Esoteric, adj. 1. Difficult to understand.
He wakes up. He receives his mission for the day. He completes it. He sees the superior. He sleeps.
There are no more 2 am music sessions that get him chased down the halls. No more cuddles in corners or jokes at Xemnas' expense. No life in him at all; the perfect definition of a nobody.
But Axel knows that feeling is possible, if you work at it, and the musician knows too. Anger and laughter spill over the edges of blankness which is all they knew at the beginning. But Xemnas preaches that emotion is obsolete and they hide it, until Demyx starts hiding them a little too well.
Axel can't understand it. How can you not get angry when you get a mission a day? How can you not spit in the superior's face when he caresses your cheek? If he touched Axel, no matter how high up in the food chain he was, Axel would writhe away from his touch and burn him down to ash.
Axel can see bruises peeping out of his sleeves like badly-drawn tattoos. But when the others brush against him, even though it must hurt, he does nothing. He doesn't react at all and that drives Axel absolutely nuts. Once Axel just went up to him and squeezed his wrist, as if offering to be friendly. There was no flinch, no sharp intake of breath. That just made Axel feel worse.
And one day the redhead has had enough. As his target walked out of the door Axel grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and tows him through a portal into Namine's room (He told the witch to beat it for a day. Larxene was all too happy to assist, he was sure he really didn't want to know why.)
He growls between his teeth and forcefully strips off his robes. Bruises and welts in various stages of healing littered the thin body in front of him. A particularly nasty bruise on his chest is turning yellow like a malignant sunburst. A thick weal winds around the waist, deep into the flesh.
Axel is not content. He pulls off the standard black gloves and boots only to discover a plethora of burn-scars on his pale pianist fingers. Axel straightens up slowly, staring him in the eye. And he finally, finally gets a reaction. Those pale eyes wince away from his.
"Why?" He asks after months and months of watching and wondering. "How can you let him do this to you? How can you not care about it, how can you feel nothing?"
Finally the slender form in front of him opens his mouth, eyes glistening venomously at him. "How can you say that? What makes you think that I don't care about this?" Realizing his mistake he opens his eyes wide and grabs for the black robe tangled on the floor like an immobile heartless. But Axel grabs him, avoiding the various marks of pain around his arms. "Explain. Now." Blunt and to the point like Axel himself.
And it all comes out. The threats to Axel and to Roxas. The sly manipulation that oozed from the superior. Every single lie and hurt came tumbling out.
And suddenly Demyx isn't so esoteric any more.
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A/N. Please let me know if there is a pairing you want me to write - I need to improve; so this series is a sort of practice run before I start an actual fic with a plot (dun dun dun) and everything. So please tell me; anything goes!