Welcome, my adoring public!
That'd be sweet to have an adoring public...
Anyway, I was in the middle of beating my head against the wall over my other story (The lovely AkuDemy, "Sanctuary") when the idea for this AU one-shot just kinda popped into my rattled brain. I decided I might as well type it up. I really needed a break from "Sanctuary" anyway.
Not really yaoi, though there might be mindless flirting. Not sure yet.
Description: Axel's suicide attempt has failed, landing him in the back of a bright ambulance with an EMT named Roxas stitching up his wrists. Being strapped to a gurney in a moving hospital that smells like death, rubbing alcohol and latex is scary, sure. But waking up to find your savior at your bedside with a million and one questions you never wanted to answer is even worse.
A/N: This story was inspired by "The Artist in the Ambulance" from Thrice. (Hence the title) It's really an amazing song. One of my favorites. (and yes, I'm one of those people with thousands of songs on their computer that feels the need to pawn off their horrible music taste on everyone else. It's my cross to bear.)
Disclaimer: My over-active imagination is a nonprofit organization, dedicated to bringing you quality entertainment in the form of fanfiction. It does not have any rights to the Kingdom Hearts franchise. So please...don't sue.
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Lights that dance across the asphalt like camera flashes, the piercing sounds of sirens, screams and broken glass crunching under hurrying feet. Most people occasionally pass these scenes on their way home, cursing the dead as they lay beneath blue tarps for causing the auto accident and slowing them down. For Roxas, it was routine. The smell of the interior of the metal beast he saw too often, the pleading voices of people young and old, begging him not to let them die, the sight of someone else's blood on his hands at the end of almost every shift. And to think he could have been a nurse. Walk in, tell the person they'd be waiting forever and a day for the doctor, walk out. Not that difficult, not that traumatizing. But no. Roxas had decided he was perfectly fine with only completing half of med school. He thought being a paramedic would be 'fun'. After all, that's why he'd wanted to become a doctor, right? To play god for a living? Like most things in his life, Roxas had no idea what he was getting into at the time and his hasty decision was one he paid for almost every day.
Now he sat at the end of the ambulance bay behind the hospital, slowly puffing away at a menthol cigarette and rolling tiny pieces of gravel between his fingers. The automatic doors of the hospital slid open, but he paid them no mind. There was only one person who felt the irrepressible urge to annoy the shit out of him on what was sure to be the only cigarette break of the night.
"Smoking will kill ya..." piped a voice from behind him.
"Blow me." Roxas replied without a backwards glance.
"Well you're just a perky ray of sunshine this evening!" the voice exclaimed sarcastically. "What's your secret? Is it the stick up your ass? Oh it must be!"
The EMT who spoke was tall, with broad shoulders and dirty blond hair that had been cut into what he liked to call a 'stylish mullet'. Roxas thought it made him look like more of a dork than the doofy smile that was usually plastered across his boyish face. The man wasn't much younger than Roxas, though he acted like a child that had just sucked down a 2 liter bottle of Mountain Dew and eaten a pack of Pixie Stix. Truth be told, however, it was refreshing. Most of the other EMTs Roxas found himself stuck with were either bleeding imbeciles or personality-less drones. At least Demyx was fun to be around when he wasn't bouncing off the walls. Besides, he loved driving the ambulance, and Roxas hated driving that damn thing more than he hated administering IVs. And ugh...IVs. Something about watching a needle piercing skin like that...
"I'm going to kill you..." Roxas said jokingly, watching the last rays of sun fade behind the line of trees and tall buildings in the distance, the lights of downtown flickering to life.
"I love you too, Roxy." Demyx smiled, taking a seat on the cement, marred with tire marks. "It's getting' cold..." he said, looking around at the packed parkinglot. Roxas snapped out of his nicotine-induced trance and focused on the light breeze raising goosebumps on his bare arms.
"Yeah..." he muttered. "Tit's a bit nipply."
"You're so vulgar" Demyx said, staring at Roxas through a few strands of wispy blond hair. He only nodded in agreement. The pair sat for a while, making smalltalk about how badly movies suck nowadays, the upgrades on the new Toyota Camry (and how badly Demyx wanted one) and so on. The sounds and smells of night crept up on them slowly as Roxas reached for his third cigarette in ten minutes, ignoring Demyx's comment about him being a 'chain-smoking jackass'. Roxas thought absentmindedly as he lit his cigarette, about how the asphalt always smelled different after nightfall than it did in the blazing heat of the day. He'd only taken about three puffs when the alert box on the hips of both EMTs began to vibrate, the tiny red lights flashing rapidly.
