A/N: Okay, at first I really thought this chapter sucked, but now, not so much, it actually worked out pretty much how I wanted it to. This story is coming pretty close to a close...I can count up to six-seven chapters more in all, including a couple spare chapters if I find I missed something.

Whatever happens, I hope I continue to rock this story.

Read, review, enjoy.

"Yes, you can hear me correctly...No, the running water in the background is not affecting your hearing...I want a week off...Yes I know I'm the only doctor in my field at our hospital, but other doctors can fill in...I've been planning this for a few days now. I left a good folder of notes on my desk, just have the substitute read them...Yes I'm sure...Thank you, good bye." At long last Kurogane clicked the cellphone shut and placed it in his pocket.

The doctor was in a very strange place for a telephone conversation, believe it or not, he was in the bathroom. You could hear running water coming from behind a curtain, which one of Kurogane's hands disappeared behind. The second the cellphone had been turned off Fye's voice came from behind the curtain. "You know, you can let me go now. I won't fall again."

Kurogane chuckled. "After your last demonstration of grace I'm not going to trust your judgement this early in the morning."

"It's seven-thirty. The morning is over halfway over."

"Fye, just wash up so we can go."

There was a long pause. "Can I ask a question?"

"Go ahead."

"How am I supposed to 'wash up' when you have such a tight grip on my shoulder that I can't reach the soap?" Kurogane sighed, let go of Fye's shoulder and watched the shadow behind the curtain, that was Fye, do various things behind the shower curtain in a hurried fashion before the sound of running water suddenly stopped.

After a couple more minutes the sound of Fye's voice was heard again. "Kuro-chu, hand me my clothes please?"

"What? You're not going to just come out? Why not? I've already seen everything you--"

Fye's embarrassed scream overshadowed Kurogane's words, "Pervert! Give me my clothes!"

Kurogane chuckled at Fai's reaction and picked up the stack of clothes that Fye had left out the night before. "Does handing you your clothes include your socks and shoes?"

"No." Kurogane passed the clothes, minus socks and shoes, behind the curtain and in what seemed to be record time Fye came from the bath fully dressed.

The blond then proceeded to pull on his socks and shoes, mess with his hair until it lay flat on his head, brush his teeth until they seemed to gleam and put some sort of lotion on his hands that smelled oddly like sandalwood... Kurogane had no doubt in his mind that if Fye felt he had the time that he would give himself a manicure and a pedicure. Although Fye denied it most of the time, Kurogane had found over the last few days of living together that his lover was obsessed with the way he looked.

"You ready?"

"Yep. Let's go." The pair of men walked out of the room and down the stairs, out of the house, and into Fye's blue Subaru. The stuff that they would need was already in the back of the car, and Kurogane looked back to their home that they wouldn't see for a couple days at the very least.

"So. Why did you have me wake you up at seven a.m. anyway?"

"Because," Fye laughed a little bit as he started the engine, "I knew that if I set an alarm clock that it would go off and bug me until I reached out and threw it against the wall. You, on the other hand, have proven to me time and time again that you won't leave me alone no matter how many times I throw you against the wall."

Even though Fye's statement was true, no alarm clock was going to wake Fye up, Kurogane growled a little bit as it did not answer his question. "You know what I meant."

Fye sighed, "Because Kuro-koi, I have things we need to do and it'll take about two hours to get to our destination."

"But we don't have to be there until one in the afternoon!"

"Even if we're early, it can be a good thing to be early."

No more arguments were heard as Fye put the car in gear and drove on. The places Fye had wanted to stop at included breakfast, which Fye insisted on paying for, going to a grocery store, and then going to a place Kurogane had never even seen from the road before. "What is this place?" Kurogane asked as he looked around the shop Fye had dragged him into. "The Assassin's Store?"

Fye chuckled and he looked at various, curious goods. "It may not say that on the sign outside the door, but that's pretty much what it is. Kuro-myu is so smart."

"So why are we here? I thought you already had an arsenal of weapons."

"I do." Fye picked something up, turned around, and placed it in Kurogane's hand. "I'm shopping for you."

The doctor looked down at the item that had been placed in his hand and he almost dropped it, "You're buying me a gun?!" He whisper-yelled at Fye.

"A stun gun. You're not an assassin, so you technically can't kill. However, you can defend yourself." Kurogane decided that if he hadn't already decided this he was to take note of it now, Fye was insane.

The blond dragged Kurogane around practically every square inch of the store and had both added and subtracted from the pile of merchandise as they went. Finally, Fye began to head toward the checkout. "Fye? Are you sure all this stuff is necissary?"

"Of course!"

"Even the hat?"

"Of course! The hat looks so good, it's hard to resist." Kurogane wasn't much of a hat person, but since Fye wanted it...geez, he was starting to think of Fye as if he were a wife!

As they got up front, Kurogane heard chuckling. He looked over his shoulder and there were a few other customers, presumably other assassins, pointing and chuckling at Fye. "Uh...Fye?" Kurogane pointed this out to the blond and Fye only seemed to go red in the face, get very irritated, hurry to pay, and get out of the store.

