Axel cursed softly, the cigarette refusing to light. The rain had ruined his whole box of smokes. It was just as well; he was working on quitting -- only smoking twice a day to make it through ducking orphanages and jail. At seventeen, it was a bit difficult to do when any job he came by required certain documents he wasn't able to forge by stealing a few office supplies from the nearest convenience store. But smoking helped him pass the days when there was nothing left to steal to eat. Stores heightened their levels of vigil and although his lifting skills were superb, on an empty stomach and with relentless double vision, his fingers were more slippery than sticky.
"My life," he muttered, putting the lighter back into his pocket. The alleys weren't exactly the warmest places to keep holing up, especially when the buildings were tall and the edges of the roofs were too short to keep him from getting soaked to the bone. Not to mention the cats that he'd actually fought at some point to get into a box for the night.
Not that cardboard was exactly waterproof but it held somewhat.
Axel ran long, callused fingers through dark, matted shoulder length hair, sopping from the torrential rains. The only maroon tank that he owned stuck to his skin and the gray cargoes were black from nature's onslaught. The only thing he thought would actually survive was the pair of combat boots he'd managed to find cast carelessly onto the sidewalk in front of some guy's apartment.
The idiot.
Axel unconsciously huddled, attempting to make his tall lanky frame small under the passing of the red and blue police lights. When they passed, he unfurled himself and walked away in the opposite direction. He traveled with his head hung, not a fan of having the sky take a liberal piss in his eyes. He raked his hair back another time, chewing irritably on his ruined cigarette. It was getting late and he hadn't seen hide nor tail of a promising place to stay the night. At least until he could find his way into another town. He'd spent too long in this one already. Being a street kid since the age of ten, he'd taken to city hopping when the authorities came to close to catching him.
The seventeen year old sighed, a shiver lining his spine from the bit of wind that blew in from behind him. At this rate he'd get sick for the first time in a long time. He idly removed his wristbands and wrung them out, an almost fruitless chore, but it kept them from getting waterlogged.
Axel looked up through the sheets of rain, a flash of lightning illuminating the rest of the street briefly. He looked to the right of the main road and nearly sagged from relief. An abandoned building would be better than nothing right then.
