A Brighter Shade of Sunshine

Lenny/Yuki =]

First of all, I am still writing "Possessive", but I wrote this one shot during a bit of a writers block. I'm not sure if I'm too pleased with it-it seems to me like I've just regurgitated Lenny and Yuki from series 24, no matter how many times I tinker with it. I still think it's pretty cute though, and hopefully you will too. I

It's both Lenny and Yuki's POV. I'm not very good at POV.s though, so bear with me.

I was listening to Fleet Foxes, Kubb, Owl City, Mice Parade and Casiotone For The Painfully Alone whilst writing this-not interesting really but there you go, indie influence all the way (Y).

Enjoy

A Brighter Side of Sunshine

Lenny + Yuki's thoughts 3

Lenny

The first thing I said to Yuki was that he didn't speak much, and I was correct on that analysis. Even now, over a year since we met, he doesn't speak much, but that's not to say he isn't a communal guy, a guy who likes to be involved with the rest of the ED we work with, or a guy who will go out of his way to help people. Hell, all I can do is admire him, as he convinces a patient that treatment is the way forward with his calm, sympathetic manner. My manner isn't calm or sympathetic, and up until recently I didn't see that as a problem.

That first day on the ED as an F2 changed my life, where we received news that our colleague had been killed in a fire in a situation where we had all fought to go to. I've never believed in God, but maybe it's God's fate that kept Yuki from going down to that warehouse instead of Heather-after all, he got the answer to Adam's question right, the only one of us out of 8. Genius. If Yuki had gone down there, and burnt to death, I have no idea where I would be. At least I couldn't really miss him, but then none of us, not me, not the rest of the ED, not the hundreds of patients, would know what an astonishing he guy was, except for one person, of course, who goes by the name of May.

After Heather's death, Yuki, May and I were like the three musketeers, getting through the everyday turmoil of being a doctor, possibly the hardest, academically demanding and stressful job anybody could get themselves into. We were best of friends, and for a long time, I naively thought that the three of us always would be. Yuki was the brains, I was the brawn, and May was like the mother, the perfect combination, the perfect opposites. It was perfect to feel like I was part of something, and feeling like I had the world's best surrogate brother and sister, especially after I lost Davey.

But then, we got to the dreaded F2 exams, and all of the problems started. Out of the three of us, May was the least gifted. It's not that it's a crime at all; in fact, I felt a bit bad for her after the initial anger of finding out she was the deans daughter because of all the pressure she must have had to go into such a rigorous career. I never, ever believed she would cheat in the exams though, considering how hard me and Yuki worked, and how upset Gary and Eve were when they failed. It angers me even now.

I knew Yuki had always had a bit of a thing for May too, but again, I never thought it would get anywhere, and when it did for a short time, I was pleasantly surprised. It was nice, for that week at least, to see Yuki so giddy and happy and confident, not uptight and nervous like he was previously. I should have found it suspicious when I found out Yuki had been suspended. I thought initially that he had been inappropriate with May in the public eye or something equally humorous. I actually laughed, but Yuki didn't find it very funny. I still ask myself why I didn't feel apprehensive, because Yuki very rarely made mistakes, and Yuki wouldn't be that careless.

The next week, he had a meeting with Mr Jordan-I think now that he would have been reinstated anyway-but he didn't go to it. From what I gathered, he went to see May, who admitted that she had done the deed, and then that was the last we saw of him for four weeks.

By this time, Kieron was on the scene, and Yuki's apparent sacking didn't bother me that much to start with. I went out for a drink with May and Kieron as though nothing at all had happened, and I got very drunk, knowing that the next day was my day off. I went into the house and went to sleep as usual, and I woke up the next day with a splitting hangover. I didn't notice that Yuki wasn't there until about 5pm, and I stuck my head round his door to see him gone. I assumed that he had just gone out, and when he didn't come back that night, I assumed that he was drowning his sorrows in drink like most 22 year olds who had just lost their jobs would.

