Disclaimer: Air Gear is owned by Oh! Great.

Author's Notes: Chapter two is finally here, whee. Is this a long or short update? I'm not sure. Well, I'd like to apologize if this was a long one. Ooohh! To the wonderful Crimson Vixen, your review was too nice! I'd also like to say that each review that I got made me squeal and go gyah! Seriously. Your reviews are love.

Warning: Rated T for swearing. There will also be shounen-ai­ (boyxboy love). If you find that offensive, or you don't like the idea of it, then please don't read.

Spoilers: Spoilers for when Agito fought Akira in the Behemoth battle (only for the part wherein Agito had this breakdown, and was talking to Akito).

Pairings: IkkixAkito/Agito, SanoxKazu, slight KazuxAkito. If you don't like these pairings, then please find another fic that will suit your preference.

Notes for reading: Plain "…" means normal talking. Italicized "…" denotes Agito/Akito speaking to the other half, and italicized '…' vice versa. The italicized '…' also denotes a person thinking.

This chapter contains five parts. Each part (in no particular order, just that there are five of you, so there are five parts) dedicated to Crimson Vixen, Emi Sue, SexySpoonsWillRuleUsAll, sabaKu-no-dark-neKo-chan, and ChibisWillRuleTheWorld, because their reviews are delightful.

Fused Silica

Chapter Two: Annealing Point

Ride, run, spin, scale, jump, accelerate, and then it goes all over and return to ride. Agito knew that it always comes back to ride. Winning means riding, protecting needs riding, being a king was riding. As much as he was concerned, he was sure that it was all about ride, ride, and ride.

But at some point, it became fly, and Agito wasn't so sure anymore. If he was riding, he was flying? Or was he flying when riding? It became flying all too soon, and without him noticing.

Then he sees Akito smiling at the back of his mind, and at the same time, in front of him. Those golden eyes looked back at him, full of certainty and understanding and warmth, always warmth. He mouths those words that eases Agito's mind and lift the confusion and doubt. Agito returns to feeling safe and sure again.

"Sometimes it's about riding, other times it's about flying. But most of the time it's about the wind passing by. It's what binds riding and flying together."

Agito nods slowly, and answers back in his lazy, gruff tone.

'And it's still blowing, huh?'

Akito wonders at times, whenever he stares at spiky black hair, that if the wind was blowing now, would it ever stop blowing?

He is scared, frightened even, when the time will come that the wind will stop. 'If it ever will stop,' his other half whispers. Akito wishes and hopes that the wind will forever be there. He doesn't want it to stop blowing ever.

Yet, there is a feeling somewhere deep inside him that throbs whenever he thinks of the wind not blowing. It resonates, and gently reassures: that it won't stop blowing at all, that there wasn't even a possibility of stopping.

Otherwise, Akito is sure that he would do everything to never let it happen. He knows Agito would do the same, even if Agito wouldn't admit it.

So Akito goes back to staring contentedly. He sees the usual black hair and brown eyes. He looks at Ikki wearing his A-T, riding and having fun.

But something else stops, somewhere deep inside of him, when he sees Ringo riding with Ikki, when Akito hears the name Simca-sama coming out of Ikki's mouth, or when Kururu is simply fixing Ikki's A-T.

He doesn't wonder about that, though. It's familiar, it's not scary, and he knows that it's there and that it just stops - whatever it is, Akito accepts it. He reasons that he doesn't have the time to wonder about something that he doesn't really know. It's much worthwhile to wonder about the wind.

It's Agito, the more violent half, who wonders not about the wind.

He wonders when Akito will stop loving, if Akito ever will.

When Akito had looked at Kazu's eyes earlier on the rooftop, he had wondered about something else.

He knew that something had stopped? inside the blond. Kazu's eyes were just too sad. It begged to be buried deep and be forgotten instead of being present within brown irises.

Akito had been thinking about it ever since, because he wasn't sure what it was that was bothering Kazu. For some reason, it was bothering Akito too.

So later that night, when Kogarasumaru was having its daily training under Aeon Clock, Akito was still thinking about it.

And when Onigiri accidentally knocked Agito - the eye patch sliding towards the right eye - it was Akito who saw the blond looking.

Kazu was staring at Sano - the same way that Akito stared at Ikki.

Now Akito was bothered more than ever.

'I've got it bad,' Kazu keeps saying in his head. He was scaling a wall over and over again, as fast as he could, all the while thinking about how beautiful a coat flaps. He had never thought so much about a coat before. He had recently become aware of how captivating and amazing the cloth can actually move.

So, he thought about the wonders of fabrics and textile while he scaled and scaled the same tall wall, as was instructed by the person wearing the coat. Kazu had to train to become stronger, but he was sure that training had never before required so much thinking about flapping coats. It was all Kazu, his mind, and a certain homo-bastard.

