019 - Cuddling
It had been six days since the Pepto Bismol pink of Marluxia's hair began to fade. Vexen was beginning to feel terrible.
This was a different sort of terrible to the ill, weak-stomached, lethargic terrible he was used to. It was also different to his own peculiar brand of emotional terrible, which tended to centre around himself being a failure at all aspects of life and love. So this was the third kind of terrible that he was beginning to suffer, and all of this terrible was sitting on his shoulders like a horrible, heavy weight the altitude of which Vexen's weak bones could not sustain.
This morning, it appeared that Marluxia had decided to cook the raspberry pancakes that meant he was apologising for something that he didn't know that Vexen had known that he'd done. But how could Vexen tell him that all the times he'd supposedly been asleep he'd actually been conscious to feel the press of Marluxia's lips to his forehead, to hear the confession that became a mantra, over and over every night while Marluxia thought that Vexen slept soundly and blissfully unaware?
And Vexen could see Marluxia cracking, plain as could be, mouth alone while he smiled now, his eyes distant and sad. Every time he laughed it was forced, and every time he spoke it was like he was desperately trying to forget that he was Marluxia and Vexen was Vexen, and the tension between them was more likely than not going to break them both.
Vexen ignored the fruity, bready smell emanating from the kitchen, and headed for the bathroom, grabbing a change of clothes on his way there. Inside the tiled room, he stripped down and happened to glance at himself in the mirror. The scars on his skeletal body nearly made him smile, remembering all the conversations - all of Marluxia's injuries brought about by his own stupidity, and Vexen's through misfortune. Twelve stitches from the bared wires of a fence. Seventeen failing with a sewing machine.
Three point one four one five nine two six five three five...
Vexen sighed to himself, and wished that by some obscene coincidence his telephone number could be the same as the first eleven decimal places of pi because then he'd actually remember it, and pulled on his clothes. With nothing left to do, he dragged himself to the kitchen where Marluxia was working.
"Hey."
"Good morning."
Marluxia tried his best at a smile, but it was a broken one, and Vexen felt a pang of terrible crack through his stomach. God damn it, what was he supposed to do? He tried to make things easy for Marluxia, but he was naturally taciturn and capricious in his personality, and too many times he snapped automatically at Marluxia without thinking and was too proud to apologise, and the terrible would return to stab him again. But...
But Marluxia loved him.
Nobody loved Vexen. It was preposterous, laughable, but Vexen knew well enough that Marluxia wouldn't cry and whisper those three words to an apparently asleep Vexen if it wasn't true.
"How are you?"
Marluxia's smile twisted as he set two plates of pancakes down on the table.
"I'm fine."
Vexen looked at him with his tired expression and muddy-pink hair, movements almost lucid in their autonomy, and didn't believe a word of that.
"No, you're not."
Marluxia's head snapped up from the pancakes, but he was quick to busy his hands again.
"You're not," Vexen continued. "You're not. You're perpetually miserable nowadays. If I'm that hard to live with, then why don't you just go home?"
Marluxia's hands froze, the syrup bottle pooling its contents over the pancakes until they were drowned in sticky sauce, and then some. But he seemed to be stuck that way. Vexen realised, mostly from very personal experience, that that was a sure sign of a broken heart.
The terrible twisted and writhed inside him like a beast, and suddenly he realised that he couldn't keep doing what had always been his initial response to pain, and that was run.
"I know how you feel about me," He said, trying to sound offhand and failing. Marluxia gently tipped the bottle up to stop the perpetual flow of golden syrup, and said nothing. "I've known for a while."
Shaking, Marluxia set the syrup down, idly wiping one finger up the glass side to catch the spilled drip. He licked the finger, almost thoughtful in his manner, and then let out a shuddering sigh.
"I should go," He said eventually. "I should leave. It'll be easier for both of us."
Vexen imagined silence in the apartment, no food and no sleep and nothing to do but read until his body gave out. He imagined falling from the couch, television still playing some erudite wildlife documentary, in a dead faint from which he wouldn't wake up. He knew that he was walking on thin ice, always knew. He was alive, yes, but barely - it would take just days for him to collapse if nobody made sure he fed himself, and perhaps another week for his heart to give out completely.
"If you leave," He said, "I will die."
It might have been an exaggeration but it worked to whatever means Vexen didn't anticipate. Marluxia's hands were at his mouth in an instant, stumbling backwards until his back hit the cooker. He hissed a little.
"I've made everything worse."
Vexen made sense of the situation enough to walk over and pull Marluxia from the cooker before his shirt caught fire, but still as he lifted up the fabric there was a deep red welt on Marluxia's lower back.
"You moron."