A few days passed after, and I kept on assuming, assuming that Yuki was staying at his parents, or with his uncle, assuming that he needed a few days alone to get over his loss. A week passed, and I still assumed, but by this time, a nagging worry had started to set inside me. He wouldn't pick up my calls, or May's. Then at the pub that night, May came over to see me, panic stricken. She told me that she had been to his parents and that he wasn't there. There was nothing else for it: I called the police and reported him missing.

The next couple of weeks I tried hard to hold myself together. I took my anger out by chasing Kieron down the road, which resulted in him falling off his bike. I can't believe I was stupid enough to do that. I couldn't believe that Yuki would just take off, and my head circled with some of the horrific possibilities of what could have happened to him. We all knew that there was a chance he could be dead, although none of us, May, Kieron or I, dared to speak of that chance, and every long day the hope of finding him alive got slimmer. If my own ordeal was awful, I don't even want to think about what his parents must have been going through-I know now that they'd already lost one son. I could see May falling apart too, but at the time, I thought it was because she was anxious, not because she was guilty. Kieron didn't really react, but then again, he barely got to know Yuki, and he ended up leaving us anyway after Mr Jordan dismissed him.

Then, on the 8th May, four weeks and 2 days after Yuki had disappeared from the ED that fateful night, some bin man found him sleeping rough in one of the refuge bins outside a nightclub. Yuki, my best friend, my roommate, my colleague, was filthy, and confused, and dehydrated, and close to hypothermic, but he was alive, and he was found, and when he came into the ED, a small feeling of gladness flooded through me, if only for a very brief time. Any happy thoughts I had just vanished instantaneously when I approached him with my best, happy-go-lucky tone.

"Yuki-man, boys are back in town!"

He didn't respond at all. That was what hurt the most, and that was when my strong feelings for him started, seeing him so vulnerable.

A lot of fanatical things happened that day, and looking back, it's all a bit of a blur up until Mr Jordan pulled me aside an hour before the end of the shift and told me that May had been dismissed.

"Why?" I asked, and Mr Jordan sighed.

"Dr Phelps has admitted that she broke the patients neck, and that she let Dr Reid take the blame."

Our trio had then well and truly been devastated, as I went to heatedly confront May, who gave me abuse back, and we haven't spoken since. Good riddance.

After that though, after Yuki was discharged the next day, and he came back to work the next week, I sort of vowed to look after him as if he was my little brother, because I realised then and there that I loved him-it was just how I loved him that I was confused.

Did I love him just as a brother, or was this something else?

Two weeks after May left, he confided in me about how he really felt, and he actually cried about it, something I never thought I would see. Yuki wasn't one to be gloomy-it didn't suit him. I held him in my arms and I was so close to kissing him, but I stopped: he didn't need any more romantic disorder, not then. I vowed myself to not make any amorous gestures again.

Yuki healed, or at least appeared to heal, a lot quicker than I had even hoped, and within a couple of months he was fully back on his feet, optimistic and confident in his work, and clandestinely determined to win the JAFA award, like I was. But I was selfish. I felt like I deserved the award more than he did-I had got him through the romance hurdle after all. I didn't think Yuki was into medicine for anything else but May. So I bought a bribe to win the award. I didn't realise that Yuki was in it for his dead brother, and when he told me, my heart actually broke into shards, like it had done before when I destroyed Becky. I thought I was about to destroy Yuki too, destroy someone else I loved. The horrific guilt that May must have felt sank in.

I don't know whether it was a good thing Yuki found out-I still have an insignificant bruise on my nose where he punched me. I never thought I'd see Yuki-so gentle, so level headed-react like that. And I was angry at him at the time, because I felt like I was in the right, kidding myself, even though deep down the only person I was angry at was myself. And when I was alone, when I was thinking about Becky, I realised I had just smashed the face in of the one person at that time I truthfully loved, like a wife beater, an abuser. Crazy.

But Yuki came back.

