Mille: K, so, about a week after the 8th chapter went up, me in my immense catlike gracefulness, ate asphalt in a parking lot and cracked my laptop screen. Apparently the cost of fixing the thing was equal to, or even more, than the cost of a whole damn new laptop. I cried as my bank card was raped. D; But it's okay, because now I can finish the rest of chapter 9, well, at least what I can remember of it. Sorry for the wait guys. Here's the next installment of madness.

-:-Warnings-:- I'm tooooooo lazy to care to write this. It's an M rating for a reason, you bess be espetin some shiz homies.

Disclaimer: Disclaimed!

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Mr. McBride, You've Got Flies In Your Eyes

Or a better title:

In which the predictably unexpected falls very obviously into the plot

Or an even better title:

In which the Goddess tries in vain to remember what the fuck she was going to write in this chapter.

----

It was a perfectly sunny Monday morning when he met a face he wasn't expecting to see; not now, or tomorrow, nor ever.

Since Xemnas had started his job as a Therapist, nearly three weeks ago, and since Marluxia had been buying him different outfits to wear to work for his viewing pleasure, Sephiroth had been playing the role of housewife more often. He'd never imagined that threatening the Nobody with his sword would ever prove ineffective, but then again, he also hadn't expected to become-dare he say it?-mildly attached to the man. So in an effort to preserve what little nookie he was receiving, which had gone from "Okay, but you can only have a bite", to "You ain't getting none till I say you gettin some niggah!", he did everything in his power to keep the golden eyed Rottweiler as calm and relatively pleased as he could. His libido was at stake here, and despite what his logical brain was telling him, three weeks without sex was driving him batty.

He'd smiled for a moment as he realized he had a 25 off coupon for shredded beef, and decided that he would make quesadillas tonight, but then he scowled at himself for taking joy in something as domestic as carrying around coupons. He knew a few SOLDIER's that'd be turning in their graves if they could see him now, the Great and Mighty General Sephiroth, getting so pleasantly tickled about a piece of paper that'd save him just enough money to waste it 5 minutes later.

He needed to stab a kitten now, anything to keep his fearsome name ferocious and long lasting till the end of time.

He'd been on his way out of the meat department, sack of flesh in hand, and had run headlong into something small that said 'oomph' and fell over. Reflexively, because working at a bar with a constant flux of tipsy men tends to do that, he reached a hand out to the fallen meathead that dared trespass upon his mighty chest in such a manner, and the world just stopped as he tried to figure out the logistics of the thing on the floor. He should've seen this coming a mile away, The Goddess just loved to do shit like this to him all the time, but then again, she hadn't told him, and as he wasn't telepathic, there really wasn't any way to avoid it.

"My, I'm so very sorry, I really should pay attention to where I'm going!" She snickered…she always snickered, that was what she did. "Clumsy me," she took his hand, head bowed low, still staring down at her scuffed white Mary Jane's and simple white dress. "I didn't hurt you did I-…Oh!" Wide blue green eyes went wider. "Well, Sephiroth," a gentle smile, all too pleasant. "Fancy seeing you here of all places."

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

"I hate my job."

Xemnas looked over from his place on the couch when he didn't get a response for his bitching, eyeing the silver haired swordsman looming near the window staring, zombified, out of it. Normally, he'd throw a fit for being ignored and threaten not to let him kiss him for a week, but it wasn't that the man was ignoring him, it was that his body had walked through that door about an hour ago, and his brain had yet to get the right directions and catch up.

Normally, his silence wouldn't bother him. It wasn't uncommon for him to faze into moments of prolonged external seclusion, but he'd had a distressed look on his face for a disturbing amount of time, as if he were a 17 year old, with a brain tumor, trying to remember his apples from his oranges and failing miserably.

Xemnas was still in a shitty mood from having to deal with a client who'd turned out to be schizophrenic, and not just making it up, had attacked him with a stapler and an arsenal of bobby pins, and yet the office still insisted that she was just suffering from depression. However, seeing Sephiroth like this was starting to freak him out. He practically levitated over to the man, careful hands sliding up the general's back, over his shoulders, before their director slumped himself lightly, comfortingly, against him.

"What's wrong?" Xemnas eyed the side of his neck, hypnotically watching the vein pulsate. "You look like me."

"Hn."

"…I mean that you look constipated."

