In'ei    
[Shadow]

A Yami No Matsuei Fic by Murasaki Suishou (murasakisuishou@yahoo.com) 
and the Queen of Blueberry Toast (TheKWOBT@gundamwing.net).

*~*~*

Four- Kogoe [Whisper]

*~*~*

All was not quiet in the house of the dragon gods.  The eldest child 
was in the process of making preparations for his camping trip (since 
it wasn't going to be all for show, as was first plotted), and his 
sister was helping him (and making her own plans, of course), with 
this servant or that fielding questions from both over supplies, 
appropriate clothing, etc.  The air was all raised voices and boxes 
being dragged out and put back, and the lord of the manor soon grew 
weary of it all, and sought peace in the sanctity of his upstairs 
rooms; a bedroom/sitting room arrangement, both relatively lacking in 
ostentation.  He did not care for such fripperies of design.  

For example: In his sitting room, the area he was currently haunting, 
there was a squat teak chest with brass handles, it's doors inlaid 
with mother-of-pearl, upon which sat a few bottles of spirits and 
glasses to accompany them.  There were a pair of maple chairs, with 
raised, deeply curved sides but no back, sitting just a few inches 
apart before one of the two low, rectangular windows.  Another chaise-
-covered in plain, dark blue silk--sat in the middle of the room, 
before a low table which was laden with books and a tea service that 
was presently at rest.  Voluminous red silk lanterns hung in trios in 
every corner, and white voile covered the windows.  

SohRyu sat not on the chaise or the chairs, but on the floor beyond 
the table, lounging on a few cushions he'd purloined from the linen 
stores.  On the coffee table, amid his selected texts, sat a newly 
opened bottle of Benedictine--a glass of which he held in one hand.  
It was his foremost favorite libation; one he liked to savor in those 
moments he spent alone to brood.  He hadn't had any until that day, 
however, when brown paper-wrapped box showed up at his door in the 
hands of a messenger boy.  Rikugou's usual one.  SohRyu figured it 
was his way of trying to sweeten his mood.  He couldn't help but be 
amused over how badly his effort had failed.  Nothing would improve 
his mood at the moment, nothing save for Kijin coming to tell him 
that he'd changed his mind.  

Oh, it wasn't that he was jealous of his friends.  He was glad that 
his eldest had found companionship in Tsuzuki...And yes, even Byakko 
to a degree.  But the idea of him actually leaving, and for such an 
extended period of time, only left him cold.  The house would seem 
that much lonelier with the absence of his children.  

SohRyu quickly drained the glass, then sat up to pour himself another 
one.  He was startled out of his brooding by a knock at the door, the 
bottle's tip wavering above the glass' mouth.  Benedictine drizzled 
down its frosted side to pool on the table.  He set the bottle down 
with bad grace, and began to blot at the spill with the sleeve of his 
black robe.  

"Who is it?" he grumbled.  

"It is I, SohRyu-sama," called the housekeeper. "You have a guest."  

"Oh.  Well, I'm not in the mood for visitors," SohRyu replied, 
lifting the glass for a sip.  "Tell them to go away."  

"Very good, my lord...Oh!  No, you can't--"

The knob ground faintly in the catch, and the door parted just enough 
from the frame for him to clearly hear the goings on beyond.  "It's 
okay, my good woman.  He's been expecting me," answered a very 
familiar male voice.  "Now, you just go along."  

"But...Rikugou-sama.  I--"  

"It's all right," SohRyu called.  "He can't let one day go by without 
annoying me.  Might as well let him get it over with."  

"A-all right, SohRyu-sama," came the housekeeper's uncertain answer, 
the rustle of her dress as she curtseyed.  The door opened and 
closed, and slippered feet sounded three shuffling beats on the 
polished, dark wooden floor.  

"Ah, you received my gift."  

Without turning to face his guest, SohRyu held the glass up, and the 
diffuse light from the windows turned to diamonds in the pale 
liquid.  "Benedictine is my favorite liqueur.  I'm sure you knew I 
wouldn't leave it long."   

"Hm.  One of the few things you can't resist."  

"I pride myself on my restraint."  He took another sip, and then set 
the glass down on the floor beside his makeshift couch.  "Are you 
just going to stand there staring, or will you choose to sit while 
you do it?"  

Rikugou laughed, and once more his footsteps shuffled across the 
floor.  "I'll have a seat.  And I'll have a drink too, if you don't 
mind."  

"Glasses are over there," SohRyu said, waving a hand at the 
chest.  "While you pour, you can begin to tell me why you are here."  

One cordial glass was plucked away like a flower, and Rikugou 
returned, choosing the chaise for his resting place.  "A man who 
doesn't waste time.  I do like that."  

SohRyu cocked one brow.  "You are trying to charm me.  That's never 
good."  

"Maybe, maybe not.  Depends on how you are going to take what I want 
to say to you."  

"And just what is that?"  

"Well~l..."  Rikugou filled his glass, and set the bottle 
aside.  "You're brooding."  

"Yes," agreed SohRyu.  

"It has to stop."  

"Oh?  Does it?" said SohRyu, with a wry chuckle.  "Care to tell me 
why?"  

Rikugou settled himself sideways against the couch's gently curving 
rest.  "Because it's boring.  Because you aren't doing yourself any 
good.  Because...it won't make Kijin stay."  

SohRyu's eyes darkened.  "Who says I want him to stay?"  

"No one has to.  It's very clear how you feel."  

"And how do I feel, O wise one?"  

Rikugou snorted.  "You are too possessive of him, for one thing.  
That's hardly healthy."  

SohRyu stiffened, on the defensive.  "What's wrong with wanting the 
best for your children?"  

"I don't believe your reluctance to let him go has anything to do 
with 'wanting the best' for him."  

"How would you know my reasons?" SohRyu growled.  Rikugou calmly 
averted his eyes as he sipped his drink.  They didn't leave his glass 
when he lowered it once more to the well of his joined hands.  

"He's young," he countered.  "He wants to live a little."

SohRyu adamantly shook his head.  "Not with Touda, he won't."  

"Even though he loves him?"  The soothsayer gave him a questioning 
sort of look.  "Well, SohRyu-sama--if he can't have who he wants, who 
might he have, hm?"  

SohRyu glowered, and a soft growl rose from his throat as he jumped 
to his feet.  "You've said quite enough, Rikugou!  I want--"

"Gomen, gomen!" cried Rikugou, hurriedly setting the glass down 
holding his hands up in a warding gesture.  "I did not come here to 
start an argument with you, SohRyu-sama."  

"*Oh*?  Then why *did* you come?"  

He folded his hands primly in his lap.  "I wanted to invite you to 
over the night Kijin-sama goes away.  Just you.  I recently acquired 
two excellent vintages of Perrier-Jouet, and I thought you might like 
to come over and partake of one, along with some fruit and cheese.  
We could also continue our chess game, if you like."  

SohRyu looked doubtful.  "Champagne.  You want me to come drink 
champagne."  

"Hm, yes."  

He looked down at the floor, slightly puzzled.  Then calculating.  "And 
they're fine?"  

"Oh," Rikugou nodded, "very much so, yes, my lord."  

SohRyu pursed his lips, considering, and then gave one nod in 
assent.  "All right.  I will come.  What time would you want me 
there?"  

"Say...around eight?"  

"Done."  

"Splendid."  A grin suddenly lit up Rikugou's face, and he stood up 
to make him a formal bow.  "I shall see you then."  

SohRyu curtly nodded once more, then turned away from him altogether, 
snatching up a book from the table and heading to the window side 
chairs with it as Rikugou made his exit.  He flopped down in one, and 
opened the book to read.  

And missed the knowing smile the raven god wore as he closed the door 
behind him.  

***

Byakko began again, "And after were spread the nutella on the emus, 
we'll be home free! Assuming the trolley shows up on time, which it 
will, because the people driving it will believe..."

Kijin gently patted his friend on the shoulder of his lacey, pink haori 
so as to more gracefully interrupt the tiger god's latest recitation of 
their plan, which he did, but only bouncing up and down.  "Annou ne. 
Byakko-san, you've been a superb help to us, but..."

"Yay! Superb help!" mimicked Tenko she darted past, swatting at an 
escapee super-ball with the iron sandwich press.

"But what?" Byakko inquired, pouting a good deal, as he never did like 
the sound of "but"s from anyone.

"But if you embellish our plans any further we shall NEVER get to 
Touda's palace, but rather spend all of our lives carrying out a clever 
plan by which we might arrive at Touda's palace.  You've already 
arranged it so we shall actually go camping as opposed to pretending we 
go camping."

"Not that we mind," added Tenkou.

Their fellow conspirator sighed then, and hung his tail, which managed 
to upset one of the bags and send foil packages of dehydrated turkey 
stroganoff flying clear across the room.  No small feat considering the 
three of them were presently holed up in Kijin's enormous, round 
bedchamber, two perched on the edge of the bed, which had been, that 
morning, got up like a lilypad.  The youngest dragon god was still 
chasing her super ball, or at least, one of her many, many super balls.

In time though, Byakko sighed, "You know, I think you're right... can we 
spread nutella on some emus just the same though? I think nutella'd 
emus would make a lovely present for my Wittle Bean Cake."

"Wittle Bean Cake?"

"My thoughts exactly!" one of the maids went on as she passed with an 
armload of tarp.  "Byakko-sama never exactly been one to eat anything 
remotely related to a bean."

"No no! My Wittle Bean Cake the person!"

Kijin blinked.  "Watari brought one of your bean cakes to life?"

"Not that either! I wasn't going to tell you buuuuuut."

Every single servant in the room scurried over and came to stand in a 
ring about the bed, leaning in and giggling faintly here and there.

"I HAVE A BOYFRIEND!"

Both of the young dragon gods set off noisemakers conjured from the 
sleeves of their robes.  Tissue paper flowers flew every which way.  As 
did super-balls.  Unfortunately, the super balls hurt, and all of the 
hired help made good in fleeing them.  The younger of the siblings leap 
up upon the bed and cast her arms about Byakko's neck, whilst the elder 
embraced him about the shoulders.  But only for a moment.

It always surprised the tiger god just how Touda had become so smitten 
with a boy who dressed so modesty, was so decorous and sparing with his 
touches.  Was so fuzzy-rabbit cute, as opposed to sexy-bitch cute.

But who was he to argue with the Whiles of Wuv(tm)?

"Oh! I'm so happy for you!"

"Me too! Who is it?"

"Why, 'tis Tatsumi-san."

They both promptly gave him looks suggesting they did not perhaps 
believe in much of the Whiles of Wuv as much as he did.

Kijin more than Tenkou, for the little girl's face brightened 
considerably after a moment and she began to dance about the two boys 
with a pair of lace fans.  

"I'm happy for you." Her brother finally said, nodding then, and rising 
to his slippered feet.  He had been in his underwear for most of the 
morning and as much of the afternoon as had passed, but of course, for 
him, underwear happened to be a plain under-robe of light Corinthian 
blue cotton.  His finer garments for the day- those which might well 
have been harmed by tent-poles and backpack straps -had spent time then 
hanging from his doorframe.  They flew off though just then, and as 
elaborate as they might have been, he had them on in a moment- black 
silk painted with glowing cerulean lotuses and dragonflies.  In this he 
whirled around once before bowing to his sister and his guest.

"Thanks! I'm happy for me too! Ukyu!"

"I shall be return in an hour or so.  There are a few arrangements I 
must attend to upstairs- about the cypress grove... er... present lack 
thereof.  I'll hurry back."

They waved to him as he vanished out the door, and he waved back, 
caught Tenkou's wink, and Tenkou's 'So tell me all about you and 
Tatsumi!' before he started up the stairs to his father's rooms.  She 
knew he had lied.  Funny how she didn't see fit to tell Byakko... she 
told Byakko everything, as if he were rather her favorite confidante 
doll.

/But then again, I suppose we all have things like that... people like 
that./

As he ascended the stairs to his father's lair though.

"But not me of course.  Ah, but if I was a stuffed toy I wouldn't want 
to listen to myself either."

And he laughed in spite of the draft.  

***

The sheers over the windows stirred in the breeze, and the door 
rocked open and shut from its worn lock. Unable to concentrate on 
his reading, SohRyu had set his book aside after the maid had brought 
a small plate of the candies he'd requested from the chef that 
morning. His children liked sweets, same as those elsewhere, and 
he'd hoped to make them smile again. Perhaps they would accomplish 
what he could not so readily achieve. 

Judging by the way his son was laughing, however, perhaps they 
weren't needed at all. 

He knocked, then entered when SohRyu called. The elder dragon rose 
from his seat by the window, a column of plain black silk and unbound 
hair. A hesitant smile set his face aglow. 

"Your packing--is it going smoothly? Are you finding everything you 
need to take?"

***

"Yes, Outousama," Kijin replied, his words quite unadorned, though his 
eyes glided over to the tray over candies, and settled there for an 
instant.  "It's going very well.  You will be happy to know we have 
managed to keep Byakko out of all of your breakable possessions."

They both smiled at this, and would have, even had the mood been truly 
dour.  It wasn't, all melancholic strains aside.

/Even for the wicked like me I suppose there is a certain kind of 
regret./

/You have to leave someday, Kijin.  Perhaps there was a time I might 
have stayed here, shut off from the world until I took your place on 
the council but... those days were ending long before I was born, so to 
speak.  And besides, Tenkou is a better candidate than me for the 
guardianship./

But his worries broke off then, and purpose reclaimed him... in a way.  
"Annou... that platter of sweets, I don't suppose..."

Before he supposed a thing, the silver circle had been lifted up and 
born before her- a mirrored ocean seen from above the chocolate puffs 
of clouds.  And what clouds! He knew one at once to be a mouche of mint 
marshmallow bound up in silken cocoa delight- one of the cooks' 
specialties when it came to dessert.  And shortly he found himself 
pulling up the sleeve of his robe to keep it from the delicate 
confection which was well known for its being prone to melting with 
little provocation.

"It's just that.  I thought perhaps I'd better come and say good-bye 
*properly* to you now, since we might be rather rushing come tomorrow."

As he spoke, he didn't seem to be the least be aware of the tiny smear 
of chocolate which had come to occupy one corner of his lips.

***

SohRyu exchanged the small platter for a square of snowy linen the 
maid had left behind with the chocolates, knowing as did all how 
messy such fragile confections could be. "Here," he said, 
approaching Kijin with one fringed end of the napkin poised over his 
index finger. "You have chocolate on your face." 

The boy tilted his head back, lifting his face and standing perfectly 
still under his father's dabbing fingertip. He could feel the swell 
of his lower lip beneath the cloth, and when he drew the napkin back, 
he found his son's silvery eyes turned upon him. SohRyu, drawn to 
the velvety appearance of Kijin's cheek, cupped his hand there, 
brushing a thumb over the deep curve to gently caress the corner he'd 
just cleaned. The boy inhaled sharply, surprise shining in his eyes 
and touching his cheeks with a faint blush. SohRyu smiled. 

"I am glad you thought to make your farewells now, where we can 
indeed make them properly, my beloved...son."

***

Kijin closed his eyes then, and he smiled, as if it was but a some 
small sort of jest that he had hidden his eyes away from the Guardian 
of the East.  

SohRyu and he let him,.  Let him hide away the platinum-blue pools, 
where perhaps not even the emperor dared toy with the elder dragon so. 

"You keep calling me that.  But even the tips of your fingers seem to 
be saying something entirely different.  The way you move- I can hear 
you -even how you draw breath."

The shell of chocolate about the surface of the mint cream broke in two 
then, and one half he held up, finding the lips of his father well 
enough without his sight.

***

The tips of Kijin's fingers breached the barrier of his slightly 
parted lips, and SohRyu chanced a lick at them around the luscious 
chocolate morsel.  The boy's eyelids fluttered, chest heaving with a 
single, jealous breath.  SohRyu caught his wrist when his fingers 
fell free, bending to kiss his open palm.  

"If you hear more in the way I touch you, the way I act around you--
it's not surprising.  I can speak of war, of philosophy with ease; 
such things I am well versed in.  But love?  No.  Such gentleness you 
and your sister taught me.  Tenkou's sweetness is a delight to me.  
But you..."  

He fell silent for a moment, wonderingly brushing his fingers across 
Kijin's cheek.  "You don't merely delight me," he whispered.  "You 
enflame my soul."  

***

At those words the godling's eyes shot open, though the lashes still 
drifted as shadows over the Sytheran blue of their irises.  His gaze 
shone softly, having blossomed into the poise of low light.  And there, 
in pieces, suspended just above and just below the wet, culpable 
surface of his sight was a kind of deep and empathetic sadness smote 
with knowing wonder.

Kijin though, did not blush anymore than he had already.  He said 
simply then, as he drew one step nearer, almost fading into the 
rippling black robes of his father: "Do you see your eyes in mine? 
Their reflection, and not only what lines close to yours lie there, but 
the mirror of them proper?  There is no more that I may do to answer 
those, save let you look into yourself.  And be there enflamed."

The last of the mint puff in his hands had nearly melted into his skin, 
but he drew it up, and he had his own fingers with it on, plunging each 
digit down against his tongue where before it had barely been caressed 
by the elder shikigami's mouth.

"Otousama."

He left the dragon god's shadow then, and made a slow procession of his 
own in the light of the many window panes, which had gone an almost 
metallic bluish grey now that the sun had ridden through the afternoon 
clouds and onto the other side of the palace.  He had come to the door 
passing five of himself, and finding nothing strange of it in him, and 
once there, he locked it with the verdigris key taken from the folds of 
his garments.  The bit of metal he let fall then, and it chimed as it 
hit the floor. 

Then the boy spun around, his back flat to the ivory inlays of the 
panels behind him, a breathless smile upon his lips.

"For whatever you are captivated by captivates me as well. No matter 
what."

***

SohRyu's gaze stole from the key that sat all alone upon the floor to 
meet Kijin's own.  "So in loving you, I love myself?  And you, 
yourself?  Hm.  Perhaps there's something to that.  We are," he laced 
his fingers together, "one."  

His hands fell to his waist, to loosen the long, fringed sash he'd 
wrapped around it that morning.  "You know it as well as I, my son.  
So...why do you yearn for another?  He might make you happy for a 
little while, but...he doesn't know you like I do."  

The sash fell to the floor, and was abandoned there as SohRyu began 
his threading way across the room, going blue then pale as the slowly 
expiring sunlight bathed him through the panes.  The buttons holding 
his robe closed slid from their holes under his fingers.  He shrugged 
the robe from his shoulders, and let it billow down upon the 
discarded key.  Only his grey underrobe remained, thin and gauzy.  

"And I know you so well," he murmured huskily, gathering Kijin into 
his arms.  "Let me show you just how much."   

***

He was glad when his father went on without speaking once more of the 
feathered snake who so haunted his dreams and his smaller moments of 
lust.  Why? Why indeed! Sohryu knew nothing of the sense of willing 
pleasure between himself and Touda- only that it existed, that it was 
real beyond concept.  

Maybe... it was all just a story in it haunting his mind, haunting his 
heart- the queen of the light falls beyond love with the lord of the 
deep, dark seas and all their little friends miss them.

But now, he had nothing to answer for, as long as the door stayed 
closed.  Safe in the certainty of that, he leaned to SohRyu's neck 
then, kissed him there, and smelled the sea salt nothingness of his 
skin.

Kijin sighed, and parted the mist of his father's underrobe as his 
hands slipped inside, and settled against the center of his chest, 
working out from there in lazy circles.  The arms about him wound much 
closer to his skin, bit by bit until it was only his palms between 
their hearts.

So he raised his head at last, and they both knew the wish that their 
lips would be so fortunate.  

***

Gathering Kijin to him, SohRyu closed the narrow gap between their 
bodies as he captured his mouth in a heated kiss.  The door creaked 
softly under their combined weight, and the elder god eased his son 
away from it with the parting of their lips.  He gazed into the 
silvered depths of his son's eyes, savoring the sight of him, of the 
way he felt.  

"It has been too long since you came to me this way.  I thought you 
had forgotten."  

His son shook his head, smiling, and his fine-boned hands swept the 
gauzy underrobe off SohRyu's shoulders.  It crumpled in a semi-circle 
at his feet, leaving him bare to his silken touch.  But before the 
boy could caress him as he might wish, SohRyu scooped him up in his 
arms, and carried him directly into his bedroom.  It was even more 
fanciful than one might associate with him.  The walls were covered 
with silver silk.  The cinnabar bed stood upon a low dais, its 
mattress draped with silver, blue, and green.  Curtains of densely 
woven white net hung from rods suspended from the muraled ceiling; 
dragons drifting through the clouds.  

