Right, so the reason that I haven't been updating so often is because I have a life outside of writing, unfortunately, things like school, family, all that messy junk. That and lately my body's been out to get me, and it seems that my kidneys are taking this round of Kill the Author Slowly. ..;;

Andromeda90: Glad you're enjoyin the hotness, and yes, I'm wondering what's with the lack of reviews myself. o.O;;

Jewlin-Chan: Yep, Xemnas shall be working there. I'm not sure if it'll be permanent or not, as I'd like the story to steer itself around, but seeing Xemnas in the Nurse Betty role is quite entertaining.

MixGoldenPhoenix: After I made that splattered description of Seph, I got kinda hungry and made pancakes….

Volurin: Technically speaking, I'm probably going to make the default claim that their both virgins in terms of their future relationship with each other. And don't worry, there shall be snogging men as this will remain, solely, a yaoi fanfic. :3

-:-Warnings-:- Temporary death, fluff, romantic cliché's. Yeah, this is the mushy chapter sort of, because my brain's been feeling mushy.

Disclaimer: Yeah, yeah, same old, same old. .

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A Streetcar Named Insanity

Or a better title:

In which Sephiroth plays hide and seek.

----

"So he just….left?"

"Yes, the screwy silver bastard. He didn't even have the decency to shut the damn window on his way out!"

For about five months after the events of the Shower Incident, as he'd so called it, and despite the fact that they shared a room together, the said silver haired bastard had managed to successfully avoid all contact with Xemnas. He knew that he was still, somehow, coming to the apartment without him noticing, because there would be food missing, the laundry would pile up as usual, and he was continuously unclogging the shower drain as it filled with knots of long silver hair.

Thus Sephiroth became the apartment complex's phantom, as no matter who he asked, no one had seen the usually noticeable swordsman. It was as if he'd never existed, or perhaps, he was a complex wide hallucination and somewhere along the lines, medical interventions had been made and the drugs were working too well in covering over any residue of a tall, dark, and crazy man lurking about the place.

Xemnas knew the man kept considerably late hours, not entirely sure where exactly he worked as he never thought to ask and, apparently, Sephiroth didn't feel the need to divulge the information, so his absence was affecting all the factions of his life that revolved around interacting with him.

Once or twice, he'd thought to consult The Guild about his absence, that maybe the man had moved on or something, but the coincidence was too predictable, and even if he were to tell them that he was suddenly partner-less-as doing his job was a little difficult as they'd begun to take on joint work-he had a feeling they wouldn't give two shits about the issue and tell him to go about his way with the bullshit assurance that "his problems were their problems. And we will get to the bottom of it right away."

Xemnas brooded. "I despise him."

"No you don't, you despise being left in doubt."

"Hn…that too." He seethed. "But I really do despise him."

At this moment in time, Xemnas found himself in the confines of a very cozy little café in a world that he hadn't known existed, and looked very much like a transfigured version of Paris, without the romantic dialect unfortunately, but with the same heady chaotic atmosphere of bustling existence.

After noticing that he couldn't wear his robe everywhere and not get odd looks, he'd very irritably went about the task of shopping in the trendy-but-not-really aisle of the stores of this world, as a small percentage of the clothing was fairly appealing to his tastes.

Currently, he was wearing a thin black turtle neck of a small knitted type, the collar rising snuggly beneath his chin and sleeves that nearly covered his hands. A pair of low riding black flared pants clung to his legs, covering the tops of his black boots, a piece of the organization he'd not wanted to give up. A white, monochromatic fuzzy collared coat was slung over the back of his chair along with a white scarf.

He'd been a bit skeptical about how low these pants slung on his hips, which was why he'd gotten the turtle neck as it was a long bit of clothing, which meant he had to go all out of his way to buy a different set of underwear just to wear with these pants. It was all very obnoxious and new.

"What's on your mind?"

Sighing a bit, he turned his attention from the window, and the crazy homeless woman screaming about the end of the world and killer broccoli, to face Number 3, who he'd met up with by being literally run over by him…no really, he'd hit him with a damn T-Bird, and it'd friggin hurt. He had to sort of fake being unconscious for a while so people wouldn't raise hell, and later found out that Xaldin had done it on purpose just to get his attention. Bastard.

"Nothing, just trying to bend time and space so I can reach through and tear his head off."

Xaldin chuckled lightly, raising a cup of coffee to his lips as he peered over the rim at his leader, or actually, former leader since when you died those things usually expired, maybe, possibly, he wasn't sure.

He decided he liked Xemnas in tight black clothing. When not being worn by the dark haired, charcoal eyeliner wearing youth crowd, black was a very classy color, and it accented Xemnas' authoritative air quite nicely. He really did have a nice figure, most members of the organization did really, it was just those damn robes that did such a good job at hiding them…well…except for Axel. No amount of clothing was going to cover the fact that Axel had child bearing hips.

