Part 12B- Wet Gardenias
[Version 2.0]

Ken gulped.  Omi stood behind him and wondered for the first time why he'd 
called him Ken.  So Ken spluttered out like a candle under wet fingers.

Omi could feel his hand on the door in the next five seconds.  Omi felt the earth 
move under his feet as he ran.  Omi knew Yuuji's gaze on him; that Gretel had so 
feared and craved.

As if pricked here and there with his own darts, he remembered somehow that 
none of tonight was real.  Not the club, not the drug deals, not the music outside 
and in his bright pulsing mind.  That he was Tsukiyono Omi who was here only 
for death and the revenge of death.

Did this sort of thing... happen to regular people? No... it couldn't... could it? But 
he had never been like that! How could he know? How could he find lies, find a 
way to enter through the window instead of merely looking in?

And he became afraid.  His stomach lurched as if the floor had turned to water.  
His muscles tingled, and his knees twitched and somehow he was indeed rocking 
back and forth on them.

But he found his heart was still. He could have killed Hajime with his bare hands 
then and there.  Assuming he didn't call for help.  Which he probably would.  
Assessing that situation was simple child's play.

But Omi was afraid because he desperately wanted to do as he had been asked.

"Well...?" Hajime asked impatiently, some of the lust waning in him.

"The gloves stay." And Omi found he slid his jacket off as if he had been waiting 
all night to be rid of it for someone else's eyes.

*** 

"Okay," Hajime answered with a shrug. "So long as everything else 
comes off." 

He himself removed his jacket, and draped it carefully over the swivel chair 
behind the desk, and then crossed over to a narrow, tall dresser that stood in the 
far corner. The doors he opened wide, monitoring Omi's progress in the mirror 
that hung inside of one of them. Watching him, that is, in between digging 
through this drawer and that, occasionally slipping things into his
pockets, as if he didn't want Omi to see them, and know what he had planned. 

Once the boy had undressed himself fully, he shut the doors, and 
walked over to him. Gave him the once over very slowly, circling, 
one hand skimming Omi's body as he moved. He stopped when he got 
behind him, petting his back. 

"Such pretty skin. Such a pretty boy," he murmured, bending down to lick at his 
nape. "I feel that luck is smiling on me tonight, to have given me such a prize as 
you." 

Hajime bent to nibble at Omi's neck, moving his hands now to his 
shoulders to caress his arms. He was unhurried in his movements, and when he 
reached his wrists, his hands lingered there, stroking the inside of them where he 
could feel the calm thrum of his heart.

Nibbling became slurping, kissing. Hajime gently drew Omi's hands 
behind his back, still holding them loosely, in first both hands, 
then in only one. 

"I think I'll have to reward Shigure after all." 

At once his hand tightened, and then was replaced by the bite of cold steel. The 
cuffs locked shut around Omi's wrists with a sharp click. Hajime laughed softly in 
the boy's ear, as his hand closed around his neck. 

"Get on top of the desk, Ken-san." 

***

It had been the same song they played last of all that morning, the revenant in  
moonless Tokyo nights he had sworn he would never come back. And here, 
breathing between dusky bodies, forgetting that the dawn outside existed, here he 
heard it again.

So he swayed under the orgiastic power of the voice or one more 
nameless girl too perfect to be real, her light and tempting vocals and the 
sparkling baseline. The welcoming offer of a phantom form among the real ones, 
the heaven out of reach for all but the most strung out and exhausted dancers.

He closed his eyes and fit his lips to the words as he writhed in the crowd under 
movements not wholly his own. 

I'm mesmerized in every way
You keep me in a state of daze
Your kisses make my skin feel weak
I'm always melting in your heat
Then I soar like a bird in the wind
Oh I glide as I'm flying through heaven

Me 
I want it don't you know
My love I want you so
Sugar
You make my life complete
Rapture tastes so sweet

/I said I hated this. I said I would never come back. I can't even hear myself in 
here. I can't even think like me. I'm no one and everyone and... there we go./

Naru smiled to himself then, but his gold eyes he kept closed as if by doing so he 
could keep anyone from seeing him.  His arms he wrapped around his own 
shoulders. 

/So this is Blake's uncanny caress or ritual and purity that sucks filth into its 
wake... I wonder... if he felt like this when he wrote, if he lived like this in his 
head, and heard the angel ladies before they were born?/

And he sang silently, and he moved, and he knew emptiness and 
everything, there in the nothingness below the strobe lights and 
above the concrete.

/Everyone and no one./ 

***

Omi let out a dismayed moan when he felt he could not work his arms forward as 
long as the cuffs had him. His own softness became unbearable, Hajime's kisses 
lost their feeling save for the pricks of his teeth just against him... barely... little 
warnings that flight was impossible.

And yet once, whole centuries of moments ago, he had disrobed himself as if 
doing so to another, tempting and convincing. Luring someone into bed. He had 
forgotten, he supposed, he was the prize, the beloved, the desired. 

"What's the matter?" Hajime asked the blond floss dusting his 
ear, "Don't you like cuffs?"

Only in the smallest voice could he answer. "N-no..."

"Well, maybe you'll get used to them. Be a good sport about it and that's all 
yours." Said as he pointed out the bag of Indo-san flopped on the chair of the desk 
like a forgotten doll.

"I don't..."

"Kiss? Please, tell me you're joking."

And next thing he knew he was lying in Hajime's arms and tempted to reach back 
into the mouth which claimed his own and held it there in the naked office.

***

He had a look just to make sure, not that he trusted his eyes.

His heart eased itself and fled then, just like the first time he had seen him. 
Everything moved but what stood around his wet and beating muscle. The blue 
lord beyond the footlights, framed by the smell of fresh alcohol... his hair was 
silver and his coat of ultramarine. But it was still Yuuji.

And he Naru, as the crowd came close. Close enough to be heard if they had 
simply been on the street, outside of the sorcery of that girl on the speakers, the 
loving midnight magic. And it was better than that rush of her nonexistent body 
when, like a curious fae thing onto a mortal, did he reach out and caress the boy 
he couldn't have. Only to fade away, and go unseen, before he even became 
suspicious and turned around.

Which he didn't.

At all. 

He knew nothing but himself. Naru was grateful. And then he was 
a witness, hidden behind one steel pillar as Shigure passed- one 
person he hadn't expected to see in a million years. His lip was 
bleeding and his pants half off. He knew of him and wished no more, the Crasher 
boy. But he listened from his space of drowning 
nonexistence.

"Frankly, I hope Haj-san puts a pencil holder up that blond tramp's ass and leaves 
it there!"

"You're just saying that `cause you didn't get `im first. Sour 
grapes."

"Yeah, and maybe baby-faces aren't my thing."

"Now that's REALLY sour grapes."

Shigure felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to the face of someone who had 
ceased to be real, someone he could almost see right through. 

"I'll give you 15,000 yen to repeat that standing near the bar. 
Everything you just said."

It was too loud to do more than nod.

Naru jingled and was gone. Maybe it wasn't Omi. Maybe Yuuji 
wouldn't even notice, or think, or be.

Any more than he was.

As for himself and his body still enraptured though his soul was not, he broke the 
trance, broke through the front door, ran until he found somewhere dark, and sat 
down on the curb even though it was raining.

***

Yuuji had overheard a conversation between two girls, during which one had 
mentioned how scary it was that all those people had been kidnapped, and that she 
had known one of the missing.  He had been trying to think of a graceful way to 
enter their chat, when he looked around to check on Omi, and found him gone.  
Alarmed, he'd scanned the crowd, and only calmed down a little when he saw 
Omi and the brute making their way across the
back of the club. He tracked them all the way to the office. The situation wasn't 
ideal, but, then again, he did have his wrist communicator.  If Omi had any 
trouble, surely he would be able to do that much. And surely, he assured himself, 
surely he had brought his shuriken. 

All the same, he decided, he wasn't going to take his eyes off the door.  And he 
didn't, not until he heard a boy say, "Frankly, I hope Haj-san puts a pencil holder 
up that blond tramp's ass and leaves it there!"

Yuuji whipped around and found the boy he'd seen taken away earlier, arm in arm 
with another kid.  He edged out of the strip of bar space he occupied, and crossed 
the few feet that separated them. 

"What was that about a blond kid?" 

Shigure eyed him over his newly acquired beer bottle. "What the 
fuck's that to you," he snarled, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

"It's a lot to me," Yuuji replied evenly. "Could be a lot to you, if you'd help me." 

"Huh. I already got my money, baka. I don't fucking care about 
yours." 

Their gazes locked and hung there together, and Yuuji shoved the 
other kid out of the way, and drew up alongside Shigure, burying his fingers in his 
collar, and jerking him close to whisper, "You don't help me, and I'll drag you off 
to some nice, dark corner, and screw you silly, even worse than that hired hand 
did. And you'll get nothing for your trouble except a lot of pain, kid. Now--tell me 
about that blond. Is he in trouble?"

Shifting from one foot to the other, Shigure nervously pursed his lips. "Uh, yeah, 
he is. But don't tell them I told you!" 

"Hmpf.  I'm not making you any promises." Yuuji let him go with a hard cuff to 
the side of his head, and a shove, and then he set off for Haj's office, slyly 
unwinding the whipsword from around his waist as he walked. 

As he approached the office, one of the men stepped forward to block his entry, 
one hand upraised and uttering a few words of warning.  Words that only died in a 
gurgle when Yuuji slashed the man's throat open. He fell to his knees, gagging, 
blood spurting from the cracks between his fingers. 

A girl's scream rent the air, but he didn't pay it any 
attention. Instead, he kicked the man over, and moved to attack his companion. 

He was ready for him, and he was quick in the way that he drew 
his gun, and aimed. Yuuji stayed still until he thought the man was about to fire. 
Then he leapt to one side. The bullet whizzed past, all heat and smoke as it singed 
his hair, the surface of his coat collar. He staggered, but regained his footing, and 
with a flick of his wrist and he had him around the wrist, and he gave his metal 
lead a hard yank. The gun clattered to the ground. 

After that, it was pandemonium. Though the gun had a silencer, to 
those in their vicinity, it was clear what was going on, and the 
kids had panicked.

Yuuji managed to entangle the man even more, and, thus entrapped, was able to 
deal him the injury as the man had wished to inflict on Yuuji. He snatched up the 
gun, pressed the muzzle to his temple, and shot him. 

The gun wound up on the floor by its owner, and Yuuji began patting down the 
corpses for a key, but found not a one. So he did the only thing he could think of, 
despite the romance movie ridiculousness of it all. He marched up to the door, and 
began to pound on its surface. 

"Uh...Boss! We've got trouble!" 

Hajime broke the kiss with bad grace, but was slow to still the 
wanderings of his free hand over Omi's bare thighs. 

"Ah, damn! Just when we were beginning to enjoy ourselves, hm?" He gave Omi 
a regretful little smile, and, with a tweak of his penis, lowered him down to the 
desk top. 

"Don't worry Ken-san. If it appears we will have to make a sudden 
escape, I'll just take you back to my place." He gave him a leer, 
and padded over to the door. Flipped the lock, and flung open the 
door. 

"What the hell is--"

Yuuji silenced his question by coiling the whipsword across the man's neck and 
pulling it tight. Very tight.

***

It was with almost bored impassivity that Omi watched his lover, or the shadow 
of who he guessed to be his lover- deepest grey against utter black, both of them 
flicking this way and that, in and out of nothing as the lights strobed and the 
arcane things before them- children, lover, voyeurs, no ones... they
all raced hither and thither, bleeding into one fog, one disembodied impression of 
where people should have been.

Yuuji had taken the tip of his twined razors in his other hand and pulled.  His 
palm had been cut by the gesture and the blood was dripping down into Hajime's 
cuffs.

The screams had all become one muted static in his mind, like a signal breaking 
up, or a radio dying as the station was left far beyond some starry sky.

As if he laid beneath one himself, he stretched backwards over his bonds, for his 
hands kept his back from the desk.  The chains bit at his lower back so he arched 
into them and hoped Yuuji wouldn't notice the clothes he had worn weren't in 
disarray besides that of being thrown down slowly- had not been
pulled or cut or...

He said to him, "my hero" in a voice so faint it could not possibly have been made 
out.  

He didn't feel like he was being saved, but almost like... it was he who saved 
Yuuji, as he, still bound, slipped off the desk at last, and, looking every bit the 
ravaged boy, did kiss his cheek and lean against him, Without a smile, he bent and 
kissed Hajime goodbye with a touch to his lips as innocent as the tremble in a 
young child's hand when a butterfly has left it.  

That was before his lips turned blue and cold then.  Probably the last thing he ever 
felt.

***     

Yuuji had left Omi long enough to fish through the dying man's 
pockets for the key, but when he turned to his lover to free him, he was greeted by 
the sight of his boy kissing his would-be rapist on the lips so tenderly, as if he 
would miss him. It made his stomach turn. 

He shook off the disgust he felt over what he'd seen him do, and moved to unlock 
his cuffs. Frowned at the sight of blood creeping around one wrist from one palm. 
Yuuji kicked the cuffs away across the carpet, and took his Crashers scarf from 
around his neck to bind the cut with. 

Omi's hands were so cold. Yuuji held them for a moment after he'd 
applied his makeshift bandage, then hurriedly removed his trench and draped it 
over Omi's shoulders. Slid it over his arms when the boy didn't bother, and 
buttoned it up. 

Then he caught him by the chin and forced him to look into his 
eyes. "Are you okay, Omi? Do you think you can walk out of here on your own?"

***

He tried to nod but Yuuji held him fast; blinked, and for too long, as if he had 
gone sleepy or drugged.  Out of the darkness of his own eyelids then, Yuuji 
seemed to have changed.  What was he doing there, holding him like this? What 
was he doing here at all? 

/No! No! That's not right... I know... You're.../

"Yuuji... I... ouch..."

The hand which held his chin pulled away and cupped his cheek instead.  He 
quavered though, under the dismayed heat of his gaze.

"I'm... I'm OK.  Really."

And the tails of the trench dancing around his ankles, he leaned up against Knight 
and rubbed his face against his shirt, one hand gathering up his lover's injured one 
and petting it as consolingly as he could.

***  

Yuuji hugged him close, pressing a kiss to the top of his head.  He wanted to 
stand there and revel in having him alive and breathing and snuggled against him, 
but it wasn't the time or place to do so.  Someone might call the police, and they 
might be on their way now.  They had to leave.  Now.

He tipped Omi's head back gently and gave him a kiss, scooped up his discarded 
clothing without so much as thought for it other than no trace of Omi should be 
left behind.   These he tucked up under his arm.  Omi he held in his other.

"Come on then."

He led him out of the room, past the sprawled bodies of his attackers.  The club 
was empty save for a few strung out kids.  Yuuji paused near the bar to listen, and 
was soon rewarded by the faint squeal of sirens.  Distant, but undoubtedly 
approaching.

He promptly guided Omi towards the bar, and through the store room to the back 
door.

***

Something then like... like walking through and underwater grotto in the dead of 
the ocean's night, or by day, for so deep was the blackness and so intense the 
weight around him.  All around him.  He might have been beyond the last points 
of brightness, into the realms of the blind things and the swimming lights of neon.  

The dawn or dusk remained in his heart- the sort of spiritual limbo between either 
side of light; his mind remained free of the car splashes and the rain, but his body 
ached to wander so in the land without hope or voices clear.  Between them, he 
slid his hands into his pants where it might have been logical for pockets to be, 
and he brushed his wet fingers to his wetter skin.

His hair dripped in his eyes and he did nothing about it.

"For such is my fate I suppose, to be gay by the light of the morning and fall into 
misery.  Would that I could follow the sun to the other side of the earth and rather 
be where always I would smile, or not exist at all by night."

A businessman in a long, sleek, black car pulled up and ran along the curb, 
whistling and asking how much.  So he was still in the bad part of town.  It only 
settled hopelessness in his chest, to wait there, to be nothing but weight as if he 
carried the stone egg of the world.

"Would that earth would give me up through death or sin or the blessed violet 
miles of home."

The man, disappointed, drove off, and he, alone again among what crowd had 
ventured out on foot, beneath shining plastic and stuttering umbrellas.

"Would that I had not such a heart so angry with me always for being here."

But he fell into the dimness and the scintillating vision of a place which had long 
ago deemed the hour of bedtime come.  Hoping beyond all other hope that he 
knew the darkened back alley which he stepped into, the stairs he slipped on, he 
from which he nearly tumbled all the way back down to the nowhere when his 
footing abandoned him.  

Even beneath a blanket of rain and the clouds which glowed in the distance of 
someone else's night, one soaked Uhyou Naru recognized the door of his old 
friend, and rapped upon it.  The single hint of a nightlight or a lamp on for late 
surveillance glowed there.  

And then again, for his hand had made very little noise indeed.

At last the door opened, and the elder Crasher, wet himself an in his robe, beheld 
his standing in the puddle which had run from his iridescent white clubbing 
costume.

"Masato... onegai... I'm really cold.  Can I come in and warm up, just for a little 
while?"

He would have gone on, would have apologized, but his words were too close to 
weeping to continue.

***

"Shit, kid! Get in here!" Masato caught him around one elbow, and 
urged the shivering, half-drowned boy inside, slamming and locking tight the 
door after him. "What are you doing walking about in this weather?" 

Naru only began to fumble with the zips on his boots, but soon gave  up, and fell 
to shivering even harder against the wall. Grumbling under his breath about the 
foolishness of youth, Masato knelt and tugged them down, and helped him ease 
out of them. 

Then he stood up, and, more gently said, "Come on, Naru. I've got 
the oven on. You can sit in front of it and get warm. Okay?" 

Again, without waiting for an answer, he drew the boy away from the wall, and 
hooked an arm around him, holding him close as he began to steer him from the 
foyer towards the kitchen.  He'd scattered his battered cushions around one end of 
his kitchen table, and to these he'd led Naru before stepping once more out and 
down the hall for towels, and then to his room where he scrounged up a t-shirt 
that was oversized on him, and a pair of
two sizes too small pajama pants--which he had never worn, but never thought of 
ridding himself of due to sentimental reasons. Masato returned posthaste with his 
offerings, and plopped them down on the table before Naru. "There you go, kid. I 
know they aren't quite your taste, but they're clean. And dry." 

He paused there, nervously wiping his hands on his robe as he watched  his young 
guest--who at that moment closely resembled a wilted  flower. He almost asked 
him what was wrong.  Had someone hurt him?  But that last was obvious, the 
former none of his business, so he crossed over to the cabinet where he kept his 
dishes. 

"Get out of those wet things, and I'll get you a drink. Something to warm you up." 

Into one snow-white tea cup, he poured a dram of the plum wine he 
kept about, just to have. He would have given him some Chartreuse, but strong 
drink was the last thing Masato thought he needed. Not when he was so dejected. 

"Let me know when you're dressed, okay?" 

***

Naru made a small, feeble noise somewhat resembling a yes.  It seemed enough.  
Masato set the teacup on the table and scooted it over as if rather he was offering 
vegetables to a child enamored of angel food cake. 

But the wine was not in question; simply offered and with small condition.  His 
fingers did not seem to recall at once just how to undo what had been his 
elaborate garb.  What had he dressed as? An seraph? A nymph? Death as a young 
man? Any of those way, he pulled his shirt off over his head and cast it down to 
the floor with a muffled sort of schloooop noise.  

Unhindered now, rain which had caught in his hair fled down his back and chest, 
making him fidget, try to redirect the little streaks of chill water.  As he daintily 
wrung a few strands into the pool of his clothes, he glanced over to Masato, who 
was just as he had been.

And he had a big wet patch on his robe where he had held Naru.

A fact Naru did not fail to overlook or curse.

His trousers followed- the cuffs and the gloves. The collar.  he watched the liquid 
spreading out from his things- they no longer resembled whatever grandiose 
illusion he had aspired to.  The angel and the demon in them had gone, leaving 
only a thing which happened to be shiny and wet like so many other that night- a 
street corner under a light, dead creature at the bottom of a pool.  A shapeless, 
shining mass.  He had no trouble adding his underwear to them, and leaving 
nothing between himself and the almost pajamas.  

His makeup washed away, and with it, all he had of a smile. 

Whoever he saw in the enamel of his cup wasn't Naru.  Naru was leaking 
rainwater on the floor or running glittery down the gutter.  Yet he couldn't entirely 
let him go.  He reached into white blob and reclaimed his collar.  It hurt all over 
again, but he fastened it by the moonstone catch and gave himself a sip of plum 
wine.

"OK... I'm all ready."

How vacant and tremulous his voice sounded when it had not been filled with the 
words that poets left behind.

***    

Masato found him to look like a very young boy who'd decided to play dress up 
with his mother's makeup; of course, being Naru, he probably had done just that 
very thing. 

Without a word, he opened the drawer by the sink, and took out a 
dishcloth, the softest one, and dampened it under the hot water 
faucet. Then, nudging the soaking puddle of his snowy garments to 
one side without so much of a glimmer of disgust. Masato knelt on 
one of the cushions at his side, and began to dab the smears of 
makeup away from his cheeks until only faint shadows of it remained around his 
eyes. Naru could wipe that bit off in the morning, or never. Whatever he wanted 
to do. 

The stained cloth arced through the air, and landed on the counter just short of the 
sink. Masato plucked up Naru's clothes and draped them over the recycled drying 
rack he kept by the window. Spread one of the towels out on the damp patch 
they'd lain in and left it there, in favor of taking another and draping it over Naru's 
head. He worked the towel against Naru's scalp and through his dripping locks 
with care. 

"Um...What happened tonight, Naru?"

***

Naru caught one of Masato's hands in his own, and held it still against his head.  
The towel drooped into his closed eyes, and, if he had been in a lighter mood, he 
would have trailed off on some silliness about his looking like a nun. But for 
now... 

With vague resolution did he part his lashes with their flecks of kohl still on them.  
Though he could only claim back snatches of his verbose self, he did speak.

"I saw Yuuji at the club I ran off to after I took my leave of you this evening.  
Since you said I looked like I should go to a club, after all, even if that was a long 
time ago.  I felt like they were waiting for me there, even though they didn't know 
me.  Everyone but him.  I saw him there.  With the little blond Weiss. But I still... 
I just... I just touched him.  And it wasn't like I expected he'd turn around or 
anything but when he didn't...  never mind of course I think something terrible 
almost happened to Omi! Who's my friend and a I... but Yuuji..."

Naru sniffled loudly there, pushed his companion away and deliberately yanked 
the towel the rest of the way over his face.

"And you needn't tell me I'm silly!"

***

"Then I won't. All I'll tell you is I wouldn't expect any less 
behavior from a kid in love." 

No peek of reproach came from Naru's vicinity. 

"Is he your first real love?" 

Nothing but sniffles came from under Naru's terry-cloth hood. Masato gave him a 
sad smile. 

"That's not my business, I know. Forget I asked." 

The older man got up, taking the spare cushion with him, and scooted over to 
nearest empty side of the table. There, he fumbled with the tea cup he'd set out but 
was interrupted before he could fill it. A glance at the stove, at the teapot he'd left 
on the eye, and Masato wondered if the water was still hot enough for decent tea. 
If peach tea could truly be considered decent. 

Masato lurched to his feet, and sidled around the table to fetch the iron kettle. 
"I...know it's none of my business, but...Naru..." 

He paused, chewed on his lip as he poured the water into his cup. 
Puffs of steam rose like wraiths and melted on the air. "If you want him, if you 
think he's worth having, then you've got to pursue him.  Either that, or let him go, 
and for good--else, you will drive yourself mad with the torment. Or you'll drink 
yourself to death, and I don't want to see that happen to you." 

Masato lifted the cup to drink, but paused just short of sipping to add, "I don't 
want to see ANYTHING bad happen to you."

***

The towel bounced this way and that.  Naru had shaken his head and nearly gotten 
terrycloth up his nose.  He could see just a little the knit and the smooth fluidity 
gathered beneath it- Masato was a grey and auburn patch beside him, who he 
blinked at, and he smiled to.  Just a ghost of gladness for what at the time, seemed 
foolishness to him.  Most things did.  It must have been the warmth returning to 
his body, making everything go dizzy with his heartbeats.  

"I ought to leave this on then, since you shouldn't look at me at all if you don't 
wish to see such things befall me."

Naru felt out his teacup and slid it under his veil for a little dram of plum wine.  It 
tasted like candy on his thick and salty tongue, flitted like dew onto the earth as it 
fell to his stomach.  Of all silly things, it reminded him:

The nightingale, who weeps so sweetly, grieves
Perhaps for his lost young or his loved mate,
Drowning the sky with sweetness and the late
Dark violet valleys and the trembling leaves;
And all night long he in his sorry cleaves
To me and mine, recalling my harsh fate-
But I have myself to commiserate
Alone, who deemed an angel safe from thieves.

