Warnings: I'd have to say the usual shonen-ai warning and probably an OOC warning as well. I tried to get them right but it just didn't work that way.

Disclaimer: I own none of this; please don't sue. You'd have to wait in line for quite a while as I am not kidding when I say I have only five cents to my name. -.-; I have an addiction to feed, dammit!

Waves of silk and taffeta swirled and danced around him, bobbing in time to the music from an unseen band. Yohji frowned in puzzlement. Where was he? He answered his own question: It appeared to be a grand ball. But why was he here? Kodou Yohji would never attend a ball. Maybe he was on a mission? No, Yohji decided, he was definitely here of his own free will. Now why was that?

A raven-haired beauty floated past him in white silk, beckoning him with alluring eyes and a seductive smile. Yohji gave her an instinctive grin and started after her but stopped when he suddenly realized why he was here. He was searching for somebody, hunting them...and it wasn't her.

He turned around and searched the crowd, hoping to spot who he sought. He had no idea that person was but he was certain that he'd recognize them on site. The ocean of fanciful fabric parted before him like the Red Sea as he pushed his way across the floor. He was getting close; he knew it. Just a few more steps and he'd catch site of his lover. Asuka... his mind whispered. If only those people weren't standing in the way!

"Yohji," he heard a voice call. Yohji frowned; that wasn't the voice he'd been expecting. If he didn't know better, he'd almost say it was--

"Yohji!" Omi screamed in his ear. Yohji jerked awake, falling off his chair in the process. Swearing under his breath and ignoring the looks from the other customers of the little outside cafe, he righted himself. With one last epithet for the brat who had so rudely awakened him, Yohji readjusted his earpiece just in time to hear Omi yell, "The target's coming your way!" The chair nearly came out from under Yohji again but this time he caught himself.

He started when he saw another hand beside his own and heard a man whisper in his ear "You'd better be careful." Yohji looked up into laughing brown eyes. The man winked at him and then walked away, leaving Yohji feeling slightly shocked and scandalized.

"Umm...Yohji..." Omi's voice crackled over the transmitter. "That was the target."

"Shit."

"Okay, explain this to me again," Yohji said exasperated. The beginning of a truly terrible headache was starting to pound in his temples. That could be, he theorized ruefully, from Manx's chewing out, then Ken's, then Omi's somewhat more gentle scolding and Aya's...well actually Aya hadn't said much of anything. Yohji supposed that he deserved it, falling asleep on a mission of all things, never mind what he'd been doing last night. God, this was going to be a long day--night--whatever.

"I've told you," Manx responded in the same tone as he'd previously used. "The target, known only as Akurei, picks up a different whore every night. It's the perfect opportunity to kill him provided we have the bait at the right time and place. And since somebody screwed up, we don't have any other choice."

Yohji waved his hand dismissively. "I know all that. Just tell me why the whore has to be Aya. Aya for godsakes."

"Because you've been seen already and frankly I don't think Ken could handle the assignment."

"What about Omi?" Yohji mentally slapped himself upside the head the moment he let the words out. Just the thought of sending the kid out into that underground world, prepared or not, made him queasy. He wasn't quite sure why but the thought of doing the same to Aya also caused the same reaction. If only he hadn't let the target see him...

"Omi? Yohji, are you out of your mind? Not only do we need him as communications, but the target's interested in males that aren't jail bait. Men, not boys."

Yohji pulled out his last line of defense. "But Aya's an ice cube!"

Manx stopped his protests with an upraised hand. "Which is why he's perfect." She let Yohji ponder this for a moment before continuing on. "I really don't see why you're protesting this so much." Frankly, neither could Yohji. "You know Aya won't do anything to endanger the mission." With that, she turned on her red high-heel and walked out of the room.

Yohji couldn't stop the last jibe he offered her retreating back, didn't even try to stop it. "Yeah, unless a Takatori shows up."

The scene was different but it was still the same dream. He was still chasing after an unseen lover but now instead of a ballroom, he stood on a street corner, peering out into the night. The crush of people, inevitable in a large city, flowed on either side of him but he stood still. His love would come to him soon enough if he simply waited. Rude, yes, but practical.

A flash of red hair caught his eye. He turned to face it but it had already disappeared. Wait a minute, red? Just who was he chasing here? Unless Asuka had suddenly dyed her hair, it wasn't her...That's right, he remembered, Asuka's dead. Why he chose to remember this, even in his dreams, Yohji didn't know. One would think that in the sacrosanct realm of dreams, cherished love ones would be immortal.

