Christmas and Chaos

by nooziewoozie

His shirt opened down his front, showing golden skin like some kind of blue-collar wet dream come to life—he was brown even in the middle of winter and he smelled like motor oil and had hair that spiked out from his head, bushy and unruly and ridiculous. He radiated heat. Some idiot part of her hindbrain wanted to soak it up. -Megumi, Sano; family, Christmas, and sex on couches. M.

Title: Christmas and Chaos
Pairings/Characters: Sano/Megumi.
Rating: A hard M on this one.
Notes: I'd like to thank the people behind Scrivener because this would not have shown up for another 5.5 years without it; the cardiovascular bloc for giving me so much free time; and my family, for providing all of the quirks. What a bunch of weirdos.

---

Prologue

When Megumi turned seven years old, she made herself a promise: she would never go hungry again.

When Megumi turned seventeen, she had gained enough perspective to realize how very Scarlett O'Hara-esque that promise had been (Megumi was many things, but no Scarlett), but she'd kept the promise—or at least, had kept that hope alive. Upward mobility, that was the ticket. She'd step-by-methodical-step amassed all the tools needed to climb the social ladder: perfect grades, a GPA heretofore unheard of in her high school, a brilliant SAT score, and a scholarship that would carry her to financial security.

At seventeen, Megumi strode into college on a full scholarship (she had no patience for people who did not stride forward; what was the point, after all, of mincing steps?) and into her future.

---

October 26th, 3:32 PM, Higashidani Auto Works: In Which Various People With Hard Heads Bash Them Together (Metaphorically, Of Course)

When Megumi turned twenty-seven, she was up to her ears in debt and wanted to set her car on fire. Her ancient blue Volvo looked better than it had in ages, shiny and undented and gleaming in the thin winter sunlight, and it looked smug, too. She looked down at the bill on the counter and blinked. The number remained astronomical and just as impossible.

"This can't be right," Megumi said to the lady behind the counter.

"Let me see," the woman said, leaning forward and adjusting her glasses. "No, it's all there. New battery, tune-up, oil change, tire rotation, and brake pads." She smiled beatifically. "You'll notice that the detailing is complimentary for first-time customers."

I can afford this. Still, all the spit dried up in her mouth. She had nearly a decade of higher education under her belt and a job that could only get better. Get it together. "Kaoru—that's Kaoru Kamiya, she recommended this place to me. She said you'd do a good job." And not charge me an arm and a leg.

The woman brightened. "Oh, Kaoru sent you to us. What a lovely girl. How do you two know each other?"

"We were college roommates," Megumi said. She was just buying time, stalling in the face of the inevitable, something she normally did not have any patience for. She took a deep breath and paid her bill. "Surely all of this wasn't necessary."

"I wouldn't know, dear," the woman said as she swiped Megumi's debit card. "I'm just filling in for today. I am entirely ignorant about all the tinkering they do around here, but I can get you an expert opinion if you like." She handed Megumi a receipt for her signature and picked up a phone, murmuring quiet words into it.

Megumi did as she was supposed to, gripping the pen tightly and nearly ripping through the thin paper as she scrawled her signature, nice and illegible, like a doctor's ought to be. She handed the receipt back, collected her copy, and was turning to go, when a rangy man ambled into her line of sight, looking like he had only a passing acquaintance with razors and shaving cream.

"Sano," the woman said. "Good, you're here. Please explain to this nice young woman why you did what you did to her car. I'm going to get a cup of coffee and if your father asks why I'm not manning the register, tell him to give me a raise." She walked off through a doorway.

"Right," the man grumbled, frowning after the woman. "Of course." He turned tawny eyes to her. "What do you want to know?"

It was too late, of course; she'd already paid the bill. She gripped the receipt in cold hands. "What was so wrong with my car that I had to empty out half my back account to fix it?"

He raised one of his eyebrows—that was it, just that tiny, tiny tilt, thick with disinterest—as held out his hand for her invoice. He took it in at a glance. "You're the Volvo S80?"

"Yes."

He took her in with a glance, too. "Lady, you should be arrested for vehicular abuse."

"What?"

"There's no excuse for what you did to that poor car." He put in honest-to-God toothpick in his mouth, probably thinking he was Asia's answer to James Dean. "Your battery cables where corroded to practically nothing, your oil was thicker than mud, and your brake pads were pretty much shot."

He was probably right. Lights had been blinking at her from her dashboard for a while and a mysterious squealing had started last week, telling her to haul ass towards a mechanic. But money had been so tight and her schedule so ridiculous and her patients bleeding out by the minute, that it really hadn't seemed worth it.

She raised her chin and grabbed on to her temper. "Excuse me?"

"You need to take better care of your car, lady," he said, completely unfazed by the frost in her voice. His shirt opened down his front, showing golden skin like some kind of blue-collar wet dream come to life—he was brown even in the middle of winter and he smelled like motor oil and had hair that spiked out from his head, bushy and unruly and ridiculous. He radiated heat. Some idiot part of her hindbrain wanted to soak it up.

"You don't know me," she said, her voice growing even colder. How stupid that she should notice anything about him. "And I don't think your boss would appreciate you talking to me like that. And it's doctor, not lady. Dr. Takani."

"My boss would say the same damn thing." He raised both of his eyebrows this time. "What kind of doctor are you—medical or a PhD type?"

"I don't see how it matters," she said, "but I'm a medical doctor."

"You've got a fancy MD after your name, and you drive that piece of shit?"

"I thought you were just telling me I needed to take care of it."

"A piece of shit's a piece of shit." A corner of his mouth tilted up, flagrantly taunting her. "My advice—get yourself a car that goes with that white coat."

Oh, I will. I have a whole list of things I'm going to get to match my coat. "Thank you," she said, her voice like knives, "and my advice would be to keep away from customers from now on. I'm sure it's bad for business."

She turned her back on him, dismissing him and studiously ignoring his bark of laughter, and marched out to her car. Inside, it smelled faintly like lemons, and when she turned her key in the ignition, the engine purred. Of course it does, she thought in disgust. As she drove away, she saw him in her rearview mirror, hands in his pockets, watching her.

---

Hell of a woman, Sano thought, watching her turn the corner, grinning.

He turned and went into the garage he'd spent most of his youth in and his entire adult life running from. Once inside, he found his mother sipping coffee. "Did you give that nice young lady everything she needed?"

She wanted to castrate me with a dull knife. "Sure," he said, leaning against the counter. "What are you doing here, Mom?"

"Well, Tsubaki needed the morning off so she and Anji could go to the doctor, so I thought I'd fill in."

"Mom."

"Oh, very well. I was bored." She sipped some more coffee. "And I'm fine, Sanosuke, honestly, you don't have to worry so much."

That had been what the doctor had said—his mother was one year cancer-free as of five months and thirteen days ago. Of course, the way things went in this family, that milestone had just ushered in another tragedy. "What kind of shitty son would I be if I didn't worry? Where's dad?"

"Language, dear. And your father's back there—" she waved a hand at the back of the garage "—where I left him." She took another sip. "Really, Sano, you ought to do something about this coffee, it tastes like napkins."

He blew a long breath out through his nose, groping for patience. "Mom, what part of coronary artery disease do you two not understand? He needs to be at home, resting." He didn't need another scene like before—dad collapsed on the concrete with the steady drip of anti-freeze in the background like a monstrous lullaby.

"I'm cooking with olive oil. He's taking his meds. I've gone walking with him three times this week." Naname shook her head. "If you're so worried, dear, you deal with his constant muttering and pacing."

"Dad's truck is out there." Uki bustled into the small break room, bristling with energy and disapproval. "You had one job, Sano."

"What's that?"

She set her bag carefully down on the table, glaring at him all the while. "Dad is supposed to be at home, resting and not putting any stress on his heart. You and Anji were supposed to work here, not him. One! Job!"

As though Sano could forget that. He neglected to mention that he had just been in the middle of trying to discuss it with their mother. Uki was much better at haranguing the family into shape than he'd ever been, anyway. "If you're so damn worked up about it, why don't you baby-sit them all day?"

Naname smiled into the newspaper.

"I'm too busy not being the family disappointment. And you!" Uki whirled to look at Mom. "What are you doing here? You're supposed to be at home, looking after Dad. Away from all the carcinogens!"

Outa, small and pink-cheeked, sidled into the room in Uki's wake, shouldering a comically large book bag.

"Honey, he's more stressed sitting around at home, worried Sano's blown up the garage in a fit of socialist rage. And the motor oil didn't give me cancer." She smiled at Outa, riffling his hair. "Of all the ridiculous notions, honestly."

"Hey," Sano said, offended. "I have never blown anything up in the name of socialism. Arson was always Katsu's style."

"I don't know why you hang out with him, he smells."

That would be the weed, Sano thought, and declined to comment.

