasn’t obnoxiously loud and even what he was saying wasn’t so bad but…but…but… he was still just sitting there blabbing on about his morning and Roxas was not in the mood.
“Oh, that’s nice,” Roxas offered, reaching under his own seat to pull up his backpack again and retrieve his headphone and music player and maybe that would make him shut up.
“Yea, I know, I’m glad I got here in time. It’s not like I have anything to do today, but I mean, I want to go home and sleep… I flew back from Los Angeles and while it was quite a lovely flight, I’m looking forward to sleeping a little.”
“Me too,” Roxas said forcefully, digging frantically around in the bottom of his bag for the MP3 player.
“Yea.” The guy put down his backpack and ran his fingers through his hair, slumping back into the seat like a kid. At least he wasn’t fat. Small blessings. Even if they were politically incorrect small blessings, they were still small blessings. “Do you smell that? It smells….like flowers.”
Roxas eyed him dangerously and contemplated his options for escaping the current situation. He tried to subtly look over the seat but height was not an advantage in that and he wasn’t able to adequately see if there was anywhere else to move. If the guy had taken the seat next to him, though, it was probably a safe bet to say that the two seats on either side of the aisle were all at least occupied by one person and he wasn’t going to be able to recoup his own two seats. Lame. Lame lame lame. Could he break the window and jump out? He felt his heart deflate when he realized that the bus was rolling to a start now and was pulling out into traffic and to jump out now would be suicide. Great, just what he wanted. And besides, there was work in a few hours and after that he still had to go to Demyx’s damn party but at the moment that wasn’t looking so bad, because anything with alcohol at the moment was going to be damn well worth it. He could, of course, go back and sit next to the lilac hating people just to spite them.
“Yes, I know, who knows what that could be,” Roxas said shortly, still unsuccessful in finding his music player.
The guy smiled. “I’m not complaining,” he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his sweatshirt. “I’d rather smell that than say, oh, a sweaty, hairy guy. Not that I’m saying there’s anything wrong with sweaty hairy guys. Flowers are just more pleasantly fragrant. Or least, in my opinion. Is that a little too gay of me?”
Roxas looked at him with a loss for words.
“Sorry, I guess that was a little too personal. What are you looking for?”
He had zipped up on pocket in frustration and was now pawing agitatedly through the other, nearly shoving his face in it. “Just my music player,” he replied shortly, hoping that the guy would take the hint and leave him alone.
But of course not, because those guys only had room in their brains for one thing and that was, of course, to keep talking.
“Need a light?” the guy volunteered, and from his pocket came a lighter that was shoved ungracefully in his face.
Roxas gave him a look. “Why would I need a lighter?”
“To get light? I mean, your backpack’s pretty dark. Not that I’m knocking the backpack or anything, but shadows do that to you, or at least, that’s what I hear.”
“No, I’m fine.” Could he sound colder? Could he maybe make his voice sound just a little bit more deeper? “Really. I’m fine. Thanks, though.”
“No problem.”
The guy seemed content enough to leave him alone for a second, a second in which Roxas was able to conclude, with quite a sinking heart, that damnit, he didn’t have his MP3 player. He wanted to close his eyes and scream because now he could very clearly remember where it was. He’d taken it out in his mother’s hospital room to put it on while she sniped at him. He could hide the buds under his hair and she would never know that while she was singing at him to get a better job and get back in school that he was listening to music with thrashing guitars and screams. He always made sure to listen to those tracks when he was visiting her. When she had made a particular startling point and looked at him for support, he’d pulled them out of his ears and set it on the counter to cover the fact that had, in fact, not been listening at all.
And now they were back in Brooklyn and probably hanging off the ears of some orderly.
“Fuck,” he said, quietly, slumping bonelessly back into his seat because honestly, what now? It was a shame they weren’t in London, because he had never tried jumping off a two story bus before and who knew what kind of shiny happiness that brought along? Who wouldn’t want to jump off a shiny two story bus into a pavement that was flying by in a blur?
“Can’t find it?”
Roxas again fixed him with a pointed look, one that seemed to fly completely over his head. He was looking at him with genuine concern, however, so Roxas sighed and ran his own hand through his own messy hair. “Nope. Think I left it at my mom’s. Damn.” He made a half-shrug, trying to find a successful way to close the conversation. “Oh well. I can sleep without it and I’ll just get it next time I see her. I can really sleep without it though,” he reiterated, already pushing his head toward the window.
