Okay. It all goes downhill from here... if only for a little while. Right now, I have living arrangements with someone who can be qualified as insane, it's funny how she goes through cycles... it's a roller coaster. She's happy one minute and then deeply depressed the next, but usually there's a month or two between the deeps. Right now, Axel is straying into the darker side of all this.
There's also some extra info in this chapter that would probably change the genre, but I think it's not prevalent enough to change anything over. I had this planned, but I honestly didn't know if I wanted to make it obvious. I want to make it obvious, though, because that'll help clarify a lot of the stuff I impart in later chapters.
My E-mail is on the blink right now, sadly, so if you want to contact me, AIM me at XragXdollXloverX
I'm actually at chapter 16 now, but I'm not sure if I want to go ahead and post it all just yet... and I really didn't intend to post the first strike against them in lucky chapter 13. Haha! And don't hesitate to review, guys. It just makes me want to write more!
Axel woke with a bad hangover and the bed was cold.
"Demyx?" he called, ignoring the pounding agony it incited.
"In the bathroom," he replied, voice suitably low. He seemed okay, but he was wincing and rubbing Bactine into his sore ears. "They hurt still…"
"Yeah… just leave them alone for a little bit and you'll forget about it."
"You need to clean your lip," Demyx stated, slumping down onto the bed, "You have crusties. And really bad breath."
"Screw you, Dem," Axel laughed.
"Just saying," the blond giggled, giving his lover a one-shouldered shrug.
Axel rolled up into a sitting position and yawned, clutching his throbbing head.
"I'm going to get some food… um… you want me to pick something up for the pain?"
"Nah. How long have you been up?"
"Since early. I'm mostly recovered now," Demyx replied quietly. "Anyway… what did you dream about last night? You were crying hard enough to wake me up, and I was pretty fuckin' out of it."
Axel thought about it, but he couldn't dredge up much other than the faint memory of vast amounts of blood and a very terrible grin.
"I don't remember. Sorry."
"It's alright, viejo verde. You probably just flipped after all the pizza and m&m's."
"That'll do it."
Demyx jumped off the bed, pulled on a pair of dirty jeans and an ancient t-shirt that he'd probably had all his life, slinked out the door with a little wave.
Axel laid there for a long while just contemplating what was next. Well, he needed to get his lip patched up first of all. He could feel it throbbing with a dull ache if he really thought about it, and a searching finger returned with the tip coated in a fine dust of amber. He knew it was probably just dried up plasma. He'd never had a piercing that bled, and indeed, he'd had quite a few, though many of them had to be removed over the course of several years. Some were just plain unattractive; some were weird, uncomfortable even; most were rejected by his body after a few months.
The faint smell of turpentine caught him off guard.
How the hell did that get here?
Oh the bitterness it inspired was amazing.
He rolled out of his bed and washed his face, rubbed the sterilizing agents into his stinging new hole, washed out his dusty-tasting mouth with pain in a bottle. There wasn't much pause between the sink and the shower. He turned the water on hot enough to scald his skin to a boiled pink color, stood under it until he felt like he was going to suffocate. He turned off the water, took a few deep breaths, and then turned it back on, cold. Straight-from-a-glacier, below-freezing kind of cold, and his skin flared to a bright red at this new abuse. He sighed.
After a few more minutes he felt like he was starting to slip into a hypothermic state, turned the heat back up again and started on his regular routines. Insanity… it really just kind of sucked sometimes. At least he thought he could be insane. There was no real way of knowing… but the goggle eyed scars that puckered up the lengths of his arms, his inner thighs, scars burned there from the angry red tips of cigarettes… they reminded him of who he really was, or maybe just who he had been. The lines that marked abuses beyond reckoning that hid themselves in the strangest places. The memories of nearly retching up his own innards when he took all the pills…
At least they didn't have him on lithium any more.
He figured he was fine. They told him he was fine, really.
But the turpentine haunted him.
Turpentine chasers, to be exact.
They tasted like so much shit, and they were acrid, poisonous, and painful, to say the least… but it made the other pains go away.
He'd done it before and he'd probably do it again.
"Disturbed" is for pussies.
"Totally fucking insane" is for the hard core, and at one point, he was.
He remembers what nut-house walls look like. The kind with the pads on them. He considered getting some of those walls for his bedroom when he got home, but the painting… they showed him how to paint.
And to say the least, it kept him grounded, calm, docile even.
Right now he could really use a shot of that pink shit.
Funny how the past always seemed to catch up with him….
But dying, killing oneself with such slow, steady hands… it was fucking brilliant. Exquisite. To see one's own soul evacuate: exhaled like a fine mist to disperse and return to the endless ether from which all sentient things are born. Axel had always known he could see things that no one else could, and that's why he painted, and the paintings soothed the burning fever in his brain.
He didn't really realize it, but he was a clairvoyant of sorts.
He remembered the first time he met his old friend Saïx, the golden eyed man with the blue hair and the terrible scar, holding out a notebook, and without a word Axel took it. Saïx had known, confined within the same walls. He understood what was driving the redhead mad.
Axel remembered the sudden pain and the sensations of drowning, the lines of fire on his wrists, slicing upward and he cried for the fear of it. He hurled the notebook away from him.
Saïx had looked terribly confused.
"What did you see?"
