With Demyx as a friend and more importantly Aqua as an ally, things get better with the passing of winter. One evening in February affairs at the soup kitchen are slow enough for her to sit down and talk to me. I tell her a little bit about my life in Traverse Town, leaving out most of the details like living in the car and Axel and pretending to be a girl, and the thing she picks up on the quickest is how I was always happier when I didn't have to leave Larxene to work.
"I think what you really need is to take a break," she says kindly when I go off on a little daydream about those weeks I spent in Traverse Town, before I moved here, when Larxene and I would spend all day together, enjoying each other's company.
"Yeah," I say, "But I can't afford that." Aqua smiles at me. She's a very pretty woman, made more beautiful by her hard work and tireless sacrifices for other people. She's so humble about it, too, never asking for payback or even recognition for her favours. I wish I could be like her, but I'm too selfish.
"That's what the soup kitchen is for," she says. "I'm sure Demyx wouldn't mind you sharing his room for a few months, and as long as you help keep the place tidy and the kitchen running you're more than welcome to call this your home."
I think about this for a long time, so long in fact that Aqua stands up and begins to tidy things around me. I say; "I still might work part time," and then "But it would be really nice to take a few weeks off completely," and finally, after a longer silence, "Hey, Aqua. Is Demyx gay?"
Aqua glances up from wiping down one of the work surfaces, then briefly looks at Terra, who is serving soup to the slow trickle of people coming in out front.
"He thinks you're very cute," she says finally, "And I'm sure that if you asked him out on a date he wouldn't say no." And suddenly I wonder how obvious it is that iI/i am gay, that she knows even in spite of Larxene, and how obvious it might always have been. I never came out to anybody except Larxene (my friend Larxene, not my baby Larxene), but only because I had a really frighteningly intense crush on one of Mr Wise's adopted sons at the time and didn't know what to do about it. She giggled and giggled and told me to kiss him, but I never did. His name was Aeleus, he seemed to me like he was at least seven feet tall, and he had this habit of working in the garden with no shirt on, which made me all hot and flustered around him. I wonder now how blatant it was that I secretly wanted him to do terrible things to me in bed, or if my lie that it was "just the heat" ever fooled anyone.
"Okay," I say evenly, doing a good job of hiding all my retrospective woes. But I don't do anything until my prepaid January of rent runs out and Demyx helps me pack up all my things so I can move in with him at the soup kitchen. The day, which is a Sunday, goes like this: Demyx arrives an hour late because he overslept, then he mainly sits on the bed playing with Larxene while I carefully decide what I want to keep and what I'm going to throw out. I already took my foster sister's clothes down to the pawn shop and sold them off for a pathetically small handful of coins, but the rest is a bit more complicated: do I keep the utensils and appliances until I move out somewhere else, or not? What about the baby things Larxene's grown out of? I couldn't exactly explain the rationale behind keeping them to Demyx.
"Hey, should I keep the kettle?"
Demyx glances up, Larxene's hands splayed out on his face. "Uh, do you want to?" He's useless at this. "I don't know!" I exclaim; "Do you want a kettle in your room?"
Demyx smiles: I've finally put the kettle question into a context he cares about. "Sure, why not." I sigh loudly and conspicuously as I put the kettle back in its box and add it to the ever-growing pile of crap that I own. Where did it even all come from? I don't remember carrying this much from the car in Traverse Town.
"The point of this," I say, unfolding another cardboard box and taping the bottom back up, "Is whether I sell the spare things or put them in boxes in your room. Do you want your room full of boxes of my stuff? There's hardly space to swing a cat in there anyway. I didn't just ask you to come over here so you could play with Larxene; this is actually important to you personally. Are you even listening?"
Demyx is singing to Larxene again. He does this all the time. Most of the time, I think it's cute, but then most of the time both of us are shirking our duties rather than just him. He only glances up when I stop.
"Look," I say, exasperated, "This here is what is going to go in your room. So far. Considering that we need another bed in there too, do you really think it's all going to fit?"
"We don't necessarily need another bed," says Demyx, so nonchalantly that I don't know if I've heard him right. He's been doing that casual flirting thing ever since we met, but they're always things that I could just explain away: not so the insinuation that we might some day soon be sharing a bed. And maybe I've just become a prudish maiden in this year of solitude, but that seems like way too forward a comment to make when he's only known me for a month. So even though I would secretly love to share a bed with him, I snap "Of course we'll need another bed". Demyx looks at me like he's put out, and says "It was just a joke," in a hurt voice. Of course it was a joke! I just wanted it to be more, as usual. A few weeks ago I came to the conclusion that Aqua just said those things about Demyx to be nice: so what else could it be?