“You can borrow mine,” the guy volunteered.
“No, that’s fine,” Roxas said in alarm, but the guy was already yanking his own backpack up into his lap and unzipping one of the pockets. Roxas spluttered a few more times, trying to get him to stop and explain that really, that was completely unnecessary but the guy was persistently ignoring him and still going through his bag in complete and utter disdain for what Roxas was saying. A moment later he emerged with his own MP3 player and offered it to Roxas.
“No, no, I’m fine,” Roxas said hastily, shaking his hands and shying away from the outstretched gift. “Really, I’m fine.”
“Don’t be ungrateful, kid,” the guy said, but he was grinning.
“Really,” Roxas said, now annoyed. “I’m fine. It’s yours. You keep it.”
“Suit yourself.” That obnoxious grin was back on the guy’s face and Roxas looked bleakly out the window. They weren’t even to the highway yet and he had another two hours to kill with this guy. Would he really leave him alone and just let him sleep? Not that sleep was probably going to happen because contrary to what he had explained, sleeping did not come easily to him without music, usually. He attributed the first drowsy thoughts when he’d first gotten on the bus to pure exhaustion but that was gone and he was awake now, thanks to this clown. That’s exactly what he looked like. He was tall, incredibly skinny, had flaming red hair, big green eyes, and was very, very pale. A clown.
“So where are you headed?”
Oh, no. More. Conversation.
“Up north,” Roxas said shortly.
“Oh, me too,” the guy continued, seriously. “I’m going to visit my aunt. Haven’t seen her in awhile, I’m a bit nervous. I kind of just wanted to go home and curl up in bed, though. The last few days have been rough.”
Roxas nodded in what could have been sympathy or a brave attempt to keep a straight face that was not full of murderous intentions. The guy slumped further back into his seat, swinging up his long legs to rest against the banister that lined the stairs that was right in front of them. Roxas saw the driver’s eyes twitch, but then refocus on the road. Great. Not only was he stuck with an idiot sitting next to him, the driver didn’t even care that he was plaintively breaking the rules. And if the driver didn’t care about that, then what else didn’t he care about? Stop signs? Red lights? The speed limit? The cars in front of them? Heaven only knew what kind of trouble they were going to crash into.
“Have you ever taken one of these before?” the guy continued, still in that conversational tone that Roxas never wanted to hear again.
“I take them a lot,” he replied, again as shortly and curtly as he could, finally dropping his backpack to the floor in defeat and sliding it back underneath the seat.
“Yea? This is my first time. I usually fly places but this place is sort of out of the way I guess. Which is okay, I’ve never been on a bus before. It’s sort of exciting.”
If riding in a bus packed full of perfectly unknown, smelly, strange people was sort of exciting, Roxas really didn’t want to know what kind of dull, pathetic life this guy led.
“Are you trying to sleep?”
The question was completely unexpected and Roxas forgot all manners and simply stared at the guy sitting next to him, who was watching him with those earnest green eyes. He was sort of smirking, but it had no malice or bite to it, or at least none that Roxas could see.
“What,” he said, after Roxas had simply stared at him for a good ten seconds, “do I have something in my nose?”
The question was said so seriously that Roxas couldn’t help but make a chuckling sound that quickly turned into an embarrassed snort. “No, no, you’re fine.”
“Oh. Well, are you?”
Roxas almost took up the staring position again but remembered what had happened last time and instead shook his head, remembered what he had been trying to do himself originally before this clown had sat next to him, and then nodded, fervently. “No. I mean, yes. I am trying to sleep. Don’t know if I can though. I don’t do well without music.”
Well, fuck him in the backseat.
The guy raised an eyebrow. “And here I was, offering you my soul practically and you were over there just denying it. Here, I’m not going to use it.” And he again extended the music player in his hand. “I mean, if you find my music offensive that’s one thing, but just clear out denying it is just plain mean. I mean, I could be giving you heart and be dying over here and you’d just be like, no thanks, even if you needed it and there I’d go and just pucker up and kick the bucket for nothing. You’ve got to put things into perspective like that sometimes. No need to feel bashful, kid.”
