Fic-- Dust and Glass Streets (2/2)
Title: Dust and Glass Streets (2/2)
Rating: R
Word Count: 5, 078
Characters: Roxas, Axel, Demyx
Warnings: Swearing, character death
Summary: Whoever hires waiters for the graveyard shift is mentally unstable. That's what Roxas thinks. When he meets Axel, that is. (AU)
Author's Note: I met an ambulance driver at my work two months ago. It took me awhile to figure out what I wanted to say about that.
The inspiration and title came from the song "A Story for Supper" by the band Lydia. I've uploaded and you can download the demo version here-- if you like what you hear, check them out. They are amazing.
ONE
When Axel returned with the glass of water, he set it very ceremoniously in front of Roxas, sat down slowly, and looked at Roxas intently, intently enough that the blonde uncomfortably took a long sip of water and slid the pad back toward Axel without looking. “Are you going to take my order yet?”
Axel ignored him and studied the pad, tilting his head back and forth like a worried dog. “My parents aren’t divorced,” he said, frowning. “I don’t have a stepdad.”
“Here, I’ll make it easy for you.” Roxas reached over and snatched the notepad back, ripping off the top sheet of paper and furiously scribbling something down before practically throwing it back in the redhead’s face. “There, that’s my order. Right there. Bam bam.”
Axel took the pad back and examined it before looking up at Roxas. “Did you always want to be an EMT?”
The question came so abruptly that Roxas opened and closed his mouth stupidly for a second before spitting out, “Uh, no. Did you always want to be a waiter?”
It came out a little coldly and Roxas regretted it instantly, because he wasn’t one to be judging-he made assumptions, not judgments-but Axel just smiled. “Touché. No, if you cannot believe it, my lifelong goal was never to be a waiter. I sort of, kind of, want to write a novel sometime. I’m a creative type. I live in my head. I waste away on water. I make pictures with words. I draw with my sentences. I make you feel things you shouldn’t feel. I talk too damned much.”
“Amen,” Roxas said quickly, not trying to interrupt him but hastily looking at his watch-Demyx still hadn’t returned, but their time wasn’t exactly being used productively. “So, are you going to-“
“You should see my brother, he’s a piece of work,” Axel continued on, looking a little bit up toward the ceiling. “Big plan for his life, laid out, all his little ducks in a row. He’s something else. He’s brilliant, really. My parents sort of expect me to do the same thing, have all my little ducks in a row and tick them off, one by one-college, job, wife, kids, career, grandkids, glorious retirement, first man on Mars, you know, things like that, those kind of ducks. Like my brother.”
Roxas’s picture had been subtly changing-now it sprouted to well over seven feet, grew fangs, and from its back sprang leathery wings. Axel x 2. Axelzilla. The Bride of Axel. Axel: Large and in Charge. Axel just wasn’t some harmless schizophrenic who would cost society millions-he was a full-fledged lunatic.
“But me,” he pressed on, ripping out the paper that Roxas had written his order on, “I’m not like that. I don’t have some grandiose plan for my life. That’s no fun. If I wanted my ducks in a row, I would put them there myself, and I would shoot them down myself. Not because my father wants me to, or because my mother wants some pretty grandkids for herself before she kicks the bucket, but for myself. I guess that’s a selfish notion.”
The paper he was holding was calmly being folded, over on itself and in different directions, and Roxas nearly said something, but Axel’s eyes were focused on the paper, and he hadn’t listened to any of Roxas’s other interruptions, and so he gave up.
“I mean, I think it’s a selfish notion. Isn’t it? But then again, life is about yourself right?”
“Right,” Roxas said, even though Axel couldn’t possibly be listening to him. “Absolutely.”
“I don’t think you believe me, Roxas.”
Roxas looked up, and Axel looked up, from the paper his fingers were still entwined in, and he lifted an eyebrow. “You don’t sound like you believe me.”
The blonde felt flustered. “I… you lied to me about your parents, why should I believe you now?” he said, defensively.
“So what, you don’t care about what your parents think?”
