A/N: The chapter in which this fic vigorously earns its 'M' rating. Ehehehe.

There's a quote in the third section, right before Zexion enters the café ("There's nothing you can take from me…" etc., etc.). I will take a request from the first person to correctly identify the quote (that is, the name of the work it came from, who said it - and if you know, the scene, though that part isn't necessary). So, have fun, enjoy the read, ID the quote aaaand….you guessed it, review!


~Awake (And All the King's Horses and All the King's Men….)~


Larxene lifted Zexion – as thin and petite as he was – from the couch and cradled his shaking figure to her body. Axel watched and felt both intrigued and awkward. He wouldn't have guessed that a woman whose presence was as sharp and static as hers could handle anything with such tender care.

"I'm going to put him to bed." She announced quietly. The softness in her eyes didn't match up with the rest of her, though he had a feeling that the relationship between her and Zexion was more like mother to child than anything else. She disappeared into the hallway and did not reappear for several minutes. He looked around the apartment. It was small, but modern and stylish. He wondered who had arranged the décor.

When Larxene emerged, her eyes bore an expression he found much more fitting. He leaned against the back of the couch and lit a cigarette.

"So," she said. Her tone seemed to smirk, and was slightly amused. "Your name is Axel and you're in my living room. Want a beer?"

"Yeah, I'll take one."

She opened the fridge and tossed him a can of Heineken. He caught it, popped it open, and took a long swig.

"So," he said, parroting her smug tone, "Your name is Larxene and you have blue eyes and you drink Heineken. Anything else I should know?"

"I'm a good fuck."

"Classy." He said. He couldn't help a laugh. "Is that an invitation?"

"It could be. You know, if you play your cards right."

He quirked an eyebrow and took another drink. She moved closer but stopped just short of touching him, instead perching on the back of the couch a foot or so away. He caught her scent, which was something like lavender and spent firecrackers.

A twelve pack of beer and one witty conversation later, kissing her seemed perfectly logical. She responded immediately, dug her nails into the fabric of his shirt, and he was sure she was about to rip it off. There was no reason for any of it. But Axel was not a creature of reason, and besides, she was pretty like a lightning strike and she was there and she wanted him. So it was easy.

He slid out of his shirt and tossed it unceremoniously across the room.

She ran her hands along his ribs. He pushed her lightly, toppling her over the edge and onto the couch; he leapt over to join her in one nimble move.

"You…"

"Bastard? Yeah. Got it. Now let me focus."

She obliged. And for a long time they were nothing but lips and legs, hips and thighs, and tangled mess of bodies. He pulled her blouse up over her head and attacked the skin at the hollow of her neck. She gasped. Her heart fluttered underneath his mouth.

"Condom." He muttered.

"In my purse."

He slid off of her and walked to the kitchen table, a difficult and painful venture in and of itself. He spilled the contents of her small black bag out over the surface of the table and, just for a moment, balked at the sheer amount of variety. Clearly the woman was prepared for any situation. He picked up a small, shining package, ripped off the wrapping and his pants, pulled the latex over his throbbing erection.

It occurred to him briefly that screwing his friend's roommate was not the best idea. The thought was banished when he returned to the couch to find Larxene had slipped out of her pants and lay, gloriously nude, waiting for him. She smirked at him and tilted her hips up.

He needed no more invitation.

When he pushed into her, there was no sense of completion, no feeling of puzzle pieces coming together. It was not beautiful, it was not love. It was hot and fast and dirty and crude as he thrust into her rhythmically, his hands underneath her hips while she rocked in nearly perfect time.

"Oh – holy.." She rasped out as he hit that spot, that ohgoditfeelssofuckinggood – "Axel!" She shrieked.

In the room down the hallway, Zexion woke.

.x.

He emerged from the darkness and sprang to life as dawn bled pink into the night sky. For a moment, there was nothing, and then – feeling. It rushed into him like music, strains and notes and instruments overlapping, mixing. It was like running frozen hands under a hot stream of water.

He tried to separate and identify, classify, make sense of these new sensations.

There was sadness, deep and mellow and aching. Pain, red and angry like an infected wound. A landscape of brokenness, rifts and caverns of the soul. Hatred, a black and starless sky…

And then sound flooded back.

"Axel!" He heard Larxene scream. It took a few moment to register; he hardly ever paid attention to her sex cries. But then it dawned on him. It was….

He pressed his face into his pillow and screamed until his lungs could no longer sustain it. He remembered that he had been riding in Axel's car, remembered the feeling of slowly falling apart as it reached it's terrible climax, and how he had known a sudden, bright agony. He had only the faintest memory of being helped into the apartment and laid in bed.

And now Axel was fucking his best friend senseless in the living room. Which was just fantastic, he thought wryly as he slipped out of bed.

