Author's Notes- Well… Contrary to all reason, I have continued. (Insert deity here) save us all.

Warning- Whee, yaoi!

Disclaimer- Hm... lesse… *digs around in her pockets* No, nothing involving Outlaw Star seems to be in here, nope… there is, however, a month old movie ticket stub, a crumpled post-it and some lint. I DO own those, so ha!

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Gene yawned slightly as he pushed open the door to his shared dorm, running a hand through his messy red hair. Upon entry, he slung his small book bag off his shoulder and tossed it onto the desk, wondering vaguely if there had been anything breakable in the sack that he should have previously considered. Well, if there had been, it was definitely too late to be worrying. Smiling slightly at the sheer drabness of the thought, he all but collapsed onto his bed.

After a few moments of having his face implanted into the mattress, Gene decided that it would be best if he were able to breathe fresh air once again. Turning his head to the side, he caught sight of Fred, who was sprawled across his own bed, reading. The dark-haired young man seemed to be quite absorbed in his book; so absorbed that he hadn't heard Gene come in and taken the opportunity to tease him. The redhead found himself missing the random comment about his looks or whatever Fred could come up with, and couldn't for the life of him come up with a reason as to why.

Gene realized belatedly that he was staring at Fred. He tried to tear his gaze away, but found that it seemed to be glued to his roommate. With a mental sigh, he just let it go. Fred wouldn't notice, so there were no worries there. The door automatically locked when it was shut, so intruders weren't a problem. Why fight it? So, with slight reluctance, Gene let his blue eyes roam all along Fred's body.

He was shocked at what he realized when he had the time to actually consider it. Fred was attractive. He had a very, very nice body; slender, but slightly muscled so as not to look skinny. Currently, he was twirling a lock of navy hair around a finger as he stared at the pages of his book, occasionally making a thoughtful 'hm' sound in the back of his throat. Gene tried to see what he was reading, but the book was open flat against the mattress, cover blocked from view.

With a thought that he didn't much care about the book anyway, Gene let his eyes run back along Fred, looking his roommate up and down once more. It was nice, just to be able to look and think and not be asked questions about it. It gave him a chance to put all of his scrambled thoughts in some kind of order, and also a chance to try and make sense of them. The latter didn't prove to be very successful, but at least he was somewhat closer to figuring it out than he had been previously.

The redhead sighed again, this time audibly. It was soft, so he didn't think it would bring any more attention to him than entering the dorm had. Indeed, it didn't, but unfortunately, a few moments later, Fred decided that he was done with reading for the night. Without moving the rest of his body, he placed a marker in his book, closed it and placed it aside. Feeling eyes on him, he turned to see Gene staring.

Very unfortunately, Gene didn't realize that Fred was done reading until the dark eyes met his own. Much too late to look away and pretend he had been doing something else. A blush started to creep up onto his cheeks, but he managed to hold it off. He could deal with teasing, it would be over in a few minutes anyways, he could take it…

"…Gene?" Fred's voice was soft. He didn't tease in that voice. "Are you ok?" He tilted his head to the side a bit, looking at the redhead with gentle eyes.

Gene was shocked. That had been a perfect opportunity to tease him, a perfect opportunity! And Fred had… passed it up… And was, instead, being… thoughtful… All right, now he was confused. "Huh? Oh, yea, sure… I was just… thinking."

Fred smiled at him as he sat up. "You seem to be doing that a lot." He stood up slowly, stretching as he did so. "Let me know if you ever want to tell me what you're always thinking about." He began to walk towards the small kitchen of their current abode, but paused along the way, as if considering something. Halfway there, he changed his course, heading for Gene instead. With a gentle smile, he leaned down and gave the redhead a light peck on the cheek before continuing on his original course.

Gene's eyes widened as Fred's lips came into contact with his skin, and stayed that way even after his roommate was out of his sight. Had he just… Of course he had, he could still feel… But why had…? What was… And why the FUCK wasn't he trying to kill Fred for it?! Instead of jumping and yelling like he thought he would, Gene just slowly raised his hand to his cheek, lightly touching his fingers to the place that Fred's lips had been only moments before.

He kissed me. Ok, that was obvious. He had covered that. Why…? That, he was having a bit more difficulty with. Of course, there was the obvious reason to why Fred had kissed him, but, unfortunately, the obvious reason didn't make sense. At all.

That hadn't been a normal kiss; definitely not the kiss of some guy just hitting on someone for fun. That was… it hadn't been… It was just on the cheek… But still, guys didn't make it common practice to kiss other guys on the cheek. Well, so what, he's gay. No, that didn't make sense either. There was no reason, nothing backing up that kiss… Unless…

Gene slowly turned to look at Fred's bed, remembering the look that the young man had worn when he and caught Gene staring. He added that to the kiss. And the lack of teasing. When he worked out the result, it made his head spin. He doesn't… He can't be… He just likes me, that's all… He can't be…

He was slightly jerked out of his daze as Fred came back into the room. Not making any move to repeat past actions, he merely gave Gene a cheery goodnight before getting into bed and turning off the lights on his side of the room. Really, the redhead had every intention of going to sleep as well; his classes had run quite late today, but… There were too many thoughts to consider. Too much to think about.

