Part 9- Boys
[Version 1.0]

"Omi?"

"Omi!?"

"Aw, shit."  

Youji slumped against the now closed door, uselessly rubbing at 
cheeks to relieve the subtle tickling of the blood as it oozed down 
his skin.  Caught another glimpse of his hand and cursed once more, 
this time more forcefully than before.  

But then, he'd had good reason to spew invective.  A whole handful of 
good reasons.  One of which wasn't present at the moment, and Youji 
didn't have it in his heart to blame Omi for leaving.  If he were 
seventeen years old and more or less an innocent, he would have done 
the same thing.

And he knew that Mitsuki was right:  It wasn't over yet.  

He wondered if it would ever be.

Youji shoved away from the door, leaving it unlocked but the "Closed" 
sign still facing out.  Stared down at the blood he knew to be his 
own, contemplating what he should do first:  Clean it up, clean 
himself up, or go find Omi.  

He voted for the second one.  The floor could wait; and Omi clearly 
wanted peace after all that confrontation.  He deserved it.  
Deserved...

/Deserves a guy better than me as a lover.../

Youji walked off towards the back, and the ground floor bathroom.  

***

Yuuji, just before Mitsuki's arrival, had gotten up to fix himself 
another cup of tea and some toast, and had inadvertently heard the 
commotion coming from the shop, their dialogue drifting to him as if 
on seawinds; bits and pieces, and none of it good.  It had occurred 
to him to close the door, that he was playing audience to something 
he had no business knowing about--but the little voice inside his 
head warned him off the idea of closing the door.  So, he'd simply 
gathered up his food and drink and retired to the bedroom.  Perched 
himself on the edge of his bed and listened for any cries of 
distress.  

He'd heard Youji shout, and nearly went down then, but his sense of 
privacy stopped him.  If there really was a life and death situation, 
there probably would have been more of a ruckus.  

And...the less he got involved, the better.  

As he went back into the kitchen for another cup, he noticed the 
sudden stillness.  Heard Youji's frantic summons.  So Omi had run 
away, then?  The thought of that boy being so hurt that he'd actually 
fled the shop made Yuuji sick.  Made him furious, in fact.  So much 
so that he stalked over to the door to shut it.  

Which, of course, he didn't do straight off, for Omi was curled up 
against the wall behind it like a frightened little kid; like he was 
trying to sink into the powder blue painted walls, never to return.  

He heard Youji moving around below, and the door was quietly shut and 
locked, more to keep Youji out than to keep Omi in.  

Then he gently took Omi by the elbow, saying in his friendliest, most 
coaxing voice, "Come on out of the corner, Omi-kun, and tell me 
what's wrong."  

***

"It's not usually like this..." Omi breathed, uncurling his body only very 
reluctantly, though as he did so, an insistent, rather stiff little smile 
claimed his lips, which were pale against his hot cheeks, perhaps always 
pale.   "Youji's very sweet to me.  He doesn't ever yell at me, or girls at 
all.  It's not his fault.  He's not mad at me.  I'm not upset."

Yuuji looked like he wanted to slap him for being a fool.

Omi didn't blame him one bit.

Very gently, as if striding on to lilypads, he slid from his hiding place.  He 
contemplated the feel of Yuuji's hands on his arm, which was bare and 
sensed they had taken to touching him much as he had touched Yuuji that 
morning.  Was it even morning any longer? He couldn't find a clock 
anywhere and that unnerved him, but he tried to speak anyway.

"I'm..."

/Now what were you expecting, Omi? He's an assassin.  He'd just like 
you.  They're all just like you.  You keep telling yourself this and it 
doesn't make do any good.  You don't change.  You never will./

"I'm..."

/He's not a statue either.  He wasn't made for you.  He doesn't exist for 
you.  He was sleeping with a pretty blue-haired woman six weeks before 
he decided he wanted you.  Stop being jealous.  You're such a brat./

"I'm..."

/It's pity.  But it's not bad.  For now.../

His heart melted and tricked down to a bitter little puddle in the bottom of 
his stomach, though his voice felt like it rose an octave.  "I'm kinda mad 
at him right now though.  I don't think I wanna go back downstairs for 
awhile.  He made a mess anyway.  He'd better clean it up... do you 
umm... have any milk?"

/Am I even jealous.  I'm not sure.../

/Not sure at all./

***

/Milk?  He's in the middle of an emotional crisis of sorts, and he 
wants milk?/  

"Umm..." Yuuji began, shifting his attention to the refrigerator and 
staring at it as if he had x-ray vision.  Actually, he was doing a 
quick mental inventory of its contents.  "Yeah, yeah, I think I've 
got some."  

/...At least he didn't ask for a bottle of sake./

And he did have some as he found upon opening the door--a half a 
carton left.  He poured him a glass full and carried it over to 
him.  "If you want to lay low here for awhile, that's fine with me.  
I wouldn't mind your company.  You could sit on the edge of the bed 
and watch TV.  Raid my doujinshi collection."  Yuuji gave him a warm 
smile.  "Of course, I wouldn't mind if you just sat in here by 
yourself if you'd rather be alone with your thoughts.  Anything." 

"But as for me...I need to get back to bed," he added, leaning in as 
if sharing a confidence.  "My doctor is quite disapproving of 
patients who don't mind him."  

A wink, and Yuuji went back into his bedroom.  

***

Omi didn't even get a chance to thank Yuuji before he pattered off, 
leaving him with a very cold glass in his even colder hands.  He took no 
time to wonder over it, simply carried it over to the table, where he sat 
down and began to sip from it very slowly, weaving the most splendid 
refinement into ever sip, threads of casual grace.  Concentrated solely on 
looking natural and well mannered.

For no one.

At least it kept him from thinking, concentrating on drinking his milk.  

/I can't hear a clock... I don't believe Yuuji's got one./

/At least not out here./

/Now now, young man, you're supposed to be drinking.  That's it.  You're 
tired, you're thirsty.  You're having a drink.  Nothing else./

But the white, clean sweetness only lasted about ten minutes, leaving him 
staring at the few thin bubbles it had left behind.  He reached into the glass 
with his tongue and popped one.

/Oh... darn.../

So he took a moment to wash his cup and dry it until the body of it 
squeaked, but somehow, it still seemed filmy, so he did it again.  In hotter 
water this time.  Dried it again.  Left it on the counter since he felt nosey 
going through Yuuji's things.

Someone laughed on whatever his companion was watching.  As if 
following a very slow glowworm in the woods, he shuffled into Yuuji's 
room for the second time that day.  Gave him a certain, small smile the 
moment they took to look at one another.

He listened through the floorboards as he knelt beside the stack of DJ's, 
picked up nothing through them save the slight metallic clicks of the mop.  
Click.  Click...

More laughter.  He gave up and snatched a few from the top of the pile, a 
little rainbow of glossy covers and gold lettering.

/Wow.../

The far corner of the bed seemed to offer him a seat, so he took it, and 
began to scan the covers as if looking for a puzzle piece he'd lost, a bit of 
information on an old case, a certain line in a love note, all of these one in 
the same to Omi.

"Ohmigosh! You've got a Towa x Yuki! Those are so hard to find."

Sure, the eyes were a little too large, the limbs not gangly enough, and 
Towa looked more than the clich‚ girl's comic uke than even his dress 
seemed willing to permit, but seeming the water color of the pair 
embracing just so... Towa leaning over an unhappy Yuki's shoulder and 
waving a peace sign, drawn by someone else... just a nice little thing to 
know.  For now.

***

At Omi's exclamation, Yuuji smiled a bit, covering it with an grumble 
of his own. "Eh? Did I leave one out?" He shuffled down to the end 
of the bed, sidling close enough to Omi to easily see over his 
shoulder. "Mou! So I did. Ah, well. You can take that one along 
too, hm? To add to the others I had...er...sent up to your room 
earlier." He tapped the glossy cover, and gave him a proud sort of 
grin. "But this is the only Towa x Yuki you'll find in the bunch." 

He fell into a comfortable slump across that part of the bed, 
ostensibly watching TV, but really secretly eyeing Omi in a 
completely non-sexual, but truly interested way. Smiling a little as 
he watched his younger companion read the doujinshi he'd found, and 
hoping he wasn't dwelling too much on whatever had happened 
downstairs earlier. He was just too young to have so many cares 
weighing on his mind. 

As if he didn't have enough as it was, being an assassin. Certainly 
more than any boy his age should have.

It just seemed so unfair that Omi would end up living as he was 
now. 

It then struck Yuuji that he had broken the very rule he'd made for 
himself prior to moving into the Hanano: That he would be all 
business, and wouldn't do anything to further the very necessary 
bonds he'd have to forge with the other two Weiss. It was important 
that they had enough of a rapport to be able to work together 
successfully; he understood that. 

But, as he'd vowed, neither of those bonds would be allowed to grow 
any stronger. 

/Yeah, right. Man, the only person I tried to fool there was myself./

/But then, I didn't count on such a lonely, sweet kid being a member 
of Weiss./ 

/And okay...He's pretty too. I don't think that makes me some vile 
pervert just because I find him attractive./ 

/Huh. I could no more turn this one away than I could've turned Ran 
away, all those times he came to my door seeking solace./ 

/But then, I guess that's me: Yuuji-niichan.../ 

He tapped him lightly on the arm then, turning his attention fully 
onto the TV. "If any other titles catch your fancy, help yourself. 
You've been more than generous to me." 

***

Youji, his face shiny with dabs of ointment in places, brown with 
bandaids in others, had mopped up the splatters of blood--his blood--
from the shop's floor.  Wiped it so clean that no one would ever 
believe that a man had attacked and had been attacked by a woman in 
that one spot.  

The cloth ended up in the washer, sprinkled with detergent and doused 
with stain remover and flooded with hot water.  Youji ended up back 
in the shop--only long enough to gather up his newly repacked twin 
red suitcases and oft used, overstuffed duffel.  He glanced 
mournfully around the spacious room, his gaze lingering on one table 
in particular. 

He was leaving.  Fleeing the premises, because that was what he did 
when things went sour--and, from his viewpoint, things couldn't be 
anymore spoiled than they were now.  He'd left no note for Omi, but 
only had come to that decision after much deliberation.  He couldn't 
think of anything save for "I'm sorry," and "I love you," phrases so 
oft used by errant lovers everywhere that they had lost any real 
meaning or specialness.  Never mind that both of which were true, and 
both of which were probably the last things in the world that Omi 
wanted to hear then.  Or ever.

He'd simply left a stem of Cattelya in a green glass vase on Omi's 
dresser.  Everything else he'd left alone, the door between their 
rooms still hovering in the dusty shadows of the attic.  Anything 
he'd left behind was Omi's as far as he was concerned--his to keep, 
sell or leave out on the curb for the trash man to collect.  

It seemed a fitting penance at the time.

He slipped his key to the shop off his ring, and laid it on the table 
he'd claimed as his own, and then, Youji left the Hanano through the 
back exit...Alone.  

***

Omi gave Yuuji a long, somewhat searching glance, one ever so faintly 
pinkish from the spell of Kaikan Phrase naughtiness he had been enjoying.  
"Domo arigatou, Yuuji."  Then a wink, and he flashed him a sight of the 
page he was on- the one where Yuki was only now finding himself 
deflowered.  Yuuji covered his eyes in mock sympathy for the lovely 
guitarist held at the mercy of his backup.

Oh well, mercy otherwise made poor yaoi comics.

Just then the floor shook.  Just slightly.  Nothing unusual for Japan, 
certainly.  A simple, ordinary jolt such as one prepared for with museum 
wax here and there under one's gundams.

Which was fine except for the sound.  The metallic slam.

They had both jumped a little, but said nothing... though the doujinshi 
floated to the covers then and Omi, no explanation given, slipped out of 
the room.

"Who's there?" He called, descending the steps one at a time as if 
expecting them to break beneath his slight weight.

The whirr of the air conditioner, the dripping of one of the sinks, the 
broken syncopated hiss of cars.  The quiet sense of energy as light made it 
past the breaks between the curtains and the windows.

"Youji-kun?"

His feet skidded a little on the floor, which he found slightly wet, but he 
managed to catch himself on the wall, which he held as he peered around 
it.

"Youji-kun?"

His steps quickened as he flew about the premises, but moved yet as if he 
crept within a  delicate castle of ice where the very signifiers of his life 
could ruin his world.

Of such traces of humanity, he found none, nor any sign at all of another 
being, human or not, alive.

The flowers though were well and lush and glad to be alive.

"YOUJI-KUN!"

He waited many minutes for the stairs to shatter under someone else's 
footfalls.  

"Youji-kun! Where are you? I'm sorry! C'mon! Don't do this to me! It's 
not funny! Youuuuuuji!"

Pouting, he sat down under a spray of camellias- pink and white and red, 
all together, left so carelessly on someone's counter.  Not his own.  They 
wept a few petals over him as he leaned against the cabinets beneath.

/Well, he can just come find me then./

/That's why I wanted before... when I went upstairs./

/He didn't come then.../

/He didn't.../

/He.../

And then he realized he could not find the long dark graze along the 
sidewalk- the glossy shine of his lover's sportscar.  Not that he hadn't 
already known it would have vanished.

Long, long before.

"Youji-kun..."

And then the whole world seemed to melt like a watercolor in the rain.

"Youji... Youji... Youji-KUN! COME BACK!"

***

At the sound of Omi's scream, Yuuji was out of his room and down the 
stairs as fast as his bruises would allow.  But it was only when he'd 
reached the bottom that he was struck by the absolute stillness of 
the house.  The air so close and lifeless that it unnerved him even 
to breathe--as if just by doing that, he was in danger of awakening 
some long slumbering beast.  

"Omi?" 

He stood as motionless as he could, listening.  Heard nothing but the 
creak of the house settling.  Cautiously he crept down the hallway 
towards the shop.  

"Omi-kun?"  

A little sob answered his summons, one muffled as if by a hand.  
Yuuji quickened his pace, but when he reached the shop, he didn't see 
Omi--only heard him.  He tracked him by those muted snuffles and 
gasps, until at last he found him hunkered down in front of the sole 
unclaimed table in the room.  

/Oh, shit./

/...Damn that Kudou!/

Yuuji knelt beside him, hesitantly reaching out to brush the camellia 
petals from his hair.  

***

Omi ground his dripping eyes closed and struggled with his tears for air.  
Yuuji's touch was intolerable, but he felt to weak just then to even shrink 
away from him, do more than turn his head a little so he wouldn't have to 
see him.

So Yuuji wouldn't have to seem him being such a baby.  

"I'm an assassin for crissake, why am I CRYING!?"

And out in the open like this, with his palm cupped over his mouth and 
nothing more.  His words gurgled when his spoke because his mouth was 
wet and his whole face started to ache then.

"And what are you doing out of bed? C'mon Yuuji! It's no big deal.  
Really it isn't.  It's not.  I swear it's not..." 

The wails he had to wander through to speak seemed to say nothing of the 
sort.

"I knew he was gonna leave me.  But it was still really nice for awhile.  
I'm sorry I'm so upset.  I should be used to this by now... I just make 
everyone around me sad."  

He grabbed Yuuji's wrist and eased it away from his hair, casting him a 
little smile ringed by the final vestiges of his tears before they rolled off 
onto his shirt. Then he clucked at him like a mother hen.  "I'll make you 
sad too, if you stay.  Why don't you go back to bed? I'll be Okay."

"I'm always Okay."

***

"It's no big deal, and you're okay, huh?  That's just bullshit.  You 
aren't okay, Omi, and it IS a big deal.  You're sitting on a cold, 
hard floor covered in wilting petals and your lover has just left 
you."  Yuuji swiped at Omi's dampened cheeks, and held the moistened 
fingers out to him to see.  "You're crying, damn it."  

Yuuji wiped his fingers dry on his sleeve.  "I got out of bed because 
I heard you wailing.  I didn't know what had happened to you!  There 
was no way I was just going to sit there in front of the idiot box 
like nothing was wrong."  He cocked him a speculative look, the anger 
drifting out of his voice.  "And something tells me that you aren't 
used to being left alone when you're upset.  Or did Ran and Ken let 
you cry alone?  Cause if they didn't, why...Why should I let you?"  

/'Cause, okay...I kind of like you.../

"And besides, you're going to make me sad if you stay down here, 
because I won't be able to rest, won't be able to read all those 
juicy doujinshi you let me borrow.  So...If you want me to go back 
upstairs, you'll have to come with me."  

***

"I didn'... I didn'... I... I..."

But then his fingers fell along the curve of his bare neck, winding down 
into his throat... almost as if he felt for something there across his skin.  
But his wide eyes closed there as he sat still, fumbling a single stray fold 
of his shirt.  He got to his feet without their help and strode to the stairs, 
head bowed, still feeling at his neck.  

"Because nobody wants me, Yuuji. I know that.  I get over it.  Even if I 
sure as hell don't want me either.  But I want you to get better now so..."

He ran away without another word, he dashed up the steps and into 
Yuuji's room, where he waited for his friend, having taken up his former 
place at the edge of the bed.

/Just like I'm supposed to./

/I can still be good./

/Kinda... it never gets me anywhere./

/He, Youji never went for good, now did he./

/Oh.../

"Shimatta ne..." Muttered when he found himself still leaking tears and 
choky little moans.  

***

Youji had driven aimlessly around Tokyo, towards and through the neon 
garden of the city's center.  Saw the kids with brightly colored hair 
and brightly colored clothes, saw the little goth girls and boys.  
Sales clerks and businessmen and waitresses and the odd popstar 
decked out in shades and trying to look inconspicuous as they window 
shopped with their amour du jour in tow.  

And just as quickly as he saw them, he forgot about them.  Or dwelled 
upon them.  He could be in the mix, just as inconspicuous.  People 
who passed, who might take some notice of him might think him just 
another struggling J-rocker.  Girls would be charmed by him, women 
would just find him amusing, someone to take home to warm their beds 
and their bodies for a night, only to turn him loose to the newly 
dawning day.  

His thoughts turned to just how many women had granted him that 
privilege.  Most he'd entertained just once.  A few others, like 
Mitsuki, he'd hung out with for awhile before they--or he--would 
drift away into the arms of someone else.  There was never any talk 
of relationships or love.  In fact, he'd never considered the 
possibility of ever finding that sort of happiness with 
someone...Until he'd decided to lay his reservations aside and take 
advantage of yet one more opportunity he had been given.  

And now, all that was so much ruin.  

Omi deserved better than him.  Someone who was everything he wasn't. 

He pulled up to a light, one just at the fringes of Tokyo's heart and 
soul, and it was then that he realized just where he was.  A street 
he'd been down only once, but once had been enough.  He pondered over 
turning down that street, and going to that particular place, 
lingering there long enough to hear the impatient honking of the cars 
behind him.  

Then, just as the light began to change to yellow, Youji made the 
turn.  Laughing darkly as he did so.  It served the bastards right 
for disturbing a man while he brooded.  

It was little changed, that neighborhood with its corner markets and 
shops and apartment buildings catering to young professionals and old 
executives.  Not much different than the place where he lived now, in 
a way--save that it had an edgier feel to it.  The kind of vibe he'd 
always liked.  

And they liked it too, his old, recently come together acquaintances--
which explained why he'd always felt some sort of rapport with them.  
Gender notwithstanding.  

It was in front of their building that he pulled up.  A structure of 
cream stone and flower crammed balconies.  He locked up the car and 
entered the airy, softly illuminated, plant strewn foyer and boarded 
the elevator to the sixth floor, head down to hide his battered face 
from view even though he was alone.  

Was alone even after he stepped out onto the green checked carpeted 
hallway of the sixth floor.  Walked down to the door of apartment F, 
and simply stood there.  He could smell tomatoes and oregano and 
onions; could hear the rich, singsong chime of feminine laughter--one 
of the sweetest sounds in the world to him.  

He could picture them both, laughing and gossiping over glasses of 
wine, a pan of lasagne bubbling in the oven.  Shimmering in their 
candlelit loveliness.  Two sweethearts sharing a rare moment of 
peace.  

So...Youji couldn't ring the bell. Couldn't ruin it for them.  It 
wasn't their problem anyway--it was his.  

All his.  

He reached into his pocket for the tiny datebook he always carried 
around with him, and thumbed through it until he found a blank page.  
He hastily wrote down an address and a number, saying he could be 
reached there from now until...?  Asked them not to say anything to 
Omi or Yuuji.  Then he folded it up, and slid it under the fine crack 
in the door.  

And then he left.    

***

At first, Yuuji wasn't sure where Omi had gone; if he had disappeared 
into the quiet of his apartment, or if he had retreated into his own 
bedroom, where he had been before. A faint, pitiful little moan from 
the recesses of his dwelling provided the answer before he'd even 
finished climbing the stairs. Yuuji slipped inside, and shut the 
door, not bothering this time to lock it as he had done to all the 
others downstairs. 

/Cause I doubt the Hanano is going to reopen for business today./

He stopped short on the threshold when he saw Omi weeping afresh, and 
draped himself against the jamb, rubbing his wounded shoulder 
gingerly. 

/Omi, you're breaking my heart./

/You make me want to scoop you up in my arms and stroke your hair 
until you fall asleep. I don't think I should./

/You've been spooked enough for one day./ 

A sigh and Yuuji entered the room. The doujinshis were pushed back 
into a pile, and were placed on one corner of the dresser, with Omi's 
kept separate. The TV went off with the punch of a button, and a new 
box of Kleenex was dug out of the recesses of his closet, opened and 
laid on the bed. 

Then he sat down next to Omi, his hands folded in his lap as if he 
wanted to keep them still. As if he were fighting the impulse to 
touch him at all. 

/I guess I should defend Youji to you, but I don't want to. I don't 
want to badmouth him either. I just want to forget him./

/But...I don't think you're going to forget him in a hurry, are you?/

"How can you say that no one wants you, Omi, after one lover leaves?"

***

"I told you!" Omi snapped between his sobs.

A lull came then, of sounds besides his weeping.  The sun rolled behind a 
cloud or left the side of the building their window was on.  Either way, he 
found himself staring up at Yuuji in a greyish sort of vapor.

/Ohmigod.../

/I didn't mean to... to yell like that./

And then for a moment he cried not for Youji, but rather for Yuuji, who 
had bothered to stay beside him at all, and stare like a confused kitten into 
the bottomless waves of his sapphire eyes, which were dim or entirely too 
bright.  He was sure...

/Even if I'm worthless./

/Even if I'm shouting at you after.../

/Even if you're looking at me like I tore your heart out squeezed all the 
juices out of it.../  

Rather he wrang his hands as if to press that fearsome sensation from 
them, out into the heaven's of nightmares, in some world where they 
were... all one bloodied legend of children's beds that stirred young one's 
by the light of her tears and seeped into their dreams...

By his hands, but his own hands... 

Omi laced his fingers behind his head and shrank away.  Not for 
protection, but instead to hide himself, his saline shrouded eyes.  

"It's not just Youji..." A long sniffle.  He snatched away a tissue and blew 
his nose.  "It doesn't matter to me, if they're lovers.  That was just... 
something that happened.  Before even... before Ran and Ken left me out 
here.  My sister, even if it wasn't her fault... Youji... he told me... he said 
he wouldn't... he said he wouldn't and then Mitsuki... and now he's... 
whoever that was who saved me before when I was small..."

/I wish he hadn't.../

The grim tendrils of this thought slipped forth about his sinews and 
calmed his trembling voice, fell through him and around him in the ruin 
and the screaming loveliness of something he had kept in the back of his 
mind so long finally creeping to the surface.

Of him, Omi who wanted to crawl under the bed and go look for the 
pieces of himself that had given bloody way to all of this when they left 
him.

