A/N: All disclaimers and warnings continue to apply; please refer to notes before the Prologue. This is rated M, so you must be over 17 to read this, because there's profanity and references to sexual activity here. Please read responsibly :-).

All comments and criticisms are very much appreciated, particularly as I am likely to rewrite some of this fic anyway. As you may know, I can't respond individually to reviews unless you leave me an e-mail address or sign your comments—but if you do, I will. Privately e-mailed or PM'd comments are welcome too, if you prefer. So, hope you enjoy, but feel free to let me know, as you wish, either way.

Chapter 7: Tequila!
By the end of the sixth day, Ken hated the assignment. He didn't know how Yohji put up with this sort of shit. He didn't like tequila or sake or any of the other drinks he was required to consume; he was tired of all the pawing he'd had to not just endure but encourage from lecherous men and women old enough to be his parents and, in some cases, grandparents; and Aya was either really irritable or really clingy, by turns, and the mood swings on top of Ken's own weariness and upset with the mission were beginning to seriously affect him. Besides which, it was just taking too long. Something was starting to feel seriously wrong. And--although he couldn't say anything, least of all to Aya--the blank stares of the already broken, and the hopeful smiles of those not yet taken were really, seriously disturbing him. He couldn't ...

You're just tired, he told himself, cutting off the thought before completion. Stop being melodramatic.

To make everything worse, he had a morning shift, again.

Wandering into his room, he looked around, and sighed. It was messy. Soccer posters decorated the walls; soccer gear littered the corner. A small pressboard desk, covered in mission documents and comics and game schedules, sat in another. A pile of dirty laundry lay on the floor, off to one side, and a bunch of ... stuff ... was randomly scattered over the floor. The bed was neatly made, albeit covered with various items of clothing, both mission and casual. This room was his. Except for the fact he could no longer sleep in it—and that, only because he was no longer able to relax properly without Aya beside him, which at this moment irritated him no end—he liked his room. A lot. He'd always been comfortable in it, and right now, he wanted that comfort, that sense of self. The last few days had left him feeling vaguely ... unlike himself. Dressed in clothes too tight and smiling a smile too bright. Sometimes he wondered how Yohji and Omi did it. At least Aya had always been honest about his feelings.

He cleared off and sat on his desk chair. Like everything else, it gave him a sense of familiar comfort as he leaned back, his body effortlessly adapting to the hard wooden surface.

The only thing missing was Aya.

He wondered, if he asked, if Aya would consider ...

He looked around, and made a decision. He could, at least, ask—what kind of wimp didn't even try? So he picked up the phone and called Aya in the next room--he didn't want Aya to reject his suggestion to his face. He wasn't a wimp, but he wasn't an idiot, either. He asked, and didn't really hear what Aya said in response, expecting the negative. Ken made some general sound of agreement when he heard silence and hung up. Then he kept sitting, trying to get up the energy to go take a shower and get over to Aya's room, where he knew the redhead waited.

There was a knock at the door. He got up, automatically, to answer it.

"Ken. It's late. You're dirty. I am tired. Go shower." Aya was standing there, pillow and blanket in his hand. Aya pushed past Ken and stalked into the room, lip curling, looking around with derision. "Don't you ever clean?"

"Aya ..." Ken's mind was having trouble processing what was happening. He stood motionless, still clutching the knob of the open door.

"We got back ages ago. You should be ready for bed. We have early shift."

"I ... you came." Ken was still standing there, holding the door.

"I live here. What on earth are you talking about?" A perplexed, impatient, and slightly worried frown marred Aya's features.

"You hate my room. But you came."

"It's not really a big deal, Ken. And you've never really asked me over here before. I figured you didn't have clean sheets or something ... I mean, you do, don't you? Have clean sheets?" Aya raised one gracefully arched eyebrow in mock-dismay, as if the thought that Ken may not change his sheets was horrifying to him.

It probably was, Ken thought, trying to process everything, his mind working far too slowly. He opened his mouth to answer. "Yeah. I ... " Aya shook his head slightly at Ken's flustered response, and Ken belatedly realized Aya had been teasing. God, he was tired, and Aya was ...

"Ken. I don't know what is wrong with you, but I need to get some sleep, and so you need to get going." Aya was closing the door, gently pushing Ken toward the shower, somehow handing him a clean towel that Aya produced as if by magic. "Go."

