[FIC] The Vertigo Shot [KH2/Zemyx/Part B]
TITLE: The Vertigo Shot
AUTHOR: S-P [reveneirz/Sinful Serenity@fanfiction.net]
RATING: Um. PG13 for some swearing?
GENRE: Drama, semi-AU
PAIRING: Zexion/Demyx
WARNINGS: shounen ai, slight spoilers for CoM/KH2
WORD COUNT: {1/1} 13,521
SUMMARY: Memory, like pride, is a dangerous thing: a blade that, when unheeded rusts, and handled carelessly, cuts its owner. Some people are lucky enough to forget, and some people aren't, through different lives.
[x]--[x]--[x]
Their friendship is a tremulous one that grows from Demyx's care and Zexion's carelessness.
He grows on him, in a strange kind of symbiosis, an unwelcome parasite that he is gradually getting used to. At first, Demyx does all the legwork; he pops up into Zexion's room at random intervals and does nothing. He sits there, hums a little, does his homework or projects until the twitch Zexion's right eye had developed settles down. When Zexion gives up on immediately throwing him out (he had once bodily removed Demyx; for a man so short and skinny, he sure was strong), Demyx takes cue--to, little by little, coax Zexion into speaking, an effort that takes many weeks and boxes and boxes of chocolates. Eventually, he sits at the desk parallel to Zexion's with his chin propped up and they talk.
He finds that he is beginning to enjoy the spiky-haired blonde's company, if only because he did not expect nearly as much of Zexion as every one else seemed to. He never left the conversation topic up to Zexion because he knew the other man would never begin voluntarily; he is never offended by Zexion's caustic responses to his silly antics, and he knows not to bring up their past after the first few sharp glares Zexion threw at him. Even if he doesn't like it, he understands that silence, too, has a place in conversations. He is resilient in a way that Zexion knew he would be before he even knew his name.
They make an odd pair, a tall blonde musician and he, a professor shadowed by his student. They are careful to never let their relationship appear as anything but a teacher and pupil to the public, but when Demyx drops by to visit him at his apartment (how he got his address he did not know, and had the suspicion that he did not really want to) he is wild and free, a riptide in the monotony Zexion once toiled through. He irks him and amuses him in a way that is completely foreign, and perhaps a little unsettling.
Before long, they have nearly an established routine. Monday is Zexion's day, all to himself, in which he usually spends researching or reading or learning. Tuesdays and fridays Demyx stops by his apartment near five o' clock, where he insists on cooking (his skills in the kitchen are surprisingly good) and after dinner and a mostly one-sided conversation, he cleans the kitchen until it shines (even more surprising). He leaves at nine o' clock for his dorm across the town, and silence settles in Zexion's place again.
Wednesdays and thursdays, Zexion stays after hours to work in his classroom, and Demyx arrives shortly after his sixth period at three o' clock. Sometimes he pulls out his textbooks and complains about music theory ("If I can play it fine why do I have to know what the hell the inversions of an a minor dominant seventh are anyway?"), or works quietly; somedays, he pulls out his work and it lies on his desk, abandoned, and he simply watches Zexion in a way the older man has now grown accustomed to.
Weekends, Demyx occasionally pops in on the mornings, but mostly spends them sleeping in or doing odds and ends around his dorm. He plays for the jazz band at a bar downtown in the evenings, a fact he had not disclosed to any one except Luneth, so he is pleasantly surprised when he and his weekly bandmates are strumming out blues and he finds Zexion in the audience. He stands up on the small stage and announces gleefully that the next song's to his newcomer-friend, and the audience peer at each other interestedly, trying to figure out the who the popular young blonde's accompaniment is. Zexion hides his face behind a drink, and makes a point to save half of--so that when Demyx breezes over to his table much later in the night--he can dump it down his shirt.
Demyx laughs and jokes and whistles and Zexion finds that a certain kind of controlled chaos enters his life now, that he is along for the ride (like it or not), and that he is not really complaining, much.
But fate has different plans, and just as the dark-haired man thinks he could get used to this, he has The Discovery. It is not so much a Discovery as it is him randomly stumbling on a page in one of the campus bookstore's many psychology texts, this one in particular covering mental illnesses. The shuffling noises of students and teachers browsing shelves around him dulls into a murmur, and he feels all his energy drain out of him.
He is getting careless. He cannot believe that an answer--or, at the very least, a lead--to all his questions has been staring at him for so long and that he has not seen it in his preoccupation with Demyx. Zexion snaps the book shut and shifts it to the crook of his arm and in mounting rage and insatiable hunger and feels hollow, all at the same time, and he grabs all the nearby titles that could have any possible revelance, piling them into his arms.
He blows four week's of paychecks on the pile of heavy textbooks and scares the daylights out of a clerk who timidly offers him her assistance, but he is so far gone that he does not notice. The next thing he knows is that he is home and reading, reading as fast as he can, making notes and outlines and highlighting and cross-referencing. He needs to know more.
Cotard's syndrome, he mouths into the silence of his reading, Negation delirium. ...neurological disorder...delusions. ...subject believes that he or she is dead, or... do not exist.
[x]--[x]--[x]
Demyx was not pleased.
No, Demyx-Lord-of-all-he-surveys-on-occasion was not pleased at all (title self-imposed.) He slouched at his desk, frowning slightly, blue-green eyes surveying the room. The other students were alternatively bent over the test they were having today, finished and attempting to quietly exchange notes, or oggling the substitute.
Leonhart had stood in for Zexion for the last two days and it was beginning to bother the blonde-haired man. He was an excellent teacher in his own right, patient and well-read, but he just wasn't the same as other male. Demyx hadn't been around the university long enough to know for sure (he had transferred here in spring semester, last year), but he was fairly certain that Zexion had never missed a day of his teaching career.
Up until now, that is.
Demyx returned his attention to the test packet and the answer form placed in front of him, unenthusiastically bubbling a letter at random. He grumbled. He twitched, he sighed, he tapped, and he fidgeted, until Leon noticed and was quickly getting irritated.
Fifteen minutes later, the musician gave up any hope of getting a decent score and circled 'd' for every remaining question on the test. Leon accepted it when he turned in both forms with a arched eyebrow, but didn't bother asking; he'd established, in his two days of substituting for the class, that Demyx was more or less a wild card and figuring him out would be a general headache and a waste of time. Demyx smiled at him somewhat apologetically, quietly made up an excuse about a dental appointment that Leon saw right through, and left the classroom.
The blonde quickly decided that the rest of the day was a lost cause too, so he stopped by his apartment to drop off his schoolbag and pick up his keys. He had one to Zexion's apartment, not because the shorter man had given it to him, but because he'd stealthily removed it from Zexion's spare key-ring in his study, made a copy, and then returned it later. Tucking the keys and his wallet in his back pocket, Demyx armed himself with his CD player and favorite pair of bulky headphones and stepped out again.
The April air was warm and sweet-smelling after rains from the previous day. On the way to the trainstation, he splashed in random puddles, air guitared, and made a general fool of himself in public, not that he particularly cared. He decided that, when he got Zexion's place, he'd do him a favor and do his spring cleaning for him. Demyx enjoyed cleaning mostly because it gave him a legitimate chance to play with water, but he also knew that Zexion was either a complete slob on occasion or so busy that he simply forgot to pick up after himself. On the streets leading from the Bella Vista University, there stood a park named similarly, a tiny picture of greenery in the cityscape. Demyx had only strolled through it once or twice to admire the trees and quiet little lake towards the center when his muse was particularly dead, but today he noticed that that there was a girl sitting under the wrought-iron arch of the gateway, surrounded by flowers.
