rr: happy birthday! this is the cross-dressing, alcoholic!father, boys-in-love story you (might of) asked for. a few minor corrections from the version i sent you, but nothing worth a re-read.

michele-bell is my speedy, gorgeous, talented beta; she writes like nobody's business.

brightviking: um. wow, thank you for helping me correct this! you should get a medal, or a reward, or a hug. you deserve all three.

- Epilogue, Part 1 -

What's really funny is the fact that everyone saw it coming from a million miles away. Nobody blinked when the news flashed on TV for a couple seconds, squeezed in between the presidential election and a special report on some pretty girl star for the summer Olympics. Nobody scrabbled to find the remote to turn the volume up or cared enough to say, Oh, hey, I knew that kid.

Only one boy didn't show up to school the next day. And everyone kind of expected that too.

- Dispatch to the Sea Floor -

This is how it starts:

Roxas is stuck in the backseat of somebody's parent's car with a blond girl he barely knows, his pants half down and tangled around his knees, and he'd like to tell people that this is totally normal for him, but anyone with half a brain can see that he has no idea what he's doing with his hands and is there even a proper way to grope somebody?

The girl, now that he has a closer look at her, is not actually a blond. Her roots are red and when she leans down and giggles, sending a waft of alcohol-scented breath into his face, he catches the smell of a bad hair dye. She doesn't look nervous at all under the slivers of orange streetlights shining through the car window, and maybe that's why he took her up on her offer an hour ago. Her curves are soft, her lips taste like cherry bubblegum, and she's the first girl to meet his gaze and not glance away a second later like he's part of the wallpaper.

"Hey," she whispers, stilling against him, and he wonders briefly how he could mess up when he's just lying there, but maybe that's actually part of the problem. "Relax, okay? I've done this before. Don't worry about it."

"Okay," he says, and then, "Yeah, I – yeah." His hands slide down the cool skin of her back gingerly and hit a bump of fabric - her bra strap, he realizes a few seconds later. Shit. How did those work again?

"That's it," she pants. Her hair is falling into her face and tickling his nose, making him bite his lip to stop sneezing. "Just unhook it. There's, like, two hooks on the back."

Oh.

He fumbles and tugs uselessly and considers chewing it off because her bra seems hell bent on preserving this girl's virtue but somehow he gets it undone and the next thing he remembers is lying flat on his back with the bra dangling in his hand like a trophy and her body curled on top of his, warm and moving with confidence (thank god one of them knows what's going on). He glances at the delicate lacy trim of the bra, the tiny white rosettes dotting the edge of the cup, and his mind blanks for a second before rebooting with the half-formed thought of, Holy crap. This is-

It's strange.

The night is reduced to a blur of sharp limbs and huffed laughter and finally, finally getting off with her hand down his pants like he's thirteen and alone in bed. It's kind of funny in a mortifying way, so they both share a grin afterwards. They spend the night talking about stupid things like summer movies and old television shows and when the sun rises and stains the sky gold, he feels a little relieved. Against all odds he has manged to make it through the night.

(He also feels a little empty, but he's not sure why so he pushes the thought away quickly.)

She kisses his nose and slips out of the car after a few quiet moments of breathing and sitting around and doing nothing. The words stopped flowing an hour ago, and he's a little relieved that he doesn't have to be the one to mutter an excuse and back out first. He watches her walk down the street with her back straight and her heels clicking on the pavement, not turning around to glance back once, and he realizes that he doesn't know her name. Then he realizes that the car doesn't belong to him either so he gets out quickly and hopes Axel remembers to pick him up like he promised.

Axel arrives a little after nine and laughs at his wild morning hair and lip stick smeared shirt. He can't help but flush when he realizes how he must look, but it's so far from reality it's kind of unbearably pathetic so he just jumps into the passenger seat and tries not to punch Axel every time he shoots him a knowing smile that makes his eyes hurt.

"Did you have a nice time?" Axel asks eventually, grinning hard, and Roxas rolls his eyes and thinks about the way her hair fell into her face when she concentrated and how she didn't say anything even though they got nowhere near taking off her underwear and only got one hand down his.

"Yeah," he says, a little surprised that it's true. "I guess I did."

"Huh. That's pretty awesome." Axel flashes him one more bright smile before flipping on a radio station and fidgeting with the dial until they get some crackling AC/DC mixed in with the background hum of the engine. Roxas scowls at his choice of music and makes a pointedly obvious gesture to turn the volume down, but Axel just grins and lets his fingers tap the steering wheels absently in time with the beat, belting out the lyrics obnoxiously loud like he doesn't care who hears him murder 'Back in Black'.

It feels completely normal: Axel singing slightly off-key to his left, the buildings flying by like drab blocks stacked against each other, the bumpy road with its familiar potholes and misaligned cracks that guide the stuttering car towards the horizon.

He falls asleep leaning against the window, his breath clouding the shatterproof glass.

x

Twelve o' clock sneaks up on him like an invisible, lumbering monster, breathing heavily and cursing with every other dragging step as it waits in front of his bedroom door and tries desperately to get in.

"Fucking ungrateful shit. Open the goddamn door!" A heavy thump, the sound of meaty flesh striking wood, and the door miraculously holds up against the terror outside.

"Go away!" Roxas calls out, his voice sounding too thin and too stretched in the dark room. "Don't let him come in," he whispers into his pillow, pulse racing and skittering and pumping adrenaline through his veins. "Please."

"Little fucker!" The frame shudders and he knows the lock won't last long now. He replaced it a week ago and he can already see the wood splintering around the areas where the rusty screws are drilled in. It's like the story with the Big Bad Wolf, only there's no brick walls to stop it from reaching him so he's fucked.

"Please," he hisses again, just as the door crashes down and he starts in fear. His vision is flooded by the silhouette of a large man back lit by the harsh hall light. The figure is advancing towards him slowly, like time is stretching out to make this moment last forever.