“Were we talking about me?”
“You’re getting defensive, Rox.”
“Yes!” Roxas said, getting angry now. “Yes, I do care! They’re paying for my school and for my car, until I graduate and yea, I do care about what they think.”
“So everything you’re doing, you’re doing it for them?”
“No! I want this too, I want to go to med school and be a doctor and I want to be an EMT and I want to save lives and I want to make a difference and you haven’t even put our order in yet!”
“So I am selfish, then? Because I’m not doing what my parents want and I’m trying to live for myself?”
“That’s not what I said!”
Axel grinned sagely, and went back to folding his paper. “Either way, I think what you’re doing is pretty awesome, Roxas. I think you do make a difference and I think you’ll be a great doctor when you grow up.”
The monster shrank, and morphed, and mutated, and this time Roxas pictured a blank piece of paper with a drop of red on it and nothing else. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” he grumbled, resuming tapping the table with his hand.
“Oh no?”
“No. Drunks and old ladies and little kids. I haven’t saved anyone yet.”
“I’m sure you have.”
Roxas glared at him. “I think I know better than you do.”
“I think you’re being pessimistic.”
“Would you just fucking put our order in already?”
“You don’t have to be hero, you just have to try, Roxas.”
“Do you do this to everyone?”
“Naw,” Axel replied, suddenly getting up. “Just the pretty ones.”
“I’m so flattered,” Roxas said through gritted teeth, as Axel very gently put the piece of paper back on the table in front of him. “What the hell is this?”
“It’s for you. Don’t you like it?”
“It’s very… nice.” Roxas picked up the intricately folded piece of paper and examined it. “I uh…. do you know what my order is?”
“Omelet, extra cheese, no mushrooms. What’s your deal with mushrooms? I’ve never met one I didn’t like.”
“I bet you haven’t,” Roxas snorted, and he smiled and Axel grinned and started to walk back to the drink station. He set aside the origami, against the salt shaker, and leaned back, tapping the floor now, as Demyx suddenly slid into the seat across from him, looking anxious.
“Where the hell have you been?”
“On the phone. Why, miss me?”
“Who the fuck was calling you?”
“Your mom, precious. We’re a big item, me and her. Where’s our food?”
Roxas rolled his eyes and pointed vaguely toward the drink station. “Somewhere over there. Your friend just put it in.”
“What do you mean ‘just?’”
“Oh, I mean, we had a big heart to heart, you know, lots of crying and tissues involved. You missed it, we cleared up a lot of emotional issues, a lot of identity issues, I’m sure you could have used that.”
Demyx frowned. “This is perplexing.”
“Hey, he’s your friend.”
They talked about Demyx and his mother for a couple of minutes, and then about Roxas and his gay boyfriend that lived in Australia, until Axel reappeared at their table, holding a red messenger bag that clashed horribly with his hair. He also sported a black and red jacket, and his hair had been released from the confines of the rubber band and his spiky locks went every which way.
“Glad I could be of service to you boys,” he said, tipping an imaginary hat. “But, I must be off. Time’s money and what have you.”
Roxas gaped at him. “Our…. Where’s our food?”
Axel jerked his chin back toward the kitchen. “Don’t ever you worry, Larxene is bringing it out-she’s a real peach. You’ll just love her, I promise.”
“What the fuck, Axel?” Demyx asked, though he sounded defeated already. “You know she hates me.”
Axel laughed. “Well, she needs to meet Roxas. Have a chat with him. Talk about things. Got it memorized?”
“You’re an awful waiter.” The drop of red on the white paper was joined by some other colors, and this time the picture was a very hopelessly apathetic young man who worked in diners late at night and made other hopelessly apathetic young men question their own hopelessness.
“Thanks, partner. Hope to see you around sometime. Great meeting you.” Axel shouldered the bag, and started for the door.
“Thanks for the crane,” Roxas called after him, fingering the folded paper in his hands.
“It’s a duck, Roxas, a duck. Don’t let the long neck and pretty wings fool you. Catch you kids later.” The door made a chiming noise as it was opened and closed, and he was gone.
