A/N: HAHAHA I'm such a hypocrite.
Every year I'm like "I'm gonna post something awesome on my birthday!" and I never do. What's more depressing is that I started this on my birthday last year, and it's had...two updates since then? Three counting this one?
Maaaan, it's a good thing I got that magnum opus thing out of the way before all this stuff started getting so hectic.
Edit: FF, whatchu doin' to my formatting, you silly goose.
It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.
- W. Somerset Maugham
In the wee hours of Saturday morning, Zexion lay down backwards on his bed with his feet on the pillow. He stared at the popcorn ceiling and thought about nothing at all, really. He waited for feelings to slam into him like a wave – given maximum surface area and the power of gravity, some were bound to land on his body eventually.
Alone was a feeling to Zexion. It was spread with a thin knife over his stomach, and it quivered. He wanted a place to stick, let linger.
Maybe he would become a psychologist.
And spend his days surrounded by people? Hardly a good option.
Zexion had always felt a sort of muted pity for psychologists, and a sort of admiration. Being responsible for someone else's sanity was terrifying; what if you screwed up? Misdiagnosed? Everyone would rely on you to fix the suicidal people and the depressed people and the crazy people, and what if you couldn't tell the difference between a hopeless cause and one you weren't good enough for? He was terrified that if he ever became a psychologist, he'd proclaim a suicidal man to be cured. And when the inevitable happened it would be his fault – because it was his job, to fix people like that.
He could hardly imagine being responsible for anything. People always made mistakes; best to keep the stakes as low as possible. He was a boy with few ambitions.
Maybe he'd care for fish. Nobody cared if fish died. He could fuck it up gloriously and just replace them all, and they'd never notice.
Numb, Zexion drummed his fingers against his stomach and waited for the sun to rise and the heat to become unbearable.
Another thing he couldn't understand was all this drama people put themselves through – television had provided him with a full set of socially acceptable morals, as dictated by gruff murder detectives. You never made sacrifices. You could have it all if you shouted loud enough. The other side was the wrong side. You can't kill one to save ten.
Most importantly: it was better to feel pain than to feel nothing at all.
He was just being contrary, probably. He'd seen the message so many times that he decided to do the opposite, and somebody would have to see it and care enough about him to set him right. Ha, ha, ha.
Zexion didn't feel pain; he felt nothing at all. He kept waiting for the ice to break on the thin frozen tundra that was his mind, but it went too deep.
"I," he told the ceiling, "am fucking melodramatic, and I'm going to take a bath."
The bath didn't help. Normally he could enjoy them, he'd sit in the tub while it filled and relish the surface tension that rose over dry skin, and he'd close his eyes and stop thinking. Today something was off – the heat, maybe, or his noontime promise to a stranger. At any rate he sat cross-legged and stared at the water in front of his legs. He stuck his face under it and blew bubbles out his nose.
What movie were they even going to see? He had no idea; he hadn't even looked up the name. But he was glad it was a movie, because nobody talked during movies. You could both sit there and share an experience without having to contribute anything, and once it was done you had something to talk about. Not that he'd have anything to say. But he could make something up. It was never hard, for him.
He soaped up and washed down, suddenly sick of the bath and its lack of distraction.
Movies – television – books – they must have made sense to most people. People were selfish, Zexion knew that; they liked to see things reflect their own selves. So pop culture must have made sense to them. And he was the outlier. So he was going to go see a movie and he would find it amusing, but wholly unsatisfying, and it wouldn't leave an impression and everybody would talk about it for weeks and weeks while he stood dumbly on the sidelines wondering why it was such a breakthrough.
Of all things, movies got under his skin.
Zexion toweled off his hair limply, hoping he hadn't woken his parents up, and went to go get dressed.
Here's another chance, boy-o, said the nasty part of his mind. Dress to impress. This guy thinks you're in college. So you'd better dress like it.
