What was important was that they were happy. Past the way the water was forever running out of heat, past the way the bed still smelled faintly of blood and the sidewalk they pulled it from, arguing with Salvation Army for their prize on the corner of 86th and—"We're fucking needy!"—past the candlelight and hunger pains, they were happy. So maybe Axel got paid in chump change, piercing various appendages of preteens shitting their parents' money while enduring the exhaustive sterile precautions and ambient techno bullshit the girl at the counter liked to filter over the PA. Maybe Roxas felt like screaming at the deli customers insisting he got their orders wrong—"Pastrami on rye my ass!"—asking for extra pickles while he ran a slicer and stirred macaroni and answered the phone like he had two heads and eight hands, all the while trying to justify killing his soul for money he could make in an hour, tops, on the street. Nobody said it would be easy, skipping town at nineteen and sixteen with starry, starry eyes. They did what they had to. To eat, to live. Prying loose plywood and making due in that house for a full month before they both found jobs and saved enough to get a place, stuffing themselves into closets when realtors came. To eat, to live. Because when Axel brought Roxas a half eaten package of bratwurst retrieved from a park trash can just off of Broadway, Roxas crying before picking the ants off and devouring the greasy, slightly spoiled food, it hurt too fucking much. What was important was that now, three years after their exodus, they were happy.

Right?

Axel wandered in around eleven, undressing right in the entry way to their tiny studio. Six hundred a month, no utilities, no pets—Axel looking at Roxas concernedly, "Think they'll let me keep you?"—as if two people shitting where they sleep wasn't enough. Roxas was on the bed, hands folded across his stomach.

"Pierced a clit today. Fun stuff," Axel said, reaching into their flickering fridge and pulling out a package of baloney and peeling off a slice, rolling it neatly and demolishing three before he brought over a rolled piece to Roxas. "You okay?"

"Yep." In this case, "yep" meant that Roxas called in sick at the deli and stood around on corners all day. Suck four dicks at fifty a pop, and you almost have your share of the month's rent in an hour. Do it for three hours, and you have his share, too. Trading in killing your soul with meat and cheese for killing your soul with meat and come, except one pays a hell of a lot better. Which do you choose? To eat, to live. He's always so hungry, and they never buy anything they don't need. You don't need bread, just the meat. You don't need to make a salad to eat some lettuce. Meat, cheese, vegetables, fruit, and sometimes, when the blues of Roxas' eyes got darker, Axel bought cereal they'd eat with their hands. They didn't own bowls. They never bought milk. Roxas didn't like to watch Axel eat because it hurt. It hadn't always hurt.

"I think we need cereal." Axel crawled on the bed, hands and arms finding ports against Roxas' body; ships, seas, and shores. Axel was older now, twenty-two on paper, but it wasn't hard to remember fucking in the bathroom, Roxas biting through the pads of his fingers, when he was nineteen and sneaking in through the fence out past the farthest backstop. They were bad, bad boys.

"Yes, please," Roxas said. Because Axel could never know he was tricking again. Because he did this for them, and he never let anyone touch him, laying out simple rules: my mouth, your cock; you touch, I'm out. Wrapping a leg around Axel, hand running up to tangle in strands of hair, he tried to forget laying just like this, out of their minds on H. Laying like this at the twenty yard line at three in the morning, come pooling out of his ass because Axel dropped the condom on the wet grass. Laying like this in his bed, right before it had all gone to hell. "Love you," Roxas murmured, eyes drifting shut. In the morning, there would be cereal. And soon, milk. Soon, bread. He'd add money to the box, every day just a little. Later, new clothes. Later, a car. A house. A ring.

Axel sighed, stillness sneaking into his limbs as he relaxed against the boy in his arms. His hands smelled like disinfectant, his stomach gnawed at his insides, but how could he be anything but perfect? He had his Roxas, his little bad boy in black grinding on the bottom row of the bleachers. Better a meal of herbs. Because what was important was that they were happy.

Right?