"Dad, I - " he begins to say, but the rest of the sentence is cut off when his father throws a clumsy punch that knocks him flat onto the floor. He's bleeding out of the corner of his mouth, he thinks dumbly, lifting up a hand to touch the cut. Shit. His body curls up instinctively and he bites down a yell when he feels himself being dragged up by the roots of his hair, his eyes tearing up without his permission, and fuck it, his dad's supposed to be sober tonight. It's a weeknight. It's a fucking Wednesday.

"Not so smart now, huh? Not too good for your old man now." A heavy waft of stale breath and alcohol makes his stomach churn and he turns away, his fingers scrabbling with the thick-veined hands twisted into the front of his shirt.

"Fuck you," he gasps out. It's impossible to win, he knows that, but it doesn't stop him from acting like a little bitch and trying anyways. He lashes out and misses, lands on his ass with a loud thump. His dad lets go and starts to rant about money and work and ungrateful little shits, and it's right then that realization hits him like a slap to the face.

"You got fired again, didn't you?" he says, his voice cracking horribly in the middle of the question. The look his father gives him makes him certain it's true.

He can't help the strangled cry from slipping out when a heavy boot collides into his ribs. Nothing matters but blacking out as fast as he can, anything to get away because he's always been a coward at heart and his father knows it, everyone knows it, it's like he has it painted on his face and only Axel still thinks it's a lie. Axel can be kind of stupid like that.

"Goddamn, fucking, punk -"

He hears the floorboards squeak run but he's too tired to get up now. He shuts his eyes and waits.

x

Axel's face turns bone white when Roxas shows up at his front door the next morning, skittish and sort of bleeding in a few places. He feels bad about making Axel worry so he starts to walk away but Axel stops him with a firm hand on his shoulder.

"What the fuck-" Axel begins, his green eyes sparking with anger, and Roxas swallows hard. He tastes coppery blood sliding down the back of his throat and almost throws up, but he fights the reflex down and stares at the ground instead. The concrete is cracked and sprouting a few ugly weeds. He nudges one with his foot.

"Sorry, I'll go," he mumbles a few seconds later, tugging his arm away. Axel won't let him leave and tightens his grip until it's almost painful. He focuses on the bite of Axel's fingers digging through the thin layer of his sweatshirt and tries not to shiver.

"What happened?" Axel asks. He looks strained and a little desperate, like he's scrabbling in his head to find an explanation that will help him make sense of this fucked up situation. And if it'll help him feel better, Roxas is willing to talk all day.

"My dad got fired," he says, and then feels stupid when Axel looks even more furious. He wishes he knew when to tell the truth and when to lie his ass off. Usually he hedges his bets with the latter, but with Axel the rules are all different. "After I found out about it, I wanted to get out of the house so I took the bus downtown and I sort of wandered around for a while. And, yeah, I know, it was pretty stupid to do that at night, but I was pissed off. I thought he could actually keep this job for once, you know?"

Axel doesn't say anything, but his shoulders relax slightly, and Roxas knows he's getting over the initial shock and anger stage (it's always there and it's always surprising, like, shouldn't Axel be used to this by now?) and sliding into weary acceptance. The lies keep on spilling out of Roxas's mouth because it's the only thing he has going for him and he thinks he might break down under the silence if nobody's talking.

"So there was this guy," he continues. "I sort of ran into him and he got really pissed and started yelling and some of his friends came out of the bar to watch and -" In some distant part of his mind, he wonders how this story is any better than what really happened, and he thinks that maybe he doesn't know how to lie to Axel, which is stupid because he's had teachers eating out of his hand before and his best friend shouldn't be any different.

"And then, uh. I don't know." He pauses lamely. "He sort of...threw a punch and then I tripped over something. It's really not as bad as it looks."

Axel sighs and drags a hand through his hair, and Roxas feels like shit for dragging Axel into this mess when a trip down to the local drugstore would have gotten him pretty much the same thing: a few painkillers. Some bandages. A glare from the clerk behind the cash register.

"I'll leave," he says decisively, hiding his reluctance under a mask. Axel looks at him like he's crazy or stupid or maybe a lot of both.

"Shut up. You're not leaving. And before you try to make it your future career or something, I need to tell you that your story really sucks. And so does your acting. Hate to break it to you, Rox."

Roxas rolls his eyes and feels a knot in his chest loosen a little. "Yeah, well, there goes that idea," he says. His lips twitch into a half-smile before he realizes it's there and then Axel is tugging him off of the porch and into the house and he almost lets out a sigh of relief because he's safe now. He's with Axel.

x

"I like your elbows. They're bony." Axel chokes on a giggle as he struggles to stand up from the sagging couch. He falls down a second later and it's really not that funny but Roxas is cracking up and laughing so hard his stomach starts to burn with every inhalation.

Getting high makes everything better, he decides fuzzily.

Sora and Tidus came by a few hours ago and left behind a bag of weed in one of their backpacks, which Axel took as an open invitation to help himself. If they were stupid enough to forget it, then they deserve not getting it back (or, at least, that was the explanation Axel gave Roxas after he came out of the bathroom and found Axel sprawled out on the sofa and lighting up with a huge smile on his face like Christmas and his birthday came extra early this year).

Axel's little sister left her Barbies scattered around the living room floor in various states of undress, and Axel picks one up and positions its arms into the universal sign for jacking off. Roxas snorts and says, "That's not funny, Axel."

"No, it's fucking hilarious." Axel grins and tosses the doll into a corner where it lands behind a fake potted plant with half of its leaves missing. The ones that are still attached are drooping and covered in dust, and that plant would be really fucking depressing to look at if everything wasn't so shiny and bright right now, Roxas decides, breathing smoke.

"She'll find it sooner or later," Axel mutters. He doesn't sound too concerned. He tilts his head back and exposes the clean line of his throat and Roxas's mouth goes dry for a reason that has nothing to do with the joint burning in his hand.

"Whoa, hey, look, there's a snake on the ceiling!" Axel points up and Roxas cranes his head to see a couple cracks in the plaster. He studies one of the cracks critically and after a few seconds shakes his head.