But he stopped there, as if meaning to go on after having recalled the rest of the 
sonnet, but the teacup down, he shook his head again.  "Ah, if only the second 
half of that verse did not suck."

Still more silence then, not even the sound of tea being drunk, or swirled.  Or that 
of anyone daring to move before his shrouded figure.

"Affection from afar is but an invisible jewel, set into paper with pens by poets 
who knew how to properly conclude an ode. Yuuji is no beloved of mine, nor I of 
his.  I only long... though I don't even know what love I would have wished, if I 
could wish at all.  Well... I wanted him to be happy, and I guess he is.  That's all.  
I am only here to keep the thieves from the angels now.  I must not be sorry I gave 
him away, or that you will not give me anymore to drink."

(OOC: Naru quoted from the 311th sonnet of Petrarch.)

***

"So that's it? You're going to give up on love at the ripe old age of what? twenty? 
That's a long time to be alone, Naru." 

Masato reached for the cup, then jerked his hand away and grabbed one end of the 
towel instead. He whipped it off, sending his long blond locks into a tumble about 
his head. The towel went sailing off in the direction of the drying rack. 

"All you want is for Yuuji to be happy, and all I want is for 
YOU to be happy. But you aren't. You're always alone, and I know you gotta hate 
it, else you wouldn't be skulking about my house wanting handouts all the damn 
time."

Masato did take his cup in hand again, and sipped. The tea tasted 
like boiled ashes suddenly, and he angrily set it down and pushed it away so hard 
the golden liquid splashed upon the tabletop. The older Crasher got to his feet and 
stalked off to fetch the wine, and brought it back to the table. He set it in front of 
Naru. 

"You want to sit around feeling sorry for yourself, fine. Do it. 
Sit around my kitchen all damn night and submerse yourself in self-pity. Drink 
the bottle dry, and pass out on the cushions dreaming of what you can't have. I 
don't..." 

Masato suddenly scrunched his mouth up like he'd just bitten a lemon, and shook 
his head. "Forget it. I'm going to bed." 

***

It poured.  Had been pouring probably.  Only the faintly sweet scent rising from 
the wet macadam made that and the lingering heat bearable.  And yet, when he 
moved, he was deathly chill beneath Yuuji's trench coat. 

They scrambled for the Crasher's bike, and sped off from their without their 
helmets, zig-zagging through the most obscure and broken back roads.  Through 
miles of bleak places with no certain names any longer- not in disrepair, but rather 
misery, for they could not be among the living night.    

Darkness held sway here, save for the occasional broken streetlight, and they 
passed almost no one until their meandering course back to soapland and mindless 
paradise began.

At the first traffic light they had known in many long minutes, and kissed his 
neck, leaning his forehead against Yuuji's shoulder then, and shivering.  They 
took off and a pebble from the street bit at the curve of his ankle and made him 
yelp.  

"Ah... Yuuji? Maybe... you should stop somewhere and let me put my boots on." 
A faint little laugh.  "I'll look awfully funny riding around with you barefoot."

***

"I...Oh." It was Yuuji's turn to laugh faintly, out of chagrin. The sound of sirens 
had always set off his hair-trigger sense of panic, such was his latent fear of being 
caught. Even if he hadn't really done anything wrong. Who would miss a drug 
lord anyway? 

He wheeled the bike down the first alley he found, ready to ward off anyone 
who'd chosen to hide from the wet in its dark crannies. No one stirred at their 
approach, however, and so Yuuji relaxed. Eased his precious machine to a 
humming stop, and flipped down the kickstand. He slid off, to allow Omi a bit 
more room to move. 

"I'm sorry. I didn't think." 

Omi only chuckled again, still as whisper-faint. He even more waif-like soaked 
through. Pale, and feverish seeming. Yuuji had the urge to touch his hand to his 
young lover's face, but knew it would be ice on ice. Yuuji thought he'd never thaw 
out again. 

"Are you sure you're okay?"

***

"Yes, absolutely!" Omi insisted, dismounting the bike with a bit of a skip to his 
movements.  He still caught one of his feet up in his hand when he landed, having 
found a rather nasty scrap of stone beneath it.  Yuuji had leaned over to see what 
the matter was, and no more.

Though he soon found himself caught in one of Omi's hot and wanting kisses.  
His tongue lapped at his throat and his teeth left pinpricks in his lips.  And then he 
was gone, grappling first with his shorts; had to force them over even his slim 
bottom, and they did no more for him than plastic wrap. Then the
boots next.  He was obliged to pace in them, let them find their proper place 
against his body on their own.

A car passed, Glay blaring from the semi-cocked windows, and he watched it, 
rather them minding the buttons on Yuuji's coat, which he took off, and despite 
the growing and unhappy chill, handed back to him in favor of the rent tank and 
the waist jacket.

The gloves, however, he stuffed in Yuuji's pockets.  Now bare, his slim fingers 
glistened with sweat and some stray blood from his wrist.

He didn't seem to notice in the least.

"Where's the closest of the other clubs from here? We'd better get going if we 
want to check out anymore before they close!"

***

Now *that* worried him. Yuuji knew that if he could hold a mirror up to his face 
right then, he would see just how much it did so clearly.  With an adamant shake 
of his head, Yuuji replied, "We are going nowhere but home, and you are 
stripping out of that."

He had ceased speaking because of the vapid smile Omi now wore. As if he were 
trying to placate him, convince him he was up to it--as if he were trying to placate 
himself.  "And you are going to bed." 

Yuuji shifted his attention to Omi's garb once more, and took a good long look at 
it. Noticed for the first time that it wasn't torn, save for where Omi had slashed it 
before going out that night.  Hadn't been subjected to abuse at all, save for the odd 
wrinkles they'd gained from lying on the floor. 

On the floor...Where Omi had put them? Of his own free will?

The idea of him willingly doing anything with someone like Hajime 
made his stomach turn. He said nothing though, kept his expression quite bland as 
he climbed back on the bike. 

"To bed, to sleep, and tomorrow night..."

Yuuji gunned the motor, and eased the bike towards the entrance of  the alley. 

"Youji'll be the decoy."

***

"If you want.  I kinda liked being decoy though." Omi leaned up against Yuuji's 
shoulder once again as they drove on, setting his fingers to his back.  The golden 
floss of his hair tickled him about his battered wrists, and he loved it.  Every 
minute caress.  

And it made his heart pound.  Another light, another circling wet crowd of the 
oblivious, another little worry that bit it's way through him.

Yuuji's shoulders had gone very, very stiff under his touch.  A gentle rubbing of 
them got him no attention.  He ran his thoughts around him, pressed his sternum 
to his spine.

And nothing.

And nothing.

And nothing.

So he hid his eyes behind his lover's shoulder, and there waited.  Blind and deaf to 
the world.  He could not feel the rain.  Only Yuuji's sweaty shirt and the rows and 
rows of bandages which still bound his chest. 

It didn't really surprise him that light from one of the Koneko's windows breached 
what little air hovered betwixt them.  Someone was still up.

Yuuji, however, he did not permit to leave the bike.

"P-please," he stammered.  "Don't... don't go just yet.  Don't go without me.  I'm 
scared and it's dark and cold and I don't know anyone here anymore.  Please 
don't..."

He had to fight to get any sense of when he was.  And he won.  But still the words 
unbidden slipped his lips.

***

"Leave you? But I'm not..."

The hands at his shoulders clutched tighter. Yuuji's first thought was to tear 
himself away from Omi's grasp, but realized immediately that such a course of 
action wasn't a wise one. It was better to coax him, and so he did: murmured 
nonsense and reassurances until his hold on him loosened enough for Yuuji to 
climb off the bike. 

What he found was not the Omi he knew, but a cowering, frightened 
boy, one who was pleading, but to whom, Yuuji couldn't say. It 
didn't stop him from laying his hands on Omi's shoulders.  

"I'm not going to leave you anywhere! I'm going to take you in, and put you to 
bed. We can talk to Youji in the morning, hm?" he said, casting a glance up at the 
lit window. 

Omi said nothing, but it seemed to Yuuji that he had begun to relax a little, so he 
reached around him to help him off the bike. 

"C'mon. Let's go upstairs." 

***

Omi, on his wobbling feet, managed to leave the bike only in a clumsy little way, 
seeming to be doing so for the first time in his life.  When he met the pavement, 
he stumbled and nearly ground his knees into the sidewalk.  Yuuji caught him, 
and from this next embrace he still would not leave, and so had to be lead back 
into the house, his arms twined with his lover's, his steps
uncertain.

He watched his feet too, rather then where he went.  As if he knew not how they 
behaved or what they walked upon? Were there mermaid scales beneath those 
boots, ready to turn back to fins? Did he stand on the wrong side of the vault of 
they heavens by midnight, or the clouds that hid them from Tokyo?

No matter.  He pulled to the side of the back entrance's hall and leaned there, 
arched and seductive and empty and sighing, with one hand over his eyes for the 
kitchen light was on and it had hurt him.

"Who left THAT on..." he mumbled to himself, scrubbing at his lashes.  

"Doesn't matter," as if someone had indeed replied to him, though Yuuji all the 
while with silent eyes had watched.  A deep sigh and a shiver before he started on 
the stairs, oblivious to the two green eyes that followed him until even his toes 
were out of sight.

But his thoughts not out of taste.

He left the hall lights alone as they were and nearly stumbled up the second flight 
of stairs to one of the upper rooms.  Either of the upper rooms.  He had to stop 
himself and rather, still in darkness, part the doors of Yuuji's quarters where, by 
the light of the streets he had left, he poured himself a glass of milk and sat down 
to drink it at the table.

***

It was him verses the bottle of wine.

Silence had come to take Masato's place once the elder crasher departed, and Naru 
could not sorrow over that instance yet; not while the purple heaven in a bottle 
remained for him.  His steeling fixations with water in a dark and empty desert of 
the world.  His bloom in the Tokyo sidewalk.  The everlasting sutra which assured 
him death could come as noble caresses up and down his besotted marrow, and 
that out of that chivalry, songs would come up like white vines over his grave, 
though not to him, who could not listen from the bosom of the earth.

He took her and himself by the throat- one hand on his collar, one on her taper. As 
if he looked over some potion which would shrink him, or some cursed and 
foreign gem.

And there the promise of still weirder dreams.  

"But I don't feel like dreaming now, Masato."

He almost broke the neck of the bottle, trying to squeeze out of it just how he 
could not wish for something absolutely human as oblivion.

Or what he guessed was human.

Wobbling like a toy, he got to his feet then, and stood before the sink, staring at 
the wall rather than the basin itself.  He felt himself, heard himself, but did not 
see, not really.  Not as he turned the bottle upside down and convinced the blood 
of plums to know the drain.

Which left the sidewalk bare, the desert dry, the clouds free from verse.

He was proud of himself until he, meaning to return her to the table, caught a few 
drops of amaranth dew still sloshing in her belly.

These he drank.

And left her alone after that.

A few steps in the cozy semi-dark after he had shooed the lights away.  The door 
he sensed nothing behind, save breath.  So he curled up before it, damp hair 
resting about his fingers.

/Three of us in the house and we're all alone./

But the bottle at least, glinted in the single gaze of light from the street, and 
remembered what she had once been.

***

Yuuji left the lights extinguished, shut the door on the world behind him. It was 
just the two of them again, like it was before they'd left, but still, it was nowhere 
near like it had been. 

He'd made a grave mistake, had left Omi in danger of being raped. 
How much had happened before he'd found them? Yuuji didn't want to think 
about the possibilities, but the vile thoughts crowded his mind anyway. 

"I'm sorry," he murmured, feeling as if he needed to say it, even 
though it didn't matter. Nothing he could do or say mattered now. 

He pushed away from the door, drowning in recriminations. The 
bloodied trench he shed and left it across his sofa. The 
whipsword followed, pooling onto the floor with a clank. Omi seemed to stiffen 
in his chair, glass poised before his lips for a fraction of an instant, but Yuuji 
wasn't sure in the poor light. 

Yuuji wasn't sure about anything, except that his head ached and he was tired. He 
pressed the heels of his hands to the burning pits that served as his eyes as he 
staggered over to the table. Came up behind Omi's chair. One hand and then the 
other fell away from his face, and landed on the wooden back. Yuuji opened his 
eyes, blinking wearily at the blue-white glow of Omi's street lamp-lit hair. 

"...Do you want to talk about it?"

***

Omi turned in his chair for the same instances that he drank, so the glass hid his 
mouth.  He sipped, left his lips moist rather than dart over them with his tongue.

The question though remained in him- what do you want me to do?

They both squinted in the passing brights of a car outside.  Someone who had 
dared stay out later than even they.  By and by, Yuuji was not a ghost, and then he 
was again- all milk himself, sweet translucent and so alone in the land of the 
living and the little sprite who called himself his own.

Omi set down his milk and lead his head on Yuuji's hand, caressing his injured 
one with the skill of a scholar who chances fragile works.

"Yuuji... I'm sorry I was so grumpy.  He didn't hurt me, not one bit."

A pause then, as he lifted his own wrist, and marveled at the lacing of the scarf 
about the bloodied slit there, whose juices had not yet seeped past.  It was as if he 
wore the thing for decoration.  

"Well, I did that to myself, squirming.  But Hajime hardly even had his hands on 
me.  You don't have to worry.  He'd just taken me back there, and we were going 
over what he wanted.  He told me lots of silly things.  The sort of thing you'd say 
to a whore.  I did look like one, huh? But I didn't think he was gonna tie me up- 
just show me the weed.  It was my fault."

A sigh, and his kissed his way across each of his lover's fingers as if seeking rings 
of office.

"But you saved me, my Knight saved me."

Then he laid down again, purring just a touch in spite of how lightheaded he had 
suddenly grown.

***

Yuuji wove the fingers of his free hand into Omi's silky hair, and petted him 
tenderly.  If the boy had chanced to look up into his face then, he would have seen 
just how little his murmurings of reassurance had affected him.  Yuuji was still 
plainly worried.  He left off his stroking, and slid that same hand
down his back and under his arm, gently urging him to his feet. "Come on.  Let's 
go into the bedroom, and I'll fix that wrist up properly."

With one last nuzzle of his knuckles, Omi did as Yuuji bid him, leaning on him 
heavily as the older man led him into their room.  He sat his lover down on the 
bed, and hastened to the bathroom for the first aid kit, and brought it back.  He 
knelt set it and himself on the bed next to Omi, and began to work in silence, and 
quickly as possible.  The stained scarf wound up on the floor, exchanged for a 
layer of ointment and a gauze pad.  Yuuji wrapped it in place with a few strips of 
gauze and tied it off.

"There.  That should take care of it."

Yuuji smiled at him, but it faded in a blink.  He couldn't think of anything to say.  
The impulse to yawn hit him unexpectedly, and he did so, afterwards getting to 
his feet to strip out of his clothes.

"Uh...I'm kind of beat," he mumbled as he dropped his shirt onto the floor.  "What 
do you say?  Want to turn in?"

***

/It's supposed to be the other way around: me patching you up./

And he would have offered to tend to the wounds of his companion, the cut his 
own play had given him, but Yuuji pulled away before, and stood, half dressed in 
the dull glow of one lamp, succoring himself.

It made Omi turn away, just a little and towards his pillows, which he had trouble 
remembering, since they hadn't been his pillows very long ago. He shook the 
mounds of fluff about, trying to remember them at some point in the future.

"Yeah, let's go to bed," With his soft remark he eased himself down on the 
mattress, still clad for the most part.  His legs were bare, feeling cold against the 
sheets.  His earrings chattered in his hearing and he only pressed himself deeper 
against the sheets to try and drown them out.

The light was quieted and some kind soul drew the covers from under him about 
his body.  And then Yuuji was with him, naked and sweaty and smelling just a 
touch like metal.  Omi had to let him know he didn't mind, and so, he gave up his 
pillows for Yuuji's shoulder- the one which had not been injured.  All those nights 
before.

No words, but he kissed him about his neck.  He felt dirty and he felt better than 
ever, feeling so gently another's living tip-taps at his side and in his lips when he 
kissed him.

"Oyasumi."

He had not even ceased speaking when his eyes closed for the last time of that 
straining, weeping night.  Behind his lashes, he found a woman in a white 
kimono, drawing gold from the water in a fountain with a chalice ringed by 
carnelian roses.  When she went back into her house, she broke into pieces, bit by 
bit, and was gone.  He did not see her change, or find any trace of her body, but 
his presence in the dream came to another room and found there, twittering in 
flight, breathing as they ate of pins, a thousand butterflies of white, all with scars 
about the edges of their wings.  There was a man there, who the woman had 
belonged to, and he drew more kin of the tiny, white souls from tiny, white bowls 
from someone's dinner table.

***

Masato lay in bed, snuggled under his blanket, but he did not sleep.  He instead 
lay on his back and stared at the rolling patterns of light from the passing cars 
below, and thought about what he'd said, and how.  And for the fifteenth time in 
as many minutes, he cursed himself for a heartless bastard.  How could he have 
done that?  How could he have unleashed his temper upon a
heartbroken boy like that?  Couldn't he have just tamped down his feelings for a 
moment longer, and left him on better terms?

He fell silent suddenly, and listened to the deafening quiet beyond his door.  With 
a sigh, Masato ran a hand over his face, and flung the blankets back, revealing his 
choice of sleepwear on that hot night: the T-shirt he'd worn that day, and a pair of 
boxers. He got to his feet, stepped over the jeans he'd left on the floor, padded 
over to the door, and so quietly opened it.

Naru was still there, leaning against his door apparently sound asleep.  Masato 
stood for a moment, gazing down upon his golden head and wondering what he 
should do.  If he should wake him, leave him, or simply...

Holding the door as steady as he could, Masato got to his knees and slipped one 
arm through the wide crack in the door, wrapping it around Naru.  Then, having 
him thus braced, he eased the door open further, and moved his body between that 
of his young companion and the floor.  Naru shifted against him, sighing, and 
Masato stayed still until he had settled back down to sleep
again, and then, he slid his arm under the boy's legs and slowly hoisted him up.  
The door fell closed with a light tap of one foot, and Masato made his way back to 
the bed.

"Sleeping in the hallway...What were you thinking?" he whispered.

*** 
 
There played moments then of velveteen quiet, and the sense he had lost all of his 
slight weight, though weight it remained in the confines of the waking world.  
Such had left him to the devices of her sister and her mirror, the place where no 
one but Naru went.

He had walked somewhere where the birds were singing, despite that no trees 
were there to hold them.  The clouds had born him to lavender elsewhere and laid 
him at last beneath the gaze of two lazy moons. Hills sparkled with windows and 
the air no breath of man, only violets. 

On Antiterra, he did not start, did not mumble some unhappiness.  He simply 
came to realize there were hands upon the body he still clung to, and with them a, 
half-silkiness that smelled cigarettes.  It didn't bother him.

His eyes batted open to the swirling baubles of silvery light, and traces of the false 
dawn of city lights which chanced the hazy midnight outside Masato's room.  He 
let one of his hands steal over to the edge of the futon and brush against the floor.  
Having a more European bed at home, he was rather unaccustomed to the sense of 
being so near the ground.  But it calmed him.  

"I don't... really remember what I was thinking," he said in barely a whisper.  
Turning, he made out the silhouette of Masato crouched beside him, as if it was 
he sneaking into some companion's bed and not the other way around- he had the 
other end of the sheets drawn up over his chest, probably in contemplating 
whether or not to lie back down himself. 

He found Masato's hair in the darkness and laced his fingers in it, found that it 
was not merely long and somewhat unkempt, but very smooth otherwise, almost 
feeling wet to the touch.  Still clasping it, he sat up himself, kissed one stubbly 
cheek.

***

"I don't know why you did that," he said softly.  "All I know is...If you're thinking 
of using me as a substitute for Yuuji, I won't stand for it.  That's all I want to say."

And Masato was indeed quiet then, for he'd found something more pleasing to do 
with his mouth.  He had slipped his arms around the otherworldly creature sitting 
next to him, and expressing all the affection he'd long felt for him in a most 
passionate kiss.

***    

"I was just kissing you goodnight," Naru insisted once his lips were free. And he 
could smile, just a little to those milky grey topaz eyes so gently entreating him.  
Could he resist telling anyone with such a gaze a bedtime story? No, not Naru.  

"There's a novella, by Balzac," He began.  "It's called Seraphita, and it was one of 
the very first to go this way.  There are two people who fall in love with her, 
Seraphita.  A man who believes she is a woman, and a woman who believes she is 
a man.  But she is neither and both together, and still beloved by both.  So, before 
she dies, she sends the two of them off into each other's arms."

His hands traced then the contours of the arms which had embraced him, slid 
beneath them and held Masato just as close as he had been- no nearer and no more 
distant.  

"I always thought that was an awfully stupid thing to do."

A little air of puzzlement came down against they two.  The kisses ceased for a 
moment, and his lips alone now, he smoothed them together before he dared press 
them to Masato's brow.

"Until just now.  I would never take you for something you were not.  For you are 
neither an angel nor Yuuji not Reiichi or our poet friend, the younger of the dead 
Takatoris.  You are no one I might have been beloved of before or ever shall 
again.  Even if we did once wonder after someone the same."

And with a happy little sigh, he laid back against the mattress, folding his 
companion in his arms so his head might rest against his chest and he could finger 
his hair all he liked.    

***

With Naru's heartbeat lulling in one ear, and those graceful fingers fumbling with 
his dark, shaggy locks, Masato found he couldn't bring himself to move.  So he 
didn't even bother--except to press closer to his warm body, and to let one hand 
lightly trace the contours of his lithe, long-legged frame through his baggy 
clothes.  His lids drooped, but he did not sleep.  Masato found he was much too 
happy to do that yet--but not so happy that he wasn't in the mood to make 
confessions.  

"This afternoon, after I had come back home from the beach, I 
realized that I had settled my heart on the wrong person. The kiss we shared gave 
me the first inkling that I had made a mistake."  

Masato twisted just a little, just enough to place a kiss upon the center of Naru's 
chest before he lay still again.  "I've always cared about you, Naru, but it feels 
deeper now.  Like...love."  

Masato drew the blankets up higher, puddling the edges around Naru's shoulder.  
"I don't mean to get all sappy.  I just wanted to reassure you, I guess, even though 
you didn't ask for any such thing."

***

Naru chuckled just faintly in the rolling half-light.  "I did not ask for you to be so 
poetic either.  That simply doesn't mean I'm not fond of the fact I suddenly find 
that you are." 

And for once in his life on Earth, with a second so familiar but so formerly distant 
body curled against his own, the young assassin could think of nothing more to 
say.  For what words would be tender enough for what he felt then? Perhaps... 
Maybe even... 


Too profound to pull down time down around them, or so he, as a Terran thought.  
Then again, he had thought until that moment the deluge was over, but the 
raindrops had not even slowed; the crept all the more vivid into his mind.  

Masato was not very heavy, but he still made him feel rather that he was the one 
being held, just his presence resting soft against him.  He swept his hand which 
had lain pressed against the carpet up against his companion's cheek, and lowered 
the other onto his bare back, miming the colored path of the dragon there.  At 
first.  Until he realized he could not make it out with his fingers- the sigil of the 
man he had known so long and never really met, and so simply stroked him there, 
sighing a little himself in muted pleasure.  

***

Such a contented sound could give anyone ideas, and Naru's satiny 
little sigh worked wonders on Masato's imagination. His fingers, 
too. Masato's own found their way under the bunched up folds of the younger 
man's shirt and began to stroke the baby smooth skin above the narrow protrusion 
of one hip. 

"Me, poetic? Hm. Just shows that you've rubbed off on me more than either of us 
have realized." 

Masato chuckled quietly at that, and nuzzled him again, sensing the sensitive pad 
of one nipple beneath his cheek as he moved. He was struck with the urge to turn 
a millimeter more and nuzzle him there as well, and turn he did, and nuzzle he 
did, and felt Naru start a little at his unexpected touch. Felt Naru's thigh brush 
against the evidence of his own growing desire, and it was his turn to sigh. 

He slithered upwards along his side, rising to meet his love's amber eyes. 

"Will you tell me now just what it is that you like but makes Yuuji nervous?"

***

Naru's half-lidded gaze danced away form the ceiling and met Masato's 
somewhere halfway between their eyes.  Neither of them laughed now, the rain 
did not, nor the vitreous nothings who haunted the their room.  

He was panting a little though, and his chest tingled and felt cool where his 
companion had brushed against it.  The elder Crasher now hovered above him, 
rather how a knight might meet a faerie in the faintness of the woods.  He blushed 
now, just a touch, and turned ever so slightly away from the grey pools of 
Masato's eyes.  

