Word Count: 50,035

Warnings: Angst. Lemon, blood-play, character death, suicide, vampirism, gore, other. Gratuitous use of real historical figures.

Pairing: 1x2x1

Notes: AU, first person, deliberately shifts tenses. Duo POV, insert with Heero POV. This is set in a parallel time-line, using the detail that Heero was 15 in 1995 (when GW came out) this means he was born in 1980. This means I've worked him out so he's the same age as me approx (he'd be 25 this year) so you can work out all the details of his life, but he's 18 or 19 when he meets Duo.

The echo of your words hangs heavy in the small bathroom. The tiles are stained with the traces of steam, of warmth, of light. There is a crust of scum from the soap on the dish. The fixtures are white with scale. I trace the outline of what you said, cursed with an eternal moment as I watch the full moon from the bath in which I lie.

It will be dawn soon and the window that now so effortlessly shows the moon will show the rising sun and this all will be in vain. It will be over, lost to the stains and the scum and the scale. Without you there is no reason for me to be, without you there are only the stains and the scum and the scale.

This ending is ignominious.

It is strangely fitting.

Your skin is golden and tactile in the lamplight. I can't help but touch it, feeling the brush of the hairs of your arm bristle against my fingertips, the way your eyes lazily rise from the page you are reading, the warm smile before your eyes fall back to the words.

The cushions of the chair hold your heat as I run my hand over the nap of the woven fabric, feeling its slight coarseness against the pads of my fingertips. It is rough compared to your skin, it lacks the heat, the slight dampness because the night is warm; and your indulgent smile.

The chair is a rich dark green, the colour of a wine bottle. You are wearing a pale blue shirt that brings out the colour of your skin and the detail of the mole on your forearm. Your book is a paperback well beloved and dog-eared. More than anything I want to snatch it away from you, to throw the book across the room, and be the focus of your rapt attention.

I listen to the steady rhythm of your breath, the soft intake and exhalation as it stirs and coils against your lip, I can see the tip of your pink tongue as it peeks between pale thin lips in concentration, the furrow of the skin between the dark hair of your eyebrows as the author takes you to where I cannot follow. Your blue eyes skim and flicker as they read the words I cannot fathom. Sometimes, unaware of yourself, you mouth back the words you have read, tasting them, your pink tongue curling around them with the curiosity of a new lover, or an army invading a country it had never even heard the name of. The look on your face is that of Alexander first casting eyes on the subcontinent of India, a mixture of curiosity, wonderment and disgust. You know that I'm staring at you, taking in the details of the pores of your skin, the follicles that might become a beard if you give it a chance, the lines of your jaw, the curve of your lips, the shadows under your eyes. I read you as intently as you read the book in your hands.

You exhale deliberately to let me know your displeasure, a sound that is not quite a snort as you fold your long legs up underneath you. I can see the expressive striations of blue and violet and gold that surround the event horizon that is your pupil, the flush of dark hair at the open collar of your shirt, the silver chain against your dark skin, your Adam's apple which bobs when you are excited and feels sensationally meaty against my teeth, the pulse of your throat. The way your chest rises and falls with your lungs in a beauty that you are never aware of.

I can't help but smile at your displeasure, the slow tug of the side of my mouth until I give in and smile; my lips remain closed, though. It is my concession to those times when you stare at me, drinking me in as intently as I watch you.

You smile in response, your lips tugging open slightly to show a warmth inside and you lay down the book but say nothing. There is no anger in your features, no disgust, only love and fondness.

I cannot accept it.

The sprawl of the city outside our window is a blanket of fireflies, or a constellation of stars laid heavily against the hills.

I never hate myself more than when you smile at me, so open, so loving, so free. I hide so much of myself from you and you offer me everything, every hooded emotion, every breath that passes your lips.

I don't lie, but I don't need to create falsehoods when I lie to you.

The city is sprawled awkwardly like a fat man squatting around us. The lights are a fragmentary beauty, they show other warmths, other lives. In other rooms other lamps reveal similar scenes, of other lovers watching each other surreptitiously or as openly as I did. I can't help that I watch you so intently. You fascinate me, you draw my eyes almost against my will.

The imprint of your head on the pillow is a warmth I know in the hollow of my armpit. "What are you thinking?" you ask me, your voice a rumble amidst the buzz of electric lights, amidst the silence of the night, and the sparkle of other lights -- other rooms and other lives. Hundreds of thousands of people live in this city, but sometimes I believe, with the arrogance of humanity, that it is just you and me. Sometimes, with all my arrogance, I wish it was. Then I am disappointed again because that can never be. There will always be other people between us.

"How tired you look," I answer calmly, surprised at the words that escape me, "how fascinated by a Russian trollop you can be, how the words of a man long dead hold your interest."

"Men die," you tell me with a slight smile on your lips, "words don't." You look away, your eyes looking to the floor, "Anna Karenina is immortal, despite her suicide."

I decide to indulge you in this; the distant look of longing for a world that is not, nor never can be, your own. You crave a world of adventure, a world of danger, a world I try so hard to keep you safe from. When did the hunter, I wonder, become a pampered pet that strains at the cages that keep it safe? Soon you will shirk this cage I have made you, soon you will cast aside the wings that keep you safe. With the arrogance of mortality, I know this, I have always known this, but yet, selfishly I cling to this moment, pray for one more minute, one more hour, one more day, before you walk away. So I watch you closely, I learn and relearn every detail of you, every facet, I hoard your image over and over again, waiting against hope for you to leave me.

You will.

Your kind always do.

I understand the dark. I know it and it knows me. The dark does not change. It is immutable. Like I thought that I was. I know darkness. I understand darkness. But I know that the dark changes me. I need the dark, but it doesn't need me. The dark simply is; it is I that change. The night is a sea I swim in whether I want to or not. More often than not, now, I do not see the wonders of my underwater world and simply wish to drown.

The college campus is dark and ominous at night. There are whispers amongst the heavy trees and drunken students lurch from lamp post to lamp post. The rural setting brings me comfort; I love the smell of the trees after the brief rain. I can hear the yowling of foxes and the laughter of drunkards. It smells clean and fresh, of fine and the sharp sting of a cigarette in the darkness.

People talk and laugh, the sober guiding the lost home to their dark tower blocks and loveless halls of residence. They go to sleep, to talk, to drink, and to fuck. Once it was churches I haunted, a shadow amongst the cold Latin chanting and the sweet smell of incense, then I moved from place to place, from college to college.

I like this place. I like the welcoming feel of it. The fact I can walk into any lecture and just listen and learn. I can't understand the words on the screen but I can follow what they tell me about books I'll never read, films I'll never watch, politics I'll never care about.

It has other advantages, I tell myself. It has you.

I caught sight of you sitting on the steps by the book shop. The college, unlike many of the others I have known, is perfectly self contained, everything you could need within easy walking distance. You were sitting there with friends, quiet amidst their chatter, picking away at the food in your hands with no real care what you ate. It was a mechanical process to you, something you did because your body needed to. You sat there as they smiled and laughed and gestured, and you listened, and you understood, but you, yourself, were silent.

You wore a light tee emblazoned with the legend "Welsh Rugby" and the flush on your throat told me that you were drunk in ways the stench of alcohol could never have. People smell of alcohol for so many reasons; there are only a few reasons that you flush. I learned that later. So stoic, so beautiful, with your wide sharp cheekbones and the dark lashes that frame your brilliant blue eyes. Your hair was a tussle of unruly dark strands swept back by an impatient hand, as if it needed to be cut, as if it had reached that length of in between where it is unmanageable. Not long enough to restrain and not short enough to just behave on its own.

Of course it is not nearly the length of mine. I watched as you felt the weight of my gaze upon you and, emboldened by alcohol, you smiled at me. I changed my mind about you then: I looked at the barely restrained violence of your thighs, the power in your shoulders, the black slashes of your eyelashes, and I decided in that minute that I wanted nothing more than to run my fingers over the ripples of your abdomen, to scrape my teeth over the curve of your hip. It made the decision easy. I didn't return your salute. I turned and walked away.

You were not for the likes of me.

It didn't stop me wanting you. I could have died for you, for the rustle of your hair against my breath and the short innocent smile that you offered me. I have seen many things, I have performed miracles, and I have stood at the crossroads at midnight to dance with the devil. Yet your smile both fascinated and horrified me. If you knew me, I wondered, if you knew what I was, would you still smile at me that way?

The campus, which once felt so small and intimate, was suddenly a self enclosed universe, with its own sun and its own moon. Everything changed, and you did it with a smile. The last person changed it with a kiss. I hungered for you, your imagined smell drove me half mad around corners when I thought I smelt it. My mouth watered at the mere thought of you. Yet I did not search you out; if I saw a similar mop of dark hair I turned and walked the other way. More than once I left because I thought that I had heard your voice. You drove me to distraction, and then you were unaware of my existence.

When I heard women talk I believed they talked of you. I would feel the coarseness of your hair between my fingers, the taste of coffee in your saliva, the heat of your breath on my face. The very thought of you made me hard and hungry. When I fed that hunger I wanted to feed from you. When I slept I dreamt of you.

You drove me insane, you fascinated me, and I didn't even know your name.

I should have left the campus. I should have relocated. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat, but nor could I leave you behind.

Nevermore is a joke that has certainly gotten old over the years. It has been a hotel, a club, a restaurant, and an opium den. It has moved many times through many cities, but it has never changed hands or name. Officially it is my home. It is a dark space of black lights and matte steel, of heavy thudding bass lines and pressed bodies. There are booths and heavy dark wood stools. There are lights behind the bar; they illuminate the liquor and the glasses. Lit from behind the grenadine looks like blood. The bartenders come and go, but Dorothy always remains.

She looks luscious in black velvet; a sweetheart neck reveals an expansive décolletage. Most men see Dorothy and see her blonde hair and her heaving bosom. They see what she wants them to see. She is everything to me: my mother; my sister; my lover; my friend; my enemy; my absolution and my damnation. What I am Dorothy made me. The years give us a strange closeness. Even my name is a variant of hers. She is wise and terrible and beautiful. She fascinates and terrifies me in equal measure.

I love her as much as I hate her.

Time and again, however, I am drawn to her.

There are no mirrors in Nevermore. It is something that everyone notices eventually.

She has threaded a black ribbon through her hair. It is a darker blonde than most favour and her skin has paled to the colour of cream; her eyes are a murderous aquamarine. Her lips still press together and purse without her realising. It is a sign of her amusement. People underestimate Dorothy because she is beautiful, but she is as dangerous as she is lovely. She sways to the drumbeat, as sinuous as a snake, and as deadly as a viper. Her heels are tied up her calves with the same ribbons she has in her hair and around her forearms. A diamond the size of my thumbnail hangs from each ear. When she sees me she smiles, her perfect reptile smile.

We are drawn to each other, Dorothy and I.

She crosses the floor through the dancing throng as if they were a figment of her imagination. She calls me by a name I gave up, a name that ties me to her, though years have passed since I have seen her last. She pours us drinks from a bottle behind the bar; she holds it out for me. The glass is warm in my hand. Dorothy is the perfect hostess as she leads us to her office. The outer wall is black glass, deliberately scratched matte. It means she can see out but there is no reflection and they cannot see in.

She has decorated her office to look like the inside of a Chinese brothel. There are screens all over, some lacquered with phoenixes and dragons, some with elaborate fretwork. Chinese robes hang from the walls. She burns incense to cover up the underlying smell. It is very different from what I expected. The last time I was in here it was a Parisian salon. The portrait, however, of the three of us, remains pride of place over her desk, protected and priceless. It was out of place in the Parisian salon, it is out of place in the Chinese brothel.

She peels off the dress, pulling a robe about her shoulders; the ribbons, heels and diamonds she leaves, though. There was a time that she only wore her diamonds, but she has mostly grown out of it. If she was hunting then she might have done that. Nevertheless she crosses her legs with a passive slowness, a beautiful gesture designed to drive men wild.

It is what we do, Dorothy and I, get underestimated and drive men wild. We take what we want regardless of the cost. It's what we were trained for.

She asks me why I have come to her.

I tell her that I simply did not want to be alone. She offers me her reptile smile. She calls me her srdechni and I stay with her, not because I have no other place to go, but because I don't want to be alone. I want to drink in the familiar smell of her, incense and the lemony herby perfume she has worn for years. I want to lie with my head in the curve of her neck and her legs entwined with mine and the way her fingers twine though my braid.

She has only done this once to me: she appeared at my door, her hood up and her eyeliner smudged. We turn to each other in the dark times. Yet I turn to her far more often than she to me. Only once did we ever turn to him.

We are a fraction of what once there was, all that remains, a happily shattered family, drawn again and again by mutual loneliness. I suppose the technical word for what we are is a kiss but you will never hear us call ourselves that. We are a family, Dorothy, Treize and I -- a strange family, driven apart as often as we are together, but a family nonetheless.

Dorothy asks no questions, she knows instinctively that I won't answer them. I never have but she has never asked. Dorothy and I are the same, embittered and beautiful.

I sleep that night in her silk draped bed, clinging to her as if she answers all the problems I might ever run across. I lie there for hours, just breathing in the familiar smell of her, lemons, verbena, russet roses, incense and underneath it, the smell of something else: the smell of her.

Sometimes I wish I was more like you, comfortable in myself: I laugh, I joke, I watch you with barely restrained patience but it is a mask I wear, for you, for my friends, never for my family. You ask me to introduce you to my family, such as they are. The concept of you meeting Dorothy gives me chills and cold sweats. Not because I am afraid that she won't like you, because she will, but because of what will come later: she'll sit on your small couch when you leave the room, she will light a cigarette that she uses to mask the smell of her breath and then she'll ask me why I always do this to myself. Why I still harbour pretensions for your kind "he's a catch, Duo, if you were like him, but you're not, we're not."

She will pull her hair back behind her ear, her face illuminated by the slow pulls on her cigarette. She will tell me to get out before I get hurt again. In her callous way she means me no harm, she wants what is best for me, but she'll do it in the cruellest way. She'll remind me of what I am, of what you are, of how different we are by our intrinsic natures. She'll tell me to take what I want from you, and nothing more. To walk away while I still can.

I have lost before; I am weak despite the jokes and the obvious physical strength. You are beautiful, vibrant and vital. You fascinate and entrance me, but my imaginary Dorothy is right, you'll be the death of me.

Yet still I am afraid to do what I should and walk away from you.

You will kill me, and I will do my best to help you.

Dark thoughts entrance and paralyse me. I am old, given to deep depressions and inane rages. I lie in this bath with no future and too much past. I am old, and you are what Treize calls a mayfly. You wake, live for a single day and then die. He asked me once, when we were deep in our cups, how you could bear to go on with such short lives, knowing that no sooner had you started something than you died.

I asked how we could bear to go on when we didn't.

Death makes life valuable, Treize told me that. Our lives are long and tedious, and totally without worth. In all my years I have done nothing, I have written no books, I have composed no symphonies, built no monuments. My legacy, such as it is, I leave with Treize and Dorothy. I stand to the front and left of Dorothy's portrait, and as a statue among many such in Treize's pleasure garden. That is how our kind remembers: with the money that we have no lack of, we commission our likenesses for those we leave behind.

I have asked Treize to prepare something for you.

The miniature I have of the three of us may be priceless -- it should be in a museum -- but I would give you something just for you, not my family memento of me and my family whom you will never meet. Nicholas, the artist, asked if all such monsters were as beautiful or as heartless as we.

Treize laughed and laughed. "But, Nicky," he had said in his perfect way, "we're not heartless at all, that‘s the rub."

It's the great irony of us, that we are not heartless.

Loving you is proof enough of that.

It is not you I am angry at, nor is it Dorothy who made me what I am, or Treize who taught me to exploit it. Not you who loved me, Dorothy who treasured me or Treize who chose me.

I curse the heart that the years didn't kill in me, the heart that cannot help but, by its very nature, betray me.

This night is longer than I wish it to be -- why is it my time vanishes with you, but lingers without you?

You ask me about myself, sitting on the bench at night, your ankles crossed out in front of you, stretched out in a lush line. You are wearing cheap white trainers, and your jeans have seen better days. Your hair is windswept in the cool October wind. The promenade you have chosen for us to meet is lit by a string of lights and a passing boat blares its horn at the city. "It looks like a giant floating birthday cake," I mutter under my breath at the sight of it.

You fix me in place with those impossible blue eyes, eyes the exact colour of the waters of Biscay after a storm, eyes in which I could all too easily drown. "Tell me about yourself," you say. It is a command, your voice a deep rumble in your chest. "You are a mystery to me," you say, "and I don't like mysteries."

"You like me," I answer tartly.

Your smile is predatory and wicked. "I'd like you even more if I knew more of you than your name."

For an instant I consider telling you everything: of telling you about what I remember of the passage of years; of what happened all those years ago in the Russian court where I gave up my name; in England where Dorothy, Treize and I were a scandal about town; in the small church in Ireland were I lost my faith; about Hilde who I thought I loved until I met you. I remember the aftermath of what happened the last time I spilled my terrible secret, of the bloodshed and the heartbreak that inevitably follows such a declaration.

I just smile at you and begin to tell you a story that is at once completely true and the biggest lie I have ever told.

I'm from America, I say -- having spent the last century there it is true enough -- I have a brother and a sister, I say, we are a family of sorts. My sister owns a club in London and my brother lives in Moscow where he works for the government. I'm the baby, I tell you, just drifting till I find my niche.

You ask about my name, unusual as it is. In this I can tell the truth.

I say how when I was very young that Dorothy and I were inseparable and that our brother started to call me "Dorothy Duo", as we were living in Italy at the time; eventually it just got shortened to Duo which I liked better than my given name anyway.

Your smile intrigues me. "There you go, Duo," you say. "You told me two things about yourself even if you didn't mean to. You told me your sister is called Dorothy and that you lived in Italy." Your smile is vulpine now, but is mischievous rather than dangerous. "It's not so hard," you continue, "to tell me everything. Tell me about your parents," you say.

Again I tell you the truth. "They died a long time ago -" my voice is blunt, "-- I don't remember them.

You apologise with your hands on my face, they are chilled, and your lips are like slices of fresh peach. Yet your kiss is warm and I can taste salt in your saliva and garlic on your breath, a faint half remembered tang. I lose myself in the feel of the soft short hairs on the back of your neck, the heat of your lips and the erratic beat of your heart, glad of the awkward silence to deflect the questions that I can't answer.

A passing elderly couple comments sweetly on young love, fooled by my slight frame and long hair into believing me a girl. I take the word and roll it on my tongue against yours, into your mouth, your fingertips and your breath. I mingle the taste of it against the taste of you and find it pleasing. Yes, I think to myself, as I press myself tighter against you on a bench at the bay, under the lights and the chill October sky, the word is love.

I spoke to Dorothy yesterday, we lamented that out kind can only use the most basic aspects of the high tech cells that Treize insists we carry. We met for coffee in an overpriced bar that she insists on still calling a salon. What is the point, she asked me, of giving us camera phones that can't record our images; that can't relay our voices. We could manage, she told me with a laugh, and with one of those old cells that we used to laugh at because all we do is text.

When you asked me for my number I almost went cold stammering out that I'd be more than happy to text but I really wasn't good on the phone. You just laughed and said, "Who is, these days?"

It wasn't the reason Dorothy and I met, it was just a topic of conversation.

Although the date seems insignificant to your calendar our kind is never alone for it. I suppose even Treize found his comfort among the gathering of the Old Ones. Dorothy and I met for coffee and shared a banal conversation that never touched on what really bothered us, and held hands on the table.

Part of me wondered what would happen if your mortal curiosity had led you to follow me, but I quashed it down: I had told you the truth, that I was going into the city to meet my sister.

Dorothy and I might be as different as chalk and cheese but she is my sister and under the waves of guilt that I felt for surviving when so many of us fell, for the mourning for the brothers and sisters that I lost in the Day of Fire I came to treasure her. I always loved her, even when I despised her. I imagined how it would look, meeting a beautiful woman and holding hands. I braced myself to tell you.

You trusted me however and did not follow.

So Dorothy and I sat in an Italian coffee shop talking in medieval Italian and recounting the simple banalities of our lives. We did not shares the amusing stories of what had happened since we last spoke, or even the fond ones. We talked of television programs, and people on the tube.

The Day of Fire is the closest thing our kind has to a ritual, and that is all. We met to share an ageless grief and talk of nothing, pretending for one night, to be mortal.

We are entertaining some of your college buddies, who, despite the years of our affair, still do not know how to take me. Matthew maintains, in his boorish "rugger" way, that I am just your wealthy friend. Relena, who recognises me as a rival, is too busy with her legal practise to make more than a passing bid for your affections. She reminds me of someone I used to know. Simon you describe as happily married; his wife is a limpet of a person with dead eyes. Sylvia shines in the way that only women who know their own worth do, and Wufei baffles me. The two of you are so different that it amazes me that you are friends at all. He calls you Yuy and me Maxwell, expecting in return to be called Chang, and takes deep breaths at Matthew's cheap homophobic jokes.

I beg off the food explaining that as the chef that I ate more than my fill sampling each dish, but drink heavily of the wine. I am like a shuttlecock this evening, tossed between the inane and ancient jibes of the homophobic Matthew, who everyone else ignores though Sylvia suggests is over-compensating, and Relena's drunken passes at you.

The longer the night goes on the drunker and angrier I get. You told me to invite Dorothy and Treize, and I amuse myself by imagining them here, Dorothy picking at the chicken whilst baiting Simon and his lacklustre wife to amuse herself as Treize holds court at the other end of the table with a few perfectly placed barbs. If that did not work then Dorothy would say, "What is the point, Srdechni, of inviting us to feed and then serving chicken. I understand that this one amuses you, but the rest are free." Then we would feast as we once did, before the Day of Fire, we would feed over many nights, we would bewitch them with promises and pleasures they could never otherwise know and we would glut our fill.

The more wine I drink the more it appeals to me to just reach across the table and rip Matthew's head from his shoulders whilst Relena screams and screams. Simon's bland wife would faint and Simon would vomit, Wufei and Sylvia would ask simply why I didn't do that sooner.

Your reaction I do not ponder at all.

"What's your opinion, Duo?" you ask snapping me out of my fantasy of violence. "About the chateaux in France, do you think that they're haunted?"

I belatedly recall that Relena had been talking about the jite in which she had holidayed and the strange noises she had heard. The villagers had told her that the old house was haunted. It sounded to me more like they were laughing at her expense when the house had mice.

I empty my cup before I answer.

"My older brother," I say, "works in government and he told me a story about a certain chateau in the Ardennes region of France that he had had off an old Russian soldier, who had heard it off a French resistance officer that swore it was true.

"This Chateau was notorious in the area as being the home of an ancient demon that called itself "Gebieter", and once a year it would descend into the village and feast on the youth of maidens, and the village and Gebieter profited from the arrangement."

Relena and the banal wife are listening with bated breath, the rest with amusement, Matthew with barely concealed disdain. "Over the centuries Gebieter got older and changed the terms of his agreement. He asked only that his chateau be maintained and for a single night a willing youth be sent to him. The next morning the youth would return, apparently unharmed, and the blessing of Gebieter made the town prosperous and its people healthy."

I fill my cup and empty it before continuing. "By the Second World War even the villagers didn't really believe in the legends of Gebieter but nonetheless they kept the agreement because they saw no harm in it."

Wufei's expression suggests to me that he has heard this story before.

"When the Nazis invaded the area they heard the legends of the demon and decided to use it to their advantage. They seized the chateau to use as a communications base and from Paris they hired an actor to pretend to be the demon.

"To further the ruse they took young girls from the village and slit their throats before exsanguinating them." I drink more of the rather fine wine, emboldened by it. "Communications from the chateau stopped suddenly one night. The actor was dragged into the village by a mob, where they put a stake through his heart and chopped off his head. They cut off his arms and his legs and burned them, burying the ashes separately. His skull and his heart were sent to the Vatican, as was common for demon kills, and his torso hung for the birds to peck at."

I look at the horrified faces around the table. "They never found the soldiers, so yes, Relena, I suppose it's possible that your jite was haunted."

Wufei looks at me for a moment before he bursts out laughing. Following his lead Matthew guffaws, "You really had us going there, Duo, great story."

I return to the solace of my wine cup. The story is entirely true. I heard it first from Treize and then from Gebieter himself, who complained that he never did like the taste of Germans, that they were too bland for his palette, but for them he had made an exception. He also told the villagers how to kill the actor so no one else would get the bright idea of impersonating him.

Of all the old ones I have met, and to many I am still only a youngling, Gebieter scares me most.

Across the table you look at me strangely, as if wondering either why I know such a tale or why I would tell it.

I turn away from your eyes and back to the cup of wine, as if daring you to say "you've had enough" or to tell Relena finally that you're not interested, or to tell Matthew that I am your lover, that you enjoy having sex with me, that you like giving head, that you enjoy rimming and that he should either accept that or get his repressed arse back to whichever part of Wales he comes from.

You never will, not because I embarrass you, but because it would be déclassé.

I know you love me; I know Matthew's opinion doesn't matter to me; I know you won't leave me for Relena, but knowing and accepting are two different things.

We argue that night, not for the first time. I seriously doubt that it will be the last. "You never tell me anything about yourself," you shout, your face red and your veins throbbing. The bed we stand either side of is like a mountain between us. "You never stay the whole night. You won't move in with me and we've been together two years. I know nothing more of you than I did when we first met."