"The vibrating box of life!" Demyx cried. "It beckons! Come, Smoky!"
Roxas rolled his eyes, smashing the cherry of his cigarette into the asphalt. He stood, bending back, popping several vertebrae into place. Tucking in his dark blue polo, he trudged behind Demyx toward the blood-red ambulance parked by the curb. He stood for a second or two, glaring up at the bright white lettering on the side before Demyx shouted at him to get into cab.
"So what's on the menu for appetizers tonight?" Roxas asked grudgingly, referring to the first call of their shift. Demyx glanced over briefly at the plasma screen of the console where it displayed the location and condition of the patient in bright green.
"Uh..." he said, glancing from the road, to the screen and back, trying to read. "Looks liiiiike... we got a suicide attempt."
"Great." scoffed Roxas.
"22 year old Caucasian male, 6'0", roughly 190 lbs, red hair, green eyes." Demyx read, making a left turn, heading towards the glowing lights of the inner city.
"And I have to lift him?" cried Roxas, looking from the quickly passing scenery outside the window to his partner.
"He's not that much bigger than you..." retorted Demyx. "And I'll help."
Roxas groaned and thumped his head on the window, catching glimpses of the fronts of stores with bars in the windows and punkass kids on skateboards as they passed in a multi-colored streak. Despite everything, there was something to be said about driving around in an ambulance. For one, everyone got out of your way, siren blaring (and right now it was, though the cab was for the most part, soundproof) or not. Not to mention, there was that nifty intercom feature that allowed the driver to yell at civilians who refused to get out of the way. Roxas smiled on the inside remembering the time Demyx yelled at a couple of street thugs to 'move your piece of shit ghetto-mobile'.
"Where the hell are we going?" asked Roxas, not recognizing the street they'd just turned down.
"To see the Wizard, Dorthy!" cried Demyx, tapping the steering wheel to the beat of the song stuck in his head.
"One of these days, MacIntyre..." Roxas mumbled, committing the ultimate taboo act of addressing Demyx by his last name. Demyx frowned, looking over at Roxas.
"Low blow, dude." he grumbled. Roxas smiled warmly, grabbing Demyx's shoulder and squeezing it.
"You know I love you, blondie." he said lightly.
"Yeah yeah..." Demyx answered, pulling into a rundown apartment complex, parking near the dumpster and turning off the siren. He sighed, rubbing his face, looking up at the roof of the cab. "You ready for this, buddy? There's gonna be a lot of blood. Dispatch said he slit his wrists."
Roxas felt bile rising in his throat and his hands went cold. Blood. He hated blood. Even in school, his stomach would churn when he sliced open a cadaver... and on a cadaver, the blood doesn't gush the way it does from a severed jugular, or slit wrists. He breathed deep, opening the door on the cab of the ambulance, letting it squeak and slam shut behind him as he stepped onto the asphalt with a crunch. There were already police squad cars parked near the sidewalk, a few officers standing on the metal steps outside.
"How bad is it?" Roxas asked a female officer with blond hair and a tiny waist.
"Could be better, could be worse. We've got him stabilized and applied towels and pressure to his wounds." replied officer L. Ryes.
"Who reported it?" Roxas asked her, making his way toward the staircase. She looked at the notes she had jotted on a flip pad.
"Uh... a neighbor reported 'blaring rock music' and my partner and I were called out on a noise violation. The door was unlocked, we came inside and..." she sighed, putting the pad back into her breast pocket. "There he was."
"Where's the neighbor now?" inquired Roxas, climbing the stairs, officer Ryes on his heels.
"Inside. His name is...uh... Marly? Marluxia? Something like that..." she muttered. Roxas nodded, stepping into the apartment. There were officers inside as well, searching the place for things like drugs and weapons. Not that there was much to search. An empty refrigerator sat in a filthy kitchen, a moldy loaf of bread on the counter beside a drainboard. There was no furniture, only a small television with a busted up antenna on top. There was a bathroom no one wanted to go into and one room.
