A/N: WHY DOES THIS SITE LIKE TO THWART ME WITH TITLES? IT DOESN'T LET ME USE CERTAIN TYPES OF PUNCTUATION. The title is SUPPOSED to read, "Love Conservative - Goodbye, Simon!" Enjoy yourselves. This one contains yaoi.

I waited in my office, pacing and wringing my hands.

Kinon and Gimbley I had dismissed, but I had ordered one of them to alert me from ground level reception when Simon arrived. He was to be sent up immediately.

I paced to the window and craned my neck, to glimpse the people below on the streets. I paced to my desk and glared at the telephone as if it would ring sooner that way. After a few more laps around the room, it did.

"Commander Rossiu."

"Yes, Kinon?"

"He's… he's not here yet, but Reite has called and said it's because she's holding him up inside Lagann."

I rubbed at my temples. I thought of saying something harsh, of relinquishing my control and venting my frustration at the phone line's unfortunate other occupant, but the impulse didn't last. Kinon's voice sounded just as apprehensive as mine. I sighed and said to Kinon, "I just wish he had told me why he wanted to meet me here. I could be down there, helping to see them off." She didn't respond for a moment.

"You don't want him to get caught up in the preparations and leave without seeing you, do you."

Had it been anyone else, I'm certain I would have denied it, but this was Kinon. "No, I don't," I whispered, and I hung the phone back in its cradle gently.

I paced back to the window.

The sun, high in the sky, nudged its girth behind a cloud, and when it did I could see my reflection more clearly in the glass. My jaw — still swollen from Simon's spectacular punch — shone red and raw, but it no longer burned. My hair hung in one long tail again; Kinon had insisted upon brushing it out after things had settled down and she had treated my bruise. I looked relatively composed in the window glass, but I didn't feel it. In a frighteningly short amount of time, Simon would be taking off with Leeron, with Kittan, with Yoko… with everyone except me, to hunt down the Anti-Spirals. Why did he ask to see me?

I didn't know what was left to say to the man that had awoken me from my soul-dead sleep.

And yet, I desperately wanted him to come. I wanted one last moment alone with him, although I didn't know how I would — or if I even could! — convey my emotions, the changes that I felt beginning in myself as a result of his actions and his crude-but-righteous counsel.

Why did he want to see me?

"Rossiu."

I spun around. Blue jacket, white pants, cobalt hair. Boota at his shoulder, chattering a series of mole-pig syllables until finally, while I composed myself, Boota was let down to scamper out the door after what I could only assume might be Yoko's bosom.

"Kinon was supposed to let me know you were here."

An unruffled grin. "I'm sorry if I startled you. I came in from the skybridge on the twenty third floor."

I held my position as he wandered in and closed the door behind him. "I see." The inside of my mouth grew cottony-dry. How he radiated confidence! He was composed, and informal, and a grease spot stained one cheek. "Reite and Lord Genome have been getting ready for the launch across the dimensions," he said.

"As expected."

With his hands in his pockets, he meandered to the window not far from where I was standing.

I couldn't take it any more.

"Was there something you wanted to talk about, Simon-san? Surely with all that still needs to be done, you would rather be—"

"Don't even think it, Rossiu." I clamped my mouth shut. What was he…? "I made sure to escape from that chaos so I'd have time to say goodbye." His grin was only a little flippant.

"Ah," I managed. The sun came back out from behind the clouds, lighting up the gold on his collar, and for a moment I became distracted. I found I needed to look away to avoid being dazzled. Such a fantastic force, Simon — although it was hidden beneath his easygoing outer layer most times, and only came out when one knew it was there. Or maybe I only thought his aura so strong now because he had been the force to break me. To subsequently reinvent me.

That, and for quite some time now, he has fired something else in me that I am both reluctant and desperate to give in to.

"Kinon finally had time to show me in detail the surface reconstruction plans you made," he told me.

So he had seen them. "And?"

"And I'm glad you're alive to follow through. Only you can, with plans so complex. The new buildings and landscapes are beautiful, Rossiu. Not to mention it will be economical and a wonderful resource for the future humans that will live here."

My hands twitched, and I left the window for my desk, where I perched as serenely as possible on the edge of it. I burned. "Thank you, but you know I had help."

His gaze had followed my retreat. "We all have help, now and then. It's no less impressive because of it."

Silence, but for the ticking of a wall clock and the buzz of my sleeping computer.