I am drunk and it makes my tongue slack. "If you knew anything of me then you would not wonder why I won't stay, why I won't move in with you." My fists are balled at my sides and my eyes stare at the chequered pattern of the bedspread. Do you know how much I hate arguing with you? "It's not like you make an effort to tell anyone that we're lovers."

"You won't introduce me to your sister," you counter, "I have to hear from Wufei that she only lives a stone's throw away. Aren't you worried that she'll disapprove of me?"

"Dorothy would chew you up and spit you out," I yell, "and Treize would take you from me to remind me that no one will ever love me like he does." It is the absolute truth and it horrifies you. "I don't want to share you. I can't stay the night." It is time for a little truth. "I'm UVA intolerant." It is a legitimate medical condition that we have long since exploited for our own purposes. How we laughed when we first heard of it. "Your curtains aren't thick enough, I would blister and burn."

Your mouth makes a wordless oh of realisation, your anger fading like mist. "Why didn't you tell me?" You circle the bed in a few confident steps and put your arms around me, laying your head on my shoulder.

"What?" I ask, still drunk, still angry, but with my own inadequacy now, "That I'm a freak?"

"No," you say, "that such a simple change to my curtains would mean that you would stay." You look up at me, and I see the striations of your eyes, blue and violet and gold. "And I thought you were just a night owl." Your fingers creep up to the back of my neck and pull my head down so it's almost level with yours though we stand of a height. "You don't have to keep secrets from me, Duo," you say, "I love you, I'll understand." And at that my heart shatters into a million pieces because there are so many things I can't tell you.

Prolonged exposure to direct sunlight does not kill us -- we are notoriously hard to kill, after all -- but it does hurt us. The pain is elegant, though, and cleansing; it burns away the impurities and reminds us of what is important.

Most of what you know about us is untrue.

The only truths among the lies are this: we are long lived and immune to disease; and we must feed, though not to the extent that you expect. We take a pint, or thereabouts, and then we are glutted, much as if you had managed a pint of milk in one sitting.

We can eat, we can drink, and we can love and therein lies the tragedy. We are all too human to survive such long lives. It is easier, I think, to face mortality when it brings such rewards and so little loss.

You hold me firm in the perfectly strong circle of your arms, pressing me against the strength of your pectoral and abdominal muscles. I feel your hips against mine. This is the closest I can get to Heaven. I pull away, almost against my own will. "Not here," I say, "I can't stay the night here, but you can stay the night with me."

I like the smile that lazily and sexily sprawls across your face, the way your fingers twine through mine. You rub your hips against mine in a manner that you're never really aware of, a way that drives me mad with want. "Just tell me it's not far," you whisper in my ear, "I really want to fuck you." The obscenity is punctuated with a hot wet lick that makes me groan.

"It's not far at all," I tell you, "thank god."

"Or we can fuck here, and then go," you suggest, "You look so very fucking sexy when you scare the shit out of Matthew." You only cuss when we're like this, face to face, chest to chest, and cock to cock. You have slipped your thigh between mine to rub it against my erection. It's all I can do to stand. "Chang told him that your brother was Russian Mafia and that's why you were only seen at night, and that if he continued to continued to annoy you, that you would just kill him outright." You laugh, scraping your teeth over my throat, over my jugular. Your laughter is a hot wet exhalation on my skin. More than anything I want to tumble you into the bed and spread myself open to your hands and mouth and cock.

No, I pull away with the very last of my reserve, that last iota that is not driven mad by wanting you. "Not here," I stammer, "I can't stay here, I really want to, but not here, I want you to fuck me in my own bed, to wake up tomorrow afternoon with you. Or we can fuck here and now and I'll leave again."

Your kiss lingers as you suck my lip into your mouth. "Just let me get my coat."

My apartment is just a short taxi ride away. At this time of night I tend to get the same driver, an old Irish woman who wears a wool hat regardless of the weather, and chatters on about nothing. She opens the door for you. "Hello, Mr Maxwell, is this your young man? Why he's as handsome as you said. I don't think Mr Maxwell told you about old Nan, did he, probably a hundred better things to talk about with a man as handsome as you." She sits down and starts to drive -- she knows the way, I don't have to tell her. "Why if I was only forty years younger, Mr Maxwell, I'd have to aim my cap at him." I laugh, I only use this taxi firm and I know Nan well. She's a harmless old woman and her chatter is calming. "Now, I wonder what you said, Mr Maxwell, that he finally decided to go uptown to see that fancy flat of yours."

"I asked him, Nan," I tell her, "he's never been invited."

"I bet he hasn't seen that pretty as a picture sister of yours," she continues, "she was in my cab the other day, dispatch said she asked for me, special like. Not given to talking like you are, Mr Maxwell, but she said that you told her about old Nan, who took you home every night. I asked her if she was married and she said she wasn't, she didn't strike me as the sort to be a good wife, mind you, but she didn't like me calling her Miss Maxwell."

"It's not her name," I tell Nan to Heero's horror: he thinks I would never tell him this, but these details he has never asked me and I wouldn't think to volunteer. "It's Catalonia," I tell her. "She was married, but he left her."

"What kind of man would leave a woman as pretty as that, and she moves like a Lady, why her house is even nicer than yours, Mr Maxwell, but I suspect that you know all about this, Mr… She leaves it open for you to answer.

"Yuy," you tell her.

"That's an unusual name, where's it from?" And as simple as that the topic is changed as if we never mentioned Dorothy at all.

You pause for a moment as I open the door. I am expecting an explosion, some hint of displeasure about what Nan has, through solid months of extrapolation, managed to wheedle out of me. Instead you look around amazed as the simple, yet understated, luxury that Treize and Dorothy arranged for me. Every year or so I will be invited to Nevermore or Koblensk and my flat will be redecorated, with or without my consent. This year the theme is suede. There are heavy suede curtains over all the windows and doors, and velvet curtains on the bed. It is an odd mix of old Europe and New York. I don't really care for it.

"Welcome to Chez Maxwell," I say with a smile, hoping that it covers my nervousness. I'm not supposed to invite your kind here, it is one of the few rules that everyone else ignores and I have kept slavishly. I would be summoned back to Treize if he discovered it. "Would you like the grand tour?" I am almost shaking.

"No," you answer, "I knew that you were independently wealthy but…" [You] are gaping. I didn't expect that. "Now where is that bed of yours, you promised me that you would sleep with me and I fully intend to hold you to it." More than anything I want to kiss you; instead I just stand there and let you guide me to the bed.

Not that I suppose that it really matters but Dorothy's husband was called Alejandro and she honestly loved him. At the time someone made the tasteless joke that she loved him as much as she was capable of love, but that was unfair. She loved him utterly and completely, and I think she still does. She wears a locket with a miniature almost exactly like mine, and on the other side she still wears his picture.

It started like many a love affair. At the time Dorothy and I really were younglings, and Treize still travelled the world with us. At the time we were living in Granada under the shadow of the mighty Alhambra, which had recently been liberated from the Moors. The entire court of both Castile and Aragon were in residence as they planned what to do with Italy as France made moves towards Venice, unwilling to see Naples in Hapsburg hands.

She met him when she was working for the queen on Treize's insistence. I flitted about like a social butterfly. Alejandro was important enough that he travelled with the court, but not enough to have any sway. He was tall and golden, with really good skin and thick blue-black hair. He was unremarkably handsome except for a chipped front tooth that gave an ordinary face a rather appealing personality. He was never in a position to warrant Treize's curiosity but it was clear that he was smitten with Dorothy from the start.

He used to appear on the both of us from nooks and crannies about the palace to serenade her or to give her small gifts. It took many months for her even to stop to listen to him. He called her his golden angel and spent hours starting at her across the court, and everyone knew of his infatuation. In fact, the queen herself told Dorothy to whet her appetite on such a handsome man.

Treize did not care. He warned her, however, that she was not like him and that she must not, at any cost or for any reason, reveal her secret to him. In fact he said that it would stop the rooms if she was coerced to his desire, but he would not force her. We were his courtesans but never his whores.

She gave in to his desires and something changed in her: although her normal manner is one of amused disdain she was absorbed with him. For months her conversation was devoted utterly and totally to Alejandro. She spoke to the other members of our family and me, and then she beseeched Treize to let them marry.

He refused.

I was called into his presence with her and he explained in length why, because Treize could be manipulative but he was never cruel with us. He sat before us, very much a king before his vassals. When he spoke to us it was with his whole attention, something he still does for me and Dorothy that he never did for the others. When we had done well we were crowded unto his lap like beloved children, the youngest of his family by some margin, and wont to make mistakes.

He told Dorothy that she had to remember that Alejandro was not like us, that unlike us he would grow old and die, and that any love she had for him would be tempered by this fact. She would have to go into exile with him throughout his life, so she would be alone at the end, and inevitably she would lose him.

He actually sounded sorry to tell us that.

She asked if he could make Alejandro one of us.

I think that was the worst thing she could have asked him.

Treize turned his face away before he answered her. "It is a possibility," he said. "However, Dorothy, both you and Mishka-" he always called me Mishka and still does, "-were brought into our family as children. Dorothy, you were seven, Mishka you were only five. You had years to grow into the knowledge of what we were, accepting it with the innocence of children. Alejandro does not have that luxury. If you tell him then you will become bound by our laws: if he can keep the secret for a year and a day then we will bring him into the family and he will be one of us, forever. But bear this in mind, my little one, before you make your decision."

Dorothy wept for days on end, being asked to choose between the man she loved and her family.

Then she and Alejandro vanished. Treize like a doting parent took me into his bed because I had shared a bed with Dorothy. He comforted me when I cried but it wasn't the same.

Then on St Stephen's she came back without Alejandro. She came to me just before the dawn and that night begged Treize for forgiveness. He asked if it was done. She nodded.

They had run south to Seville where they had married in secret. On their wedding night Dorothy told him her secret, confident that he could keep it. He didn't believe her, she said, so she proved it.

He ran into the streets shouting demon and the church came to investigate. To get away she had to kill them all, even Alejandro. She was distraught -- to this day I don't think she really got over him. She still wears his miniature and on his birthday and St Stephen's she spends the night with Treize.

He forgave her utterly and totally and still treats us like his adored children. Even now, years later, he still pulls us unto his lap to lavish us with attention. When we are with him we sleep in his bed, secure in his scent of briar roses.

He forgave her. We all forgave her. But she never did forgive herself.

She never speaks of him, or the time that she spent alone with him, other than it ended in his death.

She never loved again, at least not with the same passion. After the Day of Fire, when it became necessary to choose a name, she picked Catalonia in what was obviously his memory. She still wears his wedding ring amongst all her other jewellery.

But if it changed her, I never saw it.

Your family you have not kept secret from me. I know about the accident that stole your parents from you and left its mark under your heart.

I have even met your uncle, whom you describe as a dusty old scholar. He shakes my hand nervously, as if he's worried how to take to his nephew's male lover. "So," he says, shifting his thick glasses so that they cover even more oh his bushy grey eyebrows. His grey hair is slicked back into a stubby ponytail. "Heero tells me a linguist," he says, "is that so?" From there we fall into a familiar conversation about medieval languages and the beauty lost by their modern counterparts.

You sit silent and watch me as I grow more and more animated, waving my hands as I enthuse about infinitives and the variants that Dante used, how we shouldn't use them as a model for Florentine linguistics. I smile at you warmly before I turn back to your uncle.

At the back of my head I make the decision that Treize would like your uncle Jay; even as I wittily, in my opinion, maintain the conversation, I can see the two of them in my mind's eye.

He asks me why I know so many languages, yet makes no obvious reference to my lack in English, something that astounds you. I can read and write many languages, but although I speak it competently I can't read English.

I tell him that my brother is in government so my sister and I spent years travelling with him.

He smiles before he turns back to you. "You've caught a good one here, boy, don't you let him go."

"Believe me, Sir," you answer, "I have no intention of."

For a moment I bask in the warmth of your possessiveness. "Of course," your uncle continues, "I may have to borrow him; how's your Ottoman age Polish?" I laugh and answer him in kind.

"Yes, boy," he laughs, "if you ever let him go, call me, I'll have to steal him away myself."

The college is dark and cold. The rain slicks down the glass of the windows. Your hair is pressed flat against your face which is still round with puppy fat. Your eyes are large and brilliant against the slickness of your rain soaked skin. Your jeans are moulded to the shape of your thighs, and are tight against your calves. Even your shirt has gotten soaked through your jacket, and you are leaving a pool of water on the tiles of my entrance hall. I don't know why I invited you in, or even if you just pushed your way in once I opened the door.

"You've been avoiding me," you tell me. Your voice is crisp and firm, and you take a wet squelching step towards me; involuntarily I step back, away from you. "I want to know why."

I am clutching a towel that I fetched for you close to my chest like a shield, and your eyes have mine in a tight grip. I am frozen in place like a mouse before a cat.

"How did you find me?" I ask -- to my knowledge you have only seen me that one night that you smiled at me weeks ago. Obviously I am mistaken.

"Don't you have an answer for me?" you press. Your eyes flicker with anger and I can smell a heady blend of emotions from you: fury, lust and uncertainty.

"I," I start, but the words fail me.

"You have chased me and then you run when it looks like you might catch me. More than once I have gone to speak to you and you have walked away. No one even knows your name." I watch a conflict of emotions as they play across your face. "Have you nothing to say to me?" Your lips are still twitching with anger, and then you step forward, decision made. Your hands clutch the side of my face so I cannot get away and forcing me against the wall you kiss me, hard. Your tongue flickers at my lips demanding entrance and without question I acquiesce.

We stand there for several minutes before your hands tug away the towel in my hands and throw it out of the way. I know I should push you away. I know that I should say no but it has been so long since you smiled at me, and I can taste your pulse on my tongue, your lips are simultaneously soft and firm, I can feel your cock stirring against mine through two ridges of denim. It startles me into action. I pull back. "Duo," I gasp, "my name is Duo." With an amazing hunger you catch my earlobe between your teeth. I take a step towards you, accepting the inevitable. "The bedroom's through there," I manage, pushing the edges of my fingernails into your scalp.

We don't make it that far. We tumble to the floor, your hands tugging at the hem of my tee whilst I fumble with your jacket. I've never known a hunger like this: I want to devour you, to pull you into my body until I am a part of you. We are writhing against each other like a pair of cats. My tee tangles in my braid as you pull it up, with half of the buttons undone I push your shirt down around your waist and sink my teeth into the cords of your shoulder. Your blood tastes sweet on my tongue as I lap the wound I have made.

You rip open the button-fly of my jeans with an easy jerk of the wrist before you slid your hand inside. I can't keep the gasp of surprise from my throat, your want is hot and musky, but your hand is cold from the rain. "Duo, my Duo," you mumble as I arc into your hand.

"Yours," I manage, all conscious thought driven from my mind with the subtle pressure of your fingertips, the rough skin of the skin between your fingers and thumb I am almost driven insane by the ridges of your palm against my erection.

Your mouth seizes the skin of my throat, to swallow the noises I make before they escape. You savage my throat like an animal, teeth and tongue in perfect harmony.

I do not even bother to undo the zip of your jeans, just slide my hand inside, cupping it over the strength of your erection, treasuring each vein and ridge, the weeping tip and the feel of the crisp hairs against my hand.

We buck against each other's hands and glue our mouths together, grunting and grasping. I want more -- this can never be enough.

I use my free hand and the carpeted floor to pull down my jeans so they pool around my knees to give your hand room to play. "Fuck me," I gasp into your mouth, "I want you to fuck me."

Your answering moan gives me spasms. "Soon," you manage. "Soon." And with a sputtering aching gasp I come in your hand. You follow soon after, your face contorting, your mouth open and your eyes screwed shut. A delicious red flush spreads across your chest and throat and I feel a second surge of lust knowing that I did that to you.

"Bedroom," I stammer. "I really want you inside me. I want you so deep I can feel you fucking the back of my throat. I want to feel your hips bang against my ass so hard it bruises." You can't answer that so you scoop me into your strong arms and manage the few steps to the bed where you throw me. I take the opportunity to shimmy out of the jeans where they've gathered like a shackle about my ankles. For a second you stare at my nakedness sprawled out for you, and I can feel the lust coiling in my belly in a way that I'm sure that I've never felt before. I want you. I want you to want me. I want this to never end. Inevitably, though, it must.

You asked me once about my parents. I told you the truth, that I couldn't remember them. I remember nothing before Treize and even after that there are huge gaps in my memory. Treize tells me it's normal, that there is only so much room in my head for memories. I know the information that is held in the Silver Book because Treize has never withheld it from me, though sometimes I forget those who fell in the Day of Fire. I was recently with Treize and I walked through the gallery and I was hard pressed to remember the name of the little girl who sat on Lucrezia's lap. We had taken her in because she had nowhere else to go, and there was talk of making her one of us. I had to look up her name, but when I read the name Mariemaia I remembered the smell of lilacs in her hair and the feel of her in my arms when she sat on my knee.

There are very few listings in the histories of your kind about what happened in Prague on the 18th January 1799. Treize, Dorothy and I were in England at the time, following an invitation to winter at a country estate in Derbyshire. It saved our lives.

We had lived in Prague for years, moving between Prague and Rome following the tide of politics as they interested Treize. Lady Une, Lucrezia, Milliardo, Trois, Cat and Mariemaia were left behind in the large townhouse, because it was only a small excursion.

Treize had become very powerful, and like all powerful men he had attracted enemies. His name was Duke Dermail, but you will not find reference of him in your histories. He hired mercenaries from all over Carpathia, a nasty group indeed.

They broke in early in the morning. Mariemaia was in bed with Lucrezia, Milliardo said that they didn't stand a chance. They cut off their heads and set the bed alight. Trois and Cat were left to the fire, they were on the top floor and they had blocked the doors, trapping them inside.

Milliardo and Une barely escaped with their lives. Une lost her mind, she was very badly hurt and when she slept to heal she didn't wake up. She still sleeps to this day, in Treize's palace. She is now a beautiful living statue.

Milliardo came to London; he was badly scarred since fire had burned the left side of his face so it looked like melted wax. He wore a silver mask to cover it. He told us of the treachery of Dermail, of the deaths of our family, of the loss of Une, which I think Treize took hardest of all.

He told us that they had come from Carpathia.

We caught the next ship out.

I do not care to linger on what happened next. Needless to say they were all killed and legends were born of the horrors that we wreaked. What I remember most clearly is licking the blood from Dorothy's face.

Milliardo coined the phrase the Day of Fire just before he asked Treize to kill him.

They had been together longer than I had been alive.

We are very hard to kill. If not for the rain just after the Day of Fire, Trois, Cat and Lucrezia could have been revived. We only need the ashes and a drop of our blood. Time will heal their wounds. There are ways, however, to end it. The heart must be completely destroyed; a wide wooden stake is best for this. Then the head must be severed. Catholic witch hunters used to send the head and the heart to the Vatican to make sure we could not be revived. The limbs are severed and burnt, the ashes gathered to be kept separate. The chest cavity is split open and the genitals cut away. What is left is thrown to the birds and the beasts. With the heart and the head the body can still be revived but it takes centuries to heal. I think that's what Treize kept them.

Watching him broke my heart, both Dorothy and I offered to take the burden or to help at least, but he refused. He did it all himself, he gathered the head, heart and lungs in a beautiful wooden box that he carries with him everywhere. We all lost in the Day of Fire, but we lost brothers and sisters. Treize lost the two people who made him whole.

He drove Dorothy and I away, never so far that we couldn't return, but no longer were we his favoured pets, brought everywhere at his side. Suddenly we were thrust out into the world on our own. The fabulous parties we had fed from no longer invited us in. Unsure what else to do we clung to each other. For a century or more we toured the world. Dorothy favoured theatres to feed, she appears to fall asleep on some man's shoulder and take her fill. I took to midnight masses.

We are at the cinema. It is a film that features all manner of movie monsters, some based on fact, some created by a wary populace. Frankenstein's monster is portrayed as a lumbering brute. "He was erudite and brilliant in the book," you whisper in the darkness. Count Dracula amuses me no end. I remember meeting Treize in Paris for a performance of the Resurrection of Lazarus. He wore almost the same outfit then. I picture him pulling his cape over the lower half of his face and waggling his eyebrows like Bela Lugosi. I laugh out loud. You turn the attention away from the painfully bad movie to look at me. You reach out and clutch my hand. "This movie's awful." You tell me.

"I know, but we might as well wait it out, there can't be much more of this rubbish." I say, turning my hand and twining my fingers through yours.

"I can think of something better to do to waste our time." You sound mischievous, I turn to look at you, away from the demon hunter on the screen and find myself being kissed. I am forced to agree with you. This is a much better way to waste time -- a much better way indeed.

I rouse myself from cat cream-satiation and stand beside your bed to look down at where you're coiled around your pillow, your skin is marbled with rich blue and purple veins and I am reminded of just how long it's been since I last fed. I swallow convulsively, licking my lips again and again. I can almost taste your blood.

You look like a little boy lying there; the remnants of our lovemaking are raised welts from my nails and cooling on your stomach and thighs. I can feel your semen and excess lubricant seeping out of the crack of my ass. My lips feel swollen and my balls are tender and aching from your touch.

I am torn by my need to stay with you, and my need to feed. The part of me that Treize raised is telling me to feed from you. It is not like I will kill you, or even truly incapacitate you. You would not remember me feeding, and I could use you like so many of the mortals that have shared our lives throughout the years, cultivated for food and sex.

Dorothy's pet is called Walker, and he has been with her for ten years now. Walker doesn't know our secret, he never will, no more than Treize's pet. They are almost furniture, or servants. Their kisses taste of duty.

Yours taste of power and love and fire.

I dress quickly and pay a prostitute for food. She will wake in the hotel room sluggish and well paid. It has been a long time indeed since I killed in my hunger. Then I return to the uptown flat that I share with you, I shower before I climb back into the bed with you.

You roll over and press your head into the curve of my collarbone. "Daisuki da." You murmur, still mostly asleep. You always talk in Japanese when you're mostly asleep.

"Ee," I answer, breathing in the scent of you and our lovemaking, "boku mo da."

I am reminded of something that Treize said when we were in London. He was talking to the queen, offering her all in his power to make her smile. Dorothy, Cat, Trois and I were all presented to her and she refused us and all the pleasures that we could bring and we were skilled in those arts indeed. She gave us to the court, amongst poets, playwrights and painters, secure and beautiful in our immortality.

She turned to Treize, her face painted as white as our own and said that she had been betrayed, that she could not risk herself when England was gambled on everything she did. She was England and England could not afford to fail.

Treize just laughed and dared what many would not; he laid his hand on her arm and told her, "If it doesn't end in bloodshed, dear, then it's probably not love."

Under Treize's tutelage Bess grew hard and brittle. She could not afford entanglements with Europe in such turmoil. The court could not accept her as less than ruthless. She had to be more than they were. She surrounded herself with men like Treize, hard and ambitious, loyal to those they served whilst their own interests were served.

She learnt a lot from Treize, the power of being a symbol and fear. She became England's virgin queen though she often took one of us to bed because we offered no entanglements, no attachments.

She remembered Treize's words and remembered that bloodshed could not be borne so there would be no love, but pleasures of the flesh were different.

Dorothy became the literati's darling. One young poet, Kit, serenaded her with the topless towers of Ilium. His murder upset her truly.

We were libertines, the four of us, before such things existed, corralled and exploited by Treize, sometimes with him. There was no greater sensation than lying sandwiched amongst their nakedness, feeling their skin and kisses along me. It was perfectly normal for us to spend days like that.

Trois and Cat were special, they came as a pair, but now they call it a group marriage. We were family, it was not love like I have with you, nothing of that power or passion, just contentment and the comfort that being around for centuries together can bring.

Nevertheless it ended in bloodshed.

Trois and Cat were murdered, and Dorothy and I, without their tempering influence, shattered like glass.

You wake up earlier than me daily, and as I pad into my over-equipped kitchen I find you sitting at the island with a glass of milk and a cheese and pickle sandwich. You look at me with a mouthful of white bread and then you carefully chew then swallow. "Sorry," you mumble, "I got hungry." There is something impossibly cute about watching you eat. You are wearing only a pair of sweats and your hair is sexily sleep mussed. "I didn't think you'd mind." I lift the second half of your sandwich. "Not at all." You have spread out a packet of chips on your plate, and a few pickled onions. "Is this what you do most nights?"

You nod, taking a fingerful of the chips to crunch on your tongue. You are beautiful when you eat. "I wake up starving." You say drinking from your milk. "Then I get back into bed with you and sleep it off."

"I must wear you out." I'm feeling mischievous and horny. I want you, now. I am prepared to be magnanimous; I'll let you finish your midnight snack. I give you back your half eaten sandwich. "I'm going to run a bath, care to join me?"

You smile and I take that as a yes.

The bath I hold Dorothy responsible for, in that it is vast and features buttons that remain a mystery to me. I run it till it's comfortably hot, using the scented powder bomb that makes the water lusciously soft. I am undoing my braid when you come in. "Is there room in there for me?" You ask.

"Of course," I answer, "why else would I have such a big tub?"

Normally when we bathe together it is a prelude to sex, often in the tub, but not this time. You splash me and I laugh, I am so shocked I splashed you back. Quickly we fall into splashing and laughing, and then you ask me to turn so you can wash my hair. I love it when you do this; it almost melts me into the water. I give myself totally to your hands, confident, knowing, but all too soon it is done, the water rinsing out the lemon scented shampoo. Then I wash your hair, it is coarser than mine.

I cannot believe how intimate this is; sitting in the same bath washing each other's hair. This, I decide, is love. We dry each other off, for once not stealing gropes or kisses, we use the towels carefully and affectionate.