The splash of color caught his interest. Ambling over, he found that the girl was a tiny whiff of a child, with blonde hair and white skin so pale that, in addition to her simple white sundress, she looked the picture of a tiny angel. The thought made Demyx smile. He looked closer, and, eyes widening, realized he recongized her.
He greeted her cheerily. "Hello!"
"Good morning," her quiet response was. She peered up at Demyx through a pale blonde fringe, smiling slightly.
"Demyx," the older blonde introduced himself, and held his hand out.
Hesitantly, she placed her delicate hand in his, and they shook, very gently. "Naminé."
Demyx crouched, so that he was eye-level with the girl, who hadn't given any indication of recongizing him. Maybe she didn't remember, Demyx mused. He guessed that not everyone did.
She sat on the flagstone entrance that stepped up to the park, a sketchbook held loosely in her lap, with a small gray money-box placed besides her. Buckets filled with water and clusters of bright flowers surrounded her, painting a brilliant splash of color on the gray city sidewalk. She looked like she couldn't be more than nine or ten years old in this life, much like her last, but the quiet sense of maturity radiated from her that told Demyx she was probably a little older than she appeared.
"Are you selling the flowers?" Demyx asked, curious.
"Yes." Her fingers drummed lightly on the cover of her sketchbook, which she then lifted slightly, to show Demyx. "I sell pictures, too."
"Can I see?" She nodded.
The pictures were drawn in an assortment of color pencils and crayons, each different from the last, all of them carefully drawn in an amateurish sort of way that was charming. She'd drawn city and landscapes, animals, flowers and trees, and occasionally there were pictures of people passing by. The shapes were blurry sometimes or the lines shaky, but the small details and the delicate touch Naminé infused in them told Demyx that she had natural talent and a great love of art. He held up the book to the young girl, tapped a finger against a picture she'd drawn of the ocean at sunrise. It was near the beginning pages of the book, not particularly good but with a kind of quality he knew a professional would never be able to duplicate or capture. "Can I buy this one?"
Naminé nodded again.
"How much?"
She shrugged, taking the sketchbook from him and carefully ripping out the page on its preforated lines. "How much you want to give," she said softly, and handed it to him.
Demyx blinked, accepting the paper. He glanced at it again, then looked back at Naminé, who was watching him. "Why are you out here, anyway? I mean, um... selling stuff. You should be in school, with the other kids, you know?"
"My papa needs money, so I never went to school," Naminé explained. "Mama got in a car accident so Papa says she's going to resting at the hospital for a long time. He says we need money so that she can stay there, and so the doctors can make sure she'll have good dreams." Eyes downcast, she continued, softer now, "Papa says if we can't give her the best care, mama'll get hurt, and she might not wake up, or not remember us. So I want to help." She looked down, whispering now. "I want to take care of her memories."
"Oh." At a loss, Demyx chewed on his lower lip. He studied the picture of the ocean again, and then carefully folded it into eighths, placing it in his wallet. "I'll take good care of it," he said, to fill the silence, and pulled a twenty and a ten dollar bill from his wallet, pressing it into Naminé's hands. As an after thought, he bought the bucket of particularly vibrant-looking daffodils too, and added another five-bill to the small pile in the blonde girl's hands. She stared at the money, surprised, and when she looked up to say something, Demyx smiled at her. "Um, hey, I have to go, but are you gonna be okay here by yourself?"
"Yes," Naminé said quietly, tucking the money into the safe-box. "Thank you very much," she added.
"Okay." Demyx beamed. "Listen, if you and your papa ever need somethin', just ask for Demyx Melzer over at the Bella Vista apartments, okay?" Naminé nodded, and he got to his feet, taking the bundle of flowers she'd wrapped in paper for him.
Funny how things work out. Demyx didn't like goodbyes so he didn't saying anything else, and he was sure that they'd meet again, anyway. He trotted off down the street whistling, earning a few odd stares at the large boquet daffodils cradled in the crook of his arm. To him, it seemed like he and the other organization members, the people he'd known in a past life, had spent so much time and blood together that their beings resonated in the same circles now, drew themselves to each other.
A ten minute ride on the rails brought Demyx to Zexion's complex. Pressing an ear to the door, he knocked in the special way he knew annoyed the hell out of the shorter man, and waited. When there was no response, the dirty blonde tried the handle, found it locked, and took the liberty of letting himself in.
As soon as he did, he frowned, letting the door close behind him with a click. The air in the entry hallway was stale and nearly dank, as if the windows had not been opened in a long time. The kitchen wasn't much better; a few plates and a cup had a collection of what looked like a couple day's worth of crusty remains and mold scaling on them in the sink. The room Zexion used as a study of sorts had books lying all over and a thin layer of dust developing on the shelves.
"Ooookay," Demyx said aloud to the house, "Zexy has definitely not been taking care of you."
Silence. If Zexion hadn't poked his head out of some room or other and grumpily told Demyx to keep it down by now, he figured he must be out. At least something in the house was getting air.
He left the boquet of daffodils on the kitchen counter and set about opening windows; he deposited his CD player and headphones, along with his wallet and miscellanous crap in his pockets, on the counter next to the flowers, rolled up his sleeves, and cleaned.
A few visits back, Demyx had found an old radio crammed in the corner, and to Zexion's increasing head ache he'd fixed it. Today, he turned it on and tuned into a random station, hummed a few bars along with the music, and set to work.
The dishes went first, neatly dried and stacked in the cabinets; he wiped down the counters, mopped the floors, and dusted the study, picking up the books and piling them in groups on the desk and bookshelves, hoping (with a little bit of fear) that he hadn't horribly destroyed some scientific connection Zexion had established between their arrangement (an irate scientist was a very scary thing, Demyx had learned in the last life and in this one as well.) He fished the forlornly abandoned vaccuum cleaner from the closet and vaccummed the carpets, starting in the entry way and going through the living room and the hallway leading to Zexion's bedroom and bathroom.
He was dirty himself, but feeling satisfied with his work nearly done. Demyx re-rolled the sleeves of his shirt and got himself a glass of water. Then he was struck with An Idea. Grinning wildly, he pulled out Naminé's artwork, and pinned it to the refrigerator with the silly, brightly-colored alphabet magnets he had brought over, on yet another visit awhile back.
Demyx glanced at the wall clock. It four-thirty and Zexion hadn't returned from where ever he had disappeared to. Demyx figured he could whip up a quick meal and leave it for the slate haired man before he had to beat it; he had promised Luneth on pain of death that he'd be back to cook that night, if only to prevent Luneth's friend, Renka, from making another disastrous meal for them (who had spent the evening glaring down their backs as they torturously ate it.)
The daffodils peered at him innocently from the counter, a brilliant splash of golden-yellow against the shady gray counter. Demyx had another Brilliant Idea; up until this point, Zexion had made a point to make sure the curious young blonde never had a chance to sneak into his room. But now that Zexion wasn't around... "Demyx, my man," he cackled, "you are Brilliant!" He found a tall glass from one of the cabinets and filled it half-way with water, then removed the paper wrapping of the daffodils and gently pushed them in. The flowers seemed to grin at him, so he grinned back.
"Get with the beat, yeah!" Demyx sang, snapping the fingers of the hand not holding the make-shift vase as he wandered down what he'd dubbed The Forbidden Corridor, despite his vaccuming it a half-hour earlier. He stopped at the door he presumed to be Zexion's bedroom and stepped in.
"...Holy hell."
If he'd thought Zexion's place was messy earlier, than his bedroom looked like, as his mother had been very fond of saying to him, like a tornado had ripped it through.
