Blinker

Badou could always tell when he had gotten Haine's goat, because on the off chances when he did, the albino's left eye would blink in an erratic pattern. Always the one for slapstick humor himself, he often referred to it as Haine's "blinker."

And on one such occasion, as Haine stood on the stairs to the church, fuming as his left eye twitched, Badou couldn't help but smirk as he said, "You're blinker's on." An idea coming to mind, Badou looked behind his partner and at his ass, where if Haine really had blinkers they would probably truly lie. Making an affirming grunt, Badou leaned back around, looking Haine in the face as his partner got a scathingly suspicious look.

"It's blinking in Morse code. You're sayin' I'm gonna have a good night."

Help

It was one of the only times he had ever held a girl's hand, and it had turned out coming back to bite him square in the ass. It wasn't Nill's fault; it was just his damned luck. She had been balancing on the pews like she usually did when she was bored, but one of her lace up sandals had come loose. He had held one of her hands as she balanced, her other hand preoccupied with tying up the black lace of the untied shoe.

It had been then that Badou, in all of his great timing, had chosen to come careening through the door. Had he been going slower, he probably would not have run into the albino, but because the Cyclops had an annoying habit of wanting to do things quickly, he had nipped that possibility early in the bud.

So instead, the red head's most recent foible had sent both of the gunners tumbling to the ground. At first he had been worried for Nill's balance, and upon coming out of the tangle of idiocy that had tackled him, he only found her perfectly balanced on the pew, her shoe again tied and her small hands clasped together.

She was laughing, and Haine sighed. Help always came at some sort of a price these days.

Lost

Badou always loved the idea of blasphemy. He thought it was funny, how people could go against what was so called sacred and downright abuse it. Blasphemy was a game to him, one he never really minded loosing.

Lolly

It was a dream… or a memory that he had had that day. It seemed real… but he wasn't sure if he could trust himself. It had been a day in his early childhood, when his brother had… still been around. He had come into possession of a spare lolly, cherry in flavor if he remembered correctly. He had no intention of eating it, seeing as he already had one… but he had felt the inane urge to do something with it.

That was when he had come upon the kid in the alley. He'd caught Badou's attention because of the kid's white hair. Looking back on it, he was exactly what Badou could picture Haine looking like as a young boy.

He had held the lolly out to the child, looking down as the albino looked up at him questioningly. It was as if he was unsure what he was supposed to do with it, or as if the small token were really real.

"Here," Badou had said, as the boy had taken the confection, "matches your eyes."

The albino had looked up at him again, a look of confusion, but also gratitude greeting his gaze. He had never seen that look again, which was what had made him question the validity of the vision. But Haine's spectrum of emotions came so close… especially now, that they had been working together for so long, that Badou didn't doubt that Haine was capable of such an expression.

That was why he was still confused, and why he still had not told the albino about the vision, for fear of it being proven false… or true.

New

Every six months, a strange occurrence would happen regarding Badou's partner. Haine had finally come to the conclusion that about every six months was when he needed to go out and get new clothes. Mostly because the ones he had could only bear having so many patches in them. Not to belittle Nill's work, but they just didn't hold up against the beatings that Haine dished out to them.

So it was when Haine walked into Buon Viaggio in a strikingly slim fitting pair of new jeans that Badou knew that the albino had come into his new wardrobe. And as Badou glued his eyes to the carefully clothed ass, he couldn't help but think that maybe new things weren't so bad.

1st

Badou had never been a competitive guy. Sure he was reckless, but he didn't really care when other people beat him. He cared if he won, but otherwise everything was pretty much the same.

But the first time he and Haine had gotten to first base, he couldn't help being competitive. And, luckily, it had paid off.

He had been 1st in the home run to first base.

Cuddle

It wasn't often that Haine let Badou cuddle with him. Even rarer was the time when he consciously let Badou cuddle with him. The few times that the red head had gotten away with it was when the albino had been half unconscious or asleep entirely.

And even then he still put up a hell of a fight most of the time.

But one day, when the day had been warm and the sun had been shining, a day in whose shadow Haine and Badou sat happily in Haine's darkening apartment, smiling for no reason at all and just enjoying the calm of a good day, Haine let Badou cuddle with him.

Actually, the albino had asked him to cuddle with him.

Badou didn't know if it was just the sun that had gotten to Haine's head, or just the good mood that they were sharing, but he found that he didn't particularly care. It was an easy question to answer, and he found that as they sat on the couch, listening to nothing but each other's heartbeats, that even though he didn't often get to see this side of the albino, that the wait in between was definitely worth the rewards, only to be reaped when they were ready.

Kitchen

Badou had awoken one early winter morning to the smell of cinnamon sugar strong in his nostrils and the warmth of a working oven wrapping him in a blanket of content. He had opened his eyes grudgingly, not wanting the blissful sleep he had been enjoying just yet. But, knowing that he had an albino to take care of, he rose anyway, both wryly eager and slightly afraid to see the results of their… "roughhousing" from the night before. He was still slightly tired from the endeavor, but not too tired yet to forget a blanket to protect his warmly sated skin from the chill of the cold morning.