Not that he had much experience with college kids, anyways. Not up close. But he shuffled into jeans that were a little tighter than usual, and same with the shirt, because that would make him look bigger. Wearing oversized clothing all the time probably made it look like he'd shrunk. He pulled a black hoodie over his head and went to go stand in front of the mirror.
"Jesus," he groused. "I don't even want to do this. Fucking senioritis."
Zexion sighed. "Adolescence: do monumentally stupid things for the sake of social acceptance!" he said, holding his arms out from his sides and watching the sleeves droop. "Now in exciting new flavors like hipster and emo. New look, same bitter emotional scarring."
"Zexion?" his mother's call was muffled by two doors and a hallway, thickened with sleepiness, but it sent shivers of irritation down his spine.
"What is it."
"Are you all right? Who are you talking to?"
Wow. Wow.
At eight in the morning, just one word from his mother was enough to ruin Zexion's mood for an hour. Who the fuck did she think he was talking to? His secret girlfriend who snuck into his room? His mother was fundamentally incapable of drawing the most obvious conclusions. She only ever asked him if something was wrong when he was feeling fine. He didn't understand how she'd come so far in life with such a fundamental misunderstanding of social interactions.
Of course, he wasn't really one to talk, but at least he could fake it.
"I'm fine, Mom." Which was his default response.
"...okay." There was an undertone of that same no need to be so snippy Zexion, but he ignored it. God dammit. Sometimes he asked himself why she could derail everything he was thinking with two needlessly invasive words, and he realized she wasn't awful, just human and paranoid, but he couldn't stop finding her so...awful.
With a quick stride to the entrance of his room, Zexion shut the door a little more forcefully than necessary and slammed the chain lock in place.
He pulled the blanket off his bed, taking extra care when it caught on the corner, and booted up his laptop. This early on the weekend, nobody was online – IM was virtually deserted, social networking sites sparse. Not that he'd ever had any particular affection for either medium. They were more chances to interact with people, and so they were more chances to slip up or do something awkward or feel alienated. He could be one paranoid motherfucker when it came to stuff like that.
Maybe he was just scared of rejection? Fuck it, he knew he was scared of rejection. Everyone was.
Zexion Gillespie was...nobody's best friend. And nobody's priority. Not Axel's. Not Larxene's. Not Lexaeus's. Not his own mother's. Hell, most of the time he was hardly his own priority. That was usually okay, and he didn't mind or anything, but he'd be lying if he told himself it never mattered.
He had almost four hours until he had to meet that guy at the movies. What would he even do with the time?
Stay here? Jesus. With his mom clunking around the house like an elephant?
No, his best option was to get out of his own head for a while, so he resolved to go outside. He'd get breakfast somewhere cheap and just do...something, until he had to go. It was an appealing plan: he could eat whatever he felt like, go to the park when nobody would be there, pretend he was occupied with his phone if he made accidental eye contact with anyone. Yeah. Okay.
Zexion spent almost three hours in one chair in a coffee shop, firmly entrenched in his book. He'd finished the autobiography ages ago. Without getting the chance to go to the library, though, he was pretty much limited to all the books in his house – which meant he got stuck with with a stupid Alice in Wonderland reimagining he'd picked up at a book sale sophomore year. The story was full of wars and romance and flimsy excuses for things that glowed, but he had no nostalgia for the original book; this was all the same to him.
He nursed an iced coffee, then an egg sandwich, then a sugar cookie. Zexion could take a gloriously long time to eat food – bite by tiny bite. But he could only waste time for so long before the baristas probably got annoyed, so at about eleven he high-tailed it out of Disaffected Liberal Arts Major central and ambled toward the cinema.
Technically he should get on the train, and get off at the next stop – but he knew where he was headed. At least, he knew what street the theater was on, and it was the street he was currently on, and he knew which direction to go.
Besides. Walking helped him think. You could stay inside your head while you walked, and once that got too depressing you could stare at the things you passed by.
