Nagisa always slept tentatively, lightly like a cat, ready to spring up at the least little noise. His paranoia was well-founded – living with his instable mother had taught him vigilance even during sleep – and now that he was in the dorm-style bedroom for the Kyoto class trip, surrounded by a host of assassins-in-training, that life-long preparation for waking unannounced came in handy.

"Okaasan…" The word escaped from Karma's clenched jaw, hissed like a curse. Nagisa opened his eyes and watched the other boy lying on the futon next to his. Everyone had instinctively chosen places further away from the troubling boy, but Nagisa and Karma had been close friends not so long ago and the distance that had drifted them apart last year was blurry now, as if little by little they were scuffing at the line in the dust.

Karma groaned and rolled over on his side, facing Nagisa more properly. His brow was drawn down and his eyes scrunched shut against some sight unseen. "Just stay…" he said – breathing the words more than annunciating it – as if it were as pointless as it was mandatory. "Ikanaide kudasai, Okassan…," Karma continued in a breathless whisper, muffled by the pillow.

Please don't go, mother? Such a formal way for a son to speak, Nagisa thought. It reminds me of how I have to speak to my mother when she's in one of her moods.

A cloud slipped past in the night sky, allowing the moon to reflect off the white bed linens, providing a gentle nightlight to the room. Karma sniffed and without opening his eyes, he reached out and took Nagisa's hand.

"Okassan, domo arigato gozaimasu," Karma reactively thanked his mother in his dreams.

Well, I guess if this is what he needs; I can be a stand in for my friend.

Nagisa plumped his pillow with his free hand and had just closed his eyes to resume his battle with sleep, when he heard a soft sound like a single rain drop plopping on the tatami. Great, while Class 3-A gets private rooms, we get a roof that leaks: figures.

He looked up to the ceiling, waiting for the next drop so he could do something about it: a bucket underneath the hole, or move the futons, something, anything, was better than waking up wet in the morning. Then he heard it again, closer than he'd first thought. How can that be? He turned as much as he could away from Karma without taking his hand from the other boy's grasp and studied the night sky. He could count the individual stars, and a fair wind had blown away the clouds to the far side of the horizon.

Plop! There it was again, like some Chinese torture technique he'd read about in one of Karasuma-sensei's field manuals.

Ok, if I can't find it from the source, I'll backtrack it, Koro-sensei would be so proud of me, he thought, and turned back toward Karma and the open sliver of space between their futons.

The three drops were so closely spaced they seemed as one large splotch on the tatami. He shuffled over, hoping Karma was a deep sleeper, and looked up. The ceiling above them was dry.

Hmm, he pondered. Plop! This time the sound was right at his ear and when he looked at it, he could see the liquid glistening on the floor. He wet the tip of his finger in it and touched it to his tongue.

Salty, like the ocean… like tears… like Karma's tears –

Nagisa sat upright, pulling his hand from Karma's loose grasp.

"Uh…," Karma protested, his groan turning into a whimper. Nagisa watched to confirm his suspicion and after a beat, he saw another fat, plump tear hit the mat.

"Karma-kun," Nagisa whispered. When did we start using formality with each other again? It wasn't always that way. When he got no response, he shook the boy and raised the volume in his voice just a little more, "Karma-kun, wake up."

Karma cleared his throat and blinked his sticky eyes open; he rubbed a hand across them, finally noticing the tears on his face.

"Nagisa-kun?" he growled quietly, pushing up so that he rested on one elbow and glared at Nagisa.

"You were… um, well…" Nagisa put a finger to his eye, unwilling to accuse Karma outright of crying. "You were talking in your sleep," he said instead. "I didn't want you to wake everyone else up."

"Yeah? What was I saying?" he demanded.

"I don't know, it was just sounds really," Nagisa said, looking away.

"Whatever," Karma dismissed. He pulled back the blanket, cinched his belt tighter, and got out of bed. Nagisa didn't move as the anger roiled off Karma like a living tide of black emotions. Karma's feet padded silently toward the exit, followed by a soft swish from the door. Nagisa finally turned and looked as Karma rounded the corner and was gone.

Nagisa searched the hallways of the hotel, the bathrooms, and the common areas, but didn't find Karma until he investigated the small garden off the kitchen filled with fragrant herbs and vegetables. Karma sat on the small stone bench at the center with a daisy clutched in his fist, half the petals were already yanked out and as Nagisa approached, he heard Karma say, "She loves me…" He plucked the next petal. "She loves me not…" He repeated this until all he had left in his palm was the bald black central stalk. "She loves me not…" Karma ground the sound out and crushed the remnants of the flower in his hand.