And it was so easy to let Aya take over, to follow Aya's direction. Before he knew it he was washed, and changed, and lying wrapped in Aya's arms on his bed. Because he knew Aya would never, ever take advantage, of any kind, and here, in his room with Aya, warm from his bath and wrapped in the softness of his own, familiar sheets, his face buried in the skin of Aya's neck, he didn't need to be on his guard, didn't need defences. Because this was the one place, the one place in the entire world he was completely, and absolutely, safe.

And then Aya moved against him, and Ken was suddenly not so tired anymore.

"No." Aya's voice was an irritated rumble in the darkness, but Ken could hear the thread of amusement and affection under the bitten off words. "Go to sleep, Ken."

Warm and safe, grinning broadly, Ken slept.

Awareness came to Ken slowly in the morning, filtered through dream and memory. He was warm, and sleepy, and very, very comfortable ... and not alone. He shifted, slightly, feeling the warmth and give and solid muscle and bone of another, very familiar, body, and smiled. Aya. Well, Ran, but Ken couldn't quite, at least not this early, make the shift to thinking of Aya as Ran, when Aya had always been Aya to him. Did that make sense? It didn't matter. He was his. His. Aya. Who had stayed with him all night, because he'd asked. A wave of pure happiness flooded him, and he swallowed a laugh, not wanting to wake his bed partner this early in the morning.

"Good morning, Ken, sleep well?" Too late. Sometimes Aya did really seem more like the cat for which he was named.

"Thank you", was what Ken said, instead, the words out of his mouth before he'd had a chance to think them through.

Aya raised an inquiring eyebrow, but said only, "Your room is quite messy. You really ought to clean it sometime." Which, in Aya-speak, was his way of assuring Ken that everything was really, really all right.

Didn't stop Ken from being self-conscious about it, from trying to explain and apologize all at once. "I know, I ... "

Ken's words were lost in Aya's mouth, as he stopped his words with a somewhat less than perfect kiss. Morning breath, it really wasn't ... but then Aya's mouth was moving lower, and lower, and morning breath really wasn't very important at all ...

Aya's breath was moist and heated on his skin, his lips soft and perfect, and his voice a seductive rumble, and Ken moaned, all coherent thought rushing out of his brain.

Aya was speaking as he fingered the top of Ken's boxers. "Ken, what if I were on top this time?

Ken froze. "What?" He ... he was still getting used to ... he didn't think ... but it wasn't fair to Aya to ...

Aya's voice was soft and tentative. "I just thought ... maybe ... "

Ken sat up abruptly, drawing his knees up, muscles rigid and desire having fled for the hills. It wasn't the first time this had come up, but it was the first time Aya had been so direct. "I ... I'm sorry. Not yet, Aya, I ... "

Aya sighed. "It's okay, Ken."

Kase had always been direct—more than direct, sometimes. But Aya was nothing like Kase, Ken reminded himself. Nothing like. Kase would never have let Ken be on top to begin with, and when he'd been with Kase, he'd never even wanted—he'd never trusted Kase enough, in retrospect—to even consider letting Kase inside him. Aya was different. Aya loved him. He could ... he just ... just not yet. He felt miserable.

"I really am sor ..."

"It's okay, Ken. Really. Just ... we have an early shift. I better get going." And rising in one graceful movement, Aya was across the room and out the door before Ken could frame any reply that didn't begin with I'm sorry and end with I suck.

Lying there staring at the closed door over an hour later, he still couldn't find one.

The seventh night, and thank all that was holy, Omi had decided to give up on the whole bait scenario, and try something a little more traditional. They were assassins, not the undercover type, for Gods sake—Kritiker had other teams for infiltration-type information gathering—and the fact that they'd had left the undercover portion up to Weiss didn't bode well but Ken wasn't going to think about that. And besides, Omi had reasoned aloud, entirely ignoring Ken's blush—missing a day at the club might actually raise interest in Ryou, Ken's pretty-boy alter-ego.

Whatever the reasoning, Ken could have kissed Omi for the break; he upgraded to kissing Aya instead. From Aya's response, Ken thought that Aya might have forgiven him for his behaviour that morning, but looking at Aya's face, rubbing a thumb over one perfect cheekbone, he couldn't be sure. Then Aya turned away, and in the next moment he was Abyssinian and looking at mission plans, and that was it.