"Ah... my... how do you say... my leather things of questionable usage? 
Particularly usage upon myself at the hands of others.  As if it wasn't simply 
bizarre enough I should keep a set about for others to use on me.  A rather... 
complicated set with all the trimmings of discipline one might imagine."

A droll sigh and he shook his head a bit.

"But I suppose me saying such a thing does not make up for what the sight of 
them in disarray about my bed must have been like to our immaculate friend 
Yuuji."  

***

A Naru in cuffs. A blindfolded Naru in leather cuffs and nipple 
clamps and himself stroking the inside of one of his sleek thighs 
with a riding crop. Masato felt his heart quicken in his chest, and he forced that 
image and a multitude of ones similar away with thoughts of sushi and daisies and 
all manner of mundane things. If anything were going to happen, he did not want 
to rush it, and given his current state...He was in danger of doing just that. Naru, 
in his opinion, wasn't someone one took to bed to merely fuck and forget about 
the next morning. 

Naru's eyes shone enticingly in the half-light, beneath partly 
closed lids, and his chest brushed his with every excited breath. He was slowly 
being bewitched, and he didn't care. 

Masato grazed his jaw with his knuckles, catching under his chin. He coaxed him 
to turn and meet his gaze. 

"If that's the reason why he abandoned you, then you're better off without him. 
You wouldn't have been happy, and neither would he." 

He bent to kiss him then, the hand at his hip moving away to snag the hem of his 
t-shirt and tug it upwards. Masato let it drop again over the edges of his ribcage 
just as he pulled away to admire his companion. Fingers drifting lazily over the 
slope of his stomach. 

"As for me," he murmured, "I don't have either leather cuffs or any of the 
trappings you implied, but...I do have the means to tie you up, if that's what you 
like. If that's what you want." 

"Is that what you want, Naru?"

***

The younger Crasher giggled beneath Masato's feather light touches, his eyes 
falling closed of their own accord.  He did his best to make it seem as if the way 
his knees so cutely clacked together was just the same sort of embarrassed little 
reflex, even though he had done that much on purpose.  

"Well, it is but I... I don't much fancy the idea of you getting out of bed after 
anything to tie me up with at the moment, please understand."

It made him start to go a little warmer than he was used to, lying there with the 
elder Crasher's touches playing over him in such a nimble and yet so cautious 
way.  His companion, through his worn fingers seemed to sense this, some small 
worry, and caressed him then much more slowly, the patterns he left upon his skin 
growing all the more ornate.  

Naru, still feeling every hint of their designs, pulled himself up to lean on his 
elbows a moment. "So, I'm going to be a bit more of a brat than usual and ask you 
to stay with me.  Just like this." With a grin he took the elder man's right hand and 
drew it from his body, holding it as he might have something fragile and wishing 
to flee, "In this sort of light. I..." Not sure why he was faltering, coming to 
mumbles himself now, he pulled sat up cradling his lover's palm against his ribs.

"I think I would like if you would do whatever you were planning to otherwise.  
Even if I do seem a little uneasy."

Through the blue between them, he offered Masato the very best stiff upper lip he 
could manage.

/Oh bloody 'ell.../

For the idea that they were rather lovers at the moment had finally surfaced in his 
mind, made him giddy and shivery at the same time.

***

Masato had felt him tremble beneath his trapped hand, and he sat up as well. His 
free hand instantly went to Naru's hair and began 
petting it. "Then if that's what you want, I'll give it to you, 
because I want to please you," he replied quietly. "I don't want 
to leave the bed either. It's much too warm and comfortable here." 

He leaned in to kiss him at the temple, again on the cheek, and added in a 
whisper, "Getting to know each other a bit better was exactly what I had in mind." 

His fingers moved beneath Naru's restraining palms, grazing his ribs, and Masato 
kissed him again. Tender little nibbles and licks upon his lips. He could feel a bit 
of the tension slip away from the youth's body, and Naru's hands finally left his 
own, but he didn't cease in his attentions. Merely shifted more to lap at his jaw, 
nibble at his throat, in between kisses. 

When the younger man moved closer to him, however, he moved his 
wandering hand from the curve of his ribs, and let it drift slowly upwards. Stroked 
his velvety skin as he went, small, tickling caresses of his fingertips. 

"Ask me anything you wish."

***

If the caresses had not begun to quell the nervous sentiments of his tripping heart, 
the pretty candy offer of all the questions he could have ever desired to ask most 
certainly did.  Still shivering a little with his giddy wondering did Naru consent 
once more to be held, to be fumbled, to be powerful and powerless with his cheek 
against Masato's collar bone.

With some faint absence did he find he felt awfully tiny beside his companion.

But in a nice sort of way.

"Well..." one of his fingers rather strayed up over his chest in darting curlicues, 
running circles about his neck and which caught on his hair.

"Ah, sorry..."

"Anyway..." And instead of pulling on his mane, Naru ran his knuckles over 
Masato's whiskers.  "Just what made you decide you ought to keep your stubble 
just like this?"

He would have sucked his own lip as testament to his childishness, but Masato's 
lips were just as available.  And nibbled back at his.  

"Because I'm quite honestly rather partial to it, and I shouldn't like it at all if you 
were to shave it off."

With a pinch of his scratchy cheek, the younger Crasher sank back into his lover's 
arms then, and waited most patiently for his answer.

***  

It was like he'd just managed to calm a frightened songbird, and had enticed it to 
perch upon his shoulder, having Naru curled up against him. He nuzzled the top 
of his head, smiling to himself as he lay his hand upon the center of Naru's chest.  
Beneath it, he could feel the quieting beat of his heart. His jaw still tingled from 
Naru's caress. 

"I don't know. I've always worn it like this. When I was younger, 
pre-Crasher, I thought it made me look tougher. And so..." Masato 
shrugged. 

"Besides," he added, amusement carrying over into his voice, "look who I work 
with? A pretty man with a boyish smile who can charm people without much 
effort; a man who grew up well off; and 
yourself." His hand wandered from his hair to graze his cheek 
affectionately. "One of us has to fit the stereotype of an assassin, don't you think?"

***

Naru nodded and once more ran his fingers over Masato's cheeks.  "I think that's a 
very cute, ironic thing indeed!"

At which, though it made his companion look ever so vexed, he felt compelled to 
make a terrific fuss.

"Well, I only said that because you aren't much like an assassin.  At least I would 
beg your leave to think so of you.  Maybe you do sleep in your clothing for the 
most part, and maybe you do rue little darkling things.  But ordinary people all 
have things they regret, and sometimes they sleep in their clothing? Don't you 
think so?"

A little sigh, and he sank down just a little deeper, just a little closer; thought 
about how nice and musky the darkness smelled near Masato.  "But you aren't 
TOO *hopelessly* jaded, and you haven't gone *frightfully* old before your time.  
You don't love only plants and sleep with only passing dive-bar ladies who forget 
your name after three minutes.  You don't have a death wish and you..."

Naru started then and rather roughly cast his arms about his shoulders.  "Please 
tell me you haven't one of those, and that you shan't be too long angry with me for 
asking after it if you do.  I am only so selfish as to wish this would not be our only 
night together in this bed.  Or elsewhere or..."

He cut himself off then, and merely rested in the just barely familiar safety he had 
found there in the arms which had not yet let him go.  

***

But then, Masato was content to sit there with Naru in his arms, to breathe in the 
milk-clean smell of him. His eyes gleamed like 
mirrors in the sullen half-light. 

"As much as I, as you say, sleep in my clothing, and fret over the many grim sides 
to my life, I don't have a death wish. Life has its richer moments, and I'm not 
ready to give up on it just yet. I don't think I will be for a long time." 
 
"And I don't intend for this to be the last night we'll spend together in this bed, or 
anywhere else. So...please, don't worry." 

Masato's hand wandered over Naru's hair, down his back, and then he partially 
withdrew from him. His fingers lingered upon the small of the boy's back, upon 
one thigh as Masato stretched out on the bed beside him. They held their 
positions, regarding each other in the quiet gloom, and then Masato patted his 
shoulder. 

"Come on, kid and lay down. Just to rest. I won't touch you apart 
from holding you unless you tell me otherwise."

***

"Though you are welcome to if it would please you, Masato- there is no need to 
ask me twice."

Naru yawned a touch and mopped at his drooping lashes with his knuckles before 
casting himself down upon the covers in a little curl of warmth and baggy 
clothing.  A curl which rested against Masato's side before throwing one of it's 
legs over his own and lacing them together.

And he lapped at his neck there where it was closest to his curious tongue.  "Why 
even your after shave is delicious.  Mai mai!"

Shooed away by a teasing paw, he made rather a pillow if his companion's 
shoulder, which he fluffed as if it were rather feathers.  

"I'm glad.  Simply glad and nothing more.  Without reason and without pain.  
Forgive me if I get used to sleeping here, for I think I shall rest rather well about 
thee, and may be spoiled.  Assuming I am not already."

His fingers here swept over Masato's stomach, dipping into his navel before 
skating just a touch lower.  

"And I should like for you to rest as well as I do, which you shan't with this."

At which his hand came to cup the elder Crasher's stiffness through his boxers.

"Now now, it is only so you might relax.  Don't think about me, me here, if you 
can."  A little tweak.  "Just be glad.  It simply isn't as empty as it sounds."

***  

Masato lay still, though, eyelids heavy, breath catching 
softly on its way into his lungs every time his younger lover toyed with him.  He 
would have laughed if he wasn't more inclined to moan.  

"I'll..."

Naru's fingers skated along his erection.  

"...be all right.  I just...Ahh..."  

Those same fingers breached the thin cotton flap that concealed him, and grazed 
his sex.  Masato's hands flexed against the fabric upon which they rested--both 
bed sheet and t-shirt.  He dragged his eyes fully open and found Naru watching 
him intently.  

He pulled him those few inches forward and bestowed a devouring kiss upon his 
lips.  

"I'm your toy, Naru.  Do with me what you will."  

***

"Oh..." And the youngest Crasher, there in the darkness, half fainted and so slow 
against his new lover, felt himself blush- just grow warm on the inside.  It rained 
still, and even without the teardrops and the darkening lull, no one could have 
made out his pinking cheeks, for he hid them in the folds of the sheets so turned 
up around them.

"Am I really to be trusted so? Would you say that if they asked you before 
whatever gods there are?" And as the inside of his lips ran ripples over his neck 
and his pulse as he rose with his lover's desire, "Have you said it at all, or have I 
been dreaming still of home like little boys will do?"

Masato nodded, Naru knew not which supposition for, and he cared not, for the 
nod was only the thick smooth, mane flitting over his face.  And it felt so nice... a 
mirthful little noise of his own and he buried his face in it for a moment, 
snuggling and kneading his fingers into his stiffness.

No more words again that evening.  Naru held his fingers to his lips, kissing them 
all over with his tongue.  Made them wet as he could and slid them, just so, 
around Masato's sex.  Had him that way- dewy and dainty and slow enough to last 
through millions of raindrops.

***

All day, no one had asked just how all three of them had ended up in Megaera's 
apartment.  Not even Megaera.  Who frankly didn't remember herself.

Mitsuki sat now, perched atop her windowsill like some sprightly thing rather 
than the very tangible woman who had been violently ill through most of the 
morning, and in the manner of someone who was used to being violently ill no 
less.  None of them were any worse for the wear of her griping, and neither was 
the bathroom floor.  

She had her fist crammed in her mouth at the moment so to keep from laughing 
while their acquaintance made use of the phone and the fax.  

None of them had gotten dressed- just showered, cast on whatever filmy things 
could be found sometime about noon and pretended they were renting a hotel 
such as Gatsby might have liked. Megaera's dwelling seemed a slice of rushing, 
impersonal New York style rather than anything close to Japan.  The photo 
albums they had taken Youji's picture from had spent years in a trundle under her 
white piping bedframe. The insubstantial robes she and her female guest had 
plucked up looked like they had never been worn- the faux feathers and the lace 
were crisp.  No one pointed out the yukata Hiro draped himself in had been that of 
the very man he was now making calls about.

Mitsuki opened the window so she could flick her ash outside onto the street 
while she smoked.

Megaera smiled upon their companion, and he smiled back, just a touch.  It made 
her feel better.  But just as he finished, the bikeress claimed his attention with a 
deep and grinding laugh.

"So you're REALLY gonna wear this for us?" at which she pointed to the tiny 
tape recorder that had turned up beside the photo album. 

"For you ladies only."

"Ah, domo arigatou, Hiro-san!" Their hostess began.  "I am sorry I am too faint of 
heart to go along."

He shrugged and came quite close to her, close to Mitsuki as well, who crowed 
again and slid off the sill, her robe flapping open, leaving only the translucent 
shift to guard the shadows of her nipples and what lay below her waist.  "Egh, 
wouldn't go down too well if either of us went.  Quit worryin' about it! Especially 
since we CAN still make it interesting an' all."

Megaera blushed beneath the arm that crossed her shoulder.  The less forward of 
her guests looked hopelessly intrigued.  

"Sure thing! We'll have... a drinking game! Now lets see!" A scratch of her chin.  
"For every time he moans like it hurts, one of us will kiss you!"

Hiro, though he did not seem to have been expecting such an offer, smirked from 
ear to ear.

Megaera on the other hand, went somewhat more crimson.

"And every time he tells you to stop, we'll kiss each other for you to watch!"

"Now wait a minute!" Their host insisted.

"Do you mind?" Asked with a lick of her naked lips that only deepened the other's 
flush.  

"Well I..."

"Great! Now every time he yells for help, you can cop a feel!"

"'suuuuuuuuuuuuuuki!"

"No... back that up! If he says please, or anything like that, you can tell one of us 
to take of any piece of clothing you want! We'll do that before you cop the feels!"

"I don't know if this is such a..."

"If he calls for any of the guys back at the shop, or his parents... in that case, one 
of us will cop feels on you.  Or both!"

"... good idea.  Especially that last part about..."

A silencing hand descended here, found the cheeks it covered hot with blushes.  
"The coup de gracie! If you can make Youji cry, you get to watch us go down on 
each other!"

That was too much.  Their host leapt from her chair and scuttled away, crying,

"MITSUKI! KYA! ONEGAISHIMASU! DON'T SAY SUCH A THING!"  

"Aw c'mon, Megs! Whatcha worried about? You ever seen Kuudou cry?"

Silence then, for they all knew she had a point.  And that impossibility was the 
very best incentive to do anything, seek anything, live in Tokyo, even when it 
looked like New York.  

***

When Masato awoke, it was near noon, and it was still--a sluggish, weeping 
drizzle. Fat drops splattered upon his wind-rattled window screens. The room was 
drowning in the reflected, yellow-grey glare of the stormy sky outside. He had to 
blink his drowsy eyes once or twice to relieve them of the sudden stinging the 
strange glow caused them. 

Otherwise, though, he didn't move. He didn't want to, and wouldn't for all of 
Kritiker's money, for he was still clearly not alone. The fact that he was not 
surprised him, both for the fact that Naru had opted to stay the night, and that he 
himself didn't mind. That he wanted him there at all. 

And he did. 

They, in the course of the night's slumber had wound up snuggled like spoons, 
Naru's back against Masato's chest, his head on the edge of his pillow. Arms and 
legs a tangle. His hair had fallen away from the nape of his neck and his collar. 
Masato grazed it with his lips; thought he smelled of apples, oddly enough. 

Desire took root in him again, being so pressed against that young, lovely man, 
but Masato ignored it. Simply savored the feel of his budding erection against 
Naru's clothed thigh instead, there in the half-asleep state he was still in. Again, 
there would be time for that as well. When Naru wanted it. He wasn't going to 
rush him, and frankly...something told him he didn't have to worry. Naru could 
wander away, and would, but Masato knew he'd be back. 

And he would be there when he did return. 

The arm he'd slung across him in the night, he tightened up just a little, and 
Masato rose just enough to easily reach the peach satin curve of Naru's cheek with 
his kiss.

***

Naru offered his companion a sleepy giggle when his lips came up against the 
curve of his neck, and his hair fell down over the place where the swooping neck 
of the t-shirt had bared his chest.

The elder man started of course, not having come to know yet that his boy was 
wide awake, and had been so for many watery minutes where he would not leave 
his burrow in the mattress, the one patch of rutilated semi-sunlight he had made 
his own. 

Masato's stiffness did feel rather nice, so close up against him.  Although he 
decided to pretend he hadn't noticed.  Too drowsy a morning for sex.  Too bright.  
Too early or too late.  Either way... he wasn't sure of the EXACT ins and outs of 
it.

But the lips only nuzzled him, crept along just below his ear and made him laugh 
once more.  

He did however, shift about until he found he could return the embrace which had 
lavished him all night.

And said to Masato the one thing he had really hoped he COULD say- "You 
stayed.  You stayed with me allllllll night."

***

"Hmmm...Yes, it appears that I have," Masato replied, smoothing 
Naru's hair back from his face. "It also appears that I am not apt  to move just 
now. I think I could possibly stay right here, and it's  all your fault." 

His hand wandered under Naru's t-shirt and scrambled up his side, 
tickling gently. He swooped down to swallow his giggles with a 
kiss.

***

Which only made Naru giggle all the more.  He lavished in the trickles of his 
lover's tongue, still as could be, perhaps fearing he would frighten him away in 
the end should he move too much, breathe too hard.

The elder man had to pull away and coax him to take a sip of air, which he did, 
only after losing his fingers in Masato's hair, while his lover twined his fingers all 
around his back.

/And you did stay, I just know it./

So much for one night stands.  He didn't know how he was ever to go back to 
them, after knowing two nights, just as things were.  Like this, and no other way.

"Is that so? Are you going to spend your whole bloody day with your hair in 
shambles doing nothing but tickling me?"

A nod.

/I've never known you to.../

A quick nuzzle of the elder Crasher's neck to hid his eyes, and his knitted brows.

/Lie./

For it occurred to him then, that somewhere between waking and dreaming, he 
had done so himself sometime before the dawn. 

"Good."

Then, naturally, the phone rang.

***  

Masato's fingers stilled upon Naru's back, and he hissed a 
exasperated "Damn!" against his temple. A quick kiss upon his lips,  and the older 
Crasher abandoned his young lover to the empty embrace of sheets and blankets 
for the lesser charms of the telephone across the room. 

"Yeah?" he grumbled, furiously scratching his head. "Oh, it's you. No, I haven't 
just gotten up."

He rolled his eyes at Naru. 

"Yes, I'm sure. No...Look, what do you want?"

"I...No, no," he continued, shaking his head and turning away from the bed. 
"Yeah, I know." 

"Well, are you sure...?" Masato nodded, and raked a hand through his hair. "Yeah, 
okay, I understand." 

And then..."Never mind. I'll see you in a while." 

Masato rang off, and when he turned around, he fixed Naru with a look most 
pained. Quite shamefaced, as well. 

"I guess I won't be able to lounge around in bed with you today after all, Naru."

***

Naru did then the most utterly Naru-ful thing he could think of to do- say, the first 
thing that came into his mind, what with his being Naru presently, albeit a Naru in 
love with love returning (wow, such a rare, collectors item that! Going for almost 
triple its original asking price on Ebay these days!) who had just been a Naru 
asleep.

He pouted like a miffed schoolgirl and launched into a rant.

"BAH! Leave it to Reiichi to simply wake up one afternoon and say to his 
hopelessly idiosyncratic self, 'Oh, REIIIII-CHAN! Let's do something today not 
to make the world a better place, but to turn our comrades lives just a little more 
irritating, because, you know, this business that we're in...' oh, it does irk me to no 
end he calls it that, another euphemism I could take but that one, anyway... 'trying 
to make the world a better place? Well, I'm just horribly, horribly bored with it,'." 

The youngest member of the aforementioned group, who had taken the time to get 
to his feet in the midst of his speech, pulled a fake swoon onto the blankets and 
covered his eyes with his wrist.  His shirt rode up as he did so, leaving most of his 
torso bare upon the mussed covers.

"It may be Cinderella that he plays with Abbess, late, late into the night, with the 
singing and the traipsing about in mounds of chiffon, but I swear, in the real 
world he so seldom chooses to visit, he is the evil stepmother and we all his be-
ash-ed girls!"

A yawn, and he jangled to his feet, scrubbing the curls back into his hair with his 
fingers. "At least when it comes to bumping people off, perfectly charming 
lunatic otherwise.  I shall go with you even if he has not asked for me? It is the 
very least I can do."

With which, Naru pecked Masato upon his cheek, skipped into the kitchen, put on 
a pot of tea, ran some water over the dishes but didn't actually wash them 
properly, stole a cookie out of one of the otherwise bare cabinets and returned to 
the bedroom to find his lover looking quite stunned and foolish.

So as he gulped down the last of the crumbs of lemon bar, "Please tell me that 
was Reiichi."

*** 

Masato laced his fingers together and hooked them across his neck.  Upon the end 
of a heavy sigh he replied, "I wish I could. But I can't." 

His hands broke free and swung down to his sides again as if he were very, very 
weary. He gave his lover that sort of beaten look. "It wasn't Reiichi, it was..." 
Masato paused, biting his lip in indecision, before walking over to Naru and 
guiding him down upon the futon. He sat down next to him. 

"I've never told anyone this--not even anyone in Kritiker. But...I know I ought to 
tell you." He took a deep breath and let it out again. "I was married once." 

Masato paused again, letting that bit of knowledge soak in some 
before continuing. 

"We were kids--18 and 19. It was a mistake and it was over years ago--the 
marriage only lasted a few months. I don't hate her, or she me, I suppose--but we 
weren't meant to be together. Under other circumstances, when we split, we 
would have gone our separate ways and that would have been that. But, as it was, 
we couldn't.

"Naru, I have a kid. And she's the reason why I can't hang around 
the apartment with you this afternoon."

***

Naru gaped.  His mouth hung open.  He could not blink.  But he thought he 
should go about saying something.  Anything, and so he closed his lips, 
swallowed, got all ready to speak... and found he could be nothing but stunned, so 
once more he stared.  This went on long enough for it to seem he was attempting 
an impersonation of a goldfish from one of the more famous gardens which 
remained as courtly traditions about Japan.

But just what had so taken him by surprise? Not even that he could not find words 
from his glittering menagerie, not that his lover's apartment had failed to fade 
away into his own as the booze filtered out of his veins.  But rather...

"And you've decided you would bear your heart of hearts before *ME*? Me of all 
people? Don't you know I could be furious with you right now and just go 
storming out that door in a fit of rage over the fact I had my hands the same place 
as a woman and with much the same... ah... risque, intent? Don't you know I 
could lecture you on just how imprudent it is for an assassin to maintain a family 
which he juggles between one bullet in the next? Or what about the fact I'm a 
tremendous baka and I'm liable to let this slip at the most inopportune moment of 
all?"

Quiet then and the rain walked on around then.

"You know what, you're an even bigger baka if you trust me enough to tell me 
such a thing."

And just like that, he had climbed onto Masato's lap and laced his arms around his 
neck while he giggled against one of his ears and nuzzled them.  "And I'm just 
flattered to tears you're my great, big baka!"

Which was followed by a great, big, smacking, wet kiss.

"Has your daughter got a name so I might send my love properly?"

***

Masato wrapped his arms around Naru to hold him in place lest he 
decide to make good on his threat to leave. Chanced a pat of his 
hip. "First of all--yes, my daughter has a name. It's Chinatsu. 
Secondly, no woman has ever had her hands where you did last night.  Not even 
my ex-wife. We weren't that...ah, physical. We weren't even in love with each 
other."

Masato mimicked Naru's raised brow. "You heard me. We weren't in 
love with each other--we were in love with the same person. A man 
who was once a close friend of mine. I didn't know how I really felt about him 
until he was dead, and then..."

He shrugged. "It was all out of mourning that we got together. All out of 
mourning that we..." Masato waved his hand towards the bed. 

"And so I have an eight year old. I didn't know Naoko was pregnant until after we 
had separated, and when I did find out...Well, I couldn't let her bear the 
responsibility alone. I've tried to help her as much as I possibly could." 

Masato jiggled Naru upon his knees, then pivoted around and flopped his lover 
upon the bed, throwing a leg across his to keep him there.  Flashed him a grin. 

"As for you scattering that bit of news to the four winds or pouring it into the ears 
of the Kritiker brass...I don't care. My daughter isn't their business anyway." 

Masato lunged for him, and peppered his neck and cheeks with kisses, ending 
with one upon Naru's lips. Rose up to stare down at him as if he'd just been struck 
with an idea. 

"But...Why do you have to *send* Chinatsu your love? Why don't you come with 
me and give it to her in person?"