Thick volumes of what looked like medical texts littered the floor and bed; clothes were scattered across any free space that could hold them. The desk looked like it was groaning under the sheer weight of precariously balanced satcks of papers and documents, binders, folders, and other office goods Demyx never really bothered himself with; a laptop sat, running on top of a briefcase crammed with yet more paper, and besides it, the desktop monitor of another computer was enveloped in Zexion's great coat, from where it had fallen from the hooks set in the wall above and to the right of it.
Zexion was a bit of slob sometimes, but usually never this bad. But something else threw Demyx off about this room. He shrugged uncomfortably and swallowed, if only to make a sound in the silence, which now felt heavy and condemning. The blonde set the glass of flowers on the only free space--the nightstand that stood guard to the bed--and made his way to the table.
It was with a prickling sense of dread, rising irrationally in his throat, that he began to inspect that contents of the table, both attracted to it by his sheer curiosity and repelled by a sense that told him he was intruding and he should have kept away.
"'Cotard's delusion'?" The blonde read aloud, brow furrowing. "'A rare neurological disorder in which a person holds the delusional belief that he or she is dead, does not exist, is putrefying or has lost his/her blood or internal organs'... what the fuck?" He did not notice his hands were shaking now, as he picked up the textbook that had first caught his eye. "'...Can arise in the context of neurological illness or mental illness and is particularly associated with depression and derealisation...'" A yellow sticky-note was attached at the end of that sentence, naming another book and page number in Zexion's spidery handwriting.
"What the fuck?" It clicked, then; how Zexion always managed to cleverly manuever whatever conversation Demyx struck up about the past, in whatever form, into some other meaningless babble; how he tensed whenever Demyx brought it up, until the blonde had eventually stopped, just for the sake of his being cautious around the other man. And, judging by the state of the room, how he had disappeared for the last two or three days.
Before Demyx knew it, he was drowning, wading deeply into yards of research Zexion had compiled in some frenetic drive that horrified Demyx for reasons he was not entirely sure of. All he knew was that the books, the notes, they all felt wrong, out of place and dangerous and it made the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
He didn't understand half of the psychobabble the medical and sociology texts went into. He didn't really want to, but he kept reading anyway.
"'Depersonalization, the experience of feelings of loss of a sense of reality. ...he or she has changed...the world has become less real.'" The words tore at his throat when they escaped, harsh because he realized, with a sinking feeling, that this was how Zexion seemingly diagnosed himself. "Why...?" Demyx mumbled, staring at the lines of text blankly.
"A very good question," a voice ground out from his left. "As in why. are. you. here."
Demyx nearly dropped the book with a squeak, simultaneously snapping it shut and knocking over the desk chair as he faced Zexion. The blue-gray haired man stood the way he always did, and if it were not for the expression in his eyes and the ice that dripped from his voice he would have looked completely and sounded normal.
"I..."
"Should not be in here." Zexion strode swiftly in the room, snatching the text from Demyx's surprised hands. He glared up at the taller male, a near snarl curling his thin lips. "Get out."
"Why?!" Demyx burst out, completely ignoring the command. The sinking feeling in his stomach was quickly turning; it flopped in his belly, a sick and screaming feeling. "What the hell is all this? Zexion!"
"It is none of your concern. Get out."
"No!"
Zexion glared at him with ice that could have rivaled any of Vexen's creation. He ran a hand through his slightly knotted hair, and in that moment Demyx took in his haggard appearance; the slate-haired man was paler than normal and he looked simply exhausted, with bags under his eyes and rumpled clothes that he had probably slept in.
"Why?" Zexion thought he heard the blonde man--oh, but in that moment of icy clarity he saw Demyx for the boy he still was--voice cracking slightly. He moved past Demyx, setting the chair he had knocked over on its feet, and sat down on it, resting one elbow on the desk surface and propping his head up on it. His mind ached for days spent too long awake, for the lack of food or water.
"Why not?" He answered sarcastically.
"God damnit, Zexion!" In an uncharacteristic display of violence, Demyx slammed a fist onto the surface of the desk, sending a stack of paper flying. It startled the other male, and when he looked up, he saw the burning, passionate rage, illuminated by the stale light slanting through his shuttered windows, on his face--the rage that had kept him in the form of a laughing blonde Nobody when the heartless had first stolen him. Demyx was a peaceful boy but when he was mad, oh, when he was mad Demyx was nothing short of a hurricane.
"Are you joking me?" Demyx gritted out, softer than a whisper. His voice rose. "Why are you doing this to yourself?!"
"We died without hearts, Demyx," Zexion said sharply, sending him a piercing glare. "Have you not questioned your existance now?" He let out a choked snarl when Demyx, towering over him, seized his shoulders and shook him violently.
"QUESTIONING," Demyx roared, "IS WHAT HELPED LOSE US OUR HEARTS IN THE FIRST PLACE!"
This was the rage (they stole this from me) that had kept Demyx's spirit from devolving into a mere Dusk; this was the hidden grief (all I wanted was my music) and anger (what did I do to deserve this) that kept his spirit buoyant and endlessly cheerful (I gotta get through this), what none of the other organization members had realized the air-headed blonde contained.
But this has moved/past love to mania. This has the strong/clench of the madman, this is gripping the ledge of unreason... Zexion closed eyes and the poetry and silence made perfect the anguish in mind, unvoiced. The poetry and the silence and the image of Demyx before him almost breaking, not quite because Demyx was unbreakable, but the image of Demyx's deep dive in the last months for him and now--his near drowning, because god knew Zexion had dived yet deeper and suffocated--
Demyx had sunk to his knees, but his hands still clenched at Zexion's shoulders, and he was still staring at him with the raw sort of misunderstanding in his eyes that it blinded Zexion to look at him.
And, true to form, true to the impossible depths of the friendship and whatever else they had carefully crafted, Zexion answered before he spoke: "If we live now...we are simply reborn into another life and shape...but we have never regained our hearts. If the heart is the source of emotion... the mind, however, processes it. It tells us how to think and feel. When I found out about Cotard's syndrome, I thought... I thought I might have found the connection. If we were unable to determine what emotion of ours is real or imagined...it invariably must have had something to do with the mind. If what we felt the loss of feelings was the loss of our realities...if I researched the disorder, I thought I could have found the recovery." Zexion took a deep breath. "I thought I would know why we failed in our last life."
The grip on shoulders had slackened. When he opened his eyes, he found that the blonde man--the boy--had slumped over in the course of his only admission, his forehead lightly resting on his chest.
"Can't you... just...why does knowing matter?"
"Demyx," Zexion said, and Demyx thought he must have sounded the most gentle he had ever heard him, "no one can live being forever ignorant."
"No," Demyx whispered miserably, "no one can live being afraid to feel."
In the silence, Zexion sat there, arms useless at his sides, Demyx still bowed to him, broad hands at his shoulders. His eyes caught the glass of daffodils, bold and bright in the gray, and it felt like the rest of the world had slipped away, in a rush of sudden, dizzying vertigo that panged in his chest. Just him, Demyx, and the lovely flowers.
"Our lives then, in that world..." he fancied he could feel Demyx's breathe ripple through him, straight to where his heart could--could not--have been. "...they ended when we died. In that world. Can't you just let go of the past, Zexion?"
The sense of dettachment sharpened. Derealization. His hands curled into fists weakly, and in a rush of exhaustion he let his head lower, forehead resting in Demyx's spiky blonde hair. We live in a world where sleeping demons will not lie. He thought he might have felt a spark, when Demyx sighed.
In that grudging, beautiful, destroying moment, Zexion admitted the words that hurt him most: "I don't know."
[x]--[x]--[x]
"Yo. Luneth speaking.
"...who is this? ... Oh! Demyx! Hey man, where were you? ... ...OH YEAH I'M PISSED AT YOU. I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT RENKA MADE THIS TIME BUT--
"...oh. So you're, uh, sleeping over at this guy's house?
