Dale: This is yet another request that Chip put in some days ago, so this goes to her, and to Jaded Expression of Euphoria who so lovingly made us the avatar and is awesomesicle, as per her word choice. It's also for you, readers... don't feel left out - there's plenty of love for y'all.

Gackt, Hyde, hair pulling, leather pants, and a rosary.

So, here you have it. Don't own, didn't happen, no need to rub it in.

I might have ruined some people's perception of Hyde as the conflicted victim of a supernatural creature in this relationship, but I'm sure it'll make some others happy... and it might offend others because it has some blasphemic scenes. Lol. Enjoy and give Jesus my apologies.

:]

Soul on Fire

For once in a long time, Gackt was trying to sleep during the night. He was truly exhausted after a long and grueling tour of Asia and Europe. His voice was tired, his body was tired, his mind was tired, and quite frankly, his soul was a bit worn out from all the running around as well. He had really overdone it this time, and yet he still continued to work.

He had been pushing himself so hard for months, especially since a new concept for his next album had been developing in his agitated mind for days. All he did was think, write, negotiate with the record label, and repeat the cycle, barely eating and certainly not sleeping much. It was true he only slept a few hours every night, but even he needed at least three hours a week and he was sure he hadn't had nearly as many hours of sleep in a week and a half.

Sleep tugged at his eyelids and his bones, but the night was just too hot. He had tried a fan plus the air conditioning in his room, but the heat was just stifling, no matter what he did to get some fresh air circulating. He had started the evening wearing a full set of pajamas, and not an hour after he had gone to bed had passed before he was down to wearing nothing but a thin bed sheet around his middle.

His last resort was to open the window.

He didn't want to open the window because the sweet call of the outside world would not let him sleep. He would want to go out and enjoy the feel of the breeze and the sway of the trees under the silver moon, and he wouldn't sleep. He was well aware that he wouldn't be able to stay still for long if opened his window, but he also wouldn't stop tossing and turning maniacally if he didn't do something about the godforsaken heat.

He gave up. Tossing the lightweight sheet aside, Gackt stood up and opened the window to let in the breeze. He returned to his bed as soon as he opened the window. He looked through the open space at the night sky and sighed. Outside, it wasn't hot at all. It was fresh, breezy and all around peaceful. There should be no reason why his room should feel so hot with fresh air, a fan at full speed and air conditioning cold enough that it should have made him grab a blanket or two.

Maybe he was going crazy, after all. Maybe he had turned off the air conditioning and couldn't remember it… he was so exhausted and unaware of his surroundings that it could have easily slipped his mind. Leaving his bed and the oppressive heat of the room, Gackt wandered into his house on a mission to check if he had turned off the thermostat.

The thermostat read a low temperature – it was indeed cold enough for him to need a blanket, but he still felt hot; he could even feel tiny beads of perspiration gathering at the back of his neck and it frustrated him that he felt that way.

Was he running a fever? Had he finally made himself sick from stress and exhaustion?

He touched his fingers to the nearest air vent high up on a wall. There was plenty of cold air flowing into the house, but he still felt so damnably hot.

Gackt decided he would return to his bedroom, take a cold shower and return to his bed. He was determined to sleep that night, even if it meant he would cram all six feet of himself inside his refrigerator and ship himself to Antarctica.

He needed the rest desperately so he could keep up with his ideas and visions for future endeavors. He couldn't afford to make himself sick.

Before stepping back into the bedroom, he put a hand to his forehead, trying to feel for a fever, but he couldn't feel anything out of the ordinary in regards to sickness, except the feeling he was roasting alive slowly. He walked into his room.

What he saw sitting by his windowsill waiting for him while looking at the moon reduced Gackt to shocked stuttering and trembling, the heat devouring his body mingling with a cold feeling crawling up his spine one vertebra at a time.

"H-Haido..."

Giving Gackt his coy Mona Lisa smile, Hyde sat on the ledge with one leg drawn up to his chest and the other swinging playfully as it hung suspended above the floor of Gackt's room. His hands fiddled with a black rosary that glinted softly under the glow of the moon. Deep caramel eyes stared down Gackt's electric blue and a sultry voice that shook the nude man to his core softly addressed him.

"That's my name, Gacchan. Wear it out all you like…"

He should have known it was him. He should have known he wasn't hallucinating when he felt the strange heat. He should have expected Hyde to be behind it all because something unexplainable always happened to him before the petite singer showed up out of the blue.