"Do I?" Detached, still, and Xemnas didn't like it. Frowning a bit, he slid his fingers up along his neck, rubbing small circles over the softer tendrils of hair just behind one ear, pulling lightly on them occasionally. He felt a little better when the swordsman closed his eyes to revel in the sensation for a moment, but it was a hair's breath of a moment, and before long he was having a staring contest with the landfill outside the window again.

"It's nothing to worry about," he said coolly. "What is it you were saying about your job?"

"I said I loved it."

"Really?" Sephiroth noted the look of irritation that crossed Xemnas' face as he turned about, quirking his mouth a bit and shrugged. "Not my fault I wasn't paying attention. All you're bitching has begun to run together lately."

Surprisingly enough, Xemnas didn't swat him this time for reminding him how much of a woman he'd been for the past few weeks, rather he looked a little constipated. Sephiroth guessed he was trying to figure out what emotion to feel at the moment, but as his face faded to the remote emptiness that he usually wore, he figured he'd given up.

"Sephiroth," said general scowled and walked around him, heading towards the kitchen with him calling after him. "What happened between here and the store?"

"You're not allergic to anything with yeast in it are you?" It seemed he was staring into the all empowering light of the refrigerator more often these days. Perhaps if he waited long enough, a prophet would take up residence within it and explain to him why weird shit kept happening to him all the time.

"Did you kill someone?" Xemnas gave him an accusing eye, which was brushed off as the swordsman swept listlessly past him with a glass of cranberry juice spiked with Vodka.

"I killed a kitten today, does that count?" He really didn't want to discuss it, and he tried to make his point clear by sitting very stiffly in a chair beside the small dining room table and snapping open a newspaper. He was just getting to a story that would've made him smile lots, something about an adolescent cereal killer and his love of mandibles, when a tanned hand slowly and very deliberately lifted it from his grasp and began to fold it neatly.

"I wasn't done with that." Sephiroth still had his hands up, holding his invisible newspaper, twitching a commanding finger to have the tangible one returned to him.

"Darling." Xemnas smiled sweetly.

"Sweetheart." Xemnas grasped his suspended hands.

"Love of my life." Sephiroth did an exceptional job suppressing what would've been a very undignified yelp, as the loud pops and cracks of bones being crushed echoed about the room.

"Is there anything in particular I should know about?"

"No…not that I can think of."

"Are you sure?" Xemnas popped one of his fingers.

"Well…now that you mention it…"

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

"I see, so you're working for the Guild now. How long?"

"Immeasurably long." This is impossible…this can't really be happening.

"I understand," she laughed airily. "You can always tell the ones that have been at the Guild the longest. They don't really want to talk about it, and with good reason too. That place can sap so much energy and life out of you." She stared off through the window at a gaggle of non human Purgatorists carrying a large mirror along the murky sidewalk. "Sometimes, I used to think that there would never be a way out of this place…that I would be stuck doing Atonement work for eons and eons, and yet here I am, proof it can be done with a little patience and perseverance. But, there is a reason for it…It's all a learning process, a self-examination of sorts. It seems a funny way of doing it, and the system is very hap hazardous, but there really is a method to their madness."

She turned to him and smiled something bright, something entirely too bright, and he swatted away the feeling of comfort and security, that everything was going to be alright and the answer lay under the next rock. He sent her a warning glare.

"Stay out of my head."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, I just haven't got the hang of this yet," she rubbed at the side of her nose a moment, giving him, still, a sugar warm sort of smile. "Sometimes, if I'm not careful, I'll make groups of people suddenly stop what their doing and hug each other. It gets a little out of hand really, but I've been getting a lot of help from Zack and L.U.C.I.D. though."

"L.U.C.I.D?"

"Luminous Underlings of the Copious Ideological Deity."

"Sounds like another Guild."

"It is, just a bit more celestial."

"Is that why you have those?"

"Yes."

"I would've expected an angel's wings to be a bit…larger."

"Well, we're not official angels, it takes a lot of hard work to become an angel, title and all that," she stretched one of her tiny white sparrow-esque wings and took another sip of her tea.

"Luminous underlings…so what, they send you around doing good deeds or something?"

"You could say that, but I really don't know very much about it myself" she scratched her head a bit. "I hate being left in the dark about everything. I don't like all the mystery that goes into the afterlife. You'd think after you died all would be revealed, but it's as if I've just moved from one fuzzy screen to another; it's very annoying. But I suppose they have their reasons, so I just have to keep doing the best that I can-"

"Stop that." He was feeling like he was about to give birth to bubbles.

