All The Lies I Never Told You, a digimon fanfic

All The Lies I Never Told You

Some people meet the way the sky meets the earth,
inevitably

("Tales of Burning Love" by Louise Erdrich)

Note: f/ refers to the f-stops for relative aperture sizes in photography.

f/1.4

They make an unpretty picture, huddled shoulder-to-shoulder in the backseat of his car.

At the traffic light, he glances at the rearview mirror again, locking eyes first with the passenger diagonal from him. Only one blue eye looks back, blank and withdrawn, while the other stays hidden under the boy's palm. An elbow is balanced on the door handle as he shivers in his short-sleeved polo shirt, the collar askew around his neck. His scabbing lip puffs at the corner, jaw still sporting little lines of dried blood on pale skin.

He raises an eyebrow, still silent, and lets his gaze wander over to the one in the middle. Her hair is a mess, broken barrette cupped in hands with knuckles scratched to match the tears in her sheer black tights. Over a plaid top and flared skirt she wears an oversized sports jacket, its pocket emblazoned with a stitched logo of their school's mascot, and her feet are tucked into ratty sneakers far too big. She's biting hard on her bottom lip, head bowed.

A pained wheeze distracts his attention, and he pauses at the last in their mismatched trio, whose face is tilted so far back it's parallel to the car ceiling. His eyes are closed as he breathes heavily, and noisily, through a wide mouth. Rolled tissue blot his nostrils, and he's pinching the bridge of his bloody nose. Legs stretched out to take as much room as possible, his feet are bare.

The light turns green, and he shifts the car back into drive. "Nearly there," he says, as a way into conversation.

Takeru reacts first, impassioned stare stirring to life: "Oh, okay, thanks." And then, after some thought, "We, um, definitely owe—owe you for this, Jou. More so if…you know."

His eyebrow twitches. "He won't hear it from me."

"Bankth," echoes Daisuke, knocking his knees together. "Boon, too, ib dab opay."

"Easy enough. I rarely see Jun anyway." The car rumbles as he makes a rather sharp turn, and Takeru grunts when his elbow knocks off the windowsill. Jou straightens the car, apologetic. "But you do realize that bloody noses and black eyes speak for themselves, right?"

"Oh, dib ib nomal fo me—,"

That's when she finally looks up, raising her chin, and puts a hand on Daisuke's knee. He stops shaking at once. "Try not to aggravate it," she tells him, nodding at his nose, where a fresh leak has started to pool above his lip.

"Opay," he mumbles, but she leaves her hand on his leg anyway. Takeru turns back to the window.

The tempered silence breaks this time only after they've reached their final stop. Which is fine, as far as Jou's concerned, because he can't quite figure out what to make of things, of their unpretty-ness. But he knows to ask her, and only her, so he does, but only after the car stammers to a rough stop in the parking lot of her parents' apartment complex, and only after the boys have peeled themselves up and out of his hand-me-down ride with a sort of eagerness that Jou finds mildly insulting. She has a foot nearly out the door when he turns to face her directly, speaking with utmost seriousness: "Hikari, a second?"

She nods without a word, pressing the housekey into Takeru's open palm, and waits for the pair to disappear into the lobby. Jou launches into it straight off: "Give Takeru something iced to keep over his eye until the swelling goes down, and Daisuke can take the tissue out but don't let him sleep on his side. And all of you—mouthwash to take the scent off, and put the clothes in the laundry straight away."

She nods. "Okay. I'll remember, I promise."

He hesitates, and then, "I'll never be mad that you call," he tells her. "Just…be more careful."

He seems to think his words might wound, like she wouldn't already know. But the wrinkles around her mouth soften anyway. "I will."

His nod is short and embarrassed at the emotion. He waves a distracted hand at her, shooing the sentiment away, and she takes that as a sign that she ought to shoo off, so she does, dusting off her skirt in the parking lot before moving to close the car door at last.

"Wait, Hikari," he lifts a crumpled pair of stockings out from the glovebox and gestures with it, "throw out the ripped ones, before your parents get home?"

Her smile is still small, at first, and then grows with that cheeky glint that dispels any doubt he might have had about her family genes. "Are you asking me to not let Taichi know you've got a women's stockings in the glove compartment of your car?"

Jou starts to frown, bristling at the speculation. "They're not mine."

"Well, of course not, Jou."

The bristling intensifies. "They're not. Mimi forgot them once when—,"

Regret flashes across her face, and she rears her head back with a laugh, "No, stop!"

"That's not what happened!"

Fingers snatch up the pair before he can change his mind, and she waves them in gratitude, still giggling. "Tell Mimi thanks."

"Hikari—Hikari, that's not what—Hikari, don't tell them anything!" he's yelling through the window now, flung as close as the seatbelt will allow, but she's already gone, chuckling to herself all the way up on the elevator. Kicking off Daisuke's shoes and shrugging out of Takeru's jacket at the apartment entrance, she stops in the kitchen to wrap a handful of ice in a sandwich bag and carries everything to her bedroom.

They're settled in bed. Takeru's on his back at the far end by the wall, arm outstretched above him as he switches holding up three or four fingers at a time, squinting painfully through his swollen eye. Polo shirt exchanged for the T-shirt he'd left here only a few nights before, he's comfortable over the blankets, knees drawn up and bare feet flat on the sheets. Daisuke's on the side, pants cast off as usual and phone in hand as always, cuddled under the duvet and breathing loudly as he skims through messages. His gaze flickers around the screen when she enters, and he offers a wheezy open-mouthed smile, unaware of the drool pooling on the edge of the pillow under his chin. "Boo book poebebah."

Rolling her eyes, she hands him the ice, and he tosses it absently somewhere near the vicinity of Takeru's neck, earning a knee in the ribs when the latter, hissing, recovers from the cold shock.

"For the swelling," she tells him, and Takeru accepts, cupping the ice over the side of his face. He rolls over on his side, then stops in mid-turn when he sees her peeling off her stockings, her skirt lifting just enough over smooth pale thighs to sneak a glimpse of pink lined panties. He looks down, Daisuke hasn't noticed. He counts another second or two, then looks up again, this time seeing her laying two pairs of stockings over the back of the desk chair. Confused gaze sweeping down over her bare legs, he mutters, "Where'd you get those?"

"Oh, you know, the hormonal telegram arrives at different times for different people…." She sighs, wistful, and he snaps back to normal.

"Sarcasm is so pretty on you."

She makes a smacking noise with her lips, blowing him a kiss, and continues undressing. "Jou gave 'em to me to replace the ripped ones. Says I'm absolutely not meant to tell you Mimi left them in his car."

His eyebrows shoot up into his hairline, and he whistles, "Oh, really?" while Daisuke yawns, "Thebee tho hot."

She pauses, settled now in boy short briefs and a night shirt with tiny cartoon rabbits scattered across the neck, and scrunches her face as she considers his still plugged up nose. "I think you can take those out," she says, and he perks up, touching the tip with care.

"Thiby?"

"Only one way to know." Takeru leaves the ice bag on the pillow for a moment, then sneaks his left arm under the boy's neck to forcibly leverage his face up. Holding him gently, tender, he tugs the rolled tissue with his other hand and drops it on the floor by the bed, ignoring Hikari's tittering snort at the mess. Daisuke ignores it, too, nestling his head back on Takeru's forearm to breathe freely, poking at his nostrils. He sighs, satisfied, when his fingers come away dry.

Hikari shoos him away from his nose with a hand under his chin. She's not sure what she's looking for, despite the doting gesture, and Daisuke can tell. He grins, mouth twisting into a sloppy, sleepy smile, the nasal stuffiness nearly gone. "Diagnosis, Dr. Yagami?"

She lets her fingertips pinch the skin under his jaw. "No more fist fights."

"Had it coming."

"Doesn't matter." Her gaze skips to Takeru's and holds it steady. "No more."

One arm now immobile, Takeru retrieves his ice pack with his free hand. "She's right."

Daisuke sniffs in exaggeration, and Hikari hisses, "I told you not to aggravate it!"

"You know who's the real aggravation?"

Takeru's arm shakes under Daisuke's neck, and the latter's head bobbles enough to stop talking. "Don't mind it," Takeru tells her. "His head is back in the gutter that's Jou's car, trying to figure out how he can get Mimi to take off her stockings for him, too."

Daisuke's eyes glaze over, and he turns then to nuzzle his beat face into the crook of Takeru's elbow. He murmurs, "D'you think she's got a pair of those thigh-high ones, too? With laces and everything?"

"You're disgusting."

"Well, you picture it how you want, Takaishi, and I'll picture it how I want."

"And me?"

"I don't think you'd look good in lace."

"You've seen me in lace," laughs Hikari, making a show of clamoring around the pair to squeeze onto the last bit of mattress.

"Explain yourselves."

Daisuke reaches up to force an awkward and heavy pat across Takeru's chin, thinking it's the top of his head. His fingers trail down the boy's neck, making Takeru open his mouth, breathing light. He pulls his fingers down and away from his lips just as he reaches them. Daisuke yawns, "You picture it how you want, Takaishi, and we'll picture it how it happened."

"Oh," Hikari flicks him again, tucking herself into the crook of his neck. Daisuke wiggles over roughly, ignoring Takeru's grunt when the blonde's shoulder hits the wall. She slides one leg between Daisuke's, her ankle hooking under his shin like an anchor. He has a hand on her waist, dipped into the slope of her back, and his fingers curl around the top of her shorts, grazing her stomach, stopping only when her breath draws on his neck. She finds her voice again, and it's hoarse. "Don't tease him."

"Oh, please, tease me," says Takeru, shoving the pair back with his free hand. They resist, and he's trapped. Resigned to discomfort, he continues to hold the ice over his bad eye and lets his surrendered arm stretch flat behind Daisuke's head. The gesture brings his fingers into the tangles of her hair, and she feels his thumb trace the outline of her ear. "I want the whole story. Leave nothing out."

"Okay," she begins as her eyes close. "Once upon a time."

"There was a boy."

"And a girl."

"And a king."

f/2

He's been wanting to ask about it all night, then finally seizes his chance when he steals into the room with her after family dinner, his unspoken invitation to such intimate events years old and still standing. Teasing past her, he waltzes across the emptied space and sinks down onto the edge of the mattress, bracing himself with both hands behind him at the waist. "How many times is that, then?"

She silences her phone before pocketing it and shoots him a practiced, knowing look. He's offended, or at least mimics an offended expression, head wiggling side to side to imitate her face in an exaggerated manner. "I'll see him later," she murmurs, shutting the door over her parents' amused laughter to the evening variety show playing on the living room television. It'd become routine, at this point, to view a show or two rather than another match after dinner. The latter isn't the same without Taichi, so it's up to the former, with its goofy contestant antics and jovial guest interviews, to at least fill the apartment in the way he once did. She can't imagine what kind of program or radio show they'd have to use to fill the space she'd taken here, after tomorrow. Just the picture of the two of them struggling to cover the silence at all is painful enough.

Takeru frowns, unconvinced but unwilling to share coveted alone time just yet. "Fine. Just don't end it after I've gone or anything."

Hikari rolls her eyes. "How would you entertain yourself if we weren't around to be the living dress rehearsals for one of your plays?"

He's propped up on the bare bed by an elbow, head cocked, feet still firmly on the ground as he leans over on his side. The premise appears to alarm him. "I guess I just wouldn't."

"Bravery is you getting out of bed every morning, with that threat overhead."

His grin is infectious, and she's giggling now, too. She puts her face in her hands to stifle the sounds, shoulders shaking at the repressed laughter, and it takes a minute for her breath to come back. She moves to the window, or attempts to, but his hand grabs at her arm when she passes by. The tip of his thumb to the tip of his forefinger encircles her wrist perfectly, but he doesn't pull tighter yet. He just keeps her there, holding her from walking further, and her neck rolls slowly around towards him, passing him a half-hearted stare of exasperation. "You're not just leaving him, you know."

She flicks her wrist around without any effort, so now her palm is pressed to his as her fingers mirror his hold. And she does pull, tight, because Hikari's always craved that sense of grounded, solid flesh to make her still. "Like I could even try," she says, and this time only his eyes smile. They're a duller blue, she notices with surprise, or maybe it's the dim light in the bedroom, now stripped to just one sullen sort of dome light by the empty desk.

"I think you've been trying all your life."

"To leave you?"

He grimaces, shaking his head. "To leave here."

At that, Hikari just shrugs, excuses stuck in a parched throat. "So've you."

It's true, but Takeru doesn't want to ruin it by pointing out the obvious. So he tugs at her, and she bends into his open arms easily. Settled down on their sides now, he slides his cheek across her forehead, lips to her hair. "It's going to be weird, isn't it?"

"We had a whole life here," she agrees, staring up through tufts of blond hair to the ceiling of her bedroom. There's still scratches of paint there, marks from old poster tape, and pinpricks left by the nails and tacks that only yesterday held up the photo frames that hold up her entire world.

He breathes in slowly, with intention. "D'you think we'll still have one out there?"

The parched, scratchy discomfort is back, and she has to open her mouth to let the air in, to give her an excuse to swallow deep and blink quick. "You're talking like we aren't still kids."

"That makes it worse."

She nudges him clumsily, and he pulls her closer, face buried in the wisps of young hair on her temple. She whispers, in something like comfort, "It's only four years."

He mumbles something she can't hear, or maybe just makes a wordless sound, but before she can start to turn her chin to ask him about it, he's cleared his throat in a lazy voice, ever cool, "Just don't come back with a boyfriend. I'm not going to handle it well if you do."

She claps her free hand over her mouth with another laugh. "What exactly do you think happens at foreign universities?"

"Quite a bit, if one cares to consult The World According to Inoue Miyako, trademark pending."

"Oh, for…," and she sighs, loudly, brushing her hair back from her forehead. "Like it or not, Takaishi, I have bigger plans than another one of those," she adds with a pout, eyes narrowed at nothing.

He watches her face change, breath hitched. Then he shakes his head, "Miyako'll be devastated. She's counting on you finding you two a pair of brothers, y'know."

Hikari snorts, amused, and closes her eyes. "She'll be fine."

"But will you? I mean, four years is a long time, Miss 2-AM-Texts."

Her shriek of protest startles him, gaze darting ever so briefly at the closed bedroom door. Her strangled voice distracts him, "He told you about those?"

He can't control the laughter, endlessly amused at her reaction. How is it that she can still surprise him after, he'll spend a lifetime trying to understand. "You really thought he'd just be at home otherwise?"

"You still should have told me!" she yells again as her elbow lands under his armpit and his muscles snap back, and his laughter cuts at the sound of her head hitting the floorboards when they tumble down together. On instinct, his arms stretch, fingers sliding under her neck, and she's curling over onto her side with a wince, gasping, "I'm fine—I'm fine—," while he's sputtering out, "Oh, shit, 'Kar—,"

She finds a hold on his forearm, pressing her thumb into the skin in a gesture of insisted calm. "I'm okay," she says, but he still rolls over her, hands holding her face so his fingertips can cup under the backs of her ears. There's a long pause in his smile, one that makes her blush. "What?"

"I should have told you a lot of things," he says, as though he's not yet realized he's said it aloud.

She pulls on his elbows, bringing him closer. "We're not dying, Takeru. We're going to college."

"Lightyears apart. And you know what happens to light when it travels that far?"

"Takeru—,"

"The whole universe changes."

"You're crazy," she mumbles and pushes him back.

His hold slips down to her arm, bringing her with him as he perches back on his heels and she sits up, slouching forward. That's when he finally lets go, hand falling down to his side, but he's still looking at her. "Are you going to end it with him?"

She wants to laugh again, because the alternative is just too damn bleak. "Tell me what to end, and I'll end it."

He looks away, towards the door, leaving her to time to find the words to speak again first. Her voice is gentle, with a hint of a tease to her soft, small lips. "What's Miyako's guidebook say about husbands?"

He snorts at the idea, still staring at the door. "Husbands don't last."

"Boyfriends don't either, y'know."

"Yeah? Then what does?"

They're sitting across from each other now, just out of reach. She likes to think it's good practice, and he likes to think that it could have been her, that it should have been, if only everything had gone different than this.

"Hikari?"

"Mm?"

"What lasts?"

And she says, careless with her honesty, "You. And me."

f/2.8

Daisuke is the sort of crush that you hate yourself for having. Good-looking to be sure, but not in the way that made you want to admit as much, and certainly not enough to tell him. He'd never let you live it down if you did, and not because he thought it mockingly obvious or that his ego needed it—Iori once remarked that Daisuke's self-esteem would outlive Styrofoam—but because from then on he'd know exactly where to draw the line in the sand between you. Suddenly, you were his, and you wouldn't be able to quit.

