Fic: The Twilight Between - Chapter 1 - Getting Buried in This Place

[zenelly]

THAT'S RIGHT. THAT IS SO RIGHT. YOU ARE, IN FACT, READING THIS.

Finally.

So, I decided to get off my ass and post this, because I've been sitting on it for a while. Any comments or suggestions are much appreciated.

Title: The Twilight Between
Pairing: Zemyx
Disclaimer: KH = NOT MINE.
Dedications: to prettypixiechan. Because she is my lovely beta. All other mistakes are my own.
Rating: NC-17
Summary: The thing that Demyx wants most in the world is a break from feeling the emotions of other people. He doesn't get that (in fact, it might be the opposite), but what he does get might actually be better. But either Zexion can save his sanity, or be the one thing to push him over the edge.
Warnings: This fic contains dubious-consent at times, and severely distressed mental states at others. I will post warnings on specific chapters, so you know what you're getting into.

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Getting Buried in This Place

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The hospital buzzes with the muted hums of machines and low voices. Even far away, in the depths of an unused section, the sounds are apparent. Background noise. People talking and chattering and thinking. He hears them, wishes he didn't. It is loud to him, excruciating, and it is not the physical part of the noise that causes him pain.

Brightly tiled floors flow into white walls, the patterns nonsensical and wandering. Standing cool and solid against his back, the walls stretch down and up the hallway, vibrating softly with the motions of people walking. The smells of antiseptic and anesthetic fill his nose, and he breathes them in as though the smell of them alone can soothe his aching head. (They can't, don't.)

As the halls are traversed, footsteps echo and reverberate through the floor and his feet, making him feel almost as if he can count the people within the large building. The vibrations set off the slight throbbing in the heels and balls of his feet, and they ache harder, hurt more, practically sympathetic to the aching of the ground. He wonders absently if the building ever begrudges the people walking inside it, shaking it to its eventual destruction.

The pain in his head flares briefly, throbbing with his pulse and scattering his thoughts. Pressing the heels of his hands against his temples, he bends over slightly, sliding slowly down the wall until he feels the floor catch him before it melts away, disappearing with the rest of the hospital. Darkness fills his eyes and ears, a rushing, pounding noise overtaking the sounds of passersby. Nothing is solid anymore except the whirlpool that is other people. Even in the midst of all this dark, he still feels them, razor-sharp and acidic against his mind. (The world brightens to grey, flickers to black again, never seems to settle on whether it wants to be here or not.)

Feeling finally slides back into his fingers. Shaking hands drag through his hair, tapping anxious rhythms against his skin. Flickers of images press against his mind, like salt in an open wound, flaring bright and sharp. Remembered grief cuddles him and holds him, and he cannot seem to shake it off, attempting to brush its shadowing fingers from his shoulders. It never seems to work. He can't stop himself from trying, trembling hands skittering across the rough fabric of his uniform, brushing off the invisible cold and ice of grief.

Cheerful murmurings of hopeful, too-happy nurses flitter through his ears as sound returns, echoing and large, and he sighs as similarly cheerful thoughts grate against him, their sandpaper-edged sides scraping the raw edges of his mind, and his headache flares again. The surface grief recedes, digging deep within him, replaced by equally painful, nonsensical hope. He knows instinctively that one of the nurses is nervous about something, and that the other one hates her, but is too polite and two-faced to say anything at all about it.

(He wishes he didn't know. Life would be so much easier if he didn't know.)

Demyx looks up tiredly, a sigh stirring the hair of his bangs. His hands sit shaking against the sides of his head. The world reforms itself slowly, colors and images resolving themselves into real shapes and items. Once again, the wall stands cool and solid against his overwarm back, and Demyx leans into it as he reorients himself with the hospital.

'I might have to head out to the club tonight…' he thinks wearily, dropping his hands to look down the hallway. No one notices when he disappears after a rough time, and so no one has come looking for him yet. For that, he is always grateful. The grief under his skin has finally settled, digging deep like thorns and nettles in his skin, and he would hate to have to feel anyone else on top of that (pressing it down, further in him, bleeding him). The club is the only way he knows to pull the thorns out. Pleasure overwriting pain, overwriting sadness, but still nauseating and still hurtful, and he can never bring himself to really enjoy it.

The alternatives are worse.

It's not like he hasn't tried to ignore it before.

Sighing, Demyx rubs his hands against the floor, tile slippery smooth. He stands slowly, shakily, his vision going dark around the edges. Demyx leans against the wall heavily, feeling it press clean and cool against his cheek. He hates it when a child is almost lost in the ward. The combination of worry, grief, and elation that he has to deal with is almost worse than if the kid had really died. Never bad enough that he wishes the child had died, but horribly rough and acid-etched anyway. Pushing himself away from the wall, he begins to walk down the hallway, back to the noise and friction-slide of other people.