Sometimes, Zexion couldn't shake the feeling that the whole world was placating him. Everything he said, thought, did – all of him in his entirety was an embarrassment, but everyone felt too awkward to call him out on it. He felt like he was being forever condescended upon. And who would be right, in that situation? Him or the whole rest of the world? It was hardly a fair comparison. Zexion was doomed to be a useless outcast. Every conversation he weighed in on, his opinions were unwanted; every experience he shared, they were waiting for him to shut up; every argument he made, all anyone thought was 'oh honey, that's cute, but go back to your sandbox now'. How sad, Zexion. Nobody can stand you and you won't leave them alone.
Did conceding to an argument make you the bigger person, or did it make you weak? If the other person didn't know you were letting them win? He'd been talking to Larxene – he'd been talking to Larxene, because she told him things for whatever reason. Maybe she figured he didn't have anyone to spill her secrets to. He'd been talking to Larxene about altruistic suicide. But Larxene was a girl, full of emotions, so when he'd said the words "anthropologically speaking" and "it would be to the advantage of the tribe if", she'd gotten so mad. That couldn't be right; for one thing, she'd watched a documentary in psyche and none of those claims were substantiated, and anyways he was just taking the most controversial stance he could because he liked to feel superior.
He'd said okay and left and now it was two days later, and it was the first time he'd thought of it since.
Maybe he'd just agreed to watch a movie with Demyx the Traffic Cop because he didn't have the spine to make a decision for himself. A decision had been presented to him, and he'd gone the route that would hurt the least feelings.
So much for being a sociopath. Fucking weakling.
No – no, he was only being reasonable; he had no opinion on the matter and took the most logical step.
He couldn't shake the feeling, though. That he only had friends because people were being polite to him. Or that he...perceived things differently.
Which is why he was so hung up on this Demyx thing. Demyx had...no reason to be doing what he was doing. He had no obligation to be polite to Zexion, to befriend him or get something from him; he had no reason to interact with him at all. He couldn't help wanting to believe in the earnestness of this man – Zexion was so distrustful, so paranoid, lonely and disconnected that this was the only hand he would accept. If someone had no reason to do something, he was doing it because he wanted to, because he honest to God wanted to go see a movie with Zexion the sociopath, and that could be trusted – because it wasn't asked for.
Zexion laughed, then, inside his head. What a hypocrite! He never extended himself or did something only because he wanted to. If everyone in the world were like him, nobody would have any friends, ever. But the world was not like him. That was why Zexion even had friends, however good they were.
Zexion was a sociopath. He and the world had nothing in common.
It went on like this – Zexion thought and thought and thought, and while he walked he noticed nothing of his surroundings. He bumped into strangers and failed to apologize in time; he sped past elaborate graffiti and ignored the homeless men with cups of change.
Elementary school, he mused, had really fucked him up. His was so small – each grade had maybe forty kids – that there was only ever the one clique of boys. And when you were like Zexion, awkward and with a distaste for sports, you tended to get...not ignored, exactly. Not ignored. But...forgotten. Unwanted. Nobody's first pick: if a table could seat four kids, he'd be the fifth one who got booted to sit on the ground. Because he wasn't like them.
Yeah, you're just a special fucking flower, aren't you?
He snorted. Elementary school had begun his paranoia, middle school had exaggerated it, and high school added layers of complexity and false hope to the pot of depressed bullshit that was his brain.
He was so small.
Zexion walked right past the theater and down another block before he realized. He hurried back, with his eyes on the ground, and sat down on the steps to wait for Demyx to show up. He switched his music to something mindless, quiet, droning, without words, and he sat on the rain-damp concrete stairs and watched people filter in and out of a Barnes and Noble across the street. Pulling his hood up, Zexion started to feel like Roxas on the steps to his house – sitting, waiting for something he wouldn't tell anyone, closed up and so, so little.
"Oh! Hey, almost didn't see you there!"
