Creative Differences

Three months.  That was, approximately, twelve weeks, ninety days, or twenty-one hundred and sixty hours.  

But who was counting?  Certainly not Zexion.  He had better things to do.  Deadlines to meet.  Art galleries to populate.

Paintings to hopefully sell.

Practically covered in acrylic from head to toe, the blue-haired artist scrutinized his work, stepping over a mixing palette and a few scattered brushes on his studio floor to get a closer look out of his one unobstructed eye.

Detailed.  Lines precise, without a doubt.  It was also static, no movement.  Just like the last five he'd attempted.

Just about the opposite of what he was supposed to be working on.

He'd been signed to show in a gallery in two weeks time.  The theme was movement, the show's name Vibrance.

Zexion was, undoubtedly, unequivocally screwed, and he knew it.

Cupping his chin in one hand, entirely unconcerned about the smear of navy paint it would leave, Zexion sighed.  He'd have thought he was better than this.  How many times had he told himself Demyx was bad news with a capital everything?  Yet he'd let himself get attached, let himself swoon a little every time the tall blond had done something sweet or even romantic to win his affections.

Now he was gone, and Zexion's paintings all sucked.

Three months.  How was he going to get through this?

In fairness, the paintings weren't that terrible.  They might even be able to be displayed in some other gallery, at some other point time.

Assuming he didn't starve from lack of funds to buy groceries first.

He'd always been a good sketcher, and fascinated by architecture.  In the small town where Zexion had grown up, there weren't many impressive buildings to draw however.  For a time, he'd dabbled in portraits, in drawing the people and animals he saw around him.  Sometimes a tree or flower even.  But something had always come out a little off.  Physical movement, displays of emotions… he just couldn't seem to portray them accurately.

Buildings were better.  Sculptures were impassive.  For awhile, angles and edges were his only friends, and it made tolerating a big city like Chicago — with all its big city noises and big city overcrowding —  well… almost tolerable.

But then Demyx had come crashing quite literally into his life, in one impressively coifed flurry of blond hair and blues music.  And it had changed everything.

Yes, the crashing had been literal, for if there was one thing Zexion loathed, it was peoples' ignorant use of spoken expressions in general.  Literal means truly.  It's not there for emphasis.  It indicates reality, something that actually happened.

Demyx, quite literally, happened to Zexion.

Zexion sighed, found himself returning to his corner desk to stare dolefully at the myriad of half-finished pictures he'd drawn, all of the tiny coffee shop on the first floor of a much taller building on Ashland Avenue.  It was the location where he and Demyx had collided, the former entering while the latter had been running out for a smoke break in between song sets.

Zexion also despised people who smoked.

Pursing his lips a little, he snatched up a few of his rough sketches, bringing them back with him to the small room's center, beneath large fluorescent lights, surrounded by a mix of empty and occupied easels.

He'd meant to show the cafe in different stages of occupancy throughout the course of one night.  Yet they'd all come out looking static, the small details making up the street and seen within the cafe's large picture window simply enforcing the notion that the painting was impassive, unmoving.  Dead.

From the corner of his desk, Zexion's cell phone began to vibrate.  He may not have even noticed it, if not for its sudden dive off the edge and onto the concrete floor.

That got his attention.  

Growling a little under his breath and holding back a barrage of curse words — he'd always felt swearing was an exercise for the inarticulate — Zexion made his way across the room to retrieve the wayward phone.

Demyx.

A strange mix of excited anticipation and burning irritation flooded through Zexion's chest.  Dirty blond haired, blues rocker Demyx was the entire reason he was in this mess right now.

That wasn't entirely true, and Zexion knew it.  Technically, Demyx was the only reason he'd been offered the slot at Marluxia's art gallery anyway.  Seemed they went way back, probably in a way Zexion would rather not hear anything about without a liberal level of alcohol in his system.  Just the same, it'd given him an in, his first opportunity to reach a larger, wealthier audience.  It wasn't something he was willing to pass up.

He picked up the call, opened his mouth in greeting…

…and was promptly cut off by the low, crooning voice of his new boyfriend.