Climbing the dais, SohRyu pushed him through the gap in the sheers, and 
lay him on the bed.  Stretching out alongside him, he caught him in his 
arms again, pressing fervent kisses to his mouth, even as his hands 
impatiently worked open the fastening of his clothing.  When he had 
laid him bare at last, he pulled back to look at him, taking in his 
slender waist, the delicate outline of his chest; the so-kissable, 
tawny nipples that puckered under his gaze.  He brushed a thumb over 
one, eliciting a soft gasp from Kijin.  SohRyu followed it with a kiss, 
gratified by the feel of his son's arms twining around his neck as if 
he wanted to hold him there.  

"Oh, Kijin," he whispered against his velvety skin, his fingers 
tracing his sides.  "My love."  

***

The godling smiled then, the same faint and distant way he did for all 
the world outside their bedchamber: the same look, but not the same 
serenity, same gorgeous cataclysm.  

"Even were the rest of the universe all my lovers, and you ages gone 
from it all, I would come here, and I would wait for you."

SohRyu picked himself up from his son's chest, though the rivulets of 
his azure hair fell about them both, wrapped all around the otherwise 
naked skin, and the shadow of the robe as it had fallen from Kijin's 
shoulders; from his thighs, and his chest.  

"But I have you now, and you have me, so there shall be no waiting."

So his smile turned bedroom wicked then, his white teeth with their 
tiny fangs peering out before he echoes then, "My love."

They tumbled to their sides in a river of seafoam china silk, some of 
it catching around their bodies, and some hovering around them like 
mist.  The boy breathed deeply, and once more for SohRyu's mouth swept- 
finding it, parting it, pushing himself into it as their lips dripped, 
and his throat filled with small caresses.  They were waist to waist 
now, pale skin to pale skin, as he brushed his fresh stiffness over the 
likewise responding body at his side.

***

Desire surged afresh through SohRyu, and he clasped Kijin that much 
tighter to him, and his kisses grew more eager, one after the other 
until they were both breathless and slightly dizzy.  Brushing back a 
few long tendrils of his son's hair, SohRyu lowered his head to the 
curve of Kijin's shoulder, panting softly against his skin.  

"So you admit it again.  I am your love, and not another.  I had 
thought you'd grown tired of me."  A kiss.  "I am happy that you have 
not."  

Murmuring soothingly, Kijin let his hand hands coast down his back, and 
SohRyu opened his mouth to lightly rake his teeth down the side of his 
son's neck--meaning to tickle and not harm.  The boy gasped.  SohRyu 
laved the pinkish line he'd left with his tongue, then slid away from 
him just enough to better gaze upon him.  His skin felt like velvet 
against his stroking hands, everywhere he touched him.  

He traced the brown nubs of his nipples with his fingertips; felt the 
ridges of his ribs under muscle; the dip of his waist, and the narrow 
rise of his hips.  Kijin nudged them forward just a little, enough to 
make his meaning clear, but SohRyu ignored him.  His hand lingered 
upon his thigh, sketching lazy circles, and he sat back to take in 
the sight of him again.  The godling's chest was rising and falling 
faster with his breath, lips parted and eyes bright.  SohRyu swept 
forward to kiss him deeply again, now gently caressing his rosy sex.  

"Roll over onto your stomach for me, Kijin."  

***

The boy canted his father the vary slightest look of puzzlement through 
his cast-asunder bangs, for it wasn't sheer intent he found in the 
azure eyes so close to his own.  No, there was nothing else settled 
there, like the heavens on a sunny day settle over the ground just 
before a playful shower that blows up unexpectedly.

The faint wondering passed between them, and into his father's face as 
well, for Kijin was never one to show his worry if he could help it... 
but was this really... truly... worry?  He shook his head then, and smiled 
rather, "Aaa, so you've thought of something new for us to play, 
Otousama."

A savoring instant of a kiss then, and with a whirl of whipped cream 
silk all around, the boy gathered himself up from the bed, and 
straightened his fallen locks for a moment before diving down once more 
to the covers, where he took one colored marshmallow pillow in his 
arms, and scrunched it up under his shoulders and his head.  Kicked his 
feet- thumpthumpthump!  Let's not be so serious.

"Well, I like it so far.  What comes next?"

***

SohRyu laid a hand upon his son's flexing calves, urging his limbs 
down to the covers. Once Kijin had taken the hint, and let himself go 
limp, the elder god lessened his grip.  Very lightly, he traced the 
firm mound of one calf.  

"What comes next...is this..."  Gently, SohRyu coaxed Kijin's legs 
apart, and traced their shape with fingertips only, moving with all 
the pressure of a feather, up and back.  He noted how the boy's 
breath seemed to catch in his throat whenever he stroked his inner 
thighs, how his body would tense.  His legs moved further and further 
apart with every upwards sweep of his caresses, allowing him to move 
higher towards his center.  He thought he heard him whisper his name 
into the pillow he held, soft and sweet as a plea.  

SohRyu ceased his petting, and moved away just long enough to 
retrieve something from the slender wooden chest he kept under the 
bed.  

"No, love, the game's not over yet," he assured him, as he worked the 
cork free of the dainty blue glass bottle he held.  "Far from it."  

The cork landed with a muffled plop onto the floor, and SohRyu tipped 
the bottle over Kijin's naked rear, intending to use it all; the rose 
scented oil trickled over his skin, oozing into those secret places.  
The boy curled his toes, but otherwise remained still.  SohRyu, 
smiling softly, dipped his fingers into the residue coating Kijin's 
skin, edging them gently between his cheeks.  

Kijin gasped.  SohRyu shifted so he crouched over him, and bent to 
kiss the curve of his lower back.  His index finger, oiled 
thoroughly, easily breached the opening of Kijin's body.  

"Do you like my game so far?"  

***

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah..." Kijin gasped as his father's finger slipped down 
inside of him to press the soft muscle there in, and rub it so there 
was no question of touch, of easing him open for something yet to enter 
him.  The memories of all the times before he'd sat, straddling 
SohRyu's hips, of kissing, of cradling his shaft inside and out... it was 
enough to make his own shudder against the sheets, and the muscles in 
his back go all to knots against the bone.  

"Yes..." he finally managed to stammer as the digit that had breeched him 
lunged slowly for his sweet spot, caressing him there even harder than 
before.  "My love."

The familiar, silken lips of the elder dragon god smiled against his 
spine, and stroked the knots about his shoulder blades, even as his 
mouth crept lower and lower, almost near enough to bite his rosebud, 
but he stopped just short, and rather leaned into the thrusts with his 
finger, sliding it out, and running it up and down his thigh a moment, 
a question where the air was so heavy with the vapor of the dead roses 
it was almost impossible for him to imagine speaking with it.  But he 
did, because he was twisting and floating around inside with misty, 
slow eros.

"The only thing I think that I would change... perhaps, it would be even 
more delightful with two fingers?"

When his lover nodded, his hair swept out over him a moment, and this 
time, the first digit was joined by a second, and both wandered deeper 
than the first had dared go.

"Oh... yes."

***

"I'm so glad I could please you," said SohRyu. "I bet I could 
make you ever happier, though. Shall I try?" He punctuated his 
question with a wriggle of those fingers he had buried inside Kijin, 
making him twitch and purr. 

"Ah, I will take that as a 'yes'." Easing his probing digits out of 
his son, SohRyu swept his tongue along the curve of one plump cheek, 
and rolled onto his hip. He rubbed his slick hand over his sex until 
it was glistening from crown to root, and then he turned to his son 
again, speckling his lower back with a few more kisses as he rose to 
his knees. 

"Kijin..." he whispered, crawling between his son's spread legs. "So 
beautiful..." The elder dragon stroked his hair away from his back, 
laying it out like a banner across the covers; laying caress after 
caress over his skin, feeling the shift of bone and muscle as the boy 
lazily stretched under him. 

"I can't resist you...at...all..." He sharply drew a breath as they 
slid together, the smooth meeting of ass and groin heralded 
brilliantly by a burst of light in his head. 

"You...feel so good."

***

"You... a-as well..." stammered Kijin, his lips quivering all the while as 
he fought away a gasp.  He hadn't been in bed with anyone in ages, and 
longer had it been since anyone had taken him at all.  He had feared 
his body would refuse to open for his father's penis, fingers or no 
inside of him before it.  The tip though surged all the way in without 
any coaxing, and it most deeply met his muscles which shuddered around 
the shaft driven into him.

Some vague memory in him recalled how he would have to lie still 
before, when he had been smaller; when the cock now settled and 
twitching with pleasure against him was far too big for him to take all 
the way, and he would have to trust Sohryu utterly with fucking him.

The hand once more against his neck, seemed to remind him that the 
elder dragon held all those memories as well.

So Kijin turned, and he sucked violently on those fingers, smiling and 
giggling about them as he leaned into the first thrusts, and made the 
some all his own.  

"Yes... I seem to remember this game now, or some other way to play it."

A little shiver then, for he had felt his own stiffness leak onto the 
sheets.

"I love you, Otousama.  And not just because you remember too."

***
 
"Kijin," SohRyu whispered, his fingers soaring over the boy's silky 
skin.  "I have never forgotten..."  His breath caught, then fled him 
in a near silent sigh.  "I'm only sorry I have been neglecting you of 
late.  It will never happen again."  He bent to kiss him on the back 
of the neck, sliding into him again.  

The two rolled in unison to one side, and SohRyu gently tugged his 
fingers free from his son's mouth, and sent them dancing down the 
boy's chest and stomach.  He raked his nails gingerly through the 
dark floss flocked around his groin.  Kijin moaned softly in 
impatience, and SohRyu chuckled.  Then he gave him what he wished.  
  
"I only wanted to tease you, my beloved," he crooned in the boy's ear 
before kissing it.  Kijin wrapped an arm around his father's neck, 
and their lips came together.  For a long while, their voices 
remained silent; the air was riddled with their gasps, quiet moans 
and the soft, wet smacking of their lips.  The bed creaked faintly 
with ever subtle shift of their bodies.  

And then SohRyu gathered Kijin closer against his tensing body, 
jerking away from his kisses.  A roar tore from him, and the air 
crackled and sparked with a sudden burst of energy.  SohRyu's 
enormous wings had sprung free from the magic that rendered them 
invisible.  They were shaped like bat's wings, velvety to the touch, 
and they shone in iridescent shades of blue, light and dark, in the 
light from the white lanterns dangling from the bedroom ceiling.  

***

"Ohhhhhhh, Outousama must be VERY mad at Kijin ni-chan today!" Tenkou 
giggled to her favorite nurse who had just come in with almond cookies 
when the ruckus upstairs began.  The servant herself said nothing, but 
patted the little girl on her head before sweeping out the door again, 
blushing madly and trying not to scream.

***

The crack of aqua light, the cry, the sparkling shade that rent the air 
around him; between the joy of seeing his father's wings gush into 
being and his last few desperate thrusts, Kijin too climaxed on the 
edge of the final impassioned surge that rent him.  

It ached for an instant like the first push of SohRyu's flesh within 
his own.  He felt his skin open but not bleed, his muscles clench and 
flicker inside and against his shoulders and a little glow enfolded 
both he and the elder dragon god.  His swift, faint cry troubled the 
air and own wings came but gently, as swift and blinding as the climax 
had been.

In human form he wore nothing so majestic as his father about his back- 
cherubim in Victorian paintings had wings somewhat larger than his own.  
They were clear and very pale cerulean, three little, split arcs of 
spectral flesh with only the barest hints of bones between

They drifted each a moment in each other's arms, eyes stealing over the 
proof of their bliss.  Kijin kissed his father, full on the lips and 
rose from him, letting a trace of his seed trickle down the curves of 
his thighs while he crept over the sheets.  Half tangled in the covers, 
he pressed his lips to the folds of SohRyu's wings.

***

They quivered under the tender pressure of Kijin's kiss, and a 
shudder of delight rippled through SohRyu.  He batted them once, 
snagging the delicate gauze that hung in sheets around his bed upon 
the tiny, thin claws that curved along the joints of his wings' 
frames, and tearing runs in them.  

SohRyu didn't bat an eye at the wreckage he'd caused, however.  Just 
rolled over onto his back, his wings spread out like a blanket 
beneath him, and held Kijin.  He gingerly brushed little caresses 
over his son's dainty protrusions.  

"Stay," he said in a soft growl.  "Sleep here tonight, and every 
night as you will.  It is time we lived as lovers, instead of only 
indulging ourselves with each other now and then, when we think the 
servants won't know."  

***

"The servants know already, I'm quite sure," Kijin offered gently as he 
could.  If his father wished so their pretenses would be banished at 
long last, he found no point in keeping *that* from him still.  Still, 
the elder dragon god started, a growl blooming in his throat, though 
that wilted away once his son had reached up and swept the last few 
stray hairs from his face.  

"Now, I won't worry if you won't.  I will sleep here to-night though, 
and now perhaps if you don't mind me napping in the middle of the day."

SohRyu shook his head, and with the heal of his hand, closed his son's 
eyes.  "Every night, after I return home.  No matter what Tsuzuki and 
the rest of them say.  They... aren't like us."

Of course, no one, not one shikigami still alive in their days was 
'like them'.  Kijin and his sister had been the first fragments of 
god's soul to live apart from their master in at least ten generations; 
since the days when the world had still been filled with people willing 
to believe in them; since before all other divinities with harsher 
words about their lips.  

He dozed in his father's arms then, though in his future not so far 
away, he couldn't seem to see himself ever returning to his home, and 
his dreams were not of the man whose wings slipped over him.

*** 

Coffee Alone stood on one of the many typically innocuous street 
corners of Tokyo; one far, far removed from the dazzle of the nightclub 
facades; not that such things might have been awake at that hour of the 
day. It proved, at first sight, pretty much indistinguishable from the 
commercial district where it abided, but drawing closer, there was a 
hint of subtle whimsy there. The walls were fashioned so that on the 
outside, they resembled only a fence of brazen metal panels, though the 
glass above the delicately incised patterns on the plates did get in 
the way of this, just a little. Inside, the imaginary barrier had been 
painted with great, big, colorful blossoms and birds, becoming rather a 
hedgerow to keep out the city- that work was done in huge, glossy 
strokes, globs of inviting color materializing into roses and 
chrysanthemums. The chairs were all white, the floor green and the 
ceiling blue. The maid uniforms of the waitresses were all the same, 
though in different pastel shades. They had china silk wings on the 
back.

Sen took his companion to a seat along the window, and ordered himself 
a cinnamon latte, which came to him almost instantly in a petal-shaped 
bone china cup rimmed with metallic pink.

"I've never really understood why they called this place Coffee Alone," 
he remarked shortly after they pixie girl had left their table. "People 
do come in here by themselves, but they never seem to leave... well, 
alone. Most of them don't come for the coffee even! Though it is really 
very good."

***

Tatsumi doubtfully eyed his own cup, which was in the shape of a 
slightly opened blue lotus, a thin rim of pale green between the 
petals for ease in sipping. It wasn't that he thought it horrid, but 
rather far too fanciful to hold regular Colombian lightened with a 
healthy splash of real cream. 

That, and he knew he looked ridiculous with such a worryingly 
delicate cup cradled in his hand. "So, ah...This is a thinly 
disguised singles bar? Strange," he said, glancing around at their 
fantasy land surroundings, "it doesn't really look like one." He 
lifted the cup to his lips, and took a tiny sip. "It's not like I'm 
any sort of an expert on that subject." He gave him a sheepish 
smile. 

"I'm in love with my job," he explained. "Perhaps too much so, 
but..."

***

Sen, who had laughed quite gaily at the suggestion Coffee Alone was 
anything besides a curious coffee bar surrounded by not-so-curious 
coffee bars, ceased his giggles suddenly and shook his head.  

For an instant then, before he spoke, it seemed as if he had started to 
reach across the table, but his glittering fingers ended up knotted in 
the napkin the occupied his waist.  After all, Tatsumi's hands were 
full of porcelain lotus.

"But what? You're one of the last of a dying... umm... dying sort of 
dashing chap!"

He didn't seem to notice in the least the way his companion's eyes 
momentarily grew wider at the mention of the word "dying".  

"Now, I certainly don't mean to say Japan has fallen into ruin or 
anything- goodness! That wouldn't exactly be charming lunch 
conversation! I daresay! A direct violation of pleasant manners.  
Anyway, there simply aren't a lot of people like you left at all! 
People who live for others through their work, when just a generation 
ago, we were all like that, or mostly.  The happy work ethic is nothing 
to society anymore.  We all just *ARE*, when before, we *WERE*, because 
there was more than one of us..."

The door chimed as a woman in a pink hat came in, and the hostess 
greeted her small, white dog instead of her.  This all while Sen leaned 
back and had a long, lush pull of his latte.  "Aa, but I'm no one to 
talk.  I was never like that myself.  Life is strange and 
sanctimonious."

***

"Here, here."  Tatsumi set his cup into the faint groove of its leafy 
saucer, then carefully slid it a bit off to the side.  It wouldn't do 
for his arm to inadvertently collide with it--not when just holding 
it was risky.  

"I've never heard such praise from anyone about my habits.  Those 
around me tend to think I'm something of an oddity.  I guess that's 
only typical in these times, as you said."  He touched one of the 
leaves peeking out from the lip of the vase in the center of the 
table, and, finding it real, stroked the underside of the pink 
carnation to which it belonged.  "But then I am an oddity, in more 
than just that particular way."  

His fingers left the bloom, rosy head nodded in seeming agreement to 
his remark, and Tatsumi picked up the cup for another sip.  "Tell 
me," he began, smiling at his companion from behind his cup, "what 
was Hoshiko like at university?  She rarely talks about those days."

***  

Sen didn't pause on millisecond to think about his answer, and when he 
spoke it, it was over just the very tail end of his companion's breath.  
He had the little jaunty jingle of uttering something oft considered, 
but seldom spoken.   "She was into everything, just like a little kid.  
The head of the science department went so far as to change the locks 
on her favorite chemical cabinet to keep her from sneaking vials out of 
it during the night- although she did always pay for what she used.  
Erm..."

And then in a whisper, "Mostly at least, mostly." His fingers neared 
his lips but didn't quite touch them, "But don't tell her I said that.  
I can't imagine it would delight her, so to speak.  We were just kids! 
And now we are oddities ourselves... in a different way of course.  A 
different and peculiar way."

So he laughed then, his cornflower eyes seeing something long ago or 
not yet played out.  He didn't give Tatsumi much time to wonder over 
which it was though, for he revealed so himself, almost at once, as if 
he feared being caught daydreaming.  "I remember I used to think she 
lived in the lab, because I never saw her anywhere else until this one 
day going back to the dorms, there she was talking to this dear, old 
woman with a white cat.  Don't ask me why I remember that.  I couldn't 
say! I didn't even talk to her then or for many months afterwards but... 
it just stuck in my head, I guess you could say."

***

"I can see why you'd think she lived in the lab. She spends the  
night quite frequently at the lab now," Tatsumi said, chuckling. "I  
guess I'm not the only one devoted to my work."  
 
A waitress wheeled a cart laden with desserts past their table, and  
Tatsumi waved her over. He chose two hazelnut biscotti, sweeping one  
from the plate as soon as the woman had set it down. "Did you ever  
find out who the woman was?"

***

"Oh, I pretty much knew already," Sen chuckled.  "It was just one of 
her friends.  Most of her friends were much older than her of course.  
She just related well, I suppose you might say.  You do know her 
grandmother raised her, ne? So she's always been able to talk up to 
people that way."

***

No, Tatsumi didn't know that Watari had been raised by his 
grandmother; such information never came up during the course of 
their conversations--what very few they had had in the past. It 
struck him as he sat wafting a dainty silver spoon through his coffee 
that he knew little about Watari at all. 

/And yet, you spent practically all of yesterday.../ 

/And with someone you hardly know./ 

But of course, it was too late for being cautious and practical. 
What was done, was done--but it was all very sobering nonetheless. 
Tatsumi lay the spoon upon the cup's saucer, and nudged his drink 
aside, biscotti and all. "It's like that now--most of her friends 
are much older than she is." 

/You have no idea.../ 

"I wonder though..." he began, only to stop when he found his 
companion gazing off into space with a bright, goofy little smile 
upon his face. He frowned, perplexed, then turned to see just what 
or who it was that Sen was so happy to see.

***

But apparently not so happy he didn't have time to turn back to his 
companion a moment, and flash him a much more subdued and consoling 
sort of grin, "Don't wonder about anything," he chirped, "Just be 
happy! After all, we can order lunch now."

Tatsumi of course only heard his reassurance, and saw nothing of his 
smile, for his eyes were quite glued to the same place outside they had 
both just been looking to.

Just across the street, a pair of shiny-slick motorcycles of blue and 
white had parked sideways between a pair of miniature Toyotas.  These 
most obviously belonged to a pair of on-duty Tokyo police officers, one 
of whom was still straddling his bike while the other had dismounted 
and was now giving hers a once over, despite that it had all of the 
surrounding air quite to itself, and could not have been cleaner had it 
just come speeding out of the factory.  The officer still sitting on 
his cycle blew at his bangs and pretended not to notice his partner's 
odd behavior.

