Part 18- Turn Away
[Version 1.0]

It was raining again, and the news blinking over their television set 
promised it would end before the afternoon came.  Perhaps it would in 
Tokyo, but he had the feeling the clouds would chase them wherever they 
went. 

No one said a word as they slipped out the apartment door and into the 
empty halls which were hard to see in mist-strewn, cerulean light still 
swimming from the window at the end of the hall.  They had all expected 
it to be dark, but since it wasn't, they all stood a moment, trying to 
look out beyond the glass, but the water splattering against it left 
nothing but a dreamy blur.  So, with barely any breath on their lips, 
they descended the stairs, and left through the alley door.  

Omi ran over his memories of just what he'd packed in his little black 
suitcase- everything he owned that mattered anymore.  The computer, 
cash, some medical supplies, one change of clothes and a few of 
Seishirou's things.  Everything else someone knew was his.

"Sayonara, minna-san.  Sayonara."

Youji wordlessly hoisted his son onto his shoulders so Seishirou sat on 
the straps of his father's luggage.  

Their umbrellas popped open, and arm and arm, the two Weiss ran off 
into the empty streets, splashing and clattering all the way down to 
the local service train.  They barely made it into the only empty car.  
None of them took seats- they all just stood, dripping around one of 
the metal bars and watching the rainy morning zoom past them.  

And then they ran all over again, dashing through white pools of light 
rather than between them like before.  They were all afraid of falling, 
and Omi, who was more afraid than anyone else, had to lead the way deep 
into the silent, empty halls of the closest train station to the 
airport where he lingered a long time to make sure the ticket lady got 
a good look at him.  He asked which way to the terminal, went that, 
way, and them made them all double back in stocking feet to the part of 
the building that handled long-distance land travel.

They did not stop for papers this time.  He had three tickets.  They 
all jumped the turn-styles the one minute the guard at the platform was 
away from his post, then it was up onto the endless concrete platform 
where all three sank down onto the nearest bench, gasping and shaking 
out their umbrellas.  

Rain streamed from the roof and ran in a hundred tiny waterfalls around 
them and onto the tracks.  These glistened at first in the station 
lights only, but at last dawn came; blue growing pale grey almost in an 
instant.  Now and then footsteps in tune with the deluge and the 
hissing of distant breaks disturbed the few yawning businessmen who 
waited with them.  Now and then a voice, but it was always the same 
woman and she never got to the train they were waiting for.  

*** 

Yuuji hadn't seen them go, he'd felt it. It was obvious in the way the 
house had gone still, in the silence which had reigned, in the very air 
itself. An old building letting out a long sigh of relief over being 
partially emptied. 

It wasn't long after that that Yuuji had left, Ran's few effects 
stashed away in one of the spare bags Omi had left in the closet. The 
thought of seeing Ran again lightened his heart, buoyed his steps down 
the many staircases, past Ms. Higurashi's apartment and straight to 
the back exit. When he reached it, Yuuji stepped through the door into 
the cool dawn without so much as a glance or word in parting. 

Never was he so happy to leave a place in all his life.

***

"Actually, I rather enjoyed that.  Don't usually care for sleeping with 
women; it's a somewhat of an... umm... jell-o-ful affair."

Feng grumbled and hit Aburatsubo upside the head with the whip she had 
used on him earlier that morning: no easy task considering that she was 
lying with her head lost in a mountain of teal and azure pillows, and 
he was upside-down and halfway off the otherwise endless expanse of bed 
Rivolta had provided her, the dom, and her companion with.  

"I said 'usually', my dear.  No offense.  No, no my dear... Constantine, 
what is it you keep calling her?"

There was a great clatter of chains and their host, swathed in the 
image of the bird his second-favorite erotic playroom was dressed in, 
got to his feet, yawned, and attempted to right his cerulean blindfold.  
It ended up snagged around one of the golden peacock heads that topped 
the armoire sitting on the iridescent peacock feather carpet.  "Beloved 
of my Soul, it is an epithet from the Kama Sutra."

"Ah, I see! So you've had the pleasure before with Feng-chan! Did you 
try the upside-down on a chair position? That always looked just 
righteously fun to me!" 

"Yes, actually.  Speaking of which, Beloved of My Soul, how is that 
back cramp doing?"

Presto-sempai whistled, "Go Feng-chan."

"Call me anything that ends with -chan again, and you die.  Horribly."

"Oh, I don't doubt that at all! I'll put a stop to it at once..." And 
then, as he righted himself to more of a three-o-clock position on the 
torn, bloodied, be-cummed and much enjoyed sheets.  "Would you prefer 
another honorific?"

"I'd prefer that you SHUT THE FUCK UP!" screeched Creiddylad from the 
bathroom, which was, as it happened, not especially separated from the 
bedroom, for Rivolta found walls to be cumbersome in some lascivious 
situations, and so, had used only screens around fixtures installed in 
a corner farthest from the tiffany windows.

"Mai, mai! Sounds like someone got a feather up her ass!"

"That's exactly what happened, you insipid, slavering, malodorous 
pervert!!!"

Their host clucked his tongue, and chided his petulant guest, "Now, 
now, Aburatsubo smells as nice as can be!"

"Mwahaha! Sweet lemony-fresh victory is mine!" declared Aburatsubo, 
only to discover as he did that their host had begun to sniff him in a 
distinctly non-arousing fashion.  

"No, you smell more like... Feng!"

Feng groaned.  So did Presto.

Creiddylad came out from behind the screen, clothed only in blue 
sunlight vapors and a broken robe of trailing bandages.  She walked on 
her tiptoes over to a pair of aqua jelly sandals that had been left out 
for her, slipped them on and then her gloves.  Her covered hands flew 
into the remains of her clothing, and came out with Omi's earring.  
This, in silence, she brandished at the dom and her girlfriend.  Both 
fell silent.  So did Constantine, if only because he discovered that 
the key to his varicolored chains had gone missing.

Feng, after a moment of glares with her companion, slid over the sheets 
and began licking her way down the gauze and skin that made up 
Creiddylad's torso, closing swiftly on the auburn fluff she didn't try 
to hide.  No whistles this time. "My pet..." Though Feng sat up just 
before reaching her tongue into the nether lips it so often graced, and 
turned to the door shouting, "Who's there?"

Sure enough, the door opened.  Outside stood a boy wearing a golden 
tutu and nothing else.  His head had been shaved, and roughly.  Only a 
few patches of stubble remained around the back of his neck.  "Rivolta-
sama, there is a package here for one of the guests."

"What!?" he cried aloud, forgetting the missing key for the time being 
and clattering his way over to the half-cocked door.  When he wheeled 
around to address is companions, one of the lines of iron loops came 
around and hit him in the chin.  "No one's even supposed to know *I* 
own this place, let alone that any of you are here!"

He got no answer, but the psychometric stomped past him, and threw the 
door wide, revealing the arms of the boy before her to be occupied by a 
cellophane-wrapped basket filled with fruit, and silk and a box of 
sparkly band-aids.  

"Kelvena..." hissed Creiddylad as she ripped the things from the boy's 
grasp.  They landed on the floor soon enough, and she stared at them 
there, cursing just loudly enough to be heard.

No sooner had she finished her hushed tirade, than the phone rang, and 
it was she who rooted it out from beneath a heap of feathers and 
screamed into the receiver, "You think this is FUNNY!? You BITCH! 
ENJOYING MY MISERY ARE YOU!?" 

"Not at all," replied the smooth sugar voice on the other end, "I 
didn't know myself the cat would do you any SERIOUS harm until an hour 
before.  You know, it does take some doing to have something delivered 
in Japan when I'm out here in the moors.  I'll do better next time, 
that's a prediction and a promise."

"You told me everything would be, and I quote you WOMAN, 'fine,' 
Kritker or not, if I took the Tokyo job!"

"That was three weeks ago, love.  Do try to calm down.  Things change."

"That includes your sorry face the next time I see you if I have 
anything to say about it!!!"

A yawn, barely stifled, and the sound of a car passing outside on the 
distant line.  "Yours won't be scarred, so no there's no use in getting 
angry.  In fact, the only wound that will leave a mark on you is the 
one on your thighs.  You will get a lovely tattoo to cover it up.  
Don't tell me you hadn't thought of it already, and before you accuse 
me of never doing anything for you, check the note under the dress I've 
sent.  It consists mainly of the exact whereabouts of one Honjyou Yuuji 
for the next week, every hour, on the hour.  Just make sure you don't 
get where he's going before he does.  That might look suspicious.  In 
the mean time, I have to go.  Long distance and all.  Enjoy your pretty 
new things! They'll match that tattoo."

Click, the line went dead.  Creiddylad stood holding the earpiece for 
awhile as if she expected to hear more from it.  At last it fell to its 
cradle none too gently, and she stalked, step by step, over to the 
basket, piercing the wrappings with the earring she still held.  They 
peeled away easily enough.  The dress beneath them was black and acid 
ocean green. 

In the mean time, Aburatsubo got to his feet stretching this way and 
that as he jogged in place.  "Now that's a conversation I would have 
liked to have heard the other end of.  Have you got two lovers? An evil 
boss? Is she pretty, too?"

Before he could be curious about anything else having to do with 
Kelvena, Creiddylad spied something hidden in the Easter grass that 
lined her package.  

Its wrapping fell away as it met the edge of Presto's throat, and 
hovered there, finding that not even a long, shimmering arc of silver-
blue metal, could faze the intrepid dom.  It was a curious blade which 
bore no handle, only a little slit in one of its ill-matched sides 
through which her fingers slipped.  Constantine found himself reminded 
vaguely of a French curve. Creiddylad just clasped it, whatever it was, 
and rocked it against the film of Aburatsubo's skin, glowing and 
horribly lovely now that her toy had been returned.

"If I was like you, Kelvena would be my mother, Presto-sempai." His 
name was uttered with a sneer.  "But I'm not.  You see, I'm what you'd 
call a lab job.  There are genes in me from over 500 people.  A lot of 
the irrelevant ones were replaced with custom built proteins to sharpen 
my senses, powers, bloodlust.  The only thing that ties me to her is 
the fact we have the same Eurydice tick.  But never mind that.  The 
important thing is there are actually fourteen of me, all psychometric, 
all my age, but I'm the only one of those fourteen who showed any 
extraordinary talents or temperament suited to the job we were built 
for.  Now, knowing all that, do you really want to take you chances 
pissing *ME* off?"

"Mmm... no."

Creiddylad laughed as she took the knife from his neck, and whirled it 
around on her finger tips as if it were but a scarf, or a baton.  It 
somersaulted in her hand, around her head, and down to her side then, 
where it hung, glinting a little under her fingers.  Constantine 
applauded, and so did Aburatsubo.

But Rivolta, who had managed at last to extract himself from his 
chains, turned to her as she sidled back over to Feng, and fell on his 
knees before them both, though he smirked, self-righteous even as he 
humbled himself.  "So, I was right.  I have met Terrans through the 
trade in dead and lovely boys."

"Oh," whispered Feng, "We are not just Terrans, we are Verdonne."

"And what does THAT?" choired both men before shooting each other less 
than pleased looks.

"Nothing to you." As Creiddylad rolled her shoulders in the puffy 
morning light now, her companion set to lapping at her netherlips, not 
daring to part them just yet.  "But maybe you would like to come 
hunting with us?"

Inquired Aburatsubo, "Hunting what?"

"A pretty, golden beast."

***

"It seems strange to me," began Ren Luminia's lover, "that a woman born 
to kill this Valdis of yours would rather have some nameless, 
phantasmal blond for her prey."  He pursed his lips in wondering, but 
she took it as a sign he wanted kissed, despite that she knew his 
thoughts well enough to understand there was no truth in her silly 
interpretation of his gesture.  They laughed together over it, and he 
stroked her hair.

"She isn't mad..." she told him, pinching his cheek in small 
admonishment.  

"No," Kelvena agreed, "She cannot be mad, "it is only that she is 
vengeful.  Of course, there's no need to tell her that I coaxed her 
into being the Tokyo envoy simply so she would catch the scent of this 
boy."

"So you lead two of your daughters astray to get what you want? I'm 
pleasantly surprised at your cunning." And as such, he offered her a 
kir which she had already reached for.  

Having drunk deeply, she tried to make him change his mind, "No, I knew 
this would be best for our interests since I was young enough to have 
sat on your lap and been bounced like a toy."

"I would have liked that."

Ren Lumina found this hysterical, and so dragged him over to one of the 
arm chairs as she moved there to flop down between its burgundy arms.  
"Shame on you! My mother is older than you!"

"She doesn't look it of course.  Ah, how you awe me, both of you, all 
of you, your whole world..."

"Oh! Do stop being such a dramatic! There will be plenty of time for 
contemplative awe once you have your redhead, and I have mine."

***

Naru awakened the first time when the lamp beside his bed burned out, 
and the sudden, flickering darkness disturbed his sleeping senses 
enough to make him open his eyes.  It had been three in the morning 
then, and light or not, dreams and waking of an assassin or not.  Even 
if he was still a little afraid of the dark, he had rolled over on his 
mussed bed (which he was lying sideways on) and curled up in the warm, 
silky dark, where he slept soundsly after a few moments of imagining 
the cool mattress under him was really someone's chest. 

The second time, it was eight- still far before the time he usually 
rose, the thin light outside begging it was earlier still.  But someone 
was pounding on his door, and the catch was clattering in the lock as 
if it meant to break.  With a sigh, and a swift kick to his 
malfunctioning alarm, he rose, threw on his robe for appearance's sake, 
and waded through his ocean of pens to the door, pausing a moment to 
rue the pair of warm, untouched bottles of beer on the counter.

"Masato, oh beloved of mine and all three graces! What in the blue 
blazes do you want!? I'm out of my blasted bed already! I'm COMING for 
CRISSAKE! Do stop that infernal Swedish massage on my poor, decrepit 
door!"

Flinging the rusty metal aside however found no such man outside.  The 
shade there cast by the luminous clouds that drifted about the throats 
of the apartments was no one he knew, so making it out was even harder 
for his still-sleep-ridden eyes.  Just to get a better look at the 
fellow, he drew aside and waved him in.  He seemed somehow familiar.

The boy did not recall it that day, or for many after, but he had seen 
the man once, long ago when he had first been swept into Kitiker's 
arms.  This guest of all he'd swept inside his flat had walked him down 
an empty hall to the office where Manx had waited for him.  That 
morning it was eons from his waking mind, as first times often are save 
for the wiles of sentiments and confession.

But the man remembered.  He bowed.  Naru did not know what to do in 
return.  

"I fear," he said, "That I am not your Masato, and as your superior, I 
must object to what you have implied.  Being involved with one of your 
associates.  No, that isn't good work ethic at all."  As he rose from 
his stoop, his two glassy, narrow black eyes lit on the young Crasher, 
who turned away, and watched him rather in the bubbly image on one of 
his plates- swarthy fellow.  Tall.  Smiling but barely.  Thin, unkempt 
black hair.

"I am Kyou, Naru-san.  I came to you this morning because I can not 
find your Yuuji-san.  If you can't tell me where he is, perhaps if you 
and your fellow Crashers my partner has sent for will remember 
together?"

***

Not long after Naru found his morning sleep broken to pieces by Kyou's 
racket, a similar fate seemed destined to impose itself upon his lover, 
and his lover's door, which also got quite a pounding long before the 
usual, humane Crasher-waking hours of eleven or so.  

"You know," Reiichi pointed out to his escort as he wiped the freshest 
trickle of blood from his cheek, "I've got a key.  We could always use 
that, and perhaps wake him up with a nice bucket of water to the head."

"Quiet!" replied the escort, setting his foot rather to the mailbox, 
which crumpled under the pressure of the blow.  

"As you wish, Sir Sena."

"Call me that again and..."

"Yes, yes.  I know.  And there really isn't any need for threats."  
Finding his cut simply wouldn't stop bleeding, he cupped it in one of 
his palms, and watched the boy before him go about his work as a hiss 
of voices arose from the apartments around they two.  It seemed thusfar 
Masato was about the only one who HADN'T gotten up.  

Of course the boy himself was fresh and conscious as could be, as if 
he'd been waiting since before dawn to come after they two.  Oh, he 
might have been young- sixteen at best -but he still had that gait, the 
manner of carrying his lithe self that any eye trained by Kritiker knew 
denoted one of their higher-ranking agents.  

Reiichi felt bad for him the moment he beheld him! Such an adorable 
child.  All cream skin, satiny brown hair fluffed out around his 
cherubic face.  Those two cerulean eyes.  The fact he was dressed like 
an LA gigolo.  Made to work murdering people! Oh, what a pity.

Pity for Reiichi though, ran in him only as long as pain did not.  He 
realized in his reveries the door had opened, and the blood from his 
cheek seeped through his fingers.

"Ohayo, Masato."

Sena just glared.

***

Masato's eyes widened through a massive yawn as he looked Rei over; his 
blue terry cloth robe with the missing pockets and a pair of white 
boxers was all he wore, having been rousted out of his bed so abruptly. 
He was not happy over it either, frankly, and he spared the foul-
looking boy an equally nasty look before shutting him out altogether. 

"Shit, Rei. What the hell happened to you?" Masato cocked his head at 
him as he dug his fingers through his unwashed locks. "And who's 
the...OI! What do you think you're doing, brat?" 

Sena had pushed past the sleep-ridden Crasher and had stalked off 
towards the living room. Masato fumed in his wake, shooting another 
glare in Rei's direction before abandoning him on the stoop in favor of 
chasing after the intruder. The boy was standing in the middle of his 
living room as if he had every right to be there, and Masato was 
suddenly struck with the urge to slap his smug little sneer right 
off his face. 

"Who the FUCK are YOU?!"

***

Sena though refused to answer for the time being, and having taken in 
the surroundings to his satisfaction, reached into his pocket, coming 
up with a little black cellphone that ha dialed at once, and shouted 
into once whoever he had called answered.

"KYOU! You know you could pick up when I call you... no... no... not 
now... no I... you didn't? Well, he's not here either... I'd rather 
not know... was that person just now...? U-huh... yeah, yeah.  Usual 
place.  Can't say when we'll get there... just wait for me.  Ja."

While he was speaking, Reiichi had quietly slipped into his fellow 
Crasher's apartment, closing the door behind him and saying nothing 
(though he did help himself to a tissue for his cheek the minute he 
spied a box).  When Masato gave him a look, he only grinned, and 
brushed one of his many stray locks of hair back into place, though it 
didn't do much good.  He didn't look as if he'd brushed it at all.  

As for the intruder, having hung up on Kyou, he whirled around and 
sighed, looking every bit the condescending parent of a child who has 
just been arrested one more time.  "Izumi Sena, Kritiker special agent 
in charge of personnel.  Get dressed, you have a meeting with my 
partner and I to discuss the whereabouts of Balinese, Bombay, and 
Knight."

Reiichi wasn't exactly pleased with how the boy said the word 
'discuss'.

***

Neither was Masato. "I don't know anything about the Weiss agents. I 
don't know anything about Knight," he snarled. "None of us do, brat, 
so you and your companion are just wasting our time and yours. And I'll 
thank you to get the hell out of my apartment." 

The boy turned away a little, a move Masato knew well. But before he 
could make any sure move to stop him, Sena spun, light flashing from 
the chakram he held in one fist. The weapon caught him squarely across 
the cheek, and he briefly tasted metal as the edge of it swept past 
his lips. 

But the blood creeping into his mouth was the least of his worries, for 
Sena now had the  muzzle of a gun pointed at Masato's chest.  The older 
man froze where he stood.  

"Bastard," he sneered.  

Grinning, Sena waved the gun towards the hallway before turning it back 
onto Masato. Seeing no safe way out, he stalked off down to his 
bedroom, leaving his robe on the floor outside his room. He emerged a 
few moments later clad in the black jeans he'd worn the night before, 
his jacket, his black leather motorcycle boots, and a red T-shirt from 
the pile of unfolded laundry he'd only washed three days before.  When 
he returned, Sena was still brandishing the gun, though he didn't seem 
to be paying much attention; rather, he looked like he was daydreaming.  
Masato decided to take advantage of his wandering thought, and stalked 
straight up to the boy, backhanding him across the mouth. 

"That's for the blow you dealt Bishop. Be glad I don't take the injury 
you dealt me out on your hide, boy, because I wouldn't show any mercy." 

The muzzle of the gun met Masato's chest again, but he didn't back off. 

"Go on and shoot me, kid. Because then, you'll probably have to kill 
Bishop, and Pawn, and then where will you be? No information and mired 
in questions over what happened. Kritiker doesn't like to lose agents, 
even ones considered to be rogues." 

Some of the arrogance left the boy's expression, and Masato laughed. He 
airily batted the gun away and stepped out of Sena's path. 

"Come on, then, brat," he said as he waved for Rei to proceed him to 
the door. "We haven't got all day."

***

Sena, still rubbing his reddened cheek as if he thought he could push 
the tint of it out of his skin, growled and with a wave of his hand, 
started off towards the door, which he flung open with such violence 
the hinges screamed in fear.  In spite of this, he smiled at the two 
Crashers, and swept his arms out towards the walk around the upper 
floors of the apartment building.

"After you.  Though you might be surprised: we're actually considering 
downsizing.  And then where will people like you be?"

"Under you in bed begging for our job?" Bishop shuddered visibly at the 
thought, and would have gone on to make gagging noises if he dared.

Their escort, having set the safety on his unused gun, gave it a twirl 
and chuckled to himself.  "Hmm... that could be.  That very well could 
be." And then, as the metal slid back into his hidden holster, "But in 
the mean time, we really don't have all day."

"Of course not! Why, the sun had already risen by the time you thought 
to get us out of bed!"

Without any more words to Sena, they all paraded bleeding down the 
outside stairs and the slippery puddles that had welled up there.  It 
was slow going for them, but Sena leapt over them as if he could stand 
on their surfaces, or at the very least, had no fear of dying should he 
fall from losing his footing underneath one.

As for Reiichi, once they had reached the bottom floor and started for 
the parking lot, turned to his comrade and remarked, "Ah, so we match 
then.  Terribly sorry about that.  He is awfully quick with that 
thingamajig of his!" Cuts and all, he smiled. "Look at it this way, 
maybe Naru will kiss it for you later."

"Into the car." Sena ordered, having come up to an innocuous blue 
Chevrolet. "And no whispering or that THINGAMAJIG might end up 
somewhere else."

"But of course, we certainly wouldn't want to put you in an even worse 
mood!"

***

Youji hadn't been on the train in ages--not since he was Omi's age, in 
fact. He wasn't surprised to find they'd changed little in the five 
years between then and now, nor was he surprised to find the trip as 
boring as he remembered.  Neither of them was up for conversation 
during the whole of it--whether it was because they feared revealing 
their plans to the wrong ears, or something other, Youji 
didn't know. Talking seemed pointless anyway. 

So the moment the voice announced the last stop within the Tokyo city 
limits, Youji had finally relaxed. Sei had fallen asleep just a few 
minutes previous, all curled up on his lap, fingers twisted in the 
folds of his shirt. Omi had as well, tucked in on his side with his 
head on his shoulder. The car was empty save for them, so Youji hadn't 
made any move to nudge him away. He knew he wouldn't have if they were 
in the presence of others. He didn't care who saw anymore. 

That was his last thought before he too fell asleep. 
Rocked by the swaying of the train, Youji didn't wake until he felt a 
hand on his shoulder. He jerked upright, rousing both his child and his 
lover from their dreams, and found a ticket taker standing beside them. 
The train had reached their destination, and all passengers had 
disembarked except for them. Youji thanked him, settled Sei upon his 
shoulders, and the pair of them gathered up their few belongings 
and left. 

It was raining there, too, the streets mostly dark and empty now, the 
city's citizens more than likely still abed at that hour. The pair of 
runaway assassins paused on the corner outside the station, trying to 
get their bearings. 

Then, Youji took Omi's hand in his own, and the two bolted off 
across the slick street as if every demon from Hell was on their heels.

***

They ran with their palms pressed so close together the raindrops 
slipped around their wrists as they splashed along through the 
sidewalks and the winding alleys.  The boy seemed to be heading 
everywhere and nowhere all at once, half leading, half being lead.  All 
he gave in the way of directions were tiny pulls on her lover's arm, 
just enough to coax him one way or the other.  Sometimes he just let 
him tear along however he liked.  

In silent secret, he was glad beyond words it was pouring.  Not even 
their scent, the traces of their feet in the gravel, would remain.

They ran until his breath felt like raindrops in his mouth.  Their 
resting place appeared alongside a street rippling with headlights in 
the early morning rush while the roads they'd crossed before had all 
been dead and still.  Omi seemed to know the place, but not the Subaru 
that pulled around the corner and almost into him.

Youji had to yank him away, and even then he would go no further than 
the curb, where he stood, head back and bathed by the blinding shower 
as he pushed his umbrella away.  None of them had cried out, not even 
Seishirou, who, shivering now, bent and kissed the top of his father's 
head.

Omi smiled.  

"We're almost there.  At least we're far enough away I can tell you 
where we're going."

A quick skimming of his eyes over the soaking skyline that stood 
wrapped around them and Omi dreamily said,  "I've found us a house.  
We're going to stay there for a few days.  I need time to forge our 
passports.  They'll think we'll leave the country first thing, so we 
won't.  It doesn't make sense, hanging around, and that's why we have 
to do it."

Another handful of tickets he showed only by parting the zipper of his 
jacket far enough for the destinations to peer out.

Niigata.

***

Youji's brows rose, and he slowly nodded, smiling just a bit. "I see. 
Well, I must say that's an inspired choice, Hidaka-kun." 

Omi chuckled, and Youji looped an arm around his neck, hugging him, 
before dropping his bags on the shimmering pavement and whisking Sei 
off his shoulders.  He removed the leatherjacket he was so loathe to 
abandon around the boy's tiny body.  

"There," he said as he zipped up the jacket. "That should keep 
you warm until we can get to proper shelter." Youji gathered his son up 
again, settling him once more on his shoulders, floppy, cold leather 
sleeves falling around his chin as Sei sought to hold on to him. Youji 
picked up his bags, and took Omi's hand again. 

"Right. Now just where is this house you got for us?"

***

Omi shook his head a little and reached up to pat Seishirou, who 
returned his touch by brushing his wet, blue bangs from his face.  The 
boy and his father looked like a spread out of a CLAMP comic just then- 
one of them lost in the other's legs, the other under all that leather 
and the sweet, acrid smell of it.

"Not too far from the train station- these tickets are for a secondary 
stop." he told his companions.  "It's kinda out of the way, actually, 
the house.  More than I expected it would be." Silence then, as they 
waited alone at a streetlight- a novelty that, anywhere in Japan.  
Beyond them on the smoky horizon loomed the glass shell of the train 
depot.  

He hadn't answered.  Youji and his child knew that, and were waiting.  
With a faint, droll smile, he told them the truth.

