Secrets - part three
by Ebonhawk

Rowen spluttered through several false starts as he tried to think of how he could possibly reply to the unanticipated appeal. He finally decided he couldn't avoid the dreaded 'but' statement. "Ryo, I'm flattered that you would think of me like that but-"

"But nothing, Rowen," Ryo broke in, not wanting to hear the obvious conclusion to that sentence. "All I want is an answer, not a speech. Will you?" Ryo could feel an adrenaline rush sending jittery, nervous excitement through his limbs. Rowen hadn't yet put on anything more than Sage's boxers and it gave him an excellent view of the archer's lithe body. With more than his normal intensity, Ryo searched Rowen's eyes for some sign that he would respond favorably. Please, Rowen, he pleaded silently, please?

"I'm sorry, Ryo. You're a good friend and all but I just don't see you that way." Rowen cringed a little at his own words. He'd not only used another 'but', he'd also said something that wasn't entirely true. Life was certainly having grand time throwing awkward and difficult situations at him. It didn't help that he was having to deal with them totally unprepared. His heart felt like it was going to pound right out of his ribcage.

Squaring his shoulders and firming his resolve, Ryo stepped closer to his tall, blue-haired friend, placing his hands on the other man's bare chest and internally shaking away those last words. He wasn't ready to let this go. Heat of the most wonderful kind flushed through him in a hazy swirl, concentrating sharply between his legs. He could hardly believe he was doing this. He'd never been this forward when it came to intimate things.

Ryo slowly moved Rowen back toward the door until his shoulders came in contact with the wood. He pressed his damp body close against Rowen's, slid one hand in a soft, tingling caress down the pale skin, and slipped his fingertips beneath the waistband of the single article of cloth separating them. "Don't say no so quickly," he murmured, wanting this so badly it hurt.

Rowen swallowed hard and forced his lungs to draw in air. The touch of skin on skin was intoxicating, making his head spin in reaction. This wasn't anything like when Sage touched him. Not at all like that. Ryo radiated a fiery aura of need that was focused entirely on him, leaving no escape. Outside his own idle fantasies, this was not anything he'd ever have expected of this man. "Ryo-"

"Shhh," Ryo hushed him, his breath warm, a finger pressed against Rowen's lips. Ryo could feel the response that shivered through Rowen's form. The body was more than willing, he noted with an enraptured thought - *he* had done this! Now, could he convince the mind? One way to find out...

He pressed his lips to Rowen's startled mouth, letting his eyes slip closed. Taking full advantage of that parted softness, Ryo slid his tongue in to taste the quiet warmth. It was pure, gentle, yet edged with a sharp clarity...like sunlight glowing through the moist atmosphere on a warm spring morning after a long night of rain. So this is what Sage had been keeping all to himself... Moving his mouth gently against Rowen's, Ryo allowed his hands to wander freely over the thin, strong body. One hand lingered on the firmly toned rear, tenderly petting and kneading the silk-covered flesh. He nearly lost himself when his friend began to relax into his touches and return his attentions.

Pulling back just far enough to see the star-filled, blue eyes had closed like his own as to better understand the sensations, Ryo declared quietly, "I wish I'd gotten to you before Sage. He's a very lucky man." Rowen's luminous eyes slipped open, lids heavy with the weight of rising desire. The tiny, demure smile that appeared on the sensitive lips drove Ryo unswervingly onward in his seduction.

He gently caught Rowen's lower lip between his teeth and nibbled, gaining a soft sigh for his work. Trailing his open mouth down the fair, slim neck, Ryo dipped his tongue into the hollow between the delicate collar bones. He was rewarded with an airy gasp that made him smile. Rowen was literally trembling under his advances and Ryo felt his friend's enthusiasm increasing with each little bit of contact. Gods, Rowen was the most sensual being he'd ever known!

When Rowen's practiced hands brushed over his chest, pausing briefly to tease his nipples, Ryo moaned low in his throat and gave in fully to his passion. It was as if his own heat caused Rowen to melt into him then, letting him take what he wanted for his own. His mouth was hard on Rowen's, his tongue gaining dominance, leading the archer in this as he had lead him against the Dynasty. His hips moved, grinding his hardness against Rowen's own growing erection. Almost roughly, he started to push the green silk down...

He heard Rowen make a small sound of discomfort and was suddenly shoved away. "What's wrong?!" he snapped in barely controlled frustration, immediately wishing he could take back the angry sounding words.

Rowen stared at him for an uncounted span of time, fingers touching the lips swollen from Ryo's aggressive kisses. His breath consisted of soft puffs of air, as if a little hard to come by. A sorrowful look of - was it regret? guilt? - sat deep in his beautiful eyes. "I'm sorry, Ryo," he whispered, "I can't do this. You belong with Mia, not me."