After a minute or so, she seemed quite satisfied with her impromptu 
inspection, and finally bothered to pull off her helmet, which ended up 
looped around one of the handlebars by means of the chin strap.  
Without looking, she bounded across the street, one button after 
another on her shirt coming undone.  Fortunately for Tatsumi, she had a 
sleeveless silver vinyl bodice underneath.  

Leona- for there was seriously no one else she could be -could not have 
been more than five feet tall if she had gone without her boots.  She 
had a sleek, stringy build like a prop girl in a bad mecha comic, and 
the cover of one such bad mecha comic peering out of the back pocket of 
her trousers.  Her feet and hands were rather too large for her, but 
when she started dancing to the faint music drifting in over the 
speakers in the coffee shop, it was almost graceful in spite of this.  
A single, scratched up, purple glitter bandaid stuck lopsided across 
one of her cheeks.  Her auburn hair had probably at one point been 
intended to exhibit a short cut of some sort, but hadn't been trimmed 
in awhile, and presently existed in a shaggy, sloppy mess which she had 
done no more to arrange than run her fingers through once on the way 
in. 

Battered boy's comic, sparkly bandaid, messy hair, nipples just barely 
discernable beneath her flashy top and all, she sidled up to the table 
and made great, big, puppy eyes at Sen.  He took her hand, meaning to 
kiss it, but had to take her biking glove off first, and what was more, 
she decided she would rather burry her fingers in his hair and pull his 
head over so *she* could kiss him on the top of it.  

"Hiiiiiiiiii Koibito," she finally purred as she flopped down on the 
bench beside Tatsumi's companion.  And then she kissed him again.  On 
the lips.  Very loudly.  

"Good afternoon, Lee-chan," he replied once he had her leave to speak 
(and had scooted over to make room for her beside him on the bench- she 
joined him without question, throwing her shirt down on the seat before 
she sat down).  "I'm sorry, I've not ordered out anything, I wasn't 
sure if you were in the mood for cappuccino or expresso."

"Ah, s'ok.  After all, I'm really much more in the mood for a chocolate 
malt."

"Then a chocolate malt you shall have!"

"Yay!" And then, after a few semi-intelligible endearments and praise 
for the ice cream concoctions of Coffee Alone which were even more 
saturated with her Osaka accent than her more audible speech, Leona 
flashed a huge, saucy grin at Tatsumi and inquired as if first taking 
notice of him, "Who's your friend?"

"Oh! How rude of me.  Tatsumi-san, this is Ozaki Leona.  Lee-chan, my 
friend Tatsumi-san."

Tatsumi-san, who momentarily found himself presented with one of the 
officer's hands to shake. 

"Nicetameetcha!"

***

At that, Tatsumi quickly closed his mouth (which had been slightly 
open in shock from the moment he saw her carelessly sprint across the 
street), and took her hand as if it were a dead, slimy mackerel. 
Just a touch of his fingers to hers, and then he dropped his hand 
into his lap. 

"Ha--" he began, strangling. Tatsumi quickly cleared his throat with 
a word of apology, and began again. "H-hello." 

Leona looked at him as if he'd just grown an extra nose, and then she 
cackled loudly. Tatsumi's expression briefly became one of horror, 
which neither of them seemed to notice. He reminded himself that he 
was Sen's guest, that he shouldn't do or say ANYTHING rude, both for 
his own dignity and for Watari's sake. Even though he felt sick and 
uneasy, and he suddenly wanted to flee. 

/This...I can't believe.../

He nervously sipped at his now-warm coffee. /She isn't wearing a 
bra. I can see--!/

/...No, I'm not looking./ 

The two of them began to giggle, and then rub noses and kiss as if 
they were the only two people in the room. Tatsumi picked up his 
last biscotti, intending to divert his attention by eating it, and 
wished the floor would give away beneath his seat. 

And when Leona jumped up to frantically wave both handed in the 
direction of the doorway, turning the eyes of all the patrons and 
staff upon them once AGAIN, he wished it would cave under their bench 
instead.

***

Ah, but Tatsumi's luck was not with him that day! For it was not the 
ground under the lover's bench that gave out, but rather the legs of 
Leona's partner.  He had no sooner stepped passed the threshold than 
all the vaporous elementals in the area decided he ought to do their 
fancies a favor and be made a fool of by small gods.  Either that, or 
his shoelaces had come untied.  It turned out to be the latter.  At any 
rate, his entrance consisted mainly of falling flat on his face, 
attempting to rise, slipping on imaginary ice and finally managing to 
stumble over to their booth, besides which he stood for a long time, 
dusting himself off here and there.  Tatsumi in this hand ample 
opportunity to look him over.  

No, he wasn't nearly as unspeakable in appearance as Sen's lover.  For 
starters, he had all of his undergarments intact it seemed.  Sadly, the 
boy simply happened to be a complete and utter wreck.  Besides the 
untied shoes (which happened to be white sneakers someone had tried to 
color black with a magic marker), his tie had not been fastened 
properly, his pants had a run in them. One of the buttons on his shirt 
was missing and had been replaced with a new one that didn't match at 
all (besides the fact robin's egg dress shirt in question happened to 
be a wrinkled, sweaty mess from living under his uniform for several 
hours), and he had a small glob of congealed shaving foam presently 
residing just under his left ear.  His poor hair had suffered more or 
less the same fate as Leona's when it came to a deprivation of 
brushing- more was the pity.  He would have been quite fuzzy-rabbit 
cute in better condition, what with his gigantic, sad blue eyes and his 
crayola yellow marker locks, and his little button nose.

His shrill, long-suffering voice with which he apologized amidst a 
flurry of bows "Sumimasen! Sumimasen! Sumimasen!" And so on and so 
forth until Leona was good enough to bop him on the head.

"Ari! It's OK! Everyone here knows you're a klutz! We don't CARE!"

"Sou desu!" Ari replied, blinking quite stupidly at his companion.

Sen took this moment to clear his throat and correct his girlfriend a 
bit, "Ah, actually, I don't believe you and my friend Tatsumi have been 
properly introduced."

"Yeah! Sen brought a friend too, now no one in their right mind would 
EVER think we're goin' out.  Ufufufufufufufufufu!"

The blond boy proceeded to shriek in Tatsumi's general direction.  
"AIE! I didn't notice you! Gomen nasai! I...!" And then just a suddenly 
as his latest bought of apologies began, it died in a slow gasp as his 
gaze settled on the seat he was evidentially wondering if he should 
take.

"Tatsumi-san, Ari-san.  Ari-san, Tatsumi-san," their host concluded the 
introductions with the proper hand-gestures and then went about 
summoning a waitress and some proper lunch menus.  

***

Usually, Tatsumi blended in at gatherings; he was always sensibly, 
correctly turned out, no matter what the occasion.  He never wore 
anything that might make him stand out.  He didn't much care to be 
the center of attention; the spotlight suited his co-workers much 
better--especially Tsuzuki, who seemed (in his opinion) to enjoy it 
the most.  

But he certainly didn't blend in with this group.  In fact, he was 
quite aware that he looked even more staid than usual.  And why did 
it feel as if they were on a double date?  

Maybe because, in a way, they were?  

He hastily turned away from Sen and Leona, who had twined their arms 
together to sip from their cups, eyeing each other meaningfully over 
the rims, and found himself eye-to-eye with Ari's bashful, pale blue 
gaze; the boy had decided to seat himself beside Tatsumi after all.  
He promptly blushed, and Tatsumi began to fumble with his napkin for 
lack of something better to do.  

/Oh, damn./  Watari would probably find all this amusing, if he were 
there.  Tatsumi suddenly wished he was.  Wished it twice as hard when 
Ari's hand brushed against his knee.  Startled, he looked up at him, 
only to find himself on the receiving end of a stream of stammered 
apologies.  

/Oh.../  He nudged his glasses into place with a stern sort of look 
for Ari, ever so relieved when the waitress arrived with their 
menus.  Tatsumi opened his up and raised it so it hid his face.  It 
wasn't that he meant to be rude, but what would he say to such a 
bumbling, nervous young man?  Tell him that he could manipulate 
shadows into weapons?  That he really was dead?  Oh, that would go 
over *so* well.  If only he could keep the menu for the whole of the 
meal.  

While the others sifted through their choices, he ordered the sole 
with the white wine sauce, mushrooms and tomatoes, and another cup of 
coffee, then regretfully passed the menu to the smiling waitress.

***

No sooner had Tatsumi been relived of his barrier, than Leona chose to 
blow bubbles in her milk shake.  A few of them sailed over the edge of 
the glass and splatted on the saucer where the glass stood.  
"Ooopsies!" she told the waitress, and then ordered a very complicated-
sounding sandwich with trimmings from all over the world.  Ari asked 
for curry and Sen the most enormous salad on the menu, with almonds.

"You get curry every time we go out!" Leona fussed unto her partner 
then, and to this he only brushed, and shrugged, and somehow or other 
managed to stab himself in the wrist with his fork.  Apologies once 
more filled the air.

"Now, now Lee-chan," Sen simpered, "If he likes curry let him have 
curry.  He'll be a bear all afternoon if he doesn't get his recommended 
daily allowance."

Ari, between his still proceeding yelps of pain, made a vaguely bear-
like sound and seized Tatsumi by the back of the neck adding then, "I 
think I'll eat him first."

"Oh no! My dear Hoshiko's friend! She'll never forgive me if you have 
him for lunch!"

And all three of them laughed and laughed.

***

But not Tatsumi, who struggled free of Ari's grasp, and hastily 
fussed with his rumpled collar.  "Excuse me," he said, as his 
companion's laughter died away to chuckles.  "I am not a bowl of 
curry."  Tatsumi leveled the very glare that had always made Tsuzuki 
nervous upon the presumptive young man; it didn't have any effect 
upon Ari whatsoever.  Instead, to Tatsumi's dismay, he propped his 
chin upon his hand, and regarded him in delighted wonder.  

/Oh.../  

Tugging at his tie, Tatsumi scooted an inch closer to the edge of the 
seat, feigning interest in the wild, straggling clumps of ivy which 
grew in recessed planters above the booth. 

*** 

Ari, naturally, was not deterred in the least by this little show of 
self-distraction, and in a very, very small voice, inquired, "Well, if 
you're not a bowl of curry, then what are you I... HEY!"

The "hey" being for Leona, who had begun flapping her fingertips about 
in mockery of his lips the moment he had deigned to speak what she 
found of his to be platitudes.  Sen gave her a little swat across her 
knuckles.  

And with no prompting or allowances, said, "Well, my little Lee-chan 
and Ari-chan, Tatsumi here, is a secretary."

The response from Watari's friend's lover happened to be that she put 
her finger in his mouth.  Whether she was trying to keep herself from 
making some joke about the affair, or genuinely had a hangnail... well, 
that was open to interpretation.  The blond officer, however, beamed, 
his vapid, cerulean eyes filling to the brim with naughty, easy-
secretary based fantasies.

"Wow..." he declared wistfully.

***

Tatsumi did NOT like the misty gleam of lust in Ari's eyes, nor did 
he care much for his tone of voice.  "It's not what you think, Ari-
san."  /Whatever you are thinking.  And I don't want to know!/  "I am 
not that sort of secretary.  I don't type and take messages.  I am 
responsible for making sure the corporation (the best word he could 
come up with to describe JuOhCho) runs smoothly."  

And he did that very well, he thought--though it could be easier if 
he had more frugal, more sensible co-workers.  Speaking of 
which...how was Tsuzuki getting along?  Tatsumi wished he hadn't 
gotten away from him.  Why, all sorts of mischief could befall him, 
especially with that creature on the loose.  

/Oh, I don't want to think about it.../  he thought, even though he 
couldn't stem the flow of his grim imaginings.  It was only when Ari 
tapped him on the shoulder that he managed to shake them off.  Not 
that finding those vague eyes trained upon him so admiringly was a 
great comfort.  

Still...

Tatsumi sighed in resignation.  "How long have you been on the 
force?"  

***

"A coupla years now," replied Leona, nodding with her straw still 
situated in her mouth- a giant, squishy bubble from deep within the 
shake rose and hovered just below the surface tension of the rising 
milk.  Unlike those she had blown earlier, it didn't pop, but rather 
hung there, looking most disturbing.  

Ari blushed and added himself to this, "A few weeks... almost three 
months... that's all."

"Yes, that's true," Sen giggled.  "But we feel like we've known you 
forever, if not in fact longer than that." And with that, he flagrantly 
blew the boy a kiss in full view of his girlfriend, who laughed 
uproariously and began to nibble his ear.  

The officer at Tatsumi's side though flushed in turn with the 
shinigami, and began to shrink down in his seat, as if he too wished he 
could vanish without any questions from the outside world.  Perhaps it 
was only sympathy abashment, for he certainly had been staring at 
Tatsumi long enough to be certain of his chagrin, or perhaps he truly, 
truly had gotten fed up with the pair once they crossed the 
kissing/nibbling line.  Maybe he hadn't wanted to admit he was an 
underling of the red-haired woman, even though the way he stood in her 
presence alone betrayed that.  Maybe he was just getting comfortable.

Anyway, he quite managed to catch one button of his sleeve on his 
coffee cup, which tipped over and wept its contents not onto the table, 
but Tatsumi's pants.

"KYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYA! Sumimasen! Sumimasen! Sumimasen!"

"Well, who didn't see that coming?" Droned Leona.

***

Not Tatsumi.  While he wasn't exactly expecting a clumsy, smitten man 
to douse his lap with hot coffee, he was expecting an accident of 
some sort; the day just held too much of a calamitous vibe.  

He'd sucked in his breath when it hit, too stunned for a moment to do 
anything more than just sit there and stare at the steaming, ever-
widening stain which lay over his groin.  It wasn't until Ari began 
to pat him with his napkin that he sprang to life again.  

"I'll do that!"  Tatsumi exclaimed, batting the other man's hand away 
and snatching up his own napkin.  He knew, though, that no amount of 
dabbing or patting would soak up the mess.  So much for dignity, 
thought Tatsumi, as he sponged his napkin onto the spreading, steaming 
hot coffee stain that now adorned his right leg and, uncomfortably, his 
groin.  So much for a rare, non-eventful lunch, whilst his partner was 
waltzing about Tokyo doing everything but his job.  

/Why did I think...?/  Tatsumi wadded up the sodden knot of a now tan-
white cloth and dropped it onto the table; irritably waved away their 
waitress when she approached with a bundle of more napkins, having 
seen the accident.  Nothing would help the mess his trousers were in 
save for a trip to the dry cleaners.  

Tatsumi stood up, sending the puddle of coffee that had gathered on the 
vinyl seat dripping onto his shoes.  He closed his eyes briefly in 
displeasure.  "I am afraid I must be going, as this is quite 
unpleasant.  No," he said, holding up a hand to silence Ari's protests, 
"never mind, Ari-san.  Things happen."  

But no more had better happen, he thought, for he couldn't take any 
more delays.  He was wrong for having come along in the first place, 
he saw it now.  Politely, Tatsumi bowed to the group.  "My apologies, 
Sen-san," he said.  "I am afraid I must take my leave of you.  Allow 
me to treat you one day, to make up for missing out on this lunch?"  

***

At this, the hysterical silence which had usurped Sen exploded into a 
dismayed and distinctly girlish screech (one which quite made Leona 
rear her head and cover her ears, thusly finding some revenge for the 
coffee-soaked shinigami, for the ice cream which flew form the end of 
her strew landed in Ari's left eye, and caused him to burst into 
tears). 

"KYA! Oh! Tatsumi-SAN! I'm so sorry! Oh please, please don't feel 
obliged! This is just a horrible, awful disaster among disasters! You 
don't own me anything! Don't dare give me money for your lunch! In 
fact! Just a minute! Waitress! I need this man's order to go!"

The waitress gave a weary shrug, and, all of their plates in tow, 
meandered back to the kitchen while Sen began rather frantically 
rooting through his pockets.  One of his rings fell off in the process 
of his ransacking his left pants pocket for a wallet.  After a few 
packs of gum, a keyring with a bell and a lone Turkish dictionary, he 
managed to find his wallet- it was pink with a silver kitten 
embroidered on the front.  Not satisfied with whatever lay within, he 
took the fallen ring, looked it over, and finally tossed it onto the 
top of his guest's foil-encrusted take home box, where it shone, satin 
finish gold and dark topaz.

"And please, do buy yourself some new pants! Tatsumi-san.  It was nice 
to see you, really it was."

Leona nodded in turn, and Ari muttered something along those lines that 
died in a piteous ouch, for he tried to bow from his seat and in doing 
so tumbled to the floor.  

***

Tatsumi did his best not to notice the man sprawled at his feet as he 
performed another, more formal bow to his host.  It was rather hard to 
do, however, as said man chose to use his legs as a crutch as he worked 
his way to his knees.  He found himself staring straight into Ari's 
startled blue eyes for one brief moment before he straightened up.  The 
ring seemed a safer object to study, anyway.  

"Sen-san.  This ring is far too expensive for..."

But the other man cut him off, scooping up the ring and popping it into 
his jacket's breast pocket with a final pat.  Tatsumi, knowing it would 
be rude to protest any further, accepted it with a resigned sigh.  
"Arigatou, Sen-san.  You have been most generous.  Until next time we 
meet."  

Sen beamed at him, as did Leona and Ari, most uncertainly, as he 
noticed from the corner of his eye.  Tatsumi, having said his 
farewells, took up his lunch and left the quiet haven of the restaurant 
for the churning city.  

***

Leona watched their fleeing companion, all the way down to the corner 
and his final hasty step into the throngs her eyes could not trail over 
from where she sat- the thought made her sigh, and wonder if she would 
ever see the fellow again.  Never...? She couldn't ever bring herself to 
care for that word.

She did, however, kick Ari in the head.

"BAKABAKABAKABAKABAKASHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!"

"Now now," Sen cooed, and he reached over as gently as he could, 
clasping one of her forearms in his arms,  "Be nice.  It's not his 
fault he gets nervous around cute guys."

The blond officer fussed in his turn, "And I really liked this one!"

"Meh, I did too," His partner agreed.  "He... reminds me of someone.  But 
I don't know who.  It sure ain't Hoshiko.  But... ah well.  Damn shame 
he'll never come near us again."

"They're always like that."

"Too bad for us."

"Yes!" Their host seldom agreed with their magisterial ponderings, but 
he did now, adding sincerely at the end.  "Let's eat!"

So they ate.

***

Early in the Meifu afternoon, Hisoka's fingers were still stealing over 
the keys of his keyboard, windows of stale grey frames still 
somersaulting over the screen, veering this way and that, shrinking and 
bursting and wheeling with gorey images here and there. Outside that 
sun danced with the cherry blossoms, and the office workers who had 
been last to take their lunch breaks were just now filing in from the 
blue and white gingham ladies the outdoor tables happened to look like 
from the computer lab. 

The boy had just gotten to the file on the Shinjuku station triple for 
the fourth time, when he thought the heard a little noise- a little 
twitter of tissue paper rolling over itself.  At first he took it only 
to be a strange rustle of one of the other JuMaChou personnel presently 
typing away, and so went back to work once it was over, and nothing had 
come of it.

At least, until the light upon the top of his monitor suddenly found 
itself disturbed by a round, fluffy shadow-orb.

Looking up found the powder-puff of 003 perched in the middle of the 
beige plastic roof, staring at him most expectantly.  She hadn't cocked 
her head to one side, like owls tend to be so wont to do, but rather 
had one of her wings folded before her breast, almost reading her 
shoulder, or where her shoulder presumably was.

"Kyuuuuuuuooooooooooo," she announced.

***

Hisoka wasn't exactly overjoyed to see her, as she was reminder of 
the very person he was striving so hard NOT to think of.  That, and 
she had dropped three pinfeathers onto his keyboard.  

"003, I'm not in the mood to be entertained, or counseled, or even 
annoyed.  I am working.  See?"  He gestured at the screen to make his 
point.  

The tiny owl blinked at him, then waddled over to the front edge of 
the monitor, curling her pearly talons over the hard, plastic corner 
and leaning down for a better look.  She hooted softly at him when 
she rose. Hisoka rolled his eyes, and plopped his chin onto his hand, 
frowning in displeasure.   

"It doesn't make a difference.  He made his choices, and I wound up 
making a fool out of myself."  He began to type again, fingers 
pounding the keys just a touch harder than necessary.  "Case 
closed."  

***

The assertion of finality consternated 003 to no end, but, much to her 
dismay, no amount of puffing up on her part seemed capable of 
attracting the boy's attention once again. No, he seemed quite content 
to ignore her until such time as she left, or actually turned into the 
powder puff she was quite starting to resemble.

But of course, there were things the boy wasn't capable of ignoring!