"Sorry, sorry, I really should see someone about this, I don't want to go through the rest of my unlife visiting excessive happiness every time I smile…although, I guess that wouldn't be too bad-"

"No. See someone about it. For the sake of sanity."

"You sure? You could use a smile on your face-"

"I hate not having my sword with me."

"Alright, alright then, just because you insist."

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

"Okay….so…what? You thought I'd be mad at you for having coffee with some girl?"

"Well, you got mad at me for holding the door open for some guy two days ago."

"No, that wasn't just some guy, that was an attractive guy and he was giving you a 'come hither' look."

"So, of course, I'm to blame."

"Well I couldn't blame him, he was a total stranger."

Sephiroth just growled at him and took another sip of his Vodberry. Xemnas got the message, sighing a bit too exasperatedly before popping another of his fingers back into its socket and wrapping it up with another thin rag. He would've used bandages, but the ones under the sink had looked rather questionable, and even if they were dead, he was still worried about the odd green stains on them.

"Was she an ex-girlfriend?"

"No."

"Just a friend then?"

"No."

Xemnas paused to stare into his face a bit before tying a gentle firm knot. "You killed her, didn't you?"

"Well, she was already dead when I saw her again, but yes, I killed her once before."

"I see," he kissed his bandaged pinkie finger before turning away to roll up what remained of his old uniform in an old sheet. He was going to miss working at the hospital, but it wasn't like he'd never go back and visit. After all, Luxord in a nurse's outfit was just too good an opportunity to pass up. "And I take it things went a bit uncomfortably?"

"Quite the contrary," he stretched himself a bit, rolling his right shoulder marginally. "You'd have thought we were old friends catching up on lost time."

"Really," Xemnas raised an eyebrow as he rose with the sheet and made his way towards a small hallway, where a mountain of laundry had overtaken the hamper and was causing a fire hazard. "So is that why you're all weird."

"I was expecting something else."

"Like what?"

"I don't know, just something…else."

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

"How's Zack?"

"Oh he's doing just fine, well, sort of. He and a few people at L.U.C.I.D. are getting into little scuffles here and there; mostly just differences of opinion."

"I can't imagine why."

She could smell his sarcasm and it made her smile. "Well, I have to admit, it's a suffocatingly pleasant atmosphere. Even I get a bit catty every now and then, but beggars can't be choosers."

"Hm." Sephiroth was staring into his fifth nearly empty cup of coffee like it was the most interesting thing in the world.

"But how about you?"

He looked up, questioningly as he raised an eyebrow.

"How have you been doing?"

He frowned slightly, distrustful, as he had been for the past 3 and a half hours. The swordsman tilted his head away from her slightly, as if listening out for someone behind him with a microphone, telling the brunette exactly what to say next before he got a bullet in the back of the head.

"Fine."

"I could see that really," she said with a gentle smile. "You've changed."

"How so?"

"You seem, I'm not sure, a bit more at peace then you were."

"At peace?" If there was anything, he knew he was not a peaceful person. No more than 5 minutes ago he'd wanted to ram his fist down the waitress' mouth for putting one too many scoops of sugar in his coffee.

"Yes, peace, even for you, is a possibility." She studied him as unobtrusively as she could. "There's been a change in your life, and its affecting you for the better, whether you realize it yourself or not, and it's because of that that your soul is beginning to fill itself."

"Well Miss Cleo, anything else you want to add? Maybe throw in my horoscope?"

"Hey now, I'm being serious!" She giggled, a little less girlish than before. Perhaps she was being serious this time. "No, but really, whatever it is that you've come in contact with, hold on to it like your life depended on it. It just might be the key to the end of your Atonement."

"What makes you so sure I'm atonable?" He smirked. "For all you know, I could be running this place in another year."

"Well, knowing you…" She fell serious for a moment. "But I do mean that, in all honesty. You were brought here because someone felt you should be given a second chance. Someone believed that you could heal yourself."

"Then someone's an idiot." The general drained the rest of his coffee and coughed. "I don't feel the least bit of regret about what I did."

"And you shouldn't."

He paused. He'd heard that right, hadn't he?

"You shouldn't regret a decision that you believed in. It's just that yours was a little, oh, I don't know, cosmically threatening? "

"Human beings were destined to wipe themselves out anyway. I was doing them a service."

"Is that how you feel now?"

