Hello readers! First of all, I would like to humbly express my gratitude for those of you who have stuck by this seemingly abandoned fic. The story behind my year of absence is that I had a good portion of the next chapters my fics written and saved on a disk…a disk that mysteriously disappeared. I lost a considerable amount of my progress along with the heart and motivation to type it up all over again. I am so, very sorry to those of you who were kind enough to read and comment, requesting a quick update. In fact, I recently visited and reread the comments you left and I believe they gave me the motivation to prod the brain muses awake and get working again. I am sorry to have kept you waiting and can only hope to make it up to you all in my future chapters. Thank you again!


My heart stopped and the blood drained from my face in an instant. "He...Heero..."

The figure moved forward from his place in the shadows of the alley, but as the light hit him, I realized that it wasn't Heero at all. The man stalked toward me with a glare cold enough to flash freeze, a familiar glare, and I think I forgot to breathe. As he approached, I felt rushing warmth on my face and at the pit of my stomach; a warmth I hadn't felt in years. No, this man was not Heero, but he came pretty damn close.

Before I could think of anything to say, Jamie attached herself to his waist and flashed her wide, blue eyes at him. "Kale, am I not pretty enough for customers?"

"'Course you are! You're the prettiest little thing on the colony! Who the hell said you weren't?" He cast a meaningful glare at me. "Is this guy bothering you girls?"

Realizing that she might lose me as a potential customer, she shook her head innocently. "No, Kale...It's just that he never buys! He makes me think I'm not pretty enough. You think I'm pretty, right, Kale? You'll be paying tonight, right?"

"Don't listen to her, Kale. She just likes being a damn baby for attention," Greta, a wiry red-head who assumed the position of the leader popped into the conversation, taking a long drag from her cigarette. Jamie scowled in her direction. "Duo likes to keep us company. He doesn't bother us much," she flashed me a cheeky grin before continuing, "and tends to keep things peaceful. Kinda like you do."

Kale looked at me again, that cold stare scanning me, trying to find something that disproved Greta's words. Apparently, he didn't find anything because after a moment, his mouth formed a small, friendly smile. "Well, I suppose if Greta says you're okay, then you're okay. I'm just surprised there's another soul on this world that cares about the ladies here."

I found my voice shortly after I found my composure and returned the smile. "Well, I was born on L2, so I know what kind of shit happens down here. Just doing my part as one of the last decent citizens on this damned colony."

Kale chuckled, and I liked that sound. It was low and throaty, much how I imagined Heero's would be. His skin was fair, contrasting against the dark fall of his hair which tumbled over his sharp, green eyes. His grin looked well practiced, revealing white, straight teeth. He reached out a well toned arm to shake my hand and I accepted it with my own, if not hesitantly. "Well, it seems that the Earth and colonies have hope after all if there are people like you and me around...Duo, was it?"

"Uh, yea, Kale, right?"

"Right," he smiled again and some part of me melted. Although his demeanor was completely different, there was something about his face and stare that pulled at my heart-strings.

By the time we were acquainted --though, not as well as I would have liked to be-- the girls were in pursuit of a small group of young men looking to have some fun. Which meant that Kale and I were alone and I wasn't getting any information tonight.

I sighed, "Well, I guess they'll be doing alright with those guys."

"Yea, there's hardly any trouble here anymore." There was a long pause as we began walking down the street. "So, Duo, you never buy?"

I chuckled, "Nah, I guess Jamie's starting to get impatient with me. What about you?"

He gave me a sweet smile, "No, I couldn't touch them. I see them more like sisters. Very crude, very sexual sisters."

"Yea, calling them 'whores' is a very brotherly thing to do," I joked and he laughed loudly.

"Oh, they'll probably get me pretty good for that one. I won't be hearing the end of it for weeks, but they have to understand I have to keep the macho look to potential threats."

"Threats? You see me as a threat?" I made my eyes as large and innocent as I could. His laughter rang out in the night around us, and I realized I liked the sound of that, too.

"When their old pimp died, there was some chaos going on around here. A lot of they guys would take what they wanted without paying."

"Yea, I remember that. Wasn't too far back, a maybe three or four months ago."

"Right. Well, their new pimp gives me some extra creds to make sure that the customers act accordingly, so you could say I'm their unofficial bodyguard. I think all of them see me as one, too...well, except for Jamie. Then again, she sees anything with a wallet as a customer."

I laughed with him, "Yea I guess she does, but there are times when she almost makes me believe that she has genuine feelings for me!"

"Yea, sometimes I'd think it'd break her little heart if she found out I was--" he stopped and shot a nervous glance at me to see if I had caught that. I had. Kale sighed and ran a hand through his hair in an embarrassed fashion, "Please don't tell them."

