ALL HAIL BATOU/TOGUSA! W007!

And review, if you don't mind. :pleading expression:

"What kind of dreams do you have?" Togusa asks him.

Batou snorts. "I don't even sleep."

"But you have dreams," Togusa insists. "You don't close your eyes, your breathing doesn't slow down --" Batou snorts again, but does not contradict him. "And your heart rate doesn't slow down either, not like mine does. But you still have dreams."

"You're not going to let this go, are you?"

Togusa smiles at him from his place on the couch: on his back, legs thrust carelessly in front of him, black shirt rumpled and pushed up to expose his navel with his smoky blue jacket fly-away and his head grounded on the armrest, staring up at Batou.

"No," he agrees. "I'm not."

Batou does not want to have this conversation. Not now, here in the briefing room, not later, in his car. He doesn't want to talk about the place he goes sometimes, when he is tired and needs rest, the place that has peace and quiet and dreams. So many kinds of dreams. He doesn't want to speak of it, and wishes that Togusa would let it lie.

"Why are you so interested?" he asks waspishly, and immediately wishes his tone had been different.

A hurt expression crosses Togusa's face and darkens his eyes, which are the color of molten gold. "Just curious," he says and sounds unhappy.

Batou sighs. "I don't remember," he lies. "I never remember my dreams. Probably a good thing."

Togusa is falling asleep. Batou knows he is; his friend would never let himself be seen so vulnerably otherwise. "Liar," Togusa mutters, eyelids beginning to fall.

Batou scowls at him, and it makes Togusa smile.

"Honest -- what do you dream about?" Togusa's voice begins to acquire a dreamy quality to it. Batou feels an odd chill run down his spine, which he knows is ridiculous -- he is artificial; he controls what his body does.

He does not answer the question; Togusa does not ask again. Either asleep, or simply too drowsy to be bothered, Batou cannot tell which.

He just wishes that Togusa did not look so relaxed, so calm and reposed. That his muscled stomach with its pale, flawed skin (and those flaws, everywhere on his body, somehow make him more beautiful than Major, who is perfect like a little bisque doll and just as cold) was not exposed to the air, that his face was not so warm and open. That he was not so very...

"You," Batou admits. "I dream about you."

But Togusa is asleep, and does not hear.