'I am not supposed to be thinking about homo-bastards!' Kazu reprimands. 'Think about the coat!' A pause, and then, 'So, that's how I got to the coat.' His lips curved at the sides.

Kazu made a spin to avoid a protruding brick, and then accelerated. 'Forty-eight.' He reached the low end of the wall and ran back to the other end. 'Forty-nine.' With his fingers, he touched the base of the top of the wall, concentrated the centripetal force there, and jumped to go back the other way.

When he reached the flat surface of the ground, he exclaimed, "Fifty!" The gears of his A-T were hot when he made the final dash across the cemented floor. His eyes shone brightly with triumph, his A-T skidding to a stop a few meters away from the wall. The blond had finally finished the training, and in record time too. He hoped it was in record time, because he didn't want all his fast running to be put to waste.

He scanned the area around him and found nobody near. It seemed that he was the first to finish. He usually was the first to accomplish their training, being a speed Storm Rider. When he strained his hearing, he could hear the pants of his teammates on the other side of wall. 'I did finish first,' he thought, a grin forming on his lips.

All he needed to do now was tell a particular trainer that he had finished his training for the night. Kazu lifted his eyes and searched for the familiar coat. 'Where was a homo-bastard when you need one?'

When he couldn't find the familiar tall form, he started to get irritated. An edge of the coat was always on his peripheral vision when he was scaling earlier. Now that he wanted to see the damn coat, it was nowhere to be seen.

Kazu was about to give up and start heading home when a glint caught his eye. Curious, he lifted his gaze there, and saw a view that left him staring.

On a building near the walls they had to scale, a bespectacled man stood on top of it. Brown tresses framed his face and shone with a distinctive, captivating luster. The moon, which hung clearly in the dark sky, illuminated the man's skin. The light from the moon made the outlook seem ethereal.

'Aeon Clock.'

Kazu swallowed. He couldn't tear his eyes away from the homo-bastard. He knew that he couldn't stop thinking about Aeon Clock, but this was the first time that he couldn't stop looking at him.

At that moment, Sano didn't look like a homo-bastard at all. To Kazu, he looked more like some sort of angel that wasn't supposed to be here.

'Right,' Kazu's inner voice turned grim. 'He's an angel that I can't reach.' The blond takes in the tall frame, the proud and dignified pose, the lifted chin, and everything else that makes up Sano. 'He's there, and I'm here. We're that far.' Even as he thought this, he couldn't look away. Aeon Clock looked enthralling, and enrapturing, and addictive, and Kazu could swear that the wind was against him tonight. It was making the damn coat flutter, which makes it all the more hard for Kazu to take his eyes away from the homo-bastard.

"You like what you see?"

The words were whispered right behind his ear, and it sent a shiver running through his spine.

And just like that, Kazu broke his gaze and turned around. His eyes widened significantly, and they landed on the person in front of him.

Akito stood there, looking at him with a ghost of a smile on his lips.

And all Kazu could come up with was "Wha-What?"

When Akito's words finally registered on his mind, he waved his hands frantically in front of him in a sign of denial. "No!" he insisted, his head shaking from side to side.

The ghost of a smile on Akito's lips turned into a full bloom grin, and it looked suspicious to Kazu. "I was talking about the moon," Akito clarified. He even pointed at the round illuminating object above them to illustrate his point.

'The moon! Of course, it's the moon. What else could he be talking about?' The blond bit back a sigh of relief. The blue-haired teen was always sprouting statements that had double meanings. He couldn't shake the feeling that what Akito's saying now was one of those statements.

"Err…" Kazu turned to look at the dark sky. "I don't like the moon." He tucked his hands inside the pocket of his pants, and shrugged. Although in his mind, he was hearing 'Liar,' again and again. He had always liked the moon, but tonight, he wasn't sure.

When he looked back again at where Sano was, the time-stopper wasn't atop the building anymore. Aeon Clock was presently near Ikki and Onigiri, telling some tips.

Kazu heard a soft "Why?" behind him. It sounded plain, blank, and more of a statement than a question. From Akito, it sounded like some melody that was nice to hear, but shouldn't be heard.

The question was ambiguous. Kazu wanted to ask 'Why what?', but he didn't. Instead, he looked at the moon and answered as honestly as he could, hoping the query was about the round object above them. "I don't know. Something about the way it shines, I guess." He shrugged in his casual Kazu way.

He heard another query, this time stern and louder. "The way it shines on him?" The voice was now beside Kazu, it had deliberate emphasis on the last word. When the blond looked to his left, he found his blue-headed friend looking far away.

Kazu didn't answer immediately. He followed Akito's gaze, and sure enough, he found a certain bespectacled person in that direction. The blond didn't feel aghast nor horrified, just slightly surprised. Somehow, he had expected that Akito already knew about his feelings for a certain college student bastard.

Curiosity sparked inside Kazu. "How did you know?" he asked. 'No use trying to hide what's out in the open,' the blond told himself.

