I approached the supplicant.

"What is thy desire?" she asked me, and I couldn't bring voice to the words.

"I..."

"Thou who hast come with the maiden, tell me."

I croaked, cleared my throat, and tried again. I knew exactly what I wanted; it wasn't a matter of indecisiveness. I wanted the one thing I'd never been able to have, no matter how many times I asked for it. I wanted the one thing that I'd so far had no luck in buying with money. It was damn, damn selfish, which I understood just as well as anyone, but in a burst of appalling selfishness, it popped from my mouth, the name of the one thing I had always wanted more than anything else.

"Gene," I hissed, hating myself for it even as I spoke, "I want Gene Starwind."

"This man? He who once also came with the maiden? That is thy desire?"

It was giving me a chance to back out, but somehow I found the words easier to spit out the second time around. "Yes. I've...I've never been more sure of anything."

"You didn't need the Galactic Leyline to get that," jeered a crass voice from behind me, a place in which no one had stood the instant before. I turned, a whirling mix of feelings, my petulant selfishness still coasting on the surface of my lifelong desire. "Why didn't you just ask me first?"

Gene Starwind's smile affected me then in the way it always had, sending a twittering line straight down the front of me to put a wobble in my lips, a flutter in my heart, and a stir in my groin. Unfortunately, my feet remained unaffected and I stood rooted in place, merely lost in the blues of his eyes as he continued stepping toward me. With just a few words spoken to a disturbing face, I had been granted the capacity to see him smile that way for me.

When he reached me he slipped a hand around to the base of my neck and kissed me.

In a jolt of electricity, all the selfishness I had previously felt was gone. Some instinct told me that this was a wish the thing couldn't grant - wasn't there always some code that forbade wishes of love? No, as his tongue worked his way between my lips, I knew, in my very soul, that he was one hundred percent sincere in every action. After the few seconds it took me to process this information I began returning the kiss vigorously. I hadn't tasted Gene Starwind since the one and only time the man had gotten drunk with me, and I had found the flavor of him far more intoxicating than any of the alcohol. He'd learned his lesson, so to speak, and I'd been left craving this taste for three and a half years.

The planes of the Leyline shifted - it was effortless for the one who did it - and we were nestled deep into a room of red, the carpet and the curtains and the sofa that I spun around and backed him into. The backs of his knees hit the edge of the seat; still maintaining the lip-to-lip lifeline as well as possible, I levered up into his lap and straddled him. Even more amazing that watching his lips smile for me was feeling his cock stiffen for me. Through two thin layers of fabric it was maddening; his hard flesh was so close to mine and yet so far away.

The kiss was a ravenous, raging thing by now, with his throat becoming an easy target for my Gene-hungry lips and oh dear god, his teeth on my ear. This magnificent Gene in front of me, be it some creation of the Leyline or, as I still believed, the true thing, knew exactly what to do to me to...do things to me. As his tongue traced around just inside the upper shell of my right ear, I couldn't take it any more and I moaned loudly, voice echoing off the walls the exact color of his hair and hips thrusting toward his in a pantomime of the one, last thing I desired as the strange supplicant so put it.

"God, Fred," he hissed, his mouth still millimeters from my ear and his breath hot and shallow and exquisite. "Fred..."

"Gene," I sighed back; it almost seemed as though he truly needed a response. "Gene Starwind..."

"Fred Luo," he said, and in all the times I'd heard my name on his voice it had never been more wonderful. "Fred Luo...Fred Luo..."

"Fred Luo, I've come to kill you!"

The hissed death threat was low, deranged, and decidedly female, and it jolted me from my sleep in a remarkably awful way. My dream swirled in swathes of red and star-speckled black behind my eyelids even as the moon spilled in over my rumpled blankets and I sat up, clutching my head and fearing for my life.

"Gene," I whispered, confused.

"Gene's not here to save you now, Fred Luo," she said, and damn I wished I could see her.

"Who are you?" I finally managed to croak out, more than a little scared by now. I got death threats often, but to make it all the way into my bedroom? Past the security system, the guards, the dogs? Surely she possessed some extraordinary skill. I felt death creeping closer to me, and I had to know.

"When the clock strikes twelve, a new day will begin - a day that you will never get to see, thanks to the flawless execution of Midnight Mitsumi!"

I had just enough time to register two things - a very strong case of deja vu, and the utter horror that came in knowing I would be murdered with tented pajama pants - before she appeared, sporting a skin-tight beige outfit against dark black skin and swooping kimono sleeves. I braced myself for the impact of her blade -

BLAM!

From the bathroom on the other side of the room, a single gunshot fired and knocked the Twilight Suzuka ripoff to the floor before she even made it halfway to my jugular. She slumped, merely stunned, but certainly not inclined to wake back up any time soon.

"Damnit, she shoulda known that she'd never be able to get away with just killing you. A true assassin wouldn't have hesitated to kill me, too. I don't knock out that easily."

Dressed only in his black boxers, Gene Starwind crossed to his side of the bed and slipped under the sheets next to me, his arm draping casually around my hips. I was still shuddering from the shock, but a smile crossed my face as he snuggled deeper into the mattress.

"I...it was one of those nights where I wake up and I think it was all a dream," I told him.

"Stop being so damn insecure and go back to sleep."

"I was there," I continued with disregard, "in the Leyline - "

"Jim never should have shown you those science journal sketches he was making."

" - and she - it - asked what I wanted, and all I could think of...was you."

"Yeah, well, you'd better be lucky you got me, 'cause if I hadn't had to go to the bathroom I'd've slept right through that bitch and you'd be dead."

"Gene," I sighed, and I snuggled against him. His body was warm in the cool night air and I could trace the scars on his biceps with my eyes and my fingertips. "I'm so glad it wasn't real," I whispered, "I was so scared, Gene, that you wouldn't want me..."

"Fred," he said, sitting up a little, sporting the adorable face he always does when he's frustrated at missing out on valuable sleep time (it was a face I saw often). "I want you, for the thousandth time. Now go back to sleep."

The contented sigh was repeated, and this time I had to smile, too. He rolled over to try to sleep himself, but he'd got me thinking...

"All of me?" I asked, teasing.

"Yes, Fred..." he groaned.

"In that case, you wouldn't mind me telling you that you're responsible for...this." I rolled over as well, to spoon with his back to my chest, and pressed my residual erection into the base of his spine. He tensed in my arms, in what I hoped was a good way.

"I wish you weren't so damn used to getting what you want," he growled, and rolled over to face me. "It would make it so much easier to deny you anything."

We both cracked sly smiles, and I knew he had tensed in a very good way indeed.