Or maybe this is all projection, because he'd never take things too far without you, for all the teasing and the games he'd put you through afterwards. Not for lack of inspiration or opportunity, though. It's just that after all the fun was done, he'd just forget, as quickly as he'd remember, that he'd ever made you feel anything at all, or that maybe he still could. And that's what terrifies Hikari. Not that he'd know, but that one day he'd stop and wouldn't even realize that he had, and it wouldn't even be personal.

Hikari thinks about this fact too much. And the more she thinks about it, the more it makes her want to grasp him by those wide, flat ears and shake him until the only thing left in his head is her. She wants to know that after everything she can still make him linger, that, years from now, he'd be cycling down past her family's apartment block or taking the long way back around the city park and come to an inexplicable, arresting pause. She wants to know he'd still have to cough to hide the blush on his tanned cheeks when his sister asks him how he slept, and that he'd never carve anyone else's name into that rotting maple tree at the end of the foot path. She wants to know that one day underneath all that sand he'd draw her line in stone.

Hikari wants surety, and she also knows that he'd give her that surety in a heartbeat—the same as he'd give it to anyone else.

She thinks about this too much, but what she doesn't see yet is that he thinks about it, too. So when she tells him once, huddled under the covers of her tiny twin bed in her tiny shared dorm room, trying extra hard not to make a sound and wake up her sleeping roommate nearby, that she can't read him, his instinct is to laugh, nuzzling his nose into the dimple at the end of her mouth. "What are you talking about? I'm an open book."

Hikari squirms under his wet tongue, arching her neck away. He raises an eyebrow, and she takes his face in her hands, forcing him to look at her.

"Maybe I've got a different translation," she says, and his eyes narrow at the flippant wording.

"You spend too much time around Takeru," he decides.

"Feeling a little green?"

"Me?" he sneers, nose wrinkling, then dips suddenly down again, large hands spreading across the small of her back, so she has something to protect the bend of her arch when his mouth finds that spot once more. She can feel his smirk on her skin as her lips part. "I'll start worrying when he can do this."

She's biting her lip, eyes shut, and laughs, "Who says he can't?"

Daisuke sinks his teeth, and she yelps before clapping both hands over her mouth in a panic, almost kneeing him in the stomach. But he's prepared, lifting her leg up and around his waist. "We're not talking about him anymore."

f/4

It's upon turning to the doorway, and seeing who's standing there, that makes him choke on the drink. Sputtering, he knocks a fist into his chest, squinting, just to be extra sure. "What the fuck—you invited him?"

Takeru purposely keeps his back to the scene, refusing to engage in the inevitable. Futile, he knows, but battling futility is the only possible way of life left with Daisuke for a roommate. Still, it's what keeps him at the edge of calm when a stubby finger starts to poke into his good shoulder, digging hard.

"Takaishi—,"

"Watch it," he says, shrugging aside one step. "Yes, I invited him. Hey," he adds, when Daisuke, with a scoff, makes to advance to the doorway. His tone stops him, and Takeru's frowning, "I like him, Daisuke. Don't be an asshole to him."

Over the immediate protest, Takeru lifts a beer can from the wash bin they'd converted into a temporary cooler by the dorm's sole window—not an easy task these days, his stiff wrist suspended in a bright orange cast that encircles his right arm from thumb to elbow, but he's determined to keep the arm mildly useful—and presses the bottom of the iced can to his temple, welcoming the rush of cold. They really needed to get maintenance in to fix the air-con, but Takeru's too stubborn to reassign the chore to himself, and Daisuke's too forgetful to realize it had ever been his. That, or he's too content to have a real weather-related excuse to test the limits of how far a load of laundry can truly stretch, sporting tonight nothing but a pair of Jou's navy blue swim trunks (no, please, keep them, Jou had insisted in a very unhappy voice, which Daisuke had cheerily accepted as sincere) and Taichi's championship ring (don't tell Mimi, Daisuke had warned after taking it, which Takeru had cheerily proceeded to do).

"Of all people to like, you choose my enemy," says Daisuke in a surly voice.

"You don't have enemies, Daisuke."

"Yes, I do. I could," he adds, somewhat offended, when in response to the first remark Takeru had only closed his eyes, moving the can across his forehead slowly.

"Mm-hm."

"I could. I hold grudges just as much as you do."

"Mm."

"Stop that."

"Mm-hm—hey," and then he does stop, as Daisuke snatches the can he'd started trying to open one-armed and performs the task himself.

"So fucking helpless," he says, shoving the drink into his functional hand.

"Right," starts Takeru, annoyed now, "so you don't need me to tell you that this whole thing with Ken isn't about you finally making an enemy, right? That it's really about you so very poorly treading water because, for once, someone didn't just naturally take to being your friend?" Daisuke starts miming him, mouth moving soundlessly, and slurps the rest of his soda with a scowl. That's how Takeru knows he's right, which means he can't resist continuing. "And you know why he didn't? Because you come on too strong, Dais, and it makes people feel unsafe. That's why he doesn't talk to you."

Daisuke's face turns, but Takeru hasn't noticed the change.

Musing to himself between sips, he thinks he's onto something this time, finding that coveted crack in the muddy topcoat he'd long since applied like a gloss over all his friends, turning them into excavations. Takeru presses deeper, thinking aloud: "You want to fix everything, all the time. Everything wrong or bad, you have to do something about it, and you don't ever take breaks. And when it's done, you go straight on to the next one, which is fine, but to a lot of people, you know, it's just overwhelming, and intense, like you're squeezing out their right to be themselves because of all the space you take—,"

"I'm not a character!"

There's a lull then, heads turning slightly as the music still plays from the speakers. Takeru senses people's eyes on them, but his head is moving too slow, confused. "I—what?"

"You heard me." Daisuke is furious, tempered voice rushed in frustration. "This isn't one of your stupid stories, and I'm not one of your fucking characters." He dents his empty beer can with his fist, launching it at the rubbish bin in their tiny kitchen entry, and stalks down the hallway.

Takeru, unable to think, stays where he is by the window. After a moment, he looks down at the drink still in his hand, noticing only then that he doesn't even like this flavor. His thumb slicks the beads of water from the rim, absently debating whether to go through with finishing it or cave and fetch a new one.

"All right?"

Only his eyes glance upwards, head still lowered. The smirk draws across the corner of his mouth easily. "'Course. My brother always says it isn't a party until Daisuke throws something." But when he looks slightly pained at the thought of such a scene, Takeru has to add, "A joke, Ken. I'm joking."

"Oh."

Taking a long swig from his drink, he wipes his mouth with his injured hand, inadvertently knocking the plaster into the bridge of his nose with a wince. "You're not too good at the joke thing, are you?"

Ken shakes his head, cheeks pink.

"'s'all right. A couple of our floor parties will fix that."

He considers this, imagining such a future. "That's why you invited me?"

Takeru's brow arcs, and this time he remembers to use the good arm to brush his long bangs off his sweating forehead. He's amused, studying the dubious twist of Ken's nose. "Yeah," he laughs. "That's why."

His pocket vibrates then, the mobile safely stowed there flashing through the printed cloth of his summer shorts. "Just a sec," he tells Ken, handing him his drink in a casual gesture, and dips out into the hallway to answer the call, grinning stupidly at the picture accompanying the name on the screen. It's from their last visit, when the blizzard had snowed them in all weekend. God, what he'd give for a touch of cold now.

"What, is it 2 AM already over there?"

"Stop teasing Daisuke."

He rolls his eyes, knowing full well she can't see his facial expressions either way. Kicking his heel back up to rest his foot flat against the corridor wall, he turns his neck to cradle the phone between his chin and shoulder. "Do you even know my name, or are you just too used to yelling his?"

"Don't turn this into a competition. I love you both unequally."

"Fucking hell, Yagami, I miss you."

"Then act like it," she says, but he can still hear her smile. "And I mean it. You have to be careful what you tell him."

"I can't believe he actually tattled."

"Takeru."

"All right, all right," he concedes, straightening as he glances down the hall to the suite's rooms. "I'm going."

"Call me after?"

"Yeah, not if I get my own 2 AM."

"So gross."

"I'm sorry, weren't you the one who had their first kiss under an actual mistletoe, like some low-budget, straight-to-home-video cliché?"

"So jealous."

"No, that's gross."

"I honestly can't hear you over the sound of your envy."

"Okay, that's—,"

"I just—oh, my God—how do you even hear your own thoughts over that?"

"Hanging up!"

And she's yelling back, matching him octave for octave, "What, I can't hear you—what did you—?"

He puts the cell in his pocket, shaking his head, and peeks first back into the living room. The party is still lively, some gathered at the kitchen, others arguing over a makeshift drinking game in the shared common room. He cranes his neck, looking for those dark almond eyes, until his pocket buzzes once more, eerily prophetic. Making a face to himself, he doesn't bother to check it, shuffling barefoot towards the bedroom suites.

Daisuke's flopped over on his bare stomach on his twin bed, feet on the pillow and controller in his hand. He's fixated on the second-hand monitor perched at an uncomfortable angle over the dresser between their closets, marking the invisible line that divides the dorm room in half. Not that this line does much in the way of demarcation. Even the experienced would have difficulty viewing the scattered mess and deducing which belongs to whom, with one of Daisuke's cleats rolled under his bed and the other lodged firmly into the space between Takeru's headboard and the wall (he'd thrown it there after last Thursday's game, which Takeru had filmed a little too enthusiastically—the whining, not losing), or the textbooks Takeru had borrowed from Koushiro stacked on Daisuke's chair (because Koushiro would have never lent them out if Daisuke'd been the to ask), never mind Yamato's black necktie hanging off the edge of Daisuke's top dresser drawer or the metal water bottle in Takeru's duffel bag that may or may not actually be Sora's. Jun says it's this codependent biohazard of a room that prevents her from visiting more often, prompting Daisuke to begin using Takeru's pillowcase—pillow still in it—to collect his laundry each week. Compromises, Takeru had thought at the time; one Motomiya is plenty. And this one, it would seem, has enough tendencies towards bullheadedness for more than several generations worth of the clan, seeing as he doesn't even shift his attention when Takeru enters, or when he shuts the door loud enough to earn an inquiring shout of alarm from the least drunk partygoer in the common room.

He doesn't come any closer. "You're not the sulky type, Daisuke."

"Yeah, I'll work on that," he mutters back, unblinking. "Wouldn't want to overwhelm anybody."

Any other time, this would be the moment where he'd cross his arms in exasperation, but he can't much handle such a gesture with a bum wrist, so he sticks to tugging his fingers through the damp hair at the nape of his neck. "Come on, you know I didn't mean it."

"Then why'd you say it?"

"Daisuke."

"What, you don't remember now?" He sniffs, pausing the game to rub at his nose, still refusing to look at the doorway. "You said—,"

"I know."

The silence stretches, and Takeru almost flinches at the replay in his head. "But look, you are intense, all right? I mean, you have to at least admit that's right."

"Of course, it's right. You're always right, aren't you? You think you see through everybody all the time, that you can summarize someone's entire life with a look."

His temper flares. "Then how do you want me to look at you?"

Daisuke lowers the controller, but the game still plays. He's staring at the mattress, at some spot between his hands. "I don't get it. Why wouldn't you…," and he stumbles. "Why don't I make you feel safe?"

Now Takeru does wince, eyes shuttering for just a second longer than needed. He hates that sound, that tremble in his sure voice. "That's not…that's not what I meant. Okay?"

The conviction is back, his tone flat with it. "But that's what you said."

Takeru shakes his head, bending his face to the floor. "Yeah, well, I say a lot of things."

"Say things you mean."

He's quiet, fingers over his mouth. Then he nods. "Okay."

Daisuke blinks a few times, then finally sits up, tossing the controller to the side. His gaze shifts, piercing in a way that Takeru doesn't expect. "So fucking dramatic," he scoffs after a minute.

He clears his throat, broken wrist starting to throb with the dull ache of regrowth. He smirks a little, small, but enough to be okay. "You know me."

"Damn right, I do." Daisuke grins back, sloppy and uneven, and climbs off the bed, lazily sauntering forward while stretching tanned muscly arms over and behind his untamed mess of hair. "Look at you getting all worked up because you hurt my feelings."

Takeru's eyes narrow. "Don't start thinking like that. I wouldn't be here if Hikari hadn't cal—,"

"Hey," and a fist smashes into the flesh of his stomach, disrupting his words, erupting his thoughts. He twists back on his feet, unsteady, but then Daisuke's moved there, too, grinning, the knuckles of his closed hand digging into the same throbbing spot, playful and teasing. "Quit lying to yourself," he says, voice low, and blue eyes swing sharply up, all thought emptied at the sight of him, at that smile that fills you like sunlight, or like a crush you hate yourself for having.

Like he sees it, too, like he knows, Daisuke releases him, flicking the side of nose with the back of his thumb, tongue to the corner of his smirking mouth. His hand moves back to pull at the damp curls under his ear, looking from him just as quickly, walking away to rejoin the party. He calls back behind him, where Takeru's still standing, breathless, "You're not good at it."

f/5.6

Phone in hand, he has to rap on the door four times to be heard, and it's still some moments more before it opens. He wants to laugh when he sees her, decked still in her strapless peach bridesmaid dress with her once-pinned hair now falling frizzly about her shoulders, lending her tipsy glow a comical cherub-like halo. She's clutching the stem of a monogrammed champagne flute in a small fist, manicured nails marking deep half-moons in her palm. He starts to point this out, but then she screams, sputtering out syllables at a frequency reserved for small dogs. "Daisuke's here!"

"We've eyes, too, babe," says Taichi. He's sprawled on his back on Koushiro's bed, cummerbund pulled loose at the waist and bowtie hanging about his neck. The jacket is long gone, which will make the rental's deposit agreement a confrontation that Yamato is already dreading, explaining the dour expression on the blond's face. He's sitting at the table by the window, rolling out small rectangles of tobacco paper into perfectly even cylinders. Taichi says he does it so well he's ruined him for all others, and Yamato chooses not to read the subtext.

Koushiro stomps clumsily forward, gesturing an apology for the chaotic greeting, but Daisuke's too distracted by the shiny stiletto heels on his feet. "Uh—,"

"He lost the bet," says Mimi, flouncing back onto mattress and lifting her feet up straight before her, sighing with relief at the sight and feel of free toes.

"Come on in," invites Koushiro, wincing as he closes the door behind him.

Mimi pats the space on the bed next to her. "Party still going in the main hall?"

"More or less," says Daisuke. "It's mostly just the Kidos at this point."

"Who knew the Kidos could go hard?" mutters Taichi with a laugh, hissing when Mimi flicks at his elbow for the insinuation.

But Daisuke confirms the suggestion, shuddering at the memory himself. He'd never belief it if he hadn't been witness to it, too. "Shin's somehow taken over the karaoke box, and…um, I'm pretty sure Jou's mom made a pass on me?"

"Can you blame her?" pipes Mimi, and Taichi flicks her back.

"Where is your shirt, Daisuke?" asks Yamato, glancing up from his dutiful task at the table. He gestures with a hand, and Taichi pulls himself up, sliding into the chair opposite to light one of the handmade cigarettes.

"With Takeru."

"Have I got to sit my sister down for a heart-to-heart?"

He wrinkles his nose, striding forward to join Mimi on the bed, Koushiro wobbling after him. "She spilled her wine on him during the couples' dance, and he said he couldn't video call Ken dirty."

Taichi exhales slowly, imploring gaze searching Yamato's face. "You need to talk to your brother about 'you up?' protocol, Ishida. This is just embarrassing."

Yamato flips him off, lighting his own cigarette. "And the others?"

"Um," he leans back on the edge of the mattress, "yeah, okay, so Takeru's talking to Ken in his room—," ("Without a chaperone?!") "—Sora's gone with Miyako to get pizza for everyone; she said to meet in hers in twenty minutes if you want any—," ("Oh, bless her!") "—Iori's gone to bed, I think—," ("The lil' nugget!") "—and Hikari's having a shower."

Taichi raises an eyebrow. "No comment on that one?"

Mimi tosses her hair back with the confidence of a completely sober person, nearly throwing her neck out in the process. "I could," she snaps, eyes batting prettily, "but you wouldn't like it."