"This is really getting to you isn't it?"

"Of course it is! It's complete human indecency!" Xemnas snapped, feeling the vein in his head start to dance around a bit. "You can't molest your roommate and then avoid them like they have herpes!" He ignored the stares he received from that comment. He was far too irritated to really give a damn who was listening.

Xaldin raised an eyebrow.

Xemnas scowled. "I'm clean."

"I wasn't accusing you of being otherwise."

Leaning back in his chair, Xemnas observed the James Bond look a like seated across the table from him, and wondered briefly what Xaldin was doing for his pubic service that required him to wear a black three piece suit and driving gloves. He instantly thought Transporter.(1)

Rubbing a finger along the bridge of his nose, blowing gently on the cup of coffee before his lips, Number 3 took an experimental sip, testing the waters to see if they were free of sharks, and then downed a warming portion of the substance before slowly returning the cup to the uncomfortably small saucer.

Xaldin hated the fact that café's seemed to like serving you tiny portions of everything, but seeing as it'd been Xemnas' choice, who seemed too bristly to sit down and eat a meal without chocking on his anger, he'd kept his thoughts to himself, focusing more on the internal angst running visibly through his leader.

He was wondering why in hell's name the white haired Nobody found his partner's behavior so bothersome. He'd lived with twelve other people, all of which possessed some very crippling personality trait that prevented them from pleasantly existing alongside one another, so he was a bit puzzled as to why he was taking this so far up his ass (he'd broken a few cups in the course of their time here and, to prevent him from running up their bill with unnecessary charges, had opted to buy him a slushy juice related beverage in a styrofoam, usually unbreakable, cup after they left).

Xemnas looked over to Xaldin once more, catching the tail end of a snicker as he attempted to hide it in the form of a sneeze, fisting his hand before his mouth. But nope! His Xemnas radar was going full scale today, due to the circumstances, and with his hawk-like robotic death ray vision, caught the microscopic corner of a smile.

"What's so funny?" He accused, feeling the hairs along his neck bristling.

"Hm? Oh, nothing, nothing."

"You were laughing at me."

"I was not."

"You were too."

"I was not."

"You were too."

"Xemnas," Xaldin said, slumping his shoulders a bit as he tried to figure out if this was the same man he'd taken orders from, who was now having a one sided childish spat with a man about as docile as an old snake (because Xaldin wasn't completely harmless all the time, so he was most likely an old King Cobra if anything else). "Come on, this is hardly productive."

"You were too," he shot back softly, glaring holes at Xaldin who, despite the idiocy oozing from him like a popped zit, thought that the glare was a bit adorably refreshing to see in the usually indifferent male. But you didn't hear Xaldin think that, no, it was a figment of your imagination kiddies.

"No really, you should probably let it go before you go nuts." More so than you already were to begin with.

"I can't just let it go!"

"Why not?"

"I don't know, maybe because it's sexual harassment!" Again, he ignored the stares of the people around them. Screw them for being nosey.

"But he stopped didn't he?"

"Xaldin, that's hardly the point." He sighed rolling his eyes and threw up a hand. "You're obviously missing the fact that I'm living with not one, but now [itwo[/i rapists in my apartment complex!" Again, stares, ignored.

"Well, it's not rape if he didn't put it in."

"Xaldin!!"

"What?"

"That's hardly something I would've allowed myself to be…to be subjected to!"

"Well, from what you've told me, you're making it sound as if he forced himself on you."

"And he did, goddmanit! Aren't you listening?!"

"Oh, I am, I'm just thinking you seem awfully calm for a rape victim."

"That's because nothing happened you sick freak, he just…nnneh…used his Voodoo and forced me to make out with him naked in a shower."

"…"

"What?"

"That's it?"

"What do you mean 'that's it?'!"

"I mean it sounds as if his head just ran away with him, that's all, especially after coming home and finding a strange woman in his bathroom. And judging from how you reacted, if you've told me everything (No, Xemnas hadn't told him everything.), it sounds as if you might've enjoyed it."

"What?!"

"Hey man, could you please keep your voice down?-"

"Shut up hippie!" The abused hippie turned very slowly, a bit anxiously, back to his tofu, vegetarian something or other that seemed to want to call itself a hamburger, without the imitation beef and the freezer burned sesame bun. Turning back to the dred-locked man, Xemnas sighed irritably and massaged the vein in his head again with two long fingers.

"Well did you?"

