Claude was drowning – he was sure of it.

Dark water pulled him downwards and pressed at his chest, trying to force the precious air out of his lungs. Resisting the pressure, Claude began to swim in the direction he assumed was up, knowing that he would have to reach the surface soon or it was all over for him.

He thought he was making good progress – he could now see a faint glimmer of light directly above him – when the water seemed to constrict around him. Surprised by the abrupt change in pressure, Claude gasped…and watched in despair as a silvery air bubble floated out of his mouth and towards the water’s surface. Desperate, lungs screaming for air, Claude struggled futilely against the water –

- And woke up, flailing, in his own bedroom.

Taking deep, gasping breaths in order to alleviate the squashed feeling in his lungs, Claude’s brown eyes flicked around his room searchingly. What had caused that dream? It had felt so painfully real. In fact, he could still feel pressure on his chest…

As his gaze settled on his chest, Claude’s mouth settled into a tight, annoyed line. Dammit, he should’ve known.

A familiar, blond head was resting on Claude’s chest. The rest of the blond’s body was sprawled over the bed, and his chest rose and fell to the slow, steady rhythm of sleep.

Claude glared at the sleeping man on top of him and then nudged his head to the side. “Get the hell off of me,” Claude growled.

The blond’s blue eyes slowly flickered open, and when he saw Claude looking down at him, he smiled. “Why, good morning, Claude,” he chirped.

“Kei, you’re sleeping on top of me. Again.”

“Well, I can’t help it,” Kei said with a sigh as he snuggled into Claude’s chest. “You’re so much more comfortable than the couch!”

“That’s too bad,” Claude snapped back, blushing furiously at the older man’s comment. “Just get off me. Now.”

“Okay, okay…” The blond pushed himself off of Claude’s bed and wandered out of the bedroom, yawning hugely. “I was hungry, anyway.”

Claude sat in bed for another minute, listening to the rummaging sounds coming from the kitchen, and then got up, giving up on all hopes of sleeping in.

“Kei, what are you doing?” Claude asked blearily, running a hand across his face in order to get rid of the last trace of sleep on his face.

Kei paused in his rummaging, one thin hand buried deep in a cupboard. “Looking for something for breakfast that’s not ramen,” he said lightly. “I’m starting to think you don’t eat anything else.”

Claude flushed a little. “It’s not my fault that I can’t afford anything else,” he mumbled.

Kei smiled a little. “I didn’t say it was your fault. I was just making an obser- ah! Finally!”

With a flourish, the blond pulled out a box of cereal that had been hiding behind all the ramen. Kei placed his prize on the counter and went hunting for bowls. As he did, he looked over his shoulder and settled his blue eyes on Claude.

“You want a bowl, too?” he asked sweetly.

“Um, sure,” Claude flopped down at the small kitchen table. Kei soon joined him and handed over a bowl of dry cereal and a spoon. The blond began to eat quickly and efficiently, but the younger man ate idly. Soon enough, Kei was up and heading for the bedroom.

“Where are you going?” Claude asked in surprise.

“I’ve got to work.”

Claude blinked. “What? But…isn’t it our day off?”

Kei reappeared with a sigh, his suit jacket in one hand and his shoes in another. “Well, it’s your day off now. Roma called me last night.”

The younger man’s eyebrows arched at the reference to their boss. “She called you and not me? I thought she made us partners for a reason.”

“Well, she said it was a one-person job,” Kei explained as he pulled his shoes on.

“It’s not very fair though – our first day off in a while and Roma calls you away.”

“She promised another day off for the both of us in exchange for this.”

“Okay. But…” Claude chewed on his lip piercing uneasily. “I still don’t like it.”

Kei smiled, stood, and lightly placed a warm hand on Claude’s head. “Don’t worry about it, okay? Just try to enjoy this day without me, and we’ll do something fun on our next day off, I promise.”

Claude blushed at the light contact but didn’t pull away. Instead, he looked down and murmured, “All right, then. See you later.”

“I’ll be back late tonight.” Slipping his hand off the younger man’s head Kei left the apartment, but not before giving Claude one last, dazzling smile.

Claude sat at the table for another minute or so, staring at the front door and frowning in thought. Finally, he pushed himself out of his chair and headed to his room to get dressed.

Claude had some stuff to straighten out with his boss.

~*

Roma looked up from her paperwork in surprise as her visitor entered her office. “Claude? I thought you had the day off today.”

“I do.” Claude tugged on his jacket in suppressed annoyance before adding, “Kei did, too.”

His boss sighed. “Is that why you’re up here?’

“Yeah. Why did you have to give him this job when he was going to relax today?” With me, Claude added silently, though he did not voice this thought to his boss.

Roma rested her elbows on her desk and tented her fingers. “Two reasons, Claude. One, I’m tapped out of trustworthy men at the moment. And two, Kei’s knowledge and skills made him a good candidate for the job. Does that make sense to you?”

Claude’s brown eyes shifted towards the floor in apprehension. “I…guess so.”

“Good.” Roma stood and walked around her desk, obviously preparing to usher her employee out of her office. “Now go on home and enjoy the rest of your day off. And to make up for right now, you and Kei can have another day off next week.”

“O-okay,” Claude said, turning to leave in response to his boss’s ushering. As he did, his eye caught on something brightly colored – a big contrast to the office’s somber color scheme. “What’s that?”

“What’s what?” Roma followed Claude’s gaze and then smile slightly recognition. “Oh, it’s a magazine Kei brought in a few days ago. He must have forgotten it here. You can take it home with you, if you want.”