"He gave me candy once." Outa fished a folder out of his backpack. "And he told me that the free market would steal my labor."

Uki snorted. "You call that normal, Sano?"

"Hey, do I harass you about your friends? If the one with the purple hair does anything other than listen to The Smiths and snort glitter, I haven't seen it."

"She doesn't mainline glitter, she's a fine-arts major. There's a difference."

"She looks like David Bowie in The Labyrinth minus the bulge, so if we're comparing dead-beat friends, I feel like I'm coming out ahead here."

"Oh, that's nice."

"My family's snarling at each other, must be a day that ends in Y." Dad walked in, looking like a man in the pink of health and not at all like he'd been in the hospital a three months ago, reeling from a massive heart attack.

"There he is," Mom said, still nursing the coffee. She leafed through Outa's homework folder with one hand, completely unconcerned about the shouting match raging around her. "You can stop worrying now, Uki."

"With parents like you two, it's a wonder I'm not locked up in a padded room," Uki grumbled. "You know you should be at home, right? And don't you grin at me, I'm serious."

Don't say it, Sano thought.

"Honey—" Mom began.

"Oh, boy," Outa muttered.

"Hi, Serious, I'm dad," he said, gleeful, and everyone groaned.

---

December 18th, 12:48 PM: In Which Deliveries Are Made, Trees Are Decorated, and Loneliness Is Felt

"Let me get this straight," Megumi said. "You made trifle?"

"I did," Kaoru said proudly. "And I think it came out okay, too."

Megumi spared the bowl Kaoru held cradled in her lap a wary glance. "Did you try it?"

"Not yet," Kaoru said, "but my dad thought it was great."

"Uh huh," Megumi said, and refrained from rattling off the CDC's guidelines on food poisoning. It was nearly Christmas, after all. "Where are you having me take you, anyway?"

Kaoru craned her neck to read a nearby street sign. They were driving through an old neighborhood in a suburb that was slowly but surely getting devoured by the unrelenting creep of the city; the houses were small and the trees were tall, but the streets scrupulously clean of snow. "A friend's. I promised to drop this off."

And after that, Megumi would drop Kaoru off at O'Hare, and Kaoru would be off visiting half-a-dozen miscellaneous relatives in sunny California. Megumi's hands tightened on the steering wheel.

"Thanks for chauffeuring me around," Kaoru said, "but are you sure you don't want to come with? I could buy you a ticket." She held out her phone meaningfully. "Give me a yes and thirty seconds."

Despite everything—despite the cold and her lack of sleep and how, for the first time since Megumi had met Kaoru's eyes over a pair of extra-long twin beds in a dorm room, she would be spending Christmas alone—Megumi smiled a little. "I told you. I'm working."

"But Christmas, though," Kaoru said. "You're not working on Christmas!"

"I'm working almost all the way up to it," Megumi said. "And almost immediately after."

"You should go on strike or something. Or join a union. Is there a doctor's union? Some kind of petition for the rights of overworked resident doctors everywhere?"

"That's not how it works," Megumi said. "You have to endure unspeakable cruelty and psychological torture when you're a resident so you can dish it out yourself when you have residents following you around. How could you be authentic otherwise?"

Kaoru snorted. "What bullshit."

"And yet, the system marches on." Megumi slowed at an intersection. "Right or left?"

"Left," Kaoru said, "then take a right at that stop sign." She pursed her lips at Megumi. "At least tell me you have plans."

"I always have plans."

"Shelve the world domination blueprints for a minute. Sayo's in town. You could see Sayo."

Megumi sighed. "Sayo's coming to town to meet her girlfriend's family. I don't think she'd appreciate the intrusion."

"Point. Um, how about Tae?"

"Tae's going to see her sister in Canada, remember?"

Kaoru rubbed her forehead. "Stop being stubborn and come with me, already."

"Kaoru," Megumi said.

"But—"

"Drop it." Megumi said. "And it's not like Christmas means much beyond buying shit on sale anyway." And that was true, but it didn't stop Megumi from feeling irrationally betrayed—both by Kaoru, for choosing to spend Christmas with people Megumi did not know and could not bring herself to intrude upon; and by herself, knowing that she would spend Christmas eating takeout that would give her diarrhea and watching holiday specials deep into the night. "I think some time off alone will be good for me."

Kaoru shook her head but refrained from comment. She said instead, "It's that house, the one with the green shutters."

---

"I'm telling you, it's crooked," Uki said.

"And I'm telling you it doesn't matter," Sano said. He took a step back to survey all the decorating Uki had badgered him into helping with, from the string lights and garlands twining around the banisters to the wreaths on every door to the bundles of mysterious herbs that probably weren't mistletoe hanging in convenient places, though that hadn't stopped Dad from Frenching Mom whenever he could. "It's a tree. Who gives a fu—care?"

"I do," Uki said. She glared at him over a bowl full of gold and silver pinecones she was arranging. "What is the point of doing all of this stuff if the tree—the focal point—is messed up?"

"Fine," Sano said and went to wrestle with the tree some more. He muttered his annoyance into the branches and got a mouthful of pine needles for his trouble, but still, he kind of liked this—liked the bustle of voices and the clouds of delicious smells coming from the kitchen: mom experimenting with low fat recipes and neighbors coming in and out all day. The neighbors didn't even annoy him much anymore, which he put down to the power of Christmas or some shit, because they seemed to have decided that he had indeed returned to stay and not give his parents more grief. There was a silver lining for you.

Outa tugged on his shirt. "Can you get the ornaments?"

"Sure thing, little man," Sano said. "Let me just—" He gave an almighty heave and felt the damn tree shift. He stepped back. "How's that?"

Uki surveyed the tree critically. "It will have to do," she said.

Sano snorted and went to help Outa get down a box of ornaments from the hall closet. He brought the box back to the sitting room and set it down in front of the tree. "Why is thing so heavy?"

"It's carrying the weight of generations," Katsu said from his place on the couch.

Uki looked like she had something very cutting to say, but Sano glared at her, so she swallowed it. "If you're here, you might as well help."

"No, thank you," Katsu said, sipping his eggnog. "I'm writing."

"On your blog," Uki said.

"I'm spreading the truth," Katsu said primly.

"Right," Uki said, and turned to the box. "Well, open it already!"

Sano hesitated for only a moment before flipping the cardboard flaps open. "Does mom still have the Sexy Blue Collar Merman series?"

"You bet," Uki said. "I think I see one." She settled next to Sano on the carpet and pulled out a small ornament that looked like a very muscular mail-merman, complete with the USPS logo on his shirt, a curling fish tail, and seductive (if plastic) smile.

Sano shook his head. "I'd almost forgotten about those. Do we have to hang them up?"

Uki smoothed a hand down Outa's hair as he rooted through the box with them. "Of course," she said.

Outa unearthed the stockings. "Look at these!" They were an almost comically mismatched set, made of plaid and wool (Dad's, in particular, was made of a lurid Lisa Frank print, and Sano had never really found the nerve to ask why) and whatever else their mother had found. On each one, though, Mom had painstakingly embroidered their names.

"Hey, look, Katsu," Sano said, "you've got one, too."

"Of course," Katsu said, blushing a little, though that might have been the eggnog.

"I can't believe you kept all this junk," Sano said, pulling out a scraggly tangle of tinsel, old popcorn strings, and a small jar filled with layers of colored sand.

"It's not junk," Uki said fiercely. "It's family history!"

She was right, in a way. There were layers to this box. Memories making up layers and layers of sediment: old kindergarten projects, commemorative plates, Technicolor reindeer, tarnished silver bells, and of course, the rest of the Sexy Blue Collar Mermen. "We're fitting all of this on there?" he asked with dread.

"Yes," Uki said, looking implacable. "This is going to be the Christmas."

There were a million things Sano could have said, but he didn't because he knew—last Christmas, Mom had been sick, and the years before that, Sano had been out roaming the world. There had been for a while an entire string of Christmases when the family had been falling apart. Maybe this year, they could start gluing the pieces back together. So he tweaked her forehead, right at the parting of her hair, and told her to pass the sexy firefighter ornament.

---

Kaoru didn't enter the small house through the front door. Instead, with the ease of years and years of practice, she breezed right through a back door and into a kitchen like she owned the place. "Merry Christmas!"

Megumi followed at a slower place, trying to ignore the roiling in her stomach. She had wanted to sit in the car, but Kaoru had looked so utterly disgusted at that notion ("Honestly, Megumi, they won't bite!") that she'd had no choice but to follow. The kitchen was a tiny, crowded place, but it smelled delicious and was filled with a rumble of good-natured laughter.

"Merry Christmas, honey," said a familiar looking woman, embracing her. It took Megumi a moment to place her; right—the garage, the car. The woman had said she'd known Kaoru.