Xemnas didn't answer. He wasn't ready to let his body convince his mind that that had felt pretty damn good, whatever that feeling was, and it was that feeling that was freaking him out a little. He didn't know what it was, didn't have words to categorize it, because as a Nobody, you had a very limited vocabulary on classifying emotions. They were just words to him; he'd never really gone and tried to imitate the meaning behind the words.

He suddenly felt old, as he should feel, since he's the only member with white hair.

"…Xemnas?"

"I….don't know how to answer that Xaldin," he sighed softly, looking up at him finally with eyes that could've been filled with confusion, but they were a practiced imitation of the art, so his face was blissfully blank of the emotion.

"I understand." It seemed mildly unfair that they had to suffer through this all over again, and the fact that all this public service wasn't going to get him any closer to a heart was a but unnerving. But really, what else was there for them? They were already inexistent beings in their own world, so their absence was just a deleting of the redundant words cluttering up the universe. It felt odd, to be referred to as the embodiment of extra space, but that was why some very intelligent person created irony.

As a cloud of emo descended over the two Nobodies, nearby patrons scooting away from the sudden appearance of very small but ominous looking rain clouds hovering over their table, Xemnas took that moment to look out the window, just because the narrator likes to torment him, and had another figurative heart attack.

"You know…now that I'm thinking about it Xemnas," Xaldin began, running his finger along the rim of the cup as he tilted his head to one side, neon blue eyes lost in the purity of cloudy caffeinated seas. "Perhaps the presence of a heart is a relative thing. As we have managed to imitate emotion, perhaps we will be able to teach ourselves emotion. It doesn't seem that far fetched seeing as we've managed to come this far, perhaps we can research this-Xemnas?"

But Xemnas was gone, he wasn't even in the restaurant anymore, but it wasn't difficult to figure out where he'd gone, as there was a trail of angry tearing right towards the door and out into the pastel pristine pseudo-Paris, where he was currently forcing his way through traffic across the street towards something or someone, coat and scarf whipping about him in the wake of his stampede. Whatever he was after, he seemed to be on an epic mission to get to it, and nothing was going to get in his way.

"Pah. Remind me never to be introspective around him while he's in a mood."

I'll remember to remind you Xaldin.

--------------

The only good thing about working at this particular bar, The Salty Dog, was aside from his work schedule being stupid on eight different levels of crazy, he did, however, get fairly good off time because he was under the suspicion that the owner had taken a fancy to him. Initially, you would think that he was one of those flamboyant types of men, but every now and then, he hid his fairy ways behind a mask of professional assertiveness. He also had the strangest hair color he'd ever seen and, if Sephiroth had been anything other than who he was, he would've asked the man how he'd gotten it that way.

Today, the swordsman had gotten on the owner's good side again, by not tying his hair back oddly enough, and had been given the afternoon off. He would've gone home to sleep, as he'd been feeling like crap on a stick from the extra work load lately, but he reminded himself that Xemnas, who usually got off work earlier than him, would most likely be there.

He cringed.

Maybe he'd go for a walk? Yes, that seemed just dandy, he'd go for a walk, for the rest of the day, and come home some time after midnight, sleep in the living room on the couch, and then leave before Xemnas twitched himself into wakefulness. The man had seemed to be such a heavy sleeper but lately, he'd had to take his shoes off and oil down the door lest he wake up.

It wasn't that he was running from a confrontation, no, of course not, the Great and Mighty Sephiroth would never run from confrontation, he was just, erm, giving Xemnas his space, yes, that sounded right.

Anyway, to avoid any further encounters that we are not going to call confrontations, Sephiroth had requested to be assigned a job as a museum curator for the afternoon, which the Guild found unusually helpful coming from him, but they hadn't hesitated to give him his uniform. There was no other way to describe it, that he looked like a black clad German military soldier, which to him was very agreeable, and as he walked his purposeful way down the street towards his next job, he allowed himself to bask in the bliss that, yes, indeed, it was a very nice day today.

"Sephiroth!!"

And then suddenly, from out of nowhere, a nuclear type device decimated the world into radioactive micro-pieces. Intent on ignoring World War 27, he kept his head held high with all the authority his previous years as a General had taught him, and very blissfully ignored the screaming man trailing behind him, accompanied by the blares of horns as they swerved to avoid him and the cries of people that he threw out of his way into the street.

Chancing a look back, the silver haired man quickened his pace to a jog, rounding a corner and wedged himself into a doorway nook as Xemnas went tearing past him. Poking his head out, he waited a moment for the man to round the next corner, pasting a smug smile on his face as he stepped out, brushing himself off and turned about on his heel.

"Thought you lost me didn't you?"

"!?!?!?!" Sephiroth flailed away from the irate Nobody, a vein the size of the Mississippi pulsating on the side of his forehead as he stood before him, arms folded, his weight slouched on one leg, lip twitching ever so slightly. He looked like a pissed off black woman.

