A/N: Ahh! I'm sorry I've been so slow to update this! Getting writing done has been difficult lately. But I won't keep you with the blah blah, please, enjoy the story! xD
Chapter Three
ACT TWO
Demyx's hands clenched so tightly around the glass of vodka that it could have quite possibly broken in his hands. "I don't get it," he cried into the struggling sips that he attempted to swallow, face illuminated by the dying light of sunset crawling in from the glass of Marluxia's balcony door. He sat cross-legged on his roommate's sweet-scented bed, mostly sober except for the glass of vodka Marluxia had taken out especially for him, dressed only in his jeans.
"What don't you get?" Marluxia asked leniently from where he sat at his deskchair, turned away from the typewriter where his work (or lack of thereof) sat waiting for him, instead patiently watching as Demyx spilled vodka over his bed. His tired face was illuminated in the vibrant red hues of the sunset, framed by the rectangular glasses that he wore especially when he was typing out the scripts he'd drafted on pencil. However, as done-up as he was for writing this evening, he'd seemed to have shifted over his priorities to comforting his devastated roommate.
"What I don't comprehend is," Demyx began, before blanking out as he mentally searched his mind for the proper words. As occasionally articulate as he could be when he was tipsy, blank-outs happened to him more often than slurs.
"Uh, what I don't get is why plain-out bastards like Zexion get the awesome flawless careers and get rich, and they're still such bastards even though they've probably got enough money to be happy enough for a long time, while we- we're the nice guys- we hafta suffer poverty," here he objectively pointed to the cracks in the wall by Marluxia's well-taken-care-of plants, and the playwright's eyes followed disapprovingly, "and we're super talented too, right? We got everything they got except the crappy personalities."
Demyx took a long swig of the vodka, before setting it down and staring deeply into Marluxia's eyes. "Since when did crappy personalities become a necessity in the resume, Marls?" he cried, voice slowly sifting over from angry to plainly despairing. "It all just goes right back to that time when I- oh yeah, you know, I can still remember that day." Thoughtfully, he set down the empty glass and attempted to balance it on the softness of the bedsheets, ultimately failing. Marluxia caught the motion, quite obviously, pursing his lips but not saying anything. "That was a week after I started running around trying to get music studios to accept my CD. Some bastard just came in and snapped it in two, right? Did I ever tell you about that? He was a jerk too. And he got his stuff sold."
"I remember that," Marluxia murmured, shifting his weight in the chair, finding a more comfortable niche in the many worn quilts he'd layered onto the chair for comfort. "You were quite devastated."
By now his eyes were glossy with emotion. "Heck yeah I was! B-but now, it's only just registering, maybe the whole truth of this is that: the jerks get the parts. Is that it?"
"If I don't say myself, I'd say my novels are quite popular?"
Demyx grinned. "Uh- oh yeah, your novels are awesome, by the way! But they're all under pen names, so it doesn't count."
Marluxia's shoulders sagged, before he shrugged and swirled the chair around, peering at the blank sheets that probably should have been a few pages of script, but were instead blank slates staring tauntinfly back at him. "I don't think it's a matter of personality, Dem. More like a matter of luck," he said defeatedly as he tentatively keyed in a few echoeing words onto the paper. "Luck seems to be the only determination of what's fair and what's not."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." Here, Marluxia clacked clacked in a few further strokes of keys, staring at the keyboard in remote surprise before venturing a few words further. Glancing at Demyx, he continued, "Besides, by the way, Zexion's a bit of an exception. To be honest, you don't really know his story," he said, before looking back at the projected facet of hard keys on the typewriter.
Demyx's eyebrows knitted, and he picked up his glass of vodka again, peering down the glass and finding that not even a drop was left. Disappointedly he set the glass back down on its side on the bed. "How's he an exception to anything?"
