Disclaimer: Thanks for inventing beyblade, Mr. Aoki Takao. If you want this, it's yours (but please ask feather-duster first!). I claim nothing but the right to fan it up all over the place. Also, everything I know about BEGA I learned from f-d, so where they're concerned, it's as much her intellectual property as mine.

When Parrots Lost Their Leaves

By Dixon Oriole

They boarded the train at half past two, and they'd be to the seashore by three.

"Be careful of the doors, Brooklyn. Let's not sit here, here, move a little further down."

"Hiro, you can let go of my hand. There's sand all over the floor, isn't there. There's seashells in it."

Hiro felt under the weather as usual. The effects of an impending cold that he always, in his fatalistic moments, chalked up to the presence of Brooklyn. The light-headedness, the slight dementia—it also resembled being madly in love, and Hiro stubbornly maintained that miserable outlook instead of daring to hope that it was just a passing bug. A passing bug after more than a year!

No.

The train jerked and he slumped a little against the hand-rail, pulling Brooklyn accidentally into him. "Oh…" Almost upsetting the camcorder that Brooklyn casually held, that Hiro not-so-casually owned, and that was pointed directly at its owner's blushing face. His inner-ear imbalance and propensity towards a cold sweat was exacerbated, and Hiro grimly assumed that was because of Brooklyn bracing himself with his free hand on Hiro's own chest.

Thankfully Brooklyn didn't look up from the unswept floor of the passenger car, even through the camera. He ignored it, if indeed he happened to notice Hiro's vaguely euphoric expression, or the following frown as Hiro tried fiercely to chase it from the view of the old mother two rows away who was just staring at the pair of them over her tote-full of swim floaties.

"I think there's seaglass somewhere in this sand, Hiro," Brooklyn said, scraping an experimental furrow with his shoe. "It's a beer bottle from Normandy." He swung down into a seat and half-twisted to record out the window, as the fall scenery and inland fauna began to trade for that of the coast. Allowing Hiro a moment to cling to the railing and recover.

"What color is it, Brooke?"

"Greenish—brown. The brown ones get further because they're more common."

"That's-that's great, Brooklyn… Maybe we'll find a sand dollar too."

They had fled Ming Ming's birthday party at quarter til two, slipping stealthily through the side-doors and then running hand in hand down the veranda. They had without the slightest hesitation forgone the mimosas and the karaoke, the Bollywood screenings and the festoons of purple crepe paper, in favor of what Brooklyn had called 'someplace better'.

"Sand dollars? No… not this time of year."

"Well, then, what about half-dollars? One day we could rent a metal detector."

"It's the wrong time of year for dollars… The ocean isn't going the right direction until Christmas."

Hiro had no idea why Brooklyn had invited him along—certainly not for his conversation. But in his truly, truly fatalistic moments, he didn't even care; he couldn't even get past the feeling of Brooklyn's breath on his ear telling him at the party that they ought to leave now. If he had wanted to give himself a heart attack, and fall dead on the spot, Hiro might have believed that Brooklyn wanted him there, or valued him company, or loved him back. If he wanted to provoke his illness to a terminal degree, he might recall in detail how easily Brooklyn's fingers wove with his. How easily their hands fit. How easy it would be to rent them a hotel room for the night.

"Besides, I don't want to use a metal detector to find more people. Hi-ro, I'm trying to forget about people!" Brooklyn banged his head against the window, making the old mother look up.

"Oh, then, a starfish? Maybe we can catch hermit crabs also. You like tide pools," Hiro softly suggested. Wanting to suggest other activities too.

"…Don't be barbaric."

Brooklyn smiled. Hiro sat down beside him because his knees gave out. Hiro turned also and leaned a little back, to regard the yellowing fall landscape over Brooklyn's shoulder, through the viewscreen of the blessed camcorder that so far miraculously no one appeared disgusted by.

"Look, Hiro, the first seagull in a month. He's very distinguished, isn't he?"

When Hiro pressed closer to search the horizon for the offending bird, Brooklyn didn't recoil immediately, so that meant Brooklyn didn't mind? And Hiro, reeling with the proximity, only managed to check himself three inches to the moment from actually touching his beyblader's shoulder. Because he could feel his heart in his throat, crowding out his voice—"Uhm…"—and if it beat any harder it would explode. He thought he'd let it. He couldn't see the seagull; there were clouds in his eyes, and they only parted for Brooklyn.