One by one, three MORE owl feathers came twirling down and settled 
across his busy fingers, tickling and itchy and just being puffy 
annoying no doubt! Of course, no sooner had they landed, than they were 
sent to the floor with a single, sharp breath. Even the really big one 
she had especially taken out of her tail for him. Why, she should have 
been honored that she was desecrate herself so just for his attention! 
He wasn't of course.

Hisoka however WAS seemingly immune also to the grating of her dainty 
claws against the plastic border of the monitor as she clenched and 
unclenched her little feet. Why, he could be scratching her pretty, 
white belly with those fingers!

The moment THAT thought crossed her head, there was no it to cross 
anything else! And, as such, she deliberately tumbled from the computer 
screen, landing with a plot and a "ytugjhbnmv" in the middle of the 
keyboard.

***

"Aahhh!!"  Hisoka dove for the addled little owl, snatching her away 
from the keyboard in his cupped hands, and depositing her 
unceremoniously upon the small pile of spiral notebooks which lay to 
one side of the monitor.  

"Look what you've done to my report!" Hisoka cried, waving a hand at 
the computer screen (and overreacting, but he was still upset over 
what happened with Watari). 003, who had quickly righted herself, 
ruffled her feathers at him, yellow eyes blazing like coals.  Hisoka 
was thoroughly unmoved.  

"Save your tantrums for Watari-san.  I'm not having it.  Not today."  
He reached for her, and she pecked his thumb hard, making him yelp.  

"SSnop dat," he hissed around his thumb.  003 merely gave him a faint 
hoot, and began to preen. Seeing his chance, Hisoka popped his 
wounded digit out of his mouth, and lunged at her with both hands.  

"Gotcha!"  

Screeching angrily, 003 beat her wings uselessly against the backs of 
his hands as Hisoka picked her up; the boy only grinned at her 
nastily.  "Right, I'm taking you back to Watari-san."  And he marched 
out of the room, and headed off to the fair-haired doctor's lab, 
muttering under his breath to her about foolishness:  his, hers, and 
her master's.  Those few he encountered in the halls stepped aside to 
let him pass, and he was plainly oblivious to their odd looks and 
quiet whisperings.  

When he reached Watari's office, he pulled it open as smoothly as he 
could using just his pinky and ring finger, placing himself in its 
path when it swung back so it couldn't close.  Bewildered, Watari 
looked up from his microscope, blinking at the irritated boy he'd 
earlier held on his lap.  

Hisoka boosted 003 into the air; the tiny owl beat a wobbly path to 
her owner's shoulder.  

"Keep her out of my way.  I don't want to be bothered by her, or by 
*you* for the rest of the day!"  

***

Watari, struck stupid as he was, could do nothing in especial to answer 
besides mutter a few unrelated syllables here and there.  Which he did, 
and for some time whilst his beloved owl tugged his hair out of its 
sloppy ponytail and down around the shoulder where she stood so it 
worked for her almost like a golden-curtain.  Behind it, she clucked in 
dismay regarding her crinkled feathers.

Hisoka, waiting for his answer still, refused to be moved by even the 
most innocently foolish mutterings, no matter how many of them there 
ended up being, and how many unhappy coos from the little owl followed 
them.  It was all the doctor could do to reach up and pat her on the 
head a moment. 

Just like that, when her down found his fingers, he discovered he could 
once again speak without faltering at the sharp beak-kisses that 
accompanied his words!

"Hisoka! I was just going to come for you.  I've got... a really good 
lead! I think I do at least.  Now, you don't have to come with me or 
anything when I check it out! I'd like it, but if you still don't want 
to I... I am..."

The boy had glanced over to the microscope then, but wouldn't approach, 
just stare, bored with the dead as ever the dead could be.

"No, it's not over there actually.  That's blood from one of the 
victims I was examining for other reasons.  But look at this!"

Most gently so as not to stir his pet too much, he bounded over to one 
of his many slate-topped tables, and began to sort through a melange of 
papers atop it, finally coming up with one that just happened to be 
blue.  It landed on the floor, and he kicked it over to Hisoka.

"Now, according to what most of our databases tell me, Seis, as a 
whole, tend to prefer people whose fates are tied to many other people- 
makes them more noticeable, brings more potential hosts around.  All 
the good tuff! And we all know that psychic people make better hosts 
for almost all unseen world entities that don't have bodies of their 
own. As you can see, I got in touch with the Norn office- would you 
believe they only had one page of results, and only five of the matches 
are in Tokyo? Foreigners, all of them, much to my surprise, except for 
the boy, why, they'd all make fine hosts! Or dinners, as the case may 
be.  Even if they don't appeal to our friend the Sei, I'm sure he'd be 
attracted to them! He might have already found them.  It's worth a 
look."

Hisoka though didn't seem especially thrilled with this conjecture.  
Neither did 003 though, at least not until she lit rather on the paper-
bedecked table, and started poking through some of the print outs 
herself.  Another packet of papers she finally bore over to the boy, 
holding it between her talons whilst she sat down on his forehead.  He 
had no choice bot to look at her bounty.

"Not to mention that our Sei seems to only like people one might called 
attractive.  Now, mind you, I don't find any of that lot especially 
pretty... except maybe the girl, if whoever picks out her clothes would 
stop dressing her like a 1980's Skipper!"

***

Hisoka's thirst to prove himself as a detective was far stronger than 
his lingering anger towards Watari--or rather, everyone, because he 
wished so fervently that Tsuzuki was there with him, and all was back 
to his idea of normal.  

He tugged the papers free from 003's clinging talons, wickedly 
ripping them in the process, and gave them a closer look.  "So," 
Hisoka began, waving the printout bearing the black and white image 
of an unsmiling man who sported very short hair, facial scars and an 
eyepatch, "the Sei is supposed to go after this bunch?  Out of all 
the people in Tokyo who are psychic?"  

Watari nodded brightly.  Hisoka only scowled at him, and shuffed the 
data sheet with the unappealing photo into the middle of the 
bedraggled stack.  "Seems a longshot to me," he groused, "but I'll do 
it.  I'm sick to death of Meifu at the moment."  At that, he gave the 
bespectacled doctor a hard, pointed glare, to which, Watari smirked--
just like a sneaking, conniving cat.  Hisoka wanted to strangle him.  
He raised his hand to swat at 003 instead, just barely missing the 
tiny owl.  

"And I'll thank you to keep your owl away from me in the future."  

***

"Aaa... I'll... do my best! Hisoka-kun!" Watari declared, saluting then.  
It was really the least he thought he could do, no matter how much it 
hurt him to say so, in front of the very feathered lady he offended by 
making one such deal with the boy.  But if not that then... what else?

003 didn't seem nearly as offended as he thought she would, and, in 
fact, gave him rather a look that seemed more to his sight like she 
felt more for him about it, than he for her.  So he didn't worry.

"Just let me put a few things away here, and we'll leave right away.  
The database doesn't say EXACTLY where they're working, but they 
shouldn't be too hard to find so... we'll leave through the pond out 
front then."

Kurosaki nodded, and then took his leave for the time being.  No sooner 
had his shadow passed out of sight, than 003 recovered her place on his 
shoulder, and stuck her bill firmly in his ear.

"Oh... what am I going to do now?" The doctor asked her, and had she not 
been an owl, she would have answered him with more than nuzzles and 
nibbles.

"I guess you'll have to stay here for the time being.  Maybe Tatsumi 
will come back soon and you can go sit with him then.  Wouldn't you 
like that?"

Her coo of acknowledgement was all he needed.  His slides went back 
into their refrigerator, his papers under a few Florence flasks to keep 
them form blowing away, and having changed into a pale green duster 
over his lab coat, Watari set out to make the journey to earth.  Just 
one more day returning to his former home in the cosmic spaces; one day 
out of endless more.

***

Hisoka's arrival in Tokyo didn't go as smoothly as Tsuzuki's, for 
when he emerged from the hidden gateway in the park fountain, he 
landed directly in the middle of a receptionist's bento box.  She had 
just set it aside on the fountain's low retaining wall to retrieve 
her can of tea from her bag.  

Sufficed to say, she was not pleased.  She swore at him (and, being 
one of those yankee types, did so without shame), and flung her 
squashed wiener octopi at him as he attempted to retreat; 
unfortunately for Hisoka, she had terrifically accurate aim.  She 
also had an audience, who all stopped to gawk (and titter) at the 
humiliated boy.  

"I HATE Tokyo," he hissed under his breath as he picked bits of food 
from his mussed hair and sleeve.  It was a familiar refrain, though 
he'd often repeated it to Tsuzuki, and not Watari; but the good 
doctor was destined to hear it uttered often over the next few days--
or however long they were to be in the city.  One more minute was too 
long, as far as Hisoka was concerned.  

Smog; crowds; people pushing and shoving in their *ever* so polite 
way to get from A to B; too many damn cars and their blasted 
irritating horns.  What was there to like about the place?  NOTHING!!
Hisoka, now relatively food-free and still blushing faintly from his 
ordeal, looked over his shoulder at his companion, and swore to 
himself for the umpteenth time over the fact he was stuck in Hell 
with HIM!  

"Come ON, Sensei, and let's get this investigation underway."  

***

"Ah... yeah..." Watari began rather uncertainly, for he'd been standing by 
himself a moment, feigning interest in the azaleas that dotted the 
edges of the gravel path which wound its way around the fountain, 
wondering just why he had materialized in the middle of them, as 
opposed to the middle of the fountain itself, where he, Tatsumi and as 
far as he knew TSUZUKI were all wont to appear.

The answer came to him, soon enough, rising to the surface of his 
thoughts through the film of Hisoka's grumbling as they started off 
into the city true, and not the floating sanctuary where they could 
almost, but not quite, conjure disinterest in the woes of the living.

/Sen always likes Azaleas.../

Not that Kurosaki-kun would ever care about that.

He hoped he wouldn't, and had to remind himself not to take him by the 
arm when he realized the glass fins of the train station weren't in the 
direction they were headed.

*** 

They had sped out of Tokyo, and gradually the sea of metal and 
stone they'd navigated through widened and softened into a glittering 
ocean rimmed by trees.  Youji steered the car off the road onto a 
small, gravel-covered lot, and parked it under a pair of dainty 
maples.  A wide, gently sloping expanse of grassy land flowed down 
from the lot towards the sea; carved into it to the right was a set 
of concrete steps which led to the sand below.  Youji tossed the keys 
into the air, and caught them one-handed with a saucy wink for Tsuzuki.  

"I've been cooped up in the city for far too long.  A man needs to 
get away from civilization once in a while and breathe cleaner air, 
you know?"  A smile, which died under the onslaught of his 
companion's compelling, deep purple eyes.  Mesmerized once more, 
Youji gazed into them unabashedly.  Another wicked smile slowly 
appeared, and then Youji swung the door open, and climbed out of the 
car.  

"Come on then, Tsuzuki-san," he said as he walked around to the car's 
trunk.  "Let's bond with nature."  

Youji opened the trunk, and when he closed it again, he had a long, 
yellow blanket folded over one arm.  At Tsuzuki's questioning look, 
he added, "I like to be prepared."  

Tsuzuki didn't smile, didn't nod.  In fact, to Youji he looked so 
suddenly unsure of himself--and that just wouldn't do; nervous people 
were the hardest to woo, and he wanted everything to go smoothly.  
So, he handed the blanket off to his companion with his best 
reassuring look.  "I mean, grass and sand can wreak havoc on one's 
clothes--and I don't want your suit to get dirty."  

***

"Of course!" Tsuzuki burst out, laughing a little then as his left hand 
sailed up along the crest of the sky and settled on the back of his 
neck.  His elbow wobbled back in forth in the breeze, which he supposed 
in the end was better than blushing.  Again.  

But all those moments, Youji just stood those three feet from him, his 
lips glinting as if he chuckled himself too, inside and without any 
sound to be heard above the rustling water.

"Aa, actually, thanks.  No really! I'd never thought of that in a 
hundred years!"

/Literally./

Just the same, blanket slung over one arm, he shed his jacket from the 
other, switching which was which as deftly as a juggler exchanging 
bottles with the air until it was his hands hidden under canary fleece.  
"It's too nice a day for coats, don't you think so?"

His companion nodded, and the black cotton he had been hiding under 
tumbled over the headrest of the passenger seat.  Followed by his tie.  
His shoes.  His socks.  

Barefoot, and with his collar lapping all around his neck as he ran, 
Tsuzuki took off through the tumbled quartz stone and budding gentians, 
Youji's yellow blanket sailing over his head; Youji himself not so far 
behind at all.  They raced each other to the place where the earth and 
the sand met, the border of the seafoam's domain.  Had there been 
anyone to see them, they would have looked just like old friends, but 
no, rather they were just as lonely as the single path of clouds 
treading over the firmament out of reach of the shore.  Though there 
was but space around them, he could almost heard their voices echoing, 
and it made him think for a few instances, right after he had stretched 
himself supine over the not-quite-bed, that maybe the whole beach, the 
hills, the sea that touched so many other lands... maybe it was all just 
painted on in baby blue and lime and just-off white.  

But Youji came, at sat beside him there, his own naked toes tickling 
circles in the musty sand, eyes watching the water now.

Tsuzuki sighed, and sounded then as if he was speaking his momentary 
fantasy aloud, though it was a whole other illusion his lips bespoke in 
the end.

"When I was little, I thought for a long time everyone in the world 
felt like I did, like I do.  And then... when I found out it wasn't true, 
I thought instead that... that I was just strange, and there was nothing 
else to it at all.  Nobody else could be like this.  I'm still... kinda 
nervous about it.  I guess... I don't mean to be but... ahhh..."

And the words trailed off into wisps of breath as he closed his eyes 
and smiled.

***

"The world would truly be a boring place if everyone felt the same 
way, so...there's no need to be nervous about anything, Tsuzuki-san.  
You are a singular person; revel in it."  Youji gestured one-handed 
towards the sky.  "Embrace your uniqueness."  

Youji cast a look back at Tsuzuki over his shoulder, and after a 
short pause, the two men broke into peals of laughter.  The sound of 
their blended voices roused the gulls hovering over the waves, and 
they began to scream with abandon.  Youji stretched his arms over his 
head hard, groaning, then eased himself down onto the blanket, toes 
still planted in the hot sand.  It felt too good to move them.  Felt 
too good to move at all, with the sun shining down on him, and salty 
sea breezes tousling his hair.  

He felt like a kid again.  

"You know," Youji said, slinging an arm over his eyes to shield them 
from the sun, "it's too bad we don't have a kite.  A shiny one--
silver, maybe--with long, red, iridescent tails.  With the wind like 
it is, we'd have a good time of flying it."  

He snorted softly in amusement then, struck by the irony of someone 
like him talking about kites and windy days, and scooted up to fully 
lie beside his companion.

"Ah, don't mind me, Tsuzuki-san.  I get like this sometimes, all 
wistful and sentimental."

***

"Oh, that's OK! Give me a few minutes and I'll start talking about my 
sister Ruka," Tsuzuki replied, and he grinned with all the whimsy in 
notions of flying unicorns who take children to candy skyscrapers.  
Just a little melancholy though darted over him, and he needed to say 
nothing about the years those kids spent so far away, only to return, 
at eight, to a world that had become eighty, or vanished all together. 

"I know it wouldn't be nice!" He added hastily, "But sometimes, those 
things happen." 

Youji nodded, he most certainly did know, and not only his physical 
affirmation made this plain.

"You know, a kite would be great! A little silver and red stunt kite 
that would go WOOOOOOOOOSH!" Here, he made a loopy spiral with his hand 
that sailed up and down and all around his companion's field of vision.  
"Mou! It's too bad my coat won't fly!"

Though surely a black trench wouldn't have been nearly as elegant as a 
metallic little fish of a toy darting over the heavens.  It would have 
turned out all floppy and real against the make believe clouds!

"But... that's the only thing I really love about my job anymore, that I 
can leave whenever I want as long as I come back... and I can be this way 
if I really wanna."

/If only I really was a detective, and no one would notice me being 
gone./

On tiny, romantic thought came to Tsuzuki then, and tiptoed this way 
and that over his senses, made his cheeks begin to prickle with a blush 
once again.  

/If only I was really alive... well... nothing I can do about that! I can 
be happy though! I can!/

So he, just faintly as a child's breath, drummed his fingers over 
Youji's forearm, weaving and circling down the bare skin until he came 
to his wrist, where he waited, asking silently for the hand he had held 
for a few instants before they fled the city.

***

One might think that Youji, being the lothario he was, wouldn't care 
about such shy, simple acts as one seeking the hand of another--but 
he did.  The touch of someone's hand upon one's own could be 
comforting, flirtatious.  It could be downright sexy, even, feeling 
the shift of bones and tendons, fingertips sliding over skin; it was 
his belief that how a person might touch one elsewhere could be found 
in the way they treated one's hand.  

That Tsuzuki had been so hesitant to claim his hand intrigued Youji.  
Delighted him--and yet, without so much as a glance from the corner 
of his eye, he raised his arm from his face, drawing his wrist down 
until their palms met.  Pressing his against Tsuzuki's, Youji folded 
his fingers around his hand, and pulled it down to his lips to kiss 
the back of it.  Kissed each protruding knuckle.  

"Tell me," he murmured, "about yourself.  What--apart from 
bathhouses, chocolates, and convertibles (he smiled)--interests you?  
What makes you happy?"  

***

"Oh, I like to dance," Tsuzuki replied.  It was the only earthly thing 
Youji hadn't already mentioned, and something he never, ever got to 
talk about back home.  As such, it was always and forever napping in 
the back of his thoughts, just waiting to pop out and make itself into 
something more than wishes alone.  It was also a thing that moment- 
yes! A real, audible, conceptually alive thing! -which drew a reaction 
just as dear and mild as the kisses Youji had given his hand.  The 
other man turned away from the heavens and drew his lips into a 
delicate, inquisitive smile.  

"Not like... dance-dance, but daaaaaaance," he clarified, or, at least, 
clarified to himself.  When he realized that no one else in the world 
at large still understood the distinction, he went on.  "Formal 
traditional dances.  My sister was a student of Nishikawa... the 
Nishikawa school that is, and she taught me.  I haven't had much time 
to perform lately- I have enough trouble getting to auditions, let 
alone rehearsals so..."

He waved goodbye to a puffball cloud over the waves as it began to sink 
to nothing outside of the horizon of his view.  But that hand too came 
to rest on Youji, taking the hand that had clasped his own.

"What about you? Do you like being a florist?"

(OOC: http://www.cjn.or.jp/nagoyaodori/index.html ^_~)

*** 

At that, Youji lowered his eyes to their joined hands; no one had 
ever asked him how he felt about being a florist, if he liked it or 
not.  It was just a guise Kritiker had stuck him in; he never thought 
to complain or question.  It would have done him little good to do 
either, anyway.  To his surprise, though, it didn't take him very 
long to find the answer.  After a few seconds wondering over it, he 
raised his eyes to Tsuzuki's, lightly squeezing his captured hand.  

"Yes," he said, "I do, even though I don't really take it as 
seriously as Aya does."  There, he chuckled, at both himself and his 
quiet co-worker.  "He likes to putter with the plants, care for the 
shop.  I prefer the selling aspect, because I get to work my charms 
on potential buyers, see if I can't persuade them.  It's like a 
game."    

"Of course, there is a peacefulness in handling all those perfumed, 
fragile green things.  I find it easy not to think about my troubles 
when I'm working on arrangements.  I can just think about how 
beautiful the flowers are, or where they came from and how I'd like 
to see that place someday.  Think about miles and miles of brightly 
colored petals, all dancing in the breeze just for me..."  He paused, 
then flashed Tsuzuki a rueful little grin.  "It's a far cry from what 
I used to do, let me tell you."    

***

"I'd think it'd be a far cry from anything! Being a detective or not!" 
Tsuzuki replied, his warm smile breaking for an instant with an almost 
worried sort of look that fell through Youji for just an instant, 
chasing that vision: miles and miles of flowers just like the cherry 
trees in Meifu who never gave up trying to bear fruit with all those 
tender blossoms.

"You said you used to be a detective too? Don't you ever miss being 
outside now that you work in the flower shop?"

But enough passed between them then that there was no need for an 
answer.

That was why they were out of doors now, staring at the sea and each 
other's eyes- that sufficed.

"Umm..."

Kuudou's fingers left his then, and batted at his bangs an instant 
before once more settling around his wrist.  The sea fell quite and for 
awhile, there was no more of the surf coming close to them.

"Did... anyone ever bother you about... you know... before.  'cause I kinda 
think... it's hard to like other guys and be a detective! People don't 
take you seriously.  Ah... sorry."