The red flash was back, this time holding still long enough for him catch a quick glance of amethyst eyes. They gazed upward at him, dazzling mirrors of ice that begged to be melted. Yohji's sight moved downward to slightly parted lips and he stepped closer to his unresisting lover.

Suddenly the crowd was jostling him, separating him from the mysterious stranger, shaking him...

"Yohji, let's go!" Ken barked, fairly bouncing around with his barely concealed energy. Mentally, Yohji told him to go fuck off or kick a soccer ball or something but he didn't voice his thoughts, just yawned and stretched in such a way that he slapped Ken while appearing completely innocent. He'd get up in a few minutes. Ken solved Yohji's problem of getting up by rolling him off the couch. He then grinned irritatingly while Yohji swore at the floor. The minute Yohji began to struggle to his feet, however, Ken was gone. He wasn't going to hang around long enough for Yohji to return the favor.

Yohji stumbled out of the den rubbing his head muzzily, wondering if there was any coffee made, where his cigarettes were, and did anyone have a damn comb? He stopped at the stairs, leaning on the railing and just happened to glance up. Suddenly his worries didn't seem so important anymore. Aya was silently descending the stairs, though how he could move in leather that tight, Yohji had no idea. The red head surveyed the room with his ice-cold eyes, now wantonly smeared with kohl and holding a challenge deep within their depths. Yohji, never one for fully appreciating the male half of the species, suddenly, desperately, wanted to answer that challenge.

Aya finished his graceful glide downward--something that Yohji decided should be illegal--and stood at the bottom. He gave the unabashedly staring Yohji a wary look, thinking the blonde was teasing him. "Let's go."

For the tenth time in as many minutes Aya wondered why he was doing this. He wasn't complaining, it was for the good of the mission, he told himself, but dear God, why couldn't somebody else do it? Outward Aya was calm and cool, acting the part of the experienced street-whore; inside he was nearly panicking. Not only was he aware that he looked like a prostitute but he felt like one as well, and that was unbearable. He would never admit it to anyone but it almost hurt to breathe in the clothes he'd been forced to wear...and he'd rather die than confess that he almost liked it, especially the appreciative looks he'd been getting. Those looks were another part he could have done without. Thank God, he'd finally curbed his instinct to blush at every clothes-stripping gaze that came his way. He was still working on not coloring at the blatant invitations and innuendoes.

And that took him back to the positively predatory look Yohji had given him. The people on the street Aya could disregard but for some reason, that look stuck in his mind. Every time some man propositioned him, Aya would recall that look and all of his attempts to keep the blush down went all to hell. He could not be interested in the blonde playboy, he could not! Yohji chased after anything--he would have said anything in a skirt but he didn't know anymore--he was a...a...slut. Yeah, that was the word he was looking for. 'But he's hot' a mental voice piped up. Aya immediately decided that he didn't like that voice.

"Hey, baby," a smoky voice called, curling around the 'baby' like a caress. Oh Lord, Aya thought, please, please, please don't blush. Go away, he urged. Just go the hell away and let me do my job! The little voice made itself known again. 'But right now your job's whoring!' it wailed. 'Why not go along with the man? Oh look at that--he's blonde, too. Brown eyes, though, not green.' Instead to giving in to the little voice in his head, Aya speared the man with his eyes. Eyes that he'd figured out by now carried something in them that he would never have expected. Way too many people had been commenting on his eyes, telling him about their beauty and the savage challenge they contained...whatever that meant.

Evidently the man had taken Aya's silence as acquiesce for he shoved the redhead up against the wall, taking rough possession of his lips. He would have decked him but Omi's voice whispered over the transmitter. "That's him." Aya silently thanked him, now he could fully slip into his assassin mode, focusing his complete attention on the target and forget what he was about to do. Aya let himself relax--not trustingly, never trustingly--into the man's arms, wrapping his own around the target's neck and accepting the knee that slid between his legs.

"My car's around the corner," Akurei whispered in his ear. "I want to fuck you so badly." Crude or not, Aya couldn't help himself--he blushed slightly. "How much do you cost?" The man led Aya around the corner to where a black limo was parked.

Aya's mind raced. This was something that was never covered in the briefing that Manx had given him. "Two hundred," he lied. The figure was somewhere in the middle of the range he'd heard from the other creatures of the night wandering around.

"So cheap for one so beautiful," the man teased, pushing Aya into the car's back seat and joining him, sliding up close on the leather seats.

Aya glanced up at the Akurei, giving him his best smoldering look while running a hand up and down the man's chest. "You can't charge much when you don't have a pimp."