The old mother down the line glared suspiciously at Hiro. He looked ill; he ought not be going to the beach; in no time he'd have to support himself entirely on that poor red-haired boy. When Hiro's glazed eyes met hers, she abruptly busied herself with making her three-year-old blow his nose.

"Hiro, shut up, your pulse is louder than everything." Brooklyn glanced back at the traveling companion who hovered uncomfortably in the periphery of his vision, neither coming nor going, and his cheeks petulantly inflated.

Brooklyn, somehow, already smelled like the ocean. Brooklyn had been wading in the fountain at the train station, and now sand clung all the way up to his knees. Had they salted the water? Was Brooklyn absorbing the cold breeze, wafting in at them through the window..? Hiro distinctly thought he could die. He shivered. He was in danger of cardiac arrest. But. That was fine. "I'm—sorry, Brooklyn, it's skipping beats every so—It must be the train. I'll try to quiet down."

"Please do. Hiro. Why aren't you looking at the seagull? His name is Grandpa."

With effort, and not just because he couldn't find the damn bird, "Grandpa is beautiful, Brooklyn. Very distinguished… Fit-for-a top hat."

Brooklyn smiled again, coldly. He didn't like it when animals wore people-suits. But he let it slide because Hiro was looking somewhat peaked. Hiro closed his eyes and let himself be rocked gently along, listening to the repetitive deep click of the tracks underneath them and the repetitive hushed breathing of Brooklyn-at-his-side, trying to steady his own alongside it, and he couldn't remember any other happiness. And if Hiro was going to be thankful for nothing else, he was thankful for the ticket stub in his pocket. That they had stood together before the counter, Brooklyn taking Hiro's hands and using his coach as a counterbalance for him to tilt backwards, looking up at the list of destinations for the trains departing Immediately.

The line of Brooklyn's sharp jaw and graceful neck drawn from below…

"Grandpa has disappeared. He's a town seagull, not an ocean seagull, there's a real distinction. He couldn't follow us forever, Hiro; don't miss him, don't be so needy. And you mustn't mock him about his caste if you see him, Hiro. He's sensitive; he'll probably kill you."

"I won't die until you tell me to, Brooklyn."

The old mother snorted. Delirious young men had no business going to the beach!

...

"Hiro," Brooklyn began, startled, before falling into a restless silence. He traced their reflections slowly on the glass with a fingertip, and then he continued, very gravely to the window, "Everything you say sounds stupid."

Hiro watched, through a fog that obscured other people's faces, as the old mother's three-year-old son dug around on the floor for the purported Normand sea glass—until she caught him and dragged the squealing blonde out of Hiro's sight, back behind her hen-shaped bulk. Hiro didn't take it personally; for all he knew Brooklyn was talking to another seagull. And stupid or not, in the depths of his pounding skull he stubbornly believed that his words had been sincere. And Brooklyn knew everything, so Brooklyn knew that.

"Hiro, give me the ticket stubs and the pamphlet, please."

"Brooklyn…" Hiro whispered, harshly, when the mother wasn't watching. Don't run from me. Don't hate me. Don't leave me alone. Don't let me love you forever without doing anything about it. Let me do something for you. He shifted to face Brooklyn further. Kind of stir-crazed.

"Hiro."

Brooklyn impatiently clawed at Hiro's pockets for himself, until he found the papers he wanted, and withdrew them, but Hiro caught his camcorder-wrist— Brooklyn's eyes narrowed, but he ultimately ignored the affront; just swiveled his spare hand and tilted his head until he could read the back of the pamphlet for the little zoo three stops in the opposite direction one-handed. He dangled the camcorder complacently in Hiro's grip.

On the zoo's logo there was a monkey—some kind of mutant rhesus—wearing a party hat, lips pulled back over his teeth in an enormous grin, which was a threat in monkey-language, at least, if not human-language. Party hats on animals..? Obviously this pamphlet held double-meanings. Someone who understood animals could puzzle out the real message. Brooklyn maneuvered the ticket stubs up between his teeth, and then shook the pamphlet open, flattened it against the window, and peered closely at an image of a toucan.

Hiro gazed hard at the blue veins lining the wrist he held gingerly in his fingers. Trying to memorize their composition. Brooklyn, take me with you when you leave. Be there when I wake up.