__
After a harrowing visitation that resembled an armed interrogation with the woman named Larxene, who apparently disliked anything that didn’t have two X chromosomes, they got back into the ambulance. Roxas dug around under the seat until he found his black and white checkered backpack; unzipping the next to smallest pocket, he folded up the crane-er, duck-so that it still retained most of its shape, stuck it carefully into the backpack, and zipped it back up.
“He never gave me a duck,” Demyx said, signaling and bouncing up off the curb into the lane in front of a blue Lincoln. “He gave me a crappy little box one time though.”
“It’s a crane,” Roxas said, tapping his knuckles against the window as the Lincoln blasted its horn. “Not a duck.”
“I feel replaced.”
“My omelet had two mushrooms in it. I hate mushrooms.”
“You’ve just never eaten the right ones, cupcake. And I feel replaced.”
“Oh, shut it. Just drive.”
They drove silently for the next few minutes, until the dispatcher came on over the radio and reported that there had been an accident, involving a drunken driver and a pedestrian, with a possible fatality. They said nothing, but Roxas saw Demyx shoot him a look he’d never seen before; oh goody, Roxas thought, releasing the seatbelt, maybe we can save a life today.
They went back the way they came, passing the diner, and turning the corner onto some street called Paean, and they saw the police cars and the small crowd of onlookers. He saw the gray Mustang parked sideways, and the skidmarks on the ground. There were three people in handcuffs on the sidewalk by the cop cars, and Demyx drove the ambulance around them, stopping on the other side of the small barricade.
Roxas jumped out, racing around back to throw open the doors and grab his box while Demyx yanked out the gurney. “Move!” he shouted at the onlookers, who hastily parted so he could get through. “Stay out of the way!” There were a couple of things that gave Roxas pleasure-yelling at a group of complete drunken strangers was one of them. He heard the cops yelling something, and he hit the ground next to the sprawled, lanky body.
His heart stopped.
“What… what happened?” he managed to choke out to the cop, a standard question, but he couldn’t move.
“Riding his bike, crossing at the light over there,” the cop said, pointing vaguely in some direction that Roxas didn’t even care about. “He had the right away, and those drunk fucks came tearing around the corner and hit him at about forty miles per hour. He went flying, hit the street, they didn’t realize what happened, ran over his lower body, and someone down the street saw them and stopped them. Didn’t even realize what had happened.”
“You think they would have seen him,” Roxas heard himself saying, fingers automatically moving to the throat, “you would have thought they’d seen his ridiculous hair.”
He could feel the cop looking at him strangely. “I guess, but I mean-“
There was a loud thud next to him as Demyx hit the ground to his other side, already shouting, “Okay, what do we have-Axel!”
“His pulse is weak,” Roxas heard himself saying again, “probably internal bleeding. He was on his bike, and they hit him and he went flying, and then they ran him over.”
“You think they would have seen him, with that hair,” Demyx said, and his voice was tiny, pitched, high.
“You would think, wouldn’t you?’ His voice was talking, but Roxas didn’t understand. “Come on, move.”
And they removed his jacket, and his shirt, and they discovered that both of his legs were broken, and so was his pelvis, and probably some ribs. His head was bleeding, and his breathing was growing weaker, and Roxas jabbed him with a needle while Demyx stuck a mask on his head and he was going to save a life right now, and this was the most important life, the most important life so far that he’d ever seen on the pavement, because every other life had broken legs or cuts and this life had both of them and the mask was not working-
“Roxas,” the voice said, and it wasn’t in his own head this time, but outside, and it was gentle, ever so gentle. “Roxas, stop it. He’s dead.”
Silence.
One time, a long time ago, he’d liked animals, because there were a lot of them, and they didn’t die like humans, and he’d told his dad he’d wanted to be an animal doctor, because that would be better than watching people like his mom die, because there would be more of them.
There were probably a lot more cocaine addicted, depressed theatre major, LSD- abusing, Iranian, alien, schizophrenic lunatic, redheaded stepchildren, duck-making, hopelessly apathetic night waiters too, just like there were animals.