These encounters weren't unwelcome, but they always took Kamui by surprise and the nagging feeling that Haido enjoyed violating his privacy in such a manner disturbed him a bit. However, the most disturbing aspect of the situation always was his utter inability to classify the encounters as real or vivid dreams.

He felt every single touch and remembered every single word about their nightly meetings, but come morning, he could never find enough proof Hyde had been with him during the night. All he had were hazy memories that he tried so hard to hold on to, but there was always something fleeting about them, something that made Kamui desperate to chase after those memories.

"The heat… you… you did this, didn't you?" Kamui had tried being more coherent, but he was still at a loss of what to say. He didn't want to admit it, but he was partially afraid that if he spoke in complete sentences, the petite man would disappear.

That was, if he could call Hyde a man.

"Good job," the slight blonde singer cooed mockingly at Gackt with a faint smirk; a gesture that was becoming all too familiar on this nightly Hyde.

The way Hyde appeared and disappeared before him couldn't be human. Unless Gackt had lost his mind, it was impossible for Hyde to be so far away on tour or doing something far from where Gackt was and still show up before him when he was alone. It was impossible and he knew he wasn't crazy.

He knew supernatural when he saw it, and whatever Hyde was, he was definitely not just a mere mortal as he seemed to be.

"Doesn't the heat remind you of Taiwan a little? I remember it clearly, Gacchan… it was just infernal, wasn't it?" With a graceful little jump off the sill, Hyde landed softly on the floor and walked slowly toward Kamui.

Predatorial was just about the only adjective that could vaguely describe Hyde's gait as he approached Gackt. Just knowing that those small steps could change into leaps and bound at the drop of a dime made Gackt's heartbeat quicken; even his lungs refused to exhale, painfully aware that anything could trigger an unexpected reaction that he wasn't sure he could handle.

Hyde wore the same outfit Kei had worn during the early scenes of Moon Child – the flowing white shirt that left little to the imagination had enough buttons loose to reveal his smooth chest and a beautiful onyx rosary hanging from his slender neck; the tan leather pants rustled softly as his thighs rubbed against one another while he walked, the leather clinging to the small figure in places that had Gackt's mouth watering.

Everything had changed during the filming of Moon Child. Before the film, it was Gackt who had held an interest on Hyde. He had wanted him for Kei's role and the short singer had accepted it, albeit reluctant to do so, at first. It was true he was interested in Hyde more so than just as an actor and artist, but Hyde had never flirted back or done anything past being kind and friendly. But all that began to change during the filming of the movie; during the day, Hyde would be his normal self around Gackt, but there was a new air about him, almost as if he was suddenly more interested in Gackt, but never saying it; Hyde seemed to imply it with a look or a smile, but he never said anything that crossed boundaries, much less did anything that could turn their friendship into something more.

At night, it was different. When darkness fell and the cameras stopped shooting, Hyde would sneak into Gackt's room and act unlike his daytime self. The nighttime Hyde oozed with raw, crude sexuality; his eyes shined brighter with a sinful glint; his body looked impossibly appetizing, even more so than any other time; his silky voice fell like a trickle of cool water and ran down Gackt's heated back; his words rained upon Gackt like blows that turned to hands and caressed him in places that made him gasp and blush. The worst was when Gackt inquired to Hyde about the previous night and the petite blonde would claim he didn't know what he meant by that. It was as if hose encounters never happened, but Gackt knew they did and that Hyde just had to be lying.

The truth was tucked away behind and beyond that tiny, sinful smile.

This nighttime Hyde had to be a demon lover, an incubus unlike anything and anyone; the stuff of legends. Gackt never joked when he said Hyde's smile was sin; a person's smile was the mirror of their personality, and if there was any truth in that statement, then he was more than right about the other man.

But the nighttime Hyde's seduction didn't stop at lustful looks and dirty words. No, in fact, it didn't stop until Gackt was running a diabolical fever that blocked out all of his surroundings and made him swim through a haze of pleasure and blurry images. It never stopped until Hyde was pulsating around Gackt with sexual abandon and his hands squeezed Hyde's unblemished hips hard enough to make them bleed.

It didn't stop until Gackt was calling out Hyde's name faster than he could breathe in air; it never stopped until Hyde drained him of everything, starting from his release all the way to his last drop of energy.

