The Anti-Zemyx Day Thirteen
Title: Practical Jokers
Genre: Humour, Friendship
Rating: T
Summary: Sunday is a day for pranks...
A/N: Wooo! This is my favourite one yet! Obsidian Rush, do you like it? Each prank has a connection to the last and next. Whoever can find ALL connections gets a special prize! Oh gosh, there's a lot of symbolism and references~!
Sunday was a day for pranks. The early morning sun rose sleepily up into the sky, tinting the slowly drifting clouds with rays of pink and yellow, as the world drowsily woke up to the Sabbath day. It was six o'clock, and the only people awake in the House were Naminé, Axel, and Sora.
The three were busy cooking stacks upon stacks of pancakes and waffles for the rest of the family, with different flavours and ingredients, such as strawberry, blueberry, wheat, white, chocolate, and mixed, with Axel and Sora quietly giggling to themselves and Naminé popping a blueberry into her mouth every once in a while, glancing at the Mickey Mouse clock and wondering when everyone else would wake up.
Surprisingly that day, Zexion was the last to rise from bed. Marluxia, Saïx, and Larxene had already gone to work (regardless of the fact that it was a Sunday), and Xion and Vanitas were going to an amusement park to spend the day, using some of the money Marluxia and Larxene had won in Luxord's cantina. Everyone else who had stayed behind at the house wondered to themselves as their slate-haired family member remained in bed long after everyone had awoken if he was sick, or had a fever.
In the second-floor corridor, the air smelled foul, with a sting to the smell. Zexion's sensitive nose twitched as the horrid scent rudely dragged him from his peaceful sleep, shattering the dream into a thousand light pieces and wiping it from his memory. The slate-haired junior's eyes fluttered open, and he sat up to yawn and stretch, when the full intensity of the smell hit him like a runaway train, and he coughed mid-yawn.
"What on earth...?" His bedroom door was slightly open, and through the crack, the studious car repair apprentice could see a blonde mullet facing him, moving slightly as his arm did. Yawning once more and getting out of bed (running his the hand not covering his mouth through his hair), Zexion walked over to the door and opened it wider, leaning against the doorframe and crossing his arms.
"Just what do you think you are doing?" he asked softly, with a rude, irritated undertone, holding an arrogant stance. Demyx looked up and smiled.
"Oh, hey, Zex!" His smile wilted like a dying flower as he recognized Zexion's attitude and dark aura. He grinned weakly and held up his hand: in it was a sopping old rag. "I accidentally spilled some rubbing alcohol in front of your door and was cleaning it up, but..." Zexion's pale nose wrinkled in disgust.
"Why was there alcohol in the first place?" he asked tiredly, rubbing a hand over his stinging eyes. It was much too early, in his opinion, to have anything to do with alcohol, drinkable or not. Demyx shrugged and continued mopping up the mess with his wet cloth.
"I dunno. It was there in front of your door. I came over to check if you were still sleeping, and I... happened to... knock it over..." He was hesitant and sheepish, and made an adorable face in an attempt to win over Zexion and avoid his displeasure. Zexion gave him a long, hard look, and after a few minutes, turned around and shut the door, so he could change his clothes from his white shirt and black pajama pants to a black shirt with blue jeans. He stared at himself for a second in the mirror, watching the reflective glass indifferently, as he ran his hand through his hair once again, but this time, with the intention of dry-styling the strands into place. He sighed, moderately satisfied with his appearance, and opened the door once again, neatly stepping over Demyx's hunched form and making his way down the narrow staircase without even a look back.
It was Kairi who greeted him first upon his arrival to the table.
"Good morning!" she said cheerfully. "How was your sleep?" Zexion shrugged and sat down at his place at the table, right across from Naminé's. She looked at him with a smile on her face, nonchalant, but he could sense the slight worry underneath it.
"I suppose I slept all right," he answered, as he reached for a plate, placing two waffles onto it. "I was just tired from my schoolwork last night."
Sora smiled.
"You made a rhyme."
"So I did." Zexion reached for a banana, peeled it, and began slicing the white fruit over his breakfast, pouring a small amount of syrup onto the fruit and waffles once it was all cut up. He clasped his hands in a prayer for a moment, before picking up his fork and breaking his fast.
It was nine-fifteen.
