A/N: Happy birthday, Mini, sorry it sucks. (I told myself I'd never write gift fics. But I also told myself I'd never convince myself to write shounen-ai, and we can see where that's landed me. (I also told myself I'd never write crack again. Sigh~.))

Regardless: you are now one numerical year older, even if you are really only one day older. HAHA YOU'RE OLD NOW

Disclaimer: disclaim'd.

"Stupidity is the devil. Look in the eye of a chicken and you'll know. It's the most horrifying, cannibalistic, and nightmarish creature in this world."
- Werner Herzog

Remind me, if I ever - ever - decide to go to a farm, ever again, that it is a very bad idea. And if I don't listen to you, tranquilize me. You would be doing me a favor.

This is my day: wake up at 6:30 in a rickety wooden bunk, do chores for an hour; get the cows in the barn; eat breakfast for fifteen minutes; get the cows out of the barn; do field work for three hours; eat lunch; do maintenance work for four hours; eat dinner; do evening chores; read the summer reading for an hour or two; sleep at nine o'clock.

Every day.

For a month.

My parents paid a bunch of farmers in this place to call it a camp and then sent me here.

I mean, excuse my French, but oh my God.

So here I am, sitting at a table inside of a bunkhouse and slowly working my way through a potato stew or something. It doesn't have much of a taste; they cover everything in spices, which I suppose is giving me a pretty good idea of the way most food tasted before chemicals and plastic packaging. They let it rot then cover up the rot with rosemary.

It doesn't take me long to power through my food, though; I may be sweaty and stinky and dirty, but I'm not objecting to finger-food any day. Yeah, by stew I didn't mean like...soup. They call it stew but it's just potatoes, carrots, your usual.

Of course, I'm not allowed to leave until everybody's done eating. It takes a few more minutes for Leon to realize that everyone is waiting for him to do something, though.

It's almost night time already, which surprises me. I mean, it is summer. I always think that the sun's going to last forever, especially when the days seem to.

The bunkhouse is a creaky old affair. It's all unfinished wood, and the dining "hall" in the center is just a few (technically made for the outdoors) folding tables and chairs in that creaky, creased white plastic. It always smells like a mixture of people, sweat and aftershave, and the unmistakable scent of animal.

"Hey," Leon says, "Hey guys, hey, listen up." The low rumble of chatter stops, then, and people look up. Leon's a pretty imposing guy. He won't tell me where he got that big-ass scar on his forehead, but I've gathered from farm gossip (no, really) that it had something to do with a very manly bull.

"So," he continues, "We got chores tonight," like we don't have them every night. "Uh...Zell, you take cow chow, Seifer, feed the goats in the far pasture and Aerith can get the ones closer to the barn." Okay so that leaves...bunnies, horses and chickens, I think. I wouldn't mind bunnies, and horses are okay. Maybe I'll get lucky and be stuck with dishwashing duty?

Leon keeps listing names off, Zack do this, Cloud do that, no Tifa you can't go with him, and breezes right on by the chicken chore. I don't hear who gets it, I just know that it isn't me. And thank God for that. Have you ever seen a chicken? Right up in the face? I have stared a chicken in the eyes before, and let me tell you, there is no such thing as a smart chicken. They're better than goats, though, goats are evil and smart. You don't ever have to worry about a chicken uprising.

"...okay," Leon says after some consideration. "I think that's...oh, wait," he says. "Roxas, almost forgot." Dammit. "The fence on the chicken coop by the road broke, and the chickens keep running around. I'm not that worried about them, but if you could get as many as you can back in there and then temporarily stop up the coop so no more get out, that'd be great." He looks me right in the eye when he says that.

Oh, damn you, you bitter old man. I can't believe he wants me to chase chickens for an hour and a half! Have you ever tried to catch a chicken? Fuck! I hate chickens! Nobody likes chickens!

It's just about in the middle of sunset when I grudgingly work my way over to the old, dirty road which leads to nothing but trees and fields and other farms. I suppose, if you go back far enough, you find a highway. I must have gotten here somehow.

It's just like Leon said: the chicken coop, which is like an elevated dog house on wheels, is broken. Or rather, the fence around it is. See, there's the coop itself, which is the house-on-wheels thing, then there's a bunch of chicken feed or tree pulp or something on the ground around it, and that's fenced in by - well, chicken wire.