"Well, for one, he really does care for this play. He's been pretty much co-writing for it this whole time. He's used to being in much more professional productions, but he's mostly patient with us and he's really trying to steer the play in the direction of success," Marluxia explained. "So even if he can't exactly boast the best personality, he really does care for his work. Doesn't that make you feel a bit better?"
"He's still a jerk, and I don't see how that should qualify him for being a hotshot actor."
Marluxia cast him a frustrated look. "Just make up with him, will you, Demyx? Your spat's just the sort of thing you have to put up with in the perpetual stream of crap that any career's bound to throw your way." Here, his hands were in a perpetual, unpredictable blur of movement scooting over the expanse of the typewriter as he pulled in another page.
Mollified, the musician picked up his sitar and swallowed, plucking at a few strings. Suddenly he felt self-conscious, even though the only other person in the room was Marluxia. "I just.. I don't know. It's not fair that I have to put up with him pushing me down like that, right? You were there," he murmured.
Suddenly Marluxia's hands decelerated, finishing what seemed to be a word with wistful long clicks at the keyboard before he stopped altogether. "Demyx," he sighed, swerving around his chair and gazing at him resignedly. The sun had set quite far by now, and Marluxia's soft expression was barely visible in the dim bluish light. Defeatedly, the pink-haired man outstretched his arms and grumbled, "Come here."
Wordlessly the musician set aside his sitar and crumbled into an awkward embrace with him.
It was a thing that they did every so often, and sadly more often as of late. Marluxia more often than not initiated it, pulling Demyx into a haphazard hug that they remained in, and then pulled off and forgot about. They didn't talk about it but neither of them denied that they pretty much needed it to remain sane, especially with electric bills piling up on the dining table and failed job attempts staining Demyx's whining, diminished phoetus of a career history.
"You have to try and make up with Zexion later, okay? Or I can talk to him for you. Your choice."
"Yeah.. yeah, okay. Don't want to talk about it," the musician murmured into the warmth of his roommate, breathing in the light flower-like scent that marked Marluxia, "I really don't get how you deal with all this."
Marluxia chuckled, his chest quaking with the movements as he patted Demyx's back reassuringly. His glasses fell askew when attacked with his roommate's head of fully-gelled blond hair, but he just smiled fondly. "I have an ineffectual roommate like you, and the whole production depending on me. Plus, I have a beautiful boyfriend like Vexen to argue with over props."
Here Demyx laughed lightly, tipsily slipping out of the hug and making for the kitchen. "For the record, your boyfriend creeps me out."
The playwright just ignored this remark, snickering a little as he turned back to his typewriter and continued typing away. He hesitated to tell Demyx that in their entire conversation, he had typed out a full page of script, and was entirely on the way of creating another.
Over in the kitchen, the blond musician threw his hands up to the heavens and groaned loudly. "You know, this still hasn't fixed the crazy mess that I'm sure my job over at the play is after picking a fight with the lead actor.."
- - - - -
"I honestly suppose that this is the best you can do?" Marluxia sneered, gripping the silvery surface tightly in his knitted-gloved-covered hands as he brandished the scythe-shaped object quite threateningly. As he did so, a biting, nonexistent western-movie whoosh breezed through the theatre.
Vexen returned the overconfident grin with a toothy one, holding his own weapon: a light pink spray-paint can uncapped and ready for action. Despite the flowery bandana Marluxia had given him tying back his hair and the worn, frayed apron spattered with paint he had tied back over his typical lab-coat attire, he managed to actually look rather threatening. "It is the prototype version of the exponentially better prop that I am certain to produce once this coat of painting is finished."
The playwright testily swung the prop in his hands like a baton, gracefully spinning it in elegant arcs that left blurs of colour in the air. "And is the core strong enough?"
The props director scoffed. "You couldn't expect less."
Demyx watched the couple from the stage with obviously piqued interest, before leaning over to Luxord who sat by his side, whispering, "Do they do this often?'