"It's Ken's house.  He's still the owner, even if he doesn't live 
there.  According to the bank records, it was paid for in full before 
he was even born, and when his mother died, it went to him.  But it's 
been empty all this time."

With that, he wheeled across a few wet cracks in the pavement, pausing 
with his hands behind his back, posed like a little sprite.  Like he 
had with Naru. 

"I figured if it turns out that's not where they've been hiding, he 
wouldn't mind if we stayed there, just for a little while."  But the 
magic ended then, and Youji's hand was once more his, and that was it.

***

"Ken's house?" Youji hissed, quite stunned by Omi's revelation. "He's 
had a spare place to live in all this time, and you've known it? Did 
Aya?" 

***

"Well, actually, I didn't know until last night," Omi confessed.  "I 
just kinda had a feeling I should check.  So I did.  It was real 
obvious, too, for anyone who knew what they were hacking into.  It's 
his name on the deed! Of course, that's far too easy for anyone in 
you-know-where to figure out."

A wink here, and a soft smile for the umbrellas they were carrying 
below their waists despite the deluge.  He leaned onto Youji's 
shoulder, just a little so as not to frighten him.  "After all, 
Akeno-itoshi, subtlety does have its charms, but sometimes you just 
want to say what there is to say, ne? Like... we're going home."

***

"Yeah, home at last."  Youji chuckled softly, bending a little 
to rub his cheek against Omi's damp, shocking blue locks. "Maybe we 
won't miss them so much after going there?" 

Omi tipped his head back a little, and Youji placed a kiss upon his 
forehead. "Let's go, then, Kioshi-ai. Ken never liked to be kept 
waiting."

***

Naru wasn't especially elated to have been taken to a dank dive of an 
apartment in the middle of nowhere first thing in the morning.  He was 
even less pleased that he had to spend his time there with a taciturn, 
overly polite brute of a man: such things couldn't help but make him 
feel uneasy.

Kyou had turned on the overhead light- a dangling orb of frosted glass 
that swung when a train sailed over the tracks nearby -sat down himself 
at the other end of the card table, and started to chip away at 
something small with the hand axe that he had conjured from the depths 
of his jacket.

Not that any of this made the boy feel any more at home.  When a leak 
in the roof decided to drip onto his hat, he didn't even have the 
mettle to ask if he could move the rusty, little fold up chair he was 
sitting on to somewhere drier- just let the water flow down over the 
feather and onto the concrete floor.

Another train passed, and the screeching thunder of it brought his 
hands to his ears.  Kyou stared at him with the same impassive look in 
his black glass eyes.

/They're almost... like dolls' eyes.  Like marbles! Or blackberries! 
They're really not like eyes at all./

He just had to ask, "So... how long have you been working under the 
auspices of our masters and their immaculate whims? Noblesse Oblige and 
all that."

"What are you talking about, Naru-san?" Kyou replied without looking 
up.

"Nothing I suppose."

Just then, he heard a car door outside, and without thinking after 
himself, he rose and fled to the small, cracked window.

This time, it was his lover and their friend.  And a boy.  He wanted to 
call to them, but he didn't.

***

As Masato had climbed out of the car, he decided right then that he'd 
never seen such a grim sight as the hulking ruin of a building which 
loomed before them.  It was worse than his own, right down the 
neighborhood it had been born in.  The trash cans dotting the curbs 
were either overflowing or had been tipped over outright, their 
contents scattered down the sidewalks, into the road.  Graffiti had 
been splashed across the walls on this building or that, with the 
apartment building in question having seen the brunt of it.  And 
there were lots of broken windows.  One in particular caught his eye 
only because he saw Naru's face hovering within the grimy, cracked 
pane.  He fairly melted in relief; his lover had not been harmed, it 
appeared.  

In his haste to reach the apartment that belonged to that tiny 
window, Masato collided hard with Sena, nearly causing the boy to 
completely lose his footing.  He wasn't going to wait, he wanted 
answers.  He wanted Naru away from whoever had him, and damn it...

Two at a time he took the worn, outside-wrapping stairs to the second 
floor, dodging orange peels and bottles; wrinkling his nose at the 
odor of cabbage as he swung himself around a tight corner past one 
apartment.  The humid air was thick with it there, and he scrubbed at 
his nose with the back of his hand, as if that would dispel its 
aroma.  

Behind him, he heard the purposeful steps of their captor, the less 
assured ones of his friend.  Masato, more to annoy the former than 
anything else, spun the knob to test it, and found it locked.  When 
he turned to Sena, he was rewarded with a simper and the sight of one 
key on a ring dangling from the boy's fingers.  

"Brat," he muttered, making a grab for it; but the boy was too quick 
for him.  Easily he jerked it out of his reach, laughing in his 
pleasure over having tricked an old man--which wasn't the correct way 
of doing things when faced with one who had been 
deprived of both a lazy morning in bed and his breakfast.  To the 
sound of Rei's soft, worried murmuring, Masato grabbed Sena by the 
scruff of the neck, and jerked him over to the door.  

"I've really had enough of this.  Open it now, or I'll break your 
neck."  

To his satisfaction, he felt a single tremor pass through the boy 
before he'd regained his courage.  The key clicked against the metal 
lock twice before the tumblers gave way.  The door opened upon a 
dimly lit cavern.  Masato tightened his hold on Sena and dragged the 
boy into the apartment with him.  Once inside he thrust the boy away 
from him, eyeing him dismally.  His regard lingered longer on his 
ax-wielding companion, and he nearly groaned aloud; he surely 
hated facing psychopaths on an empty stomach.  

/Oh, well.  No helping it./  

Masato pointedly forgot about the two of them for the time being, 
switching his attention onto Naru instead.  With Rei somewhere behind 
him, he crossed over to Naru, giving him his most reassuring sort of 
grin as he drew alongside him.  "You okay?"  Lightly, Masato took his 
lover's closest wrist, and leaned in to whisper, "They didn't hurt 
you, did they?"  

***

Naru threw his verbosities to the wind for the time being, and said 
simply to his lover, "No, I'm alright.  Just hungry."

And there, in the shrinking concrete darkness of one more dive in the 
bad part of Tokyo, they smiled at each other and their stomachs 
rumbled.

The bespectacled Crasher, newly in their presence, rolled his eyes.  
His insistent testing of each and every step had kept him and once he'd 
slammed the door behind him, he at once began to pray to himself that 
he'd have the same luck going back down as he'd had coming up.

Naru started to say something then, something in his usual voice, but 
it not yet begun was ended.  

For Kyou's axe had come blunt side down between him and his lover, 
nudging them apart.  They both looked over to the elder of the Kritiker 
officers, and found him just barely grinning himself then, his lower 
lip caught under the tips of his teeth.

"Uhyou-san, Tanuma-san? I do so hate to be the bearer of such news, but 
our organization, though well acquainted with what working in such 
close proximity can do to a man, really doesn't approve of these 
things."

Naru stuck his tongue out at him as he shuffled away, and Masato hid it 
behind his hand before Kyou had a chance to catch the gesture from the 
corner of his eye.  

"Please be seated.  You might be here awhile, so it is the very least 
I can do to assure minna-san is comfortable."  

Reiichi flung himself into the nearest chair, and grasping the front of 
the seat as if he feared it would get away from him.  Naru took his own 
chair back, and crossed his legs.  Sena had to push Masato into his, 
though once he had gotten him into a suitable position, he bent down, 
and spoke straight into the elder Crasher's ear.

"Of course, you and your fuck-mate might only have to hang around for a 
few minutes *if* you decide you'd like to be nice to us as opposed to 
breaking my neck.  'cause, y'know, I don't think Kyou would like that."

***

"Why?" growled Masato.  "Is he *your* fuck-mate?"  He gave a short 
laugh, and shoved Sena away.  "Spare me your threats, kid.  I'm not 
in the mood."  Jabbing a finger in Kyou's direction, he added, "Call 
off your lapdog, ax-boy, and get on with it."  

With a smug smile, he settled back in his chair, legs sprawled 
open.  "But I'll tell you now, none of us know where the Weiss agents 
have gone.  All we know is that someone was stalking them.  As for 
Knight..."  He threw up his hands. "I have no idea."  

***

"Stalking them? Sou desu ne..." Kyou remarked, and then, much unlike his 
demeanor otherwise suggested he might, he burst out laughing and 
beckoned Sena to his side.  Sena came to him without a second thought.  
"That's a lovely story, Tanuma-san.  Very convenient for you, and your 
lover I suppose.  But lovers though you may be, you should know that it 
is not your place to be so, nor ours."

"Yeah," spat Sena then.  "We were Shuiichi's, and that's the way it's 
gonna stay."

A long few moments of silence then, broken only be a rattle in 
someone's dumpster as it was stirred by one of the neighborhood cats.  
Naru in the end, spoke up, or rather, shouted up.  "Well doesn't *this* 
just dwell on every ludicrous little triviality!" To their pseudo 
captors, his remark seemed meaningless. "Whatsmore, I'll have you know 
Takatori the poet hit on me on more than one nonconsecutive occasion, 
and I wasn't the only one!"

"Naru-san," sing-songed Reiichi; it was a small plea for the boy to sit 
back down.  

"Why, if you must know the truth, and I daresay you MUST know that 
truth as in know it well enough already, we were ALL Shuiichi's and 
there were plenty of agents, veritable bevvies I assume, who knew a 
cursed lot about that, more than they ever desired to.  The man was his 
own procurer and procured!"

Sena quite coolly marched over and kicked Naru's feet out from under 
him.  It was all too easy, for the young Crasher was already off 
balance courtesy of his own sentiments. "I know.  I'm glad.  And this 
has nothing to do with what we came here to discuss."

"Quite right, so you might as well be the one to drop it!"

"Thanks, I will!" By sheer accident, both of them humphed loudly and 
turned from one another, nearly, but not quite, in unison.  Both 
blushed, only one spoke.  "Now, if you don't know where the Weiss are, 
or your former partner, you must at least have some idea."

"Not one wretched clue!  I can't guess any of my teammate have a 
modicum one either!"

***

Masato glanced over at Rei, who shook his head, then back at their  
captors, smirking.  "You see?  *None* of us have any bloody idea." 
 
/About anything, it seems./ 
 
"And why would we?" he added.  "Crashers and Weiss don't mix.  Never  
did."  Masato got to his feet, blithely knocking Sena's restraining  
hand off his chest when the boy dared to approach him.  "Touch me  
again..."   
 
The boy glowered, but didn't budge from his spot.  Masato slowly 
looked him over, noting the lines of his slight body, the doe-like 
tilt to his eyes; pouty lips.  A blush stole across Sena's cheeks, 
brought on by all the unwanted attention he'd garnered.   Masato 
only grinned.   
 
"Now," Masato continued, addressing Kyou.  "We've told you all we  
know--which is nothing.  Two Weiss disappear, and Knight was sent to  
replace them.  Two more disappear, and then he leaves.  He never was  
one to tell me--or any of us--anything personal.  We were never  
really that close, for all that we worked together.  It happens that  
way sometimes, as I'm sure you know."   
 
"Are you satisfied now?" Masato asked wearily.  

***

Neither of the two Kritiker agents seemed to know. They glanced to one 
another, and their eyes were still as glass.  Reiichi sneezed loudly 
and tried to dab his nose on his sleeve without being noticed.  Naru 
moved not, said not, breathed not.  At last it was Kyou who nodded unto 
his companion, and withdrew to the grimy window, which he stood before, 
so he was only a shadow to those assembled.  

"Aa, minna-san, we are CLOSE to being satisfied, but we aren't, not 
just yet.  I assure all of you, it won't be too much longer.  After 
all, it is only a small slip in your memories, easily restored."

At those words, he drew the sleeve of his jacket up over his hand, and 
with it, buffed away the unctuous dust which had come to abide about 
the windowpane.  The smog residue still crept there though, on the 
outside, though that film now stood riddled with pinpricks of water.

Masato looked over to Naru and found the boy was blushing.  Horribly.  

"You see, King has made us well aware of the... somewhat unauthorized 
mission Tanuma-san and Honjyou-san engaged in several nights before, I 
will be the first to admit the results were more than satisfactory to 
our cause.  It is though that King was never given any information 
regarding a return to this man's mansion, which interests my partner 
and I, for we are well aware of it, and the atypical circumstances in 
which both of these incidences took place.  That is to say that they 
occurred during the time Honjyou-san was among the Weiss."

***

"I don't see why it matters WHEN he did it," he said, throwing up his 
hands.  "It had nothing to do at all with Kritiker business, anyway.  
It was Yu--Knight's idea," he amended testily.  "But I don't know why 
he was there.  He never told me what he wanted with Uekiya, just that 
he wanted him dead.  I'm sure a lot of people did, and probably not 
just in Japan."  

Hands gripping the curved metal back of his chair, Masato hunched 
forward, twitching one aching shoulder; an old wound that always gave 
him trouble when it rained.  "And yeah, Knight did the actual killing.  
I only held that bastard's goons at bay.  And I'd do it again if I 
had to do it over.  I'm not sorry that Uekiya's dead, and I'm not 
sorry I went with Knight.  He might have died otherwise.  That's all 
I know about it."

***

"And I'm just hearing about it now!" continued Bishop as he stroked the 
air above his lap where the phantom of its usual occupant resided 
whenever he sat without her.  "Why! Masato! How COULD you!" An irate 
sniff later and he had turned his back on his companion, scooted his 
chair away, hoped that afterwards the other Crasher would know it was 
only a charade. "And if you're intending to bring up any time we've all 
been unaccounted for, these two made some effort to help me re-
calibrate by surveillance equipment.  I must say as well-meaning as 
those actions were, they did NOT go well! Why, just the night before 
last I had to re-set my pirated cell phones MYSELF."

The Kritiker boy spat and began to laugh quite boisterously at this, 
his jocularity scaring up a hoard of birds from the crawlspace above the 
interrogation chamber, a hoard who knocked over something metallic that 
had been stashed there.  "You idiot! If you're having trouble with the 
damn things, requisition new ones."

Bishop whistled, reached into his pocket, and came out with a handful
of forms.  "Which one should I Xerox first? I've been sending these 
things in for months, one copy at a time, every Tuesday."

From the silence this aroused at last came Kyou's cough, and a look 
towards Naru's poor, pink cheeks.  "I assume you've some refute for all 
of this?"

"Why yes! As a matter of fact I do!" the young Crasher spat back.  
"Aside from the fact I don't know when all these absurd allegations are 
meant to make reference to, I have been drunk at either my house or 
Masato's every night this week! And Kyou-san, I'm certain you have 
veritable murders of useless knowledge about that considering the 
bottle of single malt whiskey in your glove compartment!"

"Naru-san, it's really very indecorous to look around in other people's 
cars."

"Then why, dare I ask, is it on my job description?"

***

"Because that's the sort of people we work for," Masato countered, 
starting to pace about the room in time with his thoughts. "They 
want us to be suspicious and questioning of each other. They don't 
want us to form bonds of any sort with our teammates, even go out of 
their way to pair up agents of wildly dissimilar backgrounds to 
discourage such ideas. We are merely toys to them--is it any wonder 
so many agents end up as alcoholics? That a few agents have even 
gone so far as to end their lives?" 

Masato abruptly ceased his circling of the dismal room, and spun to 
face the group. "We watched Weiss, and you watched us, and none of 
us found the answers to our countless questions. Just rats in a 
maze, the lot of us!" Masato lifted his eyes to the ceiling, 
thinking about the curious crash they'd heard just moments ago. "Did 
you ever wonder who might be controlling this twisted experiment?"

***

Kyou spun away from Masato at those words- his own face now hidden by a 
deep shadow that ran side along sickly light of their window. "It is 
not my place to wonder."

"I suppose," Naru subsequently intoned, "you're going to tell us now 
that it isn't our place to wonder either."

The Kritiker agent and his withering shade nodded, "You have spared me 
the trouble."

"Ii wo, please permit me the infinite bliss of showing myself out as 
well! I'm quite finished with you if you're quite finished with me, 
Kyou-SAN!" The boy lifted his eyes, and they were glassy still. He spit 
and wiped his lips on his sleeve.

"I suppose I am..." his words were sighed, not wistfully, and not 
without wits. "Please, don't be a stranger to us here if you remember 
something, or think it is that you might."

"Yes," added Sena, as he flounced over to the door and threw it open. 
The rain in the wind came blustering in. Reiichi got to his feet. No 
one yet though chose the rain over the halo of the single light. "You'd 
be surprised, I think, if you knew how much you could remember if you 
only stopped trying so... hard."

"Why? There is nothing to discuss here. No me, no you, no Terra, no 
world, no Weiss. Nothing. We would all exist in the oblivion of my 
thoughts where this conversation will be irrelevant when uttered under 
the influence of the rising sun."

As he strode then towards the puddle that had gathered on the concrete 
floor, he passed Sena, and Sena seized him by the face and kissed him.

***

Naru's whole exchange with their captors in the wake of his outburst 
was odd, but this! Masato gaped at them in shock, frozen until Naru 
wound his arms around Sena's waist. 

"OI!" He stormed over to the couple, unmindful of the ever growing 
puddle he was soaking his boots in, and hauled Sena away from 
Naru. He thrust the skinny dark-haired boy against the wall, where he 
stayed but did not 
cower. Neither did Naru, though he was loathe to meet his fellow 
Crasher's glaring eyes. 

"Why do I feel like I've just overheard a dialogue between a pair of 
lovers?  Or is it a trio, and not merely a pair? Why are you so 
damned upset?" Masato caught Naru by the arm, and gave it an 
insistent little shake when the boy still refused to look at him. 

Naru yanked his arm free, and withdrew to the opposite wall, hugging 
himself. But Masato remained stubbornly rooted to the spot. "I'm 
not leaving until you answer me--and truthfully!"

***

He could hear the rain hitting the roof still, and that was it.  The 
door had blown closed, or someone had shut it loudly.  In all of this, 
he thought he could sense something dripping in the room, and from the 
shadows where Sena had thrown him he looked down and saw a thin wisp of 
wire around the arm his lover had not taken.

He was bleeding, but he couldn't even feel the cut.  

The silver thread he tore from his wound with his teeth, though it 
couldn't have looked to anyone watching as if he did more than kiss the 
rent in his skin.  

Then he did look at Masato.

He glared.

"Fuck it all, I don't know either of these ingrates."

The elder Crasher lunged for him then, but he spun away, ducked, 
embraced the handle of the door and fled nimbly down the stairs before 
the metal panels had even tried to slam behind him.  When they parted 
again, no trace of him remained.

Sena chuckled to himself, and swayed from side to side, cracking his 
hips and his ankles.  "Don't know the kid either, but I'll tell you 
this much, he's a rotten kisser.  Unlike someone we know.  And he's so 
sensitive! I mean, Christ! You can have your pick of assassins and you 
take that flighty THING?"

As Kyou's hand fluttered against the Kritiker boy's shoulder, Reiichi 
turned, and coughed, and somehow spirited himself over to Masato's side 
without making a sound.  

***

Masato's gaze jerked from the woefully empty alleyway to the smug 
Kritiker agent who'd so casually taunted him, and he glared at him as 
if he were just a second from pouncing. "Oh, yeah, kid. I'd take 
him over a shit-eating little bastard like you any day." 

Sena stiffened indignantly beneath Kyou's hand, and Masato made to 
lunge at him, only to be seized by the arm by Reiichi. He swung a 
heated look in his teammate's direction, but the other only shook his 
head. Two breaths more, and he shrugged, and Rei backed off. 

"I'm through with you clowns. If either of you ever come around my 
door again, you'll regret it. Trust me on that." He beckoned to Rei 
as he headed out the door. "Let's go, Bishop. Maybe he's still 
around here somewhere." 

As he pounded down the stairs towards the alley, he added, "Of 
course, with my luck, he probably isn't. Damn it!" he exclaimed, 
pounding the staircase wall as he swept past. "Why the hell didn't I 
just keep my mouth shut?"

***

"Because you wouldn't be Masato if you did," Reiichi said quite plainly.  
When his fellow Crasher spun around to glare at him, he only smiled, 
and with more disconcerting ingenuousness than usual.  The rain picked 
up, whisking his dark hair all around his glasses until the water from 
then tracked rather his frames. He was shivering, and the downpour had 
swept the thin coating of dry blood from his cheek so it once more 
bled.  

"Now, now, I've never known you to be anything but frank, Masato.  
'Frank' and 'Masato' are almost the same words to me after all these 
years, just like 'Naru' and 'bombastic' and 'Yuuji' and 'charming'."

His companion forfeited the debate with a shuddering sigh, and together 
they took off down the alley and the mud there which had come from the 
dust and refuse.  The smell at least had gone, and only a clean 
stillness seemed to linger, though no footprints did, no sound of 
steps, nothing of Naru.  It was as if he had not left the dingy little 
apartment at all.   

But Masato just kept on searching. 

"He wouldn't care for you so much if he didn't understand.  If 
anything, he should be proud of you.  That he means so much to Masato, 
Masato gets angry at the thought he's lost even one little piece of 
bombast.  That seems like typical enough Naru-logic to me."

Of that, there could be no doubt, so, without doubt in what else he 
did, Bishop snatched Rook's arms into his left palm, and with that, 
hauled him under a gushing roof gutter.  The water which tore from it 
was pure enough now that it had been pouring for awhile- only a thin, 
white foam like that on seawater raced along it anymore.

"They can't hear us over the spray if they are listening, Masato.  So 
let me just say this on the side of doubt.  You know as well as I do 
that Naru was with the youngest Weiss last night.  That's why he seemed 
so embarrassed!"

***

"Yeah, I knew!  I watched them leave!  But they didn't..." Masato 
stopped, scooping his streaming bangs back from his eyes.  "They only 
hung out," he finished lamely.  "Got a few beers and talked, like 
kids will do.  You know?"  

But Reiichi shook his head in dismissal of his assumptions, and 
Masato collapsed against the dripping brick retaining wall behind 
them.  He shoved his hands in his pockets with a bleakly 
hissed, "Damn."  His breath fled from his lungs in a rush.  

"Okay, I knew it.  I didn't want to admit it to myself, but 
yeah... deep down, I knew he screwed that Weiss kid last night.  What 
I don't know is why--why was he wasting his time with Yuuji when he 
could have had that kid?  Hell, why is he wasting his time with me?!  
He must find me a damnable fool, Rei.  An OLD one."  He jerked one 
hand free to wipe the rain from his face, snorting.  "And I guess I 
am."  

Rei opened his mouth to speak, but Masato waved him silent.  "I've no 
business hanging around with a kid, anyway, huh?  And here I'm 
chasing him around the streets in the freezing rain while you bleed 
and shiver."  A wry smile crooked his mouth, and Masato shoved away 
from the wall to swipe at the watery blood trickling down from the 
cut on Rei's cheek.   

"Some friend I am."  

***

"Saaa... don't be like that." Reiichi said, though he made no move to 
brush his companion's hand away. "I assure you, a part of me is really 
enjoying the sheer ridiculousness of it.  My bleeding in the rain, not 
your being a bad friend, because you aren't."

Clucking his tongue somewhat then, Bishop stroked one of his knuckles 
rather along his companion's stubble, tweaked him a little there.  "And 
you're not OLD.  Not REALLY."

One of the gutters above them creaked as if it might give way under its 
burden, and together they eyed it most warily before slipping a little 
further down the alley way.  It wouldn't have made that much difference 
if they had been beneath the piping when it gave- for it did, and for a 
moment the street was only the bed of a waterfall. It was the principle 
of the thing really; two assassins not smart enough to avoid an 
embarrassing short of getting doused.  They sighed like a pair of 
drenched alley cats.  

Cars rattled and sped past the main road, or some semblance of a main 
road, just like the real world always passed their sort by, he guessed.  
Thunder came too, and around them the refuse and the sky churned almost 
in tandem.  

Though they exchanged nothing but slight curses until at least, Rei 
sighed, and started pulling Masato along.

"You know, it seems to me that I'm very much not Naru, and that maybe 
you'd do better consulting him on the matters of all things Naru-
related.  But first, might I suggest we make our way back to one of our 
homes and dry off?"

***

Water splashed onto them from the broken joint of another pipe,  
spilling down their backs.  With a violent shudder, Masato tugged the  
collar of his jacket up around his neck. "Yes, you might, Reiichi,  
and might I suggest we go to your house? The heat's off again in the  
hovel where I live, and I don't want to hang about dripping wet in a  
chilly apartment on top of everything else."  
 
As so to back up his disgust, he sneezed loudly. Then groaned. "If  
I get a cold, I'm going to track them down for sure."  
 
Chuckling, Reiichi rolled his eyes, his forced marching of his  
companion never slacking until they'd reached the corner. They  
waited for the light, huddled together there on the curb in their  
misery, until they spotted the means of their salvation coming down  
the street towards them. A cab. They exchanged grins, and then  
Masato clamored off the curb, waving his arms for the driver to  
stop. To both their amazement, he did, just a few feet from where  
Masato had stood to hail him. Masato gave a cheer, and ran to whisk  
the door open for his companion.  
 
"What happened to you guys?" asked the driver when the two Crashers  
were settled in the back seat.  
 
"Er... my car broke down," answered Masato. "You're the first to stop  
for us."  
 
"Where are you going?"  
 
Masato gave him the address to Rei's house. "Um..." Shooting Rei a  
look, he began rifling through his pockets for money, knowing he had  
a little, but not exactly how much. His search produced 1200 yen;  
Rei's only 500.  
 
"Take us as close to there as you can for 1700. Okay?"  
 
The driver gave them a strange look in the rear view mirror, then 
replied with a shrug, "Okay."  
 
Masato lay the notes on the seat beside him, spreading them so they  
might dry a little before it was time to pay. Then he sat back with  
a sigh. Looked out the window, then casually over at Rei, who had  
turned to look back at him at the same time.  
 
And then, they both burst out laughing.

***

He wasn't any different from anyone else that morning at the station: 
just another bag-laden traveler waiting for a train. People only looked 
twice at the hair, bleached as it was, dark blue eyes giving away what 
trickle of gaijin blood he had in him. But no one had ever asked him 
about the details of his life, not really. And he'd rarely revealed 
them--save for when he was drunk and sick of the world. 

He was going south to Hiratsuka, and there he would hide for awhile. 
Yuuji had chosen it because it was on the sea and smallish, and Ran 
once mentioned having had briefly lived there as a child. He'd always 
wanted to see it after that; the boy had talked of it so fondly. 

The woman spoke to him from her airy tower, the last of her words 
nearly drowned out by the rumble of the approaching train. People moved 
from their corners when the behemoth slowed, sleepwalking their way to 
the gaping portals, weaving through those many who'd come from points 
north to the smoggy glory that was Tokyo. Yuuji barely took any notice 
of them as he filed past, glanced at no one as he made his way to a 
seat. He'd had his choice of them that day; far more people were coming 
in than going out. He took that as a blessing. 

He hoped he would have many, many more before he was through.