"He's not the friendliest..." warned an officer as Roxas crossed the threshold into the room. The entire place smelled of mold, filth and cigarette smoke, but this room reeked the most. And there, on the stained and dirty carpet, lay the patient. As officer Ryes promised, there were towels on his wrists. Roxas knelt, gently pulling the towels away, feeling the resistance as the blood coagulated onto them. The gashes were deep. They'd definitely need stitches. As for the patient...despite being weary with blood-loss, he wasn't in too bad of shape.
"What's your name?" Roxas smiled at the redhead. And what an amazing shade of red it was, with equally intriguing spikes to match. Roxas wondered in the back of his head how much gel it took to hold hair that long.
"Axel..." breathed the patient.
"Axel what? What's your last name?" Roxas asked, pulling a small flashlight from his EMT bag and shining it into Axel's eyes, checking for dilation.
"Cunningham. And get that fuckin' light outta my eyes..." he griped, turning his head away. Roxas pressed his fingers to the spot just above the crude slashes on Axel's wrist and watched his watch, taking his pulse.
"Where were you born, Axel Cunningham?" Roxas asked, trying to keep him conscious. Axel groaned loudly, looking at Roxas with fierce green eyes.
"This shithole town. I have a mom who hates me, an asshole father, one dead sister, an estranged brother and my childhood dream was to be a pro baseball player." he rattled off irritably. Roxas ignored him, looking over his shoulder at Demyx who was dragging a gurney up the stairs with the help of a police officer.
"You on anything tonight, Axel?" Roxas asked out of habit, not taking his eyes off the gurney's progress.
"No illegal substances, no prescription or over the counter medication. Haven't had a drop of alcohol, either. My blood type is AB negative, my favorite color is red, I had a dog once, but he got run over..." Axel continued to ramble when Roxas cut him off.
"Would you like us to get you a shirt?" he asked, looking at Axel who lay there in nothing but black boxer shorts. Axel sighed, giving up his attempt to annoy Roxas.
"No, I'm fine." he mumbled, turning his head away, too weak to do much else. "But some morphine would be fan-fucking-tastic." he said hopefully. Roxas waved to Demyx, who pushed the gurney into the room.
"I can't give you painkillers. You've lost too much blood, it might put you in a coma." he explained, wrapping a blood pressure cuff around Axel's arm and squeezing the bulb. Axel stared at Roxas as if he'd just sprouted a second head.
"I tried to kill myself. You really think I care about being in a coma right now?!" he cried. Roxas again ignored him. With Demyx's help, they got Axel onto the gurney, pulling the white, funny-smelling blanket up to his chin, strapped him in, and proceeded to very carefully bring it back down the stairs. A few people were standing outside, trying to see into the upstairs apartment, kept at bay by police. Women in too-short shorts and filthy tanktops, children with no shoes, shirts or manners. Roxas could almost understand why Axel had tried to off himself. One man, probably the landlord, called to Axel. Something about him still owing rent. Demyx, Roxas and several uniformed officers shot him a dirty look. Axel wished desperately that he could have flipped him off, but his arms were strapped to his sides on the gurney.
They pulled Axel across the choppy asphalt, bringing him around to the back of the ambulance. Roxas tugged on the doors, stepping up into the darkness. He flipped on the light and helped Demyx load the gurney, locking it into place. When the doors were shut, Demyx went around to the front, climbing into the driver's seat. Demyx sat on the small bench to Axel's right, shuddering when he thought of the impending task of sewing this guy back up. Axel was too busy looking around the interior. The whole thing was blinding white, and there were cabinets with Plexiglas fronts. Axel could see inside and his eyes wandered over the vast selection of sterilized instruments, all in their own neat blue packaging. There were face masks, gloves, oxygen masks and plastic tubing of all lengths and widths. Roxas began pulling instruments of his own from the cabinet beside him, cursing when the ambulance hit a bump and his head ricocheted off the bright red biohazard box behind him. Axel's eyes widened when he saw Roxas pull out an IV needle and bag of clear fluid.
"What are you going to do with that?" he asked fearfully. Roxas didn't even glance at him as he began rigging the needles and tubes.
"This is an IV." he said, again speaking out of routine. "I'm going to insert it into your vein and - ..." Roxas began when Axel cut him off.
"I know what the needle is, what the hell is in the bag?" he asked. Roxas squeezed it gently.
"It's a saline fluid that's going to help restore some of your electrolytes." he explained.
"And that nasty looking needle?" Axel inquired. At this, Roxas piqued an eyebrow.
