FicWad

Demyx had always been a bit of a puzzle to Roxas. He didn't actively dislike the musician, he was always just...a bit of a loner, apparently. Not in the same way as Zexion, who apparently hated humanity in general and wanted as little to do with it as possible. Demyx was friendly - no denying that - and could be quite talkative if someone else initiated conversation, but he didn't go out of his way to socialize. Of course, when Roxas first met him, he'd had an arm in a sling and wasn't on active duty in the first place, and within a week of his going back on duty, he and Axel had been sent off to New Orleans, precipitating a long fiasco. And after coming back from that, he'd been sick for a week. Most of what Roxas knew about him was from reputation and what little he'd seen in New Orleans - he was friendly, smiled a lot, bit of an oddball, abnormally emotional, didn't like trouble, hated fighting, and loved music, and supposedly he and Axel had been pretty close once upon a time. That always made Roxas wonder whether his arrival had upset some sort of delicate balance, pushed the two of them apart somehow, because Axel didn't seem to pay all that much attention to Demyx.

Like now, for instance. The musician, sitting just on the other side of Axel, had obviously been crying about something, judging from his red face and puffy eyes, and Axel didn't seem to notice; he was focused completely on the food in front of him. Well, Axel ate like a starved animal, but boy, was he being oblivious...

Roxas sighed as Axel scooped himself up another helping of potatoes, and wondered if he was deliberately ignoring the Melodious Nocturne for some reason. "Demyx looks pretty cut up about something; I wonder what's eating him," he said in a conversational tone.

"Huh?" Axel set his plate down and looked around, as if he didn't have any idea who Roxas was talking about, much less what; apparently he really was that oblivious. Roxas wanted to smack him."Oh...Demyx...hey...you look pretty upset; what's up?" he asked, as if Roxas hadn't prompted him.

Demyx glanced up from his dinner. "'Scuse me, what?"

"I said, you look pretty upset. What's up?"

Demyx shrugged and tried to smile. "Oh. Nothing. I didn't even know I looked upset." He scrubbed experimentally at his face, which only made it redder. "I'm fine."

"Okay." Axel shrugged and went back to eating his dinner. "Bullshit," he muttered to Roxas.

"What do you think is up with him?" Roxas asked quietly.

Axel shrugged again. "I dunno. Maybe nothing. I don't quite get the way he works - he's the most emotional out of any of us by along shot, though that's not saying much; maybe just being able to sort of feel without a heart does weird things to his head sometimes. I'm not the expert in this shit, but I kinda suspect that's not the case. Whatever it is, he's not gonna share it at the dinner table. Can you reach the basket of rolls?"

Roxas handed him a roll. What he remembered about how emotions were supposed to work could be wadded up and stuffed into a thimble with enough room left over for a dozen poppy seeds and a few ground-up petals from the poppy itself. Then he started thinking about how Marluxia would react to that analogy, and forgot about Demyx's emotional state.