So, instead of turning in, Gene remained up for a while, staring at Fred's sleeping form. He frowned slightly; not out of disappointment or anger, but out of confusion. He can't… That's stupid. That doesn't just happen. We've only known each other for month or so, it can't be…

He can't be in love with me.

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Gene yawned loudly, all thoughts from the previous night temporarily lost from his sleep-clouded thoughts. Blearily, he searched the general vicinity for what could have possibly awoken him from his coma-like slumber.

Stupid fucking alarm clock…

Grumbling, he buried his face in his pillow, willing for the annoying mechanism to turn itself off. Or spontaneously combust. Either was good. Anything that shut it up and let him get back to sleep.

The infuriating device had the nerve to keep ringing.

"Grrrgh…" Gene might have been trying to say something, and the words were just muffled by the pillow. He may have been just grumbling incoherently. Even he wasn't quite sure. The only thing that the redhead was sure of was that he wanted more sleep. Oh, and he wanted that damn alarm clock to be run over by a semi-automatic. That would be nice.

His hand reached out, groping blindly for the alarm clock. He banged his wrist against the edge of his nightstand and cursed. Still not wanting to give in and look up, he continued his blundering search, and the clock's incessant ringing merely seemed to get louder by the second.

However, before his fingers had even come close to the clock, the alarm abruptly shut off. Confused, Gene merely continued searching the nightstand with his hand. Eventually, his fingers came into contact with another hand.

"I hope you know that it's highly inconsiderate to set your alarm clock this early when your roommate doesn't have classes for another hour." Fred's voice was sleepy, and his statement was punctuated with a yawn.

He got a half-hearted grunt in reply.

Half-expecting another playful scolding, Gene waited. Nothing came. Blinking, he slowly picked his head up from the pillow, peering through half-lidded eyes at his roommate's bed. The lump in it, presumably Fred, didn't appear to be all that awake. An arm was extended from beneath the blankets, a hand still resting on the alarm clock's off-switch. A sleep-clouded dark eye looked out at him from behind a curtain of navy hair.

"Are you going to let go of my hand?" A blush made a half-hearted attempt to form on the redhead's face, but eventually gave up. On the border of consciousness, embarrassment finds the tread rather slippery. Slowly, Gene's fingers released Fred's hand, and he brought his arm back to rest on his bed. "I wasn't saying you had too, but oh well." This time, Gene was very confused that there was no follow-up.

"Just that?" Getting up slightly, Gene propped himself up on his elbows.

"I'm sure I could work up some more if you'd like." Fred's visible eye blinked slowly. "Unfortunately, I'm not quite awake enough to work up things on the spot like that."

"And yet you're awake enough to form complete, coherent sentences." Yawning, the redhead sat up, swinging his legs over the side of his bed. "And sadly enough, I am too now."

"Your fault for not making sure your schedule didn't have you up at all hours." It was Fred who yawned now. "And damn you for making it keep me up as well." Gene couldn't help but laugh softly at this.

"It's not my fault that you're such a delicate sleeper." Gene ran a hand through his hair. "You could have slept through it if you wanted to."

"Doubtful, considering you had the same idea." Yawning again, Fred pulled his blanket up over his head. "Now, if you don't mind, I will try and regain some lost sleep."

"What if I do mind?"

"Then you can go stick your head in an oven for all I care."

Slowly getting up, Gene stumbled sleepily over to his roommate's bed, sitting heavily on the edge. "That's pretty inconsiderate too, you know."

"Oh heavens, now I won't be able to sleep for the weight of guilt on my heart." The lump beneath the covers shifted slightly. "But luckily I have an idea with which I can redeem myself." Before Gene could move, Fred had shoved the covers off, sat up, grabbed the redhead, and lay back down, hauling Gene with him. It took him a few seconds to realize exactly where he was after all the confusion.

"W-what?" This time Gene did blush. Fred's arms were wrapped around his torso, and he was being held tightly against his roommate's chest. He vaguely took into note that Fred was topless, and was remotely grateful that he wore a muscle shirt to bed. All that skin-on-skin contact would have done something quite frightening to his senses, he was sure.

"Now you can't go stick your head in an oven, and my conscience can rest easy." Through the haze of confusion and embarrassment, Gene realized that this could be considered partly his fault for, 1, coming this close to Fred, and then 2, commenting on something he should have responded to with a laugh. He also realized that, after recovering from the initial shock, he wasn't protesting at all.

At least his body wasn't. His mind was very near spazzing out, and getting closer by the second. However, the rhythmic rising and falling of Fred's chest as he breathed did seem to have a sort of soothing affect… Nevertheless…

"I… I… I have to get ready for… for class…" Gene was not pleased with his voice at all. His pauses sounded like they were caused by pleasure more than embarrassment. He didn't even stop to consider that that might be because they, in fact, were.

