[CN: Spoilers for special chapter 15; this is set several years pre-canon, back when Natori was still a grumpy teenager (starting to learn how to hide it, but Matoba has a talent for bringing out his grumpy side), and Matoba was still a little pest. Can be taken as slash or pre-slash.]

I own nothing.

The rain was lashing against the roof and windows, as it had been for the past three days now. Shuuichi had put in at work, of course, but unfortunately the film schedule hadn't called for rain and the director was daily inventing new definitions for the word 'done.' While the director raged against nature, Shuuichi would stand under an awning with his co-stars and wonder why on earth they couldn't just film in the rain if it was so crucial they film now. They were doing a horror film; he didn't see why the director thought a horror flick would just fall apart if they had to shoot in the rain. Rain improved the ambiance, didn't it?

Apparently not. Shuuichi supposed it was just as well—he'd been told more than once that he looked like an alley cat when soaked, and that didn't exactly do wonders for his charm and allure. I guess until I can get established it'll be my good looks that get me by. Good grief, I don't remember getting established in the exorcist world being nearly this hard. Just a few near-death experiences and I was fine…

So with work canceled for the day and the weather too nasty to make actually going anywhere appealing, Shuuichi had been holed up in his apartment, trying to pass the time. Reading books, watching movies, practicing spell circles while sitting inside the patch of golden light cast by the street lamp outside (well, as much as he could inside, anyways), anything that could distract him from the sight of coal-gray skies and rain drops splattering on the window.

Sitting at the kitchen table, Shuuichi frowned, flipping through the pages of one of his research notebooks. There had been a meeting two weeks ago, one he had been forced to miss on account of his other work. There'd be another next week, but he wasn't sure he could make that meeting either, and for the same reason. Missing one was one thing; every exorcist had to once in a while, and no one was going to think anything of it. Two in a row would probably present… difficulties, especially considering he didn't yet have the sort of reputation that would make up for not being around for nearly a month with the client base.

Let's see, the next one's at ten at night. I suppose I could make that one, if the director doesn't get any bright ideas about late-night shooting. Or maybe it'll rain then, too. Won't be the first all-nighter I've pulled. Shuuichi smiled ruefully. Thank God for coffee. I don't know what I'd—

There came a light knocking at the front door.

Shuuichi frowned sharply. Who would be wanting to see him, and at this time of night too? He supposed it could be the landlord, but he'd paid the rent and all the bills on time this month, the landlord never called after anyone after seven at night, especially not for people who lived on the third floor like he did, and it was, a quick glance at the clock told him, eight.

As he pondered, another round of knocking came, louder than the first. "Alright!" Shuuichi called, not a little irritably. "I'm coming!" Hopefully it'd just be one of his neighbors asking for sugar or something like that. (With his luck, it probably wouldn't.)

In fact, it wasn't the landlord. Or one of his neighbors.

Holding a dripping umbrella, a rather damp Matoba Seiji flashed his typical catlike smile at him and waved. "Good evening, Shuuichi-san. Would you mind letting me in? It's gotten pretty bad outside."

What…

Shuuichi damn near slammed the door in his face.

As it was, he stared, dumbstruck at the younger boy, whose smile was taking on a more razor-like sharpness with each passing moment. "Well? Nothing to say?"

"How… How do you know where I live?" Shuuichi demanded, once he'd finally managed to unstick his mouth. He hadn't told anyone in the community where he lived, not even Takuma-san, who Shuuichi was reasonably sure wouldn't try to curse his toaster or anything weird like that. Come to mention it, he hadn't even told anyone that he'd moved out of his family's house. Shuuichi also hadn't seen any of the Matoba clan's shadow ayakashi around (For such supposedly stealthy ayakashi, they were about as subtle as a freight train; Shuuichi felt like he would've noticed if they had been skulking around his building).

"Oh, you don't need to—"

"Answer the question, Seiji."

"Phonebook," Seiji replied blithely. "Now may I come in?"

"Remind me to get my name taken off," Shuuichi muttered. "Okay, so why are you here, then?"

At that, Seiji tilted his head slightly, his smile fading to a frown. "I had heard that you had moved out of your family's house. I was curious to see where you were living now; may I come in, Shuuichi-san?"

Somehow, Shuuichi doubted that was the actual reason—or at the very least, it wasn't all of it. Seiji rarely had such simple, straightforward reasons for the things he did (or if he really did, Shuuichi was too busy being infuriated with him to notice), and it wasn't like he'd ever made house calls back when Shuuichi was still living with his family. Back then, Seiji had sent a servant to spy when there was something he wanted to know, or possibly was doing the spying himself. Heck, that was probably what he was doing now. It just wasn't as easy to slink about unseen in an apartment as it was on an estate, so Seiji had decided to take a different tack. That was probably it. Probably.

