It was very visible to Axel, that Roxas felt uncomfortable as the bus closed its' doors to roll onto the redhead's stop. The smell of exhaust mixed sloppily in the early spring humidity, and the junior wondered how he could have gone six years without ever really talking to this boy, "So you're a sophomore?" He asked casually, trying not to smirk when his voice made the other jump.

The blond's voice was uncertain, but he painted himself up with the friendliest tone he had, "Yeah, and you're a senior, right? Or no...Junior?"

"Junior." The word seemed to puncture time and space itself sending them spiraling back into silence.

The next vain attempt at talking was Roxas' pleasure, "So…what do you like to do? Ya know, besides spy on me in the RS."

Axel snorted at the idea of himself 'spying' on the blond, and his nose was met on inhale with the scent of worn leathery plastic. 'God, I wonder how old this bus even is.' One of the timeworn graffiti marks dated back to 2031. What a junker. "Normal stuff. I play sports, read some, I like to work on computers…"

"Yeah…computers." They both seemed to be banking that the other knew what they meant. The pressure to not question one another immediately was beginning to weigh heavily.

'I want to know what he knows about AI. Does he program?' Axel bit his lip, "Do you-?"

Roxas shook his head, "Just wait. I think we've both already said too much." They regressed back into their awkward shells of safety. From there, the taller male felt free to analyze his new found companion. Roxas really was everything that people cracked him up to be. His hair was a soft blond with strips of dandelion brilliance. His complexion was smooth and fair as if he had never exerted himself a day in his life. His very essence exhorted something up inside of Axel to improve himself. The only flaw, if it could even be called that, was the dusting of freckles upon the young man's nose, but even that seemed to be stars in the Milky Way that was Roxas' appearance. Slender, Axel noted as well, but not sickly thin like the redhead would have anticipated him to be, 'He's just…so human.' The American Boy of the decades past. 'I wonder what he would look like wearing retro clothes…'

The examination became feelings of comparison rather quickly. Axel was Christmas with his candy cane red hair and white, white skin. His eyes were the greens of summer in their entire vibrant evanescent multitude. Freckles, similar to the blond's, dotted his body like cities on a map. He had used to play connect the dots on his arms when he was bored in class, but gone were those days. 'Everything was so much simpler when I was a kid.' He bit his lip at that lie, 'Maybe it wasn't…' There were those days, those long, long days where he thought he wouldn't make it. "Sometimes people get sick." How those words burned like acid to a child who was bewildered by every sight and sound. There was nothing more fragile than a smile at a funeral. Nothing as piercing as the blare of a siren. Nothing as strong as the dropping of a pall to represent finality.

"Your father has passed away, son." The irony in those words was not lost on him even to this day. He supposed that the other man hadn't even realized what 'son' meant to him. 'At least I still have mom.'

When someone dies, a part of you dies with them. A connection cut with sharpened metallic scissors. A one way conversation made permanent. Axel's mother hadn't healed, but she had broken the habit of flinching at her husband's name anymore, and she had learned to laugh again. A gifted man is what the young boy's father was called most often at the funeral. It seemed most of the adults there weren't present to mourn the man, but his ideas by the way they talked of him. They handled his mother like she was a child. Telling her time would heal all wounds and that everything would be okay. "So many projects left unfinished." Hidden words. Whispers in the crowd told him that his dad was important to the company. "We value every Moshiva employee, and we're sorry for your loss."

Axel was not ignorant. He knew his dad had been sick. People still treated him like a fool.

The young boy had been oblivious. He hadn't realized the absolute finite way death had about it.

The teen wasn't stupid. He knew what letting go was.

Axel wasn't an AI. He still missed the man who bought him his first book on computers, let him play around his office, and had taught him how to throw a baseball.

Humans were such perfect hypocrites. You were told to let go by society, but every single last one of them clung to something. They needed it. Human's needed definition and connections to show that they were real just as much as they needed air. It made his age group's existential crisis twice as hard. It felt like they were impostors on the planet. Extras. No connections to be made due to all of them having been consumed by AI.

There was a soft hiss as the airbrakes were engaged, the doors swinging open. Axel stood regally at his awkward height. He loomed over the blond like a guardian angel. Something about the smaller boy made Axel want to protect him. 'Why? I don't have a fixer-upper complex.' Biting the inside of his cheek, he realized that this was possibly the biggest lie he had ever told himself. Doctors and computer geeks were the same to some extent. They both handled physical and mental parts of one creation. Sometimes it was the hardware, the bones, the muscles, the motherboard, the processor. Sometimes it was the brain, the software. All those connections and inputs had to line up perfectly to make something light up with electricity. Beautiful in its simplicity and complexity.

Just like Roxas.

Their steps hit the asphalt like the ocean crashing against the shoreline. Kissing it shortly before being taken away only to smack against it once more. As the bus moved on to its' next destination, Roxas' voice melted Axel's apathetic exterior like the first rays of sun on winter's snow, "What you're going to show me…it's legal…right?" His voice held all the innocence of a child, but beneath the surface, Axel could tell that the blond was a viper lying in wait to use his fangs.

A long breath of thoughtfulness came from Axel's side, "Even if it wasn't, would that stop you?"

Roxas looked up the hill to the streets beyond where his house sat in all its' safety. He stared back at Axel looking the other over as if this was his last chance to renege on the decision, "No."

An inward sigh of relief. "Then come on. I have something really cool to show you."

He'd been dying to let someone know for ten tiring years.


Boom. Chapter 2 done. Thanks Layla for Beta~ Review~