Axel isn't really sure how such a really, really weird situation planted itself in his generally dull life.
He'd set out that grey morning looking to get away from it all. Personal searching, soul searching. A one man show; complete with a harmonica and crashing cymbals. Enlightenment or some hippy shit like that, minus the weed because he'd already smoked it all. Definitely not sharing the already cramped space of his car with a kid a few years younger than himself with an annoyingly bright laugh and a lightbulb smile, and eyes that were way too fucking blue to not have been robotic and planted in his skull. Maybe the FBI had found him and decided to track him down, watch him, because people didn't just quit their job and entire life to go on a huge drive for no reason, without telling anyone. And now the two of them were driving down the dusty roads, on a roadtrip to Bumble-Fuck-Egypt, and Axel can't convince himself that he minds, no matter how hard he tries. And at first, he really, really tries. Honest.
He blames strange mother-hen feelings he gets sometimes. He just saw him, unkempt blond hair flicking everywhere, and pulled over. How could he not? It would have been wrong, to have left the Sun's lovechild chilling by the side of the road, looking so stupidly optimistic and full of hope in his ripped acid-wash jeans and wrinkled Disney tee. Axel's never been one to pick up hitchhikers, due to a perfectly rational axe-murderer phobia, but it seemed that Roxas was a special exception to his driving morals. He had been severely lacking in the axe department.
The kid wasn't too bad company, either. Easy enough to get along with. Didn't whine often or complain about eating cheap gas-station food (as long as there would be ice cream, if there wasn't he'd frown and it'd be too cute for Axel to handle, really), or sleeping in the backseats when they couldn't afford a motel. And that happened more often than not, because they'd happened to get too much ice cream at that last stop, fatass. Kind of funny, too. But not in the clown, comedian kind of way, no - what really made Axel laugh was the way Roxas would speak sometimes. Like the world really was that simple and innocent and one plus one always, always equalled two, and if you can't see that you must be really fucking stupid. Like two guys sleeping together under one soft, worn blanket wasn't considered strange.
Sometimes they'd fight, over the dumbest things and sometimes the not-so-dumb, and Roxas would glare from the backseat instead of the passenger, and Axel would cuss and hit the wheel because dammit, he was tired and Roxas should be thankful he even stopped for his bony ass in the first place instead of letting him starve or get raped or something twisted like that. And then at night when he thought Axel was asleep, Roxas would curl into his neck and whisper in hot little puffs against his skin that he was sorry, and every day he was thankful Axel had stopped and picked him up. But Axel was always awake, because he knew that's what Roxas would do. And in the morning Roxas would crawl back into the passenger seat and smile that bright-bright smile and everything would be okay again.
Like falling in love with a stranger – a kid, at that - you picked up at the side of a road could be okay. Like any of what he was doing was even remotely okay.
Axel isn't sure how things got to this state, got so out of hand, where he almost drives into a random tree because the sound of Roxas laughing at his lame joke - it really wasn't that funny - was enough to take his eyes away from the road. Where he begins to crave the warmth that has nothing to do with the blanket and the cuddling they did each night. Where his black heart (that he was pretty sure had shrivelled up and died in the corner of his ribcage a long, long time ago) suddenly begins to palpitate a little every time Roxas smiles and tells Axel he loves him like nothing but his view of love matters, like he hasn't got a care in the world. And maybe he hasn't, because he's young and Axel assumes he's run away from home, he didn't have anything with him but some cash when it was decided it would be a good idea to stop for him. He never asked him, and Roxas never asked why Axel was driving on his own anyway. Maybe it would work, maybe they would work.
Axel knows it isn't that easy, that nothing is ever that easy. He knows it won't ever work, that nothing ever works that way. He knows-knows-knows, but he's all too happy to let himself pretend. To pretend that everything was okay and would stay that way, okay. And really, he's worried about how happy it makes him, but he ignores that thought whenever it comes up. As long as there was gas in his shitty little car and a small blond boy in the seat next to him, he figured that there wasn't any reason why he couldn't keep driving along on the dusty back roads forever. Or city roads, or mud roads, or any roads, it wouldn't matter. Nobody would miss them.