"Anyway, can you please stop playing with my daughter and start helping me sort my stuff?"
"Aw, come on, you're almost finished already," Demyx says, like the whole heap of stuff I still haven't packed isn't even there, but he pulls himself off the bed and puts Larxene on her play mat for some tummy time before marching right over to her drawer.
"Hey, are these her newborn clothes?" he asks, holding up a handful of stained onesies. I nod. "I guess you don't need to keep them. Unless you're planning on having more kids. And even if you are," he looks at the articles of clothing critically, "I'd still buy new." He's probably right: thanks to Larxene's propensity for vomiting horrendously frequently and my lack of satisfactory cleaning facilities, the clothes probably aren't even fit for wearing any more.
"I guess I was just being nostalgic," I say, tossing them straight in the bin. I keep the toys, though, for "sentimental reasons" (and also since they can be pretty damn expensive) with the exception of a few really chewed up ones. Larxene's teeth are starting to come through now, which essentially means that she will chew on anything, ever. Then Demyx tells me to throw away half of my clothes ("Why would you want to keep that? It doesn't even fit you any more!"). We go through everything again, this time taking out some of the bedding. Then just as I'm boxing up the last miscellaneous items Demyx reaches in suddenly and pulls out the camera. "Hey!" he says loudly, "What's this?"
"Oh, it's just a-" I begin, but Demyx yells "Smile!" and would have clicked the button if I hadn't pulled the camera out of his hand just in time. "I'm saving those! They're for Larxene!" I shove the camera back in the box, irritably.
"Sorry," Demyx says, sounding genuine. "I didn't realise."
"Of course you didn't." I tape up the box. "Are you going to help me carry these downstairs or do I have to do it myself?" And with a po-faced expression, Demyx picks up the box of Indispensable Cutlery and follows me downstairs to where Terra is waiting with his car. We fit everything in after a bit of reshuffling, and then I lock up and hand my key into the landlord on the ground floor, and away we drive. As the block of flats disappears behind me, I feel a little bit sad.
"So did you decide to quit your job in the end?" Demyx asks, holding Larxene tight and safe next to his chest. She's dozing lightly, dribbling onto his new band t shirt.
"I'm going to keep on for a bit," I say, "So I can open a bank account and get some saving done. Aqua's going to help me with that." Demyx yawns loudly at the first mention of finances. "And anyway, it'll be useful in case she needs me to move out." Or things with Demyx turn sour, which I'm always half expecting. What happens if we never go out? Will I just die of unresolved sexual tension? And what if we do? Will he go the way of Axel, wanting sex all the time and using my assumed sexual history against me?
We get to the soup kitchen, using the side entrance to carry all the boxes in. "Have fun," says Terra, and then we're trying to find spaces for everything in amongst Demyx's crap. He's supposed to have tidied up before I moved in, but predictably he's failed to do so. So half of the battle is stuffing his clothes into drawers and finding spaces for his guitar paraphernalia and shoving his school work out of the way. But eventually we get almost everything under the bed, and I have almost the entire area of the mattress to sleep on that night. When we're lying in the darkness Demyx says "You can sleep up here if you like," but I just lie still in the darkness pretending that I don't have the festering beginnings of a boner in my gut, because I don't know if he means I can lie with him or not.
After work on Monday, once I've done my fair share of washing out soup tureens from the kitchen, I go upstairs with Larxene sitting on my hip to find Demyx playing video games in our room. "Hey, Mar," he says when he sees me come in, "And hey Larxene." I feel her respond to her name. Demyx pats the bed next to him, and I obediently join him, watching pixel sprites jump over blocks towards some imaginary goal.
"So I was thinking today," Demyx says, looking at the TV, "About your hair and how it seriously needs cutting. I know you're kind of strapped for cash right now, so do you want me to do it for you? I do my own hair, so I'm pretty good."
"Sure," I say, lying down, too tired to really think about vanity and haircuts. "But don't give me a Mohawk."
"Aww," Demyx says jokily. I look at his back as he plays, too enthusiastically, body twisting like it's him jumping those blocks in the screen and not just a comical avatar. Then I look down a little bit. "I was thinking about something up by your ears. Lots of layers. You had a fringe before, right?" Evidently I'm more distracted by Demyx's tight jeans and what's inside them than I'd like to admit, because I don't reply immediately.
