Yoh rapidly blinked his eyelids and made a huge effort to maintain his usual composed expression.

That night, finally closing the door of his studio apartment behind him he would have expected anything, , except to face, laying on the sill of the only window in the room, the beautiful creature he loved.
He took a few steps toward the figure standing in front of him, not yet sure whether what he was seeing was real, or imaginary.

With his back turned towards the window, FeiLong's silhouette seemed cut in the blue glimmer of that night's full moon, a night whose colours were dying down due to the approaching of a thunderstorm.
FeiLong's beauty, in that light, seemed almost unearthly, and Yoh did not have the strength to tear his gaze from those amethyst eyes, which were watching him with the manner of a warrior god, while his delicate nostrils vibrated with each breath.
The spell that took him made him almost believe that he was losing his senses. Maybe it was just an hallucination, and perhaps the insanity came to help him escape from that emptiness inside him.
Meanwhile, the weather outside had changed abruptly, and layers of thin but dense clouds had covered the night sky. Large drops of rain began to fall, sparse at first, then increasingly thick, insulating the noises of the city's night.
The light of the full moon that now was behind the veil of clouds, had been replaced by the intermittent flash of the neon sign from a cinema that was on the other side of the road.
FeiLong raised his right arm towards Yoh; in his hand was a silver gun.
The glare of light on the barrel came and went, in unison with the neon sign, but Yoh had no concern of it.

The weapon was only a small reflection in the most peripheral corner of his eyes, which were committed in admiring, with desire, the ethereal face of the man in front of him when the room was illuminated, and to recall his diaphanous beauty when the room slipped back into darkness.
Light and shadow.
FeiLong.
"How dare you look at me in this way!" FeiLong's voice was a threatening hiss that slipped through the full, red lips, curved into a cruel grin.
No, he was not a vision.
"I'm sorry if this annoys you, FeiLong-sama, but I cannot help it ... now I cannot hide any more ..."
"At least, let that the last thing that my eyes will see, be your face ...," he thought. Anyway, what else could the leader of Baishe be there for, if not to require the exact payment of his debt?
In the room, almost bare of furniture, the metallic click of the gun's cock being armed by FeiLong's tapering finger echoed like a snap.
"Lower your gaze, I said!" FeiLong hissed, between his teeth, while his proud eyes sparked of black lightning.
Yoh smiled. Well, it was not a real smile; it was rather a soft shade on his lips, almost imperceptible. However, it was his eyes that were changed, a look that FeiLong had never seen in seven years. The same look of a young man in an old, scorched photo...
"I was afraid that I would find in your eyes the look of seven years ago, but I am happy to see this proud and authoritarian glance; the same as these last seven years."
FeiLong sighed, disarming the cock of the gun.
No, he just couldn't do it.
"I preferred for you to be the mute and mono-expressive man I used to know ...," he said, lowering the gun.
"For how long now have you not obeyed my orders, Yoh? Or rather, has there ever been a time when you did? he added, after a few seconds, with a suddenly tired voice.
"You... you knew that?"
FeiLong put the weapon in the holster tied to his thigh, and then turned toward the window, giving his back to the older man.
"I avoided thinking about this entire story, after that damned night on the ship... but I suppose that escaping from reality is not so easy, right?"

The Triad leader leaned both hands on the windowsill, while the intermittent flashing of the neon light lit reflections of purple through out the long, silky strands of his hair.
"Coming here, I thought about what Asami could have offered you to convince you to betray the Baishe in order to have Akihito back: money, perhaps? Or power... or maybe he could simply have seduced you? I know the effect that he can have on people, and how good he is in using them according to his own interests," he added with a bitter tone, "a man like him has plenty of resources, it would not have been difficult to find a way to buy you, Yoh, or anyone else. But... but while I was thinking this, I realized that there was something wrong, something out-of-tune, in this reasoning, also if it was perfectly logical..."

FeiLong turned once again towards the other man, and now they were so close that to lengthen a hand would be enough for them to touch each other.
"For all these years, my confidence in you was strong because I was convinced that you were one of those men that couldn't be bought so easily, and not because you were a saint, or incorruptible, but because I have never felt that there could be something in this world that you would desire so much to become a bargaining tool. Yet, I could be wrong on this, as on the rest." An unnatural laughter gurgled between FeiLong's alluring lips, "but now I know I was not. Asami simply did not need to buy something that had always been his. I've been tricked by him right from the start, right?" he added, with a cracking in his voice, looking straight into Yoh's eyes, a look that was for him a punch into the stomach.
The older man lowered his eyes.
Yoh had always known, since those early days in that dirty jail, since he first saw the fire burning into FeiLong eyes, that the moment of truth would arrive sooner or later.