Blinking himself out of his stupor, Zexion was surprised to see Demyx had escaped his attention. He supposed he'd been used to the guy in a police uniform – civilian clothes made him melt right back into the scenery. He took a second to look him up and down. You could tell a lot about someone from their clothes. At least, in high school you could. The theater kids tried a little too hard to look disheveled; their sweaters sagged perfectly over one shoulder and boots unlaced just the right amount. Oblivious nerds wore jeans that exposed their ankles when they sat down, jocks wore shorts even in winter, girly girls wore lace and leggings, musicians wore hats, and class clowns wore shirts with ironic sayings. You could tell a lot about someone from their shoes, too. Zexion would know. He spent an awful lot of time looking at the ground.
Demyx just had on a black rain coat, some well-fitting jeans, and a pair of dirty sneakers. Like he'd grabbed whatever he saw handy after a shower, with no thought or rhyme or reason – Zexion envied that, a little.
"Oh," he said. "Hey."
"You all right?"
"What?" Had he been crying or something? "Uh, yes?"
"You looked so startled for a second there," Demyx laughed, clapping him on the shoulder. His hand was warm and expansive. "Zoning out?"
"Yeah."
"You do that a lot," he said, running a hand through shards of damp hair. Zexion's mouth was a little open, and he watched that hand with a barely concealed fascination. A part of him itched, almost, to trace it – but that was quickly stifled. Wants were weird and undignified.
"I guess. Dunno, maybe I didn't sleep too well last night," he said. He stood up and smiled at Demyx, a fake smile that hurt the sides of his mouth and pulled a little on the strings around his heart. He never smiled at a person and meant it. He never fucking meant it. People smiling back were like a constant tally of social approval, not really human things that cared and – and he still had to get through this movie with Demyx, who thought he was normal.
Zexion sometimes thought he wanted to take a break from real life. A real, proper sort of a break. Everyone would leave him alone, even his thoughts, and he'd come back new and shiny and ready to try again.
There was a double door leading into the theater, but Demyx only opened one side of it, heaving it back and nodding his head for Zexion to go first. He followed right behind, real close, and put that warm hand on Zexion's shoulder again before heading to the ticket machine.
"My friend got the tickets online," he said, taking a creased printout from the theater website out of his pocket. "I'll just be a sec. Have you seen this one before?"
"No," Zexion frowned, staring up at the vaulted ceiling. Complex lattices of pipes and long iron beams had been his friend since fifth grade gym. Things got stuck up there in the rafters, like balloons and balls and ambitions. It was like a treasure hunt where you didn't have to look anyone in the eyes. "I um," he said, looking at Demyx's back as he printed out the tickets, "Don't go to the movies often. I usually just wait for it to come out on DVD or on TV or something."
"Cheapskate!"
Zexion snorted, coming up behind him. He stuffed his hands in his windbreaker pockets. "My friends don't really like going out to the movies."
"What do you like to do? Wait, don't tell me – you sit around playing Brahms and talking about new scientific discoveries."
"What?" Brahms? The fuck? The machine spat out the actual tickets, and for the second before Demyx took them they looked like rectangular pink tongues.
"Nothing. That's what my friends do – the ones that go the conservatory, I mean." He wrinkled his nose at some gum crushed into the ratty red carpet, and headed towards the clerk. "I have normal friends who play videogames all day – what do you do?"
"Uh," Zexion had an answer and all, but the ticket lady – large, tanned, with an ill-fitting red vest – was right there ripping off parts of their tickets. She didn't need to hear what he was saying. Not if it wasn't...planned.
(He could do that – line up a conversation so the right accidental eavesdropper heard it. Like social prowess was a game where you could unlock achievements.)
(Fucking monster.)
Demyx smiled at her, and accepted the ticket stubs, offering one to Zexion.
"I guess not much," he confessed as they walked away. He cradled the stub in his hand. "We don't hang out too often – usually we'll go online or mess around in parks."
