Disclaimer- Shotaro Ishinomori's, not mine.
Notes- Spoilers for 'Tears of Steel' and 'Breaking In'. In case, you're interested, this isn't for fanfic100 on it is, however for the 30 kisses challenge (I'm currently signed up for three different challenges for the Cyborg 009 fandom. What can I say, I like a challenge. :)) Oh, and obligatory yaoi warning! Jet/Albert, as usual. Comments are always appreciated.
Jet hadn't thought much of Albert Heinrich at first. Of course, back in those days he hadn't thought much of anything beyond escape and revenge. Everything else was either part of the plan or in his way. So it wasn't until after they fled, and he got to know him and the rest of the team better, that he decided that he didn't like any of them.
It was the stupidest thing he'd heard in his life. Yes, they'd escaped, but the bastards who'd stolen their lives were still out there, and they weren't going to stop chasing them just because they didn't feel like fighting anymore. They all pissed him off, but not nearly as much when Albert tried to feed him that crap, because he had thought Albert was smarter than that.
He decided he hated him when they first fought 0011. Soft-heartedness in his teammates was one thing. Albert stopped him from killing the assassin sent to kill them because... he had no idea. Probably something in his past. Like almost everyone else, he had yet to divulge what his life had been like before being kidnapped by the Black Ghost organization. Either way, Jet didn't give a damn. He let 0011 get away because he couldn't let go of his own past, and now that monster would come back to try to kill them again, and he would never forgive him for that.
But Albert surprised him in the end. He had never told Jet who gave him the tiny gold ring he used to fire that last shot, or why he murmured the name 'Hilda' afterwards, but it wasn't hard to figure it out that whoever Hilda was, she had meant everything to him... or that he had thrown away the last thing he had left of her to save their lives, and the hate Jet felt for him slowly (very slowly) turned into a grudging respect for the older cyborg.
It wasn't until much later, right before they stormed the Airship but after he had been wounded that it began to change into something else. To see so much reflected in the eyes-- anger, concern, relief-- of someone as calm as Albert, for someone like him, made something inside Jet twinge. But they were in a middle of a battle, and he had no time to figure out what that thing was.
When he did figure it out, he immediately wished he hadn't. Because figuring it out meant owning up to the fact that without even realizing it this time, his feelings for Albert had... become something else entirely.
And what the hell was he supposed to do about it! While he had been known to knock boots on more than one occasion, it had never meant much more to him than that. None of them had ever made him feel the way he did when he was with Albert... as stupid as that sounded. But he also knew he wasn't the easiest person to get along with... and this was Albert, after all. But if he didn't do something soon, he was going to explode--
"Jet? You okay?" He was so busy brooding, he hadn't noticed Albert sneak up behind him. It was getting harder to look him in the eyes these days.
Oh, just do it and get it over with...
"Hey. Albert."
"Hm?"
"Look over here."
He kissed him, long and firmly enough to get his point across, but nothing further than that. When he pulled away, Albert's expression was not angry, just confused.
"Hunh. That answers my question. I think."