Akito started chuckling then, his voice small and cheery. In the night setting, it sounded odd but comforting.

When his laughter subsided, a lopsided grin replaced his lips. "The eyes," Akito began in that cryptic tone of his whenever he sprouted proverbial words, "are the windows to our souls."

For a moment there, Kazu thought that he had to find another book that would translate what Akito had just said. So it was new when he started grinning, and then soon started laughing.

"And now," Akito gazed at Kazu's brown orbs, "they are happy."

Even though there was no real reason to laugh, Kazu did. He found the irony in the situation, and couldn't help tittering.

"Eye reading, huh?" The blond had a wry smile on his lips. "You knew everything just by looking at my eyes?"

"I didn't say that." Akito clasped his hands together. He looked at the night sky, and noticed that there were few stars decorating it. "I don't know everything," he admitted.

Kazu made a sound at the back of his throat. Akito didn't know what the sound was supposed to mean, but he decided he should elucidate further.

"I know the cause." Akito's smile grew a fraction wider, and then it went back to a small one. "I don't know the reason." Akito realized, after gazing at the sky intently, that the reason behind their dim surrounding was because there were few stars this night. What few street lamps present were blinking and had insufficient lighting.

At that point, it seemed logical to Kazu that he should look back at 'the cause' - as Akito had put it. He searched for the coat once more, but found the wall he had scaled blocking his view. His earlier thoughts suddenly came rushing back to him. He could feel the chill of the air as the night progressed, and he pulled his sweater tighter to his body.

"You want to know the reason?" Kazu didn't look to see if his friend agreed or not. He pointed to the wall with a hand, saying with a plaintive voice, "He's over there." Akito didn't question who he was, and the blond appreciated that.

The same hand then pointed to where Kazu was standing. He continued, "And I'm over here."

He explained simply, as if it added everything up, "We're that far." The blond even made small hand gestures that emphasized the gap between his palms.

To Kazu, it did explain everything. It explained why he was this way, acting this way. It explained why he was thinking about flapping coats, and it explained why his eyes told Akito that he was sad. It just occurred to him now that this distance was 'the reason'.

When he glanced back at Akito, he found the shorter teen looking back at him with an unwavering gaze. Akito had an inquisitive expression painted on his face.

"Your eyes tell me that you're serious." Akito narrowed his eye, which resembled Agito's glare a bit. "You're telling the truth."

Kazu was about to say that "Of course, I'm telling the truth" and ask "Why wouldn't I?", but Akito released a breath that stopped him from doing so. The blue-haired teen sighed in that unsatisfied I-give-up way, and Kazu began wondering about what was going on Akito's head instead.

When Kazu asked Akito what was wrong, after he had had enough of the tension apparent in the shorter teen, that lone golden eye looked like it was thinking hard. Akito explained just as simply as Kazu had explained earlier, "I'm just wondering what it was that had stopped."

Kazu became puzzled right after. He certainly didn't get that. It seemed that now he needed that proverbial-words-translating book.

It was actually the following day wherein Kazu had really needed the translating book.

The sun was peering over the horizon, and its rays were slowly lighting up the schoolyard. Kazu had just arrived at their classroom, opting to be early unlike his friends. It even seemed to him – as he scanned the vicinity of the room – that most of his classmates liked the idea of being fashionably late or staying permanent on their beds. He was thinking about how he was going to cram all his homework before classes started when he sat on his seat.

He was slouched on his desk, going over his algebra book and not really understanding it much, when Akito arrived.

The blue-headed teen made fast strides towards the blond, and Kazu hadn't noticed it at first. He did finally notice his friend when Akito had stood in front of his desk, his smooth pale hands flat on Kazu's table with the very intention of being regarded seriously.

When the blond looked up at Akito, the golden eye was fixated only at him. They stayed liked that for a few moments, looking back at each other, before Akito finally spoke. And it was a good thing that he did, because Kazu wasn't one for staring contests. He was sure that he would break under the intensity of it all.

"I know what had stopped." Akito's voice sounded certain, but Kazu detected a hint of distress.

The blond creased his eyebrows, looking confused. "What?" he asked, partly because he didn't understand what was happening, and partly because he wanted to know what the hell it was that had stopped.

"It's," Akito sounded unsettled now, and he cast his eye downwards before he spoke again, "the flame. It stopped burning."

Annealing is a heat treatment wherein the microstructure of a material is altered, causing changes in its properties such as strength and hardness.

I fear that this chapter might be was confusing. I'd like to clarify in part four and five that what Akito was wondering about that 'had stopped' was what 'had stopped' inside Kazu (reference to part three of this chapter). I'm also afraid that possible typos might be lurking within.

Does anyone know what color Kazu's eyes are? I have watched only one episode of the anime, so I'm not sure. I stuck with brown for now.

Feedback is love.