"Really?" Demyx seemed genuinely interested. They were heading for the theater, under a much closer, blacker ceiling with posters all over the walls and the rich smell of popcorn turning Zexion's stomach. There was practically no line at the concessions stand. "Who?"
"Huh?"
"Who do you hang out with? I might know them."
Hm. The truth, or a lie – Zexion considered the merits of each. If he lied to Demyx and gave him names he didn't know, it would be suspicious. He might ask around – "You ever heard of a guy named Axel?" and the confrontation would be awkward at best. Zexion hated it when he committed a social faux pas. Made a joke nobody laughed at, or got shrugged off by people he was socializing with. It took him down a peg. Plus, that was what people always did in movies. They came up with silly, lame lies, perpetuated them, had to go to huge lengths to keep up appearances, and they always got found out. Movies like that were so...trite. You always knew exactly what was going to happen: the big reveal, the disappointment, the few minutes of lonely deadness before the main characters get back together.
The truth held different consequences. Best case scenario, Demyx smiled it away, couldn't care less, thought the miscommunication funny. Worst case scenario – he got mad and stormed off. But Zexion at least got left alone.
He shrugged, and puffed up his chest and got ready to be honest. The way he saw it, if he pissed Demyx off, then the most he had to suffer was one movie with somebody who stopped liking him. "I don't...actually go to the conservatory," he said. "I'm in one of the high school orchestras."
"No kidding?" Demyx paused, staring at the boxes of candy. "No kidding," he said again, quieter.
Zexion could feel whatever enthusiasm had been there get gently sucked out of the conversation. Demyx only stood there, watching the food with his lips sort of tight, sighing through his nose.
"You're really in high school?"
He felt like he should apologize for it. "Yeah, basically. Is that so shocking?"
"Dunno. You just seemed...older, I guess." He shook his head, and Zexion's hands twitched in his pockets. That was a real shame – he'd never wanted to touch someone before, just to see what it felt like, but if Demyx hated him now, then so be it. "What grade are you in?"
"I'm a senior."
"What, now?"
"...yes?" Zexion laughed, and glanced at the cashier of the concessions stand. He probably couldn't care less about this conversation, between two guys. "I graduate in a couple months. Turned 18 in January."
"Oh! Oh. That's...not so bad, then, is it?" Demyx heaved a big old sigh, and smiled a little. "I don't feel so creepy. Where're you going for college?"
"Local university." Creepy? Was it that weird for functioning adults to befriend highschoolers? Zexion supposed that for the adults it would be – after all, he didn't spend time with middle school kids.
It was a strange relief that Demyx didn't ask which university – not that Zexion wouldn't have told him – but instead, "Not moving too far, huh? That makes sense. We've got a lot of good stuff up here. I mean education, and other things, too."
"Yeah, that's what I figured. Plus, the one thing I knew about which college I was gonna go to...I mean, when I was deciding, I told my guidance counselor that it had to be somewhere that snowed sometimes."
Alien eyes spiraled ice down his spine, relentless and smiling, and Demyx opened his mouth to reply but was interrupted by the vendor's "Can I get you anything?"
It took a few minutes to get food, so Zexion figured Demyx would've forgotten. Wrong again. "Snow, huh?"
"What?"
"Right before we got snacks. You said you wanted to go somewhere with snow."
"Oh." Which was a weird thing to say, and perhaps a little too honest, and you weren't supposed to do it when getting to know someone. Right. Zexion shook his head and resolved to be more careful. "Um, yeah, I guess. I mean I wasn't that serious about it – "
"No?" Demyx laughed. He seemed like the kind of guy who laughed all of the time, even when something wasn't funny, just because. "Aw. That was totally one of my things when I was applying to colleges. I said it's got to at least have a park or a forest or something nearby, where it's not really crowded, or I'd go nuts, and there had to be seasons. I don't want to go where it's warm all the time."
