The Sound of Sunshine

By: Salem Martin

Wave One

He showed up without any warning at all. But, that was how they'd all come to be here, so it wasn't that big of a surprise. He looked like he belonged there the least, though, like a pampered little rich bitch sticking it to daddy for a few weeks before he started missing the caviar.

Zexion had been reading a salvaged copy of The Magician's Nephew on the porch in tiki torch light when the kid stumbled up. He had literally stumbled too, lugging a fancy surfboard with him and tripping over sneakered feet. He stepped to a stop a few feet in front of Zexion, panting slightly. It was quite a long way to where they'd set up home.

Zexion looked at him over the top of his book, mildly amused with the situation, waiting for the out of breath boy to speak. When he didn't, Zexion sighed.

"Can I help you?" He asked, and the boy perked up immediately, half hiding behind his surfboard. It was blue from what Zexion could tell in the soft light, and most likely custom made, formed out of expensive materials. It almost insulted him. The boy twisted his feet about in the sand for a moment more before speaking.

"Can…can I—"

"No."

Zexion bit the word out before the boy could finish his sentence, mind already made up. They didn't need someone like this in their home. It was bad for the group feels. Thinking of feels, Zexion could suddenly feel quite a few pairs of eyes on his back, coming through the glassless, curtained window. He heaved another sigh and returned to his book. Trust the group to always leave the wannabes up to him.

"I don't have anywhere else to go though…"

Zexion glared at the kid over the top of his book and through thick bangs that smelled of seawater. The boy was all but climbing his board, wearing black swim trunks and a blue tank top with black sneakers. His hair rivaled some of the crazier 'dos in the group, something between a mohawk and a mullet. He looked desperate. And rich.

"Why not go home?" Zexion retorted unkindly, not eager to take on another member. They were already so assimilated to each other that a new person would throw everything they had completely off kilter. The boy looked down at his feet.

"If I do, it means giving up absolutely everything I love in life, and I don't think I can handle that," he replied softly, then looked up at Zexion with pleading eyes. "Please, oh please! Just give me a chance, all I wanna do is surf! I'll even sleep out here if that's what it takes, just please don't turn me away! I'll just die if I go back home."

Zexion was given the puppy dog eyes, and heard faint sniggers coming from the curtain behind him. He felt a headache coming on.

He wasn't going to win this.

He made a mental note of the page he was one and closed the tattered book, getting up and capping the tiki torch, leaving the only light on the beach to the half-moon in the sky. He looked at the boy one last time.

"Fine. You can crash on the beach. Don't touch our stuff, provide for yourself, don't talk to us, and you can stay…"

"Demyx," the boy helped, and Zexion smirked.

"Demyx. You can stay as long as you like if you can follow those rules. Understand?"

The boy named Demyx nodded, and Zexion pushed open the makeshift door to the home, rolling his eyes. With any luck, the kid would fuck up and he'd have to be kicked off the beach they'd claimed. If Zexion's luck ran bad… He stopped in the hallway and glared at the trio who grinned evilly back at him from their places next to the window. With Axel, Xigbar, and Larxene as a team, his luck wouldn't run bad. He harrumphed and continued on to his room, the hanging beads that served as his door rattling obnoxiously as he passed through them. Riku was already passed out in his hammock, snoring lightly. Zexion climbed the ladder to get to his hammock, shimmying in carefully so that he didn't flip and fall on Riku (which had happened too many times to count before, all with varying results of Riku wrath). There was a small hole cut out near the ceiling that served as Zexion's personal spy window, giving him a good view of the beach from where he lay in his hammock.

He stared out at the moonlit beach, the waves crashing soothingly. Demyx was a dark smudge against the picture, the boy sitting on the beach with his rich kid board and his pampered soul. Zexion lay back in his hammock, swaying slightly and smiling, closing his eyes. He wasn't going to last half a day.

Zexion woke up early the next day as usual, the smell of breakfast being made drifting through the home. He laid in his hammock for a few moments, waking up and letting cool air work into his muscles for the day. Early morning and late at night were the only times it got any kind of cool here. Even in the winter it was too warm in the daytime, but at least during then you had to pile up a few more blankets than usual. This time of year it was just warm and then uncomfortably hot, with a few days of positively muggy and a few days of dangerous heat. But that was the Islands, for you. Temperamental with the temperature. Zexion didn't have any desire to see snow anyways.