The hospital is large and full of patients and doctors and nurses and cleaning staff and people. Not a single one of them is unknown to Demyx, whether they are in his ward or not. He knows their names, the abstract sense of who they are on a level more elemental than even they are aware of. A simple walk to the cafeteria (or to the unused hallway in the Labor and Delivery ward) stretches his senses out to include most of the expansive building, and his mind touches everyone else's along the way. He skims their emotions unintentionally, always has, always will be able to. Even as he walks down the deserted hall, he can feel glimmers of patients on the floors above and below him. Hope, sadness, lassitude, apathy, the certainty of death – Demyx feels them all.

He hates it.

He hates it more than anything.

Not the helping people part. Not the saving people part. Not the making them live again and feel hope again part. Not even the watching them die part. He doesn't mind that even a little bit. He just hates feeling everything they feel. God, there is nothing more in the world that Demyx wishes for than to just be normal and to never know what another people is feeling as intimately as he does. (He dreams of it sometimes, and waking is the hardest thing he has ever done.)

(But he's never able to really get the dream right enough for it to seem real. What does an empath know about not feeling the emotions of other people?)

Absently, Demyx reaches down into the pocket of his scrubs and pulls out his cellphone. He flips open the phone, seeing the notification for a missed call and a new text. Both are from Axel. The text reads:

"Hey, are you okay, Dem? Worried about you, since your headaches are getting so bad. Txt me back, kk?"

And Demyx smiles absently at the screen, shakiness slowly leeching from his body, leaving him feeling wrung out and kitten-tired. He types out a reassuring reply quickly before he turns the corner, reentering the bustle of the hospital. Emotions press invasively against him. They seem like solid, living things, and Demyx has to close his eyes, sick from claustrophobia. A trip to the club definitely is in order, he thinks tiredly. His phone buzzes in his pocket, and he checks it as he dodges interns and staff on his way back to his own ward.

"Don't lie, Dem. You're not OK. I'm gonna pick you up from work, no ifs ands or buts, got it?"

Demyx just sighs a little. He doesn't bother sending a reply. Axel means what he says (and sometimes, it's a relief to remember that someone is going to take care of him, even when no one else will). There is no arguing with him when he's in this mood, even when Demyx really just wants to protest. Sometimes, he really wishes that Axel will take him on his word and leave him alone, without his concern and worry running razor-sharp fingers down his mind. But…

People aren't perfect.

It's a lesson Demyx has learned and forgotten more times than he can count. No matter what they look like on the surface, he always finds himself privy to secrets he didn't want. Brief touches impart nurses that hate everyone they work with while smiling kindly at them all, doctors with fetishes, patients who hurt themselves, or were hurt by the people bringing them in, and he cannot avoid touching them in a hospital. He never wants to know any of it, but he always does. And still he tries to convince himself that someone out there is exactly like they are on the inside.

He's still stupid enough to make himself believe it every once in a while.

(He wonders how people would react to how he is on the inside and knows that no one wants to see the mess that he really is underneath the thin veneer of smiles and absentmindedness.)

Demyx grins and nods at people as he passes them, offers assistance where needed, all the while hiding the pain behind his eyes. They never notice, smiling back at him without a care in their worlds. He's too good at making sure they don't. Axel seems to be the only one who doesn't ever accept his excuses, and he's torn between being grateful and annoyed. (After all, Axel doesn't hurt less than anyone else. He just hurts in a different way.) All of his thoughts stir up his headache again, making it nauseatingly strong, but he's so close now, and he just keeps moving.

Walking through the hospital, Demyx finally makes it to his ward. The swimming, unformed, drugged feelings of children brush against him, softer and less edged than the minds of adults. He smiles more readily when he's here. Children's emotions, while being stronger and less controlled than adults, aren't edged in as much salt and fire, and they make him feel like there's something still able to be salvaged in this world. (He's only able to convince himself of this because he never has to see them later, when they change and warp beyond themselves. It's a lie, but it's a helpful one.)

Demyx feels a wave of concern and relief a second before a large man leans over the nurse's station desk, face grim and stoic. Ice blue eyes flick up and down Demyx, checking him over, before settling on his eyes. The concern fades away, becomes less of a physical presence, and Demyx rocks forward on his heels, feeling its loss like a lack of support.

"You okay?" the man asks gruffly as he stands up straight, crossing his arms, dark brown medical scrubs scratching a protest at the movement. Demyx smiles, though he hides it in the crinkles around his eyes.