***

Naru offered his lover a most childishly incredulous look at first, drawing his 
kiss-damp visage away and tipping himself about all wrong so he could stare up at 
Masato as upside down as he liked.

He had to move fast then, or it would all be lost, his plot.  One of his arms caught 
about the elder man's neck, and he captured his leg with both of his own.  Then it 
was just a swing of his whole gangly body and he had the vexed Crasher under 
him so he could sit on his stomach.  Which he did, and with great impunity.  
Grinned and stooped to the lips that were just about to curse
so he could tease them with a lapping of his own.  

"Can I?" It came out in the voice of a second-grader told he may stay up to watch 
his favorite show, which the evil network executives have moved to a time slot 
not suitable for little children who need their beauty sleep.

Naru coughed to drown out the memory of his grammatical faux pas.  "Ah... May 
I, rather? Wouldn't you know I think that would be the most fun in the whole wide 
world? I, with all the honesty of a heroine in a Victorian novel, can not think of a 
single thing that would charm me more, not even if you conjured crystals from the 
tips of your fingers... although that would be pretty smashing and all if you were 
planning on doing it! Has your offspring the same astounding power if you do?"

A little bounce, and a little "ooooof!" on Masato's part.

"Oh, don't worry, I don't plan on having lemon bars for breakfast every morning!"

He rolled down then, splatting on the mattress with a cross between a yawn and a 
sigh.  "Although, unless the dear thing is having a slumber party, I think perhaps I 
should stop somewhere and fetch myself something to wear.  It shan't look too 
well at all if I show up in your pajamas.  But then again, I don't think it would 
look good either, if I appeared in what I usually wear... ah well, perhaps we might 
find a happy medium as it were."

And he had bounded off then, diving straight for his boots, which he started to 
pull on the moment he had them in his hot, little hands.

He wondered if Masato remembered what he had forgotten- mostly the last time 
he had been with any people close to a family.  For that moment had slipped his 
mind many rainy days before, and it still saddened him sometimes, that he could 
stand beneath the clouds, looking for his brothers and his many parents, and never 
would they come again to land on the outstretched palms of his
consciousness.

*** 

Masato slowly got to his feet, vigorously rubbing his stomach where Naru had sat 
upon him. He made straight off for his cigarettes, pulling one out and lighting it 
and tossing the pack onto the bed before he made his way down the hall after his 
lover. Naru was now wearing both boots, and was streaking off to the kitchen to 
gather up his now-dry white outfit. Masato paused at the entrance to the hall, 
listening to Naru hum as he went through the process of folding up his belongings 
into a neat bundle. 

And he grinned around the tip of his cigarette. No, he hadn't 
forgotten what Naru had told him. He reckoned that was why he was so happy 
now--and why he probably was somewhat sad. He also reckoned that Chinatsu 
had just found herself a new playmate. 

Said playmate in question appeared in the kitchen doorway, clothing tucked under 
one arm. Staring at him expectantly.

"You want me to take you home?" Masato asked, breathing smoke like a dragon.

Naru's brow creased in a frown. 

"You want me to wait for you here while you go fix up?" 

Still the same frown.

"You want me to pick you up when we're both ready? We do have over an hour 
before we have to go meet her." 

Naru slumped against the doorframe, worrying his lower lip as he 
pondered his choices. Masato only laughed. 

"You think about it then, utsukushii kareshi e, and I'll go take a quick shower and 
change into something more presentable." 

***

Naru did think about it.  At first.  And while he slapped his cheeks to get the 
phantom pink to leave them, and endeavor he finally realized was rather hopeless, 
only to make himself blush harder at his own foolishness.

"Such is my life!" He said to the grey mist paint on the ceiling.

But presently, his life was demanding he make himself lovely, an activity which 
he never, ever passed up.  In such a spirit did he figure how long it might take him 
to dash home through the puddles, beg off saluting the usual shopkeepers who he 
swore were taking bets on the outlandishness of his garb, find something to 
disappoint whoever had the most money in the category of the most outrageous, 
do anything with his hair and appear at the downstairs doors to his complex.

He tested his boots and came to the conclusion he could, if he left the umbrella 
behind, pull it off in half an hour tops.

Naru clattered back to the bathroom, tossed open the door and announced to 
Masato, who was just revealing how his ass looked beneath his boxers, "Ah, my 
cavalier!" Enunciated in the French fashion, "I fear I must start back to my flat at 
once or I shall never come up with a thing suitable for visits.  Mightest thou come 
to fetch me once you have finished? I shall be waiting with bells on."

*SLAM*

Some footsteps, receding and then returning. 

"Please don't think I meant that literally."

A kiss and he tore out the door, minding not to slam it, but not to pull up his pants 
as he ran.  After all, the rain had enough of a time dragging them towards his toes 
that it seemed silly to fix them straight off.

*** 

Masato was as good as his word--in less than a half an hour he was dressed and 
ready to go.  Dressed, meaning in his one good suit--a dark blue one, with a pale 
blue shirt beneath it.  Had debated on the earring, but in the end he left it in; he 
looked like a rough, unsavory character with or without it.  Masato figured the 
other parents already had him pegged as such.  He just hoped Chinatsu wouldn't 
suffer because of him.  He feared that most of all.  He had said as much to Naoko, 
and more than once, but why she persisted...He reckoned he never would be able 
to figure that out.  

It had taken him little time to get to Naru's apartment, despite the drizzle that had 
continued to plague Tokyo that afternoon.  He paused long enough to stash the 
two bow-and-paper wrapped boxes he'd brought along in the trunk (and taking a 
look around to see if anyone was watching him) before leaving the car for the 
front door of Naru's apartment building.  As he entered the lobby, he realized that 
he'd never been invited there before by daylight.  He also suspected just why he 
hadn't.  

The ceiling was leaking, dripping water into various buckets that 
stood scattered over the worn, rust colored carpet, and the air 
smelled oddly of cooked cabbage.  He noticed on his way up the stairs that the 
paint was peeling here and there on the walls, the apartment doors, and once more 
he cursed Kritiker's stinginess.  But he didn't intend to let any of his dismay show, 
didn't want to spoil things for Naru.  

His Naru.  

A smile played at the corners of his lips as he knocked on his love's green front 
door. 

***

A crash, a few meows, some intrepid squeaking, a thump, a jingle and Naru 
finally opened his door.  Though he stood between his lover and whatever view of 
his flat that lover might have gleaned, out of his chambers still rushed a pair of 
white and black mice, followed by a beer bottle, several wads of
writing paper, some cats, and a still rather be-tuna'ed tuna can.  

"Ah, the natives were restless, I was obliged to feed them before they expressed 
any willingness to re-negotiate the terms of sparing my new curtains." Which 
were in fact, rather old curtains, sun faded from guarding a more elaborate 
bedroom than his own (which he had thought to lock this time, lest Masato 
request entrance for a moment or crane his head just the right
way.)  

One of the cats stopped chasing the mouse and dove for the beer bottle instead, 
sniffing at the wet lips and batting it under the space between the railing and the 
floor.  Naru sighed, and was thankful the thing rolled over the side and smashed 
on the pavement.  That way, no one might see it had been recent opened.  The cat 
gave up and started to wash herself.  "None of them are mine, you understand.  
They simply abide here when it suits them, which happens, most recently, to be 
when I'm home."

A pause.  He looked the elder man over- admired him even, for never had he seen 
one of his companion's dressed so strikingly well on a day not pertaining to 
potential (albeit minuscule) raises.

"Ah, well, do you find me suitable for the eyes of your darling? I simply don't 
mind popping back inside to change if this doesn't suit.  

For the afternoon, Naru had changed to a pair of black ankle boots with heels of 
height level with the toes and left his white ones from the night before napping on 
the fuzz balls of his couch like a pair of vinyl storks.  He wore black pants as well 
that were just slightly too long for him, and probably hanging down 
unfashionably low, though the fact he had left his short-sleeved
dress shirt untucked made whether they did or not into somewhat of a mystery.  
He had put on a tie with it- a tie printed with a piece of Monet's famous water 
lilies, and tied something very short of right.  It wasn't even exactly  hanging 
down the center of his chest.  His earrings matched each other (they
were ladies' teardrop, synthetic pearls) but not his bracelets, which were of huge, 
faceted, clear plastic beads of pink and blue and lavender.

He had washed his hair, and dried it too fast, so none of the curls had anything but 
wild order to them.

Not to mention that he had sprayed them in place just so.

***       

Masato had to work to keep a straight face, not to chuckle or look horrified. He 
didn't want to hurt Naru's feelings.  So, Masato simply reached for the earrings, 
and very gently said as he carefully removed them from Naru's lobes. "I think 
these, as lovely as they are, are probably too outlandish for a school play." He 
placed them into Naru's hand, and began to undo his tie. 

"Now this is not too outlandish. But it isn't tied right." He 
tugged it until one end was slightly longer than the other, and then went through 
the pace of re-tying it--properly, and so it hung directly over the placket of his 
shirt. He ran his hand down it, smoothing it with sly little smirk. 

"And now...about these trousers..." Masato cupped his hands about 
his waist, sliding them down over Naru's shirt tales until his 
fingers found his trousers' waistband. He pinched it through the 
shirt and found they were slack enough to wiggle over his hips. "A  belt would 
solve that. Everything else, the hair, the bracelets, look just fine." 

Masato slid his hands around to the small of Naru's back, and pulled him forward 
into his arms for a kiss. 

"I do hope you like fairy tales."

***

Naru nodded, his hair brushing rather stiffly over Masato's face.  "As long as they 
aren't Cinderella, for I'm sure you're rather tired of that one yourself, I do ever so 
fancy faerie stories, even the kind that have all the naughty bits taken out.  
Especially when I'm living them, with or without the naughty bits."

The gleaned the elder Crasher a wink, and the boy held up a finger, asking a 
pause.  "And If you give me a moment, I think I've a belt that isn't made of chains.  
Do let me look."

He ducked back inside then, closing the door and pausing behind it a second, 
listening for any supposedly unheard remark, as it was a rather strange thing to 
do.  Finding none, he hurried to his dresser and came back all of five minutes 
later, a thin leather loop in his hand, and all his other belts strewn about the 
unsuspecting floor.

It didn't surprise him when the first thing his lover did was to yank up his shirt 
and thread him up properly at once, taking his time though, especially when his 
fingers came to brush against Naru's stomach.

"Ah, what a charmer you are, my Masato.  What a charmer indeed."

Their eyes met, and then their lips, and their tongues.  All before the unsuspecting 
older man ended up in the younger's grasp and found himself taken down the wet 
steps as fast as they could go without falling.

"You know," he began about halfway down, "I have never worn a properly tied tie 
in all my life! And I never expected I ever would.  Nor did I ever expect to 
awaken in your arms, or be traipsing off to the realms of children in these hours.  
But I find I am quite fond of ties- it is like wearing both a tail and
a collar, which is surprisingly delightful, and more fond of surprises than ever."

He almost jumped through the window, so anxious was he to find one more that 
morning.  

"Off we go!"

And off they went, kicking up spray like a murder of naiads out among the waves, 
and he remembered the day before as if it was rather eternities away.

Like so many other things.

And then it hit him.

"Ah... Masato?" whispered, or spoken at a volume that was like whispering over 
the Queen tape.  "Whatever am I to tell Naoko and Chinatsu if they ask where I 
am from?"

***

A spin of the knob and the volume lowered to a (barely) decent level for 
conversation. Masato tapped his fingers on the rim of the steering wheel in time to 
the song. "Make up something--Naoko's from Tokyo, and hasn't lived anywhere 
else, so it should be easy enough to fool her." 

He cut off a carload full of businessmen at the light, causing them to miss the 
yellow light. A round of horns behind him celebrated his skirting of the red. 
Masato didn't so much as spare them a glance, his hand wandering from the stick 
shift to Naru's thigh to pat it affectionately. "Oi, Naru, don't worry about it. Naoko 
doesn't give a fig who I associate with, so long as she deems him appropriate to be 
around Chinatsu--and I don't think she'll see you as an unsavory influence. I can't 
think of anyone seeing you in that light." 

Without looking away from the road, he grazed Naru's jaw with his 
protruding knuckles. "And Chinatsu's going to love you, I think."

A sidelong grin, and Masato spun the car around another corner, down another 
street which was lined on one side by a seven foot high brick wall, broken only by 
two narrow columns and a deeply curving black wrought iron gate. Through that 
yawning mouth did Masato drive, and down the circular lot that arched around the 
front of Yousei Academy and away to some car-crammed side lot. Other parents 
and their children had congregated there, some in costume. 

Masato skirted past that crowd prior to searching for a space, 
shifting his eyes back and forth between the clump of playgoers and actors and 
the path of his car. Smiled suddenly and proudly, but said nothing, not even after 
he'd finally found a space to park.  Instead he jerked the keys out of the ignition as 
soon as he'd had the car in park, and practically bounded out of it. 

But, as Naru found upon making his exit, their arrival wasn't to be an unobtrusive 
one, for one of the actors had noticed the car and had recognized it, and had run 
after it in her excitement: A little girl with a long braid of thick, glossy black hair, 
who was dressed in the green of summer leaves from the tips of her pointed suede 
ankle boots to the red-feathered, slouchy felt cap she held in one hand. A plastic 
dagger hung from her waist in a brown sheath. 

"'Tou-san! You came!" 

***

Naru actually hung back for a moment, sandwiched between the car and the car 
door, looking out over the raindrops on the roof.  The downpour had finally 
subsided, but the clouds had not.  It made it easier to see, no sun glare in his eyes 
as he peered about, or wanted to at least. They kept slipping back to one spot- that 
where Masato had run to, where kept a fairy prince played by a faerie princess in 
a most darling of jests.  He leaned over the roof, got his sleeve in a puddle and left 
his place then, coming just a little closer. 

For Naru had never been to a school, or been kept about with other children, even 
when he was himself but a child.  There were no schools on Terra, no 
playgrounds, no plays put on by little creatures who had not yet passed their tenth 
year.  Why, such beings! How rare they were! His brief stint among their ways 
had made him but a jewel among men- a rarity, a far distant work of art with 
meaning long ago lost.

And now, in the ages since, he had come to see children as such himself.  Schools 
made no sense to him save as treasuries of untamed and sibylline glories; poetry 
made form, changing verse to verse with intensity and innocence unknown even 
by the emotions of a million love poems; things beyond love poems. Really living 
things.

He laughed then, to himself.  And left his place, walking entranced through the 
rain-damp garden of all wonders too small for words, coming close enough to 
hear what Masato had to say to his daughter.   These little sweet things he vaguely 
remembered having heard once himself.

The feathers on Chinatsu's cap danced with her as she blithely skipped about, all 
in the same place, and yet elsewhere, like a little elf indeed.

And then she got a good look at him...

And he at her.

And though on wet macadam, he stooped a bit to see her eyes from as close as he 
could get, and afterwards, she craned her head about, trying him from this angle 
and from that one? Did she know him? She did not! What did she think of him 
though?

And was it any comparison to all the things so ruiningly spectacular that Naru 
thought of her?

Naru hoped not.  He was too busy thinking of snatching her up for a good glomp.  
Such became his goal for the day, to win enough trust to capture that puff of 
living energy for a hug.

***

Chinatsu was wondering who the boy with the pretty eyes was, and why was he 
hanging by her father's car? Were they friends? Was he shy? Where did he find 
such pretty bracelets?! 

She swung upon Masato's hand for a few more minutes as she 
scrutinized Naru before gazing up at her father and asking, "'Tou-san? Who is 
that?" 

Masato looked over his shoulder at Naru as if he'd forgotten he was there; 
immediately became chagrined because he had, so caught up was he in his 
daughter's unexpected appearance. Gave him a kind smile, which he transferred to 
his daughter. 

"His name is Naru."

Chinatsu gave Naru another tilted, intent look. "Is he going to the play?"

Masato chuckled. "Of course. I asked him especially to come."

"Especially, huh?" 

Masato made some murmur of assent, and Chinatsu let go of his hand in mid-
swing, stumbling backwards but catching herself before he could.  She only 
danced out of his reach when he made another playful lunge for her--danced off in 
Naru's direction. Masato turned so he could watch them, hands in pockets, and 
grinning all the while. 

When she had come within a foot of Naru, she caught a bit of the near knee-
length tunic she wore between finger and thumb, and she dropped him the best 
curtsey she could perform. Then she held out her hand to him, and offered him a 
tentative smile. "I'm Tanuma Chinatsu."

***

"Oh!" Naru said as he reached for her hand, "As I said to your dear Otosan, that is 
such a pretty, pretty name!" And he had her fingers then, not encircled by his own 
as most obliging adults might have done, but had curled up his own so it fit with 
hers as if they were near enough the same size.  

Chinatsu, for such a little girl, had quite a shake.  A downright boisterous shake 
and a smile like a pixie who knows she is the true mistress of a garden.  He 
curtsied to her, for his shirt was just long enough to permit him to do so.

"I'm very pleased to meet you, Chinatsu-san."

"But *who* are you?" The little mistress of Never land promptly inquired, 
perhaps cutting him off, in an anxious, but not rude sort of way.

"Uhyuo Naru."

She paused then, never taking her eyes from him... oh, they were not the same 
color as Masato's, but they had the same wise-owl sort of look, same almond 
shape, same tendency to cling to him places that were not his face- in Chinatsu's 
case, his glittering wrists.  Her finger fell to her lips then before drumming on her 
rosy cheeks.  "Are you a Naru-kun, or a Naru-chan?"

They both laughed, Masato laughed behind them.

"Technically, a Naru-kun.  But you can call me Naru-chan or even Naru-han if 
you want."

"How about Naru-hana?"

Sporting as ever, the youngest Crasher toddled over to the bushed which ran along 
the perimeter of the parking lot, coming back with a primrose in hand, though it 
shortly fell behind his ear.  "Oh yes! Now I think that will do nicely!" 

(OOC: I found out this morning that Naru can apparently be a girl's name as well 
^_^.  And... in case you found it odd Chinatsu asked both her father and Naru who 
Naru was, the second time she's actually inquiring as to WHAT Naru is.) 

***

Chinatsu giggled behind her hand, throwing look back at her father to see if he 
was just as amused.  And he was, much to her delight.  She started to run over to 
him, stopped, and ran back to Naru to seize one clattering arm. Tugged at it in a 
silent command that he follow.

"Where'd you find him?"

Masato gave Naru a fond smile above his daughter's head.  "I didn't find him, 
Chinatsu.  We work together."

She whipped her head around to study Naru, then looked back up at her father 
with a faint frown.  "He's not a detective."

"Why would you say that?"

"'Cause detectives don't wear colored bracelets and pretty ties and flowers behind 
their ears."  She reached up to finger the end of Naru's tie.

"Well, he does."  Masato took his daughter wandering fingers away from Naru's  
shirtfront.  "Now, take his hand properly, and let's go back to the school. It's 
almost time for you to fly away to Never land, Peter-kun."

She did as he bid her, not really minding it in the least, as the grin she gave Naru 
implied.  When they drew near to the entrance of the gymnasium, however, 
Chinatsu broke free of them both, and sprinted away towards it.  Or rather, 
towards the woman who'd been lingering in the dark mouth of the doorway, 
watching the trio approach.  She allowed her daughter to capture her hand, but 
resisted  her efforts to pull her away from the sheltered porch; she raised a hand in 
greeting.

She was dressed in a peach colored suit, and had the same glossy hair as her child, 
only it was cut in an angled bob; possessed the air of a woman who'd lost much 
and had grown wiser for it.  Chinatsu had clearly inherited her dark eyes from her 
mother, but not her smile.  That was Masato's.

When the two men reached the steps did she bow, and then hold out her free hand 
to take Masato's.  Like old friends, and not lovers.

"I didn't think you'd come--much less bring someone along."  Here, she looked 
Naru over as if she was staring at his soul.  But as she met his eyes again, her face 
broke into a reserved smile.  She looked back over at Masato, and her smile 
softened perceptibly.

"But I am glad you did."

Chinatsu began to dance about, and she ushered her through the door, bidding her 
to go straight backstage, and she'd be there shortly.  The child was off in the next 
breath.  She turned back to Masato and Naru, and to the latter said, "I'm Kourogi 
Naoko.  Thank you for coming."

***

"It is my pleasure, Memsahib," he replied, bowing as deeply to Naoko as he could 
without his tie brushing the ground.  Whatever disconcerted sense he had felt 
upon her glance fluttered away then into a touch of embarrassment.  Oh, certainly 
he had known people on Terra who LITERALLY *DID* feast their eyes upon the 
deepest reaches of his consciousness and whatever force, natural or above that, 
which had fostered it.  And he could shrug it off.  But then again, most people on 
Terra were used to peculiar forms of address, unlike Antiterrans, and here he had 
up and used one...

Which hadn't offended Naoko on the least it seemed.  

He guessed she just thought he was playing along with Chinatsu.  Which he was, 
rather.  Or she playing along with them, for she cleared her throat and shortly 
said, "Okasan, this is Uhyuo Naru.  Naru-hana, this is my Okasan."

And just to make her smile, the both bowed again, though he could not help but 
notice Kourogi-san's eyes straying once more to her former husband, or the way 
Masato was shaking his head with a grin.  As for Naru himself, he pointed to the 
flower for her, and she seemed to understand.  To mother and daughter he then 
remarked.  "I've not been to a play in AGES."  He really hadn't. "And when 
Masato gave me the playbill for this one, and his reviews regarding the talent of 
the lead, I simply couldn't refuse."  


He paused then, and wondered why he hadn't though to ask his lover if his once-
upon-a-time wife had known of his fancy for other boys, for the fact he hadn't 
suffixed the other Crasher's name was telling enough.

But then again, were detectives that chummy in her mind? Just friendly enough to 
dispense with the -kun's? Maybe some day, if he was lucky enough, he would 
have to try being one.

***  

Naoko gave him a little nod, a cool hint of a smile. "I see. Well, again, you are 
most welcome." She waved a hand towards the rows of chairs that stood behind 
her. "It won't be a long play. Afterward, perhaps, you might come with us out for 
dessert. That is," she added, giving her ex-husband a pointed look, "if Masato 
plans to join us." 

He perked at that. "Well, I..." he began, looking from Naoko to Naru, and then to 
Chinatsu, who mercifully was out of earshot and engaged in whispering and 
giggling with a girl in a long, blue gown. Her Wendy. 

Her eyes narrowed just a fraction, even as she gave him another little smile. "You 
think about it, hmm?" 

"Uh...yeah." Masato, slightly ashamed now, looked back over at his daughter.  
Always he wanted to limit contact with her--for her own good!--and always 
Naoko tried to thwart his desires. She certainly knew which buttons to push, how 
to best manipulate him, and from the self-satisfied air she'd cloaked herself in, she 
was aware of it. 

"We might want to get seats before all the good ones are taken," he added, to his 
lover now and not Naoko. She had already left him for Chinatsu and her friend, 
and was leading both girls to the backstage area. He gestured for him to proceed 
him. 

"You can pick them out...Naru-hana." He gave him a weak smile, and snuck a 
squeeze of his hand, so quick that he was sure that no one could have seen him. 
So wrapped up in Naru, that he missed Chinatsu turning around just then to see it; 
missed her wondering look. 

As for Naoko--she had indeed noted Naru's omission of any suitable honorifics 
when he referred to Masato. But then, she had an inkling of their relationship as 
she watched them cross the parking lot, so it surprised her not in the least. 
Masato's preference for his own sex had always been at the back of her
mind, along with all the other little quirks she'd learned about him during the 
course of their long friendship, brief marriage. 

After all, it had been her first true love that he had loved as well. 

But, despite that, she was surprised nonetheless. Masato, who had NEVER 
brought anyone to meet Chinatsu before, had finally invited someone to come 
along. A rather young someone. Naoko wondered for a moment if he was even 
over the age of eighteen, did he look so fresh to her jaded eyes; that he was such a 
youngster both worried and amused her. 

/What HAVE you done, Masato?/ she thought as she cast one last look over her 
shoulder before disappearing through the backstage entrance Masato, as if he 
could read the twists of her ponderings from such glances, only shrugged in a 
self-conscious way.

*** 

That was, shrugged as much as he could before Naru decided to have another one 
of his micro-size fits and haul him off towards what he thought would be the best 
seats: those not directly in front of the stage, but in the middle, just the same; near 
enough to see everything, but not of such distance that the effect of the whole 
would be lost.  Really, a suitable sort of place for
admiring any mural or such work of art.

He plopped himself smack in the middle of the aisle, leaning back and crossing 
his legs.  His lover remained standing, looking down on him with a sort of almost 
helpless puppy expression.  