The blond-haired man, amidst a decidedly boring-looking game of solitaire, smirked. "Often enough to keep us quite amused."
The musician sighed, shifting back to plucking at the ghost of a melody on his sitar, casting a forlorn glance at the checkered canvas shoe hanging off the doorknob of the actual janitor's closet a ways away, shuddering every time the door jerked a little or made a bumping noise. The shoe quite undeniably belonged to Roxas, and a certain redhead had long disappeared from thin air in the middle of rehearsal since that checkered shoe had propped itself on the doorknob. "Just.. how many couples are in this production, anyway?"
Luxord chuckled. "As many couples as there were the right hands dealt them."
It was yet another gloomy, rainy day, with even less of a turn-up than the day before. Not even Zexion and Saϊx were there this time, something which Demyx was actually quite thankful for. Word had not spread to anyone else about the intense spat that had happened between the actor and musician, apparently. Well, Demyx wanted to keep it that way. He didn't want the shadow of the event to fester into gossip, or worse yet, a boot out of the team.
He wasn't exactly in the mood to reason with a certain ice queen anyway.
The sitarist paused in the middle of a tune. Like Luxord would say, Zexion certainly had a few tough cards dealt his way, but still... the guy was mean. He was a fantastic actor, and admittedly quite attractive, but the personality threw off everything. But what did personality matter when the young man could act like he had in a simple rehearsal? Demyx found himself disappointed, forlorn and outright depressed thinking about it. Anxiously he resumed plucking at the strings of his favourite, slightly aged instrument.
Whatever actual turn-up had showed up for the rehearsal was currently either being excessively romantic in the janitor's closet, arguing over props, plucking aimlessly at a sitar or playing solitaire. Though, Luxord had been sociable to offer to play poker with him.
This play production.. sucked.
Demyx sighed, watching with half amusement and half resignment as Marluxia and Vexen had at it over... well, props. It was unfortunately blatant, despite the cocky competitiveness that gleamed between the two of them, that they were an incredibly happy couple. The musician rested his chin in his hand as he watched him, thoughtfully pondering on what kind of material could have made those two the happy couple that they were. Marluxia had had his fair share of ex-boyfriends and even girlfriends in thrifty relationships, well enough to make some men wince, but he seemed earnestly secure in this one, causing Demyx to wonder.
...Well, said man was currently swinging around a scythe prop like a moron and exchanging playful theatre-related jeers with his paint-spattered boyfriend, but that part didn't matter.
Demyx was nudged out of his reverie by Luxord and an unusually sharp edge of a card. "Is your head in the game?" the blond man smirked, the stubble of his unshaven face showing in the bare light of the stage. "You stopped playing about five minutes ago."
The musician shook his head confusedly. "Uh."
"There's an unpleasant bug going around, I hear. Hopefully you've not caught it?"
"...Uh. I.. guess," Demyx murmured, feeling his mind suddenly blank out as he idly trailed a hand over the strings.
- - - - -
It was a Friday morning, at a time ghosting just between the post-arrival sleepiness and the pre-lunch hunger, when Demyx sat strumming vigorously at the strings of his ornate sitar, listening happily as Namine and Roxas dueted harmoniously. They were sitting with their legs hanging off the edge of the empty stage in a row, with Axel seated in the audience chairs, arms crossed and a satisfied look in his eyes.
Demyx tore through the heavy tempo of the song with practiced ease, anxiously risking a glance up at either Namine or Roxas every so often. It truly had taken practice and they still had the unfamiliar awkwardness of any first-timer, but they were really singing and capable of keeping to the song. That in itself was a lot of reassurance, because if there was one more problem they didn't need, it was stumbling, singing, barely-adult actors tripping over themselves.
He finished the tune, and gave the two a satisfied smile. "You guys are doing great!" Demyx exclaimed, gingerly setting aside his sitar. He faked a huge grin, mostly putting it on as soon as he caught the minute glimpse of Zexion in his peripheral vision. The actor had just emerged from the front door with Saϊx. Demyx warily looked everywhere but where he was, biting his lip and looking objectively at Roxas.. who was peering at him with large, curious blue eyes. Namine, sitting farther away, mirrored the action.