"It's more like a worm," he says, slowly measuring each word. It's important for him to convince Axel of this, only he can't remember why. "Worms are in a totally different class than snakes. Because they're so freaking lame."

"Whatever." Axel waves his hand like he's dismissing the thought, like he's a queen and the rest of the world is his loyal subjects, and Roxas starts thinking about Alice in Wonderland because the queen of hearts was made of awesome and he fucking loved that book.

"Off with their heads," Roxas says loudly, ignoring Axel's laughter and his "fuck, you're so high right now."

"Not mine?" Axel asks a few beats later, pitching his voice high and girly and batting his eyelashes in a way that should be annoying but ends up looking totally hot as fuck.

Roxas squints and climbs onto the couch, positioning himself on Axel's lap with a lazy smile. "Not yours," he agrees, focusing on the way Axel's bony shoulders tense up when he presses his hands onto them, lowering himself down so they're face to face. "Never yours," he whispers, and he can feel Axel's breath on his nose and cheeks, brushing against his skin lightly, feather touches of stale hot air.

"I think I might love you," Axel confesses suddenly. His green eyes are dark and speckled with flecks of gold. The sight makes something in Roxas's chest clench.

Roxas pauses and thinks about the words as much as his molasses-slow brain can handle. He wonders if their fantastic and magical bonds of never-ending friendship can handle a break up, and if it would even be worth it for something he could probably accomplish with his own left hand.

Axel squirms underneath him and he decides, fuck thinking.

"Get rid of the 'might' and you have a deal." He plants his lips square onto Axel's and grins into the sloppy kiss.

x

Rewind a few years to seventh grade, when Roxas was still that small, scared shitless kid that always sat in the back of the classroom and never looked up when the teacher asked a question or forced people to "share their thoughts", like their thoughts were actually worth sharing. And Roxas was sort of a freak before that too, but seventh grade is when it really started.

And it's stupid. The boys at school, they think watching a guy get kicked in the balls is freaking hilarious, so it's not like they're setting the bar for classy humour very high. A bunch of them had this running joke going on about how girly Roxas always looked, with his big blue eyes and skinny hairless legs and, don't forget, the hair. Hey, do you use strawberry conditioner? is one question he got sick of hearing way before the first week of school ended.

Then Axel transferred in.

Axel, with the weird markings under his eyes and his endless supply of energy, like he's the Energizer bunny pumped up on steroids. He can't help but attract everyone's eyes whenever he enters a room and half the time he doesn't even notice it, he's either that oblivious or really full of himself, only it doesn't seem to matter because people love him either way. He's the type of guy Roxas thinks he hates, if only because he pretty much hates everyone at this point.

How they actually meet goes something like this:

Axel walks into the cafeteria one day and looks around and sees Roxas sitting alone at an empty table, and (Roxas is still not sure why he did it) sits down across from him with this huge grin on his face.

"Hey," he says. "I'm Axel."

"You're about to commit social suicide," Roxas tells him, mostly because it's true and he can be an anti-social bitch when he wants to be left alone. Some girls are outright staring at the two of them, probably wondering why the new kid is messing around with the freak and thinking it's either hilarious or mean or really cool.

"So?" Axel smiles and rubs his arms absently. "I saw you sitting here at the cleanest table in the room, so I thought I'd join you. Hey, you can totally leave if you want."

Roxas narrows his eyes and tries not to punch the grinning face in front of him because the last part sort of sounds like a threat and he was here first, only Axel could probably take him on in a fight if it came down to it. So he switches tactics quickly. "You're telling me that you didn't hear any of the rumours about me?" He knows how to use sarcasm and barbed words better than most kids know how to fake a smile, and there's really no reason they'll fail him now.

No reason, he tells himself, even as Axel shrugs and leans forward a little. "Your home life sucks. You're a junkie. You like to whore yourself out to fat men in business suits late at night on Hot Street."

"Uh."

"Your mom killed herself. Your mom ran away. Your mom's secretly an alien trying to get home and you're her demon spawn infiltrating our public school system while she plans out how to mind control the president and take over the country -"

"Okay, stop." Roxas sifts quickly though Axel's words and comes up confused. "That's what you heard about me?"

"Yeah, pretty much. There were a few more, but I forget what they're about. And hey, are you really going to blow up the school before graduation?"

Roxas smiles a little.

"Hi. I'm Roxas."

Axel grins like a cat and it's sort of sweet.

"Yeah, I know."

x

Skip ahead a few weeks to this one day in seventh grade that nobody remembers but him. He's actually getting kind of used to being invisible, nobody's said anything stupid to him since the day Axel more or less pulled him up from the bottom of the food chain and gave him the title of "Axel's freaky friend".

In PE, he opens his locker and finds a blue plaid skirt lying innocently on top of his gym clothes. There's a price tag still attached to it so whoever put it there is a total freaking idiot and wasted twenty four dollars on a really lame prank. The combinations don't change from year to year so it won't be too hard to find out who had it before him, and he must have zoned out for a few seconds because Axel is peeking into his locker and saying, "What, did somebody stuff a free porno mag in there or something? Oh, hey. Sweet! A skirt." Axel pulls it out and continues talking, and Roxas wonders if he even thinks about what he's saying before he lets it all spill out like chunks of colorful vomit. "Nice color. Why do you have a skirt in your locker? And, hey, why haven't I seen this before?"

Some boys snicker at Axel, who is brandishing the skirt in front of him like a dance partner. He's even humming some horrible 80's metal song and Roxas snatches it out of his hands and crams it underneath his clothes.

"It's a joke," he explains blandly. He tucks a corner of his sweatshirt down so he can't see the skirt at all. "It's really stupid. I'm, like, supposed to be a girl or something. Whatever."

"Oh." Axel blinks. He chews on his lip and after a while says, "Hey. Let's switch lockers."

Despite his protests ("Seriously, it's no big deal, Axel. My self esteem isn't that freaking low - ") Axel kind of forcefully takes over his locker and he gets a newer one located near the end of the hall, one that nobody knows the combination to because it's the first year people are using it.