It never stopped until Gackt passed out from Hyde's passionate ravages and slipped into an underworld of hazy riddle-like dreams. It truly stopped until his phantom of desire left him at dawn's doorstep and vanished from his presence, never leaving enough evidence for Gackt to truly know if he had ever been there… only to resume another night when the night was dark and the moon was standing watch.

It used to happen just about every night back when they were filming moon Child. Now, after two years of wrapping up the film's production, the nighttime Hyde still claimed him on some nights. It was not as often anymore, but when the brown eyed incubus showed up, the encounters were a whirlwind of limbs, screams and the ever-present thirst for one another's passion. The encounters were few and far in between since the end of Moon Child, but they were by far the most fulfilling and wild, yet the most frustrating; frustrating enough that the half-memories consumed him whenever he wasn't working himself to exhaustion.

It was Gackt's nature to work way too hard, but the incomplete recollections of the nighttime Hyde and his devilish ministrations drove him to despair so much, he went out of his way to keep himself more busy than he could handle being. Gackt knew that if he gave himself time to think about Hyde and couldn't come up with an answer, he would lose whatever was left of his mind.

The last time Hyde had materialized to claim Gackt had been at the start of the latest tour – the one that he had just finished and the one he had poured so much energy into. He had been overly overzealous for the past months for a reason: Hyde. Gackt just couldn't let his nightly obsession drip into the daytime; if it did, he would ruin himself and he wouldn't even care.

"Don't drift away, Gacchan… don't make me bring you back the hard way. You've been a bad boy and you've been keeping away from me…" Gackt could not determine when Hyde had come close enough to whisper so menacingly in his ear. The heat was still there, getting stronger with the close proximity of the brown eyed ghost lover.

The blue eyed singer gasped when a small hand slithered up his fevered neck and buried itself in his disheveled copper hair; he yelped helplessly when the hand yanked back roughly, pulling his head with it, the fingers tightly grasping his hair. The mouth grazing the shell of his ear was hot, moist and made his skin tingle with jolts of electric longing; the voice growled deeply,

"You can run across the world, Gacchan, but you can't hide from me."

His body burned with a desperate need and screamed for Hyde's touch, but Gackt forced himself to speak; he needed to.

"You think I run? What about you? You drive me crazy at night, and then you pretend nothing ever happened in the morning…. Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep myself together when I question my sanity every night?" The tall man tried to keep his feelings in check, but years of doubt and confusion were pushing through faster than he could push back.

"You're damn right I'm trying to stay away from you – you give me what I want to take it away from the next day! It's been more than two years of this and I have my limits… I've been in the psych ward before and I won't let you put me there again…." Gackt was interrupted by a set of hot lips at his throat, mocking him and searing his skin.

"You know I'm never going to stop and I'm never going to tell you what you want, Gacchan… and yet you fight me. I like that – I like that fire that engulfs you when you're mad…" Hyde paused for a long instant to then continue, "in fact, it makes me hot when you fight me…all that anger, just waiting to be released… all that anger and energy, just for me." The demon singer let go of Gackt's hair and grasped his wrists instead.

Gackt's anger had receded into more longing at Hyde's words. His rage fell through enough for the sultry demon man to coax him toward the bed where he found himself spread eagled with Hyde hovering above him. The way in which Hyde rubbed himself against his naked body had Gackt panting; it would be even worse when they were finally skin to skin, and he couldn't be more eager to be pressed against Hyde's body.

He'd been waiting for far too long.

He made the mistake of holding Hyde's entrancing gaze for a moment too long. Faster than he realized, he found himself being dragged under the spell of that hazy fever that always claimed him before Hyde did. Everything around him began to take a surreal twist and figures and objects swam all around his addled field of vision. The clearest image in his eyes was that of Hyde's face inches above his, inhaling and exhaling as if he was trying to breathe him in.

The heavy pull of those brown on his awareness was hard to fight against; even though Gackt's eyes were wide open, it felt as if they open just a crack. No matter how awake he seemed to be, his electric blue eyes couldn't see past the dreamlike film that had just settled over them.

"Haido… Haido…" He called breathily for his nighttime lover, uncaring of the resentful feelings he had spoken not too long before. His logic had been pushed aside by the mysterious fever, giving way to Gackt's suppressed yearnings and allowing them to run amok through his veins. The magic of Hyde's ancient spell rendered him boneless, pliable, and highly susceptible to the demon's whims.