Sort of mesmerized by his voice and the fact that he could simply keep talking for so long, the “kid” part snapped him out of his daze. The guy probably only a year on him, two tops. But the speech, or whatever you called the pattern that the words coming out of his mouth were in, sort of stirred him and he took the MP3 player out of the guy’s hand, being careful not to let any of his skin linger more than was necessary. One innocent touch and watch, this guy was going to turn into a creepy stalker who would smile at him quite suggestively once they were off the bus and suggest a hotel room and then Roxas would have to call the cops and frankly, no thanks.
“Thanks,” he said, which still came out shortly and he tried to remedy that by saying, “I really don’t have to, you know. I’ll be fine.”
Again with that raised eyebrow. “Didn’t I tell you that I’m giving you my heart and all this has to be put into perspective?”
This time Roxas was a little annoyed, and instead just muttered, “Yea, I got it. Thanks.”
“No worries. You know how to work it?”
It was the same as Naminé’s, so he nodded and said, “Yea, I got it. Thanks.”
The guy waved his hands. “Go ahead and go to sleep. You look like you need it.” A pause, and then a hastily added, “I mean, you just look tired. I’m sure I look tired. My hair feels kind of deflated too. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.”
For the first time, Roxas sort of actually smiled. “No, I got it. I look like shit. Don’t worry, you do too.”
For a second, Roxas felt like he’d said the wrong thing and that this guy was now going to fly off the handle and either A) strangle him or B) start molesting him right in front of that damn bus driver who would probably be content to either A) let it keep happening and pretend he didn’t see it or B) turn around to watch and simultaneously crash the bus into a barricade. But no combination of those options happened, and the guy just smiled back. “Yea, I know. I hear that a lot.”
Roxas just offered a smile, and started to mess around with the MP3 player while the guy pulled his hood and started to burrow as far back as he could into the seat—more than he already was, which was really quite a futile gesture. There was something to be said about clowns, maybe. Roxas had never been fond of them as a kid. It was a bit cliché but they had never floated his boat or rocked his world. He supposed that had to do with his mother a lot. Her hair today had been deflated, but when Roxas had been growing up that hadn’t been the case at all. Azuela Hart was fond of many things, but most of those things were cosmetic and of all the cosmetic things a woman could undergo, she enjoyed dyeing her hair the most and so Roxas had seen it through many shades and styles, and along with the pale makeup and bright, popping lipstick she used to wear, she had sometimes looked so very much like a clown that the other kids would laugh at Roxas.
Not that he ever really considered the laughing, but it was something when he could sadly look at his mother and think that they were right.
In any case, the guy sitting next to him seemed to have given up the conversation now that he had successfully surrendered the MP3 and was pulling up his hood and leaning his head to the other side. Roxas tried not to look so guilty as he thumbed through the choices; the guy had given it up willingly, after all. His heart and all that. The choices weren’t so bad; Roxas was one of those who was under the impression that the type of music a person listened to said a lot about their personality and flipping through the choices on this player spoke a bit to him. He was mostly an alternative fellow with some heavier and lighter tastes, but Roxas was happy to not have to file through too many options. They had somewhat same tastes. After awhile he settled on a blue-sy type singer with a throaty voice that was soothing and mournful all at the same time. He rested his head against the window, watching the gray morning slowly now start to turn into dawn.
The guy in his ear was quiet and soulful and a little bit of vengeful, or at least that’s what Roxas heard, and the gray world outside the window was slowly turning fuzzy, like it had when he’d first gotten on this bus a little while ago. The sky was turning darker shades of gray and the orange and purple had mostly disappeared but Roxas could remember a time when those shades had always been there, like an eternal sunrise, and he could remember a happy hand on his head as well as a strict voice, like the scratchy, gruff tone in his ear now, and now it turned to a low growl, more of a threat than a promise, and the hand that had been on his head lifted and it was replaced by cruelly manicured fingers that pried and closed, hard, into his scalp. The gray sky disappeared, slowly, and turned into a bright sun that was slowly starting to fall from the sky and like before, he could hear words, but they had multiplied, and they were going through his head, again and again and again, just as the gray sky faded from view, he’s dead.
