Epilogue


It had been an impromptu, rash, split second decision that Vexen wasn't sure if he regretted or not. He looked down at Marluxia who was curled up in the blankets beside him for a moment. When that got boring he turned back to his book.
"How much longer are you going to be?" Marluxia asked wearily. It was already nearly midnight and the neophyte probably wanted to sleep.
"That depends on how many interruptions I get," Vexen replied snidely. Marluxia looked up at him with a slightly disdainful expression.
"It's nice to know that you treat me with such respect,"
"I treat you with more respect than you deserve,"
Marluxia gave a long suffering sigh.
"And what does that have to say about your tastes?"
"This has nothing to do with my tastes," Vexen huffed. "Now if you'll let me get to the end of this chapter,"
"Can't it wait until tomorrow?"
"No. Shut up and let me read,"
Marluxia sighed again and buried his head in the thick blankets again, curling up against Vexen's chest. For a moment, Vexen's eyes lingered on the younger man, but then the book called to him and he returned to picking words off the tattered page.
The decision had not only been rash and impromptu, but also very stupid. Marluxia was in complete contrast to Vexen's idea of an ideal partner; the opposite gender, for a start. He was a neophyte, an arrogant and egotistical one at that, he was disrespectful and headstrong and far too sure of his opinions. And, Vexen had come to realise, lived in a dream world with his head in the clouds, filled with delusions of perfection and grandeur. He was all ideas and plans and detailed aesthetics and absolutely no practical application whatsoever.
But he'd been caught up in the rush of everything and not even thought for one split second before he'd said yes. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, he was beginning to think clearly about all the problems that his words would pose.
The most immediate and physical of all, Marluxia was propped up against his ribcage and very heavy. Vexen glanced down at him, his pink hair brushing across his face, hand resting on Vexen's chest, fingers slightly curled. Marluxia must have noticed that Vexen was looking at him, and glanced up through his thick eyelashes.
"Done yet?"
"Just one more page,"
"You said that twenty minutes ago," Marluxia huffed. Vexen looked back at the book.
"Did I?" He asked distantly. Of course he knew that he had indeed said that, but there was no harm in irking Marluxia a little more. A small thought mentioned that perhaps he might be part of the problem, but he ignored it.
"You're intolerable sometimes," Marluxia replied, yawning. "And I'm exhausted. If you don't close that book in the next thirty seconds I'll remove it for you,"
"What makes you think you could?" Vexen snipped. Marluxia glared, making a grab for the old leather bound volume a second too late as Vexen simply held it out of the way.
"I'm fully capable of restraining you and you know it,"
"You're dirty,"
"What?! I didn't mean it like that!" Marluxia reached up, trying to grab a hold of the book, but Vexen was holding it above his head, still reading. "You're the dirty one, taking everything I say as an innuendo!"
"Then I suggest you save yourself the embarrassment and don't say anything at all,"
For once, Marluxia actually did the sensible thing and shut up. Vexen returned to his book, and admittedly it was a few pages until the end of the chapter, but it really only was a couple. Finally at a convenient stopping point, he memorised the page number and snapped the book shut.
"I'm done," He announced, fully expecting a sarcastic reply of something along the lines of "Finally...", but there was nothing. Not even an exasperated sigh or a murmur. "Marluxia?" Vexen said, quieter this time as he glanced down at the other nobody. Asleep already. "Well, if you could get to sleep with the light on then why complain?" He muttered, feeling an irrational smirk form on his face. He leaned over to the bedside table to put down the book and turn off the light, but didn't get far. With Marluxia lying on him just so, there was no way he could reach the table and the lamp without knocking him over and waking him up.
Well. Vexen wasn't tired and he still had fifteen more chapters to go. He opened the book again and resumed his reading.