Yamato clears his throat before Taichi can fully get up off his chair, and the latter sinks back down again, puffing hard on his cigarette. The taller blond turns his attention back to their young guest, whose wide-mouthed grins of adoration are lost on Mimi as she slurps down more of her champagne, a task proving difficult in light of her sudden inability to match the edge of the glass to the part of her mouth. Convinced that standing will help, she clambers off the bed to lean next to it, arm outstretched for balance. Koushiro starts to hobble towards her, offering an elbow for balance, but she waves him down, self-confidence in overdrive with shots of liquid courage.

"Yours if you want it," Yamato says to Daisuke, holding out a cigarette.

He blinks, dragging his gaze from her bright face, the fabric of her sweetheart cut pulling tight over her chest. "Uh—no, thanks, I'm good," he says. He waves his phone. "I'm actually just trying to get reception. I was trying to send Ken a picture of the couples' dance—pre-spillage."

But Taichi's not listening, lazily settled into the pleasures of smoke and drink after a long festive night. "Champagne, then? We nicked the good stuff when Shuu wasn't looking." He puffs with pride, but Daisuke again shakes his head.

"No, I don't drink."

"So healthy," croons Mimi, patting his head with both affection and a ploy to find balanced support on her unsteady feet. "He doesn't smoke or drink or—,"

"—wear shirts," says Koushiro.

Taichi snorts back a laugh. "Do you even own one?"

"Not clean ones," Daisuke admits, grinning.

Mimi scoffs. "Don't be mean—he's fine, you're fine, Daisuke, you can wear whatever you—oh," and she turns her neck, face to the side, when he steadies her wobbly pose with an arm around her waist, her hand falling on his shoulder. There's an imperceptible pinch of her fingers there, at the crease of taut skin under his shoulder blade.

Taichi rolls his eyes. "So that's it, then? No one left but the ones in cradles?"

"It's not like he's still in school, and he's not that young anyway—you're not that young," she reassures him, as though he might be devastated at the idea of losing his youth, pinching his shoulder in search of something softer than muscle.

"No, ma'am," winks Daisuke, hand spread smooth and tight over her hip, "not where it counts."

It's difficult even for someone as observant as Koushiro to put in correct order the aftermath of such a line, seeing clearly only the part where Yamato orders him to find Daisuke a shirt to wear as he hoists a hysterical Mimi from the room, and the part where Taichi ducks under the table for his own safety when her deadly claws lunge for his neck ("He called you 'ma'am' like some old lady!"). Then Taichi's gone, too, chortling all during his crawl to the door, promising to return with something clean for Daisuke to wear and leaving the pair momentarily alone.

Daisuke swings around to meet Koushiro's stone face with a gleeful laugh. "Ah, come on—it's just a joke," he tells the redhead, but that's not what's bothering him. Something fuzzy pokes behind the concentrated look he gives the stilettos he still wears, too guilty even now to remove them without Mimi's permission, his limbs nice and warm from the alcohol he's not yet mastered. Which is why he blurts out, unfiltered, "You really want Ken to like you, don't you?"

Daisuke yawns, mouth wide, and tucks both hands behind his head for support, modeling lazy dismissal in the most sinful way possible. "What are you talking about?"

Koushiro reaches the table, sinking down into a chair. "Earlier, when you were talking about the poor reception. You said you were trying to send him something, about Takeru."

"Oh, yeah, their funny drunk dance during the couples' song. It's a great video of them." He suddenly twists up, leaning forward with the phone's screen turned towards him. "Something to laugh about with me. See, look."

Except Koushiro doesn't. "But why's it so important to you to be liked?"

Daisuke stares, blank, at the absurdity of such a question. "And have someone miss out on me?"

Koushiro's pause is long and strained. "Okay. Then why's it so important that Ken like you?"

His brows disappear under unruly curls. "Because he doesn't."

He leaves it there, keeping quiet and closing his eyes at last, knowing he could probably work it out himself if he just sat still long enough. Nearby, Daisuke continues grumbling, bothered at the line of questioning, and maybe, just a little, at the empty inbox that greets him. Well, not empty. There's a few old messages from the odd acquaintance he leaves on read, two voice memos from Miyako (time-stamped to an hour that guarantees absolutely no decipherability), a blurry photo of the Kido reception and heart emojis from an unknown number, some old texting chains, and, finally, a message from Taichi, beckoning him to stop by the latter's hotel room to borrow a spare shirt, but to do so with discretion, as apparently Mimi'd broken loose from Yamato's watchful eye and was out for blood.

Daisuke closes all of the messages, and opens a new one.

hey you up?

f/8

"Tell her she looks beautiful."

He grunts in the affirmative, engrossed with his phone.

"Are you listening? You need to tell her. She won't believe me."

"Mm-hm."

"Takeru," and a hand slides forward.

His neck snaps up, mouth agape. "What the hell, Miyako—,"

"What do you tell her?" she demands, shaking the mobile in his face.

"That you've lost your mind?"

"No, you've lost yours! It's impossible to keep your attention these days!"

"I'm not asking you again for my phone—,"

"You'll get this back when you've earned it back," she interrupts in a mocking voice, dropping the mobile into the black hole that is her purse. She pinches the fabric shoulders of three formal dresses between her fingers, eyes piercing through him. "Now tell her she looks beautiful, or else we'll never leave. You're the only one she listens to."

Shoving his hands in his pockets, Takeru forces himself up from the padded chair, throwing her a surly look—to which Miyako, ever graceful, responds with a stuck-out tongue—and steps around the corner to the third stall. He drops his forehead against the shuttered panel, determined to contribute as little effort as humanly possible to the unbearable exercise. "Hikari, you look beautiful. Honestly, no one has ever worn a fitting room door better."

"Oh, just get in here."

Miyako shakes the dresses at him, mouthing the reminder once more, which Takeru makes a show of feigning ignorance in being able to understand as he knocks the stall door open with a shoulder. Hikari's cross-legged on the ground, discarded gowns in an encircling, crumply pile, and dressed down to a satin skirt slip and a white cotton bra. She's puzzling between two differently designed yet equally hideous sequined purple heels in her hands and holds them up after he shuts the door behind him.

"You like them, right?"

"Is this conversation off the record?"

Hikari frowns, weighing the options. "This is the highest I could get away with, I think. Even a half more would make me too tall."

"Towering is great. Makes you feel better than everyone." Takeru raises himself up on his toes for the effect, trying to make her laugh. She hasn't done that much, lately.

"It's not that," she sighs. "Daisuke won't care how tall I am. Jun's just…I mean, God, purple?"

He grins at her visible disgust, suppressing his own shudder. "Think of it as charity. The point of bridesmaids is to make the bride look good in comparison, right?"

Hikari glowers up at him, and he grins back, dropping to a squat in front of her. He balances his elbows on his knees, pulling one of the heels—the one less likely to provoke blinding—from her reluctant fingers and turning it over. His eyes widen. "How the hell are you affo—?"

She snatches it back, "Don't you start. I've had enough of it at my parents' this morning, all about how my fine arts degree 'will put pictures on the wall but not food on the table'," and she shakes her head furiously after the imitation, as though trying to rid herself of any memory of it.

Takeru curls his bottom lip even as he sympathizes. "Not a bad quip."

"No thanks to you being the only one to graduate with a job offer," she starts to taunt, and then softens her tone. "They collect all your columns, you know," she says, smiling in spite of herself. "Dad likes to strut around reciting from it and gesturing with a cigar."

"A cigar?"

She giggles, "He thinks it's how writers come up with their ideas."

"Ah, so that's what I've been missing lately," he laughs, settling back cross-legged in front of her. Her brow lifts. "A joke, Hikari."

"You're not good at lying, Takeru." Then she looks down at the shoes again, thumbs tracing the curved edges. "How many weddings is this?"

"Three, but keep in mind, most of our friends are way older." He means to be gentle, and she considers the remark in full before resigning to feeling worse.

She taps the heels together, once, then twice, and then three times. A wish. "Every time I get the courage to do it, to just—just make up my mind and tell him straight, I just…," and she stops. She gives a deep, emptying breath, leaking secrets with every word. "I think it's me. It's like I can't answer him right anymore. I don't think I'm easy to love."

He isn't quite ready for this, so it takes a minute. Wrinkles pinching at blue corners, he leans forward, pressing a finger into the bend under her knee. "Hikari, I've known you all my life, and even longer."

She shakes her head, watery smile stretched across pink lips. "You've known him just as long."

"Which is why I know he's the difficult one, not you. Even Ken'd agree, and he doesn't have a negative bone in his body."

She peers up at him, hearing the lilt in his voice at the comment. She straightens her posture to fix the itchy tag under her bra clasp. "Still trying to kill him with friendship?"

Grateful for the redirection, he narrates the most recent development. "They've graduated to text conversations lasting three whole minutes now." He shrugs, "I sort of think Ken's come to like it, you know. This way he's got someone answering him nicely, annoying emojis notwithstanding." He feels her gaze on him, so he doesn't return it. Instead, he slips pale thin hands through uneven blond hair, pulling at the curls. "How did we get to be so shitty at relationships?"

Hikari laughs, head thrown back, the heels of her palms pressed over closed eyes. "'Cause we keep trying to run from them, for no good reason."

He grins back, rubbing his nose hard. "You could give me one, you know."

"A good reason?"

He nods, too honest. "You could be with me instead. You know you could. I've been asking you to marry me for years. Every look I ever gave you was me asking." She can't stop laughing, bending over to shake her head, and he mocks her reaction. "Why is that so funny?"

"Because it's you, Takeru!"

"Yeah, me," he grins, falling over on his backside against the stall door. "What's wrong with me?"

She gasps back a snort. "How long do we have?"

"Well, fuck, Hikari—,"

"Hey!" The door vibrates with the bang of Miyako's fist, startling Takeru forward and into Hikari's shoulder, which lands against the fitting room wall in a painful pinch. "Stop fooling around, or I'll tell both your boyfriends!"

"Then you'd better take a picture, too," he calls back, crawling into her open arms, "or they won't believe you."

f/11

"Oooh, I'm telling," is the low taunt behind him, and Takeru, hiding his guilty jump, pauses only to exhale before turning around. Bare fingers pinched casually around the twisted end of the joint, he rolls his neck to the side, pretending to stretch, as his gaze drifts farther.

"Oh, no," he says, voice flat. "Don't."

With a cackle, Willis climbs over the other lawn chair beside him, palm outstretched. "Give'er over."

Takeru relents, passing along the paper along with his small red lighter. A moment later, Willis has passed them back, legs stretched out before him and eyes closed in contentment. He groans, delightedly at peace, "I knew I'd like you best."

"Flattering."

"Oh, that's not a compliment," says Willis in that twangy drawl Miyako now swears by. "I'm a shit judge of character."

"Comforting."

He peeks through one eye, nose wrinkling. "Saving your words for the magazine or something?"

"Something, actually," he mutters, bringing the joint back to his lips. "I was fired."

Willis whistles lowly, its pitch hollow in its honesty. "Sorry."

Takeru shakes his head, watching the smoke billow in soft clouds. He's sure that he if starts talking, starts sharing, he wouldn't really stop. It's why he's spent the last two weeks ducking his brother's texts, or his mother's calls, or his father's emails. He knows what they'd say, and he can't bear the thought of listening to them.

Willis waits for a while, then clears his throat with everything short of subtlety. "You know, I can tell 'em you got sick. Food poisoning, or whatever."

"We all ate the same thing."

"Listen, let's not pretend it wouldn't be like Daisuke to spike a serving here and there, just for the shits and giggles—pardon the pun." He accepts when Takeru offers him his turn again. "If anything, the lie'll get him to ease up on these weekly culinary experiments. My stomach is not made of iron."

"You've got a lot of learning left yet," dismisses Takeru, who'd become uninterested in Willis's stories about Daisuke, or the affection that skated underneath them all. It had been distracting enough watching the friends inside earlier, knees just ever so lightly resting against each other at the table, or how Daisuke, who'd always run hot, skin branded like sunfire, never really bothered to move his arm whenever Willis's came to brush against it. After the fourth time, Takeru had gotten up for the balcony, where he'd been sitting in the dark since.

Willis is still talking. "All the more reason to stay put. I have loads of questions for you."

"And I'm meant to know the answers?" He can't quite name his irritation, his distraction.

"About Dais? Who else?" and Willis laughs, a little drunk. "Like, honestly, tell me. Is there really nothing I can do to keep my toothbrush or razors safe?"

For the first time that night, Takeru laughs. "I'd also give up counting that what goes in your dresser is the same as what comes out."

"You're not serious," he's aghast.

"Daisuke is a founding apostle of the 'sharing is caring' religion." He stands, taking Willis by surprise this time. "All right. One more won't kill me."

"The social-iest of butterflies," he beams with admiration, opening the balcony door.

The group is almost exactly in the same place as when he'd first stepped out, gathered around the poker table they'd set up in Willis's room, the larger of the two in the flat. And, as usual, it's Daisuke who speaks for them, or over them, as the pair approach again. He looks at Willis first, cheeks flushed and brown eyes so bright, blinding. Then he bursts, "Oh, come on, we'll lose if he plays!" and flings a wild, sloppy fist in Takeru's general direction.

"No, you'll lose," corrects Willis, making Iori smile as he shuffles the cards in his hands.

Ken moves aside as the group starts to make room, scooting in next to Daisuke in a gesture that makes Takeru's chest pinch. He feels worse, uncomfortable, and empty, while Ken avoids his gaze, and Willis retakes his spot on Daisuke's other side.

"Place your bets, gentlemen," announces Willis, accepting the deck from Iori as his turn to deal resumes. "Takeru, sit down."

"Yeah, drinks first," he says, "so place your orders."

"I'll help," offers Iori.

"But the game—,"

"Play a shorter hand without us," the younger man instructs, unfazed by the whining. "It'll be good practice."

"You know, hanging around Takeru has made you real mean, Hida."

Willis knocks a friendly fist into Daisuke's shoulder to temper the retort, and Iori just shakes his head, following Takeru to the kitchen.

"Wait," he tells him when Takeru organizes fresh cups on the pizza box they'd been using as a serving tray. The blond pauses, curious, and Iori sheepishly fills one of the cups with tap water that he first tests for the best masking temperature. "I've been diluting his all night," he explains.

Takeru's smile is pinched and small. He continues rationing the rest of Willis's whiskey. "You're too good to him."

His expression twists, biting over words he's afraid to ask. "I'm worried, Takeru."

"They've been off for as long as they've been on. You just have to let it play out." He adds, "Especially the bad ones."

"But Daisuke doesn't drink."

"Which is why we've just got to keep him inside," Takeru says. He finishes the refills, returning the whiskey bottle to the shelf. "And with your dilution schemes, I'm not sure I'd really count this as him drinking."

"Do you think—," but he stops himself, chewing on the side of his mouth. "Maybe, if you talked to her for him, sh—,"

"Damn," says Takeru, frowning. He fumbles after the phone in his pocket, easily hiding the screen under his palm. "Sorry, I think this is work."

"Oh," and Iori smiles, apologetic. "That's okay—take it. I'll bring these in," and he carries the makeshift tray back out.

Takeru waits until he's gone to lower the phone from his ear, silent, until it buzzes for real. The picture's different, because he doesn't like looking at old photos anymore. His thumb lingers on the green button, then slides slowly to the red. He's not halfway into his shoes when the text arrives: Is he okay?

This time, he holds his thumb down longer, shutting the phone off.

He stands outside on the sidewalk, shivering, unable, for the briefest of moments, to remember which direction is home. He takes one step to the left, then stops, fist clenched. No. But the right looks even less familiar. He lifts his arms, pressing the heels of palms to his closed eyes. Get your shit together.

And then, some distance above his head, comes a yelping, thundering shout. Daisuke has clambered to the balcony, alone, and peered over the ledge, mouth agape. "Is that Takaishi trying to leave my party?"

Takeru fakes a groan, lowering his arms. His voice is raspy, hollow and foreign, but the instinct to simmer in distancing rhetoric is always there, stitched to his bones. "Failing repeatedly at five-man poker does not a party make."

"Then finish the round," he yells back, both hands on the railing to hold himself upright. "Get back up here."

"I'll see you next weekend, Daisuke."

"Get. Back. Up. Here."

But Takeru's already walking forward, walking anywhere. "Weekend!"

Something scrapes against the balcony wall, and Takeru's head jerks just in time to see the blur descend in a manic rush. He moves without thinking, panicked hands grasping at the sleeve of Daisuke's sweatshirt as they collide into each other, his back pounding from meeting hard packed soil. Tangled under a mess of limbs, his arm feels on fire, but he still lifts it, still raises shaking fingers to grab onto the back of Daisuke's head and throttle it in furious shock—until he feels something wet scratch his throat.