Then they go outside and their class kicks the shit out of each other while the teacher stands by the side line and screams, "You're supposed to be playing football! Touch football!" Roxas hides out at the end zone and flicks bits of astroturf at Axel while Axel explains to a group of giggling girls the proper way to throw a pass even though he really doesn't know how to do it himself. The girls don't seem to mind, though, and it's kind of weird how they'll let some guys get away with doing dumb things when they'd probably laugh themselves sick at the sight of Pence fumbling with the ball. Roxas tries not to think about it because it's too unfair and there's nothing he can do to change it.

After the PE period is over, he searches through the bundle of clothes he grabbed out of his old locker and realizes he still has the blue skirt tucked between his T-shirt and pants, slightly crumpled but still clean and relatively new. He holds it up and studies it critically for a while, wondering how dumb someone would have to be to venture into the girl's section of the department store just to buy this.

Axel pokes his head around a block of lockers and looks at the skirt too. "I still think it would look hot on you," he says, not smiling for once, and Roxas flushes and stuffs it into his backpack where it stays for the rest of the day until he gets home and finds it while he's looking for his math notebook.

When Axel asks the next day about the skirt, he lies and says he threw it away because that's what any normal guy would have done. But it's actually still in his closet somewhere, buried beneath a pile of old sweaters and shirts, waiting to be taken out and worn and admired.

So. He's a freak. And seventh grade is pretty much where it started.

x

Back to the here and now, he wakes up with his head on Axel's lap and Axel's hand tangled up in his hair and he stops breathing for a moment when Axel tilts his head a fraction to the right and lets out a soft sleepy sigh, eyes still closed.

Oh, Roxas thinks. And the feeling isn't new; it's surprisingly familiar, like an old baseball glove or the first few passages of his favorite book. He wonders why he never noticed it before. He wonders why it took a bag of weed for him to realize that Axel is beautiful.

Axel mumbles something in his sleep about burnt toast and Roxas smiles. He falls back asleep with one hand on Axel's bony knee.

x

Roxas isn't sure what he expected to happen, but Axel doesn't act that differently after the kiss.

He's still loud and bright and smart in ways nobody expects him to be, only sometimes his touches linger a little too long when he throws his arm around Roxas's shoulders, or Roxas will catch him watching his face in the middle of a movie instead of looking up at the big screen with all of the explosions.

It makes his skin itch in a way he's not sure is good or bad. A week later, he gets sick of trying to make up his mind and corners Axel after school by the rusty chain linked fence near the parking lot. Axel stands there with his shoulders hunched against the wind and his hands in his pockets, bleeding nonchalance and looking hot enough to kiss with his hair swept into his face messily and

Roxas is totally screwed.

"Are we-" he begins, and then stops himself because he is hit with the millions of ways he can finish that sentence and it doesn't even begin to cover the turmoil that is twisting up his head: Pretending it didn't happen? Hoping it'll happen again? Trying to forget it?

"-good?" he finishes eventually.

"Yeah, of course." Axel grins, his teeth flashing perfect and white. "Why? Did you think we weren't?"

I kissed you. The words are throwing themselves against the back of his teeth and he wonders if he should just let them out. He imagines Axel's reaction and swallows hard.

"Nah, it's nothing. I'm just...it's stupid." And, yes, he thinks. He's still a coward when it counts.

Axel looks at him with a strange expression on his face, like he's trying to figure him out, and it's weird because it's usually the other way around. Roxas fidgets and tries not to break the gaze.

"Okay," Axel says after a while. "What did we come here to talk about again?"

Roxas shrugs. He lets his worry slide away, packs it into a corner of his mind for another day, when he has more time to pick at it and try to untangle the knots with no one watching. "I forget," he says. He looks up at the gray sky and pretends to see something hiding behind the clouds. "Hey, Axel, want to go see a movie tonight?"

x

His dad got another job as a janitor at some big office in the nicer side of town and things settle down into an easy to handle routine. He's grateful. He doesn't need to worry most nights since his dad is usually too tired to do anything after work but sleep, and his bruises have time to fade and the cuts heal into thin white lines on his skin that he traces sometimes in the bathroom, when he's standing in front of the mirror with his shirt off and the steam from the shower blunts the worst of it.

Axel takes him to the beach one day in the middle of February. They're the only people standing on the coarse sand with the dark black ocean crashing at their feet, spraying foam into their hair and giving their skin a sticky sheen. It's a weekday and the weather is shitty so even the people who don't have jobs or school wouldn't bother coming out. The only reason they're here is because Axel has a test in Physics and he forgot to study.

Roxas kneels down in the sand and watches the choppy waves of the ocean, thinks about slipping inside of a bottle and floating out to sea. Axel sits down next to him and folds his long legs up and they don't say anything for a while.

The sky is gray and ugly and really fucking depressing.

Roxas sighs. Without the hum of alcohol in his blood or the soft glow of a joint dulling his vision, he's naked and completely unprepared for spilling anything worthwhile. He hopes Axel takes the lead on this one because his tongue feels glued to the roof of his mouth. He thinks to himself bitterly, Chicken. Coward. Freak.

Axel leans over and kisses him.

It's different than the time in Axel's living room. They're both completely sober, for one, and Roxas can feel the little grains of sand digging under his nails when he clutches at the ground in order to stop himself from grabbing hold of Axel (he doesn't think he'd be able to let go if he does). Axel's lips are chapped and soft and gently insistent and he would offer Axel the whole world right now if he could, but that's stupid and impossible so he parts his lips and tilts his head back and lets Axel inside. Everything holds still for a single desperate moment when he breathes and his vision narrows so all he can see is bright eyes and pale skin and red hair being tangled up by the wind.

A few shafts of sunlight have broken through the bank of clouds by the time they finally break apart. He licks his lips and tastes the ocean and brackish water, something sweet hidden just beneath.

"I want -" Axel begins to say.

"Yeah. Okay."

