Title: Headlines (3 of ?)
Author: Lost Experiment
Rating: PG-13/T
Pairings/Warnings/Spoilers: Axel/Demyx, AU, Character Death. Some stuff unique to this chapter I won't spoil here. Het and Yaoi.
Summary: When Demyx, a poor reporter and worse writer barely clinging to his job is forced to cover the story of the death of one of his only friends, he decides to start fresh in a new world. His new boss is practically a criminal, his new colleagues are strange and he's stuck covering the very thing he wanted to escape in the first place.
Authors' Notes: Thanks for reading…and if you liked reading, or want to place it on your +faves, please review. Reviews are golden and make me happy.

Chapter Three

Axel was in a fantastic mood all the rest of the week. Demyx had to actually remind himself about the death threat upon occasion, as it seemed unlikely that the perpetually sarcastic and cheerful man could have ever said something so violent. Sora even visited the office on Wednesday, mostly to tell his father he'd made the team after the Blitzball tryouts. Roxas it transpired, had been kept after school to do some lines as punishment for bashing a kid named Seifer with a struggle bat 'really hard'. Demyx thought back to Cloud and himself. Cloud hadn't gotten really spectacular grades or anything, but he'd been a member of the school's snowboarding and wrestling teams. He'd generally been pretty modest about his accomplishments, but much like Sora he'd never really managed to catch that his brother was looking less and less stellar by comparison. He felt a wave of sympathy for Roxas.

"He said it was an accident." Sora said defensively when he caught Demyx looking over at them. "Seifer's a wuss. Roxas didn't even hit him that hard and anyway, he had to stay too because he called Roxas a bad word and the teacher heard." At least Sora was trying a little. Demyx's face relaxed into a bemused 'adult' smile. Ah, saving grace.

Axel just laughed, evidently relieved it hadn't been something worse. "Don't you get any ideas. It's bad enough having one of you all violent, but at least your brother's finally taking an interest in physical activity. Maybe he'll finally join one of your extra-curriculars."

Sora playfully punched his dad's arm and went over to where Braig was running the copy machine. "Hey Braig, Miss Trepe said for me to tell you she'll see you at seven, not eight tonight. Are you dating her?"

Braig looked at Sora, evidently choosing to ignore the failure to use a formality like 'Mr.' with him. Probably didn't care. "What do you think?"

The kid thought. "Yeah. That's cool. She's pretty like Riku."

Braig burst out laughing. "You sure you ain't really Axel's kid?"

Sora stuck out his tongue in reply. "Axel is my dad."

"It's past noon. Therefore, I am too drunk to explain genetics to a rugrat. Don't they teach you anything in science class?"

"I thought you were a writer, not a scientist. Anyway we have sex-ed for that."

"There's a lot you don't know about me. How else do you think I got this?" Braig tapped his eyepatch and grinned at Sora.

"Can I see it this time?" Sora had abandoned the idea of a sexual education for now and was gazing at the covered eye with interest. Braig shook his head. "No way kid."

The boy's fingers twitched as though he longed to simply reach up and grab the patch off of Braig's face, but his hand dropped instead and he looked to Demyx. Hadn't realized he'd stopped working to watch the scene.

"But I thought you got it in a bar fight with…" Demyx spoke up, feeling as though he should say something. He wound up trailing off very abruptly, glancing at Dilan, whose face had frosted over.

It was Braig who came to the rescue. His lone eye darted from one to the other, sizing both men up. "Ah, Dilan, stop being a fuckwad." He waved the icy glare away carelessly. "Dilan hates the fact that he doesn't know how I got this." He said, his sarcastically conspirator's tone an unspoken challenge.

Demyx fell silent, half grateful to his new friend for diffusing a potentially dangerous situation, but also unbelievably curious. So there were things the indefatigable gossip didn't know. How had Axel avoided that all-knowing gaze? How had Braig? Was this the secret to uncovering Axel's indiscretions?

The afternoon progressed with Demyx pondering Braig's statement and a great deal of silence, exacerbated wen Sora had left to catch up with his brother, whose detention was now done. Dilan too had left the office at that time in ill-disguised rage. Braig whistled through his teeth, possibly just to break the tension. "Pretty like Riku, huh?"

