Berwald Oxenstierna and the Road Trip From Hell

Introduction

The cashier was smiling in a way Berwald would have thought impossible this early in the morning. Then he was assaulted by the scent of coffee and noticed that cashier's eye was twitching alarmingly. The lady in front of Berwald in the queue hadn't noticed the fact that the person packing her bags was probably on multiple types of drugs and smacked her chewing gum loudly.

"Do you sell magazines here?" She asked, leaning on the counter and fluttering her eyelashes.

"Miss, this is a food store." The teen had replied, taking a step backwards. The lady didn't get the message and leaned in more than Berwald had thought possible, practically straddling the counter.

Neither of them spoke and Berwald silently prayed that she would just leave already. But she didn't. The lady and cashier seemed to be engaged in some sort of staring contest that involved lots of hair flicks and the teen's eye twitch steadily becoming worse. Maybe it was some kind of mating ritual, Berwald thought.

Finally, the lady gave one huge hair flick and stormed out, ending the silent battle but leaving her shopping behind and unpaid for. The cashier sighed, before glancing to Berwald standing in the queue and promptly fainted.

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After explaining to the manager that he had simply looked at the man (although it took several eyewitness accounts and a reel of security footage to get him to believe it) it was a much more reasonable time to be out of bed and the shop was almost full. Berwald had finally escaped the store a whole two hours after he had arrived. The manager had offered to pay for his purchases to apologise for the confusion. Berwald accepted, but it would have been more useful if he had been buying more than a loaf of bread.

He approached his car, a blue mini, and sighed. Due to being a lowly college student, the small vehicle had been the only one even remotely near what he could afford. He had lived off of pop tarts for about two months afterwards, but it had definitely been worth it.

To get around before, he'd had to borrow his roommates boyfriend's car. It wasn't like he had anything against Feliks, but the pink monstrosity he owned was slightly too much (not to mention the fact that he'd found glitter in his hair for days afterwards). Berwald, quite frankly, didn't know how Toris survived dating Feliks.

He shut the car door quietly and sighed. It was only 8:00 and he'd already started the day off in a pretty crap way. He was just about to turn on the radio to see what they were playing (somewhere deep in his heart he knew that the chances of Abba being played were almost nonexistent, but he wasn't quite willing to give up just yet) when the game passenger seat door opened and someone sat next to him.

Berwald looked up. To his horror, sitting next to him was a mound of pure hair gel in a human shape. At least, that was what it smelt like.

In reality, the man's vertical mess of hair was the cause for the stench, and the man himself was just staring at him and grinning creepily. Berwald was relieved for a second that a mutant hair gel creature hadn't just climbed into his car until he remembered that the man was probably a serial killer, and started to panic all over again.

"Hi!" Said the potential mass murderer. Berwald only stared in reply. The man closed the car door and stuck out his hand. Berwald stared some more. The man raised an eyebrow. Berwald stared even more.

"I'm Mathias!" Said the stranger.

"G't out 'f my c'r." Said Berwald.

The stranger raised his other eyebrow, probably hoping he looked cool when in actual fact he now looked mildly surprised. Then he smirked.

"No."

Berwald didn't know what to say. Why, just why did this have to happen to him? What possible divine entity had he managed to piss off? In a moment of panic, he nodded and started the car.

The strang- Mathias looked genuinely surprised at this for a second before fist pumping. "Take me to the border, baby!"

This... This was probably the worst day in Berwald's entire life. Worse than when he'd had to bail Toris and Feliks out of jail because Feliks had apparently stolen some sort of pink handbag. Worse then than when the said pink handbag was later found underneath Berwald's mattress and he'd had to explain to the police that, no, it wasn't his.

With a final sigh of exasperation, he drove off, quite possibly leaving his last threads of sanity behind.