They pulled up to a squat house painted periwinkle blue. The yard was overgrown with weeds poking out in large patches. A little fence surrounded the yard, maybe three feet tall. Presumably, it used to be white, but in its current state the color was sandy brown with darker splotches of dirt. Roxas stared at his house with a mix of anxiety and disgust. His heart was doing backflips.

"Are you okay?" Axel inquired, tilting his head just slightly toward the blond. "I can go with you if you want."

Roxas considered this, but ultimately decided against it. He would deal with his own problems. He just hoped that it wouldn't kill him.

He stepped up onto the porch, and no sooner than doing so did his mom step out for a cigarette. He regarded her with a nod before slipping into the house. "Roxas!" He heard, "Who is this man parked in front of our house? Are you going somewhere?" He ignored her in favor of grabbing his stuff and getting the fuck out of there.

Roxas' room was unimpressive, if one was being nice, and a shithole, if someone was being honest. It was barely large enough to fit his bed, desk, and dresser, and the walls seemed to be imploding. The color was some offshoot of oatmeal that looked more like baby-shit brown. Roxas had tried to remedy some of this hideousness of his room by tacking up posters, but he wasn't really fooling anyone.

The desk that hugged the wall next to his bed was one he found himself, sitting on the corner of some street a few blocks down. It was in all sorts of disrepair, but it still stood and its surface was smooth enough to write on, so he had Hayner help him take it to his house. When Roxas compared it to the clean, modern style of Axel's home, his gut twisted. What he had was a lot worse than he had let himself believe.

He rummaged through his dresser first, stuffing clothes into an old backpack he found stuffed in the back of one of the drawers. His methods were far from strategic- he didn't think about what he would need for school or special occasions or, when it came to it, work. He just stuffed clothes into his backpack and was done with it. He turned to his desk and grabbed his laptop- the only thing he had ever broken down and spent more than ten dollars on. In fact, it spent quite a bit more and had, since that point, refused to spend a similar sum on anything.

He looked at his bed. It was a tiny thing- his twin-sized mattress was more along the lines of vertically-challenged-single-child-sized. The sheets were orangish and his comforter was greenish and his pillowcase was an awful drool-stained yellow-gray. He ignored them, though, and instead picked the mattress up to reveal a small collection of sketchbooks and binders stuffed with doodles and writing and serious drawings. He threw them all into his messenger bag and replaced the mattress. One last cursory glance around the room told him he was done, and so he made a motion to leave.

"Roxas?" His mother's voice stopped him in his tracks. She stood in his doorway, all tangled blond locks and drunk blue eyes. "Where the hell do you think you're going?" He didn't have to smell the alcohol on her breath or see her eyes or hear her voice to know she was inebriated.

"Just to a friend's house, mum." He replied, as cautiously as he could manage. It wasn't his intention to rile her up. He just wanted to get out.

She looked at his bags- there were three of them in total, two of which Roxas had managed to find buried under things in his room- and made a sound in her throat. It said, 'I'm not buying it' but it took her a long time to put her disbelief into actual words. It was assumed that she was far too drunk to have any idea what she was talking about. It didn't stop her from being angry, though.

"Roxas," She started, but this time it sounded more like "rocksish", "I'm getting real tired of you thinking that you can just roam about the streets without asking me about it first. You're such a disrespectful little shit, you know that?"

Roxas didn't respond right away, because he could feel anger prickling in his stomach. Anger and fear. They swelled and receded, swelled and receded, until he could manage an impeccably controlled response, "I know, mum. I'm just going to be gone for a bit. I promise I'll be back by the middle of the week."

She paused to consider this.

But like every other time he tried to reason with her, in her drunken state, she wasn't going to let him get away with it. She grabbed his arm, twisting and digging her nails into soft skin. He winced, but suppressed the scream that threatened to rip out of his lungs. She got really close to his face- so close he could smell the mint vodka she had been drinking before he got there- and growled, "You're a liar. Just like your father. A lying bastard, you are."

Now, Roxas was furious. He was nothing like his father. And whether or not his mother was drunk, she stepped over the line. He spat, "I'd rather be a liar than a dead-beat whore. I'd rather be a liar than let my kid face the world alone. I'd rather be a liar than anything you are."

Fingernails dug deeper into his flesh. She twisted his arm again. She slapped him right in the face, making sure her nails got a word in, too. "I'm so sick of you, Roxas!"

"Good." He said, trying to keep the tears that were welling in his eyes from falling. "Because I'm outta here. Good luck, bitch." He tore from her grip, grabbed his stuff, and stormed out of the house. It took one look at Axel to fall apart, but when he got into the car, the redhead didn't say anything. Instead, he placed a hand on Roxas' shoulder and it stayed there until they pulled up to Axel's house.

"Do you want to talk about it?" He asked.

To which Roxas responded, "I'd rather die than talk about that bitch ever again."
-

It was as Roxas settled into the guest room of 358 Heart Circle that Axel realized the weight of things. Not only was he allowing a student to stay in his home, but he was allowing a student who he may have had more than a little liking towards stay in his home. Piled on top of that was the fact that the student was going through some pretty rough times with family and was forced to juggle school and friendships and, now, living with his teacher. Axel had, in his day, juggled his own problems, so he had an inkling about the stress levels Roxas was enduring. But he wasn't sure he could be any more helpful than giving the boy a room to stay.

He pushed a mug across the kitchen table for a while, watching the ripples of coffee hit the edges of the warm ceramic. He wasn't at all sure if he should go help Roxas settle, or leave him to his business, or what to do at all. Pushing the mug around had been, for some time now, the only thing he had resolved to do. It wasn't until he heart a little crash that Axel got up to check on Roxas.

He leaned against the door frame, coffee in hand, glasses at the edge of his nose. "How you doing, kiddo?" He asked, though he could tell by the mess of things on the floor that there may have been a bit of a complication. "Need some help?"

Roxas politely declined, scraping up the sketchbooks and notebooks that littered the floor. "Just dropped these by accident. I should be okay."

Axel considered asking to look at one of the sketchbooks, but decided instead to let Roxas finish up.

"Just yell if you need me, then."

Roxas smiled, and just before Axel made it down the hall, he yelled, "Axel?"

The redhead came rushing back in mock panic.

"What is it?" Mock breathlessness.

"Thank you."