Marluxia and Larxene were fucking. Unfortunately, there was no other, more eloquent way of putting it. 'Making love' and 'in a relationship' both required hearts, and saying they were sleeping with each other or any other similar set of words just didn't seem enough to describe their relationship. It was only painfully obvious to everyone in the Organization, from Saix who refused to concern himself with any personal matters between the members to the naive Roxas, to Demyx who played at naivete simply because he didn't want to know what was happening between his comrades-in-arms.
One of the people who had been tracking that relationship from the start was Axel. He'd been there from the first morning, noticing the different way they'd acted around each other. How Marluxia seemed so cocksure and superior, while Larxene seemed to tamp her defiant nature down when she was near him. It hadn't taken the other members long to pick up on it either, no matter how Larxene would deny she was in any way involved with Marluxia.
Eventually, they moved on from the subject and no one pointed out what was going on anymore because their reactions with each other were simply a fact of life, an everyday occurrence that didn't seem to be changing any time soon.
Axel was surprised to note the next morning after he'd found out his best friend had been completely reamed by the sadist that there seemed to be some sort of awkward wall between numbers eleven and twelve that hadn't been there before. He was going to confront her about harming his friend, but now that he observed their awkward silence and distance, he decided he had better things to do than talk to Larxene about her temper, even if he was half the cause for it.
"What's going on, Axel?" Luxord asked, stepping closer to the shorter man so their tones could be lowered. Luxord approached Axel for knowledge about the Organization simply because the red haired man was a people watcher, and from his observations he could decipher goings-on within the Organization better even than the reclusive Superior. Luxord would be similarly be a devout people-watcher, but he was notoriously busy for reasons no one but he, Saix and Xemnas ever knew.
Axel nodded his head to the blond female and pink haired male Nobodies. "Is something different that you can see?"
Luxord observed for just a moment, his piercing blue eyes watching every movement as carefully as he would an opponent in poker to call a bluff. "She's not proverbially clinging to his leg like a lovesick puppy?"
Axel had to laugh at that. "Right. I wonder why."
"Perhaps they had a falling out of some sort...?" Luxord suggested, still studying the two of them carefully.
"I don't know..." Axel replied. "Marluxia doesn't seem different."
"He's as immovable as an old tree, so to speak. Only person with more willpower than he would be Lexaeus and Vexen," Luxord stated simply.
"Still... I can't help getting the feeling that the something is wrong with her..." Axel said, crossing his arms.
Luxord grunted thoughtfully to the affirmative. "I don't know. Why would she be acting so different all of a sudden? Last I checked there was nothing wrong between them..."
"Same here..." Axel furrowed his eyebrows thoughtfully, and a brief quiet descended on the two men.
Across the room, just beyond where Lexaeus and Zexion were talking, the two Nobodies in question were chatting with each other, seemingly normally. Upon closer inspection, however, Larxene's stance seemed rigid... perhaps not nervous, but on edge. She turned around for some reason to point out of one of the windows towards the moon. Marluxia stepped closer to her, placing his hands on her shoulders and whispering something in her ear that, if his smile was any indication, was devious.
Larxene shrugged his hands off and stepped away from him in mid-sentence, only to stop herself a second later, freezing up for some reason. She turned around and looked at Marluxia, instantly putting on a defensive air.
Axel and Luxord blinked comically in unison before exchanging a glance.
"Well that was unusual," Axel muttered.
"Indeed," Luxord nodded. Both Nobodies kept their eyes fixed upon the two others across the room.
"By the way, have you seen Demyx today?" Axel asked, moving his head slightly towards Luxord without peeling his eyes off of the events happening across the room.
"No..." Luxord said softly, stroking his beard with his thumb and forefinger. "He wasn't at breakfast, either. Even if he plans on keeping himself in his room all day, he usually comes down to eat something."
"That's what I was thinking," Axel said.
"You're not saying Demyx has anything to do with what's going on over there, are you Axel?" Luxord scoffed.
Axel suddenly burst out into laughter as well. "No, no! Definitely not!" He chuckled again. "I was just making idle conversation while we observe the Lover's Quarrel."