"You have a lip piercing... and you're afraid of needles?" he asked, referring to the shining silver ring shoved through the left side of Axel's bottom lip.
"What, you think I watched them do this? Hell no. I closed my eyes and cried for my mother. I hate needles." Axel squirmed.
"So do I. But don't worry. This wont stay in. The silver part is used for insertion, then a thin plastic tube is left to administer the medication." Roxas said soothingly.
"Yummy." grumbled Axel. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly as Roxas removed the straps holding his arms. He gently turned over Axel's arm to reveal the soft inside of the crease in his arm where it bent. Roxas rubbed the area firmly with an alcohol swab. He lifted the needle carefully with a gloved hand and prepared to stick it into Axel's arm. He stared at the vein, blue and pulsing just below the surface. It was thick, too. Holding his breath, Roxas pushed the tip of the needle to Axel's skin just as Demyx hit another bump. Roxas groaned exasperatedly and Axel whimpered.
"Sorry, dudes." came Demyx's apology.
"Imbecile!" Roxas called playfully to his partner, looking back to the bared flesh of Axel's arm. Again, he pressed the needle to his skin, pushing harder and harder until the skin broke with a soft popping sound that could only be heard in a completely silent room. He pushed a bit harder until he saw the clear fluid in the tube begin to cloud red near the opening of the needle, confirming that he'd hit the vein. Roxas quickly pulled out the metal needle, leaving only the soft plastic. He secured the IV, breathing heavily. Why did they always, always need an IV?!
"Alright..." he sighed. "I'm going to have to stitch you up. I need you to remain calm, okay? It will make the whole process go much faster and easier..." Roxas pleaded.
"You're going to what?!" cried Axel. "Nu uh! No way! I don't want stitches! Can't you give me an over-sized bandage or something?" he asked desperately. Roxas sighed, knowing this would be a challenge.
"Your cuts are too deep and you're still bleeding. Either we stitch them up, or the doctor will cauterize them when we get to the hospital." Roxas explained.
"Cauterize?" asked Axel.
"Burn them shut." Roxas said irritably.
"Stitch me." Axel said quickly. Roxas sighed, pulling the towel off of the wrist closest to him, on the arm with the IV. Blood was still trickling rather rapidly from the wound, but Roxas tried not to think about it. He pulled the large, curved needle from his kit and ran a piece of nylon surgical string through it, beginning work on Axel's wrist immediately. In and out he wove, in an 'x' pattern across the gash. When one wrist was finished and wiped clean, Roxas awkwardly made his way around the front of the gurney and sat on the bench on the other side, stitching that wrist up as well. Blood poured through his fingers as he worked. Roxas could feel the salad he'd had for lunch beginning it's ascent to his mouth, and he forced it back down.
"Not good with blood, are you?" Axel asked with a laugh. Roxas looked to him, whiter than a ghost and shook his head 'no', afraid to open his mouth. "Then why become an EMT?" Axel asked.
"Because I get paid very well to scrape people off the pavement when they've been shot, ejected from cars or run over. Blood, guts, gore and the occasional sob story aside, it's a pretty sweet gig." Roxas mumbled, tying a finishing knot in Axel's stitches. Axel winced as Roxas wiped away the last smears of blood from his wrist. He disposed of the needle in the biohazard box, and the bloody wipes in a blue trash bag. He sighed, leaning back against the wall of the ambulance, zoning out on the back of Demyx's head where it poked out from behind the seat.
"So I'm gonna live?" Axel asked, breaking Roxas's trance. He stared at the man, a few years younger than himself and nodded.
"Yeah..." he muttered, looking back at the interior of the cab. "You're gonna live."
The ambulance rocked gently as it sped down the road, the tubes and other odds and ends clinking, the sound of the tires and Demyx tapping on the steering wheel were the only breaks in the endless silence.
"Why'd you do it?" mumbled Roxas absently, not taking his eyes off the red stoplight they were sitting in front of.
"Come again?" asked Axel. Roxas tore his eyes away, settling them on Axel.
"Why'd you try to kill yourself?" he asked. Axel rolled his beautiful emerald eyes.
"I don't even know you. Why the fuck should I tell you?" he asked defensively.
"Because you're going to be asked the same thing by countless psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors and over-paid government drones collecting your insurance information." Roxas said. He leaned in and whispered to Axel "But I'm the only one who's gonna genuinely give a damn about your answer." he said, then leaned back to rest his head against the wall again. Axel thought for a moment, staring around the harshly lit cabin, then at Roxas.
