Author's Babblings: First and foremost, overwhelming apologies for how long this took me. X_x Blah blah blah, usual excuses about life getting in the way, but dammit, it did! That was aided by the fact that I just didn't know where to take this and how to take it there.

At long last, though, the damn fic's back to writing itself. ^^; Like I said, I never leave a fic unfinished, and I stand by that promise. . As always, comments and questions and even flames (w00t) are much appreciated. I can be reached in a myriad of ways (AIM: Aya no Chigatana; e-mail: lonestarfruit@yahoo.com, LJ: reviews!!) so please feel free to bug me, I don't bite. Hard. ^_~

Oh, and for whoever keeps telling me to have Ran and Ken „just bonk already" or something to that extent... -.-  is all I have to say.

WARNING: o.o; Ah, shounen-ai themes, Ran in ass-pants, bad clubbing music, angst, and more angst.

//Is it me, is it you?
Nothing that I can do
To make you change your mind
Is it me, is it you?
...Why do you run away... won't you

Nothing that I can do

...tell me why do you run away...
Is it a waste of time?

Is it me, is it you?
Nothing that I can do
To make you change your mind


So why are you running away?
Why are you running away?//

            ~Hoobastank, "Running Away"~

            "Hey, uh, you're being too friendly there.." Dammit, why hadn't he ever joined his teammates in English lessons? Brown eyes narrowed a little and Ken forced a smile, trying to pry the blue-haired girl's hands off of his butt. She had a rather insistent grip, though, and Ken finally had to hiss "No!" while practically crushing her wrists to get her to let go, which she did with a pout. A final dirty look and she was gone back into the crowd, and Ken ran his fingers through his hair in annoyance.

            "Hey Ran, I thought you were supposed to keep me sa--.. Shit." Where was the redhead, anyway? Brown eyes scanned the crowd quickly but he couldn't spot Ran, not with all the flashing lights and gyrating bodies. He felt a slight shiver trace its way down his spine and made his way to the fringes, keeping close to the wall as he started to circumnavigate the dance floor. He stopped at the bar, but Ran wasn't there, either.

            "Why does this stuff always happen to me?" he muttered miserably. "Alright, gotta think. If I was a crabby, moody ex-assassin, where would I go?" Downstairs was one option, but they'd arrived on the bike and Ken doubted that Ran would just abandon him completely (ok, so he was an optimist). The floors below held only offices that were closed at night, so that left one choice: the roof. It didn't take Ken too long to find the right door, though he did get snagged by two more semi-drunk girls before he finally escaped into the stairwell. Seems that New Yorkers liked to party just as hard as Brazilians.

            He took the stairs slowly, wary eyes glancing around at the peeling paint on the walls and the dim lightbulb flickering high overhead. The stairwell was silent except for his footsteps and the dull, vibrating hum of the music behind him, buffered slightly by walls and doors.

            Opening the door at the top of the stairs brought with it a blast of arctic wind (well, maybe not real Arctic wind, but he was used to the tropics!) and Ken shivered, wrapping his arms around himself as he stepped out onto the snowy roof, making sure to prop the door open with a broken brick so that it wouldn't leave him stuck out here to turn into a nice human popsicle.

            Speaking of human icicles... He spotted the redhead right away. Ran was perched on the ledge on the other side of the flat, snow-covered roof. Bare shoulders were frosted with a thin layer of snow, as was the uncannily crimson hair. He didn't turn around as Ken approached, though the brunette wasn't trying to be quiet and therefore was making quite a lot of noise.

            "What're you doing up here?" He stopped just behind the redhead, reaching out to brush a bit of snow off of his shoulder. "You idiot! You're gonna freeze to death!" Ran must have been sitting out here for a few minutes in order for that much snow to pile up on him, and his shirt was about as much protection from the elements as gauze would have been. "Come on, let's go inside."

            "No."

            So it was back to the age-old battle between two stubborn men. Ken hugged himself.

            "Dammit, Ran! It's cold out here, an' if you haven't noticed, you're turning into a snowman!"

            "I don't care."

            "Well, I do!" He tugged on Ran's arm – damn, his skin was freezing! – though so far the redhead wasn't budging.

            "...Do you?"

            Brown eyes blinked. Clearly the alcohol had adversely affected the way the older man processed things. And it was a depressant, after all...