He turned quickly and slipped out the door, leaving Ryo standing alone, aching with his need for physical release and a confused heart, in the steam-filled bathroom. Water still beat relentlessly against the tub and tile behind him.

"Shit," Ryo cursed, furious with himself. He dragged a hand cruelly through his wet mess of dark hair. "Wildfire, you idiot, what have you done now?"

Leaning his back against the smooth, untextured wall, Ryo let himself slip down until he was sitting on the floor. He stared blankly at the wooden door of the cabinet directly across from him. His mind emptied itself of words, working instead with only the unnamed turbulent emotions that whispered a familiar dark refrain inside him. How the hell was he ever supposed to face Rowen again?

Ryo swung around quickly and slammed a clenched fist into the wall with a quick burst of humiliated strength. The drywall gave under the impact and left him faced with a fist-sized hole at approximately knee-height. "Ah crap," he muttered in disgust. Patching the wall without Mia finding out what he'd done was not going to be fun.

He could live with the pain that was starting to replace his hand and could handle fixing the wall. He couldn't change what had just happened between him and one of his closest friends. He'd not only embarrassed himself but Rowen, as well. Already, he could feel the beginnings of self-doubt and misery stirring low in his breast, growing on the already heavy emotions filling him. Why was he continually so *stupid*?!

Cye watched, strangely fascinated, as Yuli whispered something into Dais' ear and the former Warlord valiantly struggled not to laugh. Yuli must have made a vulgar comment, to judge from his gleaming eyes and too-virtuous smile. Clearing his throat lightly, Cye started, "Not to interrupt you two or anything but...just how did you end up-"

"Together?" Yuli supplied with a smirk.

The three of them sat comfortably at the kitchen table, Kento having disappeared into the living room to drown in his video games fifteen minutes earlier and Mia having taken to her bedroom again to look over some papers. Dais and Yuli were side by side, the younger of the pair sitting close enough to the one-time Dynasty minion as to practically be in his lap.

"Yes, I have been wondering about that." I also wonder when you became such an exhibitionist, Cye added silently to himself. The boy - no, young *man* - had yet to take his obviously eager hands off Dais, constantly touching him in some way. Cye found it rather disconcerting, considering their history with the former Warlord.

"*Die*, you evil scum!" bellowed Kento from the other room. "You cannot defeat the almighty Kento! D'oh!"

"I'll tell you everything *if* you'll answer a personal question for us," Yuli replied with a look of contrived innocence, easily ignoring Kento and tugging on a lock of shoulder-length black hair. It was vaguely reminiscent of the more truly innocent expressions of his childhood but Cye wasn't fooled in the least.

With a rueful sigh, Torrent folded his arms across his chest and puffed his hair out of his face. "Nosy thing, aren't you?"

"I learned from the best." The cheeky grin on Yuli's face made Cye shake his head in mock despair. Dais observed the scene with an intrigued eye. He really knew very little about Yuli's friends - and most of what he knew was what Yuli had told him. He hadn't had much reason to learn more than their deepest fears when he'd battled against them.

If only for Yuli's sake, he needed to understand these people that had once been his enemies. To know them better would give the deeper emotional attachment he found himself wanting with the charming, playful scamp he'd grown so fond of. Yuli made him feel young - something he hadn't felt in a long time.

"And you would like to know?" Cye's question broke into his thoughts. Torrent appeared none to happy to have his own tactics - although ones he no longer used - turned against him.

"You and Kento have been doing the horizontal hokey pokey, true or false?" Yuli asked bluntly, leaning forward over the table like he was interrogating a hostile witness on the stand.

Cye's blue-green eyes went wide. Oh, the brat was *definitely* getting personal - not to mention unbelievably crude! Still, it wasn't as if he'd be telling them something that everyone hadn't already assumed as truth. "All right, you silly little bastard, if that's the way you want to play it," he paused and tossed a not-quite-affronted look at Dais, "True."

"See?! I told you!" Yuli jumped up from his chair and crowed his triumph loudly. He struck a victorious pose that would have done a pro wrestling champion proud.

"Fine, fine," Dais held up his hands in defeat. "You've got two of three now but I *still* say Wildfire hasn't had the guts to put the moves on her yet."

Yuli turned on Dais, annoyance written on his face. "Ryo's a lot stronger than you seem to think."

"I also seem to recall that he's not anywhere near as sure of himself as *you* think," Dais tossed back easily.

"So," Cye spoke up, seeing the path this exchange was sure to take, "do I get my story or do I have to beat you for it?" If he didn't get the tale now, Yuli would probably use it to worm even more information out of him later.

"There's really not much to tell, actually," Yuli admitted, a little chagrinned. "I was out with Shiho a couple of months ago and she decided to introduce me to a new friend of hers."