Though he had been out for an afternoon and an entire night, he felt as though he hadn't slept at all. He contemplated calling in to the hospital, but decided against it; he didn't want to drag out his community service and besides…there was someone he wanted, needed to see.

A wave of dizziness crashed into him as he entered the bathroom. He staggered forward and gripped the edges of the sink, squeezed his eyes shut and prayed for it to pass. His stomach churned. He was sick.

He turned the faucet on to rinse the sink out and looked into the mirror. He wasn't surprised to find that he looked like shit – pale, drawn, his eyes puffy and red from crying. The three tears in his cheek looked angry.

He turned the faucet off and the shower on, cranking the hot water all way up. Steam billowed out and mercifully fogged his reflection. Very slowly, and with shaking hands, he removed his clothes. He winced as the fabric of his turtleneck was torn from the neck wound where fibers had clung.

The hot water felt something like a miracle as it ran over his skin. He sank down and curled up in the corner of the shower, drew his knees to his chest, and stayed there until the water ran cold.

He dressed and went into the living room, where the scent of sex hung so heavily in the air he nearly gagged again. Larxene and Axel were sprawled out on the couch. They'd pulled an old blanket over their naked bodies, for which Zexion was immensely grateful. He'd seen enough of Larxene's body to last him a lifetime.

He left, decided to the walk to Castle.

That night, he thought, he was going to get very, very drunk, and lay in bed doing nothing but attempting to drown out the sickening rush of feeling. He hoped Larxene remembered to buy more vodka. While his false ID was as good as the one he'd made for her, he'd forgotten his and he knew that after the hospital and a shift at the café, he wouldn't be in the mood to leave the apartment again once he arrived.

He ignored Kairi and Sora as per usual, but nodded to Roxas when he saw him carrying a meal tray.

When he entered Demyx's room, he found that the patient was not staring out at the water, but gazing at the doorway expectantly.

"Zex." He said, so softly and gently that Zexion began to tremble and feared that he would cry right on the spot. "Come here." He scooted over in the bed.

Zexion forced his shaking legs forward, hesitantly propelled himself to the hospital bed. He crawled in. It was a snug fit, and he could feel the thinness of Dem's eaten body against his. "I was lying." He whispered, "When I said my mother never hurt me."

"I know." Thin hands played with his hair. It had a soothing effect. "The first time I met you, I could see how much pain you were in. I can still see it. But I don't know how to help you…"

"Nobody can help me. I can't be fixed. I'm a – I'm broken like the glass from the picture frames…." Like mother's acrylic nails. Shattered by the force of blows.

"That's not true."

"It is."

"You're more than what you think you are, you know, you are. I see that."

"You aren't a psychic."

"No. And I'm not real smart, either, I mean not in the way most people think. I just – I read people well, had to use that to survive and I – I know that you're more than what you think."

For a moment, everything seemed to freeze – it was not in the same way as when he had seen his mother, but more as if the world had simply ceased its turning. He could hear his heart pounding and was certain Demyx could as well.

He had never heard anything like that before. More than what you think you are.

Someone…believed in him?

Him?

It was impossible. He was nothing and no one.

He began to cry silently and shamelessly. He'd long since invested in the idea that hope was complete and utter bullshit, a lie, but there it was. Glimmering faintly in the distance like the sun off the water. Hope. Hope was terrifying. And it was an illusion, he was sure, for the one person who believed in him would be dead within the month.

"It's going to be alright." Dem whispered, wrapped his arms around Zexion and held him.

"How can you say that when you're going to die?"

" That's alright, too, Zex, it is, because I'm tired and my body hurts. I know….that I'll be way better off where I go after, so…" He shrugged slightly. The laid there for a while, quiet save for Zexion's sobs, but eventually they began to subside.

"I'm such a fucking wreck." He muttered.

"If you wanna tell me…"

"You're not a therapist, either."

"Like you'd go to one anyway? Besides, listening's another survival skill."

"Right." He sucked in a deep breath and debated whether or not to tell Demyx. He'd never told it all, intentionally, outright – Larxene knew because she had deduced from his episodes and he'd grudgingly filled in blanks along the way. To tell would be to trust. Trust, like hope, was frightening, only it was far more dangerous. Because trust, when broken, could shatter you.

It took only an instant to remember that he was already shattered. And aside from that, part of him….really wanted to trust Dem, wanted to – believe in something. Because he feared that if he did not, if he stayed in this pit of devastating despair and impossible pain with nothing to grab on to, that his newfound feelings would bury him alive.