            "Yeah, I do. Come on, we'll get you inside and get the bartender to make you something warm."

            "No."

            "You're gonna freeze!"

            "What does it matter?"

            "It matters 'cause I'm gonna have to stand out here and freeze with you, and I'm not really ready to kick the bucket just yet, thanks." He tugged again on Ran's arm, and the redhead finally turned around. Bottomless violet eyes looked up at Ken, and Ran started to say something. Ken cut him off.

            "Hey, we can talk all night if it helps, I'm serious. Just not out here. I promise you'll have my undivided attention. Alright?"

            Ran looked somewhat miffed, as if whatever he'd been about to say had been very deep, depressing, and vital to the existence of all life on earth. He allowed Ken to tug him to his feet, though he swayed just a bit – it was the fact that he was cold, of course, and not that he had had too much alcohol. Right. – before steadying. It was a slow walk back down the dimly-lit stairs with Ran leaning on Ken just a bit and Ken keeping an arm around the redhead's waist to make sure he didn't pitch them both head-first down the stairs. Ran didn't want to go back inside the crowded dance club, but Ken pulled him in by force and sat him down at the bar. The bartender wandered over and Ken made Ran tell him to get some hot coffee.

            "Alright, now why the hell were you out there?"

            "...." Ran stared down into his coffee mug. Ken waited. Ran continued to stare in silence.

            "Ran, hey, wake up. What's wrong?"

            "...what does it matter?"

            Ken huffed. "Look, we may never have hung out an' baked cookies together or anything, but I still thought we were friends on account of how we'd kept each other's asses from gettin' killed more than once and—"

            "No, I mean... what does it matter?" The redhead waved his hand in a large circle, indicating the world at large. Ken sat down heavily in his seat and blew his bangs out of his eyes.

            "Eesh. Uh... that's pretty deep... Wanna start with what brought on that train of thought?"

            Ran shrugged. "I just got to thinking."

            Ken grinned lightly, picking up Ran's coffee to take a sip. "You're what, 22? 23? And you only got to thinkin' about stuff now?"

            "...shut up."

            The brunette's grin broadened, and he play-punched Ran in the shoulder. "See? That's better. Now you just have to glare at me an' tell me I'm an idiot, an' everything'll be fine."

            "Hidaka..."

            "Yeah?"

            "...thanks."

            The brunette found himself momentarily floored. He blinked, rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, brushed his persistant bangs out of his eyes.

            "Hey, there's nothing to thank me for."

            "Thanks anyway."

            "...you're welcome."

            Ran took his coffee back and took a slow sip of it, grimacing a bit.

            "Hey, Ran?"

            "...what?"

            "How come you let that scary girl drag me off?"

            Violet eyes blinked comically. "You went willingly."

            "She was gonna rip my clothes off if I didn't! I mean, I don't even speak basic survival English like, 'Let go, you're scary'."

            A corner of the redhead's lips twitched as if he was fighting off a smile, but managed not to.

            "An' she was groping me. It wasn't cool."

            "Hn." Once more, that subtle curving at a corner of Ran's lips.

            "You're actually supposed to drink that, y'know? Not just inhale the caffeine fumes."

            Violet eyes narrowed in a mild glare but the redhead did as he was told and took a long sip of the coffe.

            "This coffe is horrible."

            "Of course it is! It's bar coffe, 's supposed to burn a hole in your stomach and double as engine de-greaser."

            "It's working."

            Ken grinned, then perked.

            "Hey, they're actually playing a good song!"

            "...great." Ran continued to sip on his coffee.

            "Come on!" Ken grabbed his arm and hauled him away from the bar – barely giving him enough time to set the coffee mug down – back to the dance floor.

            "Ken, I don't want to—"

            But it was already too late, and Ran was too worn out to protest. This time Ken leaned back against him, resting his head back against the redhead's shoulder and closing his eyes, completely trusting Ran to keep him upright. The older man didn't know quite how to respond to this slower dance style, but finally opted to just wrap his arms loosely around Ken's waist and move in rhythm with the brunette's body.

