Author's Note: Romance full speed ahead!

Raziel was standing on that familiar shelf of rock above the abyss, shivering as he crossed the bridge with chill wind rushing past his ears in a deafening roar. Pushing his hair out of his face, Raziel squinted at the figure standing near the edge of the precipice outline highlighted by the sickly green of the abyss.

"Kain!"

Shifting to look at him, Kain smiled. "Join me, Raziel," he said, holding out a hand. His voice was quiet but somehow managed to carry easily over the wind.

Suddenly anxious, Raziel stopped mid-stride and stared at the hand as if he expected it to strike him.

"Why are you afraid?" Kain asked in a reassuring tone.

"You shouldn't be here," Raziel said, but the wind swallowed his words and Kain shook his head uncomprehending. Shouting at the top of his lungs, Raziel repeated his statement and Kain smiled as if amused.

"Why not? I was here with you before."

Approaching the edge and peering over it with a sense of dread, Raziel frowned. "You know that the only thing you'll find down there is death," he cried, gazing meaningfully at Kain to communicate his point.

Kain glanced down at the abyss casually. "The only way to find out is to jump." Grasping Raziel's arm fondly, he said, "This time we will go together."

"No." Panicked by the suggestion, Raziel shook his head emphatically and brushed off Kain's touch. "No! I always do this alone. You can't come with me."

Cupping Raziel's face between his hands, Kain murmured, "I won't lose you again." His eyes pulled at Raziel with inexorable magnetism, drawing him into their golden depths and swallowing him whole. Emotion washed over Raziel, and he could not fight the pull, feeling as if he were already falling though his feet had not left the ground. Then he realized he wasn't falling at all, but flying.

Raziel's eyes opened to the faint glow of dawn pressing against the windows. He felt warm and comfortable and he had no desire to move, though he didn't think he would be able to fall asleep again now that he was awake. Snuggling back into the warm cocoon of blankets, he pressed against the body behind him before he realized that he was not alone in the bed. His breath caught in his lungs and he froze for a moment in panic, looking down at the hand he had unconsciously been clutching against his chest. Turning his head carefully, he shifted halfway onto his back and looked over his shoulder, expecting to see a satisfied smirk on Kain's face, but Kain's eyes were closed, his arrogant features slack with sleep and exceedingly peaceful.

Raziel took the opportunity to scrutinize him, content with their proximity for the first time in longer than he could remember. They had been chasing after each other for what felt like years, and it was oddly pleasant to know that Kain was right next to him now, within reach, even if he had broken his promise to allow Raziel the next move. Raziel was surprised to find he didn't mind that Kain had taken the advantage the moment he let his guard down—he had expected as much, after all, and it was a comfort when someone acted as you expected them to act, even if it could be wearying at times.

Knowing that he was courting disaster and would probably regret crossing this boundary, Raziel reached out and lightly brushed his fingertips over Kain's cheekbone. Kain's stillness was unnatural, the hush of the undead, and now even his blood was still in his veins, no longer propelled by a heart. A frown pulled at Raziel's lips as he considered the emptiness within Kain's chest that remained despite the attempt he had made heal him before surrendering to fate; he did not understand how Kain continued to live without the essential organ, but the purified Soul Reaver must have found some way to keep him going in its absence.

"By all accounts, you should be dead," he whispered faintly, his fingertips still following the worn lines of Kain's face. "What is it that keeps you alive?"

"Stubbornness," Kain murmured against his fingers, golden eyes opening a crack.

Wondering just how long Kain had been feigning sleep, Raziel tried to hide his surprise behind a mask of impersonal curiosity. "That vexing trait hasn't hurt your longevity, certainly, but the fact remains that you have no heart," he said calmly. "Janos' heart had enough power to keep him alive while it was outside his body even while it lent you its unlife, but your own heart has been gone for centuries."

"I suppose I've never needed a heart." Kain's hand moved, slipping lightly beneath the neck of Raziel's shirt and traveling along his collarbone to his shoulder. The drawstrings of his shirt loosened, exposing pale skin to the cool morning air. Leaning forward, Kain pressed a kiss over his heart, his lips warm and rough—but not unpleasantly so. "You've always had enough heart for both of us," he murmured.

"Are you hoping that a little hackneyed flattery will cause me to forget that you have broken your promise?"

Kain hesitated, looking up at him with a pensive expression. "Should I have waited for you to kiss me first? I doubt I would have had long to wait considering the way you were admiring me while I slept."

"I was doing no such thing," Raziel countered. "You said I could have the bed all to myself and vowed not to touch me, but here you are sharing the bed and you've already touched me several times."