*** 

They had slept on the second train as well, Omi's cheek on Youji's 
shoulder, Youji blind with Omi's azure hair, Seishirou snuggled up 
between both of their laps, cooing in his dreams.  When the obento 
girls came through sometime not far from noon, Omi woke up only long 
enough to say they were fine and realize he could no longer hear the 
tip-toes of the rain over his window.

Then he dreamed again of white butterflies, crushed one in his hand and 
watched its blanched blood run down onto his shoes.  There was a man 
with him who cried, and spoke softly to him, saying he had done nothing 
wrong.  That there were more butterflies born every day from worms in 
the earth.

When Youji shook him at the last stop, the first thing he told himself 
was that butterflies didn't come from worms, but caterpillars.  How 
strange he would think otherwise! Even in dreams.  

It was three o'clock, or sometime not far from there.  Mostly children 
filled the station, giggling and gossiping with each other, squeaking 
under their raincoats.  No adults- they all still lingered at work.  No 
escalator down to the lobby, only stairs draped with water and silt 
footprints.  It had rained here, but maybe not so long ago.  The doors 
opened before them and a warm, soggy breeze tickled their hair, having 
coasted in from the direction they were headed.  It kept their bangs 
from their eyes at least.

Seishirou, called Tomeo for the time being, walked on his own through 
the sidewalk puddles.  They had to go a little more slowly for him, but 
they were almost where they meant to stay, so it didn't matter all that 
much.  

Omi found the city unfamiliar to him, and not only for the sake he had 
never set foot there before in his life.  He'd never been anywhere like 
this before in any of his memories or dreams.  After all, there were no 
butterflies.  For it wasn't a city in the way he knew cities; wasn't 
gleaming and fresh as the glitter around an idol singer's eyes. 

The city itself seemed small to him, not because of its reach, but 
because when he looked up to the airbrushed mountains of the clouds, he 
could see the tops of the buildings.  And it was old, or felt old to 
him, not for some rampant disrepair. It was the little things: a spray 
of rust along the edge of a roof, a sun-faded poster in a video store 
window, the way stairs creaked under his feet as they crossed a street 
by bridge, the two middle-aged women in well-loved kimonos standing 
outside a fortune-tellers.  There were a lot of those.  Small shrines 
beside dumpling stands.  Old model cars parked outside banks alongside 
queues of bicycles.  

And there were willows- the one thing he knew for certain about the 
place they had fled to.  Niigata had once been famous for its canals 
leading in and out of the ocean, but the canals were roads now, so 
those trees so smitten with water grew now along rivers of concrete.  
They were all alive though, their leaves and nodding in the misty 
breeze. 

They came in time to a meandering side street leading off between a 
noodle shop that had recently gone out of business, and passed it, 
having no way of knowing that the rickety bench outside the bolted 
doors was the one Ken had once fallen asleep on one winter many years 
ago. It hadn't snowed last winter of course.  Just rained, like it had 
before their arrival.

The path before them widened, and they found they were not the only 
ones who had taken it.  The curbs of the road ahead were filled with 
college students discussing that day's lessons, all going home to empty 
houses or retired parents.  He and Youji looked just the right ages, 
even if they weren't dressed properly.  No one noticed them for very 
long- they had homework, friends to call, parents to talk to. 
Something, anything, waiting for each of them in their houses, for the 
houses were very much alike: blue siding and brick.  With lots of 
windows.  Slate roofs.  Set back from the road behind low, stone walls 
and rippling paths.

Almost all of Ken's former friends still lived on that block.  All 
except for one, and he lived nowhere any longer, and they hadn't really 
been friends.  Those two who still called Ken theirs made their way to 
his house, and at the gate paused for a few long moments.

The house beyond was no different from the others itself, but the 
yard... was a forest of gentle lime hydrangea blossoms and the 
shade of small magnolia trees now vanished under the upper 
dimness of the clouds.  

"I guess... they didn't come here," Omi sighed as he split the chain 
latch on the gate.  "Oh well."

"It's still pretty here."

"Yeah, it is, Tomeo-chan.  It's very pretty."

***

Youji's hands soon found themselves full of hydrangea blooms; he 
couldn't resist picking a few to decorate the insides with. He couldn't 
imagine living without the sight and smell of flowers after so long 
being around them. "I wonder why he left it? Left this place..." as 
peaceful as it was. Ken could have just stayed in Niigata forever. 

He held the flowers to his nose, and then bent to let Sei have a better 
sniff of them. The boy giggled and rubbed his nose, claiming the dewy 
petals tickled. Youji only smiled and took his child by the hand again. 
Omi had managed to breach the rusting lock, and was waving at them from 
the dusty shadows of the doorway. Sei darted away, Youji following at a 
more dignified pace. As he got to the porch, however, he set his bags 
down before entering. 

A foyer with what looked to be slim, rectangular watercolors of bamboo 
trees hung on the wall; a narrow table, upon which a vase stood, its 
long-dead flowers now just powder upon the greyed surface; a wooden 
floor covered with a carpet of dust. Everything was covered with dust. 
Youji insisted upon leaving the door open for just that reason; carried 
Sei from that point for the same reason. The smell of it was thick and 
hot, and the air was utterly still. 

Ghosts dwelled there, remnants of the life Ken had had. Youji could 
almost hear him calling... 

*Bang* 

A screen slid home with a protesting scrape, and Youji shook off his 
reverie with a self-conscious laugh. Omi was waiting for him just 
outside of the living room. When Youji drew near, he wildly ruffled his 
lover's shock of blue hair. 

"Ha! Trying to scare me, eh? Well, it won't work, kid. I've..." 

/...been frightened by the best./

Youji abruptly ducked his head and stepped into the room, trying to 
ignore the worried squeezings of his son's arms around his neck. He 
patted Sei on the back, turning this way and that as he looked the room 
over. The furniture had been covered with sheets, but somehow, their 
presence only made it look worse. A man with a more vivid imagination 
might have run from there at that point, thinking that ghouls and not 
sticks of cloth-covered wood lay hidden beneath the dust-furred drapes. 

Luckily, though, Youji's imagination never twisted down such paths. 

"So..." He turned to Omi, stepping slowly over to him. "What'll we do? 
Clean up this room a little and stay here anyway?"

***

"I guess so..." Omi sighed, only just that moment coming to realize his 
hand was still against edge of the living room window and the screen 
there he had pushed up so nothing stood between fresh air and the dead 
breeze that had been lingering so long in Ken's house.

He didn't really believe then, standing beside his lover as they both 
looked out over the small, overgrown and wet bower of the garden, that 
this could ever have been KEN'S house.  It didn't hold him, didn't 
bring warmth to his heart and his glossy cheeks.  Didn't make him 
smile.  

"If you don't mind."

The look in Youji's eyes said he didn't, and for now, without words, he 
drew away from him only to find his lover's hands sliding along his 
shoulder.  

No, here was a rainy day inside and out.  Outside it would pour again, 
inside it had rained dust for two years.  A chill air swept through on 
his heels, whirling from window to the breached front door, stirring 
his hair, and a smoke about his feet.   

The first thing he swept away was the traces of the blooms that had 
rotted away so long ago.  He cast their fragments onto the wet grass 
outside, and they left a tracery of white behind on the tender blades.  

Behind him, Sei had squirmed out of his father's arms.  He took off 
trying doors to see if he could find the closet.  Sei hadn't known Ken 
in more than the clouds of memories condensing around his father and 
Omi.  All he knew was that he had a dirty house in front of him, and it 
needed cleaned.  

Omi's eyes flew to him and cried, "No no! You don't have to do that! 
You-... Akeno-kun and I will do that! You don't..."

"But I like to clean..." the child uttered, and, having just gotten his 
hands on the handle of a small, upright vacuum that had turned up 
beyond a small armada of buckets, he held it to his cheek like a teddy 
bear.

"Well..."

"Please?"

"Okay, if it makes you happy.  We'll just take the covers off the 
furniture first, and you can clean allllll you want."  He patted 
Seishirou's head and leaned to Youji's perplexed little pout- "I had 
the electricity and the water turned on too.  I didn't think Ken-kun 
wanted us starting a bonfire in the middle of his floor."

Though there was certainly room for it.  The living room might have 
been quite tiny, but there was nothing in it save for a low, polished 
rosewood table under the window, a white wicker rocking chair, a glass 
curio cabinet and a slightly bent brass floorlamp.  Black stem ware and 
a Swarovski crystal heart pretended to take up space in the curio.        
There were some ragged cushions on the chair and a CD player on the 
table, but no discs though to be found, despite a valiant search on 
Omi's part.

Seishirou finally thought to try the buttons on the front of the 
player.  It lit up at once and whirred out a display of tack numbers 
before it chose one and began to play.  The random light was on, but 
the machine had luck enough to find, after two years, the jazz another 
rainy day had once called for. 

Frankie, didn't I tell you,
"You got the world in the palm of your hand."
Frankie, didn't I tell you,
"They're running at your command."

You know the chains as if they're your invention.
It wasn't your intention,
Frankie,
to fall in the trap you made.

It's a crying shame.
You left a trail of destruction.
Heartbreaker, you know now,
they really did care cause it's your first affair.
Frankie, didn't I tell you,
"The lion would come in for a kill,"
Frankie, didn't I say,
"it had power over your sweet skill."

(OOC: The song is "Frankie's First Affair", by Sade.)

***

They three stayed quiet, listening, until the last strains of the 
song faded. Youji's voice came softly upon its heels. "I've never 
seen such an oddly decorated room... and that's a drinking song if 
I've ever heard one. Wonder whose cd it was? Was it the last thing 
they heard?" His hand wandered over the rocker's curved back as he 
passed it on his stroll about the room. "Or maybe I should say 
she?" 

"What did she think about as she sat here and rocked in her empty 
room?" 

He wound up before the curio cabinet, a curiosity in itself. The 
heart winked at him behind the smudgy glass, and he was tempted to 
open the tiny door and fondle it. 

"Well!" he exclaimed with a hard clap of his hands, shattering the 
silence and spooking both his companions. "Shall we get started?" 
Youji walked briskly back to where the sheets lay piled, and he 
awkwardly scooped them into his arms, turned his face away once and 
sneezed. 

"I'll get these things in the washer while you start on the room, 
okay?" 

Sei beamed at him, then took off with the vacuum cord in one hand and 
the vacuum itself in the other, dragging it around behind him like 
another child might do a stuffie as he searched for an outlet. Youji 
laughed. 

"Don't you overdo it, kid," he called after him. "And don't let 
Kioshi-san work too hard either." He turned to Omi with a grin. 

"Got that?" he asked quietly. 

The boy only smiled back, and Youji sidled up to him and gave him a 
quick kiss before he left the room.   

The washer and dryer were located in an alcove just off the kitchen. 
Youji found they were both relatively new, and thankfully, both were 
in working condition, though the pipes rattled badly when he turned 
on the washer. The water was rusty, so he piled the drop sheets upon 
the dryer to wait while the pipes cleaned themselves out. He opened 
the windows, let the water run in the sink until it looked clear. 
Looked in the stove, the refrigerator, a few of the cabinets, and 
discovered all over again that he had little patience for waiting. 
He decided to do a bit of exploring of the upper rooms, thinking he 
might find something they could use during their stay. 

The stairs creaked faintly under his weight, the vacuum hummed 
determinedly along over the slowly brightening carpet. Youji could 
hear Omi laugh, and he wondered briefly over just what had amused him 
so much as he reached the landing. Three doors lined the short 
hallway, but only one of them caught his attention: that of the 
farthest one. Even from where he stood near the stairs, he could 
make out the wavering line of caulk which straddled the space between 
the door and the frame. It had been laid on thickly, he found upon 
closer examination, as if someone had intended to seal it forever. 
Certainly, that someone had intended it, but he or she had done such 
a poor job of laying it on. There were obvious gaps here and there, 
and in those places where it hadn't made solid contact with the wood 
beneath, it crumbled away beneath Youji's questing touch. 

It greatly piqued his curiosity, and he smiled as he wiped his soiled 
fingers on one leg of his jeans. It would be easy to break into, 
despite the fact that it was locked. The wood looked a little 
rotten, and the seal was useless. Youji took out the little penknife 
he always carried with him (as one never knew when one would need a 
penknife), and made quick work of destroying the caulking. Then, 
shutting the narrow blade back into its casing, Youji backed up a 
little, and aimed a kick squarely upon the knob. The door groaned, then 
gave way to him upon receiving another such blow of his foot. Dust 
swirled frantically before him, and Youji paused to let it settle 
before entering. 

Just as the rest of the house, the room was in need of cleaning--but 
it was bare save for an unfurled bedroll; not even the walls held any 
color. Not at all what he had expected to find in Ken's house--in 
his room, even, if it was his. 

"What happened, Ken?" he whispered, glancing about the room. "Was 
she against you playing soccer? Did she object to you leaving for 
Tokyo?" 

He scuffed his heel upon the floor, and dug the pack of smokes he'd 
bought at the last station out of his shirt pocket; he lit it as he 
glanced around the room.  "Man, I wish you were here to answer me." 

Youji took another deep drag from his cigarette, then stooped to roll 
up the futon. A few good beatings to rid it of dirt, a while out in 
the fresh air, and they'd be able to sleep on it. The sheets could 
be washed, of course. Youji decided to take care of them first, as 
they looked especially filthy.  

"What did you do, Ken-kun? Come home after practice and fall asleep 
in your muddy clothes?" He chuckled. "Just like you to do something 
like that." 

But when he gave it a shake, only dust flew from it. No flecks of 
dried mud. Sneezing once, Youji bunched the sheet up and scratched 
at the stain, thinking it had merely settled too hard in the fibers. 
Two passes of his nails across it, and he realized it had, and 
probably for good. 

But it wasn't mud, as he had thought. It was blood. 


***

His lover at the moment departed from the room, Omi had lingered just 
where he'd been left for awhile, rubbing his lips where the kiss had 
fallen. The stereo played on, but the songs that had followed the first 
Seishirou found grew no brighter, only changed melancholies from one 
tempo of a rainstorm to another. 

A quick glance around the downstairs rooms found no pictures otherwise.  
There wasn't a single image of a person, just the bamboo near the 
entryway and a watercolor of a field of snow that stood empty except 
for a tiny, dark fox.

He took the time to polish the glass above the white mounds with the 
cleaner that turned up beneath the sink. The bamboo itself was a wall 
scroll left exposed.  All he could do was shake the dust off the silken 
tassels and blow the webs the passing years had left away. The colors 
still looked washed out, but then again, that was probably the style of 
it. Up close there were the tiny imperfections of a passing brush woven 
through them; hairline fractures of hue.

Unlike the fox, it wasn't a print, but an original.

As he admired it a moment longer, Seishirou came padding in, backwards 
and drawing the vacuum with him. Omi watched him a moment, giggling 
softly behind his hand. The boy moved his peculiar little toy just like 
a grown up would have- didn't run with it, or push too rapidly; didn't 
let the brushes carry it away from him. The only awkward nature of the 
way he handled the vacuum came from the fact it was as tall as he was. 

He even switched the carpet height lever when he moved into the 
entryway, stepped out of Omi's shadow so he didn't hit him as he drew 
back and took care of the shoe well. Omi scrambled out of his way and 
petted his shoulder. As if the boy had a switch there, the vacuum 
powered down, and his lover's son looked up at him, remarking softly 
with a nod to the painting, "I like the snowy one better. But I've 
never seen snow, so that's probably why."

"I've never seen snow, either but I like..."

"...colored pictures."

He could not help himself to laugh outright, just in a soothing, little 
friendly way. "I do! I used to have a friend I'd always go see pictures 
like this with."

Seishirou nodded, but batted his eyes away, pretending to be unhappy 
with the way the cord had fallen, for it would have been hard to tell 
his companion the thoughts of Ouka-chan that clung to his presence. 
"I'm glad." He said, and then, with another flicker of his fingers on 
the controls, he padded off to the kitchen, or started too before 
turning around. "I ah... knocked the drawer of the table in the living 
room open. I can't get it closed."

"Maa, maa! Don't sound so embarrassed. S'ok! I'll have a look at it 
then," Omi reassured him, and beckoned, so the little boy would follow 
him and be sure whatever he could do about the drawer suited him.

Mostly, there was thread- three rolls of black and many colored bobbins 
strewn among the leaking spools.  In one corner huddled a coral-colored 
seashell filled with needles and a threader. There was a worn book too, 
pushed in very quickly on top of the sewing supplies; The Woman in the 
Dunes by Kobe Abe, an old kuchizuke. It was this that had gotten in the 
way of closing the drawer, and Omi pulled it out, only to find 
something underneath besides needles and thread.

"Osho-Zen Tarot by Ma Deva Padma?" The box of cards came out in his 
hands, leaving the book behind as he tapped the drawer closed. Having 
been caught between panels of its hiding place before, the box was not 
in wonderful condition, but the cards within were well enough 
preserved, and he sat down a moment to have a look at them.

Seishirou followed, balancing on his heels and asking nothing about the 
bits of colored paper before them. Omi smiled at him, but didn't feel 
compelled to say anything at all, not that he knew anything to say in 
the first place.  The wind brought a little chill into the room as the 
first picture came up in his hands: a woman- or at least someone with 
long hair -sitting on a giant leaf before a field of stars.

"Or maybe they're very tiny and that's just a regular leaf," said the 
boy.

"So da! That could be!"

For a long while the image held their attention, and they quite 
peacefully gazed upon it, leaving the rest face down on the carpet, not 
knowing if they could be so calm, or so quiet. Omi slunk towards 
Seishirou, bit by bit, drawn to the soft outlines of his body.  He 
touched them, and he rocked away a little bit, but would not fight him. 
Just glanced up at the ceiling following the kiss that befell his ear, 
and made a worried little noise.

"Otosama wa doko?"

"I don't know..." But a pat, and he let him go, drawing the woman and 
her stars into his hand with all of her mates. "I don't hear him 
around. I bet he went upstairs."

Taking the cards with him, Omi padded to the back of the house to the 
cubby where the steps had been hidden.

"Akeno-kun! I found something downstairs."

A gasp, not his own.  He found the far door open, and slunk over to it, 
calling once again, "Akeno-kun?"

Inside he found his lover, gazing at a pile of sheets as if they had 
bitten him.


(OOC: This is a really, really, strange non-standard deck, going so far 
as having the wrong number of cards:

http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/oshozen/index.html )

***

"Ah, Kioshi...I didn't hear you coming," Youji began, attempting a  
weak grin to cover his discomfiture.  "What did you find, hm?  Show  
me."  He took Omi by the elbow in an effort to steer him out the  
door.  He didn't want the other to get a close look at the sheet.  
 
Unfortunately, Omi wasn't going to back down.  He resisted Youji's  
efforts to escort him away from the room, tried to pull away from  
him, even, but the other only clung to him more tightly.   
 
"It's just a pile of sheets!  A futon!  Nothing to see there.   
Nothing wrong with them that a good cleaning won't cure."  He  
chuckled, trying to reassure his lover.  "I'm just imagining things.   
I guess I'm just a little tired, still.  I'm not used to these early  
hours, you know."   
 
Still, Omi kept eyeing the sheet.  Youji let go of his arm and caught  
him around the waist instead, and pulled him close, shifting so he  
blocked the other's view.  "Besides," he murmured, "the quicker I can  
get it clean, the quicker we can use it."   
 
A kiss, long and insistent, landed upon Omi's cheek.   
 
"Now," he whispered in Omi's ear, "what were you wanting to show  
me?" 

***

Omi's lips quivered as his lover's fluttered away; left them wet and 
flushing with a thread-thin trickle of saliva drawn upon his cheek.  He 
felt like a harp and the spirit meant to play it for an instant.  

But that was Youji's charm, and a charm he wished he had then to share 
with him. 

He slipped one card from his pocket and held it up before his lover's 
eyes; not knowing of course, that it was of a naked woman dancing, she 
and the light behind her made of petals of a thousand colors.  

"I found these in the end table downstairs.  The whole pack! I just 
wanted to show you since well... they're just not what I figured we'd 
find.  With the sewing things too.  Those aren't Ken's! I can't find 
*anything* of his! It's like we got the wrong house!"

***

Youji took the card, turning it a little towards the window for a  
better look.  "It's beautiful, but no, it's certainly not Ken's."  He 
handed it  back to Omi.  "I never saw him with any Tarot cards," he 
said,  drumming his fingers along the middle of Omi's back.  "Someone 
obviously did,  though, huh?"   
 
He hugged Omi tight, then released him with another kiss on the top of 
his  head.  Their hands stayed entwined.  "But yeah, I noticed there's 
not  one memento of him around here.  Not one picture.  No trophies.  
When  I came up here, I found the door locked, and someone had 
attempted to seal it with caulk."   
 
He paused to let that sink in.   
 
"Do you think his things might be around here still?"   
Youji regarded the pair of white particle board sliding doors which  
stood on the other side of the room near the window; the first time  
he'd noticed them since he'd entered.   
 
"What do you bet we'll find some of his things in that closet, Kioshi- 
ai?" 

***
 
"I'd say there's nowhere else they could be.  But just a minute 
here..." 
 
As the sound of a vacuum running once more began to stumble up the 
stairs and their alcove, he let his hand stray into Youji's pocket, and 
from there came up with his army knife, leaving the cards in its 
place.  The window he approached with the same small stealth as he 
might have a wild animal.  Touched it.  Then the staples began to 
tumble to his feet, one by one.  When they were all gone, he hooked the 
pale green swangs around the edges of the sill- they were noticeably 
sun-faded on the side facing the glass.  

The catch for window had a few spare yen before it.  A house key on a 
chain with an SD chocobo at the other end.  A tiny bottle of cologne 
that had gone somewhat dry and left long, sticky lines in the corners 
of its flask.  All this hidden from the outside by the inch or two of 
the frame. 
 
Omi didn't touch any of them.  He said, "Just so we can see what we're 
doing," and with that confronted the closet.  His whole palm settled on 
the surface of the deeper set panel.  In trying to sweep it aside, 
however, all he got was a rattle and a few thumps.  The same went for 
the nearest slider. 
 
"It's stuck!" 
 
He and Youji swept the perimeter for more of the crumbling caulk, but 
came up with no more, and no specks of any other sealant- only a few 
hints of something glittering close to the floor.  The shine only made 
them all the more determined to part the contrary doors. 
 
They tried pulling, they tried pushing, and shaking the planks; 
shouting a few open-sesame things they'd have shied from using had Sei 
been in the room. 
 
It took the two former assassins more than ten minutes to open the 
doors- a feat they only accomplished because something within fell and 
broke, losing its bracing hold on the two panels. 
 
Omi opened them.  There was a rolling clatter, almost like a peal of  
thunder, and that same Omi found himself up to his ankles in the 
contents of the closet: 
 
Clothing, some of it never washed or hung up.  Trophies, over a dozen 
of them, some with medals on their arms.  Toys.  There was a little 
blue rubber duck among the gundams.  Three soccer balls; two worn, one 
brand new.  Combs.  Children's dishes. Old notebooks.  Report cards.  
Shoes.  A cricket cage with a dead katydid in it.  And picture frames- 
almost two dozen of them, all still full.  A white porcelain one had 
been what broke to lose its hold on the doors. 
 
The boy reached down into the fragments of it, brushing the bits away 
with his nails so he wouldn't cut himself.  Underneath was the image of 
a five year old Ken sitting at the kitchen table, a smear of pudding on 
his nose.  Just across from him, and reaching for a napkin though 
someone had called her eyes to the camera? A tall, sleek woman with 
golden blond curls, one dressed all in black like she'd just come from 
a funeral.  She scarcely looked twenty. 
 
"SHIMATTA! That just *CAN'T* be Ken-kun's mother... can it?" 
 
(OOC: Omi's being a little incredulous here because she DOESN'T remind 
him of sister Ruth.)

***

"Hm?"  Youji rose from where he'd crouched on the floor, his interest  
caught by the mass of playthings and trinkets.  He leaned in close  
for a good look at the photograph, whistling when he saw the likeness  
of the woman in question.  

"Sure it is," he said, running a finger over her face.  "Look at her 
eyes, the lines of her face.  Give her a mop of dark hair that hasn't 
seen a pair of scissors in weeks, and  you'd have Ken."   

Youji sank to his knees beside Omi, and began to pick through the  
pile, taking up whatever caught his eye and examining it before  
laying it down again.  A few things, such as the gundams and the  
brand new soccer ball, Youji set off to one side.   
 
"Why did she jam all this stuff in the closet like this, though?   
Especially his pictures, his trophies," he said, picking up one such  
award.  "You'd think she would have kept stuff like that out on  
display, like any proud mother might."   
 
He glanced over his shoulder at the crumpled, bloodstained sheet,  
then carefully replaced the trophy on the pile.  "If she really was a  
proud mother, that is." 

***

"She looks so happy..." Omi said.  He hadn't moved himself, save to 
draw the picture onto his lap where it was still lying.  "Even if 
she was right here, just like this, I don't think I'd know what she 
was thinking."

And then, as he mused over the tiny photographic crystals that had 
caught the prism of her mona-lisa smile, he realized something, and as 
such, reached into his lover's pocket after one of the tarot cards; 
came up with the image of a single, tremulous daisy poking through the 
slits time had wrought in a stone.  

"She does kinda look like these are hers."

/But I think... her shoulders are a lot droopier than Ken's were... 
other than that.../

He left the card tucked in the remnants of porcelain about the 
photograph, and set them both aside, taking himself then to rooting 
through the contents of the closet until he had an armload of pictures, 
and had lined them up against the rim of the floor and the wall in what 
looked more or less chronological order.  He came up with a semblance 
of a story, but not too much of the motives, no echoes of laughter or 
creeping moments or pain that come just before the denouement.  Just a 
crime-scene summary of the years, rather than a book of them.

Ken's mother when she was in junior-high.  There was only one picture- 
she had on a white and powder blue uniform and her hair was tied back.  
The image had been trimmed for an oval frame, and the faces of whoever 
might have been posing with her were gone.  There was no high school 
graduation portrait.  

Everything skipped ahead in her life until she had sleepy little bundle 
gathered up in the front of her pink satin nightie.  That was in a 
double frame with a long, rolling shot of some snowy hills.  He got the 
impression from the former that she wasn't in a hospital.  Then came an 
image of Ken as an infant which she had taken while standing as he 
knelt at her feet, smiling up at her.  The pudding one.  Ken in his 
kindergarten uniform being chased by a mallard duck he'd apparently put 
off.  Ken turning a cartwheel.  Ken sitting on a chair with a soccer 
ball on his lap while his mother brushed his hair.  She wore black in 
that picture too, and had snapped the photo herself from the reflection 
in a mirror.  

And then...

Ken and another boy. They both held up peace signs and had their arms 
around each other's shoulders.

It took him a moment to realize the older boy was Kaze.  

***

Whilst Omi had been arranging the photographs along the wall, Youji  
had divided his attention between the movements of his lover and the  
story book he now held in his lap. Its cloth cover was worn away in  
place along the edges, but the pages were still in good shape. A  
volume of folktales from around the world. He'd gotten involved in  
the story of Cupid and Psyche when he realized Omi had grown very  
quiet.  
 