"Ah, Gacchan… have you ever heard the saying that the eyes are the windows to the soul?" Hyde cooed lovingly at the besotted man, making sure his mouth was as close to Gackt's as he could manage and still maintain eye contact.

Gackt nodded, all the while busy with trying to undo the buttons and zippers of Hyde's pants. Hyde's eyes fluttered close at the feeling of Gackt's hands rubbing against his abdomen and he smiled to himself. Hyde opened his eyes again to make contact with Gackt's clouded eyes.

"I love it when you look at me, Gacchan… I love it because I can see my reflection in those big blue eyes of yours, the windows to your soul. I love seeing myself through those beautiful windows and knowing I'm inside of you, that you belong to me."

It was Gackt's turn to shut his eyes, but he did because he couldn't look at Hyde in the eye anymore without screaming his need for fulfillment into that sculpted angel's face. His hands were fisted into the loose white shirt and the need to take what he could from Hyde prompted him to pull the shirt off the clothed man. Hyde cooperated gracefully and he was soon topless against a writhing Gackt, who was all too glad to let his hand roam Hyde's back and shoulders, lightly scratching the skin in their wake.

The feel of Gackt scratching his back sensually was the one action of their encounter thus far that had unsettled Hyde enough to make him groan and shudder; the blonde singer arched his back against the feeling, having missed it after many months of not being in the embrace of his blue eyed obsession. His hissing only helped make the blue eyed man more persistent and eager to mark his master.

Despite his supernatural control over Gackt, Hyde also suffered from that explosive passion that consumed the other man. His nature demanded he retreated when dawn broke and that his victim did not remember much of the encounter. Hyde always wished he could stay for longer and say something other than dirty talk, but he could not. In time, he had learned to accept that he could never stay long enough to see his statuesque lover rise to greet the day; he had also learned to relish the thought that Gackt would slowly go insane with doubt and longing until the next time they met; then he could make things right by feeding their passion until it was time to go again.

It was a terrible routine, but it was a cycle. At least a cycle is consistent when it cannot be constant.

After all, he did have a wife, a son, and a career aside from being an incubus. He couldn't really stick around or tell Gackt anything either way. To the eyes of the world, Gackt would always seem to be the instigator and he the victim… why not profit from the inside joke a bit?

As much as Hyde would love to stay and chat, he had a body to claim with his passion and a divine punishment to administer to the heated man beneath him. He wrenched Gackt's clutching hands away from his body and took control of the night's proceedings by sliding down the other man's body with an otherworldly grace.

"N-nan desu ka…" Gackt stuttered confused for a second or two, trying to turn the tables on the smaller man above him and claim him, but his questioning and actions only got him a feral look from Hyde and a bruising kiss that threatened to tear Gackt's very soul from his chest with thorough sweeps of his tongue and the hurried pressure of his lips.

Gackt had no other choice but to drop whatever little guard he had left and let Hyde do his delicious harm; the kiss was too brutal, but violent affections were better than no affections at all; those lonely, arduous months from before had taught Gackt just that.

Hyde's grip on his body and his mouth was too strong and it hurt to even breathe, but the taller man took it all in stride without protest to make up for lost time, to atone for refusing the inevitable. To feel something; anything would do.

And Hyde made sure it hurt at first – when the wounds were raw enough, he could bombard them with pleasure and make his lovely prisoner ache in the very threshold of the unbearable, just like he deserved, like he craved to be, like Hyde himself wished it to be.

Pleasure is much more effective when pain precedes it; so much so that it works against its bearer. With the advent of Gackt's pained groaning, Hyde ceased his agonizing assault and loosened his grip on the other man. The kisses slowed down and the ache of the bruises gave way to the unique ache of pleasure, that which ransacks the stores of reason and makes a mess out of each nerve. Gackt cried out in rising desperation at the feel of Hyde's mouth making the telltale pilgrimage down his body, his rosebud mouth awakening the thirst of lust in its wake.

Hyde's lips ghosted over the column of Gackt's neck and moved in zigzag past the collarbone, down to the right nipple, to his left, then back and forth between each rib, past the hollow dip of the belly button, over the left hip, missing the eager erection and finally settling on Gackt's testicles. The blue eyed man groaned and spread his legs as far as he could, almost as if he wanted to break himself in two just to give Hyde the space he needed to torment him.

