-1Title: The Human Need

Music: Thnks fr th Mmrs - FallOut Boy

Rating: M
Warning: Yaoi yadda yadda yadda

Disclaimer: I don't own KH or FF, but I do own a snazzy painting set.

Pairing: CloudXRiku

The Human Need

Chapter 1

The art room at Kingdom University was large, well-lit, and friendly by day. But by night, it reeked of foreboding, splashed with sinister, and seasoned with gloom. The room was lit primarily through skylights, so, without the light from the sun, it became so dark at night you could barely see the canvas in front of your face. As a result, few students spent any time there at night.

I on the other hand, loved the dark. I suppose I am some sort of creature of the night, one of those humans whose brain functions better at midnight than it does at noon. A night owl you could say. There was just something about the sweet darkness that helped me to relax and unwind. This was the only time I could perform at my best.

So there I sat, a cheap MP3 player hanging off my neck, connected to large bulky earphones fitted snuggly over my ears. A dry paintbrush hung limply from my mouth, my teeth grinding into the plastic handle every few seconds. A canvas sat before me, illuminated only by a single backlight I had drug out to use. Upon it's surface was a half finished portrait.

Sighing, and almost losing my brush in the process, I groped around behind me until my hand settled over the handle of a large brush. I dipped it in some white paint and began making smooth, even strokes over the canvas, erasing the portrait easily. I dropped the brush back in its resting place and leaned back in my chair, Rock music blaring in my ears and numbing my senses.

It was time to start over.

----OoOoO----

"Riiiiiiiiikuuuuuuuu…" Sora whined as he pulled at the threads of my shirt. I groaned and turned to face my friend, my pencil falling off my desk and onto the floor in the process.

"What is it with you today Sora?" I growled. I picked up the pencil and turned back to my work. I had to review my notes for Art History; my test was in a few hours. However, Sora had decided that he wanted to spend time with me, hence him sitting on my bed behind me, whining whenever I quit paying attention to him.

"But Riku…you promised you'd help me-"

"I'm sorry Sora, I just can't…" Wearily I reached over to grab my textbook off the bed, but was stopped when Sora's hand covered my own. Angrily I glared up at my friend. His big blue eyes were blinking at me in an adorable little pout. It usually got him his way. But not today, I was too frustrated. Ever since I had erased the half-finished portrait, I had been returning to the art room. And each time I left the canvas was blank. All the frustrating late nights were driving me insane…headaches were plaguing my existence and I was falling asleep in some of my classes. The last thing my tired mind needed was Sora's incessant whining.

I pulled my hand out of Sora's grip and grabbed the textbook, pulling it to the desk and flipping it open. "It's not going to work Sora, I'm busy. I have a test soon and I've been up late working on a project. Just….let me study in quiet for a while ok?"

"Project?" Sora perked up, completely ignoring my request. "You're working on a project? Oh, is it another painting?"

"What part of "study in quiet" did you not get?" I said, my pencil scratching against my notebook angrily. "If I fail this test, I'm blaming it on you. And you know how I hate to fail."

Sora pursed his lips and flopped backwards onto my bed in a huff. "Fine, be antisocial. I'm just your best friend…no need to talk to me."

We were silent then, the only noise being the hurried scribble of my pencil on paper or the soft turn of a page. I assumed Sora was either watching me or sleeping. The boy did not have the will to stay quiet long, so I was hurrying to finish off my notes. If I could at least get that done, I would be able to memorize them before the test. I was so busy, I did not notice Sora sneaking up behind me until his head was on my shoulder.

I squawked at the sudden contact and twisted my swivel chair around to face my brunet friend. He smiled at me sheepishly. "Sorry, just looking at what you were writing."

I grunted and turned back to my work. "Stop it Sora, I'm serious, I really need to pass this test."

"But it's no fun watching you do nothing…" Sora complained. "Can I at least look through your sketchbook or something?"

"God, yes, so long as it gets you out of my hair, do whatever the hell you want!" I cried, throwing my hands up in defeat. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw my hyperactive friend rummaging through my bookshelf, picking out which of my many sketchbooks he wanted to leaf through. While he was distracted with that, I turned back to my notes, re-reading the paragraph Sora had interrupted me on.