"What's up?"
Demyx chewed on a painful raw line of flesh across his lips, hesitating. Namine, Axel and Roxas were trustworthy enough, he supposed, but he honestly simply did not want to talk about it.
The whole issue left more than a bad taste in his mouth- the issue, in his mind, summarised the whole load of pain he'd put up with since he'd graduated. Zexion was every high and mighty music professional who'd discarded his CD before even listening to it, and their argument was every single exchange of words that had ever passed between Demyx and those myriad consultants. Those cutting remarks Zexion had made were all the telephone conversations Demyx had once had with his family, only in a sharper language and from a less-caring mouth.
He jerked in surprise when a pair of hands slapped onto each of his shoulders, and a plastic bag swung into his view. More vegetarian takeout. "Eat it all," Marluxia grunted, voice muffled beneath the cage of his fingers gripping over his mouth, "if I see a modicum of food right now, I'll empty my guts into the nearest receptacle."
Puzzled, Demyx craned his head to look up at the playwright standing behind him. Marluxia's eye twitched, his leg making a strange, jerky movement, and it looked like he was going to make a run for the bathroom either way. "Just take it," the man asserted, dropping the bag into Demyx's lap unceremoniously before turning on his heel and all but running away.
The blond he left behind had about two seconds to look between the warm plastic bag of nicely-packed vegetarian take-out, the actors on each of his sides, and the empty backstage doorway fluttering open and close before he cried, "Marluxia!" and stumbled to his feet, running after the playwright. As he fell into an awkward jog (he honestly didn't exercise enough, and the slight wheeze that caught his breath was enough proof) he barely caught the backstage door in mid-close and raced in through it.
He almost missed the fleeting figure of his flatmate before Marluxia completely disappeared into the backstage bathroom. Vexen, in all strange occurrences, was already inside, and peering with an unreadable expression as Marluxia heaved over the sink. Demyx slid clumsily out of a run as he staggered into the bathroom, biting his lip and turning away at the sight, inching towards the wall. He was concerned, sure, but it was sights like these that made his own stomach feel like it was dropping out and bouncing back up his eosophogus.
There was a thankful five seconds of relative silence as Marluxia just stood there, bent over the sink and almost completely supported by his arms, and then he continued. Demyx, casting a hasty apologetic look Vexen's way, skidded out of the bathroom and shut the door behind himself, bumping into something slightly and screwing his eyes closed. For a second, he just stood, cursing his own weak stomach.
When he looked up, he yelped.
Standing uncomfortably close to him was Zexion, whose hand was drawing strangely close to his face. Demyx's breath hitched and his own hand shot to his mouth, spontaneously swatting away the actor's. "I- uh-" he swallowed back the rising bile in the back of his throat, now feeling a genuinely bad taste in his mouth. He made a mostly useless attempt to make distance between himself and Zexion, mostly useless since the endeavour ended up with his back hitting the bathroom door. The uncomfortably thin bathroom door, it may be noted- Demyx winced at the sound of Marluxia hacking his breakfast into the bathroom sink, blocking out the sound of Vexen saying- something.
And strangely enough, Zexion looked concerned. His dark eyes stood out like sapphire gems in the darkness of the backstage hallways, watching Demyx with an intent look. "Swallow," he said, holding a paper cup to Demyx's face. He seemed to have pulled the paper cup out of nowhere, or maybe he'd had it all along; he was too dizzy to try and figure it out now.
Still, this was the actor whom he had earnestly pissed off only the other day, and no nauseoua could cloud out that fact. Demyx shot the paper cup of water a suspicious look, like the pale fingers slid around it in a comfortable grasp were bleeding venom into the water it held.