"What?" he asked, looking up from the book. "Something wrong?"  
 
He traced Omi's gaze to the very last photograph in the line. Two  
boys with their arms around each other; nothing spectacular about  
that, and he said as much, prompting Omi to pick it up and wordlessly  
hand it to him.  
 
"Oi... It's that guy. Um, um..." he stuttered, snapping his  
fingers. "Kaze! Yeah!" he cried, smiling a bit--but only for a  
moment. All the cases they'd had, and he had forgotten about Kaze,  
and what eventually happened. The pleasure in his expression melted  
away with mournful, drawn out sigh.  
 
"Oh, man," he murmured as he passed the photograph back to  
Omi. "I never knew they went back *that* far. Ken never talked about 
himto me at all, not even after... You know." He turned back to the 
pile  of toys, his expression now distant and sad.  
 
"...Yeah..."

***

Something Youji had said plainly did not bode well with Omi, who balled 
up his hands and clenched his eyes closed, murmuring then, at nothing 
and no one, the photo rattling a little on his lap.

"But you were with him before!  A few months before the rest of us ever 
even got to Weiss! He told me you were and..." he finally gasped, his 
wide, horrified eyes snapping up against his lover's back.  "Not a 
word? Not one word!?"

Youji shook his head.

Whatever rage there had been left him, though the picture frame still 
shook in his hands as he held it up, and glared at himself in the pane 
of glass above it,.

If Ken had been on the glass instead, he felt then he might have broken 
the picture and its case over his head.

"So he didn't tell us... and Aya...? Maybe he told Aya but..."

The picture said not, felt not; would not catch his hand as they 
coasted over the face of the boy trapped there.  A sigh, and he rose to 
his feet, coaxing the rest of the images into a line.  Ken grew older, 
and his soccer balls did too, now and then winking new.  He was alone, 
or he was with Kaze, or a hand that looked like Kaze's.  They stopped 
long before he turned eighteen, and there weren't anymore.  Of him.  Of 
his mother.  Of the golden-eyed boy.

When Omi chose the ones to take downstairs, they were all fragments 
from the beginning of the story- the best place to start as he knew.  
Ken's mother in her school uniform.  She and Ken and the pudding, 
tucked in a new frame.  Kaze and Ken, together for the first time in 
what he had of their lives.

He took them downstairs to the living room, where Seishirou was just 
sweeping a towel over the table that stood beneath the windows.  The 
child seemed delighted with the prospect of having something to grace 
what he had dusted, and took one from Omi before Omi had gotten a word 
out.  

"Is that Ken?"

"Aa, that's Ken."

***

"He's the biggest kid I've ever met in my life," caroled Youji as he 
strode into the room. Over his shoulder, he carried the bloodied 
sheet, the ends gathered in his hand to hold fast what he had laid 
within it; behind him, just past the threshold lay the futon from 
Ken's room. Youji hadn't wanted to tote the dusty mattress into the 
newly cleaned room. "Case in point." 

Youji swung his burden over his shoulder and lowered it onto the 
floor, and with a tiny flick of his wrists, scattered its contents: 
Three gundams. The soccer ball. Five books--one being a collection of 
silly rhymes. A pair of kid-sized black cleats which only needed a 
pair of new strings and a bit of cleaning. A small hooded warmup 
jacket which had once been dark blue, but was now very faded; Youji 
hadn't found any moth holes in it, however. He held it up for 
Seishirou to see. 

"I forgot to get you a jacket when I bought you some clothes. I 
thought this might keep you warm--after I wash it. Stinks of 
mothballs now." Youji spread it out neatly on the floor.  

"I thought you might like some more toys too," he said, wadding up 
the sheet and tucking it under his arm. "It seems a waste to 
leave 'em up there to gather dust and mold." Youji bent to retrieve 
the soccer ball, rolling it over to Sei with a smile. "Ken liked 
kids, you see. Hanging around them...I think that was 
one of the few things which gave him any real pleasure." 

Youji shifted his attention to Omi, still smiling--but sadly now. 
Leaving his son to wonder over the treasures his father had brought, 
Youji picked his way across the pile towards him. 

"Don't judge Ken too harshly. We've all had our secrets. Maybe he 
didn't know how we'd take it if he told us all about Kaze."

***

It was Seishirou who nodded to this, and claimed the blue warm up 
jacket in spite of what his father had suggested.  He held it to his 
nose and breathed.  Nodded (for he would have scrubbed it in the sink 
himself if offered the chance) and gave it a little shake before 
tugging it on over his head to make sure it fit.  Actually, it hung 
down past his knees, and its hood drooped over his eyes, so that he 
looked rather like a Benedictine monk who wasn't especially good at 
hemming his vestments.  

Omi couldn't help but laugh, and neither could Youji, whose son trotted 
over to him, and showed himself to be smiling once he tugged the 
accidental veil away from his face.  His father hoisted him up and held 
him close to his face, for he whispered.  Just how had he known his son 
wanted such a thing? Omi didn't know.  

"I like Ken too," Seishirou said.

"Saa, I don't think there's anything in the world that could make me 
NOT like Ken-kun, so I'm glad you feel that way too!"

"And the coat (as soon as it's clean)! And all the pretty things that 
were Ken's!"

"Yay!"

"And Ken's house, and the way Ken..."

"The way Ken what...?"

Seishirou shrugged and giggled, having apparently forgotten what he was 
about to say.  Slipping them from Youji's arms, he took off the jacket 
and once more became just a child rather than anything holy or strange 
in Japan. "I'll make sure the refrigerator is all clean so we can use 
it too!"

/And what I wanted to say about Ken, otosama? He feels makes me feel 
good when you think about him./

***

The 1700 yen got them to the outskirts of Reiichi's neighborhood, which 
might have been more of a comfort to the two sodden Crashers if it had 
not been for the fact Shisaragi-san abided in the second largest purely 
residential neighborhood in the Tokyo outskirts.  For the better part 
of four hours they found themselves trudging through the silvery sludge 
along the concrete sidewalks- down winding streets so shielded from the 
real world by trees older than most of the city they seemed no longer 
to be part of the sprawl.

Children passed them coming home from school, and then ceased appearing 
all together as the sky growled and the afternoon wore on and on 
without them.  Masato lost a shoe and didn't bother to turn back for 
it.  

Reiichi's seemed wholly different when the clouds stood around it- 
rather than a glowing lamp or a glass of milk, it now looked rather 
like an enormous pearl winking in and out between the shrubbery.  The 
walls failed to shimmer from the inside.  

They both stomped inside and shed the outer layers of their clothing so 
it wouldn't drip on the carpet.  Reiichi fled to his own chambers, 
returning with a blanket and a set of pink pajamas that looked as if 
they'd never been off their hangers before.  These he presented to his 
companion, along with the closest thing he had to a hotpad- 
specifically, Abbess Hildegard in a nurse costume -before stumbling 
into the kitchen in the hopes of finding some tea.

The cat washed her paws while Masato changed, paying no attention 
whatsoever to his shivering nudity, at least not until something fell 
over in the kitchen, and the man she had been charged with protecting 
took his pink-pajama state under a quilt where Cinderella waltzed with 
her prince in the crook of the moon.  As this was Abbess's favorite 
blanket , she stretched herself over his lap and began to purr as her 
white fur snowed down all over Cinderella's otherwise immaculate bosom.  

***

That is, she did until Masato dragged his hands from beneath the 
quilt's puffy folds, and removed her from his lap.  He settled her 
onto the farthest end of the blanket, where she mewed most testily.  

"Oh, shut up," he grumbled.  "I don't like cats.  I don't much like 
pink or Disney princesses either," he added, fluffing the blanket 
over his lap.  "It's like I've stumbled into a little girl's 
wonderland, and not the home of a grown ma--AHCHOO!"  He clapped a 
hand over his mouth, twitching a finger slyly under his itchy nose.  
From the kitchen came the bright ting! of a spoon falling into the 
sink.  "Someone must be talking about me.  Probably that brat kid and 
his surly lover.  Man, if that's the future of Kritiker, then we're 
all doomed."  

Hildegard blinked at him, then promptly rolled over onto her side, 
wholly uninterested in her master's rude guest.  Masato flicked his 
wet hair over his shoulders, and tucked the quilt higher up on his 
chest.  Reiichi took that moment to return with a tray of china cups, 
cream and sugar, but no pot as the water wasn't yet boiling.  Masato 
took in his sodden, disheveled appearance with a grimace.  

"Rei, quit being the gracious host and get into some dry clothes," he 
said, throwing back the blanket and rising to his feet.  "I think I 
have enough presence of mind left to watch the kettle in the 
meantime."  

***

"But I *like* being a gracious host," Reiichi protested in a weak, 
wiggly voice.  For one of only a handful of blue-moon moments, his 
smile seemed to weaken, and the creases around his pale eyes started to 
unfold as his face relaxed.  Seeing the sort of pseudo-horrified look 
of Masato's cynical wonder, any trace of dismay in his guise fast 
evaporated, and all his laugh lines re-appeared.  "Well, part of being 
a good host is attending to the whims of one's guests! Saaaaaa, I 
should have remembered that.  Please forgive me."

A small bow and a few disgruntled affirmations from Abbess Hildegard, 
and Shisaragi nodded.  Though through the panes of his glasses, he shot 
his companion a sort of uncanny look- one not quite given to fear, and 
not quite given to folly.

And then he ripped his clothes off.  Literally.  Thread snapped every 
which way.  Buttons sailed into places unnamed.  The cat got up to 
chase one.  Either that, or fled from the preternaturally pale flesh 
there revealed around all of Reiichi's fleshy, damp curves.

***

The sight of Reiichi was boggling.  It wasn't that he was physically 
repulsive, it wasn't that he was truly fat (not in Masato's opinion, 
at least), but that he was naked at ALL.  Reiichi just wasn't one to 
behave in such a way.  Reiichi was all proper etiquette, the 
aristocrat of their group.  The voice of calm reason when it was 
needed--which was often.  And so, Masato didn't know what to think.  
He didn't know where to look either; every time he cast his attention 
elsewhere, his eyes would instantly wander back to his friend's nude 
body.  He knew he was being impolite--being downright silly!--and it 
shamed him.  He figured Reiichi would be hurt by his reaction, but...

He wasn't.  He was smiling, and genuinely.  Not a humiliated blush in 
sight.  And so, Masato began to consider that he didn't really know 
Reiichi.  That the eldest Crasher seemed to be far more spontaneous 
and shocking than he ever imagined him capable of being, Masato found 
rather intriguing.  So much so that he began to relax, smiling back 
faintly; drew a deep breath, and released all his misgivings along 
with it.  

And then he *looked*.  Everywhere and unashamedly.  Circled him even, 
grinning wider when he came to face him again.  Yes, he loved Naru.  
And he would find him before the night was over, and talk to him.  
But Naru had nothing to do with this, just as Reiichi had nothing to 
do with his feelings for the boy.  

And, anyway--he firmly believed that one shouldn't turn down new 
experiences when they were presented.    

Without a word, Masato threaded his fingers through the damp hair at 
the back of Reiichi's neck, and leaned forward to kiss him there.  

***

Reiichi at this chuckled softly, almost as if kisses were something he 
was being taught about for the first time in his life.  Even if it 
wasn't true, even if the day before he had brushed his lips against 
both of his remaining companions.  Even if he knew the joys of spitting 
out white fluff after burying his face in Abbess's coat all too well.

When he bussed Masato, it was after two false starts. The kiss came 
laced nonetheless with gentle pride as earlier afternoons when he had 
chanced drawing near the other Crashers.  For a few long instances, 
they hovered just so, giddy with the feeling of one another's breath on 
their chilled skin.  

Of course, Masato soon found himself giddy with the shock of being more 
or less pushed down against the other man's bare shoulder.  

"Hmm... I didn't think you'd dare come near me after the trousers came 
off.  Interesting."  He pressed his lips to Masato's wet hair, and 
drank the rain and cigarette smoke from it.

"You mustn't think I'm trying to steal you away from your lover.  I 
always wanted to be your friend.  You, and Naru, and Yuuji; if he's 
gone away... well, let him go away.  But enough of missing chances! 
Ah... I get the impression my definition of 'friend' and yours 
are different."

His lips darted down against Masato's ear then, and when he did not 
lick him there with all the grace of an enamoured cat, he whispered.  
"You're cute when you're embarrassed.  I expected no less. I say we 
warm up the best way possible- hot tea in bed with a great, big fluffy 
kitty at out feet!"  

***

"All right.  But the cat HAS to stay at our feet."

With a roll of his eyes, Reiichi clamped his lips to Masato's for a 
loud, smacking kiss before flouncing off to the kitchen.  Masato 
watched until he disappeared past the refrigerator, and then 
headed off to the bedroom.  

And when he opened the door to his host's private haven, his jaw 
dropped open once again.  For before him lay a room like something 
out of a little girl's daydreams.  The bed was a white fourposter 
whose footboard and headboard were dusted with silver glittery stars; 
small velvety cushions of baby pink and hot pink lay scattered along 
the pillows' twin mounds.  The bedspread was a deep rose chenille, 
and the canopy above it was that same shade of satin, trimmed with 
long silver and hot pink fringe.  The dresser and nightstands were 
white, and bore gilt along its edges.  A massive mirror whose frame 
was gilt and dusted with silver roses hung opposite the bed.  The 
nightstands boasted dainty lamps where tiny bronze cherubs had been 
frozen in mid air around their pillar-shaped bases, flowery garlands 
clutched in their chubby hands, along with a pair of Royal Doulton 
Cinderella figurines--before the ball and after.  

Something warm pushed past one leg, and Masato watched as the cat 
sprinted across the white, plush carpet to leap upon the bed.  She 
immediately swiped at her face with her paws, wanting to make herself 
presentable for such a pristine room.  Then she mewed at him as if 
asking him a question, blinking at him with her luminous eyes.  He 
raked his hands through his hair, taking in the room again.  And 
heaved a deep sigh.  

"Oh, what the hell," he said, striding into the room, stripping off 
his clothes as he made his way to the bed.   

***

The Crasher shortly found himself sighing once again, for the pink 
pajamas he had taken off, now a small sea of fuchsia, were found to be 
exactly the same color as the fringes which grew from the peculiar bed. 
Abbess Hildegard didn't presently give one whit about his possible 
bugbears.  Rather, the very moment he left his garments on the floor, 
she made a sound like a bell ringing- probably the best a cat could do 
in place of a long-suffering mother's growl -and rolled over onto her 
back, looking for all the world like a white, furry sausage as she 
stretched.   

Masato gave her a looooong look, and then gingerly seated himself to 
the left side of the bed, just shy of the pillows.  He crossed his 
legs, yawned, and subsequently found his lap full of Turkish Angora.  

Before he could get a word to the errant cat, her owner appeared at the 
door, silver tray of tea and appurtenances of tea between his hands.  
"Abbess," he chided, "Be nice to Masato.  You have to understand he's 
not interested in rubbing your cute, little belly right now, or getting 
fur when he wouldn't ordinarily have fur."

Despite what he had said, Reiichi reached down, and stroked her.  A few 
mews and a kiss between her ears later, she signaled her defeat by 
retreating to her cat bed- a creation of some demented mind who had 
evidentially seen fit to make a scale model of Shisaragi-san's, only 
with a fluffy tail.  "Mou!" he replied to this, "you could still have 
sat with us.  Ah well."

As his hand left Masato's lap, it strayed against the other man's 
thigh, giving it a long, kneading, human caress.

And then... tea! A great-big pot shaped like a blue pumpkin carriage 
(complete with spinning silver wheels) full of it! And little mice 
bearing sugar cubes! Bluebirds with cream!  

And two perfectly ordinary white, bone china cups to drink from.

"Would you like one lump or two?"

***

"Er... one," replied Masato, holding the cup with both hands.  The 
handle, a dainty, thin curve, struck him as made more for a woman's 
slim finger than a man's, and so he decided not to even attempt to 
hold it properly.  

The cube pinged when it hit the bottom of the cup, slowly turning to 
slush under tea's attack.  The steam wisping from the rosy surface 
smelled of oranges and spice--something entirely suitable for a wet, 
chilly day.  Masato leaned back on the carefully arranged pillows 
with a sigh of pure contentment, and took his first cautious sip, 
eyeing Reiichi over the milky rim of his cup.  

Another sip, and he felt comfortable enough to leave the cup perched 
in one hand.  Masato lay the other upon Rei's back, and started 
tracing the outline of his spine with his fingertips.  

"Why Cinderella?"  

***

"Well," Reiichi responded as he cast a fond, sultry glance Masato's 
way, "Because I am Cinderella." As if that simply insisted on being 
that, he blew daintily across the surface of his tea before letting his 
lips fall upon it.  And slurped in a most unbecoming fashion.  

Several moments of his companion's uncomfortable quiet later, he 
finally set his cup aside and sank somewhat close to his companion.  
The hand along his back paused a moment for this, and then rose, along 
the crescents of his shoulder blades.

With tea-warmed lips he smiled, and spoke.

"You see, I changed my name just after I moved to Japan.  That's why 
it's not Cinderella anymore! And before it was Cinderella, it was Rory 
Jacobs."

As his wet lips then traced the stubbly curve of Masato's neck, he 
added wistfully, "That's a pretty normal name, Rory Jacobs."  Their 
mouths nearly touched, but Reiichi, the former Rory, drew away at the 
and smiled his inscrutable little smile.

"I used to live in upstate New York- had a perfectly charming and 
frightfully normal family: mother, father, two dogs and a goldfish who 
was frequently replaced.  But all this happened to be during the age of 
swingers, so of course, the moment they realized they still loved each 
other after fifteen years of marriage, they also came to the decision 
the only fashionable thing to do would be break up and be best friends.  
So they did, and I went to live with my father, who up and married this 
surly cocktail waitress with the most absolutely repulsive West 
Virginia accent you could ever imagine.

"She and I... didn't get along at all. And I couldn't stand her brats. 
Little anklebiters.  Pissed in my fishtank and rode my dogs like 
horses.  Made me clean up every one of their messes.  I tried to talk 
to my father about it- 'Are you trying to make me into Cinderella!?' I 
said to him.  He told me no, that he loved me.  And of course, my 
stepmother was listening, and could stand a word of it.  Next morning I 
came home from school to discover she had changed my name to 
Cinderella."

***  

"But you..." Masato began, shifting upright against the low wall of 
cushions at his back, his hand sliding down Rei's own to cradle his 
hip. "You've clung to it anyway. All this would surely remind you of 
those times." He canted him an oddly pensive look, sizing him up as it 
were over the rim of his tea cup. "Or is that what you wanted--to 
never forget?" 

A hint of a smile, and Rei turned to gaze into his cup. Masato leaned a 
fraction closer, his chest pressed to his companion's arm. "I never 
knew, I never thought to ask you anything about yourself. You always 
seemed so stable and happy. I never knew you had such an...odd story to 
relate. Serves me right for making assumptions about people, huh?"

***

"Quite, but you're forgiven," Reiichi tittered then, and he reached 
over to rub his finger tips on Masato's nose, rather than pinch it 
outright like some lovers might have been inclined to do.  Or parents 
perhaps.  Even his own.  

"But you're right, I am happy.  After all, what does Cinderella get to 
be at the end? A beautiful princess married to the handsomest, kindest 
prince in all the world.  Why, the moment my stepmother called me that, 
she made it impossible for me to have anything besides a happy ending, 
even if that is EXACTLY what she didn't want."

He didn't have to add, "but here I am", for as if by pumpkin-morphing 
magic, his presence there grew and grew until it burst and dusted 
itself down all over the house; until the two of them- man and his 
peculiar realm -became indistinguishable.  The rain popped still 
against the roof, and the light stole in though there were no windows.

"I would rather," said the light, "Have many princes though.  Isn't 
that much better? Try them all, for you know that public opinion can't 
be trusted when it comes to kindness and handsomeness.  Sometimes in 
these stories, the princess has a mind of her own.  The Victorians 
ruined that, naturally."

His tea found itself down to a few drops then, and these he stole from 
the bottom of the teacup, running them around his neck in a teardrop 
crowned loop, and another and another, until, for a handful of moments, 
Reiichi wore bangles of phantom liquid.  "But as you can see, I still 
get all the perks of being a princess.  The only question left is what 
version of the story you would like to take part in.  I can be *any* 
Cinderella for you."

The two cups vanished.  

Reiichi's glasses were gone and with nothing in between him and Masato 
now, his eyes had a wholly different cast- grey-green pearl, serious 
and vague but still alight with some unspoken gaiety only the laugh 
lines remembered for the time being.

"Kotaishi."

***

His eyes--Masato had never really noticed their color before. They 
were just there, scrunched in smiles usually, or pensive. Never the 
sort to elicit any real admiration...until now. Yet one more thing 
he'd missed. 

Well...he wasn't about to let himself miss any thing else. 

"I think," he began, smiling a little, "that I like my Cinderellas to 
think for themselves. Those that have to be directed in every little 
act aren't exciting. And you," he added, coasting a hand up one of 
Rei's arms, "are exciting." 

Masato's hand slipped across his shoulder, curving around his neck, 
and, as if he'd been hooked by his fingers, Rei rocked forward on his 
knees, inching up until they lay chest-to-chest. They hung there, 
breaths mingling, eyelids flushed and hands roaming over safe places, 
just getting accustomed to the feel of each other. 

And then, Masato thinned the gap between them to nothing, and covered 
Rei's mouth with his own.

***

Reiichi quivered a little at this- not an unhappy sort of way, but a 
flutter of his whole body.  They parted when it had passed, and he 
merely grinned again, pointing to the reddish prickles Masato's stubble 
had left about his lips before, he drew his hands into his hair.  "Mmm, 
that is one of my favorites, Koitashi."

He slipped down towards the satin sheets- just a little, just enough so 
that he looked not quite wild, and not quite like someone fawning.  His 
lips darted against Masato's left nipple, and cradled it there while 
his palms fell this way and that over him- onto his thighs, his waist, 
and the arch of his ribs.  

Bit by bit though, his hips inched forward, until they were nestled 
tight together, their cocks pressed tight to one another.  Masato could 
feel his pulse all through his own loins.

***

"Ahh..." Masato sighed, one hand sweeping down his back to clutch at 
one buttock, a steadying brace for the experimental nudge he gave 
Reiichi's hips with his own.  Their cocks rubbed together, sending 
pleasant little shocks all through him and stoking his desire even 
higher.  His own hands found their way down Rei's back, scratching 
softly in jagged lines.  

"Re...Cinderella?"  he called quietly.  Rei lifted his head to look 
at him, a nearsighted smile tugging at his lips.  Masato threaded his 
fingers through his dark hair, and coaxed him forward for another 
kiss, one heady and unhurried.  

***

Reiichi's sex stirred against Masato's, and it wept sorely, the juice 
from its tip rubbing off on both of their stomachs.  He himself moaned 
as if his momentary lover had driven his fingers into him, his lashes 
fluttering.

"I've been waiting so long for someone to call me that in bed. "

His fingers fell away from the body before him, dripping down his 
chest, his waist, and into the crooks of his knees.  He felt of his 
lover's tendons, pressing so deeply into the flesh there that the 
joints went weak.  

That was, of course, just what Reiichi wanted. He hoisted one of his 
lover's legs, and gently pulled it up along his own side.  Masato 
slipped on the cloth ice of the bed, and the deep pink bud of his 
entrance peering out into the shadows of the rest of his body. 
Cinderella stroked him there, most fondly.

"...now that I have everything *I* want, I will guess what you want.  
And since you said you prefer a princess with allllllll of her 
faculties..."

***

Rubbing his bent leg against his Cinderella's side, Masato sighed, 
shuddering in pleasure.  "And... I do.  But... Mmm... make as many 
guesses as you'd like."  He sifted his fingers through Rei's hair, 
slid them down his back.  

"Seems like you've already figured me out, though."  

***

"Such are faerie tales.  We all know them so well.  Or at least..."

With a sigh, Reiichi slipped that much closer to Masato, pushing one 
naked and dry finger tip into him, and there sweeping around his 
muscles to try and get him to relax.  

"We think we do."

His prince wobbled and hissed, half edging away, half driving himself 
down against his companion's hand, and in protest of his not-quite 
stillness, Reiichi's palm curled up against the tender bit of flesh 
right behind his sex, and rocked against it.  Cinderella was in him to 
the second knuckle then.

"Speaking of which, watashi no kotaishi is soooooooo very tight.  Mmm? 
When was the last time someone gave you a good rodgering? Poor thing."

Now when he grinned, his tongue wet the red of his flushed lips.

***

"Never," Masato rasped, grabbing at the bedclothes.  "I've always 
been the seme."  

Behind him, Reiichi clicked his tongue in disapproval, bending as he 
did so to sprinkle kisses down his spine.  His finger slid in all the 
way, and he swore softly under his breath, wriggling against the palm 
which laid flush with his ass.  And then, he pressed his fingertip on 
his sweet spot, and pleasure shook through him.  Masato stopped 
clutching so fiercely to the slippery fabric beneath him, moaning 
softly.   

"Ohhh... Do that again, Cinderella."  

***

"Silly little prince! Taking this long to realize what you've been 
missing out on!" But the reproof had no more weight to it than the 
memory of a cloud, and Reiichi no mind to bestow any more on it.  
Rather, all the pressure he could muster swayed up inside Masato, 
tweaking and rubbing at the silkiness that outlined the most sensitive 
space along his inner walls.  His lover hissed and purred and strained 
against the single digit settled in him.  Reiichi only twined their 
lips together, rather than give him anymore.

"Now, now.  Fingers aren't good for neophyte ukes.  Especially my 
chubby ones! I shouldn't put more than one in you to start out with.  
But I'm sure I have some other fun things that might be better."

Though he didn't try to leave, just curled up against Masato's chest as 
he reached under the bed for one of the heart-slatered boxes he kept 
there.

Inside was a narrow, blue rubber vibrator, the shaft of which was wound 
with a sleek spiral of pink bubbles.  Reiichi covered it with his 
mouth, his empty throat, sighing and sucking at the base for some long 
moments before it came out of his lips, glistening now.

"This should work better."

His finger slipped away, passing the toy as he pushed it into Masato, 
deeper and deeper until the rim of the base had entered him, and the 
thin slope of the handle; only the chord remained, strewn over the 
strained crimson of his rosebud.

***

The soft, rounded tip of the vibrator was pressing on some very 
sensitive spot deep inside him; if he moved even the tiniest bit, 
little shocks of pleasure rippled through him. "Shit," Masato 
hissed. "Cinderella, what...?" 

But Reiichi only lunged forward to crush his lips to those of his 
prince. One hand came to rest on the back of one thigh, holding the 
cord lightly against his flesh. He came to forget about it nearly, 
losing himself in the slick nuzzling of Rei's tongue along his own, 
the feel of their bodies nudging gently together. The more 
he kissed him, the more he wanted him. More, more...