And there are about a dozen chickens running around everywhere but inside. And they're big, too, not the football-sized chickens you see packed into crates in those tragic "this is where your food comes from" documentaries. These are monsters, red fleshy crests, speckled grey like a TV with no service or black as tar or orange as a redhead. They've got beaks like daggers. They can poke a man's eye out. And they've all got that horrible, undeniable farm smell. If you've ever been to a zoo you know it.

"Here, chicken-chicken," I say, coming up to a particularly fat one. Maybe I'll get lucky and it will be slow. It takes a few steps forward and picks at the ground. "Bokabokaboka," I say.

The chicken looks up at me. One of its white feathers is sticking straight up, perpendicular to its back. The thing looks ridiculous. It looks back down and pecks at the soil.

"Okay," I mutter, "Good chicken..." It's surrounded by tall grass, but its back is to the road and it's headed for the corner of the coop and the side of the barn. So if I can just herd it over there - ...

I stalk forward, almost crouching, internally cursing the blond spikes that droop into my eyes. It's a hassle. The chicken makes a boka-bok sound, glances at me worriedly, and starts to head for the corner. Perfect.

"Yeah," I hiss, "Good chicken...keep - "

"BOKABOKABOKABOK!" I'm hit by a whirlwind of feathers and the smell of corn meal and dirt as the bird drunkenly leaps around me and runs the fastest I've ever seen a chicken run towards the road. I hate chickens.

"Hey," says something that isn't a chicken, "You need help?"

I turn around, and I know at this point that I've basically gone nuts because the person I see just about has a bright red porcupine for hair.

You've probably seen beer bottles. His eyes are the color of the green ones. I'm not exaggerating; they are exactly that color. It's almost...weird, I guess. He's unhealthily skinny, too, like a marionette, or the human version of Jack Skellington.

"...no," I say. "I'm good."

"Really?" he raises his eyebrows and crosses his arms, leaning against the barn. "You're sure about that."

"Yes, I'm sure," I grumble. It might be annoying, but I don't need help catching chickens.

"...dude," he said eventually, smirking, "Let me tell you something. If the chicken is twice as far away from you as when you started chasing it," he gestured to the big white fluffball pecking its way down the dirt road, "You're doing it wrong."

"...the fuck do you know," I mutter under my breath viciously so he can't hear.

"Fuckuva lot more than you do, apparently," he said, coming to stand next to me and surveying the remaining chickens. And oh, they just keep obliviously boka-boka-boking like the filthy bastards they are, oblivious to my complete hallucination. By the way, am I the only one getting some...serious gay vibes off of this guy? He's standing pretty close.

"C'mon, Poky," he says, tugging on a spike of my hair, "Let me show you how a real man catches chickens."

An hour later I'm standing in front of the mostly-broken chicken pen, keeping all the freshly caught idiot-birds stuck fast in there while this Axel guy - yeah, no, really - is searching up some plywood. I already had a hammer and nails and stuff.

"Hey," he says conversationally, trotting back with at least twice as many two-by-fours as we would need to permanently seal up the whole coop. He hasn't even broken a sweat. Nice stamina for a guy that might be a hallucination. Yeah, nobody has hair like that.

"Yeah," I reply, grabbing a plank.

"Need help with that?"

The hairs on the back of my neck bristle. "No," I say coldly. It's almost complete nighttime; all that's left is a bluish-orange haze. It makes everything look funny, like I'm seeing through tinted glasses. "I can nail wood fine on my own."

He snerks and raises one eyebrow, shaking his head. "'Kay," he says offhandedly, leaning again the part of the fence that isn't broken. "Mind if I smoke?" He takes a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket.

"Yes."

"'Kay," he says again, and puts them away, just like that.

I feel like I should say something, but I've got two nails in my lips, and I can feel their sharp points with my tongue. I nail a little harder, then take one out and position it on another corner of the board. Two down, two to go.

"So are you in that high school program for this place?"

I nod. I don't remember what the program is called; it's something about bringing inner-city kids to appreciate "the wonders and hard work of farming" or something. I mean, I'm paraphrasing, it sounds especially dumb.

"That's cool. You're gonna be a sophomore?"

I wince. Oh, ha-ha, make fun of the short kid. "No," I say, removing the final nail from between my lips, "Senior."

"Oh," he says dully, "Cool."

Smack! I hit the nail very hard on the head this time to try and break myself out of the dull-eyed state I'm in. Talking to a stranger. Probably a hallucination from sunstroke or something.