__
The kid had an animated way of sleeping, Axel would give him that. The moment his face had fallen against the window there had been weird noises coming from his throat and it had to be hell for the girl that slept next to him at night, because they were constant, and he couldn’t shut his eyes tight enough to block them out. He pondered waking the kid up, but that seemed silly now that the sole reason he’d forked over his MP3 was so that he could go to sleep. Axel had slept plenty on the plane, but he tried to shut his eyes and drift away again anyway, because now he had nothing to keep himself occupied for the next few hours. The kid looked like he had needed it, though, at least more than Axel had needed it. The silky little whimpers the kid was emitting were starting to drive him crazy and he pried his eyes open a few minutes after closing them, admitting defeat in the face of an unconquerable foe.
The gray sky was starting to lighten over the horizon and Axel shifted in his seat to get his phone. He flipped it open and tried to access the internet, but the signal was all wrong so he tried to file through the pictures and see if there was anything worth looking at that he hadn’t looked at in awhile. There weren’t very many, and there were none of his dad, but there were a few of Reno a few months back, when Reno had come to visit Cloud. He had been very frank about the whole affair and Axel hadn’t blamed him—Cloud was one of his best pals and Axel got to see him a lot, whereas Reno didn’t, so Axel better buzz off if he wanted to keep his pretty face intact. Axel had called Reno a pervert for checking his little brother out and Axel had gotten decked for it anyway.
It occurred to him while he starting to really get into his game of a bouncy yellow ball and the center of the earth and some chick (who the bouncy yellow ball just couldn’t give up for dead because damnit, bouncy yellow balls never did) that he should probably check his phone contacts. He paused it in the middle of a really juicy moment involving a Venus fly trap and a terrified expression and started to roll through the contacts, pausing on the contact he had wanted to be sure he’d had. She wouldn’t be too surprised when he dropped in on her, he reckoned at some length, because of all the members in his family, she had shown him the most interest and the most care, sometimes even more than his own mother, who was happier to simply just drown her sorrows in some whiskey. He hadn’t visited her in her own home since before he could remember—she’d always make the trip to Brooklyn to come see him—and he didn’t have her address. How could he explain his sudden appearance? He didn’t know. He was already booked for this evening, but he had all day to kill and he’d like to kill it with her, because she was the only one who apparently was going to answer the question he’d nearly killed Reno to answer.
He pushed the call button and pushed it up to his ear to listen. It must have been a cell phone, because something—or somebody—was singing in his ear in an high pitched shriek and he immediately remembered that his aunt was, for all intents and purposes, one of those women who enjoyed rap music and black men. It wasn’t that Axel was discriminatory—on the contrary, he was the least discriminate person he knew but he was still human, after all, a human being, and people could fall directly into some categories sometimes. His whole deal with his categorization was that if you fit into obvious categories, then there of course, had to be less obvious ones. So his aunt fit into “single white female, cat lady” quite obviously on the surface; below that, she fit into the “wanna be gangster with a Glock and some bling” quite well also. It was more amusing to him than anything else and when he had brought it up on her last visit—about six months ago—she had very well taken off his nose for daring to ask. He’d kept his mouth shut ever since.
There was no answer to the phone but there was a perky message saying to leave a voicemail and she’d get back whenever she damn well felt like it. Knowing his aunt, that might take awhile, so he just told the machine that he was in town for a bit and needed a place to crash if that was okay with her and to call him back, hopefully before dark. That might give a sense of urgency to the phone call but knowing her, it might just as well not. For the first time since he’d disembarked the plane with a clear purpose in mind, he felt a little queasy about the entire prospect. He wasn’t so worried about actually finding a place to stay should she not return his call—he had enough cash and he really didn’t care if he missed his class tomorrow or the next day, really—but he felt a little queasy at the prospect of actually sitting her down and discussing with her what he had wanted to discuss.
It wasn’t that she wouldn’t give him the answers he was looking for. He hardly ever pried and when he tried hard enough, she melted underneath his looks like he was on fire and she was some poor snowman with inadequate dry ice to keep her going. He wasn’t worried that she might call up his mom, even if his mom actually talked to his aunt, and even if she rarely spoke to Axel. The answers sort of scared him, because he’d be forced to take what Reno said as truth and heaven knew that if Reno was right or showed kindness about anything, then there was something definitely fishy about the entire situation. His brother would never do any harm or hurt someone on purpose, but doing something this… well, noble, was different from him. The very fact that he’d have to go underneath his mother’s watchful eye and defy her was impressive enough alone. And why would his mother even accept the money?