Clearing his throat, Sephiroth straightened himself up regally, smoothing his hair back and placed a look of mock surprise on his face, very poorly, as he wasn't the sort of person to let things surprise him, so it came off looking like he was constipated.

"Forgive me, I thought you for someone else."

"Bullshit!" Xemnas snarled, turning a few interesting shades of red. He dropped his head, glaring accusingly up at the man, golden eyes emanating a brilliant insanity. "You're avoiding me."

"I am not."

"Yes. You. Are."

"My work schedule has been rather tight, now if you'll excuse me, I have to get to my next job," he said stiffly, turning about and walking back down the sidewalk. He knew he wouldn't be able to shake Xemnas off that easily, and yes, as fate would have it, the white haired porcupine followed deftly after him, walking with all the purpose of forcing his way through Sephiroth's ear and into his head so he could pick at his brain.

"Right, so I should just ignore the fact that you've been missing for the past five months, very conveniently after that incident?!"

"They've enlisted me in the army."

"What? An army of museum curators?!"

"Damn. She must've given me the wrong uniform."

Throwing his hands up in exasperation, Xemnas sped up his pace and intercepted the man's progress down the street. The Nobody danced around before him as the swordsman attempted to get around him before he eventually sighed heavily, trying to compose himself, and looked down at him.

"Xemnas, I'm very busy right now, please move."

"No. You're not going anywhere until we have a chat." He tilted his head to one side, folding his arms over his chest again and inclined his head challengingly.

"Xemnas."

"I'll break your damn legs if I have to."

"Xemnas can we please have this conversation later," Sephiroth groaned, closing his eyes and pinching at the bridge of his nose with a gloved hand, wishing he could just snuff this man out of his existence. However, he didn't want to be liquidated for killing his partner, so he was going to attempt to do this civilly. "Perhaps after you've calmed down some."

"No, we're having this conversation now, because I might not see you later…for the next eight years," Xemnas hissed, stepping a bit closer to him, curling his hand around the General's wrist and removing the hand hiding his eyes. It pained him for some reason, to know that he refused to look at him, and going along with his leadership position of previous times, not looking your superior in the eyes was punishable by tarring and feathering. Aside from Demyx, no one else made a very attractive chicken.

"No, we're having this conversation later," Sephiroth growled lowly, snatching his hand fluidly from Xemnas' grasp and brushed past him, heading for the edge of the sidewalk, searching for that elusive obnoxious yellow car usually driven by middle aged men with thick accents.

"No, we're having this conversation now," Xemnas insisted, grabbing the man's arm and tugged sharply at him, completely ignoring the fact that, despite his current weaseling act, this was still the man with the big sword, even if it was absent at the moment, and this man was a level of insanity that Xemnas wasn't quite on.

"No, we are having this conversation later," Sephiroth snapped, eyes flashing a bit of their psychosis as he resisted the urge to jam a telephone pole down Xemnas throat and be done with him. He struggled to get out of his grasp, but the man had a hold on him like a teeny bopper holds onto her favorite boy band member, and soon there was a very heated tug of war going on at the edge of the sidewalk for the appendage.

Eventually, it escalated into a mini-cat fight with Xemnas pulling at some odd part of Sephiroth's body and the swordsman clawing and tearing at the part of the Nobody that currently restricted him.

"Get the hell off me damnit!"

"No! Not until you stop running and face the fact that you're a rapist!"

"You can't rape the willing Xemnas, and if I remember correctly, you were about three moans away from orgasm!"

"Showers arouse me! Not sexually frustrated sociopathic megalomaniacs!"

Well now, this was all very nice and interesting, with all that pulling and scratching and screaming and prancing and frolicking and-…okay fine, so all that didn't happen, it was just two very angry bishounen attacking each other very close to a sidewalk. Speaking of that sidewalk and being very close to it, Xemnas, at the moment, was trying to pull Sephiroth back from it so he could drag him home by his arm, and Sephiroth was pulling against him, ignoring the odd way his arm kept cracking, still hoping to catch one of the cabs that kept zipping by without him.

Now, with any good romance story that has a couple involved in a tugging match of this caliber, things are going to go array, and eventually one of the two is going to let go, out of frustration and let the other fall to the ground. Xemnas did just that because, quite frankly, he was quite sick of the man and his attitude, and if he was going to get all bent out of shape and prissy, then he could just go die somewhere for all he cared.

And so Xemnas let go.

And Sephiroth lost his balance.

And Sephiroth went flailing into the street.

And was promptly hit by an 18-Wheeler.

……..No really, I'm not kidding this time. Sephy went splatty.