He had never minded looking as stupid as little as he did then. This time, on this adventure that he could easily have undertaken alone, Brooklyn had opted for Hiro, and if Hiro was going to feel thankful for nothing more in the course of his entire life, it was these forty-seven minutes they had spent alone together so far. No explanation for Garland. No excuse of training. No excuses at all, to that old mother, or regrets for what happened, or what that old mother saw, when he was too high on the experience to think clearly.

"Hiro, turn this pamphlet around for me."

Oh no, he couldn't move. Only his thumb could move, memorizing by touch the composition of the veins and the miracle of Brooklyn's pulse..!

Did Brooklyn have any idea—Hiro thought, eyes fondly and dazedly half-closed, staring upon the back of the russet head—any idea, the kind of power he commanded? And in having proof of it, on so many little video tapes that Hiro so religiously collected, did he realize how that power became amplified, and reached out, and spread the deadly virus that had become his love for Brooklyn? Now it was destroying everything that Hiro had once held inside.

The record button was still alight. Hiro looked solemnly into the eye of the camcorder. Hello, I was Hiro Kinomiya, but he's killing me. I feel great. He watched as Brooklyn irately flipped the pamphlet over with one hand, unassisted, muttering something through clenched teeth about Hiro that was probably in a different language but that probably meant 'useless'.

Hiro's voice sounded indifferent, too tired to hold an emotion. Hollowed out, and maybe more believable that way. "Brooklyn, tell me to die and I'll die. If you hate me, I can live forever as whatever this is now. But my skin is burning up. I think it's making me sick. If you don't hate me, Brooklyn, tell me you love me. Let me do something for you."

Hiro had it on film as proof for himself, another little tape about the blush and hack and cough of his condition, for when he was choking down cold medicine in an attempt to move on with his life. He'd never move on with his life.

Hiro looked at Brooklyn's mouth, specifically the bits of paper poking out of it. His life before this ticket stub was irrelevant. Hiro had never felt so much like giving up the person he had been without Brooklyn, and all that had once been important before him. Hiro felt himself weakening—his resilience, and the hope that one day he'd see himself free of this slave-like responsiveness to the every whim of a mere child—hope and self seeped out and greased the train tracks, propelling his spirit forward unto the waves of the ocean that would crush it. And leave--something, behind.

"Brooklyn, don't send me away. Let me do something for you. Let me run away with you."

"I hope this cobra isn't their idea of advertising."

Hiro's hand spasmed open and Brooklyn took back both the camcorder and his wrist. He didn't look up from the pamphlet. He gave no indication he was hearing any of it. And it was some form of Hiro dying. And some other form paddling doggedly out from the shipwreck to meet the occasion of Brooklyn. This death by merciful degrees, Hiro welcomed it. Better, after all, to melt beneath a fever. Dashed upon an underwater volcano. Pressed into—obsidian. Heat purified, didn't it? Unbearable heat killed, but it cleansed, didn't it? Rendered one down to their best parts..? "We can go to Normandy and make sea glass into bottles."

"I'd rather go here tonight," Brooklyn replied, more clearly now that he had allowed the ticket stubs to flutter down into his lap. He tapped the pamphlet with one of the fingers that held it stationary. "All of them are crying for help." Brooklyn turned, looking at Hiro alongside the look of the camcorder. His soft pale face was attentive, and gentle, and unsmiling. Unmocking.

"What—are their hours? They'll be closed," Hiro said, slumping over and rubbing at his temples.

"It's a small town institution. Hiro, I am worried about this turkey." Brooklyn showed Hiro a perfectly normal-looking petting-zoo turkey, whose picture was printed above a caption that read: Come meet and feed our Gary! "Gary isn't named Gary and he is not as docile as they think." Brooklyn let that hang in the air, his green eyes terribly, terribly wide, as he methodically folded the pamphlet into the shape of an origami swan.

Hiro felt as though a thick fog had settled in his brain; the clouds no longer parted even for Brooklyn; on the verge of something, and yet—distracted beyond reason by implications that Gary the turkey was a born leader of the Parktown Zoo Rebellion. He listened for a moment to Brooklyn's breathing and his own heart and the train tracks, then smiled out the window and resolved that Brooklyn had heard him. Brooklyn knew everything. Yet Brooklyn wasn't flinching.

