"Does God exist?"

The dormitory room was dark, even with a lone lamp glimmering above a stack of papers, many with black ink and silvery pencil scrawled uneasily across the smooth pages.

"Why are you asking me?" A rustle, then the swish and soft crackling noises of a page turning reverberated in the air. "That's not what you should be thinking about. Yuri would kick you hard, not that you have any dignity left to offer her on a silver platter."

"Hey." The sheets swished against each other as Hinata sat up. "Don't insult me, not at this hour of the night. My pride already took a hefty beating."

"I'm sorry. I merely thought you would enjoy the verbal banter."

"That's not…" Hinata flopped back into the warm hollow he had created in the mattress. "Otonashi…"

"Yes, darling?" The sarcasm dripped and made a widening puddle on the floor. "You're unusually shy, my dear. Perhaps you have a confession?"

"You're unusually cynical." Hinata allowed himself to savor the brief victory, no matter how small. "I just wondered…"

He punched the pillow above his head, which sighed and gave way to his fist. "Why does God exist? Why does Yuri believe that God exist? What if Naoi is right, and we could be God…and what if we don't turn into barnacles after we disappear?"

"Hinata, don't say that word." The tension in Otonashi's voice cracked the words – made the syllables strained and stretched on empty air. "How could you imagine disappearing now?"

There was silence in the room – heavy silence, the kind that made one's ears ring with the terrible anticipation of what would happen next, and the occupants of the dorm felt the dead weight settle on their chests, bind them to their places with the terrible foreboding of what would happen next, what words would lash out and leave a sear mark across someone's cheek –

"Hinata!"

It was only my imagination, huh, that I couldn't move and my legs were chained to the bedposts – that there were endless cinderblocks piled on that thing called a heart – what is a heart, and what is a soul, and do I have one? – I don't know, do you?

His eyes closed, black lashes rising once in the slight breeze that caressed his face and swept a light butterfly kiss across the pale skin.

"Hinata!" The red-haired teen was out of his chair in an instant. "God, don't scare me like this -"

"Tricked you." Hinata's eyes snapped open, and he began convulsing with laughter, turning onto his side to writhe with amusement.

"You're a monster." Otonashi went back to his desk. "You're a great, lumbering fool, Hinata, and it's a wonder you haven't yet died twenty ways to Sunday, never mind hanged and quartered by most of the club."

Hinata stopped laughing abruptly and sat up on his bed. "Think about it, though – why does Yuri insist on believing in God? There are plenty of logical arguments against Him. Why does she…"

"She needs a scapegoat." The redhead stared calmly at his books. "She needs something, someone to blame for her life, the same way you do. The same way everyone in this godforsaken -" he laughed loudly, too loudly – "school needs a whipping boy, a whipping god. We never praise Him for the good things that fall our way, insisting they were products of our own hard work, but when bad luck turns this way – it wasn't my fault, it's that man, that thing on the celestial throne high in the heavens that doesn't like me."

"I have only myself to blame."

"That's what you'd like to think." Otonashi had turned suddenly angry. "You would love to think that you made the mistake, you didn't catch a piece of rubber covered in leather and held together with red yarn, so you let your soul slip from your body and ended up here. Why do you blame yourself?"

Hinata held his breath – one second, two seconds – the question was begging to be asked, but would he let them? In the end the words bubbled from his throat and out his mouth –

"Are you…blaming God for what happened to me?"

Otonashi met his eyes for a second and looked away, running slender fingers through his scarlet hair and bracing his elbows on the table – the silence was deafening – and he cried out, "Who knows, yes, no, the world is a falling orb of fire and I'm plummeting with it, the answer is not within me but floating out there somewhere, and -"

"God, don't do this, Otonashi -" The once-cheerful teenager sat up from his spot on his bed, fists clenched at his sides

"You speak to me of God!" A strange laugh ripped its way from his roommate's lips. "Who is God, and how can he decide what I say? If he is really all-powerful, then did he make the decision to let us fight against him? We're playing into his hands, we are, and if you believe in God then our fate is already determined! It would be as if – as if -"

Hinata started forward from his sitting position and embraced him from behind, holding Otonashi's arms to his side and digging his chin into the soft hollow where the redhead's neck and shoulders met.

"I'm sorry for asking, I didn't know you'd get like this -"

"I, I, I, it's always "I" with you, isn't it?" Otonashi snarled and half-struggled. "Let go, Hinata!"

"Goddamnit, no, you little fuck." Now he was shouting too, and their voices bounced off the walls, silent ghosts that whispered everywhere.

Otonashi quieted down. "Damn."

"That's right, damn," panted Hinata. "Damn you, because we're all damned already."

"I thought damnation referred to hell, not purgatory."

"Right, like we're being purged of anything here." He inhaled deeply, letting the fragrance of Otonashi's blazer seep into his mind and diffuse everywhere, covering the angry thoughts and the frayed nerves.

"…can I stay like this?"

"No." Otonashi tugged at his arms. "Get off, you're heavy." Then he laughed hollowly and smirked. "It's kind of odd – you've got weight, and yet you're supposed to be a soul, and only a soul – I wonder what gives you your heaviness, because in theory you're supposed to float light as a feather."

"I don't know where you're going with this, and I don't care." Hinata let his arms fall to his sides. "Can't you just shut up?"

"Maybe it's the sin." His roommate's smile is sickly sweet and cloying. "It's the sin that sticks to us all, gives us form and mass."

"You think Iwasawa cast off her sin?" There's another thump and rustle as Hinata sagged back onto his bed. "You think she cleansed herself by singing?"

"I don't know. I don't think God knows, either."

This was written before the end of the series, before they both became straight. (Insert a long sigh here.) Around episode 5 or 6, I think. Now these two have been relabeled as an EPIC BROMANCE, which is still epic. Yui and Kanade are cool and shit, but I prefer my EPIC BROMANCE.

(Yes, the correct way to type it is with all caps.)