Axel had always held an affinity for fire in his dried-out heart. It called to him in a profound way that nothing ever had before. Its volatile and inconsistent nature reminded him much of himself, and he liked that. It made him feel like he wasn't so alone. So for the entirety of his life fire remained his only friend and he accepted that. He and fire had a past together and had more similarities than simply their nature and inconsistency. They had similar coloring and he lost count of how many times people had told him that his hair look liked fire. People thought he dyed it, but his insanely red hair was natural. He also tended to hurt people around him if they didn't know how to handle or contain him, and he left marks when people didn't do things his way.
The redhead swore he had been born of fire and would die of fire at the end of his life. He wanted to die surrounded by the only thing that truly understood him. He had never considered that a person, another human being, something that wasn't fire, could ever understand him, or even try to. He had never considered the fact that the only being capable of ever understanding him, the only living thing, wouldn't surround him in his time of death.
At some point during his hectic, erratic life, Axel became obsessed with coffee and coffee shops. Some of his most vivid memories took place in such establishments, memories that meant nothing to everyone else, but meant the world to him. People just didn't perceive their surroundings or situations the way he did. That set him apart from the crowd the most. Anyway, Axel found himself spending a lot of time in coffee shops at some point in his life. It was the peak of his coffee craze, and he spent nearly every moment he could sitting in this horridly ugly, green lounge chair in his favorite coffee shop that he didn't know the actual name of, so he called it 'Skeet Coffee.' The name had many reasons behind it, but that isn't important.
Axel sat in the chair every time he had the opportunity to sit down and enjoy his coffee for longer than ten minutes. Mostly, it was because a fireplace lay across from it and he could feel the heat emanate from the beauteous creation. He would sit there and drink and sit and drink and sometimes he brought in his laptop like the pretentious douche people knew him as, and got his work done here. Living in an apartment, he didn't have access to a fireplace there, and he always thought better with heat flowing through him. So he did work here and dreamed here and explored the inner facets of his mind here. Never in a million years would he ever have expected to meet the one person to show genuine interest and desire to understand him here.
"Hey, jerk-off, are you done reading the classifieds yet?" a voice called to him from beyond the large newspaper covering his face.
"Huh?" Axel lowered the newspaper to look at the stranger asking very nicely for the thing. It surprised him a little when he saw that the person calling him 'jerk-off' looked no older than 17. Now, Axel had never been very traditional (obviously), but he didn't expect that a complete stranger he'd never seen before to call him such a rude name. Feeling weird about talking to an under-aged-looking kid, Axel tucked the newspaper under his arm, grabbed his coffee, and got up to walk away, intent on not giving the paper to the kid. It was his paper, after all. He'd paid $1.50 for this paper and it was his damn it.
"Hey, hey, hey! Hold up, bub!" the blond boy called after him, grabbing him by the arm.
To Axel's surprise, this kid's hand had a surprisingly hold on the redhead and it somehow hurt him. He himself had never been very insecure at the age this boy looked, but he didn't know anyone else when he'd been that age who had the balls to grab onto an intimidating stranger as easily as if they were friends. Axel took a long look at the kid, sipped from his coffee and asked disinterestedly, "What?"
"Classifieds. Gimme." The blond reached for the paper, but Axel dodged his hand. "Come on, don't be an asshat. Give me the goddamn paper!"
"Get your own, asshole," Axel snorted. Then he wrenched himself out of the blond's hold and exited the coffee shop. He travelled to his apartment a little faster than he normally would because the blond boy persisted and followed him. To his displeasure, the kid managed to follow him all the way back to his apartment.
Extremely irritated by the time they reached Axel's apartment, the redhead decided to give this kid a piece of his mind before fleeing into his house where this stupid kid wouldn't be able to follow him. Sadly, Axel's rage clouded his common sense, and he unlocked and opened the door before turning to the blond. Of course, the kid just had to take advantage of that.
