Ah, how much do I love Code Geass? A lot. =D Dedicated to the awesome Carbucketty because I love her to death and she loves these three. There really needs to be more about them. They make the most adorable trio! Anyways, she's having a stressful time with her senior year, so I figured that I would do my part in trying to cheer her up and adding to the cuteness supply of stories out there. So, read and review, please and thank you!

Disclaimer: Code Geass will never, ever belong to me. Ever. D=

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It became their obsession, really. A very intense, concentrated, focused energy that they put forth all their effort into, so that they could achieve a goal.

Well, he did, at least. She was more of a bystander with good cast-off ideas and indifferent opinions to whatever new scheme he managed to come up with. She didn't contradict him, though, unless she thought that he was being ridiculous, which wasn't, in fact, that far off a lot of the time.

But they thought about it actively, brainstormed together, and never grew tired of this new almost-game that kept him up at night, thinking and furrowing his brow and digging through his mind for answers.

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Suzaku willed himself to keep his attention on the grass in front of him, and not the young blonde man making the silliest faces that he could come up with on his left; he knew that Gino had a reason for doing this, and he knew that reason was not to annoy him (well, he shouldn't speculate too much there…), but all the same, sometimes he wanted to be left alone.

"He wants to be left alone," came the flat voice on his other side, and just as Suzaku looked up a click sounded.

Anya flipped her camera closed and looked at him with those eyes that he always felt knew more about him than nearly anyone else, proved by the rare instances where she spoke and voiced his thoughts exactly. For this reason, he was glad that the little girl didn't speak much; it wouldn't do for Gino to know everything about him.

Gino's eyes crinkled in delight as a response to his young friend's statement, and he sucked in his cheeks to make a fish face while crossing his eyes. "I know. That's why I'm doing it."

Click.

"Recorded. Thank you."

"You are very welcome!" grinned Gino happily, giving up his quest as hopeless for the moment and lying back in the grass to stare up at the sky. "Anything for the little princess." He began to trace the pattern of the clouds with his fingers.

Anya didn't respond to that, and Suzaku studied her silently with narrowed forest green eyes. She made no move to tear her gaze away, although he noticed that her right hand twitched as though it wanted to reach into her pocket and pull out her phone.

When Suzaku closed his eyes, he could still see her—the way that her bright hued hair glowed brightly in the sunlight and how her smile could light up the gloomiest of afternoons and how he always felt that swell of happiness when she laughed and he knew that it had been he who made her laugh, he who caused her to close her eyes and let loose—

She haunted his every thought, the daydreams and the nightmares, the ones where he was reaching and reaching for her and she was smiling at him with her unnaturally solemn, controlled eyes and giggling, "Save me, Suzaku."

He could hear her trapped behind those words, the real her that was screaming out in pain and horror at what she was doing… what she was being forced to do.

And when Suzaku opened his eyes—a flash of pink hair and the smooth pale skin—his heart leapt and he snatched the girl close to his body and his furiously pounding heart, preventing her from being near the edge of the stairs while her attention was elsewhere.

Anya gazed up at him with a flicker more emotion than she usually showed, and drawled, "That wasn't necessary, Suzaku."

The chocolate-haired boy had swallowed with some difficulty and replied, "Yes. It was," before setting her down gently and walking away.

Anya paused before taking a snapshot of his retreating back.

"Don't you two have anything that you're meant to be doing right now?" Suzaku questioned, rubbing his eyes with a slight sigh and follow the line of Gino's arm into the air where his hand was doing a rather complicated twisting moment for reasons only known to the knight himself.

Anya shook her head at the same time that Gino fashioned a lengthier and infinitely more verbal answer, "More important than making sure that you don't wallow in the horrible, muddy and murky depths of your own unending depression?"

Suzaku's eyebrow rose. His friend relented.

"Okay, so maybe things that are more important. But none of those things are anywhere near as fun!" And with that he closed his eyes contentedly; he seemed willing to leave it there.

Had it not been such a lazy day, Suzaku may have argued that point, or merely gotten up to find somewhere more secluded to "wallow in his horrible, muddy and murky depression" but as it was, he simply rested his chin in his hands and relaxed his spine.

The pink-haired knight on Suzaku's right began to take a panorama of the gardens, slowly but surely making her way from one side to the other. Clearly, she agreed with Gino, although she had made no movement in reaction to his comments.

Suzaku felt something tugging at his heartstrings and closed his eyes to the sunlight. He thought that there might be something big that he was on the edge of, some sort of overarching running theme, but his mind couldn't summon up the energy needed to grasp at the fluttering edges.

"You two are being awfully talkative. How about you shut up for once?" asked Gino, cracking open one eye and examining them where they sat before laughing, full and throatily in his chest, as he always did.

It fascinated Suzaku. He only could recall one person who really laughed like that, with his entire being, like they wouldn't rather be anywhere else except for there. She disappeared from his life a while ago.

He used to be able to laugh like that; at least, he thought that he could. Those days when the feeling would fill him up and he could do nothing but let loose with a great roar of hilarity, because life was just so perfect—but that didn't exist anymore.

"Suzaku pushes people away so that they will not know what he is thinking," Anya said insightfully, going through her photos and making the final decisions about which ones she wanted to keep and which ones she didn't.

This took Suzaku by surprise, for more reasons than one, but the other young man with them didn't miss a beat and moved over to Anya easily. "Yes, but Anya takes pictures so that she won't have to show other people her feelings."

Anya blinked at this and said firmly, "I take pictures so that I may have a true record of what has happened."

Gino snorted. "Of course. Whatever the mini princess would like us to think." He smiled heartily in the face of Anya's slight frown.

The exuberant blonde man was caught off guard by Suzaku's next question, which was astonishingly hard to do, considering that it was Gino that he was talking to.

"And what about you?"

Gino laughed loud and long, like he always did. "That would ruin it, wouldn't it?"

Anya rolled her eyes and finished with her wide scan of the lush and blossoming gardens. "You could amuse the dirt, Gino," she commented, and if one didn't know her well enough, one would think that she was being completely serious.

Before he even recognized it, a ghost of something flickered around Suzaku's mouth at this interaction, and Gino sat up quickly, as though he had been burned. He grinned outright and pointing an accusing finger at a bewildered Suzaku. "There it is! That's it, that's what we've been looking for!"

Click.

"Thank you. Recorded." Something was dancing in Anya's eyes.

And Suzaku couldn't help it—he chuckled. Gino clapped enthusiastically and Anya took another picture.

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It was an obsession, sure, the way that they thought of schemes to make him smile. And there was no doubt that it bothered Suzaku half to death with their pestering plans to see the light shine in his eyes and a laugh bubble up from his throat.

But sometimes, every once in a while, it paid off.