Surprisingly, it was Luxord who looked up and laughed, shaking his head. "Not my problem." He said cryptically.

Before Demyx had time to ponder that statement and what it meant, Axel nodded over at him. "Yo. Demyx. There's a truck wreck up in the mainland you oughtta go cover. You probably can't get there by boat and we don't want you to end up in the accidents section yourself so hmm…" he picked up a pencil and scratched out a crude map on a back issue. "Walk it from there, and you'll be alright. By the way, I've got another sitting job for you on Saturday. Do as good a job as last time and I'll increase your pay."

He laughed raucously at the dumbfounded stares the rest of his staff gave him, but Demyx didn't hear them, didn't say anything as he just took the keys and left to capture someone else's misery on film.

Maybe it was this experience of snapping pictures of life, snuffed out in an explosion of charred flesh that convinced Demyx to ask his brother about Braig's suggestion to buy a boat on Saturday morning. Cloud's strange look was actually a surprise to Demyx when he asked for Riku's family address.

The odd look became clear soon in the most predictably embaressing of ways. He rang the doorbell to be greeted by an attractive woman with a kindly face and a great deal of brown, wavy hair. He was just thinking that she didn't exactly resemble the silver-haired Riku when she gave him a brilliant smile of recognition.

"You must be Demyx! It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

He was saved further humiliation when he cottoned on that Luxord must have been Riku's father and that's why Braig had suggested him. "Likewise." He said, grasping her hand, even though Luxord had never mentioned his wife or son. In fact, he and Demyx hadn't spoken much, so maybe it wasn't all that strange.

"C'mon in." Aerith held open the kitchen door.

"I don't want to intrude." Demyx said politely. "I just stopped by to see about a boat."

Aerith shook her head. "Luxord was the same way when he first arrived here, but things just work differently when the community's small I guess. Speaking of, he is in the middle of a job, so he'll probably be another twenty minutes at best. Sit down for awhile. I insist."

Foreigner gets it wrong…again. Demyx took stock. He had to admit, he was getting tired of variations on that headline. She put some sandwiches and soup on the table. "Help yourself." This time, he did.

"Thanks. It's good." He said, honestly. He eyed over her shoulder to where a large vegetable garden was growing. "You grew most of this yourself?"

She nodded. "Yeah. The community kinda helps out each other best they can. Some of us grow food, Luxord works on boats…" she jerked her head out the window in the direction of the beach front. "The fire service is voluntary and so is the supplementary health staff. We have professionals of course, but it's good to be prepared in case of an emergency."

There was a loud pounding at the door. "'Scuse me a moment." Aerith hurried off, leaving Demyx to mull that over. Talentless? Need a Job Fast? He came back to reality with a jolt, only to catch Aerith's next words.

"So it's your boat Luxord's fixing today. Isn't that a coincidence. I've already got some company from the paper. C'mon in."

"Hey! It's Demyx!" Axel turned to Aerith. "I love this guy. He keeps the hellraiser silent for me."

"Ah, you babysit. That's nice, Demyx. Maybe you could take care of Riku sometime."

"I uh…" Demyx remembered his resolution. Maybe this was just his solution to the earlier problem of fitting in. "Yeah. Of course."

Axel clapped him on the back, and Demyx felt the familiar tingle of attraction. Axel's hand seemed to remain there a second longer than it should have, but before the thought could so much as register, the other man was accepting a glass of iced tea from Aerith and chatting about something Sora had brought home from class.

After a few moments of idle chit-chat, Aerith excused herself a second time to answer the phone. Axel's eyes followed her progress closely.

When she had disappeared, Axel turned to Demyx. "So it seems like you really took me seriously. Good idea."

Demyx had no idea how to reply. "You said you were going to kill me!" he spread his hands, watching as the taller man advanced on him, something unrecognizable gleaming in his eyes. Fear mixed with attraction stirred inside of him, sending cold chills down his spine.

"Oh but this is too much!" Axel laughed as though he'd just heard the best joke in the world. "You're attracted to me. You're dead scared but you want in my pants. That's why you haven't said anything!"