We climb back into the bed and cuddle together like puppies, arms and legs entwined, faces scant inches from faces so that I can taste your breath when you breathe in.

Later we lie in bed, my head on the small of your back as you read to me from the newspaper. Your voice is soft and fond as you tell me about your favourite sports teams and recipes you think look interesting. I lie there and consider all the people that I thought I loved and realise I was wrong then, that this, and only this, is love.

Hilde was an innocent I met in Vienna, and of all the wrongs that I have done, and I have done many wrongs, she is the greatest.

I thought I loved her, this wild and crazy Austrian girl who wore her hair shorter than most men and shirked skirts far more often than she wore them. Her father was a wildly indulgent banker and her mother was a painter. Treize wanted a portrait of Lucrezia and Milliardo so he went to their house to commission it. We were great patrons of the arts, to make sure that we were remembered.

Dorothy begged off that night, I don't remember why, but the Schbeikers had invited Treize and his lovely wife for an intimate week in their country estate. So Treize, Une and I made the trip from Vienna.

The house was very French and beautiful, after the tragedy that followed Treize bought it outright, to preserve the artwork, he said, but I think it was out of a sense of guilt.

Even the oldest and most treacherous of us can feel guilt and what we did turned out very badly.

I was very young, and spoiled, and Hilde was as wild as I was. She was lovely, trained by her mother in many arts. She was expensively educated. If she had been Venetian she would have been a great courtesan with men queuing across the city to spend time with her, but for all her apparent worldliness she was incredibly cosseted and naive.

Her father was very rich and I thought that I was to be Treize's offering to him, but the offer was not made. It was the opposite in fact; I was there to learn.

Hilde was smitten with my hair. We went for long rides and she demanded that she be allowed to sketch me. She wrote sonnets to my eyes. She was fifteen years old, legally a woman, but still very much a girl. Her sketches were lovely; I thought that they were better than her mother's. Over the years many great painters recorded my image, but none were more precious to me than Hilde's sketches.

Her mother sketched me as well, and Une, though Treize begged off. I remember playing the harpsichord by lamplight as Hilde sang. She turned the pages and sang as sweetly as a nightingale.

I appealed to Treize that she became one of us. We travelled that night. Une took me to Vienna to the opera.

She told me that the decision would be mine, just as Milliardo had found peace in Lucrezia and had brought her into the family, but there were things I needed to know. Une could be far crueller than Treize, sometimes she made him seem positively soft hearted, but she was intensely loyal to her family. She was a fierce and loving mother.

She told me the law, just as Treize had told Dorothy about Alejandro, Une told me about Hilde.

She wore her hair down and laid my head on her soft blue skirts, stroking my hair. Trois may have been her favourite but she loved us all.

"A year and a day," she said, "if she can keep the secret and her mind for a year and a day then she can become one of us." I thought about it the whole night through and the next night I told Treize I wanted her to join us.

He approached her family and asked if Hilde would like to spend time with us in Prague. It was a great honour to everyone involved.

She spent a month with us in Prague, learning all the joys of the capital that there were. Then Treize told her. She cried for hours, I went against Une's direct order and broke into her room to offer her comfort.

Hilde would never have betrayed us like Alejandro had done, but the weeping became wailing. She began to claw at her arms, her legs, and any flesh she could find. She pulled her hair out in great chunks. Over a month and a half she begged for God, for the devil, for anyone but us. Lucrezia was sent in to calm her down after she destroyed her rooms. Hilde attacked her.

Une, Treize and Milliardo talked for hours. Trois told me, in the garden of the house, that they would arrange things, but I should prepare for the worst.

Une went into the rooms Hilde was in to try and talk to her. Hilde shrieked like a monkey, throwing things, the blood running out of her arms where she clawed at herself. She would not even allow me to bandage her arms. Treize went into her room and begged for forgiveness. She attacked him as well. She was hopelessly insane. He snapped her neck.

Treize comforted me whilst Une returned her body to her parents. We were monsters, but we were not evil. We paid a doctor to say it had been a fever and we dressed all her wounds. Each and every one of us attended that funeral, and when her parents died, of simple old age, Treize bought out both their town house and country mansion. He uses them still to store his art, and he calls the country house Hilde's house.

No one wanted what happened, we had all loved her.

Une had told me that the law was absolute because it was for our protection. Alejandro had betrayed us, and Hilde went mad. Either could have destroyed us all. That is why the law is absolute. It didn't make her death any easier.

There might be as many as two hundred of us scattered through the world. Once that number was double but the years aren't kind. Almost all of our number mourned with us on the Day of Fire. We did something impossible and cruel. We made Dermail one of us, and then we locked him into a tower and bricked shut the door. Every day light would flood his cell and he would burn and every night he would heal.

Once a decade, or thereabouts, Treize visits him -- this feral creature who feeds on rats, and Treize asks him if he repents, because if he does he will grant him death. It has been two hundred years and still he asks him. The last time Treize confided in Dorothy that he was glad that it was obvious that Dermail was long beyond the point where he could even remember why we were torturing him. Why did we make him immortal? So we could make him suffer like we suffered -- until Une awoke. It's been two hundred years and she has not woken Dorothy suspects she never will but still she travels to Koblensk and she still tells Une things she will tell no one, not even me, not even Walker.

I suppose that it seems cruel to do what we did to him, but he stole so very much from us. We were eight, not large as our families can be, but large enough, and because of Dermail's arrogance and avarice we became three. We lost the family we loved and the potential that Mariemaia offered us. Others died that day, but they were pets. Rain stopped the fire but also washed away the ashes. We mourned so long and he needed to be punished.

I asked Treize maybe ten years ago if it happened again if he would do the same thing. He didn't even bat an eyelid as he said that he would do it again in an instant.

He cuts off his left hand when he visits him, knowing it will grow back. There's an irony to it, Dermail grows his left hand back where Treize carries his right around in a carved wooden box.

Trois and Cat were older than me, wise and fond, silent and gregarious, a perfect match, and Milliardo and Lucrezia were light and dark. He was cold and hard and she was soft and sweet. Une was out mother, our protector, and who knows what Mariemaia would have been. That was what Dermail stole from us, our mother, our sister, our protector, and our brothers.

All that he could take, he took.

Would I do what Treize had done? Would I lock him into a tower to feed on rats? Would I chop off his hand for the pain of growing it anew?

In a heartbeat.

Dorothy, on the other hand, would think up something infinitely crueller.

Sometimes I envy her that cruelty and dispassion, but I know what it cost her and some prices are too high for anyone to pay.

I write to my family daily and this new technology of email makes it easier. You asked me once why we don't telephone each other. I made an excuse about the delay in long distance telecommunications but it's simpler than that. The same aspect of our genetics that means that we have no reflection means that we cannot be photographed or our voices recorded. So we write to each other. Dorothy says that it makes life fun for telemarketers when she answers the phone and thinks that she's being silent. It is one of the main reasons that we maintain pets, they answer the phone when we cannot.

I met with Walker for one of those embarrassing shopping expeditions. When is shop opens its doors after hours they expect a retinue so you must provide one. I wanted to buy some new clothes for the both of us, so I begged Dorothy the use of him so he would arrange things for me.

What I didn't expect was that you would walk past the store front as Walker was negotiating with the fly of a new pair of jeans I was trying on. I can see the look of horror and hurt on your face. Your face falls and I feel like I have been stabbed. Walker turns to look at you, then smiles and beckons you in. "Duo, this must be the infamous Mister Heero that you have spent the whole evening talking about." He gets the assistant to open the door and ushers you in himself. You do not have a choice in the matter. "Hi," he said, "I'm Walker, I'm Miss Dorothy's personal assistant. Duo asked me to help him with some shopping, you must be Heero, now come in, come in. Get something to drink, now do you agree with me that Duo looks absolutely scrumptious in those pants." He doesn't give you a chance to answer; normally Walker is taciturn and dependable. He makes everything run smoothly. If he had a jot more personality then Treize would make him one of us just on his ability to manage things.

He smiles at you and then lifts a whole heap of jackets, "I swear that if I wasn't so devoted to his sister I'd just have to become a gay man. You're blessed indeed to have a relationship with someone with such a delicious little peach bottom. Couldn't you just eat it up? Between you and me, Master Heero, Miss Dorothy may have a bosom," he hefts his cups hands in front of his chest, "and the longest, loveliest legs, but Duo here is all hair and ass, and all yours." Walker grins at me as he says it. "Now, in your honest opinion, do you prefer the green suede or the burgundy?"

You are dumbstruck silent and just gave in to Walker's officious and friendly patter, agreeing to everything that he says. By the time that he is done we are both fully outfitted for the next season and in a car to a hotel for a romantic dinner. You are obviously torn between feeling betrayed and overwhelmed.

I reach across the table in the restaurant and take your hand, squeezing it and rubbing my thumb over your palm. "You told me that you were going shopping." You protest sadly.

"I did." I answer both his accusation and describe how I spent my evening in that simple phrase. I did not lie to him.

"Then why didn't you tell me about Walker?" I can see the weakness in your eyes, the fear; I can smell it like cologne over the candlelight and sharp red wine.

"Because I didn't think it mattered. He's just Walker. I don't have staff of my own, except Anna Marie who does my laundry and you said you didn't want to come." I am rationalising, I know it. "He's just Walker, Doro said that I could borrow him. You can borrow him if you want." I am blabbering on because I am terrified I am going to lose you over this. "He's like family."

"He's right, you know." You say, "You do have the cutest little peach bottom in London. So, I'm perfectly happy with the moss green suede trousers that make you look so sexy." You are beautiful when you smile, a lovely warm smile that, for the most part, you keep deep inside. A smile you save for me. "Walker gave me his card." You continue, "He said that if I wished to talk about spending my life surrounded by secrets he'd be there."

"We're an old family, Heero," I sound wistful and sad. I can't help it. "We have secrets.

"I'm not going to ask anymore, Duo," you tell me. "Other than why he called you Mishka."

I can't cover my blush at that. "There's a really long story about that." Your gaze does not let me escape this answer. "Walker said it only so you'd ask." Your smirk tells me that you know that. "My brother calls me Mishka; it's a Russian pet name of my real name." I roll my eyes, "I prefer Duo, but I'm called Michel, my name is Michel on my birth records, and Treize calls me Mishka because of it, but I much, much, much prefer Duo."

You smile, "thank you, it seems that every once in a while you reveal something infinitely private about yourself and I fall in love with you all over again." You pull my hand over and kiss the knuckle with your soft wet mouth. "Marry me." You say, "let me marry you for your money, please, my Duo, my Mishka, my love."

It breaks my heart but I must refuse. "No more than this, my love, no more than this."

"I'll accept that," you say, "for now." You are obviously hurt by my answer, but it's the only one I can give. "But I have an ally now, and I will ask Walker for his help." I know you will, but Walker knows little that could help you. If you had asked Dorothy I would worry, but she would not tell you anything either. We keep our secrets because we have to, not because we want to.

I don't really remember my childhood but my details are listed in the Silver Book. Apparently I was born in France, in a town called Rennes-le-Chateau, which was, at one time, the capital, under a king called Louis XII. Une, in her delicate hand, notes my name as Michel Cledauhault and as being an orphan. She said that they had known my parents and took me in out of a sense of obligation to them; she surmised that I was at most five.

One of the few memories that I have of that time is of being in an incredibly sweet smelling garden chasing fireflies amongst the magnolia trees and jasmine with Treize. As an adult looking back I think that it was in China.

It is not that my memory is faulty but something much more prosaic: there is only so much room. One of the others [-- his name was Vlad but he calls himself Brad these days (Dorothy, teasing, calls him Brad the Impaler) --] did a memory study. It revealed only that the reason that there were huge gaps in his personal memory was simply that the time that he had spent studying history and languages had just repressed them, that there was no room in his accessible memory for them.

Treize has, among his treasures, a picture that I drew as a child, of him and Milliardo in the gardens of what I think was China. It is rather crudely drawn but the Silver Book lists them as the reason that they bought me art lessons. I mostly remember my art, and over the years I have studied with both masters and those who should have been acknowledged as such. Cat and Trois had music lessons and in their boredom they taught me. Dorothy and I, over the years, became close, that I remember clearly.

Treize wrote in the Silver Book that I was turned before my time. Dorothy was turned several months before her eighteenth birthday, in what Une called the rosiest flush of her maidenhood. She was as lovely then as she is now, though her hair was paler and her skin sun-kissed; portraits from the time also show her with darker eyes rather than the duck egg colour that they are now. I know my eyes took on a violet sheen once they were away from the sun.

The Silver Book says that I was sixteen and that Treize had no intention of bringing me over until I was at least twenty-five, if at all, but plague changes things. I don't remember this, but any of us can access the Silver Book if only we ask. It was Une that turned me, though normally it was either Treize or Milliardo that did it. She wrote that it was a great wrong that she did me, because she never gave me a choice.

I would not have you think that I was unhappy for the long years of my existence, because I was not. I had a family that loved me, that indulged me and introduced me to so many wonders. I was in Constantinople before it became Istanbul. I took salt with the kings of Jerusalem. I knew the Borgia popes and saw wonders that historians of would kill for. I heard Treize and Milliardo reminisce about things that happened long before I was born, the histories of India and Asia and Greece.

I clearly remember a night in Athens when seven old ones, drunk on ouzo, started reminiscing about one woman that had bedded and betrayed them all in a desperate attempt to be eternally beautiful. Back then it was not as unusual as it is now, or as dangerous, because often it was politic to reveal it to give you standing, especially to that kind of woman. They sat together, drinking and laughing. I was on Treize's knee and he was fondling my ass and back, showing me off like a prized possession, and letting me sip his drink as they laughed about this woman's foibles in bed and her lisp. I remember Milliardo throwing that beautiful blonde hair of his in what was obviously a fair impression of the lady in question, and saying, "There'th nothing that I like better than thucking on a thick thining cock." And even I, who had never known the woman, burst out laughing.

Treize was really drunk that night, he had slipped his hand into the silk shawl I was wearing around my waist and was happily fondling my cock and I was pumping into his hand.

I have been sixteen for a very long time -- I am lucky that I can pass for older -- but my body knows secrets normally reserved for the odalisques of the east. I was Treize's concubine for years and had it on excellent authority that I was as well trained, if not better than, the Venetian courtesans. He taught me everything he knew then sent me to others who knew more. I was more than grateful and I enjoyed the training. He gave me everything I wanted, everything I could possibly desire. I asked Une if it was that which had given her regrets. She brushed my hair, which was much shorter than it is now, and said, "You are young, yet, Mishka, you'll understand when you're older." She was right, immortality is it's own curse.

Yes, I was, and sometimes still am, Treize's lover, and everyone else in my family -- it is our way. Do you think that if I was not that I would know the tongue flick thing against your anus that sends you wild? You know that I have had other lovers before you, but I truly believe you have no concept of how many or who. It is a currency that before I met you I had no problems trading in.

But that night in Athens as they discussed the merits of a mouth with a lisp and the olive smell of her skin I wanted nothing more than Treize to bend me over the rail, and to take the hot cock I was sat against and to fuck me raw. I didn't even care if he waited until the room was empty or if he used ouzo as a lubricant, although past experience showed that it stung us both.

I didn't have to wait long, with Treize's hot fingertips running up and down my erection, and Une rolled out the drunken ancients and Treize flipped me over so that I straddled his hips. "Everybody here wants you." His breath was like fire in my ear. "And I'm the one who gets to keeps you." He had my buttocks in his hands and was rubbing my cleft against him. His smile was predatory and cruel. It was hungry and I loved it. "Shall I be the lonely goatherd?" I asked him, "Or thall I be the printheth with the lithp." Of all the things that Treize taught me, none I appreciated more than the power of words upon him. "Thall I get down on my knees and thuck on that beautiful big cock of yourth, till you thpurt your theed on my tongue and down my throat, tho I can hold it in my thpit till I kith you and you can tathte it on my mouth?"

He opened his robe and bared himself for me, and I swallowed him down greedily. I am skilled in such things after all, and I enjoyed it. He fucked my mouth and I let him until he came in gushing gouts down my throat and then he arranged me on his lap, my feet either side of his hips where he sat, and my legs stretched straight and he lubricated me with his tongue and the oil from the food we had shared with the old ones, sliding his fingers inside me so slowly and patiently until I wept with the wonder of it. The only other person that ever brought me to tears was you.

When he slid inside me it was in front of a mirror that did not show our reflection and all I could think of was the burning fullness that he slipped in and out of me.

Until I met you I honestly believed that no one could make me feel like Treize did -- even my clumsy teenage fumbling with Hilde could not compare to the feeling of him inside me, of his hands on my stomach and his mouth on the nape of my neck sucking at my spine like he was feeding from me.

It is the main reason that when we make love -- and for all the people that I have fucked I only ever make love with you -- I like to face you, to look into your eyes, so that I am not reminded of the heights of madness that Treize or Milliardo wreaked on my body, but that you can do so much more because you own my heart, such as it is, utterly and completely.

Does this mean that I regret the night in Athens? Of course not, but not only do I remember it, I do so fondly. You are my life now, but for a long time I lived at my family's pleasure, and I would do anything to please them, and they in turn pleased me.

From a wise man in Florence I learnt only this: love is love and it is not to be begrudged, no matter where it's found.

Sometimes I worry that you don't know how I feel for you, that the secrets that I must keep mean that you doubt the sincerity of my emotion. The truth is this every time that I have told my secret before it has ended badly for all involved. When Dorothy told Alejandro she was forced to kill him, a horror she must carry with her daily. When I told Hilde she went mad and Treize killed her for her own good. There were three others along the way, all of which were killed and not turned. I can think of only three younger than me. If I could then I would tell you, but I am so scared of losing you that I never would dare to tell you.

There was a witch in New Orleans to whom Dorothy offered immortality. She refused us. She said that death was inevitable and natural, and that she was honoured but that it was not her destiny. She said that death was nothing to be feared and that she would welcome it when it came.

I also remember a madman in Paris who I told simply because I could no longer keep the secret. He asked a few intelligent questions about what we were and then patted me on the hand telling me that god loved me, even if I was a demon. I sat in the streets of Paris for hours, weeping.

I have killed, but never with my feeding. I have killed to protect my family, and myself and I have feasted upon the corpses. I am not like you. It is something that tears me up inside, there are wonders that I can never share with you.

The pleasures of feeding during sex you will never share with me.

The wonders of Venice as it once was are lost to you.

The feeling of being buried in a pile of warm bodies that loves you.

If I asked Treize to make you one of us he would ask you if you wished it. He would tell you both the pros and cons of our existence and on my word he would consider it honestly to change you.

If I believed that you could withstand the information of what I am and what I have done then I would spend eternity with you. To imagine waking up to your cobalt eyes, eyes the colour of the Bay of Biscay, in a hundred years time gives me pleasant chills. It cannot be, however: you do not believe in magic so how can you accept what I am?

Do you know how many times I have lain next to you in bed and debated feeding on you? Do you know how many times I considered making you my pet, and keeping you much like the way that Dorothy keeps Walker and Treize keeps Catherine? Do you know it drives me wild to watch you shave for the inevitable spots of blood on your cheeks and chin? Sometimes, I am what that madman in Paris called me, a demon, and I can't always control it the way I should. In the terms of our kind I am still a youngling with all its attendant failings. But this demon loves you dearly and if I believed that you could withstand it then I'd accept your proposals and marry you in an instant knowing that you it would truly be eternal.

The third person that I told was an obnoxious girl at a fancy dress part in New York. She asked me what I was, not what I came as. She was wearing a skin tight black velvet dress and a cheap black wig. So I answered her question, and told her exactly what I was. Of all the words that your kind created to describe us I made sure to use the one she knew best of all. She laughed and flicked her black hair over her shoulder and said, "aren't we all," before she stalked off to meet a moonman. I left the party soon after.

Love fascinates me because people put such stock in its power but Treize tells me that he remembers a time before it existed. There was a time when the passion and devotion was unheard of, and now it rules the world.

I was born after its creation, after the ages of the troubadours who used it as a tool and the songs they created. I remember Une singing a song of king Arthur that was older than Lancelot. So I believed in love with a child's naiveté and passion surrounded by poets and dreamers who extolled its virtues. Then I lost Hilde and they told me that love was a conceit and that I trusted and adored her and that was why it hurt.

The pain was so great that I believed them.

I went through pets and lovers and did not believe in love.

Then I met you, and you fascinated and horrified me. You intoxicated me and bespelled me so I went to Treize, who knew more than I, and told him of this problem.

He laughed and stroked my hair. "Mishka, my sweet, I thought you of all of us would understand the problem best," -- his smile was very sweet and very sad -- "You're in love."

It would kill me now, to lose you.

We go to a museum, you choose it specifically because there is an entrance direct from the Tube thus minimising my exposure to the sun. It is a cold winter's morning and it is dark when we leave the apartment. Nevertheless you slather me in the strongest sunblock that the chemists supply. I think it's sweet.

We spend the day wandering around the exhibits when you stop, staring at a painting on the wall. I am not paying attention to the art but watching you look at them: imagining you in the clothes that are displayed; in the kind of finery that I used to desire men in; in the jewels that Treize keeps in store for me. So I look at the painting and stop.

I had thought, or possibly hoped, that it had been lost in the Day of Fire, yet obviously Dermail stole it.

It is a picture of me as Saint Sebastian reclining naked, apart from a swathe of red velvet about my hips and a delicately placed hand. My hair is like an aureole about my head where I lie in the woods with arrows protruding prettily from my skin.

"What are you thinking?" I ask. "I didn't think you liked religious art."

"Which saint is it?" Your lips are slightly open, shiny with saliva; I can see the start of a smile, and a hint of your teeth.

"Sebastian," I answer.

"He looks like you." You take my hand in the crowded museum, careless of who might see us like that. "I want a print of that painting in the bathroom."

Although I consider it as long and as hard as I can, I can't decipher why the bathroom so I ask. Your smile is wicked as you lean into my ear to whisper your answer, "Because that saint looks like you, even down to the flush on his neck, and rather than lying there murdered, he looks like he's just lifted his hand out from under that fabric where it was wrapped --" for emphasis you pause and suck my earlobe into your mouth before releasing it, " -- around your cock, and you know for a fact that there's nothing I like better than watching your hand slip and slide over your beautiful, hard cock."

I swallow. "Shall we get a coffee?" I ask. My voice is squeaky, I can't help it. "And we can see if they have a print, but why the bathroom?"

"So I can see it when I jerk off in the shower," you tell me. All of a sudden I don't mind that this painting exists; that it exists in one of the most famous museums in the world, however, is another matter altogether.

The coffee is surprisingly good although vastly overpriced. We sit with our feet resting against each other. "I enjoyed today," I tell you, "although I really need to get all this sunblock off, I'm slimy. Come with me to Prague," I change the subject, "come away with me."

"Marry me," you correct, "marry me in Prague."

I decide to ignore your proposal this time. "I'll call Walker and we'll make arrangements."

"We could make it a honeymoon," you say.

"I want to show you a place that I love," I tell you, as you reach into your pocket and put a small paper bag on the table between the cups. You obviously bought it whilst I got the coffee.

"I can't marry you." I can't take the regret from my voice.

"Wear this anyway." I open the bag to reveal a renaissance style crucifix on a silver chain. It's beautiful and I say so, asking you to put it on me.

"I belong to you," I say, and I don't lie, "But I can't marry you."

"Then I'll go over your head." Your expression is set in stone. "I'll ask your brother. I'll phone Walker and get his details from Dorothy. I might even get to meet her and I'll ask him. I can't imagine that he'll say no, I can be very persuasive when it's something I want, and I know that if he tells you to marry me then you will."

"I don't believe in marriage," I answer. "It causes things to go bad between people. We don't need either the law or the church to accept things between us. I love you completely. I promise that I'll never leave you or cheat on you. If I die then everything is already left to you. We don't need to get married."

"You're right," you say, "but I still want to marry you. I want to know everything about you; I want you to trust me with all those secrets that you keep. I want you to stand up in front of everyone and say that you trust me."

"I can't." Suddenly the chain that you have just fastened around my neck weighs like an albatross. "It's not that I don't want to, it's that I can't."

"Secrets are dangerous," you tell me. "My parents got divorced because of secrets, please, promise me that you will tell me everything you can."

There is a large lump in my throat that is easily the size of a golfball and I want to cry but I can't. I haven't cried in a very long time indeed. "I swear," I say, "everything I can tell you I do, I'm so sorry but I can't tell you everything."

The smile you offer me allows me to swallow the golfball in my throat. "I believe you, now shall we get two of those fancy looking fancies on display and celebrate?"

"Celebrate what?" I ask.

"That you will marry me eventually."

In my long life I have never met anyone like you. I have travelled the world several times over, although I always return to Europe. Like a lodestone I am drawn back to Prague. Most people wonder why Prague of all the European capitals but the answer is simple. It was the Hapsburg capital and at one point ruled the entire world. I am not that old but after Iberia and the empire separated Prague was still the capital of Europe and where there was power there was Treize; and following Treize like a duckling was me.

It went on like that for centuries until the Day of Fire. Then unable, or unwilling, to be on my own I followed Dorothy. I saw Nihon, Qin, Europe, Russia, India, Asia, Australia and the Americas.

I remember teasing you about being in America and you laughed and said I would be a great Native American and that I would be called "wind in his hair".

I almost told you that it was true, that I spent years amongst the tribes where Dorothy was worshipped as some kind of mystic because of her pale skin and bright hair.