"A lot of shit." he said finally. Roxas nodded.
"Fair enough." he mused. There was more awkward silence in the back, more sound of the tires on the road when Demyx began humming an obnoxious song. The humming turned to singing, and Roxas sat up and leaned forward, smacking Demyx on the back of the head.
"Silence!" he commanded. Demyx only giggled and went back to humming. Roxas sat back down on the cold, hard, faux leather bench. He sighed deeply, desperately needing a cigarette and some rest, and began picking the dirt out from under his fingernails.
"You're not gonna try it again, are you?" he asked Axel quietly, his voice barely audible over the hum of the engine. Axel turned his head to look at Roxas, strands of red hair falling in his stunning green eyes.
"Naw..." he sighed. "I'm good off the dying for a while."
Roxas nodded, looking back out through the front window of the ambulance. He could see that they were nearing the entrance to the ambulance bay, and he pulled a metal bar on the gurney upright, hanging the bag of saline from it.
"Alright, Mr. Cunningham. We've reached the hospital. We're going to wheel you inside and then the doct-..."
"I'm not..." Axel said loudly, cutting Roxas off. "I'm not Mr. Cunningham. My father was Mr. Cunningham. Call me Axel..." he murmured, looking away from Roxas. The EMT nodded, patting Axel's hand where it sat under the starchy blanket.
"My wrists hurt." Axel complained. "I can't have an Ibuprofen or something?" he winced. Roxas thought about it and nodded, watching the lights of the hospital come closer and closer as Demyx pulled the ambulance into place beside the curb.
"I'll make sure you get something." he soothed. The ambulance came to a stop, Demyx stepping out of the driver's seat to help Roxas pull Axel out of the back. The metal double doors flew open and a rush of cold air hit Axel in the face, making him wrinkle is small nose and pull the blanket over his head. A zing ran down Roxas's spine when he saw this. As sick as it seemed to him, he couldn't help thinking how cute it was. And just how twisted did that make Roxas? A 25 year old EMT watching a 22 year old suicide and thinking about how badly he wanted to take him home as an adorable pet and playmate? And to top it all off, they were both men? Maybe that weekend in Cancun fucked with his head more than he thought. Roxas recalled the images of the beach in a cloak of moonlight with that lovely, pale, silver-haired German boy standing in the water, waves breaking against his legs, bare as the day he was born. Riku had been his name? The kid didn't even speak English, but damn could he...
"Roxas!" Demyx called, breaking his trance. Roxas shook his head, brown spikes swaying. "Need some help with this!"
Roxas gripped the edge of the gurney and helped Demyx pull it towards the sliding doors of the hospital where several nurses waited to take Axel to his room. The aforementioned redhead still had the blanket over his face. Roxas handed Axel's chart to a male nurse with long, black dreadlocks and fierce eyebrows and sideburns. There was definitely a reason they never stuck him in the pediatric ward. He looked over it, turning up one sheet of paper, then the other, nodding to himself as he read.
"The fuck is this world coming to?" he griped, setting the clipboard and papers on Axel's chest. "Take him to ICU, be sure to mark him as a Self-Inflicted, hide all the sharp things..." he told the nurse to his left. Axel scoffed from under the blanket.
"I'm right here." he complained. The nurses ignored him. Roxas watched as they wheeled Axel into the hospital and down the hall. He disappeared through a set of wooden double doors, his bright hair still visible, even at a distance.
"Thanks ya much, Xiggy." Demyx smiled at the burly nurse. The man glared at the two EMTs, and he too walked back into the hospital right as Demyx and Roxas's alert boxes began to vibrate.
XxXxXxXxXxXxX
Axel woke slowly, his senses assaulted immediately with the things he hated most about hospitals. The sounds and smells. The monitor next to his bed was beeping, but so were the monitors of about 12 other patients. And somewhere, an alarm was going off. Then there was the smell. The whole placed reeked of sterilizing agent and sick. And once you get the smell of latex in your nose, it's not coming out for a long while. He opened one eye slowly, shutting it again when he found himself staring into a halogen light in the ceiling. He groaned quietly, just a tiny hint of sound escaping his lips.