"Yeah, I'm fine, Lexaeus. Just stepping out for a bit of air."

Lexaeus grunts and looks to one side. "It's Dr. Auger, Nurse Fitz. Get back to work."

(It's always been Lexaeus's way to let Demyx know he cares. That he notices the pattern. Demyx doesn't really care either way. He knows that Lexaeus doesn't know the real reason, and that he's nowhere near guessing what it is.)

(It's a sad existence, but it's his.)

Demyx nods and heads back to his work, silently apologizing to Dr. Auger with a properly ashamed slant to his shoulders. The large man only turns and goes back inside his office, stepping sideways to fit his large frame through the door. His is a subtle language, but Demyx can feel himself relax, understanding that he is forgiven for disappearing during shift. Another few steps, headache screaming behind his forehead, and-

-the world around him starts to distort weirdly, floors elongating and bending like putty around him again, and his mind scans the hallway. Finding an unused room (less noise, less pain from that direction, go there), he quickly darts inside, closing the door behind him.

In the midst of his pain, he hopes that no one will come in behind him. It's a long hope. People are always barging in. Fact of life. Demyx can't think. Can't focus.

Back against the wall, he slumps down to the floor, forehead on his knees and breathing harsh. Everything is melting around him. His own skin feels foreign under his fingers, buzzing, and everyone else's emotions, barely muted at all by the closed door, circle in like vultures. (He wishes he never had to go through with this, knowing that it's a useless wish to begin with.) The club is a certainty now, and he hates going to it when he has work the next day.

The world trembles about him. Collapses around him in a mess of spindly bits and stretchy lengths, contorting madly.

With a deep sigh, he loses his hearing, and the world goes silent save for his heart beat and breathing. Demyx blinks once, twice and finds that he can no longer see, either. Everything is black and light-spotted.

'Oh. Here again,' he thinks, falling away from his own body. He finds a strange comfort in this non-place, in the dark and quiet. The thud of his heartbeats and the rasping whispers of his breaths fill the space. Part of him thinks that this is what death is like, and he doesn't mind the idea that this is what is waiting for him in the end. It wouldn't be so bad to sink into other people, like he's doing now – lose himself in them, feel them coming in cold and worried from the snow. He seeps into them, feels them as deeply as they feel themselves, and he knows that this will be like every other time he goes to this dark world. It's a swaying place where he doesn't want to leave, cushioned in the non-feeling abyss between other people. (He imagines that this is what normality feels like.)

He wants to stay where he is.

Never leaving.

Never alone within himself.

Never hurting.

Not again.

Within this place, he knows everyone and nothing hurts here, because he's too far away from himself to feel pain. Demyx slides over each person in the building, sharing their thoughts and communing with them briefly as he passes.

"-ope he'll be okay…"

"-Does anyone even pay attention to thi-"

"-tupid bitch, hope she dies-"

"Wonder where he's gotten to?"

"Oh come on, that's so not his own kid, who does he think he's kiddin-"

"-ere am I supposed to-"

"-don't even know-"

"…"

"Sora!"

And he's suddenly slammed back into his own head, world constructing itself faster than ever, sound rushing back into his ears, and he is once again within himself, with everyone else just surrounding. The noise of his gasping breaths is loud, harsh, and his heart thrums within him. Even the dim light of the room is too much at first, and he squeezes his eyes shut. The door is solid, no wavering, and the floor isn't melting away from him. Everything is…

Normal.

His headache has lessened enough that Demyx stands up. He braces himself on the wall, expecting disorientation, and he doesn't get it. Nothing happens. The nausea is gone, no trace of it left behind. He's still shaky, but…. Nothing else. At all. No acid pain of thoughts (well, those are still there, but lessened), no nausea, no dizziness, just… shaky and a little headache. Demyx shakes his head as he opens the door, slipping back into the hallway, pretending that no one could have seen him.

(The hall is empty of visitors, so it might not be too much to ask, for once.)

'Strange,' he thinks, and it is. He always has to make himself leave if he goes to that in-between space. He's never been thrown back before, and he's never… felt anything like that.

He would wonder what it was, but his headache is crawling back, tendril at a time, and he doesn't care enough to be curious anymore.

As he heads down the hallway, Demyx picks up his charts and checks them over. It's time for another round. He knocks briefly on each door, smiling as he enters the rooms to check how the patients are doing. It's the same conversation over and over again. "Are you in pain, do you need anything, can I help you, are you sleeping, are you hungry?" (Really, Demyx enjoys the easy rhythm of it, of the sleepy and anxious answers and the quiet reassurances.) He smiles at them all, makes light and easy jokes to cheer them up.