“This is Kei’s? Is it from the surface?” Claude’s hand tentatively inched towards the magazine.

“Yes, I think it is. Go ahead and take it – I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Claude grabbed the magazine with more confidence this time. “All right, then. Good bye.”

Roma’s office door shut firmly behind him as he walked down the hall and towards the elevator. As Claude waited for the elevator to arrive, he studied the cover of the magazine. It seemed to be a fashion magazine of some sort. Well, that sort of made sense – Kei had always been into fashion.

The elevator announced its arrival with a cheerful ping before sliding its doors open. Claude stepped in, pressed the button for the ground floor, and then glanced down once more at the magazine in his hands He knew he shouldn’t look through other people’s stuff, but he was so curious…

“To hell with it,” he growled as he opened the magazine. “It’s not like Kei would mind, anyways.”

Claude flipped past all the letters to the editor and only gave the articles a cursory glance. His page flipping slowed when he reached the models in the middle of the magazine. He glanced at each face interestedly.

I guess they’re pretty nice-looking, Claude thought to himself. Though not as good-looking as-

Claude’s thought froze in midsentence as he stared at the model he had just turned to. It was Kei!

Claude’s eyes swept over the page dumbly, absorbing the blond’s casual – yet attractive – pose before settling back on that lovely and familiar face. His mind screamed that it couldn’t, just couldn’t, be Kei in that picture. Since when did he model, for God’s sake?

But it was true – there was no way Claude could mistake anyone else for Kei. And, as if to set it in stone, Kei’s name was plainly printed as the model’s name at the bottom of the page.

The elevator chose that moment to arrive at the ground floor. The opening doors startled Claude back into reality and he looked up from the magazine. Slowly, as if waking from some horrible dream, he managed to step out of the elevator and into the lobby. As his benumbed brain tried to kick back in, Claude crossed the lobby and exited the building.

When his mind finally did jump-start again, it did so with one roaring, overpowering emotion – anger. At Kei. As his anger increased with every step he took, Claude began to twist the magazine with his tense hands.

“Kei, you son of a bitch,” Claude muttered darkly.

“You’re so going to get it when you get home.”

~*

“I’m home.”

Kei wearily pulled off his shoes and left them next to the front door, mentally telling himself to put them away later. The job had left him exhausted, and all he wanted to do was relax with Claude.

One glance into the living room, however, told Kei that relaxation would have to wait.

Claude was perched on the small couch, every muscle apparently tensed. An overflowing ashtray was on the coffee table in front of him and a cigarette was trembling between the younger man’s lips. As Kei approached the living room, Claude’s flashing, infuriated gaze settled on him.

“Hey, Claude,” Kei said as he lit a cigarette of his own. “What’s up?”

“I’ll tell you what’s up,” Claude snapped as he violently ground out his cigarette. “This is what’s up!”

The younger man threw something and Kei instinctively caught it. Looking down at it, the blond realized that he was looking at a modeling job he had done for a magazine while living on the surface. Kei looked up at Claude, confused.

“This is just a job I did a couple years back,” Kei said calmly. “So what?”

“’So what’?!” Claude repeated hotly. “Why the fuck did you do that?”

“Well, there’s this thing called eating, and in order to eat you need money…”

“You could’ve done any other job out there, but you had to pick modeling. This pisses me off so much that-!”

“Why?”

Claude hesitated. Kei’s sudden question had thrown him off. “I… well… I just… It makes me angry to see you do stuff like that!”

Kei arched an eyebrow in amusement. “Why? Are you jealous?”

Claude spluttered, and he felt his face grow hot as he blushed. “J-jealous? Of what? I’m not jealous! There’s nothing to be jealous about!”

Flustered, Claude abruptly turned his back to Kei, crossing his arms stubbornly. The blond regarded him silently for a moment, then snuffed out his nearly forgotten cigarette and stepped forward. Before Claude knew it, then arms wrapped around him from behind and a pointed chin rested on his shoulder.

“I think I know why you’re jealous,” Kei murmured in the younger man’s ear. “You don’t like the idea that millions of people have seen those pictures. That maybe, just maybe, someone else may have been attracted to that pose, to that look. The things that you had claimed as yours so long ago. Or, even worse, that I may have responded to that attraction.”

“Th-that’s not true,” Claude protested weakly. It was hard to focus with Kei right there.

“Oh, but I think it is,” Kei said with a smile as he lightly kissed Claude’s neck. “But don’t worry—“ His next kiss was on Claude’s jawbone. “There’s only one person who I truly want in this world – and that’s you.”

Turning Claude’s head slightly, Kei leaned in and kissed him. Claude felt his protestations melt under the heat of that slow, lovely kiss. When the blond pulled away, the younger man found himself wanting more. He turned completely around and hugged Kei, burying his face in the older man’s chest.

“I guess I’ve been forgiven,” Kei said with a smile. When he felt Claude’s nod against his chest, he asked, “Are you ready to go to bed?”

Claude nodded more emphatically this time, and Kei, chuckling, pulled away and led the younger man to the bedroom by the hand.

A sudden thought made Claude stop walking for a second. “I’ve got one request, though.”

Kei looked back at him with a small smile. “Yeah?”

“No…no more modeling. Ever. Okay?”

With a laugh, Kei pulled Claude closer and gave him another kiss.

“You’ve got yourself a deal, my darling Claude.”