--------------

"Alright, take two of these daily for the next two weeks and you should be cleared up by then."

"And it's only an infection?"

"Yep, nothing to be worried about since you came in when you did."

Luxord, or rather, Dr. Orlund, gave the jittery looking brunette with more piercings than a voodoo doll a very pleasant smile, sending the boy another reassuring tap on the shoulder as he seemed a bit skeptical about his doctor's diagnosis. However, he soon caved and accepted the fact that this man wasn't trying to kill him with another strange pill, as the last wacko had, and shook his hand gratefully with a meek smile since, from what he could tell, the man was the only sane thing walking around this hospital.

After shooing the kid out of the exam room, Luxord soon followed after him, flipping through the pages on his clipboard for the next thing he had to inspect. He groaned. Seemed like the hypochondriac was back again. She was convinced she had brain cancer, and as she kept coming in, he was steadily starting to believe her.

"Dr. Orlund, there's a patient in room 213 that needs a follow-up." He was half expecting to see Xemnas at the clinic's reception table, but it was one of the nurses that actually liked their uniform, too much actually, as the blonde was wearing red fuck-me pumps along with a lacy pink bra that was having a hard time hiding behind her blouse with the amount of baggage it was holding in.

"Sure, I'll get right on it."

"Aren't you going to ask me how my day's going," she said sending him a flirty grin, raising a hand to delicately bite at one finger, shaking her shoulders suggestively.

"Well, judging from the way your nipples are standing out, I'd say you're having a fantastic day Stacy."

"Hee, so you noticed," she said giggling unattractively, tilting her head to one side as she bit her bottom lip gently. "So does that mean you know who I'm thinking about today?"

"Did you know your roots are growing in?"

"What? Really? Where?! Where?!"

"In the front there, love. You better get on that before people figure out you're a brunette."

And that was all it took for him to get her attention off him and allow him to go about his work. Lately, for some reason, the DBAD(Dreamy Blonde American Doctor) hadn't been doing his job of lady killer extraordinaire, so the vultures were swooping down to sink their claws into anything with testosterone. He had a feeling it had something to do with Xemnas, as he was the first [iwoman[/i that'd blown him off, so now he was adamant about cracking into his iron clad defenses.

But anyway, more pressing matters to deal with, like the hit and run case currently sitting in room 213.

"Wow," Luxord said, brows rising in surprise as he shuffled into the room, head down as he inspected the case file for this patient. "Multiple contusions, multiple fractures of the arms and legs, head trauma, dislocated hip, internal bleeding, fractured vertebrae…why the hell isn't this man dead?"

"Because he already is."

And Luxord did the most entertaining impression of an electrocuted chicken ever recorded, well, aside from Xemnas' freak outs that is. Having backed up into the wall, the blonde stared wide eyed at the man sitting in a chair on the other side of the bed, clad in a black three piece suit, driving gloves, with one leg crossed over the other, arms folded. If it hadn't been for the dred's he would've thought him to be James Bond.

"Xaldin?! What are you doing here?! You're supposed to be de-Mghg!"

"Would you pipe down? Do you want to wake Xemnas?" Somehow, Xaldin had ripped through space and time to get from his chair to Luxord to smack a hand over his mouth.

Xaldin motioned his head to the other figure hanging off the edge of the chair on the opposite side of the bed that the Lancer had occupied. His back was to them, but Luxord could imagine the string of spit hanging from his mouth to hover dangerously over the floor.

"Sorry 'bout that," Luxord whispered. "Just wasn't expecting to see you, and after this long too. How've you been? You look good you know that? Still haven't gotten ride of those damn chops-"

"Think we could talk about this later, maybe, after you've done your job?"

"Right, right." Skittering over to the patient, or of what he could see of the man as he looked rather mummified at the moment, he glanced back at Xaldin, then back to the man with the bloodied bandaged head, bits of silver strands sticking out at odd places. He cringed to think what it looked like under there. "Is he even alive?"

"Well, not technically, but it's probably safe to take the bandages off his face now. It's been about three days."

Cautiously, Luxord starting peeling the bloody gauze from his head and, much to his surprise, the face underneath actually looked like a face, not mashed potatoes, raw meat, and strawberry jam as he'd been expecting. He looked, eerily, perfectly unharmed, sleeping rather peacefully. Luxord turned back to Xaldin and raised an eyebrow.

"He's dead isn't he?"

"Like I said before, blonde," Xaldin huffed lightly, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I hooked the heart monitor up to a cat in a cage under his bed so people wouldn't get suspicious."

"God, if the ASPCA finds out about this-"

"Then you didn't see anything."

"Then I didn't see anything."

With that bit nicely diced, chopped and out of their way, Luxord went about checking the vital signs of the cat, who seemed to be in perfect health aside from a few hairballs, speaking briefly to Xaldin as he went.