"Hey there, sport!" said a tall, older man genially, and Kaoru sailed into his arms next, and for some reason, he looked familiar, too.

"How are you?" Kaoru asked with feeling.

"Still kicking," the man said, then called, "Hey, kids, get in here! Surprise!"

A little boy came skidding into the kitchen first, very pink cheeked and tousle-haired. "Kaoru! I thought I heard your voice!"

Kaoru laughed and knelt to hug the boy.

"Hello," said the woman. "I'm Naname Higashidani." She looked just like she had at the garage, except happier. She held out a hand to Megumi. "And you're the girl from the garage, right?"

Megumi rallied and took Mrs. Higashidani's hand. "Right. Nice to meet you again."

A girl came into the kitchen, scarcely taller than the boy. "Hey, Kaoru!"

"It's a little chaotic in here," Mrs. Higashidani said, smiling apologetically. "Can I get your coat?"

"I don't think were staying long," Megumi said.

"Nonsense," said the man. "Sano! Get in here!"

"Yeah, yeah," someone said, and yet another person joined the throng, and this one, Megumi remembered. Her heart gave a little kick, which she viciously ignored. "Oh, hey, Kaoru."

"Hey yourself, Rooster-head," Kaoru said, smiling. "Everyone, this Megumi, friend, roommate, and doctor. Megumi, these are the Higashidanis, friends, neighbors, and socialists."

"That's Sano," said the girl.

"Hey," said the spiky-haired man. "You say that like it's an insult." He looked very different away from the garage and all the oily, gritty things in it; here, with his edges softened by domesticity and a faded black hoodie, he almost looked normal and not like the Marlboro Man's long-lost brother. "What's up, Doc?"

She felt her spine stiffen, but almost no one was paying attention. The boy and the girl were talking with Kaoru animatedly, the older man had stuck his head into the hallway to yell at whoever else was in the house, and Mrs. Higashidani had turned to answer the phone. Only he—only Sano—looked at her now, his mouth kicked into that half-grin that had driven her up a wall. He grinned like he knew things.

"How's the piece of shit?" he asked, sliding closer.

She began to sweat under her parka. That was normal. The kitchen was warm and so filled with bodies it was probably a fire hazard. "Chugging away."

"Not giving you any trouble?" He leaned against a counter and picked up a cookie from a plate, somehow giving the gesture an air of insolence. He gave the act of breathing an air of insolence.

But just because he was unfairly glow-y with golden good heath, she wasn't going to be rude to man in his own home, surrounded by his family. She had raised herself better than that. "I guess I should apologize for my mood that day." Megumi risked half a smile. "I was a little frazzled."

He raised his eyebrows. "No kidding."

"And, no, it's not giving me any trouble."

"What brings you here?"

"She's spreading holiday cheer." Megumi nodded towards Kaoru. "And holiday cooking."

"Jesus," Sano muttered, turning slightly green. "Tell me you didn't let her do that."

Megumi bit back a smile. "Afraid I did."

He shook his head. "Isn't there an oath you medical types take? 'First do no harm'?" He pointed at her with half of a gingersnap. "That's not doing no harm."

Megumi leaned forward. "Here's a preventative public health measure for you. It's in that bowl over there." She pointed at the right one. "I'd advise getting rid of it before anyone gets at it."

The door to the kitchen opened again and a three more people dropped in, carrying pots and pans and trays.

"Jesus," Sano muttered again.

Talk and laughter and the exchanging of hugs swelled around Megumi, and she began feeling—not dizzy, but a little overwhelmed. How did one keep track of what was going on?

Sano said something to a portly man who had just walked in ("No, sir, not corrupting the youth today. I like to take holidays off.") and took her elbow.

"What?"

He jerked his head at the hallway. "You look like hell. Let's get you away from the noise before you faint."

"I am not going to faint," she said, because she wasn't. Really.

"Uh huh," he said. "The rugrats have already shanghaied Kaoru. Come on."

He didn't wait for her to agree or disagree again; he simply turned and walked into the hallway. Megumi gritted her teeth and followed him into a small sitting room dominated by wreathes, garlands, and an enormous Christmas tree.

"It's beautiful," Kaoru was saying. "And you still have that?" She touched a small, moth-eaten stuffed bear hanging from a bough.

"Sure we do," Sano said, taking a seat on a couch. "You left him here."

"You could have given him back. You didn't have to kidnap him," Kaoru said, shedding her jacket. Megumi pointedly gestured at her watch. "I know, I know. But we can spare a few minutes."

"You have a plane to catch?" asked Sano.

"Actually, yes," Kaoru said, and they settled into a conversation about people and things Megumi did not know and events Megumi had not been present for. The kids flitted around the tree, exclaiming about ornaments and hanging up stockings. A quiet man on the couch muttered a reply every now and again, though he never looked up from his laptop. Someone was expecting a baby; someone else had gotten into grad school. Kaoru ruffled the little boy's hair and complimented the girl on her extreme forbearance in dealing with Sano. They talked about elementary school misadventures and how the neighborhood association was banding together to save local parkland from greedy developers.

There was history here, shared and celebrated and years in the making.

This is why I should have stayed in the car, Megumi thought.

Eventually, Kaoru got up, saying she really did have a plane to catch. Megumi all but dragged her out with profound relief.

When Megumi finally got home, the silence in her kitchen echoed at her.

---

December 23rd, 2:42 PM, In Front of a Hospital: In Which Offers Are Made, Sano is Kidnapped, and Presents Are Bought

"You can't be serious," Megumi said.

"Serious as a heart attack," her landlord said, his voice tinny over the phone. "I've had exterminators crawling all over this place since yesterday."

"And you're saying I can't come home for forty-eight to seventy-two hours while they get rid of termites?" Her voice grew shrill at the end, which she hated, but she could make allowances for herself when it came to homelessness, even temporary. "And you tell me this now?"

"Well, I would have told you earlier if you'd picked up your phone."

"I work in an emergency room. I can't have my phone on." She took a deep breath, and bit back, You moron. "Okay, okay, fine. I'll be there in a couple hours to pick up some things." She could check into a hotel for the weekend, if by some miracle she could find one with vacancies this close to Christmas. It wasn't a complete disaster.

"No can do," the landlord said. "The tent is up. No one can go in or out for the next three days."

I am going to kill you and make it look like an accident. "So you're telling me I don't have access to my apartment until the 26th?"

"At the very latest. Don't come back until I give you the all clear," he said, and ended the call.

She stared at her phone, aghast. Homeless and family-less and friend-less for Christmas. Jesus Christ, I'm a bad Lifetime movie, she thought, gulping down mouthfuls of air. But even though she was outside the hospital with a cold winter wind gnawing away at her, she couldn't get enough air.

Where was she going to go? What was she going to do? Even when things had been at their very worst, she hadn't been homeless.

"Termites, huh?" said a familiar voice to her left, and she turned to find Sano, leaning against a brick wall.

She supposed she should get angry at him for eavesdropping, but what would be the point? She had been screeching loud enough to wake the dead. "Termites," she agreed. "I am officially homeless until the 26th."

He shook his head. "You know where you're going to go?"

"I'll figure it out." And she would, because she was a competent, responsible, professional sort of person, and that kind of person did not panic, especially over something as trivial as this. There was her emergency change of clothes and extra toiletries in her locker. She would make a quick stop at a Walmart to buy some disposable sweats, check into a hotel, and watch terrible Christmas specials into the night. Meet the new plan, same as the old plan. It would be fine. She would take this infernal, irrational panic and stomp it into the ground. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

He jerked his head over his shoulder towards the cardiology bloc. "Dad's got an appointment."

"Is everything okay?"

He regarded her for a long moment. She noticed for the first time that he did not look golden. The harsh winter sunlight washed him out, and the lines between his eyebrows and bracketing his mouth did the rest. "No," he said finally. "Things are not okay, but they're not not okay, either." He blew out a long breath as a plume of steam into the air. "Dad's getting a check-up. Standard procedure, I'm told, after a heart attack."

"Oh," she said, because she could not think of another thing to say. She thought back to the older man she'd met, the one who'd been so congenial and welcoming. It was amazing, sometimes, what people could have going on under their skins. "When did it happen?"

Sano looked out over the frozen parking lot. "September," he said. "I found him on the ground in the garage. He'd collapsed."

"But you got him to the hospital in time." And they'd done what they did best: forced the blood back through that man's heart and gave him back to his family. Despite the cold, despite everything, something that felt like a lamp lodged in Megumi's throat. She'd paid for her white coat in blood and sweat and tears over the years, but it was worth it. Stories like that made it worth it.

He shrugged. "It seems that way. But we're back here, for, oh, I don't know." He closed his eyes, and recited, "An EKG, echo with doppler, a stress test, lipid profile, and I don't know what else."

"Those things are all necessary," she said.