Yuki

Even now, I can't believe me and Lenny are in any way compatible. We're so very different-he's the class clown, cracking jokes, open with everyone but still very childish, whilst I'm the class dork, with his head in a book at the back of the room, talking to nobody unless it's to answer a question-but they say that dissimilarity pulls people together rather than split them apart. When I first met Lenny, I have admit that I found him exasperating, but still endearing, and funny-he always seemed happy whenever I laughed at his corny jokes, even though Adam and Mr Jordan and Zoe gave him fractious looks. We've sort of both had to laugh at things, at ourselves and each other, otherwise we would have driven each other absolutely insane. There's been more drama in the last year than there ever has been in my beforehand calm, somewhat secluded and sometimes lonely upbringing.

The first day on the ED as an F2 made me count my lucky stars, although I also felt culpable, because my life should've ended that very day. I should've burnt to death, and the ED would've been going to my funeral, writing my parents a condolence card. It's not a nice thought, but Heather was a capable doctor, I'm sure, and about to get married too. It makes me sad that she's gone, and I didn't even know her. I feel sad whenever anyone dies, whenever I lose a patient, but especially when I lost Haro, because he was everything to me. Still, I know that life goes on. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?

Jeff told me that I was the world's unluckiest man. Everything in the couple of months after went wrong, as we tried to adjust to ED life. We lost a lot of patients, and I was a bit of a train wreck. In hindsight, I knew that I didn't fit in there-my personality was wholly unsuited. But somehow, in the last year, I've adapted to it.

The driving force was May and Lenny. At the end of the day, when everything's gone wrong, when you've been yelled at for making a mistake, and you've lost a patient, and you've lost your phone, and you have a stack of work that needs to be done, it's good to know that there are friends to lean on. Lenny made me smile because, at that time anyway, he was a friend. But my feelings towards May were all too different. I was head first in love with her.

May was the most beautiful person I had ever met. She was pretty, and sweet, and funny, and I can't believe that she even approached me that day in medical school. I still think, deep down, she wasn't all bad in her intentions. I can acknowledge that she used me though, and my aptitude, because if there's one good aspect of myself that I can brag about in any way, shape or form, it's the fact that I'm pretty smart. It's not cool to brag though; I often abstain from doing so. I think that's Lenny's personality rather than mine.

Zoe, who was my mentor as an F2, quickly picked up on my feelings for May, almost certainly because it was written all over my face everytime I made eyes on her, and told me to ask her out for a drink, which I did, and then Lenny ruined the occasion by inviting himself. Gutted. Lenny is unbelievably annoying, although I like that about him in a strange way.

I still laid in bed at night thinking about her, and when Kieron came along, I experienced n emotion that I never thought I would-jealousy. May took a shine to Kieron, and that made me feel pretty devastated. But May didn't know how I felt, and I knew I'd make a complete pig's ear of asking her. I was going to stop myself from sending her the love letter, but Zoe's voice kept on ringing in my ear.

"You're a sweet guy Yuki. She'll be mad to turn you down."

I remember feeling anxious opening her bag to put the note inside. I shouldn't be rummaging through her stuff, I told myself. But my hands saw a brown NHS stated package and inquisitive Yuki just had to look…

The answers to the exam.

How could she do that?

I stuffed the envelope back, along with the note, and walked out of the staffroom feeling slightly queasy. I had absolutely no idea what to do-confront her? Or just tell Mr Jordan? I knew that reporting her was the right thing to do. But I loved her so much, and somehow I felt that I needed to protect her, and her career, and make her happy.

I put all my thoughts aside and confronted her. Well, in reality, she confronted me first.

"Yuki"

"Oh, leave me alone!"

"No, Yuki, need to sort this out"

"Sort out what? That you cheated in the exam? I know, it's my fault, I shouldn't have been rummaging through your stuff"

She gave me that doe eyed look, and my heart sank. Her eyes began to well up.

"I panicked, I'm not good at exams look you are!"

She was sobbing now.

"Well if I don't tell anybody it's like I'm in it".

May stopped crying, realising what I was intending to do.

"Yeah"

"Why did you have to do something so stupid?"

I was irate, and let down, understandably, because Lenny and I had worked hard for the exam.