            After a moment, he realized it was actually sort of nice. Ken's back was a warm presence against his chest and the brunette had relaxed into a rather limp state, soft breath tickling the side of Ran's throat. The redhead's hips followed the slow sway of Ken's, languid and casual. The press of people all around them was rather claustrophobic and Ran could have sworn that more than once stray hands had reached out to touch him, but whenever he turned to try glaring whoever it was down, they were gone. Ken kept him distracted enough to make him a vulnerable target. The brunette's hands slowly crept up, linking behind the back of Ran's neck and thereby pulling Ken even more snugly against the taller ex-assassin. The scent of warm liquor assailed his senses, mixed with crisp cologne and a softer touch of something like soap or clean laundry.

            The brunette's lips accidentally brushed against the side of Ran's throat, causing a heated shiver to trace its way down his spine. The fact that this was followed by a soft, warm kiss against his pale skin made him rethink how accidental it had been, though he was too busy tensing up to think much about anything.

            "Ken, what are you—...mmn..." Not fair. Ken had chosen to suck languidly at a pulse point and the various fireworks going off throughout the redhead's body made speech impossible, though Ran's brain was trying to throw buckets of mental ice-water at him. This was beyond ludicrous. What the hell was he doing dressed as he was, half-drunk, getting hit on by his ex-teammate in a club, of all places?

There were all sorts of factors, of course. Ran had perfect control over himself. He didn't need to give in to what his body was telling him it wanted, because things got too complicated and there were too many lies to tell. So Ran hadn't even considered letting anyone close enough to get physical since he'd arrived in the Big Apple. Freezing-cold showers were all his body ever earned when it started getting testy with him.

Then there was the fact that this was a man. Ran wasn't gay. At least, he was damned sure he wasn't gay. He'd had plenty of adolescent fantasies about girls when he was younger, and had never given his own sexuality a second glance once he realized that it could be controlled, locked away, and ignored. Granted, being an assassin made you see past gender to the core of a person, because that's all that mattered when lives were on the line. It didn't matter if you had more testosterone or estrogen floating around in your body as long as you watched your partner's back. But he wasn't an assassin anymore, just a bodyguard who was trying to escape his past.

The most pressing issue was that Ken was his friend, or at least as close to a friend as Aya had let anyone be. But now Aya was Ran, and it seemed that Ken was someone else, too. The easily embarrassed, sometimes awkward young man had been replaced with a more graceful, more mellow carbon copy of himself. Ken had been running the show since their reacquaintance, now that Ran thought about it. Ran would have just picked up where they left off as far as interaction went, but Ken hadn't allowed him to sink as fully into his normal iciness as he would have liked.

But wasn't this getting just a bit too friendly?

"Ken..." Ok, it took him more effort than he'd readily admit to get that out past the moan that wanted to squeeze out of his throat instead. His body was having one hell of a great time now that his mind was occupied enough to not be able to fully control it. He had to think about the ice again, about snow, about cold metal and icicles and cold showers and holy shit, he was going to have a mark there later but it felt so damn good... and that was the problem. Ran's solution was ice, cold, shutting down his emotions. Ken was fire, sunny warmth, passionate outbursts.

"Ken, stop..."

Warm lips paused, then pulled back.

"What's wrong?" The brunette's voice had a slightly throaty undertone.

"This isn't right." Ran shifted his hands to Ken's hips and tried to nudge him away. Ken's hands remained locked at the back of his neck.

"You're not into men?"

"No. ...I don't know. That's not it."

"You're not into me?"

"No. You're my friend. This isn't right."

"You said that already."

"Because it's true!"

"You didn't shove me away."

"...what?"

"If you were really against this, you wouldn't be dancing with me. Your pulse wouldn't have kicked up a notch, and you wouldn't have made that little sound in the back of your throat."

Ran was glad that it was dark, because there was a rather pink tint settling across the bridge of his nose.

"I was just distracted."

"Yeah, an' half-drunk and half-frozen. You still didn't shove me away."

"That doesn't mean anything."

"Shut up, Ran."

Violet eyes blinked, and this time he tried more firmly to nudge Ken away. The brunette didn't budge.

"Hidaka..."

Ken's only response was to nuzzle against the redhead's jawline and nip lightly at the pale skin. "If it helps, I'm half-drunk, too. Still doesn't make it 'not right'. Ask me again."

"...ask you what?"

"To stop, if that's what you really want."

"Stop."

Ken's hands dropped away, and the brunette moved out of Ran's immediate personal space, turning to shoot an unreadable look at the other man.

"...drive me to my hotel. I think I've had enough for one night."

*ahem* I said there'd be angst. ^^; ::skitters away::