His neck turns sharply, and Daisuke's lips move with it, following it, teeth pinching in something like anger, and something like fear. "You're not leaving me, too," mumbles Daisuke, tongue rough on his skin as he struggles over the words, unfocused and spiraled. "So get back up here."

f/16

At around two o'clock, his father pushes the chair back in frustration. He pulls at the loose sheets on his desk, scrawls of notebook paper that peek through unhinged drawers and between hardcover reference books. A heavy growl accompanies the futile search, and Takeru sighs at the third interruption since lunch. "Dad, seriously."

"Have you any?"

"No," he snaps with carbon copy gruffness. His hands poise over the keyboard only a second more. "But I can go get some."

Hiroaki scratches his chin, greying whiskers hiding splotchy red circles. "We'll both go."

They speak little on the way, but the lingering silence is not as awkward as it once had been. The past few months had helped repair some of the distance wrought by a fumbled childhood custody arrangement, though Takeru doesn't remember Hiroaki being as absent as Yamato says. Well, not physically. He'd come to school events, like Takeru's elementary graduation (such as it were), his junior high school summer festivals, or the time his high school basketball team made it to the national semifinals. But by then, he'd grown to hate it when Hiroaki showed up. He'd told his mother once, in a fit of teenaged self-absorption, that if Hiroaki wasn't going to bother looking up from his notepad without the halftime whistle to remind him, then he wasn't going to bother making the trip across town every weekend. In an expected twist, Natsuko had allowed him the choice. On that first Saturday morning of the new arrangement, with Daisuke distracted by his turn at the single-player version of the game he'd brought over the night before, Natsuko handed her youngest two glasses of orange juice and told him that one day he'd see all that his father had given up for them, that one day he would he understand why he shouldn't speak ill of the people who loved him.

Hiroaki still can't answer an email without a three-day buffer, but Takeru no longer takes it personally. Sudden mid-sentence stops in a discussion and long-delayed arrivals to pre-scheduled meals do nothing but confirm that his father is, in truth, an abysmal conversationalist and an absentminded latecomer. And while this reminder had been Yamato's only advice when Takeru moved into his old bedroom, as though he might have forgotten about character traits so ingrained they were little more than tropes, Takeru tries to keep in mind his mother's words, the effort at its greatest on those days when the screaming kettle is left past the point of any liquid remaining and the television perpetually stuck on full volume, regardless of Hiroaki being awake or, indeed, home. He knows more about his father now. He cares to.

The little bell chimes above the door, and the elderly shopkeeper beams a toothless welcome to the familiar pair. She takes down two cartons and marks another tally in the notebook under the register, no money exchanged. Outside, Hiroaki's already opened one of the boxes, sliding two cigarettes out but not handing the other to Takeru until he's already a few puffs in. He doesn't quite like the ease with which his youngest son accepts, how natural dark blue looks in blurred smoke. The guilt feels like an admonition, a tidy turn of karmic fate for all those nights he'd spent worrying about Yamato picking up the worst of his habits.

"You've…you're going to Ken's again tonight?"

Takeru shakes his head. "Maybe."

"He seems nice." He pauses, "Pretty, too."

"You don't think I'm pretty?"

Scratching at the stubble again, his lips purse in a small smile. "Well, if you go, remember to use the door latch."

"Uh-huh."

"I know I forget sometimes, too," Hiroaki continues (Takeru's brow lifts at the understatement). He picks out a new cigarette, grinding the finished one under his shoe. "I don't mind him being home if we're not, but I don't want the house left open if he has to leave early. Give him the spare key."

Takeru is silent, fingers rolling the filtered end back and forth. Then his arm raises, sudden, to take one last inhale. "You can keep the key, Dad." He keeps his head turned down. "I've been trying, but I just…I can't make it work in my head. And I've been putting off telling him, because I don't know how."

Hiroaki lowers the blunt, flicking the ash from the end. His free hand itches around the carton he still holds, thumb at the lid's edge like a finger on the trigger.

"Did that ever happen to you?"

His shoulders pull back in a shallow shrug. "More than I'll care to admit."

Takeru looks up, cautious, because they'd never been here before. "Mom?"

Hiroaki gestures a denial, amused. And then he narrows brown eyes at his younger son, squinting to take in each exacting detail. He's had these lines and curves memorized for years, and he cannot rationalize a time without them. He's already forgotten what the world once looked like without the shape of this face.

Hiroaki says, "Sometimes feelings just empty themselves. It doesn't have to be anyone's fault."

Takeru nods, an instinctive rather than honest gesture, accepting his words. He'd always been so impressionable as a child, Hiroaki remembers, more than Yamato, who'd learned to study the world before living in it.

But Takeru still looked at the world like he wanted to be filled up.

Hiroaki turns the carton into his palm, freeing the other to feel its way around and under the back of Takeru's neck. He holds him tight. "Let's go home."

f/22

"Now this—this I did not expect."

Miyako's standing in front of the largest piece, brushed in tinted silver. Monumental and unmissed, it's the print that embarrasses Hikari most. It had been the hardest to get right, exposure times set to gradations so minimal she could count only in fractions for weeks after. Even the immediate end to the work brought no relief: the night of the final printing had been like falling into another kind of nightmare, one commanded by dizzying spells and muscle stress withdrawals, fingers frozen around imaginary tongs. She trembled so much that Taichi had to stay up with her on the pull-out sofa he'd made for her in his living room, rubbing her hands until the stiff joints could finally bend back. She'd kept apologizing to him, despite his thundering dismals, distracting her with stories from the night before Yamato's first album released, when he'd found the blond so catatonic that he didn't know which to attend to first: checking Yamato's pupils for signs of life or prying a weeping Jou off the emergency room hotline. You artists, he'd tsked. Such a delicate breed.

"You don't like it," she guesses, studying her friend's blank face.

"I like everything you make," says Miyako. The frown remains.

"Friends don't lie to each other."

"Ridiculous. That's all we ever do. White lies build up egos and avoid the uncomfortable."

"Like this one?"

Miyako turns her head to the side, squinting. "It's just," and she pauses, tongue mild for once, "I've never seen him like this. He looks…sweet. It's weird."

Hikari, seeing the turn in the road and crossing her arms before it, doesn't respond to the lure. Miyako now peers through the corner of her eye, glasses reflecting the overhead lights at just the right angle to make her stare demonic. The smirk doesn't help, either.

"Daisuke's always been sweet."

"To you, on you, for you…."

"I'm happy for him."

"And yet his is the largest portrait here, with the softest light and, gee, right smack in the center of the spotlight, too."

"It's a group show. And I didn't choose the positions. Ken did."

"And the plot thickens."

She steps forward, reaching gently for the glass. "And there's the sign to slow down the reception wine."

Miyako relents, though not in agreement. Hands free again, she brushes her hair back, absently, and looks to the other group portraits, each framing familiar faces in curved black hues, always in gathered in clusters behind the lens. Almost everyone is here. Twirling the end of a thick lock between her fingers, she admits with modesty, "It's actually quite nice together, this set. I like the unfocused feel of the group shots the best. Makes me think we're back in each scene, you know?"

Hikari smiles. "Yeah. I know."

"But I can't decide which is my favorite."

"Are we talking about the photographs or the people in them?"

"I wish I had a spotlight, too, you know, to shine on the one I liked best."

"This is the last opening I am ever bringing you to."

And Miyako straightens, finally bristling. "My fourth-choice self is neither offended nor bothered," she declares, while the pout to her lips speaks a different story.

Hikari's smile thickens. "I couldn't ask all of them to come for the opening. They'd make me so nervous."

Miyako looks ready to ask why she doesn't make Hikari nervous, but then the weight of her remark lands, attention seized. "Not even Taichi?"

She laughs, "I had to ban my entire family from these things years ago. They're mortifying during openings. I wouldn't be able to tell what they actually thought until months later. Koushiro'd be the exact opposite, Jou somewhere in between, and—," she breathes, chest pinched, "—the others were busy. It's a Thursday night." Miyako blinks slowly, in exaggeration, but Hikari is stubborn. "I am happy for him. I like Willis. And—and it's possible, you know. To be happy for him."

Miyako takes her hand, sudden, and pulls her to the temporary bar set up along the far wall. The bartender knows them by now, already preparing fresh glasses. The print to their left, on the other side of the bar line, makes her laugh, distracted even as she'd been trying to distract Hikari. "Oh—don't let Yamato see that one without me there to watch."

"He said he'd be here soon, so you'll get your wish."

"And now who's being sly? Ugh, all right, here, hold my wine, I need to fix my bra."

"Miyako."

"He's the only single one left, Hikari! Yes, it might be settling, but at this point I really don't think we're in the position to beg." Her face slips into a leering sneer. "Yet, anyway."

Hikari bats her on the elbow. "You should come with a ratings warning, Miyako." She adds, helping herself to another glass, "And I'd hardly call Yamato 'settling'."

Miyako's gaze darts down to hers, distracted by the prospect of more gossip. "Well, we all know you wouldn't."

"This again?"

"And what would lying help with?" She finishes off the wine before waving at the bartender to prepare two more. "I remember when you couldn't even speak a full sentence if Yamato was in the room."

"Yeah, when I was, what, thirteen? And you were the instigator then, too!"

Miyako latches tightly, encircling arms for their merry way down the rabbit hole. "Oh, don't you start with that revisionist history. I might have been the one to hang the mistletoe, but you were the one who stood waiting under it for an hour. And it worked, lucky devil."

"Not according to Takeru," Hikari muses now, her natural suspicion of nostalgia waning in the memory of dark blue eyes. That, or it's this wine. She frowns at the glass in her hand. How'd it get so empty so quickly? "He said Yamato saw through it as soon as he walked in but was too polite to say anything."

"He only said that because the others had been teasing him so much," scoffs Miyako.

"I know, I know—grade school playmates, childhood friends, soulmates and etcetera," says Hikari, tired of the line.

"Can you blame us for wanting it?"

"I can, indeed, thank you. It did nothing but embarrass and irritate everyone, given the obvious."

Miyako tilts her head, long hair cascading in that way that made Hikari so envious. "Uh-uh. It only ever embarrassed you and irritated Taichi. Takeru always took it in stride—well, until mistletoe night."

"Yes, yes, 'the night of the usurper' as Takeru's named it. Actually," and she's getting dangerously chatty now, "he still makes fun of me about Yamato being my first kiss. He doesn't care at all that nothing ever happened with us."

She barks out a laugh. "Of course, he doesn't. Daisuke made sure of that."

Hikari squints through another giggle, "Yeah, he really—mm," she stops herself, "—I thought…the mistletoe?"

"Yeah, the mistletoe," Miyako laughs again, a bellowing echo. There's a smudge of plum lipstick on her teeth to match the darkening glow of her flushed face, and the wine sloshes as she points the glass she holds at the portraits on the far wall. "The mistletoe is why he still looks at him like that."

Hikari pulls herself up straight again, staring, chest heaving from hiccupping laughs. "I—I'm…."

She feels warm, swaddled in bliss and ignorance, unable to finish her thought.

She just looks.

For the first time, blind.

She looks at how he looks at him.

f/32 (in three)

"You can't keep her."

Taichi bounces the bundle on his knee, sturdy hands enveloped around a plump backside. His fingers lace together like a protective net, cradled behind a gray fleece blanket embroidered with rounded ears and a stitched elephant trunk on one corner. He'd been playing at biting it, tugging the end of the trunk with his teeth, each game earning squeals of delight and bubbles of milky spit.

"Can, too," he announces, scooting the tiniest bit aside for her. "They won't even notice."

"Fairly certain they would."

"I'd swap. One cutie for another."

Hikari settles onto the couch cushion and stretches out her hands. He glances at them, doubtful, and she lets out a sigh. "Washed and dried, twice."

The bundle wobbles in the transition, gurgling. "How's the new studio?"

"Filling up well," says Hikari. She shifts the unsteady weight to free up one hand, flicking the end of the elephant trunk to a shower of slobbery laughs. "They finished the draining system yesterday, but I'm only getting back to processing tomorrow. We've to let it air out first. Ken's paranoid about dust getting into the prints."

Taichi nods, at peace with his inability to understand her life's work. "And how's Takeru dealing with Ken's gallery still representing you?"

Now it's her turn to feign comprehension. "He hasn't said anything to me."

"Mm-hm."

Hikari takes to bouncing her knee, amused by the variations in pitch it provokes in the babbling stream. "Has he said something to you?" It's a tone of voice that says more than the words spoken, the kind that she'd mastered as a child and had only improved upon since. It had taken years for Taichi to really learn how to listen for it.

"Not in so many words."

"Or any," she guesses.

He narrows brown eyes, matching her own. "Ah-huh. Irony is a bitch, isn't she?"

She doesn't care for the language, miming an irritated expression and playfully patting the sides of the bundle's head. "I've been busy, too, you know," she admits, leaving Taichi at a loss. Even in anger, she'll put him first. He doesn't think any of them deserve her, least of all himself.

He continues, "Busy or not, talking's a big deal. Some would even say healthy." He offers the last word up like a secret, and she rolls her eyes. "'s'all right, anyway. Sometimes this thing can actually understand the unsaid." He taps the side of his wrist to his right temple. "It's also where all my schemes start, believe it or not."

"Like the one where you 'swap this cutie out' when he's not looking?"

He remains adamant. "You try minding Koushiro when he's had too much oolong tea and tell me this isn't the same damn thing. Honestly, like father, like daughter, right?" The bundle burps, loud, right on cue, and Taichi grins, delighted. He leans forward, palm to the underside of a fleshy neck. "Why, you think it might bother him?"

"To find out your babysitting offers were just practice for the final abduction?"

"To find out you still work so closely with his ex." Taichi's thumb slides down a wet check, clearing a fresh new path for the drool to gather. He pulls away to scrummage through the knapsack at his feet, searching for a clean handkerchief. "Sora says it was bad."

When she doesn't respond, he narrates the latest version of the group theory about the estrangement-that-wasn't, probing for details. But her face is empty, a reaction that he thinks he ought to have predicted from the start. Still, it's hard not to feel responsible, in that twisted way he gets when he looks at her on the days she won't look back. Is this what happens to brothers and sisters in older age? He stares hard at her, holding his breath. Don't stop talking to me, he wants to tell her. Don't ever stop telling me things.

Instead, he says, "I suppose Ken's already told you how things went."

"He did," and Hikari pauses, allowing him space to wipe up the mess, "and I think he shouldn't have strung him along so much."

"Kettles and pots."

"Still different."

"Uh-uh. You two could have given birds of a feather an identity crisis." Taichi makes an exaggerated play of his eyebrows, and Hikari is grateful her hands are too full to poke at them. "Though I hear you aren't flocking around much these days."

"You need to have Mimi teach you subtler ways to gossip."

He laughs. "What about Tachikawa screams subtle to you?"

She pulls the bundle closer, running fingers over a young cowlick of hair smoothing across the top of a tiny forehead. "There's nothing to find out. He knows. And he knows I wouldn't be where I am without Ken."

He doesn't need any convincing. "Yeah. We all do." She waits, jaw tight, and he can't find a nicer way to put it. "But, Hikari, you wouldn't be who you are without Takeru."

She starts to rub her thumb on a smudge just over a tiny upturned nose, blinking quickly, until he covers her hand with his, gripping her fingers tight to pull her back. "Then maybe I don't want to be me anymore."

Daisuke shakes the lilac-colored fabric at arms-length, frowning. "I don't even know what this is."

"You don't need to know things, Daisuke. You just need to pack."

He glances over the fabric's edge to stare her down. "Is it a baby sling? Did Mom use this to carry me around? Did they use it on you?" And rather than wait for a confirmation, he launches into the experiment, puzzling over the contraption. He begins wringing the long, narrow cloth into a thick rope and twisting it about one shoulder, looping it across his chest and under the other armpit. He ties the ends with great effort, sucking in his breath. "It is, isn't it?" he gasps out, patting the tightened lump of a knot at his mid-torso. "How does it work? Or is it not this kind of sling? Can you throw them far with it? Did I get thrown around?"

Jun continues to ignore him, occupied on the floor by the doorway. "Daisuke, untie the pillow sham. The blood is getting to your head."

He squeaks, face red, "What in the name of God is a pillow sham?"

She stands, striding so quickly he wants to cower, reverting to toddler instincts. It's a good reflex, he realizes too late, wincing another grunt when she snaps the end of the not-a-sling against the bare skin exposed after his shirt rides up in its unraveling. She shakes the sham free, mouth in a thin, fixed line as she does so, every bit as threatening as she had ever been growing up. He rubs his aching sides. "You used to be more fun."