As Zexion ate his morning meal (accompanied with a glass of freshly-made orange juice and a soft-boiled egg), he smiled softly as the sounds of Axel, Roxas, and Kairi playing Interdiction reached the ears of those still at the table. Naminé, who was drawing another sketch, smiled as well as Roxas shouted out "Yes! High score!" and Axel challenged him to another mission. Sora, who was reading the newspaper's comics, laughed out loud as Kairi exclaimed in protest how her character had so totally beaten that Neoshadow; why was it still alive?
By and by, as the three finished another game, Demyx walked down the stairs, grinning like a fool and holding the rag, now looking as though it was threatening to drip alcohol, and saluted Naminé.
"Sir, alcohol all cleaned up now, sir!" Naminé giggled and put down her paper and pencils, and took the cloth from the blond.
"At ease! Thank you, Demyx. Is the smell still there?" Demyx shrugged and stuffed his hands in his jeans pockets.
"Yeah. I lit a candle and put it there so it would get rid of it. It's not going to fall. The house won't burn down!" he protested, at Naminé's face and expression. Zexion grinned, and bit back his laughter. Breakfast had done him good: his mood had lifted, and he had loosened up a bit. Work and school had wound him up pretty tightly lately, and it felt good to just let go of everything and relax. Not to mention that the waffles tasted wonderful.
Feeling a bit rebellious (not to mention a bit strange; had Axel spiked the food?), Zexion excused himself from the table and decided to get back at Demyx for waking him up so rudely in the morning. It was nothing really, just a harmless, innocent prank. He smirked deviously to himself as he prepared for Demyx's morning surprise.
The time was nine-forty-three.
Demyx finished eating Second Breakfast, which was a sort of picklick* and brunch mixed together, and stretched, yawning. He walked away from the table (after thanking Sora for cooking the bacon), as he had been standing and eating the whole time since he had finished cleaning the spilled alcohol, and went upstairs to the second-floor bathroom to brush his teeth.
As he entered through the open door, he looked up in surprise as he saw Zexion in there as well, retouching his hair and humming so softly it could have been imagined. His buttoned, black shirt was opened, revealing his toned chest, and Demyx blushed slightly at the sight, as well as from embarrassment at walking in on his friend.
"O-oh. Sorry, I'll just––" Zexion looked at the stammering Demyx through the mirror.
"No, it's okay, I was just about to leave. Go ahead." The slate-haired young man swept past the blond with a curious smirk on his face, leaving Demyx to wonder what had put him in such a good mood. He shrugged, and put the matter behind him, as he entered the bathroom, not bothering to close the door (after all, he would only be cleaning his teeth. And maybe comb his hair. Then perhaps clip his nails...), and began brushing his teeth.
After he deemed his pearly whites quite pearly, he reached for the mouthwash bottle and poured some into his cup, and, after spitting out the toothpaste into the porcelain basin, poured it into his mouth.
He froze for a split second as his brain registered the fact that the liquid was not mouthwash, and ordered him to immediately spit it out. He did, and coughed roughly at the cruel taste.
"What was that?" he wheezed.
Zexion, who had heard everything from the first floor, smirked to himself as he read the paper (borrowed off of Sora). Roxas noticed, and asked him why. His eyes went wide as Zexion explained the reason to him, and grinned as he understood.
"Hah. Great idea. I'll be sure never to spill alcohol in the morning, then." Zexion cast an amused eye over to the short blond.
"You're not even allowed to have alcohol in the morning, yet. Or at noon, or even at night for that matter." He sighed. "I see what Axel meant by pranks as being fun. Verily, it is, if done once in a while."
Roxas's blue eyes opened wider in surprise.
"Who are you, and what have you done with Zexion?"
"Who did this, and what have you done with my mouthwash?" countered Demyx, who was walking down the stairs, pale and still coughing. Axel and Kairi saved and quit their game and turned around to watch. Sora's eyebrows furrowed.
"Did what?" Demyx fumed.
"Someone replaced my mouthwash with vodka." Axel grinned widely.
"Honestly, I have no idea why you're complaining! I wouldn't've minded!" Roxas snorted.
"Yeah. Of course you wouldn't. But Demyx hates vodka, remember? Rum, too, for that matter. And whiskey. Especially whiskey. Oh, and––"
"Can we get back on topic? Who did it?" cut in the peeved blond.
Zexion raised an eyebrow, and Demyx immediately connected that with his earlier smirk.
"You." The slatehead remained impassive, but with a tiny smile gracing his elegant face.
"Me." He nodded. Demyx stared at him in confusion.