The actor, seeming to catch on, said flatly, "It's not laced with poison, if that's your concern. It's mine."
Ultimately Demyx took the cup, sipping at it tentatively and trying to look everywhere other than at the shorter young man. There was little else to look at, though, especially in the spatially-challenged and questionably sanitary backstage hallways and their confusing layout. He noted with thankfulness that Marluxia had apparently stopped throwing up. He was mumbling something to Vexen, too weakly and too muffled to be heard through even the paper-thin door.
"There's been a wave of illness going about. I suppose Marluxia's spent enough time out in the rain to have rendered himself particularly suspectible to it," Zexion stated with a puzzlingly subdued tone. "It's worrisome, either way."
Demyx rolled his eyes and snorted, clarity returning to himself as the pangs of dizziness faded away with startling abruptness. "Yeah, I know. You're worried about the progression of the production, if it'll make the deadline," he grumbled, instantly regretting the sharpness of the tone he'd adopted.
Whatever rebuttal Zexion would have made in his own defence was cut off by the swinging open of the bathroom door and Demyx's subsequent stumbling away from it. The musician made a strange, swerving sort of motion as he turned and watched as Vexen and Marluxia trailed out of the bathroom, the latter holding a paper napkin to his mouth and looking notably dishevelled.
"Demyx," Marluxia began, voice strangely raw, "I'm going back to the apartment early with Vexen, all right? Would you mind taking up rehearsal from here?" he near-pleaded.
Demyx found himself stupidly at a loss for words, and just nodded, watching as the two men ambled away and disappeared. Then, he gave Zexion a considering look, which the actor returned with a frighteningly unreadable expression, and proceeded to say awkwardly, "Uh.. damn, I guess I'm in charge?"
Zexion's eyes narrowed and suddenly that strange, subdued and weirdly concerned young man disappeared. Head Bitch Actor Zexion seemed to kick right back into full gear with a visible change of expression, and he snapped, "Not while I'm still breathing." Here, he proceeded the make a turn on his heel and sped away towards the stage area.
- - - - -
Demyx learned, that day, that Zexion was pretty much ridiculously competent at everything that wasn't social interaction. Namely, Zexion was absurdly good at slave-driving.
Who would have known?
- - - - -
"Shit," Axel cursed with dramatic volume as he stared at his open hands and the raw, reddened fingers in front of them. They were twitching slightly, and in the light they looked like they may have even adapted different, well, angles. For effect, he repeated, "Shiiit!", loudly and quite expressively.
Demyx chewed on an overused roll of gum in his mouth quite dejectedly, stroking his sitar almost apologetically. Over at the keyboard, Kairi was reduced to a crumbled heap, falling with her head over the keys and her arms hanging off the edges uselessly. Axel, guitar still strapped on, had taken to loudly cursing just about anything that popped into his head- deeper, darker curse words, Spanish, German, what have you. On the stage, all the actors had fallen onto various places, not resorting to express any vocal complaint as their throats had been scraped raw by hours of endless singing and line-reciting for a while now.
The entire theatre was still and silent, with the morbid exception of an occasional whimper. If there were an opportune gust of wind to swoop over the entire place, it would have had an uncanny resemblance to a battlefield hours after the end of a devastating Pyrrhic victory. Because technically, the cast and crew had won, at the cost of their personal health.
If Zexion and Saϊx rendered them all completely vocally and musically disabled for the rest of their lives, Demyx would sue.
For whatever reason, Axel yelled a much louder "Shit!" after attempting to shake awake a dazed-looking Roxas on stage.
Zexion, reigning Head Bitch Actor apparently graduated to TerminActor of the production (Axel had made the nickname up halfway through Full Rehearsal No. 6) simply stood unaffected in the centre of the carcasses on the stage, with his arms crossed and a ghost of satisfaction in his expression. "Ah. I suppose that's acceptable."
