Title:Silver on the Mantel
Author: Proverbial Pumpkin
Rating: PG
Characters: K/Tohma
Summary: K finds a clue to what came before him.

Silver on the Mantel

My hands were mostly dirty from ash, by the time I realized I still had my work shirt on.

My lungs weren't the happiest they'd ever been either – nine months not smoking probably shot to hell. You hole up a fireplace with a few inches of charred log chunks and soot, and it's not going to be a picnic spiffing it back up, a couple years down the road. At least it looked like it had been years. I scraped a little at the layer of solid black on the back side, using the stoker as a chisel. Of course, the stoker hadn't been used in just as long so it left ash and rust staining grey on my hands. That was when I realized I was still in my office clothes, and awkwardly made it out of my tie and shirt. So there I knelt, in my undershirt and dress slacks, inhaling soot from who knows when and wondering why Tohma let it get to this state, when the rest of the house was immaculate as his office at NG. I glanced at the clock. Well, he told me he'd be a while.

I was brushing the loose ash onto a newspaper on the brick hearth, when I realized I'd scraped something into the grey pile that glinted. I turned it over once, letting the ash fall away.

A ring.

It was mostly sooty but looked like it hadn't dulled much, and even before I picked it up and rubbed it clean with my thumb and forefinger, I could see it was silver. A ring, someone's silver ring, had sat in the back of Tohma's fireplace for as long as those blackened logs.

I sat back on the hardwood floor for a minute, in front of the gaping half-cleaned fireplace, rolling the ring between my fingers. A plain band, no engraving. Not even the size of it offered any real clues – it wasn't tiny, but it wouldn't have fit me. Really, it could have been from anywhere. This fireplace had looked forgotten since the first time I found myself inside Tohma's home, not long after Mika took herself out of the picture. It could have been a family heirloom, fallen off the mantel one year.

Whatever it was, it had been left there, and the fireplace settled into disuse around it. I slipped it into my pants pocket and picked the brush back up, using the newspaper as a broom pan. After I finally emptied the last of the ash out into the kitchen bin I went upstairs, desperate to get a shower after a long day. Tohma would be back soon. I shook my head as I tossed a towel over the rack, thinking about that tiny piece of jewelry – bright under the ash and completely forgotten. It just about beat all.

Two hours earlier, we'd been on our way back to the office after a meeting in inner city – meeting with some people more important than me, less important than Tohma. Tohma was miffed because someone from their side hadn't shown.

"- And all for an anniversary? I question that. Whoever he is, he'll get plenty of time off in less than a week for the holidays, why take off now?"

I was driving. "Well damn, Tohma, you can't change when your anniversary is."

"Why would you even get married in December? It's like conceiving a child in late March. No foresight. Didn't he know I'd be there?"

"You sound like the most... pompous, out of touch-"

"And who is this wife of his? That's what I want to know."

I decided he was just testy because it was cold, it was late, and he still had things to get done. I'd told him to leave it all, to just get his things and go home and I'd meet him there, but he'd been determined. So I tried my rational voice as we drove along. "It was a late meeting. When you were married, wouldn't you have skipped a 5 o'clock meeting if it was your anniversary?"

"I most certainly would not."

Yeah, well, and look where that got you. Not that I was complaining. It was just a hard line to straddle sometimes, between Tohma and the rest of the world. He was on his own plane. "Well, not everyone prioritizes things the same way you do, obviously. People have their own lives."

"I don't care about their lives. I just want them at the meetings."

Don't let him get started. Steer away. "Would you ever have skipped school on your birthday, back in the day?" I asked him, leaning forward to turn on the heat dial.

"I can't even tell if you're serious."

"Senior year, I'd cut for less. Hangover, a fight with my parents back in San Franisco..." I grinned. "Or an excuse to take one of the foreign exchange girls for a drive."

"None of that applied to me."

"Well for God's sake, Tohma, what does apply to you?" Talking to Tohma was like watching a character in a movie. Theoretically he came from somewhere, but God knows where if you walked in on the middle. Guy had a hundred gigabytes of the business world in his head but absolutely no human sentiment you could get to without a wrench.

Times like these I still wondered what Tohma looked like when he was younger. "Didn't you ever have a pet that died while you were away, or something?"

He snorted. "No."

"Didn't you ever hope the power would go out so you could use the fireplace? Mis-file your taxes and forget to fix it? Didn't you ever-"

"That's enough, K-san," he said, before I got going. He had another two hours of work or more and wasn't in the mood. So I let him look out the window, at the streets and steel buildings we'd both seen every day since NG made it big. He was quiet the rest of the way and I didn't press him, just tapped my thumbs on the steering wheel while we waited at the lights, and noticed how dark the place was when we finally pulled into the parking lot. Just the dim hallway and foyer lights on every floor, and a couple office overheads lit up here and there in the windows, indicating where the people were who either had nowhere better to be or no choice but to be here instead.