Roxas stopped the CPR, and stood up, because there wasn’t much else to do-the dead could be called many things, but needy wasn’t one of them. They brought the black sheet that Roxas had never really looked at before, and he gently grasped Axel’s broken lower legs and Demyx his shoulders and they put him onto the gurney before covering him up with the sheet and loading him into the ambulance. They passed the three alcoholics on the curb, and they couldn’t fight back because of the handcuffs, and what was the point of fighting something that couldn’t fight back?
They got into the ambulance, because that’s what they were paid to do, and they started driving. Roxas picked up his backpack, and removed the folded crane-it was a goddamned crane-and looked at it, spreading his fingers over the creases and the edges, rapping his other hand against the glass methodically, predictably, like everything else.
It would so happen, he thought, looking directly at the crane, that I would try to save a life and I would fail, wouldn’t it, duck? Are you sad, duck? I am.
He set the crane on the dashboard, near the middle, where it balanced precariously but didn’t fall as Demyx signaled, and made a turn, but it was gentle and the crane still balanced there, teetering a bit but not falling.
“You know,” Roxas said, scaring himself when he heard his voice in the deathly quiet of the vehicle, “it’s a fucking crane.”
Demyx didn’t say anything.
“It’s a fucking crane, right?”
Demyx looked hesitantly at Roxas, and then at the paper, and then at the road again. “It’s too pretty to be a duck,” he agreed. “I kind of want one.”
“Back off, it’s mine,” Roxas said, swiping down the origami and holding it in both of his hands gingerly. “I kind of don’t want ducks anymore,” he said, mostly to himself. “I like this crane a lot more. It’s a lot better than a duck.”
“Dude, I just told you it was a crane.”
“If I smacked you on the head with it, you still wouldn’t get it.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, nothing.” He set the crane back where he had snatched it from, where it went on with its balancing act. By the time they got to the hospital, the sun was starting to come up.
__
Constructive criticism is always welcome and very appreciated.
Rating: R
Word Count: 5, 078
Characters: Roxas, Axel, Demyx
Warnings: Swearing, character death
Summary: Whoever hires waiters for the graveyard shift is mentally unstable. That's what Roxas thinks. When he meets Axel, that is. (AU)
Author's Note: I met an ambulance driver at my work two months ago. It took me awhile to figure out what I wanted to say about that.
The inspiration and title came from the song "A Story for Supper" by the band Lydia. I've uploaded and you can download the demo version here-- if you like what you hear, check them out. They are amazing.
ONE
When Axel returned with the glass of water, he set it very ceremoniously in front of Roxas, sat down slowly, and looked at Roxas intently, intently enough that the blonde uncomfortably took a long sip of water and slid the pad back toward Axel without looking. “Are you going to take my order yet?”
Axel ignored him and studied the pad, tilting his head back and forth like a worried dog. “My parents aren’t divorced,” he said, frowning. “I don’t have a stepdad.”
“Here, I’ll make it easy for you.” Roxas reached over and snatched the notepad back, ripping off the top sheet of paper and furiously scribbling something down before practically throwing it back in the redhead’s face. “There, that’s my order. Right there. Bam bam.”
Axel took the pad back and examined it before looking up at Roxas. “Did you always want to be an EMT?”
The question came so abruptly that Roxas opened and closed his mouth stupidly for a second before spitting out, “Uh, no. Did you always want to be a waiter?”
It came out a little coldly and Roxas regretted it instantly, because he wasn’t one to be judging-he made assumptions, not judgments-but Axel just smiled. “Touché. No, if you cannot believe it, my lifelong goal was never to be a waiter. I sort of, kind of, want to write a novel sometime. I’m a creative type. I live in my head. I waste away on water. I make pictures with words. I draw with my sentences. I make you feel things you shouldn’t feel. I talk too damned much.”