Roxas is falling too hard, too fast, and he knows that the end can't be far away now.

x

(back up a few years)

In his first year of high school, Roxas digs through his closet and re-discovers the blue skirt from way back when. It looks a little sorry with its deep creases and crumpled tag, but the fabric is still soft and bright blue and he holds it up to his waist in front of the mirror for no other reason but idle curiosity.

He doesn't have an excuse for why he tries it on.

And it feels strange. Indecent, like he's wearing nothing at all. Except for the fact that the light fabric brushes against the top of his knees every time he turns, reminding him of its presence, and he thinks that the heavy material of basketball shorts aren't anything close to this. He faces the mirror and studies his reflection carefully, taking in the way it hangs off his jutting hipbones and makes his legs look a little graceful instead of sickeningly skinny, and it still feels really strange but he's sort of okay with it too.

The front door opens and closes with a crash. His father, declaring his return home. He tugs off the skirt quickly and pulls on a pair of faded jeans, tries to stop the flush on his cheeks from almost being caught.

All throughout their silent dinner, he thinks about the skirt he stuffed under his mattress while he picks at his food and his dad stares at the game on television, his face slack and glowing eerily from the light of the screen. His dad is a normal guy, he thinks dully. Watching sports. Drinking beer. Doing normal guy things.

Which means Roxas really is the only freak in the building.

The realization makes his eyes sting. He sets down his fork and goes upstairs to do homework and for the following week, he doesn't take out the skirt at all, even though he thinks about it every night. He pictures it being flattened underneath his mattress and he can't sleep and Axel comments on the bags under his eyes at least twice a day.

The next time his dad leaves for Vegas to drop a couple of paychecks, Roxas takes out the skirt and irons it carefully on the kitchen counter. He cuts off the tag and washes it in the machine with fabric softener and puts it on again in front of the bathroom mirror, tries to imagine what it would be like to wear it for an entire day and not have anyone stare.

Then Axel calls and they talk about stupid things like the new music video online and how the old MarioKart is so much better than the new one that just came out. It almost feels normal except for the fact that his pulse is a little faster and he can't seem to stop smoothing out the front of the skirt when he sits down on his bed with his knees together. After he hangs up, he takes the skirt off and folds it carefully, tucking it at the bottom of his drawer where it won't get wrinkled.

He takes it out a couple more times after that and he doesn't stop being a freak and the days start sliding together like melting puddles of wax.

He gets scared imagining what would happen if people ever found out about it. He doesn't throw the skirt away.

x

The ocean looks like a pool of gold when the sun dips into the horizon and stains the water with bright light, glittering like a million diamonds crushed up and sprinkled onto the waves. He has to squint it's so bright.

"Why did we come here?" Roxas asks. He leans back against Axel so he can feel the other boy's chest rise and fall with each breath. Axel's arms snake around his shoulders and they're as pressed together as space will allow.

"I forgot to study for my Physics test last night," Axel says. He huffs a laugh and Roxas can picture the crooked smile and bright green eyes even though they're behind him and he doesn't have eyes on the back of his head.

"No." He shakes his head. "That's not it." He twists around and tucks his head in the crook of Axel's neck, breaths in the faint scent of vanilla and soap and sweat. "We didn't come here because of a test grade. I know that."

"No, we didn't," Axel agrees. He plays with the locks of hair brushing against the back of Roxas's neck for a while before letting his hand drop to the ground with a sigh.

"Axel?" he says softly.

"I wanted to take you away from that place. I wanted us to go somewhere else."

Roxas blinks. He wonders if he looks as confused as he feels. The surf is booming in his ears when he asks, "Why?"

"You don't belong in that shitty town," Axel says, his voice getting louder as the words start spilling out like a knocked-over cup of soda, something he can't stop. "Your dad's a fucking joke. Our class is made up of jackasses, kids who don't know anything and pretend that they do. The teacher's don't care when we kick the shit out of each other in class. They don't care what happens at home. You're different."

Roxas doesn't know what to say. He hears the waves crashing against the shore, urging him to run.

"You're different, you know?" Axel sounds painfully earnest. He's laid out and vulnerable like Roxas never imagined he could be and it makes his heart speed up, his palms sweat. "I knew that when I first saw you, and I wondered why nobody else could see it too. You – It's, like, you're so fucking-"

Roxas kisses him hard.

Run, the wind whispers in his ear, cold and persistent.

"Axel," he murmurs, leaning back so he can see Axel's entire face. He needs to look because he has no idea what Axel's expression will be this time. "Let's go away. Just the two of us. Let's get the fuck out of here."

Axel blinks and swallows and says, "Yeah. Yeah, okay. Let's go."

They scramble up and take off sprinting, kicking up sand and surf, and they hop into Axel's beat-up car and hit the freeway doing 78 miles per hour and finally, finally - he's breaking free.

x

His dad smiles and says, "Happy Birthday, son. You're seven now and that's pretty old. Almost a man now, in fact."

His mom hits his arm playfully and says, "Stop teasing him, it's his birthday."

"I'm not!" His dad holds up his hands in mock surrender and laughs as she plants a kiss on his nose. "Roxas, why don't you go into the garage? There's a surprise with your name on it over there."

"Cool! Thanks, Dad."

He runs and finds a shiny red bicycle sitting in the corner of the garage, the one he'd been hoping to get for the past year or maybe forever. He rides it until the sun goes down and his dad calls him back inside to blow out the candles.

He's not sure why he dreams about that day while he's sitting in Axel's car as they're driving out towards the horizon, towards a place they've never seen or heard about before in textbooks or maps. He presses his forehead against the cool glass and watches the world pass by in a blur of gray.

They're running out of time, he thinks. A cloud floats over the sun and darkens the road dramatically, like a scene straight from an overdone foreign film, something heavily sub-titled and drenched in hidden meanings.

There's never enough time.

x

They walk in and the motel room smells like alcohol and stale vomit. Roxas wrinkles his nose and thinks it's almost like coming home. The wallpaper is peeling and stained in a few places and there's only one small bed pushed against the wall so it looks like they're sharing it. Awesome.