I began laughing again and could barely stop until he shot me a mortified look. "Don't worry," I gave him a wide grin, wiping at my eyes, "I won't tell if you won't." It was only after the words left my mouth that I regretted them instantly. It wasn't like me to give away such personal information to a complete stranger, especially when I was in the middle of a mission. A mission, in which, I was a primary target. I blamed it on his resemblance to Heero, blamed it on the fact that my world was completely off-kilter, and blamed it on my libido for setting my loins on fire. Damned arsonist libido.

It didn't help that when I met Kale's eyes again, he was surprised, yet pleased. Yea, in my interpretation of horny-man-speak, that meant he was interested in me, too. "Small world," he said behind a shy smile. "So what do you do, if you don't mind me asking?"

I glanced around the area before answering, "I work with a friend in the salvage business. I'm usually off-colony on some retrieval jobs, so people don't see much of me anymore. What about you? You can't be living solely on what you get paid for keeping the girls out of trouble, right?"

Kale made a slight, thoughtful pout while he gazed up at the stars. The chill was making his cheeks noticeably flushed, despite the dim lighting, and I couldn't help but try to remember the color Heero's cheeks turned during cold, snowy missions. "Me," he said after a long pause, "I guess you could call me a job-hopper. I don't have anything stable, but I do get many offers, mostly because I'm an honest, hard worker. Right now I'm playing bodyguard, working part-time at the big salvage yard next to the station, and trying to get adjusted to this whole OR thing I just got initiated into."

My eyebrow rose. OR? I had certainly never heard of them before. "Initiated?" I prodded. "Sounds like some extreme fraternity! I hope you didn't have to run a couple of laps around the community naked. In some places, the air is so thick, it's caustic, and you'd end up coughing up a lung before finishing!"

He stopped and sat down on a bench by the walkway, patting the empty place next to him in invitation. "No, no, Duo. It's nothing like that...Besides, if I got naked, they'd be the ones who'd be embarrassed!"

I hesitated before sitting down, chuckling politely while my eyes scanned the surroundings carefully. I didn't like the way my guard dropped around this guy, yet I couldn't help but want to speak to him, to touch him, to invoke small moans of passion from him and see exactly why those guys would be embarrassed if he got naked...Down, Maxwell, down. It was difficult for me to fully take hold of my thoughts and actions and I knew that would get me killed before I even got a sniff in the right direction towards Heero. He didn't seem to notice my hesitation because he simply kept talking.

"...since I joined the Organization of the Rose, it managed to open a lot of doors for me. You'd be surprised how much better people treat you when they see you're part of a dominant organization on the colony."

My mental confusion got tossed aside in a second when I heard that name. Organization of the Rose? Now why the hell did that make my skin crawl? It sounded too familiar, too close to a person and his ideals; a person who, I knew, was already long dead. It suddenly wasn't so difficult to keep my guard up and that's when I knew that I was getting damned close to finding Heero. All I needed to do was keep this guy talking, charm him without being charmed, and coax every little tidbit of info I could get out of the poor guy. I would have to thank the girls; they always managed to have something to do with me striking investigation-gold.

"You have gorgeous eyes."

That comment startled me out of my train of thought and I found myself looking straight into large, green eyes. Eyes that reminded me a lot of Trowa's, calm, dark gaze, yet the piercing way they looked at me reminded me of Heero again and I blushed hotly under them. "Uh, thanks, yours aren't so bad either."

"Thank you, but yours are such a unique color," he seemed to think a while, "I don't think I've ever seen anyone with this color before. I kind of wish I had inherited eyes like this, that way I'd be able to pick people up with a glance. You must get hit on a lot."

I chuckled nervously, again, and I couldn't help but notice that it was because of him. He had reduced me, Duo Maxwell, ex-terrorist and Gundam Pilot, to a giggling school-boy. I quickly found my voice and a small chunk of my suddenly absent wit and replied, "Well, aren't you a charmer! Do you do this to every guy that comes around this corner of the colony?"

He stopped his advancement and his eyes went very wide and round, much like Quatre's do whenever he gets his hand caught in the cookie-jar. Kale parted his lips -- which were extremely sexy, by the way -- as if he were about to defend himself, but something flashed in his eyes and the sly grin returned. "Only the guys that I find worth doing it to."