However, Shuuichi couldn't see any possible pretense for refusing to let Seiji inside, so he sighed and stepped away from the door. "Yeah, sure. Just leave your umbrella by the door; I haven't got anything for you to put it in."

"That's fine."

As Seiji untied his shoelaces, Shuuichi cast his gaze around his apartment, suddenly feeling intensely self-conscious. His home was, well, not exactly the neatest place in the world. This was the first time he'd received a houseguest since he moved in; the landlord came by occasionally, but he didn't care if the place was neat so long as nothing was broken. There were books and papers piled around the walls and on the coffee table, various articles of clothing hanging from the backs of furniture, and you pretty much couldn't see the surface of the kitchen table, groaning as it was beneath the weight of books and folders and loose paper.

He had the distinct feeling he was going to get laughed at no matter what he did, but Shuuichi began casting about for things he could put away quickly while Seiji got his bearings. He grabbed a jacket and a tie from the back of the couch and rushed them into the closet in his bedroom. While he was there, he heard Seiji calling out, "It's rather small, isn't it?"

"It's a starter," Shuuichi retorted, tearing out of his bedroom and starting to grab books to put back on his bookshelf. "Starter's aren't big. You try getting anything bigger on the kind of money I'm making right now; see how far you get."

"I suppose. Oh my God, look at your bed, though!" Shuuichi nearly got whiplash, he looked back from the bookcase so fast. Somehow, somehow Seiji had managed to get from the genkan to his bedroom without him seeing, and was standing just inside the doorway. He stood in shadow but his shoulders were visibly shaking, even so. "It's covered in junk!" he exclaimed, his voice full of laughter. "Where do you sleep at night?"

"Hey, don't go in there!" Shuuichi stomped over and yanked on Seiji's shoulder, pulling him out of the bedroom. The cloth of the other boy's jacket felt wetter (and colder) than he'd expected it to be. He wondered, concerned for a moment in spite of himself, how Seiji wasn't shivering convulsively, but that concern quickly evaporated when Seiji flashed his most obnoxious smile at him. You little twerp… "I didn't say you could—"

A shadow fell across the window, cutting the golden light of the street lamp in twain. Shuuichi's protest petered into silence; Seiji's laughter died off his lips.

When he turned his gaze to the window, Shuuichi was not entirely surprised to see one of the Matoba clan's shadow ayakashi sitting on the sill, staring inside and looking pretty bedraggled, all things considered. "Uhh, don't look now, Seiji, but I think you were tailed," he muttered, as a thunderclap boomed overhead.

Seiji's brow furrowed for a moment, mouth pressed tightly into a frown, but he drew himself up and nodded briskly, quickly recovering that composed look of his. "Yes, I know. Excuse me for just a moment." He strode over to the window and unlatched it, lifting it just enough so that he could speak to the ayakashi perched outside. The window open, the sound of the falling rain grew all-encompassing; Shuuichi was hit with a blast of humid air. "Go back now," Seiji said to the ayakashi. His sleek black hair fell like a curtain about his face, leaving Shuuichi incapable of seeing what sort of expression he wore. "Tell them where I am, and that there was no trouble getting here."

The ayakashi nodded, and Seiji shut the window rather forcefully, making the panes rattle just a touch. He turned back to Shuuichi, the expression on his face impossible to discern. "He may be back at some point; I'm not sure. Just ignore him, if it comes to that."

Shuuichi frowned. "What was that about? I don't remember them following you around like that before."

"Just a precaution."

"A precaution against what, exactly?"

"That's nothing you need to worry about, Shuuichi-san."

Shuuichi's frown deepened. Seiji was laughing off something dangerous, it seemed, but it looked a lot like it wasn't something he should be laughing about, if he'd been slapped with an escort to follow him around when he left his family's estate. "It doesn't sound like that to me," he pointed out, finding his concern resurfacing.

Seiji eyed him, his mouth curving in a smirk—a markedly bitter one, Shuuichi couldn't help but notice. "You'd probably have a good idea what it is if you'd been at the last meeting."

And just like that, any concern he felt for Seiji got shoved right back into the abyss. So he's not gonna tell me? Why was I worried about this pest again? "Hey, I've been busy. Not all of us have the time to make every meeting."

"So I can see." Seiji stepped away from the window, shooting a twitching smile at the many books and papers still strewn out around the apartment. His eyes lit on the kitchen table, and before Shuuichi could utter a word to stop him, he was there, starting to leaf through the books and notebooks with complete disregard to the fact that his host was standing right there, watching him.