"Sure." He pulled out a cigarette, looking down at it as he played it between his fingers. He didn't look up at her. "I used to smoke, did you know?"

"Why'd you quit?"

"After I heard about M—" He shrugged. "It just seemed like a stupid thing to do, inviting the cancer in when other people are staring it in the face."

She didn't know what to say to him. He looked lonely and bereft, all the heat and laughter snuffed out of him in the grim, grey light of a winter afternoon. "That was a good choice on your part."

"My body's a temple, right?"

She snorted. "No one's body is a temple. Bodies aren't holy." The way people used them, cavalierly with no care in the world, still infuriated her sometimes. They couldn't see it, the way the human body joined bone and bone and nerve and nerve. "But they're beautiful. People don't see it. They just go on hurling abuse at themselves until it goes just a little too far, and their body can't absorb it. They don't see that your body does nothing but try to keep you alive from the moment your mommy and daddy mix DNA." She rolled her eyes. "And yet someone will insist on coming in with six My Little Pony dolls crammed up their ass."

That surprised a bark of laughter out of him. "I'm sure you stabilized his condition."

"That," she said severely, "was terrible."

He grinned, unrepentant. "You mustang out with the wrong people if you can't appreciate a good pun."

Well, fine. Two could play at that game. "I don't want to be a neigh-sayer, but your jokes are terrible."

"So bad they'd give people nightmares, huh?"

"They'd scream themselves horse."

"And you're both garbage at making puns," said Mr. Higashidani, stepping out of the hospital lobby to join them. "You've really gotta dig deep. Don't be afraid to stirrup those emotions and make a foal of yourself, and keep on keeping on even if your audience bales."

Sano shook his head. "Fine, Dad. Fine. You win."

Mr. Higashidani laughed. "Reign yourself in, kid, you'll make me cry."

"And I'll make you cry if you keep that up," Mrs. Higashidani said, popping out from behind her husband.

"How was it?" Sano asked.

"We won't know for sure for a few days," Mrs. Higashidani said, "but everything looked normal, they said. Hello, dear." She smiled at Megumi. "You work here?"

Megumi nodded. "I'm doing my residency in emergency medicine here."

"And ER doc?" said Mr. Higashidani, "like on TV?"

Given that Megumi had spent many an hour screaming, "Let me manage your care!" at one hospital drama or another, she kept from grimacing with an effort. "Nothing quite so glamorous," she said. "Well, I'll let you get on your way."

"Wait," Sano said before she'd turned back inside. "I forgot to ask you. Where are you going after your shift?"

"It's not important. I'll figure something out."

"'Go?'" Mrs. Higashidani said, frowning. "You haven't got some place to go?"

"Her apartment's got termites," Sano said, "and she's currently got no place to go."

Mrs. Higashidani frowned harder. "What about family?"

"It's just me," Megumi said. "And really, it's no big deal. I'll check into a hotel for the weekend—"

"You will not," Mrs. Higashidani said. "You'll come home with us."

"I appreciate the offer, but—"

"No buts," Ms. Higashidani said severely. "You can't be alone in a hotel on Christmas. The very idea. You'll come home with us and enjoy yourself and we'll all get to know you better."

"Really, Mrs. Hi—"

"It's no trouble," the woman went on, implacable. "I'm cooking for six anyway, because Katsu seems to be sleeping in my basement. One more is no trouble. And you'll have to forgive the food, because we've cut out butter. Imagine! Christmas dinner without butter." She turned to look at her husband fondly. "You'd better be worth it."

"You won't find a room this close to the holidays," Mr. Higashidani said. "And really, hon, the food is great. You can't even taste the difference."

Megumi felt distinctly caged in with generous hospitality on one side and genial good cheer on the other. She looked at Sano. If anyone were to protest, it would be him. Who would want family Christmas invaded by a virtual stranger?

He just shrugged. "Just accept," he said. "We don't bite."

"All right," she heard herself saying. "I would be delighted to spend Christmas with your family, Mrs. Higashidani."

"Wonderful," Mrs. Higashidani said, smiles and good cheer hiding an implacable core of iron. "Come by tonight whenever your shift is over! I'll be expecting you, so don't you disappoint me."

"No," Megumi said faintly. She could imagine this woman fixing that gimlet eye on any one of her children and saying, exactly in that tone, Don't you disappoint me. Had she been ten years younger, Megumi would have quailed. At twenty-seven, she still didn't stand a chance. "I wouldn't dream of it."

As they were leaving, Megumi grabbed hold of Sano sleeve.

"What?"

"You and I," she hissed, "are going shopping."

---

"I think this is kidnapping," Sano said.

"Oh, please." Megumi glanced over at all six-foot-two of him. "As if I could kidnap you. Be realistic."

"I am," he said and looked around the crowded and brightly lit expanse of the Lord & Taylor department store. "You brought me here, so you're vicious enough to do it."

Vicious. I like that. "Stop your complaining," she said. "And it's here as opposed to elsewhere because I have a gift card. The faster you help me get presents for your family, the faster we can get out."

"You know it's not strictly required, right?" He squinted at a nearby display of scarves. "We don't expect you to pay rent in the form of locally sourced alpaca wool stoles."

"Well, you won't be getting rent," she said, and dragged him across the floor through a crowd of frazzled people doing last-minute shopping toward the perfume department. "You'll be getting presents, because it's Christmas and you're taking me in. What kind of perfume does your mom like?"

"How the hell should I know?"

"What does the bottle look like?"

"Again: how the hell should I know?"

"What about your dad?" She pushed her hair back from her face, agitated. "Does he wear ties?"

"Twice, in living memory—once at his friend's wedding and once at his own."

"You are the most singularly unhelpful man I have ever met."

He sighed. "Listen, Doc. We're not expecting presents from you, anyway. Anything you get will be appreciated. Besides, isn't it the thought that counts?"

"Keep the cliches to yourself, please." It's the thought that counts. She frowned at him. He was, as all children with loving parents did, applying that mode of thinking to her. He could have given his mother a snotrag for Christmas and she would have hugged it to her bosom and cherished it all her life because her son had given it to her, and that unconditional love had room for all kinds of ridiculous behavior. Megumi had never had that luxury. Perform your childhood this way, had been the message, be good, be unobtrusive, be very quiet, and maybe we'll keep you. "What are you getting your family?"

He shook his head at her, but told her anyway, ticking them off on his fingers. "Mom's getting a food processor. Dad's getting one of those fancy medicine dispensers because he keeps forgetting to take his goddamn meds. Uki's getting a scrapbooking kit, Outa's getting a video game, and Katsu's getting a new case for his computer."

"Your mom's getting a food processor?"

"Yes, she is," he said, annoyed. "Look, I know what you're thinking. I know there's no ethical way to exist in a capitalist society. I mean, you could. You could cut yourself off from any of the goods and services offered in society and milk you own goat or some shit, which is a pretty stupid thing to do. Or, you can try to be as ethical as you can. In the meantime, you can also buy your mom a food processor because she's been wanting one since the early nineties and your kid brother a video game because he's been asking for months."

She stared at him, wide-eyed. "Sano, what the hell are you talking about?"

Amazingly, a dull red blush spread over his broad, beautiful cheekbones. "Uh, you weren't criticizing my politics?"

She slowly shook her head.

"Well. Okay." He cleared his throat. "Okay, game plan. Listen up. I'm going to go grab a couple shirts in dad's and Uta's sizes. You grab Uki and Mom a couple scarves or something. Mom likes scarves. I've seen her wear one a couple times. I'm pretty sure."

"Sano?"

"I hate shopping," he said, striding off toward's the men's section. "Let's get this done."

He was getting his mother a food processor. She stared off after him, wondering how he'd startled her out of her panic. Then she went to fight some middle-aged women for the scarves, because, well, what else was there to do? It was uninspired, but like he'd said, they weren't expecting rent. She'd barely met them, and the Higashidanis had invited her anyway. Let's repay faith with faith, she thought.

She grabbed a little something for Sano, too, because he deserved it.

Later, in the check-out line, he said, "Did you really beat up that nice lady to get to that scarf?"

"Of course. It's salmon. Have you seen your mother? She'll look lovely in salmon."

He grinned at her, and she felt a warmth bloom through her that had nothing to do with the crowd.

---

December 23rd-25th, Various Times, Higashidani Household: In Which Megumi Contemplates Her Roots, Plays Card Games, and Lounges Around In Borrowed Sweatpants

The next two days passed in a blur. Megumi gave up on keeping ahead of the game and focused on keeping up. She had expected—well, she didn't know what she had expected. To spend time chatting about the weather with the Mr and Mrs. Higashidani, she supposed. But that hadn't happened because she hadn't expected the sharp generational divide in the household: the adults, which apparently did not include Sano and herself, clustered in the kitchen, talking neighborhood politics and chuckling over the coffee and eggnog. The children, which apparently did include her and Sano, were left to look after themselves.

