Disclaimer: KH isn't mine.

Author's Notes: Alright, this is sorta an apology for disappearing for a month! April and May's one-shots are on the way, and this is just a request fic from onemoreparadise on LJ who asked for "Unrequited love". Also, Demyx's dialogue is paraphrased here. I'm too lazy to look it up right now.

Dedications: To Evil-Pixie-Dust. She is lovely, as always

Feel the Warmth You Cannot Miss

Zexion doesn't think much when Xigbar told him that he was going to recruit a new member, other than to be distantly pleased that there would soon be another person to foist his duties upon. He figures that the new recruit will be like Axel, useful but not too much so. Just another set of hands.

He is entirely unprepared for the sudden rush of feeling he experiences when he sees Demyx for the first time, sea-foam eyes glassy and stark in the paleness of his skin.

And Zexion realizes what it is to want.

(This realization only grows stronger as Demyx wakes up to his new life, begins smiling and playing music and laughing.)

Zexion attempts conversation, introducing himself almost kindly, almost… friendly. But the blond musician is only lukewarm towards Zexion, not meeting his eyes and shifting anxiously from foot to foot and always leaving his presence as soon as he can. (And Zexion hates it, hates it, but he can't do anything to change it, and so he eventually just stops trying to speak with him.)

He hears Demyx talking all the time, and he listens quietly, but listening never results in what he wants, because Demyx doesn't want him back. Demyx wants Zexion to leave him alone, Demyx thinks Zexion is weird and strange, and Zexion knows that Demyx is marvelous, wants a chance with him, but knows he will never get one.

He creates illusions instead, building Demyx from the inside out, but it doesn't work, it doesn't work, he can't get the eyes right, can't figure out how to make Demyx's voice sound anything other than uncomfortable and mocking. The illusions are sub-par, no matter how much Zexion studies Demyx from a distance. It drives Zexion mad, not having even this one small thing.

("You see that guy over there? Zexion? That guy's kinda weird, don't you think?"

Zexion's heart, supposedly non-existent, flinches that day.)

And he still has those vague, apathetic teal eyes when he looks at Zexion.

His latest illusion fades, leaving Zexion scowling at an empty room. "Not perfect enough," he murmurs, going to one of his books and flipping through a few pages, finger underlining passages as he reads them. He nods a few seconds later, picking up his Lexicon again and beginning the gestures to form the illusion when he hears the sounds of soft percussion from the window. Turning towards it, Zexion dismisses Lexicon and paces to the glass, looking down.

Rain falls in predictable patterns on the World That Never Was, pit-pattering on the large open windows, on the slanted roof tiles. It raises smells of concrete and wet pavement, but none of grass or growing things. (There is no scent of life in their white and silver world.)

Zexion sits in the windowsill of his library. Books lay forgotten around him, their pages open and bare to the air. His fingers thoughtlessly caress the spine of one as he gazes out the window, down to the exposed staircase where he can see the cloaked figure of one of the other members of the organization. Tracing their frame, cobalt eyes take in minute details even from a distance, noting height and stance and small hand gestures that the other is making. The water on the windowsill quivers in time to the movements of the person in front of him, and Zexion's lips twist as he tries to ignore the suddenly increased pulsating of his 'non-existent' heart.

Demyx.

(The blond is everywhere, the smell of him coating the hallways of the Castle, his music drifting in the air, and Zexion hates being as aware of it as he is.)

It is with almost voyeuristic curiosity that Zexion watches Demyx's silhouette beneath him. The Nocturne flips back the hood of his cloak, raising his pale face to the sky as his fingers go to pull down the zipper and completely remove the jacket. He steps further into the rain, teal eyes open and skin bared. (Zexion muses, bitterly, that it is completely irrational to be jealous of a rainstorm.)

And then he hears Demyx start screaming.

Zexion turns his face away, closing his eyes to the twisting ache in his heart. But he does not leave the windowsill. He does not leave the blond alone to scream his anger and pain to the sky, tears mingling with the rain that now falls upwards because Demyx wills it to. Zexion wants to go out onto the steps with him, wants to hold Demyx and kiss him and touch him with all of the tenderness that he knows and wants to learn. Instead he listens and he watches, silent witness to Demyx venting his passion to the uncaring clouds.

It is the only part of Demyx that he has.

Ashamed though he may be that he is so greedy for something that is not truly his, he does not let that piece go. He keeps it near him always.

(His last thought is of teal eyes, closed to the sky and rain above; the only part that was his and his alone.)

So, request fic! Haha! How about that! This went pretty well, I think, and I like it too much to leave it on the LJ comm. (And besides, you guys deserve some fic, even if it's not happy fic)

Reviews are appreciated!