"Careful with those…" I said after a moment. "I don't want anything getting smudged or ripped."

"I know what I'm doing." Sora replied in annoyance. "It's not like I break things." I grunted in response, not really listening. What was the name of that one painting?… It was bound to be on the test…

"Oops." Sora murmured, my ears picking up the sound almost immediately. I swiveled around, my eyes darting to the sketchbook immediately.

"Oops?" I asked, narrowing my eyes in annoyance.

"Um…" Sora replied, picking up a piece of paper that had fallen out. My expression softened at the sight of the detailed pencil drawing. It was a picture of him.

"I forgot that was in there," I said quietly. I stood up and walked over to sit next to Sora, all thought about the upcoming test and notes forgotten. Gently I took the paper from Sora's hands, careful not to touch the pencil work even though it had been sprayed with fixative long ago. On it was an image of a boy, nineteen years old, a big, stupid grin on his face. He was holding up a striped kitten small enough to fit into the palm of his hand. The little animal was waving a paw at the long, carefully spiked hair that flowed from the boy's head.

"Axel." Sora said quietly. I nodded as my hand ghosted over the corner of the paper where it had been partially burned away. Pain seemed to flood through the browned edge and into my hand, traveling up my arm and settling into my chest.

"Yeah…"

"It's been almost a year now hasn't it?" Sora asked, watching me carefully. I simply nodded in response, finally tearing my eyes from the paper. I reached out for the discarded sketchbook and reverently placed the drawing back where it had been before setting the book in its place on the shelf.

"I, uh…think I should go now. You have to study and all…" Sora mumbled, before getting up, grabbing his coat from its place on the bed, and leaving. I simply stared off, in a trance, not even noticing as the door closed with a sharp thud.

"Axel…" I murmured.

----OoOoO----

I made it to the art room just as the janitor was locking up. Seeing me, he smiled slightly and opened the door for me. "You're late." he joked. "Don't forget to lock up when you're done."

I smiled in return and grabbed the door. "Thanks, I will."

Once he was gone, I walked into my dark kingdom, looking up at the skylights above. The stars could barely be seen through the thick panels of glass. The moon was full. I smiled slowly to myself and pulled my earphones up around my ears. I did not need the portable light I had been pulling out. The moon was giving off enough light for me to see clearly.

My hand wandered to the MP3 player hanging loosely around my neck. Music flooded into my ears, my mind numbing as my finger slowly increased the volume. It helped so much, the noise of songs I knew by heart. The rough pound of broken love songs acted as white noise that helped me to concentrate, and to lose myself entirely. It was a trick I had learned long ago from Axel. Granted, I would probably lose my hearing in a matter of years, but at the moment, I couldn't care less. The only thing that mattered, was the canvas before me, the brushes in my hand, and the crashing wave of music filtering into my soul, keeping me from thinking clearly, keeping me raw, keeping me in my emotions.

I stuck a brush into my mouth, the soft plastic of the handle fitting perfectly in my teeth. I gnawed on it gently while fishing a mechanical pencil out of my cargo pants. Clicking a stick of lead out, I began sketching roughly onto the canvas, getting in the outline of what exactly I wanted. Slowly the image of a face began to appear among the scribbles followed soon by another. When I was satisfied, I reached back behind me to grab a brush off the table, yelping when I felt flesh instead of plastic.

I whirled, tearing my earphones from my ears. The sudden loss of noise deafened me for a moment as my ears strained to adjust to the quiet. A man sat behind me, his body propped against the table in a comfortable position. He smiled softly at my confused expression and waved slowly. "Go ahead…Sorry to interrupt you."

The apology barely registered in my mind. I simply gaped at him. The man looked to be in his early 20s, not much older than I was. He had carefully styled blonde hair that spiked in every direction and royal blue eyes so bright I could see them clearly in the dim light, as if they were glowing. His pale skin was smooth and milky, without a single blemish on his features.

He was a handsome man.

"What do you want?" I hissed, stopping my music and throwing us both into complete silence. The man simply shrugged and continued to stare at me.

"Just observing. Go ahead and work on what you were doing."

"I can't paint while you watch…" I snapped back. "It's why I work here at night, you know, when no one is around?"