"So," Axel says, twirling the silver room key around his finger. The motel still uses keys instead of key cards, and that's actually kind of cool. "I'm scared of checking out the bathroom now."

Roxas laughs and tosses his backpack onto the bed. They stopped by their houses to pick up clothes and cash because they do have some foresight. Just not very much of it. Not enough to last for the rest of their lives, and that's what really matters.

"It's not that bad," he says solemnly.

Axel looks at him for a few seconds until he breaks into a grin. "Okay. It's pretty fucking bad."

"It's a good thing you're so damn good looking. Makes up for the sucky décor," Axel says, flopping down onto the bed. He upsets a blanket of dust and sneezes.

Roxas rolls his eyes and stays standing by the doorway. "Shouldn't you call your mom or something?" he asks. Axel's mom is usually really awesome and really into the whole hands-off parenting approach, but this is pushing even her non-existent boundaries.

"I left her a note when we stopped by my house," Axel says. "Made up this bullshit story about staying over at Riku's place for, fuck, I don't remember how long. See, I actually know how to lie."

"Oh." He bites his lip and doesn't feel much better.

"Come here," Axel orders, like he can read Roxas's mind and isn't repulsed by all of the thoughts racing inside. He pats the bed. Roxas walks over slowly and lets himself be pulled down so they're lying side by side, staring up at the white ceiling, which is quickly looking to be the cleanest part of the room. That's kind of sad and really disgusting.

"If you want to go back, you can," Roxas says. He doesn't look away from the white plaster even though he can see Axel shift to face him out of the corner of his eye. "You'll still be my best friend and stuff, so. Whatever. I'm not asking you to leave home for me."

It comes out sounding a lot more defensive than he intended. The words are out there now and there's no way he can take them back so he swallows and tries not to leap up and run out the door.

He waits until Axel knocks their foreheads together and says, "You're an idiot."

"I know."

"It's hard to deal with, sometimes."

"I know."

"I love it."

He closes his eyes because they're starting to sting, but he can still see Axel burning bright on the screen in his mind.

"I don't want you to go," he says quietly.

Axel lets out a breath and lies back down.

"I know," he says.

x

His mom split when he was ten to marry a hotshot executive of some huge company on the other side of the country. Urged on by her new husband, she started going to monthly sessions of plastic surgery until her face froze into a permanent Halloween mask that sends little kids running. He's got some pictures in his wallet.

His dad started drinking and losing jobs and blaming everyone and everything for his fuck ups, started bleeding his life away the day his wife walked out the front door and left him with a little freak to raise. He's got the scars and the memories for that story too.

He met his step-sister once, right before she ran away to live in a big city and die another nameless face in the streets, a skeleton junkie. He doesn't actually have anything to remember her by but her twisted smile.

"My family," he whispers, the motel sheets pulled up over his head and Axel's breath mixing with his own. "We're all kind of screwed."

"You're not," Axel says quietly, keeping his voice low because they're hiding beneath the covers and pretending they're six again, like monsters are out to get them (only this time the monsters feel much more real). "You're really, really not."

Roxas smiles and admits, "I don't hate him, you know. I don't think I ever could. Not really."

"You should," Axel says. A tight frown is forming on his lips. "I would. Fuck, I do."

"He's my dad. He's just kind of messed up after my mom left. And I'm, like, there all the time."

"That doesn't mean he's allowed to do whatever the fuck he wants to you," Axel snaps. He looks fierce and desperate and hopelessly protective with his cheeks flushed and his red hair statically clinging all over the sheets.

Roxas sighs softly.

"The world's not this perfect place, Axel. I'm not perfect. Neither is he. Nobody is. "

"It doesn't need to be shitty all the time, though. You shouldn't need to be miserable your whole fucking life. That isn't fair."

Roxas smiles and leans in close so their noses are almost touching, so they're sharing the same air and space and thoughts.

"Hey, listen," he says. "I'm. Not."

x

They're running out of money and Axel's mom is leaving increasingly distressed messages on his cell phone so he leaves it on until it runs out of batteries. The guilt is still there. Roxas knows this will all have to end soon, and he's getting too tired to fight it. He doesn't say anything when Axel comes back one day with his hands weighted down by a few colorful shopping bags, like he tried to get his Christmas shopping done super early this year. It's only spring.

"Roxas." Axel bounces in his shoes a little. A smile is waiting to burst out on his face and Roxas feels an answering twitch on his own lips.

"Yeah?"

"Guess what day it is."

"Huh." He doesn't want to look at a calendar. He doesn't want to admit that they're both losing to time and the inevitable. "What day is it?"

Axel scoffs and says, "It's your birthday, dumbass. You're seventeen now. Only one more year until we can get out of this place for real."

He blinks and tries to remember how long they've been here.

"Oh, fuck. You really forgot, didn't you?" Axel tosses a bag at him and he catches it easily. "Happy Birthday, you fucking idiot."

"You love it," Roxas says quickly, an automatic response that his mouth remembers even if his mind is stuck on whatthehell.

"You know it." Axel grins brightly. It falters when Roxas starts to look through blue tissue paper in the bag. "I bought you a – uh. I mean, I thought you might like it, but if you don't, then I'll just return it and buy you something else." Axel winces, embarrassed, and rocks back on his heels.

"Wait." Roxas stops digging through the bag to look up. "Did you buy me a fucking dildo?"

"God no!" Axel spits out. "What do you take me for?" He spins around so all Roxas can see is the straight line of his back and an impatient gesture he makes with his hand. "Just open the fucking thing already so I'll know when to start running."

"Gee. Now I'm super excited to see what you bought me." Roxas finds a small thin cardboard box and rips it open. He stares at the contents inside. He stares some more until he realizes it won't magically morph into something else.

"Um. Axel? I think they made a mistake at the store." He holds up a pale blue silk camisole for Axel to see, which Axel does, and if anything, the blush on Axel's face grows more pronounced, like he's close to rupturing some blood cells.