It was a fascinating system, the way these things happened, and had she stopped to think about it, she would have found plenty to say. But she did not stop to think about it because there was so much else to do: watch a holiday marathon of Harry Potter movies, play card games (at which she could never beat Sano, the wretch, but handily beat Katsu over and over again), eat delicious food, and watch and cheer as the senior Higashidanis shamelessly kissed each other under the mistletoe.

In every way, this slightly worn, slightly shabby home was worming its way into her heart. The pictures on the walls told stories (first and last days of school, running at the beach, standing stiffly in front of projects at science fairs, reluctantly kissing wrinkly old relatives), of course, but so did everything else. The dishes were worn and faded, but they'd been given to Mrs. Higashidani by her grandmother, so she'd never throw them out, and if anyone broke anything, they'd be imprisoned in the basement. The doodle on the wall behind the dining table was one of Uki's first masterpieces, and Mr. Higashidani couldn't bear to paint over it. The turquoise coasters on the side table were an old purchase from a flea market. Uki had made the curtains in an arts and crafts class. There was a history test taped to the refrigerator, marked 97%, with Outa's name on top. The china cabinet had china in it, but also extra housekeys, old receipts, a large green wax hand (Sano's, made apparently on a family trip to Niagara Falls), and various trophies for spelling bees, science fairs, and lexicon challenges.

Surely, Megumi thought, this isn't normal.

She had been in other people's houses before. She had lived in an entire string of houses growing up. But none of them, not a one, packed the kind of history this one did. Surely, sometimes a vase was just a vase, and not the thing a great aunt had tried to murder her worthless cheating bastard of a husband with. She'd looked askance at Sano when he told her that one, and he said, "Hey, you asked."

"Did she kill him?" Megumi asked.

"The official story is that he ran away for parts unknown in the middle of night," Mrs. Higashidani said, handing Megumi a cup of eggnog, "so we can say yes, she did and probably buried him in the vegetable patch."

She was gathering memories, she realized late one night. She would forever remember Katsu's face when she'd won at Speed for the fourteenth time, or Uki's when she was showing off her newest outfit that she'd made from repurposed curtains, thanks very much, or Outa's when he leaned over to whisper to her that he wanted to be a doctor, too. His eyes slid over to his sister, who was glaring at Sano with her hands on her hips and a smile on her face, and over to his parents, who were laughing at each other over eggnog. "I want to stop them from dying. Like you."

And Sano, when he grinned at her over his cards and won for the fourteenth time. She had almost gone for the vase that time.

The best part, though, were the rituals. They were silly things, like everyone getting a grapefruit instead of an orange in their stocking and having to watch the original Willy Wonka movie on Christmas Eve, because, as Uta said, "It's just what we do."

---

The best part, though, was the gingerbabes.

"They're done!" Mrs. Higashidani called from the kitchen.

"Sweet," Sano said and ambled off to find her. "Come on, Doc."

"Come where?"

"You'll see."

He led her into the kitchen where it smelled like ginger and cinnamon.

Uki was standing by the stove, looking very pleased with herself. "The cookies are done," she said again, flushed and smiling. "And just about done cooling, too. I'm going to put some finishing touches on my presents, so I'm going to leave the decorating to you." She pointed an authoritative finger at Sano. "Do not mess this up."

"Oh, ye of little faith," Sano said.

"I believe in you both," said Mrs. Higashidani, and followed her daughter out of the kitchen.

"Do we eat them?" Megumi asked.

"Nope," he said, and handed her a large bowl. "Now we ice and sprinkle them."

She peeked into the bowl and found it full of creamy icing. "That looks delicious." She inhaled the delicate scents of cinnamon and nutmeg and sugar. "And smells amazing."

"Secret Higashidani family recipe," he said, and dipped a finger into the icing and stuck a huge dollop into his mouth.

"Don't do that! It's unsanitary."

He rolled his eyes. "Leave the doctor at the door, lady." He handed her a small icing spatula. "Now, we ice."

She thought of sneering at him, but he'd already turned his back to her, so it wouldn't have produced any kind of effect—even the usual effect of him smiling at her in his insolent, lopsided way—so she stepped up to look at the cookies instead. After a moment, she said, "These don't look like any gingerbread men I've ever seen."

His tawny gaze flitted up to her and back down to the cookies, which resembled the normal species of gingerbread man only in that they were presumably made of the same ingredients; they looked distinctly like diminutive body-builders, arms raised over their heads to better show off bulging, doughy muscles. "No," he said. "They're gingerbabes."

She caught the giggle that almost sneaked out of her by the skin of her teeth. Still, her face muscles betrayed her entirely, smiling at him as they were. "Is that another Higashidani family tradition?"

"Yep," he said. "As long as I can remember. Mom's always said that if she has to make them every year, she's going to make them in the image of Arnold Schwarzenegger at his beefiest."

"Really."

He shrugged. "Conan the Barbarian had a deep impact on her." He took his own icing spatula and dipped it into the bowl. "Watch and learn," he said as he applied icing to the left-most gingerbabe with a surprisingly careful hand in a triangle on the crotch. Suddenly, the cookie was wearing a skimpy little speedo.

"That's indecent," she said, but she smiled as she said it.

"Nah," he said, and dropped some sprinkles on the little patch of icing. "It's festive."

"He looks like a stripper," she said, laughing.

"That's quite an assumption. He could be an Olympic hopeful."

"Better make him a medalist," she said. "If he has to let it all hang out there for us, let's make it worth his while."

"The Michael Phelps of cookies," he said, carefully drawing a medal around the cookie's beefy neck.

"And if we're going to be accurate about it," she said, "he needs nipples." So she gave it some.

An hour later, they had David Hasselhoff (with an icing mullet, naturally), Superman (with a lopsided S that would not right itself even with her best efforts), a doctor (she'd insisted), and Conan himself, complete with a chain-mail bikini, because, as she'd pointed out, turnabout was fair play. He smiled at her as he bit Conan's head off.

---

Christmas dinner was predictably opulent, no thanks to Megumi. She'd offered her help, but Mrs. Higashidani had banished her back to the living room to "drink, play, and be merry" because the kitchen on Christmas, Uki had explained, was "Mom's kingdom, and you invade at your own peril". No one really knew what that peril was, but it probably involved getting chained to the boiler in the basement.

"She threatened that all the time," Sano said, lounging on the sofa. "'Don't do this, don't do that, or I'll chain you to the boiler.'"

"Or to make us sleep in the backyard," Uki said.

"Or the garage!" Outa added.

"Did she ever do any of those things?" Megumi asked, amazed. She hadn't ever spoken about her childhood, as desolate as it was, not until she'd shoved herself into therapy, because wasn't that was well-adjusted adults did? And here were these children were, talking about dire threats with laughter.

"Nah," Sano said. "She's all hot air."

"I heard that," Mrs. Higashidani called from the kitchen.

"Love you, Mom," all three Higashidani children chorused.

"I don't like any of you!" Mrs. Higashidani called back, and to Megumi's continued amazement, they all laughed.

After stuffing themselves full of dinner (Megumi was sure she'd seen that Sano had flung peas at Uki and that she'd flung them back, and then Outa didn't want to keep his Brussels sprouts on his plate so he'd dumped them on Sano's, and Mr and Mrs. Higashidani had laughed through the whole thing), they all adjourned to the living room.

"You don't have to stick around for this one," Sano said to her in the hallway. "It's a little, um."

"I can go," Megumi said. She was stung despite herself, even as she told herself that she no right, absolutely none, to feel that way. "If it's a family thing, I don't mind heading up to bed."

"It's not that." He rubbed at his eyes. "Whatever, just stay. It's fine." And he'd swung around and marched ahead into the living room with the rest of them.

"Okay," Megumi said, and followed him.

They all seated themselves around the living room, laughing and holding hands, and in Katsu's case, burping discreetly. She set herself on the floor between Sano and Uki, watching.

"I'll go first," Mr. Higashidani said. "I'm thankful for having time to spend with my family." He looked directly at Sano. "My whole family."

"Let it go, already," Sano said.

Mrs. Higashidani patted her husband's hand. "I'm next. I'm grateful that Sano's quick on his feet, and that Uki never let me forget to schedule my yearly mammogram."

"My turn," Uki said. "And as usual, I am left to address the elephant in the room." She looked around at them all, suspiciously bright-eyed. "I'm glad mom's not dead. I'm glad dad's not dead. And I'm glad Sano's back."

Megumi felt Sano shift next to her.

"My turn," Outa said, leaning on Mrs. Higashidani's leg. "I'm glad I got my green belt. I'm glad Sano got me a game. I'm glad we got to decorate the tree. I'm glad everyone is happy."