"Whatever is it, Masato? Has the woman eaten of your essence?" Said with a 
smile that faded as soon as the paw came down to knock his knees back to the 
same level.  A palm he caught and dragged until the other Crasher's bottom 
smacked into the chair beside.  "I see, I see! I shan't do it again for a good week.  
And I didn't mean that about Naoko-san, merely a jest, I assure you.  But she has 
got that wise woman or witchy quality to her.  I do like it, and I can see why you 
would have chosen her out of all the women in Tokyo.  You must know that if I 
had been mad about your previous entanglements before,- which  I wasn't -I 
simply couldn't be any longer for Chinatsu is truly a gem among
the small and precious creatures of this world."

Since no one was looking presently between the rows from such an angle they 
might have found either of their hands, he folded them together as he leaned over 
Masato's legs, casting one of his bracelets to the far seat there since he had 
nothing else to save it with.

***

The older man gave the hand turned palmside to his own a squeeze. "I am glad 
you like Chinatsu. And I am glad that Naoko doesn't disturb you, and that you like 
her odd ways. You know, we were friends long before we ever made the mistake 
of marrying, and...If I had to have a child, I could have done a lot worse in 
picking a woman to have one with." 

He chuckled. "...a hell of a lot worse..." Masato shook his head. "It's just that she 
knows how to manipulate me." 

The lights dimmed a bit, dousing the room in pale shadows. The backstage door 
opened, and closed, and he caught the feeble silhouette of his ex-wife lingering 
just outside it. He raised a hand to her, waving until she waved back. 

"Oh, and, there's just one more thing I want to say before Naoko joins us," he 
added as he leaned in close--so close that his breath could tickle the boy's ear. 

"Remind me to tell you later just how much I love you."

***

Naru wrinkled up his nose as a surprised rabbit might have and giggled while his 
boyfriend was still close enough to feel the way his slight form wobbled when he 
did so.  

"Oh Masato!" he said with eyes that gleamed where his cheeks had failed to 
blush.  "You do flatter me, but you need not tell me such things."

Which got him a puzzled look while his own smile, all soft focus in the falling 
lights, remained quite intact.  

"I am not such that I would need always your reassurances, for as much as I adore 
them- all words or those from thy lips in especial -it is written in the very way that 
you move and take me near you that you would more the firmament and iron of 
earth for me."

So then, with their hands still laced together, he whispered, "I know, and I love 
you too!"

And then he did laugh, out loud for but a moment until his hands came up to his 
mouth to quell the chuckles that had come before the curtains had even risen.  
"No no! It's just because I'm happy! So very, very happy!"

A few of the nearby patrons cast them lacking glances and the house lights 
toppled.  The voices began to dwindle all around them, until they had come low 
enough to catch the pitter-patter of little feet beneath the draperies.  But Naru 
stopped waving then, and smirking quite a bit, waved to one of the aisles
that ran beside them.  "'ello again, Memsahib! We've saved you a seat."

***

For the whole of an hour and fifteen minutes, the parents and guests of Yousei 
Academy's third grade class were taken on a trip to Never land. For Masato, it 
was a real spectacle, simply for the chance he'd had to see his child fly.  Granted, 
Chinatsu had whisked through the air upon wires and with a help of a pulley and 
not fairy dust, but still! She had smiled the whole time she was aloft. Every time. 

And she had not flubbed one line. She'd shone like the star who'd summoned 
Peter to Wendy's window in the story. Masato couldn't help but feel immensely 
proud of her then. But then, he usually did. As did his wife, clearly. Masato had 
glanced over at her when the curtain fell upon the close of the last scene in the 
Darling nursery, and found her eyes touched lightly with tears. She was 
embarrassed when she caught him looking at her, and quickly swiped at her eyes 
with her fingertips. 

"Forgive me, Masato," she whispered. "I couldn't help it--she has been practicing 
so hard for this. Even at home, I would hear her reciting her lines in her room." 

He grinned at that. "Did she try to fly on her own, too?" 

Naoko rolled her eyes in comic exasperation, and he chuckled. 

"I'm going to go collect her, and get that greasepaint off her face," she added as 
the lights rose. Naoko stood up, and regarded her ex-husband rather speculatively. 

"Are you both going to come with us for dessert?" 

Masato's smile faltered a bit, and he looked over at Naru (whose hand he had held 
for nearly the whole of the show). The young man only grinned, and nodded 
enthusiastically, elbowing him gently in the ribs as if he were prodding him on. 

"Oh...Okay. Shall we wait for you here?" 

"I think that would be wise. After all the pictures, and the well-wishing, and 
getting her changed back into a normal human girl from a elvish boy, the parking 
lot will probably have cleared out considerably." 

She tossed them a wave, and headed purposefully off towards the backstage 
entrance. Masato lost sight of her long before she'd ever reached it, as people 
were rising from their seats to stretch and mill about a bit.

"So..." he began, turning to Naru, "was it all you expected it to be?"

***

Naru nodded and kept nodding until Naoko had secularly lost herself in the crowd 
before inching his fingers back into Masato's, for they had grown cold in the 
moments they two had been apart, and after over an hour of being held, he'd 
grown dangerously used to it.

Not to mention that it got him a bit of a look, but it was just one of many and 
doubtless more to come in his life.

"Oh! It was magnificent, Masato! Just magnificent! I hadn't heard anyone tell that 
story in just AGES! And it really is splendid, just splendid to see real children in 
it! It was better than dancing for the pace of my heart! And I'm just thrilled they 
left the ending so and didn't put in the silly Disney one- really does make me 
agree with Reiichi about that firm and their Bowdlerizing
tendencies.  Your daughter does act like she's ever so much older! I meant that in 
a good way! The kind with all the emotions and the need not to as  "what's my 
motiva-..." Masato?"

During the latest of his substantial speeches, Naru could not help but notice the 
wandering of his lover's eyes, and this did irk him, just a bit, for he was in too 
high of spirits to let anything besides the mildest of annoyances get to him.  
Besides! Masato had always watched him while he spoke, even before!

Before they were lovers, though the else Crasher left little doubt they could be 
anything else just then.  He leaned over and pecked him on the ear just below his 
rather droopy flower.

"Oh! So this is where Chinatsu gets her impishness! I am pleasantly surprised."

***

Masato made no move to pull away, but moved instead to nuzzle him below the 
ear. "Oh?" he whispered. "You might be even more so later on, then. But no 
pressure, although...I've a good mind to ask you if you wanted to go out to the car 
and neck until Naoko comes back." 

Masato grinned saucily at him then, and gave him another squeeze of his hand 
before he rose from his seat. "Come on, Naru. Why don't we go outside for a bit 
of air?" 

"And maybe," he added, bending down to whisper in his ear again, "just maybe, 
we can hide behind that huge oak by the playing field, and I'll kiss you until 
you're breathless."

***

In direct contrast to his usual intemperate eloquence, Naru simply grinned, 
snatched Masato's hand up, and plum dragged the elder Crasher out the nearest 
exist, through the throng of chatting parents and children zooming all about, 
wishing they had been the ones to ride the wires.  There were millions of 
apologies in more languages that Naru remembered he knew, and lots of giggling 
looks at the way their fingers were wrapped.

No one seemed to surprised.  No ones seemed the least bit wont to offer rumors 
with any spite to them.  

It had drizzled a bit during the performance, so the water on the roads was fresh.  
A film of water ripples through the are, scarce able to be likened to rain.  He went 
from the top of the stairs to the heart of a puddle, sending smoky topaz up all 
about him and onto his clothes, where it melted into his shirt.

A moment he tarried, waiting for his sighing lover, but it was all beside the flower 
bushes, where the bloom he had been wearing was left to fade among her old 
friends, and a new on tucked behind his ear.  

"I couldn't bear to disappoint Peter-kun by showing up with a moribund flower, 
now could I?"

***

"I think it would disappoint Peter-kun even more if you didn't show up at all. Or 
didn't you notice that you have thoroughly charmed my child?" Masato flashed 
him a grin as he moved a bit closer, brazenly looking him up and down. "I guess I 
was worrying over nothing after all." 

He cast a glance back at the door, and found only a handful of people knotted 
together at the entrance. A few children ran past them, laughing for no apparent 
reason other than they were children and the rain had dotted the ground with 
glorious jumping puddles. Naru looked very much like he was about to take off 
after them, and Masato very nearly wanted him to fly away, just so he could 
watch. 

However, he wanted him by his side just a little bit more, and so Masato took him 
by the hand again, and pulled him close. Leaned in as if he might kiss him, and 
lingered there for a heartbeat before breaking out into knowing laughter. He 
tightened his hold on him just a bit, and led Naru away from the building and 
towards the tiny clump of trees that stood near the edge of the playing field. 

And when he got him there, Masato dropped his weight against the solid mass of 
one spreading Oak. A sharp tug and the boy fell against him, their legs tangling 
together. Masato rubbed his whiskered cheek against the Naru's smooth one as his 
hands glided upwards over his back. A volley of giggles rang out across the yard. 

"It's almost a pity there are children about," he whispered, "because I'd rather like 
to play too."

***

"Masato! Why I never!" Naru blurted out in his best equivalent of the whine 
Daisy had been wont to use on either of his fathers, or his second mother for that 
matter. "Thinking of having your way with me when there are such little nymphs 
about?  Are you trying to will them out of sight, or are you really just a dastardly, 
saucy old fellow, hmm?"

He drew back then, enough for a smile upon the frown he had brought himself.  
His cheek felt all too cold without the brushes of the rough one.  So much for 
waiting, he lost all sense for it and ruffled his soft skin against Masato's, pausing 
for only an instant to whisper above the stud in his ear: "Though, something of 
you says to me it's not been mere hours... though what is a lifetime but a blink to 
the eyes of the Kami and the fae?"

A little sigh, and he got his arms as far about the tree as he could, for he could not 
get them all the way about his fellow Crasher's waist.  "It's too much for now I 
guess.  But that's Ok.  May I say I do exalt your daughter once again? I think I 
have already.  I feel selfish enough about her to wonder if I could take her home 
with me and have a sleep over! But then again, my flat isn't exactly in condition 
for that.  Ah, dreams are... nice!"

***

Masato let his hand fall with a soft pat against the long, curling floss that danced 
about Naru's shoulders. "Maybe it hasn't been hours since then. Maybe it has been 
forever, like you said." A laugh. "But why *can't* you have Chinatsu over some 
night? I certainly wouldn't mind, and I doubt Naoko would, not now when she's 
seen you, and knows you aren't dangerous." 

He smoothed the golden locks away from his ear, and gave him a quick kiss upon 
its rim. "And what's wrong with your apartment anyway? I mean, I don't live in a 
palace, and Chinatsu stays with me quite often." 

***

"Oh," Naru began with a weak sigh, "But I DO live in a palace.  You see, my flat 
is one of the oldest annexes of the House of Chiizuu-Mancha and therein happens 
to be home to the entire clan of the eighteenth dynasty ruled presently by 
Memnoch the Tail-less and his two Viziers, Squeakers and Muffy- pants.  As for 
the royal entourage, they do go out an awful lot, as Memnoch is a great believer in 
the benefits of fresh air and the exercise his subjects may engage in whilst 
fighting back the ever-dastardly and encroaching kingdom of the Neko-dono.  
They do go into utterly majestic fits if they should be trodden upon during these 
excursions.  Never to be minded that *I* am the primary negotiator working to 
end the war between Chiizuu-Mancha and the Neko-dono, and that by openly 
befriending me, your daughter is liable to be kidnapped or harassed outright by 
either faction."

The quiet that he had so willingly engaged in for what time he had admired that 
afternoon's play left his tongue wanting a chance to go on and speak of all that 
could possibly be spoken of in the world at that time.  He thought he felt a 
raindrop land upon his brow as he leaned in to cup his lover's scratchy cheek, and 
sang about it some.  

Almost ready then to launch into an impromptu history of the war he'd suddenly 
envisioned in his bedroom, he felt a tiny tap upon his waist, that of fingers, rather 
than water.

"Why! If we weren't just talking about you, Chinatsu-chan! Did you know your 
father wants you to go into politics?"

The little girl beamed and nodded and it was all he could do not to go falling head 
over heels into giggles at her inadvertent wit. 

"It's OK though! I like mice." She declared at last, her newly retied pigtails 
bobbing as she spoke.

"You do! Why, I would love to bring you some of mine, but the Chiizuu-Manchas 
are very picky about imports, exports and indentured servants.  Selfish I say, but 
they've been ruling for so horribly long, I bet they can't tell if they're selfish or not 
any longer."

***

Chinatsu laughed though, and spun around, arms extended at shoulder level-- just 
because she could. "I think they're selfish! I only want to play with them...And 
you!" She abruptly stopped spinning and lunged for Naru's free hand, holding it 
knuckles first under her chin and gazing at him adoringly.  
"'Tou-san? Why haven't you brought Naru-hana around to meet me before?" 

A grin broke out on Masato's face then, and he playfully tugged on one of her 
long tails. "Because...I wasn't sure if he would want to meet you or your mother." 

"Why?" 

"I...Because I wasn't sure if he wanted to stay co-workers or..." He gave him a 
wink. "...become friends." 

"So you're friends now?" 

"Yeah." 

She canted him a quizzical, squinting look. "You don't act like friends." 

"Oh?" Masato intoned faintly. 

Chinatsu shook her head adamantly, switching her tails about. "You act like--"

"Oh, there you three are." Naoko stepped up to her daughter, eyeing their two 
entwined hands with a great deal of interest. Masato gave her a slightly chagrined, 
exasperated look. 

"Are you ready to go?" 

Naoko fiddled with one of the red ribbons she'd tied to her daughter's pigtails. 
"Would you mind giving us a lift? I had to take the car in for repairs." 

"Sure, that's no problem." 

She shot him a warm smile over their daughter's head as she tightened the other 
ribbon. "Then I'm ready to go whenever you two are." 

Chinatsu piped up again at that, giving the hand of Naru's which she still held a 
squeeze. "You mean you're coming to eat with us and you're bringing Naru-
hana?" 

Naoko murmured, "Naru-hana?" with a small smile for the boy and an indulgent 
pat on the head for the girl. Masato laughed a little, and held out his hand to 
Chinatsu, which she took. "Yeah, we're both coming." 

Chinatsu cheered, and tugged a little on their hands. "Let's go, 'Tou-san, 'Kaa-san! 
I want some ice cream and cake--and I want Naru-hana to tell me more about the 
goings-on at his place." 

Masato shot him a sidelong look, dearly wanting to ask him a few questions 
himself, and holding back because it was neither the time nor the place for such a 
grilling. 

Instead, then, he turned to his ex-wife again and said, smiling a bit, "Shall we 
go?" 

***

Not of course, that by that time, Naru and Chinatsu hadn't already gone, for quite 
against what might have been willed by the continuing drizzle, they had both 
dashed out from under the tree, taking off across the most be-puddled portion of 
the parking lot and there begun to laugh simply with the gladness
of having outrun their respective guardians, who both stood staring at them for a 
moment, unable to discern just who was leading whom.  Once Masato had arrived 
with the keys, Naru borrowed them with a mouthed apology and unlocked 
everyone's doors for them, holding the little girl's out for her and forgetting to 
return said keys once she and he were safely scrunched up in the back. 

Afterwards, the only shame in the matter was the fact the nearest Key Coffee was 
only two blocks away, so he did not have time to finish what sounded as if it was 
going to be a very long and fascinating speech regarding the present dynasty of 
mice abiding in his complex and all the foibles of the better known leaders, down 
to the way that Cirillian of Toaster Haven was wont to twitch his whiskers when 
he thought he had embarrassed himself  in front of his army (which was often) or 
how Naga Neko defeated herself by consuming too many of the rodent gentry.  

It was only here that Chinatsu's smile faltered, and Naru's too, for he regarded 
how still the pavement just outside his window was through the rainy film, and 
realized they had parked.   He bounded out though, doing his best to grin and 
trying to repeat all of his story over and over again to himself so maybe some day 
he might write it down for Chinatsu.  Perhaps in English class that night.  If he 
went.

"Ah, glumness is perfectly alright, Chinatsu-chan! It's always alright.  But we're 
going to go have all sorts of lovely dainties now.  I'm dreadfully sorry I couldn't 
finish my story, but I doubt I could if I had a week or even a year.  Why, there's 
ever so much I haven't even touched on."

She reached for his hand then and tugged him along under the awning, having 
seen his hair was starting to wilt a little in the wetness that tickled them, "No, it's 
not that.  I feel sad for all the little Chiizuu-Manchas that got eaten."

To which he giggled as the four of them swept into the entryway of the coffee 
shop, the inside of which had the mute hue of a mocha and besides only the allure 
of its scent.  The girl at the counter waved to them, and all together, they lined up 
before the case of little cakes and the rainbows of their icings.  In the silence of 
trying to choose one, he noticed the green tea cakes had tiny plastic wings atop 
them as decoration, the sight of such broke  his silence and his sense that he had, 
as perhaps destined, quite ruined a lovely afternoon.

"Why, don't you know? When mice are eaten up by cats they almost always come 
back as cats, except for they very bravest of them all.  Why, they get to go flitting 
around with faeries afterwards! Fae things do love mice, especially reincarnated 
mice which come in all sorts of fabulous colors! They ride them like ponies and 
teach them to speak."

***

Naoko leaned in close to her ex-husband, who was currently trying to choose 
between a likely looking seed cake and one triple chocolate coconut. "All right, 
Masato," she whispered, "where *did* you find that creature?"  

He looked over at her in mild dismay. "Creature? Naru?" Masato softly clucked 
his tongue in disapproval. "That's not very kind." 

"I didn't mean it to be nasty." 

"Well, it sure sounded like you did." 

The clerk, who had gone from them to Naru and Chinatsu, had come back, 
looking mildly perturbed. Apparently, the younger pair hadn't made up their 
minds yet either. Masato pointed at the triple chocolate one and ordered a coffee 
with cream for himself; Naoko chose one of the lemon raspberry, with tea.

"Tea? You used to be a coffee lover." 

"I still am, and don't change the subject. Answer my question like a good ex-
husband." 

Masato sighed, and rolled his eyes, to which she dealt him a discreet, light slap to 
his hand. He gave her a look. "You've gotten saucy." 

"And you've gotten forgetful. Masato.." 

He held up a hand in a placating gesture. "Okay, okay," he murmured, glancing 
over his shoulder and leading her away from the counter. A corner booth was 
unoccupied, windows behind and beside it. Masato steered Naoko over to it, and 
when they'd gotten settled, he continued, "I met him at work." 

She stared at him blankly, and then her eyes grew round with surprise. "You mean 
that boy is a..." her voice trailed away and she quickly made a gun with her hand. 

Masato nodded, grimly. 

Naoko slumped back in her seat, hands cupping the edges of the table, and gave 
him the saddest look. Masato couldn't bring himself to hold her gaze, and he kept 
his eyes averted until one hand landed on the gingham cloth-covered surface, and 
her fingers tangled slightly with his own. 

"I can't believe that boy is a killer." 

Masato drew his hand away and fumbled in his jacket for his cigarette pack.  
Took one out and snapped the lighter to life against the end of it. "Why not, 
Naoko? I am." 

"And you know I don't--" 

"Please, anata. Let's not talk about it now. Let's try to be happy today.  Okay?" 

She nodded, but the determined look on her face told him she wasn't through 
talking about it for good. He figured she never would be, not until he died,

***

It was the biggest, gooiest, fluffiest slice of strawberry mousse cake they had in 
the shop and he had never been quite so proud of anything he'd done in a coffee 
house until he handed it over to Chinatsu with a cheery grin on his face in spite of 
the fact he could still hear the little voice on his head that was calling him all 
manner of Shakespearian insults which loosely translated to "fool".  

But then his lover's daughter smiled so to behold those layers of pink sponge cake 
and even pinker jelly-laced poufy stuff; the little streak of red it left behind on the 
plate where it had been scooted along, the web of red icing that ran over the top 
and oozed along the newly bared sides.

"I'll have the chocolate equivalent of this and a caf, au lait, please," he said to the 
waitress, his eyes still marveling over his little companion though.  "And... two of 
those little wings you've got on the fruit cake if you've got any in the back.  I'll 
pay as much extra as you feel like charging me."

She sighed, and rang him up while one of her associates wandered into the back.  
He heard Masato start to get up insisting he would pay, and waved him back 
down to his seat with a grin... even if he ended up shaking his wallet upside down 
beside the register to come up with the last few yen.  Only a 500 coin he had 
completely forgotten about saved him in the end, and with it gone, he had no 
regrets (even if it would have gotten him another round of Asahi the other night... 
oh well).  

"Domo arigatou, Naru-hana!" Chinatsu bowed to him as he took up the tray with 
the rest of their goodies on it, and shortly her humongous slice of cake, which he 
had to notice now sported a finger trail in the icing.

"Oh no! Thank you, Chibi Mademoiselle! For that dainty may bring you joy- and 
mind you, there is little in the world I wish so much for! - but it is small gratitude 
for what your performance hast stirred in my heart this sopping afternoon."

They made their way over to the table where the little girl's parents were seated in 
silence which proved to be as dour as the expressions on the clouds above.  It 
almost made his spirits fall, but not so Chinatsu's he noticed.

It could only be she didn't yet recognize it; that haunted little look in both of their 
eyes, not that it was much more than a touch, a sigh of glance, something so 
fleeting he wondered how he caught it himself.

Masato nodded to him and he didn't know why.  He did, however, flop down on 
the seat, the flower behind his ear bobbing as he handed out what sweets he had 
caught for himself and the child, and two straws of course, for the ordinary coffee 
stirrer simply wouldn't hold up with as much sugar as typically found its way into 
his cups.

He tore just the tip of his wrapper off and blew the rest at Naoko.  It landed in her 
bangs with smirks all around.  Chinatsu's crashed on his cake and stood there for a 
moment before falling over into his coffee.

***   

Naoko tossed the straw wrapper to her right upon the table, and fluffed her bangs 
back into order with a few small sweeps of her fingers. With the paper sheath had 
gone a measure of her moroseness, and Masato's as well. He playfully clasped 
Naru around the back of his neck and gave him a good-natured little shake, 
laughing a bit. 

"Ah, you're being silly." He glanced over at Naoko with a nod at Naru. "You'd 
think we had two kids instead of just the one." 

"Yeah, two!" piped Chinatsu from her mother's side. "I want to adopt him." She 
stabbed at her cake, and popped the heaping bite into her mouth with a mumbled, 
"Oishii." 

"Really?" Naoko asked, giving Naru a wink. "From the way you smiled at him at 
the dessert case, I had thought he'd just asked you out on a date." 

Chinatsu shook her head earnestly. "Oh, no, I don't think he'd do that. 'Tou-san 
might not like it." 

They all exchanged looks over the rims of their cups. "And why is that?" Masato 
asked. 

"Well...you know why. It's because Naru-hana is *yours*." She gave him a 
knowing grin, and tried to sneak a bite of his cake. Masato let her. 

"Naru isn't mine, Chinatsu." 

"Isn't he? You were hanging on him like he was, I saw you." 

"That..." he began, then stopped. If she'd seen it, why deny it? He wasn't ashamed 
he liked men, wasn't ashamed of Naru. They only never brought it up because 
they didn't know how she'd take it. She was always just a child then, or so he 
thought.

He was dragged from his reverie by the dismayed look on her face, sobered even 
more by how quiet Naru had gone--unnaturally so. To that end, he slid a hand 
under the table and took Naru's own. 

"Naru's not mine, he's not thing that I own. But, yeah, he's my..." 

Chinatsu brightened, all hopeful. "Boyfriend?" 

"Uh...yeah." He gave Naru's hand a little squeeze. 

Chinatsu let out a little cheer. "Yay! That's what I was hoping!" 

"How come?" asked Naoko. 

"Because now I'll be able to see him pretty much when I want! Because now I 
have a 'Kaa-san and a 'Tou-san and a Naru-hana! Because...maybe he'll let me 
borrow some of his jewelry sometime!" 

"Chinatsu, that's rude." 

"But...I like it. I like him." She slowly reached over with her fork and speared a 
tiny corner of his cake, popping it into his mouth with a strawberry-smeared grin. 
"My Naru-hana."

***

"...Masanori-san is the third person to be reported as missing in as many weeks.  
So far, the police have no leads in the case."

/Figures.  They rarely do./

The camera shot of the perfectly coifed newscaster's flickered away to a screen 
full of snapshots, her voice still droning on over it.  "If you have any information 
on the whereabouts of Masanori-san, or any of the people in these photos, please 
call..."  

