Work Text:
Music. Drifting down the dilapidated hallways of Radiant Garden's castle, so distorted by winding corridors that by the time it reaches Ienzo he can hardly tell the melody from noise - that’s what gradually dredges Ienzo’s attention from the heavy tome, slow enough that he doesn’t notice the shift in focus until he re-reads the same line thrice, finally recognizing the repetition only on the fourth.
The question - Who is playing music, and at this time of the night? - is asked and answered in one, because the sounds he can pick up through the castle’s distortion are familiar in a way that settles heavy anxiety in his gut. How many hours had Demyx spent stretched across a couch in the Grey Area, plucking away at their weapon-made-instrument - or was it the other way around? Zexion had never bothered to ask, and Ienzo had not yet had the thought to.
The sound itself is inoffensive save the association it carries. Mere reminders of their former castle were sometimes enough to set Ienzo off, hours or days of jittery anxiety spent avoiding contact with anyone familiar enough to twist the anxiety into something worse. He still couldn’t look Riku in the eyes, and had been quietly thankful for the youth’s near immediate understanding after Axel-- Lea’s explanation.
A quiet sound escapes him as he uncoils from his heavy slouch over book and table both. Better he ask Demyx to quiet down now than make fruitless attempts at study with his stomach twisted in uneasy knots. Other emotions crowd to the forefront as he rises, hard to distinguish from one another - annoyance, perhaps not at Demyx but at having to leave his work. Curiosity. He catalogues each he can put a name to, pins them to corkboard in his mind for future study.
The prospect of actually tracking the music through the castle, however, proves to be a more difficult task than Ienzo had accounted for. The strange acoustics of the place make it the better part of ten minutes before Ienzo feels even marginally closer to its source. He can pick out the melody now, at least, and it’s less noise to him and more proper music - or what Ienzo believes proper music should sound like, with his limited experience. The rough edge of annoyance against his thoughts slips gently away as he walks the halls, replaced instead by further curiosity that, in turn, softens the grip of anxiety too.
He realizes, as he rounds a corner and is faced with a propped-open door further down the hallway, that he’s actually been enjoying it. There’s still that association, the knee-jerk reaction of this feels too familiar that’s settled heavy in his stomach, but there’s something else there too. A… buoyancy? It’s a lightness completely alien to him, and pleasant enough that rather than announce his presence, he measures his footsteps and posts himself just outside the doorframe that he might peer in from the low light of the corridor at the room’s occupant.
The giant instrument is slung across Demyx’s lap, and Demyx themself lounges in a plush swivel chair, one foot braced against the floor to twist their perch back and forth in a slow arc. Their back is to Ienzo as they strum - they’re humming, too, Ienzo notes, quietly along with the melody.
Were Ienzo to pick a word to describe himself in that moment, transfixed would not be the first, bashfully denying that much interest in anything outside of his studies - but there’s no other word for it, the way he watches Demyx’s fingers slide from fret to fret, effortlessly plucking their way through a song that hadn’t stopped since Ienzo had first noticed the sound in the library. They knock their unoccupied heel against one wheel of the chair and Ienzo recognizes it as a rhythm, guiding them to a slower tempo, a softer sound.
“You want a front-row seat, come on in.”
Ienzo whole-body flinches. Demyx hadn’t even turned around to address him, still strumming even as they spoke. How long had they known? Embarrassment flushing his cheeks, he steps into the doorframe and the light spilling from it; his hands clasp stiffly before him at his hips.
“I, ah - apologies, Demyx. I heard you playing, and…” And came to ask you to stop or move. But that’s not true anymore, Ienzo thinks - why should Demyx stop? From the looks of it they’d bothered no one else, and Ienzo’s not sure he even wants them to stop anymore. “You wouldn’t mind?” He finishes after a too-long pause - and knows it’s been too long because Demyx is looking over one shoulder at him, sea-green gaze meeting slate blue. The bright grin that lights their face at the question is telling; they had offered.
“Yeah! Of course, come on in-” The music comes to an abrupt halt as Demyx waves him in with one eager hand, swiveling to face Ienzo proper - only to knock the foot of the instrument against the nearby desk and visibly wince in tandem with the resounding thunk. “Totally. Have a seat.”
Ienzo complies; the bed seems the only place for it, and he lowers himself neatly onto the foot of the mattress, hands folded in his lap. He nods once to Demyx as the last of the pink leaves their cheeks - leave it to Demyx to embarrass themself over a lack of spatial awareness. The smile Ienzo wears is polite.
“Please - continue.”