"Don't look in those; they're private." Scowling, Shuuichi went after Seiji into the kitchen, trying and failing to snatch a notebook out of his hands.

"Oh, relax." Not even bothering to look at him, Seiji put down the notebook he'd been holding and went for another one. "It's not like I'm going to…" He trailed off, frowning. "This… isn't your handwriting," Seiji muttered, running his fingers over the label taped to the front of the notebook. Shuuichi squirmed, wanting nothing more to grab the notebook away from Seiji, but suddenly finding his arms limp at his side. Seiji looked up and frowned at him. "So it's true, then."

Shuuichi's stomach churned, and frankly he would have liked to have behaved as though he hadn't heard. He didn't meet Seiji's gaze, instead staring at a spot above his head, off to the right. The rain pattering on the roof seemed to grow louder and louder with each passing second. "Is what true?" If people were saying things about him, he'd better at least try to figure out exactly what was being said.

(Not that people weren't always saying things about him.)

Out of the corner of his eye, Shuuichi watched as Seiji placed the notebook back on top of the others, but still rested his hand atop the cover. "I heard a rumor that when you left your family's house, you took several of your family's research notebooks with you without your grandfather's leave."

That you stole them, Shuuichi thought he could hear behind the words. He felt almost absurdly grateful that that wasn't what Seiji had actually said.

"I… I wasn't really thinking."

He'd had another argument with his father. It was the same cycle they'd been going through for years—I hurt you, you hurt me, we both feel guilty about it and walk on eggshells around each other for the next few days. Shuuichi couldn't even remember what the argument had been about; they'd had so many that they all ran together in his head. It might have been something major, but it could easily have been something small. Something petty. It was just something he'd done to spite his father, and since he was already planning to leave, so much the better. Except this time, Shuuichi was pretty sure that what he'd done thoroughly outdid whatever his father had said.

Seiji tossed his head, his forehead creasing. "Yes, I can see that. You're very lucky, Shuuichi-san. If your family was still in the business and they chose to make a public issue of it, you could very easily have been sanctioned, been barred from meetings for so long that you'd have had to build your reputation back up from scratch." He stared searchingly into Shuuichi's face, and Shuuichi thought he saw what might have been a glimmer of pity in his eyes. "If your conscience is bothering you, you could always mail them back," he said quietly.

Maybe there was a part of Shuuichi that would like to do that. But the larger part of him quailed away from it—fear of reprisals, fear of curses, the simple fear of what his father or the rest of his family would say, if they ever sent anything in reply. (Maybe the fear that they wouldn't say anything at all.)

However, Shuuichi would sooner light himself on fire than admit any of that.

"Are you concerned?" He snorted. "I'm touched."

With that, Seiji found his thin, sharp smile again, and any trace of pity in his eyes vanished like dew when the sun rose in the mornings—likely never even there to start with. "What? Oh, no, Shuuichi-san. I'm just rather disappointed that you did something so obvious." He edged closer to Shuuichi, his smile starting to show teeth. "It would have been better for you to have copied down anything of use from those notebooks before you left; that's much more difficult to trace than just making off with the contents of your family's research cabinet."

"Are you serious? You were just going on about me getting sanctioned! What the heck was all that about, then?!"

Seiji laughed. Rather more disquietingly, he leaned in even closer, and pressed the fingertips of one of his hands against Shuuichi's chest. "Haven't you realized by now? You only get in trouble if you get caught."

Oh God, what is he… Shuuichi's face was burning; he could hear his blood pounding in his ears. It was much easier to deal with that sort of thing calmly when he was doing it for a commercial or the movie; in real life, it was just… He didn't know what it was.

He finally managed to push Seiji's hand away from his chest, and took a step away from him. "They're gonna find you face-down in a ditch someday," he stammered. "You know that, right?"

Seiji made a soft chuckling noise at the back of his throat. "That goes for both of us." He turned so that Shuuichi could only see the right side of his face, shut his eyes and smiled a thin, little smile. "What raises us up can bring us low just as easily. But they'd have to catch us first." He slipped away from the kitchen and went back to stand by the window. Shuuichi let out a deep, relieved breath when he finally got some semblance of personal space back, but for some unearthly reason there was a small part of him that wanted to go stand right by Seiji again. "And I don't know about you, Shuuichi-san," Seiji murmured, "but I have no intention of being caught."