After a beat of disbelief, Demyx cried, "Acceptable?" from the offstage area, feeling slightly small as he yelled at the head actor from a visibly lower surface. "Acceptable! Zexion, Zexion, it's six in the evening! These people," he gestured meaningfully at the motionless figures lying assortedly over the stage, "have families! Dreams! Have you no shame?"
As if on cue, Roxas croaked into a relative form of consciousness, making a strange gurgling noise before being nearly drowned in the bottle of water that Axel forced on him. Nearby, Namine rolled onto her face and made a brave attempt at speaking, perhaps making some form of peace. Zexion, however, did not stir one inch from the metaphorical mountain upon which he stood and peered imperiously down at Demyx. "Acceptable, meaning that we are finally on track-"
In the background, Axel was shaking Roxas violently by the shoulders, a dejected bottle of water lying on its side nearby and wetting the stage quite abundantly. "Roxas! Roxas, man, wake up-"
"-Meaning that perhaps this production is not a dying endeavour-"
"-dude, wake up... I... I can't live without you...!-"
"-and perhaps it may or may not progress into an actual, acceptable play that-"
"-look, I, I'm sorry about that time back in middle school when I stole your lunch, just wake up,-"
"-may or may not be recieved properly by the critics, even then. Which quite definitely-"
"-ROXAAAAS!"
"-displays that all of our careers in the theatre world are quite at risk. But seeing as to how you're all amateurs, that doesn't matter, does it?'
Demyx glowered up at the stage and the actor in the centre of it. "Yeah, thanks, we all appreciate you half-killing us for the sake of our dream."
Zexion glared back, rebutting, "Yes, well, that's what you all don't understand! Theatre isn't a one-time dream, something you pull off once, enjoy and never look back at. It's something you just pull off like a vacation! It's a way of thinking, a philosophy that you live and abide by! ...A discipline!" Momentarily he pursed his lips, scanning over the stage area with a razor-sharp scowl. "If you earnestly wanted to create a production, the perhaps you'd receive this much-needed rehearsing with less complaint."
A ways off, Axel was administering some bastardised rendition of C.P.R., wherein he gave the kiss of life without even trying to exert pressure on Roxas's chest. Roxas was, for the record, breathing quite well.
Zexion exited stage right.
- - - - -
At half-past seven in the evening, Demyx tumbled into his apartment with his sitar case strapped to his back and a very sore set of fingers to find his roommate buried in quilts, thermometers and several questionable apparatuses, generally reclined quite comfortably into his bed and listening with intent as his boyfriend read Shakespeare to him. On the writing desk nearby sat twenty pages of fresh manuscript that Marluxia had apparently written with Vexen's help since he'd gotten back, weighed down by a bowl of what looked like stew. The whole room smelled like vegetable stew and flowers.
Demyx stood stock-still in the hallway, weighing the factors in his mind:
He, as well as ninety percent of the other cast and crew, had been rendered borderline comatose by an insane actor and his just-as-insane-if-not-more manager for the last five hours. Marluxia was sick, but looking twenty times better. Apparently Vexen cooked one heck of a good vegetable stew. There were twenty pages of fresh manuscript on the desk. And judging from the makeshift door hanger poking out of the garbage bin, apparently Marluxia had found his muse.
Marluxia stretched in the bed and sat up, smiling at Demyx good-naturedly. "Hey, you're back. How was practice?"
Demyx opened his mouth to say something, proceeded to say a whole lot of nothing, and then shut it. Then he turned on his heel and walked away, into some zone where he was more worthy of existing in.
That night, curled up in a cold, lonely little ball in his bedroom and forced to listen to the sound of Vexen and Marluxia getting it on over the couch only two doors away, Demyx quite spontaneously decided that he hated life.
end of chapter three
A/N: Ahhh- more bitchy Zexion. Eheh. Guilty pleasure. Please leave a review if you liked this- I feed off that stuff like a barnacle on a boat. Hehe.