A couple of months! Cye thought in surprise. How had Yuli kept this hushed for that long? There hadn't been so much as even a casual slip of the tongue in all that time. And what about Shiho? What part had she played, besides the reintroduction, in this?

"Wasn't she surprised when she found out we'd already met..." Dais added, his one good eye of palest blue bright with something Cye had never thought to see in one of his old enemies. He had to admit it - no matter how odd this pairing seemed, it had done wonderful things for both Dais and Yuli. Cye couldn't help but wonder where the relationship would go, if it lasted.

Now, Yuli *did* climb into Dais' lap, tangling his arms around the slender neck. He wound a stray curl of white hair around his index finger and replied with a wide grin, "Wasn't she, though?" Looking back at Cye, Yuli continued his explanation, "We went out to lunch - the three of us - and Dais and I just sort of clicked, I guess. That's pretty much it."

"If someone had told me when I first met you as a youngster that we'd end up like this, I would have laughed and then knocked his head off," Dais commented, gazing calmly on his Yuli. "Funny, isn't it, Torrent, how the world works?"

"What does Shiho say about this?" Cye asked seriously. The shock of the situation was wearing off and he needed to know how all parties in this were handling it. He really didn't want to end up in the middle of a bad, real-life soap opera.

Yuli smiled cheerfully. "It's what she was hoping for!"

"What?!"

"It's the truth, I swear it. Shiho - wait..." Yuli said, suddenly seeing what was confusing Cye. "You - *all* of you - thought that Shiho and I were-" He made a 'you know' motion with his left hand and snickered. "Oh no. She and I never - we're only friends - and *you* thought..." Yuli lost it and sputtered into Dais' shoulder, overtaken by convulsive laughter.

"Well, what were we supposed to think?" Cye countered, feeling his cheeks redden in embarrassment. He knew there really wasn't a reason to be blushing but he couldn't exactly help it. "You never told us she *wasn't* your girlfriend!"

The bedroom door shut with a loud click. Halo looked up from his journal and watched Rowen move across the floor, sinuous and supple. Sage felt honored to call this tall, breathtaking creature his own. As soon as he came within range, though, the archer crashed inelegantly onto the mattress face down, instantly shattering the faery-illusion. "Is something wrong?"

Rowen gave his lover a confused look. His confusion stemmed from Ryo's sudden interest - and sudden it was, for he'd never seen even a hint that Ryo might swing this way before now. It was only a few short months ago that he'd realized and accepted that *he* was attracted to other men. Namely Sage. Of course, he'd indulged in fantasies involving the others - many of which had him gladly submitting and allowing Ryo do as he wished. The man was almost supernaturally good looking and terribly erotic but...they were just nice dreams. Sage was all he needed, wasn't he?

"Well? I can tell when something's bothering you, you know. Talk to me."

Remaining silent, thinking of how to approach telling Sage what had occurred, Rowen crawled over the small space between them. He laid his head on Sage's now linen-clad thigh, curling his body loosely over the thick quilt covering the bed, oddly desperate for this simple contact, to clear his thinking. He felt better when a gentle hand began to stroke his short, blue hair, and he came to his decision. Why beat around the bush?

"Ryo just came on to me." Actually, it was a bit more than a come on but you don't need to know that, he added privately for his own benefit.

The hand stilled.

"Are you serious?" The calm voice held a hint of amusement.

He nodded against the covered thigh beneath his cheek. It would've been nicer without the cloth but he doubted Sage could be coaxed out of his clothes at the moment. Rowen sighed. There was nothing to do but finish the conversation.

"What do you want to do about it?" Sage then asked without any sign of emotion, except maybe a little curiosity. He was carefully concealing any personal feelings about the situation until he'd had time to consider it further, Rowen knew. It was just the way Sage did things.

"I don't know," Rowen confessed, his voice hardly more than a whisper.

"Do you want to be with him?"

The question was thoroughly unexpected. Was the entire *day* going to be like this?! He didn't know how many more surprises he could take.

Rowen sat up and stared hard at Sage. He couldn't find what was prompting the query in the near-silver eyes. Had Sage noticed the way his cheeks were still flushed? The way his body was still responding to Ryo's amorous touches...? Of course he had. This was Sage, the one person that knew him better than anyone. His other self.

Unable to look at Sage any longer, Rowen lowered his gaze to the quilt, studying intently the familiar wispy swirls of blues and greens. It had been a gift for both of them from Sage's mother when she'd found out her son had finally been brave enough to take that first step. A matching one was spread (although not anywhere near as neatly) over the bed in his own room.

Those knowing fingers that had played through his hair only a handful of seconds ago now brushed across his averted cheek. A softly spoken question caressed his ears. "Do you?"

END PART THREE