"Ah, yes, that explains all that time we spent together." She folds the pillow sham cover into halves, once, then twice. The small square cloth joins its mates in the last box still open, tucked between sets patterned in soft, flowery pastels and matching sheets. Everything their mother had once owned, willed out to the last odds and ends. Death, it turned out, was a surprisingly tedious process.

Daisuke wipes his nose with the back of his wrist. "Did you ever think I was fun?"

Her first response is drowned out by the sound of the packing tape ripping across the cardboard. Then she adds, "Besides, when were we ever the kind of family who cared what the other ones do?"

He shrugs. "Yeah. That's the problem."

"We don't have problems, Daisuke," she declares at last, leaning with all her strength on the box so it slides across the hardwood floor. He joins her at the other corner, pushing until it meets the far wall. He dusts his hands after. "All done," she announces, overwhelmed. She takes a deep breath, "How did she own so many things? Do you even remember half of this?"

"Jun, did you ever like me growing up?"

It startles her, more than she likes to admit that he can. The unnerving pivot into familial nostalgia makes her breath short. She draws a blank. "Did you?"

He's trying hard not to smile, but it's just a reflex. "I never needed to."

She crosses her arms, mirroring his smirk. "Don't start needing it now."

He laughs and rubs at his nose again, partly to stay the stubborn runny cold he'd only just gotten over, and partly to hide his face, blinking quickly. She chooses not to notice, examining the stacks they'd assembled at the wall, each box stuffed and taped and labeled. They'd finished early, even despite his ludicrous attempts at distraction and deferment, as though he could put off being orphaned if he made them stay in this house long enough, as though he could keep her from remembering that that's what they were now.

Sometimes, she does forget. Her quip had a heavy layer of true to it, before: they really weren't that sort of family. She can't even remember the last time they'd all sat down at a table together for a meal—the same table, or the same meal—or the last time any of them thought it odd they hadn't noticed. Almost as old as Daisuke could walk he'd been gone, days at Hikari's and nights at Takeru's, or whichever way it went. Jun rarely thought to keep track or interest, occupied as she'd always been with her own life, same as their mother and father had been with theirs, too. There had never been anything malicious or obtuse about it, and social obligations, when required, were followed through not without sincerity. Love was neither questioned nor performed in the Motomiya household, no matter where it wandered off to in the daytime, or what happened to it at night. If she had less self-confidence, she'd have thought comparisons to others meant theirs were broken, but they weren't. They had always been a family. They had just never needed to be friends.

Daisuke still hasn't responded to her, an omen if there ever were one. So Jun clears her throat, searching for something to add, wondering if she'd disappointed him not being like the others, all his little friends. He should have gotten used to it by now. Willis had been the one to drive him home from the hospice, and Miyako the one who'd threatened his manager for time off. Jun hadn't known what to say to him, either time. They'd never been very good at the hard talking.

She busies herself with other issues, to keep her own spirits up more than his. "You're sure you got everything you wanted out before we packed it up, right? Because I'm not going to running errands to the storage unit every few weeks when you call looking for your old high school track suit or Dad's slap-stick comedy video collection." The latter remark cracks a smile, and she doesn't know how to explain the relief that fills her at the sight. She continues, cheerily, "Willis will just have to buy you a streaming video subscription."

"Yeah. The good kind, right, with the—,"

"—dual screens? Oh, absolutely. Motomiyas don't share the remote."

He laughs again, rubbing his face. "Everyone's gone, Jun," he tells the empty rooms around them. "We're all that's left." He turns to look at her. "You're all I've left."

She doesn't respond, and he doesn't ask her to.

Yamato watches his brother pick up the potato and roll it about his palm, weighing the feasibility of the task at hand. He casts a nervous glance over the counter, agitated. He has to keep himself from making his anxiousness too obvious, leeching off Takeru's. He keeps his voice hard, impatient, "Do you want me to show you again, or—?"

"I know how to cut a potato," interrupts Takeru, still staring at the array of vegetables before him. "I just fail to see why we need so many."

"The recipe calls for it."

His shifts his eyes upwards, mouth thin. "Were you always so by the book?"

"Someone has to carry the family name."

"So that's why they gave us different ones…."

Yamato steps forward, taking the potato away. He presses it down onto the cutting board, using the heel of his palm to keep it still as the knife neatly slides into the thick core. The poles split without any resistance, and he flicks the pieces around flat to keep the slices even as the blade moves swift down the line.

"Show off," mutters Takeru, staring with interest at the even rows lying in the knife's wake. "And before you get cocky, let me remind you that I know how the skeletons are diced up, too."

His mouth turns at the improperly executed metaphor, amused. "You're losing your touch."

"It's early," Takeru insists.

"It's eleven-thirty."

"Early," he protests. And, as if in demonstration, he stifles a yawn, leaning with his back to the counter beside him. His head feels wrecked, rattling around behind his exhausted eyes. "I was up all night, too. Didn't sleep until seven. And you know how many pages I have to show for it?" He makes a grand gesture with both hands, open-palmed.

"Try them on me," offers Yamato.

"I don't know if it'd be interesting to you."

"I'll read anything you write, Takeru, but when has that ever meant I'll like everything, too?"

This, he admits, is an accurate assessment. Very little had ever made it to print without passing first, and repeatedly, under the attentive violet blue lines of Yamato's favorite fountain pen. Then again, lately, very little had made it to print, period. "It's not my usual style."

"Well, thank Christ for that."

Takeru rolls his eyes, turning around again to accept the bowl of diced raw potato pieces Yamato hands him to rinse quickly under the kitchen tap. He watches the water fill up the basin, tiny cubes swelling to the surface. "It's about Mom."

The knife pauses, hanging still in the air. "Oh, yeah?"

He listens as the blade resumes its task, the sound of the metal work carrying with it a strange and violent rhythmic comfort. "And Dad. And you and me, everyone." Not him, not them, not us.

"Certainly a lot of material to work with," says Yamato, voice even.

"It's about Mom leaving Dad." He hesitates, "And about me leaving Ken."

At this, Yamato pauses again, lifting his chin. His mouth makes a thin frown, sharp blue eyes narrowed at his little brother's figure. "You are nothing like her."

Takeru's too tired for this argument, living off less sleep and even fewer meals to have the energy. He's not sure he would have remembered to eat anything today if Yamato hadn't pestered him with demands (he called them "invitations") to join their friends for lunch. Might as well go, he'd thought at the time, groggy and unfocused; he'd run out of cigarettes and coffee anyway, and he didn't much like being alone in Hiroaki's apartment anymore.

He shrugs his shoulders in a noncommittal agreement. "Maybe not. Yours is the only compass that works around here, anyway."

His jaw tightens, and he resumes the work at the cutting board. "Don't be so sure."

Takeru makes a show of stretching out his wrist, turning his arm over to check the underside. "Aw, gee, is it confession time already? What, we're not even going to wait for the witnesses?"

"I'll talk about me after you talk about you."

Takeru makes a face. "Unfair. You've got home court."

"I told you, you can move in anytime—after you'd paid your dues."

At this reminder, he shudders. "Dad tried putting his slippers in the toaster the other day, 'cause he thought it would be faster than the oven," and he pauses for dramatic effect, "where he'd tried putting the pair before that just one week earlier."

Yamato shakes his head, brushing his long hair back off his forehead. "Dues."

"Wouldn't that make what I did its own kind of dues, too?"

"You didn't do anything, Takeru."

"I broke his heart."

"That's what hearts do."

"He didn't break mine."

Yamato is quiet, unwilling to think of a response.

Takeru turns the faucet off, leaving the potato pieces soaking in the bowl, gluttonously swirling around in rinsing water. He reaches above the sink the overhead cabinet and removes a glass. "You want some?"

"No," says Yamato.

He nods, filling his cup alone before shutting the tap off for the last time. He stares down at his water, knuckles so tight around the glass that they lose their already pale color. "He didn't break mine, because he's never been able to. And the only person I can talk to about it, doesn't talk to me."

Yamato flinches, mouth in a grimace, remembering the errant messages still in his phone inbox. "She's just busy, Takeru. New studio, a show coming up, and another in the spring."

"Really busy," Takeru murmurs. He looks up again. "Did you like her last series?"

"It's stronger," he admits, unable to understand why this should feel like an admission at all. "I guess she's stopped doing portraits, but at least it's letting her try new subjects. I think it's good for her."

"So she can make something different, but I can't?"

"I'm not the one picking this fight."

Takeru stops to take a long drink of his water. "I don't like sharing you."

At this, Yamato has to smile, pulling his bottom lip under his teeth to keep the amusement soft. "Send me what you have, and we can talk it over next week."

"It's not finished."

"It's never finished," he points out. "That's why you shouldn't stop trying."

"You quit." He takes another sip, his head still throbbing, but his mouth still so dry. He puts his free hand on the edge of the counter, propping himself upright.

"Yes, I did," says Yamato. "Which is also why you shouldn't."

"I thought only one of us could carry the family name."

Now he's irritated, in that way only siblings can make one another. "Then don't send it to me."

"I'm just saying it's not done. Plus, if it's about me and Mom, I already know what you'll say."

"Why do you want to find yourself so much in her?" bursts Yamato, uncharacteristically loud. "You're your own person, Takeru. Things not working out between you and Ken doesn't make you her. You tried, she didn't, neither worked. That's all there is. Stop trying to live in metaphors."

He doesn't answer. He could tell him what happened to make him believe what he does about himself now, but there's no point. It stopped being about him the minute he mentioned their mother's name, a hang-up he doesn't think his brother will ever get over.

Yamato sighs, breathing low. "I need to finish lunch. If it's not ready by the time the rest get here, Mimi will have my head." He glances back, stare cool. "Are you going to help or are you going to sulk?"

The ache is pounding. Every time he blinks he sees brown eyes. "Sulk."

"Anything that makes you happy."

His mouth closes on the edge of the glass, teeth sinking into the flesh of his bottom lip. With another wince, the glass is pushed back, and he's looking up at him, confused. "Huh?"

He revises: "So long as you're happy, Takeru." There's nothing to answer him, only an empty stillness Yamato has never heard before. His voice bleeds into alarm, nervous tremor unnatural. "Takeru?"

He makes a strange sound, or at least he thinks it came from him, because now the distance is gone and now he's standing before him. Now Yamato's hand is on his neck, and now his fingers cup his throat, resting under the square bend of his jaw, just tight enough to keep him still, because he hasn't realized until then how much he'd been shaking. His breath coming in heaves. "Am—am I happy? I don't…I don't remember," he hears himself say.

"Takeru—,"

"I don't remember, I don't remember."

f/45 (in three, again)

"Try not to take this the wrong way," she says, closing the door behind her, "but this might be your least flattering angle."

Yamato spits the pit out, wiping his mouth. "Don't let your brother hear you say that."

She smiles, "That I still think you have flattering angles?"

"That you think I don't." And he shifts over, leaving just enough space on the garden bench. With a throaty sigh of resigned agreement, Hikari approaches, taking the seat and a handful of olives. "I remember one Valentine's Day," he continues, leaning back, "in secondary school, when he ended up with more homemade chocolates than me." Her eyebrows raise, stuck in mid-chew, and Yamato shrugs. "Yeah, that what his reaction then, too. Even spent that week's assembly as class president shaming the entire school for it. The vice president had to wrestle him off stage, but he'd sewn a lapel mic onto his uniform collar and had Koushiro rig him up so he could keep chastising everyone throughout the day. Nearly gave the VP a nervous breakdown trying to figure out where the voice was coming from."

She's trying hard to picture it, finding a vague memory of a strange late-winter week when a teenaged Taichi'd refused to let their mother clean his mandated uniform, prompting her to burst into tears when he insisted on doing his own laundry for the first time. The two of them had looked on, dumbfounded, as Yuuko'd barricaded herself in the bedroom to weep over their baby pictures. Opening her eyes again, she laughs, relishing the pleasantly bitter taste of the brined fruit. "Sounds about right."

He smiles at her, tilting his chin towards the door. "How's it in there?"

"Well," she pauses, "Taichi's throwing a fit over where the olives went, and Jun's gotten into an argument with the venue manager about how long we've been here."

"I hope you locked that door behind you," he remarks, and she wrinkles her nose with a shudder, sharing his appreciation for drama-less silence.

She turns her attention back to her palm, fingers curling. Finishing her last olive, she dusts her hands. "They're both just fussing because they'll miss him."

He seems to agree, or at least he doesn't answer. He also doesn't ask her how she might feel, what she might fuss over. That's why she still seeks him out at these gatherings of theirs; he never makes her talk before she's ready.

When, at last, she's ready, she starts lightly. "Maybe you should repeat that lapel mic story inside, distract everyone from their feelings."

Yamato assures, matching her casualness with an exacting insincerity, "The tell-all will have everything."

She takes the bait anyway. "Living together's rubbing off in all the right ways, isn't it?"

And he turns, sharp, so that his knee knocks into her own, making her breath draw in a sting of pain. There's no regret on his face. Instead, he's staring hard at her, one arm braced on the top of the bench. "What's going on with you?"

Hikari puts a hand over her knee, rubbing the throbbing joint. "I—,"

"What do you want to say to me, out here, away from him? That it's fine what you did? How you weren't around when he needed you, 'Kar? That you left?"

And in spite of herself, she glares back, sliding back. "It's been over a year—,"

"No," he interrupts, voice cold. "It was four days. He was in there for four days. Where were you?"

She exhales deep with frustration, and fear, and anger, and pain. Did he think she didn't know? "You need to learn to forgive people, Yamato."

"And you need to learn to say sorry."

She pulls her fist across her mouth, wiping it clean. "You can't see him as anything but good, can you?"

He sees her lips tremble and her eyes well. It's the latter that makes him bite his tongue, instincts kicking in even when the object of protection isn't blood. Something odd runs through then, instead, just left of shame. To stay it, he stands, bringing the collar of his jacket close about his neck. "I think we've all got rotten cores. And we've each got to tend to our own, best we can. But I think some of us just need more tending."

She turns her face up to him. "And you think I'm meant to do that for him? For the rest of my life?"

"Yes."

Despite her restraint, the laugh tumbles out, delirious. "That's not fair."

He's quick to agree, steadfast in it. "I know. I know it's not. But he's my brother, Hikari. So I don't give a shit about fair."

The door opens, and Hikari immediately presses the thin knuckles of her thumbs over the wet corners of her eyes. "Closing time," announces Daisuke, and Yamato murmurs something vague in response, striding past. He keeps the door open with one hand. "'Kar, you coming?"

She smiles and pats the bench. "One more minute?"

"For you: two," he says, and settles down with his knees apart and his arms stretched across the back of their seat, grinning. "God, I think this is the first I've had to relax all night. You lot are unbearable to babysit." He lifts his toes up, the tops of his polished dress shoes scuffed from years of use.

She fixates on it, distracted, breathing heavy. "You really need a new pair."

"I really need a lot of new things," confirms Daisuke, tapping the shoes together.

Her fingers close around the side of her neck, pinching the skin with her nails. "Even a new me?"

His brows shift, arching slightly. Mouth parted, he studies her with dark brown eyes, stealing glances over her pale cheeks and reddened nose, to the now closed door of the house behind them. "Huh," he says, thinking, and moves his arms back down to his lap. "Now, what would I do with a new you, Hikari?"

She shrugs, pulling her lips over her teeth in a grimace. "I don't know. Maybe a new me would have learned to say sorry."

He's still now, gaze transfixed on her. "For what?"

She only smiles, his head in her hands, fingers gripping around those wide, flat ears. "For keeping you from him," she says, the first kiss buried under the thick hair at his temple, then his cheek. She feels his mouth open under hers. "For keeping you with me."

The bowl drops back onto the table, clattering.

"Who took…th'olives?" comes the bitter cry, and Daisuke's face stretches into a low grin.

"Grumpy in the morning, aren't you?"

Taichi only waves into the air, sloppy fingers mumbling a gesture beyond comprehension or, more accurately, sobriety. "It's. Night. Time," he remarks, syllables paced wide.

"Sunrise's not for at least three more hours," concedes Daisuke. "How 'bout you and me wait up for it, kick back a couple pints of water, too?"

He narrows his eyes. "What…'s the gimmick?"

"What, borrowing Yamato's suspicion for the weekend?"

"Survival of…," but he trails off, head raised, as he stares blankly down the dimly lit room.

"You got it, champ," says Daisuke, swinging an arm around Taichi's neck to tug him along to the nearest table. As soon as he hits the seat, something gives way, and Taichi braces forward in a long, exhausted sigh. He grips the damp hair on his forehead, rubbing his face.