"You were holding my arm captive. I didn't want to wake you in order to reclaim it, so I had no choice but to lay down beside you."

"How did it happen to get close enough for me to 'capture' it in the first place?"

"I was trying to wake you from a dream," Kain replied absently. "I don't understand why you are magnifying the significance of this situation. It's not as if I crawled under the covers and molested you in your sleep. Your dignity was perfectly safe."

"You're not exactly in a position to defend yourself considering your history with keeping promises. I warned you that I was not going to be lenient this time around."

Kain's expression darkened. "I did not break my promise."

"I don't remember inviting you to share my bed."

"The bed is mine," Kain reminded sharply.

"I knew that was going to come back to haunt me."

"And I only touched you after you moaned my name in your sleep."

"I did not," Raziel said, though his uncertainty was obvious; he remembered only pieces of his dream, but he knew that Kain had been the central figure in it.

"How would you know? You were asleep."

"Exactly. How would I know? You could make up anything you wanted in order to cast the blame on me."

Kain sighed, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "Ah, Raziel. I've missed you."

The statement caught Raziel off guard and he regarded Kain warily.

Brushing his claws against Raziel's cheek, Kain murmured, "Only you could choose a locale like this for a dispute. Beds are meant for activities other than arguing, you know."

Raziel shook his head in amazement. "Heart or no heart, your libido seems to be in perfect health."

"Do you know how long it's been, Raziel?" Kain asked, his voice pitched low in that throaty rasp that made Raziel wanted to squirm away before he lost his resolve entirely.

"No. How long has it been?" Raziel asked with a glib smile. "Really. I'm curious. Because I'm sure you never touched a soul in all the time I was gone. Did you?"

Kain's brow arched and he leaned closer, the lower half of his body sliding partially on top of Raziel's though the blankets kept his presence from intruding too far. "Feeling possessive?"

"Doubting your loyalty," Raziel corrected.

"Loyalty?" Kain seemed to find that term amusing.

Rolling his eyes at the chuckle that rumbled out of Kain, Raziel countered acidly, "Commitment. Fidelity. Call it what you will."

Kain smirked and nipped lightly at Raziel's nose, his expression intolerably smug. "I thought you swore fealty to me. Not the other way around."

"Yes, I did," Raziel admitted, his eyes narrowing in a glare. "Twice. Unfortunately."

"Twice? Ah, but I thought that second time was more of a profession of love than anything else," Kain mused, his grin far too cocksure for Raziel's liking. "Calling yourself my right hand...my sword." Kain's knee pressed down against the covers, and Raziel had to struggle to keep his natural reaction to pressure in that region of his body from showing on his face. "If I hadn't been so horrified by your insane decision to sacrifice yourself, I might have been more shocked by the obscenity of your pledge."

Offended by the lewd interpretation, Raziel retorted, "I never expected to see you again, and if I was expressing my love, it was on a purely platonic level."

"Is that so?" Kain moved a fraction closer.

"It is."

Raziel could feel the heat of Kain's breath on his face as he murmured, "If that's how you feel, then tell me to leave."

Tingling with an unsettling mix of doubt and desire, Raziel gazed at Kain across the scant distance between them, the weight of Kain's body pressing insistently down on top him. "Damn you," Raziel whispered, knowing that Kain had won.

Resigning himself to his fate, he decided to take the initiative while he still had the chance, finally crossing the line that Kain had been carefully dancing around. Kain seemed to be entertained by his enthusiasm, smiling into the kiss as Raziel tried to crawl inside his mouth with a sense of repressed frustration. The truth was that it had been a very long time—for Raziel, at least—and he did not feel like taking things slow now that he had made up his mind.

Raziel's mind floated out of reach as Kain managed to find his way beneath the covers without breaking the kiss, and everything that followed was lost entirely to instinct and raw sensation.

Gazing up at the ceiling, Kain smiled in pure contentment, still drifting in the pleasant afterglow of their activities. The crimson duvet was all but on the floor, the sheets twisted around them but only half concealing their nudity in the reflection above. His hair was loose and tangled about them as well, white strands bright against the red sheets."I think it amused Vorador to give me the tackiest room in the house," he commented, arching a brow at himself in the mirror.

He could feel Raziel smile against his skin and he glanced over to where Raziel's dark head was nestled in the crook of his arm. "Maybe he expected you to take advantage of the quirks of the decor," Raziel remarked drowsily.

Kain chuckled at that. "While I don't think he would be surprised to find us sharing the bed, I think that his intention in giving me this room had more to do with my expected reaction to its tasteless ornamentation than any forethought for its usefulness."

