Chapter Text
Demyx’s fingers pluck idly at his sitar that sits across his lap, other hand carding through his hair, making it stick up at even weirder angles than he styled it into that morning.
Chords ring out through the blocked-off stairwell, harsh and echoing against his ears, and he frowns, stares at the sheet music propped up against the stair above him. He leans back against the wall and scowls at it.
“This isn’t working,” he mutters to himself, tearing the sheet off the clipboard and scrunching it up, throwing it over the bannister. It misses the trash can.
“Can you not?” comes a voice from under the stairwell. “That hit my head, asshole.”
“Fuck off Zexion,” Demyx whines. “I’m having an artistic crisis.”
He can hear Zexion stand, sneakers squeaking against the laminate floors, and a moment later he’s in view, slotted between the bars of the bannister. He was busy studying, probably, with hair clipped back with an army of bobby pins and a textbook under his arm, fingers between the pages. “You’re not even practicing,” he states. “You’ve been skipping music class and crashing my free period. You’re basically just sulking for no reason and it’s affecting my grades--”
“Zex, what did you get on your last Bio test?”
“Eighty-eight.”
“And the one before that?”
“Ninety-one.” Zexion folds his arms over his chest and glares at him.
Demyx snorts. “Three percent is a fluke and totally not my fault,” he says, waving his hand flippantly. “And anyway, who cares? You’ve already gotten accepted to Hollow Bastion. I haven’t gotten accepted anywhere .”
“Accepted on the basis that I can keep my average where it is,” Zexion snaps. “Stop skipping class.”
“Artistic crisis,” Demyx reiterates.
“More like artistic bullshit,” Zexion grumbles.
“You science-y jerks will never understand the intricacies of good art--”
“Artistic bullshit,” Zexion repeats, louder.
Demyx scowls. “One day I’ll be composing for orchestras and you’ll eat those words.”
“Get accepted somewhere first, dumbass.” Zexion retreats back under the stairwell, back to his textbooks and notes spread out over the floor.
Demyx huffs and stands up, shoving his sitar back into it’s case before slinging it over his shoulder and folding the clipboard of sheet music under his arm. “I hate you,” he says when he reaches the bottom of the stairs.
Zexion doesn’t respond, doesn’t even spare him a glance. Demyx stomps away.
~
It’s raining.
There’s something poetic about it, about how it matches Demyx’s horrible mood, about the pile of homework that’s in his backpack, weighing down his shoulders like an anvil, about the clipboard in his hands stuffed full with sheet music he’s tried to write, failed to write, failed to even play.
Composing, he decides, is hard.
(He knew it was, but he couldn’t help himself when he found out Traverse High’s terrible arts curriculum included a class on it, on analyzing music, on making it, on layering it to create effects that shook the heart and sent shivers down spines and got listeners to press replay a thousand times just to feel it all over again.)
Music theory was easy, memorizing a bunch of symbols and time signatures and other stuff that showed up on sheets. Reading sheets was easy with the acronyms he’d been taught as a kid. Listening to it was fun. Playing it was even more so. Creating it…
Demyx kicks one of the pillars holding up the brick canopy above him. Pain shoots up his leg and he has a lot of regrets.
(Is trying to compose one of them? Is thinking he could be the next Mozart one of them?)
“Yo Dem, got beef with the bricks?”
Demyx turns and is greeted by a soda can shoved in his face and a shock of bright red hair.
“The bricks are mean, Axel,” he says, popping the tab and taking a sip. Coke. Nice. “Thanks.”
“No problem. Don’t you have class right now?”
“Don’t you?” Demyx shoots back.
“Yeah,” Axel says, “but when I saw you stomp past the door, I figured whatever you were doing was like, a hundred times more interesting than Hamlet.”
“People die in Hamlet, how is it not interesting?”
“Yo, spoilers .”
“It’s a fucking tragedy, you nut.”
“Nut. Nice one, Dem,” Axel says, punching him lightly in the shoulder. “So, what’s up? I assume you haven’t taken to kicking walls for no reason?”
Demyx takes a breath, trying to order his thoughts, and finally says: “Zexion is a jerk and composing is hard.”
“Why do you like that nerd again?” Axel asks, sitting down on the concrete steps that led up to the main doors. “Like, seriously, he loves his books more than any living human being.”
Demyx feels his face heat up in a combination of embarrassment and frustration. “Because he’s nice to me. Like. I dunno. Not today, today he was a jerk.” He starts toying with the strings of the hoodie he wears under his uniform.
“I’m guessing that’s not the point?” Axel asks, leaning back on his palms and looking up at Demyx, who’s glaring at the main gates.
“I’m having an artistic crisis.”
Demyx can tell Axel’s trying not to laugh, the way he turns away and his shoulders quiver. “Oh my god, is that seriously it?”
“I hate you all,” Demyx says, turning on his heel and heading back inside.
~
A rock and a hard place feels a lot like Zexion and the principal’s office, and Demyx only realizes this when he steps through the doors, back inside where the rain doesn’t permeate the sound waves in a perpetual white noise.
It’s quiet and there’s still a good half hour of third period left and maybe leaving Axel, his only decent fake friend, was a bad idea.
“Sorry Demyx,” Axel says, following him through the doors a moment later, saving Demyx from having to go crawling back to the only vaguely safe place that was available. “But did you really have to call it something that dramatic?”
“No appreciation for the arts, I swear,” Demyx mumbles, fingers coming to clutch around the strap of his sitar case. “Why am I even friends with any of you guys?”
“Because you love us?” Axel nudges him. “So, wanna elaborate on your artistic crisis, or…”
“I can’t compose worth shit,” Demyx says, leaning against the doorframe. “And I need to come up with a whole page of original sheet music as part of my final project, as well as arrange it and simulate it. And nothing sounds good and my dreams are slowly being shattered into a million pieces and I hate everything.”
Axel stares at him. “Can’t you just make up some bullshit with the four-chord thing--”
“NO??”
“What? Why not?”
Demyx rolls his eyes. “I can’t believe I need to explain why I can’t stoop to such a cheap pop trick. I’m trying to become, like, I dunno, the next Mozart ?”
“Maybe that’s your problem, man,” Axel says. “You’re aiming so high that everything you write sounds like shit in comparison. Maybe you need to stop expecting so much out of yourself.”
Demyx scoffs. “I’m capable of so much more -- I know I am! I just can’t… access all that awesomeness yet.”
“So level up,” Axel says with a grin. “Start slow. Build it up like Lego.”
“That… actually sounds like a good idea,” Demyx says with a frown. “When did you get so good at life advice, Ax?”
Axel laughs. “Talk to Roxas and Xion about that one, ‘cause even I don’t know what happened there.”