"Yeah, I understand. Don't worry about it, I'll take care of it for you.
"Heehee. Who're you staying with, anyway? ...what? Sorry, I can't hear you when you mumble like that... 'old friend'? wow, Demyx, I didn't know you had friends.
"Right, right, alright. Okay. FINE. Jeez, what's up with you tonight? I think my ears are bleeding... g'night, Demyx. Have fun at your girly sleep-over. Make sure you let the nail polish air-dry before applying the second coat--
"...ears definitely bleeding."
[x]--[x]--[x]
Zexion woke up to the muffled sound of Demyx singing and iron clanging from the vague direction of his kitchen. He closed his eyes again and heaved an uncharacteristic sigh, trying to get his bearings, before it occured to him that the sun was shining on his face and that could only mean he was horribly late for work.
The Zexion equivalent to rushing out of bed, was, of course, more or less hauling himself from the warm sheets in a slow, measured fashion. Last night... the dark-haired man frowned, rubbing at his eyes before ambling in the direction of the bathroom. He remembered that his brain and body had finally shut down from two day's worth of exhaustion, and he'd guessed Demyx had been the one to move him to his bed and tuck him in. The mental image of Demyx as a matronly figure (the singing from the kitchen and sizzling sounds only helped convince him that, in yet another life, Demyx was probably a soccer mom) nearly made him snort his toothpaste.
"Good morning, Zexy!"
"Stop calling me that. Good morning."
Demyx rolled his eyes good-naturedly, tipping french toast from the pan onto a plate. Zexion made a half-interested, half-grumpy noise in his throat (Demyx was amused to have learned that Zexion was a man of many foods, but he had a sweet tooth nobody would've guessed) and intercepted the plate before it made it to the table. He ate standing up, leaning against the kitchen counter, and watched the blonde man bustle around his kitchen. Demyx had undoubtedly raided his closet, sporting his jeans from yesterday, soap stains and all, in addition to an old university polo the staff had been forced to wear on fridays. He also had a rather pinkish apron tied around his narrow hips (soccer mom!) that Zexion had no idea existed, but then again Demyx had a talent for uncovering objects of unknown in the Ikeda household.
Demyx frowned at him when he finished the last bite of his toast. "Jeez, I spend all morning cooking--" Zexion snorted. "--okay, well, twenty minutes maybe, and then you scarf it down in five? Where's the loveeeee?"
"I am late to class already," Zexion pointed out.
"Oh. Don't worry about it." Demyx grinned impishly, starting on his own breakfast.
"...What did you do?"
"Called you in sick." Blue-green eyes twinkling innocently, Demyx grinned at him around a mouthful of toast, lips lightly dusted with the powder sugar. At Zexion's exasperated look, he added, "What? You were on a roll already."
"..." Zexion sighed, and knew already that Demyx had some sort of devious plan, and there was little else he could do now but play along. "Why?"
“’Cause I decided you needed a break.” The answer is simple enough, and Zexion also knew Demyx well enough to know that he had no real ulterior motives, and that whatever his reason was, it was truly as simply as his explanation for it. "Which means you're not gonna spend all day stuffed up in your room angsting, 'kay?"
Laughing, he dodged the wadded up napkin Zexion lobbed at his head.
[x]--[x]--[x]
They stopped by Demyx's apartment (so that he could properly "dress down" Zexion, whose entire closet contained disappointingly respectable clothing) and then spent the day sneaking aimlessly around town--or, more accurately, Demyx wandered about to whatever places caught his fancy and dragged Zexion along. The bubbly blonde was content to stroll through the city, window shopping (Zexion had to pry his face off the glass of a case of music equipment when the manager began shooting them dirty looks), randomly sampling foods from vendors and small resturants, and just spending time with the shorter male.
It was nearing dusk when their impromptu adventure looped to an end in front of the park Naminé frequented but was not seated at today.
"Aw man, I'm stuffed." Demyx chewed happily on the end of a takoyaki skewer, which they had purchased not long ago.
"I would be more frightened if you were not," Zexion said dryly, "judging by the fact you eat like a horse." Demyx snorted and gave him a friendly punch in the shoulder.
They walked down the street in comfortable silence. Demyx spat out the skewer and slanted a look at Zexion, humming a little. When Zexion noticed and quirked an eyebrow, he asked, voice hopeful, "Did you have fun today?"
Zexion didn't answer directly, but giving a very slight nod, he asked back: "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why do you..." Zexion frowned; he'd never found words difficult before, but now he was having trouble shaping them. "Do you...bother...with this?" With me, was the unvoiced part.
"Oh, silly Zexy," Demyx sang in the way he knew annoyed him. "It's 'cause I care about you."
"What if... you couldn't?"
Demyx threw an arm around his shoulders, and waited until Zexion looked at him from the corner of his indigo eyes. "See," he said, humming nonchalantly, "I know I'm not smart or anything, but this is where I know I beat you and everyone else in the organization." He smiled fondly. "It's the same with music. You can't really play anything beautiful if you're not totally into it.
When you love something, care about it a lot, it has nothing to do with the heart.
Real feeling comes from the soul. I don't need a heart to know I'm alive and I'm real. So--" with his free hand, he reached up and pinched one of Zexion's cheeks, to which the other male shot him a positively evil glare. "--'don't worry, be happy!'"
"I don't like that song," Zexion muttered half-heartedly. Demyx only laughed, his arm slipping from around Zexion's shoulders so that he could snap his fingers together, singing loudly and earning several odd looks and smiles as they walked. And that was that. Demyx and his clumsy, understated elegance.
When they turned into the train station, Demyx piped up, "Hey, Zexy?"
"What?"
"Let's travel!"
"...What?"
"This place--" Demyx gestured around them, "--I think it's too much like the Castle and the City. We should go somewhere else." His grin was infectious, and Zexion felt a tiny smile pulling at his lips from the blonde man's sheer irrationality. "We'll start over! Again. For real."
"No," Zexion said flatly. At Demyx's hurt look, he smirked, and said, "...'perhaps another time.'"
The smile he was rewarded with was blinding in intensity. "Okay," Demyx agreed, "I'll hold you to that. Guess it's a good thing you said later, 'cause I'm kinda tired."
In the minutes before the city's later rush hours, the car they boarded was nearly empty, and Zexion noted with amusement it was as poorly maintained as the other ones, with broken lights and ripped seating. Nonetheless, Demyx flopped onto the hard cushions, bobbing his head to an imaginary beat and zoning out.
Zexion studied the other man. Because I care. When they came to the stop near Zexion's street, he ignored it, and Demyx, hovering somewhere between a day dream and a light doze, did not notice. The train took them on the rails near the coast front property, and the dimness of the city skyscrapers were suddenly and completely erased by the glowing twilight of the sun setting over the sea.
He studied the way the dusk lingered in Demyx's hair and highlighted the tilt of his broad shoulders, the way that the weak sunlight reflected off the chrome casing of the windows and painted shining dappled spots on his cheeks. The window made a frame, a sleepy Demyx caught against the ocean and the red sun.
I don't need a heart to know I am alive and I am real.
Zexion closed his eyes and imagined the picture stuck to his refrigerator at home. The gray, choppy ocean, painted over with films of orange and red and gold. They were Demyx's colors, he decided, hopeful, happy colors.
In his mind, he had his notebook, and in his imagination he was standing on the edge of the beach. When he raised his arm over his head and hurled the journal as far out to the sea as he could, he imagined also that the ocean rose in a tidal wave to snatch the notebook from the air, and buried it in the sands far, far, below. He imagined that sooner or later, the tsunami would echo out the depths again and envelop him too, but until then...
"I'm going to get through this," he tells himself.
Demyx cracked an eye open. "...Zexion?"