The picture flipped crazily, made to do so by Youji's thumb on the remote.  When 
he randomly released the button, it was a movie of some sort.  Historical--all 
samurai and princelings.  The remote clattered onto the table, and Youji sat back.  
A few papers lay on the coffee table surrounded by their dirty dinner dishes and 
tea cups, copies of the documents regarding their current case (but none of the 
gruesome photos), and these he took once more in hand and began to shuffle 
through them.  

There had to be a pattern to all these kidnapings, he just knew it.  Such serial acts 
did not happen strictly at random, as some 
believed.  That much he knew. That much he was familiar with.  

Which was why he, when broached about the subject at lunch that day, had 
insisted they split up.  That one of them take one club, and he take another.  They 
would still be in range to use their wrist comms.  

Surprisingly, his idea was heartily accepted--he had expected Yuuji to bitch.  
What he hadn't expected was the sudden pallor Omi's complexion took when he 
mentioned one of them playing bait.  The boy was unusually quiet, solemn, and 
though he'd done his best not to show much interest in him, Youji was worried.  

Very much so.  

The papers landed in a stack upon the table once more, and Youji ran his hands 
over his face, through his hair.  He was already dressed for the evening--or rather, 
somewhat undressed.  Trousers he wore--tight and black, with a zip fly and 
patterned down one leg with tiny, gold Gothic crosses--but no shirt.  Just a black 
jacket that ended at his hips.  His skin he would cover with gold body paint, thinly 
applied, and his eyes would be heavily made up.  He was 22 years old, but he 
knew very well that in the smoky darkness which marked most nightclubs, he 
looked much younger.  

His hand went to his tattoo, and he rubbed it thoughtfully as he 
shifted his attention to his son.  

Sei was stretched out on the sofa next to him, and was now wearing new clothes 
inside and out; a pair of new green sneakers with blue and white marled laces 
stood just inside the door.  In one dresser drawer in the bedroom lay a week's 
worth more of clothes.  An RC race car with black and yellow stripes, and a 
mecha by the name of Escaflowne were being kept temporarily under the coffee 
table.  A few storybooks lay on its top, separated from its sibling--the one which 
Sei held propped against his bent legs.   

A red toothbrush, a tube of kiddie tooth paste, and a bottle of shower gel that 
smelled like pears and blueberries rounded off the list of purchases: All in all, 
Youji felt as if he'd done right by his son.  Or at least, it was a start.  

He hoped his kid was pleased.  

No sooner had he thought that, than Sei averted his eyes from his 
storybook and met his father's own.  Didn't smile, just gazed at him until Youji 
was compelled to pat him on the head.  His recently trimmed head.  No longer did 
his bangs dangle in his eyes, or brush his shoulders.  Sei looked much like any 
other preschooler.  

Except...he wasn't.  He had an assassin for a father.  And his father had to go to 
work in about an hour or so.  

He had already arranged with Ms. Higurashi to look in on Sei from 
time to time while he was out.  No doubt the boy would sleep through the whole 
of his absence.  Or so Youji hoped.  

"Well!" he cried, flashing the boy a grin and clapping his hands 
across his knees.  "I'm going to clear off this mess, and finish 
getting ready.  Will you be okay out here with your books and 
things?"

***

::You forgot that fact I could...::

Seishirou blushed then.  "Oops.  Gomen nasai, Otosama! Gomen nas-..." All his 
worries were quieted at once by a pat upon his shoulder and a roll of the emerald 
eyes.  "It's really hard not to do that!"

Youji simply flicked his fingertips over his warm cheeks in kind admonishment, 
and nodded as if he understood.  He didn't, never would, but it still warmed 
Seishirou's lonely thoughts that he tries.  

"But I... I'm really, really happy! And not just because you bought me things." He 
shook his head, had it ruffled, almost smiled, but not quite.  "It was so-so-so-
SOOOOO pretty out today! I can't remember going for a walk before.  I really 
can't!" 

The book in his lap fell closed with a little thump and rejoined its kith upon the 
coffee table.  The boy did somewhat likewise, and with a small, embarrassed 
smile he crept over and sat as close to Youji as he could without actually being 
against him,  Well, all but for his fingers, which crept onto his coat; were still 
then, waiting.  Since he had not been shooed away, he
tugged the jacket down, just a little.

Just enough to let his father's tattoo show. 

And he did not tell him what Omi was afraid of, since he had asked not to hear 
about him.  Did not tell him Yuuji was too tired to fight about anything.  Did not 
tell him the barber would have let him do whatever he liked with him in bed, just 
like Omi, even though the barber was twice Omi's age.  Did not tell him Asuka 
was pretty.  Then he had tried to find the ways Ran and Ken felt all day and 
failed.  Didn't even say how much he liked the pretty ink upon his forearm, and 
mostly because walks were not the only things which first befriended his 
memories on that day.

He just petted it a little, and wished Youji would not pull away from him just yet.  

"If I clean up, will you stay just a little longer? Just five minutes? I don't mind 
doing the dishes, and I'll do them very well."

*** 

/He wants me to stay.  He really...does./

And, as that realization sunk in, some of the tension he'd been 
feeling left him.  Youji gave Seishirou a smile.  

"Tell you what?  We'll leave the dishes for now, and I'll sit here with you for a bit 
longer.  And then," he added, shrugging his bared shoulder, "you can come into 
the bedroom and hang out while I'm making up my eyes."  

/Yeah, I know that sounds weird for a man to say to his son, but I'm not your 
typical dad.  And you know.../

"...That it's just pretend, in a way, don't you?" he finished 
quietly.  

Sei's fingers curled around the slipped folds of Youji's jacket, and he nodded 
shyly.  Youji petted his cheek with the back of his fingers and marveled over how 
soft his skin was.  

"She used to say that to me all the time," Youji said, running the tip of his finger 
along the text at the bottom of his tattoo.  "'When you gonna learn?' she'd ask, and 
I'd just smirk at her."  

Sei's fingers stole back up to it, and touched his upper arm where his own fingers 
had traced.  Then, without any seeming reason, he slipped his tiny body under that 
arm, and against Youji, and lay his head on his chest.  Moved no more after that--
just sat very still.  

"Is my heart still beating, Sei?"

The boy's dark little head nodded.  He took Youji's other hand in his own and 
started fumbling with it.  Youji let him play as he wished.  

"Since you like walks, why don't we go on another one tomorrow, 
around lunch?  I'll even buy you an ice cream."  

***

Seishirou's eyes grew wide and his lashes tickled up and down, quite slowly, like 
a settling image in an artist's mind. 

Youji's son had long been bored with the simple miracles of oddly knotted 
hankies, and knew the sun rose because he, like all the people whose thoughts he 
had been born to nibble, was hurdling through the milky way on an iron sphere 
circling an island of plasma in the empty, empty universe.  That didn't mean he 
wasn't still enchanted by it's light, or the chance to wander through
it.

Of his father, he laid his fingers on his own chest, let him feel his happy pulse, 
and floated there against him, sinking bit by bit, closer and closer by the tiny 
breadth of flower petals.

"You mean it, Otosama! Really, really? I'd LOVE to go for a walk, I would! But 
only if you don't mind being seen with me since... since I'm funny.  But I can be 
quiet about that."  A tiny gust of shame crossed his face, but for only a moment.  

Youji nodded.

"I've never played make-believe either, I can try! I know I can." Seishirou, 
bouncing on the cushions then just as little as he dared, clapped then, a smile 
smothering his lips.  "We can do something you think is fun the day after that!"

***

Youji tapped him gently on the smiling curve of his lower lip, and gave him a 
smile in return. "You're on, Sei. Lunchtime tomorrow--just you and me. 
And...maybe, after work, we'll go out to eat instead of me cooking, hm?" 

He patted him on the chest, and moved to the edge of the sofa 
cushion, scooting Sei along in the crook of his arm. As he rose, he gathered his 
son to his chest. "I'll take you anywhere you want, so you be thinking about where 
you want to go. And in the meantime..."

Youji carried Sei into the bedroom and swung him down to the 
bed. "I'll have to finish getting ready. Omi gets all nagging if 
I'm not ready to go on time. Of course, Aya and Ken did too."

/Yeah, you don't know them. I'll have to tell you about them 
sometime. Maybe tomorrow./

He ruffled his hair. /That is, if you want me to./ 

Youji left Sei on the bed, and crossed over to the dresser, where the cd player sat. 
A flip of a button, and the radio came on. A little Baiser. Youji adjusted the 
volume to a reasonable level, then he opened one of the lowest drawers, and 
withdrew a little box from under the piles of socks that inhabited it. This he set up 
on its top, before the mirror. Eyeshadow and liners and lipstick and brushes. He 
fiddled about with the tubes and compacts until he found the shades of black and 
purple that he'd wanted. 

"What other things would you like to do, Sei?" he said, dipping one brush into a 
shadow of deepest purple and copper flecks.

*** 

Sometimes, he had to wonder if they had some plan written by heavenly or 
infernal hands they were following.  Or if it was only connotation that stirred 
them almost instinctually- something like birds know when they find the air 
currents over the sky scrapers, something like cats consider when they leave dead 
things at their masters' feet.

He'd never known an assassin who wasn't ready before the sun fell wherever they 
might be leading their almost life.

But in his present train of thought, Omi faltered from the summons stirred with 
silver rods against his sense of time.  A hand he half recognized stirred him from 
his improvident daydream.  

A shake of his head, and he turned to face Yuuji.  His eyes grew wide without his 
leave, but he smiled.  At his white knight.  Who he had never before seen clad as 
missions would have asked him too.  He pulled from him a second, and giggled at 
the snide little trick their lives had meant to play upon each other, when they met.

Which he felt then perhaps they had not been intended to do.

"Saa! Shiroi no kimi, to ore wa kuroi."

Not that it mattered.  Not when he smiled for him.


(OOC: So... you're white and I'm black.  Pun on an X3 Trowa-abuse doujin title- 
Pink na Kimi, boku wa aoi.)

***

"Hai."  

Yuuji stroked him from cheekbone to chin, then cupped his hand there and 
studied him, smiling all the while.  Omi, to him, still looked pale, his smile a little 
false.  He looked tired too, but then again...so was he.  Yuuji hardly slept a wink 
the night before for worrying over his young lover.  

"You got your crossbow and arrows ready?  Your comm?"  He felt stupid asking 
Omi those questions, but he couldn't help but feel as if they were necessary.  

Omi nodded, and flashed him another bright grin, which made Yuuji 
feel even more uneasy.  He patted Omi on the shoulder, though, and decided not 
to say anything about it.  

"Okay then."  Yuuji bit his lip anxiously, then swooped down to give Omi a kiss 
on the forehead.  

***

"Awwww!" Omi fussed when Yuuji's lips left him.  They stood then, gazing at 
once another, neither able to make words out of gazes, thoughts out of gazes.  Or 
anything really.

So with a shake of his head, Omi leaned up and had a kiss against his lover's lips 
instead- nothing but soft skin petting soft skin.  He wrapped his arms about his 
neck, and held him there, breathing his breath.  But just for awhile.  

"I'm ALWAYS up for kisses, Yuuji-kun.  Always, always."

He almost started to say he was always, always ready too.  Ready to kill, ready to 
save.  Himself, or else among the  wraiths of his trade.  Instead, he only smiled, 
and, as if he had been asked to part way strip, showed off his gear to his lover- the 
dart, the bow- in pieces, the comm, his watch.

His shiny pink acetate underwear.

"Well, maybe not completely black."  And his fingers found themselves next in 
Knight's golden floss.  "But you're not completely white either.  And Youji-kun 
won't be... whatever Youji-kun is."

A frown, and a sigh, broken by skidding tires outside, once again, just like every 
evening when the rush to end the day came.

"I'll go get him."

Omi started out the door then, twirling a dart for Yuuji to see.  So he would know 
he wouldn't REALLY be alone with Kuudou-san.  

/So much for company./

/Yes.  You lied.  I'm never alone.  I have you, and you make me alone.  That's 
your job./

But that went back into his hiding place so it wouldn't frighten Sei.

*** 

Seishirou rocked this way and that, like a little bird, unsure of how it wishes to go 
after the seeds about the sidewalk.  

But besides that... he had indeed found the thoughts of many a boy who fancied 
makeup.  Why, there were plenty of them about, being neither too rare nor too 
common to have startled anyone (or so Sei thought).  But his father, he was just so 
charming to watch.  The man might have left his kitchen in shambles, his clothing 
outside of the hamper, but the way he played among the dishes and the bottles of 
his dark little potions...  

It was, in terms of other such children abiding in earth for Seishirou's number of 
years, fun to watch, and so he slunk over to the dresser for a better view, 
garnering only a mental note on his father's part.  

Youji, unlike Megaera, did not simply snatch up his lipstick, rub it on and blot it 
with a tissue- he smeared it from the case onto a brush, and only then onto his 
waiting lips.  It was much less clumsy this way, how the pigment would hug the 
little bits of pink skin, as he drew them out, ink over paper, if he had been a 
painter.  And the eyeshadow! He had a thousand little white teardrops for that, 
one for each color as he shaded them, mixed them about his lashes with just the 
tips of his fingers, that came back sparkling where they did not while they rested 
in their boxes.

Though he paused, only half done, and regarded Seishirou.  The boy walked his 
fingers over the dresser, grinning just faintly, waiting to be caught as plainly as 
could be.  One of his own fingertips found it's way into the copper-flecked violet 
before darting back and writing a loopy heart upon his cheek. 

And though he smiled, he knew that Youji's mind was elsewhere when he played 
among his makeup.  Somewhere much less shallow.

"I like this, this right now!" the boy told him.  "And I like to hear stories, all kinds 
of stories.  So you can tell me ALLLLLL about Aya and Ken if you want."

Finding he still carried enough eyeshadow to make one last mark, he traced an all 
too familiar shade below one of his eyes.  "As long as it doesn't make you sad."
 
It was a teardrop.

*** 

Youji glanced down at his son as he fished out his black mascara, and offered him 
a hint of a smile. "Yeah," he said, unscrewing the cap and drawing the brush out, 
"it will make me sad, I guess, to talk about them. But...it makes me sad to think 
about them, and I'm not going to ever forget them."

/Besides, if sadness could kill people, I would have been dead long ago./ 

Youji swept the inky brush over his ebon lashes with precise strokes, carefully 
separating the strands both top lid and bottom. Then, he replaced the brush into 
the tube, and tightened the cap, and tossed it back into the box. Sank to his knees 
before Sei, and took his little hands in his own. 

"So, I'll tell you all about Aya and Ken, and you can ask me anything you want 
about them. Or about Asuka, even. Whatever you want to know about me. Okay?"

Sei gave him a nod, and Youji scooped him up for a hug. 

"So don't worry about me."

Youji drew him close and stood up, slinging him over his shoulder as he did, 
much to the boy's giggling delight. 

"Let's get you into...No, wait. I forgot to buy you pajamas!" Youji clapped his 
hand to his forehead in mock dismay. "Oh, well. You won't mind having to wear 
another of my old t-shirts again, will you?" 

He turned so he could see Sei's reflection in the mirror, and got an upside down 
smile and a shake of his head for an answer. 

"Yosh'!" He caught his son by the waist and swept him down to the 
floor again before opening the drawer where he kept such garments. 

And then, he heard the knock on the door. For a second, he froze. 
For a second, the smile on his face flickered, only to be replaced by one of regret. 
He took out the shirt Asuka liked to wear, and handed it to him. 

"I'll be right back." 

A pat on the head, and Youji strutted to the door, and swept it open rather 
carelessly, expecting to find Yuuji there. 

When he saw it was Omi, though...

Youji could barely look him in the eye. He didn't make any move to step aside for 
him to pass. 

"Time to leave already, hm?"

***

Omi had been just about to knock again when the door opened, not that amid 
Ken's most curious threats and mock angry pounding, Youji  had ever been 
inclined to be quick about admitting anyone into his quarters.  Unless that 
something was a shapely female ushered in with the utmost of care.

That he had been carried into those rooms once, or the rooms that had once been 
Youji's... he had shaken his head for he didn't exactly remember much of it- just 
seconds awake in his arms, and then they were in the bed.  It was all bleeding into 
a dream elsewhere in his mind.  

And... he just couldn't take that sort of thing before a mission.  "Ah, not quite, 
Youji-kun.  You can have a few minutes if you need them, but we did want to get 
started early.  After all, you have someone to take care of now."

He wondered if Yuuji would have, on his own, offered the eldest Weiss such 
time, had it been Omi as his lover child, instead of simply Seishirou as simply a 
child.

Speaking of whom, had just appeared behind his father, an old, black T-shirt 
clasped in his arms.

He made Omi smile himself then, just because he was there, and he was small, 
and he didn't know what the hell was going on.

Rather as Omi wished he didn't.  But he pushed into the room then, as if Youji 
wasn't there at all to complain at all, and he got down on his knees before the little 
boy.  "Kom ban wa, Seishirou-kun."

Sei shied away, only the faintest glimmer of a grin on his lips, as if he had been 
thinking just then of something dour, then struck with something cute, offered 
sheerly to cheer him up.  (As it was, no one had ever called him -kun before, and 
he wasn't quite sure what to make of unexpected familiarity).  

In his silence, Omi peered about the room- saw the books, the toys, the little shoes 
with the green-marbled laces.  "Suge! Did you and your daddy go shopping 
today?" Even then abundance of small delights made him want to grind his fists 
closed and slam the door behind him on the way out.  Squeeze something until
it broke- plastic or flesh.  

And that just made things worse.  He couldn't believe what he heard of himself, so 
he stuffed it away, smothered it before it took flight.

And then he felt ok.  It was just from the night before.  Leftover worry he had no 
business knowing in front of anyone.

The boy nodded, just slowly.

"It sure looks like you had a good time, and you sure look that way too!"

"HAI!"  

And he laughed too, as much as he didn't want to.  "I think you were playing in 
his makeup too!"

"That was also lots of fun!"

Somewhere behind his blue eyes, Omi knew then he was jealous, all good 
intentions aside.  Jealous of a little boy with nothing more than he had one had to 
call his own, and was so impossibly sweet to look upon, he could have held him 
for hours, just to watch him wriggle happily in his arms.

***

Youji took that as his cue to step in, and he did so, scooping Sei up in his arms 
once more. He didn't think he'd get tired of doing that-- of holding his son's warm, 
tiny body so close. "Yeah, that was fun,  Sei. And we'll have even more fun 
tomorrow, and...the next day...and the next day..." He swung the boy over his 
shoulder again, and made him laugh. 

And he walked back into the bedroom with him without so much as a 
glance at Omi. He lowered his son to the floor again, and proceeded to help him 
undress, taking his garments as he removed them and tossing them in the general 
direction of the hamper. Grinned at his son's disapproving look. 

"What?" he asked, shaking out the t-shirt and sliding it over his 
son, so that the only part of him that could be seen was a few tufts of hair from the 
neckline. "It's not going to hurt them if they don't end up in the hamper. So long 
as they get washed between now and Saturday." 

Sei's head popped through the neck hole with much fluttering of his inky strands, 
and he gave his father his best stern look, and a forbidding shake of his head. 
Then, so urged by Youji's scrambling fingers on his stomach, he burst into 
giggles. 

"I knew you'd see things my way, Sei." 

Youji patted his son's hair back into some semblance of 
straight. "Now...you can go straight to bed, or you can go lie down on the sofa and 
watch TV some more until you feel sleepy. But I don't want you to worry about 
me. I won't be gone that long." 

/And I will be careful. I promise./

He gave him a hug and a grin. "Ms. Higurashi will be up to check on you from 
time to time tonight. She's a very nice lady, and she said she doesn't mind looking 
after you at all." 

Sei gave him a solemn nod, then took off for the living room again. Youji stood 
up and switched off the radio and the lamp on his 
night stand. He found his son curled up on one end of the sofa, using Youji's 
favorite leather jacket for a blanket. 

Youji couldn't help but smile at that. He snatched up his keys, and, waving Omi 
on ahead of him, shut the door and locked it, mindful of his personal and 
professional enemies. 

Still, before his door, he hesitated, if only for a second. Then, he turned away and 
to Omi said, "All right. Let's go." 

*** 

Omi nodded, tearing his eyes away from the white plasterboard that had come 
between him and the vision of the dark, little boy snuggled up beneath the jacket 
he himself so well recalled the scent of.  But there stood Youji now, in real time, 
not merely a thing of clean leather and the brisk aroma that was Armani stored in 
ordinary closets.  On silent sneakers, he drew close enough
to take in what smell he wore now- just aftershave, and gold residue.

And child.

Baby-powder, finger paint, and peanut butter child.

And then he walked away, not even knowing he had been approached.  Omi 
followed him without another word, though his hands wrung each other, and he 
didn't see just right.  This to the point he started when he took a quick glance 
around before going down the steps.

He had forgotten for a moment Youji dyed his hair.

But it made him smile softly.  No reason, and he didn't want one.  

/You really do look like your boy when you have yourself fixed just so./

And then some other voice the fragments of someone else's green had nearly 
smothered.

"Seishirou's so cute! But I'll bet you'll think it's not too nice of me if I say I'm glad 
we've got him around."

*** 

Youji shot him a cold look over his shoulder as he reached the 
landing between his floor and Omi's. "If you think I'll take 
offense, then why are you making such a statement? Or is that the 
point?" 

He slid a cigarette out of the pack he'd stashed in his trouser 
pocket and lit it as he resumed his journey. Not checking to see if Omi was behind 
him nor really caring if he was. The lighter flared into life with a slap of his 
thumb on the tiny metal wheel, and Youji took a deep drag off his smoke. 
Snapped the lighter cap closed, and jerked the cigarette out of his mouth, exhaling 
sharply. "And why the fuck do you care if I have my son around or not? Why the 
fuck do you care period?!" 

Youji clambered down the last three stairs and stalked over to the door of Yuuji's 
apartment, hand raised to knock. But he didn't, merely stood there, listening for 
some sign of life and finding none. 

"He's not in there?" he asked, barely casting a look in his young 
companion's direction. Omi slowly (fearfully?) shook his head. 
Youji turned to look at him fully then, studying him most intently.  Clearly 
wanting to say something, but then, he averted his eyes and strode off towards the 
last flight of stairs. 

***

No, Yuuji wasn't in his apartment--he was sitting in the rainwashed alley on his 
bike, smoking just as Youji was despite the fact that he had vowed just that 
morning to give them up again. 

And, none too silently, he swore to himself over his lack of 
willpower. Over his lack of care the night before. For that, he 
didn't think he'd forgive himself, and he wouldn't blame Omi if he didn't either; 
wouldn't blame Omi if he decided to leave the two of them to the mission and 
larked off for a bit of fun. It would serve him right, being forced to work side by 
side with Kudou ALONE. No good would come of it if they were, that he could 
see. 

He wondered if anything good would come out of the current situation at all. 

Idly, he picked at his sleeve, tugged at his Crashers' scarf and lit another cigarette 
as he sat back to wait for his teammates.

***

Omi almost walked out into the middle of the street.  He had been following 
Youji, but not in the plane of most humans he guessed.  No where in particular at 
all, and so when the elder man turned and headed for the ally, he just kept walking 
until he stumbled on the edge of the curb and nearly crossed paths with a catty, 
black Mercedes.  As it was, he caught himself in time and didn't even get a horn 
or a squeal of tires.

So neither of his companions seemed had any reason to remember to tell him to 
be more careful when he found them out along side Hanano.  It was still drizzling 
that evening, off and on, though the sun had shattered the clouds and on his way 
out of the sky kept looking back behind him, leaving traces of rays behind, 
puddles of light on the puddles of street mud and humans unsure
whether to close their umbrellas or not.

Youji and Yuuji were both, for the first moment he beheld them, dusted with the 
last crimson and violet spray of the sunset, but then it all sank behind the 
buildings, into the shadows of Tokyo.

Neither seemed to recall the other existed, before or after he spoke up.

"Ah, alright.  Let's go then.  I guess.  Better run a comm check first."

Buttons, beeping in the colored shadows... looking at them was like looking 
through one of those toys that children have- the colored plastic that tints things 
looked at.

He buzzed Youji first out of habit, since Yuuji was using Aya's frequency and he 
always did him last.  

But there was no Aya, so he wouldn't have to get in the back seat of the car.

In fact, he didn't get in the car at all, watching anything from the car.  He simply 
sat behind Yuuji, felt them pull out after the black sports car.

And he felt him, just slowly through his jacket.

"I'm glad I don't have to ride the train to-night."

Said as he leaned against his shoulder.

***

Yuuji didn't reply to Omi's comment about the train; in fact, he 
didn't speak at all to him during the trip. Only dealt him a pat on the backs of his 
hands from time to time whenever they stopped at a light. It wasn't because he 
was trying to ignore him, but rather-- because he didn't really know what to say. 
Was he afraid that Yuuji would try something with him on the train, since he'd 
expressed a fancy for having sex on one some night? Did he really hate traveling 
on them? But then, if he had, why the sex fantasy? 