Katsu cleared his throat. "I'm glad that my blog got 30,000 hits in the last year. I'm thankful that I'm staring my Master's in Journalism next June. I'm grateful that I can have Christmas dinner with you all. And I'm thankful that Sano's back, too."

"You people," Sano muttered. "Fine. My turn. I'm glad no one died this year. I'm glad that the garage is doing well. I'm glad that Dad didn't forget how to make lame puns. I'm glad Mom didn't forget how to make fun of him for it. And I guess I'm…I'm glad to be back."

Everyone held very still.

"You people," Sano said again, disgusted. "I'm not leaving, okay? I'm here. I'm here to stay."

The entire room, it seemed, breathed a sigh of relief.

"Okay," Mr. Higashidani said. "I'll let it go."

They all turned to Megumi, almost as an afterthought. There was an inconvenient lump in her throat, but she worked past it. "I can't think of seven things right now," she said, "but I can think of one really big one. Thank you, everyone, for letting me into your home. I can't tell you how much I—if I was good with words, I'd tell you—how much it means to me."

---

December 26th: 1:31 AM: In Which Secrets Are Shared, Sex is Had, and Sano Goes Down On Megumi Forever Because That's the Kind of Story This Is, Folks

"Where did you go," Megumi asked later that evening, after everyone else had gone to bed, "that everyone is so glad to have you back?"

Sano sighed, and contemplated going to root around in the fridge for leftover pie. No, not worth it. He liked being exactly where he was, sprawled all over the armchair. This was prime living room real estate. Besides, Megumi was here, her long lean body folded into the corner of the couch. The fireplace had been lit and the flames danced in her eyes and glinted off her hair.

All that Goddamn hair.

"I didn't want to go to college," he said. "But Mom and Dad wouldn't hear of my not going. So I went and I graduated and I peaced the fuck out of here literally the next day."

"You're kidding," she said.

"Nope." There really was no way to tell this story to flatter himself. "I went to find myself. It was some real liberal white kid shit. I fucked around America for a while, mostly the northeast because New York, you know? Every kid's dream. Mostly it was dirty and expensive, so I headed off to Europe. Bummed around in Germany for a while, then I thought, why not get reacquainted with my homeland? So I went off to Japan and did a walking tour of the country, if you can believe that?"

She leaned forward. "Why on earth did you do that?"

He could see why she was horrified. Very neat and organized person, Dr. Takani was. Worse, she didn't have family. It would have taken a blind man to not see it, no matter how much she hid it behind that glossy exterior. No one who had family reacted to family shit the way she did.

"Your parents tell you every day of your life, 'We have sacrificed this much for you. We have worked that much for you. We've left these comforts behind for you.' And after a while, you get to thinking, 'I have to be worth those sacrifices.' Some kids rise magnificently to the challenge, like Uki. Some other kids, like me, think that it's unfair to shoulder that much pressure and get the hell out of Dodge."

"But you came back."

"When news of Mom's diagnosis got to me, yeah."

"I thought so."

"Did you?" He shrugged. He didn't like thinking about that. He didn't like thinking about Mom, bald and scaly and throwing up every meal. Mom, in pain and in need. Mom who'd stayed up all night with him as a kid when he'd had the chicken pox, Mom who never put green beans in her casseroles because he hated them, Mom who'd always, always been laughing, as far as he could remember. "Yeah, that was tough. Then she got better because they caught it early, but Dad's an ornery bastard so then he got sick. It's been kind of a shitty year."

"Hm," she said.

"Hm, what?"

"Not having a family is tough," she said. "But having one is a hard job, too." She snorted at herself. "Oh, wow, you can laugh at me for that one. Such brilliance. Much originality. Wow."

He'd laughed at her plenty these last two days, and laughed with her, and admired her even more. Hell of a woman, he thought again. "So tell me, Doc. What's your story?"

---

Well. She couldn't say she hadn't seen that one coming.

"Foster care," she said.

"How long?"

"Most of my life," she said, proud of how even her voice was. "I was one of those kids who aged out of the system."

He cocked his head to the side, saying nothing.

"Do not look at me like that. Nothing happened to me," Megumi said. "None of the horror stories you hear about things happening to kids in foster care happened to me. I was left alone for the most part." She had gotten good at avoidance as she had grown older; getting away from troubling and inconvenient people was an art, and one she'd perfected. It had been easy, because everyone around her had thought she was troubling and inconvenient, too.

Fuck them, she thought out of habit. Still, it was distinctly easy to feel sorry for herself this evening, surrounded as she was by the scents and sounds of a well-loved home.

Maybe because she'd never felt well-loved.

"Bullshit," Sano said. He got up and settled into the couch next to her and put an arm around her.

It felt...nice. Friendly. She ought to pull away. She couldn't trust nice, friendly things to stay nice and friendly.

He gathered her close.

In a minute, she thought. I'll pull away in a minute.

"You don't leave kids alone," he growled. "That's not how you raise kids. You bother them and nag them and drag them around to sports and piano lessons and feed them fiber and vitamins." He glared at her. "You love them. That's how you raise them."

There was a rushing sound in her ears. "I didn't have that, and I turned out okay."

He pulled her closer. It unfair how warm he was, how he radiated heat like a fire, how she felt like she could sit by him for a while and not burn herself. "You turned out great," he said. "No thanks to your foster parents."

"Thank you," she whispered. She wanted to sit here like this not—not forever, she wasn't that dumb. But she wanted something like this. Had wanted it for a long time. She was drunk on warmth and apple cider and his scent. "You're pretty great, too, despite all of your advantages."

He grinned and moved closer with intent. That was the thing with Sano; he didn't play games with her. When he won at cards or beat her at Mario Kart or overruled her in the voting between a Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter marathon, he played to win and made no bones about gloating. He made no bones about this, either. He was going to kiss her, it was written all over the quirk of his lips and the glint in his eyes. She could see the handful of freckles scattered across his nose now, and each bristle of his five o' clock shadow. His breath shuddered across her lips.

"Say the word and I'll stop."

"Don't stop," she said.

But he didn't kiss her straight away, the ass. He pressed closer, nuzzling her cheek, and he—he breathed her in? He took long breaths, moving his lips along her cheek.

"How," he rumbled, nosing along the rim of her ear, "do you smell so fucking good?"

"Clean living," she said, breathless. "Kiss me already."

"Yes, ma'am," he said, and finally, he kissed her.

The kiss was nice. Tame. Pleasant.

But it wasn't pleasantness she felt in the tightly corded muscles of his shoulder, or in the tense angle of his neck, or the shudder of his breath.

"Kiss me hard," she said, after a moment, "or I will leave you on this couch and go to sleep upstairs."

He stared into her eyes, hard. "Go big or go home?"

"All the way home, sure. I'll decide later about the 'big' part." She licked her lips and liked how his gaze sharpened and liked goading him even more. "Impress me, pretty boy."

"You're going to kill me," he whispered.

"That's the idea," she said.

"Fuck," he breathed, and devoured her.

The fire bathed her with warmth, but it couldn't compete with the heat he breathed into her with his mouth, hot on hers, and his hands, rough with work and wise with patience on her hips, on her breasts. She ground her hips into his and he grunted, he was growing hard for her, and before she knew it, his hand was down her pants, finding her wet and hot and slick for him.

Megumi grabbed his hair and hauled him back up for a kiss, a clashing and melding of lips and tongue and teeth. "You need to put your money," she panted, when they came up for air and she shuddered as he found her clit and rubbed at it and sent pleasure spilling through her like honey, "where your mouth is."

His teeth were very white in the semidarkness, and his smile as sharp as a scalpel. "Sure."

And he did, oh, he did. He crouched between her legs, the idiotic man, on the floor before her like a parody of a knight servicing his queen, and wasn't that a joke? No knight had ever smiled at his queen the way he did. But such ridiculous fancies were blown right out of her brain when he bent to her, put his teeth to her inner thighs, and finally, finally, got to the good part. His talented mouth and his mobile tongue—oh, God, his tongue—found her clit again and he pushed and pushed and pushed her toward some kind of precipice, some kind of light that was death but not death, and this felt to her like dying.

He kissed her after he'd thrown her off that metaphorical cliff. It was a filthy kiss—she could taste herself on him and his stupid grin, but it didn't feel like falling. It felt like flying.

"I will not let it end like this," she panted into his ear.

"This is your show," he said into her neck. His hair was damp under her hands, his breath perfumed with want. "It's always been your show."

"Then take me upstairs," she said, "and fuck my brains out."

He went very, very still in her arms. She felt a deep tremor in him, a seismic shift in the tectonic plates of his muscle, and suddenly she was upright and he had her straddling him, and he held her to him, and his mouth was on hers again, his tongue was in her again, plundering and hungry and relentless.

"Sure," he panted, and she realized he was moving them upstairs and down a corridor. Good, let him take them somewhere safe. She did not care where as long as she could have him.