"He was just the first..."

***

"The first?" Yuuji parroted, all poised for Omi to dissuade him that 
he didn't mean that the way he thought; wanting to hear that Youji 
was the first assassin he'd ever had, the first friend...But no. He 
knew all too well the connotations of those two words together, when 
spoken by someone sick with heartbreak and weeping, and all his vain 
expectations flowed from him like air from a balloon, leaving him 
just as deflated. 

Making him hate Youji just a little bit more. 

He pushed all thoughts of him away then, considering Omi to be the 
important one now. Reached for him, but thought better of it. His 
hand ended up curled into a loose fist on the bedspread. 

"I'm sorry, Omi-kun." 

/So damn sorry.../ 

"I would tell you I know how you feel, about how much I know it 
hurts...Because I DO know." 

"You see...I wasn't all that truthful about Sugihara. He wasn't just 
my friend. I...I loved him. I never told him. I never kissed him 
or...Anything. And I'll never be able to do any of those things." 

"I missed my chance, but you didn't. And who knows, Omi? He might 
be back before you know it." 

"I mean, why would he have gotten so possessive of you this morning, 
when he thought that you and I..." Yuuji waved his hand at the bed. 

"And...If you don't mind my saying so..." He looked down at his lap, 
where his hands had so primly rejoined. "I can't believe that he 
doesn't love you." 

***

"That's a nice thing to say, Yuuji.  Really... thanks , but..." Omi's breath 
came slow and shuddering as if possessed by unhappy ghosts.  But it was 
a start, the first in some time that had not gagged him or fallen into the real 
of abject sobs.

From over the rim of a tissue, his fourth or fifth at least, he peered with 
glistening lashes at his companion.  A little sniffle, and he told him.

"I knew about Sugihara... the minute you started talking about him.  I 
don't know, something about the way you... the way you... the way you 
looked when you were talking about him... 'cause that was how... 
sometimes... people used to look... when they talked about me." 


/I know I'm dead./

/And I'm nothing but an unhappy thought./

/But don't you look so pretty, when you talk about him.  Like you don't 
mind being sad.  Like you're OK and.../

A long whimper as he realized that chivalrous melancholy had left Knight 
with not a trace behind, that marble candor was gone.

The sense that time had slowed and the whole world could wait for him 
and his smile if he saw fit.  Vanished.  

"Oh god! I'm sorry Yuuji! I'm sorry! I should... I shouldn't be here! I 
shouldn't."

/I shouldn't be anywhere at all.../

/I'm just trouble.../

He stumbled to his feet, flowing with that revenant of unbidden weakness, 
the swimming in his brain.  But he caught himself, and stood still, gasping; 
bathed by white light and a white chill.

Yuuji just looked so lost to him then.

And he was honestly so sorry.

He timidly reached down and ran his hand over the golden waves of his 
hair.

"...so sorry..."

***

"Hm.  Am I really that transparent?"  

Yuuji suffered his touch, gazing up sadly into those tear-gilded 
eyes.  No, maybe he shouldn't be there, but he was.  He had chosen to 
flee to that particular room instead of his own lonely one, and, as 
much as he had found that curious, Yuuji just didn't have the heart 
to send him away.  He just couldn't--he knew he wouldn't be able to 
sleep knowing Omi was upstairs, all alone with no one to turn to.  

With no one to...

Yuuji reached out just as tentatively, and clasped Omi's free hand in 
both of his own.  

"This is what you want, isn't it?  Someone to be there for you, who 
cares and will listen and not judge.  Am I right?" he asked cocking a 
look at him as the boy's hand skated another timid pass over his 
hair.  

"Well...I can be that someone, you know, even though we only met two 
days ago--if you think you'd want to let me get that close to you."

/Same sort of offer I made to Ran.  Took him weeks to take me up on 
it, though.../

Omi didn't say anything, merely gave him another long, searching 
look.  Yuuji reached up and patted him on the shoulder.  

"Anyway...As for you leaving..."  Yuuji stood up, keeping hold of 
Omi's hand while he went through the top left drawer of his 
dresser.  "I don't want you to.  I don't think I could bear to let 
you go--not tonight at least."  A pair of dark blue summer-type 
pajamas emerged from the jumbled others in the drawer, and were 
pressed gently against Omi's chest, held there until the boy took 
hold of them.  

"You can sleep on the couch, or...You could sleep here with me.  And 
I do mean sleep!" he exclaimed, jabbing a finger in the air.  "I am 
an honorable man, despite the fact that I murder people for money."  

He smiled a little, one which wasn't returned and subsequently faded 
to an embarrassed grimace.  "But you don't have to stay if you don't 
want to, of course."

***

"I... I..." Omi finally forced himself to stop speaking, unable to bear the 
frailty of his own words any longer.  Fresh tears coursed over his cheeks 
and he would not reach up to brush them away.  He clutched the pajamas 
as tightly as he could, held them to his chest as if they were a child of 
his... somehow, he had to make up for crying again.  He had to show 
Yuuji he was glad, and had to do it without speaking.

Though the idea of children at all made his heart trip and fall anew.  

"Yuuji I... I wanted... I just..."

With that, he sprinted from his companion's apartment calling.  "I'm sorry 
but I have to get some air.  I'm going for a walk."

Freshly shut up in the cherry blue sunset dimness of his own quarters, he 
hung beside his bed, crying softly in the shadows which grew longer and 
longer until there was nowhere he might have gone in the room that would 
have revealed him in any kind of light.

Then he realized he'd never made his bed.  And did.  Just because, 
stretching the now very wrinkled pajamas out on top of the sheets.   

/I haven't got much time now... I guess.  If I want to go, I should go now./

/I don't think I do... not really but.../

/What else is there!?/

So in silence, he drew off his work clothes and slipped into something he 
never would have dared wear around the old house and the Koneko.  
Something slinky and dark and smooth that bared his arms.   Changed his 
earrings.  Looked like he was going to a party, which was a shame, since 
he wouldn't have known where to find one here at all, even if he'd wanted 
too.  

Then he washed his face in his little bathroom.  Refilled the water in the 
vase on his dresser... which he shut in the closet as if it meant to bite him 
and had told him so.  

Without another word, he slipped out into the breaking night, the endless 
thrum of civilization sleeping among its harbingers and enemies.  A white 
lady, drawn down by lovers, smited by the lack of stars and still 
embracing such dim heavens.

Lost to people like himself.

Omi remembered stars...

***

Youji's new place wasn't in the best neighborhood, wasn't even in the 
second best, but he liked it there--had always liked there, 
actually.  It reminded him of his past and all the ghosts within it 
every where he looked, from the tiny minute market on the corner to 
the tawdry little bar that stood across the street from where he 
currently lived.  

Not that he had an apartment or even a proper room, rather...He had 
an office.  His office.  After Asuka's death, Youji couldn't bear to 
part with the two room space with the dingy lighting, closet-sized 
washroom and the crackling phone.  Sometimes, on afternoons off, in 
the early morning after some particularly grueling mission, he would 
go there and sit, and remember.  

He had gone there the night he had killed her, and cried until dawn.  

A cot served as his bed now, and it was all he needed.  He was not 
going to sleep with anyone else, was not going to visit the hell that 
had befallen him earlier that day on himself ever again.  
Besides...he didn't want to sleep with anyone else.  Didn't want 
anyone else, other than who he had.

/Correction, Kudou.  Who you used to have./

/But that's all gone to hell, hasn't it?/

/And all because you couldn't keep it in your pants./

He finished the last of his second beer, finished off the last of his 
fifth cigarette and stood up, ignoring for once and for all the 
encouraging, smiling glances of the brunette at the end of the bar.  
He wasn't having it, not anymore.  

In a smoky, alcohol-sodden haze Youji left the establishment, a burst 
of music from the jukebox heralding his departure.  Some Pink Lady 
tune.  Youji gave pause just as the door swung shut behind him, 
reflecting on the wretchedness of it all.  

Then he laughed out loud, at himself, at the whole fucking world.  It 
was either that or vomiting.  

The pack came out, the cigarette went in, and Youji woozily spun 
around three times, and set off in the direction he was facing.  

***

/Damn./

/I mean.../

/...Oh, damn./

/I shouldn't have made such a suggestion.../

/Especially not so soon after a break up like that./

/Man, how wrong that must have sounded to Omi.../

Yuuji stood up, then sat back down, then stood up again, and slowly 
walked back into the living room to close the door at last.  
Contemplated locking it, but then decided not to.  Just in case.  

/Cause I don't want to shut you out.../ 

Then he padded back into the bedroom, and closed the door.  His gaze 
fell onto the dresser and the pack of cigarettes.  

/Masato.../

He picked up the pack, and turned it around and around in his hands, 
as if he could detect some faint imprint of his partner's aura from 
it.  Then he slid out one musky-sweet stick, and slowly slid it 
between his lips.  Held there unlit for awhile before going to the 
bedside table and digging his lighter out of the tiny drawer, and 
flipped it into life with a rapid, metallic click.  

Took a deep, eyes-closed drag, and held the smoke in for a little 
longer than usual.  His head wobbled slightly from the nicotine rush, 
one which he had deprived himself of for nearly a year.  

"I hate it when he's right."

***

These streets had never been familiar too him, the ones that ran like tracks 
for the last of dancing sunlight round the little place of nowhere that 
Hanano joined.  Somewhere, in the suburbs of Tokyo, under the reeling 
clouds.  As he walked, their candles burned low from the slashes of pink 
and orange to the breathing under water purple of being lost somewhere.  
Then blue came and the purple ran off to play tag with him, leaving Omi 
between lacey lights and the cobalt marbles that swung across the 
firmament and showed to him the spaces where his stars should have been.

People passed him or he passed them, all brushing through on their way to 
wherever they meant to go.

But he didn't have that in him that night, for it was night by the time he 
regarded else beside the sinking sun, or the sinking sense of weight in his 
breast.  With a sigh he paused among a the sounds of chirping frogs, 
feeling the vapor of the rice fields stir him where it wound up beneath his 
clothing.  

And by then he didn't want to go back to the shop.  Even if Manx waited 
for him.  Even if Aya and Ken did.  Even...

Those thoughts fluttered away like spilled candy glitter and he walked 
back into the nearest loss of himself.

He folded his palms together and started to scan the signs along the alleys 
for somewhere he might sit down for a moment.  Just a moment, he told 
himself, though part of him knew full well, even before he found the 
place, that it would be much longer than that.

The city streets made comforts for no one person, but the people 
nonetheless he found, seemed to know the places which by chance did 
well for them.

Having never wandered alone before, not for pleasure at least, if pleasure 
this dared be called, he had never experienced this himself.  

Not until he found the sign painted in gold letters, so hopelessly faded he 
took then for silver at first: Tenshi no mon.  It was not the vivacity with 
which they had been scrawled that struck him, but the fact someone had 
added something beneath them be could not read. He actually stepped up 
to the front of the little bar to try and make them out, only to be hit with a 
very warm breeze from within, one seasoned with ginger and hot sake.  
This reminded him at once how very hungry he had gotten, having not 
eaten one bite since breakfast.  His tongue, no longer wet and sticky from 
his tears, seemed to have eased up enough to let him eat...

/But I don't really feel like being in a noisy restaurant tonight... I don't.../

But then he did manage to discern what the sign said.

Onna ja nai!

Without a second thought, he swept through the beads that served as the 
door and into the realm of the paper lanterns beyond.  It was a little, 
battered place, quite dim with air twinged faintly with the aftertaste of old, 
worn reeds beyond the scent of that evening's special.  One row of seats 
ran up either side of the smoking stove, and one row of booths crossed the 
free wall then.  No waitress though stood to greet.  No waiter either.  Not 
one member of the staff stood ready to take note of him.

They were all chatting quietly with old friends presumably.  Or...

The head cook leaned down just then and pecked the cheek of a 
businessman seated before him, raising a small flock of brandy giggles.  

It was the quietest gay bar he had ever passed, but the only one he had 
bothered to enter.  A little stamp of his sneakers as he tried to pluck up the 
courage to take a seat along the 'kitchen'.  

/I'd much rather have a booth but... well... too late for that.../

They were all quite full... or were they? Just to make sure, he walked the 
length of them, found not one empty indeed.  A little sigh escaped him and 
it seemed, caught the attention of one lone chap hiding behind a large 
volume of Goethe poetry in the original German.  One who looked straight 
up at him and quite choked on his beer.  Twice.  Once for the fact their 
eyes had met almost at once, and once for the fact Omi had not smiled at 
the first one.  At least that's what Omi thought.  

/Do I know that guy?/

/Forget that... have I ever... SEEN that guy?/

Said guy being got up in leather pants and a brocade jacket worn over a 
faded gundam T-shirt.  A few dirty blond threads left his backwards velvet 
baseball cap in generally unpredictable directions.  He had a sharp little 
boy face with two soft, catty amber eyes. 

"Good evening and good morrow too! My morose little sir.  'tis the least I 
can offer such an unhappy ward of luck, two good days."

"Umm... thanks."

"Please help yourself to the seat if you like.  I won't be a bother to you if 
you'll grant me the same pleasure."

Omi's stomach growled just then, persuading him to take the stranger up 
on his offer.  But nothing more.

(OOC: The bar is called Angel's Gate [rather than heaven's gate, it's an 
admittedly false doujinism].  And the sign bears a very grammatically 
sloppy message of NO GIRLS ALLOWED.)

***  

Youji had ended up wandering away from the city's center and further 
into the rundown mire that was his new neighborhood.  Bars and clubs 
were prolific there, providing some modicum of relief from the 
bitterness of life for those who lived around there.  

And as he'd seen, life was always bitter down there.  Down 
everywhere.    

He'd stumbled into the first place he'd found, a bar that boasted a 
couple of pachinko machines, all of which lined the far wall.  Amid 
the rattle of the balls tumbling down, the low murmur of the baseball 
game on TV, Youji took his seat at the bar, this time ordering a 
bottle of whisky and a glass.  If he got sick from the alcoholic mix, 
then he got sick.  It didn't matter.  

Just another form of penance.  

The whisky came, and Youji adroitly poured it into the tiny glass.  
Two beers hadn't been enough to faze him, just mellow him.  He hoped 
to remedy the unpleasant matter of his near sobriety before 
midnight.  He lifted the glass as he raised his eyes to the clock.  
Three hours and 42 minutes to go.  

He wryly toasted the dial.  It was nothing he couldn't handle.  

Youji downed it in one go, and poured himself another, and then 
another.  The door opened behind him, letting in a soft breeze that 
ruffled his hair and caused him to look around.  In the doorway, he 
saw three men had entered, all of which struck him as being 
businessmen slumming for cheap drinks (as odd as that sounded to 
him), and none of which he knew.    

Or so he thought.  One though...His face nagged at his memory, a pull 
which grew stronger when the newcomer fixed him with a look of keen 
recognition.    

And yet...he still couldn't place that one--a man of about his age, 
wearing glasses and an orange pullover.  He oddly thought of Aya then 
as he turned away, shrugging.  

Another glass and he felt a familiar urge, a strong one at that.  
Youji gathered up the bottle and the glass, holding them close as a 
child would his most treasured toys, and carried them with him as far 
as the nearest table to the toilets.  Went down the hall and in.

It was just a typical night, or so he thought when he emerged from 
the men's' room, immediately sighting the welcoming bottle he'd left 
on the table.  He was almost upon it, almost free of the gloom of the 
poorly lit hallway, and then it was gone, or rather he was--grabbed 
from behind by a pair of arms in the semi-dark and dragged out 
through the rear entrance.  He found himself in an alley.  Whoever it 
was who had attacked him let him go with a shove.  Youji stumbled, 
but caught himself before he could fall.  

"Oi!"  

Youji glanced up dazedly, and found himself facing two men, both who 
were glaring at him, but neither of whom had spoken.  

"Oi!"  A hand landed on his shoulder, spinning him around.  Youji 
wove slightly as he came to rest again.  Waited until the speaker's 
face followed suit before answering him.  

"Yeah?  Whaddya want?"

"I know you, don't I?"  

Youji squinted at the man who now had him pinned against the wall; it 
was the same one who had noticed him in the bar.  In the light of the 
far street lamp, it was hard to tell if he did know him or not.  He 
shook his head. 

"Aw, sure I do.  You're Kudou Youji."  He clapped Youji on the 
shoulder.  "Man, I never thought I'd get to see you again!"

No honorific.  Familiar.  He didn't realize it straight off.  "It 
seems you have the advantage..."

"Yes, it does, doesn't it."  For an instant, it seemed that the 
stranger's face took on a demonic aspect.  Then Youji looked away and 
looked back and it was gone.  "I'm Godou Hiro."  He flashed him a 
grin.  "Does that name sound familiar?"

"...Uh..."

"Oh, right!  You've probably screwed so many women that you can't 
remember them all, a handsome guy like yourself!"

It took a moment for the import of his words to sink in, and when it 
did, Youji began to protest.  "Oi!  Wait a minute.  You..."

Hiro kept on talking, waving for silence one careless hand.  "Let me 
remind you, okay?"  He placed that same hand flat against the wall, 
blocking Youji from making an easy escape.  "My sister Akemi.  Long 
black hair.  Liked to wear red.  Very outgoing, very popular.  Very, 
very pretty.  Remember her now?" 

A vague image of a laughing young woman in a cherry red sweater and a 
blue scarf sifted through the jumble into his mind's eye, but he 
wasn't sure if she was the right one.  He nodded weakly anyway.  

"You do?  Well, I'm surprised, Kudou.  I really am."  He gave him 
another grin, one patently false in its friendliness.  "Did you ever 
see her again?"

"...Um, no..."

"Do you know what happened to her?"  

Youji mumbled negatively.  Tried to force his addled brain into some 
semblance of order.  He knew he was in trouble, but part of him 
didn't care.

And part of him...  

"YOU got her pregnant.  She went to one of those clinics.  Afterward, 
she was so guilt-stricken over what she'd done, and so heartbroken 
over you...You know what she did?"  He gave him a hard shove when he 
didn't answer right away.  "Do you?"

Intense, sinking dread now.  "...No..."

"She killed herself.  Pills.  Left a note too.  She wrote that she 
told you about the baby, but you just laughed.  Do you remember that?"

Did he remember?  No, he didn't.  It must have shone on his face too, 
because the next thing Youji knew he had been punched across the 
mouth.  He could feel the blood trickling from his lip, could taste 
it.  His ears were ringing, and his head spun.  Nerve endings bloomed 
white with pain behind his eyes. 

"Look," he croaked, "I'm--"

"Sorry?  Is that what you're going to say, Kudou?  That you're 
sorry?  Well...I'm sorry too."

Another vicious punch, this time to the stomach.  Youji doubled over, 
but Hiro only pulled him upright and forced him against the 
wall.  "I'm sorry she met you."

A blow to the side of the head.  

"I'm sorry she's dead."

A hard right across his cheek.   

"I'm sorry you're alive."

A swift knee to the groin and Hiro shoved Youji away from him.  Youji 
fell to the ground, panting and moaning with pain, huddled into a 
protective little ball--or he was until his attacker grabbed him 
again, forcing him onto his back.  He waited until Youji opened his 
swollen eyes.  

Which flew open wide in shock as Hiro drove the blade he held in his 
hand home into Youji's stomach.  Gave it a cruel twist, and gave him 
an even crueler smile.  

"I'm not sorry about that."  

He wiped the bloodied blade off on the leg of Youji's jeans and 
pocketed the weapon, and calmly strolled towards the street where his 
companions waited.     

***

Omi couldn't decide what he wanted.  Maybe it was just some defense 
mechanism to keep him from glancing up from his menu, but he couldn't.  
When the cook called to him, all he could manage to order was a soda and 
so sat nursing his coke for a long while.  At least until the rain started its 
procession over the thin roof and he turned up to the passing, erratic 
footfalls of it as if expecting to see it sliding past like a host of elves in the 
woods.  The cook swore colorfully and pulled down the security grating, 
not that it did any good; the steamy cologne of water on concrete invaded 
Tenshi no mon just the same, as did a rather pitiful puddle.  

The boy across from him folded up his book and went rooting around in 
his bag for another.  Goethe though had landed dangerously close to a 
creeping puddle of condensation from the half empty glass of Asahi... 
perhaps this wasn't merely a boy then.  Omi, just the same, scooted the 
covers from harm's way.

His companion glanced up, glanced to the surface of their table, and 
smiled then.  "I do believe you've done the impossible and saved young 
Werther." 

"Ah... so da." 

He got no chuckle for his embarrassment though.  "It's no small feat, I 
assure you." 

His nose popped back into his menu just the same and he rather tentatively 
settled on some grilled unagi and rice, even if the curry at the next table 
smelled perfectly lovely.  

And then trickling out in the blue "Werther shoots himself in the end 
because he can't have the woman he loves.  But even if I disagree with his 
sentiments, his attractions and his method, even if I've just ruined the 
whole book for you, I have to ask..."

Omi's eyes rose then and fell straight into the stranger's, which felt like 
little drips of caramel or tar running sticky down his insides.  A not 
entirely unpleasant sensation.  

"...are you thinking of doing the same thing because if you are, *I* think 
it would be a perfect waste.  But that's bothering you, isn't it?  Oh, damn.  
Ne'er mind me." And still he smiled down upon his guest, who was silent 
and holding himself and somehow managing to look back at him unfazed.

"Iie." 

"Saa... chotto matte! Was that a 'you're not bothering me' 'iie' or an 'I'm 
not going to kill myself' 'iie'."

"Umm... both.  I guess."

"Good and getting better."

With that, the sounds of their world came back to clinking china and the 
restless shower that rolled over Tokyo.  In spite of all the oddness of his 
companion's speech, and his tender lack of tenderness, Omi heaved a sigh 
and relaxed somewhat.  Merely making himself appear less available was 
certainly easier than keeping his eyes on his menu alone.  More things to 
concentrate on- the slope of his shoulders, the points his gaze alighted on.  
How still or not still he was.  The pitch of his scant words.

The man across the table had resumed puttering through his volumes, 
currently having taken up one with a title Omi had not managed to glance.  
But the type was very small, and not in kanji, and for it the stranger had 
taken up a pair of tiny reading glasses whose frames sat solely on his nose 
and happened to be neon blue metal.  As he had hunched over the book, 
the angle of the light over him had changed, his self-shadows moved.

And now quite clearly around his neck could be seen a choker of blue 
bruises, bluer than his fine veins and set with reddish scuff marks.

Omi realized then he was making no effort to cover them up, as sinister, as 
striking as they were upon the throat of someone so obviously minded to 
books.  My god! He would have screamed in awe to see such marks on 
Aya!

And just like that the glass twigs of his preoccupation gave way and he 
sobbed a moment.  He was out of tears he found though, but the stinging 
of going without them was hell... He spoke then, soft and slow.  "Eto do 
you... umm... want to talk?  To me.  I don't mind."

The book rolled over closed on top of Goethe, but the glasses retained 
their standing as he leaned back and smiled upon Omi with his thin lips.  
"I think I should.  Indeed, but I fear I've no idea who you are."

"Omi..." How uncompromisingly meek the name sounded by itself.

But the man followed suit and took only to his own first name.  "I'm Naru, 
called Naru-chan, except in western Japan where I'm invariably Naru-han.  
AHA! And I got you to smile a little there.  Didn't I! Didn't I!"

The boy nodded.  So did Naru.

/Well, Naru will do for now, Tsukiyono-san.  If I had any friends, they 
would call me Pawn.  But I don't, so Naru-chan is fine, fine, fine.../ "Tell 
me, who Omi is right now...?"