Axel shifted in his seat again, turning distractedly away from the boy who was speaking gibberish in his sleep at his side. The sky out the window was starting to lighten, though the low clouds were still turning the sky mostly gray and there might actually be rain in the forecast, with the way things were looking right now. Maybe it would start raining and the bus would crash because frankly, Axel had smelled something quite wrong when he’d first stepped into the bus and it hadn’t been the lilac scent that the kid next to him had seemed to be doused with. No, he was watching the driver very, very carefully, and while he didn’t necessarily fear for his life, he did sort of fear that he was going to lose precious daylight hours because the driver was going to need to pull over at the next Arby’s and just let loose into their value menu. There was that option, and the storm option, which also might make him pull over and cite it was too dangerous to drive to take a nap, while the pavement dried in the next few minutes. Precious daylight hours to waste and all that, and it wasn’t even that he really adored them, he would just rather find his aunt’s house in peace before the night came and he was totally stuck.
Well, he wasn’t totally stuck. He had a backup should that plan fall through and while he wasn’t necessarily putting all his eggs into that single basket, he might as well prepare for the worst. Which might also involve a motel since he wasn’t sure what the policy about meeting complete strangers was but he was sure it was something about “feeling uncomfortable” and escaping before that uncomfortable situation turned completely odd and erotic and totally not what Axel had wanted to do tonight. There were things he wanted to do tonight and those things had a very high alcohol level.
The kid was still mumbling when Axel tuned back into reality and he looked over at him for a second, wondering what he was dreaming about. It didn’t sound like anything good and Axel wondered where he was going and why. He had a penchant for doing that, especially on airplanes, and this was sort of an airplane, a grounded airplane. Maybe the kid was going to a funeral. Or maybe he was going to pick up his girlfriend or a pet ferret. Maybe he had twenty seven pet ferrets and maybe he had a tattoo that had that number on him somewhere. All twenty seven had had different names of course but that would take up too much space and he wanted this tattoo to be beautiful and simple and he couldn’t just get one drawing because he loved them all equally so he had just put the number because it was very simple and it would remind him all of the time of those ferrets he’d lost and loved and would never lose, at least in his heart anyway.
That was a good story, Axel thought, turning over and putting the hood back on his head, so that his back was to the kid. He let his head rest against the semi-soft material of the seat, looking out the window into the gray morning for a second. That was a good story, he thought, closing his eyes and trying not to concentrate on anything at all, but maybe he was just going home. That must be a good feeling. To just go home. Despite the sleep he’d gotten on the plane and despite the fact that he really wasn’t into sleeping right here next to a complete stranger—he’d gotten his own two seats on the plane damnit—he felt his eyelids already sliding shut. Less energetic than he’d though and he’d have to get a damn Red Bull in Sunnydale, whatever the hell that town was called. Must be nice, to have a home in Sunnydale.
He could already imagine the signs, those picket type ones, the ones that said, “Just imagine, if you lived here, you’d be home already.” Axel wasn’t one for the home sentiment. And he really wasn’t fond of the entire “I have no home so I must be full of woe” stereotype either. But there were times, and they were rare, but it was when he was on a sky bus or apparently now on this ground plane, rare times like this when he would sit and he would think and he would imagine that he would be going somewhere called home. There weren’t many good associations with that word in his brain, but he thought if there were and if he ever got them, they’d be rosy, and sort of yellowed with light, because he could remember a time when they were. He was small and sitting down and someone was running that hand over his hair and he’d been crying and he was teary-eyed, green eyes full of dew drops, but that hand had been soothing, just like that gray sky out the window. He could see it through his thin, fluttering eyelids, but his head was slipping down the seat now, further, and he could fall out of the seat, like he’d fallen off his skateboard that day, fallen and skinned his knee, and that hand had been there, going soothingly through his hair and there had been that lofty, sort of quiet and gentle and strong voice, repeating those three words over and over again, and it hadn’t been I love you, no, it hadn’t been that at all because those words were foreign and thick and they had been a long time in coming and he’d put his faith in them. He’d put a lot of stock in you’ll be okay. and even if it wasn’t and never was, he believed it anyway.