Zexion wondered if people had to apply to the police academy the way they applied to colleges, and if Demyx had planned on going to college, how did he end up a policeman? It was just a given, where he lived, that you went to college. Everybody did it.
There was something warm and old and false about a movie theater. Maybe it was that every single one he'd been to had crimson accents and carpeted floors. Demyx opened the theater door for him, so Zexion smiled and thanked him, and tried not to think too much that a forest and some snow would be a wonderful place to go to school.
It reminded him of all those conversations he heard people having in the hallways.
The thing is, U of M has really, really good humanities – I mean my brother's friend went there, and he said that a letter of recommendation from the chair of the lit department will get you into like, anywhere for grad school. But their sciences are only so-so, I mean, they're pretty average, so if I want to be a lawyer it's fine but what if I go premed?
ULU is actually a really good school. The problem is people haven't heard of it, but it has small classes so you can get help from the professors and all.
He couldn't understand that. Maybe conversations like that were meant for people who knew what they wanted, set on trains without brakes destined for the eternal point B. Zexion didn't have a point B; he hardly had a point A. He didn't want much at all. Zexion just wanted a place to stick to, get his bearings straight, a place where the big things stayed mostly the same so he could deal with the little things. Dealing with more than one problem at a time was something he'd always had trouble with. There must have been a trick to it.
When they entered the theater, the most of the seats were occupied. There were single empty seats, of course. They served as buffers between different groups. That struck Zexion as a little sad, but he couldn't point out why, exactly, it was sad that strangers didn't want to be adjacent.
Demyx, who couldn't care less, headed straight for the back of the theater. Good, Zexion thought; it would have strained his neck to sit in the front.
The movie left no impression, as expected. It had a nice soundtrack. Not music he'd be humming to himself in class any time soon, but nevertheless – pretty.
Sitting next to Demyx did leave an impression. Zexion didn't often go to the movies, and when he did, it was in large groups with people like Axel and Larxene who snorted loudly and leaned over to whisper hot-humid pop culture references to the lobe of his ear.
For one thing, Demyx didn't hog the middle arm rest, not even when Zexion left it unoccupied. He leaned back in his seat, one elbow crooked, head in his palm, twirling bits of hair. True, he might have been part of why Zexion couldn't focus on the movie – he was so much more interesting. Sincerity etched his movements. He was made of all these lines, such strange lines that came in vague undulations applied at points across his body. Soft curves of muscles on his arms, the bump of pectorals and a solid torso, bony knees, the swell of his calves diving into ankles. He was not like Axel, sticks tied together with string. Not like Lexaeus, who was so solid and broad and there, with thick fingers dancing on the strings.
What a bizarre version of grown-up.
He refused to act properly, that was the thing, he refused to sort his movements into a familiar category. Demyx should have been friendly, dopey, poorly-coordinated, always dropping things and laughing about it.
This wasn't good, but it wasn't bad. All it was, was it made determining the right reactions more difficult for Zexion.
Around his parents, Zexion was meek, unresponsive, quiet. He was not proud of intellectual achievements, and he did not ask for much. Being in his father's office was worse; he sat still like a carving, a person-shaped box left in the corner, not bothering anyone. With his school friends, Zexion was loud (as loud as he ever got), obnoxious and cruel. Different Zexions for different situations, all fine-tuned and adjusted to yield maximum positive results.
Demyx's question blew right past him when he opened up the door, grimacing at the thick fuzzy taste movie popcorn left in his mouth. "What?"
Snort. "What'd you think of the movie?"
"I don't know. It was okay, I guess."
"Wow. Aren't you just full of opinions."
Zexion shrugged. "I haven't really had time to process it."
"You process everything before you have an opinion on it?"
The clouds had gone away by now, melted into the sky and the bright sun. Bright spots of shine glinted off of everything – cars, sunglasses, shop windows – but Zexion just wanted to go home. He was done for the day. This was more than enough social interaction.
"Doesn't everybody do that?" he said to Demyx, who was wandering off toward the parking lot in front of the train station.