The new Hiro, rising to meet, full of a morbid and possibly self-destructive need to see his love returned, hesitated, and then, just, hugged Brooklyn. Three seats away, the old mother grimaced, and busied herself with a fourth application of hand sanitizer to her three-year-old's face and arms. Brooklyn froze, and then carefully examined the camcorder over Hiro's back until finding the off switch, closed the viewscreen, and with a bit of fussing managed to put it back into Hiro's inside jacket pocket.

"Hiro. Your skin is scalding me, do something."

"I am finally doing something."

He sighed. "Hiro, I don't want to remember there are people with bottles in Normandy." Brooklyn put his hands gently on his coach's head, and let Hiro tighten his grip, even though by virtue of the contact they were both burning up in the sandy passenger car on their way to the coast. Brooklyn let the swan-pamphlet tumble down into the aisle. He whispered, "You don't know me before I knew you." The film is empty. There's nothing on the videos. There's nothing in the boxes and the records and the evidence you keep. "You only know me how I am now."

"That's all that matters," Hiro protested. Punch drunk on the vision of his water-logged former self.

"Hiro, how can I bring you, how can I wake up with you, when you don't know the me from before I knew you? What is there you could possibly do for the me that doesn't know you?" Brooklyn planted his chin in Hiro's hair, and watched the old mother who watched them right back, with an expression torn between horror and fascination. "You collect my pocket lint and tell me you love me. Hiro, to protect me, will you destroy me?"

"I'll never hurt you."

"To protect me, can you kill me? Hiro, do you love all of me? Do you know all of me? Don't say things unless you want me to believe them. Hiro. Think about what you're saying; what if I believed you? What if I asked you to forgive the me that you don't know? Can you do it? Can you kill me?"

Hiro tore loose, held Brooklyn back by his shoulders, and looked him square in the imperious eye. "I know everything about you that matters," he repeated, shaking Brooklyn to punctuate. "Who knows better, tell me that. Garland? Tyson? Kai?"

"You know lint," Brooklyn spat, looking away out the window. At the gulls and the little port town coming into view around them. They'd made it. Here they were. Burned to ashes, blowing in on the October wind.

Hiro kissed his beyblader's forehead, for lack of anything better to do. In lieu of his inhibitions, left in the grave with his self-before-Brooklyn, relegated to the coffin of this passenger car. "In the end, people are worth exactly what they leave behind in the minds of those who love them," Hiro hissed, as though he believed it. As though he wasn't scared of that. "Lint notwithstanding. So I will know your life as it is now, Brooklyn. I will stay with you in this moment, Brooklyn. You chose me this afternoon. And you have me. And I don't care who you think you really are deep down.

"Accept me. Have me. I won't leave you no matter what."

"Hi-ro… What if I believed you?" Brooklyn pleaded, grinning, standing up out of the embrace. Dragging Hiro along by their easily interlaced fingertips, as the train lurched to a stop, and as the doors wheezed open, and the October wind moved the sand on the floor—brushing shells and sea glass into existence. Carrying the weight of the ocean onto their brains. "The pamphlet had a puzzle. It was a trick. There was a photo of a lovebird named Shiva who has had a dark past. The caption asked you to come find out when parrots lost their leaves. It's got to be some lesson about phylogeny—"

"Brooklyn. Believe me. Choose me. I love you as you are now, I love the Brooklyn who knows me, and we'll do without our pasts." Hiro stopped him on the train platform, as the old mother, thoroughly intimidated by the intensity of their muffled conversation and the sickened pallors they had both suddenly acquired, scuttled hastily past with her child, fleeing contagion. Her three-year-old's extra-sanitary fists had found soft shards of cloudy brown glass to bring away from the journey, Brooklyn noticed. Watching them instead of Hiro. Wishing for a noise other than Hiro, when he said, "There's nothing to forgive. There's nothing to destroy. We'll just go set who we were out to sea. The ocean can grind those rough edges down."

…

Brooklyn kept his eyes elsewhere, as Hiro wrapped his arms around him. He kept them on the seagulls shrieking over a trashcan nearby. On a vendor of kites, napping at his post. He breathed and let the wind stick salt to the back of his throat.

"You'll hold me as long as you can hold me," Brooklyn finally admitted to Hiro's left shoulder. He fished around in his coach's jacket for the camcorder. Dragged it back out and folded it into Hiro's hands, as well as the ticket stubs now crumpled into lint. And then for a moment Brooklyn's eyes were downcast, and was that a wrinkle in his brow? Almost a pensive expression? "You'll hold me as long as you can stand me…"

Brooklyn tossed the ocean-variety seagulls a glance that Hiro intercepted, and that Hiro killed himself believing was hope. Brooklyn's shoulders slumped, in the crestfallen side of a shrug, "Maybe it matters."