He took her, as it turned out, to his old room.

He tumbled her on his flannel sheets, and the sandalwood and motor oil scent of him made her dizzy and the delicious weight of him made her even dizzier. The sheets were cold but he warmed them like he warmed her; he set little bonfires under skin, in her mind, in her fucking bone marrow, and he feasted on her, oh yes, he licked her neck and bit her earlobe and had her thrashing under him, grinding her pelvis into his, her mouth into his.

"Fuck," he ground out, voice shaking, and kissed her hard and sloppy and a little desperate, and it was somehow the greatest compliment she'd ever gotten. "Fuck, woman, would you wait?"

"No," she said, slipping a hand in between them and taking hold of his cock. She pumped, once, twice, and he grew rigid over her. "No, I don't think I will."

He bared his teeth in a rictus of a grin. "You keep doing that, and this won't last long." But he reached over her to root around in his nightstand and came back with a condom.

Yes, she thought, and took it from him, impatient with him and his showboating but loving his smile and the hard cage of muscles and sinew and bone he made around her. "Long is not what I have in mind." She rolled the condom onto him, sliding it home. "Hard and fast and filthy, maybe."

Then she rolled him over and climbed on top and showed him exactly how she liked it.

---

"Oh man," he said, when they'd both stopped panting and he could talk. It was a wonder, that. After an experience like that, he wouldn't have been surprised if all his mental faculties had been reduced permanently to cinders and ashes. "This is the dream. I never got to sneak girls up here in high school."

"Really?" She rolled over to look at him, interested. "Never?"

"Nope." He moved her over so she was half on top of him. She didn't resist, bless her heart, though she moved his arm around until she could get comfortable. "Mom could smell hormones from a hundred feet away. Any and all romance I had as a teenager happened in my car."

"Seriously?" He heard the smile in her voice. "No way were you that much of a cliche."

"What? You can't say you've really lived until you've made out in the back seat of a station wagon."

"That sounds terrible."

"Don't knock it." He trailed a hand through her hair. It still smelled like flowers and vanilla and sugar, all warm, comfortable scents. It was God's greatest joke, that a woman with so many edges could smell like a house at Christmas. Or maybe it wasn't a joke at all. Maybe it was just her reality, peeking through the spikes. "But this? This is great."

"What, having me up here?"

"One more thing off my bucket list." He yawned, but he wasn't ready to let her go just yet. "Do you have one?"

"A bucket list? Sure, I do. Get an MD. Climb Everest. Win a Nobel Prize. You know, normal stuff." Her tone was flippant, but she stiffened under his hands.

Uh huh. "Something tells me that's not it."

"What, you can read minds now?" She'd gone stiff as a board now, her voice snappish.

He stroked her back. You dealt with this woman the way you death with a cat: lots of stroking. "Nope. Just a feeling."

She was silent for a long while, tapping a staccato beat on his chest. Tap tap tap went her index finger, counting down the seconds, every muscle and sinew in her stretched tight. Finally she rolled away from him on an explosive sigh. Here we go, he thought.

But she didn't roll right off the bed. Instead, she lay next to him in the darkness, staring up at the ceiling. "I don't really have a bucket list. But I do have a…a dream, I think. Or a wish. I told you," she continued in a carefully calm, neutral voice, "that I grew up in foster care. What I didn't say was that—that I have no idea who my family is. My first memory is wandering on the side of a highway in the middle of winter. That's how they found me, the police or whoever. I had no idea who my family was or where they were or what happened to them. All I remember, or think I remember, is a fire. But I could just have invented that. I could have just invented my name." He felt her shrug. "I've made my peace with that, or most of that. But…

"I keep hoping," she said, still staring into the darkness, "that one day I'll be making my rounds or walking into the ER or something, and they'll see me." She took a shuddering breath, and that struck something in him, struck at some tender spot, that someone so self-assured and so competent could sound so much like a lost little girl. "I always change who it is. Sometimes it's a woman who has my eyes. Sometimes a man who has my jaw. But they always r-recognize me." Her voice broke. "But they recognize me. They h-hug me. They cry. And they say how proud they are and how sorry they are that they lost me—" She broke off on a sob.

Oh, sweetheart, he thought, and enfolded her in his arms, half expecting her to resist; he was surprised when she didn't. She turned her face into his chest and sobbed away.

So he did what he's seen Anji do when Tsubaki had started crying throughout her long pregnancy: he stroked her ink-black hair, whispering soothing nonsense, and waited out the storm.

Eventually, she quieted. He felt the tension gather in her spine as she got ready to pull away.

"Now, Doc," he said, "don't make this weird."

"I do not make things weird," she said, pulling back to glare at him, puffy eyes glinting in the dim streetlight that filtered in through his window. She still managed to knock him the fuck out, though. It was getting to be a bad habit with her. "In fact, I've been told that I'm very, very good at interacting with patients in a calm, professional and compassionate manner!"

"Then how about interacting with friends?"

That got her to stop. "Is that what we are?"

"Sure," he said. "I think we could be."

She huffed at him. "Do you sleep with all your friends?"

"Only the pretty ones." He nosed forward to kiss her. She tasted salty-sweet, a walking contradiction. "But before you go, if that's what you want, just let me say—I don't know if you'll ever find your family, but I do know that even if you don't, you're a damn good doctor and a damn good friend and a damn good person. They would be absolute morons to be anything less than ecstatic to be related to you."

Her fingers curled into little hooks into his shoulders as her breath hitched in her throat. "How—how do you know I'm a good friend?"

"Kaoru can't shut up about you."

"And the doctor thing?"

"That's what we in the business like to call an inference."

She laughed. It was a quiet, hitching gasp in the darkness, but she laughed nonetheless. "What business?"

"The business of helping twelve-year-olds with their English homework. But I don't know. I can quiz you, if you have a burning need to prove it to me."

She drew back to wrinkle her nose at him. "What is this, an audition?"

He slid his hands around her waist, drawing her back with intent. "Just reaffirming my faith in the proud tradition of medical education in this country. What am I touching right now?"

Her breath came faster. "You'll have to be specific."

He moved a hand up her back, feeling warm skin and lithe muscle. "List some muscles for me, sweetheart."

"Don't call me that. My heart is not sweet. And you're touching my trapezius, which lies superficial to the rhom—" she gasped as his other hand moved up her ribs and found her breast. "That's not fair."

"What's not fair?" Her nipple pebbled beautifully under the pads of his fingers. She could probably tell him why that happened, all the anatomical and physiological ins and outs of it. That was probably why she was so bloody-minded: what magic remained in anything after you'd dismantled it down to the nuts and bolts? She'd probably been dismantling things a long time.

He moved down and laid kisses on her, starting at her throat and moving to her breasts, smiling against her skin. It was too bad they hadn't fallen into bed earlier because he wasn't scared—well, only a little scared. He made it his business to strip things down to the nuts and bolts of them, too.

---

December 26th, 8:19, Higashidani Household: In Which Women Bond Over Coffee

The next morning dawned bright and was punctuated by the shrieks of birds and sounds of a household waking up. Megumi blinked herself awake and stared at Sano sleeping beside her, his face slack and the rest of him relaxed the way it never was when he was awake. He was brown and beautiful in the sunlight, and she foolishly wanted to kiss him. How ridiculous. She would do no such thing, of course.

She got out bed, put on her clothes, and made it as far as the door before doubling back to kiss his mouth anyway.

She'd met no one on the way to her room, or on the way to the bathroom, or on the stairs, but Sano had told her, hadn't he, that Mrs. Higashidani could smell hormones?

"Why, Megumi Takani," Mrs. Higashidani said sternly, "did you seduce my son on my living room couch?"

Megumi winced. "Well," she hedged. "We kind of seduced each other."

"Good," Mrs. Higashidani said. "Come have some coffee with me. And you'd better call me Naname."

---

December 26th, 7:13 PM, Megumi's Apartment: In Which Pillows Are Thrown, Tempers Are Ignited, and Sano Is Taunted

Megumi's apartment, when Sano drove her back later in his SUV, had made it through the extermination in tact.

She kept peeking at him as she put her clothes away in the hamper and the leftovers away in the fridge, and wondered what he thought of her place. Soulless, maybe. She sniffed. You don't care what he thinks, remember? she reminded herself, but that was difficult when the feel of him, his warmth and his hardness, hovered just beneath her skin. Still, what did it matter if her things told stories only of her? She counted, damn it.

"You're all set, then?" he said.

"Yep," she said. What did she do with her hands before this moment? They seemed to be made of ten thumbs. "All set."

He nodded at her. "Right. I'll drive your car back when the roads clear."

"Sure."

The silence between them stretched and stretched. She would not ask. She would not ask. He could not just leave her.

"Well," he said. "See you."