(OOC: Chotto matte- wait up.  And the -han instead of -chan is an actual 
verbal tick from western Japan which is apparently considered funny in 
Tokyo.)     

***

Yuuji, who had been doing nothing much more than lying in bed 
brooding over Omi, Ran and Masato in their turn, had decided to go 
out too--injuries and admonitions be cursed.  So now he sat at the 
window of a cafe, staring out the window in between bites of chicken 
and swiss and sips of coffee.  It had started to rain a little, just 
enough to dampen the streets and the air and the people who swam 
through it.  

Not for the first time that day he swore silently at his aches and 
pains and stitched up shoulder.  If it weren't for them, he would be 
back at Uekiya's mansion again, digging through his personal effects 
like the master thief he was until he found the things he so 
desperately wanted:  A computer disk. and a silver ring.  The former 
containing a list of the men who were secretly involved with the 
project Sugihara had uncovered, and the latter...

Was nothing of importance to anyone save himself.  And damned if he 
didn't want it!  

/I was so close.  So, so close.../

He hitched his shoulder, sighing at the resulting twinge.  /Masato 
always warned me about pushing my luck, but.../

/If I could get that disk.../

/Things would be in a shambles over there probably...A lot of 
confusion.../

/Security probably beefed up a bit, but...I've faced tougher./  

/And it is important...I can't let them get away with it.../

He took one last bite of his sandwich, drained his cup and went to 
pay his bill.  

/This better work, cause if King hears about me going off on my own, 
I'll be in so much trouble.../

/And Masato.../

/I can just hear him now.../

Yuuji left the cafe, and headed back down towards the Hanano.  
Started musing over his partner again, when he heard a 
familiar "ring, ring" coming from his pocket.  The number on the 
cell's tiny green glowing screen wasn't familiar to him, but he 
answered it anyway.  It turned out to be Manx. 

"Knight?  Where are you?"

"I'm currently standing on the sidewalk in front of a jewelry shop.  
Why do you ask?"

"Where's Omi?"

"I don't know," he said ruefully.  "He's not in the shop, and he 
didn't tell me where he was going.  Why...?"

"I'm trying to find him.  Something's...happened."

Yuuji ducked into the canopied entryway of the jewelry shop, 
instinctively lowering his voice.  "What's happened?"

"Youji...He got into a fight, or was attacked I don't know.  They 
just now brought him in.  They're going to have to operate.  I had to 
sign the papers because he has me listed as next of kin..."  There 
was a pause, within which he could hear the swoosh of cars going 
past, the murmur of a feminine voice.  

"Manx?"

"...I'm sorry, Knight.  Birman just came to tell me that they've 
taken him into surgery."  She sighed heavily.  

"What do you want me to do?"

"Call Omi.  I've been trying to reach him, but I can't get through.  
Maybe he'll turn his phone on eventually."  She gave him the number, 
which he hastily scrawled on the palm of his hand.  

With assurances that he would let Omi know, one way or the other, 
Yuuji rang off, only to punch in the numbers to Omi's cell.  

Still no answer.  He was prompted to leave a message, which he did.  
The phone was folded up, and Yuuji resumed his journey back to 
Hanano, just two blocks away.  

Once back in the shop, he went to the register counter and tore off a 
sheet of paper from the pad Ms. Higurashi kept on hand to make supply 
lists, and wrote:

[Omi,

Manx called while you were out.  Youji's in the hospital...Tenrousei 
Memorial.  

Yuuji.]

He stuck a piece of tape to it, then walked back and stuck it to the 
rear door, then he hurried back upstairs to retrieve his weapon 
before he too left again.  

(OOC: Tenrousei is what they call Sirius, the Dog Star.  No, it 
doesn't make sense, and I don't care.)  

***

Omi ran his finger tips of one hand around the knuckles of the other, not 
daring to glance up from caressing his own hands.  It was all he could do 
to keep his nails from his lips where they longed to be, longed to be 
nibbled down to nubbins as he hefted his words, one cast of inky sound 
against another.  

"But umm..." It was a lousy beginning, but a beginning nonetheless.  For 
the inevitable that had cropped up during his interview.  What are you 
doing here? "He- my boyfriend -he found out his girlfriend was pregnant 
today and then he kinda... left.  Me."

Naru's second half-empty glass that currently stood among the hedgerow 
of textbooks came down with a girlish huff and a foamy clatter.  "Why 
that insolent bastard prick."  At least, the last word somewhat resembled 
"prick"- a hiccup had ruined it.  

Nonetheless, Omi, who had by now slid one of his nails neath another, 
could not help but notice the sentiments bore true distaste, not the mere 
front of words against the worthless gossip of an old aunt.  Even of Naru 
reminded him of one in a strange way.  Not that he had ever had and old 
aunt.   

But then a sigh, and some slurps.  Omi looked up to find his companion 
shaking his head, his eyes finally closed where they had not even seemed 
much inclined to blink before.  "Forgive me, Omi, if I have wounded what 
realms of your heart remain still in possession of this cavalier of yours, but 
I am an emotive chap, recent since so torn myself, and under far more 
companionable circumstances.  I can only imagine the sepulchre you find 
yourself in, but at least I sympathize."  He smiled through the bottom of 
his beer glass then, and when the vessel has been pulled away, the grin 
was still a crooked one.  

"I..." the Weiss boy began, his tongue slipping away from him.  His own 
empathy had just come up and swooned unhappily against his skin.  As if 
it wasn't such a thing, he found himself in horror anyone else would have 
had to know his world, and cloudy reminisce on Naru's eyes spoke 
enough of his own afternoon.  "I'm sorry! I didn't know.  I wouldn't have 
started with the..."

A hand popped up and silenced him.  "Oh no.  I am grateful for your 
words but really, I call myself emotive! You barely know me, and if you 
did, you would laugh at me for what happened."

"No! I wouldn't!" It was all but a plea

His host leaned back then, folding his arms around himself and shifting 
slightly as he crossed his legs.  

"I really wouldn't."

"Your confidence in the matter is more honorable than I can think of a 
comparison for.  Very well then, Omi who has no other name.  I'll tell you 
anything you want about me, Omi.  For starters..." A long string of pearly 
chuckles.  "I'm really, really smashed right now, so I can't say for sure 
everything that I'm telling you is true.  I think it is.  I can't concentrate on 
my homework unless it is... No wait, that's unless I'm drunk."  Speaking 
of which, he treated himself to another sip.  

/There's no way you could speak in such a complicated way, recite poetry 
to me between parts of that schpeel about my worthless life I just gave you 
and NOT be somewhat in possession of your faculties.  I think.../ "You 
don't sound too off it.  How many have you had?" 

"Good question, I'll look into that."

Omi promptly pulled both the basins of amber fizz away.

"How defensive of you!"

Omi downed the remains of one himself.

"And economical."

Omi burped as dainty as he could.  

Naru applauded, "Bravo! Good show! You drink like a master.  I would 
say I was rewarding you with my tale though that would be rude of me.  If 
anything, I chastise you, and provoke you to argue with me about 
something.  Well, let's begin then... I had a friend who had been my 
friend for many years.  A dashing, chivalrous sort."

/Sounds like just the type for you, the most verbose male heroine I've ever 
met!/

"Ah, we had been together for years! us and our little group of friends, but 
my noble boy, AH! He had a tragic romantic past! Lover after lover! Some 
of whom I knew, and none of whom I cared for.  Obviously, even if they 
were better for him than I was.  A few days ago, I was actually sober and I 
was actually well and we happened to be on a roof out in the good part of 
town when I finally up and gave him the speech I had been working on 
and that was it, up to my room we went."

A long pause followed where the clothing of he and his imaginary partner 
remained hanging in the air rather than meeting the floor.  

"For coffee, not that it matters." Said flying shirts morphed into mugs but 
did not resume their tumbling.  "He isn't the sort to get amorous on a first 
date, but anyway, he did end up in my apartment.  And he saw... Turns 
out I was too kinky for him anyway and with that he popped off.  At least 
he left a note though.  I pinned it to my pillow.  Ah well, they say 
unrequited love never dies.  I wonder if semi-requited love counts."  

Omi didn't say anything.  He had to push his lips together in the end.  
"Migosh... Naru-chan... I..."

Of Naru, he shook his head again and pawed at his bangs for what little 
good it did.  "Feels funny to say all that."

"Because I'm a stranger."

"No, because I should be telling it to him, by all accounts but he's not here 
to hear about himself.  Oh, do stop nursing my booze.  I'll get you your 
own."

"Wait! But I'm..."

"Underage?" A shrug.  "What purpose does physical age have anyway? 
It's merely a tool to keep track of ourselves verses the world.  Is this the 
world? Tenshi no mon? The very name denies it.  You deny it, age at least.  
*I* would not call you a child even if you have the guise of one.  I meant 
that as a simple fact, not as insult or otherwise.  You have done more for 
me than a child could have, surely.  And besides, the way I see it, if 
you've been tangled up with someone in sheets and whipped cream, 
you're surely mature enough to handle a little alcohol!"

Omi silenced his comments and sank back in his seat with a shrug.  

"How old are you anyway?" Asked among the clatter of a fresh bottle of 
Asahi, and a clean glass shortly sullied with sunrise gold.  He only filled it 
half way before pushing it over to join the lip-nibbling reflection of his 
drinking buddy, who saw himself, and hardly seemed fit to answer in his 
own mind.

"Seventeen."

"Well, I meant how old you felt inside, going by these bloody calendars."

"Five."

"Ah, and I am older than death.  Well... up with the robes on my 
comrades of oblivion! Kanpai!"

(OOC: Kanpai- cheers)   

*** 

It had gone down pretty much as he'd figured it would: There were 
extra guards, everything was utter confusion as Uekiya's main 
coconspirators went about the rooms gathering up all they could 
before the police were informed.  Yuuji hadn't seen any accounts of 
the man's death in the papers, and he doubted that he would for a 
long time.  Even then, the account would probably all be a lie.  

Still, none of that mattered now.  He'd gotten in, and had located 
the disk.  Had gotten away far more scathed than he had been before, 
but he was walking.  Loss of blood negligible--just his now bandaged 
left thigh where a bullet had grazed his flesh.  The way they'd went 
about trying to stop him, he figured the damned gun-toting fools 
wouldn't have been able to shoot him if he had been standing directly 
in front of them in a brightly lit, locked, windowless room.

It surprised him that, given his guards incompetence, Uekiya hadn't 
been murdered before now.  Surprised him, and then he forgot all 
about it.  About his latest target.  But not about how good it had 
felt to kill him.  

He ruefully longed for Omi's solicitous nature and sure touch right 
about now, he ached so.  He knew all he would probably be getting 
that night was a long soak in a hot, hot tub and two or three aspirin 
before bed, but he would take that and gratefully.  

But, as he found when he rounded the corner for the stairs, even that 
wasn't going to be forthcoming.  

"Hello, Yuuji."  

Yuuji nearly asked Masato how he'd gotten in there, but bit the 
question back as it was a rather stupid one.  He slowly settled 
himself down on the steps next to him, fighting the urge to rest his 
head on the stair rail.  "Why are you here?"  

"I wanted to keep an eye on you.  I kinda figured you'd be making 
another trip out to Uekiya's."

"Hm.  You think you know me so well."

"Because I do.  I knew what that look in your eyes meant last night 
when I had to drag you away from the old bastard's corpse."  The 
mirrored shades he wore perched low across his nose came off, and 
were slipped into a case.  "You hurt?"  

"Huh.  Yeah, I am."  He gingerly rubbed his jaw, wincing 
slightly.  "I've got bruises on my bruises.  I think I might have 
ripped my stitches."  

"Eh?  Want to go back to the hospital?"

/Hospital.../

/...Wonder if Omi got my message yet.../

"Nah.  I've had enough doctoring this week."  He lifted his hand to 
rub at his wound, but stopped himself; dropped it back onto his 
lap.  "Besides, one of the Weiss is quite proficient at patching up 
people."

/Question is:  Will I ever see him again or has he gone for good?/

"Hm."  They fell into a companionable silence, one marred only by 
Masato's soft inhaling.  One which lulled Yuuji back into the 
hopelessness of his darkest thoughts.  Prodding him and stinging him 
into relieving the weight of them.  

"I know he had it, Masato.  I know...Because I saw it on his hand one 
night when I was staking him out."  

"Knew he had...?"

"A...ring."

Masato fell quiet for a few moments.  "Did he have it on him last 
night?"

"I don't know.  I didn't see it.  That's why I wanted to search 
him."  

"Yuuji..."

"Man, why did it have to go like this?!"

"Because Life is a bitch."  Masato dropped the glowing stub onto one 
of the steps and ground it out with his heel.  "Yuuji, let it go.  
The ring is gone, and even if you had it..."

Yuuji shot him a look out of the corner of his eye.  "It wouldn't 
bring him back?  Yeah, I know.  But..."

/It was his favorite.../

/...just one more trophy of a kill to Uekiya.../

/...and I.../

/...I.../

Yuuji sighed, raking a hand through his hair.  "...I hate it when 
you're right."  

/And I wish I could let it go...Could forget so easily.../

"So you keep telling me."  Masato held his hand out for the disk, and 
Yuuji handed it over to him with a sick little grimace, watched it 
disappear into the inner pocket of his coat.  Masato patted 
it.  "I'll hand this over to Queen straight away."  

"I know you will."  Yuuji struggled to his feet.  Yawned.  He leaned 
back against the rail, staring at his partner in an empty-eyed sort 
of way.  Then he dug into his pocket and handed him one of the brand 
new packs he'd bought before dinner that night.  Masato took it with 
a smirk.  He held the box up and jiggled it back and forth.  "I guess 
this means that you know me pretty well too."

A nod.  "I guess it does."  

A pause, one marked only by the sounds of Masato's feet on the 
stairs, followed by the sound of a kiss.  Yuuji let it go on for so 
long before he wriggled his hand in between them and gently pushed 
him away.  

"Masato, I...I don't know if--"

"I know, I know," he muttered, frustrated.  He backed off, hands 
raised in the air in a warding gesture.  "I just had to try again.  
Can't blame a guy, huh?"

"...No, I suppose not."  

Masato turned at last, and strode off down the stairs, lifting a hand 
in farewell as he went.  Yuuji lingered there until he heard the door 
open and his partner go through it.  Then he made his way to his 
room.  

***

It took forever for the lights to die down inside Hanano.  She couldn't go 
home until they were out, every single one, but then again, given what she 
had been blessed with the misfortune to overhear that night from her perch 
on the lamppost, she didn't expect them to ever go out entirely.  Not 
tonight.  All she had to go on was the sound, the breathing of the building.

No one had seen her since it was past midnight by the time she resolved to 
take up her vigil from such unusual heights.  Darkness never really came 
to Tokyo, or Paris, or Sydney.  Any other cities she knew not of.  

Akiko sighed and fumbled the envelope one more time.  It was already 
damp from her little fingers.  The floors upstairs ceased their lullabies for 
the lovely blond man who had taken to their arms.  The water stopped 
draining from the tub.  His breathing grew softer and softer and faded 
away, breath by breath into the pulse of his soul and the realm of the 
human foxfire, the only thing that escaped her ears.

/But not Savil's./

/Damn Savil and her luck!/

She licked her lips.  /Damn her./

The cloak sang behind her as she fell to her feet.  Even in the broken blue 
of early morning, she still blushed.  

'twas but a slight shadow which crossed the road to Hanano's threshold.  
A hand of the darkness which crept out and pushed her fingers through the 
otherwise solid security grate, until they reached the other side, and lock 
which she sprung with only a flick over palm, having fished around in its 
heart for the mechanism.  

Akiko was ill grounded in space.  It made her senses preternaturally sharp, 
her touch icy, her relationships with solid objects those of questionable 
motive provided, she exercised a little concentration.    

Borne on them, she pranced into the shop and sought a place to hide her 
delivery, one the ordinary sort of people might notice, though a thousand 
new ones for those of her kind assaulted her sensibilities and cried to be 
used.  

She left it in the freezer between two canisters of gardenias.

Without opening the door.

And then the floor bothered her, for reasons besides its being the floor.  
Dirty.  

Silently, she swept it clean.

And then left.

*** 

The first thing Youji became aware of as he drifted out of unconsciousness 
was the smell of antiseptic--only detected because he 
had smelled the same sort of medicinal fragrance on Aya's clothing before; 
always after the boy had come back from those secret 
excursions he had often gone on. Only this time, the scent wasn't as faint. 
It was cloying, and made him want to retch. He didn't. 
He was weak, and his arm hurt, and his stomach as well. He was feverish; 
so hot to the touch that he couldn't even stand the thin sheet that was 
draped over him; so hot that someone had deemed it necessary to cover his 
forehead with a damp cloth. Its presence annoyed him greatly. He reached 
up to snatch it away, but someone grabbed his hand before he could. 

"Youji?"

He had expected to die in that alley, alone. But he wasn't dead, and he was 
in the presence of one he considered to be as lovely as an angel. 

"...Manx..."

Immediately he was silenced by the touch of one slim finger on his lips. 
The russet-framed oval of her face fell into his line of 
vision, wavering in and out of focus. 

"It's about time you woke up." 

He heard the scrape of wood on hard tile, the sound of a chair being pulled 
up alongside his bed. She disappeared then, just her visage but not the soft 
cushion of her hand in his slightly roughened own. He knew that if he 
lifted it to his lips, he would smell her perfume. He could smell it even 
now, as light as it was. 

"How long...?"

"About...Five hours now. They had to operate on you. Your stomach had 
been perforated." 

"...That would explain the excruciating pain and the tube in my arm, then." 

"Yes, it would," she agreed dryly. "What happened to you, anyway?" 

Youji tilted his face away from her, turning towards the windows instead. 
Outside, he could see the green and white and red lights of 
the sleeping buildings across the street; kept his tone light and almost 
joking when he answered her. The undercurrent of tension between them 
was getting more and more uncomfortable, and he felt it his duty to 
alleviate it.

"Well, you know me, Manx. Always attracting trouble."

She, however, was not amused. He could feel the vibe from her before she 
even spoke. "This is nothing to joke about. You could have died. The 
doctor said that if you had been left just a little longer, it would have been 
too late for you." 

Youji didn't even react to that bit of news. "So...Who brought me in?"

"No one knows--except that it was a man. He fled after the paramedics 
showed up."

"...I see," he whispered. 

"I've been trying to call Omi off and on since I arrived here. I haven't been 
able to reach him yet. I've left messages as well, but..." She shrugged one 
shoulder. 

Silence. He could almost hear the whir of her puzzled, questioning 
thoughts. 

"Don't bother him anymore, Manx."

"Hmm? Why would it be a bother, me telling him about what happened to 
you? I believe he'd want to know."

"I don't know if he would or not. All I know is that I don't want him to 
find out."

"Youji!" 

At last, he turned to look at her, pained and sorrowing. "I've been bad, 
Manx, and now I'm in trouble. Omi got caught in the crossfire, and he was 
hurt. I never wanted that."

One fine brow perked upwards in a show of interest. "You've been bad? In 
what way?"

He laughed rather hollowly, then hissed in pain, one hand flying 
protectively to his stomach. "Name it."

He could hear the faint ting! of her long nails tapping on the metal bedrail, 
a habit which surfaced whenever she lost herself in her thoughts. "I see. 
And you left the shop after that?"

"Yeah." 

"On your own, or...Did he ask you to leave?"

"I decided to go. He had nothing to do with it."

"Did you *even* bother to talk to him before you left?"

Youji shook his head. "Talking will only make things worse! I was 
threatened earlier today, and I was attacked a few hours ago. What if it had 
been Omi tonight, instead of me? Do you realize that someone could come 
after him, thinking to hurt me that way? Cause it would, you know. It 
*would* hurt." 

/It would fucking kill me.../ 

She idly began smoothing the blanket on her side of the bed, gently 
folding them straight across Youji's chest; nothing more than a 
diversionary tactic, he figured. "What exactly have you done, Youji?" 
/Apart from breaking that poor boy's heart.../

Youji turned his face away again, not wanting to look at her anymore; it 
was hard to be so honest, and see that censure in her eyes. /I've been a 
fool, for one thing.../ "I acted like myself, Manx: The callous flirt. The 
playboy. And now I'm paying for it."

She nodded slowly, her hands taking their leave of the slightly scratchy 
linens at last. She had a very good idea just what he'd meant by that.

"Yes, and since you're having to pay for your own foolishness, then Omi 
has to pay too. Is that it?"

Youji said nothing in reply; just stubbornly kept his face turned towards 
the window. The stiff way he was holding himself though tipped her off 
that she had hit home; making the self-pitying fool uncomfortable was just 
what she had hoped to do. With a satisfied little smile, Manx rose to her 
stylishly shod feet and smoothed her skirt. Youji didn't even send so much 
as a sidelong glance her way. 

"Can I still reach you at that address you left?"

"Yes."

"For how long?"

"Indefinitely." 

"I understand." 

The brisk clip of her shoes resounded through the room as she walked 
away, her footsteps only faltering as she reached the door. In the window, 
Youji caught her milky reflection in the night-dark glass as she paused to 
glance back at him, and then she was gone. 

***

They talked about stars of the earth and the sky.  They talked about 
touching themselves in front of televisions littered with angelic J-rockers.  
They talked about ice cubes and children and money.  Finally lube this 
turning to cookies and memories and all the riddles of the universe that 
would have made coffee spurt from the noses of the most staunch 
intellectuals.  

He did not remember falling asleep though suddenly... "Awake, Omi! 
Awake! 'tis three in the morning and we're being thrown out on our 
asses."

His eyes opened upon a chorus line of empty glasses, his lashes brushing 
something rather rough and soft which also happened to be pinned against 
his ear.  It took him awhile to realize he was lying on Naru's arm and the 
brocade jacket thereof.  And seemed to have been there for a lone time.  
His companion said to him then, "Ah, there's a legend the prophet 
Mohamed of our western east had a favorite cat who nodded off on the 
sleeve of his prayer robe, which he promptly cut off rather than disturb the 
creature.  I haven't got a cat and I'm not a prophet so... ah, whatever.  
Don't apologize now."  

Waving his long, messy bangs over his drowsy eyes, Omi did just that, 
still looking rather ashamed.  Quite possibly more so upon realizing just 
how MANY glasses resided on his half of the table.  "My head hurts."

"Mine too, isn't it grand?"

"Yeah, sure, why not?"

A few pokes of Naru's fingers and he managed to peel himself from the 
table top, finding himself a little soar and crink-y, and ever so faintly 
dizzy.  He had to steady himself against the back of the booth as he got to 
his feet and staggered sleepily away from the spot he had spent... however 
long it had been.  He didn't get very far before he fell flat on his face.  Not 
because of his blooming hangover, but because one of his sneakers had 
caught on the strap of Naru's bag.  An explosion of books burst forth from 
the canvass and sailed across his legs.

"Damnable hell! That was all my fault.  Are you alright?"

He nodded and rolled over to somewhat of a sitting position, catching the 
wayward volumes up and meaning to lock them back in their cage.  In the 
fading light of the lanterns, their covers flashed and gleamed as if set with 
magic candles.  The only real sorcery at work though more appeared to be 
the fact his companion had managed to get all of them into his tiny 
carryall.  There were over a dozen.  

Not a one of which he could read well.  "Saa, what are you doing with all 
these books?" 

His arms filled with Bloom and Mann, Naru replied, "I take night classes 
at college, being nocturnal and all.  At least I think I still do.  I haven't 
gone in awhile.  I was a haphazard European literature student, hence the 
Goethe and the Fragoletta."  

