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Demyx wakes up feeling like the band is practicing in the back of his skull. Everything hurts, his skin's too tight, and the inside of his mouth tastes like something furry died in it last night. He burrows under the pillow and tries to hide from the light coming in the windows.
Then, because his luck's never bad when it could be really rotten instead, the door bangs open. Loudly.
"Morning, sleepyhead!" Zack says, way more loudly than he needs to. Demyx doesn't move, praying he'll just go away.
When Zack lands on the bed -- lands hard, like he fucking jumped -- and the mattress rocks under him, Demyx groans. He feels like he's going to be sick. "Zack," he says, and he hates that whining tone in his voice, but he feels awful. "Come on, can't you just let me sleep? I had a rough night."
"Yeah, I know you did." Zack moves, and the bed lurches, and then he's straddling Demyx's hips and prying the pillow out of Demyx's hands, letting the damn light in again. "I was still awake when you came home, remember?"
"I --" Demyx stops, eyes squeezed shut. It would help if Zack would stop yelling. But he remembers a little, remembers coming home late last night, still keyed up from the show and the after party and the...stuff...he'd done there, and...fuck. He's so doomed. "Look, Zack...."
"What were you on?" Zack interrupts, before Demyx can figure out where to start.
Demyx flinches. He's so, so doomed. "What was I on?" he asks weakly.
Zack sighs. "You came home high out of your fucking head at three in the morning with your eyes glowing and tried to stick your tongue down my throat, Demyx."
The whole fucking building is probably hearing about it right now, too, Demyx thinks. He cringes at every word, remembering how everything had felt all super-real and intense, and how he'd wanted to mess around while he was high -- he remembers crawling into Zack's lap, god. And now his head is pounding and Zack is so loud. He reaches up to put his hands over his ears. If Zack won't be quieter, he'll just --
He'll just get his wrists pinned to the mattress beside his head, apparently, so Zack can loom over him and keep yelling. "What did you take? Blackjack? Fireballs? Bliss?"
Wait, Zack's the good kid in the family. The one who's not a raging fuckup at every turn. Where'd he pick up the street names for this stuff?
"Bliss," Demyx says, cracking one wary eye.
Big mistake. Zack is giving him the I'm Very Disappointed In You look, the one you usually have to be somebody's dad to pull off. "You know what goes into that shit?" he asks.
Demyx shakes his head. "One of the guys at the party had some to share," he says weakly. Everybody there was doing it, sniffing little bumps of pale green shimmering powder, and then -- then everything turned sort of strange and beautiful. "It didn't seem like a big deal."
"Didn't seem...." At least Zack isn't as loud now. "Demyx, bliss is dirty mako."
That makes Demyx frown, makes him try to glare up at Zack. He's afraid it probably looks more like a pout. "What the fuck, Zack? You've had mako in a needle."
"Yeah," Zack says. "In clean, measured doses, under supervision, after I'd been screened to make sure I could handle it." His grip gets tighter, and Demyx winces involuntarily at the pressure against the bones of his wrists -- which at least makes Zack ease up, like he didn't realize how rough he was being. "They make bliss by crushing materia and cutting it with cheaper stuff so it'll be weak enough to snort. Bad stuff. Household cleaners. Fucking rat poison."
Demyx bristles, fighting the urge to shrink down into a little ball. Zack's the only one in the family who usually doesn't treat him like he's a total reject for being...well, for not being Zack. "Sorry, dad," he says, and feels like a big jerk almost immediately. "I -- look, I feel really awful. Can you just let me up so I can get some water, and then you can yell at me some more?"
"Promise me you won't do it again." Zack lets go of Demyx's wrists and sits back on his heels, his weight settling uncomfortably low over Demyx's hips.
"Come on, Zack," Demyx pleads. He tries to sit up, but Zack was about a million times stronger than he is even before SOLDIER training, and now it's just. Well. It'd be laughable if he didn't need to get up so damn bad. "Please? I really need some water."
Zack nods. "I bet you do. You're probably dehydrated like crazy. So, you going to promise?"
The noise that comes out of Demyx's throat is completely undignified, totally a whine. "Come on, don't be such a jerk, Zack. Why do you have to be such a hardass about this?"
"Demyx," Zack says, like he's trying hard to stay patient, "it's a big privilege for First Class to live off-base. If anybody found drugs in my apartment, or found out that somebody living here was using, I could get booted out. And besides." He rests a hand on Demyx's side, comfortable and familiar, and his little crooked smile says it's not as bad as all that, not really. "I'm your cousin, and I love you. I didn't invite you to the capital of the known universe so you could kill yourself by snorting rat poison."
Demyx laughs weakly, which makes his head hurt worse. "Yeah, okay. I didn't know it was that big a deal." He'd hate to let Zack down, when Zack's been the only one in the family with any faith in him at all. "I won't do it again. Promise. Now can I please get up and get some water?"
Zack leans down and kisses his forehead. "Don't go anywhere. I'll grab you a potion."
That's the first good thing Demyx has heard all day, really. He lies there, ceiling spinning slowly in the opposite direction from his stomach, and listens to Zack rummaging around in the bathroom. After a minute he tries to sit up, which does nothing for his head but makes his stomach at least a little less ready to revolt.
"Here you go," Zack says when he gets back. "Catch."
On a good day, Demyx would have fumbled it; now he misses entirely, and the bottle lands with a little thunk on the blanket. He picks it up, studying the label on the blue plastic. "You have any of the Zero kind?"
When he looks up, Zack is staring at him like he's grown an extra head. "Potion Zero," Zack says slowly, "doesn't do anything. It has no calories because the active ingredients have been removed. All it does is taste the same." He leans against the doorway, grinning wryly. "And I can't imagine why anyone would drink the damn things for the taste."
Demyx laughs, blushing a little and looking down. If anybody would know that for sure, it'd be the guys who really need to have stuff they can count on, right? He feels like -- like such a tool. It's a good thing he's got Zack, because his mom was probably right -- he's too dumb to make it in Midgar on his own. He twists off the cap on the potion, relieved that he's still competent enough for that, and chugs it as fast as he can. It tastes like crap, but he can feel it helping, and the diet ones were never like that.
Then Zack sits down next to him, gently this time, and wraps an arm around his waist. "What are you counting calories for, anyway? You don't need to lose an ounce."
"You think not?" He's been worrying about it since the band started doing shows, fussing about his image, trying to look as cool as he thinks he's supposed to.
Zack gives him the really good smile, the one that makes him warm inside. "Definitely not," Zack says. "It couldn't possibly make you cuter than you are."
"Flirt," Demyx says, but he smiles back.