***

"Don't apologize, Tsuzuki-san.  And...no, no one ever bothered me 
about it.  I don't think my partner even guessed I was bi.  I don't 
think she even knew that I was in love with her, even though I 
flirted with her like mad, took her out every chance I got.  
Or...maybe she did, but she just didn't care."  Youji hitched a 
shoulder in a shrug.  "Either way, my secret was safe.  Still is, 
actually.  Those guys, they don't have clue.  Why, I could show up 
naked at their doors in turn, toting a bottle of champagne, and 
they'd think I was just goofing around."  

He paused for a moment to grant that image a chance to sink in, then 
added, "Ah, I'm sorry, Tsuzuki-san, for talking in such a impolite 
way."  But he smiled in such a way as to make Tsuzuki think he wasn't 
really sorry at all.  

The wind kicked up, rippling its cool fingers through their hair.  
Youji extracted his hand from the snug embrace of Tsuzuki's own and 
carefully smoothed the other's dark locks from his eyes.  

"It's a shame you can't get to auditions.  I'd like to see you 
dance.  I don't know how to do that sort of thing at all--not even 
those fancy ballroom type moves."  Youji raised himself upon his 
elbow then, face alight with an idea.  "Why don't you show me?  
Nothing elaborate.  Just a simple waltz maybe."  

***

Waltz? Maybe she hadn't shown it much, but Ruka knew how to waltz! And 
now, all those years later, he did too! Very well.  Oh, hooray for 
Meiji-era fads from the West.

Of course, one thing that had never happened to Ruka? Why, she 
certainly hadn't ever had a naked, champagne bearing man appear at her 
door.  Ooops.  His thoughts had wandered, just at the wrong moment, and 
Tsuzuki found himself blushing and those un-sorry eyes of Youji's.

/So... you're bi.  I can live with bi! Bi's sexy!/

Oh, the inopportune pinking of his cheeks.

"I can." He nodded a little, and in doing so inadvertently sent his 
companion's fingertips skating over his lashes then.  "Now, I'm better 
at the more traditional things, but I can waltz a little. And tango, 
but my tangos are just... disasters!"

They smiled.  Even he had trouble picturing himself with a rose between 
his teeth, and s shiny, Spanish beauty clasped just so against his 
chest, and he had once- just once -had an illusory maid just like that 
and a rose all his own.  But that was back in the fifties when his 
partner had been an conjurer of the highest regard.  

"Waltzing isn't very hard at all though.  I could show you right now, 
but the sand isn't good for dancing, and if we try it on the hill I bet 
we'll both go tumbling into the sea."

Besides... he didn't want to get up.  Not just yet with the afternoon 
still young enough to giggle at them through the voices of the gulls.  
To still Youji then, he ran his cheek up against his hand until it came 
to rest in the other man's palm.

"We'll go somewhere quiet, and I'll bring the champagne."  

***

It was Youji's turn to be titillated by the images his remark 
provoked, and a trickle of desire tinged his blood.  Oh, he would 
have plenty of nice fantasies later, he knew; Tsuzuki was the stuff 
of them.  

"It's a date, then."  

A shy smile broke over Tsuzuki's face, and Youji curled his hand away 
from his cheek, grazing his skin with his knuckles.  Edging the ridge 
of his jaw, and its velvety underside; his throat down to his 
loosened collar.  All the innocent caresses he wanted to indulge in, 
just to see his response.  He wasn't disappointed in what he saw: 
Tsuzuki would turn to his hand, lids closing now and then, lips 
parted just a little.  It was when his eyes had closed that Youji 
swept aside what little caution he'd been keeping, and shifted down 
for a kiss, the barest hint of pressure.  

It hit him like a jolt.  He broke away from him, rising a bit to 
stare in startled wonder into the other's vividly colored eyes.  
Tsuzuki appeared to be as caught off guard as he was--and then, just 
as delighted.  His hands left Youji's and one slipped around to perch 
on the back of his neck.  It was all the urging Youji needed.  He 
lowered himself down, dropping his skimming hand to rest at Tsuzuki's 
side, the other bracing himself on the blanket.  

He kissed him again, a headier slide of mouth-to-mouth contact, 
tickling the tip of his tongue along the rims of his companion's 
parted lips, teasing until the other pulled him closer.  Youji tasted 
of him with abandon at that point, savoring the bitter chocolate 
flavor of him.  

***

He had expected it, and he had not.  In the momentary fantasies of 
simply existing side by side with the earthly creature Kuudou-san was, 
he had dreamed of it, remembered what the feel of others' lips was 
like, second by second, in between all else that his mind could know.  
Recollection though had failed him- the thrill, in person, was nothing 
like any of it's facets- any trickle of a star where it used to shine; 
any breath of sugar, blood of lust.  

Youji's kiss was everything, and full of such desires.  His heart 
surged, even if it wasn't as strong as it would have been in a truly 
living body.  The only trembling shock of it had been the little voice 
in his mind that told him one simply didn't kiss on first dates...

/Asato, the Meiji Era is over./

/I've got all the time in the world to waste but.../

/...I don't want to think about it! Dying, living dead, dying alive, I 
just want to.../

And it all crumbled to sparkling dust as his companion's tongue brushed 
up against his own, deep into the warmth of his mouth.  The feeling of 
it sparkled down through him, and even the air off the gracious sea 
became one such caress.  With all the gusto he had, he kissed him back, 
taking his lips then, his mouth, his whole body in his arms and ran his 
hands over his back, his supple shoulders and the floss of his golden 
hair.

"Shame on you, Youji-san for being so delicious.  I'll have to come 
back every single day for more of THAT."

***

"Ah, you've just made my day," Youji replied. "I will expect you on 
the morrow, and the next, and the next..."

His voice died with another soft kiss. He was sorely tempted to coax 
him out of his clothes, and slather kisses all over him; it was hard 
to resist, but he did. Sometimes, it was fun to draw a seduction 
out, and he had a yearning to pull out the stops with this one. A 
man who liked to give imported chocolates on the first date deserved 
no less. 

So Youji contented himself with the way he felt pressed against him; 
amused himself with shy brushes of his fingertips over his sides, his 
chest, his thigh. 

"Now I just have to come up with diversion for you, one for each 
day," he said, grinning. "I relish the challenge."

*** 

As usual, Saffie Marlow was a little late coming out of school, and 
when she did find her way into the stairwell and the unguarded banister 
she so loved to slide down, her lovely blue and yellow uniform was 
still covered in fuscia and purple pastel smudges.  

"Ick..." she said to herself and the powder that had rubbed off on her 
fingers as they quested over her skirt.  But her frown turned into a 
little simper in the end.  After all, it was nothing of hers to worry 
about, but the maid's.

Technically, she wasn't supposed to change her clothing until after she 
made it back to one of her homes, but besides the state of them that 
afternoon, her brother had asked her to please wear one of her pretty 
dresses from Paris, and she was more than happy to oblige THAT of all 
requests.

The neatly folded dry-cleaners bag made it out of her tiny locker with 
no fuss, and not a wrinkle to be found on it's contents.  Delighted 
with her clever packing, she hung the bag on the roof of the wall of 
cubbies, and right there and thin, in a concrete corridor half-open to 
a courtyard full of flowers and someone's dropped papers, she stripped 
all the way down to her pastel pink undies.  She was wasn't wearing a 
bra or even a chemise, although, while Saffie stood there in the puddle 
over her discarded uniform, she found herself thinking she had better 
get herself a few.

"Muu! I hate you!" she told her little, naked breasts.  "You had better 
still fit in my dress!"

Fortunately, they did- the bodice made them seem to shrink back to the 
almost nothing.

The little dress was the color of especially brilliant teaberry taffy; 
made of something not quite silk, and not quite chiffon.  Light green 
ruffles of a fine and floaty lace lined the cuffs of the sleeves, the 
center of the waist and the rim of the skirt, but the collar had been 
left to only a bit of braided ribbon so nothing would tickle her throat 
ash she moved.  It would have been a perfectly ordinary peasant dress 
if not for the gigantic bow stitched right above her bottom- one with 
tails that fell far past her knees.  Matching it were two mary janes 
the same hue as the lace, and a beret topped with ribbons.  

As she'd gotten her homework done in class, she had nothing to carry 
with her.  The locker door slammed before her, but just when she should 
have swirled around she said, "Are you doing anything, Akiko?"

Akiko sputtered, glanced around and blushing profusely now that she had 
found nowhere to dash off too. "EEEEK! N-no.  I'm not going anywhere.  
Can't say the same for you, I see."

When Saffie turned to look at her, she had her hand behind her neck.  
An irresistible site really, and so the first little girl pattered up 
to the second, and leaned in close as she could, grinning.  
"Wellllllll... do you know what my Schu-baby's boyfriend told me this 
morning? And just so you know, it had nothing to do with the question 
on the test about Cervantes." 

"Well... who about..."

"...failing the test? No, we both did very well."

"The world will end in an explosion set off by mutated, nuclear 
hamsters rather...?"

"Than fire or ice? Nooooooo."

"In that case, I give up."

Oddly enough, Saffie seemed delighted by the prospect she now got to 
answer her own riddle.  "He said something exciting would happen to 
me."

Akiko gulped.

With a sigh and a bit of a scowl for the fact one of the wayward papers 
had decided it might like to ripple in with her pretty ribbons when it 
most certainly didn't belong there.  "Something exciting and obviously 
not dangerous, or else he would have sent bodyguards."

"Soooooooooooooo desu ka."

"He also said it would happen on my way home from school.  Want to come 
with and fine out what it is?"

She didn't.  Not one bit.  She knew Saffie had sensed this in her 
already, plain as words could be, and while she herself sensed, 
telepath or no...  "Hey... he told you I'd be coming already, didn't he?"

"Sure did!"

"Damn.  Let me go grab my stuff..."

***

Omi kept wondering when Aya was going to tell him it was time to go 
home.  

But the afternoon wore on like it never meant to end.  The shadows 
began to patter along after him in little lines just a little longer 
than he was, and the windows shone so brightly now the sun could reach 
them through the skylights that the windows he and his companion were 
seeing though gleamed back at them, kept their eyes from whatever lay 
behind.  

They had spent almost an hour together in the model shop, watching one 
of the clerks fight with a 1/60 scale Zaku.  He didn't know at all how 
much time had passed since then.  There had been sweaters and DVDs and 
the little music box shop with bamboo crickets sprinkled in the 
glimmering mermaids.  They'd reached the top floor at last, when he 
turned around and started to walk backwards in front of Aya.

The other boy had been trailing behind him for the longest time, 
glancing over the railing for the thrill of shoppers down below.  He'd 
almost stopped all together now, and was watching everything and 
nothing, maybe just the dark-haired girl with the yellow balloon who 
raced all around the fountain.

"Ne, Aya-kun!"

His voice startled him, since neither had spoken all that much all 
afternoon.

/Even if it's really just to cheer you up... in a funny sort of way.  
Since I know it's hard... not doing anything when you think you should.  
How about.../

"You're still thinkin' about Ken-kun, right? Let's go back to the model 
shop and get him something! If he really is sad- and you know, I don't 
think he is, but I bet that'll make him feel better!"  

***

Aya regarded him as if he were in a daze.  He had not been thinking 
about Ken, but about how making a trip to the mall was perhaps a bad 
idea, and how he now merely existed as opposed to lived; about how 
everything was so very WRONG, and when, damn it, when would it ever 
become RIGHT?  

Which led his thoughts right back to Ken.  

"Models," he said, much in the manner of one who had just learned a 
new word and wanted to commit it to memory.  "Okay, yeah.  We'll get 
Ken a model.  Between the two of us, I'm sure we can afford it."  

Omi gave a little cheer, and jogged back over to Aya, showering him 
with smiles.  But, despite his companion's enthusiasm, a worried 
little crease rose and hovered between the older boy's fine red 
brows.  

"Uh, they aren't really expensive, are they?"  

Omi shook his head, and Aya nodded in consent; as one, they turned 
and began to retrace their steps back to the model shop.  

"All right then," Aya said.  "But you'll have to pick it out.  I'm 
not sure what he'd like."  

***

"Let's get him an SD one! One of the cute BB ones!" Omi suggested at 
once, nearly treading on his companion's words.  The truth was, he 
quite liked such things himself, at least admiring the work Ken did 
with them.  Painting had never been a great skill of his, and whenever 
he tried to help their friend in question do away with the little burrs 
the frames left on the pieces, he invariably ended up with dents in 
their places that had to be replaced with putty.  

Aya in the mean time made no indication he knew anything about the 
situation, just nodded, and one hand straying over the edge of his 
jeans pocket, started back in the general direction of the model store.

"The BB ones have stick-on eyes.  Big googly eyes! And Ken-kun really 
likes them.  They're like that clear one he left on top of the toaster 
oven when it broke, only they don't all have swords bigger than they 
are that."

As they headed for the escalator, Omi began to tip-toe through the 
shadow-limns along the islands of sunlight still plopped on the ground.  
After all, the model shop was already in view, being on the floor 
below, and not far from the moving stairs.

It was full of bouncy schoolchildren.  

***

From Aya's point-of-view, they weren't just schoolchildren, they were 
a mass of shouting, excited, arguing, giggling immature humans, and 
they stood between them and a peaceful second trek through the toy 
shop.  Despite the lure of all those shiny playthings, his imaginings 
of how happy Ken would be when they presented the gundam to him, Aya 
didn't want to go back in there.  No, Omi could go.  Omi, who was 
still a kid himself, and would be able to cope.  Besides, he knew 
what to get.  

"O--"  he began, only to be startled by a sudden joyous shout from a 
pair of boys behind them.  He whirled around to fix them with a nasty 
glare.  But his efforts to were in vain; the two were utterly 
oblivious to everyone and everything save for the radio controlled 
motorcycle they'd found.  It spun in awkward circles across the faded 
orange carpet, occasionally bumping tables and other children.  

"Omi," he began again, "I don't want to go in there."  Aya leveled 
his forbidding stare at his companion, but Omi was unfazed.  He 
seized his arm, and determinedly hustled him forward into the melee, 
ignoring his protests.  Or maybe he couldn't hear them, for all the 
bright young voices.  

"Didn't you hear what I said?"

Omi rolled his eyes, and plunged ahead towards the center aisle.  Aya 
hung back, sulking for a bit, then followed him, dodging balls, and 
trucks, and scattered stuffed animals en route.  He spotted him again 
striding down the board games aisle.  Once Omi had reached it, he 
turned to see if Aya was coming, beckoning to him impatiently when he 
saw how far away the older boy was.  

"There better be one of those gundams you described on the shelf, 
Omi," Aya muttered, once he'd reached his side.  Of course, he 
privately figured there was such a model, for the shelves before them 
were lined ceiling to floor with gundams of all sizes and shapes.  
Aya took one down, a box depicting a green gundam, one arm of which 
ended in a dragon's head.  He knew fire would spew out of that 
dragon's mouth, if it were a real mecha, but he couldn't place just 
why he knew it.  

"So...people put these together, and then...what?  Just play?"  

Omi, eyeing another such plastic creature, nodded.  Aya studied the 
box in his hands for a moment, then set it back in its hole on the 
shelf.  He just didn't see the attraction--but then, he never had, 
not even when he was a kid.  He vaguely wondered about what he did 
like, and found he couldn't really remember--or he just didn't want 
to think of those days.  Not just then.  

"SD...SD..."  He murmured, moving down the line two steps before 
stopping again.  One had caught his attention, and Aya swept it off 
the shelf and marched it over to Omi, plopping it directly in front 
of his face.  The box read:  SD BB #100 Gundam Mibu Dai 
Shougun.    

"Look," Aya said, jiggling the box, "it can transform into a bird.  
Ken likes that kind, doesn't he?"

***

Omi's little speech of "grumpy gus" remarks died a lively death on the 
tip of his tongue.  She super-deformed Kamphir he'd been holding knew 
the full effects of gravity, and as such, found its way straight into 
the waiting hands of a little boy who hadn't quite been tall enough to 
reach it, and presently couldn't believe his luck that one had 
literally fallen into his hands WITHOUT his having to shake the 
display- an act both conspicuous and deadly. 

As for the youngest Weiss, gasped, and squealed and began to bounce up 
and down like a wind up rabbit with a screw loose.  

"Ken-kun loves that kind! And don't you know? THAT one's discontinued! 
It is! He told me just the other day how he'd love one and there it is 
and it's only 500 yen and it's perfect and I can't believe you...!"

Aya, having assumed he had made a good choice and there was no need to 
expand on the matter, nodded, and started his winding trek back to the 
cash register.

"Aya-kun!"

A few flying leaps, and he was back behind the swordsman where he 
thought well enough that he belonged.  One of the kids noticed their 
find and began to grouse to his friends about it.  The clerk acted like 
she got adult model-fanciers all the time (which she probably did) and 
they had to dig through their change in the hopes of coming up with 
enough.

They had plenty in the end.

***

It was always the same when she tried to spend an afternoon with 
Saffie.  When Saffie had afternoons to spend that was.  For a girl 
given to dressing so primly, and so enamored of vexing adults with a 
seemingly endless series of commentaries on string theory, she had an 
uncommon love of all things potentially messy: especially pastel 
portraits and soccer.  Supposedly, she cooked as well, but home ec 
simply wasn't offered at Humberuto Academy for Gifted Young Ladies, 
gifted young ladies being expected to do better than cook, even in 
Japan.  

"Wherever you want to go! Really! We have twelve minutes yet before we 
have to go."

But why they were supposed to go stand on top of the Dai Nippon Geiken 
Cooperate Headquarters in the middle of a perfectly good afternoon 
remained yet one more elusive tidbit in their conversations.

Akio chewed on her lip and tried to lie.  "Well I... I ah... I dunno."

"Oh, I think you do!" Not as if she had expected to fool her companion 
in the least, but everything in the real world, she figured was worth a 
shot.

"But I don't have any..."

"I have lots."

And so, all half-voiced mumbles of protest aside, she found herself 
then in the billowy pink embrace of the Sanrio store just outside the 
business district's train depot.  There was no one there save for two 
merry clerks (both of whom were presently more interested in a sumo 
battle they were having between a stuffed Badtz Maru and a stuffed 
Hello Kitty with green lace faerie wings) and what appeared to be a 
second pair of girls at first to Akiko.  

When it turned out to be a man with long, blond hair and a boy not much 
older than herself, it didn't especially surprise her, nor did the fact 
they were presently going through the rack of pens.  After all, the 
pale, cream coat of the older fellow was doused all over in magenta 
ink, the pocket being the epicenter of the stain.

No, the only shocking thing about the while affair was the way her 
companion's eyes grew wide as saucers when she saw them, smiles aside, 
and the fact she whirled around on her taffeta shoes rather than look 
at them too long.

Akiko shrugged decided she wanted a new keychain.  But which one?

***

"Acid green or lavender; My Melody or Little Twin Stars--It doesn't 
matter! Please, please, just pick one," urged Hisoka. "I feel silly 
just being here." And with good reason: the store was decidedly 
pink inside, and fluffy, and sparkly, no matter where he looked. 
Even in the corner where the Pochacco and Badtz-Maru stuff were 
stashed, a pitifully narrow block of boyish blues and deep greens, 
did the vibrant angel tones prevail; it was like gazing upon a black 
hole in the midst of a field of stars. It wasn't a wonder there 
weren't any males in the shop. 

Except, of course, none but them. And Watari, despite Hisoka's 
impatience, clearly wasn't in a hurry to make up his mind, or even to 
leave. To Hisoka's dismay, Watari took his handful of glittering 
pens, and headed off for a display of office supplies. Notebooks! 
Tape dispensers! Staplers! All the things a busy shinigami doctor 
needed to keep his files tidy. 

It was then, as he watched the good doctor inspect a pink Hello Kitty 
stapler, that Hisoka surrendered--both to his partner's indecision 
and his own sudden need to peruse the Pekkle merchandise on the other 
side of the shop. 

Hisoka wove between two standing racks of Sanrio backpacks, and 
unexpectedly found himself not only just two feet from the Pekkle 
bins, but just inches away from an amused little girl with bright 
blond hair and curious eyes, hands clasped daintily in front of her. 
One who was staring at him quite intently--like she found him 
fascinating. 

One who was obviously in no mood to step out of his way, never mind 
that he was now glowering at her. 

"Eh? What do you want, little girl?" 

***

/A.../

Saffie shook her head and swept aside to let the boy before her pass... 
he slipped by her then, shrugging and sighing to himself before 
settling his fast-fleeing attention on a padlock where the merry duck 
had been emblazoned in colored, bubbly relief.

/A.../

Akiko, wrapped up in the allure of the keychains herself, didn't even 
notice him! Or that her friend had gone.  She just went one and on in 
her surreal little world of winged cats and surly, chibified penguins! 
Like she hadn't a care in the world! Like reality, unreal as it might 
have been that moment, didn't matter to her! Not even...

/A tactile input telepath with pyrokinetic tendency ticks! Not a 
psychometric: a tactile input telepath with pyrokinetic tendency ticks. 
AND GREEN EYES!/

The little girl's wonderment melted into a kind of goofy, semi-
senseless smirk and she wrang her own hands with the utmost of 
delights.