"I don't think so. Most people just go with their guts," he said.
Ah. Right. Their guts. Instincts. Zexion wasn't so much a fan of things like that, of impulses – you couldn't defend those to somebody who was questioning you. Logic was usually the safer choice, though it led to some unfortunate questions. (Logically, this movie had plot fallacies and poor special effects, but does that refute its true nature as a movie? Shit like that.)
He just settled for, "Seems arbitrary."
Demyx nodded, and began to unzip his raincoat. Zexion waited for a beaten t-shirt or a homey sweater to come out from underneath, something generic and well-worn, because Demyx seemed like that kind of guy. He seemed like the kind of guy who honestly, really believed that people didn't care how you looked.
He had a muscle shirt on. The kind with no sleeves – like an actual fucking muscle shirt to show off your arms, he had on one of those. The fuck? Zexion reeled a little at first, in disgust and awe. That was tacky, but damn did you have to be confident to wear one and not bat an eye. You had to be pretty sure you had arms worth showing off if you were gonna wear that.
A little male part of him squealed with jealousy. It wasn't fair, cops were supposed to be fat and pale and lumpy, they were meant to eat donuts and sit down all of the time. They had been less pronounced in the theater, under his jacket, but in the sunlight Demyx had muscles. They weren't big or frightening, but they were smooth stones set at places in his arm, dipping into shadow like Zexion's never had. He couldn't understand how Demyx had time for that, for purposeful exercise of his arms. Zexion was exhausted by the time he finished homework.
That was just...unfair.
Now, Zexion didn't know where to look. The pavement was too obvious, his face meant eye contact, and his chest would just be awkward.
"Hey...Zexion?"
"Huh?" He settled for a spot between Demyx's eyebrows. Some people had all the luck, born looking that way.
"Are you really alright? You've been – I mean I'm sorry if this is too personal – you've been really...quiet all day."
Uh-oh, Zexion. He's onto you. Do something. Fix it, run away, pretend you don't know what he's talking about. Nobody with arms like that wants to be friends with someone like you. What do you need any more friends for?
Demyx kept going. "Was it something I did, or – "
"No! I'm sorry, I'm just really tired," Zexion laughed and glanced at the train tracks. Knobbly weeds rose up between the metal, over and around the wooden planks. Tall grass lined the sides punctuated by dandelions. Plants on a train track – seemed strange.
"Oh, okay," said Demyx. He folded his rain coat over an elbow, crossed his arms and leaned against the brick wall. "Man. This isn't really how I planned it."
"Planned what?" It seemed pretty basic. Meet at the theater, go watch a movie, go home on the train, leave Zexion alone to mope in his room for a few hours. What was to mess up?
"Uhm," his voice quivered in a failed imitation of laughter. "Uh, never mind."
Demyx was only human. He was probably making a big deal out of something that didn't matter much – this kind of thing made it more important than it was, and he must know it. Zexion wanted to press him – "No, really. I'm curious." But would annoy him if their roles were reversed.
"Well, all right," he said.
The high-pitched squeal of a train keened from somewhere in the distance. Zexion supposed they'd miss this one.
Demyx breathed through his nose and swallowed, keeping his eyes trained ahead, away from the boy next to him. "You remember that conversation we had before? You know, random personal information? You told me how you were a really quiet kid..."
"Yeah. I remember." I remember that you failed to understand the point entirely.
He said something else, but the train rolled in, growling metal thunder and echoing screeches. They waited, both of them, in silence as people boarded and it set off again.
"Mind if I have another one of those moments?" Demyx said.
"Sure."
He took his time about it. He crossed and uncrossed his arms, smoothed out his shirt, put his hands in his pockets and took them back out. Really, he took so long the moment had practically already passed when he started speaking, low tones that distracted Zexion from his words.
"This really isn't how I thought it would go in my head."
Thought what would go, Zexion wanted to ask, but he just went "Hn" and shrugged.