"So, how have things been on your side of the service?" There was an odd buildup of ear wax in the cat's ear, which actually wasn't there, but that's what he put in his notes.

"Eh, you know, same old same old," Xaldin replied, inspecting his leather gloves and scratched a spot of dried substance from them. "How 'bout you? This isn't exactly the sort of place I could see you working in."

"Why not? I've always wanted to work at a strip club."

"Yeah…I saw the receptionist…She asked me if I was going to ask her how her day was going."

"Ignore her. Some of the nurses around here are getting a bit frisky since the DBAD's found his new target."

"The who?"

"We call him the Dreamy Blonde American Doctor. He's a Casanova. Lately he's been going after the new…erm…receptionist," Luxord coughed nervously as he knelt beside the open cage beneath the bed, scratching the feline's ears with a finger.

"Really?" Xaldin raised an inquisitive eyebrow. "Who is she?"

"Eh..." He tried very hard not to look at Xemnas. "Just an intern with a bristly attitude."

"Hm…that's interesting…sounds a lot like someone I know," Xaldin mused. Again, Luxord tried to avoid looking at Xemnas, and did a crappy job. But since Xaldin was too enamored by the specks of stuff on his gloves, he didn't notice the amount of sweat leaking from the gambler.

"Well! The patient looks fine," Luxord said suddenly, hurriedly stuffing the cat back in the cage, who chomped on his hand for being pushy, and jumped up importantly. "How 'bout a drink? There's a vending machine downstairs."

"Luxord, you're hand's bleeding."

"I know, I uh," he glanced at his hand. "I do that from time to time. You know, empty the fluids from my body to balance it all out. Don't you do that? I thought everyone did that."

"I…suppose…"Xaldin was wondering what was with the spaz routine, but as he wasn't in the mood to deal with anything else mentally taxing, he decided to humor him and ignore the way the man had suddenly sweated a ten gallon pool of water on the floor around him. If he didn't get him some water he might shrivel up. "Fine, but you're paying."

"What?! Look at that suit you're wearing!"

"So? It's a uniform, now quit being such a stingy bastard and get moving."

--------------

Sephiroth waited for the two men to leave before he opened his eyes, cringing painfully as his body reminded him that, although he was very dead, he was also not impervious to pain. Damnit, what good was being immortal if you felt pain?

Slowly, feeling his spine make a series of unhealthy cracking noises, he sat himself up and eyed the various tubes connected to odd parts of his body and felt his skin crawl all over in revulsion, reminding him that at one point in his life, he'd been in this same sort of position.

Resisting the urge to rip them out of him, he pushed the test tube baby image from his mind and turned to the man slumped in his chair beside him. An interesting flare of déjà vu washed over him as he felt he'd seen him in such a state of tranquility, completely dead to the world in his bliss.

Sitting up enough to where his back didn't make any more suspicious noises, very much aware of how numb his legs were, Sephiroth tilted his head to one side as he observed Xemnas in a rare moment of stillness, and was once again reminded of the angelic-but-not-quite image he'd conjured up for him. As Xemnas shifted marginally in his dreams, a bit of a frown creasing his face before it smoothed itself peacefully, the red book that'd been balancing rather precariously on his lap slid and fell to the ground, causing the man to curl uncomfortable in on himself a mite. It seemed uncanny that he only looked docile while he slept, very much like a panther would if you were to catch them off guard.

He also took note of how dead he looked. Yes, the fact that dead people looked dead while they slept had crossed his mind, but even those hanging in the balance of Purgatory could still retain some semblance of human. They had to if they wanted to blend with the living world, but Xemnas, he wasn't even sure the man was breathing. He looked like a discarded baby doll, wrapped in his new threads (Thank god! He'd desperately needed the change of wardrobe), waiting for his new owner to wind him back up, wind him back into life and sense, becoming, once again, the intelligently sharp tongued creature that he was.

Raising his eyebrow thoughtfully, Sephiroth reached for the glass of water on his bed side table and threw its contents on the coin-operated man.

That was probably the best way to wind him up, as he flailed into life like a shot, limbs flying, loosing his balance and fell off his chair with an irate squeaking noise. After a moment of motionless silence, a silence that agitated the swordsman who looked about the room half expecting him to pop out of a crack somewhere, Xemnas' hand appeared at the side of his bed, pulling himself up till his head was in view along with a very large pulsating vein taking up one side of his head.

"Why…Why do you keep doing that?!"

"You weren't breathing. I got worried."

"I'm dead."