"What's it to you?"

"Nothing really, just wanted to know if you still stand firmly behind your decisions."

"Of course I do. I wouldn't be who I am today if not for my will."

"Good. You'll probably need that in the future." She looked at her watch then and sighed. It almost sounded unhappy. "Well, I've got to go. I'm needed back at L.U.C.I.D. around 4ish."

"Is Zack one of you?"

"Yes, he is."

"As I expected." He couldn't imagine the dark haired man with a pair of midget wings. He almost laughed, almost. He looked off for a moment as she rose to leave. "Tell him I said hi."

"Hi? Just hi?"

"What?"

"Nothing, nothing, just thought you wanted to add something eloquent and enigmatic to that."

"I save all my eloquence for work and battle. I don't need to waste it on you."

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

"Aeirith Gainsborough?"

"Yes, that was her name, rather, is her name."

"I dunno, sounds like an ex-girlfriend name to me."

"She was my adversaries little plaything actually. You should've seen the look on his face when he found her bleeding like a burst water main."

"Your evil."

"Thank you."

"But…why'd you kill her?"

"She was in my way, that and it added an incredible amount of angst and turned the protagonist into a brooding emo."

"Hmm…If I'd made a list of Things To Do Before I'm Damned, I would've put down Kill Kairi, if it would've added that kind of weight to the plot."

"Why didn't you?"

"You can only do so much in an E rated game."

"I got away with it."

"Well, your graphics sucked, and crappy digital blood would've been a no-no."

"Bless the team of artists that resurrected me in all my updated pixilated sexiness."

Amen to that.

Xemnas had finished unwrapping the general's bandaged fingers and vwala! Instant healage! Courtesy of the Dead and Fucked Corporation. (Some restrictions will apply.) Straddling his hips, Xemnas began kneading and pawing at the man's chest as he tried to keep the attention on him and off the alcoholic beverage at Sephiroth's hand. He licked the tip of his nose before pulling away to inspect him.

"Feeling better?"

"When am I ever?"

"Does the tyrant need pick-me-up sex?"

"Is the servant going to let me plunder his caves?"

"Er…maybe just the entrance?"

Sephiroth glowered. "Then get off me."

"Listen you, comforting people is not my department of expertise, and you're lucky I haven't slapped you across the face with that glass of liquor." He fidgeted uncomfortably as the constipated look crossed his face. "At least give me credit for trying. So far the only way I know to snap your mood is to let you screw me-"

"Incomplete-screwage, because you never want to go farther-."

"The word screw is still in there, so it still counts as screwing!"

"Fine, whatever."

Xemnas watched him cave in on himself, wondering if that was what he looked like when he got all Emo, Unhappy, OMFG Don't Even Fucking Look At Me Or You Die.

"I could give you a lap dance?…Rather, I could try. I've never given anyone a lap dance before, but with enough alcohol, anything is possible."

"Mm."

"Or I could make dinner tonight. You've been doing it for the past three weeks."

"Mm."

"I could make dinner naked. Huh? Yes? I'll even go out and buy a frilly pink apron just for the occasion."

"Mm."

"Or maybe one of those dresses with the hole in the back, you know, for easy access and all?"

"Mm."

"How 'bout an enema? You look like you could use a good enema."

"Mm."

His patience was running low, and his narcissism was feeling horribly neglected, so he rolled his eyes and caught the other's chin roughly between his fingers and forced his head up. There was a cracking sound.

"HEY…YOU…WITH THE FACE!"

"What? Why are you yelling?"

"Did you even hear a word I just said?!"

"…Maybe."

"Oh my god, the only time I'm willingly whoring myself and you're not even paying attention."

"Well, quite frankly, I'm a little distracted."

"Well get undistracted so I don't get unhorny."

"Not right now Xemnas, I don't feel like i-" SMACK!

It was one of those moments where you're not sure you've been slapped, but you feel the sting, but you're still not sure it happened, because all logic points to the fact that no one in their sane mind would ever slap your lethal prettiness. But Xemnas had done it, and he'd done it with an empty glass of Vodka, 'cause that's how he rolled.

The word Filthy bitch popped into Sephiroth's head around the same time he grabbed Xemnas by the hair and all but yanked it out as he spun him around and cut off his airway in a Living Weapon of Doom and Destruction headlock. The fact that he'd been in this sort of situation before, or that he was never sure if the man was ever intent on doing him sincere bodily harm, didn't bother Xemnas so much as the fact that the mopey bitch had pulled his hair out just to get him into it. He'd just washed and combed it. A few sharp elbows to his solar plexus was his reward.