"Oh..." And unable to remember why he had come to Tenshi no Mon at 
that moment, Omi offered a sheerly honest petal of one of his true smiles.  
"That's a good subject for you."

To which he got a mild sort of drunken grin, a sort of owlish attention.  
/He's got a pretty smile.  I do like it.  But for now, I'll just take my books 
back, and not ask another of him./  Which he did, only to be obliged to 
sidestep (rather clumsily since his arms were so precariously full) the little 
Weiss boy shortly as he crawled under the table after the last book.  One 
crammed in a blue Nadesco clear file.  

"Oro? Cat's Cradle? What's this?"

"Why, it's a not-very-famous book by Vonnegut.  A grand farce about 
philosophy and the end of the world."

"A farce about the end of the world?"

"A farce about everything really."

Omi got to his feet, marveling over the simple cover in it's plastic coffer.  
The weight seemed to waver between the odd match of subject matters- 
growing lighter as he thought of laughter, and heavier as he wondered how 
the world would end.  "I thought Vonnegut was American?"

"Ah he is! He is!" Naru took the book and thumped it as if trying to coax a 
stuck coockoo from a clock.  "But this isn't my book.  A friend of mine 
from where I used to work lent it to me, but then she up and moved on me 
before I had a chance to give it back.  I don't want to be known as 
someone who keeps what he borrows.  I'm not that rude.  So, I carry it 
with me everywhere I go hoping I'll run into her again.  It's my not-
exactly-noble quest!"

With a little bow, Omi offered, "I hope you find her then.  Thank you 
for... umm... dinner.  And the conversation."

"How very British of you! You're most welcome, dear Omi who has no 
other name."

Some awkward nods passed between them and having smoothed his black 
garb, the younger of the two patrons started for the curtain of beads which 
lead back to the real world.  But which way lead back to his bed? He had 
no recollection now of whence he had walked, what bridges he had 
crossed, even which way was anything close to up! The chill rush of the 
early morning air fled with his warmth and his headache as he gathered 
what remained after that beneath a dark streetlight, as if her hovering and 
blind gaze would tell him where he should go.

But then something hot and familiar in it's scratchiness slammed into him 
from behind along with it's heavy bag of books.   

"Have you got anyone to walk you home, Omi? I know I'm not exactly 
steady at the moment... but neither are you! and who will watch you when 
you get there?  And haven't you got a friend you can stay with? A nice girl 
maybe.  I'm old fashioned.  I just don't like the thought of you up in that 
apartment by yourself."

They stood blinking at one another in the dull half glitter of their alleyway, 
now dotted with the other drunks and lovers filing home.  One with the 
cook in his arms.  Since no one was around to see.  

"WAIT! Wait!" Naru cried then.  "I wasn't trying to..."

"I know.  It's alright." With that, he drew the hands from his shoulders 
and pressed them across his drinking buddy's chest, where they poised 
like a stricken mother's and looked hopelessly cute.  "We're friends.  We 
can be friends.  But you can't walk me home, because I don't know how 
to get to my apartment from here."    

"Aha! That might be a bit of a problem! Might I say, my comrade." Their 
shades swung round the light then.  "For I may live here with the seraphim 
and the sponges, but I've a flat myself, so I do travel, and I do know my 
way around at least part of this bloody burb.  Where have you been 
staying all this time?"

On their parting, Omi danced back a few steps, caught up in the moment 
and the darkness and the shouts of the neighbors demanding their quiet.  "I 
live in one of the apartments over the flower shop Hanano."

/I knew that, but it's still polite to ask./  "So you're one of those accursed 
flower boys who lives in a sea of little girls in sailor suits! I should have 
guessed as much.  And you're in luck! It's very near my abode! I can get 
you there at once!"  
 
And at once they left, headed towards the open arms where they sky still 
stood hung with the glittering raindrops that could not fall.  Yes, this 
seemed right, crossing the bare streets, knocking against the places where 
the light from the empty windows should have been.  Light and dark and 
light and dark and no one saw them if they did not see themselves.  The 
morning rolled over in her sleep and mumbled, waiting for the evening the 
break her open.  No, too early, too early, feel how still it was, save for the 
one voice that purled over the metal clad earth.

I feel good
It's a fine day
The way the sun hits off the runway  
A cloud shifts 
The plane lifts
She moves on

But feel the bite 
Whenever you believe that
You'll be lost and love will find you
When the road bends
And the song ends
She moves on

I know the reason
I feel so blessed
My heart still splashes
Inside my chest
She's like a top
She cannot stop
She moves on

A sympathetic stranger 
Lights a candle in the middle of the night
Her voice cracks
She jumps back
But...

"She moves on," Omi sang by himself for his one line, his one chorus.  It 
was easy to remember, the heart of the heart of the boozy little number.

"Come now! You can't know that song."

"But I can learn it."

"I should have expected no less from a member of my karass."

"What?"

"Bad Cat's Cradle joke.  I meant nothing of it. Anyway, where was I? Oh, 
right... ahem.  'A sympathetic stranger lights...'." He came to a stop then 
and this time it was Omi who bumped into Naru.  They both tumbled into 
the middle of the road and lay there sniggering since no cars came along to 
suggest they move alone.  "Now wait a moment! It's not funny! You still 
haven't told me if you've got anyone to stay with you.  That girl I was 
talking about, not the dancer in the words but... AGH you know!"

Now gathered once more to his feet, Omi gave his companion a hand up 
only to flee him and say to a brick wall, "Well I... I have... there's this 
other guy, in the room below ours."

"Oh?"

His eyes fell to the parting dance of the moon, and nearly did he reach for 
it.  She the dancer of the tune or rather some beauty in a bar, male or 
female destined to never even know she had been committed to tune? 
Beauty fleeting he supposed, he admitted many things with his slight 
answer.  "But I dunno... I kinda think... some of the things he said to 
me... and he... was petting me a little after... since he heard and..."

Naru's hands flew to his hips as he joined him along the wall.  "You mean 
you've got this other random fellow you think likes you?" 

"I know it." Now the moon did too.

A clap and for all the scenery and subject of their conversation with its 
pick-pocket words, he sounded as if he meant to gird some weapon to his 
younger friend. "Well then! That's fantastic! You know what they have 
always said in the states! Love the one your with! In the old world, carpe 
diem! Or in this case, seize the lovely boy! Wait... is he lovely?"

"Umm... yeah..."

"All the better."

"I guess..." For what it was worth, his head tapped the cold stone and as if 
to stir him from a faint, Naru pulled him away and ran with him along the 
borders of a minute market.  He knew where they were though, but not if 
it had been left to them and only them.  

"Do you like him?"

"Kinda..."

"Then why be sad, Omi? Why?" 

"B-because... I'm bad."

"Horsefuck!" Shouted from the peak of the bridge they had sprinted 
across.   "I tell you what, when you get home, you march yourself right up 
to his room and you tell him you want to be with him.  You tell him you're 
a good person, and you know it's a little odd but he can love you if he 
wants, and maybe it won't be forever but screw forever!"

"It's three in the morning."

"Well... then you do that come sunrise."

Not another word did either of them utter that evening.  When the familiar 
lily grates of Hanano came into soft focus, Omi lifted his finger to the 
guise of the windows.  I'm here.  I know where you are.  I'll see you.

They kissed each other goodbye, wishes of luck.

Naru watched him until Omi's whiteness slid in from the back door rose 
up the staircase, but then he himself remained along the curb for awhile.  
His shoulder hurt from the weight of his books, the words of others, as if 
he had been sapped of all himself.  Not that it mattered in the twilight, or 
the twi-morn.  

/I've sent you someone else, Yuuji.  He's pretty and he's blond and he 
might as well be made of warm milk with sugar and nutmeg.  Please be 
happy with him.  If only for tonight./

Then as he started off to his own bed.  /Err... today./

***

As for Omi, he found himself upstairs, standing beside his own door.  No 
one inside but himself when he made it there.  Then he drew on the 
pajamas Yuuji had leant him, shuffled downstairs and curled up beside the 
dozing body which was pale as the sunrise neither of them saw. 

***

It was well into midmorning before Yuuji reluctantly ventured forth 
anew into the land of waking. The sunlight slid razor-sharp through 
the narrow cracks in the blinds, suffusing the room with a 
particularly irritating brightness. He was reminded again just how 
much he hated that time of day. 

Yuuji got up anyway, as the urge to sleep had been successfully 
squashed, heaving himself up onto his side, and propping himself up 
on one crooked elbow. In a breathtaking symphony of pain, every 
bruise, both old and new, and every cut, both nick and gash, 
reasserted themselves. 

/Oh, well, fuck./

Of course, he wasn't as well as he was the night before, nor was he 
quite so alone as before. Omi was curled up beside him, lying close 
enough for him to feel the heat of his sleepy exhalations on his bare 
arm. 

/Man, I must have really been exhausted. I didn't even hear you come 
in, Omi./

Yuuji chanced a feather-light brush of fingers across one warm, pale 
cheek. /You're not looking too good. I guess that's to be expected, 
though, considering.../

/I'm so glad you came back!/ 

He tucked the blanket around Omi's blue cotton clad shoulders, moving 
as carefully as he could out of the fear that he might awaken him. 

"Ohayo, Omi-kun," he mouthed before slipping out of bed and padding 
off to the bathroom, gathering up his robe from the floor en route. 

***

Omi awoke thinking he had been lost in one of the corridors of the streets 
during a rainstorm, and had never come back to the halls of Hanano.  The 
sense of the bed beneath him and the whir of the air conditioning unit only 
faded in after his sightless eyes had bared themselves to the new day.  

He sat up suddenly, not for being surprised he did not recall the bed, but 
for that the sound of the sink running seemed to be coming from the 
wrong direction.

It felt as if a nightmare had broken around him, one he could only recall 
save in a long caress of unfamiliar fingers, over these unfamiliar sheets.

/But I wanted to come here and I... Naru... the beer... I.../

The sink had no interest in shutting off it seemed.

The clock blinked onto ten.

Omi fell back against the covers and the heavy patch of bed warmth he 
had been a part of.  His muscles felt worn and weak and ready to be taken 
back to the lace wings of rest.  Already.  But he rubbed his calves against 
themselves and the cloth that wound them, wiggled his toes in it with a 
smile.

But frowned upon coming upon something... wet.

The covers he accidentally threw over his head as he drew them aside.  

Yuuji's sheets were streaked and dabbed with blood.  

His pajama's drew a few traces of it.

He didn't cry out.  Merely rose to his weary feet, retreating to the living 
room of the apartment where he had left his medical case.  His rumpled 
bedclothes were so baggy they billowed up around his hands and hid them 
along with his feet.  Felt just as homey as Ken's robe.

"Yuuuuuuuuuuuuji-kun," called as he rapped softly at the bathroom door.  
"lemme in.  I know what you were up to last night."

"'sokay."

A pause.

"I'm okay too."

Having gotten no answer, he tapped again only to find it hadn't been 
latched and so parted onto the vision of a white knight who had, very 
obviously come to meet his dark counterpart, and not managed to come 
away unscathed.

Or dressed for the most part.

***  

Yuuji had been involved in the sponging off of his red-tinted skin 
and the wounds that caused the stains when Omi had made his 
unexpected appearance. Wide-eyed, he gaped at the boy who now stood 
in the open doorway of his bathroom, noting at once the range of 
emotions that flitted across the deep pools of Omi's eyes: Shock, 
embarrassment, and then, no brighter than a far-off star, hunger--all 
the things he'd also felt upon seeing Omi. 

"And here I was trying to keep from waking you, Omi-kun. You so 
looked as if you could use the extra sleep."

/And I was hoping I could get this done before you even woke up./

/Guess I bled on the sheets too, huh?/ 

He paused, now staring at the damp, bloodied cloth in his hands, at 
the warm, steady stream from the faucet, then he dropped the 
washcloth into the basin and self-consciously hitched the waistband 
of his boxers up a little higher on one side--so hung low there while 
he had earlier probed at a nasty bruise on his hip. 

"It's hard to keep secrets from you." 

/All my secrets, apparently.../ 

The cloth was wrung, folded and pressed once more on the bleeding, 
blistered cut he'd been given the night before by the clumsy 
gunman. "You might come to regret getting up and coming after me," 
Yuuji said, nodding at the kit Omi held. "If you're planning on 
dressing my myriad wounds and soothing my various aches, you've got 
your work cut out for you." 

***

"I've always had my work cut out for me.  I'm Omi, I'm the doctor here, 
remember?  Besides, you're no worse than having three cranky guys to 
watch over."

With that line, he fluttered his hands about his shoulders as if they were a 
pair of wings.  And smiled as he clambered up on his own tiptoes, not that 
anyone could have seen beneath his sagging PJ's, though they bared a tiny 
triangle of his belly, having wrinkled inopportunely.  

"So umm... you stay there a sec.  I think I need the spare bottle of 
disinfectant... oh dear.  Don't sit down too fast!"

Actually, Yuuji was still in the process of lowering himself to a towel on 
the bathroom floor by the time Omi returned, a gallon refill bottle of his 
precious and oft used elixir of no-more-ouchies in tow.  

The towel underneath him had already been dotted with blood.

He himself kneeled on it without a wince, though his eyes fell to the red 
patches rather than Yuuji's quizzical gaze.  

"I'll wash... everything." He told him, and popping the catches of his 
case, set to work, first inspecting what should be taken case of first.  
Admittedly, there was little he could do for the bruises presently, as many 
were now dotted with slits and scratches which rubbing cream into would 
only split for a second time or cause to hurt worse than the bruises 
themselves.  The presently leaking cuts were numerous, but their severity 
exaggerated as their crimson mingled with the droplets of water which has 
caught on the pristine skin around them.  He dabbed at one as gently as he 
could.  Earned no wince, and no wonder, save his own.  His companion's 
skin was so very white, compared even to his own; he held his fingers 
close for a moment and marveled at the difference. 

His hand then hovered over each of the most brutal markings as if seeking 
to draw the pain away, though no, his selfishness knew and he smiled.  
Yuuji was gorgeous, even in pieces.

"I can't put stitches in your thigh." He muttered, perhaps to himself.  "The 
skin around it's too raw.  I could try but... it would hurt worse than letting 
it go.  Your shoulder on the other hand..."

He leaned forward close as he might, hair dancing across his fellow 
assassin's neck.  Daintily, he chanced spreading the severed veil of skin... 
"After I scrub this out I can fix it right up for you..."

"Well..."

The scratchy medical sponge in his hand flew into the tub.

In its place, he bent and laid his lips to Yuuji's wound, coaxing it clean 
with his tongue before sliding away a moment to spit in the sink.

/You didn't have to do that./

/But I could, so I did./

"Don't worry, I'll still clean it like before, that was just to get the messy 
stuff out... plfff!"

*** 

"It's all right, Omi-kun...Although, I've never had a wound cleaned 
out in such a way before." 

/Nor have I ever been aroused by having a wound cleaned out before./

The way Omi was positioned, on his knees and hovering above the sink, 
afforded Yuuji a healthy view of his lower stomach from beneath the 
inched up hem of his pajama top. Which, in its turn, inspired the 
image of him wrapping his arms around the unsuspecting Omi and 
covering that delectable (no doubt) bit of flesh with kisses. It was 
an image that lingered in his mind. 

He soon found it necessary to drape his hand over his lap, and he did 
so as casually as possible. 

Oh, yes, he knew those well-aimed, tentative little gestures for what 
they were; knew them and had been thrilled by them; puzzled too. 
Having such a kind, luscious boy as Omi bestow his attention upon him 
was the last thing he expected to happen--especially since said kind, 
luscious boy had professed to love another just the day before. 

In the sense of fairness and honesty, he felt the subject needed to 
be broached. 

"Ne, Omi-kun? Um...Are you okay?" Yuuji asked once Omi was seated 
beside him again. "I mean, you were pretty upset yesterday over 
Youji. But now...It seems like you've gotten over him. I can't help 
but wonder why the sudden change." 

"And before you take what I'm saying the wrong way, I'm not 
attempting to defend or assist Kudou-san here. Frankly, he's not my 
most favorite person at the moment--or at any moment, really. But I 
have to wonder why you've gone from loving him and tolerating me, to 
seemingly forgetting about him and making passes at me." 

"So...Are you simply acting like someone's heartbroken ex-lover here, 
or are you` genuinely interested in me?"

***

Omi's gaze barely fluttered at this remark.  The unearthly sun flecked glint 
across his cheeks came across no crimson and his gaze nestled up against 
Yuuji's without a trace of fear.  If he had been standing perhaps things 
would have gone differently, and he would have rocked funny on his heels 
with no one to catch him.  Not so this morning.  He settled himself beside 
his companion with his hands folded at the base of his chest as if he was 
asking for something rather dear.

"You make everything so easy for me, Yuuji-kun.  I have to wonder why 
you bother, but you're Yuuji and I guess that's what you do.  I'm sorry I 
don't know you any better, but I'd like to.  Only if you don't mind."

The red stain over his lips had not faded away entirely.  Doubtless, his 
fellow assassin took note of this as he leaned rather close then.  No closer 
than they had been in bed before the sun came up or one of them stirred in 
their sleep.

"I know it's funny and it makes me look like a slut but... yeah... I am, 
Yuuji-kun."

"And not because I'm desperate."

/OK... umm... maybe that's a little... just a teeny little white lie./

/Lies among Weiss.  What a joke./

/I just want to be some kind of happy.  Naru was right.../

/But I want you to be happy too! So it's not so bad./

A faint little water-sprite giggle.  "Besi~des, you kinda like me too, don't 
you?"

/Omi the little liar.  Who's afraid of the dark, and doesn't like to be alone 
and.../

"I've never known anyone like you before, so I don't know how good I'll 
be, but let's try it."

/You're so soft and warm.  I can't help it... I can't./

/I don't really want to./

He took Yuuji's battered cheek in one palm, rubbing his thumb over the 
wounds as lightly as he could.  And the he kissed his hair, which smelled 
toffee and tobacco.  

***    

Yuuji's hands fumbled lightly over his legs, tracing the contours of 
his thighs, his hips, and then his back; all more to see if Omi was 
real, and for real, than out of any pat attempt to seduce. His 
living, breathing cuddle toy didn't protest or squirm away. 

It was more than he'd expected. Much more. 

/Okay, so I won't tell you about Youji./

He pulled the boy close, quietly delighting in the feel of Omi's 
heartbeat beneath his hands. 

/I don't want to tell you, frankly, because you seem so happy now./

/And because of that, I KNOW you didn't get my message. I KNOW you 
didn't go see him last night./

/And when I find your phone...I'm hiding it away until I can figure 
out how to delete any and all messages relating to him. Scruples be 
damned for once!/

Yuuji nudged the collar of his pajama top aside and nuzzled the 
curving slope where his neck joined his shoulder; scattered a few 
small, open-mouthed kisses there. 

/I want this. I want to have someone around me./

/I want you./

"Yeah, I do like you, Omi-kun," he breathed. "And I want to get to 
know you better too, so let's give it a try." 

He turned his face upwards just a fraction more to place a similar 
kiss on the underside of Omi's chin, but had a pair of lush, rosy 
lips offered to him instead. The mere touch of his mouth sent 
shockwaves straight to the center of him, and Yuuji coiled a hand 
around the back of Omi's head to hold him still as he deepened the 
kiss. 

***

Omi jerked just faintly beneath the wet tickle of Yuuji's mouth.  For an 
instant they parted there, he was alone and gasping faintly, only come and 
snatch another kiss, one he fell into and laced with nibbles of his 
companion's tongue.

He tasted like toffee and cigarettes too.  

It might have been one kiss or a thousand after that melting together 
between them.  Either way, many long slow, caresses they shared.  Yuuji 
held his head as they felt each other out.

As if reaching for some china dream, Omi's hands finally stirred and 
wandered over his shoulders, testing the surface of his skin for some safe 
hold not marred by bruises or blood.  If he found one at once, he knew not, 
but Yuuji sank against him at the slightest brush.  Fell closer until the 
point they had been riding around each other vanished into the myths of 
gravity.  When they were together, Knight's cuts leaking onto his clothes, 
his sadness seeping into Knight.

/Haven't you ever been with anyone... like this, this close, this sweet, this 
simple?/

/You feel like I did when he.../

/Youji.../

This didn't feel like Youji at all.  Neither more wrong nor more right.  
Neither peaceful nor lost in gales.  The finger prints on his skin didn't 
match, as if one set or the other had gone to myth as well, too many old 
faerie tales spun together and ran away.  He could have sworn he had 
turned to crystal where his patient had brushed him, and it wasn't bad, not 
at all.

/Go away and leave us alone Youji.  Since that's what you wanted./

/I'm sorry but.../

His hand came up between them and he spoke to his candy rose lips 
through his own fingers.  "Let me fix you up first and then I'll hold you all 
you want, OK?"

/Maybe you should be sorry too./

***

Yuuji gave Omi one last kiss--that one dealt to his quieting fingers; 
one last fumbling caress to his back.  Then he let him go and fell 
against the cabinets with a contented sigh.

"How can I turn down such a bribe as that?"  He gave Omi a 
mischievous grin, and waved airily at his bruised and battered 
torso.  "Go on and bandage away, Dr. Tsukiyono.  And take your time, 
because Mrs. Higurashi never opens the shop on Mondays."

/Which means I have you all to myself today!/

He petted his knee--well, what he could find of it in the voluminous 
folds of the pajamas he wore.  Yuuji thought he looked cute in them, 
and told him so, and promptly received a swat across the top of his 
head because he chose to pay him that compliment as if he were 
talking to a baby and not a grown boy.    

"Itai!  Can't you take a little teasing?!  Okay!  Okay!" he cried, 
laughing and holding up one hand to fend off another threatened 
slap.  "I won't do it again!"

***

Omi pretended to ponder this promise for some time before giggling like a 
wren and kissing Yuuji where he had struck him.  "Oh alright.  But only if 
you actually hold still!"

Somehow, he couldn't help but feel as if he had asked his companion to 
drain Tokyo bay on his own using nothing but a seashell and a twig.  His 
look said as much.  

No matter.  Omi merely rolled up his sleeves, made use of the disinfectant 
and set to work.  He had kept, ever since joining Weiss, a rather eclectic 
collection of band-aids in every size, shape and, for those moments when 
Ken was carting about finicky students who had suffered unfortunate 
encounters with sidewalks or each other, pattern.

Yuuji at once found himself tended not only by Omi, but by an army of 
chibi Sakuras and Kero-chans and for one of the larger gashes, a 
panoramic patch of Yuki nibbling some fried octopus.

In a rather suggestive manner.

/The etchi girls have even gotten into med supplies.  What's the world 
coming to?/  

Nothing more than Omi pondering the weeping cut on Yuuji's shoulder, 
from which he plucked a few stray remnants of medical thread before 
setting to work on it.  He supposed it would take about twenty stitches, but 
looked to have been done up with only fifteen originally.  /Small wonder 
you tore them out so easily!/  Today happened to be no day for another 
one of his rants regarding the hospital staff and their perpetual rush to rid 
their quarters of patients.  He took the time himself now to rearrange his 
thread, keep it away from the splits its predecessor had cause.

He did it all with the needles between his own fingers rather than balanced 
in a tweezers or a clamp.  He was sure they were warmer and less 
forbidding, in meaning, not in mind true.  After all, what he had done with 
those hands which wore fitting marks for his crossbow.  

/OK, so maybe they're just warmer./

He put in twenty-two all together before wrapping them over with gauze 
and a warning about not moving his arm.

The bullet graze on his thigh remained.  Omi coaxed it together with a pair 
of extra large butterfly bandages, wrapped it up.

"There we go! Almost done."