He had prepared himself for years to endure the contempt and the anger of the man he loved as part of his deserved punishment, but what he never wanted to see was FeiLong blaming himself, or feeling humiliated, for not being able to win his eternal duel with Asami.
The only thing Yoh wanted now was FeiLong to be able to end forever this "challenge", this distorted love that had eaten him from the inside, even if the final cut was nothing but a bullet that ran at full speed through his heart, the heart of a double agent.

Something with no value.

"And so you are not the dirty traitor of the Baishe, but you have always been the loyal and efficient spy of Asami Ryuichi...," added the leader of Baishe.
Yoh forced himself to look again at him, searching those amethyst eyes, but he had his face turned towards the window, intent on watching a moth that, stubbornly, went voluntarily, again and again, to beat against the glass. It was trying to reach the light that, seductively, was calling from the other side of the windowpane.
The same light that was only there to burn it alive, if the night's butterfly would be able to reach it. Ironically, the warmth of that light would kill it, but now that something was preventing it from reaching the fire, the butterfly was killing itself trying to remove the obstacle that was saving it.

"No, I was a traitor, the worst. Each time I wanted to serve only you, each time, unconsciously, I have omitted or changed the reality in my report to Asami-sama, to be able to stay at your side. When I haven't simply taken Akihito back to him, as he asked, but suggested something else only for the fear of being discovered and then having to leave you…" FeiLong's fingertips then reached out to touch Yoh's lips and remained there for a moment, to stop his words.
He did not need to hear any more from him.
The only reason why the cruel leader of the Baishe had come there that night was to understand why, this time, it was so difficult to decide to kill a traitor.
And now he knew why.
On that night upon the ship, while the words of Yoh almost bothered him, his gaze, instead, branded somewhere inside of him.
Despite, in the past weeks, he tried to pile up situations, minutes, work, thoughts on the memories of that night, Lee Feng forced him to come back to them, to decide on his past.

And he remembered, along with the painful goodbye to Asami and Akihito, those words and those eyes.
Now he has seen that look again, and he realized that no one had ever looked at him like that before.
In the eyes that had surrounded him all his entire life, he had seen desire, interest, fear, adoration, terror, lust, greed, remorse ... but he had never seen ones that were so heartfelt and desperate, and so sincere ...nor with such deep remorse.
In the eyes of a spy and a traitor... wasn't it ironic!
And, he was not able to give Yoh the punishment he deserved ... because now he knew that there was no anger, nor hate, nor indifference in his heart towards him.
"FeiLong-sama...?" Yoh whispered taking a step toward him, with a worried air.
FeiLong never noticed, until that moment, that he knew Yoh's scent very well, and how familiar to him his voice was, and how he had never realized it until now.
How many other things, very important and less important, he had ignored in the last seven years? He hadforgotten livingto run behind the ghost of someone who... who...
Distracted by those thoughts, FeiLong was surprised by the gentle and comfortable touch of Yoh's fingers, that were gently caressing his cold cheeks. "FeiLong sama?" the older man whispered again, almost in disbelief that he had dared to do what he was doing: for the first time, he was touching the velvety skin that he had dreamed of for so long.

FeiLong squinted his eyes, lingering for few seconds into the touch.

Warm and kind, this had the smell of those places where you can find refuge when everything else seems to fall down.

It would have been nice if he could ... if...
If he had not been himself, if Yoh was not Yoh...
If their pasts would not have been theirs, maybe ... maybe he could have thought to ... maybe.
But he was himself.
The leader of Baishe moved his face away, less abruptly than he wanted to show. More reluctantly than what he wanted to be.
"Leave Hong Kong. Now...," FeiLong said, leaning his hand on Yoh's chest.

And between his hand and Yoh's, an old photo.
And under the old photo, a heart that was beating for him at a breakneck speed.
Yoh tried to touch that hand with his own, but FeiLong had already slipped away, towards the door, and under his hand, the older man found only a scorched photo.
And on that photo, the face of someone who had been for him ... a lifetime ago.
"I cannot protect a traitor, or a spy."
"I know that it is not appropriate for you to do so, FeiLong-sama."
"They will not be here for three days ... Yoh, leave this town...," said the leader of the Baishe, opening the door, and before closing it behind him, he added, "Farewell".
And he went out.

**to be continue**