"You work on the farm?" I ask, because now that I don't have my mouth occupied I feel like I ought to say something.

"No, not this one," he pulls a toothpick out from somewhere and starts chewing on it habitually. "I'm an apprentice at Maggie's farm, 'bout a quarter mile that way," he jerks his head towards the road. "But I came here to borrow clothes from Dem since all of mine were covered in blood."

I stop hammering abruptly and blink at the chicken who's pecking my fingers through the gate. Oh great, that'll be a fun story when I get home. Hey Nam, guess what, my serial killer hallucination helped me chase chickens!

"You - oh," I say, and swallow. I brandish the hammer a little more carefully. Ohshitohshitohshit he's gonna kill me.

He shrugs. "Hey, we aren't raising pigs for the aesthetics, right? Least we let him run around in his pen for seven years before I spiked him."

"Oh!" I say, sounding a little more surprised than I wanted to. "Pig blood. You killed a pig."

"...yeah," he says, "The fuck did you think I meant?"

I turn my eyes up to glare at him viciously.

"'Scuse me," he says sarcastically, "The frick did you think I meant?"

"You're an idiot," I mutter, giving the plank an experimental tug to see if it stays. It does. It's ugly, and it can't possibly work for more than a week before it starts to fall off under its own weight, but for now the chickens are trapped and I'm satisfied.

I look back up at Axel, who has yet to respond to the idiot comment. He's still leaning against the barn, arms crossed, watching me. Listen, if he's not a hallucination, I might be in danger of losing my virginity here. Have I mentioned the really, really distinct gay vibes? They radiate off him like lines of stink. Just my luck, I meet the only gay pedophile to ever work on a farm.

And I have a thing for redheads.

"...thanks for the help," I say, because he's still staring at me. And his eyes are still this clear beer-bottle green, even though it's almost nighttime. I know I mentioned that before, but I mean it's really distinct when you're looking at him.

"No problem," he says, "I used to have to do that all the time. Brings back good memories." He takes a few steps toward me, and his worker boots crunch the scraggly blades of grass between the trampled chicken dirt. I stand stock still.

"Really? I'd think it would bring back, like, nightmares."

He laughs, completely sincere. Creeps me the hell out. I take a step back.

"No, no, see, I perfected the chicken-chasing routine. I'm the go-to guy for chicken chasing. The grand master. You lucked out - " he raises his eyebrows and opens his mouth.

"Roxas," I say, "R-o-x-a-s." He shrugs and puts his hand behind his head.

"Weird," he says, "Is it short for anything?"

"No," I tell him, thankful he didn't jump right to making a bunch of 'is that the girlier version of "Roxanne" hur hur hur' jokes. "Is Axel?"

"No," he says. "Not short for anything."

"A-ah," I say, cursing my voice for sounding so childish and unsure. Was he always this close to me? I do not remember him being like a foot away.

"Yeah," he mutters to himself, taking the toothpick out of his mouth pinched between two fingers, like he's imagining a cigarette right there. He holds it there by his mouth, staring at the path leading into the ten-some-odd acres of forest and pasture owned by Elder Oak Farm as if he expects something to come charging down it any minute. He turns his beer-bottle eyes to the side and catches me watching; he winks and pretends to take a drag off the toothpick and blow smoke out.

"So you're seventeen?"

"Eighteen," I tell him, crossing my arms defiantly. "As of a week and a half ago."

"Good," he says, and gives no explanation. He takes a few steps in my direction and leans past me to chuck the toothpick into a pile of discarded poopy hay, probably used in one of the goat pens. When he straightens up, he doesn't step back even a little. He looks down at me, a full head taller, as if to mock me and my stunted growth.

I take a step back, and my head bumps into the corner where the chicken pen meets the side of the barn. I swallow and my eyes widen, which appears to be the wrong reaction because he grins and met and takes another step forward, leaning down so that our faces are level.

Damndamndamn bottle eyes and a piece of his hair is tickling my face.

"You know the best way to trap a chicken?" he says, putting his hand on the wall, right next to my face - which is barely an inch from his.

"Corner it?" I ask weakly.

"No," he tells me, leaning in even closer.

"The best way to trap a chicken..." he breaths, lips nearly touching mine, and I can barely think words - "Is to give it a false sense of security."

A/N: I love how when I started this I told myself it was gonna be a really quick oneshot, and it ended up being around three thousand words, and I still think it's really short.