"Now, now, let's not get smart." Sephiroth paused for a moment to cringe, bending his head a bit as he pressed his fingers against his left side, biting back the irresistible urge to whimper like a hound with a cannonball sized hole in its gut. After he was sure that an alien wasn't going to pop out of his ribcage, he raised his head and frowned at Xemnas, as he'd gone into a bit of a depressed stupor, head hanging low and looking like he'd just been sentenced to death…again.

"Xemnas?" Watching the man flinch a bit, he noticed the way the golden eyed man sort of shrank away from him, a rather pained expression on his face. "You look a little constipated."

"Yeah, constipated with guilt," He muttered darkly, looking away for a moment as he sighed, deciding that he was suddenly very interested in the wall. It was very ugly wallpaper, he noted, and it reminded him of baby vomit.

"Guilt? Guilt for what?"

"..'most 'illed 'ou."

"What was that?"

"I almost killed you!"

"Ow! Headache, headache." Sephiroth was waiting for Xemnas to tell him to quite whining about his head, or take a jab at his ego that big boys didn't cry about headaches, but it never came, and as the cloud of depression that was hovering over Xemnas' head still hadn't abated, he deduced that the man was actually, genuinely, feeling shitty about the whole thing.

"There's a rain cloud over your head Xemnas."

"I'm depressed." The rain cloud shifted around a bit over the silver haired Nobody's head, threatening to spill rain onto its already wet victim. The Goddess was also very intrigued to figure out how Xemnas had manifested a little rain cloud, but she was going to keep her comments hush-hush as this was serious business.

Rolling his eyes, Sephiroth picked up an apple on the tray of plastic looking hospital food resting on the table to his right, and threw it at the cloud, successfully dissipating it and earning a questioning look from the golden eyed man.

"You only have the right to call up a depressed rain cloud if it's something to be plausibly depressed about."

"Sephiroth, I pushed you out into the street," Xemnas sighed, rolling his eyes and sitting back in his chair moodily, threatening to call forth the rain cloud.

"You didn't mean it on purpose."

"I wanted you to die. I thought to myself, that my life would be so much easier if you'd just roll over and died and leave me the hell alone," he said exasperatedly, rising from his chair in a huff and began pacing the room irritably. "See? If I hadn't thought that, we wouldn't be here!"

"You were angry with me. You can't blame yourself for that."

"Yes but angry people don't try to wish death on each other!" He paused as he noted the swordsman's "Really? Think about that statement again" look and quirked his mouth to one side as he bobbed his head in agreement. "Okay fine, so maybe angry people do wish person X would die, but goddamnit I didn't think it would actually happen!"

"Xemnas. I'm already dead."

"That's not the point! I could've killed you again!"

"That would just make me undead."

"Shyeah! And you'd be undead by my hands!"

"Why the hell do you keep yelling in italics?"

"Because I'm disgruntled!"

Growling a bit, Xemnas flopped himself down on the floor, legs crossed, arms folded, and began to brood quite deeply, deep enough so that the rain cloud appeared once more over his head. Sniffing lightly, Sephiroth eyed the little rain cloud hovering above the space that he knew to be where Xemnas had plopped down, sighed exhaustedly, and let his head fall back against the pillow as he shut his eyes.

Dealing with distraught people was never something he was particularly good at, as his idea of comfort was something like "Put a band-aid on it" or "Stop your bitching, Nancy Boy! There's no crying in baseball!" and a plethora of other humorous gruff responses. This however, was something completely different, because the distress was coming from another person who was actually worrying about his well being, genuinely, or as much as he could tell from the man, and he wasn't so sure that telling him to suck it up would make it any better.

"Xemnas?" He wasn't expecting a response, and he wasn't given one, and so he picked up a knife resting on the tray beside him, paused, and picked up the spoon instead and threw it the man sulking at the foot of his bed, earning an irritated yelp.

"Goddamnit stop throwing things at me while I'm sulking!"

"Xemnas, come here."

"No."

"Come here, or I'm throwing the steak knife at you."

Xemnas complied, as even when injured, the Mighty Sephiroth had impeccable aim. Slinking along the floor like a certain snakey individual that hasn't appeared for a while, coughcoughElijahcoughcough, he dragged himself to his feet, shoulders hunched as he stared vacantly down at the man now sitting upright, hands folded neatly against stomach and eyeing him with a certain level of scrutiny. Xemnas squirmed a bit under that gaze, as those damn eyes starting boring holes into his soul, into the emptiest part of his being, and just when he was about to slap him across the face to get ride of the vulture look, the man sighed lightly and a ghost of a smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth for a moment.

"Don't presume that you can kill me so easily. It's going to take more than an 18-Wheeler to snuff me out of existence."

"They said you were flat-lined for 10 minutes."

Sephiroth made a face. "Alright, so I'm not impervious to vehicular manslaughter, but since I'm already dead, no harm done."