"A woman… in the bath… she killed herself and then her husband found her. He panicked. He cut her up into pieces and buried her all over the city…"
At that, he remembered Saïx blanched, making his porcelain skin suddenly look like fresh paper. He explained that the woman was still alive.
Two months later, everything happened exactly as he saw it.
Axel said he was just perceptive, just like Saïx said.
Only one of them really knew any better.
So Saïx became a writer: typing, typing, typing these volumes of books that no one really understood, and he tried to live with the torment of seeing the past like a movie every time he touched a table or a glass or a door-handle. And Axel… Axel became a painter: he abused the canvases for all the terrible things that dreams told him. Axel only ever saw things in his waking when Saïx influenced it. He was innocent.
They were both brilliantly and terribly perceptive.
By anyone else's standards… they were just…
Insane. Only mildly on Saïx's part though.
And for a long time, Axel was able to tune all of it out.
Not any more.
--- ---
Demyx came back only to see his lover scribbling in his sketchbook with a thick silvery-black graphite stick, hand blazing furiously over the page. These things were very abstract, violent, dark. Demyx had seen them before. It only seemed like Axel drew when he was in some sort of mental anguish or turmoil.
He placed the box of doughnuts he'd sought out on the bed and plopped down next to the scribbling redhead who barely even seemed to notice he was there.
"Hey, love. What're you drawing?"
"You…" Axel sighed, "How I feel when I think of loosing you."
Demyx paused awkwardly.
"I'll take you to see your girl today… but I can't go in there," the artist said softly, setting his notebook aside, "I'm afraid of cemeteries."
"Why?" Demyx inquired evenly.
"It's called Coimetrophobia. I also have Cleithrophobia… irrational fear of being locked in tight spaces."
"Any others?"
"Doraphobia."
"What's that?"
"The fear of animal skins. I can't stand them."
"You're fine with leather…"
"No… I mean like mink… with the head and…"
Axel shuddered and tossed his drawing stuff away to grad the younger man.
"It's just scary."
"I know." Demyx soothed, running his hands though his love's thick red hair. "Calm down. I won't make you touch any dead fur any time soon."
He made a mental note to toss the fur collar that went with his jacket.
"Anyway, I have food… granted it's not the most healthy thing ever, but you need to get fat."
"What?"
"Krispy Kreme!" Demyx laughed, popping the box open and selecting a dough ring to munch on.
"You're still four at heart, aren't you?" Axel mumbled, a smile just barely tugging at his lips.
"Hurry up!" Demyx ordered around a disgustingly sweet mouthful, "They won't be warm forever. I waited until that light on the sign came on."
"You're pathetic," Axel laughed, "But I love you for it."
"Damn skippy, y' do!"
--- ---
Demyx left Axel sitting moodily in the car. He didn't have to come if he really didn't want to.
Softly he padded toward the brick arch with the wrought-iron gates, blue eyes staring up at the big letters. It would have been strange if he'd not known it was there, a huge, ancient cemetery in the middle of a booming urban area, but he'd known of its existence for many years, and now he knew it was Rose's final destination.
There were two graves he needed to visit, and coincidentally, they were both side-by-side.
He'd opted to keep his new life, talking on the phone with his parents. They'd understood completely. It would be too much stress for him, and really, he considered that life over anyway. He was a new creature, to say the least.
He followed the rows, passing headstone after headstone until finally, he came to the one, and oddly enough, there was already someone sitting in front of the one that should have been his.
Demyx knelt quietly in front of Rose's plot and placed a single crimson bloom on the grass.
"Sorry, love," he said softly, "I didn't want to hurt you."
The man kneeling at Demyx's grave looked up, and the blond nearly had a heart attack. The scarred cheek, the eye patch, the long black hair… well… his hair was much, much longer now, probably terminating at his hips and it was pulled back into a tight pony tail, displaying lines of silver streaks, but there was no mistaking. It was Xigbar, alright… and he really looked older now.
"Who are you, kid?" he rumbled. "I hope you don't intend to mess with her stone or I'll kick your ass up between your shoulder blades."
Confirmed.
"Hey Xiggy. Long time no see," Demyx said boldly, "Didn't think your champ swimmer died on ya, did you?"
"You sorry sonuvabitch," the older man growled, "I'm gonna—"
He was abruptly cut off when Demyx started singing the time warp. He then sat down with a sad smile on his face.
"Sorry you banged your elbow up when my dad threw you out. Do you still have the scar? I still have mine," and with that he pulled up the sleeves of his shirt and showed the older man the nine jagged scars on his wrists. Perfect proof, without a doubt.
"Jesus fucking Mary…" he breathed, reaching out numbly to touch Demyx's pale cheek.
"Last I checked they were son and mother respectively. That would be incest," Demyx replied in a smart-ass tone. "How you been, you big idiot?"
He found himself on his back all of a sudden, and he smiled softly, holding his old friend against him lovingly. Xigbar was laughing and crying all at the same time, planting a rough kiss on Demyx's lips just like the old days.
"Hey! Slow down, there, killer. I've got a boyfriend!"
"So do I… but oh holy hell! You're still alive!" he laughed, then he fell into silence, climbing off of the younger man, single gold eye sparkling with a terrible sadness. "I wish Rose had held on longer."
"So do I…" Demyx sighed.
"So… How about we go talk in a better setting?"
"Sounds like a plan," Demyx chuckled.