He rinsed his hands one more time before letting them creep up the leg of 
Yuuji's boxers.

***

Yuuji let out a breathy little laugh, but didn't pull away from his 
wandering, tickly digits. 

"If you're searching for yet more wounds, I'm afraid you'll be 
disappointed. However, if you continue your exploration..."

His fingertips slithered down Omi's throat to the deep V of skin laid 
bare by his sagging collar. 

"You will find something..."

Yuuji unbuttoned the first button of his pajama top. 

"That requires your gentle hands."

He withdrew his hand and cupped the back of his head, drawing him 
close. He swiped the tip of his tongue over Omi's lower lip, lightly 
kissing him there, once, twice. 

"And maybe..."

He nuzzled his cheek, and gave him a knowing grin. 

"You will allow me to return the favor." 

***

Omi grinned and nuzzled Yuuji right back, skating the tip of his tongue 
over the tender spaces beneath his jaw.  He got a giggle and a nervous 
little twitch for his troubles, or at least, he supposed it was nervous, for he 
had never known anyone to twitch in mere pleasure alone.  But then he 
rocked to the soles of his feet, and shook his finger at her companion.

"Now now! I don't know what you're thinking but you're all fixed up... 
for now at least..." A little wink.  "So it's back to bed with you! Sitting on 
the cold, hard floor won't do you any good, now will it?"

A few stiff moments lingered near them then as they pushed and pulled 
Yuuji to his feet so he might be lead back to the bedroom with its 
bothersome zebra light.  Omi left him standing a moment in the center of 
the room, returning with one of the sheets form his own bed, which he 
threw over the slats in lieu of curtains.  Despite that the window remained 
closed, the sheets billowed out now and again as if someone was peering 
in on them.

No, it was only the two of them as he coaxed Knight back into the furrow 
he had left on the mattress.  The traces of blood had gone cold and dry, 
neither of them noticed, eyes fixed blue upon blue.  One laid out like 
sleeping beauty fresh awakened, and the other hovering over her.

The blue pajama top fell to the floor as Omi reclaimed his half of the bed.  
Even with only the pants remaining, the bruises across his hips were plain, 
the finger marks like feathers faded.

As if he could have had wings.

He did not wish for such.  

This time his hand fell through the rim of Yuuji's boxers and tickled him, 
just a touch, slid around him, and petted.

***

Yuuji gasped softly upon feeling Omi's cool, sure caress, eyes closed 
just long enough to quietly savor the sensation.  His hand wandered 
over the boy's silky mop, down his cheek; he felt him lean into his 
palm.  

Then, he opened his eyes and reclaimed his hold on Omi's own, only to 
soon release them again in favor of tracking the lithe young body 
presented to him.  He was lovely, one of the loveliest he'd ever 
seen; Yuuji couldn't resist following the line of his gaze with his 
fingers.  He traced over his chest, his nipples, his ribs, down to 
the curve of his stomach--and there he stopped.  

He saw for the first time the evidence of his night with Youji.  The 
bruises were ugly on Omi's smooth skin, and very distinctive.  It 
wasn't hard to guess just what had made them.  He moved his hand away 
from the dip of his navel to gently stroke one battered hip, eyes now 
quite stormy when he raised them to Omi's face.  

But he didn't say anything, for he didn't want to invoke the name of 
the offender.  He didn't want to bring Kudou to his young lover's 
mind.  

So instead, he edged that hand away from his hip, letting his fingers 
creep along the edge of his waistband and over his crotch.  Yuuji 
undid the snaps on the fly and slipped his hand inside, lightly 
encircling his sex; stroked it as gently.  

"I like to give back as good as I get."   

***

Omi stifled a gasp by smashing his face in the pillow for a moment.  So 
buried, he nearly missed the sexy little cry from Yuuji, for his hands had 
tightened around him, now that their fingers had come to rest on one 
another's bodies.  Murmuring apologies, he fell to whisper in his ear, 
blinded by the golden threads.

"You're very good.  It feels... feels..."

He came to covering his slipping tongue with a few soft moans uttered 
against Yuuji's neck as he wriggled against him.

/It feels safe... feels nice but... how can I say that to you? What will you 
think I've been, and with who and where in my life?/

/It's too much./

/And such a lie./

/Even if I have already lied to you.../

"I like this, I do," he testified slowly and with wet words laced with kisses.  
"But when you're better, am I allowed to let you take me in the shower? 
Or play with you on the train sometimes? I'm kinda kinky like that I... 
mnnnnnnnnn... but I am alright, just in bed... here with you now.  Please 
don't think I'm mad you're not in me."

"I couldn't be..."

But his thoughts died and rather he gathered himself up in one elbow, 
catching his other hand in Yuuji's bangs.

***

"You can have me on the train, in a crowd, pressed up against each 
other.  I'll take you in the shower.  I'll take you now.  Is that 
what you want the most?  To have me in you, in this bed?"  Yuuji 
shifted his head slightly and kissed the tender underside of Omi's 
arm.  

"I'm not injured there, Omi.  I don't see why you couldn't have me 
that way."  

His hand left off its easy stroking of Omi's tempting flesh to make a 
brief retreat.  The snaps at Omi's waist came loose, and Yuuji 
brushed the folds of cloth aside, laying him bare.  Another careless 
swat, and it crumpled away from his ass, leaving it vulnerable to the 
touch of his hand.  Yuuji traced its curves, and dipped teasingly 
into the shadowed cleft with gentle fingers.  

"I want you to have you like that, astride me and grinding."

He cupped his sex again, giving it a jolting little squeeze. 

"But if you say no, I won't think anything bad about you.  I won't 
get mad.  I won't kick you out."   

*** 

"Ah... I ah... I didn't want to hurt you is all..." Omi flushed beyond the 
rose glow of their sudden entanglement, and hands still wrapped around 
each other, they laughed and tickled at one another's thighs.  "I know it's 
soooooo backwards but I couldn't, I just could unless you were sure! I'm 
the one who tied you up, after all."

A quick slippy kiss as he drew his legs from the remaining folds of his 
pajamas, rather like a merboy shedding his tail in favor of legs.

He couldn't imagine doing what he had in mind with a tail after all, or 
anything on his form at all really.

"First, do no harm." As he pushed himself away from Yuuji, pushed Yuuji 
from his black silk.

His fingers came up and tweaked at his own nipples.  "Fuck me, I'll be 
gentle.  I'll be all backwards and cozy for you while we do it."

Not another word.  Only the faint squeak of the springs as he tossed one 
thigh over Yuuji's and sank down on his shaft with a sharp cry.

*** 

While Yuuji had indeed wanted Omi, the way it happened had been 
startling in its suddenness. Yuuji had not expected Omi to be so 
brutal; he had not been hurt, no, but Omi? 

The idea of how badly it must have felt, having someone's sex forced 
into them and without any lubrication to soften the way, made him 
cringe. That Omi had willingly done it to himself, made Yuuji sick. 
He felt like he was being assaulted, or was assaulting him. 

He was afraid to move an inch, afraid to move further into him even 
the tiniest bit. Already he could feel the telltale warmth of his 
blood flowing, smoothing the passage and lessening the friction at 
the point of contact, and it horrified him. 

He groaned softly, however, when Omi impaled himself on Yuuji's sex 
again, and his hand flew to the boy's hip, clutching at it in a 
silent plea for him to cease; for him to slow down and let him be 
gentle. 

Omi didn't even cry out when his fingers met those angry bruises. In 
fact, it seemed the pain, for he most certainly had felt some, only 
made everything better. Omi's expression was rapturous. 

Yuuji closed his eyes against the sight. 

"Stop! Omi, please." Yuuji reached up to hook a hand around Omi's 
shoulder. "I didn't want it like this!"

***

"LIKE WHAT!? What the hell's the matter with you!? Can't I get any d-
..." 

And then he had to reach over and brush Yuuji's hand away, passing his 
own fingers before his eyes as if he had seen something before him not of 
Tokyo or anywhere remotely corporeal, either by words or by touch.  His 
knees sagged and knocked against Yuuji's hips.  He would have rolled 
against him too but he feared even blinking his eyes for fear they might 
begin to leak at this point.

He wanted to faint over that soft white body and be still with Yuuji for a 
long while.

Instead he caught up his hand again and kissed the underside of his wrist, 
spreading his hand over his face and holding it there.  His body barely 
flinched where it had been pierced, save for a light twitch deep in his belly 
that would go to heat as a wish for even the softest rolling.  He tightened 
himself up for a second, trying to feel more than pressure.

/I wonder if you feel different or its because I just ripped myself open all 
over your bed.../

"I'm sorry, Yuuji-kun.  I didn'... It doesn't hurt! Really it doesn't.  Not 
one little bit and I'm not lying.  I'm not... but you're really nice and 
comfy even though I..."

"I didn' mean to yell! Gomen nasai Yuuji! Gomen nasai!"

He hovered a moment over his battered body, breathing heavy between his 
sighs and the kisses he offered.

***

Yuuji didn't know what to do, frankly. It wasn't that he was afraid 
for his life or safety, but Omi...! The sweet friendly boy of a few 
moments ago had disappeared for a few harrowing seconds, and Yuuji 
didn't know why. 

One thing was certain though: Omi was not all right--and not because 
he didn't care for sex that was on the vanilla side. 

He hesitantly clasped his shoulders, passed kiss after kiss to the 
boy's tender lips whenever he came close. 

/What's wrong, Omi-kun?/

/Why do you want to be hurt in bed?/

He let his hands drift from their perch down to the middle of back. 

/Did Youji see it? Did Youji ever wonder?/

/Or did he simply give you what you wanted without wondering 
why?/ 

"It's okay, Omi-kun...I just thought..." 

/That you were hurt./

/...I have a feeling you were.../

***

"We're in bed.  You don't have to think," Omi corrected with a titter and a 
finger which graced the pink lily softness of his present lover's lips.  
Before his tongue did and his cheek as he curled himself just so above his 
chest, not chancing his scratched or his bandages, just holding himself 
above, nibbling his neck.

He felt oh so warm and suddenly... very, very still.  As if Omi found 
himself presently making love to taught, satin pillows.  Drawing himself 
up, he rubbed his palm across his brow and into the down of his hair, 
combing it away from the traces of sweat it clung to now.  The hands 
against his back wound in circles then, wondering where to go.

"My baby, Yuuji.  Isn't he so pretty, even when I make him sad.  I'm 
sorry.  It'll be better soon.  Shhhhhh.  I'll take good care of you..."

His fingers and Knight's he knotted together, and now freed of half the 
embrace which had stilled him he swayed with Yuuji inside him and 
murmured at the deep brushes he had given himself. 

"You bit your lip.  Oh Yuuji!"

So he gathered him up from the covers and nursed the cut with his tongue, 
the two of them wound up away from the bloodied bed like a boy holding 
someone dear he had lost, someone too heavy to carry.  

But between motion and the end of motion, the stillness and his own 
thumping heart, it all thrilled him, and he dripped against the bruises 
below his own.

"... love you..."

"...feels so nice..."

"S'ok..."

***

Under the breathy, moist caresses of his lips, Yuuji felt like he was 
melting inside, all his concerns being pushed back farther and 
farther with every kiss. He wove one hand through Omi's hair, and 
returned those coaxing busses with renewed fervor. 

"Let me go slow..."

"...And be gentle."

His other hand stole down to his lower back, traversed the narrow 
curve of his hip to grasp Omi's penis. 

"It can feel just as good being rough. Much better, in fact, in a 
lot of ways..."

He captured Omi's mouth with his own, and dared at last to roll his 
hips upwards in an easy thrust, angling so he hit just the right 
place; hand pumping in time in a slow rhythm. 

"Just give it a chance?"

***

Omi's response came as a smooth, low moan, one breathed into the lips 
that had spoken to him.  He wished to answer with words, but words 
would keep them apart, even if for but a moment, something he found, 
presently wandering such moors as their encounter had laid sprawling in 
his mind, unbearable.  The closer he clasped Yuuji, the more he felt as if 
he would drop him back to the marriage of heaven and hell that their bed 
was.  And he wanted him.  He was jealous of the covers.  Jealous of all 
Crashers past and present and daring to come after him.  He was jealous of 
Sugihara even and would have flown to the home of his ashes to ruin them 
if he would have had a chance or an inkling of where they might be.  

But Yuuji rocked into him then, more deeply and he hung there longer, 
twitching inside him and he failed to mute his squeak even hiding his lips 
against him.  

"It does... it does feel... so much... so good.  You've got all the chances 
you could... ohhhhhhh... ever want.  Whenever you want... even 
though..."

A long nuzzle around his temple.  "I didn't figure you liked to do the long 
and slow.  But I like it, Yuuji-kun!"

***

Yuuji licked a line down his throat, tracing over the jugular; sank 
his teeth in lightly and sucked greedily at the soft flesh.  Playing 
more like Louis than Lestat.  

"I'm glad you do.  I'm only sorry I'm so badly injured, for I'd lay 
you down and do you right.  Mmm...But there's time for that."  

He stroked the sensitive underside of Omi's sex, letting his 
fingernails shiver along the length from base to tip.  Then he let 
his fingers creep down to caress the downy, fragile organs behind it, 
pairing his touch with another rolling thrust.  Pleasure coursed 
through him in silvered ripples of light, meeting in his brain in a 
dozens of tiny starbursts.    

"Ah...This is heaven, being in you."  He wrapped his injured arm 
around Omi's narrow waist to steady him better, and thrust 
again.  "So many things I want to do..."

/Feathers and velvet ropes; nights where I do nothing but make love 
to you with my hands and mouth only./

/Naru would have been shocked I suppose, to find I like a bit of 
kink.../

/He could have found that out, if only he'd given me more of a 
chance, and not tried to rush things./

/Oh well./

He lifted his head from the crook of his shoulder and kissed him, 
snaking his tongue into his juicy little mouth and stroking the 
tender, moist walls of it.  


(ooc:  The phrase "dark trick" is the act of making a vampire--so 
coined by Anne Rice.  Louis is Lestat's lover, and he is also a 
vampire, made by Lestat himself.  But where Lestat would feed on a 
person until he/she died, or would carelessly make a vampire out of 
them whenever he wanted to do it, Louis would only sip at his 
victims.  He would take a little from each mark, just enough to keep 
him alive but not enough to threaten his/her life, and he never made 
a vampire.) 

***

Omi dove after Yuuji's mouth, even as it left his own, whimpered 
insensitively and snatched at his lover's hair.  He held his head in his 
hands, clasped along the lines his bones made, and he leaned into that, 
rather than Omi's lips, so Omi sighed then- a long, shivering noise, and 
cradled him down against him, sinking, a little blond curlicue up against 
his lover's chest, and he held him there, brushing the bandages on his back 
as he kissed him over his heart.   

And the foamy, platinum edges of his orgasm, his thoughts fell and rose 
with the pulses of his rocking hips, bounced this way and that, little clear 
insistences of matter rather then mind, or so he thought, guessed, dared 
insist to himself, as he sat, holding Yuuji; his eyes open, though he saw 
nothing.

/Did you want me like this when you first saw me? You knew I was taken.  
You saw me with him, you heard me with him.  Ha.  You're not so noble./

/Unless you're doing this just to make me feel better./

/I... do.../

/I... don't.../

/I wonder if I feel anything./

/You shouldn't but what the hell, it's too late now.  You're a mess.  It'll be 
a wonder if he doesn't take you to the emergency room.  Or take you until 
you pass out./

/I do... I do.../

/But you... you just did this to make me feel better, didn't you?/

/How can heaven be making me feel better? How can it! Answer me 
Yuuji./

He rose in turn with one of his nudges, in and away at the same time, but 
his lover held his hips, poised open, read for him to sink down and sway 
with him then.

/Stupid./

But he did see the, he saw the eyed that kissed him where his mouth was 
demanding air, he saw time, and peace and many white things before his 
eyes.  He shooed Yuuji's hands away form his penis and pressed it to his 
belly instead.

His inner muscles cramped and fluttered at the same instance when he 
came.

He didn't cry out, just gasped and hovered deep against him.

Held him even though he was hurt.

/Yeah, heaven is making someone feel better.  It has to be./

"Stay in me a little while.  Please Yuuji.  I... I don't know what that feels 
like.  I know I'm all bloody by now but please... pretty please..."

***

Yuuji curled him tighter into his arms, disregarding the stickiness 
coating their skin.  He raised his head from Omi's chest and drew the 
boy down for a kiss.  

"Okay, I will--for a little while.  And then I'm taking you into the 
bathroom and cleaning you up."  

He cradled the boy to him as if he were a frightened waif he'd 
rescued from the street; in a way, he knew that Omi was just that.

/And I might take you to the hospital, if it seems like you need it./

/Oh, Omi.  Why did you hurt yourself like that?/  

/Why did you get angry when I protested?/

Yuuji vowed to find out the reasons why for all of Omi's odd behavior 
before he went back to Crashers.  Vowed to try and convince the boy 
to get help, if he needed it too.  

It seemed to him that if he didn't take an interest in helping him, 
Omi would be lost for sure.  No one else seemed to care.  

/But then, that's Kritiker for you.  Just as long as their agents 
keep killing, they're happy./  

A few moments more they hung in each other's embrace and then Yuuji 
withdrew his softened member from Omi's body, but kept the boy in his 
arms, half-expecting him to make a run for it.  

"Come on, and let me take a look at you."

***

Omi gave not even the faintest murmur of protest.  He was perfectly happy 
with the few moments of afterglow where they sat together, still entwined.  
He had found in them an otherworldly peace, seven seconds perhaps, 
ultimately dashed to nothing the moment he thought of anything relevant 
to days and hours and the bed he had ruined.  He had grown restless, was 
almost glad Yuuji coaxed him up.

And yet afraid to move for fear of what he find beneath him, as if he 
would find himself falling onto something dark and far from tender.

Legs clamped together, he started to scoot away, felt a few drips, bit his 
lip, tightened himself up as if they were once again diving towards 
orgasms.  That hurt, just a little.  The tightness.  Like a little pinprick.

Seeing most of the blood had ended up in Yuuji's lap brought a much 
more grave discomfort.  There wasn't... too much.  It had only been 
splattered around.

"Umm... not here."

Which raised the question of how he was meant to reach the bathroom and 
leave the carpet its usual exsanguine self. 

/Ewe.  Girls are supposed to have this problem./

/Well, I do now./

So he crossed it without looking, reached the tile to find one long drip 
along his thigh and nothing else, nothing which had left him.  He wiped 
the streak away with his fingers and found it was milky white underneath.

But rustles then in the bedroom, so he went to flip on the lights, found he 
had left them as such, and so simply bent down against the sink, waiting 
for his lover's fingers, which he found against him soon, smoothing the 
wet skin.  He sighed, felt him coax him open for a better look.

*** 

Yuuji felt the slender body before him tense up, and he frowned in 
worry. He had tried to be very careful; that such a slight probing 
hurt Omi...

He withdrew his hand, and moved off to wet a cloth from the bathtub 
tap. "It looks worse than I thought it would." He caught his eye in 
the mirror as he crossed back over to him. "But then I think you 
know that."

"And I think..." he added, turning his attention to bathing him there 
as gently as he could, "that you need to go to the hospital. I know 
that's the last thing in the world you wanted, but..." 

Yuuji tossed the bloodied cloth into the hamper, then, after a 
moment's consideration, threw his stained boxers in after it. He 
pulled down a clean towel from the shelf above it, and draped it 
around Omi. Then he kissed him on the shoulder. 

"Come back to bed and lay down while I get dressed. I have a pair of 
sweatpants and a t-shirt for you to wear, so your clothes won't get 
messed up. Okay?"

***

Kudou Youji was bored out of his mind. 

He had no books to read, and the magazines the teenaged volunteer had 
snuck him from some waiting room were a year old. His nurse was 
about 45 and more motherly than seductive, so there wasn't any hope 
of distraction there. 

Not that he would have necessarily taken that route. 

The muted TV played out its drivel before his glazed green eyes 
without him taking much notice. His mind was at the Hanano, and Omi, 
and what he might be doing right at that moment. 

He hoped he was doing it alone, although he wouldn't blame him if he 
wasn't. A kid like Omi probably had at least one prospective swain--
some schoolmate most likely. The sort of story one would see in a 
shonen-ai manga. 

He reckoned he would be much better off with a boy his age than with 
a old slut like himself. The knowledge that he was right in his 
assumption only made him hurt worse. 

/Because he probably doesn't love you anymore, you know./

/And why would he? You're a cad, a jerk! You can't commit, for all 
your mouthing otherwise./

/You broke his heart./

/You broke your own heart./ 

He picked up the remote and sent the picture spinning in a 
psychedelic blur of color. 

/So what are you doing here?/

He snapped the TV off and threw the remote across the room; it 
knocked a chink out of the top of the plywood-veneered dresser, and 
hit the floor, the back coming loose and the batteries rolling away 
from it. Youji laid there, eyes closed, and waited for some nurse to 
stride in and berate him for being such a troublesome patient; maybe 
she'd bring the restraints and the sedatives he'd been threatened 
with earlier. He hoped she would. 

And maybe, just maybe, she'd be tired, and would make a mistake in 
the dosage. Maybe he'd never come out of it. 

Maybe he'd die. 

A smile curled sadly at his lip. Youji opened his eyes and gazed up 
the ceiling. In his head, he saw not sheets of white acoustic tile, 
but her face; her mouth moving, red lips forming a question. 

"Yeah, Asuka, I do. I want it." 

He turned bleary eyes to the bag of clear liquid that hung above and 
to the right of his head, and tracked the tube from it all the way 
down to his arm. The needle was nestled all snug and fat and shiny 
in the crook of his arm, pumping necessary fluids into his body; or 
rather, fluids deemed necessary by strangers. 

Youji had other ideas though. 

Emboldened by the fact that no one came in to witness his tirade, he 
grasped the end of the needle and slid it out with the slightest of 
grimaces, and let it fall away from the bed. With one finger pressed 
down over the vein to clamp it, he took a deep breath, then another, 
and inched over to the edge of the bed. Then he arduously lowered 
his legs to the floor, and raised himself up, until he was sitting. 

Little by little, Youji continued his journey to the dresser, pausing 
to rest at intervals when he got too lightheaded. Eventually, 
however, he managed to don his jeans and shoes, and got his shirt on 
over his hospital gown. After slipping his wallet and keys and 
jewelry back into his pockets, Youji went to the door, and with all 
the skill of a long-practicing assassin, checked for witnesses. 

The hall was blessedly empty. 

Youji cast a weary grin at whichever god was watching and slipped out 
of the room.

***

"He's down that hall, miss.  Third door on the right.  And awake, last time 
I checked."  The painfully matronly nurse supposedly minding the patients 
on the third floor east wing mumbled between nibbles of brownie as he 
eyes remained glued to the violently bad love scene unfolding on the soap 
which radiated shrieks and betrayal from the LCD monitor of her Hello 
Kitty portable TV.  

"I think Testuo and Midori might finally get it on!" One of her flunkies 
cheered.

"Bah, you, always rooting for the evil couples.  I was like that once, when 
soaps first came out.  But I got over it.  You will too."

"Maybe I do' wanna."

"Well I wanna be buzzed in, thank you very much!" The visitor snapped.

Tenrusei, a pitiful but respected place, had remote operated doors to all the 
halls.  For protecting children, adults and any deadly bacteria that 
happened to come up.  Hence why Manx had chosen it- for the folly and 
the genius of its bored of directors.

It took the head nurse three tries to hit said remote without bothering to 
look up from her screen.  Crumbs flew everywhere.