After a time, Simon let out a hum of satisfaction. He was watching the people on the streets outside, as I had been. They appeared ant-like from this height, as small as the stars looked in the sky, but he remained there for a good while, seemingly absorbed in their comings and goings. I took in the curve of his neck, the strength of his thighs, his flawless profile.

"Rossiu."

I started. "Yes." Could he see me watching him in the window glass?

"Come with us."

His command cleared my head, and I felt my brow contract. "I absolutely can't do that," I declared at once. "I am the only one who can look after earth while you're gone. I thought you understood and accepted that."

"I do," Simon replied, his back still to me as he squinted out the window, "But sometimes it doesn't hurt to double check."

"I haven't informed Gimbley yet, but I've certainly made my decision. Don't tell me you're worried about what will happen without me?"

He released a draft of air from his nose. "Viral would tell you that in fact, I'm a little intimidated by the task at hand. He kept hollering at me to stop messing around inside Lagann while Reite was making adjustments, but the truth was, I couldn't call up my full spiral energy. When he realized I was afraid, he told me to stop being a foolish human and to find my intensity again. Intensity, he called it." I felt warm when he turned around at last and his eyes found mine. "Even I get scared sometimes. I believe we can make it, but I wasn't lying when I said I needed you."

I tried hard not to let my face betray my shock and compassion. "You have me," I said, before I could help myself.

He lifted his hands behind his head and stretched, as if to rid himself of the anxiety he'd mentioned. "Everyone says you balance out my personality."

I considered this. "I will continue to balance it out… but from earth."

"It's settled then, as you say."

"Of course it is! I already said it was!" But he barely registered my retort.

"You're right in your choice. I will always be grateful to you for sticking to it, I'm sure, once my head has cleared and I'm gone into space."

His words caused my chest to tighten. "Don't talk like you're not coming back." I had already thought once that I would lose him, that my coldhearted sentence would get him executed, or that he'd die victim to the falling moon. I could not stand to think it again. If he needed me, I now needed him even more. Perhaps that was only natural, the way I'd long yearned for his passion and envied his constant refusal to give up, the way he'd opened me and forced me to see myself the way he saw me — as someone worth believing in. My gaze drifted carelessly over the line of his nose, his lips, the hollow at his neck. I wanted him — to learn from, to rule beside, to converse with, to admire. I wanted him, but he was going to leave and I was going to let him.

"Well," I said when he offered me no further words, "I assume you can't linger here, because there are people who need you to give them an empowering speech before you go. I'm glad you wanted to talk this way with me one last time before heading off, though. It's like our old meetings, isn't it."

"Mmn."

I felt hot in his presence, felt stupid filling the silence with my blathering, and when I lifted a hand to loosen my collar, I made sure to do it indifferently. "Simon-san?"

We stayed poised there, my heart palpitating fast like insect wings, and he looked at me.

"Would you like a kiss goodbye, Rossiu?" Casual, unassuming. Had I lapsed into auditory hallucinations? Completely genuine the inquiry. Thinking nothing of it except for what I might have wanted, thinking nothing of himself. He blew me away.

He was mad.

I swallowed hard, realizing that this meant he knew, could tell, possibly had always known the things I felt for him and couldn't help. So like Simon, to keep it quiet until it mattered. So like him to perceive and then say nothing. Had he been protecting me somehow?

He must have been. If Leeron were ever to discover it….

Simon was waiting for my answer. A hundred protests and fears and wayward stammerings galloped through my mind, but as he watched me with an open expression, with those hands loose and still at his sides as if to say, "Take your time," I halted my thought-gears.

I simply relaxed. I breathed deeply and said only, "Yes, I would."

And oh, how I would die to feel his lips. Not a trace of hesitation or challenge in my voice as I declared it. Simply open.

He looked quite taken aback. Perhaps my honesty had shocked him, or the quiet, untroubled tone of my voice. Maybe, until this moment, Simon had not realized how much he had changed me. Whatever it was, in an instant the shock was gone, and he was still standing silent and respectful, aware before I was that I had not finished.

"I would like it perhaps more than you could imagine," I told him, almost warmly in my conviction — softer, gentler than I've ever bothered to be for anyone but Kinon. "But you have feelings for Nia, and I would never dream of asking you to do something that would disrupt that union."