Reiichi was only too happy to honor his whispered pleas. For in the 
next moment, with one last kiss, Masato felt a burst of vibrations 
emanating from the toy Reiichi had coaxed into his ass. It shook him 
to his very core. Masato arched back a bit, gasping. 

"Cin-derella!"

***

"Mmm?" Reiichi absently mumbled against his prince's ear, and before 
any answer had a chance to find him, he had circled his thumb all over 
the dial for the vibrator- with a little ingenuity making it pulse like 
a much more sophisticated plaything.  Beneath him, Masato's breath 
hissed between his teeth as he tried not to cry out, and the satin 
groaned and crinkled in his hands.

Cinderella's lips crept over his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, 
sensing what his weak eyes might have missed, even so close.

"You're blushing, Koitashi." Even if it didn't seem to matter to him, 
one way or the other.  Reiichi clucked his tongue, and ground his palms 
back against his companion's stiff and rosy nipples, leaving the 
vibrator on low while he played.

"Don't you like to say my name? What's to be ashamed of in that? Or is 
it because you finally feel how the boy does when you take him in the 
middle of the night? Maybe..."

But his words all washed away, and rather he rubbed the wet tip of his 
stiffness down the muscles of Masato's thighs.

***

Masato suddenly rolled the other man onto his back for a crushing 
kiss. "I'm not ashamed to say your name. Not ashamed of anything. 
Not anything." He kissed him again, softer now, bending to peck at 
his throat in between tastes of his mouth. 

"I don't know how Naru feels with me. It's all been..." He frowned, 
then shook his head. "Never mind about that. He doesn't belong 
here. Only you do." 

Reiichi rolled the vibrator higher, then brought it back down to a 
low purr, teasing him. Gasping, Masato slid down him to assail his 
nipples with his teeth as payback; slipped his hand between their 
bodies to massage Reiichi's purpling erection. 

"I don't want to hear anything more about him," he said, getting up 
on his knees. "I want to know what I can do to make you happy. Damn 
if we don't deserve to be for a change."

***

"We... do."

Almost sobered for an instant, Reiichi nodded, and picked himself up 
from where Masato had cast him, though the rumpled outline of his form 
stayed behind, supine, open and pleading to be touched.  He held his 
companion in his arms, his rough hands still creeping between their 
bodies, and his head pressed against his shoulder, where he held him.  
Tight.

His smile returning then, "The kind where it's only us, and our toys."

With a low clinking, the vibrator sputtered still and was tugged from 
Masato's body until only the tip still nuzzled his entrance, rocking 
back and forth against the smarting skin.  

"You're my prince, and I am your princess who's everything a princess 
shouldn't be.  So be my toy, because, I'm a bad girl.  Let me ravish 
you, Koitashi.  Let me be the first.  I have... every flavor of lube 
you could ever dream of."

***

"Then do it, Cinderella.  Make me your toy.  Be my first." 

The vibrator fell to the bed, and Reiichi lifted his head from 
Masato's shoulder. They kissed again, hungrily, their hands roaming 
over each other's bodies until Reiichi flopped back down on the bed, 
taking his unsuspecting lover to the mattress along with him. Their 
mouths met, and Reiichi rolled Masato over, and stretched out between 
his sprawled legs. 

Caresses and kisses both grew more sensual, intent. Masato still had 
one hand in Reiichi's tousled hair when the other man pulled back to 
look at him. 

"Every flavor, hm? Even...strawberry lemonade?"

***

"Original or extra tart?" Reiichi queried, and he had no sooner done so 
than his lover went acutely still. "Maa, maa! I'm kidding! Strawberry 
Lemonade lube doesn't come in extra tart, because, you see, it's 
actually rather tart on its own."

He wanted to say it, say how delicious Masato and such an almost 
sweetness would taste together on his own lips, but he didn't, just 
et him hold him, and play in his hair.  Reaching under his bed, his 
hand lit right upon the trundle where he kept that of his erotic 
dainties that no longer fit into his nightstand, though he did have 
to part their lips to check the labels of the neatly lined bottles 
there.  The other Crasher joined him, and peeked over the edge of 
the sheets, only to raise his eyebrows at the sight of those dozens 
and dozens of flasks.

"I have," Reiichi said to him then, "midnight visitors- two or three 
at a time usually, but for you, I'll let it be just the two of us."

The bottle he had been seeking he drew up at last, and uncapped with 
his teeth, letting the plug go rolling away across the carpet.  It 
caught the attention of Abbess Hildegard, who crept from her bed long 
enough to give it a few bats.  

"Now THIS," he said with a faint smirk, "tingles a little, because of 
what they put in it to make it sour."

A little curlicue of the pinkish gel wound out onto his fingertip, and 
he smeared it on his lips then; kissed Masato with them just so wet as 
he settled back to where he rested with the other man's knees wrapped 
around him.  And with what of the lube still clung to his fingers, he 
began to stroke him open, fumbling his inside muscles in short, deep 
strokes.

*** 

Hands on shoulders, Masato clung to him, delving hungrily into his 
mouth with kiss after kiss. He wanted to devour him, but, little by 
little, he gave in to the gentle coaxing of Reiichi's tongue, his 
quiet murmurings, the tender rolling of his fingers inside of him. 
Sinking into the mattress, Masato began to relax. Reiichi withdrew 
his fingers for more lube, but wriggled them deeper within on the 
second pass, causing Masato to jerk away with a sharp gasp. His 
digits brushed over that so-familiar spot, not once but twice, and a 
moan escaped his throat. 

"Cinderella..." 

His lover only laughed softly, bending to nibble at the soft skin 
beneath his ear. Masato arched against him, rubbing his sex across 
Rei's stomach in an attempt to entice, but the other man appeared to 
be in no rush. Masato growled in impatience, and tugged hard on the 
long tuft of hair he held. 

"Ojou-sama..." he rasped, "you don't have to be all that...gentle 
with me. I'm...not made of glass."

***

"But you're so tight," Reiichi purred in answer, and though his voice 
fell away as he rubbed up against his companion's shoulders, and let 
his tongue seep into his ear.

Masato's only answer came as a long, disenchanted sigh that stirred his 
bangs as he bent once more to cup his lips with his own- the little wet 
licks turning into another melty kiss.  One where his intent died 
slowly under the onslaught of his companion's.

"Well," he admitted, "I can fix that, Koitashi."

The grey slivers of his eyes, finally peeking out from under his lids 
asked him, and Reiichi, shaking his head, ran his finger tips over them 
until they closed, and the spell desire had almost brushed away 
returned with a sort of uneasy peace.  

Small movements at a time, he drew his prince's limbs around his own 
body, muscle mirroring muscle until he was just how he wanted him, and 
he himself slipped out from underneath.  It was hard, after all, not to 
admire Masato as he had been posed just then: his knees beneath his 
chest, and his arms curled underneath his head.  And his ass upturned 
and waiting with just the faintest hint of a hot blush underneath the 
sheen of the pink lemonade lube.  He looked so catlike and so 
vulnerable.

Reiichi did his best not to fondle himself as he drizzled the lube over 
his cock.  He did pause a moment to dry his hand on one of his spare 
hankies so his palms were only warm when they took his lover's hips.  
That was all.  He planted his feet on either side of Masato's curled 
legs then, and straddling his hips with his own, drove down into him 
just once.  And hard.

***

Despite the generous swabbing of lube Reiichi had applied, it burned, 
having his cock so deeply buried inside him, and his breath fled from 
him in a rush.  He wriggled in his hands, but only managed to nudge 
his tip against his sweet spot, sending a blinding flicker of 
pleasure through his body.  

"I didn't think... you'd do it.  Ohhh..."  He twisted his hands in the 
sheets, and arched against Rei.  "It hurts... feels so good.  Just..."  
He rocked back against him again.  

"Harder, ore no ojou-sama," Masato pleaded.  "Make me feel it."

***

Reiichi purred and leaned down to kiss his lover's shoulder, the 
slight shift of his weight making his cock tip down once more against 
Masato's quivering and tender places. They moaned together, and then he 
told him in a voice so even it shook, "Anything my prince desires."

One more breath, and he drew all but his tip from him, only to lunge 
again, and once buried in his flesh, rippled down against him as if 
begging him to open further. He could not of course, for his ass was 
pressed to Reiichi's belly already.

"Oh, you do like, it, don't you? "

And he rubbed him, rubbed him with the rim of his cock until the other 
man's muscles bore down on him.

"Good little prince. Koi shiteru wa yo."

***

Cradled between his thighs and his stomach, Masato's cock twitched, 
and his reply came as little more than a faint groan. Reiichi drove 
into him afresh, and stroked his insides as before. Masato felt 
moisture drizzle over his belly from his leaking tip, and he 
maneuvered his hand between his legs to toy with his throbbing 
length. With the other he reached around blindly to grab at Rei. 
Their arms linked, and Reiichi swiped his tongue over the base of 
Masato's neck. 

"I like it," Rook hissed. "The way you're splitting me open, soaking 
my dry insides. Your hot breath on my neck. You're ravaging me in 
just the way I've always fantasized about, and I love it. Boku 
no... Cinderella."

***

"And you," Reiichi let the tip of his tongue wander over his lover's 
jaw after he had spoken, nibbled his ears with his words and his teeth, 
"are my ideal prince.  Neither too hot nor too cold but juuuuuust 
right."

In their half-embrace, he squirmed a little, banishing Masato's 
struggles to keep him just as close by bearing down in him once more, 
deep enough that his muscles would no open any further unless he forced 
them.  That much, he wouldn't, but now untangled, he reached down 
between his companion's legs and slipped his finger tip into the tiny 
slit which crowned his cock. 

"You don't love me, you just want it.  And bad too, mmm?"

But the mood died horribly then as Reiichi's voice traipsed into glee.  
"You know, I never imagined you'd ever be so much fun to just FUCK! My 
bad.  Yes, I'm a bad Cinderella, even if I do get the feeling you like 
it that way."

***

"Yes, oh, yes," Masato half-moaned, "I want it.  I like you to be 
bad.  I like how you fuck me, Cinderella, like how you're touching me 
now."  Masato twitched his hips from side to side, wavering the tip 
of his erection against Reiichi's wandering fingers, and causing the 
head of the cock inside him to stab and stab at that aching, 
sensitive spot deep within him.  Fluid dribbled over Rei's hand, 
dotting the covers, and Masato pressed back against his princess' 
groin.  

"Come on, Hime-sama, and ride me," he panted.  "I'm so close.  Ride 
me as hard or as slow as you like."  

***

"Oh, I think I would like... fast!" Reiichi giggled, more princess now 
than even his companion's cries could make him.  A little girlish lilt 
to the voice, and Masato might have expected to find a shivery, fair 
creature from some faerie tale behind him, even as the shaft buried 
still inside him shuddered rapturously at his words.

Everything stopped for a moment.  The other man's arms wound about his 
waist and drew him down to the wet and rumpled satin of the covers 
until he could draw no closer to them.  A warm weight settled over him, 
all of him.  Lips strayed through his hair and legs embraced his own; a 
fist ground tight against his cock and squeezed...

"You're such a good little prince..."

With scarcely time enough to catch his breath after the words, Reiichi 
bore down on his companion's flushed skin until his orgasm dripped into 
Masato, and his soft cries had gone quiet.

***

They lay there, clutching at each other in their sated weariness 
until Reiichi drew himself from Masato's embrace, and tumbled onto 
the mattress beside him. He could feel the ragged gasps of his warm 
breath waft over his bare shoulder, his fingers tickling his nape as 
he lazily stroked his shaggy curls. Masato turned a little, so 
better to gaze upon Reiichi's flushed, glowing face. The other had 
his eyes closed, and Masato noticed just how long his lashes were. 
He didn't look half bad without those glasses, not bad at all. 

Another thing he'd missed, amongst all the others. 

With a heavy sigh, he sat up and inched over to the edge of the bed, 
where, with a soft grunt, he scooped up his jeans and freed his 
cigarettes from the pocket in which he'd hid them. Masato inhaled 
deeply of it once he'd had it lit, and there he sat for a moment, 
just savoring the taste of the smoke. It hurt him to move, and with 
every shift of his muscles, he could feel Reiichi's leavings seeping 
out of his body to stain the covers he rested upon. 

It was glorious. 

Masato took another deep drag of his cigarette, and then he eased 
himself off the bed, and stretched hard, groaning. When he turned 
around, he found Reiichi's eyes trained upon him. The other man gave 
him a faint smile, and Masato climbed upon the bed again, and crawled 
over to where he still lay. He bent and gave him a quick kiss, 
before slipping the cigarette between Reiichi's bruised lips. 

"You're a hell of a fuck, Rei."

***

"And likewise, if I do say so myself!" the elder Crasher replied, 
nearly dropping said cigarette onto the covers.  He coughed a moment 
after he'd caught it, plainly not used to such things playing on his 
breath.  He still made his best attempt to enjoy it of course, and 
seemed to succeed despite the occasional splutter.  

"We ought to so this again sometime.  After all, can't have that 
darling ass of yours go without a little use."

Having said so, they both snickered a moment, and keeping his light 
between his fingers then, Reiichi rolled over to the edge of the bed, 
and from there cupped Masato's bottom in his hands for a moment before 
sliding his fingertips inside his sore muscles, and rubbing him there 
until he pinked.   They came out wet with lube and a few dribbles of 
his cum, and just the same, he licked them clean, grinning all the 
while.

Even more so once having given his companion a quick swat.

"There! You're all nice and warm now, so get yourself into the shower 
and cleaned up.  Don't worry about using all the hot water, I've got 
plenty."

***

Masato, with a hearty grope of Reiichi's thigh, plucked the 
cigarette from his lips for a farewell puff before he returned it to 
its perch.  He stopped long enough to gather his jeans from the floor, 
before he headed off to the bathroom. It too, was done in shades of 
pink and deep rose, and the Cinderella theme was prevalent there as 
well--chiefly in the form of the shower curtain, which bore the 
silvered image of her pumpkin coach. Masato blinked at that, then 
shook his head, chuckling softly as he reached past it to turn the 
knobs. He wanted to get it good and hot before he climbed in. 

Masato stretched again, yawning, and when he'd dropped his hands back 
down to his sides, he caught sight of himself in the mirror. His 
hair was happily mussed, which made him smile, but his jaw...Masato 
fingered the whiskers that coated his skin in a thoughtful sort of 
way. 

All of a sudden, he had the overwhelming urge to see what he would 
look like sans beard. 

"Er, Reiichi?" he called, feeling somewhat foolish. "Um...do 
you...do you have a razor I could borrow?"

***

Reiichi's immediate response to this was to come sprinting into the 
bathroom screaming "noooooooooo!".  Stark naked, and still faintly 
slick with lube in certain places, he braced himself in the doorway, 
panting, "No! *GASP* don't... *gaspwheez* kill yourself over... 
*coughgasp* one little fling!"

Of course, Masato had canted him such an utterly underwhelmed look by 
then, he could not help but realize his assumption was anything but 
passionately stupid.  Blushing now, he shrugged, and reached into the 
little caboodles box beneath the sink, out of which he managed to 
conjure a handful of peppermint pink ladies' disposable razors.

"Are you going to shave your legs? Because if you are... oh, you're not? 
Your pubes then? Either way... can I... *HELP*?"

***

"Uh," Masato stammered, warily eyeing the starkly feminine razor his 
teammate cum lover was waving around. "I was thinking about getting rid 
of my beard. Maybe...it makes me look kinda old?" He self-consciously 
rubbed the back of his hand over one cheek. 

"I don't know. I mean...maybe I'm being all stupid and VAIN, huh?"

***

"No, not stupid!" Reiichi protested in a distinctly maternal sort of 
voice.  "But maybe a little vain, which you have every right to be!"

Masato didn't seem especially convinced of this, and only rubbed his 
cheek harder.  A little sigh, and his companion drew his hand into his 
own, laid it on the edge of the sink, and then gently caressed the same 
prickly skin himself, mumbling little threads of nonsense to himself.

"So you know what? You just hold still and I'll show you what a pretty 
prince you are!"

By then of course, he'd already managed to turn up a canister of 
shaving gel- it was peach scented.  Very noticeably peach, and when he 
worked it into a lather it turned a rather brilliant orange.  Masato 
looked about ready to flinch from him as he sidled up close with his 
foamy fingers, but in the end he held still as he could while Reiichi 
dabbed the clusters of tiny, fragrant suds against his skin, which he 
did meticulously as a water-color artist.  

The sink had filled with warm water by the time he'd finished, and so 
having switched the spigot off, he washed the razor quite thoroughly 
before he ever swept it over Masato's cheeks.

Having taken two long, swoops which he rinsed with many a splash, he 
whispered, "There, doesn't that feel better already?" 

***

Wonderingly, Masato swiped a finger over the newly bared strip of 
flesh. "It tingles," he said. "But yeah, it feels better. Much better." 

Reiichi, with a grin, stepped in to gingerly peck at the lather-free 
slit of his mouth, and set to work defuzzing the rest of that one 
cheek. Masato's hands wandered upwards over his hips to cling to his 
waist. 

"I don't think anyone's gonna recognize me." 

***

"Nonsense! Of course they will.  They'll recognize you, and then 
they'll tell you how cute you look!"

Masato didn't seem any more thrilled with that possibility that that of 
no one knowing him.  His companion bopped him on the end of the nose 
with the razor's handle, and sighing then, began to shave his upper lip 
in tiny, nibbling strokes.

"Goooooooodness.  How long has it been since you had a proper trim let 
alone went around without this stubble?  I'm only asking since, 
frankly, I don't ever remember having seen you any other way."

***

"Ahhh...ever since I was....eighteen. I was sorta a baby face, you 
see, and I got teased for it--by the guys in my gang mostly." He 
shrugged slightly, and Reiichi swatted him on the shoulder for moving 
whilst the blade glided over the curves of his chin. 

"Sorry.  Anyway, I figured I wouldn't ever 
be taken seriously unless I changed my appearance somehow. Thought a 
beard would make me look tougher.  Kids get some weird 
ideas, huh?" 

***

"You've heard what sort of ones I had in my younger years, you know my 
stance on that," remarked the elder Crasher with a wistful grin.  "Of 
course, the difference between my fantasies and yours is that mine 
never really went away, and yours are about to be washed down my sink."

To accentuate his words, the razor brushed the water, a cloud of suds 
and pricks of auburn stubble blooming in its wake before sinking down 
below the cloudy surface.  

"But there's no use in feeling bad about it."  Reiichi had reached his 
other cheek, and while he worked it clean, rather held the smooth 
surface of the other so Masato wouldn't dare move fidget again.  
"There's no use in feeling bad about anything and I... umm... oh.  I 
don't mean to alarm you, but it would seem you still do have a 
baby-face."

***

"Yeah?" Masato spun to look in the mirror again once the blade had 
risen from his skin, and ruefully found Reiichi's remark to be the 
truth. 

"Aw, man," he said mournfully. "You'd think I would have aged more 
than this."

***

"Oh, don't be silly! Now, you'll just look like the charming little uke 
you are!" Reiichi giggled, and before his companion had a chance to 
protest, he had snatched up a towel, and managed to fill his mouth with 
it at the same time he rubbed away the last of the shaving foam.  
Tender blot by tender blot, he washed his companion's face.

And kissed him there, breathing deeply of the sweet and creamy scent 
left all around him.

"Now that wasn't so bad.  Let's say we try for your pubes next, 
neeeeeeeeeeeee?"

***

It was not raining in Hiratsuka when Yuuji arrived, nor did he find 
himself in the cozy burg of his imaginings; it was more a thriving, 
industrial city with the loveliest mountain views he'd ever seen. The 
sky was a clear blue, one bright enough to burn the eyes--no smog-
veiled sunlight to suppress one's mood. The air bore more the tang of 
the nearby sea than the exhaust of hundreds of cars, and there were 
trees lining the streets in profusion. Yuuji wished he had come to 
Hiratsuka sooner. 

And he still felt that way some forty-odd blocks later when, hot and 
slightly sweaty, he reached the inn he'd chosen--The Nadeshiko. It 
was low-end on the cost scale, but clean, and it boasted hot 
springs--which turned out to be quite lovely, albeit on the small 
side. No one was there at that hour of the day; in fact, it seemed 
that there weren't many guests at all. The staff even seemed just 
slightly more solicitous than they perhaps ought to be, no doubt 
instructed by the proprietoress. Probably very few visitors wound up 
at the front door in search of lodging. Yuuji couldn't say that he 
was too sorry about it. Solitude did have its charms, after all. 

His bags still sat beside the low, wide dresser, his traveling 
clothes on the tatami-covered floor beside them. He'd only stopped 
to hang the garment bag which held his Crashers uniform and weapon 
in the closet before stripping, showering, and donning the yukata the 
maid had given him before she'd left. 

The springs were truly the inn's biggest selling point. Care had been 
taken by some toiling landscaper to create the feel of a garden gone 
wild; willows and grasses of all kinds, cypresses and rhododendrons, 
maples and roses. There were several such bushes of the latter, for 
Hiratsuka was famous for their roses. Yuuji wandered past the few 
which grew near one side of the spring, brushing his hand over the 
unfurled petals in a loving sort of way; their scent came away on 
his skin. 

He shed his robe alongside the fragrant bushes, and left his folded 
towel alongside it. The steam tickled his skin as he stepped into the 
water, and he sank into the glassy pool with a sigh. Currents wafted 
around his body as he moved, teasing him. He forced what thoughts 
he'd had away, and shut his eyes to the afternoon sunshine. 

Try as he might to forget, however, Yuuji thought of him anyway.

***

It was late in the afternoon, the time when shadows have grown long and 
the trails of light along the highway just begun to show close up.  The 
phone rang four times before Megaera slipped out of the bedroom to 
answer it.  The vibrator in her was still humming as she took the 
handset from the cradle, and her words shook just as much as the liquid 
still spilling from her sex.

"M-moshi-moshi?"

"Allo? Have I got Mitsuki, Megaera or Hiro on the phone?" Purred a 
slippery, female voice on the other line.

Silence then, but for a touch of her distant breathing.  After all, she 
had told no one she would be home at that hour, that day, when she 
should rather have been speaking distilled Italian to manufacturing 
magnates.  "Ah... dare desu ka wa?"

"A little bird," And with that, there sounded a electric cheeping on 
the other side, like the call of a tiny toy.  "You know what little 
birds do, right? They tell people things."

"What kind of things?"

"Well, it seems Kuudou Youji has gone to Niigata with his little 
boyfriend and your spawn.  If you want to play with them anymore, I 
suggest you take that plastic out of your cunt and jump on the next 
train, or the one after that.  Don't look for me though, I'll be 
leaving in three minutes myself.  Ja ne, as you say in Japan."

Once again the bird, then the clack of the payphone hanging up before 
more than a few indistinguishable voices made it through the wire.  
Megaera cried out, because she had orgasmed, and because she was now 
very afraid.

Creiddylad, on the other hand, the other line, was really nothing less 
than smug and sated- this not only for the little message she had 
delivered, or that she had more than made herself known in Shinjiku 
just passing through.  She wore now the black and pale, spectral green 
gown that had been delivered to her- it ran in a V across her bosoms, 
and fell in mock rent tangles about her feet, and the high-heeled see-
thru plastic boots.  All over her in the print of the silk were cranes 
and bellflowers, glowing against the black.  A single ribbon of 
unadorned black satin ran around her throat.

Behind her Feng- clad as a cocktail waitress with cat ears -lead a 
child in emerald they took to be the kappa, and a host of bags, most of 
which belonged to Aburatsubo.  In the pool of grey and beige the station 
was at this hour, they appeared among all tints of the normal world 
like dead things rather in a live Victorian garden; giant goddesses or 
Virgins. 

The dom called to her then, "Yoooooohooooooo! While SOMEONE was 
harassing the swingers, the train has come! Better hurry up and get on 
if you want to find your white knight before Morgan Le Fay does."

Rivolta was good enough to yank Presto-sempai's hat down over his eyes 
before either of them were bothered with having to do so themselves.  A 
sigh, and Creiddylad waved the kappa on behind her.  He, like all good 
servants, said nothing to her, and pulled their things over the slip of 
space between the platform and the train without a complaint, save for 
the smacking of the baggage upon the floor of their compartment.  

And it was rightfully THEIRS, for every single seat within they had 
purchased for the duration of the trip.  Ah, wouldn't anyone who came 
to check the tickets be stupefied by that.  

Adjusting her gloves, Creiddylad slipped over to a seat nearest the 
most forward of the left windows, and cast herself down there with her 
feet propped on the wall before her, and her arms folded behind her 
head, for she didn't trust the proffered pillows at all.  Aburatsubo 
refused to settle himself and ran up and down the compartment, singing 
to himself.  Feng took a handful of seats in the back up as she curled 
up atop them like a kitten.  As they started to pull forward, the dom 
tripped and went sailing backwards down the aisle. 

Into the foamy afternoon they sped, and her eyes closed to it, her mind 
to everything around her.  It was all she wished at that moment to 
sleep.

At least until she realized Rivolta has taken the seat second over from 
her own, and there was sitting far too quietly.  Out of one grey eye 
she regarded him.

"Why, you two aren't planning to SLEEP on a SHINKASEN!" Wailed Presto 
then.  "When there's possibility of patting the lovely, chubby asses of 
the lunch-cart ladies!"

"We most certainly are, right, Constantine?"

***

"Quite right," murmured her cabin mate. "We need to conserve our 
energy. Wouldn't do to start our vacation feeling so exhausted." He 
slid Creiddylad a drowsy, smirking look before settling back in his 
seat. "Soooo," he droned, "why don't you go grope the cart ladies 
yourself, Presto-kun?" 

Aburatsubo moaned in disappointment, and wandered out of the car like 
a little boy who had been told he couldn't go out to play at all. 
Constantine gave him no more thought, other than being thankful he 
hadn't made much of a fuss for once. 

"Ahhh..." he sighed, shifting so he was more catty-corner in the 
seat. "It's nice to have a touch of quiet before the maelstrom. I 
do hope your handsome, golden-haired knight is enjoying himself just 
as much. It would *truly* be a shame if he were not."

***

The amazon wasted no time in agreeing to this, though she kept her eyes 
away and closed now that nothing remained to disturb their 
sensibilities of rest, "A shame the likes of which I doubt god has ever 
had the displeasure to know."

The thought of this though pleased them both immensely, and they hummed 
to themselves as if they had been pleasured rather by the taste of 
something quite delectable.  Feng took this opportunely to moan. 
Otherwise, there was quiet between them as the cries of the raindrops 
dying on by one on the surface of the speeding train grew faster and 
faster and faster. A thick, steel light fell through the windows, and no 
more for one by one the overheads were quieted beneath the kappa's 
fingers. Presumably, the Feng had sent him to it. 