"So what was that about?" Kurogane asked after Fye had stuffed their purchases in their trunk and got on the road again. "The laughing."

"Nothing."

"Fye..."

"Nothing!" Fye grumbled for a moment. "They think I'm too small."

Kurogane raised an eyebrow and chuckled himself, "What does that mean?"

"I'm too small."

"You're pretty tall..."

"Yes, but...what did they look like?"

Kurogane thought on it for a moment. "I guess they looked like me in some ways, at least body structure. Big, fairly muscular...oh..." Now Kurogane understood. Those other assassins had been macho and tough. Fye wasn't like that at all, Fye was almost girlish and delicate looking.

"Yeah. Exactly. I'm pretty much the laughing stock of my entire occupation. 'Look at Fye! He's so skinny!' I do ten times a better job then any other assassin in our city and yet I'm still laughed at. They act like jealous high school girls."

"If you do a better job...why does it matter?"

Fye snorted. "Performance means nothing in my field if you don't have the looks to back it up. If any potential customer were to put me and one of those men next to each other and then decide who they'd hire, they'd hire the other guy, because he looks like he'll do a more thorough job. I'm not mad about that though, really it keeps me out of trouble, because only the smart people and well paying people hire me. I'm not going to be hired to kill little Johnny down the street, or some guy who is more powerful than me. And I get paid more for doing less. So even if they laugh at me, I've still got the upper hand. They just don't know that."

"You looked pretty upset back there."

Fye laughed and shook his head slightly. "Of course I did! As a doctor what do you want more than success at helping your patients?"

Kurogane thought on this for a moment, "The respect of your colleagues and the people around you."

"Exactly. I don't have that, and I never will, just because I'm skinny."

"That sucks."

Fye seemed to pout as he leaned his chin against the stirring wheel. "Yeah. It really does."

"Hey. Is something wrong?" Kurogane frowned as Fye reached over in a hurried fashion and turned off the radio. For the last hour or so the blond had been very pleased to hear songs float out from the speakers and Kurogane had been happy to see Fye happy...not to mention that he also enjoyed Fye's lovely singing voice. Fye himself had blushed profusely when the doctor had mentioned the light singing under his breath, but he really did have a nice voice.

Because of all this Kurogane was a bit upset when the speakers went dead. "Nothings wrong...just I have to watch now. You watch too."

"For Kamui?" Fye nodded. Looking at the clock Kurogane realized it was exactly one o'clock. "You take your job very seriously..."

"Shh." The voice was commanding and Kurogane watched as the blond in front of him seemed to transform from the small kitten he usually seemed to be, into a large cat, stalking it's prey. The prey was no mouse either, you could see that from his face, no, this prey was just as big as the cat that hunted it, if not bigger. "Do you have the stun gun I got you?"

"Yes."

"Do you remember how to use it?"

"Yes."

"Good." For a long time Fye was silent, thirty minutes at least, if not more. Then Fye pounced on Kurogane's arm and turned back into the kitten, spitting and hissing as he pointed out the window. "He's over there!" Sure enough, when Kurogane looked, there was the teenaged boy that had been in the photo he'd seen. In real life, he looked less like Fye, but there was still some resemblance.

"What do you want to do?"

Fye hushed him in a hurried whisper. "We can't lose him here. He's hard to catch, I had to do a lot of calculating to get this right time and place, if we lose him, we'll start over again, because he won't come here again, he's not stupid. He knows me. However, he doesn't know you. Approach him. Keep the stun gun at your fingertips, but don't draw it unless he figures it out and tries to touch you when he has golden eyes. I'll try to get him from behind, okay?"

Kurogane could see in Fye's blue orbs that this was not really the entire plan, but that Fye didn't trust Kurogane to understand the entire plan. He was okay with that, so he nodded. "Okay."

The blond pushed him toward his door. "Go on!"

Kurogane got out of the car slowly and as quietly as he could following Kamui and tapping the teen on the shoulder, approaching him just as Fye had told him to. Kamui quickly spun around and grabbed at Kurogane's wrist, squeezing it so tightly that instantly the doctor knew why Fye was being so careful.

"What?" Kamui's voice was cold, distant, and dangerous. It was the exact opposite of what Fye's voice was like, but Kurogane wondered if at one time Fye had sounded like that too. The very thought made Kurogane want to cringe.

"Well, you see I'm not from around here and I have no idea how to get to where I want to go from here and..."

"You're speaking quickly. You're nervous. Why are you nervous?"

Kurogane blinked. Wow, this guy was suspicious from the start. "Well you are intimidating..."

"Then why did you talk to me?" Kurogane rubbed the back of his head. "Are you some kind of a masochist?" Kamui shed a smile that was not even close to Fye's. It was evil almost, as if he enjoyed torturing his victims in this way.

"No. I dislike pain." Was this how all F.A.I.'s acted? Did they all seem to have no emotion at all behind their actions? Were they all this frightening?

"You aren't?" Kurogane nodded once. "Well then..." Kamui reached out, grabbing to Kurogane's arm and bringing it up to his face. "I thought so."

The doctor's eyes narrowed. "Thought what?"