His shoulders relaxed, although until they did so I hadn't thought it possible for him to look any more unwound, any more receptive. So he had been a bit apprehensive after all. It was only natural.

A slow smile crept across his face. "Rossiu," he said with earnest and simple enthusiasm, and I took it to mean he was grateful it had been exposed at last, grateful that I respected his choice in Nia, and I leaned against the edge of my desk and let my own lips curve briefly.

After a comfortable moment had passed in silence, he said, "But explain Kinon."

I lifted both eyebrows in utter astonishment. "Kinon is one of my closest companions, Simon-san, and I hold her close to my heart, but that is all. After you woke me up with your punch, I think it didn't take her long to realize things about me that might not have been visible before. She's highly perceptive, and I have let a few walls down." Simon thought I loved her? "She told me, not long after we arrived home from Adai Village, that I'd been staring at you non-stop and would periodically turn r—" I stopped. I turned red.

Simon let out a rich laugh, but it was not at all insulting. He glanced at me from under his bangs, as if shy and delighted to hear for the first time the things he did to me. The fiend. It's that innocence and open wonder that captivates me.

"Don't laugh. Kinon would never admit it, but I'm worried she's had deeper feelings for me all this time, and I've disappointed her."

Simon wiped the smile off his face, and instead became ponderous. "Do you think you've done her wrong?"

"No. I only think I've done as I can't help but do, and she got caught up in it. If I'd known her feelings from the start, I might have been more careful not to lead her on."

"I don't think you have. You've been honest with yourself at least from the beginning, Rossiu. What's wrong with that?"

"Are you saying all we can do is be the best individuals we can be, because we can't always protect everyone else?"

"Something like that."

"Simon-san, forgive me... but you're full of crap."

His lips twitched upward a little, but then his face went serious. "Why?"

I looked away from him for the first time, choosing to focus instead on the telephone atop my desk. "Because you're always there for everyone."

He stared, with almost no expression on his features. Then, "You're doubting yourself again. Or thinking I'm more powerful than I actually am."

"Something like that," I said, but I didn't mean to sound like I was mocking him.

"Rossiu, are you annoyed that I'm here? Does it bother you that I'm so unalterably myself all the time, someone you can't completely understand?"

The second question nearly floored me. My whole body seemed to loosen and tighten at once, to fall open with its arms down in disbelief only to curl back up in horror. "Never," I cried, spellbound and aghast. I repeated it. What in the world? I had made Simon think I resented him for being the force that he was!

"So it must be that you're a little scared like I am."

Ah, so that was where he had been going. If my problem was not with him, it must be something to do with myself and my self-doubt. I frowned. I wouldn't admit it.

"What you don't know wouldn't seem so frightening if you could appreciate the things you do know, or if you stopped denying yourself the fringe knowledge you could know with a little more boldness, Rossiu."

I continued to frown, puzzled, only knowing that I didn't expect what he did next.

He crossed to my desk in five long steps, and as my eyes flew wide, he pressed his lips to mine.

They were smooth, and the kiss was soft, but his mouth was unmistakably firm and strong; I could feel it even as I went dizzy at the sensation of him suddenly so close. I could smell him, and it occurred to me that I hadn't been this close to Simon Digger for this long since Kamina was still alive, and now Simon's scent was different. Livelier. More mature. An eternity, the first half-instant seemed to last, and when another impossibly long second passed I realized that Simon was softening his kiss on purpose, giving me time to react, time to decide something, time to either enjoy or decline this touch of his compelling lips on mine. He didn't move for two full seconds as I absorbed all of these sensations, merely planted his lips carefully and patiently, and held them there. I remained frozen, my sense of balance disrupted although I was still sitting, and then the pressure lessened as he began to lift away.

The near loss of contact jerked me back into being, and I shot my arms out to seize him by the collar, to drag him to me again. He made no sound of protest — seemed not to register the violence with which I'd moved — and only put out his hands on either side of me to balance himself against the desk. Now our lips were sealed together more tightly, and I couldn't help it — I let my tongue out to taste his kiss, gently, slowly.

Simon's lips moved then, conscientiously, drawing deliberately away from my tongue. He took my lower lip between his two instead, then pulled partially back — peeling us apart so slowly that every sensation felt elongated — before he moved in once more in his own fashion, as if imploring me to continue to my liking, as long as I could refrain from overstepping his boundaries.

