Disclaimer: Touchingly not mine.
A/N: Written for Challenge #229 – 'Favourite Body Part' at KH Drabble (one of the oddest challenges I've seen so far from that community).
Hand in Hand
© Scribbler, June 2010.
Axel had long fingers. For some reason Larxene thought of them as pianist's fingers, but when she tried to imagine him playing piano the image wouldn't come. Axel burning a piano, sure, but not playing one. He was as tuneful as an elephant fart, and about as useful.
Painter's fingers then. Except it was the same deal: Axel wasn't built to create. Perhaps his fingers were meant to manipulate – like his brain. A holdover from the life he'd had before becoming a Nobody? She visualised him in a white coat instead of black leather, a 'Dr. Axel, Chiropractor' badge pinned to his chest. Except that, if he was some kind of doctor before, it would've been his real name. She flicked through possibilities like a mental rolodex with very few pages: not many options when your name can only possibly have three letters: Ale, Lae, Ela, Lea. They all sounded like pretentious cocktails at a seedy bar. Add 'Doctor' and the fun never ended.
Dr. Ale, Alcoholic Beverage Researcher.
Dr. Lae, Sex Therapist.
Dr. Ela, Transsexual Surgeon.
Dr. Lea, TV Talk Show Host Who Thinks He's a Shrink.
She switched to another rolodex, this one of careers requiring long fingers. Axel the writer? Only if it meant scrawling dirty limericks on bathroom walls. She was more a fan of poison pen letters herself. Axel the typist? That just brought up images of him in a secretary's pencil skirt and blouse, which was fun in its own way, but didn't ring true enough to be more than a joke. Axel the gardener?
That one made her pause. Marluxia was the gardener. He also had long fingers, which he took out of his gloves when gentleness was called for. He fought like a demon, encased in leather to grip his scythe, but touched his flowers with bare hands, as if savouring the softness of each petal. Larxene remembered him in his garden when she first arrived at the castle; running the tip of one index finger up the stem of a rose, skin catching and tearing when he didn't slow down, or even try to avoid the thorns. He'd looked up, seen her watching, and smiled, like he felt more than just the physical pain of a cut finger. She'd gone and pressed her own naked finger to the edge of a throwing knife, but whatever he'd felt, she didn't. Couldn't. Not even when he drew it along her skin for her, blood beading until he licked it away. Marluxia was a gardener, a creator, who could pull life from empty earth. Marluxia could make her feel lots of things with his long fingers, but he couldn't make her feel.
Axel wasn't a creator; he was a destroyer. Fire burned. Fire annihilated. Maybe she'd have better luck with Axel's long fingers instead.
"What are you staring at?"
She blinked back to reality. Axel was in front of her, frowning. She'd curled into the corner of a sofa with a book in her lap, the corner of the page dog-eared where she'd folded and unfolded while her mind wandered. Her fingers were slender but average sized – good for flipping pages, carving out throats and sticking pins into eyeballs. She was a destroyer too.
She smiled, but it had no warmth. "Can you play the piano?"
"What?"
"Or paint my portrait? Immortalise me in oils? Fix my back problems with a few magic twists?"
Axel's frown deepened. "Why the hell would I want to do that? You never make any sense."
Larxene just continued to smile, flexing her hands in and out.
Fin.
.