"Head," he says next, and Daisuke mimes a sympathetic look.

"It'll ache, all right. Your own fault though."

"Shut."

"Uh-huh." There's a shout of laughter, screeching across a few tables before them. Taichi lifts his chin, still cradling his head in his arms. Willis is spread lazily in his chair, blue eyes twinkling at the women beside him bent over in giggles. With his jaw set tight, Taichi makes another strange gesture, and Daisuke covers the flailing hand with his to bring it back down onto the tabletop and avoid injury. "You might like him, if you gave him a chance," he offers as a distractive strategy, and an honest one, too. "Hikari likes him."

"She's better," murmurs Taichi, still glowering at the table. He clears his throat, bracing himself to sit up straighter. "Than me."

"Lightyears so," agrees Daisuke.

It's foolproof, this tactic. He watches as Taichi sits back in his chair with a small tug to his smirk, expression glazing with drunken affection over his favorite topic, sober or otherwise. "Once, when six," and he places his palm at the same height of his knee, "she spent…allowance on a—an inflat," he puffs his cheeks, holding his breath, "football, after mine went," he blows raspberries. He claps his hands. "All her 'llowance. On me."

Daisuke laughs. "She's pretty much perfect."

Taichi nods several times, each successively longer than the one before. He turns his gaze to the younger man, chewing on the inside of his cheek. "Almost."

"Hey, yeah, listen," and he waves the concern aside, "it's—it's all fine. It's old news. We're okay now." He tilts his head back to the far table. "We're all happy."

He snorts, "Uh-uh." He launches forward, nearly slipping clean into a startled Daisuke's lap in a miscalculated attempt to lean in closer. It doesn't bother him, if he's noticed at all. He continues, "She wishes…you'd told her."

Daisuke presses a finger to Taichi's forehead, easily ushering him back and away. "I've done. She was the first to know. I mean, after Jun."

"No." He paws the hand back. His eyes are shut, and he pinches the bridges of his nose to keep the pain at bay. With another sigh, he glances at Daisuke, mouth twisted in pity. "We're stubborn. Yagamis. Bad talker feelers." Without warning, he cups the back of Daisuke's neck with a large, warm palm, turning his head forcefully towards him. "Don't be like us."

"Handsy, aren't we?" Mimi slips her arms around Taichi's shoulders, gently easing him back. She exchanges a glance with Daisuke, who attempts to blink his gratitude as he shakes Taichi's hold off him. But the latter won't budge, fingers gripping at his collar. She lowers her lips to his cheek, whispering, "I thought we were going to save the swinging years for our sixties?"

"I'm dispensing…'dvice," insists Taichi.

"Mano a mano," says Daisuke, as the other's grip steadily increases the pressure on his windpipe.

"That's not really the right use of that phrase."

Daisuke looks confused, or otherwise short of breath. "You sure?"

Takeru nods, coming to stand behind him and lifting Taichi's hand off Daisuke one finger at a time. He rubs his throat once free, sighing, and Taichi grumbles, "No one 'preciates my advice."

"Maybe it's to do with the dispensing technique," suggests Takeru.

"Oh?" sneers Taichi, licking Mimi's hand when she tries to quiet him with her palm over his mouth. She hisses, wiping his saliva off on the top of his head, which he ignores. "What'bout you?"

Takeru's smiling. "Go on."

"Smirk all…all y'want…Takai—Takaishi." He's trying to stand now, knees knocking into the tabletop and elbows into Mimi's ribs. She strikes the top of his head again. "Least we…say things. You—," he attempts to poke an accusing finger at the blond, but misses, instead landing a smack somewhere near the right of Takeru's nose. "You just…. You don't feel anything."

He holds his breath, aching. Then he rubs his nose. "You're a real sweet drunk, Tai."

Mimi grabs his face before he can retort back. "Let's get you home." She looks back at the pair, "It was a lovely party, Daisuke. Congratulations."

He salutes a goodbye and immediately regrets the gesture. But Takeru's already seen it, and read right through it, through him.

The blond laughs, "What was that, practice?"

He scowls, broad shoulders slumped in embarrassment. "I've no idea how to practice for it."

Takeru's still grinning "Well, you've got those language tapes, your social graces, your lack of overbearing older sibling." He hesitates then, smile slipping down a notch. "You actually might want to let that last one slide a little bit," he admits.

"God, I know," he complains at once, face twisting. "Jun's gone right off the deep end."

"She's just scared."

"I'm not dying; I'm just moving."

"Eight time-zones away."

Daisuke throws him a look, the weight of his gaze making Takeru want to break. "You need to get out of Yamato's place before the lecture gene completely transfers over." Takeru rolls his eyes, but relents all the same. "She's got it in her head I'm going to make another life somewhere else, away from here and her," continues Daisuke. His gaze wanders back to the loud table in the corner. "But it's not another life, not to me. It's just…growing." When Takeru doesn't prod, he lets his smile linger. "I'm glad you could come."

"Yeah," says Takeru, straightening. He slips his hands into his pockets. "Wouldn't, uh, miss it."

Daisuke fills the silence, unable to bear it, not with him. "Wasn't sure for a while," he admits, casual. "Sort of feels like you and 'Kari swapped busy levels a bit."

His lashes flutter, making a show of shielding his face from the ceiling lights when the venue's manager announces the closing time approaching. "That's how we agreed to manage you, you know. Pass the potato back and forth forever."

"Who gets me next?" he asks, amused and upset, all at once.

But for all his writerly subtlety, Takeru doesn't hear it. "She does. I'll be on the road again next week, a few months this time."

"Oh, yeah? Where to?"

"You really don't have any idea what I do for a living, do you?"

He's making another face. "That personal column gig? No, thanks."

"That bad?"

"You always end them too early, right at the cliffhanger."

Somewhere Daisuke's holding his magazine in calloused hands, the nail of his stubby round thumb lingering on the black ink of his name under each title. Three times it must have stayed there, at least. He swallows a deep breath at the thought. "That's what a weekly column is, Dais."

He grimaces, arms raised in a shrug. "We haven't all got all our days off like you writers."

Ignoring the plain mischaracterization, he jokes, "Can't risk losing a subscription. What'll it take then?"

Daisuke uses a minute to consider it, staring past Takeru's shoulder at the table where his partner sits. His gaze doesn't waver, nor does he look back. "It's meant to be about your life, right?"

"In theory." In truth, he'd written about everything, in some way or another. His parents, his brother. Ken. Hikari, as much as he could bear. But not—

Daisuke looks at him, for the first time like this, all night. "So write one about us."

Takeru turns the word over in his mouth, tongue smooth on the edges of the sound it makes in his head. But Daisuke's voice is the kind of sound that couldn't ever be written down. Trying would be a lie, an insult. And trying is all he'd ever been doing, all this time, all along.

He takes a breath. "Okay."

She's seated beside Mimi with Sora's feet stretched across her lap, keeping her in one place. A clever move on the redhead's part, Takeru guesses, and characteristically subtle. Nearby, Iori's laid out a few playing cards face-up on a table, and Daisuke's pouting while Miyako gleefully shows off another winning hand. Willis flicks at his lower lip, the curl extended so far that it's made his face almost cartoonish in misery. He exclaims, and Jou laughs.

"Fresh air?"

Takeru shakes his head. "'m'all right."

"Okay," says Yamato. He picks at the last of the canapés, making his way down the refreshments table, or at least all the dishes Taichi's yet to get through himself.

"Eating for two, are you?"

"Got here straight from work after a day of meetings." He pauses, "Sorry about not being able to give you a ride."

"Made it anyway," the younger blond answers, honest in his cheer.

"Hm," says Yamato.

It dawns on him, unevenly. "Were you trying to get me to stay home?"

"No," he protests too soon, and Takeru's mouth curls. Avoiding him, he defers instead, "You have your deadline, right? And there's the open bar and she's—everyone was going to be here," he shrugs, stopping himself.

He takes the cracker out of his hand, eating it himself. "Yamato, you need to learn to forgive people."

He doesn't answer, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes flattening. So Takeru adds in clumsy assurance, "I'm all right. I'm staying away from the alcohol, I'm keeping up with my routines, I'm pacing the conversations and keeping active. The only thing I've yet to manage is this annoying, peevish sound out the back of my head, harping on about dishes in the sink and shaving cream on the cabinet mirror…." He taps his left temple with the base of his palm, making a show of attempting to knock things into place.

Yamato rolls his eyes, popping an olive into his mouth. "Can't wait for you to move out."

"Yes, you can."

Lips pressed thin, he knocks a curled fist into Takeru's cheek, tapping lightly. "I'm in the garden for a bit if you need me."

"I'm going to get you a beeper." His brother flips him off, a gesture he returns without reservation, but doesn't quite get back down to his side fast enough when he turns to see Jun staring at him. "And you a bell," stammers Takeru, surprised.

Her face is pinched. "So glad you made it."

He keeps his gaze forward, calculating an escape. "You might want to get your throat checked, Jun; you sound a little robotic."

"Everyone loves the ones who show up without an RSVP," she continues, not missing a beat.

He's waiting for her to blink, no longer sure she can. "Er, yeah, sorry. I've had some, uh, deadlines. Got a new job recently," he adds, wincing at how lame it sounds.

"Does that help with the—," she cuts herself off, points at her temple, and motions a few circles.

All patience withers. "Yeah, Jun," he says, curt. "It helps."

When she only continues her scrutinizing gaze, he turns from her to look at the dwindling party, too. Koushiro and Taichi reappear from the garden Yamato's just walked into. Willis has left the card game now, joining the other girls. Miyako's in an argument with Jou over a technicality Iori wants no part in. And Hikari's gone. A sweep through the room, quick, turns up no trace of her, or Daisuke. He feels his mouth grow parched, wondering.

"Good," she says, and Takeru is surprised to realize he'd already forgotten she is still standing there. "You really scared him."

"Yamato's scared of everything," he dismisses.

"They got into a huge fight over it."

"Yeah, well—," and he stops.

"If they hadn't worked things out, he wouldn't be leaving." She leans forward, a frantic glint to her wide eyes. "I think I really wanted them to not work it out."

He takes a breath to even the pounding in his ears. "Here's a tip," he starts, ignoring the hoarse sound of his voice, "don't put that in your farewell toast."

Jun nods, earnest, as though she were taking notes. "No, no, you're right…not toast material."

"Definitely not."

"Then what should I say?"

He's taken aback again, discomfort palpable. "Maybe…just fake it?"

"Aren't you supposed to be a writer?" she persists, stepping even closer.

"I'm not really good at lying," he admits.

She doesn't laugh, her mouth grit so tight across her face. "We're both never going to tell him what he means to us, are we?"

Takeru turns on his heel, mumbling about the toilets, and walks through the room to the open doors, just at the entrance to the private hall. He staggers up the stairs before sinking down onto somewhere in the middle, holding onto the railing. He keeps his face bent onto his shaking knees, breathing through his mouth. Get your shit together.

"Hi."

He shifts his gaze upwards, the lump in his throat still tender. "Hi."

She comes to sit on the staircase with him, smoothing her skirt over her knees. Hands clasped together in her lap, they look down the hallway and through the open French doors. The venue manager reiterates the last items in the program and emphasis the late hour and impending closing time, scheduled just before a final farewell toast. The latter announcement earns an excited cheer from the remaining guests. In the din, Taichi's voice asks where the olives are, and Jun screeches for silence again.

Hikari straightens, keeping her tone light and shallow. It's how she's begun talking to him, lately. It's how she manages it. "I was going to go for a walk in the garden. Come with?" There's something so gentle in her voice then, so honest and open. It's the kind of sound that begins things, an invitation into intimacy. He wants to put his face in her hands, so she can fill his ears with just that sound, and hold them inside his head until, at last, for once, he's full. "Takeru?" she whispers. He doesn't answer, mirroring her posture, her gesture, her fear. "Takeru, are you ever going to tell him?"

His eyes close, not in shock or with relief, but just simple exhaustion. He's leaking everything that makes him, him. Small, sharp holes that pinprick every corner of every layer he wears over his skin. He's slow, and even, and tired. "Not every story gets finished, Hikari."

She's quiet, listening to the music playing through the room below. She turns her cheek to look at him. "Then why does this everything feel like it's ending?"

He wants to laugh, because the alternative is just too damn bleak. "Tell me what to end, and I'll end it."

f/64 (in three, one last time)

"You are devastatingly out of shape." Through a coughing wheeze, Taichi rears his racket back in an exaggerated wind-up, while Sora ducks easily out of his range. She adjusts her headband, giving him a minute to catch his breath, and turns her attention to their younger companions. "You, though, I'm surprised by."

Takeru rolls over onto his stomach, arms at his side and cheek pressed into the court floor. "Give us five minutes and we'll kick both your asses."

"Small threats from a small man," grunts Taichi.

"And speak for yourself," groans Hikari, standing up again as she stretches her arms above her, racket pinched between her knees. "I'm out."

"Out like champions, the Yagami way," declares her brother, limping off the court.

Sora clicks her tongue, and Takeru's grateful he doesn't have to expend the energy himself. Instead, he pulls himself to his knees, groaning as his elbows bend creakily. Shutting his eyes, he sits back, legs spread before him, and raises his face to soak the warm sunshine, its beating light burning the sweat from his skin.

"Takeru," her voice calls again. Hikari's offering him her hand, but he shakes his head.

He raises both arms in surrender. "I'm not playing you again, crazy lady."

She rolls her eyes at the complaining tone. "Come on, we're heading back."

He glances behind her to see a grumbling Taichi already limping his way to the men's locker rooms, his racket swung up over his shoulder, the glint of gold on his finger reflecting the sunlight. "I'm going to hang out here a bit."

"You sure?" Her voice is soft, without a hint of an undertone.

He nods. "Yeah, go on ahead. I'll catch up."

Hikari takes his racket when he hands it to her, gathering up her water bottle and both their sports towels. It's after she's already started down the pathway back to the women's locker rooms that Takeru's eyes catch on Sora's, trying to be as casual as possible for this orchestrated moment alone. "How do you do it?" he asks.

She turns her head, curious, and finishes gulping down the last of her sports drink. "Do what?"

Takeru changes his question. "Keep up with us. You still make so much time for everyone."

"Well," says Sora, matter-of-fact, "you're important to me."

"But how do you do it?"

She turns her whole body now, to look at him where he still sits on the floor of the tennis court, hands empty and open-faced in his lap. "Are you asking me for advice about Hikari or about Daisuke?"

He feigns an attack to his chest, clutching his left shoulder and mocking a jerked reaction back. "Am I really that easy to figure out?" he asks, straightening again. He doesn't bother laughing this time, because he knows he wouldn't get away with the right tone. Instead he smiles, wiping the sweat off his face.

Sora can't stop the twist of her mouth, "Does everything have to be complicated?"

Takeru shakes his head even as his slouch deepens. Her gaze is steady, in that exacting kind that should make him feel bare and barren. But her smile is still stitched to the corner of her mouth, to that crease of her brow, and he knows she knows. "Last time we all talked," he offers suddenly, without meaning to, "just felt so shallow. Like all we have in common anymore is where we went to school together." He shrugs, "How do you tell your best friends you miss them?"

She doesn't answer him, looking in the direction Taichi had gone. She thinks for a minute, and then says, "You know, for what it's worth, things aren't always wonderful between us, either. Yamato's got his career, Jou his practice, Koushiro his family. And those two," she waves a hand after Taichi, "once that finally happened, none of us saw them as often for a while, remember?"

"Maybe. But you still make time," repeats Takeru. He knows it's a broken line by now, but he doesn't know how else to make her or anyone else see it, what all went different, and how. "You don't pretend everything's just gone on the same way, all along."

She comes to sit down next to him and puts down her racket, too. Her hand around his shoulders, she pulls him in for a soft kiss to his temple, using her other hand to brush his damp bangs away from his eyes. "Time isn't the enemy, or the friend. It just is."

"Yeah." He presses his forehead into her shoulder. "That's what makes it mean."

Daisuke opens the cupboard above the sink. "Or I could make you some toast with…blackberry jam."

Jou finishes fastening his wristwatch. "Just the coffee is fine, really."

Not listening, the younger man excitedly snaps his fingers. "Hold on. There's peach marmalade from when Jun visited, out in the garage cooler. Stay here!" he orders, bursting from the kitchenette, and nearly colliding with Willis, who'd emerged from the bedroom at the same time. He attempts to catch his partner's wrist, hoping to intervene, but Daisuke's too fixed on his task, waving him off, though not rudely. The blond sighs, shaking his head, and smiles at an exasperated Jou still sitting at the high-rise table.