"Why?" Naminé's, Sora's, Roxas's, Kairi's, and Axel's heads moved back and forth silently as they watched each person as they spoke. Zexion made a vague gesture with his hand.
"You woke me up with the stench of rubbing alcohol. I merely returned the favour in a different fashion." Demyx's face was torn between laughter and horror.
"I cleaned it up!"
"So you did." The blond sitarist and guitarist threw his hands up in frustration and turned on his heel, walking back upstairs, and closing a door shut. None of the six below could tell which.
"That was brilliant," breathed the redheaded man, with a hint of awe bleeding into his voice. He hadn't recalled the last time Zexion was this... human? Normal-seeming? But seeing him actually prank someone, and Demyx of all someones, was pretty damn cool.
Zexion flicked his aqua eyes at the speaker and grinned.
"It is fun, isn't it? Pranking someone?"
Everyone stared.
The door Demyx closed was, in fact, Zexion's, and he entered the room with the intent of teaching that slatehead a lesson. The rubbing alcohol was an accident: he didn't have to go an switch mouthwash with vodka. Demyx shuddered and looked around the room for something to prank Zexion with. His searching gaze fell on the book Zexion was currently reading, titled Lost Heterodoxy; the silver-grey bookmark the junior had placed in between the pages caught his eye especially. Demyx grinned and, careful not to disturb the bookmark, slipped the cover jacket off of the thick tome. He searched the assorted bookshelves of varying sizes and looked for a similar-sized book, and inadvertently said 'Aha!' as he found what he was looking for.
The book he had selected was titled Otherwordly Tales, and was of similar size and shape to Lost Heterodoxy. Demyx smirked as he worked quickly, switching the Tales cover jacket with the Lost one, and placing the real Lost Heterodoxy, now disguised as Otherworldly Tales, back in the bookshelf. He placed Tales, disguised as Lost, back where Lost originally was, and snickered to himself before sneaking out of his room and returning to his own.
Zexion walked back up the stairs and entered his room not two minutes later, and picked up the large book, not looking twice, and plopped himself down upon his comfortable, soft bed. Leaning against the headboard with his pillow as a cushion, Zexion opened the book and searched the pages for his silver bookmark. His slate-coloured eyebrows quirked in question as he searched in vain for it, and realized that it wasn't there.
Could it have fallen out? He shrugged and flipped back to page one, where the Table of Contents was, and began searching for chapter fifteen. He read in stunned surprise as the words he saw were not what he expected.
"Let's see... Table of Contents...hm? Vasilia the Beautiful? The Frog Princess? Hansel and Gretel? What on earth...?" He shut the book and glanced at the cover.
Lost Heterodoxy was written in silver, embossed letters on the purple cover. After a moment, the slate-haired youth sighed and leaned his head against the wall. Someone had switched the covers. And he had a very clear idea who...
Demyx was once again downstairs, this time munching on a pear and watching Double Edge with Axel and Sora. It was a decent movie, in his opinion, but soon it grew boring, though Axel and Naminé seemed completely absorbed in the story. Demyx watched a few more minutes of the movie before leaving (neither audience member noticed immediately), and decided to go into the den. He took out his blue sitar and strummed it, and played for an hour or so, until it was eleven-twenty, and decided to go into his room.
Walking up the stairs, he hummed Prince of Awesome to himself (one of Zexion's least favourite songs; he had asked why anyone would name a song Prince of Awesome if they wanted to sell it. It sounded arrogant) and opened the door to his room, before doing a double-take from shock.
The walls of his and Axel's newly refurbished and remade room were completely covered in beautiful, though mocking, drawings and paintings. It was a mural of children's stories, with a girl in a red hood next to a wolf, a yellow bear holding hands with a pink piglet, and several scenes from childhood stories coloured onto the white paint, stories Demyx had long insisted he had outgrown. The sitarist's eyes narrowed as he thought of the perfect revenge for the slatehead's intrusiveness and unauthorized entry into his room.
He waited until Zexion left his room to converse with Kairi downstairs to infiltrate the 'enemy's' 'territory'. Quickly and skillfully, Demyx carried over and dropped the rolls of posters in his arms onto the floor, and grinned as he pulled out tacks from his pocket and began inserting them into the walls. The green and yellow thumbtacks stood out loudly against the sallow walls, but Demyx merely ignored this fact as he hung up several of his band posters on Zexion's walls, where he had no chance of escaping their sight. He hid in his room once more and pretended to read a book as he waited for Zexion to return to his room.