The image of Seiji's father, the scars on his face snaking out from under his eyepatch, those same scars twisting his mouth when he spoke, his face carven and his one visible eye gleaming like a flame lit in the dark, flashed starkly through Shuuichi's mind. He tried to imagine Seiji looking like that, Seiji who was always smiling and smirking, ever wearing such a forbidding countenance, ever wearing that patch or those scars. He'd be a different person. A stranger.

"This is your last year of high school, isn't it?" Shuuichi asked him, more softly than he'd intended. "What are you planning to do after you graduate?"

He'd imagined that Seiji would scoff at him and say something like 'What do you think I'm going to do? Have you forgotten who I am?' But instead, Seiji sighed and shrugged his shoulders. He pressed his cheek against the window, staring pensively out into the rainy night. "I don't know. I think I might like to go a university."

"You?"

For once, it was Seiji on the defensive as he said, not a little haughtily, "My grades are more than good enough for college, Shuuichi-san."

"Oh, sure, Seiji; I can't imagine that you'd be caught being less than perfect at anything. But what would you major in?"

"Botany, maybe."

"Botany?"

Seiji raised an eyebrow and looked at Shuuichi as though he was just a touch slow. "I like plants," he said, far too evenly. "It's not outside the realm of possibility." He brushed a lock of hair away from his face. "What I'd really like is to travel," he admitted. "Just… live somewhere else for a while. I've never been away from here before, and once I'm the head, I won't have the opportunity anymore." He sounded almost wistful, though that note was so faint that Shuuichi couldn't even be sure that that was what he was hearing. Then, Seiji peered intently at Shuuichi. "You've traveled, haven't you, Shuuichi-san?"

"Well, yeah." Shuuichi fumbled around for words, thrown as he was by the turn this conversation had taken. He's never left town? Not even on field trips? That's… weird. "When I was a kid, my mother's family would take me on trips with them sometimes, usually to Okinawa. They took me to their house in Sapporo a couple of times; that's where my mother grew up." He had looked forward to those trips more than anything else, his only escape from a house filled with resentment and secrets and old fear. "I actually had to go to Tokyo recently for work—my other work, that is."

"Tokyo?" Something sparked in Seiji's eyes. "What's it like?" he asked curiously.

Shuuichi found himself wishing he could say something, anything that would have lived up to Seiji's likely pretty high expectations. However… "Honestly? It's loud. And crowded. And really smoggy. I don't think you'd like it very much."

Seiji looked away momentarily. "Oh." When he turned back, that catlike smile of his was back. "So you're still doing acting, are you?"

"Yeah, Seiji; some of us do have to hold down day jobs. Where do you think I was, last meeting?"

"Hmm… You know, I actually saw one of those commercials you did recently."

"Really?" Shuuichi knew it was kind of pathetic to sound as eager as he did, but no one he knew outside of his job as an actor seemed to be even remotely familiar with his work, such as it was. "What did you think of it?"

Seiji's smile sharpened, and Shuuichi felt the familiar prick of irritated dread—the feeling anyone got right before Seiji opened his mouth while wearing that smile. "I thought they were horrid, actually."

"Hey! I worked hard on those!"

Seiji shut his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest. "You're casting pearls before swine, then."

Shuuichi felt his face growing warm again. "What?" he squeaked.

Seiji's eyes shot open, and a look stole over his face that Shuuichi had never seen there before—complete and total shock. He looked at Shuuichi, wide-eyed, and clamped his mouth shut.

They stared at each other like that, the awkwardness surrounding them seeming to grow more palpable with each passing moment.

Finally, Shuuichi asked, rather helplessly, "You… You want something to eat?"

-0-0-0-

Food and drink in hand, chips and Oreos and canned soda, they flopped down on opposite ends of the couch and Shuuichi began flipping through TV channels. He kept it on a local news channel until, as luck would have it, up popped one of the car commercials he'd done recently. Seiji nearly fell off the couch laughing ("Was that for real? Was that seriously how they told you to act? And what was with that sparkling?! Was that a special effect?"), and, ears burning, Shuuichi changed the channel just in time to catch the beginning of some movie about a family being tormented by ghosts in their house.

The movie was interesting enough; Shuuichi thought it reminded him a bit of his exorcist work, except with 'ghosts' instead of ayakashi. Occasionally, Seiji would comment on someone in the movie doing something especially ill-advised ("So how long do you think it'll be before this one bites the dust, Shuuichi-san?" "I'd give it about thirty seconds."). Shuuichi would rant about the occasionally poor line delivery from one of the leads ("Geez, was he just half-asleep when he was reading his lines or something? Why didn't they do that take again?" "Say, aren't you working on a movie kind of like this?" "Uhhhh…").