"It's not worth arguing," Willis suggests, as though Jou might not already be quite used to the man's antics. "Sorry for not being able to see you off tonight."

"No need," promises Jou, honest. "I really don't need all the fuss, though I appreciate the hospitality on such short notice. I really normally don't travel for work all this much, but it's been a big year."

"In one and out the other," he says, shrugging. He pauses, musing, "I think he's lonely. Familiar faces from home always seem to remind him of that."

Jou can't think of a response to the remark, or the tone that accompanies it. He sits back on the stool instead, teeth pulling at the corner of his lip, a habit he'd never quite broken. "Even so," he adds at last, "it's nice to see old friends."

At this Willis brightens considerably. "Tell more of our old friends that, will you? 'Kari's been around a few times, and of course Mimi can't be without Daisuke for more than six months. You should see this place after one of her visits," and Willis waves both arms around the tiny kitchen, grinning. "I eat like a king, then."

"Can't imagine," smiles Jou, except he can. It's rare that a fortnight goes by without Mimi doing likewise to his own apartment, filling it to the brim with baked confectionaries and savory pies, a grave overestimation of the recommended average caloric intake. Not that he could ever get this fact across to her, in much the same way as no one could really get Daisuke derailed off his one track fixations. He glances into the hallway then, wondering how long to give it before he really had to insist on heading out for his mid-morning meetings, then turns to Willis, "You both should come back for a visit. It's been a while since we all got together."

He agrees, but still shrugs, pulling on his raincoat. "I'm always up for a visit home. It's that one," he nods into the hallway, "who I can't pin down long enough these days."

"Well, Daisuke's always been hyperactive."

Willis just laughs, picking up his umbrella off the hook by the door. "What don't we know about him, right?"

Jou smiles, murmuring something too soft in agreement. It's after he's gone that Daisuke finally returns, carrying the rescued marmalade jar. He shakes it a bit too vigorously for the contents it contains. "You'll love it," he promises, chipper.

He doesn't disagree, watching the younger man get to work slicing off thick portions of the bread loaf on the counter. "Um, so, I'm sure Takeru's mentioned it, but I'm getting married in the fall."

The knife slips, and Daisuke howls, and Jou's off his stool with such a quickness it topples, the noise making Daisuke shout again, back smacking into the sink counter behind him. "Jesus, Kido! I've got neighbors!"

"Your hand—let me see it, are you—?"

Daisuke slides to the side, away, showing him his unscathed arm. "It's fine—it's fine! Just watch your timing, for Christ's sake—who raised you?" He clutches his chest, rubbing it hard, then stands straight again.

Jou finds the stool and resets it upright, catching his own breath. "Sorry, I'm just—I thought that was a good opening."

"My God, have you ever used a transition before?"

"You've all known about my engagement for half the year!" Jou protests, defensive.

Daisuke blinks quickly, "Your—what?" And then his face clears, then colors dark, all at once. "Oh. I thought you said…I thought—," he stops himself, drawing a breath. "Right." Then he adds, too late to not be lame, "Congrats again."

Jou sits back on the stool, shoulders still tense. "What I was trying to say is that I hope you both can make it. I want to be sure you can. It's going to be small, not like my brother's and Momoe's. Intimate, close friends only."

He nods. "'Course, we will," says Daisuke easily, with something like irritation.

"Good. I'm…we'd like that."

Something's shifted, but Daisuke can't name it. He returns to the cutting board, righting the upturned bread loaf. "One or two slices?"

And Jou, with something like wisdom, doesn't press him on it. "One, please."

Koushiro startles awake at her touch to his elbow, for which she's immediately apologizing. "No, no," he starts, unfocused to even see who he's addressing yet, "I'm fine, I'm awake, we're awake—,"

Hikari's grip tightens around his forearm, pressing gently. "Even so," she says, politely agreeing with his inaccurate assessment of his current state of consciousness, ever discreet, "it might be best to be awake back in your hotel room, before Taichi catches you." At this she casts a meaningful glance at a passed-out Michael at his same table, whose black-penned mustache and round spectacles clash violently with the bright blonde color of his hair and soft pink flush of his skin.

Koushiro gathers just enough of himself to register both the warning and what might befall him should he choose not heed it. He gratefully pats her hand where it still encircles his arm. "You're the good one."

She's grinning, "Please be sure to record yourself saying that and send it to my parents, will you?"

"Everyone knows."

"Well, the ones who count." She pulls herself to her feet, bringing him up gently with her. "Come on. We'll escape together."

He allows her to help him stand, but afterwards eases her off. "I can make it back," he assures, then nods at the table by the windows. "You three stay."

She looks at them, seated across from one another, with a few empty chairs between. It's that distance that makes her draw her breath then, shivering. Koushiro feels the odd tremor and, even in his state of sleep-deprived delirium unique to all young fathers, releases himself from her arm to pull his suit jacket off. She doesn't even notice he's lent it to her until she feels its heavy weight over her shoulders. "Oh, no, Kou, I'm fine—,"

"See you in the morning," he yawns, ignoring the protests, and slowly ambles his way from the room.

Hikari stands alone only for a moment. She slides her arms one by one into Koushiro's jacket, then approaches the table in a smile. "They're doing a last call."

"I'll get them," insists Daisuke, rising, allowing her his chair.

She doesn't refuse either offer, settling herself comfortably. Takeru slides her his slice of wedding cake. "It's good," he assures when she tries to shake her head. He takes off a bit of the icing with his finger and licks it, "Promise."

"I believe you," she says.

"Still?" Takeru shakes his head, teasing. "All these years, and you haven't learned a thing about me, have you?"

"Call it a fool's intuition," and Hikari smiles at him, head turning a little.

He looks at her, blue eyes sharp. His lips part, but nothing utters from them, at first. His puzzled stare unnerves her, but she breaks his gaze this time. His humor is gone. "'Kari, I've never lied to you. Do you believe that?"

All she sees is how he looks at him.

"Do you, Takeru?"

"They only had the dark ones," announces Daisuke, returning before he can answer her. He places two beer bottles on the table, helping himself to the water glass he'd left behind, and takes the only empty seat between them. Hikari takes her drink, while Takeru tips the neck of his back towards him, eyebrow arched. "Still don't drink," he says, gesturing for him to help himself to it instead.

"Not after that one time."

Hikari gasps, sitting up. "That's right! Why on earth did I have to only hear about that once Takeru wrote it in his column?"

"He exaggerated everything," says Daisuke, declarative and loud. He waves dismissively, ring glinting where it's still so comfortably settled, there on his left hand. "It was only one floor up—,"

"The point is that you still jumped—,"

"I'm just saying it wasn't as high as all that!"

"No, but I definitely was."

"Oh, right, the part you conveniently did leave out of the column."

"You knew?"

"You were high?"

"Oh, yeah—,"

"Of course, I knew, Willis told me. He didn't much like the rest of the column, but—,"

"That tattle-tale—,"

"Hey, that's my tattle-tale, so watch it—,"

"Where's he anyway?"

"Took Jun back to her room. She's not been feeling well lately—,"

"How high exactly was the balcony?"

"I told you, as high as—,"

"No, that's the thing, you didn't tell me. And I wish you had. Or even just called me. I must have texted Takeru so many times—,"

"You're not putting me between you two again."

"I never—," and they both look at here then, at the bite in her tone. She draws a breath, even, and takes a sip of her drink.

Takeru leans forward over the table, beer braced between his hands, and thumbs pressed against the cool frosty lip of the bottle. "I shouldn't have written all that without your permission. That's definitely fair."

Daisuke opens his hands in a welcome gesture. He's sitting back in his chair, grinning at him, "I love being famous, so no issues here."

He rolls his eyes, "Never have a fifteen minutes been shorter."

Daisuke's up again, straight-backed. "Wait, so I'm really not in your book? You weren't joking before?"

"A book?" She looks at him, surprised.

His thumb follows a condensation drop down the side of the bottle and flicks a dewdrop off and onto the table. "Uh, yeah. I was just telling Dais about it." He smiles, "Signed a publishing contract and everything."

Hikari nods. "Wow. That's, that's really great, Takeru."

"Don't be too happy for him," warns Daisuke, leaning over to flick Takeru's resting elbow right back. "It's not going to be about us."

"It's a memoir about my family," Takeru explains to her, easily sliding out of his reach, which only seems to sour Daisuke's mood.

He doesn't try touching him again. Instead, he's crooning in complaint, "How are we not your family? I'm way more entertaining a character than Yamato."

"I thought you hated it when I made you out as a character."

"Only because you think you know me so well," he tuts back.

"Who doesn't know you, Daisuke?" Takeru laughs. "You're an open book."

She shivers again. Distracted, she attempts some common ground, head spinning lightly, "To be fair, Yamato is interesting."

"We all know what you think about my brother."

To her blushed surprise, it's Daisuke who defends her. "To be extra fair, everyone gets weird around your brother."

He mocks a surrender. "All right, I stand corrected. He is gush-worthy."

"But, like, super weird. Look at Taichi and Mimi. They're obsessed with him."

Hikari interjects, spitting up, "Hey, I thought we agreed to never talk about their arrangement."

Takeru clicks his tongue, refusing to acknowledge any such said agreement. He shifts so his shoulder is now angled against the side of his chair, directing his attentions to Daisuke. "Did Hikari tell you that they got a dog?"

She gasps, "No, not this story, Takeru—,"

But Daisuke's curiosity is too peaked, and Takeru's winking back at her, not the least bit apologetic even as he mouths her a 'sorry'. Daisuke exclaims, amazed, "He finally convinced her?"

Hikari discounts assigning any such credit. "It's one of those golden poodle mixes, so I'd mark it down as a solid Mimi win."

Daisuke snorts, chuckling, and wipes his nose with the back of his sleeve. "God, I love her."

Takeru's looking at him, that shine to his bright eyes that feel like they could glow, burning. He continues, "Yeah, but he told her she had to let him name it Yamato, you know, because of the yellow hair, and—no, stop laughing, it gets better—it's the perfect name, because this dog loves everyone except his namesake. Like, all it does is just scowl whenever my brother's around—,"

"It's true. I swear on my life, I once saw this dog look him straight in the eye as it peed all over Yamato's new shoes right there in their entryway."

Daisuke hiccups, waving him off. He turns aside to reach out a leg and kick Takeru's chair. "Stop—I can't—,"

Takeru's laughing, too, kneeing his foot right back and off his seat. "No, listen—it gets ten times better—okay, so now they've got this running joke about dog, right? How Yamato's always whining outside their bedroom door at night, and how Yamato keeps shitting on their brand-new rug—,"

"—how Yamato won't stop begging for extra helpings at every meal—,"

"Oh, my God—I can't breathe—,"

"So now Yamato—I mean, my Yamato—refuses to go by their apartment anymore 'cause of the devil dog and all the teasing, right? So they've—seriously, Hikari, stop laughing, you're ruining the story—so then they started putting up these lost pet posters all over—all over the neighborhood—with his—with my brother's picture on them, and—and people are actually calling, because they've noticed he's not been coming around much, and all these strangers were actually fucking worried about—oh, shit, Daisuke!"

He's crashed backwards, clean off his seat, hysterical in his breathless laughter, and Hikari's on the ground next to him in the same second, crawling around the upturned chair. Takeru ducks under the table to get to them, shoving the thick tablecloth aside. He finds a hand that finds his, pulling his arm down hard, until he's rolling over onto this side and knocked into her thin shoulder, chin to her elbow in a rough tumble. Her fingers grasp for his, and he lets her, tripping over her leg, or maybe his, landing underneath his chest, or maybe hers, face pressed into her throat, or maybe his.

He doesn't know, and he doesn't care. He just kisses that skin, its sweet familiar taste lighting his full heart on fire, like a last chance, risked and misspent.

f/90

Takeru lets himself in, like all the times before, recently.

It's a striking scent that meets him, rich in invitation. Keeping his coat, he walks forward into the kitchen, following the trail with his nose upturned, curious. That's how he finds him, bent over the stove with a concentrated, dour expression.

Takeru keeps the laugh at bay, while Daisuke doesn't even bother looking up. Mimi does, however, and points to the sink beside her. "Wash up first."

"Jesus, you're worse than Yamato."

"And yet neither of us have ever had bronchitis."

"It was one time, and totally Miyako's fault." Takeru shakes the water from his freshly rinsed hands, making Daisuke's scowl even deeper.

"Use a goddamn towel, will you?"

"What's wrong with my shirt?"

Daisuke doesn't respond, reading the next instruction out of the cookbook with a frown. "This can't be right."

Mimi approaches, taking the mixing spoon and presiding over the open book. "Let me see."

He only grunts, uninterested. The frustration on his face quiets Takeru's tongue, making him think through his next move. This is how it's been for too long, these days, walking over hundreds of self-replenishing eggshells ever since his and Willis's move home. Hikari hadn't been able to explain it either, only remarking that they ought to make more of an effort to bring the couple back into the circle, what with Jun's illness and the downsizing that had come with needing to make accommodations for her extra care. Her condition had stabilized in recent months, while Daisuke's temper had mutated into something else entirely.

His current fixation had to do with the dietary restrictions his sister had undertaken to treat her post-treatment health. Even Mimi had gotten in on the obsession, which is how Takeru had been roped in as taste-tester, after Taichi's boycotts of anything that crossed their kitchen and Jou's threats about reporting the experiments to a higher authority. Takeru proved an easy persuasion, keen to never have to make meals for himself if he could help it. That, and thinking about Jun made him think about Yamato, and the ache that came with that fear had him agreeing to anything, even playing house whenever Willis had to be gone for work. He doesn't really ever ask why Daisuke's not had Hikari over, instead. He doesn't really ever want to mess this up.

He returns the dishtowel to its hook and pauses to peer under the lid he lifts off the saucepot. "What are you making me?" he asks, deliberate in his wording.

"Something terrible," says Daisuke.

"That's not true," insists Mimi. She brings a spoonful to her lips, smacking them thoughtfully. "Okay, so a minor setback, but we—," and she stops when, silent, Daisuke pulls his apron off, walking away from both of them. Mimi looks at Takeru, her sigh contained. "Jun didn't eat her breakfast this morning," she tells him.

"I'm sure she's just tired."

"Maybe," agrees Mimi, voice soft. She returns the spoon to the saucepot, stirring vigorously.

Takeru leaves her there, tracing back through the rented apartment's small hallways into the single bedroom. Daisuke's sat on the foot of the bed, his back to the door, and his face in his hands as he bends over his lap. He stays by the doorway, bracing the side of his head against the frame. "Can I come in?"

Daisuke doesn't move, and doesn't answer.

He considers his next words for a moment, and then starts, "Listen—,"

"Please don't tell me you understand, because you don't."

"No," agrees Takeru. "I don't."

"Good. So leave."

"No."

Daisuke lowers his hands from his face. "It'd be good practice for me."

"Don't talk like that."

"She's all I have, Takeru. Once she's gone, that's it for me."

"How are we not your family?"

He turns his head to the side, just enough to glance towards him without meeting his gaze. "Is that what we are?"

Takeru shifts his posture, sliding so his back now rests against the door. "It's what we've always been, Dais."

He moves around the corner of the bed, one leg bent across it before him, hand over his knee, and the other still braced on the ground. "You've never looked at me like family."

Every time he blinks he sees brown eyes.

"Only because I can't stand looking at you," says Takeru, grinning. "Seriously. I'd recommend a shave at the very least."

He lifts a hand to his chin, running his fingers underneath the fuzzy stubble. "I don't know why I thought I could grow it out."

"Science isn't for everyone."

"It is for that one," and Daisuke jerks his head in the direction they'd both come from, catching the cheerful hum that Mimi makes to herself as she continues her preparations. "I can't make heads or tails out of that cookbook of hers."

"I mean, Yamato did offer to come help."

"A Sophie's choice if I ever heard one."

Takeru laughs, thumb pressed over his shut eyes as he rubs his face, the sight of his honest grin making Daisuke smile, too. When his eyes open again, he tells him, "I'm really fucking scared, Takeru."

His hands slip through his hair, tugging the thick curls back slowly. He keeps the smile on his face, because he knows Daisuke needs to see it. "I know. Me, too."

Daisuke turns away again, staring at the far wall. "Can you stay again?"

"What, tonight?"

Daisuke nods. "Yeah."

It's an easy ask, and an easy answer. It's what he comes here for. It's what he never tells her, when she asks how he is. It's what he doesn't say to anyone else.

His tongue dips across his bottom lip, hesitant. "Yeah. If that's what you want. Up to you."