I stood outside, regretting what I had told May, but then she came running out after me, and she told me that I was right in what I was going to do. She made me feel bad, so I told her I wouldn't say anything.

"May, stop…please?"

She turned around.

"Yeah?"

'You're not going to do it again, are you? You made a mistake, but we can just…put it behind us"

"Yeah"

She smiled, and leaned forwards and kissed me, and every thought in my mind was electric. I didn't care that this was manipulation, because if manipulation felt that good, then I would happily be a doormat for the rest of my life.

Somehow, only a few weeks later, I found myself living rough and trying to block out every single thought of her. The comprehension sunk in that she had ruined my career, my friendship with Lenny and herself, and basically my life as I knew it.

For the first few hours, I just kept on walking the streets. The air around me was gloomy and bitter but it didn't bother me. I couldn't feel anything but pain and torment and isolation and depression. It started to rain so I sat under the bus stop and somehow fell asleep, if only for a few hours. I just walked through fields for all of the next day, feelings of hunger and thirst and general griminess setting in. I went to the local Tesco to get a drink and something to eat with the last few pound coins in my pocket, and I felt like going home and sorting myself out, but I knew I was too weak to even consider it.

I don't remember the next few weeks very well. I blacked most of it out, and I never want to be there again, where I even considered jumping off a bridge or something equally traumatic. I couldn't bring myself to do that either. Somewhere along the line I ended up sleeping in a dustbin, probably for days, I don't know. One minute I was lying alongside rats and rubbish and the next I was in the very hospital I worked in.

Recovering from the ordeal, Lenny was the only person I felt I could talk to. There was a side to him that I hadn't seen before-he was gentle and he looked out for me; continuously asking if was okay until it got almost frustrating. He gave me the strength and confidence to carry on, and after a while, I woke up and actually felt okay, like I wasn't a gloomy ghostly person anymore, like I was happy, hardworking Yuki instead.

There was a nice 2 months of so where it was just us two as the best of friends, but it would turn out that my best friend would stab me in the back. Haro told me to grow a set, and that's what I did. Lenny deserved that punch. He's my best friend but he still deserved it.

But then I remembered that I owed everything to his comradeship, so I came back to find him.

After Adam's birthday party in the ED, the friends went home to their apartment. They didn't acknowledge each other, even though neither of them had eaten. They just went into their individual bedrooms.

After about half an hour however, Yuki came into Lenny's room and sat on his bed.

"Sorry."

Lenny looked up from his book, to see Yuki sat there.

"It's okay, mate!" he laughed, but Yuki's head drooped downwards, glasses loose on the bridge of his nose. He nodded, but kept on frowning, so Lenny put his arm round Yuki's shoulder and shuffled up next to him.

"Look at me" he said gently, and he looked at him in the eyes for about a second before losing contact. Lenny put his other hand on Yuki's knee, thinking what the hell.

"It's alright. I was the one in the wrong. But we can move on now."

Yuki smiled at his friend again, before putting his arms around Lenny and hugging him almost too firmly, contact that made Lenny jump and feel abruptly nervous. He let go after about a minute and looked at him, although this time it seemed as though he was studying Lenny, eyes squinting behind his glasses. He had a sort of smirk on his face, but Lenny was having a hard time reading him. He just kept on smiling, unsure what to make of it.

"You mean a lot to me, that's all", Yuki said finally, before looking away, slightly red cheeked.

"Yuki…"

He shot a gaze at Lenny again, and without thinking at all, Lenny leaned in and did what he'd wanted to do for months. Just a small peck on the lips, but that's all that was needed.

He paused.

Oh my God, I've blown this…

Yuki leaned in and kissed Lenny back. He did it almost like Becky had. Lenny couldn't believe that he was actually in love with somebody else. Yuki stopped and smiled at him shyly, looking incredibly dorky but absolutely adorable. There was a long pause.

"So…Chinese or pizza?" he asked Lenny cheerfully, adjusting his glasses with his thumb and grinning.

"Erm…you choose", Lenny laughed, and as he left to order food, every happy emotion sunk into Lenny, most significantly of all, the feeling of being in love.

The End