My ears picked up the slight emphasis on 'doing' and I was mortified when I felt my face flush again...which, of course, did absolutely nothing to help the color of my cheeks. He advanced another inch and I found myself retreating on the bench, sliding away the same distance he did. What had gotten into me? This wasn't my usual carefree, cool behavior. Kale was right about people hitting on me left and right, but never, in my entire life, had I been reduced to the goo that he was turning me into right now. The nighttime darkness, along with the dim streetlamps danced across his features as he moved closer, and the result was simply breathtaking. His hair hid his eyes and fell across his high-cheekbones and I realized that I was staring at Heero again. Heero, with enough sexual aggression rolling off of him to compete with my own screaming needs. It was a dream that I had almost every night during the war; a dream that I still had, yet never expected to be encountered with, and I felt as though the blood from every inch of my body decided to gather in an area that suddenly felt too confined in the jeans I was wearing. Well, at least I didn't have to worry about it rushing to my face anymore.

My back hit the armrest and I realized that I had no more room to scoot away from the man who was almost upon me. Then again, I'm not sure my intense need to give in would have allowed me to retreat any further anyway. He was close enough, now, that I could feel his breath softly falling on my own lips, and the warmth of his bicep brushed against my arm which sent more sensations straight to my aching groin.

I remember wondering how the hell I had gotten myself into such a state, and I remember not caring, but most of all, I remember the face he made when we both suddenly heard Janie's voice calling out for us from around the corner. It was a face of loss; a face of embarrassment, but primarily, it was a face of complete and utter frustration as he pulled away. I laughed at the thought and he looked up to meet my eyes. After a second, Kale managed to match my smile and I knew my face was probably mirroring his own frustrated expression.

"I," he began, but Janie came 'bouncing' around the corner and heading straight for us.

"I thought I heard your laugh, Duo," she cooed. "It's always very thick and loud, very manly." She bent over in a "cute" pose, but clearly with the intensions of showing off her greatest assets which were already peaking through a low cut shirt.

"Well, thank you, Jamie. I'm glad someone app--" I cut myself off with a grunt as Jamie unexpectedly plopped herself right down on my lap.

"What was it that you were saying Du--" It was her turn to cut herself off when she felt the definite evidence of my aroused state. Her eyes grew as wide as saucers as wriggled around on my lap for a second to make sure. Upon confirming that my bulge was what it was, she looked at me curiously. "Duo?"

Once again, I was mortified. Yet the way she clung to me made me smile and put on a playful pout. "Well, what do you expect? I'm still young and my body likes to react to things it likes." Jamie squealed with joy at this, yet Kale shot a sideways glance at me and tugged uncomfortably at his shirt, the skin at his neckline flushing pink.

"So you thinking about buying tonight, Duo," Jamie asked hopefully, rubbing against my softening erection with her thigh.

I shifted, sitting her down on the bench between myself and Kale, and stood. "Maybe next time, doll. Until then, you might wanna keep those covered. Wouldn't want you to get sick." I adjusted her flimsy coat over her exposed cleavage, feeling uncomfortable under both her gaze and Kale's. "I, on the other hand, better get back home. I have to be up in a few hours to get some work done, but I promise I'll be back soon to visit you all." I turned to Kale and lifted a hand in a wave. "Nice meeting you, Kale."

Kale's gaze slowly swept over me and I felt myself get hard again, "It was a pleasure meeting you, too, Duo. I hope we can talk again very soon." And with that, he stood, pulling his jacket over his own erection and turning to Jamie, "Come on, we'd better get back to the other girls." Pouting, the girl followed and they were gone.

Man, was that smooth. Usually I made sure I was the one to take my leave before everyone. It helps me gain more sexual attraction, but the sexy bastard beat me to it, making me the last. He was good, too good, I thought as I repressed a shiver that was only partially from the cold, shoved my hands deep inside my coat pockets, and headed home.


The moment I got home, Wufei was already standing outside, disapproval just rolling off of him. Great, I thought to myself, just when I thought I was gonna get some sleep.

"And just where the hell have you been, Maxwell," he asked coldly. He had already washed, dressed, and pulled his hair back into that impossibly tight ponytail he always wore. I couldn't help but wonder if he ever took it off, and if not, whether it was the sole source of his irritability.

"Out. I'll tell you guys later. I really need some sleep."

Wufei sputtered angrily before finally collecting himself to say, "What do you mean, sleep? We have a schedule, Maxwell. One that you set and you're telling me that you're not going to follow it?"

"Can it, Chang. I've had a long night, and I can't put up with your bullshit this early in the morning."

Wufei began one of his sputtering attacks again when Quatre flew out of the doorway and wrapped his arms around me. "Oh, Duo! You're alright! Thank Allah you've returned safely!"

"Of course I did, Quat. What makes you think I'd suddenly take off?" There was a slight tone of bitterness in my response.