/It's too bad he's dead./

Although that sobering realization did evoke a most puzzling conundrum 
in her besides all the recent born and quickly splatting almost 
passion.  ::Hey, Schu-baby?::

The thoughts darted out of the Sanrio shop, flew up above the clouds, 
and finally came diving down into an open, drowsy mind on the other 
side of the city.  ::Hey! What's up, Liebechen?::

::If you fall in love with a shinigami, and you know they're a 
shinigami, does that make you a necrophiliac?::

::Hmm... I... don't know.  Hold on, I'm with Dr. Kazutaka.  I'll ask.:: 
Schuldich looked up suddenly from the sidewalk which he had been 
staring at through the window of the car and a few passing prostitutes 
who tasted like lime sorbet.  "Hey, are you a necrophiliac? Just 
curious."

Muraki grinned from ear to ear and nodded.

::He says yes.::

::Well... damn!::

::Now, now.  There's nothing wrong with having the hots for dead 
people.  It's not like most of 'em CARE.::

Unfortunately, Saffie's did.

/Ah, I suppose it's better to have eyes only for Nagi-chan anyway.../

::No, it's not.::

With a dour little sigh, Saffie bid farewell to her brother, and began 
to poke through the Miffy kiosk which she had come across while trying 
not to look at Hisoka.  It didn't make any sense that it was there, 
considering the rivalry of the cat and the rabbit.  Sometimes, she 
supposed, cats and rabbits got along...

***

"Hisoka! I've made up my mind! I will take... both pens!" Watari declared 
as he made to leave the display, though the attempt failed quite 
miserably, and he ended up trotting right back.  "Well... and this." The 
stapler felt like it was giving him sad eyes, and he just couldn't 
leave it be.

Neither, it seemed, could his gaze flee the Pekkle section where his 
companion had been poking about.  As soon as they had met at the 
register, and the cashier busied herself with searching for just the 
right size bag, he bent beside him and whispered with his lips nearly 
on his ear: "Did she say anything to you? The little girl from the file 
of those psychics? That's her, isn't it?"

***

Hisoka hurriedly cast a look over at the pair of girls, who were 
examining the Miffy bento boxes. The dainty blonde, now holding a 
powder blue paper Kitty fan before her face, peeped at him shyly, a 
smile in her eyes. 

Of course! It was her! Hisoka cursed himself for not noticing it 
before. His non-existent love life would just have to remain so...at 
least for the time being.

"No," he replied quietly, "she didn't say a word to me. 
Though...isn't it odd she's here?" Hisoka made a face. "I mean, 
here when we are. It's all too much of a coincidence, 'cause we 
don't come here everyday. Or at least *I* don't."

***

"Once a week! Once a week! I try to be responsible," The doctor blurted 
out, only to realize he had done so in a voice just a touch too loud 
for the serenity the lipless kitty faces bobbing all around him seemed 
comfortable with.  He covered his own mouth then, and turned away from 
Hisoka, the two giggling girls, and the change the cashier had offered 
him.  

Only after they had slipped out the door for the sake of what 
appearances remained to them did he remark, "Stranger things have 
happened.  But... you're right.  ESPECIALLY considering that she's one of 
the telepaths."

"Why would that make it 'ESPECIALLY' strange? I could just as easily 
have found you if I was like Bradley."

The two shinigami whirled around to find the candy pink puff of their 
quarry not five steps behind them in a pond of sunlight which had 
tripped between two of the white girders overhead.  Her companion was 
all but hiding behind her, pretending to admire an add for the latest 
Kinki Kids album.  Neither of them moved, or spoke, or did anything but 
smile like the blond one did while she waited for her answer.

Though she ended up giggling, "Actually, he did tell me I'd meet you.  
You're Yutaka and Hisoka? I'm Saffie, and this is Akiko."

Saying so, she dragged the other girl down with her when she bowed.

***

But Hisoka did not bow or smile:  He STARED.  HARD.  For she had done 
something extremely rude. Who was she to call them by their first 
names?!  And her a child, yet.  

"That's Kurosaki-san and Watari-sensei to YOU!" he snapped.  "Now 
what the..." he caught himself, reddening slightly.  "I mean, WHY are 
you following us?  This some kind of a game you're playing?" he 
sneered.  "Taunt the shini--"  

The rest of his sentence ended in incoherent mumbling, as Watari had 
clamped his hand over the boy's mouth.  

***

"...-gami?" completed Saffie.  And then she began to giggle behind one of 
her slim little hands while the creatures before her looked on in VERY 
uncomfortable disbelief.  Akiko, her hair standing on end with fright, 
spun away again and began to fidget like a child who knows the prick of 
a shot is immanent.  

"What are you talking about?" Watari caroled, and he waved his hand at 
the two of the dismissively as he could, "That's just silly.  Kids' 
stuff, Kids' stuff! You've been reading too much manga, and let me tell 
you if it has shinigami in it it's probably a little too scary for 
little..."

Savil parried then, "Well, for starters, ~you~ seem to have left your 
JuMaCho name tag on."

It was true.  He had.  And while he was desperately trying to come up 
with a logical excuse, she added.

"Besides the fact that shinigami thoughts always taste a little like... 
Vidalia onion." She spoke her little tidbit of knowledge as if it were 
rather some profundity everyone was expected to know.  Frankly, neither 
Hisoka nor his companion seemed to find any connection between the two.  
Vidalia onion equals death? It just didn't make sense.  

"See? A whole bunch of stuff about your being shinigami that you didn't 
want me to know just flashed through the back of your mind.  Oh, please 
don't act all scared! You MUST be used to telepaths by now.  And 
anyway, you can go home soon: I just called the sei for you.  He should 
be here any minute."

***

"How kind of you," Hisoka grumbled, glaring at Savil--who only smiled 
prettily and curtseyed to him.  With a snarl, the boy angrily whirled 
instead upon Watari.  The doctor had not yet bothered to take his 
nametag off.  Hisoka, with shaking hands, assisted him.  

"Countless emails, and memoes, and sticky-notes, and still you don't 
get it!"  He snapped, jamming the pin into the closest pocket of 
Watari's lab coat.  "Leave your name tag at the office!"  

The blond attempted to splutter a defense for his forgetfulness, but 
Hisoka silenced him by clamping his hand on Watari's arm.  "Never 
mind that now.  Just...come on.  If the sei is coming, we might do 
better fighting it on the street.  Not here, outside Sanrio shop."  

Because how would they ever live THAT down?, he asked himself.  

***

"Aww! I thought it might be fun to have it *in* the store!  Not on top 
of the Dai Nippon Geiken building where you were supposed to have it." 
Saffie remarked quite half-heartedly on their way out. 

"Were... supposed to?" He asked her at last. Hisoka hadn't closed the pin 
on his nametag just right- it came undone as he walked and had stabbed 
him in the chest. As quickly as the wound healed, it had still left a 
smear of blood on his shirt, he could feel it- hot and sticky.

"Of course. But that's the nice thing about knowing the future- 
sometimes, you can have fun with it! I- we -aren't supposed to be here, 
you know. This summer already happed without us in another world. But 
it's spring yet, so don't worry."

"By 'us' you mean..."

"All the people in that file, I..." Her words faded though her thought 
hadn't reached its end.

Akiko's nervous sighs hadn't startled them away, for though her fingers 
did steal over the other girl as she passed by, it was Hisoka who 
captured her attention in the end. As if staring at a bird of paradise 
frozen in the frost about the poles she watched him, caught on her 
tiptoes so they were as close to eye to eye as they could get.

"Oh, you poor thing. You can't block, can you? Or your 'friend'! My, 
aren't you fucked!"

The shadow of a boy's voice passed over her once more at that, but 
clung to her no more than some stranger's wandering gaze.

And either way, she had tip-toed back over to her little friend, who 
had her fingers in her mouth, and her knees clapped tight together. 
Saffie perked, and listened herself, her eyes stealing back and forth 
across the sky. There at least, nothing changed.

The sounds of glass and concrete shattering in the distance presently 
insinuated itself into the afternoon, bleeding through even the voices 
strewn about the sidewalk.  Screams followed, but for them, the little 
telepath did nothing more then set her fingers to her lips.

She whistled.

"NEEEEEEEEEE! Gisaro-kun! I'm one street over, silly!"

Wateri ripped a piece of chalk form his coat, and began to scribble 
wildly on the sidewalk at his feet. Pink dust from his scratches flew 
in the gusts of the passing cars. That at least was shortly not alone.

The entire Sanrio store exploded in a conflagration of ruptured pink 
plastic and beheaded stuffies. The entrails of a toaster oven still 
wearing the effigy of Hello Kitty skittered across the ground like a 
live thing and landed at Saffie's feet, a little of its smoke chasing 
its way up her skirt. The walls of the two shops on either side 
squealed under the stress, crumbling down to their girders, and those, 
in the limelight of the creature stranded among the ruins, warped and 
bent and cracked like spun sugar.

In the distance, all the glass in all the train station's thousand 
windows fell to the ground. It sounded like the shore of an ocean of 
bells.

It gave off no light, but a culpable circlet of wind dashed around its 
feet.  its presence was rife and wretched with wet, seething anger. 
When the shadows and the smoke gave way, only the figure of a blond 
highshcool boy met their eyes. Once he, and the thing within him had 
taken stock of the two shinigami though...

"YOU!? No... NO! This can't be... not so soon again! I WON'T! No matter 
what you do to me I *WON'T*! Not anymore!"

The voice died though, and so did the body holding it. From throat to 
waist the skin split with a screaming crack; the garish muscle and the 
bones, their fragments following the two plumes of blood which erupted 
from the corpse.

Saffie didn't even try to duck them, and to Watari's momentary horror, 
the crimson did no more than splatter as if on glass some twenty inches 
from her face. The sei lost all interest for her then. She wheeled 
through her own ribbons and stared across the still road to the 
rooftops there.

"Wai! Nagi-chan, you came!"

Though there were two boys there: the other -the one she paid no mind 
to -dripping with little metal loops where chains had once run through 
his clothing.

No one was looking their way but her though- a few drops of blood 
spilled against the laws of physics meant nothing to them. The sei, as 
he strode through the rubble and the fragments of bodies other than the 
one he had claimed...

He was beautiful. His chocolate brown hair lay strewn about his pale 
skin and the faint traces of golden tattoos there- mussed, but as if by 
play and not the final vapors of the blast. When he moved, he flowed, 
and though his flesh, fed on that of his last host, had form now, it 
failed to seem solid at all as if it was but mist gathered in the shape 
of a boy. Those lush pink lips could not be kissed, as tantalizing as 
they seemed, and the emerald of his eyes would be destined to fade with 
the end of some dream. And yet, he had breath now, left footprints, 
wounded the tip of one slim foot upon some fallen glass.

He was also, in his true form now, quite nude.

***

Crouching in the chalk circle at Watari's feet, Hisoka could not help 
but stare at the sei.  He had expected him to look like the monster 
he was--not like the star of some fevered, erotic dream.  That he was 
beautiful made the situation even more horrifying, and Hisoka could 
feel his heart roar in his ears.  The creature was more like a god, 
not a beast.  And only a god could defeat a god.  

"Watari..." he croaked, wishing it was Tsuzuki instead--Tsuzuki who 
could summon gods strong enough to successfully fight him if it came 
to that.  But before he could say anything more to his companion, he 
was nearly bowled over by a waves of emotion, fear and anger mostly; 
a desperate longing.  The sei was in pain, and Hisoka felt it so 
acutely it brought tears to his own eyes.  

And then it was all gone, and he was on his feet, Watari's arm around 
him for support.  The sei was still poised at the very edge of the 
circle, regarding Hisoka curiously.  The boy shrugged Watari's arm 
off, and swiped at his eyes, momentarily glancing off to the side 
where he saw the Japanese youth the telepath had summoned.  He was 
now picking his way across the rubble towards her.  

As for the other one...Hisoka tore his eyes away from him before he 
could fully see what he was up to.  It was bad enough that he could 
feel his utter hatred.  He wavered under its onslaught, but shook it 
off quickly before anyone could notice his distress.  Or he hoped 
they didn't.  

The sei didn't seem to, even though his gaze didn't flicker away once-
-even though he'd lifted his hand as if he wished one of them to take 
it and step out of the circle.  Hisoka wasn't so sure of him that he 
would dare do that.  

"Despite the fact that it's what you want," Hisoka said, guessing at 
the cause of his heartache, "you can't stay here.  You have to go 
back where you came from."  

***

"Do you even know where I'm from, Hisoka?" asked the sei, and rather 
than waiting for the boy to answer him, he met his eyes for but a 
moment, and his mind.  The circle did well enough to keep him from 
their skin, but it wore no ward against the faint, ephemeral kisses 
telepaths used so often upon the objects of their curiosity.

It didn't feel, exactly like a telepath's though, the spirit's tasting 
of him.  It left behind more than an echo-presence, but a clear, 
physical heat in his chest and the smell of wilting vegetation in his 
nose.  

"You don't.  You think you do, but you don't.  They told you I'm from 
Papua New Guinea, did they?"  With an arrogant sniff, he tossed his 
head, only to reach through his hair and smooth it with his dainty 
fingers.  "Well, well.  I haven't been from Papua New Guinea in 
centuries.  It's as much their fault as mine I'm 'free'.  Your precious 
'Hakushaku' is the one who imprisoned me in the first place."

Watari raised his eyebrows at this, and in his shock, the Sei delighted 
all the more, a sardonic grin staining the wine of his lips.

"I mean, even your little girl mind-reader knows that, and I'm sure 
Tsuzuki did too if he hasn't forgotten already."

"I'm not a 'mind-reader', I'm a telepath.  There's a difference."  
Savil protested, shaking her finger at the sei.  That miffed him just a 
little and he promptly blew up the parking meter at her elbow with one 
cross look.  The shrapnel only burst halfway, sailing into the street 
rather than her arm.  She just laced her fingers together, and on her 
tiptoes, draped herself over Nagi's shoulder.

Akiko made some effort to hide herself behind the elder boy who had 
arrived with Saffie's, but when her hands met the jingling circlets at 
his back, he turned around and gave her such an infernal grin, she 
promptly decided to take her chances in the open. 

"So, let's not bicker over semantics, dear," the sei concluded.

***

At once, a pair of chipped cement blocks which stood in the street 
between Gisaro and the circle Watari had cast burst into a cloud of 
dust; propelled by a sudden gust of wind, it swept over the sei and 
wisped away into nothing. Gisaro seemed to lift a brow in surprise; 
he wasn't used to receive warnings in that sort of form.

"Yes," said Nagi softly, "let's not bicker at all. Unless you like 
to play rough games...?" 

Gisaro looked him up and down, sizing him up, and then a ghost of a 
smile tugged at his mouth. "Maybe some other time. Right now..." he 
turned back to the pair of shinigami who still stood within the 
circle. Before he could vocalize his thoughts for the non-telepaths 
in the group, Hisoka interrupted him. 

"What do you want?" he asked. "What's so important that you kill 
innocents?!"

***

"Innocents? I drink the essence of a few spare prostitutes and that 
makes them innocents?" The sei threw back his head and laughed 
outright.  "If I had that kind of power, I wouldn't need to drink at 
all."

"Fifty three if NOT a few!" Watari protested, stamping his foot so hard 
he nearly tumbled form his own circle.

Farfarello took this time to quite casually point out, "Semantics 
again."

"Woul, no one asked, thank you very much!"

"The loon with the eyepath has a point, you know." The spirit intoned, 
sounding every bit bored with whatever he had come across in mad man's 
mind.  Anticipating the words his neglected doctor was about to spit at 
him, he counted them with a wave of his hand and a simple, "Please, 
let's not result to vulgarity either.  I have a name.  It's Gisaro.  
Saffie over there took the time to learn it, I expect you ought to as 
well."

Saffie nodded, every bit the sage in clever disguise, "And I'm not even 
hunting him! Now you were saying...?"

"Thanks," Gisaro quite obviously didn't care for being acknowledged 
just so.  "You though! You two little deaths.  You have no right to 
judge me! You're just like me: spirits stuffed in leftover bodies sent 
to kill your own kind.  You were humans once, so you get lonely and you 
drag them down to hell with you when they won't die on your own.  When 
I was a Kalui, I killed Kalui.  Now that I'm a whore, I kill sluts.  
The criteria isn't exactly the same, but you get the idea."

Somewhere in the rubble, the last of the shops girders writhed and 
cracked its last, striking the remnants of the Miffy display with a 
deafening shatter.  Watari didn't hear a word of it, for his mind 
rather had whirled and spun and tripped and tumbled, coming to rest all 
of a sudden on a paper he had spared but the faintest glimpse.

"Then the report from the Oceana branch...?!"

"...which you never really saw, besides in summary form."

"Because it doesn't exist! You're..."

"...Hakushaku's love slave.  Is this going somewhere besides the 
obvious?"

Actually, that hadn't been at all what the doctor had been about to 
suggest, and so it appalled him all the more.

***

Hisoka obviously shared Watari's sentiments, for upon hearing 
Gisaro's jaw-dropping revelation, he gaped pale-faced at the smirking 
wraith. 

"You?!" he cried, jabbing at finger in his direction. "And...and 
Hakushaku? That..." 

Wasn't really surprising. It would be like Hakushaku to be into 
kinky ghost sex--and why care if the ghost in question is murderous, 
when it was so lovely? 

"Bastard," Hisoka grumbled. 

"Ohhh?" crooned Gisaro. "Jealous? Because...I'm not THAT tied to 
him." With a leer for the boy, Gisaro lay his hand upon his throat, 
and drew it slowly down his torso in a seductive kind of slither. 
Hisoka found he couldn't tear his eyes away from the glide of the 
sei's hand; Gisaro noticed his interest, and just before he could 
touch his groin, he let his hand fall to his side, and laughed 
nastily. 

Color rose to Hisoka's cheeks at that, and he scowled in a vain 
attempt to hide his embarrassment. "Shut up!" he spat. "We are 
nothing like you. We take the souls of those whose time on this 
plane has come to an end. YOU merely KILL for the sake of it. 
There's nothing humane about what you do. It's all to slake your own 
sick desires!"

***

It was really rather doubtful that Hisoka, of sound mind and body 
still, could have put what he felt into any gentler words, or that such 
a little play of sentiment would have done even a sliver of good 
against their sei's particular point of ire.  

Gisaro's eyes blazed for an instant, and a plume of indigo shot through 
the lines of his tattoos one, twice before the gold bled through again.

With a voice as calm as water just before it shatters into waves, "Sick 
desires? We seem to have a little misunderstanding here.  You see, I 
haven't had anyone to eat in almost two-hundred years."

The streetlights for half a mile around all surrendered themselves to a 
shattered state without much of a fight.

"I'M FUCKING STARVED!"

***

Glass chimed around him as Hisoka lowered his arms to his sides, the 
shards spilling from his hair and clothing. "How noble of you to 
forego eating those mortals you encounter," he sneered. "How 
sacrificing you are, to rid the world of those you deem unfit to 
dwell within it--those like YOU!" 

"Poor sei," Hisoka mocked, glaring at him from the smudged edge of 
the circle. "Do you loathe yourself, deep down? Is that your real 
reason for killing?" 

"Do you really expect us to care?" 

***

"No," Gisaro spat back with a toss of his head, "I most certainly 
don't! However, I do expect you at least be smart enough to just let me 
*go*.  I mean, even YOU know you're not going to get anywhere 
threatening me with just a little telepathy, some magic circles and... is 
that a fuda in your pocket?"

"I can draw some pretty vicious blobs!" Watari protested.

"Oooh! Blobs! I'm indescribably terrified.  In fact, I'm so afraid of 
them, I bet it looks like I DON'T GIVE A SHIT."

The doctor's only halfway intelligible response to this was a muted 
"Hidoi..." as he turned away, and for fun if any other reason, began to 
draw what were probably supposed to be tissues on his hand.  Sadly, 
even his ability to draw a square was nothing short of sub-par.

"And anyway, you're wrong!" Saffie burst out with a little sneer as she 
whirled away from Nagi's shoulder.  "You don't just have one telepath 
and a fuda.  You have TWO telepaths, one Lucinda, a telekinetic, my 
doggie and..." Akiko here glanced around in search of a canine of some 
sort.  Farfarello moaned and pinched his nosebridge.  "A really big bag 
of fuda!"

A swarm of paper charms sailed from the pockets of the silver-haired 
boy, zipped over the concrete and stuck themselves (or at least, stuck 
most of themselves) all over Gisaro until he looked more like a fraying 
mummy than a homicidal sex god.

He stood blinking for a moment, rustling and shedding little scraps 
here and there; scratched himself between his legs, and under his chin, 
and on his left forearm.

