13-Jul-2000
Response to Joyce K. Wakabayashi's Challenge
Fingers met, desperate, searching for precious contact. He felt the younger man groan into his mouth, eyes fluttering shut, eyelashes brushing against his cheeks like the wings of a butterfly. Long limbs tangled beneath them, and eventually locked, giving out to the dirty mattress below.
There wasn't much time...
But then there was never enough time. And their fingers still searched, brushing over seamless clothing to undo buttons, caress pants off slender hips, kiss away white starched collars to give to long, pale flesh. He paused and admired his lover, flesh glistening wet with sweat and moonlight.
As if discomfited by the silence, the dark-haired man looked up at him, eyes questioning. "Love you," he breathed softly, words tracing soft whispery paths down his back. The older man shivered, feeling as if someone had just walked over his grave.
Older, but wiser with scars to prove it. He smiled, but said nothing. He never did; it was better to say nothing at all than to lie. He knew that even if he could not be truthful with his lover, his pretty politician with his generous eyes and cool smile, he could not bear to deceive him.
He said nothing, but his mouth descended for another kiss, silencing the man writhing beneath him, moving languidly against the heavy cotton sheets, silencing himself.
Their union was brief, but blissful. For a moment, they could forget the Colonies, forget the missions. There was only...
...mouths....
...hands...
...fingers. And goodbye.
His beeper went off. A mission.
As the message blipped across the screen, neon light bright in the darkness, his eyes widened.
Goodbye indeed.
He trailed his target quietly, keeping his footsteps quick and sure, yet soundless. An assassin had to be sleek and shadowy, living in the quiet corners and the deserted rooftops. An assassin had to be cold, calculating, and utterly precise.
Yet, following this man, down the block and to a small ramen stall, standing outside the blank plexiglass, one hand pressed to the plastic, he was anything but. His thoughts were scattered rice to the wind; he could not find his focus.
He watched as his lover twirled long strands of pasta around his fork, eyes never leaving the ground, as if afraid of discovery. Outside, the assassin snorted. What would the media say if a powerful politician was discovered eating ramen with the common folk? Heavens!
Yet he was mesmerized by the simple actions. Twirl, twirl, lift, eat. The fork disappeared into his mouth, guarded by cherry red lips and a small mole just to the left of his nose. It reemerged sans ramen.
Growling, he let his arm brush against his pistol, hidden in the folds of his coat. The metal was there, cold, hard, waiting to be used to end an innocent man's life.
His lover's life. Yet when their relationship had begun, they had both agreed that work and their torrid love affair were separate, distinct and untouching. It was the only way to stay sane; to have a little box labeled 'love' and a little box labeled 'duty'.
Yet it seemed the contents of both boxes had been dumped onto the floor and unceremoniously mixed with a wooden spoon. He could not tell where his mission began and where those *fingers* began. They all melded together in a stream of bright-hot consciousness that was slowly invading his mind.
He stood there for an hour, watching him eat. A flood of panic rose through him as his target rose from his seat and pulled on his jacket. Darting behind a phone booth, he watched from behind the metal framed box as the target walked down the street, head bowed as if a great weight were pressing on his neck.
A large cheer went up in the streets as he passed through the crowd. He was to make a speech tonight. A speech of peace and of peacemaking. A speech that conveyed all the hopes and dreams of one man trying to carefully guide the universe away from war. A speech that laid bare his soul to the blood-thirsty populace seeking a scapegoat to blame their misfortunes on.
He began to speak.
The assassin began to listen. Shimmying up a telephone pole and jumping onto the low roof of a random apartment building, he slowly crept forward for a closer look. His lover was truly powerful; he radiated presence, even standing in the dirty streets of a ghetto preaching to common rabble. His eyes shone brightly in the hazy gray fog that was beginning to settle over the Colony.
There was a pause in his flow of words, and he heard a slight murmur in the crowd. Peering down below, he saw *him*.
His almond shaped eyes narrowed to a sliver as he recognized the man hiding among the sheep, teeth bared wolfishly in a grin or in a warning growl. He saluted him, a small smile playing at his lips, and disappeared into the crowd. Not simply moving out of his view, but literally melting away, into the shadows, as only the best assassins could.
The signal. He knew that if he delayed any longer, he himself would soon be dead. The man he worked for tolerated his relationship with the would-be-savior of the Colonies...barely. But he also knew that his boss would never understand it if he failed this mission. Emotion is weakness, he'd said. But if that was so, then he would never have felt all those things, never laid beneath the sun's warm hand, never let another's touch affect him so.
"...peace can only be afforded to those who..." He was gesturing towards someone in the crowd; with a startled rush of pride, he realized that most of the audience, though not all, were nodding their heads, agreeing with this upstart's ideas.
Closing his eyes, he kissed the very tips of his fingers, willing the wind to carry it to his lover.
Odin Lowe pulled out his pistol, aiming the crosshairs at Heero Yuy, and squeezed the trigger.
End
Bianca
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