Demyx was little more than dumbfounded. Axel played a headgame he just didn't understand. He wasn't used to his emotions being all laid out there like that. Wasn't sure what to do when Axel leaned across the table and grasped his shoulder with one hand. The other hand against the table had chewed nails stained with printer ink and graphite lead. Dully he could hear the buzz of Aerith Gainsbourough's voice as she chattered animatedly with someone on the phone about her husband's availability schedule. The words registered in the numb, dumb way that things tended to linger when one was acutely aware of their surroundings.

"A little incentive…you deserve it." And then he was being pressed against the back of the chair, a hand rubbing with maddeningly unconcerned amusement against him as he whispered half-hearted derision into his parted lips. "One good turn…"

Demyx let it happen. Even for a man whose greatest sexual experience to date had been intimate encounters with his own hand and a few wet kisses from when his grandmum had been alive, Axel was clearly talented. He felt raging guilt and freedom and fear and desire all at once, wasn't sure it was possible to feel so many things all at one time.

"You won't say anything…you like this too much."

Just as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. Aerith came back into the room and the two men were sitting at either ends of the table. The redhead had turned his attention to gobbling his food and making Aerith's cheeks blossom with praise, so much so that perhaps she missed the pinkness spreading across Demyx's own face. Axel's eyes met his for just a moment and they issued a challenge. Demyx knew he could not meet that challenge – Braig's words came crashing back to him. He was mysterious. Dilan didn't know anything about him so he could pretend anything he wanted. It was his weapon, but right now it felt more like running away all over again.

Luxord returned then, with a promise he could get started on a new boat project in another three-weeks time and an agreement to keep it simple for the sake of Demyx's status as a beginner. It all left Demyx to wonder if it were at all possible to avoid being in the same room with Axel altogether. Given his track record at running away, he figured his chances weren't all that spectacular.

"Come on Roxas. Dad said it'd be okay if we went to the play-island today. You can play Blitzball with Wakka and Tidus and me and stuff." Demyx, on his way to his babysitting job froze in the act of pushing the bell, heading around to the back yard of Axel's house, where Sora's voice had issued from.

"I don't think so." Roxas said softly, scuffing his feet.

"Dad said it would be fun." Demyx stopped to listen and saw immediately that if Sora had wanted his brother to be interested, he had just made a grave mistake. He could picture Roxas' angry scowl.

"I'm not doing anything Axel says is fun." Roxas was sure to put emphasis on the name he used in place of 'Dad'.

"When are you going to stop hating him? It's not that I don't miss our real Dad a lot, but Axel's pretty fun."

Roxas' eyes narrowed in response. "I hate him He acts like he's such a great father, and does all that fun stuff because he figures he'll feel less guilty about what he did. He's such a fake, lying asshole." Demyx suddenly was acutely aware he was eavesdropping and decided to stop, walking straight into the backyard as though he had no idea they were there or talking about their father.

Sora sighed. "I thought you'd started changing when you didn't mess with that Demyx guy's head when he was over watching us."

Roxas shrugged in response, though he seemed a little startled to see Demyx standing there.

"So why don't you make life tough for me?" Demyx asked Roxas when Sora had left. He didn't let on that he'd overheard the earlier parts of the conversation, though he suspected Roxas knew.

"'Cause I know Axel bullies you too, I guess."

"N…not really…" Demyx's mind drifted back to the death threat, then to Aerith's kitchen. Demyx had only equated bullying with being beaten up and he hadn't really been beaten up all that often in school, as though even the bullies found him beneath their notice.

"It's okay to admit it." Roxas said offhandedly. "He's a jerk. Your brother is Lieutenant Cloud Strife, right? Why don't you get him to punch Axel in the face. Then he wouldn't bother you anymore."

Demyx blinked. "I...don't think SOLDIER works like that."

For the most part, their conversations didn't return to Axel and his many indiscretions. Roxas seemed content to play quietly on his own for the most part, and eat grilled cheese for lunch, which was a blessing to Demyx's negligible cooking skills. He made himself scarce sometime around four, about the time Axel was due to return.

Axel's call of "I'm home!" was punctuated by the slamming of a bedroom door, leaving Demyx exactly where he didn't want to be: Alone in a hall with Axel.

To be continued...