“Amen,” Roxas said quickly, not trying to interrupt him but hastily looking at his watch-Demyx still hadn’t returned, but their time wasn’t exactly being used productively. “So, are you going to-“
“You should see my brother, he’s a piece of work,” Axel continued on, looking a little bit up toward the ceiling. “Big plan for his life, laid out, all his little ducks in a row. He’s something else. He’s brilliant, really. My parents sort of expect me to do the same thing, have all my little ducks in a row and tick them off, one by one-college, job, wife, kids, career, grandkids, glorious retirement, first man on Mars, you know, things like that, those kind of ducks. Like my brother.”
Roxas’s picture had been subtly changing-now it sprouted to well over seven feet, grew fangs, and from its back sprang leathery wings. Axel x 2. Axelzilla. The Bride of Axel. Axel: Large and in Charge. Axel just wasn’t some harmless schizophrenic who would cost society millions-he was a full-fledged lunatic.
“But me,” he pressed on, ripping out the paper that Roxas had written his order on, “I’m not like that. I don’t have some grandiose plan for my life. That’s no fun. If I wanted my ducks in a row, I would put them there myself, and I would shoot them down myself. Not because my father wants me to, or because my mother wants some pretty grandkids for herself before she kicks the bucket, but for myself. I guess that’s a selfish notion.”
The paper he was holding was calmly being folded, over on itself and in different directions, and Roxas nearly said something, but Axel’s eyes were focused on the paper, and he hadn’t listened to any of Roxas’s other interruptions, and so he gave up.
“I mean, I think it’s a selfish notion. Isn’t it? But then again, life is about yourself right?”
“Right,” Roxas said, even though Axel couldn’t possibly be listening to him. “Absolutely.”
“I don’t think you believe me, Roxas.”
Roxas looked up, and Axel looked up, from the paper his fingers were still entwined in, and he lifted an eyebrow. “You don’t sound like you believe me.”
The blonde felt flustered. “I… you lied to me about your parents, why should I believe you now?” he said, defensively.
“So what, you don’t care about what your parents think?”
“Were we talking about me?”
“You’re getting defensive, Rox.”
“Yes!” Roxas said, getting angry now. “Yes, I do care! They’re paying for my school and for my car, until I graduate and yea, I do care about what they think.”
“So everything you’re doing, you’re doing it for them?”
“No! I want this too, I want to go to med school and be a doctor and I want to be an EMT and I want to save lives and I want to make a difference and you haven’t even put our order in yet!”
“So I am selfish, then? Because I’m not doing what my parents want and I’m trying to live for myself?”
“That’s not what I said!”
Axel grinned sagely, and went back to folding his paper. “Either way, I think what you’re doing is pretty awesome, Roxas. I think you do make a difference and I think you’ll be a great doctor when you grow up.”
The monster shrank, and morphed, and mutated, and this time Roxas pictured a blank piece of paper with a drop of red on it and nothing else. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” he grumbled, resuming tapping the table with his hand.
“Oh no?”
“No. Drunks and old ladies and little kids. I haven’t saved anyone yet.”
“I’m sure you have.”
Roxas glared at him. “I think I know better than you do.”
“I think you’re being pessimistic.”
“Would you just fucking put our order in already?”
“You don’t have to be hero, you just have to try, Roxas.”
“Do you do this to everyone?”
“Naw,” Axel replied, suddenly getting up. “Just the pretty ones.”
“I’m so flattered,” Roxas said through gritted teeth, as Axel very gently put the piece of paper back on the table in front of him. “What the hell is this?”
“It’s for you. Don’t you like it?”
“It’s very… nice.” Roxas picked up the intricately folded piece of paper and examined it. “I uh…. do you know what my order is?”
“Omelet, extra cheese, no mushrooms. What’s your deal with mushrooms? I’ve never met one I didn’t like.”
“I bet you haven’t,” Roxas snorted, and he smiled and Axel grinned and started to walk back to the drink station. He set aside the origami, against the salt shaker, and leaned back, tapping the floor now, as Demyx suddenly slid into the seat across from him, looking anxious.
“Where the hell have you been?”