"HEY! These are ITCHY! Get 'em off! Get 'em off!"

***

Hisoka's laughter rang out over the windy street. "Afraid of a 
couple of Fuda? Some vicious monster YOU are," the boy sneered.

***

His remark succeeded only in getting onto Gisaro's nerves more so than 
the fuda, or his recent lack of nourishment.  The paper charms flew 
from his skin then, bursting and cracking like glass in mid air until 
only a few stray feathers of them still clung rustling to him.

"Yeah! Well, let's see how YOU like it!"

From beneath the shade of his tousled hair, one of the sei's tattoos 
rose from his skin, swaying like a tiny golden snake at his side until 
finally the very tip of its lacey curls wept a long, soft leaf of 
brilliant green.  Two, then three and swaying all together they lost 
all of their lines at last until one by one they seeped away from him, 
and began to cling to the edges of the doctor's ward.  Chalk peeled 
from the concrete in little severed arks and blew away, let the leaves 
through, but no hands, no Gisaro.

He simply stood and watched his toys circle the shinigami, nibbling 
daintily upon on finger though he did pause occasionally to chase down 
one of his itches.   

"Eenie... meenie... minie... oh, how about you go f-..."

Watari's scream though was crushed to nothing under the clang 
Farfarello's sword made when it met Gisaro's shield.  

"Hmm, wise mad man, are we?" 

"When he's not ACTUALLY mad? Yes." Saffie replied with an oh so certain 
nod.

"Hmm, sounds delicious."  But the next blow found itself fending off 
not with any spiritual barrier, but a yawn and a gigantic, fuchsia 
spoon which the Sei had conjured on whim alone.  "Maybe we can play 
later.  For now... oh, hold still, boy. Geeze!"

***

Impulsively, Hisoka flung a ball of energy in their direction, 
knocking their locked weapons apart, and sending Farfarello 
skittering away from the sei.  For a moment, the Irishman lay still, 
and then, to Hisoka's mild wonder, he rose without so much as a grunt 
of pain, and flashed a terrible smile at the pair of them, his tongue 
darting out to lap the blood from the long scratch on his left 
forearm.  It was Gisaro's laughter that tore his attention away.  

"Oh, feel his joy!  We've hurt his god, the one thing he wants," said 
Gisaro with a cold smile for Hisoka.  "Can you feel it?"  

He could feel it, without the sei's prompting; Hisoka was doing his 
best to couch the madman's emotions within those of the people around 
him.  "I don't care!" he spat.  "He's nothing."

"Not nothing," said the sei, waving a scolding finger.  

"You are the one.  You are the problem," countered Hisoka, drawing a 
deep breath.  "And I am going to stop you."  

"You...stop me?"  Gisaro let out another peal of laughter, and 
Hisoka's face began to burn.  Indeed, it seemed they all were 
laughing at him, deep inside.  Always laughing.  

"Yeah," he said, "Me."  And he wrenched free of Watari's restraining 
hand, and left the boundaries of the doctor's protective circle.  
Gisaro promptly stopped laughing, though amusement lingered in his 
eyes.  

"We'll duel.  You lose, you leave--and I mean this plane of 
existence, not just Tokyo."  

***

"Sounds fair," Gisaro remarked with a yawn, and a clanging of his spoon 
against the ground.  "Hell, I'll do you one better.  You manage to kick 
my ethereal ass, I'll see if I can leave that leaf of mine stuck to 
your doctor friend's forehead."

As he said so though, those such toys of his which he'd decided not to 
play with all burst into blood spatters where they hovered.  No one 
really took notice.  The children were all too busy laughing- 
Farfarello among them, though not Nagi (he had cracked a smile, just a 
trace of one scarcely enough to be discovered even by sunlight).

Watari didn't even seem to remember he was alive.

He just stood there, his hands clamped over his chest and the two small 
and supple breasts there which had ripped open the two middle buttons 
of his lapcoat.

Of the boy, for aghast hardly did him any justice, he remembered 
himself only with a quick thwack to the head made by the sei's second 
spoon, this one blue, and quite obviously being offered him.  

"Stop gawking and lets get going already! You know as well as I do you 
don't swing that way.  And I haven't got ALL day."

***

Bewildered, Hisoka hesitantly took the spoon, and twirled it between 
his fingers. "A spoon? You, a mighty sei, fight with eating 
utensils?" 

Gisaro folded his arms across his chest and fixed Hisoka with a 
grim "So what?!" kind of look, and the younger detective laughed 
nastily. 

"This is ridiculous," said Hisoka. "But...okay, you want to fight 
with spoons, we'll fight with spoons." And brandishing his own, he 
determinedly stepped out of the chalk circle, and took a place 
opposite the sei. 

"Okay. I'm ready, Gisaro."

***

"Finally!" And with that, he paused an instant to pop one of his 
shoulders, yawned, and took a terrifically off-kilter whack at Hisoka, 
who had until that moment been quite tricked into complacency by the 
unwieldy little show. He caught it though, the spoon rushing for his 
head, and being that it was indeed a spoon, Gisaro had no trouble 
giving it a spin and clouting him upside the temple with the bottom of 
its bowel.

"Come on now! You can't expect this to work as if we had katana. 
Fight as if you are hungry, hungier than you've ever been."

"Which reminds me, Savil remarked from the sidelines, her little pro-
sei banner fluttering behind her back for an instant. "I'm feeling a 
bit peckish. Shall we stop for dinner somewhere on the way home, 
Nagi-chan?"

"You're thinking about food at a time like this!?" This wailed by 
Akiko, who had once more cowered behind Farfarello- he might have 
been an unsavory shield, but compared to what else there was...

"Why not? If you like, you can always come along."

"Trendy cafes hurt God."

And all the children, charmed or not, shook their heads while around 
them rang the deadly chimes of two spoons crashing together, glass 
under feet, flesh on flesh and finally Watari's faint moan.

***

Another stunning blow had met Hisoka's temple, and the boy dropped to 
his hands and knees onto the carpet of broken glass and cement dust. 
The street reeled in his blurred vision, and he felt the warm sting 
of his blood flowing from the needle thin cuts blooming on his grimy 
palms. He closed his eyes to better combat a rising tide of nausea, 
only to have to open them again much too soon for his liking. The 
sei was now standing over him, gloating. 

"Do you yield?" said Gisaro smugly, twirling his blood-edged spoon 
between his fingers. 

Hisoka blinked at him stupidly. "...I...I won't..." he stammered, 
not moving from where he sat despite his show of bravado, save to 
retrieve the spoon from where it had fallen. Beside him, Gisaro 
crouched, and leaned in close to him. 

"Go on, boy," he whispered. "Pass out. Admit defeat. Because I've 
only just begun, you know. I would hate it if you could not be there 
to witness my moment of glory." 

"No," said Hisoka, turning to glare vaguely in his direction. 
Gisaro, however, was only affected by his anger enough to sigh in 
exasperation. 

"Suit yourself, then," he replied, and two semi-solid fingers rose 
and tapped Hisoka squarely in the middle of his forehead. Hisoka 
crumpled to the ground without a sound. 

"I wanted to do it nicely, but oh, no. You had to be stubborn." 
Gisaro gathered up his opponent's weapon, and stood again, holding 
them both aloft in victory. 

Over Savil's cheer, Watari shouted his name, but Hisoka didn't 
awaken. Gisaro, with a nasty laugh, stepped away from the fallen 
detective, and moved to join the quartet of humans who had stayed to 
observe the fight. Savil beamed at him as if star-struck. Akiko 
yelped fearfully, and hid her face behind Farfarello. 

"It has been...enlightening," he said, and he shimmered into nothing, 
leaving only his footprints behind. When their eyes shifted to where 
the two strangers had been, they saw they had disappeared in like 
fashion. No one, save for Akiko, was frightened by their sudden 
leaving. In fact, they looked quite satisfied. 

"I feel like having a burger with the works," said Nagi at 
last. "Let's go to that little restaurant on Kitagawa. They have 
the best ones."

***

In the midst of their psychic carnage and the spilled blood of innocent 
bystanders, Saffie began to cheer with a gaiety shame could never 
touch.  "I want a teriyaki chicken sandwich with mayonnaise!"

"What a thoughtless child..." Farfarello mused then.  He had finished 
lapping the blood off his arm and so his lips were free now, albeit 
quite crimson.  "To admire a beast she herself attacked and then want 
for nothing but the sating of her insipid, mortal flesh."

Akiko, (to whom he must have been speaking too all the while), peeked 
out from behind his back just long enough to nod.  Sirens then, sirens 
at last, and she took back her hiding place.  Insane? Yes, he could 
only be.  But he had made no move for her, and so frightening a 
creature was he, that surly no one else would come for her while he was 
there.  

The cries of delight finally came wheeling to an end, and her 
protector, over them did say, "I want an order of onion rings."

This answered with a chime, more clapping... "Neeee, Akiko-chan, what 
about you?"

"Ice cream..." it was all the more she could make herself say, so long 
had she been silent.  It seemed as if her tongue no longer belonged to 
her, and made no intention of ever doing so again.  

"Yay! They've got ice cream! And shakes! And sundaes and oh, Nagi-chan! 
Don't worry about walking!"

By the sleeve she had caught the boy she shared her home with, and his 
languid shuffled ended at her touch.  They starred at one another, the 
certainty of their gaze broken only by a wink.  "I got us a ride. It 
should get here in four minutes or so.  We just have to go wait by the 
intersection over there."

No sooner had she pointed to the less damaged side of the arcade where 
they had gathered, then all four of the misadventureous children found 
themselves born into the air and blown like leaves over the 
insubstantial roofs standing in their way.  No one was looking skyward 
at the time- Savil had seen to that, and so when they landed at last, 
there was not so much as a murmur as to from where they had come- much, 
much stranger things were happening just on the other side of the wall, 
a few apparating pedestrians were certainly no competition.   

By a twist of broken streetlight did they wait until the slowly 
seething traffic at last gave way to one of Takatori's jet black 
limousines.  The driver pulled up to the curb at their feet, and 
climbed out calling,  "Aaa! There you are, Savil-sama.  No *what* may I 
ask is my kokoishii doing out here in this mess?"

"Kaze-chan!"

And then to match her missing tongue, Akiko suddenly felt as if the 
rest of her had vanished in turn.  Her companion left them, and took a 
flying leap over the hood of the limo.  He caught her, the unfamiliar 
demon there in his cream suit and blue raybans; he caught her, and he 
kissed her on the lips with all the sensuous wonder fit for a girl many 
times Saffie's age.

"Ewe," said Farfarello.

***

Alone and invisible on one of the rooftops still intact and stable, 
words were falling, and no one could hear them.

"Hisoka... Hisoka-kun.  Oh, wake up Hisoka-kun! Your wounds are gone, 
they're gone already... damnit! Hiso-ka...-kun."

The doctor's voice fell though.  It was ordinary sleep he saw, and not 
so ordinary blood.  Wounds of the spirit sought through the flesh never 
healed quite right away.  Some were left, but fading, fading... just like 
the leaf still resting on his brow.  With the boy still clasped to him, 
he looked down to his half-bared chest in horrid wonder.

The breasts his only so many moments before had gone with the sei's 
curse.  He did not have the sense to feel if anything else in him had 
changed, and now it was all he could do to wonder.

/No... not all.  Not all!/

Through the reflection in his tears, they seeped back to hell and the 
springtime burned into the sky there.

***

Schuldich sighed and tipped his seat back so that all he made out any 
longer of Tokyo speeding by was the water gleams of light that bubbled 
over the grey ceiling of Muraki's Lexus.  The doctor hadn't said 
anything, though between them he tasted somewhere deep in thought; 
musing over the out of nowhere question from before.  It had been that 
way for too many minutes Schuldich decided.

"My sister wanted to know," came the answer his mind had not conjured 
on its own, All the wonder in him drew itself thin, into fine, fine 
threads: purely analytical by nature though still swept by the milky 
citrus of his madness.  The logic of the eloquently deranged always 
tasted in the ways of something that could not exist- lemon tea with 
cream in it or mint shot with barley.  Something like that.

"I can still pick her up no matter where I am.  She's only as nosey as 
I am, so don't worry."

They had stopped at a red light somewhere.  He reached over and took 
Muraki's thigh against his hand, just as his companion had imagined him 
doing.  Only there was just once incidental difference...

"I'd wear that," Schuldich answered and he called the image up between 
them then, snickering to himself about it.  "Hey, I'm always good for a 
little dress up, and not just with Saffie, as tempting as that may be.  
I can be the doll besides the dollmaker." 

***

"Interesting proposal.  I believe I shall take you up on it."  Muraki 
tilted him a faint smile.  "I would dearly love to see you garbed so, 
all those complicated fasteners and ribbons standing between me and 
your succulent flesh.  The unwrapping of a gift is often just as 
exciting as actually being able to touch the gift itself."  His 
smile widened into a foxy grin.  "Or so I've discovered."  

The light changed, and Muraki reached down to shift gears; his 
fingers swept a caress over Schuldich's thigh as the car spun into 
motion.  "I do have a few things at home you might like, but...this 
is our vacation.  I should offer you a few souvenirs to remember this 
time by, don't you think?  Problem is," he said, with a disappointed 
little sigh, "I rarely get to shop for such delights as what I 
pictured you in; Oriya is quite stubborn when it comes to trying new 
things.  You may have gathered that."  

Reaching into the hidden catch-all between the seats, he fished out a 
jewel case, and singlehandedly popped a cd it contained into the 
player; the sound of a koto floated softly through the speakers.  "Have 
any boutiques in mind, my pet?"  

***

Schuldich "hmm"ed over his question then, making a half-hearted attempt 
to find some rhythm in the string he could drum with his finger tips on 
his lover's encroaching hand.  The notes followed their own slow and 
sparkling way; one with a mind all its own, and no underlying 
seriousness of a beat he could have mimicked.  

"Not really," he finally conceded at the next light.  "I haven't gone 
out for anything like that since we came to Japan."

Muraki's surprise nearly caused him to slam his foot on the hapless 
break pedal.

"No, really.  Everything I've got on's from our tailor in Paris.  
Didn't want to risk ending up with stuff that didn't fit ~just~ right, 
y'know?" This in spite of the fact he was still acting perfect content 
to be wearing Oriya's things and had with the snicker at the end of his 
sentence, lead the doctor's hand just a little closer to the juncture 
of his legs.

"So, annnnnnnnnnnyway, that place that just crossed your mind? Take me 
there.  It's just down the street, right? I can taste the manager 
already- she's worrying she marked the gold-plated chains in the back 
down too much, and he's probably right."

::Considering that IS one of the things you had in "mind".::

***

"You know," Muraki replied, "I think I'm going to enjoy this coming 
week." And, as he sped through a newly turned red light, he swung 
around to bestow a grin upon his companion, his demonic eye flashing 
him briefly through the doctor's cascading white bangs. 

Over the strains of the koto, Schuldich laughed, and laughed.

*** 

It was late in the afternoon, by the time they returned to the Koneko 
no Sumi e.  Tsuzuki had asked his lover to bring him no further to his 
house than that.  He didn't ask why, and he didn't even tell himself, 
though some small part of him could hear what Hisoka might have to say 
if a living man appeared at their Tokyo apartments, or what that living 
man would do when he saw him vanish through a faint disturbance in the 
air, down into the almost nothing of the Unseen World.

Neither for now, all would be well.   Was well.  Seemed well at the 
very least.  The rush home from work hadn't quite started, and all the 
clouds from the seashore had stayed there, waving.  Here in the city, 
everything shone as if it had no excuse not to show off, or feared it 
might be the last day to do so.

In the shade behind the shop, they parked, and still giddy (for the 
thrill of riding in the convertible he still hadn't grown out of) 
Tsuzuki clambered out, deliberately tripping so he could catch himself 
and spin on the pavement.  

"Arigatou, Youji-san!" he told his lover, bowing.  He could have 
dispensed with the honorific, but it was more of a surprise for now to 
keep them around.  Maybe tomorrow.

On the street, someone honked their horn, and a little girl laughed 
when the wind came tip-toeing through the alleys and stole at her 
braids.  Youji just looked at him with those misty-gleam-green eyes.  
And he smiled.

***

"I'm the one who should be thanking you," said Youji, "for the 
chocolates, for agreeing to go with me to the ocean, for the lovely 
time you showed me."

He came to a halt before him, and, without so much as a glance to see 
who might be watching them, cupped Tsuzuki's face in his hands and 
kissed him tenderly.  

"Arigatou, Tsuzuki-san," he whispered against his lips.  Youji gave 
him another quick buss, then released him.  But didn't move away from 
him.  

"If you were of a mind to come by tomorrow, I'll be here.  Shop opens 
around 9, usually, if we all don't oversleep."  He chuckled.  "Of 
course, I don't expect to sleep at all tonight.  I'll be too busy 
thinking about you."  

Youji caught his hand and raised it to his lips to kiss.  "Ja na, 
Tsuzuki-san."  

***

"Ja ne, Youji-kun," and Tsuzuki winked then himself, his tongue 
stealing out over his well-flushed lips.  He purred, and he twirled 
once more on his heels, just barely managing to catch the corners of 
the coat swinging from his arm before they snagged on the paving of the 
driveway.  "That should last me until tomorrow."

/To think you're already seventeen hours away or so, when I could just 
turn around and have you with me now all that time./

They waved, and he found himself idly wondering as he started down the 
street where the sidewalks once more swathed in pale shadows were.  
Less than that time had passed since he had chanced them the first, and 
whether the slant of light, more jewel than muted floral mist reminded 
him, or Youji did somehow, they felt just like he knew well, and that 
this was somewhere he wouldn't be nervous to tread ever, ever again in 
the world.  

Belonging there or not.

He wondered what the other florists would think, seeing him twice in a 
row.  Well, if anyone asked, it was detective business.  

Maybe, before he got another kiss, he could have a word with the red 
haired boy with the purple eyes.  Although kisses would more than do.

Yes, much more than do.

***

Just as the last trace of Tsuzuki's shade slipped out of his sight, 
Youji stopped spinning the keys to his seven, not because he hadn't 
anyone to show off to anymore, but because he'd heard a little clatter 
in some indeterminate space just above.  When he looked up, the blinds 
in one of the windows were swinging a little, just the way they might 
have if a cat has passed them by too fast on her way off the sill. 

Which would have been a fine story, except Momoe-san's, the only one in 
the building, could be seen waiting on Aya's stool for his return.  A 
fickle creature as always, she descended from her perch and decided to 
rub her cheeks all over his shoes, mewing piteously all the while.  

Not that he had ever suspected her.

He knew better.

*** 
 
Upstairs, Ken lurched away from the foot of his bed where he had caught 
himself in the midst of his shock.  His head swam as if someone had 
gone about liberally clocking him with a bamboo practice sword.  Or 
five.  His was dry and shaky.  He forgot to breath until his face 
turned blue.

"So now Youji- YOUJI OF ALL PEOPLE gets to go around makin' out with 
hot guys he just met..."

Turning to his models, they all just stared back at him with their 
metallic detail eyes, none breathing a word of advice.  Not the 
Shenlong, not the Taiga, the guntank; the Quebley or the Leopard.  And 
he'd always thought the Leopard at least was his friend! Of course it 
chose to fall over just then, and sent everyone else cascading down in 
its wake.  The Shenlong clattered onto the shelf of SD editions and 
sent them to their chubby little knees as well.

Downstairs, Youji decided to play some X Japan.

"There's no justice in this world anymore is there!?  There just... 
ISN'T!"

Rather than admire his mess, Ken collapsed onto his bed, and threw one 
arm over his smarting eyes.  

***

Oblivious to the little drama playing out between their two 
companions, Aya and Omi returned the shop, their entrance heralded by 
the full volume chorus of 'Forever Love'. X Japan was one of 
Youji's "good mood" bands, proof positive that things had gone well 
for him that afternoon with his (surprisingly) male visitor. And 
when Youji was in one of those moods, it was hard to get him to focus 
on work, they both knew. Which was why the looks they exchanged were 
amused, and not exasperated. Indeed, though Aya did take the shop 
seriously, he didn't regret going out that afternoon with Omi. 

They headed upstairs without checking on Youji, Omi running, and Aya 
following him at a more dignified pace. When they reached the third 
floor, it struck them both just how silent it was; no TV, no radio. 
Was Ken asleep? 

It was too bad if he was. 

"Ken?" he called, rapping on the door. "Come out. We've got 
something for you." 

***

Ken wasn't quite sure at first that he'd head anyone at his door- it 
could have been some tumbling in the music, or the outside world 
announcing its presence to their little flower shop world.  Aya, after 
all, wasn't in the habit of knocking for any reason besides reminding 
him of the time.

But then se second little clatter, unmistakably upon his door, and 
Omi's voice rising just above Hide's.  "It's something you wa~anted!"