"I'm so, so sorry," Marluxia managed as Vexen bent him over the kitchen table, wetted a towel and gently pressed it to the burn. He didn't know what kept him calm; he supposed that one of them always had to be the stronger. They couldn't both be emotional trainwrecks; when Marluxia broke it felt like Vexen had stepped up to take his place and look after him. It was strange, that. Did that normally happen to two men forced to live together for extended periods of time? But whatever it was, Vexen's mind was still clear or detached enough to reply with a remark that he was sure he'd heard before, somewhere in a distant memory.
"Love makes fools of us all."
Marluxia managed to prise himself from the smooth table to stand, one hand taking hold of the towel cooling his back. He sought something in Vexen's eyes, and seemed to find it because one side of his mouth twitched and his gaze dropped to the over-syrupped pancakes.
"Yeah."
Vexen, for all his emotional failings, had a calculative and analytical mind, and it was with the mad rush of genius that had granted him a doctorate if not a wife that he stepped back and assessed the situation. Marluxia was not unattractive - in fact, quite the opposite - and nor was he unpleasant company. He was useful around the house, and his cooking was much, much better than Vexen's could ever hope to be. The only problem was that Marluxia was male, and so was Vexen. But what difference did it make, really? There were no end of homosexuals who lived completely straight lives, married partners of the opposite sex, even had children. So why should it be impossible for a heterosexual to do the same?
It wasn't even as though it would last terribly long; Marluxia, he was sure, would soon grow tired of Vexen's hesitant attempts at romance, and actually sleeping with a man who was literally nothing more than skin, bones and vital organs, would soon prove detrimental to comfort.
And anyway, his bed had, after all, always been built for two.
So Vexen closed his eyes for a moment, let scientific analogies make sense of the situation, and stepped forwards to brush his hand against Marluxia's arm and his lips against Marluxia's cheek.
"Whether it's any good or not," He whispered, "Walking around like you dumped a bottle of Pepto Bismol on your head suits you."
He felt the hot flush rise to Marluxia's face, and the muscles around his mouth twitch as he made to speak and found no words. Vexen reached around under the pretence of relieving Marluxia of the burden of the towel, and left his arm across the shorter man's lower back.
It took a few moments. Marluxia's own arm hesitantly lifted, rested against Vexen's hip, the one that had broken back at school and had never quite sat right ever since.
Cuddling. It had been a while since Vexen had done that. A long while indeed.
The next day it seemed like a dream, like all intimate encounters with Marluxia seemed like a dream, but all the little hints were there; Marluxia's hair was suddenly pink again, his eyes a little brighter, his smile not quite right because he was trying to reserve it, not force it onto his face. He was still hesitant about his actions, reaching only to stroke Vexen's arm, and the older blonde couldn't believe it when he, not Marluxia, was the one to initiate a shy, chaste cheek-kiss. And it was with honest amusement Vexen saw Marluxia try not to let his face light up with joy, and the next time they laughed they actually both managed to cry before they stopped.
It was tiny things, Vexen came to realise. It wasn't like snogging, or sex. It only took stupid little things to make Marluxia happy, like smiling when he said good morning, and leaning against him slightly on the sofa as they argued over watching documentaries or tacky horror movies, and letting him rest his head on Vexen's shoulder so they could both read the daily paper together.
And it was the stupid things, Vexen also realised. Marluxia, bless his soul, was not the brightest spark in the bunch, and it was the stupid things he did that made Vexen laugh and think that, yes, maybe he could, with a forgiving imagination.
And it was the cuddly things, too. Marluxia was both soft and dense simultaneously; he was like holding a sandbag, but his skin was smooth and his body flexible. They began with just touching each other's arms occasionally, then one evening when Vexen was doing the washing up for once, Marluxia's hands found his hips, and then everything seemed to be an opportunity for cuddling, whether it be mutual reading or television watching or just a generic sort of we're-not-doing-anything, let's-cuddle.
Vexen didn't really know what had happened, because he was still throwing up and fainting with unhealthy frequency, but things seemed to be different, not just because four days later, Marluxia came down with something and suffered his own bout of throwing up in the bathroom.
"... Eight nine seven nine three two thee eight four six two six four..."
"Were you quoting pi when I was throwing up just then?"
"Hell, if you can recite how to make a shirt, I think I'm allowed."
"You geek."
"At least I'm not a housewife."
"Oh, so it's not enough to insult my hair, you have to insult my masculinity, too?"
"What masculinity?"
"I... I really do loathe you sometimes, Vexen."
"Cuddle?"
"Cuddle."
A response to Sushibee's 018, Pepto Bismol. Because every emo prompt has to have a happy ending. u___u Set in the verse of our RP.