He continued smiling at me with this annoying knowing look. "Oh….well, I've been here every day for the last week, and you seemed to be doing fine, except that you always paint over everything that you do."

My eyes narrowed into a deadly glare, but it did not seem to have any effect on the stranger. After a few moments of silence, I turned away and started packing up my brushes.

"Hmmm…" the blonde said. "You leaving? It's kind of early to leave…"

"I'm not going to paint with you around…" I hissed. "So either you leave, or I do. It's your choice."

He shrugged and pushed on the table, righting himself. "Fine, I'll leave. Didn't mean to upset you…" He waved a hand at me and headed for the door. I waited until I made sure he was gone, then set my brushes down and mulled over what had just happened. The man had been strange, but he was probably just a harmless student who had found an interest in my painting. It wasn't really anything to get upset over.

Oh well, this was my time to lose myself. I couldn't do that if someone else was here. Sighing, I pulled my earphones back up, thumbed the music back on, picked up the brush I had reached for earlier, and began painting.

Despite my efforts to lose myself and give way to raw emotion, I found myself drifting off. The music was not drowning out my thoughts like it normally did. Worries about that strange blonde man along with a dozen other things clouded into my consciousness, forcing me back to reality.

Needless to say, when I left that night, the canvas was once again blank.

----OoOoO----

Frustration and anger are hard emotions that eat away at the soul and can rot a person from the inside out. For me, it had been happening for a year. Sickness and pain were a constant companion at my side as I strived to get over depression and strive forward in my life.

For a year my canvas had been blank.

My inspiration, my love, my life, died one year ago, trapped in the structure of a burning building. Since that day, I haven't been able to paint a single thing. The flame was gone, lost in a dead inferno. But God knows I've tried. I've worked myself nearly to death night after night, desperate to bring it all back, to capture it all again.

But all I received in return for my efforts was several trips to the hospital, collapsed from lack of sleep and malnutrition. I, the great and talented painter, was slowly killing myself because I'd lost my ability.

It was a drawn out ritual consisting of constant torture. I rarely ate, I was an insomniac, my body that I had carefully taken care of for 18 long years had been reduced to skin and bones, muscle wasted away and under developed. I had gone from a strong, healthy young man, to a skeleton damned to eternal stress and weariness. I'd gotten used to the sight of my own blood as I vomited periodically. I was sick. But I would go to hell before I'd let anyone know it.

Sora, my best friend in the entire world, didn't even know the true extent of the pain I went through every day simply by living. He knew I was depressed, he knew I was frustrated, but he didn't know to what extent, and if he had, he'd have had me locked in the nurse's office before dawn. But I didn't want to improve, I didn't want it all to go away. I had been living in a constant hell for exactly one year, and I didn't know if I could possibly live with myself if I got out of it.

So instead, I ignored my emotions during the day, and released the inner demons at night. That was the only thing keeping me sane, the only thing keeping me alive. My art was my savior. But it was also my greatest folly, because it was something I could no longer do. If I had to live with a blank canvas for another year, no, another month, another week. I swear I would kill myself.

And this strange, blonde man was not helping.

After the first appearance of the stranger I had taken a night off from painting, to catch up on my missed sleep and to finish studying for upcoming tests. Sora didn't bother me, not after the incident with the picture. He knew that seeing it had thrown me into another one of my moods, my depressions. In fact, few people besides the bouncy brunet talked to me any more, so I found that I had more quiet alone time than I knew what to do with.

My music filled my head without the need for a player. It was perfectly memorized, down to the last note in my mind. I could play it at any given time, to concentrate. But it still wasn't the same as sitting in the dark, alone, with the bittersweet notes pounding in rhythm to my heartbeat. Even taking one day off was having adverse effects on my system, and I vowed to return to my dark kingdom come the next night.

But when I did, I found trouble in paradise. My canvas, my beautiful, blank canvas, was gone.

My knees went weak at the sight as an overwhelming terror rose up in my throat along with bile. I collapsed back against the table, my mind not understanding. I'd been working for a year, replacing worn out canvas with worn out canvas for months. But why, why now, of all times, when my depression had reached an immeasurable height, why now did it have to disappear.