"Actually, I got that for you," Axel blurts out. He drags a hand through his hair and adds, "I mean, if you don't like it, then I'm really sorry I fucked up and, uh, can you please give me one more chance? I promise the next one'll count."

"No, wait a second. Why the fuck did you get me something out of the girls department?"

I'm a guy, he doesn't add, because it's already pretty obvious. They've been sharing the same locker room for years. A sudden thought sends a small jolt of terror down his spine and he tries desperately to remember if he ever left the skirt out accidentally when Axel was over at his house, and Axel's not stupid, he could put the pieces together and figure out how much of a freak his best friend is and – holy fuck this is all wrong.

He glances up to catch Axel chewing on his lip. "Okay, this is going to sound kind of stupid, but it was sort of just a guess. I mean, I found this skirt in your dresser one time, when I was looking for a T-shirt because it was raining or something and I got wet and I wanted to change, I don't know - " Roxas winces and feels panic bubble up in his stomach. Oh shit oh shit oh shit, he thinks.

Axel babbles on, oblivious, and maybe if Roxas runs out right now he'll avoid having to see the disgust on Axel's face. His feet won't move, though.

"And, uh, if you don't wear girl clothes, then whatever. I'm sorry for being such an ass. But if you do? Then I think that's really fucking hot and I thought you might like this."

Roxas stops gripping the sheets. He asks hesitantly, "You don't think it's..." Weird? Fucked up? Creepy?

"Uh. Nope. I mean, if some other guy did it, like Xigbar or something, then it'd be nasty as fuck, but on you, it's just, really..."

Roxas holds his breath and leans forward unconsciously, waiting for Axel to finish the sentence. His heart is beating too loud in his ears and he worries for a brief moment that he won't be able to hear the word when it comes.

"Beautiful," Axel breathes. "Um. Hey, are you going to kick my ass now?"

"No. Well, I haven't decided yet." Roxas stands up and takes a step closer to Axel.

"I'm not a girl," he states flatly.

After a few seconds, Axel looks relieved that the statement is not followed up by a punch. Then he rolls his eyes. "Yeah, I kind of figured that out, Rox. It's not exactly a secret or anything. I'm pretty sure the whole world knows."

"No, I mean. If the only reason you want me to wear that is so you can pretend I'm a girl, or -"

"That's not it," Axel says quickly. His voice is sharp and betrays all of the feelings he's trying to hide behind his jittery knee and twisting hands; it's almost too much stored energy and pent up emotions for a single body to contain.

"Okay. Then I'm going to put it on now."

Axel blinks and a moment later his face splits into a blinding white grin, like all of his wishes and half-assed fantasies have come true in a split second. It almost hurts to look at him so Roxas stares down at his shoes and its tattered laces and tries not to tremble at how much the other boy affects him.

"The bottom half is in the other bag," Axel says, and he can actually hear the lopsided smile in Axel's voice.

He grabs both bags and hurries to the bathroom.

x

Surprisingly, and against all logic, the camisole fits him perfectly. It doesn't have an extra elastic band to give him support for his non-existent breasts and the material feels silky, smooth, slides through his fingers when he plays with the hem. Axel would make a good boyfriend to some girl, he thinks absently, and then he feels a spark of fear because it's true. He forces the feeling down and he's had years of practice so it's not very hard and stop. He's refuses to let his mind wander down that particular road now.

He stares at his reflection and stubbornly ignores the crisscrossing scars and burns on his skin, concentrating instead on how the fabric folds to fit his body, like a loose skin of light blue. The thin straps on his shoulders are edged with a trim of lace and hang loosely, and he knows the detailed work in the front probably means it's the opposite of cheap, that this is something way beyond Axel's budget from his part time job at Starbucks. It's elegant and expensive and smells faintly like the floor of a high-end department store.

"You all right?" Axel calls through the thin barrier of the bathroom door. He pictures Axel waiting outside, his expression nervous and hopeful, and smiles. It's an unconscious reaction that seems to have surfaced a lot recently.

"Yeah. I'm fine."

Now or never, he thinks to himself, squaring his shoulders. He opens the door and Axel almost falls in.

x

Twenty minutes later, they're making out like it's the last thing they'll ever get to do and it doesn't get any lower than the waist, but it's not like they haven't tried. He knows Axel has tried. More than once.

"God, I don't know how to do this," Axel admits finally, pulling back. He looks flushed and a little sweaty and hot in a totally debauched way.

"Uh." Roxas tugs the flimsy camisole down over his stomach and lets out a deep breath. "Have you ever...?"

Axel shakes his head. "Only with girls. You?"

It's hard, but he resists the urge to roll his eyes at the question. The list of people who would touch him voluntarily is short enough to count on one hand and he thinks everyone in the world knows this but Axel. "No, I really haven't. Ass."

Axel holds up his hands and says, "Whoa, wait, not even that time we went to a party and that blond girl got really into you? I picked you up afterwards and you looked, uh."

"We didn't get that far," he says stiffly. His pride is taking a beating today. And then he bursts out laughing because this is so fucking ridiculous, he's talking about sex with Axel in a dingy motel room that has probably seen more action than all of the stories they've heard in the locker room combined. "This is fucked up," he says, smiling hard.

Axel grins at him and plants a sloppy kiss on his cheek.

"What was that for?" He lifts one hand to touch the slightly damp skin and wonders why it felt so sweet when for the past few minutes all of the other touches were dirty and hot and hot-wired straight to his pants.

"Nothing. Because I felt like it. Because you're pretty."

"You're impossible," he says. "Really fucking impossible."

"Yeah, okay. I think I can deal with that." Axel presses forward slowly until Roxas is lying on his back, caught in a cage of long limbs and looking up at a pair of dark green eyes, the dip of Axel's collarbone, visible beneath the collar of his worn T-shirt as it hangs down and exposes pale skin.

Axel, he decides, is the best kind of impossible.

