"Heero?" I mumbled with sleep-chapped lips. It wasn't a question meant to determine if he was there... I already knew he was... but rather to draw him out of whatever darkened nook of the room he'd dissolved into.

A shadow moved at my periphery, familiar in height, moving across an oft-trodden path to the side of my bed. He loomed over me, and that's the best word for it really: loomed. The quiet moonlight washed his face of the black shroud of night and tore strips of shadow away from his bared chest. The easy rustling was clear as he slid the top sheet down the bed. His weight jostled the mattress beneath me, bringing me further from sleep for the moment.

Two muscular arms snaked around my middle, pulling me to him, fitting my back against his glowing warm chest. I folded my legs as his came up beneath me. His lips pressed to my naked shoulder, then against the vein in my neck, and finally to the hinge of my stubbled jaw.

"I love you, Duo," he whispered as he drew the tip of his nose along my ear. His arms moved up to encircle my chest, and I rested my palms atop his large hands.

I didn't say it back. It didn't need to be said. He already knew I felt the same for him with the very deepest fiber of my heart. This was Heero telling me he loves me. Something I don't think he can say anywhere but there, with the dark cover of night to hide us.

His warmth lulled me back to sleep. I awoke in the morning with him still beside me. No declarations were shared in that first hour of new sunlight, no spoken reminders of what we both knew and felt from one another. There were lips that needed kissing, hands to tame and lazy pleasures to give and share.

Tell me by night. Show me by day. That's how Heero loves.