Gaah, I never do things for the Organization pairing-calendar, but MarluxiaVexen is my OTP for all time so I had to write a fic for 11-4. Happy MarluxiaVexen day.

Disclaimer: I don't own Vexen, Marluxia, or anyone and anything else associated with Kingdom Hearts, which belongs to Square Enix and Disney. I do own the University and all characters within it, but that's minor so never mind.

x

Academic Curiosity

x

"What was your Somebody like?"

Marluxia glanced up from his newspaper. "Pardon? Why do you ask?"

"Curiosity," Vexen said, sitting down on a sofa across the room from Marluxia's armchair. "And a hint of boredom. But mostly academic curiosity."

"Boredom? You? Aren't you the one who informed the rest of the Organization that they could feel no such thing?" Marluxia looked almost offended.

"I said it was merely a hint of boredom," Vexen corrected. "And I am curious. It's for research; I want to know what similarities we Nobodies have to our Somebodies. If any."

"Go ask someone else, then," Marluxia said, raising his newspaper again. "I'm sure one of your fellow scientists will give much better answers than a lowly neophyte."

"I already know what they're like," Vexen said. "Even associated with them every day."

"Then can't you bother Axel?"

"I haven't been able to locate him."

"Larxene?"

"You must be joking."

Marluxia sighed heavily. "All right," he said, closing his paper with exaggerated precision. "What is it you want to know?"

Vexen hunched forward, elbows on his knees. "What kind of person were you?"

Marluxia frowned. "Rather vague, don't you think?"

"Just tell me anything. Occupation, age, socioeconomic status, whatever occurs to you."

"Fine. Occupation." Marluxia thought a moment, and then smiled. "I didn't have one. I was a hippie."

Vexen sat up a bit. "A what?"

"You don't know what a hippie is?" Marluxia raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. "Well, who would have imagined it! Surely you've seen one before? Tie-dye clothes, rose tinted eyeglasses, bandanas and peace signs and smiley faces? They go around with signs protesting wars and promoting love? Familiar at all?"

"Apparently, the 'hippies' never made it to Radiant Garden," Vexen said tersely. "What precisely do they do?"

"Make love and get high," Marluxia said.

Vexen stared at Marluxia blankly. "That's it?"

"Basically. That, and listen to the kind of music mothers ground their children for singing." Marluxia chuckled dryly. "It's a good life. No worries in the world. Well, except for where they'll find a place to sleep and when they'll next get any food. But the fashion is great and there are flowers abound. Hippies are big on flowers."

Vexen couldn't conceive of Marluxia leading a life like that. Demyx, maybe, or Axel. But Marluxia? It was ridiculous. He dropped the question and moved on. "Fine. A hippie. What was your social life like, then? Your friends, your romantic preferences..."

Marluxia grinned again. Vexen could only imagine what he would come up with next.

"Romantic preferences? Other men, naturally," Marluxia said. "And I'm quite proud of it."

"Congratulations," Vexen muttered. "Moving on..."

"I wasn't finished," Marluxia said. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs, looking thoughtful. "I didn't like just any men." He grinned wickedly. "I liked older men. Blond older men. Especially the scientific types."

"Oh?" Vexen felt his cheeks heat up. That was disturbing. There was no reason why he should react to the statement. Vexen bowed his head, hoping his hair would cover the blush. He had to see how far Marluxia would go with this. "How much older?"

"At least twice as old as me," Marluxia said. "I was twenty-three when I became a Nobody."

Furious, Vexen sat upright. "How dare you! I am nowhere near..."

"Nowhere near what?" Marluxia asked, eyes wide.

Nowhere near forty-six and Marluxia knew that. He was, in fact, only thirty-four and was pretty sure he didn't look that much older than his age. But Vexen couldn't say anything because, technically, Marluxia hadn't said anything about Vexen.

Vexen shut his mouth and hunched over again, glaring at Marluxia. The neophyte was just toying with him. Vexen should have given up right then and gone to talk to Larxene after all, but Marluxia had insulted him and Vexen wasn't about to back down from a challenge like that. Instead, he said, "Fine. Anything you'd like to add before we go on to something else?"

"Just one thing. I always had to have two boyfriends and one girlfriend at all times," Marluxia said.

Before he could stop himself, Vexen asked, "What's the girlfriend for?"

Vexen could have killed Marluxia just to get that smug grin off his face. "Someone has to be on the bottom."

"You are disgusting!" Vexen shouted, shooting to his feet. "I don't know how you managed to worm your way into the Organization, Eleven, but I assure you I was not on the committee that allowed you in."

"Good thing, too," Marluxia said. "I was still acting very much like my Somebody when they let me in the Organization. I would have had you within the hour."

"I would have killed you and used your corpse for acid experiments if you'd tried," Vexen snarled.