Zexion, who had been downstairs talking to Kairi and telling her how to get the 358 Attack Gear in World That Never Was to gain an advantage over Axel, heard a scuffle upstairs, more specifically in his room, and excused himself, grabbing a cookie on his way up, and entered his private quarters to inspect the damage.
Hm... not as bad as it could have been, he thought, as he surveyed his new 'decorations'. Band posters for groups Demyx was into, including his infernal Wave Gigs, Do Not Enter, Up To Eleven, and Total Eclipse adorned his once-plain walls, hung up by green and yellow thumbtacks hammered haphazardly into the wood. Zexion shook his head and crossed his arms, shifting his weight onto one leg, and called the blond over.
"Demyx!"
Demyx walked over, with a little too much of a spring in his step, and a little too much of an innocent expression on his face, and saluted Zexion with two fingers.
"Yeah?" Zexion smirked as he tapped his book with the fingers of his right hand.
"Did you mess with my book covers?"
"Maybe..."
"Did you place these posters up here?"
"Perhaps..." Zexion sighed and grinned deviously.
"Of course, Demyx, you know that this means war."
"Oh really? Well in that case, we'll see who gets the last laugh. We all know pranks are one of my specialties."
"Of course. As well as laziness." Demyx stuck his tongue out childishly, to which Zexion also stuck his tongue out childishly, and the Prank Wars began.
The first official battle began as a result of Zexion taking Demyx's sitar and hiding it in his room. He made a sign with Do Not Enter written in bold letters and hung the plaque up onto his door and balanced a bucket of water on top of his door to punish anyone who walked in without permission, and
waited for Demyx to make his move.
Demyx had not seen Zexion place a bucket of water on top of the door, and, upon opening the door abruptly to demand his sitar back, ended up being doused with water, much to the laughter of Roxas, who happened to walk by right at that moment, and Zexion.
To retaliate, Demyx waited until Zexion was asleep for a nap to dip the tips of his hair in ink, making only the ends black and wet, while making him smear the (washable) ink onto his face as he moved in his sleep. Zexion found out by a laughing (and dying from laughing) Axel, who pointed out the mess on his face.
Zexion struck back by replacing Demyx's hair gel with white pudding, and dumped a bucket of water on top of the blond's head, to ruin his hair. After a glare, Demyx disappeared into the bathroom, and did not come out for a full two hours later, as he was busy trying to wash out the pudding. Though his hair was ruined (and was now worn wet), Demyx grinned as he replaced Zexion's apple with a wax one, laughing as the slate-haired youth bit into the fake fruit and made such a face of disgust.
To strike back, Zexion turned Demyx's music all the way up, so that when the blond turned the stereo on, the blasting music (being at MAX and all) would shock the blond and teach him to switch his food. It worked for a while, until Demyx decided to take revenge by replacing Zexion's Beethoven CD with a Wave Gigs one, laughing as Zexion realized his mistake.
The rest of the household laughed at each and every joke, and Roxas even began taping it.
To up the ante, Zexion sent Demyx an anonymous message informing him of winning a Wave Gigs concert ticket. Demyx was all in a tizzy as he celebrated his good fortune, until Kairi pointed out that it was fake: the numbers were only 9's. The blond glared at the innocently reading junior after Kairi pointed the flaw out, and the junior winked back.
As revenge, Demyx changed Zexion's ringtone to Three Blind Mice to mock him.
Due to that, the blond found a mouse in his bed. To reciprocate against Zexion's actions, Demyx bought a black snake and brought it over, and hid it into Zexion's bed as well.
He didn't notice the poisonless python swallow the wriggling mouse whole, and wondered why it looked so sated.
Finally, it was past seven o'clock, and it was time for dinner. As the rest of the gang had not returned yet, the seven began eating early and made a truce for all of the practical jokes.
But what no one noticed was that, as soon as Demyx's back was turned, Zexion slipped in crushed sleeping pills into Demyx's pasta, knocking the younger blond out.
He smirked, sighed, and smiled softly to himself.
"Looks like I got the last laugh... I won, Demyx."
Yes. Sunday was definitely the day for pranks.
A/N: Oh yuck. The beginning was better D: but I lost concentration (it's ONE AM PEOPLE! WOOOO~) and just... trailed off. I didn't want to miss my deadline!
WILL BE REWRITTEN! I promise. It'll be better, but I dunno when.
*yaaaaaaaaaawn* Goodnight! Review? Please? I swear I'll make it better. Maybe after Hellfire Seas is updated... ^^;