Axel drops a kiss on his neck and then rests his head there, whispering, "God, you're just. You're too beautiful to fuck. Did you know that? I don't even -"

He huffs a laugh and says, "It's fine. Seriously, Axel. I want to."

And those three words are all it takes for Axel to dive forward and press their lips together, reaching a hand between them to tug down an elastic waistband, and this, this feel right. All of the awkward, jagged pieces from that one night in the backseat of somebody's car slide together perfectly, like what it was waiting for was Axel, and it's perfect, it's-

Roxas arches up and hisses, making Axel glance up worriedly. "Okay?" he pants. His lips are red and bruised and Roxas hasn't seen anything hotter in all of the pornos they've watched at Sora's house when his parents aren't home.

"Don't. Stop," he orders, a lock of sweaty hair falling into his face. He blows it away impatiently and bares his teeth in a grin.

Axel complies.

x

Roxas shivers as the sweat on his skin starts to dry and cool down, the thin scratchy sheets doing nothing to help with the drafty room. Axel's thin arm flung across his chest is warm, comforting. He buries his face against Axel's chest and breathes in.

"We need to go back soon, don't we?" he mumbles.

He feels Axel's sigh ruffle the top of his head and he knows that the other boy is nodding.

They pack their bags and leave the next morning.

x

The car ride back is mostly silent. Axel turns on the radio and fidgets with the dial as they go through one county and enter into another, switching zones. He almost always manages to find a station that blasts metal from the 80's and Roxas doesn't complain about his choice in music for once. He's too busy thinking. Each green sign on the highway that tells him he's closer to home feels like sand running through an hourglass, and he can't stop its progress any more than he can stop them from driving back to the real world. Where their lives are waiting for them.

He presses his forehead against the cool glass and thinks, this. This should feel normal. The air conditioner is on circulating warm recycled air and Axel is singing along to some horrible song with too many guitar riffs, his fingers tapping on the steering wheel absently. The road beneath them is cracked and crumbling; a black tar line snaking out into forever.

His chest hurts. This should feel normal, but he can't stop thinking about his step-sister, the one he only met once. The last time he saw her pretty face was in a city morgue a year ago when his father was called down to ID the body since her real father wouldn't risk his company's image to show up. She had looked perfect, all laid out on the cold steel, like she was waiting for a kiss from some fairytale prince.

He falls asleep with her pale face imprinted on the back of his eyelids.

Hours later, he wakes up because Axel has stopped in front of his house and turned off the engine. Axel's face is half-hidden in the shadows, but from what Roxas can see of it, the other boy looks off.

"Hey, you okay?"

Axel unbuckles his seat belt to face Roxas with a shuttered expression he can't place no matter how hard he tries.

"I don't want you to go in there," Axel says.

Roxas attempts a smile and wonders how far off the mark it looks. "I'll be fine. Seriously. I don't think he even noticed I was gone."

"Roxas," Axel says, his mask cracking, and he twists the sound of his name so it comes out like a desperate prayer instead of just a stupid word, and this isn't fair. If Axel asks him one more time, he knows he won't be able to say no.

"Hey, I'll see you tomorrow." He slips out of the car quickly before Axel can grab hold of him and runs over the dead lawn to his house (he knows he's running the fuck away). The windows are dark. He digs into his pocket for the key and finds it, tries to push open the front door as quietly as he can.

Inside the entryway, he stands still and listens for the sound of Axel's car driving away.

"Roxas," somebody says in a low, hoarse voice. Roxas freezes and tries to peer into the dark, find the speaker, his father, maybe make sure he's still okay and not half-dead from alcohol poisoning like he was worrying about for the past week or so. "Where have you been?" The words are slurred, but not angry or accusatory. He relaxes slightly. He's still ready to run.

"With Axel," he says, sounding much braver than he feels. His voice doesn't even tremble when he adds, "I left a message on the answering machine upstairs."

A grunt. "You know I never check that thing, you little shit."

And any slight hope he had that his dad was actually worried about him dies faster than he can blink.

"Sorry, Dad. I'll leave a note next time."

He hears a creak and recognizes it as the springs in the old armchair shifting, his dad pulling himself up.

"No, you're not sorry. But you will be when I'm finished with you."

He grabs for the door but he's not fast enough, his father is lifting him up by the collar and shaking him and he can't, he can't fucking breathe.

"Dad-" he gasps out. His father snarls and throws him against the wall where he lands with a sickening crash. A picture frame falls off and splinters into a million glass pieces on the ground beside him, but it doesn't register as he scrambles to get away, palms bleeding from the shards and slivers littered across the carpet. In a distant part of his mind, the glittering fragments remind him of the ocean and green eyes and the taste of salt on his skin.

"You. Fucking. Punk. Always screwing around and wasting money -"

The moon whispers to him, run, but he's so tired of fighting, he just wants to lie down next to Axel and sleep forever. He doesn't see the flash of a metal wrench until it's too late and then his last fleeting thought is,

I should have warned him-

- Epilogue, Part 2 -

Axel skips school to go to Roxas's funeral. He wears a blue T-shirt just because he knows it will piss people off and he's itching for a fight right now. He has all this energy thrumming inside of him (hatred and anger and despair) and no way to release it because Roxas is gone.

Gone. Fuck. He knows he should have been there, he should have stopped Roxas from going in or waited around a little longer in his car. He should have never let Roxas come back to that fucking house to that fucking man and now he can't do anything; he's stuck in a graveyard under a clear blue sky on a warm summer day and he's alone.

"I really fucked up this time," he says to nobody. A bird sings.

He kneels down in the dirt beside the grave stone and wonders what Roxas would say if he were here. Something clever and biting but secretly hurting inside because everything with Roxas is a mask to hide his insecurity and fear, emotions buried deep within him from years of training.

Hey, the world isn't this perfect place you know.

"I know," he mumbles. "Fuck it, I know that, Rox. You were right."

He lies down and presses his cheek against the dirt, tries desperately to fall asleep in a cemetery next to his best friend.

The wind whispers, run, but there's nowhere left to go.

- End -

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