At some point something told him it was morning and forced him to wake up. He groaned as instead of being greeted by the familiar lurking darkness, bright light hit his eyes. He quickly screwed them up to avoid temporary blindness and peered up at the man he had been sleeping on.
"You're still reading?" Marluxia asked, disbelieving.
"I couldn't reach the lamp to turn it off with you sleeping on me like that. And you were asleep, so I figured a few more hours of uninterrupted reading time wouldn't hurt,"
Marluxia glanced round at the clock on the wall.
"It's six o'clock. And you're still reading."
"Yes," That was another thing. Marluxia was one of those people constantly stating the obvious.
"Do you ever sleep?!"
"Don't be ridiculous, Marluxia. Of course I do,"
"I do wonder sometimes. Now turn that lamp off and let me sleep. Stupid light made my subconscious think it was morning,"
"It is morning," Vexen pointed out.
"I don't care. It's too early," Marluxia grumbled, wriggling back down into the ample bedding again, throwing one of the blankets over his head to block out the light.
Actually, Vexen mused, Marluxia was quite cute sometimes when half asleep and disagreeable. Not that he wasn't always disagreeable, but still. Eventually, Vexen leaned over to turn the light out and then set about searching for Marluxia underneath the blankets. Eventually his hands came into contact with Marluxia's waist, and he wrapped his arms around the other man, pulling him closer.
"I'm supposed to be up in half an hour," He whispered in Marluxia's ear.
"Says who?" Came the muttered reply as Marluxia pressed himself against Vexen's body, hugging him tight.
"Zexion. We have some experiments to evaluate,"
"Screw evaluation. I'm finally comfortable and you need to sleep,"
Vexen smiled in the darkness. He had to admit it to himself, after a stressful day and then pulling an all-nighter, he was rather tired. And being curled up in blankets and Marluxia was surprisingly comfortable.
"Fine," He mumbled back, letting his eyelids slide shut. It barely took a minute for him to fall fast asleep.

--

After fruitlessly knocking on Vexen's door with varying degrees of politeness and force, Zexion eventually gave up and just walked in unbidden. It was dark inside, but the cloaked schemer was sure that Vexen would be in here, if only because he'd simply looked everywhere else. Leaving the ajar to allow some of the light from the corridor to enter, he slipped in. On the bed, there was a huge pile of blankets, steadily rising and falling as the man underneath it slept. The quantity of bedding in itself was odd; Vexen's room was always cold but of course it never bothered the crytokinetic nobody. Also, the fact that it was nearing eleven o'clock and Vexen was asleep was highly unusual. Zexion reasoned that the trip he'd just returned from must have been tiring, but surely not so much so to warrant getting up three and a half hours late? He'd have thought that Vexen would have been sensible enough to go to bed early if he was that exhausted, but then again Vexen did have rather peculiar sleeping habits.
Unable to solve the dilemma without further inspection, Zexion picked his way through the cluttered room in the half light to the bed. He lightly shook what he hoped was Vexen's shoulder, hoping to wake the sleeping scientist. When he received no response, he simply threw back the covers. To his surprise, he found not one, but two sleeping nobodies, peacefully curled up in each other's arms.
That was unexpected, Zexion told himself, stepping backwards slightly. By all accounts of Xigbar, Vexen and Marluxia still classed each other as being in the utter loathing category, but here they were sleeping together as though it was what they always had done. The freeshooter needed to know this. As quietly as he could, Zexion slipped back out of the room, closing the door behind him. Well, that would explain why Vexen was still asleep, if he'd been up all night with Marluxia.
It took a while to find Xigbar. Zexion supposed that if he tried sharing any top-secret information with one of the other members, then Xigbar would unfailingly appear on the ceiling to eavesdrop, but since the information that the illusionist held now was something that Xigbar really needed to know for once, of course he would be nowhere to be found.
In his searching, he spotted Demyx in the training arena, however. He had been part of the big plan too, so Zexion figured that he might as well know.
"Demyx," He called out to the water elemental as he entered through the spectator seats. Demyx spun around.
"Oh! Zexion! Hiya!"
"Must you punctuate everything with exclamation marks?" Zexion sighed at Demyx's never ending enthusiasm. He only succeeded in confusing the musician, however. "Anyway. Guess who I found in Vexen's bed this morning,"
"Uh... Vexen?" Demyx hazarded, evidently not to bright today.
"I mean in bed with Vexen,"
"Oh! Oh my God! Really?!" Demyx's confused face suddenly split into a wide grin.
"Assuming that you're thinking Marluxia, yes," Zexion muttered.
"What's all this about our resident flower boy?" Came a loud voice from high above them. Zexion sighed again. Typical.
"I thought you'd pop up out of nowhere as soon as I mentioned anything interesting, Xigbar. Now get down off the ceiling so I can talk to you properly,"
There was a whoosh as the black shape of Xigbar hurtled towards the floor at high speed, landing with a thump barely inches away from where the two already ground based nobodies were standing.
"You don't need to constantly show off, you know,"
"We're not all cloaks and daggers, little Zexion," Xigbar, not all that tall himself, laughed, patting Zexion's head.
"Do you want to know what it is about Marluxia?" Zexion snapped, waving Xigbar away, irritably.
"I'm sure Demyx will tell me, right, dude?" Xigbar laughed off the murderous glare that Zexion shot at him as Demyx just grinned like an idiot. "Ok, ok, take a chill pill," Xigbar muttered when Zexion kept glaring. "I take it back. But you're still short. Now what about Marluxia?"
Zexion sighed. Surrounded by idiots. He opened up a portal to Vexen's room.
"Look. It'll be better if I just show you,"