Irritated, because he swore he could taste blood in the back of his throat, Sephiroth released his hold for a moment, backing away, before reaching a hand out to snag the retreating shape. He was surprised to find numerous slashes appearing like magic all over his hand, and without thinking about it, grabbed hold of Xemnas' wrists to keep him from further attacking him with a pair of scissors. The Nobody spat at him and sank his teeth into his assailant's hand, who yelled something angry at him in what sounded like German before he was thrown across the table.

Elijah stood outside the door with an envelope in his hands, thinking it might not be a good idea to knock, not since something heavy had slammed up against the door. He stood there for about 5 minutes, listening to a variety of ominous sounds, many of which included tearing fabric, snapping wood, and predatory screams. It sounded like a catfight, a giant horny catfight, with a dash of blood. The reptile slid the envelope addressed to Xemnas beneath the door and prayed that it didn't get shredded as he made his way downstairs.

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

"You've seen the Superior?"

" 'Course I have, it was only a matter of time really. We've all got this uncannily obnoxious ability to know exactly where each of us is and whether or not it'll piss them off if we drop them a line."

Marluxia watched the Blue Haired Boy Wonder stare hypnotically into his glass of water. It was the best water in the world, straight from the hose, filled with all those nutritious parasites and bacteria, guaranteed to aid in unhealthy weight loss for an extended incurable time. Luckily, Saix had the immune system of a Brazilian cockroach, so the flower mage was pretty sure that after the 12 glasses of water, he could start heading out back with a garden hose to preserve his stock of Fiji.

In one corner of his little mind, Marluxia almost felt bad about screwing with Saix. Anyone with half a brain and one eye could tell that the Luna Diviner willingly and (secretly) happily enjoyed the master and servant image presented between himself and Xemnas, on a kinky make you giggle for days level, and also on an anime school girl stuttering first crush sort of level. It was sweet really, if you looked past the fangs, and the mood swings, and the bitterness, and the cynicism, and the hate for all things generally alive and in his space.

But he mostly felt bad because if the man ever found out but his scheme for personal entertainment, he'd probably tear him a new one and an extra, free of charge, but that only meant if he ever found out that he was being screwed with. And the screwy key was that Marluxia fully intended on not telling him Xemnas was doing the monkey love jive with his partner. Though, him finding out would be completely unavoidable, which was what Marluxia was counting on, because he wanted to know who would last the longest in a fight; the insane general, or the sane berserker. It was too tempting, like waving weed in front of Snoop Dog to see if he'd jump. He was even thinking about setting up a betting ring.

"How does he look?"

"Dead."

"Yes, I know that, but does he look…" well would've been a good word, or even sexy, which was an even better word. "…fine?"

"Depends on what you mean by fine."

"You know what I mean maggot." Saix bit off the 't' at the end of maggot. It was a sign of irritation. But he added a bite to everything to express his irritation.

"He looks healthy for a dead guy, if that's what you mean." Marluxia watched the blunette's eye twitch impressively. "Buuut, I think you might be meaning to ask something else, no?"

"Like what?"

"I dunno, maybe you should talk to him yourself."

"Because he'd want to speak to a disappointment such as myself," he muttered darkly, and immediately, the shadows began to shift in the room.

"Oh don't be a martyr, you weren't the only one to die! Besides," Marluxia flipped his hair. "My death was way more epic-er than yours was, so there."

"Whatever. Only You-Tubers are going to get to see your death…in Japanese…never to be translated…which downgrades your death to a blip on the relevance radar."

"Tss, you're such a beetch to everybody."

Saix sent him an unusually prissy smirk before draining his glass of water and dropping it on the bar counter. The Salty Dog was empty, only because Marluxia had made sure it was empty, because he didn't want to be run out of business because Captain Insano decided to go kamikaze and kill some dude for breathing his air.

"More water."

"How about something tastier than water?"

"I don't like alcohol. It makes me crazy."

"Yeah, I know, I remember." He got nerve chills just thinking about it. He'd never be able to look at saran wrap the same way ever again. "But I'm not talking about booze, hun, I'm talking about something that would interest you."

"Interest me," he raised an eyebrow, doing a poor job of looking interested. "Do tell."