The city took a long time to give way into hills, and when it did, the 
country came in a sudden shattering of green from silver. After that, 
it was all one could do to keep believing that Japan was not all 
emeralds like the miles of leaves and tiny, rusty villages that ran 
along the tracks.

Not long past three, Creiddylad mumbled- "Have you still got Sugihara's 
ring on you? I know I left it on the floor of the white room, so it's a 
question of your having picked it up."

***

"Mmm..." hummed Rivolta sleepily.  "Yes.  It's just..."  He deftly 
plucked the bauble free from the left slit pocket in his vest--
sparkling stars in gold and silver shooting across a violet universe--
and held it out to her upon his pinky.  "Here."  

The light from the windows fell upon it in such a way that the ring 
seemed to pulse.  Creiddylad closed her hand around its sides and drew 
it off, and Constantine let his hand drop down to the arm rest marking 
the border of his seat, shifting to watch her.  She wiggled it 
back and forth, making it wink, and then slid it on one of her own 
fingers, admiring the way it looked on her.  

Rivolta stretched his arms out before him, then settled back in the 
seat.  "The way he looked when he saw that ring, the horror paling 
his handsome face...Oh!  it was delicious."  He leveled a knowing 
smirk at her, which she returned.  

"But...I feel that's not the only trophy you hope to take from that 
bonny boy.  How right am I?"  

***

"Very right indeed," she replied, turning the circlet over her gloves.  
She seemed to be seeking a most beautiful side to it- one with no 
flaws...

She found none of course- no especial beauty, and not a mark of the 
world, for in spite of all that the ring had been through, it wore not 
one scratch, nor scuff, nor chip upon its dainty sloping sides; was 
indeed so plain, so true to the very notion of what a ring might be.  
Creiddylad, seeming to see Constantine's attentions for the first time, 
looked up to him and added, "Oh, I'll give it back.  But not today."

Her two dark hands drew a settled in the blinking shadows of the seat 
neither of them would claim.  Above it spun up a single wisp of smoke, 
or what might have been called smoke, had it flowed upwards, rather 
than down.  There for a moment trapped in the wrong part of the 
present, rose the figure of Sugihara.  And a girl.  They kissed and 
melted into one another quite literally.  "Best I can do with these 
on," she said.  "My memory, and not the ring's but OH! How I lust what 
there is written in the body of it.

"Hey, that was pretty cool!" Aburatsubo burst out then, popping up over 
their headrests like a Jack-in-the-Box.  "Do a bunny next!"

The ring alighted on the psychometric's nose, and that was all she 
seemed to need of it to send the intruder yelping in Feng's general 
direction.

Rivolta clapped for her.  

Don't take it for anything more than it is, but I have to say, I don't 
meet many ordinary demons who appreciate the finer points of other 
people's suffering.  It's a taste no one bothers to acquire anymore."

***

"More's the pity, I say," Rivolta remarked, twiddling with the 
chain of his pocketwatch.  "They miss out on one of life's greater 
pleasures in failing to broaden their horizons in that direction."  
The flower-embossed cap of his watch popped open with a press of his 
thumb; he glanced at it, then closed it and pocketed it again.  "One 
can find true beauty in the suffering of others."  

Creiddylad "hmm"-ed at him, the ring dancing now above her 
outstretched palm.  Rivolta smoothed his hair back, and settled once 
more into the sideways embrace of his seat, hands folded over his 
stomach.  

"Poor broken Yuuji.  He loved unwisely, and still he 
mourns.  How beautiful he will look once he learns the truth of his
 would-be lover's heart--assuming of course, you plan to tell him, 
that is."  

***

"Perhaps right before he dies." But she burst out laughing once again, 
and the trinket over her hand lost all semblance of its axis, topsy-
turvy flipping every which way, but never quite leaving the space of 
her palm. "I'll decide when it comes to that."

But the glimmer that passed her eyes spoke of all manner of otherwise 
decadent excess of Yuuji, her momentary downplaying of the whole affair 
aside.    

One of her hands shot for Constantine's vest.  No questions, no 
pardons, she simply reached into his clothing and made off with his 
watch, though she did it all so deftly nothing of them touched besides 
her and the chain about the dial. Sugihara's ring hovered over her 
shoulder now like a tiny bird or a moth that had caught itself in her 
hair.

She did not have the power to make it go dizzy for her like the ring 
had, but she did well enough with it otherwise, for it began to swing 
in time to the half seconds the clock above the doors kept.  "Loved 
unwisely, eh? And what am I to call all the memories of the affairs 
your skin left HERE?"

***

"Why, they're life-changing experiences, of course," Rivolta parried.  
"I was dreadfully sentimental when I was a boy.  Fell in love at the 
flutter of an eye.  One of those...romantic types, I guess."  He 
shuddered delicately in revulsion.  "But I learned from all those 
failures, and thankfully, I'm not like that anymore.  I recognize 
love for what it is:  a game for the weak and stupid.  I, my dear, 
am neither."  

He flashed her a wolfish grin.  "Now, tell me, lovely Creiddylad:  
Which trinket do you find more interesting to hold?  Mine, with the 
tales of all my wretched past indiscretions?  Or Sugihara's, with the 
lesson in heartbreak that it holds for the fair Knight?" 

***
 
"Oooh!" teased the Amazoness then, "trying to trick me into picking 
favorites,?" A sniff, and she turned form him, all but her sherry eyes.  
They lingered, nearly fading into the dim heavens outside, for they 
penetrated the shadow of her against the outside perfectly- as if 
almost someone had cut a hold straight through her apparition.  But 
Creiddylad grinned, and cast herself about in her seat until it was 
only the empty one between them, if that, for she had quite let herself 
and her black gown flow over the armrest and somewhat into the space 
beyond.

The watch she left fall against the thigh her movements had bared.  

"You should know that will never work, but you ask anyway? Perhaps part 
of you still is a romantic in the sense of danger, the disregard for 
one's own existence.  Well, my reformed wretch, I like Sugihara's ring 
because though it is quite old, the scent of it is fresh yet- sharp 
and... crisp, burned in quick so it won't ever melt." Her mix of words 
drew a little, murmured praise from the still smarting Aburatsubo in 
the back.  She glared, and Rivolta simply looked on as if singed ice 
was something he was well acquainted with. 

"BUT! I ALSO like your watch because it is so very HARD to sense 
anything from- everything is all smashed together, yet sticky and 
apart- like the brush strokes in a Van Gogh.  The memories almost feel 
like I could pull them apart.  I might try, but I bet I'll get the 
stars in with the cafe."

"That," and as the metal flowers there looped into the air only once 
more to be captured by her palm, "and it wouldn't exactly be gallant of 
me to pass up the challenge.  I mean that in the sense of what Yuuji 
and I have."  

***

"Certainly not, my dear.  I mean, when he's gone to all the 
trouble of trying to escape you, it would be a horrible shame to 
disappoint him by not bothering to find him.  Besides, he must pay 
for the wounds he dealt to your delectable flesh."  

With a sly simper, Creiddylad spun the ring again and caught it.  
Rivolta was more entranced by the picture his watch made against the 
backdrop of her bared thigh than the ring's desperate twinkling.  

"You know, I think there's something in what you say.  Perhaps I am 
still a romantic in that one way--though I do value my life.  I'm not 
so tired and jaded of the world as to want to leave it yet, 
but...there are so many experiences to be had, none without some 
measure of risk.  I'm willing to risk my life to enjoy all that I 
can, you see, as well as we all should, in my opinion.  Human 
existence would be utterly boring otherwise."  

He gazed pensively into his companion's compelling eyes for a few 
heartbeats.  "At this very moment, I see a brilliant opportunity before 
me, one which carries with it a great deal of risk.  My watch is resting 
upon your thigh, just within arm's reach.  The question is:  Do I 
dare lunge for it, and gain in the bargain the feel of your taut, 
undoubtedly silken flesh against my fingertips?  Knowing, even as I 
did so, that you might lash out and maim, if not kill, me?"  

His gaze fell then upon her naked limb.  "Ah, it's the lady and the 
tiger.  Either way, one dies a death of one form or another, both 
excruciatingly sweet in its painfulness.  So...as I see it, I can 
only win, even if you kill me."  

With that, smiling, Rivolta reached out over the space which 
separated them, and curled his fingers around his watch.  The metal 
had grown warm from contact with Creiddylad's skin.  Disconcertingly, 
he felt his pulse begin to race.  

"Will you slay me now, lovely Creiddylad?" 

*** 

"Lady, you live," though she bared her teeth at him from between her 
naked lips.  Her feet rose up from being settled against the floor, and 
Rivolata's hand followed the movement of her skin, tracing beneath the 
petals of her skirt for a moment as she cast her legs over the arm 
rests of the chair between them so her boots came to rest in his lap.

"But I get to use you for an ottoman."

Rivolta, still wound in with her garb, just inches from the vinyl that 
covered her sex, took his hand back and began to undo the buckles 
there.  It didn't surprise her, or make her laugh anymore, the way he 
tried to work the catches and hold his watch at the same time, or that 
he had been possessed to treat her so.  

No, something else snatched at what fancy Creiddylad still called her 
own.  "Although, if it should happen you ever fail to delight me, you 
may not be so lucky.  That would be no fault of yours.  I ruin 
everything I'm ever given to play with. Poor Constantine." 

***

"Fair Creiddylad, don't wound me with your pity. That you might feel 
such for me, only means you loathe me. I'd rather you cut me with 
your whip than hate me." 

One boot fell to the floor, and Constantine set to work upon the 
other one, his watch still clamped to Creiddylad's thigh by his 
palm. "If you think to ruin me, lady, please do try. Sometimes life 
just bores me. I need something to shake it up on occasion, even if 
it's heartrending despair." 

The buckles of her other boot came free, and it fell to the floor, 
leaving her long, slender feet with their neatly painted bright red 
toes nestled in Constantine's lap. He stroked the tops of them 
lovingly, sketching the bones which shifted under her skin. 

"I do want to delight you, though, make no mistake, fair lady," he 
added, lifting her left foot in his hand and placing a kiss upon its 
arch.

***

"Ahh," the Amazoness sighed, "Then you have truly dismal luck, don't 
you?"

Rivolta but kissed her again, and held her sole to his cheek.  Almost 
returning the favor, the pads of her toes strayed over her eyebrows 
when she stretched.

In the end though, when she spoke, it was as if to herself.  

"I suppose you know how to raise assassins, or you think you do.  Yes, 
you THINK. You see, the people who built me, they thought so too.  And 
so the first few like me?  Heh.  I don't know EXACTLY what they did to 
them, but suffice it to say, it was torture less than pretty.  
Otherwise, I doubt there would have been the nasty little incident 
where one of them got loose and slaughtered most of the researchers who 
were supposed to keep her from doing hurting herself.  Do you know how 
close you were to never being able to even imagine my whip against your 
skin?

"They almost took me out of production after that.  Kelvenna's idea, of 
course, of course, and we all hate Kelvenna when she's right!"

In tacit affirmation, Constantine embraced her ankle with his hands and 
let his nose slide down the taught mound of her calf muscles.

"But you know, why ruin a good thing if you've already got it in 
production? SO whatever else they had of this stock they took off to 
the toy city by the sea.  It's called Rethwellen, and we all lived 
there, happy and stupid with all the toys and all the other little 
girls we could ever want to play with.  What are children but toys? 
Fragile little things that make wonderful dolls, at least until they 
break, and I'd have to get a new one.

"And I was the only one who ever broke my toys.  You see, we were all 
BAD besides HAPPY.  Bad like... cookies before dinner, and sleeping with 
our shoes on in our pretty little beds.  But I! One night I got out and 
I went to the Villa- that's a place like Presto would want -and since 
the only other children were mine or one of my Kelvena's, nobody had 
any rules about where good little girls go and don't go.

"One of the visiting lords gave me a whip and let me play with his 
slave. Do you know what that's like for someone who has never known 
pain? Someone for whom rapture is the same as brushing her teeth? To be 
someone who has everything and make someone have nothing.  Who wants 
dolls and lacey sheets and bubble soap after you know blood is the only 
thing that will ever make you happy, if only because blood is nothing 
you believe yourself to have?"

*** 

"And yet, the blond boy proved that blood flowed through your veins as 
surely as it does his own," said Constantine softly; his fingers had 
just discovered the baby soft underside of her knee.  He bent to kiss 
her upon her kneecap.  "Such narrow-minded, blind fools, to want to 
eliminate such perfection; an intelligent beauty with an unslakable 
thirst for blood.  You're almost like some terrible goddess whom 
everyone loves and fears alternately, and the only way to please you 
is with gruesome sacrifice and not sex and songs of prayer."  

Rivolta's fingers strayed lightly over her thigh, whispering under 
the tatters of her skirt to graze her skin.  "What must I do to gain 
your favor, my sanguine lovely?  If I give you blood, will you grant 
me an hour in your arms?" 

*** 

"Oooooooooh," sang Feng and Aburatsubo, only to vanish behind the seats 
where they had slunk for a better view of Constantine's worships.  No 
one hushed them, for no need came, and their eyes drowned in each other 
where they dared not wonder with their lips.

Constantine's arms were left empty but for the foamy light of the rain.  
Creiddylad had risen to her bare feet, and stood now, with her hands 
crossed on the bodice of her gown like a loving saint.  Her lips, 
flushing though they were with some silent elation just laid bare, had 
crept into a fine, syrupy smirk like those destined to die wear when 
they tell the dancing lights beyond that they have no regrets.

It was all almost childlike though- the way she held herself, the 
smile, even how she closed her eyes before the outstretched arms of her 
prospective lover.

"Do you know who the Morrigan is?"

He told her yes, but she covered his mouth.

"She is the Queen of the Faeries, the crow and the phantom woman who 
washes the cloths of those destined to die before battle, mother and 
murderer.  I am none of those things, but when I was little, after I 
had learned to steal more than cookies and the flower crowns of the 
other ones LIKE me, I wanted to be her."

She stooped beside him then, and her eyes fell open, "So, if you want 
me for an hour?  You can't have me.  If you call me the Morrigan, then 
I am her, and you can have your pretty goddess."

What she didn't tell him was the flickering, wet recollection of the 
day one of her nurses has cried out, and said the little Morrigan had 
awakened.  But of she and her kind had been called that before they 
were born, or the woman simply shrieking out the last of her pagan 
beliefs, that not even the nurse knew any longer: she'd already offered 
her sacrament.

Perhaps someday, Rivolta would too.

But not just then.  

***

The sun had begun to set by the time the trio had finished their 
cleaning--they had dusted, scrubbed and vacuumed three rooms total--
kitchen, living room, and the bathroom--along with the hallway.  The 
rooms belonging to Ken and his mother, they left alone save for 
removing the futons and stored linens.  The former, Youji had beaten 
clean over a clothesline on the back porch with a broom, whilst the 
rain spilled vehemently from the lowering clouds.  

Both mattresses lay stretched on the floor in the living room, 
between the windows and the coffee table, dressed with freshly washed 
sheets.  Youji had left Omi and Sei to the chore of setting their 
bedding to rights, while he went out to the minute market they'd 
passed on the way to the house.  He came back waterlogged, but 
satisfied, for he'd found enough on the shelves to make both a decent 
dinner *and* breakfast--tea, a loaf of bread, instant rice, butter, 
pancake mix, peach jam, milk, miso cubes.  He even managed to score a 
box of the chicken bites Omi liked so well, as well as a box of 
instant brownie mix.  It just seemed like a night for brownies.  But 
not a night for him to cook.  It just wasn't his forte.  Lounging in 
hot baths, now...

Youji rolled his shoulder, grimacing a little.  He'd overdone 
it... somewhere.  And then, some had overdone themselves on him.  He 
ran a hand over his chest.The bruises sprinkled over his body were 
still quite vivid and tender, summoning forthmemories of the assault 
he'd suffered.  

/No.  No, Kudou, don't give in./  

Steam beckoned from the inviting pool of water in the bath, and with a 
sigh, he sank into it.  Youji leaned back against one side of the 
raised, square tub, and sank down in the steaming water until it met 
his shoulders.  Now, this, he could live with.  He sat quite still, 
eyes closed, until the water around him had settled--only to jump to 
life again, and turn around to take something off a low table that 
stood on that side of the tub.  Two cards, tarot cards.  One was a 
picture of a fair-haired man and a dark-haired woman, both naked, 
walking arm and arm under a tree.  The other was a picture of a 
brutish looking woman in red robes and a little blonde girl in a 
apron dress.  The woman was pointing off frame, her mouth opened in 
a bellow.  That last made him laugh a little; seemed familiar 
somehow, but he couldn't remember just where he'd seen it before.  

"Odd..."  He lay the cards back on the table, and took another card 
from one of the decks.  A single, large pentacle, set above an 
illustration of a wind-blown wood.  "How does a person learn to read 
these things anyway?"  

"Maybe I oughta learn," he murmured, half-seriously.  "I could become a 
traveling fortune teller."


***

"It was very nice of you to let your tou-san have the bathroom first," 
Omi told Seishirou as they sat warming their hands around a pair of 
pink, frosted glass candle holders lit by vanilla votives.  The 
Hidaka's house wasn't cold, and neither was the evening really- just 
wet, and that made it feel cold to the two of them since they were both 
so very thin.  

"Otosama needed a bath more than me," the boy said, and a cobweb came 
slithering from his jet black bangs.  

Omi laughed and jiggled their feet together underneath the kitchen 
table and its newly washed clothing.  "If you say so! But..." and his 
voice became very quiet then.  "Why do you call Youji-kun 'Otosama' 
instead of 'Tou-san'?"

Where most children most certainly would have piped up with an answer 
at once, the one before him murmured a wispy little noise of pondering, 
and stared into the candle flame for a long, long time before he 
answered.  Omi couldn't help but think he looked like a sage when he 
did that, and not only because the dancing aura of the candle wiped the 
green out of his eyes and left them as pools of creamy onyx.  "Because 
I should."

Omi had no idea what to say to that, no more than he knew if there was 
a god, or any unicorns left about the last unsettled threads of the 
word.  He opened the little box of tarot cards where they pranced and 
started to lay the cards out between the two of them.

The top slip of paper wore a maiden and one such creature of inky mist, 
wrapped all around her in a glaucous shade no solid thing could have 
matched.  It was the High Priestess.

They had found exactly twenty decks so far in the house: unicorn tarot, 
elemental tarot, doll tarot, tarot of the sacred circle, tarot of 
another sacred circle, Rider-White... vampires, spirits in ink, Hello-
kitty.  They were mostly gathered on the table... well, except for the 
erotic tarot and a few Youji had borrowed. 

Just as Omi reached for the five of wands, the timer for the brownies 
went off, whereupon he dived for the little counter top oven where 
their dinner treats had been baking away.

Seishirou was good enough to hand him an oven mit before he burned his 
hands.  "Are you sure it's alright to have brownies for dinner?"

"Sure! Just not every night."

"Hai."

"You know, I do believe these are all done! See? They don't wobble on 
top when I shake the pan."

The little boy grinned from ear to ear, and so did Omi, though it was 
Omi's smile that faded first.  Outside, there was one dull growl of 
thunder- one so far away the light before it never found their eyes.  
Neither of them started, and he was glad that his lover's son had no 
fear of storms.  

In the house next door, a light came on, rippling though the sheers and 
into their still-open blinds that would have otherwise covered the 
glass slider.  Seishirou sighed at the lamp across the garden wall, but 
pushed it from his mind in time and rather sought a hot pad for the pan 
his companion refused to relinquish.  After awhile, Omi gave the 
illuminated space a look, and saw there the silhouette of one of the 
neighbors, who just stood there, still as could be, with one hands 
against the curtains and the pane underneath.

"Umm..."

"Oh, the brownies.  Right!"

When he looked back, the shadow had gone away, and a jazzy hum had 
begun to ripple from the next door house.   

***

Just then came the thundering of Youji's feet on the stairs, his 
voice happily drifting in snatches of song.  The bath he'd had did 
much to improve his mood, but the smell of baking chocolate truly 
thrilled him.  Youji entered the kitchen with a grin, patting one 
handed at his damp hair with a towel, cradling the two decks of cards 
against his chest with the other.  He'd readied himself for bed in a 
green T-shirt and white pajama pants printed with tiny blue and red 
fish swimming in rows all over, even though sleep was hours away.  

"Man, I could smell those brownies all the way upstairs!  I take it 
that they're done?"  

Omi jabbed a finger in the direction of the pan, then held it to his 
lips.  Setting both decks down on the table, Youji cocked his head 
questioningly.  "What--?" he began, only to fall silent at the 
ghostly wail of a sax, faraway and sorrowful.  A faint smile tugged 
at his lips, and, enticed by the sound, he wandered over to the 
sliding door.  Across the glowing windows of the house next door, a 
lone shadow flitted.  

"Our neighbors have good taste in music."  Youji grinned.  "I wonder 
if they'll lend us some those cds, sometime."  

Omi shrugged, not sparing his lover so much as a bat of an eye, and 
Youji's own fell upon the pan of brownies.  He walked over to pinch 
off a corner, blowing on it gently before popping it into his 
mouth.  "Mm..." He stuck one gooey fingertip into his mouth to lick 
it clean. "pretty good.  How about you cut us each a couple of 
squares, Kioshi-ai, while I pour us some tea?"  

Youji went to the cupboard, and took down three of the cups they'd 
found and washed that afternoon.  Sei scampered over to the cabinet 
where he'd placed certain items after unpacking them earlier, and 
came away with the canister of tea.  Youji chuckled as he took it 
from him.  "Milk for you, though.  And you can have as many brownies 
as you want.  Omi and I might have to watch it, though, or we'll end 
up looking..." He fished a card out of his T-shirt's pocket, and 
handed it to Sei.  "Like this."  

It was The Lovers card from the Wonderland deck, with Tweedledum and 
Tweedledee as the featured couple.

***

Seishirou began to chuckle behind his hand, and Omi tried not to betray 
his relief; he'd been sure the little manifestation next door would 
bother the boy, but it didn't.  No, he seemed quite at home knowing 
they were being watched, or he didn't seen.

/Of COURSE they're looking over here, the house HAS been empty for two 
years. You'd look too, and you wouldn't give a second thought to being 
caught at it./

Picking up his tray of rather askew treats, he waved at the distant 
figure with his empty hand.  "Maa! Akeno-kun!" For Youji had just 
called him by his second name and he felt like returning the gesture.  
"You'd turn into a Mad Hatter long before Tweedledee or Tweedledum"

Though with those words, and the tray safely on the table top, he 
stooped and took a better look, for he hadn't found just which card of 
the deck it was before.  His realization made him squeal.  "KYA! That's 
just so... so..."

"Surreal?" suggested Sei-chan, assuming the seat nearest the one Youji 
had been eyeing.

"Surreal will do nicely.  Say, who taught you that word?"

"Umm... someone I know used to say I was surreal."

Though it wasn't especially nice, Omi had to agree, but only by 
brushing the boy's hair behind his ears before sitting down himself.  
Seishirou hadn't wanted to say it was his mother, or spill the milk he 
was having such a time handling.

***

"Whoever said that--just forget them," said Youji. "They don't matter. 
And they were WRONG."  Three gooey, chocolately squares landed on 
Seishirou's plate. Youji turned to deal Omi his portion, placing two 
brownies on his plate. Stretching across the table, Youji set the pan 
down as close to his own plate as he could, then poured tea for his 
lover. He wasn't inclined to speak just then, wanted to sink into the 
mire of his dark thoughts even as he hated himself for thinking such 
things. But then, as he set the teapot down, he heard strains of 
singing so sweet and sad that he was torn from the clutches of his 
own simmering hatred. The voice was that of a woman, familiar and 
dusky and forlorn, one which spoke of love and heartbreak so profound, 
she would never recover. 

How many times had he felt the exact same way? 

Youji set the teapot down, and wandered over to the sliding glass 
doors, to gaze upon the house across the yard. A shadow flitted over 
the glowing windows, moving so quickly, he didn't know if it were 
male or female. He leaned against the frame, head cocked to the 
side, listening. 

"Takes me back..." he began, dreamily. "I can't tell you how many 
evenings I've spent with Billie crooning to me. She got me through a 
lot. A whole hell of a lot." 

His eyes darkened with some old memory, and Youji let them shut for a 
moment. "I wonder if they knew the Hidakas?" he asked, laughing as 
soon as he'd uttered it. "Of course, they did. Living next door and 
all, how could they not?" Youji opened his eyes, and a lone shadow 
crossed one window, and came to stand before another, positioned as 
so its owner was leaning on the sill, staring back at him. 

"I wonder..." he paused, watching the mysterious figure abandon its 
lookout. "What do you say to the three of us going over to pay our 
curious neighbor a visit?"

***

Omi to this, nearly dropped his hapless tea, only to rather, in the 
end, cant his lover a charmingly baleful sort of glance.  Seishirou 
licked his lips behind his napkin, and not only for the sake of the 
boy's look, but because of the frosty mint madness rising in the boy- a 
kind of irritated transport no doubt found in Omi and nowhere else.

/You and your last minute ideas .../

As for Seishirou's father, he merely raised a brow and began to munch 
his brownie, not bothering to lick the crumbs from the corner of his 
lips.

"Akeno-kun, it's a bit late, don't you think?"

No, he didn't think so at all.

"Well, we could always have him over in the morning?"

"What about work?" the little boy piped up.

So some huffs and nods later, Omi, his mouth full, finally consented, 
or rather, pretended to.  "Alright.  But you'll have to put on 
something besides pajama pants! And you should be the one to go over.  
After all..." He paused long enough to accentuate his twiddling of his 
aqua locks.  "I'm sure suburbia finds me frightening."

***

"I bet they'd find me far more frightening than sweet little you," 
Youji retorted. "And what do you have against fish, anyway?" 

Seishirou giggled, and Omi made a face as if he'd smelled something 
atrocious. Youji sniffed in disapproval. "I suppose it would be 
better if I turned up wearing something skintight, and made him 
wonder just what sort of people are currently residing at the old 
Hidaka homestead." He lifted a brow at Omi, who filched another 
brownie from the plate with a careless shrug. Youji whirled about 
with a shrug of his own, and left. Behind him, he could hear Sei's 
muffled giggles. 

"Heh," he said softly to himself, running a hand down the front of 
his T-shirt as he padded into the living room. "I guess this outfit 
isn't entirely fashionable. Not worthy of the image I've worked so 
hard to create." 

/For all the good it did me./ 

Twisting his shirt hem in his hands, he came to a halt beside the 
futons, and warily eyed his bags. Suddenly he didn't want to leave 
at all, just wanted to draw the blinds in the kitchen and forget 
there was a world outside; he couldn't, for he was lousy forgetting. 

"My curse." He closed his eyes in an effort to force himself to relax, 
and then threw himself into the task of picking out an outfit. By the 
time he was finished, he'd donned a long sleeve black T-shirt that 
hugged him like a glove, and a pair of black trousers. He'd swept his 
dark hair into a ponytail at his nape, and perched a pair of yellow 
lensed glasses upon his nose. He jammed his feet into the boots he'd 
left by the door, and stomped back to the kitchen, laces dangling 
around his feet. 