"Those fuckers are bright, I know..." said a voice from his bedside. Axel sat up quickly, wishing he hadn't. A sharp pain wracked his head and he fell back onto the flat pillow, still looking in awe at the owner of the voice. It was Roxas. He sat in a chair near the silver tray of 'personal belongings' that had been lifted off of Axel while he was in a painkiller-induced sleep. The only things on the tray were Axel's lipring and a twisted hemp rope ankle bracelet that had been cut. Roxas was sitting cross legged, with a Styrofoam coffee cup from the kitchen in the basement, watching Axel intently. Axel stared at the blue-eyed EMT for a moment, then sat up in his bed, leaning over the edge of it as much as the IV would allow.
"Hey I uh... never caught your name last night." he said to Roxas.
"It's Roxas." he replied.
"What's your last name?" Axel asked.
"Lovecchio." Roxas answered. "It's Italian..."
"Well, Roxas Lovecchio..." Axel began "You're freakin' me out." he whispered. Roxas only smiled, running his finger absently along the rim of his coffee cup.
"I just wanted to make sure they gave you something for the pain." he said quietly. Axel beamed and motioned with his thumb over his shoulder at the half-drained bag of fluid hanging on a silver pole beside the gurney.
"They gave me morphine!" he said happily. "And you said I couldn't have any..."
"Well you couldn't, at the time." Roxas defended himself. Axel scowled and leaned back against his pillows.
"Well, I'm fine, I got my painkiller, so what else do you want?" he asked Roxas.
"To talk." The EMT answered lightly. Axel looked at him strangely.
"About?" he asked slowly.
"You, your life, you know...stuff." replied Roxas. At this, Axel laughed loudly, drawing the attention of two of the nurses.
"My life...right. Shouldn't you be out saving people?" he said. Roxas shook his head, looking down at his coffee.
"My shift ended two hours ago." he said.
"And you've been sitting here, waiting for me to wake up since then?" Axel asked. Roxas nodded with a smile. "Wow... I don't know if I should feel violated or flattered."
"Both?"suggested Roxas. Axel smiled, nodding and looking around the room.
"Alright...my life. Let's see...uh, I was born here. In this hospital, no less. And to a couple of mean, sadistic workaholics that would do nothing but ignore and abuse my siblings and I for years to come..." he began.
"Siblings?" asked Roxas.
"Yeah. My twin brother Reno and little sister Elena." he nodded sadly.
"You have a twin?" Roxas asked, thinking about how lovely the twin must be.
"That I do. He looks just like me, though his features are a bit more...manly, I guess. Oh, ya see these?" he asked, pointing to the identical upside-down teardrops under each of his eyes. Roxas nodded. "Not a tattoo." Axel said proudly.
"No shit?" asked Roxas.
"No shit. It's a birthmark. Reno has a set, too. Right on the side of his face, by his eyes. They look like pieces of hair that have curled around. It's really cool. 'Cept his are red." Axel explained. Roxas leaned forward in his seat to better look at the markings.
"That's a wicked birthmark." he commented.
"Yeah..." said Axel. "Got a lot of flack for it when I was a kid, though. Reno and I both. Our hair didn't really help, either."
"Holy shit, that's natural?!" exclaimed Roxas.
"This color?" Axel asked, pulling on a chunk of brilliant vermilion. "As natural as an alcoholic beatin' his wife and kids." he smiled.
"I can't imagine there being two people with hair like that..." Roxas breathed.
"Yep. It's a trip. Though Reno's hair is a bit more orange-ish. And a helluva lot longer." said Axel.
"Longer than that?" Roxas asked, amazed and reffering to Axel's shoulder-length hair.
"The top layer isn't long. He crops it all short and spikes it out everywhere, then at the base of his neck there's this long piece that hangs all the way down to his ass. He keeps that part in a ponytail. It's great!" Axel smiled at the memory of his brother. "I've never done a damn thing to my hair, though. Everyone thinks this is all gel and god knows what else, but I just brush it in the morning and BAM! Spikes." he grinned. Roxas chuckled, sipping his coffee.
"So this Reno guy...your brother... you don't talk?" he asked.
"How do you know that?" Axel questioned.
"Mmm...when you were mocking me last night, I believe you used the term 'estranged'." Roxas replied sweetly.
"Good game." mumbled Axel. "Yeah... Reno and I don't talk much anymore."
"And why not?" asked Roxas. Axel looked at him with the urge to glare, then took to staring at the ceiling.
"Because of what I did at his wedding a few years ago." he mumbled.