"Now that's not very scientific," Marluxia chided. "Aren't you supposed to be unbiased during conversations like these? I do hope Even never had to interview anyone."

"Heartless don't have mouths like yours," Vexen snapped. He remained standing and crossed his arms. "Moving on. What was your education level?"

"I dropped out in second grade, but I still got my doctorate."

"In what?"

"Origami."

"What was your family like?"

"The usual. A mother, a stepfather, and my father. We had to get a restraining order against dear Daddy when he killed my sister."

"What connection did you have to your Nobody power in your Somebody's life?"

"You mean the plants? Marijuana leaves, obviously."

"What about the scythe?"

"Butcher knife, actually. One of my boyfriends accidentally killed me, which is how I ended up here."

"How did that happen?"

"Well, he had the weirdest kink for blood, and we were too drunk to hold the knife steady..."

"I give up." Vexen bowed his head and held his hand against his forehead. "I surrender, I admit defeat, I forfeit the battle to you. You win. I don't know what I was thinking to ask you anything at all."

The malicious gleam left Marluxia's eyes, and he looked at Vexen with a completely impassive face. "I should have warned you that I don't like to discuss my Somebody, but I figured you'd get the message quicker this way."

Vexen nodded wearily, eyes closed. "Just tell me," he said. "Was anything you said true?"

"Yes," Marluxia said and that was all he offered. He stood, leaving his folded-up newspaper on the armchair, and disappeared.

Vexen gaped at the place where Marluxia had been standing a moment before. Then he stamped his foot angrily and shouted, "In the name of the Darkness, WHAT in all of that could have possibly been TRUE?!"

x

Naminé glanced up as Vexen appeared in her room. "How much of that did you hear?" he asked shortly.

"All of it," Naminé said. She held up her current crayon drawing to show two scribbled men in trench coats; one with blond hair was standing with his arms crossed, the other with pink hair was sitting in a chair and leaning as far away from the blond man as he could.

"You've seen Marluxia's memories," Vexen said. "How much of what he said was true?"

"Very little," Naminé said. "Bits and pieces have truth to them, but his really outrageous statements are lies."

"What was true, then?" Vexen asked.

"I'm not allowed to tell you," Naminé said. "Marluxia told me to never tell anyone anything I know about him."

"I see," Vexen said, frowning. Now he was curious. How could he find out the truth about Marluxia?

"However," Naminé said, "he didn't order me not to tell you a way you could find out about him."

"What's that?" Vexen asked.

Naminé pressed her fingertips together and smiled over them at Vexen. "Where do you think Marluxia got his newspaper?"

Vexen crossed his arms. "He couldn't have gotten it here. He must have gone off-world..."

Naminé nodded. "He left it on his chair, if you're still interested in reading it," she said. With that, she turned to a clean piece of paper and started coloring.

x

Vexen found what he was looking for on the third page of the newspaper. It was a campus paper for the University of Animulus, the Ani News. There was a photograph with four men, and second from the left was a man that had to be Marluxia's other. His hair was a light brown, but he wore it in the exact same style as Marluxia, and their eyes were undeniably the same. Still, there were subtle differences that Vexen couldn't quite pick out, but was unsettled by nonetheless. Something about the way this man's face was shaped, the look in his eyes... Vexen shook off the feeling and started reading the article.

"NEW DETAILS IN MURDER TRIAL – This week, police have uncovered new evidence that may turn the tide in the six-month-old trial over the suspected murder of beloved Animulus professor of botany, Prof. Lamuria."

Vexen added an X and shuffled the letters in his head. Definitely Marluxia. He glanced at the photo caption. "From left to right, Profs. Germane, Lamuria, Julius and Harvens." The photo matched up. Vexen quickly read the rest of the article.

According to the article, six months ago Professor Lamuria, thirty-one years old at the time, had been found apparently dead as only a Heartless remained of him after a visit to the home of the Dean of Sciences, Orison. He had a bottle of water that Orison had given him, which was poisoned with sap from an Oleander, and Orison had an Oleander growing in his backyard. Since Lamuria had died at home and it was well known that he was a botanist, the police assumed that it was a murder framed as suicide. However, now the death seemed to be a suicide framed as murder.

Lamuria had long been dissatisfied with Orison and thought that he himself would have made a better Dean, but was unable to claim the job. He had become more vocal in the weeks leading up to his death, even going so far as to say he would get Orison fired if it was the last thing he ever did. His friends had also spoken up recently to say that they had seen signs that he might have been depressed, but hadn't said anything to Lamuria. And finally, police searches had found seven unlabeled pill bottles filled with Oleander sap stored with various other medications in a cabinet in Lamuria's house.