Luxord shook his head, smiling. "Well, if anything new pops up, do tell me. I have some things to take care of."
"You always have stuff to 'take care of', Lux," Axel shook his head. "But I will alert you to anything else that happens today."
With that, Luxord quietly walked off towards his room, while Axel settled himself back against the wall to observe.
-
Demyx sighed, running his fingers once more over the keys on the piano, trying to figure out how to play it with his left hand wrapped up in a large, bulky bandage. He began the tune once more, gracefully flitting his fingertips over the keys, before the bandage caught on one of the black ones and ruined the melody. Demyx frowned at the injury for a moment, then sighed and leaned back slightly on the piano bench.
Deciding that he wasn't going to get anywhere very fast, he stood up quietly and walked out of his room with every intent of getting to the kitchen for some sort of sustenance. Naturally, as always happened in situations like this, Larxene had a similar idea and was in the kitchen as well. Also, to use the word naturally again, there was no one around. If there was a god of irony out there somewhere, Demyx was sure they had it in for him. Somewhere beyond the magical Fourth Wall, someone snickered.
Making a small noise so as not to get too close and then startle her, the water elementalist walked into the kitchen heavily. Larxene threw a look back over her shoulder, then quickly turned around as if nothing had happened. Carefully, he approached the awkwardly massive refrigerator, prying the door open slowly. Once again, he was acting as if she were some sort of wild beast that if he moved too fast, she'd attack him or something.
Apparently she noticed the same thing, whirling around and glaring him down. "Do I look like some freaking animal? Like I'll rip your throat out if you move too fast? Relax you freaking moron, I'm not going to hurt you without a good reason. Though how you're acting now is quickly approaching that good reason."
Demyx flinched and jerked backwards from the sudden pair of hands that had seized the front of his coat. "No really! I'm sorry, I was just thinking..." Better to appease than tempt her rage.
Silence.
This world was good at that.
Larxene let him go and looked him over. "Right." With that, she turned back to whatever it was she had been fiddling with previous. Demyx similarly leaned over to fetch something that looked like it had at one point been a chicken, but had been so picked over it was a pointy structure of bones, cartilage, and strips of random meat. He set it down on the counter under the cabinet with plates in it. Without looking at what he was doing, he reached up with his injured hand to grab a plate.
Once again irony decided to smite him, causing his hand to fail to get a firm on the plate. This naturally ended with him dropping it, having it bounce of his shoulder, and then smash on the ground with a noise loud enough to make Larxene jump and screech.
She turned around, trying to regain a normal breathing power, eyes glimmering with rage. "What the hell!"
"Ah... I dropped the plate, sorry," Demyx replied, holding his hands up and backing away slowly.
Larxene slapped her hand to her forehead. "Of course you dropped the plate. What special kind of stupid are you? Look at that hand! You wouldn't know how to properly dress an injury if it came up and bit you on your scrawny ass." She reached out quickly and grabbed his hand, unwrapping it with haste. "Can't you do anything right? If you were stuck out in the middle of nowhere with limited medical supplies, I swear Demyx, you'd use them all on a mosquito bite. You don't even need gauze for something like that, a large band-aid would've done even better. I swear... hold this." She handed him the end of the bandage, before picking a spot less than halfway down the length of it, summoning up a knife quickly and slicing through the material and throwing the excess in the trash. She yanked the fabric out of his hand before wiggling her hand in the 'give it over' motion. He complied, and she began re-wrapping it. "Men, I swear. Where would you be without me?" She finished, looking over his hand intently before shoving it back at him. Larxene turned around, grabbed whatever it was on the counter then walked past him, knocking shoulders on the way.
Demyx just stood there watching her leave, flexing his hand now that it wasn't layered down under fabric. After another moment he returned to his food, contemplating once more the strange new twists fate kept deciding it wanted to throw right in his path. Not that he could particularly say he minded those strange twists. He was almost... almost tempted to help speed them along. Almost only because he wasn't entirely certain where those twists would lead him.