In the twilight, Zexion leans forward and kisses him.
AUTHOR: S-P [reveneirz/Sinful Serenity@fanfiction.net]
RATING: Um. PG13 for some swearing?
GENRE: Drama, semi-AU
PAIRING: Zexion/Demyx
WARNINGS: shounen ai, slight spoilers for CoM/KH2
WORD COUNT: {1/1} 13,521
SUMMARY: Memory, like pride, is a dangerous thing: a blade that, when unheeded rusts, and handled carelessly, cuts its owner. Some people are lucky enough to forget, and some people aren't, through different lives.
[x]--[x]--[x]
Their friendship is a tremulous one that grows from Demyx's care and Zexion's carelessness.
He grows on him, in a strange kind of symbiosis, an unwelcome parasite that he is gradually getting used to. At first, Demyx does all the legwork; he pops up into Zexion's room at random intervals and does nothing. He sits there, hums a little, does his homework or projects until the twitch Zexion's right eye had developed settles down. When Zexion gives up on immediately throwing him out (he had once bodily removed Demyx; for a man so short and skinny, he sure was strong), Demyx takes cue--to, little by little, coax Zexion into speaking, an effort that takes many weeks and boxes and boxes of chocolates. Eventually, he sits at the desk parallel to Zexion's with his chin propped up and they talk.
He finds that he is beginning to enjoy the spiky-haired blonde's company, if only because he did not expect nearly as much of Zexion as every one else seemed to. He never left the conversation topic up to Zexion because he knew the other man would never begin voluntarily; he is never offended by Zexion's caustic responses to his silly antics, and he knows not to bring up their past after the first few sharp glares Zexion threw at him. Even if he doesn't like it, he understands that silence, too, has a place in conversations. He is resilient in a way that Zexion knew he would be before he even knew his name.
They make an odd pair, a tall blonde musician and he, a professor shadowed by his student. They are careful to never let their relationship appear as anything but a teacher and pupil to the public, but when Demyx drops by to visit him at his apartment (how he got his address he did not know, and had the suspicion that he did not really want to) he is wild and free, a riptide in the monotony Zexion once toiled through. He irks him and amuses him in a way that is completely foreign, and perhaps a little unsettling.
Before long, they have nearly an established routine. Monday is Zexion's day, all to himself, in which he usually spends researching or reading or learning. Tuesdays and fridays Demyx stops by his apartment near five o' clock, where he insists on cooking (his skills in the kitchen are surprisingly good) and after dinner and a mostly one-sided conversation, he cleans the kitchen until it shines (even more surprising). He leaves at nine o' clock for his dorm across the town, and silence settles in Zexion's place again.
Wednesdays and thursdays, Zexion stays after hours to work in his classroom, and Demyx arrives shortly after his sixth period at three o' clock. Sometimes he pulls out his textbooks and complains about music theory ("If I can play it fine why do I have to know what the hell the inversions of an a minor dominant seventh are anyway?"), or works quietly; somedays, he pulls out his work and it lies on his desk, abandoned, and he simply watches Zexion in a way the older man has now grown accustomed to.
Weekends, Demyx occasionally pops in on the mornings, but mostly spends them sleeping in or doing odds and ends around his dorm. He plays for the jazz band at a bar downtown in the evenings, a fact he had not disclosed to any one except Luneth, so he is pleasantly surprised when he and his weekly bandmates are strumming out blues and he finds Zexion in the audience. He stands up on the small stage and announces gleefully that the next song's to his newcomer-friend, and the audience peer at each other interestedly, trying to figure out the who the popular young blonde's accompaniment is. Zexion hides his face behind a drink, and makes a point to save half of--so that when Demyx breezes over to his table much later in the night--he can dump it down his shirt.
Demyx laughs and jokes and whistles and Zexion finds that a certain kind of controlled chaos enters his life now, that he is along for the ride (like it or not), and that he is not really complaining, much.
But fate has different plans, and just as the dark-haired man thinks he could get used to this, he has The Discovery. It is not so much a Discovery as it is him randomly stumbling on a page in one of the campus bookstore's many psychology texts, this one in particular covering mental illnesses. The shuffling noises of students and teachers browsing shelves around him dulls into a murmur, and he feels all his energy drain out of him.
He is getting careless. He cannot believe that an answer--or, at the very least, a lead--to all his questions has been staring at him for so long and that he has not seen it in his preoccupation with Demyx. Zexion snaps the book shut and shifts it to the crook of his arm and in mounting rage and insatiable hunger and feels hollow, all at the same time, and he grabs all the nearby titles that could have any possible revelance, piling them into his arms.
He blows four week's of paychecks on the pile of heavy textbooks and scares the daylights out of a clerk who timidly offers him her assistance, but he is so far gone that he does not notice. The next thing he knows is that he is home and reading, reading as fast as he can, making notes and outlines and highlighting and cross-referencing. He needs to know more.
Cotard's syndrome, he mouths into the silence of his reading, Negation delirium. ...neurological disorder...delusions. ...subject believes that he or she is dead, or... do not exist.
[x]--[x]--[x]
Demyx was not pleased.
No, Demyx-Lord-of-all-he-surveys-on-occasion was not pleased at all (title self-imposed.) He slouched at his desk, frowning slightly, blue-green eyes surveying the room. The other students were alternatively bent over the test they were having today, finished and attempting to quietly exchange notes, or oggling the substitute.
Leonhart had stood in for Zexion for the last two days and it was beginning to bother the blonde-haired man. He was an excellent teacher in his own right, patient and well-read, but he just wasn't the same as other male. Demyx hadn't been around the university long enough to know for sure (he had transferred here in spring semester, last year), but he was fairly certain that Zexion had never missed a day of his teaching career.
Up until now, that is.
Demyx returned his attention to the test packet and the answer form placed in front of him, unenthusiastically bubbling a letter at random. He grumbled. He twitched, he sighed, he tapped, and he fidgeted, until Leon noticed and was quickly getting irritated.
Fifteen minutes later, the musician gave up any hope of getting a decent score and circled 'd' for every remaining question on the test. Leon accepted it when he turned in both forms with a arched eyebrow, but didn't bother asking; he'd established, in his two days of substituting for the class, that Demyx was more or less a wild card and figuring him out would be a general headache and a waste of time. Demyx smiled at him somewhat apologetically, quietly made up an excuse about a dental appointment that Leon saw right through, and left the classroom.
The blonde quickly decided that the rest of the day was a lost cause too, so he stopped by his apartment to drop off his schoolbag and pick up his keys. He had one to Zexion's apartment, not because the shorter man had given it to him, but because he'd stealthily removed it from Zexion's spare key-ring in his study, made a copy, and then returned it later. Tucking the keys and his wallet in his back pocket, Demyx armed himself with his CD player and favorite pair of bulky headphones and stepped out again.
The April air was warm and sweet-smelling after rains from the previous day. On the way to the trainstation, he splashed in random puddles, air guitared, and made a general fool of himself in public, not that he particularly cared. He decided that, when he got Zexion's place, he'd do him a favor and do his spring cleaning for him. Demyx enjoyed cleaning mostly because it gave him a legitimate chance to play with water, but he also knew that Zexion was either a complete slob on occasion or so busy that he simply forgot to pick up after himself. On the streets leading from the Bella Vista University, there stood a park named similarly, a tiny picture of greenery in the cityscape. Demyx had only strolled through it once or twice to admire the trees and quiet little lake towards the center when his muse was particularly dead, but today he noticed that that there was a girl sitting under the wrought-iron arch of the gateway, surrounded by flowers.
The splash of color caught his interest. Ambling over, he found that the girl was a tiny whiff of a child, with blonde hair and white skin so pale that, in addition to her simple white sundress, she looked the picture of a tiny angel. The thought made Demyx smile. He looked closer, and, eyes widening, realized he recongized her.