I wonder how much of the images of the South American gods were just our kind passing through, and lingering on their way. Treize will not tell me just how old he is; only that he started the silver book when it became clear that he was starting to forget. Every now and then I hear of some image that strikes me as perfectly Treize. Every now and then I catch my own image, like the portrait in the museum and wonder how many of the old ones were mistaken for gods.

Saint Sebastian was painted in Verona. I was still very young and very arrogant. I was the primped peacock that tagged along beside Treize who had been in the mood for Italy. At the time Italy was wracked by war, but overall it meant little to the Italians. Treize, typically, was playing both sides. The Hapsburg general was tempted with Dorothy, and the French general, when he refused Lucrezia, with me.

I was young, and so was he, and both were beautiful.

One thing immortality teaches us is patience: decisions that your kind makes in a heartbeat take us years because we do not realise the time passes until it is too late. Such it was with the beautiful French general.

His name was Gaston, and he was brilliant. He seemed to shimmer as brilliant men often do, but I was too young to appreciate it at the time. Treize said he looked like an angel and it would only be a matter of time before God called him home. He was right.

We were young and vital, our tumbling was frantic and at times [painful], and all he told me I reported to Treize. Then one day he asked for my portrait, and amused and flattered, and more than a little spoiled, I agreed.

The painter was a greedy old man who said he spent months on the texture of my skin and hair. He had hungry eyes and cold hands. More than that I forget.

Gaston did not live to see it finished. The beautiful young French general, who had never lost a battle, fell at Palma. I was waiting for him at camp, when Milliardo came to fetch me. He told me that Gaston was dead and that we were leaving for London.

Ten years later Treize bought Sebastian and moved it to Prague where we returned time and time again.

I wonder now, if Dermail stole Saint Sebastian which of our other treasures did he also steal? How many images of us are in museums and private collections all over the world waiting for us to walk past and be lost in a memory of Lucrezia or Une or one of the others Dermail stole from us?

It is easy to blame Dermail for all of our troubles, but he is not solely at fault. He stole a lot from us, but others, along the way, took from us too, just never as much as he did.

If the years have made me bitter then they have made Dorothy hard. I have seen her face down men much bigger than her and they will quail like children beneath her gaze. She rules Nevermore with a fist of solid iron, and Walker trails along behind her like a wolf, tamed but still cruel in his way.

I know grown men that will back down from the very name Dorothy Catalonia. I went shopping with her once and she reduced the incompetent saleswoman to tears. I am sure that they hear her name and draw straws to see who will serve her and bear witness to her cruel asides. She can be very witty, but her witticisms are steel edged.

Where Une softened her cruelty with a maternal instinct Dorothy has none of that.

Yet she is beautiful and like moths men are drawn to her flame.

If I have left a swathe of broken hearts behind me then I did not intend to. Dorothy, however, was groomed to topple kingdoms. I have seen kings fall before her, throwing aside all their duties for one more perfumed kiss. Where I loved each one of them, even if only a little bit, Dorothy used them for her own amusement.

I asked her once if she loved Treize, if she did what she did for the hours spent in his bed. She laughed. She did it because she could, she told me.

Walker adores her, she allows him to groom her. We have no reflection, which makes personal grooming difficult. For years Dorothy and I dressed each other, and then lay amongst each other's limbs, sated and drowsy, sharing with each other the secrets that we had learned.

Dorothy and I were lovers. We aren't anymore. We are old now, though not nearly old enough to be considered old ones. We are jaded; I am bitter and she is cruel.

Only Walker shares her bed now. She keeps her pet docile, because she is so strong someone asked her if he was her submissive. Walker sprayed the man with coffee, and then explained it to her. Amused, she bought him a collar -- with a bell.

Dorothy is a sybarite. She has experienced nearly all of the pleasures of the flesh, but the concept of bondage gave her the giggles. It made her seem very young and vulnerable and I saw Walker almost melt with fondness for her.

She has kept him twelve years now, that's seven longer than any other pet. He has met us all; she takes him with her everywhere. She has paid for him to have language lessons and to learn martial arts. He wears designer clothes and has a three hundred pound hair cut. He has a doctorate in business. He looks, and acts, like an executive for a large company. He calls himself her PA but he knows that he is her pet.

Catherine, on the other hand, is remarkably quiet and unobtrusive for someone Treize found in the circus. She was a knife thrower. I tease him that he should never piss her off. She just smiles as she serves us supper.

I like Catherine. She's maternal and doting and as fierce as a tiger. She is beautiful and lithe and often it amuses Treize to dress her up and call her his little Czarina. She just smiles in a way that tells us all that she is only indulging him.

Treize sought her out. She is the last surviving member of Trois' family and obviously, missing him, he made a pet of his [great-great-great-grandniece]. I'm not sure that I would, but Treize and I are different in many things. It is almost impossible not to see Trois in Catherine. They do look very alike.

Treize said he only wanted to see her, but on seeing her he couldn't bear not to keep her. So now she hovers around him, more than a servant but less than a wife. She is Catherine, and that is enough for him.

Let me tell you a story. I'll abbreviate it because originally it was quite long. You'll see soon why I choose to tell you this.

Once upon a time in a country that no longer exists there lived a beautiful princess. Now the princess' father was very protective of her beauty and locked her away in the uppermost tower in his castle. Now some might say that there were better ways to protect his daughter, like possibly sending her to a convent, as his neighbours were wont to do.

But the king adored his daughter and every night he would climb up the tower and his daughter would sing to him whilst he read.

Then one night three travellers came to his home: a redheaded man with perfect manners and a kingly bearing; a lady as cold as ice; and a prince with hair the colour of spring wine. The king was flattered by their attention, and opened up his home to them.

They repaid his kindness with treachery. They opened his lands to a rival lord and there was slaughter. As the king lay dying he asked the prince with hair the colour of spring wine why, and the prince with the colour of spring wine told him that in all the time that they were guests in the king's house that he had broken into the tower to see his beautiful daughter, and that he was taking her away.

The king cursed him with his last breath, but the prince with hair the colour of spring wine merely laughed and asked how you could damn an earthbound demon to hell.

Thus Lucrezia joined our family, her name was originally Caroline but she changed it because it was the Carolingians who destroyed her family. Her entry in the silver book is this "Princess Caroline has changed her name to Lucrezia. Milliardo has expressed the desire to marry her. I see no difficulty with his decision. She is welcomed to our family."

You do not care for clubbing, but despite my need to feed, I do. It is a great hunting place since I left the campus to follow you. I can see the avaricious look in your eyes as I dress. I am wearing a pair of skin tight silver trousers, fastened at the sides with embroidered ribbons, the same ribbons that I have tied about my forearms. I have smeared violet and silver glitter along the lines of my chest and you have traced out the kanji "saiai" at the nape of my neck and in the sweat bowl of my collarbone. A curving wing design is on my back in black marker pen and I am wearing a pair of black Chinese slippers that I have worn for centuries.

My hair is elaborately styled in a series of hooks and ringlets, fixed with ribbons and glass beads. Although I can't see myself the look of hunger in your eyes tells me that I look good enough to eat.

It is all the approval that I need.

"Are you sure that you don't want to join me?" I ask. I can see the thought working through your head, the pros and cons being carefully weighed out and measured. "You know there's nothing I like better than dancing with you." I stand in front of you and roll my hops against you, knowing the curve of your hips as well as my own. I slip the edge of my hip into the dip of your pelvic bone and grind myself against your sleepy cock to the music in my head.

I have gone too far -- and leaning into the tendons of my neck you inhale deeply, almost as if you could breathe me in. You are scenting me. I am enough of a predator to know that. You are familiarising yourself with the scent of me before you sink your teeth into the tendon and suck hard. You pull back gasping for air, your teeth bared as if you were the demon, not I.

"Stay with me," you say, "you look good enough to eat, and I want to gobble you up."

The mark on my shoulder tingles pleasantly, one shade less than pain. The ridges of your teeth marks are almost burning in their intensity. It is like a hot flush and reluctantly I pull away, I am panting and my cock is stirring in my pants. It is as hungry for you as I am. "It's Dorothy's birthday," I answer with noticeable regret. "You're more than welcome."

You are dressed for a night in front of your word processor, a loose green vest and a pair of cycling shorts that cling to your thighs and ass. It causes a familiar, yet welcomed, ache in my gut.

I quash the lust down. It is Dorothy's birthday and she has invited half of London. I know the chance of her lingering to talk to you, other than a kiss on the cheek, are slim.

I need to feed.

I have left it as long as I possibly can, but it is calling me now. It's simple enough to feed at Nevermore, if Walker refuses, as is his right, then some patron can be coerced into a dark corner.

After tonight I would have to feed on you, something, in all the time we have been together, I have never done. Over the years I have been told the feeding can be pleasurable for us both, that it is an exciting part of bed play, and truth be told I have done it with others, just never with you because you are more to me than meat. You are Heero.

"Then I'll wait up for you." The smile and kiss you give me are lingering and I am at your mercy.

Nevermore is packed. There is a press of bodies and a tremendous line outside. For her birthday Dorothy has waived the cover charge on the door.

The music is thumping; the lights are flashing; the crowd is heaving. The only thing missing is you.

Dorothy is sat on the bar with men gathered around her. She wears a silver sheathe dress that ends just below her crotch. A silver ribbon holds a large amethyst at her throat. Ribbons coil up her arms and legs and her hair is dressed as elaborately as mine. She smiles when she sees me, slipping to the floor in her ballet slippers and walking forward. "Tell me I'm pretty." She says with a wink as she turns around for me to admire her, then she shouts over the music, "a free drink for anyone who guesses my age." It's a safe challenge; none of them will ever guess that she's nearly five hundred years old. She slips her arm about my shoulders. "Come, Srdechni," she enthuses, "tell me that you've brought that man of yours, Hitotsu or something."

"Heero," I correct, "no, he didn't come. I asked, but he has a deadline."

On anyone else her expression would be a pout, and then she shrugs. "Nevertheless, Srdechni, we must eat, drink and be merry," she laughs, "because tomorrow," her laughter is infectious, "tomorrow isn't my birthday; a drink, bartender, for my beloved Duo."

"But, Dorothy," one of her admirers whines, "you said that you liked me, I'm a liked guy."

"Darling," she answers with a smile that's all ice, "I do like you, but I like my baby brother more." She drinks her vodka neat and I follow her example. It is smooth, like silk. It's from Treize's own cellar. You can taste the difference immediately.

"Is he here?" I ask.

"Treize?" She ventures, "He's about somewhere, you know how it works, look for the crowd of swooning girls and boys, and he'll be in the middle of them. I'm disappointed that your ningen couldn't come." Ningen is the word for human in Heero's native language, and she uses it deliberately to remind me that he's not one of us and never will be.

"He's not as outgoing as we are." I tell her honestly. "I told him that he only had to make an appearance but he still begged off." I smile at her, "but I'm here as long as you'll have me."

"In that case, Srdechni," she tells me, "I'll let him have you back in fifty years or so." And we laugh.

I love to dance. I can feel the rhythm in my chest and along my nerve endings. I lead Dorothy unto the floor to dance together as we have our entire lives. We are a match of skin and hair, the silver of our outfits catching in the light.

The DJ realising that Dorothy is dancing plays what has, in the last few years, become her signature tune, Portishead's "Glorybox". If I hear it on the radio I immediately think of her.

We dance together like we danced in the slums of Rio; it is a matched undulation, and the crowd around us parts to watch. My hand is on her hip and her hair between us as we writhe together like snakes.

She turns so that we're eye to eye, then she raises one calf to my hip and jerks against me as her head circles like she is simulating penetration, but slowly in time to the languorous beat of the music. My hands are on her waist supporting her.

This is well rehearsed. We've done this hundreds of times so when I turn her she doubles over and lets me rock against her pert bottom.

As the song ends we end up in the position that we started in, facing each other, our hands on each other's asses and one of my thighs between hers.

The dance floor erupts in applause, they assume this is some kind of show, but one person isn't clapping. His black eyes are piercing through me like arrows. I feel the weight of his gaze, but assume from the animosity that it is one of Dorothy's admirers. It is not. It's Wufei. He has Sylvia on his arm and she is torn between agreeing with Wufei's outrage and the desire to run and hide from the inevitable collision.

"What a pretty young man, Srdechni," Dorothy says, "Do you know him?" Before I answer her she murmurs in my ear, "His skin is like caramel; imagine him between the two of us, like white chocolate covered caramel and I bet just as sweet." I know that she's only teasing me, but not that long ago she meant it when she said those things. Once we would have acted on the desire and returned him to Sylvia sated, if we didn't play with her too.

"He's Heero's best friend," I tell Dorothy, "Chang Wufei."

"He looks positively pissed off," she tells me, "come back to me when you're done, Srdechni," she kisses me on the mouth, "but no fighting in my club."

Wufei is furious. I can see the veins pounding in his throat and forehead and poor Sylvia does not know where to look. I do not back down from his challenge.

"What are you doing?" He sputters as I lead him somewhere quieter. Dorothy is right; this is not the place for this. On the whole I like Wufei, he genuinely means well. He is trying to protect his friend. He obviously feels that I am cheating on you. I'm not. I would never.

I have never betrayed any of my lovers.

And I certainly never would betray you.

"Enjoying the party?" I answer blithely. Blithe indifference is Dorothy's favourite mask, but I can wear it too.

"Did you come here with that," he pauses looking for the word, "that woman?" He is that angry I fear that he might cry.

"Dorothy?" I ask, enjoying this, "she's my sister."

"You kiss your sister like that?" He is dumbstruck and confused.

"Don't you?" I answer.

He decides to change tack. "Does Heero know you're here?" He asks.

I hand him my cell, "call him; he knows where I am, who I'm with and what I'm doing. I wanted him to come with but he didn't want to."

He looks at the cell thinking; perhaps that I am bluffing, but then he backs down. "I'm sorry, Duo," he says, "When I saw you with her I immediately thought the absolute worst."

"You're just looking out for Heero." I tell him, wondering why I am being so understanding when I would be just as easy to tear off his head. The police would ask for the security cameras that I would not appear on. I think it's because I like him and he is trying to protect Heero. They are like brothers. "Come on," I say, "drinks are on me. Let's enjoy this party; Dorothy doesn't have a birthday everyday." I smile, "she'd get old far too fast if she did."

"I owe you my apologies." Wufei says, genuinely contrite as Sylvia rolls her pretty eyes.

"It's nothing, Waffles," I say with a grin, "as long as I get to dance with this lovely lady." I wink at Sylvia, who obviously thinking of the way that I danced with Dorothy, blushes.

"Is this your young man, Mishka?" Treize asks from behind me. Treize is not a big man but he is tall and he has the most amazing presence. He can literally fill a room. He is wearing a silver shirt and black velvet trousers that appear lilac when the light hits them.

"Treize!" I shout, reaching up to kiss him on the mouth as I did Dorothy. "Treize, this is Wufei and his girlfriend Sylvia, they're Heero's friends." He weighs them up like cattle for the slaughter.

"And where is your Heero? I hoped to meet him."

"He begged off." I say looping my arm through his on one side, and Sylvia's on the other.

"Mishka?" Sylvia asks quietly.

"Long story," I answer, "let's get drinks, I'll grab Dorothy and we can sit in her office and make a night of it."

I like Wufei and Sylvia but the hunger must be fed.

You ask politely if I could make myself scarce for an evening. You tell me that you have an important deadline and that I'll be a distraction, but that you'll make it up to me. You even apologise that you are driving me out of my own home. Perhaps I just feel indulgent because with a lingering kiss that tastes of distraction I find myself queuing to see a movie.

As horror movies go I am bored by this attempt to scare me. There is little that I can find frightening about faulty plumbing, but I sit it out, unlike other patrons.

I meet someone on the way out that I know and she and I go for noodles at a nearby restaurant. Knowing that you don't get it often I buy you six bottles of Asahi beer and several boxes of Pocky. Our waiter is used to the long conversations that she shares with you. She tells me to give you a kiss for her, and Yvette, one of Dorothy's barmaids, is amazed by her descriptions of a blue eyed Japanese man who eyes are filled with me.

I make sure that Yvette gets home safely, despite her protestations that she will be fine, then waving money at me for the taxi that I refuse.

Then I go home. I turn the key in the door, my door to my apartment, and I am confronted by Relena. She glares at me as she buttons up her blouse. Her skirt is twisted and it's only later that I am able to process that the rage is not directed at me, but you, and the glowing red palm print that you have left on her face.

Then I am beyond thought. I am fuelled by rage. I scream obscenities at her as I grab her by the arm. I throw her into the hallway and turn on you.

"Mine," I snarl, and push you against the wall hard enough that I must bruise you. I use my hips to pin you in place and I snarl. I attack you with what is one whit less than a killing bite, tasting blood and meat on my tongue. It enrages me even more.

Sometimes I am not as careful of my strength as I should be around you. I tear open your shirt to reveal the line of your breastbone. "Tell me you want this," I snarl, "tell me you're mine."

The words that you say I cannot register, perhaps you answer my demands, perhaps you tell me that you are leaving me, that Relena's pregnant. Perhaps you are telling me no. It doesn't matter; it's just noise to me.

In all of the times we have had sex I have never been as rough or needy as I am now. In the hall of my apartment, with the tang of your blood on my tongue, and the hurt of your betrayal, are all weighing so heavily on my chest.

You could be telling me now and it wouldn't matter. I couldn't hear you.

I turn you as easily as a piece of paper and using saliva as lubricant I start to stretch you. I open you only slightly before plunging in without care of whether I hurt you. I need to dominate you, to mark you, to plunge myself into you to rid you of Relena's taint.

She is so very lucky that I didn't kill her in my rage.

Inside you are hot and tight and maddeningly good. Your skin is soft and hot against my hips. My hand is over your mouth, in case you protest I suppose. I come with a startled cry and it is easier to slide from you, lubricated by semen and blood where I have torn you open.

The hunger takes over at the feel of blood on my skin. The air is rank with it; the mark on your neck is seeping almost as much as your ass. "Mine," I say in some language, I don't know which, but it is most likely French or Italian, then I slip to my knees and press your buttocks apart.

When I suggested this type of foreplay to you before, you told me that the idea nauseated you. I can smell lust and blood, the musk of you and I reach out my tongue and like an animal I lap away the traces of fucking you. I have to support you with my hands; I can feel your knees trying to buckle under the onslaught of my tongue. I can hear you gasping and groaning and I wonder why I never did this before.

You are saying something, but I can't make out what it is drunk as I am on the taste of you, maddened by the very idea that Relena was here, in my home, with you.

I take your erect cock into my mouth without caring that I might hurt you, suckling you roughly but I am slowly calmed by the feel of your hands on my head; not guiding me; not demanding that I pull away, but simply lying there, giving complete acceptance of what I am doing. I dare to look up at you and you stare at the ceiling like a saint in the thralls of a vision with my mouth on you as you spill your passion down my throat.

"I'm sorry," I murmur over and over, trying to make sense of what I have just done, you have collapsed to your knees in front of me and my mouth is against your ear. You are dazed from the orgasm.

Even if you forgive me this trespass -- one thing remains between us. I have fed from you now; my kisses will taste of your blood.

You think that I don't know your secret. You are wrong. I have known for some time what you are. I simply do not care. You cannot comprehend that being you is enough for me. We all have secret histories, even I.

I shall tell you the story of us, because I know you, Duo, you will skirt around the truth, given to flights of fancy and dark depressions, you will flit through time choosing which tale suits your mood at the time. You lack the discipline to tell a story from start to finish. I do not lament this in you; in fact, it is one of the aspects of your personality that I love the most.

Never doubt that, Duo, I do love you. It caught me by surprise, for it was something I never expected for myself, but I do, my fey one, my love, my Duo.

My first encounter with you came as a rumour. It was a whisper that spread through the campus like wildfire. It claimed that you were a reclusive millionaire, and that you had paid the Modern Languages department a king's ransom to teach you at night. I know the truth of it now, but then, all those years ago, you were simply a curiosity. Occasionally one of us, either my friends or me, would spot you across from us and we would point you out to the others. Sometime we would even laugh. Yes, even I.

You must remember at that time I did not know you, other than the boy who looked younger than he was and avoided the sunlight. With the morbid fascination of a bully we discovered, or should I say Matthew discovered, that your major was French and that you were close to completing a doctorate in French literature. It is a detail that never fails to catch me unawares. At first we thought it was a lie, now I know it is true, it is one of many that you have collected under many names. As I said, I know your secrets.

I loved university. My uncle had warned me of the possibility. He is a professional scholar and I had spent my life living in university housing with all its attendant failings and wonders. I knew each lecturer in each subject and a myriad of students served as my baby-sitter teaching me many things in many subjects as took their whims.

Yet University was different when one attended rather than lived there. I could have attended the school where my uncle taught; instead I fought for a scholarship to attend one of similar reputation. It was several hours away and I must admit that I relished the freedom. And I used that freedom in many ways. I tried all manner of things I would never have tried before. I did not stick to many of them, but in trying them I knew why they were not for me. I even spoke to my uncle about you; I remember that. He never misses the opportunity to remind me that I have devoted so much of my life in pursuit of he who was called the phantom de l'universite.

I will never forget the evening that I first caught a true glimpse of you. I was sat in front of the bookstore waiting with Chang, Simon and Relena, whom I was seeing at the time, waiting for Sylvia Noventa to walk past in the hope that Chang would finally say something to the girl that he was fascinated with. You caught my eye, I don't remember why. You were all in black in the warm spring night, your hair falling out of the back of a baseball cap, over the fasteners, and your arms were full of books that you were taking back to the library that was just past me. I remember the moment perfectly clearly. I was drinking coffee from a polystyrene cup, it tasted like wood-stain, and I had already made the comment that I believed that that was what it was. Matthew nudged me and pointed you out, hissing to be surreptitious, though I think he might have worded it to not give it away.

I remember the instant our eyes met it was like an electric charge. I remember that I thought that time had stood still. I remember having to pluck up the courage to smile at you. Behind me Matthew scorned me. He warned me that you were a demon from the nth dimension and that you would swallow my soul. I ignored him. You were so beautiful in the twilight, your hair coming loose as if you had slept on your braid. Your eyes were shadowed. You looked exasperated by the world in general and the books in your arms. There was something ethereal about you, a holiness I had never seen before. It was like a revelation seeing you. Even now, all these years later, I catch a glimpse of that wonder -- what must be the hand of god upon you. Your limbs were androgynous under your black jeans and tee and even your braid did not make you girlish. You looked to be neither male nor female, but wondrous. I wonder, now, if I loved you even then, as much as I do now, with that first glimpse across the courtyard.

My smile was tremulous, I know that, and slow. You had burned your image unto my retinas without even trying. Though I had seen you before, never this close or with such detail. You were like something out of a Cicely Barker print, and I decided that you were the jasmine fairy. One of my uncle's students, in a desperate bid, I think, to make my uncle reconsider her grade, had given me a book of prints of the flower fairies, I was very small at the time, maybe six or seven. I fully expected my uncle to take it from me, but he did not, and many days we would wander around the local gardens with the book in hand, pressing the flowers into the pages. Once we went to a large botanical garden just for the cuttings. He brought me them back when he travelled. I still have the book. I will share it with you. Perhaps you will sit on my knee, as once I sat on my uncle's, and together we will smell the dried flowers that I collected and read the simple poems together. I would like that.

But that day as the sun set behind you I was wonderstruck. I had heard tales of such, academics can be such hopeless romantics, I had spent my life hearing tales of how Alexander felt on first beholding Roxana, or Romeo first catching sight of Juliet across the Capulet feast.

The central courtyard of the university was not the most auspicious place for such a meeting. I expect it should have been outside the Wild Wood as the wind whipped about us, and you would have brown leaves in your hair and would wear brown gossamer, a creature of autumn. Or perhaps I should have been a Norse warrior come upon a temple of Freya as the sun dipped beneath the mountain of Gjegnen and, although you would have a fur draped around your shoulders, your chest would be bare and your hair loose about your shoulders as I stood in the snow behind you. As I write those novels I create to amuse myself it is you I cast as the winsome maiden, it is your face I see on those women. My agent, Stephanie, tells me that all those women would not understand that love if I did not love those women, but she is wrong, it is not those women that I love, it is you.

Yet that spring night, as the sun set behind the line of birches that hid the rear car park, staining the sky with the violet colour of your eyes that I first saw you, tired, careworn and inevitable. Even then there was something other about you, like you shone from within and I smiled at you.

I had no idea then that you would turn and look away.

I know now that it took a supreme effort for you to do that, that it was no simple decision or scorn. I think even then I could see the decision furrow your brows and tighten your lips into a firm line. Behind me I heard Matthew comment that my unused smile must have scared you away, I barely paid attention. I was about to stand up and give chase when Sylvia came out from behind the bank and Chang attempted one of his many attempts, all of which failed, to woo her. That they became lovers at all still surprises me as he constantly lost his tongue before her. Even now, she assures me with the fondest smile you could imagine, he still does. That is how I know it is love between them. Between us, it was more complicated.

I don't remember much of my mother, a warmth, her shadow in a kitchen my uncle assures me was hers, but one thing I do remember clearly, reciting it over and over, were the words that she left me in her journal. Love, she said, was the colour of blood. The other fragment that I read over and over, as a small boy in my uncle's university home, with the brown striped curtains flapping in the afternoon, and my cartoon patterned bedspread pulled up over my knees was on the day that she decided to marry my father "I choose love, do what you will." Who she challenged in that way I still do not know, perhaps the fictitious character to which the volume was addressed.