"All right," he said, swinging one foot up on an empty chair to tie 
his shoestrings. "Am I dressed suitably enough to go visiting the 
neighbors, fastidious one?  Yes?  Score one for me, then." 

Youji chuckled Omi under the chin, kissed Sei on the top of his head, 
and headed for the sliding door. "Be back in a bit."

***

"Maaaaaa! Youji-kun!" Omi called after him, only to find himself 
laughing in time with the little boy at his side, who in the mean time, 
had quite managed to get brownie on the end of his nose.  Napkin in 
hand, the former Weiss clucked his tongue at him, only to rub 
Seishirou's dessert-ed face as gently as could be.  

Seishirou responded by crossing his eyes, and sighing as if he expected 
better of himself.

"Silly Tomeo. It's just chocolate and milk and flour.  See?  Comes right 
off!"  So he showed him just how well with a small glimpse of the 
napkin, before adding, "I wonder if this comes off too, neeeee?" 
Whereupon he took the boy's nose between his fingers and jiggled it 
this way and that as if trying to get it to come loose.  "No, I don't 
think it does."

"Keep trying! That feels funny! I like it."

So he did, because he couldn't resist, even if it might make him dizzy, 
or leave his face twinged a little red, which it did.  And Sei-chan 
looked for all the world as if he was blushing at the sight of a little 
girl he liked.  He also went straight for Omi's nose, and gave him much 
the same treatment, even if he had to hold him with most of his tiny 
hands.

"Hey, I have to go grab that other ch-..." but his voice faltered then, 
as he realized that he had indeed already pulled over the extra chair 
which had stood so long in the corner of the kitchen; that only three 
of them had existed in the house to begin with. "Uh-oh..."

But he looked down to find his lap filled with a raven-haired, sleepy-
emerald-eyed child, who had moved their plates together before 
clambering over. "Maybe..." he started to say, but then fell into 
giggles, "...he likes brownies too!" But then quiet once again, but for 
the rain, and the jazz, and Seishirou became quite businesslike about 
occupying his new perch- did not lean too close, nor seem unwilling to 
be held -and he ate quite slowly between tiny sips of his milk.  

"Maybe he does," agreed Omi.

***

The shower chose to swell in time with the voice from the distant 
radio- a moment which happened to coincide with the one in which Youji 
left the house.  The raindrops grew from seed-beads to liquid Bob 
Mackie bangles that broke as they struck the ground.  The only place 
free of their shards was a tiny island running along what might have by 
clear morning been the shadow of the streetlight.  Now it was the only 
still place in the wet film that over everything swirled.  The light 
itself seemed to know nothing of the deluge.  Just stood, and shined 
between the Hidakas and their neighbors.

Whoever lived also in the halo of that wispy, suspended lamp had quite 
an immaculate lawn.  Then again, it was all of ordinary grass, 
interrupted only by a single, stately maple with leaves the color of 
garnets.  The low, flat stones which made up the walkway were neat, but 
rather sunken, as if they had been there for sometime, and often walked 
upon.  It was only the door just past the last of their kind that bore 
the hint of anything new in its fresh, red paint job. 

Youji knocked upon it without a second thought.

The door did not open very wide- only let a sliver of chappy light 
escape, break by a along the shadow, ill defined now that it was 
backlit.  In a few seconds it resolved into a man poised just behind 
the door; one with dark, shimmery hair and a single, pale gold eye 
peeping from behind the door.  Before Youji had a chance to speak, he 
had bowed his head and said in a low, clear voice, "Kom ban wa."

***

Youji mentally shook himself free of his startled wonderings, and 
made his best formal bow in return.  "Hajime mashite.  Watashi-wa 
Fujimiya Akeno to moushi-masu."  He waved to the Hidaka's 
house.  "Ah...I came with Hidaka-san's nephew Kyoshi.  He had hoped 
to find his cousin here, but..."  

The gold eye blinked, but otherwise, the man stayed half-hidden 
behind the door.  Youji didn't blame him; he was certain he looked 
quite odd, a stranger without any sense to bring an umbrella along on 
a walk in the rain.  

/You'd think I'd have sense enough to keep my mouth shut, though.../  

"Um...We saw your lights on, heard the music.  We've just taken a 
batch of brownies out of the oven, and Kyoshi thought you might like 
to join us.  If it's not too much trouble, that is."  

***

The Hidakas' neighbor was silent for a moment more, perhaps shaking his 
head slowly in the low glistening that seeped out into the street from 
behind him.  But then he tucked himself back into his entryway, and 
beckoned for Youji to follow, at least far enough into the little well 
where shoes were meant to be left- one lonely pair of loafers lived 
there now.

"How strange," He said.  "I nearly asked you where the boy had gotten 
off to these months." Another small sigh then, one which dragged his 
shoulders down with his breath.  "I suppose he's not a boy any longer."

The neighbor had until then been lost in his own dimness- his head 
bowed against the edge of the door.  He caught himself and looked to 
Youji then; gave him a ghost of a smile.

After all, it wasn't often he came across someone who didn't start at 
the sight of the grey leather patch that covered his right eye.

"Aa... excuse me.  It's no trouble at all.  In fact, I'd like to come 
over for awhile, if you still don't mind that is...?"

***

Pushing his dripping hair away from his face, Youji shook his 
head. "Not at all. None of us will mind, I assure you." 

The old man smiled a touch wider at that, and left him long enough to 
take a black umbrella out of the small wooden stand that sat behind 
the door. Youji noticed that it had been patched in two places, and 
a tightly wound strip of black tape was the only thing holding the 
cracked halves of the curved handle together. And he thought nothing 
of it. Eccentricity should be forgiven in the aged, he felt, and he 
wasn't exactly fit to make any judgments about anyone. 

The two left the house and crossed the yard with only the faint glow 
of one lamp and the strains of a trumpet to herald their silent 
exodus. A glance over his shoulder as he stepped up to the door 
found the old man staring at the newly awakened house in a kind of 
sorrowful wonder. As he slid the glass door back, Youji wished he 
knew what sort of memories the other held about the Hidakas. 

Sei was still sitting upon Omi's lap, both nibbling at their dinner. 
Omi turned with him when he heard Youji's footsteps on the linoleum; 
stood when the other man made his entrance. 

"This is Hidaka Kyoshi," Youji said, crossing over to stand by 
Omi. "My son, Seishirou," he added, relieving Omi of his child. He 
paused, and then added to their guest with an apologetic little 
smile, "I am sorry. I forgot to ask you your name." 

***

Seishirou, now in his father's arms again, went limp like a sleepy 
kitten, not even finding that he wanted to fidget against Youji's wet 
clothing. 

Their guest seemed satisfied to know the boy, like his father, wasn't 
in the least bit alarmed or taken aback by his appearance.  In fact, 
they looked gently at one another, the old man and the child. 

"Oh no, forgive me for being rude and not offering it sooner," the 
neighbor remarked then, as he tapped his hand against the center of his 
polo shirt.

"Watashi no Onamae wa Koichirou Nageki desu."

(OOC: Ok, I made the name Nageki up, deriving it from "Nageku", meaning 
"lament".)

***

"Ah, I once knew someone named Koichirou," said Youji, gesturing to the 
empty chair.  "But only for a very short time."   
 
The old man nodded slowly, in such a way as to make Youji wonder if  
he had read between the lines of his remark.  He crossed to the  
table, and took the seat Youji had never claimed.  Sei clung tight to  
his damp shirt, almost daring him to try and take him to bed, so  
Youji sat down with him, cuddling his tiny body close in one arm.  An  
extra plate and cup of tea appeared before their guest, courtesy of  
Omi.   
 
And when he'd had taken his first sip of tea, Youji said, "I have  
never been to Niigata before.  It's lovely.  Ah..."  He paused to  
break off a bit of brownie.  "Sumaisen ga, Koichirou-san, but have  
you lived here long?" 

***

Nageki shook his head and sipped at his tea.  The steam from the 
surface of the amber liquid billowed out around his nose vanishing, 
leaving the image of the old man as clear as if ever could have been.  
"I don't mind you asking.  But yes, I have lived in this city all of my 
life, and the house I have now for almost thirty years."

"Suge!" commented Omi in a soft, enticing voice, though he looked back 
to the knife he had left in the brownies and began to slice again.  He 
hadn't really meant to say anything, but then again, he'd never abided 
in one place for more than a few months.  Their guest watched, and held 
his plate over just before he had finished.  They thanked each other, 
and  Koichirou-san went on, his eye darting between the two lovers, 
sparing neither more attention than the other.

"I suppose you must be wondering what became of the Hidakas and... my 
son.  I wouldn't mind anything you want to ask about them.  Thirty 
years is a long time, and I am tired of pretending I don't know that, 
or anything else about the people who lived here.  I have no one's 
honor left to protect.  So, I have given up on secrets too.  I would 
rather put your minds at ease."

And in the faintly startled silence that followed, he retreated once 
more to his teacup, this time draining it more deeply, and with more 
thought, "Besides, you do make the most delicious tea I've had in 
ages."

Omi refilled his glass without a sound besides water leaving the 
teapot.

***

Youji looked from the tilting teapot, to his lover as he set it down 
on the table again.  Omi drew his cup to his mouth, eyeing Youji 
through the hot vapor rising from it, giving him the barest nod of 
agreement to his unspoken question.  Youji slumped a little in his 
chair, and turned to Koichirou-san with a sigh.    

"Hida--Ken...I knew him.  Or I thought I did.  All he ever told us 
was that he was from Niigata.  He never talked about his family, his 
life here--at least, not to me."  He shrugged.  "I guess I never 
thought it was important to know about all that stuff.  We got along 
well enough, and that was that."  

He paused, then added, "I wish I had taken more of an interest.  I 
guess it's too late for that now."  Youji took a sip of his tea; his 
throat was suddenly so dry.  He felt so...guilty.  

So what else was new?  

"Please tell us about him, Koichirou-san," he said as he set the cup 
down.  "Tell us what happened between him, and your son, and Hidaka-
san."  

***

Nageki shook his head, pausing only when he realized he seemed to be 
refusing Youji's request,  No, he wasn't, but he held one hand up then 
and rubbed his chin with his knuckles a moment, deliberating with 
himself.

Seishirou, in the silence this begot, helped himself to some more 
brownie.

"I never knew Hidaka-san very well, I couldn't say for certain what she 
thought about any of it."

"What you think is more than enough," Omi attested, and got himself an 
agreeing sort of look. "Aa, if you don't mind.  Was she... kinda quiet 
then?" Although the idea Ken had been raised by an introverted woman 
was one that certainly never would have occurred to him in Ken's 
presence.

Nageki, for dread and awe, nodded.  "You could have called her that, at 
least here.  I don't know about what she did during the day at work.  
But you have to understand, compared to the talk that came up after she 
arrived, anything else would have been 'quiet'.  My wife and I had been 
here for six years or so, and most of the people in the neighborhood 
longer.  You can certainly understand the stir a young, single woman 
with an infant made.  Especially when she hardly left the house for two 
years, and when she did afterwards, it was always in black."

One of the decks of tarot cards he spun so he could see the front.  "I 
had to find out from Kaze, years later, that she was a fortune-teller, 
and by then I'd already grown used to it."  

***

"Strange to think of Ken with a fortune-telling mother. She must have 
been quite popular to be able to own a house and support a child on 
her own." Youji picked up one of the cards on the table; a smiling 
man, a laughing woman, and two small, grinning children stared back 
at him. 

"I can imagine the stir she caused. It must have been hard for her, 
raising a kid on her own.  Were Ken and his mother very close?" 

***

Nageki, still looking quietly rapturous at whatever memories his host's 
question had dredged up in his mind, put down the last snibble of the 
brownie drummed his fingers on his cheek for a moment.  

"I don't know.  How do you mean close?"

"Well..." Omi began then, as he spun the card with the happy family on 
it around so it faced everyone but him then.  "Did they care about each 
other? Maybe not love, but something like that."

Mr. Koichirou had already nodded, so it didn't bother any of them when 
the boy trailed off, and took a sip of his tea.

"They weren't like anyone I've ever known, either of them.  But I think 
so, in a way.  I didn't ever get to know Hiharu very well, but then 
again, she was always just like the day I met her."

None of them Weiss had any need to ask him to go on, for lost in 
daydreams of the falling rain, he looked out over what little of the 
side yard was glinting in the light from their two houses.

"You see, I didn't see Ken once those first two years.  Hiharu 
wouldn't take him out of the house.  We all thought he must have had 
rather fragile health of course.  But one Sunday afternoon, my son," 
Here he faltered for just an instant, his voice going thick and 
distant, though any trace of such wet emotions left his voice when he 
cleared his throat. "...and I were out in our garden when I got a call 
from work.  This was back before the walls between everyone's gardens 
had been replaced, and ours was... not in the best shape.

"Well, as soon as I got off the phone, I went back out to my son, who 
came running up to me: ''tousan! 'tousan! You won't believe what I've 
found! I've got a real live pixie back there!' So he took me behind the 
rose bushes.  I figured he was just playing pretend, so you can imagine 
my surprise to see an unfamiliar toddler tied up with my son's 
cardigan."

***

"No, really?" queried Youji, beaming at the elder man's 
nod.  "Oh, man!  I'm going to have to tease him about that."  

As soon as he'd uttered those words, the cheer Nageki's description 
had evoked within Youji faded a little.  "Ah...when I see him again, 
that is," he amended.  

Nageki merely nodded again, and Youji lowered his eyes to his 
neglected cup.  

"So..." he piped up, "that was that?  The start of their friendship.  
If Ken hadn't wandered out of the house that day...I mean..." he 
began awkwardly.  "Ah, gomen."  

***

"I would not be sitting here talking to you.  No, you would be back in 
the city where you were born, watching television or chatting with 
someone you knew who wasn't Ken.  And Ken? I don't know what would have 
become of him." The old man dragged his fingers around the rim of his 
plate, and smiled at Omi: Omi who was too lost in his own thoughts to 
smile back...

Would the whole universe really be all that different if seventeen 
years ago, Ken hadn't wandered away from his mother, or Kaze from his 
father? Was that really the defining moment that broke their universe 
away from all the others, where they had girlfriends, and quiet 
evenings alone at home; where they were... normal? Could that one almost 
laughable coincidence really call itself the place where it became 
impossible for any of them to go darting back to that myth among myths 
in the waters of time behind them? In some other procession of events, 
it was Ken sitting in his chair now, talking about how college was 
going while his mother warmed some sake for him and his lover?  Ken and 
Youji had never met, never stumbled on Kritiker and been brought to 
Tsukiyono Omi's feet.  Maybe Tsukiyono Omi was still Takatori Mamoru?

Seishirou had to tap his leg to remind him that their guest had once 
more begun to speak.

"...but it's alright," Nageki told Youji.  "Things didn't happen that 
way. I just hoisted the boy up and carried him inside to untie him.  I 
remember he was so articulate for his age.  'What's your name?', 'Ken'.  
'How did you get here?', 'I walked across the rocks into the garden.  I 
was just playing...'.  'You're Hiharu's boy?', 'No, Okasan's'. And all 
the time I was talking to him, my son couldn't take his eyes off him.  
I thought he was just waiting for me to prove he hadn't found his 
pixie.  But I don't know now.  We gave Ken some orange juice and 
carried him back to his mother's house.  

"Hiharu... was a wreck- she thought she'd shut him in the attic since 
he'd closed the screen door behind him when he went out.  She had that 
whole storage room torn up, and when we gave Ken back to her, she 
almost cried 'Kenken, I don't know what I'd do without you- he's 
everything I have left, Koichirou-san'.  That's just what she said... 
Anyway, she kept thanking me and thanking Kaze until finally she picked 
something up out of the boxes she had everywhere and told me to take 
it, it wasn't doing her any good, least she could do.  A little crystal 
ball.  I still have it somewhere."

***

"She loved him that much..."  Youji shook his head slightly.  "What 
happened?  Was it because of the scandal he was involved with?  Did 
that turn her against him?"  

"He was my friend," he added, apologetically, as if that would 
explain everything.  "One of my best friends..."

/And I don't really know him that well at all./  

***

Nageki, to the surprise of both former Weiss, shook his head, and 
finished his tea at last, waving Omi away when he offered him more.  
When his eyes came back to them, they settled one Seishirou, and no one 
else.  

"He was... Ken I mean... Ken was my little boy.  My Kaze grew old before 
his time, and Ken never became more than twelve.  I used to wish... 
sometimes... that he really had been mine; my only child.  I would have 
done anything for him, but that one thing that was left to me in the 
end I couldn't... I just... couldn't."

"Koichirou-san..." Omi said. 

Nageki just smiled as if he remembered his favorite toy from years and 
years and years ago.

"Hidaka-san left her son because she couldn't accept who he loved.  And 
he loved my son."

***

"I was blind," Youji said, shaking his head sadly as he stroked 
Seishirou's cheek.  "Not about Kaze--I sort of saw how Ken felt when 
they were reunited, though I didn't really accept it as fact.  I don't 
know why I did.  I wish I'd done everything differently.  I wish...I 
wish I'd said something to him after..."  

"But it's all too late for that now," Youji added sadly.

***

"Yes," Nageki enjoined, "It is.  Whatever happened between you and Ken, 
was already too late.  You mustn't blame yourself.  Once the rain has 
fallen, an umbrella is only a memento, no shelter.  But..." and here the 
old man's voice rose, chiming ten years younger than he was.  "you did 
see him?  Ken.  And he was alright?"

Omi in his turn, agreed for his lover- "Yes, he was very alright.  And 
we think..."

"Think what?"

"We think he's run off with someone he's in love with."  Even though 
they knew.  He didn't know how their guest would take a more 
irreparable affirmation of it.  

As it was, a kind of sullen wonder took him, and he looked through 
their window to his own.  "Oh..."  A moment passed, and Nageki smoothed 
his bangs from his eyes as he rose shakily from the table, moving as if 
his feet had fallen asleep.  He bowed to them, and they returned the 
gesture, though Youji and Sei only with nods.  "I'm afraid it's grown a 
bit late for me.  Thank you for the tea and sweets, Fujimiya-san, 
Hidaka-san, Seishirou."

"Bai bai..." sighed Seishirou, and he tried to wave though his 
drowsiness had seeped even into his fingertips.

"Bai bai..." Nageki whispered back, and then to Omi, his Kioshi- "Would 
you mind walking me home then?"

"No, not at all! Let me get my coat."

Before they two slipped out the door, the blue-haired boy had kissed 
his lover in the trailing black of his locks, just long enough for 
Koichirou-san to see.  The old man smiled, and they went together into 
the rain.   

***

Youji stared at the sliding door through which they'd disappeared, 
seeing only the rainy night and the lonely, wavering light that 
burned in Nageki's window.  Seeing all that, but not really 
acknowledging it.  For his thoughts were elsewhere, much as they had 
been throughout the course of the evening.  

"I shouldn't have brought him here," Youji whispered.  "He would have 
lived on with his memories untainted.  Now... they're all ruined."  

In his lap, Sei stirred, snugging down against his bicep.  His 
fingers flexed upon his sleeve; Youji stroked the back of his soft 
little hand before carefully maneuvering him around so he lay fully 
with the cradle of his arm.  The boy blinked uncomprehendingly at 
him, closing his eyes again when Youji slipped his other arm under 
him.  

"Time for bed, Sei-chan," he sang softly, rising from his chair.  
He'd made his bed up before taking his bath; before the minute was 
up, Youji had Seishirou stretched out upon it with Ken's old blankets 
tucked up to his chin.  Youji added one of the gundams to the bed, 
laying it within reach of his son, before he bent to kiss him.  

"Sleep well.  Dream of beautiful things," he breathed in his 
son's ear.  "Oyasumi."  

Sei mumbled the same, and rolled onto his side, drawing the gundam 
close to his chest.  Youji rose from the futon, turning out the 
lamp before he left the room.  

And when he returned to the kitchen, Youji sat in Nageki's seat, 
sliding the last cigarette from the crumpled pack he had found tucked 
in a pouch in his bag.  It was stale, nearly mashed flat by whatever 
he'd last carried in the duffel, but it lit true--and that was as 
good as he wanted.  Just as were the tears that welled in the corners 
of his aching eyes, and silently spilled, all for the sake of the 
past, and the things that could never be changed.

***

Omi found himself on Nageki's doorstep, wondering just why Kaze's 
father had asked him to walk him home.  Neither of them had fallen, and 
the old man had come before his steps before he had a chance to catch 
up, for the sidewalks were still unfamiliar to him, as much as the 
streetlights glancing of the spirals on the fallen rain made it shine.  
They'd said goodnight, and now it was time to go home.

So he went home, leaving silently as if he'd never been; stopping to 
splash in the biggest puddle he had could find until the milky water 
there burbled up into his socks and made him shiver with delight.

Behind the closed pane of wood, Koichirou-san sighed, shook away the 
few droplets that has gathered in his hair, and glanced between his 
window blinds just in time to see the boy dancing with himself.   He 
watched him all the way back to the Hidakas' house, and finally turned 
off the jazz he'd left streaming from the speakers.

In silence for awhile, he gazed about the rooms that had been his for 
so long, and tried to see them once again as if for the first time; as 
if for the last time.

There were no pictures, no loved little things, and footprints in the 
carpet he could remember making.

What he couldn't recall was just where the crystal ball he so fondly 
found in his waking thoughts had gotten to.  With a sigh he rose, and 
went to the desk that had been his wife's.  It was locked, and he found 
himself scrambling with his lack of depth perception to figure out 
which key of his belonged to it.  

It was empty inside, but for the pictures he had put there sometime 
after watching Hiharu getting rid of her own.  She ridding herself of 
his son he...

...well, he didn't remember anymore.

And he couldn't quite see himself reaching after the one of Ken he had 
always liked best.  So he shut up the desk of the woman he scarcely 
remembered anymore, and went to bed with his lights on.

***

It was a somewhat wetter Omi than before who blew through the screen 
door.  Youji didn't look to him, and he couldn't blame him anymore than 
he could seem to coax his wet bangs from his eyes.  

He left them there, and his shoes against the glass.  The blinds he 
closed, and the lights elsewhere came down under his hand, though not 
too faint were they when he had finished, for he'd caught sight of 
Seishirou dreaming away on the sitting room floor. 

/Oh... I wanted to say goodnight.  Well... tomorrow./

By then, his lover's cigarette had gone out, but he found his 
silhouette still holding it, still gazing down between his feet to some 
sweet nothing neither there, nor anywhere past the floor.

Omi dropped to his knees, and crawled up between Youji's.  He laid his 
head on one of his thighs, smiling up at him from there in some tender 
synergy of thoughts, sans breath, sans sense of his heart beating 
anymore in his chest.

"Itoshi? Doshita na?"

***

Youji remained as still as a statue, as if a faerie had fled from the 
hydrangea outside to pay him homage.  

"Betsuni."  He buried his fingers in Omi mussed locks, and petted him 
gently.  It was then that Youji became aware again of his dead 
cigarette, and he dropped it onto Nageki's saucer.  The table, 
woefully, was covered with their dishes and cups still.  

"I guess... we should clean up."  

*** 

"They can wait, Youji-kun.  There's nothing on them that has to go 
right in the sink, and we have more dishes."

/As if I'd take them over you./

His hands trailed down against his own knees then, catching on his 
pockets before he reminded himself it wasn't polite to hide one's 
fingers that way.  Instead he let himself fall forward- just enough 
for the sense he wasn't quite where he had been.

"Besides, there are better ways to spend rainy nights than doing 
dishes.  Could... could I sit with you for awhile instead?  I want to 
know what that's like... just... to do that and not worry."

***

"Yeah, you can sit with me, and we'll make believe that nothing's 
wrong for as long as you want.  Just... wait ..."  Youji rose from his 
chair, and padded softly down the hall to the living room.  He 
shortly returned bearing the spare futon he'd brought down earlier.  
Without a word, he unrolled it on the kitchen floor before the stove, 
smoothing it out before climbing onto it.  

"Come on," he said, patting the mattress.  "We might as well be 
comfortable."  

Omi promptly piled onto the futon beside him, and Youji took him in 
his arms.  His shirt was cold where the rain had kissed it; Youji 
rubbed his hands up and down his back in an attempt to ward off the 
chill, delighting in the feel of his thin frame pressed so closely to 
his own.  

"Listen," he whispered.  "It's so quiet."  

***

But it wasn't to Omi.  He could hear his pulse tumbling in his ears, 
and the soft jangle of his earring as it shook with his pulse.  The 
slight rustle of his lover's hands straying up and down his shirt 
seemed louder than the mumbles of thunder that had melted through his 
sleep on the train that morning.

But there were no cars, no skating tires at the feet of traffic lights.  
Not one footstep troubled the upstairs floor, and no one below them 
needed a drink that would make their glass sing as the ice fell. No 
sirens.  No voices.  No music from the house next door.  Nowhere a 
cricket or a rejoicing frog.  

Outside of his terribly elated body there was only the rain underscored 
by the gentle hum of the refrigerator. 

"Ohmigod..." he whispered, breathless then, and quiet enough to betray 
that he felt his voice might well shatter their dishes.  His eyes 
strayed over the corners of the kitchen and the faint light of the 
living room where he could guess it beyond the door.

As he head came to rest on his lover's chest, he knew that now at 
least, neither of them were bothered by it, the silence that wasn't 
quite silence.

"Is it always like this here? I've never been anywhere like this 
before.  No noises of anybody else moving around.  's kinda scary but... 
I think I like it."

Said as he rubbed his cheek over Youji's breastbone, and caught there 
the inner motions of his breath and his heart.  So that was three 
sounds, not counting their voices.  

***

"I think I do too," Youji said, laying his hand upon the top of his 
lover's bent head.  "I never thought I would feel at home in such a 
place."  

The boy hugged him just a bit harder.  But Youji didn't fret in the 
slightest.  He was comfortable holding him because Omi was safe.  Omi 
wouldn't try to hurt him.  No harm could come to either of them in 
the gentle stroking of the boy's hair, or in tender embraces such as 
they were sharing now.  

But there couldn't be anything more between them.  The idea of merely 
disrobing in front of Omi made him apprehensive; if he tried anything 
else...

/No,/ he decided.  /I'll worry about that later./  

/Just...relax, now./  

Taking a deep breath, he cuddled Omi closer.  "I almost wish we could 
stay here, make it a real home again."  

***

"Maybe someday," Omi began in a voice softer than the water that 
fluttered apart against the windows, "Someday, they'll all be dead, and 
then we can come back here and stay for a long time."

It was plain who he meant, and the sentiment was nothing of hatred, 
nothing of pain.  Just his observation on the world as it looked down 
on him from whatever there was above the futon, the ceiling, the 
clouds.  And Kritiker.

"I don't want that, not really, but nothing lasts forever."