"Dude." Xigbar was staring at the sleeping couple with unsuppressed glee.
"Do you realise how annoying that word is?" Zexion hissed. "Quieten down. I don't want to wake them,"
"They're so cute! I want to take a photo!" Demyx flipped open his phone and carefully lined up a shot.
"I wonder what they were doing all night that left them so tired that they're still sleeping," Xigbar whispered. The remark sent Demyx into fits of silent giggles.
"Shut up!" Zexion said again. "If they wake up-"
He was interrupted by a ball of black leather and electrical sparks that suddenly shot out of a portal.
"Larxene?!"
The organisation's only girl studied members II, VI and IX for a moment and laughed, not even bothering to keep her voice down.
"Oh! I expected to find Marluxia here, but not you three as well. It's shameful, really, peeping on the dearest newly-weds. Whatever is the Organisation coming to?"
"Keep your voice down!" Zexion hissed again. "You'll wake them up!"
"Too late," Came Vexen's unmistakable voice, groggy from sleep, as he rolled over to face the trespassers. "What the hell are you all doing here?" He peered at Xigbar and Demyx, both wearing identical sheepish expressions, an angry looking Zexion and Larxene, detached and amused by the whole situation. When the men failed to come up with an explanation, Larxene stepped in to help with a devious smile.
"We wanted to congratulate you, of course,"
"Really? On what?"
"Oh, I don't know. Getting laid, perhaps?" Larxene's grin widened as Vexen froze, face turning as red as Axel's hair.
"What?! T-that never-" The academic just managed to splutter.
"Oh, come on!" Why else would you still be asleep at this time of day?"
"Gah! No! I was reading! Reading! Get whatever perverted thoughts you're having out of your head! Nothing happened!"
"Quick to defend ourselves, aren't we, Vexen? Got something to hide?" Larxene pressed, taunting Vexen further. He gave her an exasperated look.
"I hate you all," He finally conceded after a moment, rolling over onto Marluxia whom he'd forgotten was still lying there asleep.
"Ow! Vexen! That was my-"
Vexen mercifully shut him up by clamping his hands down hard on Marluxia's mouth.
"Shut up! Just shut up! Don't even think about it!" He screeched, trying to hold the struggling assassin down as Larxene howled with laugher. Eventually Vexen gave up, miserably burying his head head in the pillow.
"...Elbow," Marluxia finished quietly, thoroughly confused. "Morning everyone. What's wrong with Vexen?"

After a few minutes and several patchy explanations, Vexen firmly ushered the gaggle of nobodies out of the door, slamming it behind them.
"Do you really think that they, you know... Did it?" Demyx asked Larxene.
"'Course not. Even Marluxia doesn't move that fast. I was just winding Vexen up,"
"Oh. Well. It's great that they're together, though, right? We didn't even need to do anything in the end,"
"So it was you guys who left the rose and all that other stuff, then. Shoulda guessed that,"
"Somebody needed to get them together. It's obvious that they're made for each other," Xigbar wisely commented.
"I admit I didn't think it was that obvious until Marluxia confessed that he'd fallen head over heels for old cranky scientist here. Whilst eating cheesecake, I might add," Larxene replied.
"So that's where it went," Zexion muttered. "There was still more than half of it left. Did he eat it all?"
"Yup," Larxene grinned. Marluxia's best friend she may have been, but that didn't mean that she wasn't going to tell on him when the owner of the cheesecake came round asking where it had gone.
"Holy cow," Demyx said with enthusiasm. (Improbable censors for expletives had become something of a trademark of Demyx's. Unfortunately it also mean the birth of a lot of terrible innuendos, courtesy of Xigbar. Carrots would never be the same again in the Organisation.) "I saw the size of that thing. No way could he have have eaten it all,"
"He didn't eat all of it. Just half," Larxene said.
"Oh,"
They parted their separate ways.