Rolling over onto his stomach, he peered over the edge of his hammock, checking to see if Riku was the one up making breakfast. Being met with the sight of a still snoring silverette, Zexion crawled out of his hammock and quietly climbed down the ladder. He forewent shoes, like everyone else did unless they were going into town, and padded bare foot into the kitchen area where Axel and Roxas were conversing quietly about something as Axel roasted sausages in their tiny little makeshift stove/fireplace. The redhead glanced up as the slate-haired man wandered in, sliding just off the poker sausages onto a slightly chipped plate and handing it to him. Zexion took it with a word of thanks and sat down next to Roxas in what they affectionately called the Food Nook (when really, it was just two wobbly tables with mismatched chairs that were kind of sectioned off by more tacky beaded curtains.

"So, Zex, I was filling Roxy in about the new kid. Care to elaborate a bit more for him?" Axel drawled, sitting down with a plate to share for him and Roxas, who glared at him for the nickname.

Zexion waved at his sausages to cool them off before trying to eat them, also trying to buy himself some time to think.

"What more should I say that you didn't overhear last night? He's a pampered little bitch who will inevitably give up 'everything he loves' to go running back to his daddy's money," Zexion said, biting into a link with finality. It tasted a bit old, but a quick check made sure they were all cooked through, and his now burnt anyway tongue told him that they were well past a safe heat. They made do with whatever they could get their hands on, but with none of them having any sort of medical insurance or decently paying job they still had to be careful. None could afford to get sick; even if they all pitched in, it wouldn't cover the bills.

"Oh? And what if he's more headstrong than the others?" Axel asked, nearly swallowing a link whole. "You say you give them at least a week because none of them have lasted that long before. What if he does? He looks dumb enough to do it."

Zexion huffed his slate colored bangs out of his face and abandoned the idea of cooling off his sausage links.

"And if he does, what do you think he could possibly understand about any of this? I'll bet you that the only concept of a family he has is a broken one, and that'll be how he functions in a group situation," he said. "He'll throw everything we've built out of balance, Axel. I can't have that."

Roxas snorted, stealing the last three sausage links from Axel before the redhead could eat them all.

"You can't have that? Really? You sound like…you don't even sound like a mom, dude. You sound like some ruling overlord. What's so terrible about mixing some things up? If he can haul his own, then it benefits all of us. You know that," he said through a mouthful of meat. Zexion sighed and finished off his sausage as Riku came into the kitchen, shirtless and yawning. The slate-haired man waited until Axel had turned back to making sausage, Roxas had turned to washing off his plate, and Riku was looking the opposite direction before allowing his eyes to roam over the expanse of skin the silverette showed.

Riku had been the third member to show up, the first stranger to the pair of Zexion and Roxas. The two of them had only been living in the old, abandoned surf shop on a back beach of Destiny Islands for about a month, barely scraping by on stolen food and two miles that way tap water in the single fast food restaurant on the island. One day, a terribly grungy boy showed up barefoot and so dirty they hadn't a clue what his actual hair color was, begging for a place to stay. Roxas, only being about twelve at the time, had hidden in their salvaged home while Zexion talked with the boy. It had ended with a rather forced bath in the ocean, revealing Riku's real hair color as well as multiple bruises lining his pale skin. Zexion took him in for real, then, and it was many more months before Riku had informed them as to why he'd shown up the way he did.

"Riku, you know this is going to scar with the way you're treating it, right?"

"I know. I don't care though. I'm just glad there aren't going to be more where that came from."

"Well, as long as you don't run into any sharks, at least."

Zexion smiled slightly, remembering Roxas' light hearted comment that day. The ugly scar in question roped from one shoulder to the opposite hip down Riku's back, thick and lilac. The story it held wasn't a happy one. But, Riku hadn't run into any sharks yet, so Zexion figured they should all be thankful for that.

"Earth to the mother ship, you comin' down anytime soon?"

Zexion jerked out of his reverie, leaning away from Axel as the redhead invaded his personal space.

"Jeez, the kid's already half naked, dunno why you'd feel the need to strip the rest of him," Axel said, grinning and dodging as Zexion kicked out at him, making the beads rattle loudly. Riku just laughed softly and kept tending to his sausages.

"Who's stripping who? I want in!" Xigbar whined his way into the kitchen, pulling his long gray and black hair into the usual ponytail. He had yet to put on his eyepatch, the pale off white of his cheap glass eye gazing into nothingness. He'd shown up after Axel, but before Larxene, and was probably the only reason Zexion had even considered letting Larxene stay in the first place.