Mitsuki flew through the door, slopping water from her slipshod bouquet 
every which way.  An orderly fell on it after she had departed, and the 
head nurse still refused to look up.  

"Well well well! Anxious to see me are you!" She caterwauled with 
blinding brilliance to the figure limping across the linoleum before her.  
Her hand flew to the speak button on the mic by the hall door.  "Nurse! 
You have a patient out of bed! Why, I do believe it's Mr. Kuudou! And 
he's barely fit to stand! You'd better come get him at once."

"Cam't I' wai' 'ill a commehshul?" She whined with her mouth full.  
"Nah, you zere, you pulth that guy bacs a' be'.  NOW!"

The nearly sobbing flunkie let herself into the hallway, and sighing walked 
straight up to Youji and announced, "You made me miss the hottest naked 
seen of the season, you unfeeling jerk!"

And proceeded to look around to make sure no one who cared was there to 
see her haul the assassin back to bed by the ear.  Mitsuki applauded the 
sight and followed leaving a trail of mum and freesia petals behind her.  

***

And it would be just as well that Mitsuki was smiling as 
enigmatically as the Cheshire Cat, for back inside Youji's room all 
most certainly was NOT all right. 

"Take your hands off me, damn it!" 

"You be quiet, and stay in that bed!"

"Why did you have to show up! You are the LAST person I want to 
see!" This, of course, was directed to Mitsuki. She only smirked, 
and continued arranging the bouquet. 

"That's no way to talk to her, especially after she brought you such 
lovely flowers!" 

At that moment, Mitsuki turned around with the vase in her hands, and 
carried it over to the bed to give him a better look. At the sight 
of the freesia, Youji scowled at her most fiercely. He would have 
gone after her if it weren't for the presence of the nurse. 

The young woman caught his hate-filled look, and hastily placed the 
flat of her hand on Youji's chest as if that was enough to stop him 
from rising. "Kudou-san! If you don't calm down, I will call the 
orderlies in here to restrain you." 

He leveled her a look of such fury, that she almost took a step 
backwards. Almost. 

"Do it, and you'll find out just how useless straps are to hold me 
down." 

The nurse stared at him for a few blinking seconds, then rolled her 
eyes. "Oh, please. Who do you think you are? Superman?"

That got a titter out of his visitor; Youji turned his head away and 
shut his eyes. He couldn't stand the sight of her anymore. "Oh, 
just get out of here!" 

"Hmpf. Gladly." To Mitsuki, she added, "If he gives you any 
trouble, just press that button there." She pointed at the red switch 
just behind the bed. Mitsuki gave her a bright smile and a nod, and 
the young woman flounced out without so much as another glance in 
Youji's direction. 

Youji fell back against the pillows with a heavy sigh. He wanted to 
scream, wanted to rip the whole damn room apart. His hands twisted 
the sheets violently, and he stubbornly kept his eyes glued to the 
dead TV screen. He was loathe to speak to her, but as the seconds 
interminably twitched by, he couldn't contain himself anymore. He 
was on the verge of exploding as it was. 

"What the fuck are you doing here, you bitch?"

***

"Well!" Mitsuki began with a huff and a toss of the scarf which had taken 
up residence around her neck, which might have been the only part of her 
buttercream-cozy form she WASN'T trying to flash.  "I heard you were in 
the hospital so I just HAD to come by.  I mean, what kind of friend would 
I be if I let the father of my unborn child to rot away in his OWN misery?"

She made a move to adjust her hands to her hips, realized she was still 
holding her bouquet, relocated that to the nightstand whereupon the mums 
both wept magenta petals onto Youji's nose, none of which he made any 
effort to fan away.  Her hands did eventually find their resting place, just 
as her feet found the most irritating place in the room for her to stand.

In his line of sight.

Her turned away towards the window.

She closed the blinds and stood in front of them.  

"You made the paper, you know.  Page seven of the general section." She 
reached inside her bra, retrieved a single clipping which was smudged 
with and now smelled like the fruity powder which abided on her bosoms.  

"I guess that brat of yours did this to you, eh? It's always the little ones.  If 
you tell me, maybe I can get them to take him in before he leaves 
downstairs.  You must have put up one hell of a fight! The guy carrying 
him didn't even look like he wanted to hold him! And how nice, he, unlike 
me, has no visible injuries.  You're just like a bad-ass lifetime dad, you 
know.  I'm surprised the nurses don't adore you just because you're 
something they know."

***

The clipping wound up as a crumpled ball on the floor, and Youji 
wound up right back on his feet. He unsteadily made his way to the 
threshold, where he slumped against the jamb, panting softly. 

/Omi's hurt? But how? Did they go on a mission?/

He ran a hand over his face and found it slightly damp with sweat; 
crossing the room had taken more out of him than he realized. 

/Damn that Yuuji! Didn't he even try to watch Omi's back?/ 

The hallway he found empty once again, save for a cart full of dirty 
meal trays and a wheelchair, one which stood outside the room across 
from his own. Some of his old spark lit up his shadowed eyes at the 
sight of it. 

Youji turned where he stood, back to the jamb and looked over at 
Mitsuki. 

"You keep telling me that you're carrying my kid, Mitsuki, and I keep 
telling you that it's not mine. If you're so sure that it is, then 
give me proof. Genetic proof. Have a test done when it's born, if 
you'll let it be born, and then, if there's no doubt, then I'll take 
responsibility for it." 

/Which is more than my dad ever did for me./ 

He gave her a frosty smile. 

"But marry you I will NOT." 

/And that's for the best, 'Suki, and you know it./ 

With that, he gathered his resolve, and with a deep breath and a hard 
push, he staggered away from the doorway and across the hall. Fell 
heavily on the chair when he reached it, bracing himself from falling 
to the floor by gripping its arms. Pain burst in white sparks across 
his vision, nearly taking his breath away. He hung there for few 
minutes, until the ache subsided. When he looked up, she was 
standing behind the chair, smirking. 

Youji turned away and lowered himself into the chair with a weary 
grunt. "You want to have some more laughs at my expense, 'Suki? 
Well, then, take me downstairs to where you saw Omi."

He settled back with a sigh, and glowered down the hall, imagining 
Yuuji's handsome, smiling face. Imagining his fist crashing into 
it. 

"I want thank his friend personally."

***

Mitsuki actually seemed to be exercising caution and possibly decorum... 
for all of about five seconds.  For said five seconds, she remained a grey-
wash shadow in the footlights of his room, one with a crimson tint to her 
cheeks no one noticed.  The backlighting washed it out.

"Marry you! Yuck! No way! I was hoping we just negotiate some hehe, 
quality bedroom time instead."

Which got her a moan and some rolling green eyes.

"Ah, later though! The very best time for us hedonists.  In the mean time, 
your brat has made me to nauseous to laugh, so I guess I owe you one.  
Also later."

Saying so, she took the handles of his wheelchair with a downright 
indecent sort of grace, worked her fingers into the rubber rods and her own 
gaze into Youji's, for he had turned all the way around just to glare at her.  
And it seemed, get his head patted, because he did.

She wondered if he remembered the night they had played naughty nurse, 
or if the party keg of Sapporo had performed some strategic erasures.  

Either way, chuckling wasn't near sweet enough to serve as portent of her 
swelling heart.

/All joy is shameful.  The obvious stuff is best./

He looked it, he felt it, everyone could see, she could know, life would 
know, he would be dead sometime far off and people might still remember 
him for it.

As she wheeled him down the hall, she hummed, took the back elevator.  
The halls instead of candles stood filled with white lines on the walls 
where the plaster didn't meet up just right.  No slow motion, just the two 
of them at the usual hospital clip.   


"Wrapped Around Your Finger" following them like the smoke from the 
cigarettes would have.  At another place.  Another time.

(OOC: As explanation of that really freaky second to last paragraph... 
have you ever seen the video for "Wrapped Around Your Finger" by the 
Police? It's basically Sting and Co. running around this huge room, which 
is empty except for rows and rows of candelabras.)

***    

The nurses wouldn't even look at him.  He got the feeling he shouldn't be 
standing.  Or that he should at least ask for a new pair of pants.  Not that 
there weren't other bloody boys in the emergency room- ruined dress 
shirts, torn skirts, mangled sweaters, crimson lashes that had stained 
collars.

But such wounds had little ignominy as the red tail painted onto Yuuji's 
grey and drooping sweatpants.  That he had declined to sit.  Been carried.  
Left a puddle on the table he'd been slung over while he was examined.

He gave up and hid his face in the white wings of Yuuji's coat while the 
doctor babbled on.  The doctor who sighed, perhaps in disapproval, or 
perhaps merely because he was a doctor and he had the right to sigh if he 
liked.  

Words.  Yuuji's words.  The air was filled with jagged glass, white as 
snow against the grey, grey walls and the grey, grey faces.  

Stitches, four.  But they'll heal fast.  Antibiotic solution, just in case.  Be 
more careful next time.

Dignified obscenities that made the whole warmth beside him rumble. 

And the constant squeak of passing wheelchairs.

The front door opening, gusting, closing.

Yuuji's arm fell over him and then he didn't mind so much.  Lessons on 
being insensitive could leave him now.  He wanted to feel this at least.

*** 

Yuuji held his arm slung across Omi at an angle, protectively, as he 
guided him away from the electronic doors and towards his waiting 
motorcycle.  The boy looked as fragile as spun glass, and all he 
wanted to do was take care of him.  

Yuuji wondered if any of them had ever treated him with care when he 
needed it.  He figured they probably hadn't.  He figured that was a 
damn shame, but he spoke not a word of his grim thoughts and 
figurings.  Just kept it light, for Omi's sake.  

He gave his young lover a cuddle.  "Come on, Omi.  We'll go home, and 
I'll put clean sheets on the bed--it won't take me long--and then 
we'll curl up together and watch TV.  I'll even make you some miso 
and tea if you want."  

/And maybe, while you're recuperating, I might try to find out what's 
bugging you./  

/I can't bear it, thinking of you wanting to hurt yourself so 
badly.../  

A quick glance to the right and left, and Yuuji bent to place a kiss 
on Omi's hair, only to be stopped by the sound of some calling out 
behind them.  

"Oi!"  

Yuuji turned around, Omi too.  The former grew wide-eyed then solemn, 
the latter gasped in dismay.  Yuuji felt him tense up at his side.  

Of course, it was Youji who'd summoned them--a very pale, dishelved 
Youji.  He had arrived downstairs just in time to see them leave, and 
had risen from his chair without a word to his tormentor.  Had made 
his hurried, painful way to the doors after them before they could 
get away for good.  Behind him, by the door, stood Mitsuki with the 
wheelchair in tow.  One of the admitting nurses came outside just 
long enough to see what was going on before striding back inside.   
Yuuji guessed that she had gone for assistance.  Youji's freedom from 
hospital food and boredom was only temporary.  

However, it was plain to Yuuji that he didn't give a damn that it 
was.   

"...Why did you bring him here?" Youji gasped, edging closer and 
closer to them, one arm wrapped around his stomach.  

No answer came, but then, it didn't really have to, for the blond's 
gaze tracked over Omi's baggy clothing, pausing only when he saw the 
dark stain trailing down the back of his sweatpants.  

He stared at it, brain working madly at computing just what that 
stain could signify, and then he raised his feverish eyes to Yuuji's 
own, and drew himself up as straight as he could, his fists in hard 
knots at his sides.  

And then, to Omi, "What happened to you?"  

***

Omi's eyes had fallen to the floor, his fingers quaked as they had reached 
up and patted Yuuji's hand before coaxing it away.  And he had chosen to 
see nothing but his own bare feet for many long seconds where women 
whispered and the sneakers of nurses sang dully on the all too white 
linoleum.  Mitsuki was frankly disappointed by his reaction, dumbstruck 
and flabbergasted by what he did next.  

It was a perfectly ordinary Omi who glanced up into the eyes of his once 
beloved.  Sanguine in mood only, bearing a golden smile of a cherubim 
onto an gloomy archangel.  He knotted his hands before his chest and 
worked them a little as he spoke.  The sort of thing very shy but very 
earnest people do.

He didn't sound so shy though.

"I got a little carried away, Youji-kun.  It's nothing.  The doctor said I 
would be fine in a little while.  But what about you? Did you fall? Or was 
it late at night...?" That was what they usually said at home, explaining 
the occasional stitched to curious girls.  It was dark and I couldn't see too 
well so... "You'll be alright too, won't you?"

Still he wore nothing but that same sweetness that only broke along one 
line.  Not this line.  Youji looked upon him as if he didn't know him, or 
was meeting with some frozen element of him, kept long in wastes of ice 
and oceans of long, white thorns.

A sober little nod.

No less of a grin.

Just one step towards him.  

"I'm sorry, Youji-kun, that I couldn't make you happy.  I really did want 
to... but... please don't think I'm mad at you! I understand.  And you can 
be as mad at me as you want.  That's OK too.  I don't mind.  I don't mind 
anything at all.  In fact I'd... be pretty mad at me too.  You just get better 
now!"

***

Youji took two steps towards him, all utter disbelief. "What are you 
talking about? You *make* me happy, Omi. You are the one..." He 
glanced over at Yuuji, then down at his feet, speaking in a low, 
urgent whisper. "You are the one I want to be with, not Mitsuki. I 
don't love her, I never did. It was all about sex with her."

Hesitantly, he lifted his eyes to look at Omi again. "It's not like 
that with you. I...love you." 

/Not that it seems to matter anymore, does it?/ 

Youji swallowed nervously, and took another step closer to him. Then 
another. Then he stopped, and laid a hand on his stomach, patting it 
in a show of nonchalance. "Um...I was a bit careless the other 
night. Found myself on the business end of a knife." He 
shrugged. "The doctor said I'd live."

/And I know I'm wasting my time here./ 

/All that money spent, all their time, and for what?/

/Just delaying the inevitable if you ask me./ 

Yuuji paced idly back and forth as he listened, but otherwise made no 
move to drag Omi away. It appeared to him that this meeting was just 
what was needed, despite the fact that it might end in a breakup for 
once and for all. 

He fervently hoped that it would. 

Youji took no notice of him, or of anyone else. 

"Now, I've answered your question, Omi. I want you to answer mine." 

"Why *exactly* are you here?" 

***

A scowl, or some tiny echo of a scowl skittered over him, but nothing 
more.  "Nothing at all!"

As if he had heard nothing before the inquiry.

Nothing after.

Nothing in his whole life besides it.  

And still, that was all he had to say at first.  

"I'm the one who fell coming home last night. Just carelessness.  It's 
nothing near as bad as what happened to you! Geeze, I'm sorry Youji, I 
can't say that enough."

And his hands finally fell to his sides, sung casually as if he was talking 
about someone else's date.

"Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuut, I don't feel so good, I kinda... would like to go 
home and lie down.  This isn't such a bad hospital.  You'll be OK, won't 
you?  You can always call me if you know, they aren't nice."

A little shake of his head towards the approaching nurses- he held up his 
hand to them, and as if he had turned them all to white marble, they froze 
for the time being and watched.  

"I think I'll be able to take better care of you now that... that we're not... 
that we're just like we were."

A little nod, and he stamped his foot, determined to do something, but 
what it could not be told.

"Ja ne, Youji-kun."

And then as he walked under the fluttering arm of Yuuji's coat.  "I don't 
think I'll be in my room though when you come back..."

***

"And I know he won't," Yuuji added, tossing a look over his shoulder 
at the stunned, stricken Youji, "because he'll be in MINE." 

Youji took a few wobbling steps after them. "...What?"

"What's the matter, Kudou? That wound rob you of your hearing?" 
Yuuji helped Omi get settled on the motorcycle, pausing to brush one 
gloved finger down his cheek. Gave him a little smile as he passed 
him his helmet. Then he turned his frosty gaze towards Youji. 

"I think it's very clear, don't you?" 

"No. No, this can't be...You..." 

"Yes, it can be. What? Did you think he was your doormat? That 
he'd just wait around for you, so you could treat him badly all over 
again?" 

"...I didn't..."

Yuuji laughed shortly. "Yeah, right. Whatever." He beckoned to the 
nurses, who were still lingering there rather uncertainly, chatting 
quietly between themselves. The white-frocked ladies advanced then 
under the watchful eyes of two orderlies, who stood with Mitsuki by 
the door. 

However, they were too late to retrieve their patient before any 
damage could be done. Before any of them could lay their hands upon 
Youji, he took off after Yuuji, hands out to grab him. 

"You...BASTARD!" 

He managed to get his hands around the wide, floppy lapels of Yuuji's 
trench, but no more than that. Yuuji caught him on the jaw with a 
vicious punch before his drained reflexes could spur him to react. 
He was on the ground and dazed in a blink, blood streaming from his 
newly cut lip. 

"I didn't want to do that an injured man, but you left me no choice. 
I'll not have you messing with me, or with Omi. Not anymore." 

With that, he eased himself onto the bike, and when Omi had curled up 
tight against him, he started the motor, gunned it. 

"See ya around." 

In a cloud of exhaust, they sped off, leaving Youji to the tender 
mercies of three disgruntled nurses, and one ex-girlfriend. 

Just before he fell into the arms of oblivion, Youji thought he heard 
Mitsuki laugh.

***

Naru knew where he was going.

Not that the meandering, back-tracking, crooked and generally convoluted 
route he took there did anything to prove that.

Old habits died hard- taking the long way around was just one of them that 
lived on and on and on.

That and he had been so very disturbed by how much he had fancied 
walking with Tsukiyono-san the previous night! Why, such a bookish 
fellow as himself ought to be content to skulk in the corners of poorly 
reputed gin joints and go scuttling away from the light of the sun at all 
costs.

And the moon.

/But damn, if I haven't utterly forgotten just how beauteous late afternoons 
in this bloody burb can be!/

He spun on his heels, his very, very high heels, and once more permitted 
his eyes to roam the trivialities and mundane... err... mundaneness that so 
set wonder a-glitter in his mind.  The way the low cradle of the sun glinted 
off the windshields, that he could hear the giggles of the wind above the 
ceaseless ceasing and rebirth of car tires making their way over countless 
chips of stones.  Where had it come from? Were they all kith, those 
pebbles in the concrete, or had they only been introduced the day they 
were poured? Like the salary men who made family and lovers of their co-
workers!

/And I know it must be lovers as well.  You can all smile at me and act 
like nothing is at all funny between you and the fellow you gave that 
presentation too!/

He smirked at the thought and almost turned around to go home and 
pleasure himself in the presence of his Boku no Sexual Harassment 
library.  

But the sea of stone with all its truths and uninvited vagaries intrigued him 
far more.  

That and a bunch of highschool girls called him over and demanded he 
pose for pictures.  He insisted modestly he didn't know what all the fuss 
was about, why, he always dressed like this!

"This" on that particular afternoon being high-healed electric fuscia go-go 
boots, shorts with legs of uneven length made of samples from several 
painfully loud fabrics which included a few carpet samples, a plain, white 
dress shirt which had had holes cut in it and replaced with hot pink fishnet, 
several pounds of 80's bangle bracelets, a chain belt, a choker of purple 
beads he could authenticate as indeed having come from a senile 
grandmother of six, a pair of John Lennon glasses with one yellow lens 
and one blue, a Little Twin Stars mini backpack which was also pink, not 
to mention a blinding magenta feather boa with matching earrings, only 
one of which he had in an ear, since he had only one pierced.

The other was pinned in his beret amid many layers of sequins.  

They asked if he felt embarrassed going out in public dressed so.  He 
apologized for forgetting the shell pink eyeshadow.  He posed with them 
for a good ten minutes.  They all threw the camera the international I Like 
Gundam Wing sign and laughed when his stomach rumbled.

The rest of his walk was more or less uneventful.

Unless he counted as an event.

He sure didn't feel like one.

At any rate, it was about half-past four by the time he reached the shabby 
stucco apartment- the one with the cracked beige tile leading up to the 
covered entryway with the perpetually empty fanta and coffee machines.  
The elevator moaned all the way up to the fifth floor, which was actually 
the fourth floor, but not named so for fear of bad luck.  Then it was around 
the concrete walkway... he had to stop and marvel there as well too, for 
the people in this complex were not at all inclined to hang their laundry by 
their front doors, unlike those in his residence.  Being so, he did not walk 
into a single nightie.  Nor any cats! Didn't they have those here either?

Such was their loss.  Maybe he had called all their away with his daily 
offerings of genuine American canned tuna.

But Naru finally came to the last apple-green door, to which he rang the 
bell three times before recalling the bell was in fact, quite broken.  So he 
knocked.

Masato answered after about a minute, implying the fellow was indeed 
awake at this rather early hour.  And looking somewhat less rumpled than 
usual.  Had he come at a bad time? Such feats of dressing presentably 
were usually beyond his fellow assassin.  

Brightly as he could, he began anyway: "Good evenfall, Masato-chan! 'tis 
been far too long indeed since we have so much as laid eyes upon one 
another! Ah yes, such is the curse of the assassins in the calm following 
the tempests of the Takatoris and Estet respectively.  I fear once more my 
stove has conquered by the demons of the electrical shorts! At least, I 
believe that is what is the matter with the accursed thing.  So it goes.  Ah, 
fear not though! I have brought my own beer this time!" 

At which he held up a six-pack of Asahi extra dry.

The extra large cans.

***

"I was..."

/...About to go out./

Of course, he couldn't bring himself to say that, not when met with 
those mournful, desperately hopeful eyes and that goofy grin. The 
kid was as thin as a rake, anyone could see it. And granted, he was 
technically an adult, but...Then again, he wasn't, either. Masato 
knew he'd only go off and drink that six pack and would end up sick 
or in trouble or both. Occasionally it gravitated to him. 

So, with a resigned sigh, he stepped aside, jerking his thumb over 
his shoulder. "Get in here, kid. And don't call me '-chan'."

The living room was probably not how one might envision an assassin's 
parlour to be. It was clean; the wooden floors free of dust, no 
personal effects lying around where they shouldn't be. No beer 
stains or cigarette burns anywhere. Masato had even repainted the 
walls just the week before a misty grey. 

But there, the differences ceased. The furniture was just as one 
might expect: Thrift store finds and donations. The couch didn't 
match the chairs, the tables were of different shades of wood. The 
only thing he'd really splurged upon was his bed, a TV and a radio, 
all for obvious reasons. And those three things were the only things 
he'd probably take with him should he ever move out; leave the rest 
for the next person who'd grace these rooms. After all, he could 
always find other sofas, other chairs. 

Naru flung himself down on said sofa, long legs stretched out before 
him, and proceeded to launch into the first of six. Masato stopped 
dead in his tracks en route to the kitchen and watched him pop the 
top and take a healthy slug from the can. 

"You're hungry but you spend your money on beer."

Naru only flashed him a wet, saucy grin and a shrug. Masato grunted 
in annoyance, and swept the rest of the cans off the table. 

"You can have more when I say you can." 

Grumblings of protest marked his exit to the kitchen. But when he 
glanced back at Naru after placing the sixpack in the fridge, the boy 
was slung comfortably across his sofa watching TV, as if nothing 
whatever was amiss. 

Masato huffed. /Crazy kid./ 

He turned from the doorway and started rummaging through his canned 
food cabinet, trying to find things that would go with the items he 
had stashed in his refrigerator. Food wasn't something he tried to 
stint on either; never was his icebox completely empty. 

As many times as Naru had shown up on his doorstep, begging 
sustenance, Masato knew his always was. 

"Okay! I've got some ramen, some onigiri, some..." He opened the 
icebox door, and stooped to remind himself further of its 
contents. "Some fresh tuna rolls...Well, they were fresh this 
morning. And I have some leftover lasagna I made last night; bread 
sticks too." 