The demon singer took the soft, hairless sac in his mouth and rolled it around with his tongue, suckling it and grazing it lightly with his teeth until Gackt was all but weeping with need; the broken cries and the restless, searching hands providing a pleasant backdrop for Hyde to revel in and mark his territory bit by bit. He was purposely neglecting Gackt's aroused length, but was careful to keep the man's own hands from relieving the engorged length.

Gackt knew better than to try, but Hyde could never be too careful… or too vicious.

Hyde's wandering tongue released the abused testes and set out to find another vulnerable part of Gackt's anatomy to pleasure; it didn't have to wonder far, for the soft, enticing feel of the man's rectum captivated Hyde's attention. He gave Gackt's entrance two long, teasing licks to distract the man and buy him enough time to ditch his pants, which were far too restricting by then. Gackt's little scream made Hyde laugh sadistically; he licked at the tightening hole again, this time exerting more pressure and pushing the tip of his tongue past the contracting ring of muscle to tease his shuddering lover. The panting and gasping on Gackt's part only got louder and more erratic, his mind and body consumed by Hyde's satanic loving, the domineering worship of his body. Reason had long since abandoned him, taking his courage and resistance along; all that was left inside him were those repressed feelings and the starved desires he had been harboring for all those months, maybe even some that had survived the passage of time.

Gackt didn't have to fight with himself to keep any thoughts away; Hyde's pornographic doings obliterated any semblance of active awareness and replaced it with a flood of sensations that far outnumbered his nerves and synapses. With every feeling rushing through his body at once, there was no way for Gackt to do anything else but to yield to Hyde and scream out the excess bliss gnawing at the remains of his composure.

Hyde was painfully aroused as well, but more than glad to postpone his own gratification just to hear his conflicted lover tear his throat with moans and groans that redefined sensuality. He figured a few more moments of relentless rimming wouldn't hurt Gackt… not much, anyway.

Gackt's hands were dutifully buried in Hyde's hair, grasping tightly at the golden tresses, holding the demon's head between his quivering, parted legs. The blue eyed man's nails dug into Hyde's scalp in an excruciating flash of pain when the blonde singer grasped Gackt's erection and gave it a few quick tugs. Hyde hissed and squeezed Gackt's hardened flesh in warning before releasing it. Gackt gasped, about to bemoan the loss of the hand, when he felt it again, but this time, it was only Hyde's index finger tickling the head of his erection and smearing the drops of fluid in complicated patterns; Hyde's sinful tongue probing at his insides and licking him raw.

"Mine." Hyde sank his teeth into the tender flesh of Gackt's upper thigh and worked his mouth around the flesh fiercely until Gackt's shrieks and the angry colors of the bruise pleased Hyde enough to stop. He repeated the process on Gackt's other thigh and made the man scream again, his body thrashing madly, seeking either relief or refuge.

More than a tangible token of his possession, Hyde bit him to pull him away from the abyss of climax far enough that the real encounter could begin. The blonde bit his lips hard enough to draw some blood and hauled himself up to hover over Gackt on all fours once again.

Hyde slipped off his rosary and wrapped it around the base of Gackt's length, deliberately stroking the flesh with both hand and accessory to create more overwhelming sensations that Gackt could drown in. Hyde's efforts were rewarded with muffled mewling from the other singer's beautiful throat; he had turned his face and buried in it the tangled sheets, exposing the jutting, straining veins and muscles running the length of his neck.

The sight made Hyde roll his eyes and groan, suddenly too dizzy from the endorphin rush he got whenever he saw Gackt at his most vulnerable.

Hyde could no longer wait and Gackt wouldn't make it if something didn't happen soon.

It was time. No more avoiding the real showdown, no more skirting around what they both wanted more than anything.

Through the thick fog clouding his head and the desire storming through his body, Gackt was aware enough of Hyde's position and braced himself for their roles to be reversed. But the reversal never came.

What did come, however, was the claustrophobic but marvelous feeling of a hot, tight cavern engulfing every inch of Gackt's length with a speed that just had to hurt that delicate passage. The blue eyed singer shut his eyes tightly and bit his tongue, willing the sudden rush of pleasurable pressure to slow; praying he could withstand the heated confines that milked his erection like a vice wrapped in hot, wet silk.

Hyde screamed for the first time in the night, throwing his head back hard enough to make his back crack loudly. His body had not been prepared to accommodate his lover, but he had forced himself to take all of him. Now, the angry pulsing of his abused muscles racked him with needle-sharp jabs of pain that ran one after the other up his spine and out of his mouth. Surely there was damage, but he smiled.