"You're side's bleeding again."

"I know. I do that from time to time…I empty the fluids from my body to keep a proper balance throughout-" Xemnas wasn't taking the bait, as the rain cloud had begun to let a few drops of water squeeze out of it and pelt through the silver strands. Wincing a bit as his ribs leaked a bit of life's fluid, Sephiroth grumbled a bit, trying to dust out the empty shelves that stored compassion and found them to be full of lice with tomahawks.

Xemnas, on the other hand, was a bit at a loss for why on earth he was feeling responsible for the accident, what with having a lack of heart, and because his brain was telling him that the damn idiot should've watched where he was falling. Lately, it seemed that a whole slew of sticky obnoxious things called feelings were making themselves known all at once. He needed to figure out what was causing that and get rid of it, but despite his intellect telling him that it was because of a certain silver haired bishounen, he was going to say it was because of the weather.

"It hurts here." Looking up, he found the swordsman raising his left hand, palm facing towards him as he pointed to some spot on the back of his hand. He had a blank look on his face, but his eyes were a mixed soup of mischief and insanity, quite a dangerous mix when brought to a boil.

Sephiroth watched Xemnas, noted the question behind his eyes as he stared just as blankly back at him, probably trying to decide if he was going to get hit with a blunt object or not, and decided that a bit of reassurance that nothing of the sort was going to befall him was in order. "It hurts Xemnas," he repeated himself, tapping the back of his left hand with his right finger. "Aren't you going to make it better?"

After an extensive stretch of time, and a tumble weed rolled past the door, Xemnas eventually willed himself forward, grasping the offered hand as if it were made of glass, and, a bit cautiously, pressed his lips lightly over the indicated area as a pair of maddened mako eyes observed his movements, waiting until Xemnas had drawn away to shift his hand to point a finger to his chest. "It hurts here too."

"Is that so?" Xemnas smirked, the rain cloud, looking very irritated at being unable to hold onto Xemnas' depression, began to shrink and twitch. Tilting his head to one side, the dark clothed man seated himself on the edge of the bed, placing his arm on the other side of Sephiroth's body, leaning against it as he eyed him with mock suspicion.

"Mhm, hurts like hell," Sephiroth replied, trying his best to do a beaten puppy impression, but it came off looking like a psychotic hell-hound after a virgin sacrifice.

Xemnas tried to ignore the look, as it was probably meant to look like something else, hopefully, and kicked it from his mind as he picked open the front of his tied gown, shifting the fabric to one side as he placed another lingering kiss to the man's chest, noticing the shallow intake of breath, and flicked his tongue over the skin before drawing back.

Sephiroth had a funky look on his face, some emotion of confusion, fascination and "What the hell am I doing?" But it broke away as he regained some part of his composure and placed a finger to his forehead over his left eye, sending Xemnas that same beaten dog/ecstatic hell-hound look again.

"There too?" Xemnas inquired, receiving a brief nod before he rolled his eyes, smiling bit as he took hold of the swordsmans chin, leaning his head down and pressed a kiss to the spot, feeling a warm fuzzy moldy motherly feeling at the gesture before he pulled away to study him. "Anywhere else I should know about oh pitiful one?"

Again, he received no spoken words, other than a cheeky smile as the swordsman raised a finger to his lips, tapping them lightly and watched Xemnas face go blank for a minute before he complied, ghosting his lips over the swordsman's before completing the chaste kiss, lingering, curious in nature, before the golden eyed man pulled a few breathes from him and sighed, reaching up and waving a hand over his head to be rid of the rain cloud, ignoring its cries of angst that floated away into the nothingness of strangeness from whence it came.

"Will that be all, your Majesty?"

"Hn…" The swordsman paused for a moment before making an uncomfortable face. "My bladder hurts."

"That sounds like a personal problem."

"A problem I need to deal with before it becomes your problem," he grumbled, shifting about uneasily. "Now help me up, I think my legs are still numb."

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Mille: Yay for getting this chapter done! It took me nearly half a century, what with me being a bit physically impaired. But here it is, not nearly as funny as the other chapters I believe, as this seemed like more of a filler chapter.

Sephiroth: Still can't believe I got hit by a truck. Didn't see that one coming.

Xemnas: But you said it wasn't my fault! T.T

Sephiroth: Stop yelling in italics damnit!

Mille: Anyway, onward to the footnotes! Only one today kiddies. x3

(1): Transporter is that action movie with Jason Stratham who transports packages from point A to point B with no questions asked. Of course, human nature is all about questioning things, that and if he didn't break his rules we wouldn't have an entertaining movie. I still don't know what Xaldin's public service job is that requires him to look like a transporter. He still won't tell me.