"Hey baaaaby," Demyx drawled, an obvious smile in his tone.  "Can I, can I …have your num-ber?"

Unexpectedly, irritatingly, Zexion felt a pleasant fluttering begin low in his stomach.  Still, he wasn't about to let Demyx off that easily.  Zexion was in a fowl, hopeless mood, and a little bit of off-key singing wasn't going to help with that, he thought with spite.

"You obviously already do," he replied, his voice meant to come out cold, falling somewhere between tight and flat-out stressed instead.

Demyx laughed through the line.  "I know, right?  I must've gotten seriously lucky."

"No kidding," the blue-haired man muttered under his breath, directing a glare at one half-finished canvass as though it were the blond musician himself.

"So, whatcha up to, cutie?"  Demyx's tone was good-natured, as though he was just coming down from the high of a show.

Zexion glanced at the digital clock on the far wall.  It was two in the morning in Chicago, midnight on the West Coast.  That was probably exactly what was going on.  And he had very little time before he'd have to pack up and get to bed if he wanted to be coherent for classes tomorrow.

"Still in the studio," he murmured, distracted.

Demyx's voice went instantly sympathetic.  "Creative issues, baby," he asked, prompting Zexion to bite the inside of his lip a little.

He'd always hated terms of affection.  Cutie.  Baby.  What was he, five?  But Demyx never seemed to tire of them, and Zexion did have to grudgingly admit they were hot to hear whispered against his ear during the few moments of intimacy they'd been able to spend together before Demyx had gotten the news that his band had been chosen to open on the West Coast leg of a national tour.

"You could say that," he replied, the scowl clear in his voice.  "Marluxia's going to kill me.  Or at least never invite me to show in his gallery again."  The last few words came out in a hopeless, negative rush.  Demyx made a soft sound of acknowledgement across the line.

"Doubt it, babe.  Still working on the cafe set?"

Zexion eyed the works in front of him, willfully ignoring the first comment.  "Unfortunately, yes," he said between gritted teeth.  

Demyx's tone instantly perked up.  "That's great though.  It was the night we met, right?"

Still scrutinizing his most recent sketches, Zexion only nodded with a slight sound of acknowledgement.  "Mm."

Over the line, it was possible to hear the smile in Demyx's voice.  "That night was boss, man.  So busy, full of people," his said, his voice turning sly, "so much possibility to run into someone hot."

Yeah.  That was pretty much exactly what Zexion didn't like about going anywhere populated.  If not at a friend's prodding, he wouldn't have gone at all.

Demyx forged on though, not at all concerned about the lapse in speech two time zones over.

"And the running into turned into the introducing, and the introducing turned into a real date, with some kissing and some…" He trailed off, voice low but laughter audible.  "And all this time apart is gonna make me want to introduce myself to you all over again, babe."

The heat creeping up Zexion's neck was palpable at the thought.  Shyly, he looked out again at the barrage of unfinished paintings with his one uncovered eye.  Unconsciously, he imagined smoky breath at his lips in a way that didn't make him curl them up into a disgusted sneer as was usual whenever he smelled the tell-tale signs of a smoker.  

Something missing.  In his paintings, in his life.  And Zexion was beginning to have an inkling of what it was.

"Oh," he asked, the word forming a question at its end.  With a determined look, the blue-haired college student reached for a mixing brush and three light bright tones of acrylic.  "And how does one introduce themselves to someone they've already met?"

He was playing along, not something he usually did, not even with someone he really rather liked.  Or, at the very least, someone he felt some measure of attraction to, despite his best efforts the quell exactly that.

"Easy," Demyx replied, his tone still light, still perpetually positive.

Lowering himself to a cross-legged position on the canvass tarp covering his floor, Zexion began studiously mixing the three colors he'd chosen.  "Tell me, then."

"Well, it involves a bit of acting," Demyx admitted.

"I'm sure."  Zexion's lips curved upward into the hint of a smirk.

"And there's the part where I'd have to ram right into you again."