He was asking me to behave myself, and it was an impossible thing to ask of me, but I would have given anything for him not to end it, so I tried. My body had been tensed; I let out a deep sigh of submission, of recognition and satisfaction, but halfway through it became a moan. Simon had stepped in closer, slipping one knee between my thighs to better plant his feet. He paused for a moment, startled by my reaction — he knew not what he'd done to me — but I didn't give him time to process it. I had him by the collar; I held him there and kissed his yielding lips, playfully and licentiously and every way I knew how. Let him keep his chosen level of distance, his innocence. I wouldn't do anything he didn't want me to do. But as long as it was Simon, standing here, allowing me to have this, for whatever ludicrous reason he'd thought up for us both… I wouldn't let us stop.

Torture of the sweetest kind to kiss him slowly. Lightheaded loops and vertigo to kiss him quickly. It was ten times more potent than I'd ever dreamed.

My left hand wound its way into his cobalt hair; the right was yet locked to his collar, and my thumb ran over and about the chain that held his drill around his neck. Then it slipped free and my fingers followed the chain's entire path, coming to rest at his chest over the core of spirals that was his very soul, and down further over his muscled abdomen before shifting back up to nestle once more in his collar. He didn't stop me. I sucked enticingly on his lower lip. After a moment I felt his breathing quicken. My back arched where one of his powerful arms had drifted, as if to clasp me to him despite his initial will. I lost myself further and nipped lightly with my teeth when he shifted position. The action elicited a groan of approval that Simon immediately tried to stifle, but it was too late. The damage had been done.

When next there was tongue, it was Simon's, burning hot and vivid against my own, deepening the kiss to new levels of ecstasy until I cried out.

Simon responded with an all-conquering chuckle neither of us expected him to be capable of. It was teasing and cocksure, and entirely automatic. He had moved his lips to my neck, at the place where I'd loosened my collar, but when the sound of the chuckle sank in, he went rigid.

We halted.

My chest heaved. Simon took his arm away from my back, but he did not step away. I leaned forward, struggling to catch my breath and yet fearing to breathe. My forehead came to rest on his shoulder. I couldn't meet his eyes. No, we couldn't possibly have gone so far!

But we had, and he had, and it was entirely my fault for not refusing his initial offer. Simon had been willing to give me something I had already accepted I would never have, and instead of denying his advance like a reasonable creature, or accepting it quickly and getting through with it, I had pulled him down with me farther than he'd wanted to go, into one long whirlwind of….

From above me, Simon said, "You didn't take anything I wasn't willing to give, Rossiu."

How could he be so calm? "Do you know what you've done, Simon?" No honorifics now; it seemed too ludicrous in our intimate tangle of limbs against my desk.

"I've kissed you," he answered, and it was at that moment that I glanced up, and it hit me that Simon was not the slightest bit unnerved by this fact, only by his unwittingly fervent reactions that he had not previously anticipated.

"But Nia," I said stubbornly. Was he trying to sidestep the consequences? Ignore the logical reality of what it means for the leader of the Gurren Brigade to allow Commander Rossiu of Kamina City to see him off to war with a kiss?

"I didn't betray Nia," Simon said.

Oh, how Leeron would howl with entertainment. Even I was tempted to. Was this some sort of denial? I decided to fold my arms and listen to his justification.

"Don't look at me like that, Rossiu."

He had recovered himself so quickly; his features showed no sign of struggle or regret… or denial. He was talking to me and looking at me as if nothing had changed.

I knew then that nothing had.

At that realization, part of me wanted to grow bitter, but Simon was smiling his gentle smile and I had to fight to keep hidden the spirals of pleasure that still curled tight inside of me. "Did you enjoy it?" he asked me.

I faltered, indignant, still trying to decipher the reason he had kissed me after all. "Th-that kind of question…."

"You've given me a lot over the years, Rossiu. I wanted to return the favor in a way that would mean something to you. You're my friend, and it's okay sometimes to do things you wouldn't usually do for the sake of your friends." My lips had formed a tight line. "Besides," he added, "Nia kissed Kittan once, so that should make you feel better about the strength of my relationship with her. Maybe her kiss wasn't quite like that, but Kittan had been feeling ill and she wanted to cheer him up."

"That was different!" I exploded, appalled at his idiocy. "She gave him a kiss on the cheek, because after her cooking made him sick, he wouldn't stop griping until she apologized and kissed him well again!"