"How gratifying to know that there is someone who can amuse themselves at your expense as you are so fond of doing to me."

"Where do you think I learned such skills?"

Kain looked over at the contours of Raziel's back when he failed to reply, wondering if he had dozed off to sleep. Seeing the pure, unbroken skin stretched across Raziel's shoulder blades, he couldn't help but think of the crimes he had committed against Raziel so long ago. His hand instinctively reached out to the flawless skin with an apologetic touch, but Raziel flinched as soon as he made contact, clearly remembering a similar touch and the feeling of broken wings that had followed.

"One day you will evolve," Kain said quietly, dragging his claws lightly over Raziel's back and feeling strangely sentimental. "And I will finally get to see you fly."

Raziel made a strangled sound somewhere between a whimper and a sob and shuddered, clearly overcome with emotion. For several excruciating moments he did not speak or even move, and Kain could feel his anguish as if it were his own. Rolling onto his side, Kain pulled Raziel back against him and cradled him close, stroking gentle circles over his skin and wishing that he would have had a little more tact than to bring up such a sore topic so thoughtlessly.

"I have no right to wish for such a thing, I know." The apology stuck in his throat with the awkward discomfort of inexperience.

"If things had been different..." Raziel replied haltingly, his voice thick with emotion.

"I was not jealous for a moment, if that is what you're asking. You were always my favorite, and I would have been desperately proud of you if I had not been so consumed with regret at the time."

"Regret," Raziel echoed sourly and Kain could feel him tense. "You ruined my wings, condemned me to centuries of agony and a mockery of an existence as that damned squid's plaything, but that wasn't enough. You also ruthlessly murdered all of my progeny. If you were so penitent, why did you continue to wound me at every turn?"

The accusations cut at him, and Kain felt a familiar sense of guilt writhe in his gut; the remorse had made itself evident shortly after his madness was cleansed away and it had been nagging at him ever since. "You were the only one I could rely on—the only one who could have endured what needed to be done," he said, quickly becoming defensive. "I did not understand my true enemy at the time, or I might not have had the resolve to throw you so carelessly into the abyss. As for your children, they would have suffered enduring torment at the hands of your jealous brothers after your demise. Their quick deaths were a mercy, not a punishment."

Raziel relaxed against him slowly, a soft sigh escaping his lips. "It's so easy to fall back into old patterns," he murmured. "But we have both made mistakes. I murdered my own brothers without hesitation, chased after you still blinded with revenge. You saved me from the Reaver, but when I learned that Janos' heart was beating inside your chest, I had no compunctions about taking it from you. I did not waver even though I knew it would surely mean your inevitable death."

"Yes. I orchestrated your hatred from the beginning, but I never truly allowed myself to doubt that your loyalty would win out in the end."

"Then perhaps it was not a mistake at all," Raziel retorted, his tone shifting back into more comfortable territory. "It's good for you to realize that your influence has its limits."

Relieved to find himself on familiar ground again, Kain nipped at Raziel's earlobe. "Interesting theory. Shall we test those limits?"

"Are you attempting to prove that you have as much stamina now as you did when you were young?" Raziel asked with a smile in his voice.

"As much? I imagine I have more," Kain replied, nuzzling at Raziel's neck just beneath his ear, sharp teeth teasing at the fragile skin without breaking it.

"You're still competing against your younger incarnation, aren't you?" Looking back over his shoulder and meeting Kain's eyes, Raziel conjectured, "You want to make certain that you have outdone him."

"Oh, I'm not terribly concerned about that," Kain replied mildly, his hand sliding down along Raziel's hipbone and toward more intimate areas. "I am far more experienced in getting reactions out of you than he could possibly be, and I have a long list of ways in which I intend to defile you before I will be satisfied—most of which would no doubt cause my younger incarnation to blush like a maiden."

"And what if I don't wish to be 'defiled?' Have you considered that possibility?"

Chuckling, Kain kissed Raziel lightly on the back of his neck. He knew better than to step onto that landmine.

"Well, I hope you are also considering taking a break at some point for a meal," Raziel said when he failed to respond. "We'll have to leave this room eventually, you know."

"Of course. Especially since some of my plans involve other areas of the house, including a particularly explicit strategy for corrupting Vorador's favorite chair."

Raziel laughed, a radiant sound that made Kain's empty chest ache. "I don't think I want to know."

"You'll enjoy it. I promise."

Author's Note: Before you ask, I haven't written a lemon for the missing scene. Sorry to disappoint. I like to leave things open to the imagination...most of the time. ;) Hope you enjoyed it. I might have one more quick epilogue chapter to post after this, but it will likely be utter fluff. Thanks for reading!