Finished with his food preparation, Demyx quietly left the kitchen and returned to his room. What he didn't expect was a visitor but seconds after he'd seated himself and prepared to gorge himself on what was left of the chicken. The familiar sound of a portal opening caused him to slow down, but who stepped out of the portal caused him to stop altogether, the strip of chicken he'd just been about to consume hanging unattractively from his mouth.
"Oh for the love of Nothing..." Larxene placed two fingers on her temple and her thumb on her jaw. "You're a disgrace, finish eating your food."
Demyx paused for a moment, slowly chewing on the hunk of torn chicken flesh, before finally fitting the entire piece in his mouth and finishing it off.
"Flattering," she drawled sarcastically. "Very elegant. Let me guess... a prince in your former life?"
Demyx laughed suddenly through his nose, shaking his head. He swallowed before replying. "Not even close."
"I think you missed the sarcasm there, Demmy-boy," she pointed out, tilting her head towards him.
"Maybe I was trying to start conversation?" He replied quietly, watching as her haughty expression fell and turned into something akin to surprise.
He'd caught her so off-guard she couldn't think of anything to say for a moment after that, finally deciding on a simple, "Humph."
Demyx smiled at her then, a somewhat lopsided look that told he'd planned that somehow. He wasn't supposed to be able to plan out anything that would catch her off guard, damn it!
With an angry scowl she flopped down sideways on the chair across from him, glaring daggers and other sharp, pointy objects at him. He just shrugged and continued eating despite the awkward silence between them, in a moment she seemed to have lost interest in trying to kill him through telepathy and went back to letting her eyes trail around the room.
"Hey Larxene... do you think there's a god of irony out there anywhere?" Demyx asked suddenly, shattering the fragile silence.
"Hn. I couldn't tell you. I don't believe there's a thing such as God with His capital g, or gods of other things with their little g's. If there were, they'd be pissed something awful that people like us can control their holy natural elements. But irony... irony is a force so vengeful and unpredictable it's almost its own sentient being..." she replied thoughtfully after a moment of contemplation. She looked at him, raising an eyebrow. "Why do you ask?"
"No reason really... I just think that if there was such a thing as a god or goddess of irony... I think it would be a goddess, really... anyway, if there was such a thing as a goddess of irony I'd have to say she's recently fallen into my lap," Demyx sighed, leaning his head against his clean hand.
That was always a fault of his, Larxene had noted. Too easy to open up and talk about things with people. "Ah well, irony's more of a whore than Lady Luck. She'll be off your hands and sucking some other poor sap off before you know it. Unless of course she drags you with her."
Demyx laughed at that, though mentally he was wincing at her somewhat crude language. "Well, I don't know if we could call Lady Luck such a whore. She seems to be velcroed in Luxord's bed."
Larxene laughed and for once it wasn't haughty or superior like the normal, it might've been called a heartfelt laugh if she still had a heart. It elicited a similar feeling from Demyx that his own laughter had from Larxene, only he had no idea that was what had happened.
Once again silence fell between them, though this time it was nowhere near as uncomfortable as it had been before. Demyx seemed to forget he was eating anything, just taking his time staring at the small patch of shiny bed frame revealed from under the somewhat sloppily made bedding.
"If you're not going to eat that, hand it over. I wanted some of that chicken too, you know," Larxene stated suddenly, looking at the plate in the Nocturne's lap.
He blinked in surprise then looked at her, frowning. "I thought you already ate?"
"That? That was for Marluxia," she stated simply with a hint of what might have been distaste.
"There was enough food there for three people... don't tell me he took all of that down by himself," Demyx said, surprised.
"No... he barely eats any of it. Most of it he makes into mulch," she replied, wrinkling her nose and emanating disapproval.
"What a waste of good food... Well, dedicated gardener for you..." the water elementalist sighed, picking the plate off his lap and handing it to his female companion.
"Yeah... I don't think... I ever realized just how... girly he can be..." Larxene said, taking one of the strips of meat and beginning to tear it apart.
"The pink didn't tip you off?" Demyx chuckled. "Infatuation makes it hard to see flaws in people."
