Phantom and Angel

PART 10

Caught off guard, D stilled completely, eyes examining Leon as if he hadn't' seen the man in years, then, he reached to carefully brush away the finger from his lips and, ever so gently, take the man by the chin. "Who are you—and what have you done with MY dear detective?"

At the end of D's sentence, Leon felt the nail of D's pinky lightly tracing a line downward from the back corner of his jaw to his neck, which normally wouldn't have had that much of an effect on him. In this case, it caused his heart to speed up slightly and his breathing stop for a few moments, without his realizing it. His weakened state made it enough to push him to his limit.

As D admiringly searched Leon's eyes, he saw the smoldering blue suddenly cloud and drift aimlessly to one side just as the lids began fluttering. The color of Leon's face paled alarmingly. In one graceful motion, D had one of Leon's arms around his shoulder and hooked his free hand around the detective's waist to guide him back to the bed as all of the muscles in the man's body began to go completely limp.

With Leon passed out, T-Chan moved behind the human after D got him in a sitting position on the bed. He slipped his hands under Leon's arms and pulled him to where his head was resting on the pillows as it should be. He helped D get Leon out of his street clothes and into the black silk 'pajamas' as if they were racing against whatever time it might take for Leon to regain consciousness again. D was artfully putting the black sleeveless top on Leon while he was dealing with shoes and socks so that the jeans could be dealt with. "Huh. He's got better foot hygiene than I realized before."

D sighed in dismay as he glanced up at Leon's face. "Yet…he neglects caring for the rest of his body—in more harmful ways."

"Uuuuuuh—I wouldn't be too sure this is from self-neglect." T-Chan's brow knit at his own comment before he slipped from the bed and set the shoes, toes up, against the side of a small dresser with the opening angled down towards the floor.

D turned his head to stare at the totetsu. "What do you mean?"

T-Chan shrugged, a little more careful to keep his expression neutral. "It seems more like he's having a hard time staying asleep long enough than not wanting to sleep."

The words settled in D's mind, and he turned his attention back to the face of the sleeping detective. It almost seemed as if he might ask in scolding: why didn't you tell me? "Why would the case he's trying to solve now bother him so much more that it would keep him from sleeping properly?"

"Maybe he thinks it could end up being more personal than some of the others." T-Chan had a momentary feeling of irony as he faced undoing Leon's jeans. Not hesitating long enough to make it obvious, he undid the metal button at the fly and brought the zipper down like an expert.

D moved to slip his fingers under the waistband of Leon's jeans at the hips and got a hold of the boxers underneath. "Why would it become personal?"

T-Chan glanced up at D, not sure if he really couldn't guess, or if maybe he wanted his own unspoken suspicions confirmed. "Well, let's see…Norma….Alexander…oh, and don't forget—Wong…" He started tugging alternately on the outside of the jeans from Leon's mid-thigh with a sinister grin. A glance up at D's face told him that his theory was more than a little hard to accept. "I never told you about the things Leon was saying after we left the shop." His face was more serious.

"Things?" D asked simply as he pushed the denim down Leon's hips while still holding onto the undershorts.

T-Chan nodded just as he finished slipping the jeans off over Leon's feet.

The two looked down to momentarily stare at what was printed on Leon's boxers.

T-Chan broke the silence. "It was mostly muttering that he probably thought wouldn't be heard, and more than half of it was complaints about you having some kind of death wish."

"A DEATH wish!?" D stood up ramrod straight, hands on his hips and flung the ends of his hair from his head when he suddenly turned to look at Leon's face as if he insisted on an explanation from the detective even if he was unconscious. "Why, that's nothing short of completely absurd! Whatever gives him a reason to accuse me of having a death wish?"

T-Chan reached up to retrieve the silk night bottoms, and start working them onto Leon's legs. "Oh, just a few, silly little things he listed, like…letting nearly anybody into the very place where you live and sleep, not owning a gun, using self defense for a city-destroying dragon but not for yourself, not having any sort of security system or at least training the monkey to dial 911…"

D gave him a scathing look and started to help get the lower half of the pajamas onto Leon. "I believe I'm starting to get the idea."

T-Chan released a snort of mock contempt before getting a little revenge for earlier. "Definitely contaminated…"

A/N: Since I collapsed the first 7 parts of this chapter "Phantom and Angel", some people may not be able to post reviews to the most recently posted part because the site recorded them as already having posted to the chapter it's listed on (which changed because of the collapsing of earlier posts).

I'm dying of curiosity about what people reading this story think about the elements I've written in this story. The last three posts got nearly 100 hits the first day I posted them.

I'd love to know what you like most about this story.

I'd love to know if there is anything that you don't like or don't get.

I'd love to know if there's anything in particular you've seen in the story already that you'd like to see more of.