“On the phone. Why, miss me?”
“Who the fuck was calling you?”
“Your mom, precious. We’re a big item, me and her. Where’s our food?”
Roxas rolled his eyes and pointed vaguely toward the drink station. “Somewhere over there. Your friend just put it in.”
“What do you mean ‘just?’”
“Oh, I mean, we had a big heart to heart, you know, lots of crying and tissues involved. You missed it, we cleared up a lot of emotional issues, a lot of identity issues, I’m sure you could have used that.”
Demyx frowned. “This is perplexing.”
“Hey, he’s your friend.”
They talked about Demyx and his mother for a couple of minutes, and then about Roxas and his gay boyfriend that lived in Australia, until Axel reappeared at their table, holding a red messenger bag that clashed horribly with his hair. He also sported a black and red jacket, and his hair had been released from the confines of the rubber band and his spiky locks went every which way.
“Glad I could be of service to you boys,” he said, tipping an imaginary hat. “But, I must be off. Time’s money and what have you.”
Roxas gaped at him. “Our…. Where’s our food?”
Axel jerked his chin back toward the kitchen. “Don’t ever you worry, Larxene is bringing it out-she’s a real peach. You’ll just love her, I promise.”
“What the fuck, Axel?” Demyx asked, though he sounded defeated already. “You know she hates me.”
Axel laughed. “Well, she needs to meet Roxas. Have a chat with him. Talk about things. Got it memorized?”
“You’re an awful waiter.” The drop of red on the white paper was joined by some other colors, and this time the picture was a very hopelessly apathetic young man who worked in diners late at night and made other hopelessly apathetic young men question their own hopelessness.
“Thanks, partner. Hope to see you around sometime. Great meeting you.” Axel shouldered the bag, and started for the door.
“Thanks for the crane,” Roxas called after him, fingering the folded paper in his hands.
“It’s a duck, Roxas, a duck. Don’t let the long neck and pretty wings fool you. Catch you kids later.” The door made a chiming noise as it was opened and closed, and he was gone.
__
After a harrowing visitation that resembled an armed interrogation with the woman named Larxene, who apparently disliked anything that didn’t have two X chromosomes, they got back into the ambulance. Roxas dug around under the seat until he found his black and white checkered backpack; unzipping the next to smallest pocket, he folded up the crane-er, duck-so that it still retained most of its shape, stuck it carefully into the backpack, and zipped it back up.
“He never gave me a duck,” Demyx said, signaling and bouncing up off the curb into the lane in front of a blue Lincoln. “He gave me a crappy little box one time though.”
“It’s a crane,” Roxas said, tapping his knuckles against the window as the Lincoln blasted its horn. “Not a duck.”
“I feel replaced.”
“My omelet had two mushrooms in it. I hate mushrooms.”
“You’ve just never eaten the right ones, cupcake. And I feel replaced.”
“Oh, shut it. Just drive.”
They drove silently for the next few minutes, until the dispatcher came on over the radio and reported that there had been an accident, involving a drunken driver and a pedestrian, with a possible fatality. They said nothing, but Roxas saw Demyx shoot him a look he’d never seen before; oh goody, Roxas thought, releasing the seatbelt, maybe we can save a life today.
They went back the way they came, passing the diner, and turning the corner onto some street called Paean, and they saw the police cars and the small crowd of onlookers. He saw the gray Mustang parked sideways, and the skidmarks on the ground. There were three people in handcuffs on the sidewalk by the cop cars, and Demyx drove the ambulance around them, stopping on the other side of the small barricade.
Roxas jumped out, racing around back to throw open the doors and grab his box while Demyx yanked out the gurney. “Move!” he shouted at the onlookers, who hastily parted so he could get through. “Stay out of the way!” There were a couple of things that gave Roxas pleasure-yelling at a group of complete drunken strangers was one of them. He heard the cops yelling something, and he hit the ground next to the sprawled, lanky body.
His heart stopped.
“What… what happened?” he managed to choke out to the cop, a standard question, but he couldn’t move.