The air went eerily still, and Demyx could instantly feel number twelve tense up. He closed his eyes and chastised himself for thinking out loud again. It always managed to get him in trouble.
The only thing he could do now, was apologize. "Ah! S-sorry! Just thinking out loud..." he laughed nervously. "Just forget I said anything?"
She 'humphed' again and turned away from him.
Finally, he asked the question he'd been wanting to since she'd shown up. Hopefully this time she'd give a better answer. "So... uh... what brings you here?"
She sighed, placing the plate on the table before turning over sideways in the chair until she could fold her arms over one armrest and place her chin on it, while she let one leg hang over the other armrest and the other leg pulled up to her chest and resting on the inside of the same armrest. Overall Demyx couldn't tell if that position was comfortable or not. "Eh, Marluxia's being a haughty bastard. Made me stand there for twenty minutes while he spread that food around in his stupid mulch pile, then turned around, acted surprised to see I was still standing there, and then dismissed me like I was some sort of personal servant."
"Never thought he was that mean," Demyx replied, eyebrows raised in surprise.
"He's not. Well, he's not to anyone else... not that bad at least," Larxene stated, staring off into something beyond Demyx's head for a moment.
"Still, you could've gone to any number of places rather than my room. Why here?"
She sighed again, squeezing her eyes shut and gritting her teeth. She didn't want to admit it to him... but... "I don't know. The whole place is blue... it's... calming. That and it smells nice in here, not overwhelmingly floral or how it can really get to smelling like ozone in my room."
Demyx quirked an eyebrow at her response, accepting the explanation but forming dozens of new questions in his head.
"That and you're not all that annoying to hang out with... I guess..." she cast her gaze at the floor.
That really took the water elemental by surprise. Three days ago the whole Organization would've bet she'd rather drink her own weight in bleach than voluntarily spend time with him. He watched her for a long moment, trying to decipher what the heck had happened to her over the past couple days, but failed to see anything. The only difference between today and any other day was that she looked tired.
"By the way," Demyx said, holding up his left hand. "Thanks."
"Huh? Oh... oh come on. You were going to be a natural disaster if you'd kept going with that freaking gauntlet you had been wearing. I only did it to save the poor, unfortunate dining ware that would've met an untimely demise from your awkwardness," Larxene replied, moving one of her arms out from under her head and waving her hand dismissively. She replaced her arm and closed her eyes once more.
Demyx just smiled softly and quietly got up, walking silently past her and settling himself back down at the piano. He lightly flitted his fingers over the keys, bringing out soft sounds from the piano that he soon crafted into a rather impromptu melody.
-
It was some time later before Larxene woke up, not even exactly knowing when she'd fallen asleep. Something soft brushed against her cheek, and she turned slightly in the chair, only to find what had brushed up against her to be a feathery soft blue blanket. Sleepily, she gripped the edge of the blanket and nuzzled her face into it, enjoying its wonderful texture and the fact it smelled like everything else in the room, clean with a hint of rain.
She stayed like that for a few moments, not even caring if Axel were to walk in the room and see her like that only to tease her about it for months afterwards. Finally, she slowly sat up, wincing at several of her joints whom had decided didn't like her sleeping in such a position. Quietly she stretched out her sore, stiff body until she deemed it well enough to get up and walk again. As she did so she neatly folded the blanket and placed it back on the chair before silently walking towards the door to his room, and summoning up a portal. As soon as she did so, she heard the ambient sound of the piano stop, and threw a look over her shoulder. "Thanks. You didn't have to do that-"
"Yeah I did."
She shook her head. "You're sweet, Demyx." She turned back to the portal and shook her head, muttering a barely audible, "too sweet," before stepping into the swirling mass of purple and black and disappearing.
-
Like yeah. I'm keeping this going. Hopefully this won't stall out like the rest of my multi-chaptered stories. R+R if it pleases you. Reviews make me warm and fuzzy and keep me up late at night just so I can give you people these things. Yeah, it dropped an f-bomb. I refuse to change the rating, though, just for that one word. I promise the story won't do that again.