"What did you do?" asked Roxas, intrigued. A huge smile broke out on Axel's face.
"I got rip roarin' drunk, yeah? Took the biggest piss...right in the champagne glass pyramid on the main table at the reception." he giggled. Roxas choked a bit on his coffee as he started to laugh along.
"Wow. Nice goin'!" he commended Axel.
"Yeah, but that bitch wife of his doesn't want him talking to me anymore. I'm a 'bad influence'. Psychotic whore..." he mumbled, looking off to the side. Roxas nodded.
"And your sister?" he asked. Axel got quiet, looking around the room, not looking at Roxas.
"Beautiful girl. Long blond hair and a wicked personality..." came his reply. Then his face fell. "She died." he muttered. "Her best friend was drunk...she was the one driving and..." he couldn't bring himself to finish the rest.
"I'm sorry, man." Roxas said.
"It's alright." Axel waved away his apology. "What about you? You got brothers and sisters?"
"One brother. Sora." Roxas answered.
"Not much to say about him or what?" Axel inquired.
"Not really." Roxas shook his head. "He stays to himself. Has a small karate school in a stripmall a few miles from here, teaches sword handling on the side."
"Fascinating." Axel murmured.
"Yeah. Sora the karate master and Roxas the paramedic. I dunno how the hell that happened, but it happened."
"There are worse things in life, dude." Axel chuckled. "You don't wanna know what I did for a living."
Roxas's eyebrows shot up as ideas ran through his head. Some of them on the more risqué side. Axel did have the body to be a male stripper...
"And what might that be?" he asked, sipping his coffee to hide his red cheeks, though Axel wasn't really looking.
"Dude, you've been inside my apartment, you won't believe me." Axel said.
"Try me." Roxas dared him.
"I worked for a bank." Axel sighed. "In the mortgage department, as a loan processor."
"I'm so sorry." Roxas cringed. "After the economy slid, man...the housing market..."
"Yeah... 'tanked' is an understatement." Axel said grudgingly. "I got laid off. Not enough loans, too many processors. They shut down whole branches. I tried my luck at being a convenience store clerk around the corner from my place but after the third time I was robbed at gunpoint, I decided a change in scenery was in order." he groaned, stretching carefully so not to disturb the IV still feeding painkiller and saline into his veins.
"And then?" Roxas asked, taking another sip.
"And then..." Axel chuckled. "I became a waiter at a male strip club." he beamed. Roxas choked on his coffee. "I knew it!" he thought.
"It wasn't for long, though." Axel mumbled.
"So all of this and then what...you just decided you were better off dead?" Roxas asked.
"Oh there was more to it than that, mi amigo." Axel corrected him.
"Such as?" asked the EMT.
"Well let's see... I had to sell all my furniture so I could eat, my cat ran away, I had no phone, no cable and no running water, I had no job. My rent was three months late and so was the bitch that claimed her bastard child was mine even though I'd given up women months before she even became pregnant..." Axel rambled.
"'Given up women'?" Roxas asked.
"Yeah. Given up women. Where was I? Ah yes...my family refused to help me, my mother found out I was bi and lord was that the straw that broke that camel's back..." continued Axel.
"Woah woah woah... you're bi?" Roxas asked, incredulously. Axel stared at him.
"Uh...yeah. Bi. Bisexual? I swing both ways, I like women, I like men...need any more clarification?" Axel asked. Roxas shook his head.
"Moving on...my car was being repossessed, I owed payroll advance companies thousands of dollars, my apartment kept getting broken into, work was scarce...it just wasn't a pretty sight." sighed Axel. Roxas stared at him, his blue eyes large.
"Wow." he croaked.
"Yeah." breathed Axel. "What about you? You're an EMT. Any traumatizing tales?" he asked.
"Uh... just the usual. Bloody car crashes and meth houses." Roxas mumbled. He sat for a moment, staring at the young man in front of him, and a spark lit his eyes. "You smoke, right?" he asked. Axel looked up at him from the bed.
"Like a fuckin' chimney, why?" he asked.
"Let's go have us a smoke, then." Roxas beamed. Axel stared at him hopefully.
"We can do that?" he asked. Roxas nodded.
"Yeah...get your gown on and let's go."
- - - - - - - - - - - -
But alas!
This is not the end!
There's another chapter.
Even though I said it would be a one-shot.
I'm a terrible person!!
cries