The ass was going to leave her! The pillow she threw bounced satisfyingly off the back of his head, though not as satisfyingly as a heavy vase might have. "That's it? You're just going to leave?"

He turned around, angry. "What do you want me to do?"

Stay, she thought. Stay and do wonderful things to me. But she couldn't say that, she couldn't be that pathetic, not when he thought he could fuck her senseless and leave without so much as a thank you! Men! What was wrong with them all? Absurdly, tears started gathering in her eyes and that was the last straw. "Oh, go ahead and go, you bastard! What do I care? One day of mediocre sex is not worth—"

He stalked towards her. "Mediocre sex?"

She was still mad, but her body, idiot dumb matter that it was, reacted to him with fireworks. "Yes," she spat. "In fact, I don't think it was worth it."

"The hell it wasn't," he said, and she wasn't sure who kissed who, but it didn't matter, it didn't matter all all. She tabulated the things that did matter in some distant corner of her mind: her hands, ripping off his shirt; his hands, in her hair and on her ass; their steps, rushed and haphazard towards the couch. He bit down on one nipple, sucked, and bit again, and she was lost.

But she was still mad. "Is that all?"

"Nope." He smiled at her, and it was one of those rare un-ironic sure-thing-no-problem smiles, the sort that made her stomach swoop and gave birth to dangerous sentiments like, "Maybe this thing between us can be more than a fling." Shit.

He gave her no time to ruminate; he leaned down for a kiss on the cheek, on her clavicle, and then all the way down her abdomen and between her legs. The friction between her thighs and his permanent five o' clock shadow was delicious. His tongue was skilled and slippery and mobile, and when he played it fast and hard and strong against her, she was lost.

Shit, she thought again and again as her legs fell open and her heels caught on the carpet. Shit.

Her orgasm was a quick, violent affair, and over far before he came. He surged to strained above her now, his face contorted in a half-grin, half-grimace, eyes lit with nothing so noble as love: he shook and sparked with animal lust.

"So?" he snarled, still pistoning his hips, still huge and solid and pulsing inside her. Already she was recovering, the pleasure shooting from her center to her fingertips.

Somehow, she found the presence of mind to sneer, "I'm still not sure you were worth it."

He didn't take offense, not when she was flushed with pleasure and meeting his every thrust with one of her own. Not when evidence to the contrary was written so clearly across her skin. But he did take her words as a challenge—he reached between them, unerringly found her clit, and rubbed and flicked and suddenly she was swearing at him in three different languages, urging him on, and promising dire consequences if he didn't. (She would reflect later that perhaps threats of castration would have at least daunted other men; Sano, however, just kept on keeping on.) She dissolved utterly, and Sano made her come three times before he came himself, the bastard.

---

If she were any sort of artist, she would paint this scene in filmy blues for the predawn light and pasty blacks for shadows. Feeble light filtered through gaps in her sensible winter curtains. They, too, were blue, and lined with layers of insulation to keep the cold out. Somewhere to her left, a radiator hissed. Her bra was abandoned on the hallway floor. Sano's pants were on the floor beside it, a belt trapped in the loops, buckles akimbo. She had a love bite on her right shoulder and another one low on her belly. Sano slumbered on beside her, sun-browned and coarse-haired, one arm flung across her and holding her close.

Megumi did not smoke, but this seemed to be a perfect moment for it. She would name her painting Adulthood: sensible curtains at her window, a lover in her bed, and a cigarette dangling from her hands, sending up thin cancerous smoke from a glowing point.

No point in inviting the cancer in, he'd said.

She ought to kick Sano out. She ought to make clear to him that they were only fucking. She ought to never have let him sleep in her bed.

She did none of those things. She turned, buried her cold nose in the fur on his chest, and fell asleep to rhythm of his steady heartbeat.

---

December 27th, 7:32 AM, Megumi's Apartment: In Which Decisions Are Made, Coffee Is Drunk, And Adults Act Like Middle-Schoolers (But What Did You Expect From These Dumbasses, Anyway)

Sano made her coffee the next morning, and said, "We need to talk."

"No, we don't." She took mug he offered her and steeled her squishy heart against him. "I'm still mad at you. You were going to leave, you asshole."

"You left," he said angrily. "I don't like waking up alone, but I thought, hey, maybe she just wants to avoid awkward questions, so whatever. But then you spent the rest of the day talking to my mother."

She stared at him, exasperated. "Because you want to keep her to yourself?"

He rubbed his forehead. "What the hell are you talking about? No, Megumi, no. Because you didn't give me a chance to talk to you after. Every time I turned around, you were talking to mom or dad or Tsubaki or someone. I thought you and I were done. And that was a really shitty way to end it."

She hadn't meant to do any of that. It was just that his mother was right there, and she kept feeling the imprint of his mouth on her, well, everywhere every time he looked her way, and how on earth was that appropriate? "Did I say we were done?" she snapped. "You said this was my show, Sano, and don't you forget it."

"Are we done?"

He turned the tables on her so well, this man. Temper and sheer contrariness made her say, "It was just sex. It was nothing."

"It wasn't nothing."

It was nothing. It meant nothing to me. The words boiled up her throat, but the sight of him, angry and warm in her kitchen, stopped them. His beard had left abrasions on her breasts, low on her stomach, between her thighs. She could see where she'd marked him, too—a bruise on his neck, a scratch on his arm. For that, for what they'd shared, he deserved honesty from her, if nothing else.

She clutched her coffee cup so she wouldn't clutch at him. "No. It meant—something. But I don't know what it meant, or how much, or how to let it mean something more."

"What the hell do you mean?"

"I don't know how to do this, okay?" She glared at him. "I am not good at relationships. I have trouble—" what had her therapist said? "—letting people in."

He tilted his head at her. "Tell me something I haven't figured out yet."

She clutched harder at her cup. The rest of her life gaped ahead of her, a long, straight road. That was good, she had worked to make it a straight road. She'd gone around enough bends before she could talk. But, it wasn't contentment that thought inspired in her. She felt…desolation, loneliness, something like sadness, that she'd found a man who could make her laugh and make her talk and make her come and make her, even for a short time, a part of his family, and that she would have to let him go.

And for what?

Suddenly she was furious—at him, at herself, at this whole situation. "I hate this," she ground out. "This is why I don't do relationships. I don't do this. I hate being bad at things."

"But you're bad at relationships?" He considered her, rubbing at his chin. "And you don't do things you're bad at, do you?"

"I might be fond of my comfort zone. Oh, stop smirking like that, I know it's a character flaw, all right?"

"Oh, so long as you know." He put his own mug down with a thump and crossed the kitchen in two long strides. "Come on. Don't give me that shit, doc. I like you. There, I said it. I liked you from the moment you bitched me out for fixing your car. And you, I think, enjoy making yourself unlikeable. Don't have to deal with people that way, huh? You can keep them all at a distance, because who cares if they'd abandon you? You abandoned them first."

Oh, that was too much. She poked a finger into his chest. "What gives you the right to say that to me?"

And the ass smiled and kissed her, hard and open mouthed, and she didn't slap him, idiot woman that she was.

"This," he said, leaning his forehead against hers, "this gives me the right. I don't care what you say or do, I'll like you anyway. Even if you yell at me and throw shit at me and buy me ugly Christmas sweaters with roosters on them. I won't leave, doc, not unless you tell me to go and mean it."

Her mouth had gone dry as the Sahara. "And what if I mean it?"

"I'll still like you." His big hand cradled her skull and he kissed her with infinite gentleness, nothing like before. It was a long kiss, a wise kiss, a kiss that said, Hello, there you are. "Don't tell me to go," he whispered after they broke apart.

And how could she, when he looked at her with eyes as yellow as the harvest moon? He was warm around her. She could live off that warmth for—not forever. But a little while, maybe. Maybe it was okay for her to hope for that. "I won't," she said. "But, I, I don't know how to—how the mechanics of this relationship will work."

"I think we figured out the mechanics just fine." She felt him grin as he kissed her behind her ear.

She smacked his arm. "Focus! I'm talking about the rest of it, the everyday things, responsibilities and your family and the bills—"

"Megumi," he said, raising his head to lock gazes with her. "We'll figure it out. We'll take it one day at a time."

"That does not sound like a plan."

"Woman," he said, exasperated. "You want me to plan out the rest of my life with you? I don't even know where I left my pants."

She went very, very still, his words prickling over her scalp. "The rest of your life?"

"I don't know," he said, serious now. "I don't know what going to happen down the line to you or to me or to us. All I know, for now, is that I want to be with you. I like you, remember?"

She looked up at him, serious and tousled and badly in need of a shave, but here—here in her kitchen, in her life, despite everything. Oh, fine. "I like you, too."

"I know," he said.

"Oh, my God," she said, and almost dumped her coffee over his head.