Though he had already gotten to his bare feet by then- his lock hadn't 
ever been in the best of health, and he certainly didn't want them to 
burst in, find him lying dreamily on his back.  Who knew how they would 
take it?  What he did happen to be certain of though...

/I bet it's not a new boyfriend./  Mostly because he'd yet to explain 
to any of them he wanted one such creature of his own.  /Hmm... what else 
did I want? I don't even know! Stupid Youji kissing that Tsusuki guy in 
front of me!/

By the time he got to the door though, a smile had smothered out the 
last of his dour musings.  Youji kissing a boy.  Blackmail material.  
And besides, eighteen or not, Ken loved presents.

"Hey guys!"

"Hey guys" being the best he could do that wasn't "Whatcha bring me!? 
Whatcha bring me!?"

***

Aya swung the brightly colored plastic bag up from his side, and held 
it out to him from two fingers.  Ken practically snatched it away in 
his glee.  "Omi and I went out after Youji left.  We found that at the 
mall."  

Resting his weight upon the jamb, he watched Ken yank the box out of 
the bag, saw joy subsequently rise in the other boy's face.  Cradling 
the box to his chest, Ken turned to them, and beamed.  

Aya glanced down at Omi.  "I think he likes it."  

***

Omi's only response to this was his grin, though shortly he came to 
realize the boy they'd gone to visit had a few other replies in mind- 
probably yelps and giggles, for he descended upon him and began to rub 
his knuckles over his sandy blond hair.  

"I sure do!"

"Ken-kun, itaaaaaaaaaaaaaaai."

"Thanks guys! A Mibu Dai SHOGUN! A MIBU DAI SHOGUUUUUUN!"  And this he 
asked of Aya rather, Omi still in his grip though he was: "Where'd you 
FIND it? I mean, these things are outta print? It DIDN'T just turn up 
at the model store, did it?"

***

"It certainly did," replied Aya. "I merely uttered the letters 'SD' 
twice, and there it was--the only one on the shelf. I even think 
that clerk was surprised to see it. I know those little kids were." 
And he smiled faintly in the manner of one who was pleased with 
himself. "Not to mention greatly dismayed over the fact that two 
grown men found it before any of them could." 

***

Ken balked for a moment, his eyes as large as saucers.  He looked as if 
he might take a step away from his companions, or drop Omi, or possibly 
both.

In the end, he simply began to laugh again, even clearer than before, 
lighter than air, happy as could be in the world.  He gave the boy in 
his arms a squeeze before letting him free to right himself and his 
mussed locks somewhat, and case himself down against the doorjamb, 
right on the other side of it across from Aya.

"Well, what can I say? Too bad for them.  Oh yes! Toooooo bad for them.  
They should think they're lucky, getting to see somethin' like that.  
*I* certainly didn't know you had a talent like that.  If I did, I'd 
have you spending ALLLLLLLLL your time in here summoning Rose Gundams 
and Clear Wing 0's.  OOOOOOH! SPOOKY!"

***

"Does that mean you want me to move in with you?"  Aya joked, 
regarding Ken with the same gently amused look as he wore earlier.  
Which he quickly lost, for Ken seemed to freeze; Omi's expression 
went from being irked to speculative.  Aya suddenly wished he had 
just let Omi bring the gundam to Ken on his own.  Why the hell did he 
just say that?  

Before he could deem all as being lost, his salvation arrived, taking 
the form of their missing teammate.  They could hear him singing 
along to Dahlia as he pounded up the steps at a run.  His voice 
dropped out of time with Yoshiki's in a coughing fit; too many 
cigarettes lately, and not enough good ol' fashioned exercise.  Time 
for that to change, he figured.  

"Aya," he croaked, coughing some more.  /Kuso!/  "Omiii?"  He knocked 
on the door, then, at the boy's summons, leapt up the top floor 
stairs until he caught sight of the trio.  Somewhere along the way, 
he'd switched his gold shades out for a pair of silver metal framed, 
rose-lensed ones.  They straddled his well-made nose like a bridge 
over a river; green eyes laughed above them.  "So there you guys 
are," he said, smirking.  

"Miss us, did you?" asked Aya coolly.  

"Some of you, I did," Youji parried, batting his eyes at Ken.  Aya 
scowled.  

"Don't start that again."  

Nudging his frames a bit higher on his nose, Youji grinned wolfishly 
at Aya, then promptly changed the subject.  "You might like to know 
that the fanclub is starting to assemble out front."  

"So?"  

"Sooo, do we let them in or not?"  

Aya glanced away, considering; shrugged.  "Whatever you want.  I 
don't care."  

Youji's brows shot up.  "You don't care about opening the shop?!  
What, are you feverish or something?"  

"No," Aya said irritably.  "I'm not sick.  I just don't feel like 
standing about while a bunch of teenage girls fawn all over me all 
afternoon, and then go home without buying so much as a single 
daisy."  

"Oh."  Youji nodded.  "Okay.  So I won't open the shop.  But what am 
I going to tell them?  They know we're here."  

"Of course they do," said Aya.  "You've got the cd player going full 
blast.  The shop's not soundproof, you know."  

Youji gazed at him for a moment longer, then resignedly rifled his 
hand through his hair.  "Ah, well," he sighed mournfully, not wanting 
to deal with a pack of soon to be complaining, pleading, sad-eyed 
little girls.  "I'll think of something."  He shuffled off the way 
he'd come, hands dug deep in his pockets.  Aya turned back to Ken, 
and found him gazing at him in a strange sort of way.  Aya lowered 
his eyes to the floor, and turned away, digging his hands in his 
pockets; he felt he'd said *quite* enough to him for the time 
being.   

"Have fun with your toys, Ken," he said, and he shoved away from the 
jamb to escape into his own apartment next door.  

***

/Oh no you don't!/

"Aya?"

But it came out much too softly the first time, or he thought that was 
why the swordsman didn't turn back to him.  Omi gave him a quick thumbs 
up and a smile before whisking himself down the stairs after Youji, who 
was coughing again, and he had just enough time to return it, and to 
miss mussing his hair one more time by a handful of inches.

"Aya!"

And he managed to catch the other boy's wrist just before the doorknob 
got it.

It was just... there.  Just right where it needed to be for him to get 
his attention.  Nothing purposeful, and his clumsy grip probably gave 
it away.

"You wanna help, dontcha?" Ken chuckled.  "I know that look!"

***

His whole arm seemed to tingle under Ken's hand; Aya knew it was just 
a trick of his mind, though.  His gaze promptly skipped from his 
trapped wrist to the boy who held him, and he frowned.  "What are you 
talking about? I'm not--"  

Ken fell against the wall beside him, still loosely clutching his 
wrist.  His smile had wavered into nothing, and his eyes held a faint 
note of pleading. Aya found himself trying to compose a line to honor 
the deep color of them.  

/What in the hell...?  No, no.../

And even worse, in the next spin of his thoughts, he realized he did 
not want to pass up the opportunity laid before him in favor of 
brooding alone in his room.  

He found he never wanted Ken to let him go.  

But then, he did.  Morosely, Ken shrugged, and turned away without a 
word to shuffle off to his room.  Aya lunged forward and caught him 
by the wrist to stop him--and he wasn't so quick to release him.  

"All right," Aya said quietly.  "I'll help, though I haven't a clue 
how to put one of those things together."  

***

Ken had started, spooked and bewildered when he felt their places 
reverse so suddenly from what they had been so few moments before- he 
knew it was Aya, and that Aya had taken a hold of him, but... somehow he 
couldn't seem to get his thoughts around the two ideas at once.  He 
must have jumped... knew he'd jumped!

Nobody let got of him though- not the sunbeam perched in his eyes, and 
certainly not the swordsman at his side.

A smile once more claimed his lips as he whirled back around, 
forgetting for a moment that doing so would surely bring the 
swordsman's arm with him.  Ooops.  Oh well.  Nose to nose with him now, 
he crowed triumphantly.

"Haha! I knew you'd come around! I knew it!"

But just so suddenly he ran with his friend still clinging to his arm, 
and shut the both of them into his apartment, all the bolts of which he 
went about throwing before bothering to point out to Aya that he'd 
moved the shoe-rack.  "There we go, now... you've really NEVER put a 
gundam together?"

He still really hadn't.

"Aa... 's no worries.  It's EASY!" The lid shimmed away from the rest of 
the box, and the bones of the Mibu Dai Shogun peeped out, gleaming 
white and gold and red around the edges of a little sheet of paper, 
which wore a picture of the finished model, with all of its niftiest 
features clearly pointed out.  This opened up into a short, perky 
water-color comic of the model and several others shamelessly beating 
one another up which Ken by-passed, and showed the black and white 
sketched underneath to Aya.

"It says how to right inside the box? See? It's so simple even idiots 
like me can do it!"

(OOC: I actually don't know what the comic with the SD Mibu Dai Shogun 
is, but my Sazabi and Ghost Gundam both had fighting comics with them 
so... ^_^;.)

***

/I'm locked up with Ken in his apartment.  And no one can bother us./ 
That alone sent an odd little thrill through him, never mind that 
they were going to play with toys.  Anything that could make Ken that 
happy...

Aya, who had been perusing the instructions with some interest amidst 
his idle musings, (after all, it was something unfamiliar to him), 
suddenly raised his eyes from the sheet and stared hard at Ken.  

"You aren't an idiot," he said quietly.  And then he lowered his eyes 
to the booklet again, briefly, before dipping his hand into the open 
box and drawing out what looked to be part of one leg.  He then 
glanced down at the pages again.  

"Okay...now what?" he muttered, having dropped the part into the box 
for another oddly shaped piece.  "Do you snap them together?  Glue 
them?"  

***

"I usually just snap 'em," Ken replied, his voice falling a little, for 
he had been taking mental inventory of one of his drawers, only to 
realize he didn't have a scissors in it. Or... did he? Yanking the drawer 
clear off it's rollers found no such mystical device hidden in his 
troll treasure of odds and ends.  However, there was one resting quite 
serenely on to top of the chest he had just violated.

/Not an idiot indeed! BAhhhhhhhhhhhh./

"The only trick," he went on to say quite sagely, hoping Aya hadn't 
noticed his foolishness.  "Is that you gotta cut the little plastic 
burrs off with a nail clippers.  Other than that they stay together 
pretty good.  But just in case..."

His retrieval of the glue of course also succeeded in turning up the 
nail clippers, which were, quite stuck to it, for the thing had leaked 
in the shoebox where he kept his emergency model repair supplies.  In 
fact, part of the shoebox was still stuck to it, as was his hand.

"Umm... you can take everythin' outta the box awhile.  I gotta go umm... 
take carea this."

***

But Aya had witnessed Ken's foolishness, right down to the moment he 
attempted to draw his hand out of the shoebox, only to find it stuck 
to him. Aya did not react at all, save for abandoning the model box 
on Ken's bed. 

"It looks like you need my help more than the model does," he said, 
trailing after his accident prone teammate.

***

"Aa, s'ok!" Ken reassured his companion.  Pointing to the mess he 
presently had affixed to his palm then, "Just needs a little nifty glue 
remover stuff!"

Which doubtless would have been a more convenient solution if he had 
remembered at that moment just where the solvent happened to be, 
because he had never in his life bothered to put it in the same box as 
the glue.  For the first time, the cosmic possibilities of uniting the 
two in one container occurred to him, only to be summarily dismissed by 
the all too obvious simplicity of the arrangement, the death of any fun 
there engendered.

That and Aya had found said solvent in his underwear drawer, thus 
ending both their search, and his murmurs of puzzlement which had 
coaxed the swordsmen to join the quest in the first place.

A few quick sprays which concluded with the death throes only an empty 
aerosol can can make, and the glob of glue and cardboard tumbled into 
the trash can.

"See? Nothin' too it!"

When he went to cast the spay bottle back into the abyss, he found he 
had, besides freeing himself, acquired a nifty censuring glare for 
himself.

"Ah... right! Better wait until AFTER we're done."  

***

Another certain catastrophe averted, and he didn't have to lift a 
finger; Aya felt as if he'd just witnessed some sort of miracle.  
Shaking his bangs out of his eyes, he crossed back over to the bed 
and picked up the model box.  

"Come on, show me how to work these bits and pieces into that," he 
said, stabbing a finger at the picture of the gundam that adorned the 
lid.  

Ken, with a giggle, bounded over to where he stood, hand out for the 
box.  But at the last minute, Aya jerked the box out of his reach.  

"Give me the glue," he said, holding out his hand.  "And *then* I'll 
give you the model."  

***

Almost doleful now at the loss of his favorite non-gundam toy, Ken 
canted the tube one fond farewell look before relinquishing it to Aya's 
waiting hands.  The other boy treated the gooey metal with no such 
respect- just struck it on the side of his palm a few times, and made 
sure the cap was on tight as it would go.

He tired his best not too look so long at the rough treatment, and with 
a nod of his head, directed his companion to follow him down to the 
floor.  His ironing board popped out from behind his dresser and clack-
clack! Its legs unfurled, leaving a mound of puffy, grey vinyl between 
him and the swordsman.  The box got to live there.

"Ok, well, the first thing we do, is look to see what's first on the 
instructions.  Then we cut that part out of these..." One of the sheets 
of model bits sailed into the air.  "Then we cut the little burrs off 
with a nail clippers and hope they've been molded right so they 
actually stay together.  See? Easy."

Finding the foot at D7 however apparently wasn't.

***

Aya picked up a frame of grey plastic bits, checked the letters at 
the corners of each set of pieces, then tossed it away for a red 
one. With his attention glued more to the sheet than to where his 
fingers were moving, Aya missed seeing Ken reach for the same frame. 
He did not, however, miss feeling Ken's fingers grasp his own, and 
his eyes flew to Ken's with a start. 

A blink, and it was all over. Ken pulled his hand back as if he'd 
touched something hot, leaving Aya feeling rather disappointed. That 
is, until he saw the tinge of a blush pass over Ken's suntanned 
face. Aya had to force himself back to his task, and he was much 
more careful to mind what he was doing. 

He had also become aware of the silence that had fallen between 
them. Being one who rarely spoke, he normally didn't mind finding 
himself in the midst of a quiet room. But...it was strange to be 
settled in such a place with Ken, who was far too boisterous usually 
to remain unvocal for long. 

And so...

"Have you always...Ah!" Aya plucked up a frame of black pieces from 
the pile, and, after checking the number-letter combination, handed 
it over to Ken in triumph. The elusive D7 foot had been found.

***

"Yosh'!" Ken cheered, whistling for Aya as if they had been playing 
together and both been somewhat responsible for a goal.  "Ok, now, you 
do it just like this: snip, snip, trip, trim- and if we had any other 
pieces out -click, click.  See?"

With the very tip of the scissors' jaw, he clipped the little vines of 
plastic away from the instep and the heel of Dai Shogun's foot, letting 
it tumble to his hands when he had finished.  The two burs he cut away 
then, nipping as close to the surface of the mold as he possibly could.  
Why, when he had finished, there was only the smallest pale scar where 
it piece had been joined to its brethren.   

All this danced with his clumsy fingers as if the plastic was destined 
to crumble to dust if he squeezed even the slightest bit too hard.

"And don't worry about the snibbles that get all over the carpet.  I'll 
just vacuum."

***

Aya glanced up at him in mid-snap, and missed the precious calf 
part's skipping across the ironing board. "I'll keep that in mind," 
he said dryly. 

Ken blinked at him, as if he thought he'd missed something himself, 
and Aya carelessly plucked the dainty scissors from his companion's 
grip; their fingers once more touched, and another tiny thrill of quiet 
delight rippled through him. 

"So..." he began, as he started working the scissors along the 
plastic's edges with precise snips, "how did this love of models 
develop? Some auntie give you one for a birthday, and got you 
hooked?"

***

"Auntie?" Ken blinked quite stupidly and proceeded to glance about his 
quarters as if he expected to find someone not himself hopping around 
in his shadow.  Once he had at last assured himself that he was indeed 
the only one there, he began to laugh and rub at his neck through the 
edge of his t-shirts collar.

"Aaaa, sorry." And having cleared his throat and the little burrs of 
plastic from his pant leg.  "Nah, somea the kids in the neighborhood I 
useta live in had a thing for 'em and I just kinda picked it up after 
awhile."  

***

"Ah..." Aya nodded, then lost himself in his task. The leg he was 
fiddling with was taking shape nicely, he thought, and he wasn't 
having any trouble at all. Given that he was a beginner, he couldn't 
help but feel a bit proud over his accomplishment, minor though it 
was. 

"Here's the leg," said Aya, holding it out for Ken to take. 

The boy hummed in delight, bestowing upon him a smile so warm that 
Aya felt himself melt a bit inside. Their fingertips touched, and 
his heart skipped a beat. 

And then, he froze with shame. For Aya, wanting to ensure the pieces 
would stay secured, had gotten carried away with the glue, and now 
their index fingers were stuck together.

***

"What is this, Mamotte Shugogetten?" Ken asked of no one in especial, 
certainly not the Gundam, and Ran didn't feel as if it was his inquiry 
to answer.  The leg had in the meantime fallen back into the box's 
embrace, glue side up by one wonder of gravity or another, so it was 
only they two, and their fingers, and Ken's little shake to their 
fingers hoping to part them.

And no one else.

"Hmm, not that's kinda strange.  Usually when I stick m'self together 
they come right apart but... ow! Damn."

The glue just wouldn't be persuaded to budge, no matter how many crazy 
patters he swung his hand and the swordsman's helpless one through.   

"Ah well, looks like we go guilt trip Youji into giving us some nail 
polish remover.  Or we can wait, sometimes it takes awhile to unstick 
itself..."

***

"We wait," muttered Aya. "Youji won't let us live this down if he 
finds out." 

Ken made a noncommittal sound, and Aya scooted a little closer to him-
-for comfort's sake, he told himself. He hoped Ken would think as 
much, if he noticed. Which...it seemed he didn't. Aya wasn't sure 
if that was a good thing or not. 

Still...he did admit to himself how nice it was to be so close to 
him, and not to have make any explanations for it. It also gave him 
a chance to just look at him. Never had he seen any one 
so...adorable. He was pondering just how appealing and puppy-like he 
was when the other boy looked up from his perusal of his gundam's 
parts, and gave their hands another rough shake. Ken seemed quite 
startled to find himself under Aya's close scrutiny, and Aya, 
blushing slightly, suddenly feigned interest in the box's lid. 

"Um...what's Mamotte Shugogetten?"

***

"Some little girls' cartoon I caught Omi watching once," Ken replied, 
grinning all the while with the sort of look people only wear when 
convinced they have especially succulent blackmail material on someone.  
He took his companion's quirked brow as a little inquiry for even more 
dirt, and presently indisposed as far as robot building went, he 
settled to recounting what he'd seen.

"Wellllllllll, the gist of it's that this boy gets stuck with a moon 
spirit and a sun spirit and they don't like each other.  But the moon 
spirit's got this little star spirit she calls up.  I can't remember 
her name but she's like... mute. And anyway, the star spirit got tied to 
the boy with a magic thread or somethin', and she was none too happy 
about gettin' tied to an earth boy 'cause he couldn't understand her no 
matter what she did."

With his free finger on his lips then, Ken sighed and gazed with 
distant eyes around the room.  "I don't remember what they did to get 
unstuck, not that it'd do us any good."

***

"Maybe they never did," said Aya.  "Maybe they were doomed to stay 
stuck together for eternity."  

Ken's eyes lit upon Aya's in faintly alarmed fashion.  With a shrug 
that jarred their joined fingers, Aya quickly averted his 
gaze.  "Anyway," he added, "we won't be able to free ourselves if we 
just sit here moping over bits of plastic in the middle of your 
floor.  We've got to think of something that might work just as 
well.  We can't...just wash it off?  Maybe with the gardener's soap 
we use when we wash up?"  

There was a moment of silence in the space his voice had filled, and 
Aya, drawn by some impulse of which he knew not the origins, curled 
his dangling fingers up to lightly tickle the roughened curves of 
Ken's palm.  

***

"Well," Ken admitted after awhile. "We could TRY the gardener's 
soap, I guess. But what if one of the... umm... fans sees us? They might 
think we're kinda weird."

Although, as the words rolled off his tongue, Ken became thoroughly 
convinced such was the case anyway. After all, most florists were 
straight, and didn't have night jobs which involved...

/...what mine does./

He was about to admonish himself for his own foolishness (yet again) 
when it hit him.

/Uh... they don't know that about me. That's MY problem and just mine./

When Aya started to say something about getting to their feet, he cut 
him off, and became quite suddenly aware that the tickling sensation 
that had been creeping over one of his palms stopped. It was 
absently he tickled his teammate back.

"Why not? Lets go, Aya."

Of course, as soon as they had both managed to get to their feet, the 
glue cracked from their skin and they found that the only thing holding 
their fingers together was the tugs of their muscles.

"Well... how 'bout that?"

*****