Heart to Heart

By: CrystallicSky

Disclaimer: I don't own Xiaolin Showdown or any of its characters.

Warnings: Slight language and slight sexual implication towards the beginning, but otherwise, fairly tame.

Chase Young sat alone in his study, poring over the various texts whose insights always comforted him and kept his mind sharp in these long, boring stretches of inactivity since accepting Hannibal's offer, entirely, completely, and utterly alone.

Well, sort of.

At the feel of a slight weight in his lap, the warlord sighed roughly, wondering aloud, "What is it you want now, Spicer?"

The young man on his knees under Chase's desk, arms folded over his lover's thighs, grinned as he answered, "Just checking in on you, babe; wouldn't want you to completely drop off the planet and turn into some kind of bookworm, you know."

The warlord graced the boy with a look. "I am perfectly fine without your 'assistance'."

"You're damn right you are," Jack purred. "You don't need my help to be fine, you sexy beast: you're constantly a 'fuck me' away from having anyone you want any way you want 'em."

In a low tone, the dragon-lord rumbled, "Continue kneeling before me and speaking so lewdly and I just may use that ability to put your mouth to better use…"

"Oh, well, wouldn't want to distract you!" the goth chirped, standing and plopping carelessly into the man's lap, gifting him with an affectionate peck on the cheek. "Can't have my honeybuns torn away from his reading."

Chase frowned darkly, demanding, "Don't you have to be frustrating elsewhere?"

"Not until 4:00," came the earnest answer.

The warlord sighed again. "Should you insist upon staying," he instructed, "I ask you to stay silent."

"Awww," Jack groaned, "buzzkill."

"Spicer-"

"Alright, alright," the youth conceded, "I'll shut up…"

"Good," Chase said.

For a long while, they sat in silence.

While he normally hated keeping his mouth shut for extended periods of time, instead preferring to use it to speak a mile a minute or to feed his incredibly quick metabolism with various sweets and junk-foods, Jack didn't mind so much when he was being quiet for Chase.

Now, that didn't mean it was easy or that he liked it by any means, but in moments like these, he managed to distract himself from the lack of conversation by listening to a sound that very few had ever had the privilege of hearing.

Chase Young's heartbeat.

Since the moment he'd been allowed to be so close to the warlord, he'd loved hearing the sound of the man's heart and how reflective it was of the man himself.

Proud, steady, and strong, it always fascinated Jack because of what he knew of biology: human hearts could only go so long and had but an approximate amount of beats in them before they stopped altogether.

The albino had always been fascinated by Chase's because by all accounts, it should have ceased by now, long worn and exhausted from centuries of use and much too tired to continue thumping away.

Not so.

Chase's heart was quite determined to never stop, to beat until time itself stopped first: 1500 years and still going strong. This fact was a comfort to the youth because his lover was already so old (though he didn't show it in the least) and to want to stop living seemed a natural thing: to hear the power and strength in those proud, steady beats helped to remind Jack that Chase was not going anywhere anytime soon.

The warlord in question was having difficulty in focus on his books, something that only ever happened when Jack was near. The Art of War lost its appeal all too easily when his albino sat so obediently silent in his lap, and he found his reading as shallow as a bored high school student's: acknowledging the words mentally, but retaining no real understanding.

It was moments such as this that Chase did the same as his lover did (because he was no fool, and could tell just what the boy was listening to), and focused instead on Jack's heartbeat.

Spicer's heart, he'd always pondered, was decidedly unlike the genius himself: consistent, steady, and reliable. Whatever comfort the goth found in listening to his heart (for surely, there was some appeal in it with how often he did it) Chase found equally so, if not more, in listening to Jack's.

The boy truly worried him, sometimes. It was as if he were addicted to danger, or if not that, a magnet for it, and it too often seemed that even Jack himself forgot one very important fact.

He was mortal.

Spicer could die or be killed so effortlessly, the fragile thing he was: easily-bruised, subpar eyesight, clumsy, weak, unskilled, and to top it all off, overconfident.

Yet, every day a Shen Gong Wu went active, the goth would be there without fail, ready to have his rear end handed to him by self-righteous children who gave no guarantee that they wouldn't kill him to prevent a victory by evil.

In the beginning, he had attempted to shoo the youth away from Showdowns because he was troublesome and accident-prone, likely to cause some odd chain of events that could lead to Chase's loss of an important Wu. Now that they were lovers, he tried to shoo Jack away because Xiaolin Showdowns were for those who knew what they were doing, and the goth most certainly did not know what he was doing.

Sitting there with the albino genius in his lap and staring blankly at the words in his book (occasionally turning a page to keep Jack from suspecting something), Chase continued to listen to his lover's heart.

It was a reassuring sound, he supposed, because with all of the stupid decisions he made and the risks he took, it often seemed as if Jack wanted to die. The persistence of the genius' heart was a reminder of how persistent the boy himself was, and considering that, it was perhaps one of the first times he'd actually felt grateful for the goth's cockroach-like tendencies: no matter what happened to him, Jack would survive it, somehow.

Spicer was mortal, Chase's mind kept reminding him; he would have to remedy that, soon.

Slowly, he began to realize that something was…odd. It took a little while, but upon identifying just what it was, the warlord was given pause. No, he thought to himself, that couldn't be; what were the chances of that? But, nonetheless, listening closer, there it was, just as he'd thought.

It was strange, yes, but the man supposed it was fitting.

"Chase," Jack spoke quietly, having realized the same thing, "they…they're beating together…"

"Of course they are, Spicer," the warlord explained, finally closing his book in defeat. "We are lovers: it only makes sense that our hearts should beat as one."

"Oh," the goth acknowledged, "that's weird."

They sat there for a long while, simply listening to the steady, synchronized sound of their existence.

A/N: So, this is just a piece of fluff that came out relatively acceptable, so I deemed fit to post it. Anyways, I hope you liked it! :D