Title: hearty-heart stew

Author: Digimon Empress Yaten (de yaten)

Warnings: Gore, cannibalism. Dark. Weirdness and run-on sentences. The majority was written when I was under the influence of painkillers and two pulled teeth, I just now found the time to tweak and upload it so it makes more sense.

Notes: Giftfic. Prompt: "We do too have hearts - don't be mad!" Also, because I have a weird fanon—I've always differentiated between a "heart" and a "Heart"—with the uppercase Heart being what is ripped from the body by the Heartless, and the heart is simply the organ. Reviews welcome as always, especially if you favorite!

Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts or its characters, I don't claim to own them.

Demyx found it very, very hard to resist somebody with a heart.

And not that fairytale-glittering diamond Heart that would end up crawling back to a bright Kingdom Hearts like a kicked dog – no no, he found an honest-to-goodness beating heart surrounded by a pretty little nest of bones and tissue simply irresistible. He drifted toward them (like a Heartless, Axel smirked) until he couldn't contain the squirming non-feeling clawing at his chest any longer and he had to hear and feel the tempting little heart by any means necessary.

And Any Means Necessary was usually either fucking or killing. Sometimes both - it was a minor detail, really. Whatever made it easier to get them closer, because if they were closer it was easier to pretend that he was the one with the heart, and by extension the Heart, and if he had a Heart then it meant he could feel and if he could feel then there had to be something more to him than musical grins and sex and the endless dance-water-dance.

What was this one's name? Janice? Janet? J-something. Maybe. He couldn't remember. All he could remember was the beat beat beat (a steady fucking drumbeat) of her heart, caged by bone and muscle and flesh - first nice and slow against his ear and then hammering up towards his lips and finally, now, because it was just one of those days, hot and cupped in his hands.

But it was cooling, and when it cooled (warm full of life and love, but then cold like winter and ice and sometimes him) it made him want to run-run-run away. The smell and feel and oh shit, the gaping hole in Julie? Jane? J-something's chest was too much and it made his stomach twist.

But then, it was a heart and not a Heart in his hands, so it was a thick slick muscle with ridges and bumps and a nice coating of slimy blood and Demyx isn't too sure-what-else but he wants to know. He asked Axel, but Axel said he'd failed Biology (set the lab on fire) and why don't you just eat it and find out, Demyx?

And so he took VIII up on the suggestion (a little meat never hurt Nobody) and dug out a recipe book from the library gathering dust, because Zexion was gone and Axel only read magazines and who-knows what everyone else did with their time. Cooking was as good a hobby as any, he supposed, in a World That Never Was where the day was either spent on missions or window-shopping in stores without owners and going home to stare at heartless spiders skip-skittering up the wall. He spent the evening in the white-washed kitchen with the radio blaring, simmering and spicing and sipping the broth with a rough wooden spoon Luxord's Other carved. (The spoon tasted like ocean and beer, but the heart definitely did not.)

A heart didn't taste anything like he'd imagined it would, but he'd been laughing and whirling ideas of a taste that was beef and deer and sweet singing Snow White all in one sweet nibbling bite for hours now and he wasn't surprised that it didn't taste like that.

But this was something new entirely. Wet like water (warm like fire) and there was something – something – still pulsing deep below the herbs and spices that whispered (MydeMydeMyde) and begged him to throw away the fork and napkin folded just-so over his lap and dig in with everything he (once) had.

And when he did, it felt oh-so-good that his eyes closed all on their own, so he didn't see Axel sit next to him with no expression, didn't see the other watching blankly as the blood drip-drop-dripped from his chin onto a marble table for thirteen.

Axel only skeleton-smirked when Demyx's eyes opened and watched as something cherry-red was scooped from his lips (Axel had bone fingers) and sucked on like cherry-red candy by the Nobody with cherry-red hair, and the blonde with cherry-red lips watched as it dawned on him that it was not sweet cherry-red but dark and disgusting and it was blood.

Blood.

"Blood," Demyx said.

"Blood," Axel mimicked.

Axel was still smirking and Demyx closed his eyes so he didn't have to see the lips curved and stained with gore as he spoke. (He saw it anyway, Axel always in his mind.)

"At least you have an actual heart inside you now."

Demyx curled forward and tried to force the contents of his stomach onto the table.

He couldn't.

Cry.

: We do too have hearts - don't be mad! :