Zexion could almost imagine the suggestive eyebrow waggle from two thousand miles inland.

"Is that an absolute requirement," he asked, voice wry, hiding the steadily increasing flush creeping up his cheeks at the image.

"Oh, definitely," Demyx practically chirped.  "And then I have to apologize while I look you up and down, realize you're a total hottie—"

"Are the kids still using that term," Zexion interjected, going for sarcasm but coming off a bit mild as he felt the flush migrate to the tips of his ears.

This time Demyx did laugh.  "Sure, why not when it's true?"

Indeed, Zexion thought.  He switched the conversation to speaker phone, an unconscious smile lighting his face as he rose, paint palette and brush in hand.

"Anyway," Demyx said, apparently not in the least concerned about the lull in conversation from Chicago, "Then there'd be flirting and you putting me off but me not giving up."

"Sounds familiar," Zexion nodded, making a tentative stroke within the small space of the cafe window on one canvass.  An idea was forming in his mind, settling in, taking root.

"And then we'd be pretty much where we are now, unless a few make-out sessions I neglected to mention come to light."

Light.

Zexion stared.

People.

Both had been missing from his paintings.  He had, of course, painted them at night, but no light emitted from the windows of the cafe, no people adorned the interior or the streets surrounding it.  He didn't like drawing people as focal points in his works, always seemed to leave something essential out.  But as supplements to the building?  Completely oblivious to his own lapsed side of the conversation, Zexion began scraping off some acrylic with a small, blunt tool.  Then to add the lighting colors…

"Hey, Zex?  Still there?"

The voice brought him back, forced him away from his work.  "Oh.  Yes," he responded, voice distracted, distant.

"Everything alright in Chi-town, cutie?  You got quiet there for a second."

Slowly, Zexion reached for the phone, switching off the speaker as he lifted it back to his ear, eyes still on the minor changes he'd just implemented on canvass.  This could work, this could work.

"Fine, yes," he said vaguely.  "I just had an idea about my gallery pieces…"

"…And ya wanted to make sure you got it down before you forgot, am I right?"  The smile in Demyx's voice was obvious.

A nearly inaudible sound of acknowledgement came from the back of Zexion's throat, soft but affirmative.

"Coolio.  I do that when I'm working on new songs too, y'know, trying to get the right note or chord or word.  Or whatever."

Zexion yawned.  "You've told me."

It seemed the sound hadn't been lost on Demyx though.  "It's almost three over there, babe.  You've got school in the morning.  Time for you to get to bed, although unfortunately not into mine."

Again, that fluttering, light-headed feeling at Demyx's teasing words.  Then, a sudden, embarrassing realization.

"I didn't ask you how your first show went."  His tone was guilty.  He'd been so wrapped up in his own work that he'd forgotten the reason Demyx had probably called in the first place.

"Aww, that's sweet of you, cutie, but no worries.  I can tell ya later.  The next budding Picaso needs his beauty sleep, so get going."

Zexion hesitated, half wanting to continue talking, half wanting to patiently explain to Demyx that Picaso had been a cubist, a painter who excelled at abstract works, while he was anything but.  The words never left his mouth though, eyes returning to the canvas in front of him.

This was going to work.  This was actually going to work.  And somehow, in a manner that was entirely unknown to Zexion, Demyx had helped him through it.  It defied logic.

"Okay," he conceded, already gathering stray brushes up from the floor.  "Will you…"  Zexion stopped, trailing off.  He'd been about to say something unacceptable, something sickeningly sentimental.

For the first time that evening, there was silence on the other end.  Before he could stop himself, Zexion blurted out the rest of the sentence.

"Will you call me again tomorrow?"

How embarrassing to admit his needs like this, his desires.  Uncharacteristic to the core.

Demyx laughed, apparently delighted.  Zexion was already pulling the phone away from his ear as his new boyfriend murmured the last few words.  Yet he heard them, and he'd hold onto them for the next twenty-four hours like he'd never longed for anything before.  When the musician next spoke, it was an offering of reassurance or…to Zexion, a promise, even more.  

"I wouldn't miss it for the world."