"How does all that sound?" 

***

Naru's stomach at this came forward and offered a particularly petulant 
gurgle that really, most honestly sounded as if he needed oiled somewhere 
inside, or had perhaps blown a gasket or two.

"That all sounds splendid, Masato-kun!"

Masato glanced out of the kitchen a moment, arms filled with foil and 
plastic packages, lost his stunned glance to another fit of disapproval...

His guest looked into his beer can as if it were a telescope which seemed 
to have a smudge of dirt on the end, took a moment to laugh at the little 
girl flouncing about in the cucumber costume in whatever cartoon he was 
watching, and finally realized his comrade was mad because he had not 
only worn his shoes into his house, but propped them on the "good" half 
of the chintzy blue sofa.

So he got up at once, bowed in apology, somehow without spilling any of 
his Asahi which he refused to relinquish, stomped back to the entryway 
and there fought his go-go boots off.

Barefoot and more or less bare-legged, he padded back to the kitchen, 
savoring the feel of the carpet on his naked toes.  It still amazed him he 
had managed to go all of twenty years without getting one callous- aside 
from a few blisters now and again, his feet were as smooth and snuggly as 
the rest of him! Mostly because the always resided in shoes if he could 
help it.  Which made the fact he had nice feet an awful waste.

Leaving the TV on, he crossed onto the checkered linoleum and knelt at 
the less-puffy of the two cushions Masato kept about.

"A thousand pardons for my faux pas, but you know I'm not used to 
observing such manners.  It's rather hazardous to go about bearing one's 
toes at my flat and I've had it even longer than you've lived here so..." 
better to steer away from the perpetual subject of just WHY the Crashers 
had show up one morning at headquarters demanding to all be moved to 
separate buildings. "You know, I do quite fancy this heather color you've 
put up.  It must make it look as if it's late in the day like this... or late for 
most people."

***

Masato placed all the bowls and trays on the table, and turned to 
fish some chopsticks and serving spoons out of the drawer where he'd 
kept all his utensils. "Uh...Yeah, I suppose it does. I've never 
really thought about it before." 

He shot him a look over his shoulder as he went over to the fridge 
for drinks. "But thanks."

Out came two of the beer cans, one of which he sat down at Naru's 
place; the other he kept himself, saying it was "payment for the 
dinner." His companion made no complaint to that, simply raised his 
can in a silent toast, and popped it open. 

Masato flipped back the foil from the lasagna pan, and contemplated 
it, wondering whether or not he should heat it up. He decided not to 
do it, for it would take too long, and some foods were just as good 
cold--if not better. He helped himself to a bit of it, even more of 
the sushi. "The ramen I'll have to cook," he said, nodding at the 
packet he'd taken out of the cupboard, "but I thought we'd have it 
after, if you want, over tea maybe." 

/And you'll want something hot pretty soon. Damn landlord! Why he 
won't fix the AC unit, I'll never know.../ 

/I guess you get what you pay for though./ 

/Kritiker sure knows how to look after their assassins./ 

/Hmm...I wonder how long it'd take to save up for one of those heated 
tables.../ 

Masato raised the can of Asahi to his lips, but didn't drink right 
off. He was too busy taking in the sight of the boy across from 
him. 

"Shimatta...You look like one of those teenagers who hang around 
downtown on the weekends. Like you should be sitting in a nightclub 
dancing and flirting and so on with all the other beautiful kids--not 
sitting around some kitchen eating cold food with an old man for 
company." 

"Itadakimasu!"

He snatched up one of the neatly formed tuna rolls and popped it into 
his mouth, washed it down with a swig of beer. The pale liquid 
flowed down his throat like honey, and he unabashedly licked his lips 
as he lowered the can to the table. 

"So why the hell aren't you, Naru?" 

***

The bite of lasagna which he had almost gotten all the way to his mouth- 
his very wet and achy mouth -ended up backwards gravitating at this very, 
very, very un-Masato like question.  He pondered over his companion as if 
he might have pondered over one of his books, even making little 
swishing motions with his hands.

Then he finally DID take his bit of pasta and sauce.

Chewed it for a long time as if trying to make it last.

Had another swig of beer.

And answered, "Because that's just not what I fancy, Masato-kun.  At 
least, not in present day, present time.  Not everyone who puts on kicky 
bohemian airs enjoys spending his Sundays crammed in one of those 
abominable, loud clubs between a hooker and a grass fiend."

After two slices of tuna roll he managed to get into his mouth at the same 
time, he went on, a good deal less seriously than he had sounded 
originally.

"Although I most honestly admit having gone through that phase several 
times in the last... umm... gods above and below, it's seven years isn't 
it?"

Neither of them had anything to say to that.

Nothing at all.  At least, not while they were still sober.

Some levels of platonic, personal intimacy, required alcohol.

Especially among the Crashers.

With a wave of the can, him trying to reach that dizzy, exposed peak, 
"Besides, you try getting into an adult club with these eyes!" He batted 
them behind his glasses.  "I like books right now.  Not that I've any 
certainty how long that will last."

No quips about this either.

Quite unexpectedly, he leaned over, accidentally got one of his elbows in 
some soy sauce, cursed, but still slumped in the same, be-sauced spot.   
"That and I... ah... I asked if I could go home again today and they said 
no."

A gurgling sigh from the depths of his rising sun.

"Not that I'm surprised or anything."

***

"What did you do that was so bad...? No, don't answer that," he said 
with a quick, erasing wave of his hand. "I'm not trying to pry in 
your life, Naru." 

Another long pull of his beer. 

"It's just...I don't know that much about you, really. We haven't 
been much in the habit of opening up to each other." He 
shrugged. "I suppose I'm merely curious." 

/And...Okay, sometimes I think you could use someone to unload on./ 

Masato thoughtfully flicked his fingers over the carefully cultivated 
whiskers which adorned his jaw, gaze wandering about the kitchen as 
he mulled that over. He wound up studying the can in his hand, wound 
up lifting up for a greedy gulp. 

"I didn't mean to insult you with that question, kid. It's just..." 
He pursed his lips, and exchanged the can for the cigarette pack in 
his pocket. Pondered the cons of continuing in that vein, then 
plunged forward anyway. 

"It's just you seem so lonely sometimes." 

/How could you not be?/ 

/God knows I am.../ 

He drew one out and lit it; tapped the pack on the table as he 
wondered over offering Naru one. Decided against it. The drinking 
was enough of a bad habit. 

Another listless bite of lasagna passed between his lips, another sip 
of beer. Masato propped his elbows up on the table, and tapped his 
ashes onto the floor before he realized what he was doing.

***

Naru promptly puffed up like a disgruntled grouse, and did so with his 
mouth full of breadstick no less.

"So you're quite permitted to sully the virgin forests of your floor with the 
ashes of pimps and cocktail waitresses while I am abjectly forbidden from 
traipsing in here with a perfectly innocent and, mind you, very clean pair 
of boots still on my feet."

But then he chewed on his lips for a moment instead of his dinner, 
evidentially disgusted with himself for the little tick, but nonetheless, 
indulging in it for a moment.  

"Ah, I thought nothing so of you when you asked me of my past.  It is no 
honor and no disgrace.  I say that as the assassin and agent of general 
destruction I have become, for that is neither an honorable nor a 
disgraceful position to hold in the belly of the world, either world.  It is 
merely a limbo, a purgatory of bubble wrap between us and the rest of the 
world."

Where he paused, as if he had laid out a display of lovely rings for 
inspection, rather than a handful of glancing, surrealist words.  He also 
helped himself to some onigiri.  

"So, the way I see it, we're quite allowed to, even in lieu of shoe and ash 
related prohibitions, be curious and lonely and even shrewd in our old age.  
I don't FEEL young, Masato.  I never felt young, but I'm going to cut you 
a bit of a deal here and you can feel free to call me a usurer, but frankly, I 
think it's a fair one, especially after that terrific bit of chewing me out over 
being a so-called fool after I insisted to you the first time that I was not 
raised on antiter-... earth."

Some of his beer ran down his chin after his latest sip.

"My guts for yours."

***

Masato squinted at him through the ghostly ribbons of smoke. Tapped 
the ash onto the floor again just to irk him, before he laid it aside 
on the edge of his plate. 

"Deal. And...I think for such an activity, we'll need added 
fortification of the liquid variety." 

He rose from the table and padded over to the refrigerator. Reached 
for the remaining cans of Asahi, but stopped short of actually 
touching them, for he saw something entirely more suitable. 
Something he'd had for months, but always somehow conveniently forgot 
about. He supposed that, since it was so rare an item for a man like 
himself to possess, he had wanted to hold it for a special event. 

Masato realized that event was finally on hand. 

He took out the bottle of wine and, after fishing out two mismatched 
champagne glasses, carried it all back to the table with him. 

"I've had this for a while," he said, darting back to a nearby drawer 
to retrieve the corkscrew. "Somehow, Bishop got his hands on a case 
of it, and he gave a bottle to me. I never figured out why." 

"Not that it matters." He added with a deep shrug, having caught 
sight of Naru's glazed expression. 

The cork fell victim to the screw without much protest--just a soft, 
quiet slurp as he eased it out the bottle's neck. 

"I've only tasted this once in my life," he explained as he poured 
out two generous lashings of the bright green wine. "It's called 
Chartreuse, if you don't know, and it's French, and...It has quite a 
kick." 

He passed a glass of it to Naru, and took his own to sip at 
cautiously. Gave it an appreciative smile; just as smooth as he 
remembered it being. 

"I reserve the right to force my brat guests to pad about in their 
pantyhosed feet, just as you have reserved the right to deny me 
entrance to your apartment unless I don some flower-festooned, old 
woman hat or that damned silver feather boa and sing a couple of 
Streisand verses. The last time, I think it was...'The Way We 
Were'." 

He set the glass down next to his plate, and cocked him a wry lift of 
one brow. 

"For that indignity alone, kid, you get to disembowel yourself 
first." 


(ooc: If you don't know, green Chartreuse is 110 proof. Made by 
French monks out of 130 different plants. The plants they use is a 
closely guarded secret.)

***

Naru clasped farcically at his chest. "Ah, Masato, if that doesn't outright 
smart! I should have expected no less from the master of pikes though."

A long, and notably uncomfortable pause followed, during which, his 
host's glare spent much of the time just looking wet and faintly greenish 
with the stain of his old-world charm and complexity in a bottle.

"But how shrewd, in retrospect. Kanpai!" To which he lifted the glass he 
had been offered and took himself through what he remembered of the 
French method of savoring French delicacies. He held the liquid up and 
watched the surface of it shifting with the otherwise imperceptible 
twitches of his hand. Pleasure of the eyes, somewhat distracted by the fact 
he found himself wondering: /Where in the bloody hell did Rook ever find 
money for cut glass flutes? Err... one cut glass flute. Whatsmore, I believe 
this is from Tiffany and Co.!/ "It's... really very, very... umm... verdant. 
How quaint."

But he could wonder over that later when back in the capacity to wonder 
coherently about anything. In the mean time, he moved on to the pleasure 
of the nose and hovered just above the rim of the glass, taking a tiny 
sniff... and then another, much less formal one. "It has a most peculiar 
aroma, most enticing, and yet, I should almost liken it to soap or a salad of 
fresh greens." Still trying to come up with a more sensible comparison, he 
regarded his companion. "Needless to say I've never had it before. Ah, one 
can't live on beer alone, so forgive me, sweet mistress of the rising sun. I 
bid farewell to thee and indulge myself with a French harlot I had never 
even known of before this night."

At which he finally treated himself to the pleasure of the mouth, a small, 
attenuated savoring. Accustomed to the warm china caress of all things 
intoxicating as he was, he found especial heat in the arms of this one, not 
quite used to the strength or the satiny feeling of alcohol which lived as 
anchoress away form bubbles. And yet it was no forceful endeavor, the 
contents of his flute upon him, rather something slow and long 
insinuating- like a whole summer recalled as a single vague impression. 
No, spring rather; just born spring.

He whistled after swallowing most reluctantly. "It's almost like drinking a 
garden. I do believe you've gone and gotten me fond of something I shall 
doubtless never be able to afford ever again. Perhaps by the time we have 
finished our tales, we shall both be blushing and staggering enough to 
excuse ourselves when we are caught breaking into Bishop's apartment 
after more of this."

Another sip, miniscule. He had to bite his tongue to keep from draining 
the glass as he normally would have done with something less exotic. "I 
always thought it was funny, that out of the lot of us, not a one ever calls 
him by his real name. He is always Bishop, Bishop, Bishop! Has he even 
got one? I find I hardly remember it if he does. You were right about this 
strumpet having a kick. Why, I met him just before you, I really should 
know it."

But he didn't, and so he paused and had two more rounds of tuna roll, 
which strangely seemed to go well with his drink. Probably in that they 
both had such light qualities to their flavors, and more than one apiece at 
that.

"In the mean time, or the time before that rather. I bet I'm going to bore 
the hell out of you. My name *really* is Uhyuo Naru and it has always 
been Uhyuo Naru, despite the fact that I am not of this earth. The clothes 
ought to give it away if nothing else, even if you still insist on not 
believing me. I have two mothers and two fathers. Which is actually rather 
normal for Terra. My two fathers met by chance at a festival, where they 
discovered they actually had the same... the same... umm... Herald, which 
is like a guide and a friend. Not only did they decide then that they were 
madly in love with each other, but that they were madly in love with her, 
being bisexual, which *is* somewhat uncommon. Anyway, they both 
married her and then were wed to each other. The ceremonies took all day, 
what with considering one was Jewish, one a Catharist and my mother 
half-Japanese."

"They had two children, of which I am the younger, but they wished for a 
third, and for some reason which takes entirely to long to elucidate and 
involves blood-typing, they decided it was too risky for Daisy, we always 
called mum that, to have another and so all went and married the maid. I 
know I am Daisy's, but as for which father... I never really cared, which 
may well be the fate of middle children, though my two brothers and I, 
we, were all equally ill-behaved.

"Now, the most unusual thing about this arrangement was how much we 
got away with, since our assorted parents were always trying to balance 
their own affairs, not that they didn't care from us! Far from it. Why if 
love came in feathers the lot of us would have suffocated before entering 
grade school. Not to mention we had each other to mind. And to play with 
and in my case..."

Naru trailed off here and peered around the room as if waiting to be 
reprimanded for what he would say next.

"Very well. Guts it is. I lost my virginity to my elder half-brother, my 
mothers and my fathers were not... thrilled, shall we say. It was not... what 
you're thinking. I didn't actually like him that way. He was merely there. It 
was late and we were tired. And so on and so forth.

"And not that they ever threatened me, or even looked at me funny, but I 
used to dread going home. So I got a job as a porter at the hotel, just a few 
hours a day, and I did rather enjoy myself there. Waiting for them to be 
angry, waiting for my brother to disown me, or kick me, or force himself 
on me. But it never happened. And I could NOT take it.

"So, one day, I just up and slapped one of the chaps who happened to 
make a pass at me, something I otherwise enjoyed. The passes not the 
slapping.  'So why do you work here if you don't like that?' he asks me. 
'Well, because I don't care to go home, sir.' 'And why is that?' 'None of 
your business, sir, though as you can see, I'm not beaten, I'm not molested, 
and I'm better adjusted than most of the luggage boys.' 'Would you like to 
come work for me then, little boy with the big, gold eyes?' 'I don't know, 
sir, I don't know what you want me to do.' 'I want you to be valiant and see 
the real world and go for walks with someone who loves you under just 
one moon.' And that's just what he said too."

He stopped here in his words, and in his glass, for he had empties it 
without really realizing he had done so. Stopped as if he had come to a 
garden gate. But the garden was gone, and he could have struck himself 
for doing away with it before he even realized it was there.

Both then, and now, and probably later.

"That's what Takatori Suiichi said to me."

***

"Takatori, huh? Well...Wasn't he the poet?" Masato scoffed. "How 
long did it take you to realize he'd lied to you? No, wait. We'll 
get to the nitpicking in awhile. First..." 

He took a sip of Chartreuse, then wordlessly took up Naru's empty 
glass and refilled it, making a note to save up and buy a case of it 
himself. 

"I guess it's my turn now, huh?" 

Masato took an onigiri in hand and munched on it a bit, pausing to 
organize his thoughts. 

"Well..." he said, brushing a stray crumb of rice away from the 
corner of his mouth with one finger, "my origins are no where near as 
colorful as yours. I only had one mother, and no father, and when 
she died--I was seven at the time--I was raised by her sister and 
brother-in-law. Neither of whom knew what to do with a kid who felt 
abandoned. In fact, I don't think they really wanted me to come live 
with them--they had three kids already, and he wasn't exactly a 
professional man. Tended bar, he did." He grimaced at the memory, 
and fumbled for his cigarettes again. "I think they were pressured 
into taking me--or maybe it was out of some damned sense of duty, I 
don't know." 

"Anyway, I grew up at first suspecting, then knowing that I wasn't 
wanted around there, that I was a burden, and it made me wild. I 
became quite the bully, harassing students, destroying school 
property, stealing from the teachers' when possible; I had a knack 
for pickpocketing. And, all those extracurricular activities, 
combined with my blowing off classes, led to my expulsion. Led to my 
aunt and uncle threatening me with reform school."

He hesitated in his speech long enough to light up. Took another 
throat-wetting drink. 

"So I ran away. I was 12. I knew they thought me a burden, so I 
wouldn't hang around anymore. With all the cocky assuredness of 
youth, I figured I could take care of myself. And I could, and I 
did. Steal a purse here, a wallet there to buy things with; steal 
the food and manga and anything else I needed or wanted. Mostly 
wanted. I bathed in public restrooms, and I even thought brush my 
teeth before going to bed at night. I had it all sussed out." 

"And then, I was caught stealing some candy bars from a minute market-
-not by the owner or a policeman, but by a yakuza shatei. For some 
reason, instead of leaving me alone or even alerting the owner, he 
took me away, soothing my fears about the police, and praising me for 
my resourcefulness. I, unused to such lauding, boasted about how 
good I was at stealing; that often, I could do it without being 
caught. Of course, that was music to his ears, being a man who was 
constantly on the lookout for talent. And so, I was drafted in to 
the yakuza. I lived that life until I was 19, and then...I just 
didn't want to do it anymore. I'd seen friends of mine die, innocent 
people get killed...And for what?" 

He finished off his onigiri, and took up one of the bread 
sticks. "Problem was, I didn't know how to get out of it; I mean, 
once in, the only sure way out is to die. Otherwise, you're always a 
mark for other yakuza, because you're a threat to operations, to the 
others' safety." 

"But then, one night, on a tip, the police raided the gambling club 
where I worked. I was arrested, and taken in for questioning. And 
who do you think led that delightful forum but one Takatori Shuuichi 
himself. He said he'd heard of me, heard of my skills. I was a 
young man, he said, and was made for better things. If I turned 
informant, he would give me a new life."

Masato puffed thoughtfully on his cigarette, staring off towards the 
flickering TV. "So I ended up dying anyway." 

Ash was once more scattered across the floor before Masato laid 
the smoke aside for his drink. "Now, back to you, Naru." 

"Is that why you can't go back home, because of the fling you had 
with your half-brother? Or is it because you became an assassin?" 

***

On the tip of Naru's tongue sat a few bubbles of sounds, that if he had 
released them, let them go bobbing on their way, they would have politely 
declined the second flute.  He honestly didn't know if he, drinker though 
he was, would probably always be after some of the things he had seen, 
would see, would feel, would live... he honestly doubted he could handle 
another glass and stand.

Well, not harm in trying, he figured.

And helped himself to the glass without the overture of a glance.  It came 
to his lips like the touch of a goddess and he knew what he would dream 
of if he ever got around to sleeping.

"Well, because... because they said I daresen't go home, which would 
make it because I'm an assassin, wouldn't it? You know, I didn't want to 
at all, not at first... and at first must have been years."

He actually lowered the crystal cabinet of his Chartreuse for a moment and 
twiddled his fingers then, working them as if trying to remove a long-worn 
ring.  "I was sixteen, by the time I asked.  I had killed twelve people by 
then, lost count of the assists.  And it wasn't that it haunted me, that I had 
done anything to end all those people, but my first litter of demons had 
grown up and flown away by then.  I was ready but, 'Pardon me sir, but 
I've done rather well the past month and I was wondering if I could go 
home.' 'Why would you want to go home? You told me your parents 
don't care much for you, or your sibs.' 'I don't rightly know, but I'm tired, 
and I haven't done anything particularly awful.'  'Just the same, we don't 
think you're ready, but soon.' And, I suppose you can guess by now soon 
has been rather long in coming."

A long sigh, wherein he thought his vision had gone rather dim, though in 
truth, it was the room, and he had not noticed before, but now got up for a 
moment and turned on the overhead lights.

"You see, you can't go to Terra without a herald and none of them are 
permitted to take me until Kritiker says so."

A pause.

"Do pardon my pun.  Ah, in the mean time, my dear guttersnipe, may I ask 
if our precious little poet ever made a pass at you?  Not to mention..."

A gulp of the liquor which promptly possessed his lips.

"Didn't you just bloody go dance in the streets the day the other brother 
nailed his sorry ass?" 

*** 

Masato chuckled darkly at that. "Oh, yeah, kid, I DID. Yuuji did 
too, for reasons that were entirely personal, and yet, weren't wholly 
his own." 

He suddenly gave him a poleaxed sort of look while his besotted brain 
twisted itself around his last remark. Then he clapped his hand over 
his eyes. 

"Oh, yeah, I'm just about drunk."

/Seems like it happens quicker every time I bother./

He rubbed his eyes, and awkwardly got to his feet. Crossed over to 
the stove and dug the kettle out of the oven, where it resided along 
with a skillet and two saucepans. "We'll save the rest of the 
Chartreuse for the next time you come over, hm?"

/Which will probably be next week, if I know you./ 

/Frankly, I can't say that I'd mind if you did./ 

The kettle he filled with water and set on the stove; the lasagna pan 
was re-covered and returned to the refrigerator. Masato dug out his 
box of peach sencha and two lime green cups. No, Naru hadn't agreed 
to tea, but he figured he'd need it anyway. 

But he'd make it weak, just in case. 

The tea things landed on the table amidst the half-empty trays. The 
temperature felt like it had dropped--as it always did in his 
apartment after the sun went down--and a sudden shiver wracked his 
body. He opened the oven door again, removed his collection of 
cookware, and turned the oven on; left the door down so the heat 
could escape. 

"Anyway...No, no, Takatori never made a pass at me. But then, I'm 
not the bishonen you are--if you don't mind my pinning such a name on 
you. I'm not willowy and achingly pretty, as you can plainly see." 
He gave him a wry smile over his shoulder. "Besides, even if I were, 
I don't think he'd find my tattoo that much of a turn on. It just 
wasn't his thing."

He turned and dropped a bag into each cup, then plopped back down on 
his cushion and drained his glass. Pushed it to one side and drew 
his elbows up on the table again. 

"Since we're being all open...

"What happened between you and Yuuji before he left?" 

***

Naru stopped blowing on his hands and clamped them around his teacup.  
This was why the Japanese ones went without handles! So all the little 
geishas and the little samurai could keep their little fingers warm without 
worrying over threading them through something!

He had seldom been so entranced by the spirit of simple innovation.  This 
easily attributed to the empty champagne flute which had joined Masato's.  

He was still nibbling his lip inside intermittedly from the "bishonen" 
remark when he started to speak, all voices telling him to be wary- 
flattened against the busting walls of his besotted mind and there gagged, 
and subjected to feathers in embarrassing places. 