Somewhere in there, between reassuring the little redheaded girl that the stars fall from the sky and hover in front of people who are special and talking to a tow-headed little boy about surfing, he feels himself returning to equilibrium.

(Internally and logically, he knows that his definition of equilibrium sucks. The only criterion he has is "not obviously going insane at the moment.")

And then…

He feels curiosity (and isn't that new), because there is a thread of non-pain, of worry, and confusion and blame, and it's smooth against his mind amidst the rock-sharp walls of everyone else. Almost welcoming, in a way. Full of desperation, worry (rock hard, and settling like a lump in the back of Demyx's mind), but it pulls at him, and he doesn't quite know what to do about it.

He follows its urging, intrigued.

And finds a man. Sitting on an uncomfortable hospital bench, hands clasped tightly in front of him, fierce eyes caught on and staring at the closed door in front of him. Slate colored hair falls across his face, and Demyx can see that the other side of his hair goes down further than the side he sees. The man is pale, and his eyes are blue, and Demyx can feel him filling the hallway, emotions like smooth water, parting around him. For all his inner turmoil (and Demyx can feel him think in a way he hasn't known he could), the stranger's face is blank and stoic.

Demyx glances down to his clipboard. He's supposed to check on the kid in the room the person is staring at, but he has the strangest impulse to talk to the man on the bench. (And he's never been one for resisting his impulses.)

"Hey," he says quietly as he is walking forward, feeling strangely as though he is floating through water.

The stranger's focus snaps over to him, and there is a sudden torrent of worry mixed with fear and guilt and irritation, all flooding towards him. None of it shows besides a slight flicker of interest in cobalt blue eyes. There is an eddy of greeting and grudging assessment as he opens his mouth.

"Hello," the man replies, but he adds no more, only going back to his contemplation of the door in front of him.

Cautiously, Demyx takes a few steps closer, looking between the man and the door. He glances down at the clipboard to see the name of the patient inside. "Sora. Sora Erikson. This must be…" And he reads through the patient file, confused. There are no family members listed around the age of the person in front of him.

"My name's Demyx Fitz. You are…?" he trails off, waiting for an answer.

After a moment, the man looks back up at him. "Zexion Erikson." And he falls silent once more, though his eyes do not leave him this time. Curiosity -sweet, and friendly, and singing to him softly- brushes against his raw mind and retreats in a wave, leaving Demyx bereft in its absence. None of Zexion's thoughts show on his face, though the depths of his feelings tempt Demyx so much. To what, he doesn't know.

The blonde takes a brief moment to compose himself, tingling prickling up and down his arms. "What are you doing out here?" he asks, wondering why Zexion is outside the room when he should be sitting next to his…son? Brother? Cousin? (Relative.)

"That's my little brother in there." Zexion's fingers clench harder, the only outward sign of the sudden crash of grief/worry that Demyx feels coming from him. That by itself erased any spot of doubt in Demyx's mind that he was lying. "They … won't let me in to see him."

"Oh?" And Demyx studies the door and the man in front of it curiously. He wanders closer still, leaning against the wall next to Zexion.

"I just want to see him... Make sure he's okay…."

The thought drifts across the space between him and Zexion, and it is flavored in smoky and subtle flavors, the emotions behind it complex and fluid. Demyx welcomes it into his mind, ignoring the worry and paranoia flickering in the edges of his thoughts. (Why is this so easy with this one person? Why does it not hurt, he wants it more and closer)

Zexion shrugs a shoulder expressively. "The on-staff nurses won't let me in. They won't tell me why either." He clenches his hands once more, turning his eyes back to the door. "He has pneumonia. And they won't. Let. Me. See him." His voice is determined not to break, though the swelling passion that Demyx can feel emanating from him fills the voids in his words.

Looking over at the door, Demyx searches the air for feelings coming beyond it, but he is overwhelmed by the emotions of the man next to him. Nothing comes from the boy inside the room. Nevertheless, he feels the worry and sheer need to see his brother coming from Zexion and he finds he cannot…. He just cannot….

Cannot not try and make this man happy, as strange as it is.

"So, uh, you want me to let you into his room?"

(Even Zexion's shock and surprise are sweet like spices.)

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So, uh, first chapter yay? I'm sort of hoping that you all like it, even if you don't really understand what's going on yet. Give it time, I promise. There'll be a lot of time to give.

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Chapter 2...

Comments

[theplumtomato.livejournal.com]

N'aww, okay. We can be fashionably late to parties together, then XD
<3