He greeted her cheerily. "Hello!"
"Good morning," her quiet response was. She peered up at Demyx through a pale blonde fringe, smiling slightly.
"Demyx," the older blonde introduced himself, and held his hand out.
Hesitantly, she placed her delicate hand in his, and they shook, very gently. "Naminé."
Demyx crouched, so that he was eye-level with the girl, who hadn't given any indication of recongizing him. Maybe she didn't remember, Demyx mused. He guessed that not everyone did.
She sat on the flagstone entrance that stepped up to the park, a sketchbook held loosely in her lap, with a small gray money-box placed besides her. Buckets filled with water and clusters of bright flowers surrounded her, painting a brilliant splash of color on the gray city sidewalk. She looked like she couldn't be more than nine or ten years old in this life, much like her last, but the quiet sense of maturity radiated from her that told Demyx she was probably a little older than she appeared.
"Are you selling the flowers?" Demyx asked, curious.
"Yes." Her fingers drummed lightly on the cover of her sketchbook, which she then lifted slightly, to show Demyx. "I sell pictures, too."
"Can I see?" She nodded.
The pictures were drawn in an assortment of color pencils and crayons, each different from the last, all of them carefully drawn in an amateurish sort of way that was charming. She'd drawn city and landscapes, animals, flowers and trees, and occasionally there were pictures of people passing by. The shapes were blurry sometimes or the lines shaky, but the small details and the delicate touch Naminé infused in them told Demyx that she had natural talent and a great love of art. He held up the book to the young girl, tapped a finger against a picture she'd drawn of the ocean at sunrise. It was near the beginning pages of the book, not particularly good but with a kind of quality he knew a professional would never be able to duplicate or capture. "Can I buy this one?"
Naminé nodded again.
"How much?"
She shrugged, taking the sketchbook from him and carefully ripping out the page on its preforated lines. "How much you want to give," she said softly, and handed it to him.
Demyx blinked, accepting the paper. He glanced at it again, then looked back at Naminé, who was watching him. "Why are you out here, anyway? I mean, um... selling stuff. You should be in school, with the other kids, you know?"
"My papa needs money, so I never went to school," Naminé explained. "Mama got in a car accident so Papa says she's going to resting at the hospital for a long time. He says we need money so that she can stay there, and so the doctors can make sure she'll have good dreams." Eyes downcast, she continued, softer now, "Papa says if we can't give her the best care, mama'll get hurt, and she might not wake up, or not remember us. So I want to help." She looked down, whispering now. "I want to take care of her memories."
"Oh." At a loss, Demyx chewed on his lower lip. He studied the picture of the ocean again, and then carefully folded it into eighths, placing it in his wallet. "I'll take good care of it," he said, to fill the silence, and pulled a twenty and a ten dollar bill from his wallet, pressing it into Naminé's hands. As an after thought, he bought the bucket of particularly vibrant-looking daffodils too, and added another five-bill to the small pile in the blonde girl's hands. She stared at the money, surprised, and when she looked up to say something, Demyx smiled at her. "Um, hey, I have to go, but are you gonna be okay here by yourself?"
"Yes," Naminé said quietly, tucking the money into the safe-box. "Thank you very much," she added.
"Okay." Demyx beamed. "Listen, if you and your papa ever need somethin', just ask for Demyx Melzer over at the Bella Vista apartments, okay?" Naminé nodded, and he got to his feet, taking the bundle of flowers she'd wrapped in paper for him.
Funny how things work out. Demyx didn't like goodbyes so he didn't saying anything else, and he was sure that they'd meet again, anyway. He trotted off down the street whistling, earning a few odd stares at the large boquet daffodils cradled in the crook of his arm. To him, it seemed like he and the other organization members, the people he'd known in a past life, had spent so much time and blood together that their beings resonated in the same circles now, drew themselves to each other.
A ten minute ride on the rails brought Demyx to Zexion's complex. Pressing an ear to the door, he knocked in the special way he knew annoyed the hell out of the shorter man, and waited. When there was no response, the dirty blonde tried the handle, found it locked, and took the liberty of letting himself in.
As soon as he did, he frowned, letting the door close behind him with a click. The air in the entry hallway was stale and nearly dank, as if the windows had not been opened in a long time. The kitchen wasn't much better; a few plates and a cup had a collection of what looked like a couple day's worth of crusty remains and mold scaling on them in the sink. The room Zexion used as a study of sorts had books lying all over and a thin layer of dust developing on the shelves.
"Ooookay," Demyx said aloud to the house, "Zexy has definitely not been taking care of you."
Silence. If Zexion hadn't poked his head out of some room or other and grumpily told Demyx to keep it down by now, he figured he must be out. At least something in the house was getting air.
He left the boquet of daffodils on the kitchen counter and set about opening windows; he deposited his CD player and headphones, along with his wallet and miscellanous crap in his pockets, on the counter next to the flowers, rolled up his sleeves, and cleaned.
A few visits back, Demyx had found an old radio crammed in the corner, and to Zexion's increasing head ache he'd fixed it. Today, he turned it on and tuned into a random station, hummed a few bars along with the music, and set to work.
The dishes went first, neatly dried and stacked in the cabinets; he wiped down the counters, mopped the floors, and dusted the study, picking up the books and piling them in groups on the desk and bookshelves, hoping (with a little bit of fear) that he hadn't horribly destroyed some scientific connection Zexion had established between their arrangement (an irate scientist was a very scary thing, Demyx had learned in the last life and in this one as well.) He fished the forlornly abandoned vaccuum cleaner from the closet and vaccummed the carpets, starting in the entry way and going through the living room and the hallway leading to Zexion's bedroom and bathroom.
He was dirty himself, but feeling satisfied with his work nearly done. Demyx re-rolled the sleeves of his shirt and got himself a glass of water. Then he was struck with An Idea. Grinning wildly, he pulled out Naminé's artwork, and pinned it to the refrigerator with the silly, brightly-colored alphabet magnets he had brought over, on yet another visit awhile back.
Demyx glanced at the wall clock. It four-thirty and Zexion hadn't returned from where ever he had disappeared to. Demyx figured he could whip up a quick meal and leave it for the slate haired man before he had to beat it; he had promised Luneth on pain of death that he'd be back to cook that night, if only to prevent Luneth's friend, Renka, from making another disastrous meal for them (who had spent the evening glaring down their backs as they torturously ate it.)
The daffodils peered at him innocently from the counter, a brilliant splash of golden-yellow against the shady gray counter. Demyx had another Brilliant Idea; up until this point, Zexion had made a point to make sure the curious young blonde never had a chance to sneak into his room. But now that Zexion wasn't around... "Demyx, my man," he cackled, "you are Brilliant!" He found a tall glass from one of the cabinets and filled it half-way with water, then removed the paper wrapping of the daffodils and gently pushed them in. The flowers seemed to grin at him, so he grinned back.
"Get with the beat, yeah!" Demyx sang, snapping the fingers of the hand not holding the make-shift vase as he wandered down what he'd dubbed The Forbidden Corridor, despite his vaccuming it a half-hour earlier. He stopped at the door he presumed to be Zexion's bedroom and stepped in.
"...Holy hell."
If he'd thought Zexion's place was messy earlier, than his bedroom looked like, as his mother had been very fond of saying to him, like a tornado had ripped it through.
Thick volumes of what looked like medical texts littered the floor and bed; clothes were scattered across any free space that could hold them. The desk looked like it was groaning under the sheer weight of precariously balanced satcks of papers and documents, binders, folders, and other office goods Demyx never really bothered himself with; a laptop sat, running on top of a briefcase crammed with yet more paper, and besides it, the desktop monitor of another computer was enveloped in Zexion's great coat, from where it had fallen from the hooks set in the wall above and to the right of it.