Brusquely, the kid grabbed Axel roughly by the neck, got up onto the tips of his toes, and kissed the redhead full on the lips. Perhaps it was the roughness of the kiss or the fact that the blond shoved Axel into his apartment and followed along behind him, slamming the door after entering, but the contact just hurt. The boy took the coffee and newspaper out of the stunned and numb Axel's hands and set them down on the table the redhead usually placed his keys on next to the door. Then, he grabbed Axel by the wrist and roughly yanked the taller boy over to the couch laying there in the living room. He managed to push the redhead down onto the couch and climb on top before it finally registered in Axel's mind what exactly was happening.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! What the fuck do you think you're doing, kid?" Axel demanded. "Don't you know I can get in trouble for messing around with a minor? I didn't even fucking want to kiss you!" The redhead shoved the blond off of him and onto the carpeted floors. "Kids your age should be in school, anyway."
The blond scoffed. "I'm 26, thank you very much, asshole. I'm a man, so this is all cool. Now lay still and let me play with you." And the blond once again tried to climb on top of Axel, but found himself on his butt on the carpet yet again.
"That's not even the issue here! Go away, I don't want you here!" Axel barked at him. "I can call the cops, you know."
"And I can call the pizza delivery guy. Who do you think they'll believe? You fucking let me in here. And like you've probably noticed, I look pretty damn young. I could just say that you abducted me. So who would they believe? Me, the high school boy that looks like he attends church every Sunday with his God-fearing parents or you, the guy that looks like he doesn't ever use his goddamn blinkers just for the purpose of pissing everyone off?" Roxas made good points, Axel had to admit.
"Why are you even here?" Axel demanded, enraged at this point. "And you better answer quickly. I have reservations about hitting stupid kids, but I have nothing against hitting smartass adults."
The blond plopped himself onto the couch next to Axel and crossed his legs as if he owned the joint. "Just call me water. And let's just say opposites attract."
"Call you 'water'? What the fuck? What's your name kid?"
The boy rolled his eyes. "Just like I'd expect from you. Mystery isn't exactly your forte. Whatever, the name's Roxas. And I already know yours, 'Axel Nonfat Chai Latte.' And before you even ask, I'll just tell you, I've never seen you before today and when I did, I knew right away that I'm sleeping here tonight. So, oblige me. I'll compensate you. I can give good head."
"Okay, you're just fucking creepy, and no, I doubt I'll be needing your services," Axel retorted in reply. He couldn't believe the gall of this little shit. Never in his life had he met someone so irritating. But to some degree, he liked it. Just like acquired tastes. It was different, but did he honestly dislike it? Or perhaps he just had to grow used to it?
"Sweet, so I'll be staying here for free, then." Roxas smiled for the first time during this entire altercation, which knocked the wind out of Axel. Why did this kid have to be so cute at 26 years old? Not that 26 was old, but he was cute. Like, puppy cute.
Axel gave up arguing with Roxas, and when that happened, the blond told him his situation. He'd just gotten laid off after a promised raise in a new city, this city, but when he arrived, they'd already given the position to someone else. And when he went back to his hotel to gather his belongings to go, he decided to go get a cup of coffee to calm himself and relax for a moment. The story turned into a rant about how fucking stupid and unnecessarily mean it was of the company to tell him he had gotten a promotion only to make him leave home and find that he really wasn't getting the job.
Quickly, Axel found himself enraptured in the way the blond spoke. He was so eloquent and flowing with his speech that he found it difficult to understand why a company would willingly throw away such charisma. The redhead found himself getting caught up in all the little details about the boy, like how he could never look at anything for longer than five seconds and how he avoided looking at Axel's face entirely. The closest he got to looking at the redhead was when he stared at his left ear momentarily. And Roxas was so narcissistic and self-absorbed that the redhead couldn't stop listening. He'd never met anyone like the blond before. It was like Roxas extinguished his fiery personality.
Roxas stayed with Axel for about a week before returning to his hometown, which he'd never mentioned the name of. And just like that, the one person Axel thought he connected with more than any other human being on earth was gone. He tried to track Roxas, but he could never find the kid. And he went crazy in his loneliness, regarding Roxas as the one who got away in every sense of the phrase. So when he died, Roxas wasn't there. Maybe he was at the cremation service, or so Axel had hoped would happen when he died, but it pained him to think that, no, Roxas wouldn't be there. So, he died surrounded by his friend, fire. And then fire immortalized him as particles of dust and ash to float about the earth.