A footstep rang out clearly in the silent room, and I turned to find the placid form of a tall, blonde man, standing not far behind me, a book in his arms. My mouth gaped open slightly in a curse as I looked back to the empty easel my canvas had occupied, then to the man standing before me. "YOU…" I started. But the man only shook his head and walked over, sitting on the table in front of me with the ease of a man who was in control. "You took it!"

The man let out a grunt and shrugged his shoulders lightly. "You were frustrated with it. You need to stop."

"How dare you," I hissed, my hands clenching in anger. "How dare you."

The man's eyes narrowed as he stared at me, their luminous shade of blue giving off an icy effect that chilled my blood, despite the boiling hate coursing through my veins. "If you didn't stop, you'd have killed yourself." He replied, his tone matching mine perfectly. The silence seemed to pronounce his words, shifting them almost into a threat. A threat of life.

"What the fuck do you care?" I seethed. My eyes flashed, burning with anger and hatred. "What the fuck do you care about me? I've my own life to live, and I'll live it how I want."

"By killing yourself?" the blonde replied simply. "I don't think so. I've seen you re-paint that canvas more times than I can count. I've seen it, sitting in that corner for God only knows how long, and each time I saw it, I wondered what kind of poor sap was stuck in such a rut. Then I find you." The bastard let out a soft, wry laugh. "To think that it's not just a rut, but that you're killing yourself in the process. I mean, look at you, you try to hide your anorexia with baggy clothing, you're practically dead on your feet, and you're killing off your ears and brain cells with music so loud I'd be surprised if you can hear yourself think."

"I'll repeat my question once more asshole.." I snarled. "What. The. Fuck. DO. YOU. CARE?!?" My voice cracked at the end, something that hadn't happened since I was a Freshman in High school. I was on the edge of my nerves, I was exhausted, and all I wanted was my time, my time to be me, to paint and get frustrated so I could go through it all again. Why couldn't this man understand that? Why couldn't he see how I was suffering, and how I needed this?

Instead of answering my question, he held up the book he was holding and handed it to me. A white ribbon stuck out of one of the pages. I glared at him, but he didn't seem to care, he simply shoved the book into my face again.

It was a strange little sketchbook. It was leather-bound, with the word "Cloud" printed in fancy, silver lettering on the cover. I swallowed my anger for a moment, my body, and certainly my hands, shaking with the raw frustration pouring through me like a wave. I took the book, and opened it up to the page the ribbon was on. There, sketched all across the page, and on the next few pages after, was myself, painting. In every single sketch, a dark cloud seemed to surround me. I noticed how tense the muscles were, how stiff my posture, how tightly I held myself. Despite the pure energy radiating from the sloppy sketch lines, every drawing seemed so dark and sad, it seemed to pull the life right out of it. The absolute worst, was a three-quarters view of my head from behind. My skin seemed so drawn in, my eyes hollow, and the expression on my face seemed so frozen, as if carved into stone.

My forehead scrunched up. I was unsure of exactly what I was seeing, but something inside me broke, and tears welled up into my eyes. The first tears for a year.

The book fell to the floor with a thud, and suddenly I was there next to it, my legs drawn up to my chest, my head pressed between my knees. My body wracked as large sobs swept through me. My earphones lay around my neck, forgotten.

The man just watched me, not reaching out in a hug of comfort, not showing any display of caring at all. I continued crying in the silence, suddenly feeling so small and helpless. Not again, I could not feel like this again. This is what was locked up, what I came here every night to prevent. This was not what I wanted.

Bile rose in my throat, gagging me. I swallowed most of it, the sick taste of vomit staining my tongue and burning my throat. I couldn't stop it. I couldn't, as hard as I wanted to, I could not keep the steady flow of tears from streaming out my throbbing eyes. My chest hurt, my stomach hurt, I hurt. Every single part of me hurt as if this man had just raped me and left me for dead.

And he only stood there to watch.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think you guys are used to getting random stories from me aren't you? Well, this one was inspired by The Glass Slipper's story: Double Forte. Granted, this story has absolutely nothing to do with music, but inspiration has many forms, most of them in the shape of bunnies XD.

So, please leave a review. I noticed that this chap is longer than most of my normal chapter are. I find that a good thing! I write too short of chapters all the time, it's about time I start lengthening them. Anyways, I hope you enjoy.

-Koji

PS: Reviews for the poor? (Cough cough) Please?