And Demyx does. They don’t pick up where they left off; instead, after a moment’s consideration, they drop into something far deeper and more melancholic, arm stretched further up the neck of the instrument than previous. It’s formal and slow and not at all what Ienzo had expected, nothing like the meandering, lilting tune they’d been chasing before Ienzo had entered. Ienzo isn’t sure he likes it as much, and Demyx must notice this in Ienzo’s expression, in the way his brows come together, because they slow even further to speak again.
“You don’t like it? I can play something else, if you want-”
“No, no, it’s - I’m sorry. I interrupted you in your practice, so you can play what you like.” Ienzo cuts Demyx off in his rush to apologize, lifting one placating hand in their direction. He does not expect the worry that bubbles close to the surface in him - worry at what, he wonders, but whatever it is it’s centered on the musician that affords him with a strange smile, a shake of their head.
“Ienzo, seriously - it’s cool. What kind of music d’you like?”
Ienzo shifts minutely in his seat and tries to tamp down on the embarrassment that threatens another blush.
“I don’t know.” He’s very entranced with Demyx’s hands, thin and calloused and still resting atop the strings of the instrument. Better to look there than their face, to see the open book that is Demyx’s emotions as they process the extent of Ienzo’s inexperience - he’s having enough trouble dealing with his own thoughts, thank you. Why this is becoming such a problem here and now is not a question Ienzo wants to hazard a guess at in the moment. “I never… music never interested Zexion.” Separating the Nobody from the Somebody made it feel easier to excuse, even with the knowledge that he’d not been entirely devoid of a heart. “It’s primarily an emotional experience, yes?”
“Well, yeah, but-” Demyx slides one hand across the strings, evidently conscious of Ienzo’s attention to them. “Even when you were a kid? Nothing at all?”
Ienzo pauses to consider it. The memories are hazy, as if experienced through a lens of frosted glass, but careful thought dredges one to the surface he hadn’t properly remembered in years.
“Master Ansem took me to an orchestra once, as a child. It was important I have an appreciation for the arts.” He can recite the words Ansem had used verbatim, but only bits and pieces of the experience itself had stayed with him - it’s strange, even now, what memories the heart held onto most fiercely, no rhyme or reason to them. Ienzo manages a quietly amused smile, gaze finally lifting to meet Demyx’s again. “I remember the ice cream afterward more clearly than the music.”
It earns a laugh from both Demyx and himself, and Demyx readjusts their seat to accommodate for sitting up straighter, inching their chair closer to the bed with one socked foot - it still strikes Ienzo as strange to see them without the hallmark cloak, and that strangeness has only been compounded by their apparent interest in wearing anything not black. Ienzo is fairly certain he’s witnessed them in nearly the entire gamut of colors representable in clothing, and Demyx had been settled in Radiant Garden for a week at best.
“Orchestra, alright. I think I can work with that. I’m not normally a classical kind of dude, but I’ll make an exception.” Deft fingers reach up the length of the instrument’s neck and twist at the knobs near the top - what this will accomplish Ienzo has exactly zero idea, but ever-observant as Ienzo is he watches the movement as closely as any other. “Ode to Joy, Canon in D. Major, all that stuff you know you’ve heard but never knew the names of?” Demyx asks as they adjust the instrument, and Ienzo shrugs.
“You would know far better than I.”
Demyx clicks their tongue and winks once they’re done, jauntily saluting Ienzo with two fingers. The wink is meant to imply - what? Ienzo wonders, how does one categorize what a wink might convey - but Demyx responds before he loses himself to that train of thought.
“Yeah, but you’re a fast learner, ‘Enzo.”
Baffling. Absolutely baffling. They save no time dropping a single syllable from his name - but even more baffling is the slow warmth that blooms somewhere just below his ribcage when he hears the nickname used. He had been so many people - Ienzo, ‘boy’, ‘little Ienzo’ to the Master and fellow apprentices, all tainted by the haze of separation and recompletion - and Zexion, a name he’s glad to leave at its final resting place in Castle Oblivion. But Enzo is new. Enzo is different. It’s a good different, and Ienzo finds himself hoping it will stick, with Demyx if no one else.
Then Demyx’s calloused fingers are gliding and plucking at the strings again, and Ienzo is altogether unprepared for how immediately he’s swept up in the new tune Demyx has chosen. While the instrument - sitar, Ienzo remembers, finally - cannot manage the sort of sweeping grandeur that his fractured memories of the orchestra had, Demyx puts their heart (the heart they had always believed they had, against all odds) into the slow, joyful tune and Ienzo is not left wanting. That same buoyancy, that lightness from before returns tenfold, and he’s no more prepared for it than he had been in the hallway, all the more swept up in it because it’s for him, at least in part. There’s a tingling like painless pins and needles that settles along the crown of his head and washes down the length of his spine from there.