In order to be a true sadist, one must be willing and able to cope with receiving pain as well as one is willing and able to administer it. Hyde was truly sadistic; he thrived in watching Gackt lose his mind over him little by little and he could very well take any pain received and turn it into ecstasy.

The thought of the bliss ahead chased Hyde's discomfort away and replaced it with a feeling of welcome fullness and satisfaction. They were where they ought to be, doing what they ought to be doing with who they ought to be doing it with.

Hyde raised his hips and let them fall with all his weight behind them; the force of impact pushed Gackt deeper into Hyde and the blonde's muscles clamped around the throbbing length reflexively. Gackt tried building a rhythm to relieve his need and take all he could from Hyde; the blue eyed man was way gone and far removed mentally, but he still had it in him to please the creature riding him.

Without words, they engaged in a compromise of rhythms – Gackt's was aimed to finding to finding Hyde's point of vulnerability, and Hyde's was aimed to drain Gackt until the man had nothing left to give him, except for unconsciousness. The act was not a loving one, but it was far from cold and detached. There was infernal heat coating them in a second skin; there was passion between them that adamantly refused to be tamed; there was an age-old obsession that wouldn't die, yet was transient and fleeting, like time, like sand slipping through fingers.

The added stimulus of the rosary digging into the shaft of Gackt's length and stimulating the outer rim of Hyde's entrance certainly fueled the fire; thrust by thrust, the crescendo of passion reached new heights.

The moonlight and the trees swallowed their cries and calls and the firestorm brewing at the pit of their huffing bellies rose to suffocate them with smoke, flames and ash, sending Gackt headlong into his little death first. Hyde was some steps behind, but not to be discarded in the midst of blessed catastrophe, he tore the rosary from Gackt and took a hold of however many beads remained in his hand after the holy necklace broke. The blonde used them to speed up his release by stroking himself at a frantic speed while the shining beads dug into the flesh and rolled over the most sensitive areas.

Hyde too met his little death head on with one hand furiously stroking his pulsating length and the other holding Gackt's twitching shoulder in a tight grip; his lungs almost collapsed onto themselves, depleted of strength by harsh breaths and scratchy screams.

It took several seconds for the blonde to assemble the pieces of his scattered mind and get his body to respond.

But if Hyde's exhaustion was an indication of anything, it certainly explained Gackt's reaction to such a heated encounter. His human body – whether in shipshape condition or not – was fragile; the preternatural exertion and the black magic fever had pushed him into unconsciousness. He now lay unmoving underneath Hyde, his breathing deep but erratic, his eyes closed and his body was limp like the newly dead.

Hyde knew Gackt would wake up from the encounter, but that wouldn't happen for several hours. His body needed time to replenish itself and make the damage fade until it was just a dull ache underneath unmarred skin. The swelling of Gackt's lips would go down enough that only the tenderness that results from a bruise was left, no cuts or bites to serve as physical evidence of the proceedings; the same would happen to the bruises on his thighs, hips and neck. Only ghosts of what had been would remain.

And as is a ghost's nature, it haunts all the corners of one's mind, dogs each step, hides behind each secret, waiting, leering, taunting.

The sleeping man would really have no way to prove what had transpired between them in the dead of night, as always. All he would have to go by would be the faint ache of his body, and the dreamlike flicker flashes of bodies writhing and crying out. Hyde knew that once the other man woke up from his deep slumber, doubts would assault him again and this time, Hyde's refusal to admit what he was and what he did would not bode well with him; there was no telling what Gackt would do when he woke up, but whatever it was, Hyde would make sure he didn't do anything to hurt himself stupidly whether physically, emotionally, or career-wise, heaven forbid.

Hyde would watch after Gackt and protect him from total madness, even if it meant giving up some things in the process. The tall singer was only enticing on the brink of madness, and Hyde had no desire to end his own fun and push the other man over the edge. The chase was at its most rewarding that way.

The blonde moved Gackt's body to lie more comfortably on the bed, wet his white shirt under the running water of the bathroom faucet, and used it as a rag to clean up his sleeping lover. Hyde's eyes devoured the images of the healed skin, the rise and fall of Gackt's breath, and the peaceful expression of his sleepy face. Hyde haphazardly threw the black sheet over the man's lower body and set about to pick up the fallen beads of his broken rosary from around the room, being mindful of the approaching dawn. He finished picking up the evidence of their midnight rendezvous and gave Gackt one last look before departing.