"You can't honestly tell me that you have classes at 6:15 in the morning." Fred's voice was soft, and his breath caused Gene's hair to stir slightly. The redhead thought about this for a moment, although his brain's progress was somewhat impeded by the fact that his face was pressed up against Fred's bare chest. It was true, he didn't have classes for another two and a half hours. Then why on earth had he set his alarm so early…?

"I… set my alarm too early…"

"Really." Fred sounded amused, if anything. Gene tried to wonder why, but unfortunately, he knew all to well. It's much harder to pretend you don't know something than to pretend you do. That, at least, still confused him slightly. It was good to be confused by something. That in itself confused him even more.

Gene was too busy trying to work out exactly what it was he was trying to tell himself to make an attempt to pull away from his roommate's embrace. He didn't notice this fact until Fred began to run a hand lightly up and down his back. It was an innocent action, almost absent-minded.

The redhead's tired and confused mind, however, took it as something else entirely. "Hey…" However, due to either his sleepiness or lack of real reason (he was severely hoping it was the former, not the latter), the statement did not carry as much force as he had originally hoped, and it certainly did not get Fred to stop caressing him. He wondered which un-desired affect disappointed him more.

Soon, he found that it was very difficult to keep his eyes open. His eyelids felt as though they each bore two tons, and he wasn't feeling all that buff at the moment. Despite his most valiant efforts, he was soon drifting off, lulled to a sort of dozing state by the warmth of Fred's body and the hand rubbing his back gently. He could have slept there for another few hours if there was no such thing as brain cells that just refused to shut up, and everyone would have been quite pleased with the outcome. Unfortunately, we all know such things do, in fact, exist.

So, of course, the rational (and very easily frightened) portion of his mind woke up at this point. It woke up screaming something fierce, and Gene immediately discovered that he was jerking himself away from Fred's embrace. He sat up quickly, breathing heavily, not even realizing that he was sitting on his roommate's legs.

"What… what was that?" He was blushing a nice rose pink now, and his eyes were wide pools of frightened azure. Breathing was becoming increasingly difficult, and he had to tell himself to slow down and take decent-sized breaths instead of the shallow gasping he seemed to be substituting for them.

Fred blinked slowly, looking up at the redhead through eyes filled with sleepy amusement. "What was what?" He tilted his head to the side ever so slightly, as if confused. Had he been thinking properly, Gene would have known very well that this was not the case. Unfortunately, thinking properly didn't seem to describe the occurrences in his head at the moment.

"You… I… You just…" He wasn't breathing properly again, and had to pause momentarily to get himself under control. Inhaling deeply, Gene tried again. "Why did you… You…" Fred raised his eyebrows, patiently waiting for the redhead to finish. Gene discovered that wasn't going to be happening any time soon, and that did nothing to allay his sudden bout of confusion and fear.

Finally, he decided to settle with the original, if rather vague, inquiry. "What was that?" He added a bit more emphasis behind it this time, hoping his point got across. If only he could get his blush to go away…

Unfortunately, Fred's faux innocence was indefatigable. "I really have no idea what you're talking about…" He grinned slightly, straightening the angle of his neck once more. "All right, perhaps I do, but truly, I can't figure out why it has you so flustered."

"Flustered?! Flustered, fuck! I'm more than 'flustered'!" Gene still remained unaware that he remained sitting on Fred's legs. "Why the hell did you do that?!"

His dark-haired roommate merely raised his eyebrows slightly. "Because I wanted to." He blinked once, slowly. "And I thought you might enjoy it as well." His face was impassive, as if he were completely oblivious to Gene's apparent admonition. Also, it gave the redhead no hint as to how to respond properly. "You seemed to be, for a while there anyway."

This time it was Gene who blinked slowly, absorbing this information. Absorbing the fact that he wasn't the only one who had noticed his lingering presence in Fred's warm embrace. Absorbing the fact that he was either going to have to prevaricate about the situation or fess up to something even he wasn't sure of.

Of course, he chose plan c. Don't answer at all in hopes that he could get away with it.

"Hn." Unfortunately, he foiled his own plan by not moving, but merely crossing his arms over his chest. Fred merely chuckled softly, not looking at all reprehensible or guilty. Really, had Gene expected him to? From what he knew of his roommate, Fred never felt guilty about anything. Especially anything concerning him.

"Well then, I suppose I was right." Gene's eyes widened. That was a very creative interpretation of his grunt. Although, he hated to admit… it was very accurate as well. However, before he could deny anything, he was somehow kicked, once again, from the control seat. Beneath him, Fred sat up, reaching forward to catch Gene's chin lightly in his hand. Leaning forward, he pressed his lips against the redhead's.

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Author's Notes- Phew… sorry to keep you all waiting so long for this… I really should learn not to work on so many things at once… Oh well. Sorry about the abrupt ending as well, but it was either that or wait another week for this to be posted… And it has a nice, dramatic effect, don't you think?