"No one's stripping anyone…yet, anyway," Axel purred, and Zexion stood up to wash his plate, ignoring the insinuation. As far as any of them were concerned, what he and Riku had had was long gone. "Where's Larx? I didn't hear her come in last night."

Xigbar sat and poked Riku with his toes until the silverette begrudgingly gave him the sausages he had just cooked for himself, muttering 'fatty' insults under his breath while he did so.

"She got another one of those seedy little queer jobs at wherever will take her tit size," Xigbar replied crudely, the sight of only one moving eye still a little unsettling even after so many years. "She said she'd be home before lunch at least. Maybe it'll pull in some good cash, I think she went all the way in to Trav on the tram."

Zexion frowned slightly. It bothered him when Larxene ventured so far. It could end up being really dangerous. He paused that thought, and groaned as he realized that he really did sound like a ruling overlord of some sort. Or just a really overprotective mother. He needed some blank time.

He stacked his plate on the rest and slipped out of the kitchen. He passed a groggy Sora, who bid him a sleepy good morning as he shuffled into the kitchen to eat Riku's sausages and hang on his shoulders. He stopped in his room only to slip on his swim trunks and shed his shirt, grabbing the almost empty can of board wax before leaving out the back door.

Kairi and Namine were talking on the porch area, already in their bikini swimsuits (or maybe they'd just slept in them, wouldn't be the first time) and sharing a small fruit smoothie from the stand a mile down. The smoothie man sold them at half price for the early birds, and at half the half for regulars such as the two girls.

Zexion nabbed a sip before passing them to grab his surfboard from the stack, the warm morning wind feeling good on his shoulders. He remembered when the two girls showed up as well. It had been them and Sora all together in a little trio, much younger than the rest of them and very lost and afraid. That had definitely been an easy decision for Zexion to make, and one that, ultimately, he was glad he made.

Even if it meant that he didn't get what he wanted.

Shaking that thought away, Zexion trotted past the home and onto the sand, the granules still a bit chilly from last night. It was low tide, so the waves were gentle and perfect for relaxing upon. When the ocean was calm like this, the slate-haired man liked to drift on his board and meditate. It was dangerous, but in that, very calming and opening. He glanced about for Demyx before working on preparing his board and sighed with relief as the kid was nowhere to be found. Maybe he'd gotten too cold and gone home to his big fluffy silk sheeted bed. Zexion frowned, feeling slightly bitter.

It wasn't like any of them couldn't go out and be successful. Namine was a phenomenal artist, reduced to selling caricatures in the tourist area of Destiny Islands. Larxene could coax the pants off the Queen and then sell them back to her for triple the price, but was instead shedding her own clothing for a third what she was worth. Axel knew more about chemistry than even Zexion, and he used it to make the best goddamn burgers in town, still only getting paid a fifth of the minimum wage an hour. Roxas could have won championships for his athletics, and the only competitions he participated in were petty ones for extra food with Axel or Xigbar.

Zexion looked out at the waves.

And then there was him. Intelligent, very intelligent. So smart it almost hurt sometimes to not be able to use that constructively. There were many, many times where Zexion had asked himself what the hell he was doing here, wasting his life on surfing and sleeping in hammocks and silly relationships with almost family members; why he wasn't out earning a fully paid scholarship to some fancy school and getting paid in six digits plus every year.

He heard the back door slam, and a few seconds later, Roxas dropped down next to him, waxing up his own board, wearing the checkered swim trunks he'd been able to fit into for years. Zexion smiled at him, a smile reserved only for him, and Roxas smiled back, unspoken words in between them.

That was why.

He had an obligation to protect him, to protect everyone, even if they were capable of protecting themselves. He had to be the glue that held them together, the tide that kept everything flowing and fluid. That's why it all started, and that's how it was going to stay for as long as Zexion could make it.

They finished their boards in silence, then splashed into the water in sync. Zexion ignored the third set of splashes that came from further down, knowing with an angry twist in his gut that it wasn't anyone who belonged here. But the moment that gut hit his board, any and all twists went away, and suddenly it was simply the pull of his limbs through current and the steady shoosh of the massive body of water around him. This was also why he stayed. No matter how smart he was, no matter how many zeroes showed up on his paycheck, none of those things compared to the feeling of freedom and absolute joy that resulted in the sea.

Far enough out to relax, Zexion let his arms and legs go slack, breathing slowly to minimize the amount of saltwater inhaled, and just let himself drift in the waves, feeling a private happiness in his mind.

When in doubt, surf.