Neither was true for Tohma, but here we were. He ran his fingers over his hat, absent-mindedly, as we drove towards the entrance. "We had a generator," he said.

"Hmm?" I glanced in the mirror and slowed to a stop in front of the doorway.

"Where I grew up," he said impatiently. "So if the power went out we didn't lose heat or anything, or lights." He shrugged. "We never used the fireplace. When there was a storm or it snowed badly, we just stayed in our own rooms and went about our business." Then he undid his safety belt and was on his way back to work, letting the door of my Honda fall shut behind him and holding out a down-turned hand towards the window, in a 'thanks, see you later' gesture before turning on his heel. I watched him head towards the entrance, a dark figure, before the lights reflecting in the glass doorway skewed left and slid forward, then slowly closed back into place as he walked down the hallway inside.

Leaning forward, I folded my arms over the wheel, thinking.

That was earlier. So a couple hours later, when I expected him home soon – to his home, that is – I crinkled up some old newspaper and shoved it between the kindling and chimney walls. I hadn't lived in a house with a chimney since before college, but the strategy of it came back. Kindling, angled; logs askew; paper filling in between. It's about airflow. Good, long fires don't just happen. I made it through half the metro section before the bottom fire stayed tall enough to light the logs, and felt a disproportionate satisfaction when a strip of orange flame finally crept up the largest piece. In a few moments it had broadened out. I straightened up, surveyed my work, and closed the thin, chain link curtain in front of it.

It was almost ten and I hit the lights. I was relieved to be out of my work clothes, and into the kind of shirt you feel like an actual person in. Our meeting earlier in the evening felt like it had happened on another day entirely; and the beginning of the work day, forever ago. But here I was – all that was missing was Tohma. I'd pulled my slacks back on after my shower. Now I fingered the ring for a moment before slipping it back into my pocket.

I was in the kitchen doing not much of anything, when I heard him come in quietly. He didn't call out like he did sometimes to let me know he was there, didn't stalk into the kitchen to make a phone call; I didn't even hear him on the stairs. So I met him in the main room, where he stood at the dark end, looking across at the glowing fireplace.

It was quiet and I didn't want to sneak up on him, so I cleared my throat as I joined him at the doorway. My first instinct was to gesture wildly at my beautiful fire and say look what I have created! But he was eyeing it the way you would a high school friend you're not sure you should speak to, so I just slung an arm around his shoulder. His jacket was cold, from the outside. Any other time I would have leaned down to give him a swift kiss on the neck, but he was wearing that hat of his and a knit scarf Ryuichi had unearthed in his own closet and, to my annoyance, proudly gifted to Tohma in the middle of a work day. I tugged at it. "Are you just going to stand there?" I said.

He tore his eyes away and set his briefcase down, and started to shed his outer layer of winter clothes. "It's nice," he said, nodding to the fire. "You shouldn't leave it unattended, though. What if it caught onto the carpet and went down the hall and burned down my piano?"

I laughed. Nevermind the rest of the house, and nevermind if I went down with it. "It's fine," I said, and tossed the scarf towards the corner. Get that out of here. Nice scarf, but I'd never liked it. I pushed at the small of his back, towards the couch. "Are you hungry?"

"I ate in my office. K-san, what's the occasion?"

I sat next to him, feeling the heat from the fire on my face and the chill from Tohma's clothes on my left. "The occasion is, it's cold outside." I touched the back of my fingers against his neck. "And you're freezing. Do you want a shower?"

"In a minute," he said. He leaned back against the couch and I settled in closer to him, crossing an ankle over my knee and draping my arm around his shoulders. Behind the curtain, the fire had worked itself into a single tongue that crackled forward and to the sides, revealing the charring logs for a moment before engulfing the base again. It flared, intensifying the light on Tohma's face and clothes, and then receded. All the colors within the reach of the glow were washed out in pale orange, and the only sound was the uneven snapping. Flakes of wood, smoldering into ash, floated up into the chimney. Tohma tilted his head, just slightly, to rest against me. It was an uncharacteristic admission.

The ring was still in my pocket.

He hadn't asked about it. He could have forgotten it was there, could have thought it was long gone, could have never known where it was in the first place. I shifted slightly and pulled it out. "Hey, Tohma."

I hadn't even realized his eyes had been closed, until he opened them and sat up. "Hm?"

"Is this familiar to you?"

He stared at it long enough for the flame to surge once, illuminating the band sharply against my palm. Then Tohma actually let out a laugh. "It is," he said, taking it from me and studying it with what might have been a trace of fondness. "It was in the fireplace?"