"Something, perhaps, about your Superior dearest."

"Why would he interest me?" It was a weak statement. Saix knew it. Marluxia knew it. Every Xemnas/Saix fangirl knew it. And to make it worse, he'd stuttered a little on the Why.

"Really? You think no one notices?"

"Just because I actually took my job seriously doesn't make me an ass kiss."

"Yeah, you kissed some ass, in a purely platonic way of course."

Saix lowered his gaze as he growled, digging clawed fingernails into the wood of the counter and leaving scars that probably would take a great deal of money to patch up (Or the right amount of under the table services, which ever was handiest).

"Relax Spot, I'm just teasing you. I'm dead, remember? It might make me hurt, but I'll come right back, I promise you."

Saix glared at him still, before it drooped into something along the lines of fatigued consternation etched in measured antagonism. He whispered uneasily; "Is it really that obvious?"

"Well, not really."

"You're lying."

"I am not! Really, we were just jealous that you were like, the unofficial number two and all, so we talked smack about you behind your back because we were insecure about ourselves."

"Your nose twitches when you lie."

"Ooo, I thought you were the only person who didn't know about that."

Saix leaned forward and let his head fall listlessly against his hand, propped up on the counter, and got stuck in a corner of his head as he stared off at something. Now that the organization was a pack of zombies, he couldn't use his threat of decapitation to keep them off his back about being the Superior's shadow. Truth be told, he had taken his job seriously, he had believed that Xemnas was the man with the plan, a foolproof plan, and they'd all followed him for whatever their individual reasons were outside of wanting to be whole again. That was until he went fucking insane.

Yet part of it was admiration, which for someone like Saix who didn't give two shits about the next person brushing elbows with him in the castle dining hall, was a very significant thing. Perhaps it was because he was the man at the end of the table, or that he radiated a constant air of, for lak of a better word, superiority with a touch of exotic grace, or maybe it was just that he was the sexiest thing on two legs that didn't irritate him. Whatever it was, he knew it'd festered somewhere in the left pocket of his robe, and it'd become something more than simply admiration. He'd go so far as to call it infatuation, but he never dwelled on it. To do so said that it meant something, and for a being without a heart, an intangible sensation shouldn't mean anything.

Shifting his gaze over to the pink haired man, who had been studying him too closely for his tastes, he straightened up a bit, folding one hand over the other.

"So? What is this something that I'd be interested in?"

"Mm, depends on where your interests lay." Marluxia smiled thinly, leaning against the counter, a hand on his hip. His sticky business stance. "What do you want to know?"

"Where he is."

"Mm…you'll have to be more specific…and you'll have to make a donation."

"A what?"

"A donation, nothing's free in this world you know."

"You've got to be kidding me. You want me to pay you for information?!"

"You're saying it like I'm asking you to give up your own child!"

"I'd eat my child." Saix hated kids. He'd probably eat his own kid and then his neighbor's kids too. He sat back to glower at the pink haired man, who, by now, was entirely too confident to be rattled by his glares of death. He had the upper hand here, and he was pretty sure Saix knew that too since he hadn't started threatening to tie fisherman's knots in his intestines.

"…"

"Is that a 'No, I don't want to know where the Superior dearest is?' "

"Fine. How much?"

"Eh, I think 250 should cover the first installment."

"Right, I'm just going to pull 250 dollars out of my ass for information you probably don't have, so here's my idea, how about I just peel off layers of your skin with my teeth until you remember that logic is your friend."

"Okay fine, 100."

"And after I'm done with your skin, I'll start on the arteries."

"70?"

"In your dick."

"40."

"After I've pumped them full of formaldehyde."

"20 dollars sound good?"

"Sounds excellent." Saix pulled a dead historical figure out of the back pocket of his jeans and dropped it in his empty glass. "Now, tell me where he lives."

"Ooo, sorry, don't quite know that yet. That's going to be a 40 dollar Incorrect Service Fee-"

"Formaldehyde's also readily soluble in water, so I can put it in a syringe and stick your-"

"Free! Free! One time only offer of a free Incorrect Service fee charge. You lucky bastard you."

"Tell me where I can find him."

"At work." Marluxia paused, realizing he wasn't going to get anymore money out of him, and rolled his eyes. "He's a therapist. He works at a clinic called M.E.R.C.Y."

"M.E.R.C.Y…What does that stand for?"

"Malignant Envoys of the Revered Cube of Yggrasil."