"Are you ok?" Nagisa asked, making sure to keep a sizeable distance between him and his once best friend.

"Ok? Of course, what gave you the impression I wasn't ok?" Karma asked, his wide amber eyes glowing from within.

"I don't know. It's just not like you to storm off –"

"How do you know what I'm like now?" Karma asked. "It's not like you came to see me while I was suspended. I've changed and so have you."

"That's not fair, Karma-kun. You were the one who stopped coming around. You made it pretty clear you didn't want to be around me anymore, so I… honored your decision."

"Honored my decision, huh?" he said, staring hard into Nagisa's face, looking at him fully, searching for some sort of lie, but he found none and looked away first.

"Did you want me to chase you?" Nagisa asked, smirking.

"Don't be a dumbass, Nagisacough kun." Karma almost left off the honorific, but at the last second, he couldn't.

"Do you think one of these days we'll go back to dropping the –"

"Who cares? Call me whatever you want. I don't care," Karma snapped, as irritable as Bitch-sensei when someone insinuated she was old. "No one cares… she doesn't; why should anyone else?" He aimed his last comments at his bare feet, but Nagisa heard them anyway.

"You've met my mother, Karma-kun."

"So what?"

"I've never met your mother."

"Neither have I," Karma shouted, suddenly on his feet and in Nagisa's face. "Oh, she comes home sometimes, with Dad in tow, but they're strangers to me. At least you know your mother and father."

Nagisa staggered back, away from the radiating contempt that danced along Karma's aura like a live current of electricity. He took a deep breath and masked his own aura. We were best friend for two years, then drifted apart for a short time, but now we're on the mend, aren't we? I have to take this chance; it'll only come once.

Making himself as harmless as possible, assuming the posture he had to with his mother – with bowed head and hands loose and at his side – he toppled forward, as if tripping and fell into Karma's hands as his friend instinctively reached out to stop his momentum. In that second he struck with the speed of a snake and latched his arms around Karma's neck, bringing him in to an embrace.

"I'm sorry, Karma, I should have chased you." Karma twitched, confused about the conflicting instincts. "I'm so sorry. You were testing me, weren't you? To see if I'd leave you, too."

"Dumbass," Karma sighed, wrapping his arms around Nagisa's waist and not fighting the hug any longer. Again, he'd let Nagisa close enough to kill him, but for once it didn't matter. "It wasn't a test… life isn't a test, it's just…" He stopped unsure of what he really meant. All he wanted was to bury his head in the loose blue hair that flowed around Nagisa's shoulders, so he did. He hadn't seen Nagisa with his hair down in so long, it was almost shocking to realize that his friend had allowed him to see him this vulnerable. "Let's forget about that time, Nagisa-kun, and try to move forward with what we have now."

"Ok, Karma-kun."

"I can't remember the last time anyone's held –" Karma stiffened and dropped his arms from Nagisa's waist. He used his hands to pry Nagisa from around his neck, then stepped away before he could say something as embarrassing as what was happening between his legs. He couldn't help the blush that rose off his chest and up his neck, but he could put some distance between them – just like the last time – and allowed the darkness of the night to hide his emotions. "Go on ahead, I'll catch up in a minute."

Nagisa stood there with his hands still up in the air as if he were holding his best friend; he was a little – no a lot – at a loss, his mouth gaping as he tried to form words. His hands clenched to fists as he blushed and put his hands loose at his side. There was that one moment, wasn't there, when we were connected again?

"Go on," Karma said, looking away, his arms crossed over his chest, hands gripping at his own shoulders.

"Ok, Karma-kun, I'll go on ahead, but…" he stepped in close, ignoring the way Karma flinched, and put his hand on the other boy's arm. When he didn't resist that gesture, Nagisa advanced a little more, and moved his hand to Karma's chin, and urged the other to look at him.

"If you won't let me stay – or chase you – then this time I want to invite you to chase me." Nagisa stepped up on tiptoes and chastely kissed Karma's lips, pulling away almost as fast as if he'd struck with a knife, then he was gone into the night, leaving Karma defenseless.

"Well," Karma said, chuckling, once he'd felt Nagisa's aura fade. "If that's the way you want this to go, Nagisa, I'm willing to accept your intent."

A/N: This just popped into my head today. I'm not sure if I intend to continue this or not, but I'll mark it as incomplete, just in case you really like it.