As a boy, scuff kneed and wild, I did not understand such proclamations. I was home schooled and I thought, with the naiveté of a small boy, that the lack was a gap in my education. Now I am older, and it is only in your presence that I understand. I studied the art of written love to improve my own writing, but it was only in your presence I came to understand the vagaries my mother spoke of. She was right. Love is the colour of blood.

Over the next few weeks you returned to your cognomen of the university ghost. As I struggled through my literature lectures, wrestling with Shakespeare's question "which is sweeter, love or its loss?" My mind was focused on many varied trains of thought. I wondered how I could understand such a question if I had never loved, and, in the wake of the vision that you seemed to me that night in the courtyard, I knew that I had never loved. I wondered how I could understand such a question when I could not remember loss. My parents died when I was very small, and despite teenage arguments to the contrary I was very close to my uncle. I wondered what men must feel to ask such a question, and the broad and almost comical face of the professor as he sucked on his pen, a wet slurping sound like a drowning Darth Vader, asking the question.

I considered the upcoming Rugby match against the university's bitterest rivals. Matthew had spoken of nothing else for weeks, it was hard to avoid the topic, in fact, and it did cross my mind.

But what kept me up at night was you. At first the daydreams were erotic, I was not easily attracted, so my attraction to you surprised me. I could not help but linger on the imagined texture of your skin, and the soft sugar dusting of the faintly honey gold hairs on the tops of your thighs.

In those weeks I learnt a lot about unrequited desire and my own preferences. Without any evidence to the contrary I had assumed that I was straight, I had never felt a strong attraction to anyone, male or female, and had guessed, incorrectly it turned out, that I was one of the majority.

To this day, I have only ever desired you.

I discovered which parts of you stirred parts of my anatomy, which previously, had only reacted to manual stimuli; the curve of your waist, obscured by a loose black polo shirt tucked into tight black jeans; the flash of socked ankle between the hem of your jeans and your sneakers; the open cradle of your arms holding the books to your chest; the slight dimple of your chin. Your lips were a madness I had not pictured.

I found myself visiting Matthew, sitting on the beanbag chair in front of his television, picking at random at the duct tape holding in the contents and imagining the juncture of your thighs. I could not help it, I imagined your erect cock, I imagined you stroking your erect cock and it was only good fortune that I did not spill myself across the felt of Matthew's chair.

If Chang could have suspected the exact cause of my distress I think, in retrospect, he might have advised a different course of action, but he had managed a whole sentence to Sylvia in their shared seminar and was feeling magnanimous. "You're lovesick," he told me with a sparkle in his eye that suggested perhaps a sentence was not all Sylvia had given him, "chase down the object of your affection, be a man about it." I remember thinking he was very wise for his age, "the worst that they can say is no."

So I decided that I would find you out and that I would understand why it was that you walked away from my shy smile.

It soon became apparent, that despite your infamy about campus, no one knew you. There were a few who mumbled about drunken one-night stands, or at least they assumed they were, they didn't really remember. So I turned to those rumours that occurred again and again. With the determination of a Mountie I went to the Modern Languages department, a fact that meant I had to sign up for starter French (a detail I still consider a complete waste of my time, after successfully mangling enchanter de faire votre connaissance for the umpteenth time Madame Vogle decided I couldn't be taught). I did it to discover your name. I sidled up to all the French tutors, even those who believed I was an uncultured poltroon for my ability to speak a language I never had the heart to tell them I spoke fluently.

It was Herr Noble, head of German, who eventually revealed your identity to me. "Duo Maxwell," he shouted it across the hall in response to a question regarding the details of his private lesson. I remember sitting there in the hallway reading the textbook for an elective I didn't need and resisting the urge to crow in delight. From there it was simple to find you. I followed Herr Noble across the campus, and watched which of the self contained flats he went to. I watched you open the door with a smile for him. It was a welcoming smile, for the foul smelling, oily little man.

It took me three days to pluck up the courage. Twice I stood frozen in front of your door, terrified of what I would do or say if you opened the door. The third time it was the rain that made my decision. I was soaked and cold, the spring wind had turned chill. The light through the glass panel of your door looked warm and inviting. I rang the doorbell before I realised what I was doing.

You opened the door in a pair of oversized jeans and an RPD tee that had seen better days. Your braid was looser than I had seen it. You looked to me like water to a dying man. At first you turned, without inviting me in or closing the door and walked the few steps to a closet just outside the hall. You returned with a towel as I stepped into the small tiled area inside the door, out of the wind and the rain.

At that time I had no comprehension of what I wanted from you, or what I wanted to say. I didn't know whether I was lust wracked or angry. I was confused and angry. "You've been avoiding me." I said, as I stepped forward then you stepped back, away from me, "I want to know why."

You asked me how I found you; I was in too much rage to answer there and then. Later I would recognise the rage for thwarted desire, but then I thought I was angry. I don't remember what I said in response, but I do remember walking forward and kissing you, pressing you against the wall. I remember a momentary worry that I had gone too far, that I had forced you, then I realised that your tongue was in my mouth and such concerns left me.

You muttered something about the bedroom but we never made it that far, thrusting against each other, our hands in each other's pants as we came grunting to each other's palms.

That night we spent learning the pattern of each other's bodies: the twinned moles that you have between inner thigh and scrotum; the place at the back of your knees that is tickled by any touch; the violet striations in your irises; the creases in your lips. I learnt that night, which parts I liked to touch and be touched and I fell asleep, buried in your tightness. Come dawn we did it again, and again and again.

I missed my lectures that day and the next. I ate peanut butter from your fingers, drank a rich Merlot from your lips. We laughed with the abandon of youth and love. I think, even then, in those first days, we knew that it was forever.

I remember the first time I took your erection in my mouth. I had confessed my utter lack of knowledge in such an area and despite your protests that I didn't have to I discovered, with some surprise, that I wanted too. The sensations of your mouth upon mine had driven me half wild and I wished to share that, and also to know how it felt. I had given you a shaky grin and said that if I had no care for it then I certainly would not do it again. I remember that you laughed and it went straight to my balls. At first I was tentative. Your skin was hot, almost feverish, and slightly salty; you smelt of soap and musk, and something else. I nibbled very gently on your foreskin, used his tongue to push it back, experimenting as much as playing, determined to discover what you would like the most. With one hand wrapped around the root of your cock, the other on your thigh, to hold you still, I slowly took it into my mouth, resting it on the cushion of my tongue. I kept going, feeding it in little by little, breathing hard through my nose, until the head of your cock touched the back of his throat and I choked a little. You seemed content with that, not wanting to go any further, being kind, probably. I wanted more.

Soon I was sliding it in and out of my mouth, pausing from time to time to lave my tongue over the head. I remember that I was astounded at how good it tasted, and so absorbed in the task I didn't notice your hands on my head. I ventured fingers between your thighs and beneath your balls to stroke and tickle, rewarded instantly with a groan and a flex of your hips.

You tried to pull back, tugging gently on my hair, but I didn't care what it tasted like, because it was you. As it was, I think I caught you unawares and the taste was like that of raw shellfish. I continued to suckle you gently until I was certain you were done, and then I swallowed.

I remember being gratified that first time, as if you had given me a great gift. I was later to learn that the gift I received was your affection and not your seminal fluid.

Over the next two years we spent flitting between each other's houses. I met your friends, few as they were, and introduced you to mine, though I know that you despise Matthew and consider Relena as a rival of sorts. Where the two of you got such an idea I cannot guess, for as soon as I met you she became nothing more than a friend.

We became sophisticated adults although I had started to notice, even then, that you looked a very young eighteen. It was my first guess that you were different, I grew up, changed, and you did not.

Your family you kept a mystery from me, the mysterious sister Dorothy and the brother that sent you long letters in Russian that you would sit and laugh at. I felt excluded from that part of your life because you excluded me, not because your brother wrote those letters in a language I did not understand, but because you claimed such secrets were important.

You were wrong.

Matthew would joke that you were a creature of the night and more than once, listening to his inane jokes I wondered why I kept in touch with him at all, or Simon and his desperate attempts to set me up on dates with what he considered suitable girls in a desperate attempt to see me as happily married as he was. Sylvia and Chang I am glad to share my life with, their counsel is often gentle and kind, and through it all I have you -- my Duo, mine. I know all your secrets now. There is little you can hide from me.

Like you, I don't remember my parents. I was three when they died, however I grew up in their memory with my uncle determined that I would know them as best as he could. So there are no secrets between us, I will tell you everything.

My mother was a brilliant linguist, like my uncle. She was tall and beautiful; her picture still hangs in the parlour of his small house. She had the same eyes and hair as me, but her face was narrower than mine. She was envied for being so brilliant and so lovely. Her name was Jennifer. She was approached by Tokyo University to help them with a large project translating Linear A and B, which was her speciality and offered tenure. So with a smile and a laugh she went. In her place, so would have I.

My father was a mathematician who also worked at Tokyo University, working, according to my uncle, on Goldbach's conjecture. He was a lot smaller than her and h ad a stutter in her presence. From the first moment he saw her he adored her. They were a good match, I think, at first, he was brilliant and she was talented. But brilliance and talent do not good bedfellows make. They had a whirlwind romance and were married within a year and she became Jennifer Yuy, beloved wife of Hideo Yuy.

After a year it was clear to all involved that they were drifting apart. Her job meant constant travel -- to other universities; to dig sites in Europe; to museums all over the world, and he stayed in Tokyo and worked on a problem he couldn't solve. What glories they had as a couple were really hers.

My uncle says that they would have divorced if my mother had not discovered that she was pregnant.

They tried. She brought her work home to their Akihibara house and he worked very long hours. If there were other women my uncle did not know it. I was born in July, very obviously his son. Liking the double irony my mother called me Heero, although I am told my mother wanted another name for me, something more auspicious.

I think, though because my uncle was not present this is mostly guesswork, that they stayed together because of me. My mother was not a typical Japanese wife; she was not afraid to shout at her husband or refuse to cook for him. And she hired a girl, Kikuko, who I don't remember at all, to be my nurse. She was a kind woman, my mother, but ill-suited for parenthood.

I was left with Kikuko one day whilst they drove to the university. It was raining heavily and I had not long turned three. The police report said that they had been seen arguing, that my father lost control of the car when a car that had skidded in the rain shunted them from behind. The car rolled, and they were both pronounced dead at the scene.

I spent the following month or so with my paternal grandparents whilst my paternal family fought over me and the inheritance that I represented. My mother had clearly left my care to my uncle but at the same time my father had left everything they owned to me. So whoever took me in took over their house and their money.

My uncle, unable to come being at a dig in Libya at the time, sent in his stead a proxy, Odin Lowe -- head of Modern languages, who had been calling at Tokyo University anyway. He brought with him a sheaf of documents in which my uncle, as legal guardian, claimed his right to raise me and had sent him to pick me up.

Odin Lowe was probably the worst person to send. My uncle laughs and says that it might have worked out better if he'd sent a trained monkey with the papers. He was a confirmed bachelor with a thirty a day habit who didn't really get on with people. He earned most of his money as a translator for esoteric texts and had discovered a passion for Japanese horror novels. He had no experience with children.

But for six months I was his charge. All I remember of that time is the persistent smell of tobacco and macaroni cheese. I didn't speak a word of English and he didn't speak a word of Japanese to me. He was kind to me, in his way, just inept. Rather than hire a babysitter to watch over me he took me with him to his lectures and photos of him show me as a chubby toddler playing with bricks at his feet. His students used to sneak me candy, but more than once he left me at the lecture hall for one of the other professors, or a student, to walk me back, usually with some treat in hand.

I was a reticent child, probably because no one bothered to see if I spoke their language.

When my uncle returned from Libya he did so with his research partner, Sally Po, who was to become the most important woman in my life.

My uncle was, like Odin Lowe, a confirmed bachelor of advanced years, meaning that he never found a significant other that could come close to rivalling his studies. Sally, on the other hand, had a myriad of admirers, yet when the day after their return she called around with some paperwork and I opened the door she threw them all away.

Sally became mother, nurse, muse, aunt and goddess to me. She was shorter than my uncle but with wide Asian features and honey blonde hair and grey eyes. She went from being his research partner to practically being his wife. She made sure he ate, because she made sure I did. It was Sally that took me shopping for new clothes, Sally who taught me English, and Sally who bought me toys. She told me, once, when I was about eight, that she had several brothers and sisters, but I never met them.

I still spent time with Odin Lowe, who despite his complete ineptitude, had become quite fond of me, and when I showed an aptitude he would laugh, bent over -- wheezing, that I was just like my mother. None of them ever mentioned my father. I grew up with my uncle in my mother's shadow. I grew up with the letters that she had sent him from Tokyo, her journals, all of which he had gathered for me as a keepsake, and her photos on the mantle. Sometimes I resented her for her brilliance, but mostly I resented that I never got to experience it. It was Sally that I loved, my mother was a shadowy presence that I didn't really understand; other people loved her, not me.

At age eleven I decided that I would be an author. It was something that neither of my parents would have considered, and something I possibly never would have considered for myself if not for my strange childhood. I did not attend public school, instead Sally, my uncle and a plethora of professors, home schooled me and everything I attempted I was encouraged at.

When I told my uncle, with the self-importance of a child of eleven, I wanted to be a writer he said okay and took me shopping for a typewriter and bought me my first journal. He did nothing to prevent me from achieving any of my dreams.

When I attended university I expected to carry the ghost of my mother and her brilliance with me. Instead it was my father who waited there for me. Lecturers asked me why I did literature and history instead of pure mathematics like my father. More than once I considered leaving, I had sold several short stories by this point and had an agent interested, but then I saw you.

I decided in that instant, outside of the bookshop and library on that balmy spring night, that I no longer existed in the shadows of my parents; in that brief instant in your violet gaze I became myself.

I phoned Sally that night to tell her of the young man who captivated me so, she laughed warmly and reminded me that I had, at the age of five, made her promise to wait till I grew up to marry me. She was dead two months later of an aggressive illness she kept secret to the very end. It was in your arms I found solace.

I think that was one of the reasons that I found you that night with Walker so distressing. You were the first person, other than Sally, to see through my parents to me. Then Walker just opened the door and ushered me in. For the first time I was welcomed into your family.

I took other opportunities to meet Walker without your knowledge because he understood the secrets that you kept from me. He answered questions that I don't believe for an instant that you would answer. There was a kind of complicity between Walker and myself, because I never told him that I didn't know, and I took advantage of the fact that you, or Dorothy, never told him just how much you wanted me to know. Then Dorothy arranged for the two of us to meet.

Chang had told me of your sister. He had told me that she was beautiful but as cold and hard as ice. He told me that she was feared, and her business was run ruthlessly. He told me to beware her, because although he considered you a kitten, she was a panther, and she would not hesitate to devour me whole.

I told you that I had arranged a dinner with Stephanie, my agent, but instead I met Dorothy. Although I do not like lying to you I knew that you would prevent our meeting.

I must admit that she was not what I expected. You introduced Dorothy as your sister so I expected you to look like her. You do not. There is a softness to your limbs that makes you look younger than you are, Dorothy lacks that. She exudes strength and I watched every man in that restaurant glare at me for being with her. She was wearing a very elegant black suit with a skirt that barely covered her ass and black stilettos without stockings. Her hair is a natural rich blonde and her eyes are like chips of ice. She has a turn to her mouth that is cruel and mocking, yet when she laughed I felt it in my balls. She has that kind of power over men. The waiters fell over themselves to keep her vodka topped up ad to make sure that we had enough breadsticks. The chef came out to the table to check that everything was okay. It is something I never get with you.

She is incredibly beautiful but calculating. She weighed me up like a prize cow and told me in no uncertain terms that if I hurt you in any way that she would make sure that they never found my corpse, or at least not enough to identify me. I have heard that threat before, but never believed it from anyone else.

She wanted me that you were fragile, and that it meant little to her if being stuck with you until my dying breath would make me unhappy if it was what you wanted. Walker had told me that she was very protective of you, and nonetheless I expected she would be like you. She is not. If you were not both so adamant that you were related I would doubt it, you are both so different. I do not know whether I feared her as absolutely as she wanted me to, but nonetheless I did fear her. Would she have killed me and dismembered my corpse, absolutely.

I respected her and I spent most of the dinner convincing her of the sincerity of my intentions towards you. It was heartening to me that she was so devoted to you because I know how much she means to you. I think I might have been upset if she had not mentioned you at all. She told me honestly that she had hired someone to check me out without your knowledge and that she was relieved to discover nothing untoward in my history. "Mishka is my baby brother, my srdechni, and he has been my anchor for as long as I have been alive, the gap in our ages is negligible. I asked Walker to arrange this meeting so that you know just how important and vulnerable my beloved Mishka is."

I told her the absolute truth -- that I would sooner cut off my own arm than hurt you. I don't know why I told her, but I told her that I had proposed, several times in fact, to you and that you kept refusing me. She tossed back her long hair, hair longer than fashion dictates, held back from her face by a ribbon, and she laughed and called you a silly Mishka. She asked me to meet her again. She wanted to know what it was that made you love me and I was glad to know that she believed that you loved me. Between Chang and Dorothy I found myself more at peace about loving you than I ever did. Dorothy had a soft spot for theatre and an uncanny ability to get backstage. Despite how she had frightened me on our first meeting I quickly found that I liked spending time with her. Her wit was caustic but perfectly timed. She observed things wittily that others overlooked, and Walker would smile at her indulgently. I told you that I was spending time with him and you would just smile at me. You liked that I spent time with him; Dorothy suggested that it might alleviate some of the guilt you felt at keeping secrets from me.

Little did you know that they told me everything.

Dorothy, one night, as she bid me farewell she kissed me on the cheek and for the first time I smelt that same distinctive odour that I had assumed was part of your cologne, and I realised that all those nights that you returned to me with that smell in your hair and on your skin what you had done. It is one thing to be told what you are; it is quite another to have it presented to you. There are those who find it attractive to be with one of your kind without knowing what it means. However once I smelt that copper on Dorothy I was frightened.

God alone knows what you thought for that week when I was cold to you. Then I had one of those moments of revelation, I believe they call it a damascene conversion. You had not changed. It does not sound like the sort of revelation that could change a person's perspective but it overwhelmed me. You were who you had always been.

It woke me up in the middle of the morning. I had changed my sleeping hours to better match yours, a fact that amused Dorothy no end, but I woke and phoned Walker to tell him what I had realised, and staid, plain Walker laughed at me. He woke up Dorothy to tell her. He assured me that she was laughing too.

"Of course," Walker told me, "He is what he is, you know that does not change it. Treize will want to meet you now."

And so I arranged to meet your brother.

The three of you are a strange mix, you are sad, wistful and soft; Dorothy is hard and demanding. She looks as if she was previously the warrior queen of an ancient country. Yet Treize is handsome and charismatic. He dominates a room. Walker told me that Treize had crumbled nations and that if it offended him he would kill me. Then he smiled and told me that it took an awful look to offend him,

He was annoyed when I met him. Catherine was fussing over him. He had had a hair cut that evening and now he could not get his hair to behave and having Catherine flitting about him was not easing his temper. I was terrified that he would not like me, but he waved her away when he saw me. For the first time I understood that he was a politician. You make people love you; Dorothy makes men desire her; but Treize makes people follow him.

He smiled at me and I honestly felt like I was the centre of his universe, the entire room seemed to vanish on his smile. He was not handsome in the way that you are; or beautiful like Dorothy. In fact if not for his amazing charisma he would be ignored in a room full of people. But there is something about him that makes him the centre of attention. Catherine sat at his feet like a pet, and Dorothy sat at his other ankle and I knew that he was the centre of the universe that was your family.

Treize told me everything, all the things Dorothy feared to tell me. He told me the reason for your secrets. He told me that you were fragile. He told me that you were beloved and that more than anything I had to understand that it was all to protect you. Like Dorothy before him he told me that if I hurt you that he would kill me, and again I believed him.

Overall I think it's heartening that they would go so far to protect you from heartache. It must be wondrous to be so loved. In those moments stood before him, I wanted, more than anything to be part of your family, to be so loved. Yet Treize made it clear, the only one who could make that decision was you.

As I lie in this cooling water I suppose that my great lament is that I had no great love. I love you, do not ever question that, but I saw Milliardo kill himself rather than live without Lucrezia. I saw Trois take a sword to the gut to defend Cat. I grew up ensconced between those loves, those fairy tale loves.

Did you know Trois once sacked a city to liberate Cat on just a glance in a window?

Milliardo chased down a poetess to learn the best words to say to his wife.

Treize built a palace around where Une sleeps.

Yet I, like Dorothy, when faced with such a love was found lacking. Was Alejandro Dorothy's one and only? I don't know. What I do know is how changed in the wake of it she became.

I am sorry, love, because I obviously do not love you enough to withstand this. I am weak. I cannot help myself. I would sooner face the fire of the sun than yell you the truth knowing that I must then kill you. No more than Hilde could you withstand the truth of what I am, and I must then either feed of you to satiation or snap your neck.

It will be easier to leave you.

I am terrified.

The water is cold. The sun will warm it soon enough.

I can't stop crying.

This has gone on too long.

It will be easier to leave you alone, but alive, than to carry with me the weight of your murder.

I will leave first, your kind always leaves me behind, only Dorothy and Treize have never left and to them I will return.

I shall return home, to Koblensk, to Treize, and in a hundred years or thereabouts, I will give myself leave to remember you.

I splash water on my face, my hair loose in the bath and tell myself over and over not to think about you, to forget you, that that will be best. I tell myself that I should have taken you for a pet, fed on you and fucked you, but nevertheless you felt like the other half of my soul.

I'm sorry, love, I cannot bear this.

Following the Day of Fire Dorothy and I were listless. Treize had locked himself away from us in his mourning. He had lost more than we, because he had known them longer, and what were mother and brother to us were the other aspects of his soul.

We wandered Europe as rootless nobles. Sometimes we were brother and sister on a progress through the fabled cities of the continent, sometimes husband and wife on our honeymoon. We were taken into mansions all over and in them I remembered Hilde, or something would remind Dorothy of Alejandro. For those thirty years we were truly and utterly unhappy. We took long term lover other than the other. We fed at will from prostitutes from the nearby towns. We were gentlemen abroad, travelling on whichever stage took our fancy.

To tell it now it sounds like we spent those three decades in the midst of a deep depression. This was not true. There were golden times in those dark years as we learned to live on our own, without Treize and his political backing. It was a strange time; the Napoleonic wars were causing havoc but did little to interrupt tourism, in fact many nobles joined up to see the continent for free. It was also cold, 1815 was a year without summer, which Dorothy and I considered truly fitting, and we found ourselves wintered just outside Lake Geneva.

We were creatures of society. We knew no other life. It is said that a doomed animal will return again and again to what it knows, even at the cost of its life.

So when we heard of an English nobleman living not ten miles from the villa we rented we took it upon ourselves to invite his household for supper. There were many reasons that we did it. We were lonely and conversation starved and sometimes it's nice to talk about new books and fashions and other vagaries. We were children, remember, sent out into the world we were never taught to deal with on our own. We made mistakes. That winter in Geneva we made a terrible mistake.

The English lord is still known as much by reputation as by achievement, then he was just a drunkard sent from England for his various vicissitudes With him he brought his doctor, to whom I once confessed too much, a friend, and two young girls of questionable morality. We fit in at once.

There was much merriment and absinthe passed around that winter that never ended.

With an irony that I know would amuse you -- we gave our name as Ruthven.

You must remember that there was a great dearth of information in those days, the sciences were fledgling arts that none took particularly seriously, and even our kind were yet to become famous. That changed four winters after in relation of those winter nights. In places like Carpathia we were feared, but not us as we are, but how we had, over the centuries, presented ourselves. Old ones like Gebieter and Treize had spent a long time building a mythos to give us the peace in which to live as we wished. Then we thought that that would never change. It was the arrogance of youth

There is saying in Prague, that absinthe makes the tart grow fonder, and how true it proved in that dread winter in Geneva.

Of course it was not the first time that either of us had had absinthe, but it was the first time that we mixed it with opium.

For the most part we are immune to the wiles of drugs, absinthe has the most charming ability to give us the giggles, it is something to see to see Treize doubled over, holding his sides, laughing at nothing. Of course it has been a long time since he has taken from the green fairy. It was stronger then than what they sell now, and more bitter, and more dangerous, and opium they have refined into heroin, but we sat there those nights, in the light of the fire breathing opium smoke and quaffing absinthe like water. It is a wonder, in retrospect, that the English nobleman and his household even made it out alive.

I know you know the rubrics of what happened that winter that seemed to never end. It is a tale they tell children, how they gathered around after dinner to tell each other German ghost stories and what came of it that night.

Of course the myth is much more pleasant than the truth.

If you try to imagine the period there is a Jane Austen innocence to it, it comes to mind as a period of long walks in perfect gardens and charming conversations over china black tea and pastries. You imagine those people wandering from ball to parlour in their desperate attempts to talk to each other. You see their mothers make fools of themselves to catch them a perfect spouse. You mouth the words "it is a truth universally accepted that a young man in possession of a great fortune must be in want of a wife." You read their perfectly polite letters and create for yourself an age of gentility that never really existed. Yet I have spoken to you of the Restoration, a period of time only slightly before, and that was accurate. I wonder when that age was repainted as being so bloodless.

It was a lusty age, of gin palaces and opium dens, the dresses were designed in such a way to maximise the flesh on display at the bosom of young girls, their hair dressed to show their décolletage to best advantage, and they wore lace dipped in perfume in order to win the lusts of men. Often times it was many girls to a bed and a gentleman was expected to love all of them.