"In other words, it doesn't mean anything."

"No really, that's what it stands for. The developers were having a hard time coming up with benevolent sounding words with which to make an acronym out of, so they stuck with weak irony instead."

Saix tried not to gag at the thought that some imbecile had sullied one of the great staples of his character by demeaning it to something so base and contrite. He shed an invisible tear as a team of non-existent men in military threads fired a volley of respect into the bleak skies of nothingness to observe the death of irony.

"Do you know where it is?"

"No, but it isn't that hard to find. Any patient of theirs or a Jehovah's witness should know where it is. Hey, you might even be able to get in easier if you started foaming at the mouth."

"Right, and land myself in a psyche ward. I'll put that on my To Do list, right between Underwater Basket Weaving and Feed Mrs. Cutters Eel."

"You laugh now, but you'll develop a sudden case of touretts when the time comes."

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About an hour after the noises stopped, the neighbors assumed that the cougars living on the sixth floor had eaten each other and went about their daily routine of yelling in various languages, throwing about furniture, and avoiding the fourth floor as Lucas had yet to return to his room, still wondering what the flying fuck just happened up there.

"Well that was strange," Xemnas said, still out of breath as he brushed a stray feather from his eyelid. He was curled about what used to be a chair, naked, except for his work shirt, which had holes in the back, staring at the ceiling where there used to be a lamp of some sort. Though he was bleeding profusely from his neck where Sephiroth had bitten him, the pain was a dull undercurrent to the fact that his lower back was killing him.

"I wonder if our insurance will cover this," Sephiroth coughed, perched on a two legged coffee table, picking something sticky out of his hair he was sure wasn't honey. He was shirtless, wearing one sock, and covered from head to toe in bear sized scratch marks that had steadily begun to heal. Despite all of that, nothing more happened than was expected-Xemnas refusing to let himself be fucked properly-but the scale of raw animosity made up for it, and now he was sure he could go to bed without needing to wake up and cloister himself in the bathroom for 15 minutes. He looked to Xemnas then, getting pleased all over again that he hadn't decided to kill him the first time they met. "We could say there was an earthquake. That might cover the hole beside the bookcase."

"Was that sex or primeval tongue fucking?" Xemnas rolled onto his back, wincing sharply as the motion strained his neck and a muscle in his calf he never knew existed. He was thinking that they needed to replace the lamp before it got any darker, or else finding the bathroom in the middle of the night was going to suck.

"Where's the phone?" Sephiroth flipped up a pile of books with the leg of the coffee table, looked about himself for a moment as, and then made his way to a dresser with one drawer left in it. "Maybe if I do some damage to the other floors, the earthquake scenario will be more believable."

"You were the last one to have it. It should be right where you left it, hanging out the window." Xemnas groaned, pulling himself into a seated position and gingerly fingered the teeth marks through the substance oozing out of his neck, and watched the general stick his head through the fractured window pane.

"Ah, found it." He was busy pulling it up by its curly-fry cord, when a head wedged itself beneath his arm and a snatch of silver hair popped up in his line of around the time he tossed the phone back across the room as close to the receiver as he could.

"Hey you, pay attention to me," Xemnas sighed breathlessly, jabbing a finger in Sephiroth's chest. "You're ruining an earth shatteringly fatal experience by worrying about insurance. Besides, you bit me, and I'm a little worried about why I haven't stopped bleeding yet."

"I bit you? I thought I just threw you at a door and burned you."

"No, I burned you, on the leg, here," Xemnas indicated a spot with his toe on Sephiroth's left leg. The fabric was charred and sticking to him like a second skin. Getting it off was going to be a party in France. "You don't remember doing that?"

"Lots of things happened within the hour. You can't expect me to remember everything I did."

Xemnas stared at him, a nervous bafflement coating his features, dark blood seeping out between the fingers cupped about the wound. Actually, now that he thought about it, there were two times during that whole ordeal that Sephiroth had actually scared the shit out of him. He truly believed he was going to kill him, no two ways about it, but then he would whip his ass with a frying pan to the face or a phone cord about the neck. There were times, like now, that we wondered if being in a relationship with a sociopath was a healthy decision. But the sex was good, or, what he remembered of it, so it was okay.