Something was going on, something he had no clue about. He was 
afraid to ask Omi about--felt in a way that it wasn't his business, even though he 
did care for him. 

And so Yuuji anguished en route to the club, and so he anguished as he parked the 
bike down an alley and hid it, and took his lover in his arms after he was finished.

"You okay with all this, Omi? 'Cause you don't have to do this 
tonight, if you don't want. It's not too late..."

***

"I'm fine, Yuuji-kun!" Omi laughed, only to squeak a bit, for the giggles had 
stirred his ribs and made the otherwise most welcome embrace all too tight.  It 
was nearly as if he held his lover and not the other way around.  He eased the two 
of them into the darker spaces beneath an awning, where they could be as 
affectionate as they liked, and with no eyes upon them. 

"Really I am, of please don't worry about me any longer. Don't you think if I was 
upset I'd tell you.  Come on, now."

But for all his chiding, he found no belief in his lover's eyes.

And just pretended he did.

"Well, let's have a bit of fun, even if we are on the job now!"

For the embrace, even if it had startled him, been almost fierce... he broke it, just 
the same, had his lover by the hand and so carried him across the sparkling 
streetlight lily pads on the river of the road.  They both tripped over the manhole 
cover in the middle, and got beeped at.  

No one asked for his age when they came to the fuzzy, pink door of their club, 
and stepping inside, wrapped up in luscious trance and the rain of a dozen disco 
balls, he found boys younger than himself, or well made up enough to be so.  
They claimed a table with holographic fabric on the seat cushions, but had no 
food nor drink.  It was only they two to watch the tourbillions of children for a 
time.  

"I wonder... how many of them would still like candy if I had any with me?" he 
said to himself.

***

Yuuji heard Omi's murmur, as the music was not yet churning vibrantly from the 
speakers which dotted the ceiling, but he didn't reply to it. Though the subjects of 
his remark had equally gained his attention. 

/Dear god...What? Does this place traffic in young boys?/

He found he wasn't surprised at all by that possibility. He'd seen too damn much 
to really be surprised by anything. Sickened, 
though...that was another story. Yuuji felt like he should round the lot of them up 
and send them home to their mothers. 

If they indeed had any...

Just more statistics for the newspapers, the lot of them. He 
wondered which one of them would wind up dead before the night was through, 
and then he shook off his sudden urge to speculate between this one and that, and 
caught Omi by the elbow.

"Come on," he whispered in his ear, "let's go over to the bar, down on that empty 
end, and scope out the room. We'd be less noticeable there." 


***

Youji had parked his roadster in front of a coffee shop, two blocks over from the 
club he was going to that night. He'd strolled those two blocks oblivious to the 
stares and catcalls, insults and occasional propositions he received from those 
passers by he met en route. He wasn't on stage yet, even though he looked the 
part, and knew all his lines--so he saw no need to indulge anyone. 

Though Omi certainly saw the need to indulge Yuuji. He'd caught how the boy 
curled up next to his Crasher lover, and it both crushed and angered him. Made 
him feel vengeful, and to that end, when he did walk onto the stage, he would 
play the part to the hilt. Flirt with everyone he found attractive, male or female. 
And maybe...he'd get lucky, and find someone to pass a few minutes with in some 
dark corner before going home. 

A male someone preferably, and with condoms. He'd had enough of 
close calls and nasty surprises--meaning visits from ex-girlfriends.  Not finding 
himself the father of a living, breathing, starved-for-love little boy. That, much to 
his shock, he was enjoying very much. 

Sei was still on his mind when he handed the bouncer over the few yen for the 
cover charge, still when he held his hand out to be stamped.  But the minute he 
crossed that threshold, he pushed the truth of what he now was to the back of his 
mind, and went into character. An 18-year-old sometime whore on the make. A 
wink here, a none-too-innocent smile there, and he started to get attention, mostly 
male, for there was where he was aiming his flirtations. 

And so busy was he in setting the scene as he threaded through the groping, 
slithering mass of humanity towards the bar, he missed seeing a very familiar 
young man flanked by three of his closest friends. 

Hiro and his friends had tailed him all the way to the club, and 
Youji had failed to notice it. 

***

"Well, well, well," Teru began, smirking into his stirred martini, "I guess Mitsuki 
was right after all, kudos to her and to you, Hiro-kun."

Sighed Hiro, smiling all the while himself. "Oh," He felt like a true villain, a real 
personification of all that was sexy and evil in the world, and he let it show, 
stretching on his chair like he had nothing else to do in the world, "that was the 
point of all this."

They laughed, the lights revolved from amber bottle green and some hint of Diana 
Ross was lost below the surface of remix by someone who wasn't even sure who 
Diana Ross was.  

"But I've lost my bet now!" The second young man complained, handing a few 
thousand yen over to the third, who said nothing, but in his feeling especially 
amiable that night, treated his brotherhood to a fresh pack of cigarettes from one 
of the cocktail boys.

As for the eldest of the group and his cloud of cheap cigarette haze, he remarked, 
watching what little of his smoke the strobe lights let him see, "I think these might 
come in handy in a bit."

"I thought you said you didn't want any part but to stand guard?" Hiro again.

"My lot in life ultimately has nothing to do with what happens to-night.  Que sera 
sera." And his ash fell to the floor.

***

Mrs. Higurashi dabbed beneath her glasses, hoping to catch her tears before the 
name of her favorite actress rolled over the soap's credits.  She did like to see it- 
so long had it been there, a sign something in the universe remained.  She caught 
it between two fallen droplets, and smiled.  A glance to the little gold watch she 
kept always on her wrist found the hour was a touch late, but just the same, time 
to check on her boarder's boy.  The bunny slippers had nothing to say to her when 
she slid them on, or even when her toes fell roughly to their soles as she walked 
upstairs.

The lock took the key and that she supposed would be that, save for turning out 
the lights the boy had left on.

"Ah, children."

But tip-toeing into Youji's quarters, she found no boy on the couch, or the bed, or 
even the heap of cushions on the living room floor.  There was, however, one 
standing on a step-stool by the sink, washing some leftover dishes with hardly 
even the sound of his soap splashing.

"Seishirou."

"Hai, Higurashi-san." He turned to look at her then, and his rubber gloves sagged 
and bubbles fell from his plate onto the floor.

Which was spotless, like it hadn't been that morning.

"Oh Seishirou..."

*** 

Abbess Hildegard awoke with a start and inasmuch was for the second time that 
day terrified to find her head presently residing in a plastic orb.  She yowled, the 
sound muffled through her air holes, and at once took off in circles, round and 
round her master's desk.

Reiichi sighed and scooped her whole form, pink lame space suit and all, into his 
arms.  "Oh Abbess! What's the matter?" He cooed.  And then he saw the blinking 
diodes all around his monitor.

He and his cat had spent the entire afternoon on the floor beside the thing, where 
they had spent the whole morning calibrating it.

He put on its headphones and listened to the static with the words thrown in 
between.

Half smiling, because his tap on the Weiss communicators was working.

Half frowning, because he didn't at all like what he heard.

"Oh, I think we had better call Naru-han about this! Shouldn't we, shouldn't we!"

The cat meowed and tried to lick herself, failing utterly, only to glance at her 
master as if she expected him to do it for her.

Almost calm, and far from calm together, he sat down at his computer and from 
his dialer program induced the macro that paged all of the Crashers by any means 
they could be reached.

All except for Yuuji, any longer, those tones he had unchecked, exiled the blond 
Knight from their world in a few mouse clicks.

"It seems they're not picking up.  Oh, now what do we do?"

They both sighed however their species would permit them to sigh.

***

"He said he wouldn't be back until late, Mitsuki-san." Megaera said, her ghost, 
still in her lingerie and floaty trimmings of Hollywood madams, though bearing 
tea, like any good Japanese housewife.  Her guest took note of the juxtaposition, 
for she had nothing better to do that evening, and the stillness had unclouded her 
mind.  

The whole world became stunningly clear.  She felt she might go blind, and 
wished her tea into sake, though nothing came of it.

"I know."

"You seem worried."

"Bored, worried! Worried, bored! What's the difference?"

Megaera grinned then, shaking her head.  Her bun came undone leaving her light 
brown hair to spill over her collar and all around her shoulders.  She didn't so 
much as try to fix it.  "I've some rather questionable manga about, if you would 
like to see it.  I didn't want to get it out in front of Hiro-san though.  They're really 
more of Kuudou-san's taste."

The cigarette in her guest's hand went out, and the fuchsia eyes befell her in the 
semi-dimness of her livingroom.  Cupped her there, as if admiring something far 
more stunning hanging on a museum wall.  

And then the arm about her waist, the lips against her ear.  "How about we make 
our own questionable manga? just in case 'Hiro-san' brings us back what we want 
most!"

"Mitsuki-san..."

***

"I thought you said Kuudou was blond?" Pachinko, feasting his eyes through the 
darkness all the while, to the point of gold and deeper black distortion that was 
their prey. 

"He is!" Hiro laughed.  "But don't you know time spoils all beauty? And that I am 
time tonight!"

"You're drunk," the cocktail waiter laughed.

*** 

"Achachah!" Omi began, shaking his finger and tugging Knight back to the booth.  
"Not just yet, Yuuji-kun!"

The blond assassin did not in this seem even remotely thrilled that he had been 
summoned so roughly back to his seat.

Omi's voice fell to as whisper, or what seemed a whisper in the thrumming 
embrace of the crowd and it's music, which rippled even up to their table.

"I just want to make sure the comms are working, you never know."

So they both reached for their pockets, and the younger of the pair had his in his 
hand, safely hidden underneath the tabletop.  If anyone glanced it there between 
his fingers, it doubtless came off as nothing but a glowstick or a phone.  Sheer 
light, packaged and read to be taken around wherever he liked.  So did he open it, 
and hit the button to summon Youji.

Knight held his straight to his ear as if he did have a phone, or a headset.  It made 
his little lover smile.

A tone between them first, just in case, and then Youji's ID.  As if breathing 
glitter did Omi speak to the bit of plastic between his fingers.  "Ne, Youji-kun? 
Do you read?"

"Youuuuuuuuuji."

*** 

This was the life: standing at a bar lined with beautiful young 
creatures like himself, with a cold bottle dangling between his 
fingers. Youji conveniently found himself growing ever more 
forgetful of the reason why he was there; now, he was more inclined to simply 
enjoy himself for awhile. Let Bombay and Knight do the work, he was going to 
play. 

He was going to saunter over to the other end of the bar and make 
first contact with the luscious brunet who'd been eyeing him since he approached 
the bar. 

"Youuuuuuuuuji."

Or not. 

"Fuck it all!" he hissed around the filter of his smoke, smiling 
carelessly at the intoxicated girl who'd slung herself into the space between him 
and another woman. Youji grabbed his bottle, and slunk off from his post, 
punching back the signal code that the message had been received. When he had 
found a suitable corner, one free of lounging clubbers, he punched at another 
button and spat, "What is it?" 

Youji cocked his ear over the device, but heard nothing. Typical. 
Omi would call to him like a sulky lover and then go away. Unbidden, images of 
Omi, naked save for the sheets on the bed, entered his head. It took two long pulls 
of his beer to drive them away. 

"Having a laugh on me? Well, fuck you!" he shouted into the comm's mic again, 
figuring they'd turned it off to spite him. He tossed his smoke away, and lit 
another, and headed back off to the bar, hoping to score before the hour struck.

***

Omi's face creased almost comically in the moments he sat at the table still, com 
held to his ear.  Knight rose but a moment after he had made the call, started over 
to the bar, one white glare among the garish club, one man among boys.  To 
everyone but Omi, who had to cover up his lips to keep from chuckling.

"YOUJI! I'm not laughing at you! I'm just doing what we usually do? Don't you 
remember?"

And he hung up without and answer to the distant one, and words unasked for 
given Yuuji.  "It's OK.  I heard him, or I think I did.  He was just swearing at 
something."

A jingle of his body and he stood, almost bumping into a boy nearly a head 
shorter than he, and wearing only half as much clothing.

"So let's go, I'll buy you a drink.  But just a little one."

***

The last shot glass fell out of his hand and he walked through its remains into the 
dusk of the corners where the lovers had hidden themselves.  All lovers.  He knew 
they were all boys, but male and female could not be made out in the way the 
light slipped from one color to another, with no time, no warning between the 
hues.

It was violet all over now, and the song had no beat for everyone was singing with 
it.  The smoke he breathed was purple, the dead glass purple.

"Having a laugh on me? Well, fuck you!"

"Did you see me laugh, biseinen?" Hiro asked, his body close enough to feel the 
heat of Youji's amaranth metal form, or how it looked between his spattered 
glasses and the all-intrusive violet. "Or have you got your latest piece of ass on 
the phone? I heard he was cute. Too bad he's not here now."

***

Youji nearly jumped out of his skin when he realized who was standing so close 
to him.  Nearly, but settled for taking two cautious steps away.  He nudged a stray 
lock of his hair away from his eye with his little finger, and took another deep 
drag off his smoke.  All a show of bravado; inwardly, his adrenaline level kicked 
up a notch.  Then two.  He wanted to run away, but yet, he didn't.  Something in 
him was spoiling for a fight.

And since Yuuji wasn't around...

"What's this?" he asked, calmly tipping the ash onto the floor.  "Accosting me in 
full view of everyone, instead of dragging me into an alley like a coward? You 
must be slipping, Hiro-san."

***

"Maybe you've given me courage, Kuudou." Hiro smiled then, his tongue darting 
over his lips.  Neither of them heard it, but as the crowd parted around them, his 
three dear friends caught sight of the pair, and whistled with the speakers.  The 
lights stayed purple and one of the dancers nearby wept purple tears onto his 
suede jacket which only made him cry more.

In Youji's silence, his once assailant noticed that the thread of hair had come 
down to his eyes again.  They were black, not emerald.  Black like what little 
covered his shimmering body.

It was he who brushed it away this time.

"Yes, I am Hiro the lionhearted now! Just for you, for you are my icon.  Don't you 
know? Oh, I forgot, you have a horrid memory.  But just look at yourself! You're 
glowing all over and not even trying to hide the stitches I gave you. I owe you this 
time.  So, how about I take you to the alley so no one has to watch?" 

A simper, and he drank from the air as if still holding his glass.  One hand slid 
into his pocket, felt the record button underneath his coat that had already ended 
up pressed.  Oh, luck had her sights on him.  Too bad such was not his interest 
this evening.  "You know *what*, don't you?"

***

Hiro seemed to be mad.  Demented.  Drunk as well from the smell of his liquored 
breath and Youji didn't like any of it.  He'd taken one involuntary step backwards 
before catching himself and adopting once more a cocky stance.  Mustn't show 
fear, man, 'cause that's what they want.  That's when they'll attack, just to hear 
your screams...

So he lit another cigarette, and tried to cover the fact his hand was trembling 
slightly.  Shook out the flame from his lighter instead of just capping it dead.  
When he shoved it back into his pocket, Youji left it his hand to keep it company.

"I'm not going to the fucking alley with you," he snarled.  "I'm not going 
anywhere with you."

Hiro threw his head back and laughed as if Youji'd just told him a joke, which 
sent the Weiss assassin's nerves on edge even more.  Rang the alarm bells and 
made him want to run for the exit.  He coolly took one step and then another away 
from him.

But when he turned around to make his hurried exit, he found himself face to face 
with one of Hiro's buddies.  And he was flanked by two more.  All three strapping 
and healthy, and Youji's heart fell to his stomach and the tiny wound there.

/Shit.  Shitshitshit./

The first one grabbed his shoulders, and spun him around like he was a toy, and 
snaked an arm around his waist, holding him like a lover might.

"Don't leave just yet, Youji-kun," he purred in his ear.  "Not before we get to 
know each other a little better."

***

"OI!" Hiro laughed whirling into the open arm of his companion, or almost, as he 
staggered close enough to be heard above the din.  "Don't you keep Kuudou all to 
yourself.  I want some too!"

"Oh," Teru began in a poor imitation of the lilt a gallant fop might use.  "But he'll 
get gold dust all over your nice suit.  And who knows what else?"

And they all laughed.  Hiro shook his head and settled himself, draped like a lazy 
cat over Youji's shoulder, his nose pressed to his cheek.  He said to him then, 
"Mmm, you don't smell at all like booze.  You smell like a girl, all makeup and 
children.  Shame that."

And the last two came, the second settling both of his hands down the back of 
Youji's pants, the third merely hovering about them all. 

As for Hiro and the first of his friends, one stilled his hand when it came close to 
his mouth and the other snatched up the cigarette.  It was hard to tell which one 
had done so, for the lights cut into another color and all went azalea pink.  

"I wonder if you feel like any of those girls you used to pick up," Pachinko asked 
lazily, kneading his cheeks through the inside of his back pockets.  His fingers 
strayed into the outline of his crack, and lingered there, barely stirring.  "This 
scared.  I can feel you shaking inside."

"That's not a question of if, but a question of when," their leader pointed out.   "Of 
course, you don't like girls anymore."

"But don't think we have anything against that," one of the other's laughing, but 
barely discernable over the din, the cries of some other lover in a corner that 
blending into the music.

Hiro took the cigarette and smoked it himself, just once, before flinging to the 
floor where it leaked ash on his shoe.  "Not at all.  We're happy for you.  Really."

***

"I'm so fucking touched by your support." 

That got him a sharp, little slap across the cheek, but the blow wasn't enough to 
cow Youji, though. He answered in kind with a hard, upwards thrust of his knee 
in the direction of Hiro's groin, but whether he'd actually hit him there or not he 
couldn't say. Only knew he'd struck, and Hiro's disco light-caressed visage 
disappeared from his line of vision for a moment. It was enough to galvanize him 
into action. He slammed one booted foot down onto the instep of the man who 
was groping him; awkwardly pivoted when he cried out to kick at him again. He 
heard and felt his clothing tear, and Youji managed to wrench free from one 
startled captor to punch the other. 

And then, in a burst of pain and white sparks, he found himself on all fours on the 
floor. Tasted the warm salt of blood in his mouth where he'd bitten his tongue. 
The four pairs of feet around him swam and melted with the rainbow lights, and 
he very nearly blacked out, wanted to so badly. He knew he was in trouble, and 
no matter how he fought, there was no way he could take out four guys at once. 
Not without back up. 

And there was none to be had. 

In one last desperate hope, he hit the silent panic button on his wrist comm.  Just 
made it before he was hauled to his feet again, and found himself embraced 
tightly by two of his aggressors, their arms around him like they were old friends. 
The insults and threats they whispered in his ears were vile enough to make his 
blood freeze. 

"No trouble," one of them said to a curious, wanting-to-help bystander. "My 
friend here has just had too much to drink," he said, patting Youji on the chest. 
"We get him home, and he'll be just fine." 

A murmur of assent, and the youth shuffled off. Youji never got a look at him 
because of the hand someone had on the back of his aching neck, forcing his head 
down. 

Someone who then hissed, "Oh, am I gonna pay you back for hitting me!"

***

Hiro managed to keep his expectant gaze from his quarry until they had made it to 
the spot he had chosen.  No one thought anything of them, for they were all as 
they drifted around the dying flame that was Youji, laughing like it was nothing 
but an ordinary evening, and they were all ordinary men albeit with less than 
ordinary interests.  They dragged Youji through the muddied, ashy puddles 
around the rim of the building, and then, in suitable drunken cleverness, back in 
through the rear window and the dank chill of one of the bathrooms.  

But oh, their leader's gaze did stray from the white lies of his liqueur.  He knelt 
beside his prisoner and petted his face while the others slipped in behind him.   
The man was breathing hard.  There gold from him stained all of their clothes- 
tell-tales already and none of them were lucid enough to notice.  Hiro he forced 
his eyes open then, and looked into them before he struck him.

"Don't you dare sob already! You'll ruin it! Don't you know this is a movie, so it 
has a climax! Like everyone climaxes, and if you cry before then, it's like you'll 
make everyone cum in their pants.  Bitch! If my sister can't be here, you'll be my 
sister and you'll be a good weepy movie damn it!"

Something jingled in the hazy, tripping mercury lights- the second of his 
accomplices, leaning on one of the sinks as he was, undid his belt and offered it to 
him.

***

Hiro jerked the length of leather taut, and the resulting snap echoed off the dingy, 
tiled walls. Youji flinched from the sound, and the men around him laughed. 

But not Hiro. 

"Belts are wonderful things--so useful, and for things other than the obvious. And 
this one is a beauty!" He held it out for Youji to see. "Note the thickness of the 
strap, the heavy metal buckle with the intricate work." Hiro turned said buckle--a 
wide, ornate device--this way and that under the hazy lights. 

Youji said nothing, but bit that much harder down on his lip. He knew they 
wanted him to beg, but he wouldn't; it wouldn't stop them from doing what they 
wished, anyway.   

But maybe, just maybe, if he went along, and didn't fight them, they would get 
tired and leave him alone, leave Sei alone. At the thought of his son, Youji nearly 
cried aloud. How would he be able to face him... 

Hiro snapped the strap again, and brought Youji's focus upon his captors; upon 
Hiro, who hovered so close. Nothing but pure hatred did he see there, for himself 
obviously. So much that Hiro lunged forward to grab at his hair and pull his head 
back. 

"You dare look at me without my permission? Scum like you? A murderer like 
you?" 

Youji said nothing, but closed his trembling lids. His reticence only seemed to 
make him madder. He thrust him away by the hair, and snapped the belt again. 

"Strip him, and turn him to the wall, ass towards me. I think I want to warm him 
up a little before I fuck him." 

"Come on, man...please..."  

"Please? Is that what my sister said when she told you about the baby? Did she 
say that in bed when you fucked her?" 

"I didn't..." 

"No, Kudou, you didn't. But you damn well will tonight." 

As they did strip him, Youji did fight, despite his earlier vows to the contrary. But 
he ended up naked and humiliated and pressed against the chill wall anyway, arms 
pulled out to the sides and pinned by two of the companions. They groped his ass 
while Hiro watched, and laughed. 

"Mmm...That's some body you got on you, Kudou. I don't know why I didn't get 
the idea for this sooner." He cocked his head to the side, and murmured dreamily. 
"If only I knew you were into cock..." 

"...Bastard..." 

Another crack. "What was that?!" 

"You...You heard me." 

All went silent--deathly so, and he felt his captors hands leave his body. In the 
next second, the leather strap met his ass with a hard slap, burning him.  He 
jerked, and hissed, but said nothing more than that. 

"What's my name, again, Kudou?" 

Youji rocked his head around, so his forehead touched the walls. Drew a deep 
breath, and said, "...bastard..." 

Hiro drew the belt tight, and let it slip through his fingers as he turned it the other 
way--the buckle end free now--and let fly with another blow, and another. 
Another--on and on until he'd beaten out his rage upon Youji, and had nearly 
rendered him unconscious. It was then that Hiro signaled for his companions to let 
their bruised and bloodied victim drop back to the floor.

***

They gave him his clothes then, put them on for him with their hands running 
down inside the seams as they did so.  They waited for him-Youji; half naked and 
slouched against the wall, fighting his bruised ribs to let him  breath.  Their 
prisoner panting so softly, and lying in streaks of his own, fresh, blood.

Hiro he simpered when he woke enough to start at the sight of his own cuts, and 
his three companions laughed for him.  His victim might have stolen a glance, but 
could not even hold his head up long enough to merit a second beating.  

"Pounding you gets more fun every time! It's like using heroin, only backwards."

The belt spun in his hands and he cracked it once over Youji's head before 
handing it back to the owner, the second of his coterie.  "Well," he said, popping 
his knuckles, "For your contribution that went above and beyond the call of 
punishing this creep who has the nerve to call me a bastard," here he gave a kick 
to their prisoner's groin.  "I hereby give you the right to go first!"

The first of his accomplices dropped his cigarette.  "Hey! What gives?"

"What?" Pachinko shrugged with an empty yawn.  "I wanted to go last anyway.  
Knock yourself out."

The fellow chewed his lips and nodded.  No thanks  His lips he licked and then 
Youji's.  "I don't want much," he said almost to himself.

"Good! Break him in slow! It'll take longer!" someone hooted over the snap of a 
lighter.  

His pants, already sagging about his hips he tapped down onto his shoes, and his 
half-hard member he pondered, twisting the tip of it himself before planting one 
foot on either side of Youji's waist.  Bang.  He pushed him on the brow until his 
head hit the wall and his throat was bared for the belt, which wound around the 
white and gold skin; the smears of sweat and running makeup.

"Bite me, and I'll strangle you." In his light, light voice.  And then he had himself 
down their captive's throat.