Gackt was truly a lovely creature; the receding glow of the moon and the breeze blew wisps of copper over his forehead and the sight made Hyde smile. The other man finally looked relaxed and at peace, even if only in sleep.

The blonde set his wet shirt down on the windowsill and ran his hands over the tattoo on his back, tracing the blackened outline of the wings by memory alone and feeling how the ink morphed the simple drawing into its true form: wings that stretched slowly and flapped gracefully and gently in the dawn wind.

It felt good to spread his wings again.

Hyde picked up the wet bundle again, climbed up on the windowsill and with a step forward, he plummeted down, falling to the ground with outstretched arms. When he was a split second away from colliding with the ground, Hyde took up his flight and rose above in the sky, camouflaging himself with the still dark clouds. As he flew further and further away, his lithe form vanished to the size of a pinprick, then to nothing at all.

*(0o0)*

Gackt's awareness came back to his body, gently coaxed by the bright warmth heating his face and the constant rush of cool air coming from above him. Slowly, his eyelids fluttered open and his sight was blurry and uncomfortable.

He had fallen asleep with his contact lenses on.

Gackt closed his eyes again and slowly made a move to remove the colored film from his eyes, one at a time. As he doubled over to put his lenses inside the case located on his nightstand, a shudder ran through his body from his feet all the way up to his brain. The sudden spasm triggered a series of flickering flashbacks of himself panting, of a room fading in and out of focus, of the ceiling spinning, of a blonde stranger moving wildly above him.

The last image tore a gasp from Gackt's mouth.

"Haido," Gackt whispered, confusion and shock filtering through the tiny murmur. He could see things more clearly now, but the memories were still a hazy mess somewhere deep down in his haywire brain.

He had been there the night before. It was probably why he couldn't get to sleep before – it just had to be. He couldn't remember it completely, but he felt certain that Hyde was behind whatever had happened to him. Only Hyde's vigorous lovemaking could relax and tense his body so much at the same time. He felt weightless, but his body ached pleasantly in intimate places. He felt the same way he always felt after falling prey to Hyde.

Gackt scrambled out of bed, looking for any evidence of Hyde's presence, maybe even Hyde himself; however, a thorough inspection of his room and the rest of his house revealed nothing – there was no clothing left behind, no bodily fluids, no sign of disturbance… nothing except his naked self and his conclusions.

In a fit of frustration, Gackt grabbed an empty wine glass and hurled it against the wall of his darkened living room and watched it smash into a million sharp points of light, an unbroken prism brought to a tragic end by the forces of acceleration, strength and human failings.

He stalked back to his bedroom in a foul mood and shut himself in his bathroom, soaking underneath the cold spray of his shower for a long time, fighting his rage, his disappointment, his despair, his cravings, his confusion. The soothing liquid did nothing to wash away the morose feelings strangling his rationale, but it provided a small measure of comfort to his body.

Gackt finally stepped out of the shower and toweled himself dry, one body part at a time. He was in no particular hurry to step back into his room and relive the torturous memories that ate at his sanity.

He left his towel in the bathroom and trudged back into his room with heaviness n his step. He picked up his discarded pajamas from the previous evening and folded them neatly. He pulled his pillows back to put his pajamas underneath, but he stopped for a moment to stare at his bed.

When he had lifted the pillow from its place, a single tiny onyx bead resting on his sheets had caught his attention.

There was only one place where that could have come from.

Hyde.

Gackt simultaneously remembered what use Hyde's rosary had assumed during their rendezvous. The nude singer scrambled to look under his bed and all over the floor for more of the onyx beads, but found none. The only one left behind had been placed under his pillows.

Placed. There was no way it could have gotten there on its own, not after what Hyde did to that rosary.

Taking the bead from its place, Gackt rolled it in his palm and closed his fist over it.

"Haido, you bastard…"

The enticing incubus would never tell him anything, and even though he had left evidence behind, he had left it as a mocking gesture. No actual words had come out of Hyde's mouth and until they did, one tiny bead wouldn't mean anything at all.

The small sphere was the confession he had wanted, yet nothing at all – just like their late night meetings.

A/N: Uh... Yeah... about them rusty trombones... Lol. I'm not even going to say anything. You let me know your thoughts, okay?