"Zexion?" What a weight this man could lend to his words.
"What is it?"
"I think you're – awesome." He winced. "No. I mean..." A big, heaving sigh. His voice shook. "I think you're beautiful and I want to kiss you. I just thought...I should...say that first."
Zexion stared at him, at his upturned smiling eyes, his nervous mouth, the pre-cringe of his spine.
...
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuckety fuck fuck!
This was not how it worked!
Nobody liked Zexion. Nobody liked Zexion Gillespie; Zexion Gillespie didn't like Zexion fucking Gillespie. The only time he'd thought about – about – that – was as a sort of social obligation, that it would be weird if he didn't, that he must be missing out on something that would make the songs of the radio make sense but he hadn't meant it.
Beautiful? Who calls another man beautiful? In the middle of a city at a train stop? Somebody looking to get shot by an eavesdropping hateful bigot. Beautiful wasn't even a word people used non-sarcastically. Besides, Zexion wasn't stupid. He'd seen himself in the mirror. He wasn't beautiful. He was little, and snub-nosed, and he still had a little baby fat under his jaw, and his eyes were too large, and his ears stuck out so he covered them with hair, and girls never looked at him twice, especially when he was near Axel. Zexion did not draw attention. He liked it that way. A part of him was terrified that if he were ever given the attention he craved, he'd become addicted to it. A ravenous attention monster whining and clawing at people to make them look at him.
He'd never had – you weren't supposed to just...say it.
Not to another guy. Demyx didn't seem gay. And Zexion wasn't gay, either, he was the furthest thing – boys were immature and always forgot their homework and tried to write science fiction epics and liked all the Die Hard movies because they didn't understand real violence. If he had to be with someone, it had to be a girl, a quiet, dark one who knew when to leave him alone. The idea of kissing someone else, especially another guy, sweaty, smelly, greasy, sickened him more than a little.
And you weren't meant to just come out and say it.
How the fuck would you know.
He kept his face still as stone. Just stared at Demyx, as if he were waiting for him to continue, and tilted his head a little. Demyx swallowed.
"I'm really sorry, that was way too forward – and it's kind of weird, because when I thought about saying it I hadn't known you were only eighteen – anyways I know you probably don't, um, and it's just I liked a guy for a really long time and never said anything and now he's with somebody else and I don't want that to happen again, I was just sort of hoping this honesty thing that you would – " he cut himself off and whipped his head down, crossing his arms defensively.
But that same logic reared its ugly head. It's of no consequence to me, thought Zexion, whether or not his advances are received. Why not go the happier route?
"Ohh, God. Can you please say something." Demyx looked at him from under his eyelashes.
"I..." A mood change was easy enough, a quick clicking into place, a soft smile with his mouth just barely turned up and his eyes wrinkled at the edges. "I just wasn't expecting you to be so forward."
"So..." Demyx raised his head fully. "That's a maybe, then?"
Zexion shifted his smile and held his elbows. "I'm not much of a talker."
He let Demyx kiss him, standing there in front of the train station in the middle of a Saturday afternoon. His first proper kiss, technically. With a young police officer, off-duty, wearing a muscle shirt and jeans, just because he was so honest.
It felt like an age went by – he could hear cars in the distance, but they seemed so far. His world was a shaky one, just him and Demyx, careful lips lined up with his and probing, never going too far but imbued with the heavy sense that they wanted to. Just the pulsation of mouths. His heart pumped in his ears like helicopter blades.
He let himself be kissed, soft and sweet, and he felt sick to his stomach, but it made the other one happy.
Maybe that was the best he could hope for. After all, it wasn't like a relationship was ever going to bring him any joy. He may as well make somebody else feel something.
To be an adult is to be alone.
- Jean Rostand
A/N: This story is full of emotional problems! Because I figured you didn't have enough of your own.
Please review? My life is full of suck and I need some old-fashioned cheering up. Or, you know, disappointed criticism.