"You smell like him. Fye." Kamui's eyes gently closed. "You're an assistant of his. Aren't you? Ah...Fye was never dumb." Kamui sighed as if he were thinking back on fond memories. "Come out you murderer!" The teenaged boy's hand gripped even more tightly to Kurogane's arm as he yelled.

Slowly Kurogane saw Fye come from in between two cars. The very scene he was now in reminded him of some action movie. Except the beautiful, foreign woman was replaced by Fye who may have been pretty in Kurogane's eyes, but was not foreign. "Let him go Kamui." The blond's voice dripped with a tone that Kurogane could not identify. It was between hate, and over-protectiveness. As the red-eyed man looked at the assassin, he saw that despite Fye's new-found reluctance to kill people, he had his signature pistol in his hand.

"Oh, dear Fye, you've gotten rusty, you care? You hired someone you actually care about?" Kamui looked up at Kurogane and tilted his head a little cluelessly. "Well...he is your type. He looks a lot like the people who "took care" of you at--"

"Shut up!" Fye screamed and it sunk into Kurogane's head what Kamui meant by 'Fye's type.' It made him want to kill the boy, whether he was an assassin or not. "Let him go. We're not here to kill you."

"Oh yeah?" Kamui snorted, "I bet you said the same thing to Subaru and Fuuma! You said the exact same thing didn't you? As you pointed a pistol at their heads!"

"No! I didn't say that to Subaru! I didn't even want to kill Subaru! Kamui! Stop this foolishness and listen to me!"

"Oh? What did you say to Subaru?" Kamui's eyes thankfully remained their normal color, but he rested his head on Kurogane's arm, his fingers wrapped tightly around that wrist.

This action elicited an angry and jealous growl from Fye as he answered, "Sleep well."

"And Fuuma?"

"What's his number?"

Kamui blinked in surprise. "He doesn't have one. He's a real person. He disappeared about a week ago..."

Fye shook his head very gently, his lips moving every so slightly and his eyes turning golden as he spoke, "Then I didn't kill him."

"Liar." Kamui turned his face into the sweater and took a deep breath, "This man...he really smells like you. The scent is seeped in his clothes and skin. You must be really close." There was a pause before the next words came from Kamui's lips. "Perhaps if I kill him, you'll see the pain you're putting me and other F.A.I. through."

As Kamui opened his eyes Kurogane saw that they had turned golden. Just like Fye's. Remembering what Fye told him Kurogane pulled away quickly, for a moment escaping from his grasp, but then Kamui's hand darted out and grabbed onto him again.

Kurogane shut his eyes, there wasn't enough time to grab his stun-gun...

A shot was heard and a pinging sound shot past his ears before he heard a screaming yell and Kamui let go. "Kurogane! Get away from him! Now! Kamui! Touch him again and I will kill you, no matter what I was told in the assignment." Kurogane looked to Fye. The determined look on his face was slightly shaky hands gripped to the smoking pistol.

Looking to Kamui he saw that while Fye had shot him, it was no where close to a fatal wound. Shot through the arm, painful, but not deadly. "Bastard. Fine, if I can't kill him in front of you...I'll just kill you first." As Kamui let go of the bleeding wound in his arm he began to run forward, the pain seeming to be unimportant in comparison to getting rid of one or the other of them.

Fye didn't move at all. He stood still as if he felt that he deserved whatever Kamui was going to throw at him. Kurogane couldn't allow that. He couldn't allow it when they had first met and he definitely couldn't allow it now. As quickly as he could he reached back and pulled the stun gun out. He pulled the knob and shot it.

Kamui's yell filled the air for a moment before the boy fell to the ground obviously unconscious. Fye looked from the body, to Kurogane, to Kamui. The blond then put the pistol away and went over to the boy's form. "My god Kuro-sama! What did you have that set to!?"

"Whatever it was set at..." Kurogane looked at the side where the voltage gage was and he made a gasping noise. "At the highest setting..."

"No wonder!" Fye sighed. "Well, at least we have him. And at least you were good for two things. Distraction and finishing move..." The blond moved the boy and picked him up into his arms, setting Kamui on his shoulder. "We'll get this arm bandaged and then head off...oh yeah, we have to tie his hands, fingers, and feet."

"We have to go so far as tieing his fingers together?"

"Of course. When you can kill someone by touching them, you have to be locked up very carefully. Come on now." The voice was as if nothing else in the world was more natural.

"Er...Fye?"

"Yes?" The blond opened the back door of the Subaru he drove.

"Er...we just did this whole thing in the middle of a parking lot in the middle of the day. Why did no one else seem to notice?"

Fye grinned. "You've never been around an assassin at work before have you?" When Kurogane shook his head Fye gave a laughing sigh. "We're careful about times and places. Also a lot more people are used to assassins than you think. In the city we're considered beings of the lawless night, but out here in the country, we're almost like the police. Almost. Now come on. Before he wakes up. You're the doctor. Take care of his arm."

As Kurogane came over Fye chuckled. "What?"

"One more thing Kuro-chu."

"Hm?"

"I love you, but you must never be an assassin. You suck at it."

Kurogane stuck his tongue out at Fye jokingly. "I love you too."