***

Youji very nearly did just that, choking violently as he did upon the unexpected 
ramming of thick, hard flesh into his mouth. The man smelled all musky and 
bitter, as if he hadn't bathed in a day, and Youji thought he'd be sick. He prayed to 
whatever God there was that he wouldn't. 

The belt tightened a fraction, enough to make Youji clamor for air, and want to 
struggle away. He knew though, again, that he wouldn't be able to; that he'd only 
end up dead for sure. So, in desperation, he gingerly wrapped his hands around 
the man's ankles, and closed his eyes, and tried to relax by pretending the cock in 
his mouth was Omi's, even though the man had none of his gentleness as he 
mouth-fucked him. 

"Man! He's enjoying it!" Hiro exclaimed, now lounging on the wall beside them, 
calmly smoking, and tipping his ash into Youji's hair. "He any good, Teru?" 

"Oh, shit...! You ought to try this..." Gasped this and he wound his meaty hand 
into Youji's hair, pulling his head back as he thrust into him again. 

"If he swallows, I think I will." 

"Oh...he'll swallow--'cause if he doesn't, I'll strangle him anyway." He chuckled 
again, but it came out all breathy and stilted. "Hear that, little whore?" 

Youji said nothing, but a thin tear trailed down from one closed eye. Whether 
anyone saw it or not, he didn't know, for no one spoke. No sound other than the 
wet slurp of his mouth, and the other man's gasps and groans. 

He felt him go rigid at last, and the sex he'd been forced to take jerked hard, and 
the first jet of cum spilled down Youji's throat. Spurted again and again, until his 
rapist was spent. Teru held him thus, and continued to abuse him until he'd gone 
completely soft. Then he withdrew, and dealt Youji a vicious punch across the 
side of the head, making him crumple sideways onto the floor. 

"Careful, careful," Hiro muttered offhandedly. "Don't incapacitate him until we all 
finished." 

A few cackling laughs, then. Teru pulled up his trousers, and dug out a few yen, 
shoving it in one front pocket of Youji's trousers. "Best blow I've had in a while. 
Man deserves to be paid something." 

More laughter. Hiro stubbed his cigarette out on Youji's hand, grinning at the tiny 
sob he heard as a result. "So. Who's next?" he asked, glancing around at his 
compadres. 

"...don't..." 

Hiro cocked his head as if he'd just heard the cry of a rarely seen bird.  "What was 
that?" he asked, spinning around and staring down at Youji's prone figure. 
Through the tumble of his inky locks, two glittering eyes could be seen. Hiro 
strode back over to him and squatted down beside him, feigning an attitude of 
concern. 

"You say something, Kudou? Huh?" he demanded, cuffing him none-too-lightly 
across the back of his head. 

Youji swallowed hard, fighting back nausea, and pushed his sweat-dampened hair 
back from his face with a shaking hand, willing himself not to say any more. 

He grinned suddenly, genuinely, and Youji didn't understand why--and nor was 
Hiro going to explain why. He clearly wasn't going to heed any of his pleas either, 
much to Youji's dismay, for he promptly got to his feet, and turned to face his 
accomplices again. 

"Aw! Kudou's not enjoying himself, you guys!" Hiro cried, clapping his hands 
together. "Who here would like to show him a good time?"

***

All eyes had fallen expectantly to Teru, as if he was had some duty to make up for 
not.  He saw this, and found it a joke.  One of the others handed him a cigarette 
and he smoked it while he lounged sated and still crimson-brushed against the 
grimy floor.  

They air had turned to smoke by then, for the window had been slammed and the 
doors of course kept closed.  The noise of the club was barely leaking in.  A strain 
here, a shout there, a scuffle and a scratch.  

There were no whispers, save for Youji's ragged breathing until the clatter he 
made when a hand came up against his cheeks.  It was the eldest of the lot, petting 
Youji, and laughing long before he had ever flinched away.

"You know, I don't even know why I came along.  I just don't lean that way, 
golden boy.  I don't want you." A snort.  "Shoulda brought my dog for you, 'cause 
we all know Hiro's gonna be disappointed if I just leave."

"You AREN'T just leaving though?" Hiro sounded expectant, as if a guest at a 
party of his was leaving without giving him a present.  "Are you?"

Teru stretched and turned upon the elder man then, "At least hang around to help 
us hold him down if he needs it.  I know you like THAT, Joshua-san."

Joshua just smirked and flicked the last of his ashy stalk into one of the toilets 
where it went out with a hiss.  "I'm tryin' to think of something, gimme a minute."

As for their leader, he knelt then, alongside Youji, with his hands finding his way 
behind Teru's dollar bills and into his soft crotch.  "Don't you think out little 
whore is the least bit pretty? Come on!"

Pachinko hissed to himself, "Stupid gaijin! Think they can't be manly if they do 
one guy."

"I heard that.  Look, he just doesn't do it for me!"

"Muuuuuuuuuu," replied Hiro, and all four of them laughed.  

The eldest fell silent first, as much as he plainly wished to add something in his 
own tongue, though he gave that up all together in the end for the sake of the idea 
come oozing through his thoughts. "That doesn't mean I want to leave him alone.  
In fact... I thought of something just now."

A click, just soft, but so familiar.  Youji's eyes came from the floor and fell upon 
the dull, bluish sheen of Joshua's pocket knife as it drew nearer and nearer his 
own body, danced before his eyes, half there, and half a horror unwilling to be 
kindled in reality.  He smoothed his hair again, combing some of the ash from it.  
"Do you like it? It was a gift from my second wife back
when I still had a wife.  Any wife!  Still sharp too."

They all hooted and clapped as their prey flinched away before the blade had 
come within and reasonable distance of his skin.  Joshua too, who had his head 
pressed up against his shoulder, and hummed into his ear.  There was a flurry of 
black leaking gold.  Tatters of half torn, half slit material went flying.  Youji was 
all bruises and his bloody thighs and ass beneath the incisions. The single shallow 
slash that grazed his waist cut into the fabric he had left along his crotch.  

"Let's play a game," Joshua said, calm as if rather it was an offer of poker with 
friends.  "How about you play with yourself," a tap here to Youji's limp member.  
"And for every minute it takes you to get off, I'll give you another little nick.  
You'd better moan my name while you're at it too!"

A smile, and he in truth embraced their prisoner.

"If you can turn me on, maybe I'll even rub my stuff in your wounds when you're 
done.  Wouldn't that be nice?"

***   

"No, no knives," Youji half-sobbed, cringing in Joshua's arms as he did.  "Oh, 
what's wrong, golden boy?" he asked so sweetly, holding the knife up before his 
eyes and letting it dangle for a moment before enclosing the handle in his fist and 
aiming the tip of the blade at his throat. "Don't you want to play?" 

"Not like this," he whispered, and his hands came up to the arm across his waist, 
trying vainly to push it away. He *had* to get away from the knife.  "Let me go."  

"Well...I would, gorgeous, but ya see, my friend Hiro here wants me to 
participate. Asked me especially to come, even though I don't fancy boys. So you 
see, I can't let him down." 

A pair of tears trickled down his face, and he began to tremble.  

"Aw, come on, Kuudou! All I want is for you to whip out your cock and stroke 
yourself while we watch. Don't tell me you've never done that for your boy toys 
before?" 

Youji shook his head fervently. Joshua, however, was not moved. He slid his 
hand behind Youji's neck, and gripped it tight so that he couldn't move away.  The 
knife he drew close to his jugular, just hovering above it, and very quietly said, 
"Get it out and jerk off already, or I'll slit your throat right here. Got me?" 

Youji gasped, closing his eyes as he reached for his zipper with wildly shaking 
hands. It came down jerkily between his forefinger and thumb, the button as well, 
and he took himself out, cradling his cock protectively between his hands. He 
struggled to think of things that would get him hard and make him come as fast as 
he could. That knife couldn't touch his skin; he couldn't bear it if he did. 

For Kuudou Youji was afraid of knives. 

"The clock is ticking." 

He drew another shaky breath at that, his heart tripping that much faster in his 
chest. He slid his hands over his flagging sex, desperately willing it to stir 
between his palms. Thought of Omi; of Asuka; of the beautiful dark-haired boy 
he'd seen at the bar; recalled all the idle fantasies he'd entertained about Aya and 
Ken together, even. 

Finally, thankfully, his erection bloomed. A mixed blessing. The men in the room 
began to catcall and whistle as he began to work himself. He felt Joshua's fingers 
pull the tattered cloth down from his hips even further, laying him completely 
bare. He stroked his throat with the other. 

"Mmm, Kuudou! You're getting me hard now, just watching you." 

Youji turned his face away, feeling the knife blade bite at his collarbone, raking 
over it and down to the center of his chest. He hissed in pain, and drew the 
laughter of his attackers. 

"That was the first minute come and gone, baby, and you haven't moaned my 
name. You better get a move on, unless you want me to cut that pretty face of 
yours next." 

"...oh, J-j-joshua..." he whispered. 

"What? I'm sorry, baby, but I can't hear you?" Joshua replied, drawing the blunt 
edge of his blade down Youji's cheek. 

"Joshua..." 

"Mmm...More of a moan, I think. Come on, Kuudou. I know you can moan, can't 
you? Just pretend you're with your lover. And you better hurry," he added in a 
whisper. "You only have 30 more seconds before the next minute is up." 

Youji increased the pace over his sex, forcing himself to think of Omi as he did--
Omi as he was before he himself had fallen into hell, and all the sweet sex they'd 
shared. 

And at last, he reached orgasm, half-sobbing Joshua's name as he did. Just as he 
did, he felt the sear of the blade as Joshua whipped it down his cheek, and 
Joshua's voice in his ear as he wailed in pain. 

"Sorry, Kudou, but you were a second too late."

*** 

His latest assailant, pleased with himself and their prisoner held the knife above 
his pants, or what was left of them, and then his hair, where the lost touch of 
blood from it ran from his wet locks onto his brow.  He shored off a few strands, 
and let them fall along the wound on Youji's chest.

"I'm glad you came along," Pachinko acknowledged.  His breathing was soft and 
sultry on the air.

And of Joshua, he nodded and rose, putting the knife away with a clack.  "Thanks, 
Pach." Nothing more and nothing less.  Drawing himself off to the side, he lit 
himself yet another cigarette and began to smoke it almost contemplatively. 

"I dunno, Hiro sure isn't sayin' much." Teru yawned, casting himself up to a 
sitting position and trying to knock a kink from his arms.

And they all looked to him then; found Hiro gleaming all over where Youji's 
sparkle had faded into grim and blood and all but slavering as he kneeled in the 
middle of the floor from where the best vantage would have been.  "Oh, but you're 
still breathing, aren't you, Kuudou?"

It took a slap to claim for him his response, but he got it, and for all his comrades.  
The sight of Youji dappled with cum and bleeding seemed to enrapture him more 
than anything else so far that evening.  He stared at the traces of salt water 
coursing over him as if he had never seen such things before, smiled and waved to 
them, the stuttering moans of his prisoner.  Smitten enough was he to show them 
off.  He said, "Joshua-san, thank you from the bottom of my heart.  You know not 
what you have given me."

"I think he does!" Pachinko chortled, pointing out the bulge on the eldest man's 
trousers.

"These?" Joshua inquired with a droll laugh as he drew away a spattering of 
bloody tears from his victim's face, caressing the salt into the wound as he did so.  

And Hiro nodded.

"I'm glad you like them." And he settled himself then, beside Teru, but at a 
slightly more than respectable distance.

"I thought you said you were going to rub your cum on him."

"Gettin' to that.  But I take longer than two minutes.  Pachinko, you go awhile.  I'll 
just hang out for the coup de gras then."

"You weren't going to?"

"Interest is interest," his cool grey gaze fell away then and his hands dropped 
down into his pants, a single sliver of black following behind to wrap about his 
stiffness.

The thin, rubbery shadow of Pachinko crept to Youji's side then, though Hiro 
spoke, rather than his unsatisfied friend.  "Yes, you only took TWO WHOLE 
MINUTES! I bet it's three with girls, four for the prettiest! No no! Don't tell me if 
I'm right! I'm only interesting in how you do with boys, but we'll know soon 
enough.  How soon? I can't say yet.  How long did she take? How long
did my sister last, or did you put it in her the same way you do the boys?"

His only reply came as a soft gurgle somewhat tantamount to speech, and 
somewhat not.

And it got him another knock to his unharmed cheek.

"Don't tell me it doesn't matter! Because it does! It does! It didn't to you and come 
the morning nothing will matter to you anymore! You will be nothing of nothing! 
Not even a whore! And I..."

"What's this?" Teru again.  As he slunk away form Joshua, he had reached 
between the slits in Youji's left sleeve, pulling his tattoo and the lines his son had 
traced upon his body clearly to light.  He had overlooked them the first time.  
"Hmm... whatever it is.  's true.  I guess."

Hiro shrugged and fumbled for the end of his speech, that would not come, so he 
said only, "It all comes back to her for me, and it will all come back to THIS for 
you!"

"See, you said so yourself," Pachinko added, and he kissed the colored marks 
most tenderly, one hand coming under the tatters of Youji's jacket to caress his 
nipples.  "Which you might want to tell me when *I'm* all finished.  You see, I'm 
not like Joshua-san.  I like boys.  Very much.  Pretty blond boys..."

"Golden boys!" Joshua snickered and then gasped as his fingers chose a sensitive 
place of his sheerly of their own derision.  

"Yeah, yeah.  Anyway, I'm going to do you a favor and be the calm before that 
gushing, manly, just oooooh! Fuckin' sweet storm that is Hiro."

Two weary, wet green eyes met his.

"I'm not going to touch you.  You're going to touch me."

Their leader was obliged to spit into one of the sinks or drool upon the floor, for 
he knew this line, this pickup.

This kink.  And it promised tears upon tears...

Pachinko stood and had his pants off in a moment.  "But about me liking boys? I 
like them raw! And fast! And hung! In fact, I had two or three come in me before 
I showed up."

Joshua coughed on someone else's cigarette smoke.  

"But it feels pretty sticky and not so nice now.  Why don't you suck it out quick?"

***

Youji stayed in the crumpled heap of flesh and bone and tattered cloth that Joshua 
had left him in. Twitching hands hanging over the summit of his bent knees, as if 
trying to hide his bared sex from their view. 

"Can you hear me, Youji-san? Or should I say...-chan?" A laugh. 

Youji still did not move, not one flicker of one green eye beneath the tangled, 
damp ebon veil of his hair. 

"Man! I think he's gone unresponsive on us." 

Hiro scuffed his cigarette out on the floor between Youji's forefinger and thumb 
to try to unnerve him; he got no response at all, and lit a fresh one.  "Aw, hell. No, 
he has," he grumbled, even though it seemed very clear that he had. Hiro grasped 
Youji's chin and jerked his head up, and found his eyes
rather unfocussed; his breathing shallow. He dealt him a slap, but Youji only 
reacted by blinking once. 

Hiro rocked back on his heels, staring at him in utter befuddlement. "I'll be 
damned." 

"So what now? Up end him on the floor and start fucking him?" Pachinko hissed.

Hiro though took a long, heavy drag on his smoke, exhaled, and then shook his 
head. "Nah, not yet. I've got an idea." He shifted so he was kneeling alongside of 
him, and slipped an arm around his shoulder in a comradely fashion, and very 
confidentially said in his ear, "Oi, Kuudou?" 

Nothing but the barest flicker of his eyelids. 

"Let me make a deal with you, okay? If you rim Pachinko here, like a good little 
slut, we won't kidnap your pretty little boyfriend and rape him. What do you say 
to that?" 

He clapped him on the chest, grinning as if he'd just promised him the sun and 
stars for nothing. Very slowly, Youji turned his head to look at him, wide-eyed in 
sheer fright. 

"...You wouldn't..." 

"Oh, damned if I wouldn't! I hear he's a sweet piece of ass, that boyfriend of 
yours." 

"...No..." he half-sobbed. 

Hiro elbowed him in the ribs, hard, and added, "And if you can get Pach-san's 
rocks off while you're at it, we'll even leave your brat alone." 

Before he could answer, the mens' room door opened. A lanky youth of about 
sixteen came stumbling in, stoned off excellent weed and drunk off cheap beer.  
He'd had his trousers completely undone before he realized he wasn't alone.  The 
bespectacled boy came to an abrupt halt halfway to the urinals. 

"Wh--what's going on?" 

"We're having a board meeting, brat. What does it look like?" snapped Hiro 
sarcastically. Youji was about to bolt, he could feel it, and he slung a restraining 
arm around his waist. 

"Looks like a party." 

"Yeah, well...Goodbye!" 

"Aw, can't I join?" 

"No, you can't," Joshua said, lumbering to his feet and stalking off towards the 
boy. He clapped his hands on his shoulders, and pivoted him around like he was a 
top. "Now get the hell out of here." 

"But...I gotta take a slash!" 

"Take it outside. We've got enough cock to entertain ourselves here right now." 
Joshua marched the boy over to the door, and out. And as the door swung shut, 
Youji watched, and the sight of his one pitiful hope fading away made him act. 
He wrenched away from Hiro in an unexpected burst of energy, and ran for the 
door, only to be trapped by Joshua and Teru. The eldest man pried his
fingers away from the cold, curved metal handle, and Youji was dealt another 
brutal punch across his bleeding cheek. 

Teru dragged him back over to where Hiro still sat on the floor, and there he 
dropped Youji. Cruel fingers bit into his skin as Hiro yanked his chin upwards 
again. 

"Do that again, and I'll kill your son, and I'll make you watch." 

He let him go, and Youji fell to trembling again. He heard the rustle of clothing, 
saw shadows, felt the nearness of a human body before his own. 

"Get up, Kudou." 

Reluctantly, he shifted, trying to creep away as he pulled himself up on all fours, 
but a hand landed on the back of his neck, and dragged him forward. 

And before him, was Pachinko's bared ass. 

"Do it, Kuudou." 

Youji struggled, and once more he heard the telltale flip of a blade; a glance 
showed Joshua standing just a few feet away from him, holding the knife at a 
threatening angle. 

"Do it, or I'll have Joshua carve you up into tiny pieces. And then where will that 
kid of yours be, hmm?" 

Youji shivered violently, blinking back fresh tears. All he got was another hard 
squeeze of the back of his neck, another shove forward. Youji sniffed pathetically, 
and turned his tortured eyes to Pachinko's naked flesh. 

And, eyes closed, he inched forward until his face was pressed to the cleft of the 
other man's ass. 

***

"SHIT!" Pachinko wailed feeling their prisoners lips brush against him.  He 
sounded as if rather it was he who had been choked, or sickened, or taken without 
his leave, save for the relish creeping in his wet words.  A trickle of saliva left his 
lips and he scrubbed after it.  He was ticked with crimson
and blushing violently.  Whether for the stimulation or the embarrassment of the 
ensuing catcalls he had evoked it could not be said for sure.  Everyone but Joshua 
laughed, for the eldest man had let his mind slink off elsewhere while he fondled 
himself, at least now that the boy had gone.  

Teru had gotten to his feet and was whistling all along, clapping and crying 
delightedly himself, as if they had a stripper of exceptional charms all to 
themselves.  His shoes came off and ended up jammed into the once more purple 
light that was trickling through the space between the door and the tile.  With 
nothing but worn socks on his feet now, he watched, and he leaned against the 
door while Pachinko wound his lanky arms behind himself and took Youji by the 
head, clasping his face against his drippy crack.

"That's it, bitch! Stick it in like a good little soap girl."

"Yes!" A giggling and pinkish Hiro added.  "Make Pach-san nice and clean or we 
won't pay you!"

Of Pachinko, he howled and twitched and thrust into the empty air, squeezing 
himself closed to the timid nibbles and creeping brush of a tongue, making it that 
much harder, as he might have for a lover.

Silence then, from they at least, listening for moans between the thrumming pulse 
of the music outside.  None from Kuudou which brought whistles of dismay 
undercut by the low grunt Joshua gave as a came.  Hiro regarded his eldest 
companion then, who held up his slick hand for them to see, though he covered 
himself up again before sight of his crotch could be glanced.  

Pachinko almost let go of Youji so he could see. The elder man smiled, quite 
casually slapping his juices onto the waiting fingers of the man who had brought 
them together.

"Arigatou."

"You're fierce."

"Undo my fly for me quick."

"You keep teasing me..."

His dress shirt was the only thing still hanging on him when he came to Youji 
then, slicking the borrowed cum around on his hands like lotion, making it squeak 
as loudly as he could.  Teru had doubled over with teary giggles and Joshua 
looked on with a fatherly dispassion, though a grin he'd let settle on his face.

"You make me so hot, and not just 'cause you piss me off." Hiro kissed his 
quarry's ear then, and straddled his legs.

"See?"

A stiff cock met his ass, a mumble the air, and the shreds of his pants came off 
with a yank.  The button clanged against one of the fixtures.  Teru started to turn 
purplish trying not to spoil the moment.  

And Hiro drew Youji's dark hair from his neck.  Kissed him there and drank up a 
few of his tear traces before he pushed himself inside and ran the cum on his 
hands over the cuts on his ass as he clutched it.

***

Youji just lay there, chest heaving against the cold tiles as he sobbed out the 
excruciating, tearing pain he felt from Hiro's initial thrust. Shivers wracked his 
body, and he wondered vaguely if he were becoming feverish.  The idea of him 
being sick in the middle of his abuse made him burst into hysterical laughter.

"What the fuck?" Hiro hissed. He grabbed hard at Youji's hair and yanked his 
head back at a strained angle, and his laughter abruptly died. A few tears escaped 
Youji's eyes, but he didn't bother to blink them away. Hiro drove viciously into 
him again, fresh blood and stale cum paving the way a little for him now. Youji 
only closed his eyes against the agony he felt, teeth sunk
into his lower lip. 

"You enjoying this, Kudou?" Hiro murmured in a breathy voice. "'Cause I sure 
am." 

Youji didn't say anything, even when Hiro shook him by the scruff of the neck.  
His rapist, irritated by his victim's sudden reticence, knocked his head down on 
the floor with hard slap, and renewed his violent attack on Youji's body.  His 
fingers dug into Youji's hips, scant nails drawing blood as he rode him.  But still, 
Youji just quietly lay there, staring blankly at the wall,
seemingly oblivious to it all. 

Hiro finally strained against him, arching, and he emptied his cum into his 
victim's ass with a cry of sheer ecstasy. Hiro worked him until the last wave of 
pleasure coursed through him, until he had gone soft, and then he pulled out. Sat 
back, still panting. 

"Shit! I mean...Damn, I had no idea he was that good of a fuck," Hiro huffed.  He 
slid a cigarette between his lips and leaned over to light it when Teru approached 
with his lighter. 

"Pity he didn't cry out anymore, though." 

"Mmm...Yes," Hiro murmured absently. A thick plume of smoke billowed from 
his mouth, and he rocked forward on his knees to tenderly smooth Youji's mussed 
hair back from his face. Youji was still staring at the wall. Hiro lightly slapped 
him on the cheek, trying to get a reaction, and only managing to make him blink. 

"Anything?" 

He sat back on his knees, and stared down at Youji in obvious frustration. "Aw, I 
think he's gone. Damn." 

A disappointed murmur rose from the little group. Joshua flipped his lighter open 
and then closed as he lit a smoke of his own. "So now what? You wanna play 
some more?" 

Hiro rubbed his chin, considering his suggestion. But then he got to his feet, 
shaking his head. "Nah," he said as he bent to retrieve his trousers. "He won't 
even realize what we're doing if we were to fool around a little more, and that was 
the fun of it." 

"Eh?" Joshua said with a nasty grin. Hiro only chuckled. 

"Well...having him cry and plead for mercy added spice to our fun, let's say."


The others laughed. Hiro zipped up his trousers, and went back over to Youji.  
Prodded him in the side with his toe.

"Oi, Kuuu-dou?" Hiro called in a singsong voice. "I just wanted to tell you that I 
thought tonight was reallll special, and I'll never forget it. I hope you don't either." 
He took out his wallet and pulled out a few yen, and scattered them over Youji's 
prone body. 

"Buy yourself something nice, baby. You deserve it." 

Hiro stepped over Youji as if he were afraid he'd soil his shoes if he happened to 
touch him, and rejoined his laughing and catcalling friends. Slung an arm around 
Teru's shoulders as they filed out. 

Youji lay there on the floor for a long time before he slowly maneuvered himself 
onto his knees, and inched over to where Hiro had flung his torn trousers. Youji 
rolled them into a ball, and cradled them to his chest as he backed himself into the 
corner, a few of the yen notes still clinging to his skin. 

And there, Youji fully succumbed to the shock of what had happened to him.

*****