"I probably hit a main artery," Sephiroth said nonchalantly, cutting through Xemnas' thoughts with an attentive kiss, pulling him towards the dining room table (miraculously the only other piece of furniture, besides the blood stained couch, that was still in one piece) and seated the dark skinned man on the edge with thoughtless effort. Slipping a hand around his wrist, he pulled Xemna's hand away from his neck to inspect his handiwork, smiling, pleased, that it'd leave a very noticeable Sephy love bite on him for some time. Reaching behind the Nobody to snag a piece of cloth, probably what was left of a curtain or a rug, he pressed it firmly, gently, against his neck as the golden eyed man hissed irritably.

"You shit head, I won't be able to sleep on this side for days."

"Why is your blood so dark?"

"It's because I'm a Nobody," he replied, blinking a little in surprise as if it was the most obvious thing. "Marluxia didn't tell you?"

"He didn't go into any great detail on the subject." He pulled the cloth away to inspect the wound, wiping at it gently before refolding it to a cleaner side and applying the same consistent pressure on it once more. "Is that also the reason why you're cold?"

"I'm cold because you blew a damn hole in our living room."

"No, I mean internally cold." He sighed, aggravated, before his calm insanity fell back into place. "I've noticed your body doesn't give off a considerable amount of heat." He stated simply, raising an eye to note Xemnas' reaction, which really wasn't much of anything. He seemed more like he was listening to something he'd heard about a billion times, and thought it only necessary to expend .0006 units of attention.

"That's what happens when you don't have a heart. Your body dies." He didn't sound in the least bit concerned over it, like something he'd gotten used to, as a terminal cancer patient gets used to the idea that they only have so long in this fabulous little world.

"It's odd though, because there are those times when you're actually warm."

"Really?" Now he was paying attention, straightening up even. Good Fido. "Like when?"

"Usually it's during sex, but there have been other arbitrary times when you're not as cold as could as you usually are." He paused in his speech to watch Xemnas' reaction, who seemed to take it all in with a distracted sort of thought, a gentle frown of unreadable focus etched into his features. "Has this ever happened before?"

"No…Not that I can recall. I never really realized any noticeable decrease in core temperature actually…or rise in it." He looked off for a moment, distracted by something just at the tip of his mind, but too far below the horizon for him to see what it was. Besides, why worry about it? It wasn't going to change the fact that he still had no heart and all that madness; And despite that, he found himself falling as he leaned to him, to Sephiroth, arching his back to place a firm needy kiss to his lips, still brushed with the slightest bit of blood.

Lazily, because he had a headache the size of a heavy metal concert gone horribly array, he licked gently at the man's lips, coaxing them apart to allow the muscle to slither within, knowing a touch of uninterrupted freedom before Xemnas's tongue half-heartedly blocked access to the back of his throat, tasting the swordsman, and the faint zing of the alcohol and cranberry juice he'd had earlier.

It was a lazy battle, like two blind, deaf, 80 year old lions fighting for dominance over a grape and forgetting half way through what they were fighting about and started milling around each other in a daze. A tired throaty moan oozed from the Nobody, draping his arms carelessly about the swordsman's shoulders and used him as a wall to hang from, like a spider monkey.

Eventually, Sephiroth got lazy, and tired, and broke their kiss abruptly, noting absently that Xemnas had made some muffled protest when his head fell forward against his chest. Resting his head atop the one of silver, he closed his eyes and swayed with the man, breathing, listening to him breathing, shallowly, and shook him gently as the man started dropping off to sleep.

"I need a nap."

"Mmm…I'm hungry," Xemnas muttered with no amount of demanding force. He let his arms fall, dead, at his sides, before he raised the lead filled appendages and wrapped them about the general's waist, hanging off him again, like sloth.

"You burned me. I'm not making you anything."

"But you bit me so you should make me something anyway."

Sephiroth paused to consider this, which took him 15 minutes because he kept spacing off at thee cannonballs beside the door that'd rolled there. "Let me sleep for 2 hours and I'll get back to you."

"Fine, but I'm coming with you…and you're carrying me."

The trek to the bed didn't go as planned, mostly because they stopped every two steps and analyzed the floor, and eventually, there was an unofficial democratic vote of 99 to 1 that said that the floor was closer and comfier, and both men collapsed upon it, knocked the fuck out, and slept for 8 hours under Sephiroth's trench coat. Xemnas wouldn't see the envelope addressed to him till some weeks later.

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Mille: So the last part was sleepy, because I was feeling sleepy, and it's easier to write sleepy people when you're sleepy. Leave me reviews while I sleep.