"But still, she didn't betray my love by doing so. I trusted her and believed in her loyalty. I'm certain she believes in mine, because I do love her, so she'll understand that—"

"Simon!"

He laughed, a reaction of that same delight that expressed both his strange innocence and what I now took to be his fondness for me. "Rossiu." His voice was low and appealing. I colored.

"Whatever the case and whatever you believe, the reality is that you've kissed someone that isn't her," I countered. "It was me..." I grasped hard for some semblance of my formidable icy self. "You can't expect me to feel grounded and ready to lead the people on earth after that, even if you do expect her to forgive you the lot." What a childish argument I was having with him. But he had me in spirals.

Flash of his first real worry. "Then it didn't make you happy after all?"

I mused while he stepped back at last and scratched his head. It didn't make me happy that he'd done this without considering his loyalty to Nia, without considering that I couldn't resist him, and that I would inevitably feel guilty afterward, having tarnished him… having neglected to immediately stop him when he gave up on his own boundaries and broke my control as well as his. It didn't make me happy that now I might feel tortured for the rest of my life, having tasted something forbidden and then being told I could not have it again. It didn't make me happy that he could justify it all with his same old lack of real logic, basing everything on feeling and believing. I looked at him.

He waited, eyes locked on mine with a little trepidation. Irrational and simple as he was, he had taught me something in Adai Village, a lesson about letting yourself feel more and struggling onward despite what you know are mistakes.

"It made me very happy," I said, and a golden warmth surrounded me when I said it. I was not afraid to admit it. I smiled a little, and when Simon saw it, he smiled as well. "However."

I reared back and landed him a solemn punch to the midriff.

I am nowhere near as strong as Simon. My strength is in my defense rather than in my offensive attacks, but I caught him by surprise. He doubled over, clutching the edge of my desk to hold himself upright. I moved out of the way and crossed to the window. Kamina City glittered.

When he recovered his breath, I watched him right himself in the window's reflection. I said coolly, "People make mistakes. That's obvious. But when they make mistakes, it's okay for someone to punch them."

Simon held his stomach with one hand, pain and amusement mingled on his features. "You're strong, Rossiu."

"Because of you," I said without hesitation. I didn't turn red this time. I was entirely comfortable in his presence. My desire had faded in the wake of his kiss, and I felt calm, confident, prepared.

"I'm sorry I made you feel the need to punch me."

"Find Nia and defeat the Anti-Spirals," I said.

"But if my kiss made you happy," Simon responded, bypassing my order of dismissal and making me want to simultaneously grin and grind my teeth, "then I know I can be happy now too." He looked down at his feet. "Plus, I didn't think it was a bad experience."

"That's just like you, Simon-san, but I'm afraid Kamina would consider you a failure at manliness for that proclamation."

A laugh, and then a steady, unreadable expression. "I'm not Aniki."

I turned back around to face him, my arms falling down at my sides. "But you're ever the boy who looked up to your Aniki's vision of the impossible." Simon watched me, something like acknowledgment and gratitude glinting in his eyes. He appeared to stand taller.

I would have to let him walk away from me, but I wholeheartedly accepted it. The world needed Simon more than I did. Nia needed him. I was proud to see him go in such splendor, with such burning passion behind his intention to pierce the very heavens.

"I miss your goggles."

Surprise. Pure delight and more laughter. "Then I'll wear them into space," he said. He turned to go. "I couldn't have done this without you, Rossiu," he told me.

I didn't even want to blink, for fear that one second of taking him in lost would be something to regret later. "I know."

"Do you think you'll be all right after all that?"

"Just who the hell do you think I am," I whispered.

Our smiles matched the brightness of the sun that shined in through the window. With Kinon and Gimbley, I walked him down to the ship.

Beneath the shadow of the most beautiful flag in creation, he left, and I knew he would come back, because despite everything I believed in him.

Author Note: You know, anja-chan asked me to make my first Gurren Lagann fic about Simon. The first one turned out to be about Rossiu. This second one here is about Simon a little, but still Rossiu…. Hey, I'm slowly working my way up. Soon I'll get to just Simon.

I think I'm simply intimidated by Simon's character. That and I have a thing for Rossiu, analyzing him and picking him apart until I fall over and understand him and can make sure I'm NOT him in too many ways. Ahaha.

I sincerely hope the events written here weren't too out of character.