Zexion was a bit of slob sometimes, but usually never this bad. But something else threw Demyx off about this room. He shrugged uncomfortably and swallowed, if only to make a sound in the silence, which now felt heavy and condemning. The blonde set the glass of flowers on the only free space--the nightstand that stood guard to the bed--and made his way to the table.
It was with a prickling sense of dread, rising irrationally in his throat, that he began to inspect that contents of the table, both attracted to it by his sheer curiosity and repelled by a sense that told him he was intruding and he should have kept away.
"'Cotard's delusion'?" The blonde read aloud, brow furrowing. "'A rare neurological disorder in which a person holds the delusional belief that he or she is dead, does not exist, is putrefying or has lost his/her blood or internal organs'... what the fuck?" He did not notice his hands were shaking now, as he picked up the textbook that had first caught his eye. "'...Can arise in the context of neurological illness or mental illness and is particularly associated with depression and derealisation...'" A yellow sticky-note was attached at the end of that sentence, naming another book and page number in Zexion's spidery handwriting.
"What the fuck?" It clicked, then; how Zexion always managed to cleverly manuever whatever conversation Demyx struck up about the past, in whatever form, into some other meaningless babble; how he tensed whenever Demyx brought it up, until the blonde had eventually stopped, just for the sake of his being cautious around the other man. And, judging by the state of the room, how he had disappeared for the last two or three days.
Before Demyx knew it, he was drowning, wading deeply into yards of research Zexion had compiled in some frenetic drive that horrified Demyx for reasons he was not entirely sure of. All he knew was that the books, the notes, they all felt wrong, out of place and dangerous and it made the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
He didn't understand half of the psychobabble the medical and sociology texts went into. He didn't really want to, but he kept reading anyway.
"'Depersonalization, the experience of feelings of loss of a sense of reality. ...he or she has changed...the world has become less real.'" The words tore at his throat when they escaped, harsh because he realized, with a sinking feeling, that this was how Zexion seemingly diagnosed himself. "Why...?" Demyx mumbled, staring at the lines of text blankly.
"A very good question," a voice ground out from his left. "As in why. are. you. here."
Demyx nearly dropped the book with a squeak, simultaneously snapping it shut and knocking over the desk chair as he faced Zexion. The blue-gray haired man stood the way he always did, and if it were not for the expression in his eyes and the ice that dripped from his voice he would have looked completely and sounded normal.
"I..."
"Should not be in here." Zexion strode swiftly in the room, snatching the text from Demyx's surprised hands. He glared up at the taller male, a near snarl curling his thin lips. "Get out."
"Why?!" Demyx burst out, completely ignoring the command. The sinking feeling in his stomach was quickly turning; it flopped in his belly, a sick and screaming feeling. "What the hell is all this? Zexion!"
"It is none of your concern. Get out."
"No!"
Zexion glared at him with ice that could have rivaled any of Vexen's creation. He ran a hand through his slightly knotted hair, and in that moment Demyx took in his haggard appearance; the slate-haired man was paler than normal and he looked simply exhausted, with bags under his eyes and rumpled clothes that he had probably slept in.
"Why?" Zexion thought he heard the blonde man--oh, but in that moment of icy clarity he saw Demyx for the boy he still was--voice cracking slightly. He moved past Demyx, setting the chair he had knocked over on its feet, and sat down on it, resting one elbow on the desk surface and propping his head up on it. His mind ached for days spent too long awake, for the lack of food or water.
"Why not?" He answered sarcastically.
"God damnit, Zexion!" In an uncharacteristic display of violence, Demyx slammed a fist onto the surface of the desk, sending a stack of paper flying. It startled the other male, and when he looked up, he saw the burning, passionate rage, illuminated by the stale light slanting through his shuttered windows, on his face--the rage that had kept him in the form of a laughing blonde Nobody when the heartless had first stolen him. Demyx was a peaceful boy but when he was mad, oh, when he was mad Demyx was nothing short of a hurricane.
"Are you joking me?" Demyx gritted out, softer than a whisper. His voice rose. "Why are you doing this to yourself?!"
"We died without hearts, Demyx," Zexion said sharply, sending him a piercing glare. "Have you not questioned your existance now?" He let out a choked snarl when Demyx, towering over him, seized his shoulders and shook him violently.
"QUESTIONING," Demyx roared, "IS WHAT HELPED LOSE US OUR HEARTS IN THE FIRST PLACE!"
This was the rage (they stole this from me) that had kept Demyx's spirit from devolving into a mere Dusk; this was the hidden grief (all I wanted was my music) and anger (what did I do to deserve this) that kept his spirit buoyant and endlessly cheerful (I gotta get through this), what none of the other organization members had realized the air-headed blonde contained.
But this has moved/past love to mania. This has the strong/clench of the madman, this is gripping the ledge of unreason... Zexion closed eyes and the poetry and silence made perfect the anguish in mind, unvoiced. The poetry and the silence and the image of Demyx before him almost breaking, not quite because Demyx was unbreakable, but the image of Demyx's deep dive in the last months for him and now--his near drowning, because god knew Zexion had dived yet deeper and suffocated--
Demyx had sunk to his knees, but his hands still clenched at Zexion's shoulders, and he was still staring at him with the raw sort of misunderstanding in his eyes that it blinded Zexion to look at him.
And, true to form, true to the impossible depths of the friendship and whatever else they had carefully crafted, Zexion answered before he spoke: "If we live now...we are simply reborn into another life and shape...but we have never regained our hearts. If the heart is the source of emotion... the mind, however, processes it. It tells us how to think and feel. When I found out about Cotard's syndrome, I thought... I thought I might have found the connection. If we were unable to determine what emotion of ours is real or imagined...it invariably must have had something to do with the mind. If what we felt the loss of feelings was the loss of our realities...if I researched the disorder, I thought I could have found the recovery." Zexion took a deep breath. "I thought I would know why we failed in our last life."
The grip on shoulders had slackened. When he opened his eyes, he found that the blonde man--the boy--had slumped over in the course of his only admission, his forehead lightly resting on his chest.
"Can't you... just...why does knowing matter?"
"Demyx," Zexion said, and Demyx thought he must have sounded the most gentle he had ever heard him, "no one can live being forever ignorant."
"No," Demyx whispered miserably, "no one can live being afraid to feel."
In the silence, Zexion sat there, arms useless at his sides, Demyx still bowed to him, broad hands at his shoulders. His eyes caught the glass of daffodils, bold and bright in the gray, and it felt like the rest of the world had slipped away, in a rush of sudden, dizzying vertigo that panged in his chest. Just him, Demyx, and the lovely flowers.
"Our lives then, in that world..." he fancied he could feel Demyx's breathe ripple through him, straight to where his heart could--could not--have been. "...they ended when we died. In that world. Can't you just let go of the past, Zexion?"
The sense of dettachment sharpened. Derealization. His hands curled into fists weakly, and in a rush of exhaustion he let his head lower, forehead resting in Demyx's spiky blonde hair. We live in a world where sleeping demons will not lie. He thought he might have felt a spark, when Demyx sighed.
In that grudging, beautiful, destroying moment, Zexion admitted the words that hurt him most: "I don't know."
[x]--[x]--[x]
"Yo. Luneth speaking.
"...who is this? ... Oh! Demyx! Hey man, where were you? ... ...OH YEAH I'M PISSED AT YOU. I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT RENKA MADE THIS TIME BUT--
"...oh. So you're, uh, sleeping over at this guy's house?
"Yeah, I understand. Don't worry about it, I'll take care of it for you.