When he walked into the kitchen, the Cyclops smiled. Haine was wrapped in a blanket himself, leaning against the counter with the old quilt draped over the pits of his elbows as they rested low around his waist. He was without a shirt, but seemed not to mind in the warmth of the kitchen. Sure enough, he still had a few bruises and red scratch marks from the night before, as if his body had chosen to heal them more slowly for the sake of the red head's amusement.

Haine's mouth tilted into a sleepy grin as the red head entered the kitchen. Badou walked over to him, placing both of his hands on the counter on either side of Haine's hips. He leaned in close to the albino, asking him lazily, "Buns in the oven yet?"

He felt rather than saw a slow grin spread across Haine's porcelain face. "Not that kind," he albino replied quietly, obviously having caught the red head's innuendo.

"Let's fix that, shall we?"

High

It was smoke. It was nicotine. It was blood. It was bullets. It was passion. It was hate. It was everything. It was nothing. It was how they lived. It was how they died. It was who they met. It was who they didn't meet. It was who they knew. It was who they didn't know. It was talking. It was singing. It was laughing. It was crying. It was running. It was falling.

It was a permanent high, if you thought about it right. And as Badou sat atop the roof of his apartment building, smoking his first fag in over twenty-four hours, he couldn't help but see the correlation, the relation, the emotion, the motion, the commotion, in everything.

It was life, and it was death.

Drunk

The first time Badou got really drunk, like really hammered, he was sure that he was going to die. Not only from the fact that he had practically drank himself to death, but also because in his intoxicated state he had failed to notice that Haine was in one of his moods. While in which, Badou had attempted to lay it on his partner.

He had succeeding in getting some skin, but it was the skin of the albino's knuckles connecting with his chin that he had received that night instead of his intended endeavor.

He'd woken up the next day with a roaring headache, a bruise blossoming over half of his face, and a very pissed albino.

Since facing that day, and all of the apologies required therein, he had vowed never to over drink again.

Dressed

Badou had never liked the Priest. He scared him, freaked him out. He had always felt that even if the man claimed that he couldn't see, that he still could, and that every time he looked at someone he was thinking something perverse and dirty.

Which was the entire reason that one day Badou's patience had finally burst when he could have sworn that the blond man had been staring at Haine's ass. Nice though it was, he considered such territory owned by him and him alone, and not even the will of God could take it from him without a fight.

"Stop undressing him with your eyes!" Badou had snapped, pulling Haine by the shoulder behind him, as if his measly body could protect the albino from the twisted line of sight of the Priest.

"Who says it's just him?" the blind man had replied, a twisted smirk curling over his lips.

Badou hadn't gone back to the church since then, and hadn't let Haine go in unless he knew that Nill was going to be there to protect him.

Ribbon

Badou had never really believed in Santa. It was just kind of a joke to him. But on Christmas Eve, so late that had Santa existed the red head would have probably been competing with him, Badou took his place. The two gunners and the giraffe had set up some Christmas decorations around the church to give Nill a pleasant first Christmas. They had succeeded, and had all agreed to stay the night to share the morning with her.

But, when the girls had awoken the next morning, it had been to a violent bout of swearing and a belt of maniacal laughter emanating from the pews a short distance away.

As the two girls looked to investigate, they found Badou, holding his stomach and laughing so hard that tears were coming out of his eye. Next, and they could hardly believe their eyes, they found Haine, who was swearing so loudly that they were sure he was going to wake the spirits buried in the small cemetery out back.

But they couldn't help but sympathize with Badou's laughter, because somehow, during the dark of the night, the red head had managed to not only get Haine's shirt off, but wrap him in bright silk ribbon from head to toe, sufficiently tying his arms in a useless yet humorous fashion.

"I am not a ****ing Christmas present!" the albino roared at the Cyclops, his anger mixed with embarrassment shown by the blush that was dying his pale cheeks almost as red as his ribbons.

"Merry Christmas Nill," Badou managed to choke out between his bouts of painfully joyful laughter. "Hope it was what you wanted."

The little angel girl just giggled soundlessly, running over to pet her ribbon-wrapped puppy and enjoy his humiliation while she could. After all, it wasn't every day she got to see Haine in ribbons.

Sometimes

Whenever Haine got into philosophical conversations, Badou couldn't help but let his mind wander. The albino would often scorn him for it, but other than that he received no deterrent for his actions. But somewhere along the line, Badou decided to play some tricks on the words of his companion. They were often innuendos, but he also found that if he spouted off random words at the appropriate times, he could turn the conversation completely around.

One case, where Haine had been spouting of spiritual questions about what life was and wasn't, Badou chose to blurt out the word "hips," following his train of thought that had previously been focused on his partners hips.

What his word had turned out to make Haine's question sound like was, "Hips, sometimes that happens, right?"

Haine didn't laugh, but Badou sure as hell thought it was funny.