Omi had found a building, apparently a storage facility. It might not be the main building, it might not be anything--but Omi's digging had revealed a ton of activity in the small warehouse, with deliveries and shipments and a landing strip on the roof. The plan was for the three of them to go in, with Omi providing computer-assisted guidance from a distance. For this mission, each of them would wear a standard electronic tracker, linked to Omi's computer, that they each stuck to a hip under their clothes—no danger of the trackers falling off that way, except, as Aya commented dryly, for Yohji, which earned Aya a smirk and leer and a "You wish, baby", and Ken glaring at both of them--and Omi had linked also to the building's own video surveillance equipment. The plan was simple: find what they could, kill the targets if they got lucky, and get out.

Omi didn't say it in so many words, but Ken gathered he didn't like leaving his teammate so exposed either, and ... it really was taking too long. Omi felt it as well. Something was off.

And for a change, things went swimmingly.

They made it into the building without a hitch, and the night shift seemed appropriately quiet. Because they weren't really sure of what they were looking for, or where they might find it, they each took a floor—Aya was to take the first, Yohji the second, and Ken the third. If they found anything worth looking into, they were to let Omi know ASAP, and the others could join for backup. No engagement unless strictly necessary—or unless the target was located--this was a sneak and retrieve-type mission. Computer files could be saved to disk, or they could link and upload directly to an encrypted site which would then download to Omi's computer. Easy peasy.

"Lots of guards here," came Aya's quiet voice over the com. "Not sure why. Just a lot of bored, overweight guards, not much else. Amateur, hired I'd guess, from the look of the uniforms. They don't look like they know much. I'm going to be a while."

"Roger that, Abyssinian. Maintaining communication silence now."

And it was weird. "Really fucking weird," in Yohji's aggrieved tones over the com. Lots of guards, big empty rooms that looked cleaned out, and the place as quiet as a well-populated tomb.

Painstakingly, silently, Aya worked his way stealthily across and around the first floor, seeing nothing of any use or interest. But there was something here, he'd bet on it. Everything was too ... weird. He was almost through when Omi's calm voice over the com interrupted his concentration.

"Siberian? Balinese, I've lost communication with Siberian. Please report."

"Shit Bombay, I'm in the middle of this floor, and there are guards all around me. Could you ... " Yohji's voice faded into static for a moment.

"Already on it." Bombay's clear, steady voice.

"Bombay, what?"

"Abyssinian, keep to the mission, do you hear? Your area is almost clear. There is no reason to abort."

"There is nothing here, Bombay. I'm through. My area is clear. I am going to upstairs now, to cover Siberian. Over." Aya had a bad feeling. It may not be anything, but sometimes in the assassin business, instinct was all you had, and Aya had learnt the hard way to trust his.

"Fine. Balinese?"

"Thanks for the assist. On my way out. There's something really wrong here. Who the fuck needs this many guards to guard some old financial documents and obsolete equipment-- there's nothing much else here, although it looks like there was ... it's really strange, it's ... it's as if they were expecting us."

Something clicked. Aya broke into a run, not caring if he could be heard. Yohji was right. They'd been expected. God, they'd been so stupid, they'd been expected, it was a trap, a trap and ...

He burst through the stairwell doors onto the third floor. Into a large, barren, empty room. And Aya's heart lurched in his chest, as sound and light rushed around him, his gaze narrowing, focussing, filling and overwhelmed with the images in front of him. Behind him, he could vaguely hear Yohji's footsteps thundering up the stairs, Omi's voice shrieking in his ear, "They've heard you, they know, abort, do you hear me, abort ..."

A pool of blood, and more smeared across the wall.

An orange sweatshirt, blotched with red, lying in shredded pieces on the ground.

A glove ... a leather glove ... Ken's leather glove ...

He stood there, frozen and unmoving, as Yohji skidded to a halt behind him, began yelling indecipherable words in Aya's ear. But Aya couldn't hear him. In Aya's mind a voice was screaming, over, and over, and over, and over ...

No, please, no, no, Ken, oh God Ken, please, no ...

And just over the screaming in Aya's mind, he could hear the faint but unmistakable sound of chopper blades.

End Chapter 7. Stay tuned for Chapter 8 ...

Gah, I hate any attempt at plot, but there you go. This one took a bit of time, although it was, as is most of this story, half-written already ... I think I am such a fluff writer--although I love reading angst, I hate, y'know, really being mean to my boys. And posting is so final, even if I plan to edit later.But I sat down today, bit the bullet as they say (let's hope Ken doesn't), and anyhow—a bit of a cliffhanger for the new year ... or earlier, depending on time. You'll be busy with Christmas stuff—trust me, you won't even notice.

As always, feedback, comments, reviews, criticisms—all very much appreciated.