Quatre didn't seem to catch it, though, because he just continued hugging me tightly. "I decided to check up on you and see if I could apologize again, but you weren't on the couch or anywhere in the house. When we couldn't find you, we thought the worst!"

Guilt for thinking to accuse him of anything except being a concerned friend instantly hit me and I wrapped my arms around Quatre in a tight embrace. "Sorry about that Quat, I just thought that I might try to get some info before people began wondering who you all are. News travels fast here and I didn't want anyone giving me false info just because they're scared about sacrificing their own ass." My eyes scanned the neighborhood near the yard for any eavesdroppers. None. "Let's all go back inside. I'm gonna take a shower, have a cup of java and tell you what I know."

Quatre pulled away slightly in order to look up at me with his large, blue eyes. Looking back, I no longer found the uncomfortable look he used to give me back in the war. His gaze was calm and analyzing, yet nurturing and concerned and he studied me like that for a moment before smiling his angelic smile and agreeing. "Alright, Duo, take your time. Since Hilde isn't here, I can make us all some breakfast before we head out."

Oh yea, that's another reason why I loved having Quatre around back in the day...the man could cook his way out of Hell if he chose to do so.

As I released him and pulled back from our embrace, which was -- to my surprise -- oddly comforting, I saw Trowa leaning against the doorjamb with a look on his face that made it seem like he had just tasted something extremely unpleasant. Gee, three guesses why. Understanding immediately, my hands quickly pulled away from the smaller pilot and jammed themselves in my coat pocket. "Well, thanks for your concern guys. I promise to inform you the next time I go out, so can I please go take my shower now?"

Quatre nodded, Wufei snorted, and Trowa had already slipped back inside the house. That seemed like a 'yes' to me, so off I went, heading toward the Schbeiker/Maxwell spa, my body begging for a nice long shower.

As I gathered my clothes and toiletries, my mind drifted back to the mission. What was the Organization of the Rose? I hadn't had the time or the mental capacity to ask Kale what its purpose was, but there was a tingling in my gut that told me that it would definitely lead us to Heero. Of course, thinking of Kale, I was reminded of his bold actions back on the bench and could already feel a different tingling, as my loins tightened at the thought of what would have happened had we been left alone.

My hand reached for the faucet, turning on the hot water before the cold; it was far too cold outside to take a cold shower. Besides, a certain part of my anatomy was screaming for attention, and I knew that I wouldn't be able to get anything done if I blue-balled it the whole day.

Stepping inside the shower, the cloud of steam billowed up and surrounded me, fogging up the glass door. It was deliciously warm, and I stayed under the intense spray for a few seconds before my hand slowly made it's descent down my torso, tweaking my left nipple as it fell. My breath began to increase as I remembered Kale's strong shoulders leaning over me. The intense, familiar features that allowed him to resemble Heero made me groan, wondering what it would feel like to have the man I admired so much in the war run his hands over me. I could imagine a hand, rougher than my own, over my stomach, stroking my side, softly scratching up my inner thigh. I was in no mood for teasing, though, so my hand -- his hand -- traveled upward to brush against my length. It twitched at the slight contact and flushed a deeper red as I encircled my member with my long fingers and began a slow, steady rhythm. The feeling of my own hand, coupled with the hot water and images of Heero, created an intensely erotic feeling and it wasn't long before my hand was pumping my cock with the delicious assistance of the precum oozing out of the slit. I tossed my head back at the new sensation it gave, which allowed the water to hit my exposed neck, and could imagine Heero's perfect mouth there, sucking, biting, licking wherever the water hit. My hand moved faster and I was forced to lean against the wall.

Dream Heero was very aggressive.

My hips began to thrust excitedly into my hand as I squeezed myself and roughly rubbed the head with my thumb. So close. Dream Heero was close, also. The hand on my cock slowed as the other reluctantly left my right nipple and rubbed against the tip of my erection, smearing the precum all over my fingers. I slipped to my knees then as those digits searched for my entrance, rubbing against the tight ring of muscle before teasing their way inside. I pumped my hand faster and the fingers inside me began to curl inward, brushing against my prostate in time with my strokes. So good. I spread my legs wider and gasped as the fingers gained better access and all the nerves in my cock ignited. "Heero...harder," I groaned as I thrusted against my hands, writhing in pleasure. My cock twitched a final time before I came, hard, and collapsed on the tile floor.

I had always dreamed and wanted Heero, but it had been a long time since we had spoken. The years I spent away from him had already dulled the pain of not having him, so I wasn't prepared for the sudden ache I felt in my chest. Meeting Kale had reopened wounds that had taken a long time to heal; wounds that would make this mission so much harder.

TBC