"It's not a very exciting story. Only that my father met a society girl whom he fell in love with and married, and she corrupted him. My whole life I listened to them fight fiercely and with no regard for each other or for me. But they covered up their bruises and acted, to the public they were so infatuated with, as if our life were perfect. The older I became the more my mother hated me. What a bitter, wretched woman she is. She couldn't stand that I was becoming a man. And things went downhill, until – well, I'd rather not discuss that yet, but I moved in with Larxene, my best friend…"

There was a long, deep silence, though it was not uncomfortable. Demyx's hands had strayed from his hair and now rubbed his neck and shoulders lightly. He shifted to rest his head against his patient's chest because he decided that he'd rather hear Dem's heartbeat than his own.

So this was what it was like to be close to someone. It was kind of nice.

"And now you drink."

"Yeah."

"A lot."

Zexion flinched. "Yeah."

"Why?"

"Because it is total numbness. I am bothered by nothing."

"Ah. I kinda figured that. Like I said before, I knew some people like you."

"What happened to them?"

"They died."

Doesn't sound remarkably far off, Zexion thought darkly. But in the next moment Demyx had caught him with his blue eyes and for that instant he could think nothing at all.

"I don't want that to happen to you." He reiterated softly. His lips grazed Zexion's forehead. "And I think you've got a chance to change it."

.x.

The train cried out as he walked to the café.

It raced down the track in a powerful rhythm both steady and frantic, which Zexion immediately likened to the feelings of his heart and mind. He allowed himself to fantasize about riding that beast of a machine somewhere, anywhere else – New York or Seattle or Boston or a cargo unloading station in the middle of nowhere. Just somewhere else. Somewhere outside his own life.

Perhaps, he thought suddenly, he'd buy a ticket when this whole candy striping affair was over with.

Hope glittered menacingly in the near distance.

Hope, that treacherous thing which existed so deeply and irrationally inside Demyx even when his situation was hopeless by definition, would either restore him or grind him into dust. But he had nothing left to lose.

"There is nothing you could take from me I would more willingly part withal – except my life, except my life, except my life."

The quote jumped out from the pages of his mind, remembered suddenly and strikingly. He sighed, entered the café, and relieved Xion.

When business slowed and the place seemed dead for the night, Zexion crept into the book section and sat, leaned back against one of the shelves. He liked to sit among the books. Sometimes he felt as though they spoke to him, stilled for a second his restless soul.

It seemed, however, that no such relief would come that night.

"Won't someone just tell me what to do?" He said out loud, to the universe if he'd said it to anyone at all.

Nothing happened. No book fell from the shelves, miraculously turned to the perfect page; no visitor walked through the door blessed with the right answer or timely, sage advice. Nothing. He was alone.

He picked a Bible from the shelves. He had burned one, once, the Catholic Bible his imperfect parents had given him when he was eight and force fed to him his entire life. He had burned it in their backyard and watched with gleeful exaltation as flames consumed the book and turned it to ashes. It was the only time he had ever treated a piece of literature so brutally.

He wasn't sure why he'd picked it up. Perhaps, he thought, he was feeling particularly masochistic, or perhaps he wanted to stew in the bitterness and hatred that he was comfortable with. He did not allow himself to think that he might be searching for comfort.

He flipped through the pages until he came across Psalm 23. He remembered it from many services, and so he stopped, began to read.

"The Lord is my shepherd
I shall not want
He makes me lie down in green pastures
He leads me beside still waters for His name's sake.
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I shall fear no evil, for You are with me – "

In one swift move, he threw the Bible across the room. "Fuck you!" He screamed. "Nobody's with me! No one! Even the universe doesn't fucking take my requests! My own body doesn't listen to me! Go fuck yourself, life, you cruel bitch, you – " He stopped himself with a gasp, his hands covering his mouth in crude horror. He sounded like his mother. Like his mother. Feeling as though he could not stand, he crawled on his hands and knees to where he'd thrown the Scripture. He picked it up, clutched it to his chest, and fell on his side. He gasped for air. He couldn't breathe.

It wasn't long before everything dimmed and faded.

.x.

He came to in the glaring brightness of a hospital. For a long time, he couldn't fathom why he would be there, and flat on his back. But then it rushed back – the Bible and the Café, hyperventilating.

Well, shit.

The doctor came in, asked him some questions, disappeared, reappeared with some stress reduction tips, and turned him loose. Zexion started to head for the door, but an idea struck him; he looped back.

Visiting hours were up, but he could sneak through the corridors he'd come to know well and see Demyx.

So he did just that. He slipped through the hallways and up flights of stairs until he reached room 669. When he pushed the door open, he found Demyx awake, and – to his faint surprise – watching Friends reruns.

Demyx turned to look at him. He didn't seem phased by the fact that Zexion was standing his room far past the allotted time for visitors, but simply slid over in the bed. Zex crawled in. They were quiet. They watched the television and cuddled, content with each other's company. And as Zexion began to fall asleep to the rhythm of Demyx's heartbeat, he realized that something even more dangerous than hope and trust was growing, unbidden, between them.