"Oh," I say vaguely when I realise the space between his question and my response is just a bit too long, "Yeah, sure. Do what you like, just don't make it really crazy. Something like Terra's would be nice, I guess, but with more at the front."
"You wouldn't look good with Terra's hair," Demyx laughs. Then he pauses. "You like it, huh?"
"I don't know, maybe it just suits him because he's got a nice face," I say without thinking. Terra does have a nice face. I really don't see him like that, because he's too old and responsible and likes Aqua too much, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a pretty face.
"He has a nice face?" Demyx giggles and giggles. "Give it up, Marluxia, he's way too straight. Trust me, I tried." Then he glances at my pink face. "You're so cute. Most people just look at his ass."
"I didn't-" I begin, but of course I'm flustered, so Demyx isn't going to believe me no matter how adamantly I try to explain that it was only an aesthetic appreciation. He just grins in that way that means he thinks he's right and nothing is going to convince him otherwise. He just laughs at me and goes back to his game, asking "Do I have a nice face too?"
I scowl as I say "Yes,". Demyx looks at me again. Then he goes, plain as can be: "So are you bisexual or what?"
I'm what, I think, wondering how you can be attracted to people of the same or opposite sex if you are the same and opposite sex all by yourself. What I say is "Yeah, something like that." I pretend to be playing with Larxene, even though she's sulking because I wouldn't buy her the toy she grabbed off the shelf at the baby shop today and doesn't want to have anything to do with me. Demyx says; "Am I cute?"
"You're really cute," I say grumpily, "But I still want my own bed."
Demyx turns off the game and lies down next to me. "Sure," he says, "I'm told I hog the duvet anyway." He yawns. "And for the record, I think you're really cute too." And he rolls over and kisses my red-hot cheek. "But we could always have a duvet each on one bed some nights."
I don't really know what to do when Demyx gets up, smiling at me, then says "Be right back" and disappears. So is he my boyfriend now? Because Axel doesn't count, that means I've never had a boyfriend before. I try to remember what Larxene's boyfriends were like, but they were always years older than her and she didn't ever seem to care for them at all, since she usually got a new one every few weeks. "What do you think?" I ask Larxene, pulling her back onto my belly every time she wriggles away. "Look, I couldn't afford that toy even if I did want to indulge you, so there's no use sulking. Does this mean we're boyfriends now?" My heart flutters when I think about it, but it's a double edged sword, because at that moment I feel strangely and unpleasantly vulnerable, some special piece of me in Demyx's hands now whether he chooses to carry me with him or drop me like unwanted baggage. I shiver. Maybe I don't want this. Maybe I do.
Demyx comes back in five minutes later with scissors and a razor. He says, "Do you want me to cut your hair now?" but I have wound myself up so much in this time that without even taking in what he's said I blurt out: "So does this make us boyfriends?"
"Sure, if you want," Demyx says. He sits down next to me. "Am I your first boyfriend?" I decide that he means my first gay boyfriend, so I nod. "Aw," Demyx smiles. "I feel special."
I think about all the ways in which it really isn't an achievement to have low enough standards to date me, but I don't say anything out loud, just letting Demyx take me into the bathroom where he wets my hair all proper and begins, first and foremost, to get out all of the tangles that have been building up.
"You should take more care of your hair," he says, but I just shrug. There's not much time when there's a baby taking up all of your attentions. I don't think he realises that almost every waking thought I have is some way related to Larxene, and even when I'm at work away from her the only reason I'm doing it is for her, so when she grows ever larger I'll have the munny for new clothes and all the expensive follow-up milks and baby foods and chew toys and and and... the list just never ends. If I didn't love her so much, I probably would hand her over to somebody else to raise instead.
We chat about nothing in particular as Demyx slices my peach coloured locks into the bath, one by one. He takes a long time cutting layers into my hair, especially when it comes to the front of my face. I tell him about how back when I was fifteen I had it cut all fluffy around my cheeks, which I liked, so he does that again for me. The rest of it is even messier, mousy brown curls up around my ears, but Demyx gives it just enough flair to make it look like it's supposed to be that way. I like it. "Hey, Larxene," I say, picking her up off the bathroom floor (I'm never leaving her on a counter again since I put her on the desk in my old flat and she rolled off it onto the floor), "What do you think?" And she starts crying, which may or may not be a good sign.