"Really?" Akurei signaled the driver to take off before reaching into a compartment. "Well, how much will this get me?" He dangled a diamond bracelet in front of Aya, it's many gems sparkling like ice. Aya gasped slightly. The thing had to be worth at least two grand, let alone two hundred. It would pay for his sister's hospital bill for a full year... Without thinking, Aya through himself at Akurei, kissing him hungrily and spreading his legs to straddle the man's lap.

Laughing, Akurei, surrendered the bracelet, which easily slipped around Aya's wrist. Aya took turns kissing the man's ear and admiring the diamonds, making sure that they were still there, secure on his arm, which Akurei took as a matter of course. Apparently he was used to poor street urchins being taken in by his wealth. At least, Aya reasoned, said urchins weren't on the receiving end of the man's other sick pleasure of cutting up people into tiny little bits and making them pieces of modern art on the streets.

The ride to Akurei's apartment was quite stressful for Aya. It involved slapping the man's hands away from his butt more times than he could count. Akurei was damned persistent and for awhile Aya thought he meant to slip of the tight leather pants and do him right here in the car. Fortunately for Aya, Akurei waited on that until he had wrestled the redhead into his apartment and onto the bed. He never even noticed when Aya removed the silver chain from around his slender waist, wrapping it around the target's neck. It took a full five minutes for Akurei to die, but he did it quietly. With his throat crushed, he couldn't utter a word let alone a scream. Aya coldly regarded Akurei's dead body and walked out the door, down to where he knew Yohji and Ken were already waiting. He quickly pocketed the bracelet lest his teammates see it. They, with their moral codes would insist that he leave it there, but then they weren't near as practical with money as he was.

His redheaded lover was back. They were standing on a country hill-top the tall grass soaking their feet and the silver moon high overhead. Each dream, Yohji could see a little bit more of the seductive stranger in his dreams. It wasn't until this particular one that he had determined that his lover was male. That had been a shock. Yohji had never expected himself to be dreaming of a man, especially when he was so focused on women in his waking hours.

His lover threw back his head, eartails flying in an arch to rest against his shoulders, and ran a hand down his unmistakably flat chest, daring lower and lower... Yohji quickly wet his lips and pulled his gaze up to meet the amethyst eyes. Aya's eyes.

Oh God, Yohji thought. Aya is not going to like this. As if that thought had shattered the magic, the dream ended.

The ride home was quite uneventful. Yohji and Ken were being unusually quiet and Aya wasn't one given to idle chitchat in the first place. Yohji felt the silence keenly and began to drum his fingers on the wheel before a glare from Aya stopped him. Deducing that there wasn't going to be any discussion about the mission or even how it went, Yohji flipped on the radio and let it fill in the empty silence.

When Yohji finally parked the car, Ken bounded out and ran on up to his room. He was still pumped from the mission but he knew that he was about to crash and would rather be in the vicinity of a bed when he did. Aya calmly slid out of the back seat and followed Ken upstairs to his own room. Yohji, a night creature and one used to staying up until the wee hours of the morning had nothing better to do than to follow Aya. Besides, he found that he was quite interested in the way Aya's backside moved in those pants... Yohji slapped himself upside the head. What was he thinking? This was Aya for crying out loud! He shouldn't be thinking such things about a fellow teammate. The fact that said teammate was male added just a little bit more to the taboo of it all. No matter his protests, however, Yohji found himself tailing Aya right up to the point where Aya slammed the door in his face.

Unable to make his feet move from the spot, Yohji opted to lean against the wall. He started a little when the door suddenly opened and a very startled Aya almost ran him over. Yohji grinned. He knew what the redhead's problem was as he'd found himself in similar predicaments all the time. "Need some help?"

Aya didn't say yes, didn't even nod, he simply turned around, head held high, and let Yohji attended to the various buckles, snaps, and zippers. For Yohji's part, he was completely chaste. Well almost. The tempting pale skin had been too much to resist as it was slowly revealed. When Aya's shoulders slipped free of the constricting leather, he gave them an instinctive caress. Aya's startled jump, though, caused Yohji to feel guilty for taking advantage of the redhead and he stopped immediately.

The minute the worst of the buckles were undone, Yohji found himself pushed out the door, Aya holding some of the leather clothes in front of him like a shield. As Yohji watched the door slam in his face once again, he knew it wasn't his imagination--Aya was blushing. It wasn't a little embarrassed tinge, but a full-fledged, naughty thought flush. With this small comfort buffering him, Yohji retired to his own bed where his redheaded lover--Aya--visited him to play all night.