“Riding his bike, crossing at the light over there,” the cop said, pointing vaguely in some direction that Roxas didn’t even care about. “He had the right away, and those drunk fucks came tearing around the corner and hit him at about forty miles per hour. He went flying, hit the street, they didn’t realize what happened, ran over his lower body, and someone down the street saw them and stopped them. Didn’t even realize what had happened.”
“You think they would have seen him,” Roxas heard himself saying, fingers automatically moving to the throat, “you would have thought they’d seen his ridiculous hair.”
He could feel the cop looking at him strangely. “I guess, but I mean-“
There was a loud thud next to him as Demyx hit the ground to his other side, already shouting, “Okay, what do we have-Axel!”
“His pulse is weak,” Roxas heard himself saying again, “probably internal bleeding. He was on his bike, and they hit him and he went flying, and then they ran him over.”
“You think they would have seen him, with that hair,” Demyx said, and his voice was tiny, pitched, high.
“You would think, wouldn’t you?’ His voice was talking, but Roxas didn’t understand. “Come on, move.”
And they removed his jacket, and his shirt, and they discovered that both of his legs were broken, and so was his pelvis, and probably some ribs. His head was bleeding, and his breathing was growing weaker, and Roxas jabbed him with a needle while Demyx stuck a mask on his head and he was going to save a life right now, and this was the most important life, the most important life so far that he’d ever seen on the pavement, because every other life had broken legs or cuts and this life had both of them and the mask was not working-
“Roxas,” the voice said, and it wasn’t in his own head this time, but outside, and it was gentle, ever so gentle. “Roxas, stop it. He’s dead.”
Silence.
One time, a long time ago, he’d liked animals, because there were a lot of them, and they didn’t die like humans, and he’d told his dad he’d wanted to be an animal doctor, because that would be better than watching people like his mom die, because there would be more of them.
There were probably a lot more cocaine addicted, depressed theatre major, LSD- abusing, Iranian, alien, schizophrenic lunatic, redheaded stepchildren, duck-making, hopelessly apathetic night waiters too, just like there were animals.
Roxas stopped the CPR, and stood up, because there wasn’t much else to do-the dead could be called many things, but needy wasn’t one of them. They brought the black sheet that Roxas had never really looked at before, and he gently grasped Axel’s broken lower legs and Demyx his shoulders and they put him onto the gurney before covering him up with the sheet and loading him into the ambulance. They passed the three alcoholics on the curb, and they couldn’t fight back because of the handcuffs, and what was the point of fighting something that couldn’t fight back?
They got into the ambulance, because that’s what they were paid to do, and they started driving. Roxas picked up his backpack, and removed the folded crane-it was a goddamned crane-and looked at it, spreading his fingers over the creases and the edges, rapping his other hand against the glass methodically, predictably, like everything else.
It would so happen, he thought, looking directly at the crane, that I would try to save a life and I would fail, wouldn’t it, duck? Are you sad, duck? I am.
He set the crane on the dashboard, near the middle, where it balanced precariously but didn’t fall as Demyx signaled, and made a turn, but it was gentle and the crane still balanced there, teetering a bit but not falling.
“You know,” Roxas said, scaring himself when he heard his voice in the deathly quiet of the vehicle, “it’s a fucking crane.”
Demyx didn’t say anything.
“It’s a fucking crane, right?”
Demyx looked hesitantly at Roxas, and then at the paper, and then at the road again. “It’s too pretty to be a duck,” he agreed. “I kind of want one.”
“Back off, it’s mine,” Roxas said, swiping down the origami and holding it in both of his hands gingerly. “I kind of don’t want ducks anymore,” he said, mostly to himself. “I like this crane a lot more. It’s a lot better than a duck.”
“Dude, I just told you it was a crane.”
“If I smacked you on the head with it, you still wouldn’t get it.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, nothing.” He set the crane back where he had snatched it from, where it went on with its balancing act. By the time they got to the hospital, the sun was starting to come up.
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Constructive criticism is always welcome and very appreciated.