It considered itself the age of free love, it was not the first, nor would it be the last, but it made the 1960's pale in comparison, and little did Dorothy and I know exactly what we had welcomed into our home.

When you learned that my English reading skills were not to be desired I was ashamed, I learned English quite late in life and never needed it really. At court in places like London, like everywhere else, we spoke Latin. When I was born there was an emperor in the east, he ruled the world, but I never got the chance to meet him. Treize called him a dour soul, but he said something that genuinely amused me, and we took it to our hearts. "I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse." English was the language of scientists, and we had no truck with that. I came to speak English but no one ever bothered to teach me how to read it. I read French and German however so I can oft-times bluff my way out of trouble.

So when it came to your knowledge that although I was fluent in most European languages and most Asian ones that I could not read English you lamented only the books that I had not read. Most you could find for me in languages I could read, and thereby expected me to read them and to take the same love of literature that you had in my daily life, the rest you bought me on tape. Yet you couldn't understand what it was that amused me so about Pride and Prejudice, especially the relationship between Mr Darcy and Mr Bingley. You just shook your head and said that that was not how it was meant to be read. Then you just smiled at me, indulging me in my strangeness, but the irony was that I had known Mr Darcy's and I had known Mr Bingley's and I still say I was right.

But I was telling you about the never-ending winter of 1815. As I said we were almost completely trapped in the villa by the foul weather so we found ourselves doing our best to amuse ourselves. Like Dorothy and I our guests slept most of the day to socialise all night.

Half of the time the ladies did not even bother with their outer dresses and wandered around in cotton chemises that they had bought in Italy with their hair unbound. They made free with their affection and their bodies, they did not care if it was either of the English noblemen, the doctor, Dorothy, myself, or each other. If there was pleasure to be had they took it.

There are few sights in this world that can compare to that of two beautiful women kissing.

I sketched the image in the nobleman's diary.

Years later Thomas More burned that diary because he feared it ruined the reputation of his friend. If he had not, then Dorothy and I would have.

Too many of our secrets were held within those pages.

I wonder how it would hurt you, to study those poems, to hear those words and know that I had been in his bed, on more than one occasion and with more than one other person. I performed most of my arts on him that winter, and he dutifully wrote them all down.

What it was that Thomas More suspected on George's death, I do not know, but for his silence we were grateful.

That night it was raining heavily, the sky had opened up and the water was sheeting down in torrents. We had gathered around the fire with plates of cheese, crackers and German sweet meats. We had been drinking absinthe since dusk, hours before.

"It is a night for ghost stories," the doctor, John, said, and started to read to us the stultified tales of a German Phantasmagoria.

I remember Dorothy cast her head back and laughed, "Is that the best you can do to scare us?" She asked, "I bet each and every one of you that I can tell a tale more frightening than any you can consider, come srdechni," she said offering her hand to me, "we shall retire to our bed and come the dusk tomorrow we shall tell you a story to chill the blood."

We retired to bed and with our blood fired by absinthe we pleasured each other till past dawn.

The next night they told us the tales that they had created. They were to become famous in their own right, but only after we told the tale that we did.

George wrote these words with no idea of how they would come to haunt him: Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent; Then ghastly haunt thy native place, And suck the blood of all thy race; There from thy daughter, sister, wife, At midnight drain the stream of life; Yet loathe the banquet which perforce Must feed thy livid living corse

Rather than the tale of Gebieter I once told you, we told the tale of Justine Moritz.

She had been a girl of middling education in a town far from Geneva who had been hired as a governess to a large family who had recently adopted a daughter. The child's name was Allegra. Justine was told that she would be well paid but she must bear in mind that the family kept odd hours, though the child would not, that she would spend most of her time alone. The pay was incredibly generous so she accepted the position and moved to the town of Csejthe where the family were living with the Countess Bathory who they knew well.

The Countess Bathory was, at that point, in her early forties and she spent a lot of time with the family whom Justine feared. The child, Allegra, however was beautiful and playful and had no ill bones in her body.

Then one night, as Justine slept in her bed, with the child beside her, she heard the first of the screaming. She crept from her bed and climbed slowly down the stairs to the basement where she saw the countess sit with her legs splayed and another woman with her face between her thighs. If this was not shock enough for Justine then imagine her face when she realized that the woman she had interrupted was none other than her employer. That was not the least of what was in the room.

The walls were covered in iron, in a grid, and at the intersection of each grid was a spike. Affixed to each set of spikes, in a crucifixion pattern, was a series of young girls, each about the same age as Justine herself.

They were hung in such a way that their bodies were used as a siphon for the blood that they lost. It was gathered in long funnels that ran around the room where it was decanted by an old woman in bottles. Through it all her employer and the Countess Bathory carried on with what they were doing, if anything, delighting in the pain of the girls around them. They were getting a sexual pleasure from the pain of the girls around them, and from Justine watching them.

Then on some prearranged signal her employer moved away and a large cage was winched into place over the countess. Inside was a young girl. She was naked. From a lit brazier Justine's employer pulled out one of many metal rods. These were used to poke at the girl, forcing her unto the spikes that lined the cage so that she bled and her blood fell on the Countess Bathory who laughed and laughed at the spectacle, smearing the blood over her skin and into her mons.

Justine crept away, terrified but unsure what to do. She went to the small room that she shared with her charge and locked the door tight, determined to take the child away come morning.

She never got the chance.

The Countess' men broke down the door and she was taken to the room under the castle where by her wrists she was fixed to the wall with the spikes and her employer used a rather cunning device to bleed her. It was a whip with three tails and at the ends of which were metal claws designed to rip into the flesh.

Dorothy did not finish her tale that night, John who was a rude and arrogant man at the best of times cut her off but the seeds were sewn of another tale of another Justine Moritz and another terrible device.

Three tales were told that night, two of Justine Moritz, and one of Lord Ruthven. But of course, you know that.

I waver between surprise and horror as you open the door. You are well protected against the winter cold, but the ruddy health of your cheeks suggests that you ran up the stairs to me. I am half convinced that I am hallucinating you.

Your eyes linger on the swell of my breastbone, limned as it is with water and electric light. I was too much of a coward to do this in the dark. Then to my hands where they float in the water. "Baka," you mumble and for the first time I genuinely believe you are there. Suddenly the slashes on my forearms begin to burn. Your gaze feels like the weight of the sun. You kick off your shoes, slide off your coat and scarf and climb into the bath with me fully dressed. You sit in the cold water with me, fully dressed, and carefully reveal my wrists to your inspection. Lying in the water for the time that they have has made the gashes pursed, the skin bloodless; the meat ragged. Nonetheless you lift my wrists to your chilled lips and kiss them. Your diligent tongue carefully laves each wound. "Baka," you murmur again and then pull me forward to rest against your chest. I can feel your heart beating against my skin, it is like a war-drum, loud and irregular betraying your panic though your exterior is calm. Resting my head in the curve of your neck with the palm of your hand you murmur what sounds like feed.

Drugged by hunger and the smell of you, half convinced it is one last fever dream before I bleed out I open my mouth and bite down hard on your carotid artery.

Arterial blood is a bright red, rich as it is with oxygen and nutrients. It is softer, if that makes sense, than it's purplish counterpart.

It is the splash of blood that makes me accept that you are really here, in this bath with me. I try to pull away but your palm holds me in place as the blood spurts into my mouth, and I have no choice but to take my fill.

After long minutes where I waver between pleasure and pain, the pink flush returns to my skin that you release me. The bite mark is bloodless, as whatever enzyme in my saliva does it's job ad the bleeding slows and then stops. I can see that you are weakened whilst your gift has made me strong.

Yet it is you who climbs out of the bath first, you who peels off the heavy winter clothes, sodden with cold water and my blood, to wrap a towel about your slim hips. It is you who lifts out a second towel for me and you who lifts me out of the water to carry me to our bed.

You lay me down on the crisp white sheets, mindless of the bloody bathwater that will ruin them, and then you lie down next to me. Though the room is icy cold your breath is hot. You pull the soft weight of the eiderdown over us and nestle your head into the curve of my neck in a bloodless parody of what just passed between us.

"You can tell me, Duo," you say to my skin, and the night. The sound is a breathy whisper into the eiderdown, "You can tell me everything."

And it is like a great weight has been lifted off me with those words, some ancient prohibition I subscribed to without knowing what it meant, and I tell you.

I watch carefully the expression on your face, it slips from fond to amused, and then into the stony stoicism that I recognise as love in you.

I tell you about my family, about Treize and Dorothy, about Milliardo and Lucrezia, about Trois and Cat and Une who was mother to us all. I tell you about Alejandro and Mariemaia. I tell you about Hilde and Father Maxwell. I tell you about Dermail and the Day of Fire. I tell you about those men I loved a little over the centuries, of Nicky Hilliard, of Gaston DeFoix, of John Wilmot and George Gordon. I tell you of things I had forgotten, of works created in my honour; of evenings spent listening to Trois and Cat play. I tell you of the golden times, arguing with poets in salons all over the known world. I tell you of the dark times, of hunting university campuses and before it churches. I tell you about things that I thought I had forgotten, about the boy Treize found to be my childhood friend, stolen by the plague that turned me too soon. I tell you that I cannot remember his name.

I tell you about the kingdoms we shaped in our image, the countries that worshipped us like gods, and then travelling through America without a cent, reduced to begging for alms.

Throughout it all you listen intently.

Then when I am done, freed of the terrible burden of secrets that I have kept from you I see you smile at me. "Tell me," Your mouth, past shivering but drowsy from the blood loss and with that I release the final burden, I tell you what I am.

I tell you of my weakness.

I tell you of my fear.

I tell you that I am a coward and that I will understand if you want to leave me, that if you will swear to secrecy I will believe you and not hunt you down.

You laugh; it is a rich throaty sound in the darkness.

I can see amusement playing about your eyes, the corners of your mouth are quirked up and the tips of your fingers are playing with a lock of hair by my ear.

"Daisuke da," you say calmly, "Zutto." You reach forwards and kiss me gently; there is no lust in your eyes, only love. "I will never leave you, Duo, ever."

I am silenced by the tone of your voice. There is no shock, no horror. There is only the calm acceptance. You look at me the same way that you looked at me that first night all those years ago.

"I've known for over a year." You say and I am convinced that I am dreaming again, "I pieced the clues together long since and then I convinced Walker that I knew more than I did and he told me everything thinking I already knew. I couldn't care less what you are, Duo, because I love who you are." Your kiss is as sweet as clover honey, and as lingering. "Now you know that I know, will you marry me?"

"But, Heero," I find myself saying almost against my will, "Don't you understand, you will grow old and I won't. You will die and I won't. You will come to resent that, your kind always do." I hate being the voice of reason, but someone has to be.

"Then make me one of you. If it is what I must do to be with you I will do it gladly. I would happily walk into hell to be with you, I might curse you for a fool every step of the way, but I'd do it in a heartbeat."

"I know," I tell you, I cannot meet your gaze. You burn like the sun. "But you don't know what you're asking for. You don't know what we are."

Your answer is eloquent in its simplicity. "Then show me."

And God help me, I do.

I honestly thought that the beast in me would cause you to recoil, to pull away from me. I looked carefully for the signs of horror that I had seen on Hilde's face as she slipped into lunacy, or the dread realisations of faith that I saw on father Maxwell's. I saw none of that.

I have never seen the beast rise in me, but I have seen it in others. I have seen the black marks like Maori tattoos on Dorothy's face when the beast takes over her rage. I have seen the shifting angles of Treize's face shift him into something diabolic and beautiful. I know what the transformation does to me, but thanks to our unique nature I have never seen it.

"You can't change the sadness in your eyes," you tell me and your voice is as soft as the fingertips on my jaw, "You are you, Duo, with all that that entails."

I am still terrified, I can feel it like a ball in my gut, and I want to install that raw terror in you, so that you will understand. "You don't understand, you can't understand."

"Then make me," you say, "nothing else matters but me and you."

"Do you think you could go through your existence, night after night, killing to feed your hunger?"

You laugh again, it's a dull throaty rumble I can't help but find impossibly sexy. "You don't," you tell me.

"I'm old." I snap, "the hunger is terrible at first." It is the first out and out lie I have ever told you. At first I did not recognise the hunger. I just ate more than usual and it was Milliardo who recognised in me the need to feed. But although I want nothing more than you to spend eternity with me, I am terrified. I can't help it.

Treize never told me that love was equal parts fear and self-loathing.

I am terrified and I don't know what else to do.

Weak as I am I give into you. I tell you I will email Catherine and we shall see about inviting you into our family. I make no promises, the decision is Treize's to make, but god help me, part of me wants him to just snap your neck like he did Hilde's.

I can feel your eyes on my hips as a I dance, lost to the driving rhythm, the beat as I dance, my eyes are closed, all I can hear are the words and that maddening beat. "Watch out," I sing along with the male vocalist, knowing full well how I must look, with my hair down, wearing only a pair of shorts. The weather outside is scorching. My arms are above my head, "you might get what you're after." The song was on the radio this morning as I fell asleep, with a female vocalist in some dance version or another, and I was forced by reminiscences to fetch out the greatest hits from the shop before it closed.

I loved this song when it came out. I still do.

I had it on vinyl.

I can remember standing in Studio 54 as this song raged, wearing little more than I do now, simply a pair of sneakers, and my hair was shorter then. I loved to dance. "Cool baby, strange but not a stranger," and I loved this song. I had forgotten just how much.

I can feel you watch me from where you sit with the sheets of your manuscript across your knee. There is a red pen tucked behind your ear and you are wearing glasses, your hair is pleasantly mussed. The smile on your face, however, tells me that you don't mind being disturbed.

If I were wearing more clothes, I would strip for you.

As I turn so that you can see my front, I thumb open the button of these frayed denim shorts, arching my feet, leaning into my hand without losing a beat of the song. I intend to strip no more than that. The promise of flesh is so much more alluring than the reality.

"I am ordinary guy -- burning down the house," I flick my head back at house, my fingers flicking over my nipples. The exhalation of breath that I receive is almost, but not quite, a groan. The look that you give me over your reading glasses is pure sex and I love it.

"Hold tight," I hold out my hand flat to you, signalling that you not come any closer, arching my back as I swing my hips. I had not put this song on with the intention of dancing for you, I just am. "Wait till the party's over," I slip my other hand the length of my stomach, knowing that you're watching. I watch you lick your lips and I close my eyes to breathe you in. I can smell your sweat and your want and I love it.

"Hold tight," I repeat turning slightly so you can see the effect you're having on me, so you can see my erection bulging against the zipper of these almost ruined denim shorts, so you can see the white fray around my thighs. You fidget in your chair, scattering papers everywhere all over the floor, "we're in for nasty weather," I cast my head back and trail my fingertips over the length of my throat as you watch. "There has got to be a way -- burning down the house," on house I flick my head down in a shower of hair that almost, but not quite covers up the pelvic shaking I do at the same time.

I can feel the plush pile of the carpet under my bare feet, and the whispery strands of my hair against my shoulders as I dance. I love this song, I can feel it beating in time to my heart which has quickened knowing you're watching me. I started to dance just to dance, to remember the song and the occasion in which I had once loved it. To remember a time before I came here, when I hunted American campuses with Father Maxwell's words still fresh in my ear.

I think you have just given me a new appreciation for this song.

I also make it clear that you can watch all you like, but you can't touch, not till the song is over.

"Here's your ticket pack your bag: time for jumpin' overboard" the verse of the song is slower, the lyrics almost incomprehensible in a slurry of quick consonants. I am mouthing along with a song I haven't heard in years. A song I used to dance to in the clubs of New York knowing every eye was on me. After the hard years in America, after the exile from Treize's arms, it was nice to be wanted like that. And if they took me for a male prostitute I took their money, and fed on their lust.

"The transportation is here" I can see your eyes lingering on my thighs, on the flat panel of my stomach; on the way my hair caresses it. Free of its usual braid my hair hangs clear to my knees. It is like a million little whips down my back and I know how to make it shimmer. I know how to make you watch me.

"Close enough but not too far," I am rolling my hips like a belly dancer to make my stomach undulate as my arms weave designs above my head. I learned to do this in Ioannina, when I was there with Treize before the Day of Fire. I was cossetted away with the Pasha's concubines with little to amuse ourselves, Dorothy and I. So we learned what the concubines would teach us, including dancing like this. I never imagined it would put such a fire in your belly, though, or I might have done it long since.

"Maybe you know where you are" I lean forward over you, pushing away the remaining papers from your knee with my cheek, but not quite touching you. Barely an inch from your mouth I lick my lips and see you strain to kiss me.

I like this new power over you.

I turn away, my legs almost between touching against where yours are sprawled, "fightin' fire with fire," I sing, hands on hips as I circle them in front of you. You have quickly learned the rules of this new game and although I can hear your breathy moan you don't touch me. I will have to make this worth your while. I am already so hard I'm aching.

"All wet," I push my ass against your erection, arching my back as my hair dances across your face, for extra effect I bounce, twice, just so you know I'm serious, "hey you might need a raincoat," your erection feels as needy as mine. I don't know yet if you've realised, but I will not leave you hanging. As soon as this song's over... Your groan is needy and your voice breaks with it. I will finish the dance, I will finish this song before I pull down that zipper and make that erection work for me.

"Three hun-dred six-ty five de-grees, Burning down the house" I take the opportunity to steal a kiss, something I shouldn't do. It is against the rules of this game I have started, but I can't resist. Your mouth is hot and gasping, I suck on your lower lips as I bat your hands away from my ass, even as I grind my erection into yours. Against the backbeat of the song I grunt. You feel so good, but before you can get purchase I pull away.

I like keeping you confused like this.

Your glasses have slipped from your nose, and as I watch you pull them off, dropping them on the floor without care, and start to undo your buttons. As I dance to the song I start to bite my lip.

"It was once upon a place sometimes I listen to myself," I run my hands down my chest again, dipping the tips of my fingers into my shorts, just to watch you lick your lips. You are never sexier than you are like this, when wanting me has almost driven you mad. I change my mind about making this a strip tease for you; there is no way I can hold out to the end of the song.

"Gonna come in first place," you have removed your shirt, and your arms are bare except for your watch on your right wrist and a leather band I gave you on your left. I can feel the beast in me purr at the sight you make.

"People on their way to work baby what did you expect, gonna burst into flame," and with that I decide enough is enough, and I lower my head to your groin and carefully, with lips and tongue and teeth undo your belt and run my chin over your tumescence making sure you can feel the balm of my breath, then cast my head back on the word flame and dance away. Your groan this time sounds almost painful. I can't help but look smug.

God I want you.

I know how much you love my look of cat cream satisfaction.

"That's right, don't want to hurt nobody," I hook my thumbs into the belt loops on my shorts. I try to remember off hand if they were jeans or I had bought them like this. I can't remember, I decide it doesn't matter. I turn my back to you, angle myself forward in such a way that the vast majority of my hair falls over my shoulders. It is like a blanket I can clothe myself in. I wonder when I let it get this long. Each twist used to be a memory, but now I have more hair than I bargained for when I made such a deal. It doesn't matter; you love it. A twist for everyone I lost. A twist for Sol, my childhood playmate, dead of the plague when I lived, a twist for Mariemaia, a twist for Lucrezia, a twist for Milliardo, a twist for Trois, a twist for Cat, a twist for Father Maxwell, a twist for Sister Helen, a twist for Hilde, and the rest for you.

"Some things sure can sweep me off my feet," My thumbs have slipped below the open waistline of my shorts and I move in such a way that I am dragging them over the flesh of my ass. I am doing this deliberately to give you a show. I know how I must look, wanton and sweaty, the night is hot and sticky and I am writhing like a cat in heat. Originally I had planned to get you up to dance with me. That changed the instant I saw your eyes.

You had been sat there working like a good little boy, you hadn't minded when I asked if I could put on some music. You hadn't even noticed when I pulled my tee over my head half way through Psycho Killer.

"Burning down the house," I slip off the shorts and kick them away, standing in front of you naked and wanting. There is only one verse left to the song, I can think I can end this now.

I clap my hands over my head. I am using my hair as a veil, I suddenly feel like Salome with your eyes burning me. My back is to you. I wonder idly how much effort it takes you to sit there. How can you sit so still? I can't take this any more. My need outweighs my desire to please you.

The song changes, I had not realised that the remote was sat beside you. Something bassy with pianos, I don't recognise it. I feel you stand behind me. I can feel your erection like a burning brand against my ass and I tilt my head back into the kisses you lay on my neck as you move our bodies to the driving bass line of this unfamiliar song. You have never danced with me. If anything it makes me harder than I am.

"Once my lover, now my friend," you sing along with the woman in the song, your voice hot and wet against my throat, against your kisses, "what a cruel thing to pretend, what a cunning way to condescend, once my lover and now my friend." You take each pause deliberately to swipe your tongue against my throat. Your hands are all that's keeping me upright, and one of them is snaking over my stomach as the other grips a nipple.

I turn in your arms, content that you won't let me fall and give myself over to that wondrous, torturous mouth. Sometimes I think your kisses are all I need to survive. You kiss like a drowning man, sucking air from my lungs and stroking my tongue with yours. You are grinding you hips against mine in time to the music, but you still wear your pants. The fabric is slightly rough and it feels so good. If you did not hold me by the mouth I would cast my head back and just thrust against that fabric, knowing it would feel as good for you as for me, but your kisses are damning and maddening. How did I live before your kisses?

You pull your mouth back to mouth the maddening words against my mouth, with every now and again a punctuation of a traitorous, timorous lick against my lips. I can't help the noise that comes from my mouth and somehow your grip on my ass slips and I fall, my chin grazing along your sternum until I am on my knees in front of you.

You look surprised, almost as if you hadn't realised that you were all that was holding me up, but now my face is level with your erection. I can smell it. I scent the air, rubbing my face along the length of it through the slightly rough cloth.

The song continues on, but I don't hear it, carefully, oh so carefully, I unpeel your want from the cloth. I do it reverently, as if it wasn't only this morning that we spent hours abed learning each other anew. I can hear you gasp as my breath washes over your cock. And in the background the woman sings her sexy, bassy song, about the man she let betray her.

Your hips are thrusting, just slightly against my palms as I decide enough; I pull your pants down to bare you to my inspection. You stand proud against a nest of chocolate brown curls, there is a taste of moisture at the tip and you strain towards my open mouth and you know I will not deny you.

I don't know the song the woman sings, but I can hum any tune so it is with a mouth full of music that I receive you. Your hands can't help but grasp at my hair, loose and shivering against your thighs. I could do this all day and never tire of it, moving my mouth back and forth along you, making sure that you enjoy my ministrations, making sure that I coat you in saliva. I don't think you know what I plan, but I don't care. We have never done this before, but I know how it's done.

I push you back, and you stumble falling first to your knees for a sloppy kiss, and then I lick your saliva from my lips as I push you unto your back, "just trust me," I say meeting your volcanic gaze. I see you lick your lips. The skin of your chest is flushed with want and I can see your erection jerking towards me of it's own volition. This was not what I planned when I started to dance but I will not say no to such a gift when it is offered to me like this.

I arrange myself over you, pressing the tip of your cock to my anus knowing that you will protest. "Shush," I say, "we must take this slow," And the song is slow and languorous and my need is damning, but I want this more than a quick satiation.

It takes what feels a human lifetime to slide unto your erection. It is so much more than usual, with my muscles un-stretched. It doesn't matter if you hurt me, I will heal, and I will treasure the pain because it came from you.

There is always pain in pleasure, they are twin snakes inside me, and I offer them up to you.

After an age, an eternity, of fullness and heat you start to thrust inside me, slowly, oh so slowly, lubricating me with precum. It has never felt so awful and so good, I cast my head back, and my hands on your thighs are tangled in my hair.

Like this, with the summer hot on my skin, and the moon burning my eyes, with you so deep inside me I could die.

When I come it is with a revelation, it is like a lightning bolt that sears my soul and I can feel you explode within me like a volcano almost as an after effect. We came together and I don't know if you know just how precious that is.

Trois and Cat were both older than me by some way. In fact if they still lived I suppose I would consider them old ones. However they have been dead a long time.

I shall tell you their story, with none of the artifice of Lucrezia's. I will tell you what I know.

Trois, like me, was born in France. But where I was born in a village, the child of Treize's friends, he was the son of a lord. He was tall and beautiful, with wild brown hair that would not behave no matter what. He had a scar on his forehead that only he ever saw and wore his hair down over his face to cover it.

They had been together for over three hundred years before I was even born.

Trois was also little given to displays of emotion, the complete opposite of Cat who would throw himself into an embrace at the slightest notion. Of them both, I genuinely do not know which of them I miss most. They were always a pair; you never saw one without knowing the other was nearby.

Trois was a creature of rain and steel where Cat was fire and air. There was something permanent about Trois and something aerial about Cat. But there was no sight that made us smile more than watching Cat run across the room to curl up on Trois' knee.

Trois left France in the year 1097, he was sixteen, determined to make a name for his father in the holy land. He was a knight, though barely old enough to hold a sword. He was to make a man of himself there, possibly find himself a lord richer than his father who had a daughter of suitable age, though it meant in those days anyone who could still bear or might grow up to bear children. Trois once told me that the place he came from was long gone, his older brother had turned out to be a drunkard who diminished the holdings and his son was a gambler. The stock was good and strong, however, and the bloodline lived on to eventually give birth to Catherine.