"Heehee. Who're you staying with, anyway? ...what? Sorry, I can't hear you when you mumble like that... 'old friend'? wow, Demyx, I didn't know you had friends.
"Right, right, alright. Okay. FINE. Jeez, what's up with you tonight? I think my ears are bleeding... g'night, Demyx. Have fun at your girly sleep-over. Make sure you let the nail polish air-dry before applying the second coat--
"...ears definitely bleeding."
[x]--[x]--[x]
Zexion woke up to the muffled sound of Demyx singing and iron clanging from the vague direction of his kitchen. He closed his eyes again and heaved an uncharacteristic sigh, trying to get his bearings, before it occured to him that the sun was shining on his face and that could only mean he was horribly late for work.
The Zexion equivalent to rushing out of bed, was, of course, more or less hauling himself from the warm sheets in a slow, measured fashion. Last night... the dark-haired man frowned, rubbing at his eyes before ambling in the direction of the bathroom. He remembered that his brain and body had finally shut down from two day's worth of exhaustion, and he'd guessed Demyx had been the one to move him to his bed and tuck him in. The mental image of Demyx as a matronly figure (the singing from the kitchen and sizzling sounds only helped convince him that, in yet another life, Demyx was probably a soccer mom) nearly made him snort his toothpaste.
"Good morning, Zexy!"
"Stop calling me that. Good morning."
Demyx rolled his eyes good-naturedly, tipping french toast from the pan onto a plate. Zexion made a half-interested, half-grumpy noise in his throat (Demyx was amused to have learned that Zexion was a man of many foods, but he had a sweet tooth nobody would've guessed) and intercepted the plate before it made it to the table. He ate standing up, leaning against the kitchen counter, and watched the blonde man bustle around his kitchen. Demyx had undoubtedly raided his closet, sporting his jeans from yesterday, soap stains and all, in addition to an old university polo the staff had been forced to wear on fridays. He also had a rather pinkish apron tied around his narrow hips (soccer mom!) that Zexion had no idea existed, but then again Demyx had a talent for uncovering objects of unknown in the Ikeda household.
Demyx frowned at him when he finished the last bite of his toast. "Jeez, I spend all morning cooking--" Zexion snorted. "--okay, well, twenty minutes maybe, and then you scarf it down in five? Where's the loveeeee?"
"I am late to class already," Zexion pointed out.
"Oh. Don't worry about it." Demyx grinned impishly, starting on his own breakfast.
"...What did you do?"
"Called you in sick." Blue-green eyes twinkling innocently, Demyx grinned at him around a mouthful of toast, lips lightly dusted with the powder sugar. At Zexion's exasperated look, he added, "What? You were on a roll already."
"..." Zexion sighed, and knew already that Demyx had some sort of devious plan, and there was little else he could do now but play along. "Why?"
“’Cause I decided you needed a break.” The answer is simple enough, and Zexion also knew Demyx well enough to know that he had no real ulterior motives, and that whatever his reason was, it was truly as simply as his explanation for it. "Which means you're not gonna spend all day stuffed up in your room angsting, 'kay?"
Laughing, he dodged the wadded up napkin Zexion lobbed at his head.
[x]--[x]--[x]
They stopped by Demyx's apartment (so that he could properly "dress down" Zexion, whose entire closet contained disappointingly respectable clothing) and then spent the day sneaking aimlessly around town--or, more accurately, Demyx wandered about to whatever places caught his fancy and dragged Zexion along. The bubbly blonde was content to stroll through the city, window shopping (Zexion had to pry his face off the glass of a case of music equipment when the manager began shooting them dirty looks), randomly sampling foods from vendors and small resturants, and just spending time with the shorter male.
It was nearing dusk when their impromptu adventure looped to an end in front of the park Naminé frequented but was not seated at today.
"Aw man, I'm stuffed." Demyx chewed happily on the end of a takoyaki skewer, which they had purchased not long ago.
"I would be more frightened if you were not," Zexion said dryly, "judging by the fact you eat like a horse." Demyx snorted and gave him a friendly punch in the shoulder.
They walked down the street in comfortable silence. Demyx spat out the skewer and slanted a look at Zexion, humming a little. When Zexion noticed and quirked an eyebrow, he asked, voice hopeful, "Did you have fun today?"
Zexion didn't answer directly, but giving a very slight nod, he asked back: "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why do you..." Zexion frowned; he'd never found words difficult before, but now he was having trouble shaping them. "Do you...bother...with this?" With me, was the unvoiced part.
"Oh, silly Zexy," Demyx sang in the way he knew annoyed him. "It's 'cause I care about you."
"What if... you couldn't?"
Demyx threw an arm around his shoulders, and waited until Zexion looked at him from the corner of his indigo eyes. "See," he said, humming nonchalantly, "I know I'm not smart or anything, but this is where I know I beat you and everyone else in the organization." He smiled fondly. "It's the same with music. You can't really play anything beautiful if you're not totally into it.
When you love something, care about it a lot, it has nothing to do with the heart.
Real feeling comes from the soul. I don't need a heart to know I'm alive and I'm real. So--" with his free hand, he reached up and pinched one of Zexion's cheeks, to which the other male shot him a positively evil glare. "--'don't worry, be happy!'"
"I don't like that song," Zexion muttered half-heartedly. Demyx only laughed, his arm slipping from around Zexion's shoulders so that he could snap his fingers together, singing loudly and earning several odd looks and smiles as they walked. And that was that. Demyx and his clumsy, understated elegance.
When they turned into the train station, Demyx piped up, "Hey, Zexy?"
"What?"
"Let's travel!"
"...What?"
"This place--" Demyx gestured around them, "--I think it's too much like the Castle and the City. We should go somewhere else." His grin was infectious, and Zexion felt a tiny smile pulling at his lips from the blonde man's sheer irrationality. "We'll start over! Again. For real."
"No," Zexion said flatly. At Demyx's hurt look, he smirked, and said, "...'perhaps another time.'"
The smile he was rewarded with was blinding in intensity. "Okay," Demyx agreed, "I'll hold you to that. Guess it's a good thing you said later, 'cause I'm kinda tired."
In the minutes before the city's later rush hours, the car they boarded was nearly empty, and Zexion noted with amusement it was as poorly maintained as the other ones, with broken lights and ripped seating. Nonetheless, Demyx flopped onto the hard cushions, bobbing his head to an imaginary beat and zoning out.
Zexion studied the other man. Because I care. When they came to the stop near Zexion's street, he ignored it, and Demyx, hovering somewhere between a day dream and a light doze, did not notice. The train took them on the rails near the coast front property, and the dimness of the city skyscrapers were suddenly and completely erased by the glowing twilight of the sun setting over the sea.
He studied the way the dusk lingered in Demyx's hair and highlighted the tilt of his broad shoulders, the way that the weak sunlight reflected off the chrome casing of the windows and painted shining dappled spots on his cheeks. The window made a frame, a sleepy Demyx caught against the ocean and the red sun.
I don't need a heart to know I am alive and I am real.
Zexion closed his eyes and imagined the picture stuck to his refrigerator at home. The gray, choppy ocean, painted over with films of orange and red and gold. They were Demyx's colors, he decided, hopeful, happy colors.
In his mind, he had his notebook, and in his imagination he was standing on the edge of the beach. When he raised his arm over his head and hurled the journal as far out to the sea as he could, he imagined also that the ocean rose in a tidal wave to snatch the notebook from the air, and buried it in the sands far, far, below. He imagined that sooner or later, the tsunami would echo out the depths again and envelop him too, but until then...
"I'm going to get through this," he tells himself.
Demyx cracked an eye open. "...Zexion?"
In the twilight, Zexion leans forward and kisses him.