"Yes." I turned a little on the couch to face him, and waited, and watched him. He rolled it between his fingers exactly as I had, only then he absentmindedly slipped it on. And then back off again. He leaned back against the couch and held it up to the light. "Well?" I finally said to him, "which one of you chucked a sterling silver ring into a fire?"

"Which one of who?"

"Whi-... you and your wife, of course."

"Ah," he said, getting up, walking a few steps towards the fireplace. "Yes, it was Mika-san." He laid it on the mantel; then he slid it back a few more inches as an afterthought, so it was out of sight, or perhaps so it was safe. I stayed seated, watching him. He laid one hand on the mantel, lost in thought for a moment. The chill from outside had been knocked off him, and I could almost see his skin warming up, so close to the fire I'd kept going. "I believe she thought it was an inappropriate gift."

"Inappropriate? Seems like most any woman would appreciate it."

He laughed more quietly, sitting back next to me. "That isn't what I meant. It was a gift to me. Mika-san found it in a drawer somewhere one day, and got rather angry, and I never saw it again. I'd forgotten..." He slipped his hand in mine, another uncommon move. "Anyway, it was a long time ago. Thank you for finding it, though." Then he smiled a different smile, leaning in closer. "Now, I believe you said something about a shower?"

But I was still thinking. I glanced up to the mantel – I couldn't see the thing, but it was up there and I didn't have to like it, any more than I did that fuzzed scarf I'd thrown in a wad against the wall. "I'm not sure I blame her. Who gave it to you?"

He frowned and leaned away from me again. The fire's strength had plateaued, and when he turned to face me directly half his face was in the shadow. "K-san, it isn't worth getting into. Is it enough that it really was some time ago, and Mika-san had nothing to worry about?"

I could see that it was going to have to be. It seemed a little optimistic to say she had nothing to worry about, considering what had happened to their marriage down the road... but then, I'd scraped at that fireplace myself, brushed away the layers of soot over the ring. When Tohma said it was a long time ago, he was telling the truth. So when he took my silence as an agreement and placed a hand on my chest, I let him lean in front of me and put his mouth on mine. And there I was again, kissing a man I'd known for years, had bartered and worked with and eventually got for myself, but whose life I'd walked in on somewhere in the middle.

"So no dice on the ring?"

He smirked into a kiss. "It was no one I wanted this badly, how's that?" Tohma never broke contact as he maneuvered a leg over my lap, straddling my hips now with his knees digging into the cushion on either side of me. He was dark in front of me, the fire a smoldering low glow against his back. And even as his lips trailed up towards my ear, even as my lower half responded to his weight against my front, my head was still tense.

"Wait, Tohma, just one more thing."

He froze. "You've got to be kidding."

"If Mika had nothing to worry about, then what's the secret for?"

If there's one thing Tohma doesn't like, it's being questioned. But this was different. He clamped his mouth shut, disentangled himself from me, and studied me for a moment, seated a bit away. Then he spoke quietly.

"Mika-san knew there were other people in the world who need me more than she did. And it was never all about Eiri-san, be assured of that. But in the end..." He stood up. "It was too much to ask her to understand why I let them occupy me. Or to accept that they were all as important to me as she was, in their different capacities."

The fire had almost died. "The ring was three years ago this January, actually. So it's not enough for you that this is long past and that I was never unfaithful to Mika-san? Well, that's fine. I think you know who gave me that ring, K-san. What burns you is that you don't know why."

He walked to the corner by the entrance, gathered up his coat and then the scarf I'd taken off him. He picked a piece of lint off it, brushed a soft wrinkle out of the flat knit, and fingered the material thoughtfully for a moment. Then carefully, he folded it once over itself and laid it over one arm, his coat in his other hand. "I once thought I owed Mika-san every detail of every relationship in my life that made her feel threatened. Almost every detail. It was disastrous. So you'll know later, if you need to, when you're not already inclined to be suspicious." He started to leave the room, then paused. "But then, Mika-san never changed, so I won't hold my breath." And that was it – he went upstairs.

I sat there, after he'd gone.

I thought about following him. But he needed to not see me for a while. I thought about a cigarette, but I'd gone almost a year. In the end I just watched the last of the embers shrink in on themselves, until it was almost like having no light at all. I got up to hold the small band of silver again. Had it already belonged to Ryuichi, another back-of-the-closet present, or had he gone out with some tiny fraction of his fortune and picked out the perfect, classic gift? For Tohma.

I needed to sleep. This would all be here tomorrow, unfortunately, but tacit. Tohma would get up the next morning and silently will me not to bring it up – I knew him. And maybe, if it drained us both too much to face some very real facts about who Tohma was and what came before me... I'd let it go.

I put the ring back, near the back edge of the mantel. And there it stayed.

[End.]