Because he was tall and thin the other knights seemed to take especial care of him, because both his older brother and his father were huge men with vast muscles and a taste for killing, but Trois was tiny in comparison. Nevertheless he was as ruthless as they were. He wanted to join the Hospitallers but his father forbade it and he served on the king's guard.

The Kingdom of Jerusalem was established in 1099 and Trois was right in the thick of it. He had garnered the king's attention and even the pope knew him by name, and where there were popes and kings there was Treize.

Treize never said when it was that Trois caught his attention, but he did at some point. He was pegged, like many young men and women over the centuries, with an interested eye to see what could be achieved. Then someone else caught Treize's attention and he was ignored.

King Baldwin was a man, apparently, with an eye for male flesh, in a time when it was neither frowned upon nor praised. As long as a man presented heirs to his house his bed was his own concern, but Baldwin had no heirs. Whether or not Trois graced the king's bed, I do not know, all I know is that he had the king's favour and was treated like a high-ranking member of the court. He was given lands of his own in Jerusalem and on the outskirts of them was a Muslim palace.

He and the Muslim, who I never learned the name of, lived at peace until one day, through the screens of the Muslim's palace, Trois first laid eyes on Cat. He was as golden then, as he was to be on the day he died.

Trois went to the Muslim and demanded that the boy, as a god fearing Christian be released unto his own kind and offered him money that he would do so. The Muslim refused. He said that the boy was rightfully his; his mother had washed ashore on his lands, and upon giving birth to him had died. His own concubine had raised the child as her own, and he was treated like a prince.

Trois was maddened by the sight of the blonde boy and demanded that he be able to see him.

He was refused.

So Trois went to the King and told him of the boy in the clutches of the infidel, if he embellished the story I do not know, but I know it was not in his nature, but Cat had enchanted him. Knights older and wiser than he that the infidel had wizards and witches warned him, that they had magics designed to drive young Christians to war and madness.

It was Treize that took pity on him. He had no army, but he was cunning and he resolved to meet this Muslim and ask him for the boy to prevent bloodshed.

It didn't turn out that easy. As I have said, his brother was bloodthirsty and by the time the story had reached him in the north it was expanded beyond all sense. By the time Trois' brother heard the story it was Trois being held against his will and all the king's men had been thwarted in their attempt to rescue him, and that Trois was being used in fiendish practices to summon the devil. Trois would have it said here that his brother was none too bright.

So he marched his army, which was actually rather large, to Trois' holding and without stopping to check in on his brother he laid waste to the Muslim's palace and started a whole new round of fighting. By the time Trois returned to his lands, with Treize in tow as ambassador, he found it desolate and covered in the dead.

He hadn't seen his brother in some time, and that was possibly why when he did find him, with Cat beside him being treated like he was Trois, he was faced with a ring of swords.

Trois had the most amazing patience but he had reached the end of it then, he drew his sword and attacked them. Milliardo was never one to miss out on a fight and he was incredibly skilled so they attacked them and won, two men against an entire group of knights.

But Trois was wounded, he had taken a sword to the side, which he denied was serious, and rescued Cat who at the time had some unintelligible Muslim name I never wrested from him. Three days later he died, well, he would have if not for Treize, but a corpse was buried under his name and Treize took Trois and the boy, Cat, with him to Avignon, where he mostly lived at the time. They called him Cat because he had a tendency to purr when they stroked his hair. It was Milliardo that turned Cat, because, he said, the two should never be parted.

They never were again.

They even died together.

I envy them that.

Do you know that you have a mole at the back of your neck where your hair starts? Probably not, but it fascinates me, I like to twine my fingers through the hair just to see it. I lay my lips to it, wondering if you can tell what it is that I kiss. You shiver and look at me with a smile, "it tickles," you say.

"Oh heaven forbid that I dare to tickle the almighty Heero Yuy," I say looking indignant.

"You're one of a very privileged few that even knows I'm ticklish," you answer with a smirk, you are lying on your front on the bed reading the paper and I love watching you like this. It is as if someone has stripped away all the tension from you. I run the tips of my fingers over your ribs, delighting in the shudder that it gives me, as you roll unto your back away from the maddening touch. With a quick move I straddle your hips as you try to buck and writhe and throw me off as I tickle you. You are almost in a foetal position.

Then you smile at me, "god, I love you," you say and it is the first time you have said it to me.

A thousand emotions cross my mind, fear, panic, terror, warmth, love, and desire. I do not know how to express it. Almost against my own will I find myself smiling at you. "I know." I say and lack the courage to tell you that it's reciprocated, that I love you too. You don't break my gaze; you don't pull your smile away. I decide to make it a joke, just to break the tension I don't think you can feel, "even if you only tell me it to make me stop tickling you."

Your laughter warms the dark places of my heart. I don't know that I have ever told you that. Your laughter warms the dark places of my heart.

There is a type of darkness inside our kind. Treize would say that it is a consequence of our immortality. I do not know the truth of it but the darkness is something that none of us can deny. Sometimes the darkness gives way to sensuality, sometimes to deep depressions, sometimes to cruelty. It is the nature of the beast I suppose. We are no like you, we can never be like you -- that, I think, is the reason for our darkness. Humans are pack animals, they form families and nests. Our human frailty means that we seek the same thing, our beasts desire mates, homes, young -- all of which we can never have.

Is it any wonder that we can be cruel?

People murder other people to stave off death.

We fuck mindlessly to stave off the loneliness.

We kill people because we want what they have.

Envy is our most human trait, and because of that it is the most deadly.

One of our brightest beauties, Theresa of Avila, an old one compared even to Treize, said that the reason that your kind fixated on us the way that they did was that they envied us, and her maxim was what they envied they destroyed.

We are human too; at least we once were, so we too destroy what we envy.

I know that look in your eyes, have I ever walked past a family, all bundled up for the winter, holding hands and smiling -- and then destroyed them utterly.

I don't think you want to hear that answer.

That is all that I will tell you.

I am not like you. You must understand that, but in some ways I am like you all too much.

So I will tell you a story, I will tell it in the manner of those you read to me, those you write in the long hours between dusk and dawn with your head bent over your laptop and your ear listening to me. I will tell one of those stories in which you must recognise the truth within the fiction; it is up to you to recognise the same in mine.

The boy smelt of cheap perfume and other men's sweat. He smelt of faceless hotels and garbage strewn alleyways. He smelt of rain and night and red gold sunset. He smelt of fake leather and wet polyester and cotton. He smelt of stale cigarettes and over chewed peppermint gum. He smelt of sharp strong gin and syrupy sweet cola. He smelt of packed night clubs and over crowded bars. He smelt of crowds and people and under it all his hair smelt sweetly of the apple perfume of his shampoo. The boy stank of sin.

Ironically he gave his name as Adam.

He had only the inherent prettiness of youth to recommend him. His face was yet to lose the plumpness of childhood and although his eyes were ancient they were still large and rimmed with dark lashes, thick with mascara and closed to the night. A gloss flecked with gold glitter along his round cheek caught the strobe light. In another world he would have been favoured and petted for his beauty, now he was only watched.

His black t-shirt was massively undersized and looked as if it might burst off his pigeon chest with every breath he took. It ended just under his ribcage with a sparkling silver motif that brazenly demanded "love me." His midriff was bare revealing pale creamy skin and the tail of a tattoo sprawled down his breastbone. His silver pleather trousers were tight enough to have been stitched on. A jade bead on a leather thong fell about his hairless wrist where his arms were held above his head to the music. It made a perfect counterpoint to his hips as he danced, swaying to the music like a cobra about to strike. His eyes were closed, lost in the rhythm and the flickering of the light.

The music was an impatient dum dum du du du du thump that reverberated through the packed bodies, across the sweat slicked skin rattling glasses of warm liquor and into the stilettos of women as they danced. The lights panned up and down, catching hair and eyes and jewellery and the sinuous lines of cigarette smoke. Hips snapped. Arms curved. Hair whipped. Head up. Ass out. Head down. Hips left. In a world of his own, alone with the music, Adam danced, all the time his eyes were closed. His lips were pursed, occasionally mouthing along to the song. The club was packed. Bodies piled against bodies, seething against each other like rats, and through it all Adam danced like he was the last person alive.

Nearly half the club watched him with hungry eyes.

The song was perfect as they watched Adam melt into the music; slowly adjust his body to the rhythms. Adam rubbed his hands over his thighs, stomach and chest as he began to twist and to move to the thumping beat. In moments, his hair was swinging wildly, flicking drops of sweat like rain drops as he twirled on the dance floor, a feast for anyone lucky enough to be watching.

Nearly everyone was.

Everyone watched, everyone looked, except Adam. The room was full of eyes: they gazed with hunger and amusement; they looked with dispassion and humour. They looked through mascaraed lashes and contacts. They stare through glasses and in the reflection of mirrors. They all watched, they all looked; everyone except Adam. His eyes were shut.

And He watched them all.

He sat perched on a stool, his heels hooked on the bar as he nursed the drink in front of me. There was a small metal table, the top a design of whorls that was covered in empty glasses and full ash trays. He was unremarkable, just a man perched on a stool watching the dance floor watching Adam dance. He wore solid black and my hair was slicked back with gel. He wore no jewellery and there was no hint of his personality in what I wore. He was just a handsome man in black that watched the boy dance with more attention than any of the other eyes in the club.

He was alone in the room full of people, alone amongst the dancing crowd and sitting he watched Adam dance.

The music was frenetic and loud. The lights simultaneously glaring and caressing, flickering on and off over the dancers, showing off their lines with a harsh white glow. They were limned like fallen stars with harsh halogen beam. It ran over the crowd with the familiarity of a lover, with the insistence of a lover, darting to and fro amongst the dancers like a bee among flowers. The light flickered and jumped: touching, tasting and ultimately taking its glut of the dancers as they twisted and jerked, gyrated and snapped, all in time to the dum dum du du du du thump of the frantic music.

And the light lingered longest on Adam.

A second boy joined him on the floor, taking him by the hand, long pale fingers twisting into the string bracelet on his wrist and meeting him halfway. Adam opened his eyes long enough to look at the boy and smile, then melted back into the music and the dance, this time dancing with the other boy.

He was different. He had reached that growth spurt where boys almost segued into men, tall but as slender as a woman still, with pale skin like silver or opals that almost shone in the harsh light of the club spots. The spotlight lingered on them. He was fair where Adam was dark, slender where Adam was yet to lose his puppy fat, and when he danced, as eloquently and elegantly as Adam, his eyes were open but when he caught His gaze it seemed that he didn't see him, but stared straight through him to the an imaginary ocean beyond. When the boy looked at him, he looked out to an imaginary sea behind him.

With one hand on Adam's ass, and the other on his neck, hips pressed together almost obscenely the two boys found the rhythm of the music. They didn't dance for the crowd. They didn't dance for the house. They didn't even dance for him; they danced for the music.

The boy with the distant gaze intrigued him. He had never seen him before. He wore sleek black, almost as if he wore pyjamas, and might have been dressed in silk and his hair was longish, falling around his shoulders and down his back with loose honey blonde curls. He looked like a fallen angel, ripe with debauchery, but staring off into space in the vain hope of seeing god.

The costume jewellery that Adam wore was gold and precious gems on the newcomer, but his hair and his skin in that sleek black silk made him seem like a marble statue, or some mythical creature, a fairy maybe, out of place and out of time. He was beautiful in the way that teenage boys can be, and he was no older than sixteen, looking innocent and wanton, holy and debauched, virgin and whore all at the same time, but his eyes were distant and pale and they stared through him.

No one else even saw him; the boy looked through him.

The boy was beautiful, haunted and haunting, dancing with Adam because it gave them pleasure to dance, lost in the heavy bass of the music and the flickering of lights that swirled around them, haloing them. And they were beautiful, curved into each other's hips, backs arched, mouths open, held in place by grasping hands as the music welled through them, mouths open, head tossing as they gave into the beat and the rhythm an the eyes upon them as they danced.

"Enough," a tall man in a charcoal grey suit said taking the boy in black by the wrist and pulling. The man looked wealthy, and there was a resemblance between him and the boy, something in their complexion, but the man was groomed and stank of money. "I told you to wait for me," the boy lowered his eyes to the floor, there was no defiance in them, and even staring at the speckled tiles under his feet, the boy stared off to sea. With an impish smile that the man could not see he grabbed Adam by the wrist and pulled him along as well.

Hours later the blood fell on the floor with an easy patter splat into a pool of it's own making, the air was rank with it and the boy in black lay back and looked with empty eyes at the man he had seen earlier in the club. He was pleasantly over full, bloated to completion as he crawled over what remained of the body, gored and dissected with a child's curiosity to the man in grey with the ginger gold hair. Licking the gore from his lips he slithered up into his lap, ignoring the cold body on the floor behind him. He felt impish and playful even though behind him was the cooling body of the man he had hunted, a man who had found love and bore children, some probably even older than the boy himself.

With a mischievous look, wiping some of the blood around his face with his wrist, the boy opened the man's pants and lowered his face unto his patron's erection, using blood and saliva as lubricant.

The man tired of this amusement quickly, he looked at the bloodied knife on the floor and the patiently playful expression of the boy as he sucked and bobbed, his tongue tracing arcane designs on the underside of his member.

Slipping his large hands under the bare arms of the boy, feeling the splashes of blood on his skin like dots of fire as he lifted him up unto his lap proper. Feeling the curving globes of the boy and using the blood that drenched them both as lubricant he fucked him.

Is that what you wanted to hear?

I can tell you a hundred such tales, of gore and fucking, by candle light, by lamp light, by electric light.

I am not like you. Sometimes it would behove you to remember that.

America is a country of have and have-nots. In some cases it is a place of great wealth, of knowledge, of power, but mostly it is not. I have stood on both sides of that plane, which is how I came to know Father Maxwell.

I spent the late nineteenth century between Boston, New York and San Francisco. I mingled with artists and poets and novelists, fascinated by their strange new art. I discussed death and self mutilation with Emily Dickinson, greed and hunger with Henry James all with the casual disdain of someone who had always had. What I knew I knew of loss.

Then it happened.

As a story it might even be familiar to you, I told this tale to another, years later in France and he decided there was something to it, changing only a few details.

Because of my youth and that I was alone, Dorothy having abandoned me for the French Riviera about fifty years previously; I hired a man to pretend to be my guardian. He was for the most part a trustworthy fellow and I signed things into his name to make my own life more convenient. He was paid well for his trouble and pretending to be my guardian meant that I, as a sixteen year old boy, could get places that I would normally have not been able to. He accompanied me.

He was a good man, for a pet. As a rule because of the hurried nature of my transformation I have always had older pets because people have a tendency not to treat boys with my age with the respect that I feel is my right. It is a strange conundrum easily solved by finding some widow or spinster and paying them to be my maidenly aunt.

His name, not that it really matters in such things, was Gatsby, so that was the name I went by.

We were installed in a large house in Manhattan that legally I still own, with all the necessary trappings of wealth. We had servants and silverware and I felt very much the gentleman, but James Gatsby had a past he had never bothered to tell me about.

Her name was Ilse and she was an Austrian immigrant with silvery white hair that had, in previous years, been a famous actress. I had never heard of her but she had married badly a man obsessed with money and show. She was a cold woman that stank of money.

What happened in the day whilst I slept was of little concern to me, I had money, I had society so I paid little to no attention to my pet; that was my first mistake.

James decided that the only way to win Ilse was with money, more specifically my money and he began to throw lavish parties in hotels that I paid for, or at least credit notes were signed against my fortune. I knew none of this.

Then one day, completely without warning James Gatsby dropped down dead of a heart attack. Normally this would not have bothered me. I would move to another city, acquire myself another pet, I had decided a woman this time, preferably French, and carry on as before. I was in the process of arranging this when the bailiffs came to the door.

He had left me rather considerable debts that because I was underage I could not sign away. I could not pay the money he owed even though I had it because to use the bank to withdraw the money I had to be eighteen. For a normal person this would not have been a problem, two years is not a long time at all, but I would never age. As you can imagine it caused a terrible conundrum.

I wanted to go to Treize but lacked even the postage for a stamp.

The bailiffs left me with an empty house and the clothes on my back, simply because none of them wanted to get close enough to steal them.

Even we need food and drink as well as blood so I found myself in a small pickle.

I had money. I had lots of money. I just couldn't get it.

I couldn't even arrange for someone to get it for me.

I had one advantage over most of the derelict in Manhattan however; I had a house even if it was completely unfurnished so despite the upscale neighbourhood I began to attract those who wouldn't be missed. My intention was to feed from them and possibly acquire someone who could release my money.

It started with veterans, but after one lured a rich woman to my home and murdered her on the doorstep to have his way with her I made it clear they would not be tolerated. The whores I shooed away with the opium dealers. I had no issue with sharing my house with the down and outs but I had some standard.

I was walking back from a feeding, I had postponed it and found the hunger overwhelming me so I had waylaid a man walking his dog and offered him some services, and instead of what he wanted he got a pierced femoral artery. She was sat on a curb near the park and crying. She had a broken basket in her hands and her skirt was filthy and torn. I had been penniless about a year at that point, it was hard to tell, but I knew she was hungry. I had a little bread, not much, but some, and a little wine that the bailiffs hadn't found. I offered her my hand, the beast in me was stirring and had its own intention for her, but she reminded me of someone I had known once and I took her home.

Her name was Mary.

Over the course of the next few weeks I took in all the children, I protected them, sometimes even now I wonder why. They stole and sold what they found for food that we shared. We were a gang and I was only the one with the squat.

None of the expected anything from me but I had advantages that they didn't have. On what should have, according to New York law, been my eighteenth birthday I took money from my account, now that I finally could, and I arranged for the house to be turned into a place where the children could stay. I knew I couldn't stay with them, because they were aging and I wasn't. Mary became their caretaker and one of my pets, though not as closely as most of them did. When two of them went away to the Great War to die I actually mourned them.

It was through them I came to meet Father Maxwell. My years of poverty meant that I no longer squandered money the way that I had, although I would never be without even if I had. I stayed where I could see them, where sometimes a dark beast would usher some of the fouler pimps from their way. If they suspected they had a guardian angel I was not about to dissuade them. Large amounts went into their care and I would not have some underworld kingpin take what I had given them, even if I hadn't known why.

Father Maxwell was the fourth priest in the diocese of Saint Elizabeth to cross my children's path. There was something about them, living as they were in the care of two elderly ladies and Mary, all of which were paid for their care, which just struck the church as being fresh pickings for conversions. I watched him as he brought them food and clothes and decided that unlike the previous priests that he meant no real harm. Sister Helen, his assistant, was just as likely to roll up her sleeves and help with the washing up as she was to preach and when she did it was gently and with real love in her voice.

I wanted to speak to him but the time never seemed right.

Midnight mass was a great time to hunt, drunks would stumble into church and fall asleep to the hymns and the sermons and no one expected anything else. So I would follow them and lay my head against their sleeping shoulder and feed. There is some property in my saliva that means that the bite is covered, though we discovered later it shows under ultraviolet light, and stops the bleeding.

One night I made the terrible mistake of actually falling asleep. I was woken up by a gentle hand on my shoulder and Sister Helen whispering in my ear that it was long past time for a boy like me to be home. Half asleep and tired I told her I had nowhere else to go. Before I knew what was happening I was joining her and Father Maxwell in hot chocolate and sandwiches and sent to a bed in the presbytery. I could have been anyone, I could have been a mass murdering rapist serial killer but they opened their home to me, they gave me clean clothes and food and for the first time since the Day of Fire I felt I was part of a family. I had not realised the extent to which I missed it.

They did not question my strange hours, it was winter and days were short. Father Maxwell found that I had a hunger for knowledge that must have at least matched his own, we discussed Schrodinger and Curie and all the other sciences. We discussed religions, not just Christianity, and I came to envy in him something much more esoteric than family, he had faith something I had never realised that I had not had.

I came to like Father Maxwell very much and Sister Helen I adored. I helped her carry the pots of stew down the street to the children's home I had inadvertently founded, a children's home that is still there to this day, I helped her with all the chores she would not have anyone else do. Some things she still wouldn't let me attempt, like dusting the church's statuary, because I only appreciated it as art and not as godly.

I told her of the places I had been, the churches that I had seen, the beauty of someone else's faith and she listened with a bemused air that told me that although she did not listen to a word I said that she was flattered that I told such lies to her to make her smile.

I like churches and I have attended some of the most beautiful in Europe, I had no need to lie to her about those places, about the cupolas of Rome, the domes of Prague, the art of Venice, the icons of Russia. She did not believe me but nevertheless she listened.

When I told her I could play the organ she gave me that look again, the one that suggested that although lying was the worst of all the sins that she liked that I tried to please her. I asked if I could show her one-day whilst we cleaned the church, her answer was an indulgent smile. In retrospect I wonder if she would have allowed me to murder someone on the high altar just to show her that I could.

I can play the organ. I can paint. Treize had many tutors that filed into and out of our homes all over the world. So when I sat down I wondered what I should play. I decided on Handel because I knew Sister Helen would love his music if she hadn't heard it before. It had been a long time but I played what I could remember of the Dies Irae. I do not have the voice for singing the beautiful Italian arias that I always remember accompanying the music in the cathedrals of New York and Rome, but as I played, clumsy at first with fingers stiffened by lack of use, I remembered all those churches and I saw a look of rapture on the face of Sister Helen.

She was dead the next day, with Father Maxwell, Mary, one of the other caretakers and no fewer than three of my children.

They had taken them to a large department store to buy shoes. It was day time and I could not accompany them. It was a time of prohibition and of racketeering and collateral damage was how it was referred to in the papers. "Priest gunned down by mobsters." I had offered to get them the shoes the day before but I had not, instead I had played the Dies Irae for Sister Helen because more than anything I wanted her to smile.

That was the terrible irony of what happened that it happened because I had wanted to please her. The shooting would have happened regardless, but if I had gone the day before instead of trying so desperately to please her she would have lived and maybe I would have been shot. It would not have been the first, or the last time.

I could even tell you a rather funny story about a time in California where I got up and ran after the man who had shot me through the heart, which frightened him no end.

I could not even attend their funeral.

I sent word to Treize and he came and fetched me. I told him what had happened and he kissed my hairline and told me it was not my fault, that I was not to blame myself; that they had trusted their faith to god and god always calls home those whom he loves. He told me the words I needed to hear then, that they were too good for this world. Then we destroyed the men who killed them.

I did it because they had deserved it.

Treize did it because they had made me cry.

The best way to travel to Koblensk is to fly to Bonn and then take the train. Treize lives just outside in a town called Rolandswerth in which he once had a castle. The ruins are still there for those that care to see such things. The advantage of taking the train I always find is the time it gives you to think. I dislike flying, I find it impersonal and cramped and I like travelling by train. So we take the train to Brussels, and then change at Koln to get to Bonn where a car meets us. It takes all night.

It is a good time to reflect, to read or as we do, to talk.

You tell me you spoil me, it would take only a few hours to fly into Bonn as opposed to the twelve it takes to go by Train but then I start to point things out to you along the way, landmarks and places that I have been. Before I know what is happening I am telling you amusing stories of what happened here, and stories of battles that happened there.

I do not realise I have gathered an audience until a complete stranger tells me to go on. It is a man late in his prime, possibly late fifties to early sixties with iron grey hair and a brick red complexion. He has the soap and lemon freshness in his perfectly pressed suit. He had left Waterloo at the same time we had with his nose buried in a book, but somewhere in France he started to listen to me ramble on.

He turns to you, "You must be proud of your brother," he says, "Knowing all this history, and him being so young and all."

You just smile indulgently, "oh," you say, "he's older than he looks." Although you are taciturn by nature there is something you see in this man, something that just makes you stare at me indulgently, not even a frown or "we wouldn't have this problem if we flew," and you engage him in conversation.

It turns out that he is an MEP on his way back to Brussels after attending his daughter's graduation. As soon as he discovers that we both attended the same university as his precious child there are photos of her in abounds. She is a pretty girl but I don't remember her at all. At points during his conversation I wonder if he is not trying to set you up with his precious princess, who has just secured a first in psychology and criminology, but he seems patient and accepting when you explain that you can't, that you are meeting Dorothy in Koblensk and that you would hate to disappoint such a pretty girl.

The man laughs and goes on his way as we change platforms to get to Koln.

"Talk to me in German," you say as we reach the German border and wilfully, happily, I oblige. I do it knowing that the language means nothing to you, which although you speak French German this is just noise to you, though occasionally a word is close enough to English that you understand.

I point out landmarks on the way in German thrilled by the look of love on your face as I do. You are proud of me; I can recognise that, because I can speak so fluently in many languages, which is a legacy of a long life and lots of travel. You reach across the small table between us and your hand squeezes my knee. "I always found it sexy to listen to spoken Russian." You say and suddenly I stutter in my monologue of German.

Between Koln and Bonn I talk in Spanish because there is something I want to tell you in all the languages I know in the car between Koblensk and Rolandswerth. Russian is for between Bonn and Koblensk.

Catherine meets us at the station. She smiles when she sees us; I am covered up against the sunlight in a hat that you have made me wear. Catherine is wearing jeans and a tight cashmere sweater. She has cut her hair since I saw her last. It has loosened the curl, which now hangs in a bob about her face. I can see Trois in her today.

She kisses me on the cheeky and I can smell her powder and her perfume, and over it I can smell briar roses and the scent calms me. I can smell Treize on her. "And this must be your young man." She tells me with a wink and smile in French. "I am Catherine Bloom," she says with a grin, and then she steps across the car to you and kisses you on both cheeks, "welcome to our crazy little family." And I wonder if it will all be this simple. If Dorothy and Treize and Walker will accept you with the calm maternal ease that Catherine has.