Was this how Demyx always felt when they played?
Ienzo’s hands uncross in his lap, curling instead into the edge of the mattress at his thighs; he leans in rapt attention toward Demyx as the minutes pass, transfixed once more. Demyx must notice how intent he is, because the high line of their cheekbones and the tips of their ears go pink. It doesn’t stop Ienzo staring, overwhelmed as he is by it all.
“Hey - you alright?” Ienzo doesn’t properly register Demyx’s words as a question until they frown. They don’t stop playing, but their plucking quiets when they speak, and it’s enough to draw Ienzo just enough from his reverie to blink once, twice, listen properly to Demyx’s next words. “You’re kind of shaking, dude.”
He is shaking. Or his arms are, and maybe his shoulders by association, and he wonders how Demyx had noticed when their attention had ostensibly been on the sitar. Ienzo opens his mouth, then closes it. His breaths are coming short and quick and he can feel his pulse fluttering in his ears - when had that happened? He sits up, folding his arms across his front. Since when had he reacted this way to anything, bar the Master’s reappearance? But even that he had chalked up to ten years of unfelt guilt and fear of rejection, emotions quickly assuaged by Ansem’s forgiveness. The only catalyst here is the music that comes to a plodding halt as he continues to not speak, and Demyx themself, who seems to be bordering on worry, now.
“Enzo-- Ienzo.” No - the first one, Ienzo thinks but can’t bring himself to say. The nickname, please, even though it only adds to the almost suffocating jostle of emotions inside him. “If you’re like - panicking or something, just nod, I guess. Should I go get Ansem?” Ienzo shakes his head decisively. He swallows, once, around the lump in his throat. Ansem is one of the last people he’d want to see him like this. Ienzo isn’t about to jump at the chance to be treated like he’s fragile, and he’s thankful Demyx doesn’t seem to want to.
“How do you deal with it?” Ienzo asks at last, voice strained with the effort it takes to speak. His gaze has once more wandered, this time to Demyx’s denim-clad knees, as he struggles to regain his composure. Catalogue the feelings, name them, organize them. So easy in theory, yet so impossible in practice when they came on this strong.
“Deal with what?” Ienzo is vaguely aware that Demyx has rolled themself closer still, now almost knee-to-knee with Ienzo.
“Everything.” He offers lamely, voice breaking on the first syllable. He’s not going to cry, the hot sting at the corners of his eyes that heralds tears mercifully absent, but he wipes at his face with one starched sleeve anyway. “Emotions. Is music always supposed to make one feel like that?”
“Why’d you think I like it so much?” Is Demyx’s answer. They’re smiling again. Ienzo can hear it in their voice - he finds himself wanting to look, but his head is still dipped forward and he can’t bring himself to raise it. “It made me feel human, dude. Like-” In the periphery, Ienzo sees Demyx lift an arm from the instrument and make a grasping gesture in the air between them. “You gotta hold onto anything you can when you’re a Nobody, you feel me?”
Ienzo thinks he does, now. If he’d felt even the ghost of that sensation in his entire existence as a Nobody - maybe things would’ve been different. He nods to indicate his understanding, and Demyx’s hand drops back onto the body of the sitar.
“Keep playing, please?”
The request seems to take Demyx by surprise. They dip forward this time, apparently in some effort to meet Ienzo’s gaze. Ienzo has enough sense, has gathered himself enough by now that he can return that look, one eye still shrouded by his fringe.
“You gonna be okay if I do?” The question and the smile from Demyx that follows it inspires another slow unfurling of that warmth in the former hollow of his chest, right alongside the comforting rhythm of his still-unfamiliar heartbeat.
Ienzo nods again. He’ll be worse off if he spends the evening chasing that feeling, and any attempts to resume the mundanity of study might prove downright disastrous. Thoughts of the Castle are the furthest thing from his mind, now, when he considers the prospect of more music. How quickly the tables had turned when faced with new associations, new feelings crowding into the space where hollow memories once lay and clearing out the cobwebs as they went.
“Yes. I think-- I think I need this.”
Demyx is almost glowing as Ienzo says it. They’re still smiling, enough to crinkle the corners of their sea-green eyes, and Ienzo thinks that he’d like to see that more often. If music alone could inspire such intensity of emotion in him, it follows that the person behind it might do just the same. Ienzo already has empirical evidence to the fact - the warmth that seems to have taken up permanent residence just below the hollow of his throat, the way he returns Demyx’s smile with one of his own without a second thought.
“Sure, ‘Enzo. Hang around as long as you want.”