That explained where Marluxia had gotten his rebellious streak, Vexen thought. He didn't particularly dislike Xemnas, he was just hardwired from his former life to butt against authority. Vexen wondered if Lamuria's death would be a foreshadowing to Marluxia's eventual downfall.

On the last two sentences, a jolt shot up Vexen's spine. He read them again, eyebrows furrowed.

"Prof. Julius, 34-year-old professor of physics and domestic partner of Lamuria, says that he is 'hurt and saddened' by the suggestion that his partner may have committed suicide. However, if the trial finds it likely then he will attempt to reconcile the possibility of suicide with his personal memories of Lamuria."

Vexen's gaze shot up to the photograph, this time focusing on the man standing beside Lamuria, Julius. Only now he noticed that Lamuria's arm was around his shoulder and the two of them were standing closer to each other than anyone else in the picture. Julius had blond hair, pulled back in a ponytail, and was smiling at Lamuria with his eyes half-lidded.

Marluxia's Somebody had been in love with a blond, male scientist the same age as Vexen.

Vexen refolded the Ani News and dropped it on the chair. He felt his face start to heat again, and didn't know why. It was just a coincidence. An odd coincidence. But maybe this was why Marluxia had wanted Vexen to come with him to Castle Oblivion, even though they had no goals in common.

This was much more than Vexen had ever wanted to know about Marluxia's life. He quickly left the room, wishing he'd never pried into Marluxia's business.

x

Vexen was down in his lab, working with the remains of a Dusk and a Shadow, when he heard Marluxia come in.

"What is it." Vexen didn't even turn around.

"I just wanted to know what you're up to down here," Marluxia said, standing behind Vexen.

"I'm trying to see if it's possible to recombine a Nobody and a Heartless into a human," he said, arranging two pieces of flesh together with tweezers, and then closing a glass box over them and turning on a jolt of electricity.

"How is it working?" Marluxia asked.

Vexen flipped off the power and opened the box. He studied the flesh. "It isn't," he said. "It might help if I had living samples."

"I'll see what I can do about that."

Vexen was surprised. That hadn't actually been a request for supplies; he'd just been thinking out loud to himself. "What else do you want from me?" Vexen asked.

"Nothing much," Marluxia said. He chuckled. "But I was wondering if you had any more questions about my Somebody."

Vexen scowled. "Not for you, no," he said. "If I want to find out anything else about Lamuria, I'll just ask Julius."

There was silence for a moment. "Who told you?"

"No one did," Vexen said. "You should really think before leaving your reading material lying around."

Marluxia didn't respond.

"What kind of monster follows his own murder trial, anyway?" Vexen asked. "You should at least tell your lover that you're still alive, in a way. I would have thought you'd have more class than to watch from a distance."

"What would you know about that?" Marluxia grabbed Vexen's arm and jerked him around until they were face-to-face. " That's not my life anymore! I'm entirely separate from Lamuria. I shouldn't have to complete his unfinished business."

"If you're so separate from Lamuria, then why do you still miss Julius?" Vexen demanded.

"Excuse me?" Marluxia said. "How can I miss him? Aren't you the one who said that we can't miss anything? We are Nobodies, you know."

"Then why did you want me to come to Castle Oblivion?" Vexen asked.

"What does that have to do with anything?" Marluxia asked sharply. "This has nothing to do with you, Vexen. I swear, sometimes you can be so full of yourself even I'm surprised."

His grip on Vexen's arm loosened, and his voice softened. "Julius was just like that."

Vexen let the silence last for a moment, and then spoke. "I'm not Julius."

"I know," Marluxia said. "And I don't wish you were. That's all in the past, and I can't let myself get tied up by too many memories." He let go of Vexen's arm and let his hand fall, brushing Vexen's hand as it dropped. Vexen could feel Marluxia even through their gloves.

Marluxia looked as though he wanted to speak for a moment, then sighed. "I should be going," he said.

"Wait," Vexen said. "I know about your Somebody now. You should know something about mine."

"Oh?" Marluxia said. "What's that?"

Vexen had no idea what he thought he was doing, but he swallowed and spoke anyway. "Even was strongly attracted to hippies."

Marluxia's eyebrows arched. "Was he? Well," he laughed, "that's... unusual."

Vexen nodded, not looking at Marluxia. He was blushing yet again. What was wrong with him?

"In that case, it sounds Even and Lamuria would have gotten along quite well," Marluxia said. "Perhaps they could meet when we regain our hearts?"

Vexen nodded. "Perhaps."

"Until then," Marluxia said, the smile leaving his face, "there's nothing between us."

"Of course," Vexen said.

Marluxia left.

Vexen returned to his work, trying to convince himself that nothing had happened because, really, nothing had.

And yet, he couldn't stop feeling Marluxia's hand on his.

x