I chatter away in the car, pointing out things about Germany that I'm sure you know, but I am as excited as a child. "You have no reflection." You say suddenly, looking into the rear view mirror with some surprise.

"No," I answer with a smile. "We don't. We don't appear on film, our voices cannot be recorded and we have no reflection." It is the first time since I have shown you what I am that you actually notice that kind of detail.

You give me your biggest smile, the one that almost touches the corners of your mouth but sparkles in your eyes, "that is really cool." You say and I find myself laughing, drunk on this, on you. "It's like in the movies." I am struck by the ludicrousness of it all, that of all the things it is my lack of a reflection that has turned you into a gothic fan boy. I can see the small smile that Catherine is determined to hide, normally she would burst out laughing at such a simple revelation but she knows that you are not my pet as she is Treize's, that I am taking you to meet Treize and it is entirely possible that he will kill you. That does not stop me unbolting myself and reaching over and giving you the biggest hug I can manage in the back of the car.

Rolandswerth is a pretty town between Bonn and Koblensk on the Rhine. Treize decided it would make him a good home before I was born and again about thirty years ago. I have been here twice since then.

Dorothy meets me at the gate. She has flown ahead. She looks beautiful in a wispy white dress that the evening sun has made see through and her hair is pulled back in a braid under a wide sun hat. She looks like she has spent the day in the sun. Her feet are bare in the grass. "Srdechni," she calls out and I see the look of confusion on your face. Then she beams at you. "You must be Heero." She says and gives you a playful wink, "wilkommen nach Deutschland." She says and then kisses you on both cheeks, "come on, Srdechni, you don't want to keep everyone waiting." Then she loops her arm through yours, leaning up against you with a rakish grin "I call Mishka my heart, Srdechni," she says, "I will have to think of a word for you." She pauses dramatically putting a finger to her lips in thought, "Draha," she decides, "he is my heart and you are his beloved." You positively beam at the new pet name she has come up with for you.

She reaches out with her other hand and loops it through my arm. "I suppose a girl is never too old to go skipping blithely about when she has two such beautiful men on her arm." She says, "But we must go in, the vodka is warming as we speak."

"Dorothy, Krasny," I say knowing full well that Heero will not understand the compliment. Dorothy blooms under it though, she knows she is beautiful but sometimes it does a woman good to be told. Sometimes compliments are all we can give each other honestly. "Does he know?"

Dorothy's smile is inviting and calming. "Srdechni," she says fondly, "when does he not?"

And at the top of the steps leading from the gate is Treize. He is only wearing a light cotton shirt to the German summer and a pair of light coloured pants. When he smiles at me I think my heart will break. He hasn't smiled at me for so long I had almost forgotten the brilliance of it. I drop Dorothy's arm and run up the steps to him, like a small child encountering a beloved parent that they haven't seen in years. He is indulgent, picking me up and spinning me around as I laugh. This is family, I think; this is home.

I catch my breath with a grin as he sets me down, "Mishka," he says and I know he means so many things when he calls me that, Mishka is a name he gave me, something fond and mine. "There is so much we need to share with you," he says, "you've been away so long."

"Hello, Mishka," the voice is a deep rumble, one I have not heard in two hundred years and my eyes open wide with surprise and I give out a little scream. It is Milliardo, in the flesh that stands before me. I throw myself into his arms and give no care how it must appear to Heero, this is Milliardo who was dead so long. If he is awake then so is Une. This is everything I need; I hold out my hand to Heero to introduce him to everyone, this is home.

Lady Une stands at a window, she is wearing a very elegant blue skirt suit and her hair is up in an archaic style with two braids twisted into knots. She is wearing a pair of spectacles and is staring out over the gathering in the party. I have left you wandering amongst his family as I answer her summons. She is weak, Treize says, she will not come out. You must go to her.

I mistakenly believed that he was the head of the family, perhaps that is true, but she is definitely the heart. Where he, Dorothy and Milliardo frighten me, she terrifies me. "Help yourself to tea," she tells me, her voice crisp and precise. "I don't care for wine."

I don't know whether to sit at the desk laid out, or to stand, I am uncomfortable and nervous before her.

"Our Michel thinks, and speaks very fondly of you." She says, but she doesn't move away from the window, "he has asked that you join our," she pauses, "family. I would know you before I give Treize my blessing, and there are things that you should know."

"He missed you very much." The words catch me unawares.

"I am unsurprised." She tells me, she speaks archaically. "He is young." She turns then, "it would be easy for someone to take advantage of him."

"He is very mature." I tell her, "and I wouldn't dare, it would kill me to hurt him."

She laughs a cold and sinister reptilian sound. Dorothy is, at best, a pale imitation of Une. Her eyes are a hazel that look like frozen fire. She is pale, and her hair is the same shade as yours. "Both literally and figuratively" She informs me. "For every tear he shed for you I would visit it on you a thousand fold, I was a favourite of pain, she danced in my eyelids and amongst my hair. I will show you the most exquisite hells before I finally, if ever, let you die."

"Then kill me now." I tell her, surprised at my own courage because I feel like I should piss myself in front of her. "Whilst he is with his family and if he mourns he is with people who love him."

At that she smiles, and sits in the velvet chair before me, templing her hands and resting her chin on her fingers. "How very melodramatic" She tells me. "I have slept a long time." She tells me. "And in that time I find the world has changed, but we have not. I find myself awakened in a world in love with our kind without knowing what we are." Her eyes are a cockroach brown and firm, she barely blinks at all. "And Michel is young, he will always be young."

"He's one of the most mature people I know." I inform her.

"He has seen the world, and he has survived many things that would topple others, but," the pause hangs for a long uncomfortable moment, "he is sixteen years old, he will always be sixteen years old. His mind is exactly the same as it was on the day we turned him, he behaves exactly as he did. He has lingered on the abyss between childhood and manhood for five centuries but that does not make him adult." She licks her lips and I can see the sharp white crowns of her teeth. "He is our greatest sin."

I can't help myself -- I question her. "Then why did you turn him?" I ask.

"Because he was dying, because I loved him, because I too can make mistakes." She tells me, her tone is even and conversational. "To me he will always be the young boy who crowded himself unto my knee to listen to me read, the boy who smiled at me and sang his hymns with such love, not for God, for we taught him none of that, but for me." She pushes back the chair and moves back to stand at the window. "I was old when Rome was born." She tells me, "I was old when Egypt first laid brick on brick. I was ancient when the Phoenicians built their cities. "We cannot have children; it is our price for immortality." She pauses; there is a catch in her voice. "Yet that does not stop us craving them. I knew Michel's parents, I knew his parent's parents. We find our own bloodline and we nurture it and cherish it as if they were our own." She pauses, and then sighs. "I was there when he was born, I was the first person to hold him and I gave him his name. So you ask me why I turned him." She looks at me again with those frozen flame eyes that look like they should belong to a dragon or some other mythical beast. Her beauty is at once seductive and terrible. "It is because I love him." She says. I understand that dilemma completely.

"He came screaming from the womb, tiny and perfect and he opened his eyes, and even then there was a hint of lavender in the iris." She said, "he was not the first babe I had held so freshly born, nor would he be the last, but there was something in the way that he fought so valiantly that softened my heart and I looked at his mother and at the church in which he was born, for Michel was never one to do things by halves, and I called him Michael, he who is like god." She stopped again, "he became Michel, and then when his parents were killed he became Mishka because he was ours."

She returns to the desk, but does not sit this time. "I can not ask you to comprehend what it might possibly be to lose him, with your mortal heart. You are a mayfly with no comprehension of how great the weight of eternity truly is." She is ruthless I can see that now. You called her a maternal tiger protecting her cubs and I fear he has underestimated her. She is like Kali, twin goddess of creation and destruction. I fear her but I respect her too. I can see why you worship her. Dorothy is capricious, but Une is relentless.

"You wish to be one of us without knowing what we are." She says calmly, "how can you when we barely understand it ourselves." She tilts her head to look at me. "I have been awake for four months."

"Then why didn't you tell him?" I ask, enraged, it is four months that I know you has mourned her, four months you could have been with her.

"Because I was not ready to" She answers abruptly. "To your mortal span four months seems a long time, but you have no comprehension how quickly centuries slide into one another, a day is merely a blink of an eye. I spent the time in study." She says, "There were so many things I did not understand and it gave Milliardo time to heal. He said to waken him when I woke; I do not think he expected Treize to do so that very hour."

"He's been lonely." I find myself saying, I don't know if I mean you or Treize when I say that. It is true of you both.

"I have paid many scholars and scientists great fortunes to find out the secret of our mortality." She uses the word deliberately. "I have studied sanguiens and molecules and in my slumber Treize continued my research." There is a time when she thinks, her glasses reflecting the setting sun from the window where I can overhear laughter from the throng below. I can imagine you fluttering like a social butterfly amongst your family, and those who have come to see you. It is obvious from the great crowd that has gathered that as soon as you alerted Treize of your intention to visit him he has summoned everyone he knows to see you. I wonder how long you have been away. "When Treize told me that our Michel had a sweetheart I did some research on you." Her voice is as cold as ice, "your parents were brilliant but yet you squander such an intellectual heritage."

"That is something I have heard all my life." I tell her.

"A scientist I could use." She tells me. "I will explain what we have learned about our kind. We thought for millennia that it was a poison of the blood, but it seems that we were wrong. It is a mutation of the mitochondria; our bodies are kept in stasis. We do not change." She is adamant of this. "Michel has been sixteen for half an aeon, he will be sixteen forever. Do you know there is only one way to be sure of our death?" She stops again, letting me process what it is that she says, "If we are killed and consumed by one of our own." Her eyes are like agates, shining behind the lenses of her glasses. "One us must slice you open and eat your flesh, making sure to consume the heart and the brain quickly. There is even a time window for this to happen, it must happen within one hour or we regenerate." She stops. "I hear the legends your kind has attributed to us and find myself amazed at the innocence of what you suggest."

She sits down, crossing her legs in a way that closes her body language to me. "That the sun would destroy us, what lunacy," she says. "Has he shown you the beast, the mutation within our very cells?" I nod; you have shown me what you call your beast.

"Has he fed from you?" I think of the night I found you in the bath waiting for the dawn, I think of the fire that rushed through me when you placed your mouth to my neck and drank my blood. I nod to her question.

"Has he told you about our world; of our limitations, of the sufferings of such mortality?" I find myself wondering if she is using the wrong word, if she means immortality, but I can't imagine she would make such an error. "Imagine the pain of a lifetime's healing in a night." She tells me, and she licks her lips. She wears no makeup and it seems to make her sterner, but you love her and that is enough for me.

"He has told me things that it hurt him to reveal." I answer carefully; I don't know what she wants me to say. "We lived together with secrets between us." I find it very important to tell her that. "I wanted to be important enough to him for him to share his confidences, but I was prepared to love him regardless as long as he would have me. Michel," the name sounds strange on my tongue; I have always called you Duo, in my heart that is your name, "he burns like the sun, I am happy to stand in his light." What surprises me is that it is completely true.

Her smile is brilliant and cold. She is simultaneously seductive and terrifying. "Go to him," she says quietly. "I have eternity to share with Michel, enjoy your mayfly life."

I find myself questioning everything she has told me as I walk back to the party outside in the gardens. It is you I expect to meet me but rather I am surprised by Dorothy who slips her arm through mine, "so, what do you think of our Una?" She pronounces the name slightly differently. I wonder how many names each of them has had over the years. "She's something else isn't she?"

I can't think of an answer for her so I remain silent. Nevertheless she smiles at me, and like Une her beauty is at once terrible and cruel. She looks like a sprite in the gathering darkness of the summer evening. Someone has strung paper lanterns from the trees and the vodka is flowing like water.

"So," she says as she lifts a glass for me, pressing it into my hand. "What did you talk about? You were in there with her for hours." The vodka is crisp and slides like oil down my throat. Really good vodka does that. It tastes slightly of cinnamon. Her expression is impish. You told me once, offhand, that Dorothy could have taught Machiavelli a thing or two about scheming. I find myself wondering if she did. I wonder if it's polite to ask.

"She called me a mayfly." I hear the words escape me almost as if someone else said them. She reaches behind her to a table and hands me another glass. I think it's her intention to get me drunk. Across the way you look and smile at me. You wave a hand before returning to your conversation. You probably tell the woman in the grey blouse that I am your secret lover. I cannot imagine that you would hide that from these people. This is your place, your kind, and I am just a mayfly.

Dorothy just smiles. "She still calls me her little lightning bug, Draha." She has adopted the nickname for me, I don't know what it means though she tells me it means beloved. For all I know it could mean cocksucker and I would agree and smile without realising I am being insulted. "She must like you," she says, "She didn't kill you outright."

If it was meant to settle my nerves I must disappoint her. "Dorotea," the one you introduced as Milliardo says, he calls her Dorotea rather than Dorothy, I wonder if that is truly her name the way that Michael is yours. "You are hardly being solicitous to our guest; you cannot keep him all to yourself."

Dorothy rolls her shoulders and smiles, "but surely we're all family here." She says then she reaches around and kisses me on the mouth, I am surprised when her tongue tries to gain entrance. I wonder if this is another of their tests. I do not know what to do. She pulls back to Milliardo's laughing.

There is something I do not like about Milliardo but I could not say what it is. He looks something like Dorothy, he has ice blue eyes and almost platinum blonde hair but you have told me that Dorothy is related to Treize and not to Milliardo. You have told me that he was a prince and a knight and that chivalry means everything to him. You have told me that he will die rather than betray his honour. Most of what I know of him is that following the murder of his family he chose death for two hundred years rather than exist on without the woman he loved until Une had awoken. I do not understand the nature of your family.

It is easy to see him as the shining knight in a fairy tale travelling to the witch's castle to save his one true love. I have seen her portrait and I wish I had known her for she was beautiful and there is much about her that speaks of mirth. I wonder what kind of woman can entrance a man to such a degree that he will spend two hundred years dead to mourn her. You told me that they were together for over a thousand years. The concept seems so simple but I cannot comprehend the vastness of it. It is too much. "Oft times," he says in his careful manner, "Dorotea is not so much a gift from god as a punishment from the devil." It is a pun on her name and I do get the joke. "Mishka speaks well of you."

For a moment I am flattered that despite such a prolonged absence that your topic of conversation was me. I have a momentary vision of seeing you, for some reason in a silk gown with a conical head-dress, telling Milliardo how I broke your heart and him donning his armour and mounting his trusted steed to avenge your honour with a tarantella and a gaggle of sighing maidens. I smirk before I catch myself. He is looking at me strangely. "Vodka?" He asks and I don't know whether he's offering or asking.

I decide he's offering and accept a glass. "I am glad he thinks well of me." I say and then realise just how bad that sounds. I want these people to think well of me because they mean so much to him. Of course I have destroyed that chance with Une. Dorothy looks at me as some kind of pet and Treize says I present an unusual opportunity to talk to someone out of my era. Long conversations with him remind me of Anne Rice novels.

"Come Michael," one of the others, one I don't recognise calls out, you turn, your hair is coming free of your braid as you smile and you look lovely, haloed by the paper lanterns, "you haven't sung for us in two hundred years." The man chides, "It is a long time to be without our little songbird, sing for us, Michael."

"Yes," another carols, "sing for us."

Treize looks on indulgent. "Have you never heard him sing?" Milliardo asks me. I don't answer.

"Two hundred years is forever," you say dragging out the word and laughing, "And in that time more people have written songs about me than I care for." You turn with a sprawl, "my voice is centuries cold," it is teasing and playful, "but I suppose I can content you with a song that was written for me, but not to music." The collar of your shirt is open and you suddenly seem very young. Perhaps it is Une's words lingering in my head, "he is sixteen, and he will always be sixteen,"

You are smiling; you love the attention. I know that you do. Then you clear your voice and begin to read from memory a poem written in your honour. "I was content to serve you up, My ballock-full for your grace cup, Nor ever thought it an abuse, While you had pleasure for excuse -You that could make my heart away, For noise and colour, and betray, The secrets of my tender hours To such knight-errant paramours, When, leaning on your faithless breast, Wrapped in security and rest, Soft kindness all my powers did move, And reason lay dissolved in love!" I know the poem; of course I know the poem. It makes me feel a little nauseous.

"You know what he was," Milliardo says and he sounds rueful and more than a little tired, "what we trained him to be."

I acquiesce.

"He was beloved, with all our human frailty." Milliardo's voice is deep and rich. It is soothing. "But he never loved," he reached out with a porcelain white hand and brushes my hair back from his face, "he never smiled like he does for you." The words reach deep within me with warming hands. There is something about Milliardo I do not like, I could not say what it is, but I think I admire him. "He was our perfect little doll, we dressed him and we played with him, but he is no longer our child. Our grief wronged him, made him harsh."

I think on what he is saying, like Une he reveals a lot without saying anything at all. "They have made him who he is."

Milliardo's beauty is like Une's -- both seductive and terrible. He shines like a brilliant shard of glass, or the edge of a sword. He has the poise of a statue and he stands nearly a head and shoulders taller than me. His hair is the colour of spring wine and almost as long as yours. He is slender and it makes him seem even taller than he is. Treize is unremarkable in comparison. I wonder if you were all chosen for your beauty. "Yes," he says finally in his perfect deep voice, "yours."

Across the garden you laugh and you joke with your family and with Milliardo's hand on my shoulder I no longer feel like such an outsider.

Treize is the last to speak to me. I find myself pushed towards a shrine set into the back of the garden dedicated to the Madonna. She is covered in ivy but it does not surprise me that her face is Dorothy's. She appears to have been made of marble and coated in bronze that years of exposure to the elements have turned dark brown and bright coppery green. Although her pose is sacrosanct there is something about the arrangement of her robes that is slightly obscene. Her lips are painted red. It is the only colour on the statue. I do not know whether to turn my eyes away from it or not. Despite its lewdness the statue is beautiful.

Treize notices my interest, "Venice," he says calmly, "she was made in Venice, she broke the sculptor's heart, he could not decide if she was divine or hellish so he made her both. He did not want to sell her, his Dorothy." He pronounces the name, "it means gift from god and there is a saying in Italy that all gifts of the divine are double-edged." He reaches out and caresses the marble cheek. "The name suits her better anyhow." I want to ask what Dorothy was called before but I daren't ask. I don't know the etiquette of such things. "She likes you." He adds.

"Lady Une called me a mayfly." At that Treize laughs, his laughter is cold and manipulative. I find myself desperate to please him; his charisma overwhelms me.

"I do not remember the woman who made me." He says sitting on the lip of the shrine and looking at me by lantern light, "And I am almost sure that it was a woman, because I kept her image for a long time, first on reed paper so I wouldn't forget, then mosaic, carved on wood, on ivory. I had a statue made of her in marble. I do not remember her face or her name. Some days I doubt it was a she and sometimes I doubt that I didn't just one day appear in this world as I am." It seems a terrible revelation. "We forget things. We are after all," he says with a magnanimous splay of his hands, "only human." He seems amused by his private joke; I watch his brows lower and the sides of his mouth quirk up. "Mishka tells me that you like to read." I answer in the affirmative, "Have you ever read Peter and Wendy?" He asks. I find myself wondering if he had some hand in its creation the way he speaks. "We are the lost boys." He says, "We will never grow old, we will never die," his hand has found my face and then like Dorothy he kisses me. I am surprised. He takes advantage of that to slide his tongue into my mouth. He pulls back gently, resting his cheek against mine. I am surprised and terrified and across the way you are talking to your family oblivious of what he has done. "I am your last chance to refuse." He says. "Say the word and you can go free."

My tongue feels swollen in my mouth. I cannot answer him. "If you need time," he says quietly, "you only have to ask."

I look through the crowds at you, you are shining and when you see me you smile and wave before pulling a woman in a red shawl up to dance to you with the music in your head.

Treize stands up and lays his head on my shoulder, "Do not make the decision for him. Do not choose what you think he wants. Eternity is a long time to hold a grudge." His voice is calm and soft. "Mayflies live brief uneventful lives, by their offspring and their works they attain immortality. We who are immortal can have no children, we achieve nothing." I turn to look at him; he is a handsome man though plain surrounded by such beauty. "Take as long as you need to decide." He tells me and then lays another whisper of a kiss on my forehead. "You know our secrets now, you are family either way." I think of my own family, of my uncle who meant well but had no idea what to do with a child and Sally who called me her little man and loved me as if I was her own. Odin Lowe saw me as some kind of strange academic toy and my mother who was talented and beautiful and my father who was brilliant. I know little of family but the words are sweet to me. His hand is hot on my shoulder, I feel I could turn to him and he would open his arms to me. "Take as long as you need."

"Does it hurt?" I ask. I do not know where the question comes from, or what it means.

His answer shakes me to the core, "everything worth having does."

"How?" I have never made a decision blindly in my life, whether it was simply which colour shirt to wear or how I would hunt you down knowing I could not live until I met you.

"Over the course of three days we drain out your blood and replace it with our own." His eyes are staring at his feet, "on the third day we cut out your heart because it cannot sustain the blood we have given it." I remember what Une said that the only way to make sure that their kind was dead was to consume them before they regenerated.

"Does he have to see?" I ask. It suddenly becomes important that you do not know of this aspect of transformation, that this is kept secret from you. I do not want you to blame your family if anything goes wrong.

Treize shakes his head slowly.

"Has it ever failed?" I don't want you to celebrate and then find out such celebration was in vain. The best way to break a person who has nothing is to give them back something broken.

"Once," he says, "she lied, she said she had borne no children and she had though the child died. Have you ever?"

I can see the words in the air that he is too polite to say. "I've never with a woman." I say. "I only ever wanted him." And that is the absolute truth; I knew nothing of desire until I met you.

"Then you have nothing to fear" He assures me. "Give me your decision when you're ready, but someone is probably starting to miss you, we've had you to ourselves all night." He leans forward and I can taste copper on his breath as he kisses me again. "Go to him."

So I do.

I see the light that shines beneath your skin when you smile. Your hair is almost completely loose now; twisted into a plait when it was wet it has dried in a loose corona of wisps about your face. I act on instinct reaching out to touch you, cupping your cheek in the palm of my hand and then pull you in for a long lingering kiss. I think I made my decision years before in a college campus at twilight with the sun setting behind you and books in your arms.

Yes, I decide. I have always known my answer.

Your kiss tastes sweetly of peaches and the slick smooth vodka. You pull back licking your lips. "Well," you say with that dazzling smile that almost brings me to my knees. "Anyone would think we'd been apart months not hours."

I lean into your hair, inhaling deep, you smell of cinnamon and sunshine and freshly cut grass and under it is the scent of old pennies and rain. I can smell your sweat warm on your skin. I drink you in. Then I look at you, at your perfect complexion at the faint sugar dusting of freckles that never see the sun, the flicker of gold in the striations of your eyes, the creases in your lip, the curving arch of your through out of your sweater, the dark lines of your lashes, and the sweep of your nostrils. You feel like velvet beneath my fingertips as you smile at me, your lips wet from my kiss.

Yes, I have made my decision.

There only ever was one option.

I kiss you again, sucking your lip into my mouth despite the catcalls of the family that surround us, even as you lean into my grip. I can feel your heart fluttering like a little bird against mine. I can feel the heat of your skin.

"Daisuke da yo," I say into your kiss, "Zutto," and this time it really does mean it.

I have made my decision. I will tell Treize come morning, but tonight is for us.

"Hey boys," one of the women, it is the one in the red shawl, says, "Don't mind us if you're going to put on a show, but had I known I would have brought popcorn."

"I would have charged admission." Treize smirks and I don't know whether to blush or laugh so I do both.

"You're so cute when you're embarrassed." The woman says, "oh, Treize-darling we simply have to keep him." She looks at you with a wink, "tell me, is he as good as he looks?"

I can feel my ears glowing at their light hearted teasing. "Oh yes," you say brightly, "better even, now come along, Heero, you can't start the engine if you're not prepared to drive."

And you lead me to the house and to your bed with no compunction that your family has gathered to see you. I will tell Treize in the morning, or afternoon, or whenever you set me from the most devilish torture of your mouth and your hands.

I will tell him.

Eventually

As you lie on the cotton sheets, satiated and sleepy I find myself pondering the nature of us. "You were so afraid to tell me," I say quietly, not really caring if you are listening or asleep, "why couldn't you trust me?"

In the moonlight your skin shimmers like pearls as you turn. I can see the dark shadow of your nipple, reddened from my teeth and tongue. "It wasn't you." Your hand cradles my cheek as you smile, "it was us, this. I thought you'd leave me, that I'd have to kill you. I never thought it would be forever."

I kiss you again, knowing that even with eternity I could never get enough of your kisses. "We'll fight all the time." I assure you.

"And then we get to the great makeup sex." You are smiling in the darkness.

"You'll hog the bed."

"You'll pinch the covers."

"I talk in my sleep."

"I break wind." You assure me, pulling me down so I lie against your chest. "I swear, I'm rude, I don't care for the vast majority of your friends and I think you spend too much time in books, time you could spend doing things with me." Your fingers are playing with my hair, "but overall I've decided that even if you are stubborn and petulant and cranky most of the time you're great in bed and you give the very best cuddles so I'll keep you."

I look up at you, "Duo, now will you marry me?"

Your laughter warms the dark places in my heart.

Excerpt from the Silver Book
On this day we welcome a new member to our family. He is young and sceptical but strong. But the greatest gift he has given us is that he has returned Mishka's smile to us. For that alone we can never repay him his kindness.