Title: Lifelines

Character(s): Demyx and Axel

Warnings: Implied sexual situation, yaoi

Rating: T

Words: 831

Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts and make no profit from its name and characters.

A/N: I've had this story on my mind for a while. Hope you like.


The superstitious measured the extent of a person's life through their lifeline. His father's lifeline had been strong and sturdy, built upon callused palms that knew the weight of an axe and the worth of a man's pound of flesh. His mother's lifeline had been soft and delicate, bathed in rainwater and dish soap, constantly tending injuries and weaving hopes with soft smiles and gentle hands. His sister's lifeline had been optimistic and lively, always present when her animated movements got the best of her and all she could do was laugh, grab his hand and make him laugh too. Their lifelines had been long, tracing the curve of their hands and reaching the wrists, seemingly reaching deeper than their skin and following their veins, their blood, cells and soul into eternity.

His had been different. His lifeline was short, barely able to touch his sister's idealistic dreams or his father's earth encrusted hands. They could not carry the rainwater like his mothers, or reach into his blood and draw infinite ideograms into existence. His hands, the salient tools of a musician, could not carry his songs echoes or be seen by his audience without someone mentioning his defective mark. It was the elderly that gazed upon him, shaking their heads and murmuring philosophies and premonitions of his misfortune. He would later tell his mother he didn't care, spill his heart into his music and let the lifelines of his strings carry his soul forward.

There were times in which his pen would take over his mind, entrapping music and transferring them to paper. The ink would smear and blot, black lines tracing his hand and making his lifeline reach beyond the paper, the room and house. He would stare at his palm, tracing the pen over the lines and barely sensing when his sister withdrew the pen from his hand, placing her palm over his and smearing the ink between them.

"I'll share my lifeline with you and that way, we'll die together brother."

Her words, even now, echoed in the void of his room. He was the last surviving member of his family and of his world; the last one left to laugh at the incongruity of his destiny. Sometimes he would stare at his hands and remember that he too had died, the sentence of his lifeline carried out. He'd lived long enough to die with them, and now he lived once more, with the same mark, with the same destiny promising a young and futile death. Only the dead couldn't die twice…yet his lifeline would not grow, no matter how much ink or darkness or blood he used to make it longer.

Then there were nights like these, in which his wrists would find purchase in the redheads hardened hands, his arms thrust above his head, blonde hair messy and loose as it thrashes against the remnants of their clothes and sheets and he is worn like a second skin, their bodies all sweat and heat.

Turquoise eyes close in wanton pleasure, reopening and blurring when his head bobs to the rhythm of their movements, a flurry of red fire that dances across both their skin and incites a seduction with his gaze instead of words. His tongue is persistent, raising bumps on the skin of his arms, tracing his wrist, his fingers, his palm and the lifeline glaring at them both. Red hair spills over an upturned face, tongue parting bruised lips and tracing the nearly nonexistent line, spreading it across the blondes body with his tongue and his breath and his eyes and he smirks when the blonde beneath him grows rigid, grabs him by his hair like a moth drawn to flame and replays their sensual melody over and over again.

When all is said and done both remain afterwards, one body curled into the other and an azure gaze tracing the invisible lines marked as his lifeline. He hears a grumble, doesn't object when his wrist is forcefully grabbed and yanked until they have rolled over and he is straddling the redhead.

"Lifelines only apply for the living. From this point on, you'll have to create your own."

His bemused gaze transforms into a wandering smile and he doesn't protest when he is once again on the bottom, teeth gently sucking on a spot behind his ear, legs interlocked and fingers laced. And between them they would create enough of a lifeline to see the obliteration of the world, the earth, the stars and everything in between. Perhaps Nobodies didn't have lifelines but he's beginning to learn just how much the paper must love the pen, if only to live this seduction for one more day, to feel the others tongue sketching his lifeline beyond his palm, up the curve of his arm, into the hollow of his shoulders, the planes of his chest, the length of his neck, into his blood and beyond the darkness. For that, he'd die all over again.