He bends over again, gaze latched hard and unblinking on his hands in his lap, the knuckles scabbed over and finger pads long since scrubbed raw and swollen. When he looks up, his eyes are red. "You know, I don't think it's ever been up to me."

Takeru breathes again, light and deep. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." Daisuke shuts his eyes, drawing a low breath. And then he's back, eyes dark as they open wide. "Fuck."

His back hits the wall, the sharp edge of the doorframe pinching the skin at his waist, spiraling pain through his hip hard enough to steal the air out of his lungs, if Daisuke hadn't done it first. His lips are on his neck, sinking under the weight of these hands, this touch, and he breathes in missteps only, skipping through heartbeats he's not even sure are just his. Fingers pull through the curls of his hair, his moves just as eager, shoving back with his hands under his shirt, cupping his ear so tight he can't hear anything but his own voice, saying—

"Shit." Takeru shoves himself off first, stumbling along the wall. He's got a hand over his face, hiding it from him, the other pressed to the doorway to hold himself up.

Daisuke stands in the middle of the room, arms sill stretched out, craving and open, until he curls his fingers into fists that dig against his thighs, making the pain this instead. "I'm sorry," he says, pleading, spiraling, emptying out. "I'm—I'm not myself right now—I don't…I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Takeru says nothing.

f/128

Jun shrieks, whooping, and throws the full hand down on the table. "In your face!"

Daisuke immediately groans, falling back across the couch over Hikari's lap, while Willis smiles, slurping back the last of his beer, and submitting to her win with a tip of his hand to his imaginary cap. "All right, we done yet?" he asks, tidying up the cards already.

"You're just sore you've lost every single hand," Miyako points out, smug, high-fiving Jun for another sweeping win.

"Maybe I'm losing on purpose."

"To what ends?" snorts Catherine, accepting the reassembled deck when he hands it back to her. "Humiliation?"

"No one ever suspects the underachievers," he warns them, careful not to slur too much.

"You really need to teach him about fair bets," Hikari tells Daisuke, smoothing back his hair. She doesn't see how Willis stares at her touch. "It's just getting embarrassing now."

"On my list," Daisuke mumbles agreeingly, suppressing a yawn.

Catherine notes the tired glaze to his eyes, and nods at her friends. "We should probably head out," she says.

"No, I'm fine! I'm awake!" He yawns again.

"A convincing performance," declares Catherine, kissing his forehead as she gets up from the floor.

"Honestly, you should go on tour," agrees Miyako.

Daisuke grunts, slumping over to his side and into Hikari's shoulder, jaw unhinged by the angle of his face against her arm. She moves gently aside, taking him by the shoulders to guide him into a more comfortable position on the cushions.

Jun takes the deck of cards, tucking them into their box and setting the carton back on the bookshelf closest to her armchair. "You can leave him there, honestly, he won't notice."

"Blanket?" Hikari asks Willis, who shrugs, scanning the room.

"I think Takeru and Taichi used up all ours to make a tent for the kids."

At this, Daisuke stirs himself upright again, opening his eyes. "I'm okay."

"Just get to bed," Hikari tells him, patting his shoulder. "Both of you. We'll clean up."

"It's all right, leave it," Willis assures her. "I'll get to it in the morning—,"

"All of this?" and Catherine gestures about the apartment, nearly every inch covered or upturned or decorated with bits and scraps of the finally-in-remission party.

"Your optimism is inspiring," agrees Miyako, doubtful at the likelihood herself.

"Well, someone will get to it."

Jun's looking at Daisuke's still posture, amused. "He's definitely out."

Like she's dared him, he startles himself up, sharp. "No. I'm okay!"

Hikari cups his chin, smiling. "We know. Just sit back."

Staring at the affection still between them, Willis forces himself to turn to the rest of the room, noting the dwindling numbers already. Few were left now, the makeshift tent already being deconstructed by Miyako, who's joking with Takeru after he reemerges from the kitchen to help. Catherine's picking up the plates and cups, and Hikari's clearing the tabletops.

Jun scoots to the edge of her armchair. "Do you mind?" she asks, and Willis's attention breaks again.

"Oh, sorry, Jun, of course." He brings her up with a steady hand, letting her go ahead of him down the hallway to the spare guestroom, her husband having long since retired to bed, an old sport at heart, or so she tells him with an warmth to her voice that makes Willis hold his breath.

Closing their door, he returns to the living room, its shambled appearance already beginning its return to decency. None of them listen to his weak, distracted protests, and within minutes the apartment is spotless, or as it could ever be with Daisuke as a tenant. He's still on the couch, sitting up with the blanket Hikari had tucked about his shoulders, watching them through a sleepy gaze. He brightens a bit when Catherine re-approaches, wishing him good night. She twists his nose at the joke he makes about her leaving, something Willis can't hear. Then it's Miyako, granting him a one-armed hug, still a little sore herself about her own losing streak, a veritable feat for someone playing against as terrible a player as Daisuke. Then Takeru, who just smiles back where he's stood, hands in his pockets, and Hikari, who kisses his cheek and hugs him tightly, before returning to Takeru's side, arm around his shoulder. Takeru pulls her into him, and they both say goodbye to Willis when they pass first, the girls shortly behind.

And now it's just the two of them, again.

Willis watches Daisuke slide low into the couch, yawning, and pulling the blanket even closer under his chin. He doesn't think he's paying attention to him, until his voice calls, eyes still closed, "You going to join me here or what?"

He doesn't.

Daisuke opens his eyes. "Will?"

He doesn't want to pick this fight now, but he's had some to drink, and time to watch. "He's the only one you don't touch."

Daisuke sits up. "What?"

"I've been watching for it, thinking it's just all in my head. You still talk, you'll still call, he's still over all the time, but you—," Willis stops himself. "I've been trying to figure it out, you know? What happened, why you've stopped. But I'm out of ideas."

Daisuke kicks off the blanket, freeing himself, but stays still on the couch, staring up at him. "What're you talking about?"

"I just know it's not about the physical part of it, but everything else. See," Willis counts off on his hand, "Catherine's naturally flirty, but I know how to deal with people like that. Miyako pretends not to care, but she's as rough with you as she is any of her siblings. I can do that, too."

"I don't understand what you're doing."

He keeps going, but steps closer with every few words now, until he's standing there in front of him at the end of the couch. "And as off and on as you and 'Kari have been, you know, I can handle it. Everyone's got a first love," he insists. "That's why I can handle him, too."

His voice is hollowing out, frantic. "There's nothing to handle—,"

It's a gentle push, his knuckles against the flat of Daisuke's palms when they reach for him, to keep him back, to make him listen. His mouth tries to close, but his head knows it's time. "What I can't handle is you. He's the only one you don't touch." Daisuke's hands pull at his own, bringing his palms up to his mouth. He kisses them, but Willis only lets his fingers curl up, wrists limp. "The only one," repeats Willis, voice thin. He shakes his head, long hair teased loose. He grabs at a straw-colored wisp with too rough a touch, fingers trembling, and Daisuke notices. It's the only thing he sees.

"That's not true," he says.

Willis bends over where he sits next to him, the pulse of his inner wrist pressed over his nose to keep from crying. "I'm sorry. I hate this. I hate being jealous. I'm not—I'm really not, I just—I could have handled anything, Daisuke, I could. I really thought I could. But I can't handle how you look at him."

Daisuke laughs, like it's the easiest thing in the world, fingers laced between his so tight. "Then I won't. I'll stop."

He's shaking his head, "You can't. You know why?"

"Don't—,"

"Because you look at him like heartbreak." Willis sighs, released. "I don't know why we've been pretending with each other for so long." He draws his hand from Daisuke's trembling grip, gentle, and so kind. "But I can't lie to you anymore, Daisuke, and you don't get to keep lying to me."

He looks at him, shaking. "I won't. I don't."

"Enough." Willis gets up, leaving the couch. "We'll talk tomorrow."

He stares after him, emptied, caving, because he knows they won't.

f/180

He finds her leaned against the doorbell, just tall enough to make the emphasis with her thin shoulder pressed to its buttoned fixture in his doorframe. He holds the door open, bracing himself, and sighs. "Way to be an adult, 'Kari."

"One to talk," she says. She tucks her short bob back behind her ears, looking up at him. "Let me in?"

Takeru stays where he is. "You know, it's not a good time."

Her mouth makes a small 'o', her expression terrifically unconvinced, because she's always been able to see right through him. "Let me in." Without waiting this time, and easily, she ducks under his outstretched arm, stepping into the small flat. She comes a sudden stop there in the middle of the studio, looking around. "What's with the boxes?" Her question is lightly toned, buoyant, like denial.

Takeru shuts the door. "Yamato send you?"

"I haven't talked to your brother in a couple of weeks, actually."

"Sure. I imagine the reporting's been a little thin these days."

Hikari looks at him, her face a perfect blank. She knows how much it unnerves him when she's like this, when she can whittle down all the things he's left unsaid but still keep her own out of her mouth. Sometimes Takeru's afraid no one will ever know him the way she does. She lifts her chin, arms clasped behind the small of her back. "Well, come on. Your book launch starts soon."

Takeru stays where he is at the door. "I'm not going."

She pretends not to hear him, or maybe she really doesn't. She opens a box labeled 'outerwear' and removes a dark navy blazer, the one he'd worn to his brother's backyard wedding, the first time he'd seen Daisuke without his ring. He blinks quickly at the memory, eyes stinging. "I think this should work," she remarks, turning the jacket over to examine the cuff. There's one button with a bit of string dangled off, and her fingers tease at it gently, testing it. "Well, I can fix that in five minutes. Where's that darning kit Sora gave you for Christmas?"

Her gasp when he yanks the blazer from her startles even himself. He shoves it back into the box, wrinkled and crushed. "I told you, I'm not going."

"This is your first book, Takeru," like he doesn't know. "Your publici—,"

"They know I'm not coming. They've got it handled."

"It's not their book."

"Technically," he grunts as he shoves the now re-closed box against the wall, with the rest of the stack, "it is. They'll sell it, they'll promote it, they'll profit from—,"

"Takeru."

He rests his forearms on the top box, back still turned to her, and says nothing.

"What's all this for?"

He doesn't have to look to see where she gestures, not to the packed up apartment, but to him. "I'm getting on with what's coming next."

"And what's that?" She takes a single step forward. "Where's that?"

"I don't know. All this," and he taps the box with a sturdy hand, "goes into storage until I figure it out."

"Until you figure it out," she repeats.

"Okay," and he doesn't bother hiding the smile that smears his lips then, turning around, "what the fuck do you want, Hikari?"

She blinks at the insult, swallowing her surprise at the tone. "I want to know what's going on with you. You're avoiding me—,"

"No, I'm not, actually. I'm growing up."

She gestures again. "That's what this is?"

He spreads his arms open in a showy welcome. "Like it?"

To keep her fingers from making fists, she presses her palms down along the sides of her skirt, smoothing the cotton fabric slowly, breathing out as she does so. Her calmness, in that moment, just makes him feel worse, inexplicably furious. "No," she says.

He lowers his arms. "Okay. Sorry to hear that."

And suddenly she's in front of him, reaching for him, like if she could just touch his skin she'd know, be reassured, that she could wake them both up out of all of this, out of everything that had ever went wrong in the last ten years. "This isn't you." The outburst does not astonish him, but the wounding of its pain still stings. On any other occasion she would have regretted making him shrink as he does under the sharp rawness of her voice. But this is different. He's different, and wounding is all she has. "You're not like this, you're not being yourself—,"

"I know myself," he says, quiet. "Don't tell me I don't know myself. Don't tell me you know me better than I do."

"Fine," she says, voice rising. "Fine, I don't know you, not this you—,"

He's pulling out of her hands now, yanking the sleeve of his sweater so hard the knitted cotton frays, undone. There's the door just beside her, but she sees him thinking his next move before he can make it. Her shoulder smacks against the wooden panel, small hand wrapped on the brass handle to keep it out of his reach, to keep herself between him and this last chance to hide behind everything he's never told her.

"Hikari."

Her heart is racing, emboldened by fear. "If you want me to leave, you tell me to leave."

He has his thumb pressed to a leaking, red nose, face turned down.

She doesn't move. "Do you understand, Takeru? If you want me to leave, you look me in the eye, and you tell me you don't want me to stay. If that's what you want, you have to say it. I want to hear you say it."

He doesn't look at her. "I don't want you to stay."

Hikari heaves, "Bullshit."

Takeru's silent, wiped clean and running empty.

She presses herself against the door, standing straight. "You need me in your life, Takeru, like I need you. We need each other, and there's nothing you can do to change it."

"You tried," he says suddenly. "Didn't you?"

She presses a hand to her cheek, holding her palm there to keep her lips from trembling too much. "Yeah, I did," she chokes out, nodding hard, admitting it at last. "Because I was angry, and I was so hurt. But just because we've found so many ways to hurt each other over the years doesn't mean that's all we'll ever do. It doesn't mean we can't be different."

Takeru takes a step back from her.

How can she make him see it?

"You can't leave. You have to stay."

"No, I don't."

"Then I need you to stay!" When he doesn't respond, head still bowed, she moves to him, holding his face. "Tell me what happened. I don't know what's wrong. You have to tell me what's wrong—,"

"It's not for you to fix, 'Kar."

Her arms around his neck, yanking him down to her height to embrace him. "Yes, I can. Yes, I can."

And he means to tell her no, that it's not going to work, that it's done, that's he's done. He means to tell her this before everything he's tried to keep in the dark rises closer to the surface, breaking through. He means to tell her, but he doesn't.

Face to the crook of her neck, instead he just asks, whispering, "How?" She turns her cheek, crushing the bridge of her nose to the hollow of his jaw, shaking her head. "How, Hikari?"

"I don't know yet. I don't know, but, Takeru, I love you, so I'm going to fix it, fix us—,"

"Fix me?"

"No, me." She pulls back enough to look up at him, eyes bright.

He cups her cheek, thumb pressed into the corner of her mouth. "We can't fix how we feel about him. That's the only problem we've ever had."

She's quiet again, her face still so flushed from the panic of before. "You could have just told me."

Takeru shakes his head.

"Why not?"

He smiles, fingers brushing over the soft, loose hair. "Because he was the love of your life, too."

She covers his hand with hers, holding it to the side of her face. "And you were my soulmate."

"That's the same thing."

"No." She is firm, striking the protest from his lips. "It's different. Love of my life is one life. One, Takeru. It means I'm never going to love anyone like I did him, as long as I live this life." She breathes deeply, unraveling in her resilience. "But soulmates—that's every life, all of them. We'd never have to speak, and maybe in some of them we'd never even meet. But in every one, Takeru, I'd know to look for you." Her forehead presses to his, her breath hot on his cheeks, her hold steady in ways he has never been, without her. "In every one, I'd know to find you."

f/256

He can't remember the last time he stayed up for the sunrise. He's sure it had to have been at least in college, or the handful of times after in those early years. He'd never been one to protest an early bedtime, even as a child. He kept the habit, serious about health after Jun and the luxury of rest. Still, there are some days when he thinks he might try it, see how long he'd last. And there are some mornings, like this one, when he does.

Takeru waits, stood in the doorway, watching him leaning over the railing, looking at the creeping dawn, the horizon a line burned into the sky as much as the earth. "Daisuke?"

He glances back, heel of his palm propping up his chin. He lowers both hands now, letting his arms bend lazily over the edge. "Hey."

"You're still up?"

"So are you."

"Can I come sit with you?"

He nods, and Takeru steps outside, the air still cool to his warm skin. He doesn't take the empty lounge chair, but stops just next to him, inches apart. He watches Daisuke stretch his arm out, pretending to scoop up the rising sun. "Are you all right?"

He hears something else, and pinches the light between his fingers. "Yeah. We are."

Takeru thinks about the last time he stayed up for the sunrise. He's sure it's happened more than enough times since college, but less so, in recent weeks. He'd never been good about going to bed at a healthy time, ashamed, more than he'd care to admit, about how long it had taken to stop feeding the monsters in the dark, the shadows in his head. Still, there are days when he thinks he might try rest, see how long the habit will stick. And there are some mornings, like this one, when it does.

He slips his hand through his. "You sure?"

If Daisuke hears that hint of doubt, he doesn't give it away. "Yeah, I'm sure. Even about you."

"Well," says Takeru after a moment, falling back on the laugh that always kept him from breaking, "at least one of us is."

His kiss is still soft, fingers against his mouth.

"Liar."

Note: Made a commitment to complete my stories. Next, Here and Now returns, in full. Thank you for reading. It means more than you know.