"Brooklyn," Hiro said, trying to pour all the devotion of his reborn soul into those two beloved syllables.

"Maybe, alright? Buy me ice cream. Coffee flavored."

"It's freezing out."

"You've got a fever for the both of us. Working yourself up over nothing…" Brooklyn shrugged away Hiro's touch, and Hiro's restraint, forging ahead down the road towards the silver-blue horizon. "Hey, stop it. What do you say we go do something important later? Let's bring Garland home some animals, okay? The cobra, Hiro, he doesn't belong in that place. He's sane, for now, but he's starting to crack. Have you ever heard of a parrot with leaves, it's a terrible joke, isn't it, Hi-ro."

Hiro fell back a little, stunned as the parting of their fingers left not just his hands feeling profoundly empty. He closed his fist tightly around their ticket stubs. He clicked on the camcorder and turned it to his face. My name was Hiro Kinomiya. Brooklyn is calling me: "Hiro, hurry, you were so excited at first! Breathe once in a while, this air is good for you. Hiro… Look up. Hiro, don't look so frustrated, I believe you? Right? Look… I've been contrary, Hiro. You can kiss me if you like. I brought you here, so I'm sorry I didn't like any of your ideas—want to rent us a kite?"

My name was Hiro Kinomiya and one day over a year ago I awoke with a terrible fever. It is his fault that this fever has not left me; it has in fact killed me. I am now a slave to it, and I am vindictive about it, and there he goes now. Hiro turned the camcorder, panning in on Brooklyn, ranging aimlessly ahead down the leaf-edged street—towards the gulls, not distinguished at all, just mangy birds over an ocean against a cloudy sky that warned of rain to make them colder, clouds unwilling to part for Brooklyn—… Brooklyn unwilling to part with--… Brooklyn at the crest of a hill, hair tousled by a wintery breeze, up on the hill—calling down to him.

Hiro hurriedly peeled off his jacket and rushed to catch up, to fold it around Brooklyn. His feet were still wet from the fountain!

Hiro could fool himself that it was easy. For years if he had to, he had the strength. But just catching his beyblader was the important thing; catching him over and over again, until Brooklyn accepted it; now especially, now especially, because God forbid, after all Hiro was the carrier and God forbid Brooklyn never catch this cold.

end

...

A/N: OH MY LORD IT HAS BEEN FOREVER. HEY SO feather-duster IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY TODAY HOW DO YOU FEEL? I WROTE YOU A THING? YA LIKE IT? Last time I wrote you a ton of drabbles; please tell me if you'd prefer some of them to this stinking corpse of an ooc unnuanced time-waster. jkjk. It's not THAT bad. I mean I don't know what it is, is it fluff? Was it like... fluff, but a little drenched in blood? Do I have ANY idea how to write Brooklyn? OH GOD I NEED REASSURANCE.

I LOVE YOU VERY MUCH. I'LL DO BETTER NEXT TIME (russsssst), MY DEAREST MOST BEAUTIFUL BEGA-SAINT AND FOREVER COLLEAGUE. HAVE A BEAUTIFUL REST OF THE DAY.

...I mean nothing happened in it, that's for sure, because no matter how I try to coerce the guy, Hiro's brain just wallows all over the idea of BROOKLYN and won't let me DO ANYTHING. So I guess I just facilitated him. By the fifth start-over, I kind of gave up on manhandling him. Freaking Hiro, rambler. He's almost doing a good job communicating on Brooklyn's level here... but I think he's still using a slightly incorrect vocabularly. I honestly have no idea what I'm looking at anymore. There's probably spelling errors and wonky sentences and heavy handed metaphors and the ilk, but I will catch and repair them! As soon as I can! FRESH EYES I NEED FRESH EYES AAAAHHHHH-- (chorus: dude, let it go.)

kk.

Hey so Hiro is lovesick. And he's TERMINALLY ILL, ho ho ho ho ho! And he scared Brooklyn into a corner, isn't that cool? I LOVE YOU f-d, f-d, f-d. PAL.

ANYONE REVIEW IF YOU FEEL LIKE.