As much as he had said, and of what had gone unspoken otherwise, he 
slipped his hand around one of Youji's, and kissed his throat in a 
little chain of open-mouthed caresses that curled down his neck and up 
against the edge of his shirt.

"Be~esides.  They have beaches in Hawaii.  Beaches of warm, black sand 
where we can stay like this all afternoon."

***

Youji didn't answer at first; his heart was hammering away in sudden 
fright in his chest, all because Omi had kissed him. Because they 
were the sort of kisses one might read as the beginning of a 
seduction, and he just couldn't bear them, sweet as they were. And 
just when he'd finally gotten Omi back into his life. 

It was enough to make him want to rage at the injustice of it all. 

"H-hawaii..." he stammered, clutching at Omi's hand in an attempt to 
stop his own from trembling. "Yes. We'll sit upon the beach, and 
hold each other. And maybe... M-maybe ..." His arm slid away from 
Omi, and he carefully inched back from him, so as not to send him 
tumbling to the futon. 

"But not now. I can't. I... I'm sorry," he said, bowing his 
head. "I'm so sorry, Omi."

***

"Youji-kun..." Omi whispered, "It's OK, that's not what I meant.  Don't 
worry."

His lover's hand, for it was still his, Omi took and kissed all over, 
but chastely now until his lips were dry.  

"Don't be sorry.  I understand."

But he drew no closer, even as every thread of muscle in him wanted to; 
just refused to let go until both them had quieted. 

"Well..." he added shyly some moments later.  "I... I... I almost do."

/But you can't really... even if it would sound better that you did./

A shake of his head, and he closed his eyes, nestling his head in the 
crook of one of his own arms now.  Outside came just the littlest hiss 
of thunder, though there had been no light before it.  Sometimes the 
clouds mumbled even without storms.  It had been that way in Tokyo to, 
and deep in the golden seed of desire still so far from blooming in his 
heart, though it lived, and it knew him.  

"If you... if you need to though.  You can just... do whatever you want 
with me.  I won't touch you.  I'll be all yours and you won't have to 
be afraid."

***   

Hesitantly, Youji met Omi's gaze and beseechingly held it. "Are 
you..." 

Smiling weakly, Omi nodded without any reluctance, pressing the hand 
he still possessed to his chest. But still, Youji hung back, weighing 
his feelings before he spoke. 

"I...want you still," he whispered. "I love you. But I'm scared. 
And I dare not do much until I know..." Youji reached out and 
brushed Omi's bangs from his eyes. "I don't know what they might 
have...given me. I don't want you to be disappointed, though, 
so...maybe if I..." He scooted a little closer, stroking his cheek 
with the back of his hand. "Maybe if I just touch you?" 

Omi nodded again, and Youji took him in his arms again, and kissed 
him upon the cheek, down his neck; hugged him close. 

"Take off your clothes, and lie down, Omi," he whispered. "I want to 
look at you."

***

"Hai!"

They parted then as he rolled to his knees, and hovered there a moment 
beside the futon, his arms wrapped tight around him.  The water had 
faded from his clothing already, and the chill with it.  His shirt 
sailed up over his head, sending his blue locks all astray and worrying 
the bandages over his wounded ear.  Just a little.  He smiled all the 
while though he fumbled it, making sure no blood would come- none did.

His belt came off, and he undid his jeans slowly so that the heel of 
his hand rubbed down against the outline of his sex, though he had no 
such teases with his socks. Denim skated away from his lithe legs as he 
rolled back onto the futon, and his boxers pealed away with them.

With his hands folded atop his chest, and his eyes closed, he found 
himself at long last warm and naked at his lover's side; unaroused, 
serene, and ultimately unashamed to be so.  The fleece about his cock 
was the same shade of cyan that had been worked into the locks still 
drifting in his face, and even in the not-quite perfect light of the 
kitchen, the scars on his knees shone.  

***

It was to them that Youji's fingers were drawn; his skin was still 
slick and smooth where the crisscrossed cuts had healed. He 
remembered all too clearly when he first noticed the bloodstains left 
behind on the front seat floor, but he didn't quite remember how Omi 
had gotten injured. 

He did remember everything else. 

"It was cold," he murmured, stroking his marred knees with his 
fingertips. "We weren't sure if we'd find you and Ken that night, if 
you were hurt or not. I didn't want to leave you, but...I really 
didn't have a choice." A wry smile twisted his lips. "And anyway, 
who knows what would have happened to that crazy bastard Aya if he'd 
fallen into the sea alone?" 

Quickly, he bent to flick his tongue over the faint tracery of scars, 
first one knee and then the other. He felt his thigh muscles twitch, 
but otherwise, Omi didn't move. 

"He loved him, even then." Youji glanced upwards at Omi's peaceful 
face, and found the slightest tint of a frown tugging at his lips. 
He petted the inside of one thigh, scooting a little farther up his 
body. "I tried to get him tell Ken," he added, lightly raking his 
nails over the blue thatch of hair marking his groin, "but you know 
Aya. Ran, I mean." 

"He's so damn stubborn," Youji whispered, bending to kiss the slim 
line of Omi's right hip.

***

"You never told me that," Omi whispered, his words dreamy and wet as 
the sky must have been.

Youji's attentions strayed then, just a moment.  A few inquisitive 
looks were canted, and still no one said a thing, not even the rain, or 
Sei's breath where it stole in little sighs from his lips.

Omi scrunched up his toes and let them steal over the side of his 
raven-haired lover, tickling, and no more.

"You never told me that you knew. Or... thought.  Or something! All this 
time you never told me."

A little swat to the side of his head with his heel, and the gentle 
toying resumed.  "Baka," this murmured as lazy and content as could be.

And then, when he felt fingers melting over the edge of his waist and 
rubbing into his tingling belly.  "I'm glad you told me.  I'm glad you 
saved him, because you came back to me.  I'm glad it's just the two of 
us now... sometimes, but it never stays.  And I don't want it to."

***

A few careless kisses graced Omi's side, and Youji sat up again to 
look at him, one arm slung around his waist.  "I don't either," he 
agreed.  "Nice as it is being able to be with you, just us two 
together, it's not the same."  He shook his head slowly, drawing his 
hair over Omi's stomach.  "Not the same at all."  

Giggling a little, Omi squirmed in Youji's arms, and the older man 
tossed his hair back over his hunched shoulder with a smile.  "Anyway, 
I thought you knew about Aya and Ken.  I mean, he always talked to you 
more about things than he did Ken or me.  He never told me a thing, I 
just guessed it from the way he acted around him."  

Omi shrugged, and Youji did too, scooting upwards along Omi's side 
until they were face-to-face.  "So, yeah, I had to save him.  Not for 
just Aya-chan, but for Ken, even though he didn't realize someone 
loved him.  And I had to come back, because... I was in love, and I 
didn't realize it."  

His fingers crept into the boy's ocean-colored locks.  "A phonebook 
if you can guess whom I was in love with, Omi."  

***

"It wasn't me, was it?" Omi murmured.  He felt his lover's fingers 
smoothing his bangs from his face, even though his eyes were closed, 
leaving nothing in them to be guessed.  "'cause that's too easy!"

He hoped so, just the same, just because the way Youji had said it to 
him called for that answer.

In the end, he got none himself though, not in words at least.  Kisses 
trickled over his face, and his throat, and his shoulder; made him 
gasp, just softly for they seemed familiar- not familiar like his lover 
but rather... someone else.  Someone whose lips he knew because they 
were his own.

Youji had kissed him how Omi had once brushed his lips to the elder 
man's perfumed skin.  All quiet.  And wondering.  Careless, and so 
immaculately planned. 

With his lips still nibbling at his shoulder, the boy scrunched over 
onto his side, and loosely encircled his companion on his thin arms.

"I loved you then too.  I loved you so much I cried even more when you 
found me sobbing the first time, 'cause I didn't want you to see.  It 
was later, but I did.  Even though I knew you didn't mind then or..."

He sighed, kissed Youji on the corner of his mouth, and didn't need to 
say anything about the first night they had spent together, for it was 
only days to there, walking back.  Days and hours and hours unchained. 

***

Youji remembered too, and wondered in the aftermath of that sweet 
memory if he would ever be able to enjoy such embraces again. "You 
don't have to cry anymore, 'cause Youji's here," he said, stroking 
his hair.  "And I won't go away again, not ever."  He lifted his hand 
from Omi's body, pinky raised.  "I swear."  

With a laugh, Omi curled his own around Youji's.  

"There," said Youji.  "Promise sealed, never to be broken.  I'm all 
yours."  He gave him an impish smile, and fell to petting his lover's 
tender skin, the movements of his hands all gentle and wandering.  

"I guess we'll be going shopping for phonebooks tomorrow, the 
naughtiest you can find.  Maybe we'll be inspired--find new ways to 
play with each other without..."  He made a vague gesture.  "Of 
course, there are one or two things I've always wanted to try.  I 
don't see why we can't do them still."  

A question rose in Omi's eyes, and Youji, leaning in to whisper in 
his ear, replied, "I'd like to tie you up."  

***

Omi's flesh reacted where his mind did not, and he grew warm amidst his 
lover's arms.  His sex though stirred and Youji's hands crept down to 
meet its tip, and coax it to kiss him with whatever moisture it would 
dare to let slip.

"I..." but whatever he had meant to say left him then, and rather he 
reached up, taking his companion in a sloppy embrace the elder man's 
body mirrored against his own- the same but backwards, and with one 
hands still draped about his cock.  

"Youji-kun," he finally said, some softly suspicious glee dancing in 
his eyes now.  "You can tie me up whenever you want."

/And this isn't just because... I've wanted so much to be yours./

He winked. "Just so long as Sei-chan doesn't see." 

***

"Seishirou won't see," Youji murmured reassuringly. "I'll take care 
that he doesn't. So much care. Just like this..." His dipped his 
index finger lower down between Omi's legs to stroke his balls, 
making him moan just the tiniest bit. He went limp on the mattress, 
letting his legs fall open even further. But Youji only bent to kiss 
the weeping tip of his sex, before he kissed Omi. 

"I'll be back. Don't go away." 

The boy shook his head, and Youji kissed him again. He crept from 
the kitchen and down the hall to where Sei lay sleeping. His son was 
curled tight in the blankets, and the gundam was now resting upon the 
pillow, too. Youji paused to take in that scene, smiling, before he 
eased his smaller duffel bag off the floor. He coaxed the panel 
closed behind him. Omi was lying on his stomach, chin propped on his 
hands. 

"I brought some things," he said, sliding that panel shut and locking 
it. "I... don't know why," he said, frowning slightly at the bag. "I 
guess it was just habit. I was going away with my lover, and I 
thought..." 

Youji sat the bag down on the floor by the futon, and unzipped it, 
parting the sides to expose what he'd brought. Inside lay dildoes in 
various styles, vibrators, a pair of steel nipple clamps, an ostrich 
feather in a plastic see-through snap box, and four wide sashes of 
heavy, iridescent orange satin. Those last Youji drew out and 
dangled above Omi. The boy caught the tails between his palms. 

"See? They're soft. Won't hurt, and I won't tie them really 
tight." 

Omi nodded, and gave him a little smile, and Youji patted the 
futon. "Okay, you just lay back, and relax, and I'll get everything 
ready." And he rose again to fetch some chairs from the table, three 
to be exact. One he put at Omi's head, the other two at the futon's 
bottom corners. 

Youji picked up one sash, and knelt on the mattress above Omi's 
head. "Hands over your head, Omi."

***

Omi, shuddering in hot delight, obliged, letting the muscles in his 
arms go limp, his skin soft as air beneath his lover's touch.  The 
satin chords slithered around his bones, cool at first, but their feel 
melted to match the sense of his flesh.  Soon, he could hardly sense 
the one washed around him just beneath his hands.  Two more caught him 
by the ankles with their soft tongues, and two more, once fastened to 
the chair backs, held him wide open.  

When he opened his eyes, he saw himself, his legs wide and his erection 
bobbing against his taut belly with nothing but space between.

"Oh, Youji-kun... Youji..."

That he was helpless to fend away the caress which dipped inside him 
made him quiver and call his name all the more.

***

"I love it when you say my name like that," whispered Youji. His 
hand glided lazily down Omi's left leg, his fingertips tracing 
patterns over the boy's silky skin. He felt him tremble again under 
his caresses, and he shook slightly in kind with excitement, lowering 
himself over Omi's rosy sex to kiss its root. 

"I want you," he murmured, nuzzling the azure floss that now covered 
his groin. "Oh, Omi. I wish..." Youji gently mouthed the underside 
of his cock, and sat back, giving his lover a rueful little 
smile. "Nevermind about that. It doesn't matter." 

He pumped his probing fingers twice more into Omi's body, bringing a 
moan to his young swain's lips; he replaced them with a medium-sized 
gel-filled dildo of green sparkly latex, which he'd coated liberally 
with some cherry scented lube. His lips grazed his inner thigh as he 
nudged it inside of his captive lover, aiming to hit that one, 
certain spot within him. 

"It's not me, but..."  

***

"'s feels good!" Omi gasped.  His flesh crept along the cool, slick 
tip, mouthing tighter and less so in little spasms.  Youji was kind to 
him, let the dildo niggle deep in little rolling thrusts as he strained 
against his bonds, trying not to buck too much and spoil them.

Not to scream.

Oh god he wanted to scream.  

"N-not better than you," he sighed to feel the shaft leaving him, and 
his cock trembled with anticipation of it meeting his willing body all 
over again.  "But I can tell it's your hands and *god* I just needed a 
little... I needed just ah... aaah!"

The wish had been granted, and the dildo turned inside him now, swaying 
like a top on the last of its spin.

"Needed to feel something of you in me..." And then so near to silence 
the words were nearly lost, "Fuck me, Youji-kun.  I love you.  I love 
you.  I love you."

***

Youji sat back on his knees, inched forward a bit, and curled a hand 
around one of Omi's trapped thighs to brace himself as he plunged the 
dildo into him again, moving it slowly back and forth, twisting it.  
His lover's hips twitched with every thrust, and Omi squirmed in his 
bonds, moaning, a blush staining his cheeks.  

It made Youji want to scream from frustration, for the sight of him 
brought back the memory of their lovemaking, of how it felt to be 
buried in him, with his muscles bearing down on his aching cock.  
Youji leaned forward over him a little more, and drove the slick toy 
into him with abandon, as he took his sex in his free hand, and began 
to pump him in time with his assault.  

"Come on, baby.  Come on..."  

***

Omi's lips rasped with his breath.  He fought not to cry out.  Not as 
loudly as he could, as he longed to.  The toy had only just grown warm 
inside him, and the hands upon him, they weren't shaking.  The one 
about his cock jerked him hard with a soft apology muttered against his 
damp skin and that on his thigh...

Was just... so warm.  So certain.  Youji's touch... he could have been 
blind, deaf, mute to sense of pressure and still somehow he could have 
known that feeling against all others.

Would have wanted more of it.  

"You-... Youji...?"

The murmur of assent came and he felt the dildo in him be swallowed 
entirely by his pliant muscle.

"L-lie down on top of me.  Just a little... I wanna feel your breath on 
me when I..."

And this he received, not just the shudder of his breathing, the 
perfume of his cigarettes still clinging around his skin, but his dry, 
satiny lips skating over his chest.  Omi surged in his bonds until the 
chairs sang under the strain.  

"When I..."

The fingers holding tight against the end of the make belief shaft 
burst into him between thrusts now.  The never left him empty, it was 
one presence or another delighting his gaping body.  And the lips, the 
lips all over him.

"...come!"

Gasped this, and with a sigh that wracked his whole body, he did.

***

Youji rubbed against his writhing lover's cock, wholly unmindful of 
the fact that his shirt was getting soaked by semen. He ceased his 
thrusting, but playfully twisted the dildo inside him until it was 
clear his orgasm had shaken itself into memory. Youji withdrew it 
then with the utmost care, and dropped it to the floor. 

"Oh, god, Omi," he whispered in a trembling voice, "that was... 
spectacular." He bent to sprinkle a few more kisses over his chest, 
then his bitten mouth, before rising to kneel on the mattress to free 
his hands from their bonds. Youji took them gently in his own, and 
lifted his wrists to his lips for kisses. 

"I love you," murmured Youji. "I love you, and you have no idea how 
much."

***

"Well," Omi whispered then, and his hand uncurled against his lover's 
cheek as he spoke, "if I don't... I'll do my best to imagine."

It was a jest, half-serious, all the tender thoughts that Omi in so few 
words and such a smile could bare.  Upside down and strewn in Youji's 
lap, he stretched like a cat, and granted the white syrup on his 
lover's shirt a few timid licks.

"Anything for you..."

He smiled, and closed his eyes, content, and still delighting in his 
own juices.  The sound of his pink, little tongue died though in 
another fit of tears from the heavens.  There was lightning, but it 
beautied only in the distance.

"Anything at all."

***

The night was still fresh when Masato left Reiichi's; the gray 
umbrella he carried--the only one Rei possessed that wasn't pink or 
lacy or sprinkled with Cinderella motifs; dust fell from it in fuzzy 
balls when he opened it in Rei's foyer--had charmed the clouds with 
its mere presence.  The streets were bejeweled with puddles, but all 
the moisture the quieting storm held at that point was nothing more 
than an elusive perfume in the air; Masato's mind began to wander, 
and his feet followed suit.  It wasn't until he smelled the aroma of 
baking cookies that he came back to his senses, and he found himself 
standing on a street he hadn't visited in a good many months. 

The cookie smell came from the two-story, pale blue wood and gray 
stone boarding house to his immediate left, and how he'd wound up 
THERE without realizing where he was going, Masato wasn't quite 
sure.  He had been intending to go straight to Naru and try and 
persuade his boy to grant him an audience, as well as forgiveness for 
his unkind remarks, not to sort out the other one nagging loose end 
that burden him.  He very nearly retraced his steps to 
the street corner, only to find that he didn't want to leave; he 
actually *did* want to swing open oaken gate and ring for the owner.  
After a moment's wondering pause, he did exactly that.  The intercom
buzzed faintly when the landlady answered his ring.  

"Yes?"  

"Naoko?"  

He heard something metallic fall and clatter over the incredulous ring 
of her voice.  "Masato?"  

"Yeah.  Am I disturbing you?"  

Masato released the button, but no reply from Naoko followed.  He was 
about to ring for her again, and make his apologies prior to 
retreating from the porch, when the door swung open.  Naoko came into 
view, clad in a pair of slim black slacks and a red T-shirt; she wore 
no makeup, and had her long black bangs clipped back from her face 
with Chinatsu's sparkling black cat barrettes.  It was obvious by the 
way she gaped at him that Reiichi's makeover had been a success--or 
so he hoped. 

"Masato!  It's not really you?"   

He made a wry face.  "You know it is."

"You've shaved!  Your hair is RED, and your clothes are clean!  Is 
that a crease?!"  Naoko exclaimed, plucking at the starched peaky 
line that now ran lengthwise down both legs of his jeans.   

"Cut it out," he grumbled, self-consciously fiddling with his newly 
dyed locks.  "Can I come in or not?"  

She shrugged one shoulder.  "Sure.  Oh, but...just one thing first."  

Puzzled, Masato gave her an uncertain nod, and Naoko, with a smirk, 
cupped a hand over one cheek, and rubbed her own against Masato's.  

"Okay," she said once she'd moved back into her own space, "Now you 
can come in." 

Masato rubbed his knuckles self-consciously over his smooth 
jaw.  "Don't make such a big deal out of it," he groused, to which 
Naoko only laughed and pinched him lightly on the chin.  

"It is a big deal.  Chinatsu's going to go crazy when she sees you.  
She's *always* going on about how your whiskers scratch whenever she 
hugs you."

"That bad?  I had no idea..."  

"Forge that.  I just want to know who is responsible for this 
miraculous transformation," Naoko said as they entered her apartment.  
"Perhaps if I ply you with wine, you'll confess his or her name?"  She 
smiled at him over her shoulder as she rounded the corner, leaving him 
at the door to remove his shoes. 

Even if he'd let the past eight years go by without any visits to his 
family, Masato figured he'd still remember just how that apartment 
was laid out--though it looked very different decor wise now.  The 
walls werepale green and edged at the corners with delicate wisps of 
painted wisteria vines; on the low table in the middle of the room, a 
pink, rose scented candle burned in a frosted glass cup.  Aside from 
the table, the only other pieces of furniture in the room were a desk 
with a bright lamp, a tall bookshelf crammed with novels and manga 
alike, and a metal stand that held a cd player and a small color TV; 
a talk show was playing out on the screen, sound off.  When he 
entered the living room, Naoko switched off the set.

"I did interrupt you," he said, gesturing pointedly at the desk; a 
ledger lay open atop a small, scattered pile of papers.  

"Yes, thankfully," Naoko said with a faint smile.  "I don't think I 
could stand to do much more account balancing tonight."  

"Oh?  Problems?"

She waved a hand towards her desk.  "Nothing out of the ordinary.  
The roof needs patching in Kanawazari-san's room, and Hasanori-san is 
behind on his rent." Naoko walked over to the table, intending to 
seat herself beside it, but then abruptly spun on her heel and headed 
for her kitchenette.  "And I promised you a glass of wine.  Have a 
seat, Masato, and tell me what brings you here this evening." 

"I...don't know.  I just..."  He threw one hand up.  "I was walking 
home and I wound up here."

"For no reason?"  

"Well, I..."  His sentence ended with a shrug.  Masato began to toy 
with the candle Naoko had lit on the table.  

"Is Chinatsu here?" he asked.  

"Yes," said Naoko, as she set a pair of pale blue sake cups down on 
the table, along with a bottle.  "I sent her to bed about an hour 
ago, which probably means she's lying under the covers with a 
flashlight and a book."   

Masato smiled at that, murmuring thanks for the plum wine when she 
offered it to him.  Pensively, he sipped the sweet liquor, relishing 
the way it singed histhroat as he swallowed it.  

"You've had a fight with that boy, haven't you?" she asked after 
several moments of silence had passed.  

"What makes you think that?"

"The wandering, your reticence.  You forget that I knew you for a 
year before I married you, Masato.  You can't hide everything from 
me." 

"Ah..." He drained his cup, and gratefully accepted another.  "Naru 
and I did argue," he muttered.  

"Oh," Naoko said.  "Over something serious?"  

"No.  Or I don't think so.  I...sort of stuck my foot in my mouth, he 
got mad and stormed off." He looked up then, and found her sharp 
regard turned his way.  

"And then you made yourself over?"

"This wasn't my idea." 

"Oh, stop grumbling," she chided.  "I think you look good.  I also 
think you ought to go over there and show him how you look in 
laundered clothes, sans whiskers.  Or is something else stopping you 
from going for a visit?"

He scowled at his cup.  "Don't you think I ought to give him up?"  

"Why would you?  I found him to be perfectly sweet and 
charming...never mind his eccentricities."  

"He's young," Masato countered.  

"Yes, so?"  

"Well...maybe he ought to be with someone else?  Someone his age."  

She set down her empty cup, and propped her chin on her hand.  "Did 
he say he wanted that?"  

"He didn't say anything, Naoko.  He only ran off."  

"Then you don't need to be making any assumptions about what he wants 
until you talk to him."  

"But--"

"Masato," she said firmly.  "Talk to Naru.  Or don't you really want 
him?"  

"Well, sure I do!  I just..."  

"Just what?"  

"I just want him to be happy," finished Masato with a weary little 
sigh.  

"Mmhmm..." Naoko murmured in a faraway tone.  "I see."  

"I've got a problem."

"Well, I won't disagree with that," Naoko countered.  "And it seems 
to be mostly here."  She tapped him on the forehead.  

"Eh?"

"You're too hung up on the age angle.  Who cares, Masato?  If you 
love him, and he loves you, then..."  She shrugged, smiling.  "And 
you do, don't you?"

"...Yeah," he said, frowning a bit.  "This is strange, talking about 
my male lover with my ex-wife."  

Naoko laughed at that, and settled her hand over his.  "No one ever 
said our lives would be commonplace."  

"No," Masato said, shaking his head, "they didn't."  

The mood shifted just the tiniest bit, the air seemingly softening 
like mist.  Their hands entwined, and slipped past to brush against a 
throat here, a cheek there, until their arms were around each other.  
Their lips met, and parted, and for as long as she held him, Masato 
felt like he was eighteen again.  All too soon for his liking, Naoko 
extricated herself from his embrace.  

"Go.  Mend your relationship with Naru-hana.  And on Saturday, come 
back.  We'll have Moroccan takeout for dinner, and you can tell me 
all about it." 

"Okay," Masato said after a hesitant pause, and Naoko lightly drummed 
her fingers on one bare cheek. 

"Just...keep shaving, hm?"

***

At the onset of evening, Hiratsuka had clad herself in flashy neon and 
insipid lamp light, and made herself ready to greet those who lived 
for the night and all its wonders. From his open window, Yuuji could 
hear the intermittent blasts of car horns, and distant laughter, and 
a tiny part of him wanted to flee from the confines of his room to 
sample Hiratsuka's after hours delights--if indeed there was much to 
be had there. Unfortunately, the web of laziness he'd been caught in 
was too strong. 

Yuuji'd made one appearance on the streets of the city after his long 
soak in the spring that afternoon, and he returned an hour later 
bearing a pair of used paperback novels he'd bought off a pretty, 
sixteen year old goth girl clad in a long, lacy black dress, a can of 
coffee with cream from a vending machine, and a pint of Kentucky 
bourbon, 110 proof. He'd lounged on the tatami beside the kotatsu 
table in the middle of the room, only laying down his book when the 
maid arrived with his dinner. It wasn't that the novels he'd chosen 
were all that gripping; it was more that Yuuji didn't want to give 
his mind a chance to wander. 

Because all that day, if his mind didn't have anything to occupy it, 
his thoughts would drift onto a long, lean body of smooth white 
flesh, and how it felt under his hands, with himself buried deep 
inside it. If he closed his eyes, he could see Aya's own, the milky 
purple of a newborn twilight.  The memory still served to set his 
pulse racing, and if he didn't shake himself free of it, his cock 
would swell and harden, and ache to be touched. 

Like now. 

Yuuji cast aside the book in favor of the open bottle that stood to 
the right of his empty rice bowl, and he drank deeply of from it, 
swiping at his mouth with the side of his hand once he'd taken his 
fill. His eyes fluttered shut, and he tried to will away the urge 
between his legs, but...

The bottle landed on the table with a hard, resounding thump, and 
Yuuji only paused long enough to reassure himself that it was still 
whole before falling onto his back on the tatami, and whipping open 
his thin, summer yukata. Yuuji closed his eyes as he tunneled his 
hand around his sex, so he could better imagine that it wasn't his 
palm and fingers that covered his length, but a surprisingly 
succulent mouth, long red fringe dancing over his spread thighs and 
tickling his groin every time he'd swayed. 

It wasn't long before his orgasm exploded in his head, and Yuuji 
sagged on the mats, panting, as tears trickled slowly from the 
corners of his eyes.

*****