Sometimes, Shuuichi caught himself staring at Seiji. It was so weird for them to be spending time together like this; he didn't think they'd ever interacted for non-exorcist reasons, whether it be at meetings or because Seiji just happened to be following him around while he was working on a case. He'd thought, not long after they met, to distance himself from Seiji as much as he could, thought it for the best. They were going down different paths; he couldn't get attached to someone like that.

That never really worked out, though. The fact of the matter was, there was no one else in the local exorcist community who was Shuuichi's age. Everyone else was at least ten years older than him and Seiji, and Seiji was the only one who didn't talk to him like he was "just a kid." (Never mind that when Seiji went to talk to Shuuichi, he seemed to have no greater motivation than to be the most obnoxious little pest possible.)

It was strange, but this… wasn't unpleasant.

And sometimes, he'd feel the hairs on the back of his neck prickling, and catch Seiji staring at him.

He'd be leaning back into the couch cushions, half-shrouded by shadow, his fine dark hair falling over his face, staring at Shuuichi so intently that Shuuichi half-expected him to burn holes in the side of his head. The first time Shuuichi caught him doing that, he thought that the lizard was crawling on his face—that was usually the reason people stared at him, if they stared—and bristled slightly, but he caught sight of movement and saw it creeping down his arm instead.

That was right. Even after all this time, most stopped and gawked when that lizard ayakashi made an appearance, creeping out from under his clothes, but Seiji never did. He was the only one who didn't, the only one who didn't stare at it or ask about it, or make veiled comments about how Shuuichi should be more anxious about it than he was (As though he wasn't anxious already). He behaved as though it wasn't there. He would needle Shuuichi about literally everything except that lizard. Shuuichi never knew whether to be angered by that or thankful for it.

When Seiji caught Shuuichi staring, Shuuichi would turn away, blushing darkly at having been caught. When Shuuichi caught Seiji staring, Seiji would smile strangely at him. He had a thousand smiles, it seemed sometimes, and Shuuichi had even adopted some of them for daily use (though once again, he'd sooner set himself on fire than admit that aloud), but this was one Shuuichi had never seen before. It didn't really seem to reach his eyes.

-0-0-0-

The blinds were pulled down over the living room window, but not shut. Heavy with sleep, eyes drooping and limbs leaden, Shuuichi woke some time in the night to bands of hazy golden light falling across his face, and the rain hitting the roof as loud as hail.

There was someone lying next to him.

In an instant, Shuuichi was wide awake, scrambling away from the other person, the mattress springs squeaking in protest against his every movement, until he remembered, and he leaned against the back of the couch, looking down at the sleeping figure next to him.

That's right, he didn't go home…

When the movie Shuuichi and Seiji were watching finished up, it was well past eleven, and raining harder than ever, so hard and so much that the street below looked like a dark-silver river in the night.

"It might be better if I just stayed here until morning," Seiji murmured, staring out the window, brow furrowed.

"What about your family? Won't they wonder where you are?" And they know that this is the last place he was. Shuuichi suddenly got the mental image of his apartment being mobbed by angry Matoba clan exorcists and winced.

"I'll call them. May I use your phone?"

Matoba-san, it seemed, was not terribly pleased that his son hadn't come home yet. Seiji may have been holding the phone up to his ear, but Shuuichi could still hear pretty clearly—"Do you have any idea what time it is?! Where on earth have you been?!" After Shuuichi was called upon to explain what type of precautions he took in protecting his home from ayakashi or other exorcists looking to cause him harm (with Matoba-san asking the questions with the sort of tone that made Shuuichi think that if he hadn't liked what he heard, he would have had someone pick Seiji up regardless of the time or the weather), it was agreed that Seiji would stay the night over at Shuuichi's apartment, and go home in the morning. The couch pulled out. They'd ended up sleeping on it, since Shuuichi was too tired to clear off his bed.

I wonder what's going on with his family. I know he's not going to tell me–I suppose I'll probably find out at the next meeting–but it sounds like it's something serious.

Oh well. It's not like there's a whole lot I can do about that.

Seiji hadn't been woken by Shuuichi sitting up (Or me freaking out like a stupid kid). He slept soundly, mouth slightly open, shirt collar askew around his shoulder. His hair fell over his face, hiding most of it from view. When he was awake, Seiji always held himself so stiffly, standing as straight and tall as he could. He almost always had a poker face ready, and even when the mask slipped, it only did so for a moment. The perfect clan heir in a world where weakness could easily end with someone's bones getting used as toothpicks. But there was no trace of that in sleep. In sleep, Seiji looked like he could be anyone.

Shuuichi lied back down beside him. As he drifted back off to sleep, it occurred to him that he never had figured out why Seiji had come here.