"Well, I rather had a fancy for Yuuji, though I suppose it was patently 
obvious at times.  To everyone except him.  Naturally.  He's always had 
that na‹ve it-will-all-be-fine-if-I-make-us-some-tea quality about his 
affairs, even when they involved death and disparagement.  There's the 
dark way most people see things and the it's-not-real-if-I-say-so lenses of 
Yuuji.  Assuming I know him at all well in any of this.  It is only what I 
think, and who am I to say anything after him? Especially after."

"Well, the short of it would be that I told him one night when we were 
skulking about the Uekiya fellow's abode and he was quite good about it.  
At least until I invited him back to my apartment.  For tea of course."

His eyes fell to the pale liquid clasped between his hands.  "Damn you," 
he said to it, and then continued as if reprimanding beverages was a 
perfectly healthy pursuit.  "And he happened to wander into my bedroom 
and see some of my... oh dear... umm... erotic paraphernalia?"

He rubbed at his neck then, fingers slid under his chocker.  

"And that espied, he promptly went as white as his jacket and excused 
himself.  I got a note from him, he transferred to Weiss for the time being.  
But what's this nonsense about your tattoo being a turn-off? It's some of 
the better work I've seen.  Especially considering you were Yakuza!"

***

"Heh.  I always thought so too.  But then, I was lucky enough to find 
a real artist to do mine."  Masato reached around and patted himself 
on the shoulder, knowing the dragon's head started just where his 
fingertips touched.  "Despite that, Takatori thought it was 
grotesque.  He liked his boys of the ethereal waif sort--not the 
street-roughened thug sort.  Which I suppose I am."  He fingered his 
beard, and wagged his brows at his companion.

"So I was merely a tool and not a plaything as well.  Believe me, I 
wasn't crushed.  I didn't find him all that attractive, and I'm not 
much of a uke anyway."  

He took a tentative sip of his tea. 

"I can just imagine how you got out of sleeping with him and not 
pissing him off too much.  I've heard he was rather touchy about 
being turned down.  Took it very badly.  I always thought he was one 
of those types who consider themselves utterly, and wrongly, 
irresistible."  

"Meanwhile, we have Yuuji who is irresistible, but doesn't seem to 
have a clue how he affects people."  

He flashed Naru a rueful smile upon catching his questioning 
look.  "Oh, yeah, I sort of fancy him too.  I made a pass and he 
turned me down.  More or less."  Masato shrugged.  "Doesn't really 
matter, though.  I don't believe he really knows what he wants."

"Or he does, but when he's faced with it, he runs scared.  Who knows?"

/Who cares, really, for that matter?/

He took another sip, less tentative now, and nibbled on the last of 
his bread stick.  

"As for him not seeing how you felt about him, I think he did, else 
he wouldn't have been so brazen as to wander into your bedroom.  Of 
course, it would have been polite to wait until you invited him in."  

"But then, he wouldn't be Yuuji if he wasn't brazen on occasion, now 
would he?"  

Masato picked up the empty tray that once held the bread sticks, and 
tossed it into the trash can by the sink.  Recorked the Chartreuse 
and put it in the refrigerator.  Then he turned and gave Naru a look 
of the type which signified he was trying to make up his mind about 
something.  

It didn't take long for him to decide.    

"Um..." he began as he regained his seat on the battered floor 
cushion, "If you don't care telling me, I'd like to know just what it 
was he saw in your bedroom that unnerved him so."

***

Naru had sniggered, at hearing his own thoughts regarding his former boss 
spoken aloud by drunk lips other than his own, into his tea to the point it 
was all but fizzy.  His breaths were still shaking with unshed peals of 
laughter when he snatched up Masato's gaze.

Gave him a wink.

/Ah, it's alright, old chum I.../

And then he asked.  

Naru set his tea aside. And folded his hands on his lap, head bowed.  He 
looked like a wilted hibiscus.  He shifted his weight between his two hips, 
lolling back and forth as if two different winds caught him. A nasty habit 
he had kept from childhood-literally vacillating when choosing his words.  
He had done it for a good two minutes, when he pondered Suiichi's first 
offer.  

His beret fell off, and he did not bother to pick it up.

"You know all those European faerie stories, with the filmy little maidens 
who are always telling their hero-friends 'now is not the time to tell you, 
my love.  But someday,' when they talk about the road back to never-
never land? Well, if you don't mind me being all theatrical and leaving the 
'my love' part in just for the hell of it, I'm going to pull the filmy-little 
maiden routine right about now. I realize my keeping of promises has 
always been a bit sub-par, but I give you my word I will tell you.  
Someday.  But not tonight."

Looking up, he found his companion's eyes their usual glazed sincere and 
old.  Very old.  Not patently put off or disappointed.  Not that Masato had 
ever been such to display such emotions.  He didn't now, and that was 
comfort enough for Naru.  They nodded to one another.

But his attention gravitated once more to the table top rather than his 
fellow assassin or the window behind him.   

"Besides... there's something... I really ought to tell you first.  So you 
aren't surprised, if it comes up.  You see, I met one of the Weiss boys at 
Tenshi no Mon the other night.  His name is Omi, and he's the kind 
Takatori-shijin always liked.  And well... it seems that Yuuji had become 
rather smitten with him and he didn't know what to do about him so I told 
him..."

/I can do this./

/I am not some distant fruitcake, I am not a ninny, I am not only books./

/I'm still terribly, terribly drunk but.../

Naru beckoned Masato's gaze into his own.

"It seems I have sold us both awfully sort in the end."

(OOC: Shijin = poet.)

***

"Oh," Masato murmured. 

And then, as the full implication of his revelation sank in, "...oh..." 

"It's like that then, is it?" 

Naru nodded most solemnly, but didn't look away. Masato, after a 
time, did--choosing to gaze at the TV instead. A commercial for a 
certain brand of miso soup was flickered across the screen. A 
smiling housewife in a starched apron, and her smiling, harried 
businessman husband. 

It was such a lie. 

"I guess I was wrong. I guess he did know what he wanted after all. 
It just wasn't...us." 

His eyes darted back to Naru, and he quietly cursed himself for 
speaking such a thought aloud, for it seemed he'd hurt the boy even 
more. Silence fell over the two assassins, during which they merely 
sipped at their tea as if it were beer. Masato wished his was 
suddenly, and for a moment, he was tempted to propose they break into 
the rest of the six pack. 

But he didn't. They were intoxicated enough. And he wasn't in the 
mood to pass out on the floor, or anywhere, for that matter. 

"Well...I guess that's that with Yuuji. Not that I'm surprised he 
fell for a Weiss boy. He fancied that redhead too, the one who 
replaced me. Of course he wasn't Weiss then, but..." 

"Funny, I thought he was my real competition for Yuuji's 
affections. Him...And you." He sank quietly into the younger man's with 
his blue dawn gaze. Sank in and didn't want to come out. 

"Don't blame yourself, Naru. Things have probably worked out as they 
should have."

He took out a cigarette, and slipped it between his lips, and 
contemplated the pack. Then he slid it across the table to his 
companion. 

"I'm not trying to get you hooked, but...Well, it's my last one, and 
sometimes there's nothing like a smoke when things look bleak." 

Masato lit up, and slid the lighter to Naru as well, in case he 
decided to take him up on it. Then he took his cup in hand, and got 
to his feet. 

"I don't know if you have other plans, but you are welcome to stay 
and finish your tea. In fact, I don't care how long you stay 
tonight. You...can even sleep over if you want--on the sofa of 
course! I don't have lecherous designs upon you." 

***

"The feeling, Masato, I assure you, is mutual." Naru smiled, and only to 
himself, shaking his head, which he took gently by the temple, rubbed a 
little.  It felt as if he had been tapped into the land of the living by a 
passerby who knew not even of a spell upon him.  His companion's eyes.  
And only for their smoky-blue topaz look, not for any intentions, only for 
their... well, any old hack or pretty boy could have deep eyes.  Masato's 
were like puddles on the street.  Focus on them one way, and they would 
only be the inch between the surface and the bed of concrete.  Focus on 
them another, and you could see the limitless expanse of the heavens.

His interest in them, had nothing but artistic overtures.  And this was no 
lie.  

He wondered, as if trying to make out his reflection in one such inclusion 
of water, over several things.  Was Masato taking it as odd he had dropped 
the honorifics? Was it worth explaining to him that such speech 
indelicacies were only an odd inheritance at what must have seemed his 
odd family? That he could still hear his elder brother begging not to be 
called Hiki-kun because it made him sound so young?
Was he going to take that cigarette, even if he didn't care to smoke? If 
only because he had already refused Masato once that night.

He did.

The stick he fitted in his hand like a pencil, and with all the clumsiness of 
a child learning to walk, he added a spark to the end- a wavering flame.

Kissed the stalk and took only the smallest puff.

It was all he could do to swallow his cough.  The smoke burned passing 
the insides of his lips.  And yet... there really was something soothing 
about it.

"Domo arigatou," he managed to say in a voice so even he scarcely 
believed it was his own.  

His feet he found to be half asleep as he got to them and padded over to 
the couch, sitting not slung over the opposite armrest, but nothing more 
than respectably close.

Another drag, and he made use of the ash try that happened to be on the 
coffee table.  Frankly... Masato DID have ash trays? Amazing.

"There's just one thing... even if we let Yuuji go."

Not that he said what it was straight out.  Actually, he changed the channel 
first.  Put on a rerun of an old, animated soap.  

"There's something funny going on at Weiss.  And even if they ARE or 
rather, WERE Suiichi's darlings... I don't think we should let our 
respective guards down and... my! What a terrific bitch this heroine is! I 
should have expected no less! But just to be sure, you know Ran is 
missing and the perpetual brass has done nothing of it save borrow our 
Yuuji?"

***   

Masato tossed a pillow and a blanket upon the chair closest to the 
sofa, then flung himself upon another, legs stretched out and 
sighing.  "I knew two Weiss were gone, but I didn't know that Ran was 
one of them."  

/I wonder how Yuuji felt about that?/

"I wonder why he didn't say anything about it the other night?" he 
mused aloud.   

Masato caught some movement out of the corner of his eye, and glanced 
over at Naru, only to find the boy sitting upright and regarding him 
curiously.  "Oh, I went after him.  I figured he wouldn't let that 
Uekiya business go just because he'd been temporarily transferred, 
and I knew he probably wouldn't let the Weiss guys in on it.  Hmpf.  
I don't think he liked having any of US in on it.  He wanted to do it 
all himself."  

"But why haven't those in charge done anything about the other two?  
Don't they care that they've gone?  Why, if it were any of the 
Crashers who'd pulled a stunt like that, they'd track them down and 
would probably kill 'em if they couldn't be persuaded to return."  

"Huh.  Who am I kidding?" he asked the water-stained ceiling.  "They 
would DEFINITELY be killed."  

He took another sip of his tea, then set it down on the coffee table 
with a worried frown.  "How much danger do you think Yuuji might be 
in?" 

***

Naru waved his hand in a fashion which could have been called dismissive 
in other circumstances.

"I don't know.  I just think things seem to be going awfully funny.  Well, 
funnier than usual.  But saying so of our lives and anything pertaining to 
them does have that note of futility.  What I see as ordinary even, they 
layman would fall to shrieking over.  It struck me as odd enough three 
years ago when instead of simply, shall we say, promoting one of the 
groups that had been with them awhile, they went and fished up four new, 
or more or less untried fellows, not in Ran's case of course, and gave them 
the silver platter of assassin-dom."

As if they both expected to see said silver platter, or it's teasing phantom, 
their eyes focused on the coffee table, and the reflections of the light there 
which carried hints of their two shadows.

Naru doubled over coughing, had his back slapped.  Continued once he 
could breathe without going redder in the face.

"And now both of the dear brothers are dead, but Weiss still exists, hasn't 
even been sent off to the ends of the earth.  And Masato, we KNOW.  
How come we're allowed to know? Why are we all inclined to fancy 
members of our own sex, isn't that awfully deleterious to missions if we 
start snogging in the middle of a firefight? Why were there little girls in 
Shijin's office? I tell you, old chap, the world is falling apart at the seems 
of its sanity and we four are the only ones who have noticed!"

This followed with a faint hiccup.

"And I'm still drunk.  Don't mind me.  I am only a bitter little boy who 
forgets his mummy's face."

***  

"Huh.  Aren't we all?"

Masato slumped in his chair, staring at the TV and musing over going 
out for cigarettes.  He sure as hell could use one for sure, but he 
was just too comfortable where he was.  And he didn't want to either 
leave Naru alone or drag him along with him--not when he was so 
intoxicated.  

He hooked the edge of the table with one foot and dragged it closer.  
Propped his feet up on it.  "Then if there is a conspiracy of a sort 
going on, I say we investigate.  King and the others need not know. "

He nodded, repeating, "Yeah, we should start it and start it soon, 
because there's no damn way I'm just going to sit back and let 
something happen to Yuuji."

/Or to any of us, for that matter./

"And in the meantime, we'll keep an eye on Yuuji, and on the two 
remaining Weiss too." 

***

The Hanano was dark and quiet save for two rooms.  The first being an 
upstairs apartment, within which a boy injured in body, but--as it 
seemed--not in spirit lay upon a bed with clean, mismatched sheets.  
Multicolored flowers and green stripes and faded black.  

The second was a glorified walk-in closet, within which resided a 
washing machine, a shelf laden with laundry powder and bleach, and 
one battered assassin, who was engaged in slowly eating a rather 
costly apple.  Eating it for no other reason than it gave him 
something to do while he waited.  

While he had, he had thought of Youji and how they'd left him; of how 
Omi had reacted to him and of how proud he was of him.  The boy could 
have easily crumbled when faced with his ex-lover, but he hadn't.  

He also thought of Masato and Naru.  Especially Naru.  

But his thoughts weren't much of a shield against his latent, quirky 
fears--which had only been stirred up by the thought of an unarmed 
assassin who'd been waylaid in the night.  

Yuuji leaned against the agitating appliance, the quiet whir from its 
state-of-the-art motor sounding as loud as a roar in the absolute 
stillness.  He'd had the creeps ever since they'd come back.  He had 
them now, staring out at the gloom that lay beyond the laundry room 
door.  

It was the nothing.  Would it swallow him whole, and destroy him 
before the boy could give the girl a new name?

It was the unknown.  The future.  Bleak and hopeless.  What lay in 
wait for him should he cross through that portal?  

The last bite of his apple came loose with a snap between his teeth.  
Yuuji paused,  heart pounding away in his chest as he strained to 
hear something.  Anything.  A signal, or a warning.  

All he heard was the click of the washer as it shut itself off.  It 
startled him so that he jumped back with a little yelp, squeezing the 
core.  Sticky juice bled into his skin, mildly stinging one small cut 
he bore on his palm.  Yuuji regarded at its gnawed at remains with a 
moue.  

/Stupid Yuuji. Scaring yourself like a kid might./

/What would Crashers say if they could see you now?/

He saw their faces one by one waver and gleam in his mind, all 
laughing, all accompanied by jibes.  All too familiar, and 
potentially comforting in its way.  

But still the dark made him cringe.  

The core landed in the wastebasket; his hand landed on the leg of the 
sweatpants he'd donned after getting Omi settled.  The sugary syrup 
was replaced by white lint.  Yuuji didn't notice, though, wouldn't 
have cared if he had.  

He just wanted out of there.  

Skin prickling, he flipped open the washer and fished out the sodden 
tangle of formerly bloodied clothing and sheets, pressing them to his 
chest.  

Then, with a sharply uttered admonishment about how silly it sounded 
for a grown assassin to be leery of a darkened flower shop, he killed 
the lights with a nudge of his elbow and headed off for his apartment.

When he reached the stairs, however, he took them two at a time.  

***    

Omi had actually snuck from his piebald bed just once.  Just for a few 
moments.  The doctors had mad no insistences he make himself 
bedridden.  It was mostly for Yuuji's comfort he remained, thinking first 
of him as a knight... a true knight of yore, who had gone off adventuring 
and left his suspiciously male maiden behind, and then as someone he 
played a game with- then the vampire, the nurse, the old friend, someone 
to disobey just a little for their own good.

That and Tenshi ni Narumon was on.  

The complexity of his thoughts for someone he admittedly knew but 
scarcely... startled him at first.  But this faded to a quiet affirmation, a 
little dancer of comfort where he didn't even ache any longer.  

/I care about Yuuji.  I can't ever let him forget that, like.../

But as the fluttering credits rolled, he had gingerly slipped away into the 
shadows.  The catacomb of his room, which seemed to grow ever larger in 
his absences, as if not only the meanings of just where every trivial facet 
of the place remained had shrunk, but he had too, and soon, if he stood 
inside, he would be no larger than a cricket in the world of men. 

He took his laptop from it's place in his closet.  Something soft and 
pleading nudged his wrist.  A pale orchid.  He wouldn't be seeing this 
chambers again he presumed, but suddenly, it struck him as a shame no 
one would behold that single, now nearly anemic bloom.

He filled it's vase with fresh water and left it on the street-side of the filmy 
curtains.

Then went back to his new bed with the funny sheets.  Lying on one side, 
he leisurely began to poke through some of his files.   And had come up 
with nearly all he sought (nearly for some of the pixels he knew he could 
make would never align themselves properly and be the picture in his 
mind) by the time he heard footsteps on the stairs.  Awfully rapid 
footsteps.  He called to Yuuji and Yuuji came to him, sat on the edge of 
their bed and regarded him with one of those warm rain sad smiles.

Omi sat up, all but tackled him, and dragged him down to the mattress so 
he was lying in his arms.

"You're hurt too, now.  You should be in bed awhile, Yuuji-kun."

Saying so, he kissed his neck before leaning up against it.

***

It was such a tender gesture that Yuuji conveniently forgot about the 
wet sheets he'd plopped down on the coffee table after entering the 
apartment. They could mildew and rot, for all he cared at the 
moment. 

"Yeah, I know. But I have a thing about letting blood stains 
linger...That and I didn't want you to sleep on dirty sheets. " He 
let out a heavy sigh as he sank into the mattress, and pressed a 
snuffing kiss to the top of Omi's head. His body felt like one 
massive ache. "I'm so used to trying to carry on when injured, that 
someone usually has to force me to rest." 

/But then, Kritiker makes it clear that we don't matter; that we're 
so easily replaceable. I had almost taken that to heart. If I 
hadn't met Masato.../

/I wonder if I'd be dead by now, simply because I stopped caring 
about myself?/ 

"But I still have someone to do just that, hm?" 

/An assassin can never have too many someones./

"I'll be one for you too, for as long as you want me to be." 

His hands wandered over Omi's back as he cuddled him close. 

"Mmm...You smell good. Feel good too. I don't think I want to move 
from this spot." 

"However, it seems that you did," he added with a ruffle of his hair 
and a smile. "In the mood for a bit of hacking, were you?"

***

"No, not really!" Omi protested with a little giggle.  I do things besides 
hack and bandage people." 

He was obliged to shift for a moment to reach for his laptop, which he 
fished over and balanced between then, tweaked the keys of with one 
hand.  The screen was littered with thumbnails of black and white photos, 
most of which he clicked away for the time being.

"But I remembered the one night after we crashed one of Takatori's 
parties, I got in and downloaded some of the surveillance footage."

Not that he needed a reason, but he pecked the end of Yuuji's nose.

"Reiji was a voyeur, but you probably knew that.  He had this Sliver set-
up through the whole mansion.  Anyway, the night I got the files for also 
happened to be the night Schwartz was there, or one of them."

All he got at the moment for that was a bit of a confused look.

"That bastard telepath and his 'friends'.  I have pictures of them, so you'll 
know what they look like on the chance they turn up.  In fact."

And here he really did giggle.

"I loaded them into photoshop and tinted them too.  Don't ask me why! 
But that's Nagi, and Crawford and Farfarello has the eyepatch which 
leaves... Schuldich.  And his hair really is that color."

Tiled across the backdrop of sky-blue that was Omi's application 
background were a series of candid shots of the nemesis assassins.  All in 
their white suits, drinking white wine and generally lounging about as if 
they owned the place.  Crawford smoked and shot a distasteful glance at a 
random tray of cocktail weenies.  Nagi lounged bored as could be against 
a banister.  Farf accosted a maid carrying a cleaver.  Schuldich knew the 
camera was there and flipped it off.  All looked like a set of 1920's 
intaglios some young flapper had most lovely colored with a set of 
expensive, uncommonly brilliant photo pens.

***     

Yuuji leaned over and kissed Omi on the cheek, parting with a wink 
and a nod towards the screen. "That's pretty cool. What you did 
with the pictures that is, not so much your subjects." He sat up to 
study them more closely, chuckling. 

"You know, the funny thing about taking someone's photo when they 
aren't aware of it--one ends up getting to see some side of their 
real self. Like this guy," he said pointing at Crawford. "He's 
clearly a snob. The redhead is nothing more than your ordinary 
smartass. Eyepatch is quite obviously insane--and Takatori was quite 
obviously an idiot for choosing to set him loose on society?!"

"That kid, though...He only looks bored, like you think a kid would 
look at a party populated solely by adults. Not to mention...A 
little sad." 

He lay his hand on the back of Omi's head, petting him 
affectionately. 

"But there's no way that guy's hair color is natural, if you get my 
meaning." 

/Hmpf. And people consider me to be fussy about my looks.../

Yuuji sank back down on the bed. "So that's Schwartz. Hm. The fact 
that you bothered to clip these photos--I take it they are your worst 
enemies?" 

Omi nodded. Yuuji nodded too. "I see. Well, if they do come 
around, I think we could handle it." He grinned. "Even assassins 
need to exercise." 

He darted forward for another little kiss, then turned back to the 
screen. 

"But what are all these other pictures, if you don't mind my 
asking?"

***

"I don't mind at all!" Omi yawned only the slightest bit on the end of his 
line, flicking his tongue past his lips in an effort to stifle the minor breach 
of manners.  Even of they were sharing a bed now and all.  He didn't 
know if he felt right about being intimately rude.

Even though he could think of times he had not minded.

Anyway...

"Even though they turned out to be nothing.  I was looking for a picture of 
Ken, but I couldn't find one.  Well..." a few swishes of the mouse and a 
somewhat blurry image filled the screen, filled with a host of white ladies 
and black men, for such were they clad as if plucked one by one from a 
forties musical, just to stand there below the balcony.

"That's his shadow up there on the marble.  I know it's just a three quarter 
blur and all... but that's all I've got left of him besides his gloves! I never 
figured I'd need a picture of Ken, I could see him every day, and Aya too.  
But Aya had pictures, and he still left them here.  Ken didn't have any to 
leave behind.  That just makes it funny I found his shadow.  Like there 
was nothing left of him besides a shadow.  It's a shame.  I liked Ken.  We 
were friends."

And then he whispered to Yuuji, despite that surely no one could have 
heard them. 

"But just friends."

Again, he found himself biting back a yawn and the need to stretch, which 
he could not do in his present state.  He compensated by tossing the laptop 
aside casting the arm which had held it around Yuuji.

"We were all friends."

Yuuji switched off the light and like a mother did gather him down against 
the pillows.  

"It just makes me wonder sometimes..." 

Fingers grazes his lips in the darkness, an faint hush.  The headlights of a 
passing car which caught upon them momentarily had more force to them.  

"If anyone thought of me that way, or if I was just being silly like I usually 
am."

He could only smell the slightest touch of blood on his lover now.  
Supposed that the sensation was mutual, and worried no more off it.  We 
was cradled in his good arm and meant to stay there.

"Like when I actually thought maybe Youji would ask me what I wanted.  
But no one does that.  I would have liked having a baby.  But I'm Omi, 
and that's the silliest thing of all."

*****