A warning, that the result pairing is het, but yaoi all the way until the end. And really, it's still yaoi at the end, but I've obscured it.

Disclaimer: I don't plan to run the show, either.


"You've killed me."

"I don't see how. You're alive and breathing right in front of me."

"Well…you will. One day."

That was the last piece of conversation they shared.

/to remember/

He was sure he was dead. Or close to dead, at least. And funny thought, he couldn't see anything at all, but a stifling white light that blocked everything else. Sharpening in intensity, so much that he didn't think he could think anymore with it in his head. It was like one of those thick, fire blankets that they wrapped around you when you were on fire, the kind that suffocated you and would've like to stay right there, like the seaweed skin on a piece of wasabi sushi, until someone ripped it off.

Tezuka thought it a fair and detailed analysis.

And then, far away, he began to hear a still beep of a heart machine, or an alarm clock. Very loud, screaming in his ear. It wasn't beating like his regular heartbeat, not at all, but rather in a slow, sluggish, rhythm. He could assume that he was awake, because he started to feel pain everywhere, thick bruising pain that took away his rationalization.

He heard something else.

Tezuka…

It was disembodied voice, definitely, or Tezuka would've been able to see some sort of motion in front of him, at least. And it was melodic, to a degree of sudden, extreme familiarity. One voice that he knew all too well. He struggled to remain conscious to hear it.

I…I just wanted to talk to you. One last time.

Was he back? Really back?

I know, now. I knew it all along, I guess, the voice continued, you loved me. And yet we both know what really happened. Don't you remember, Kunimitsu?

And then he remembered. And wondered how he could've ever forgotten.

That night. The one that changed everything. It was so simple and so complicated, all at once. It made his head hurt to think about it.

How couldn't I love you? You were everything.

Everything? Fuji was everything. That's how it always was. Never different. Forever Fuji. Forever Fuji and Tezuka.

But you never thought so. You never thought I cared about you.

There came a bitter laugh. Fuji's laugh, all the same.

That night…you remember now, see? I thought you must really hate me. Do you find me repulsive, is that why? Or were you just afraid of what everyone would've thought? What the hell was wrong with you?

All uttered in one breath. Tezuka wanted to cry, that he never thought of that, he never wished it that way; he would've given everything to have that night back. He wanted to shake his head, shout out, but he couldn't move. The unspoken apology suspended, deepened through time, like a frozen song playing its last notes. Swan song.

He wanted to die.

And Fuji's tone changed, and pleaded instead, at the thought.

But, for God's sake, don't die. Don't join me, not until you have to. Only I deserve it, and then another bitter laugh shook the air.

But he wanted to die. He really did.

Please, don't. I won't follow you anymore! I just wanted to see you one last time, but I was wrong. Please, don't!

But he—

LIVE. PLEASE.

And then it was gone.

The beep of the machine stopped altogether, the green line bent backwards to its original shape. And everything else warped into an empty blackness.

/to lust/

"Ahh…mmm…"

"Be awed, Ryoma, by ore-sama."

Atobe smirked as he watched the flushed younger boy try to squeeze his way out on top, pawing dozily at the older man's neck. He looked just like a restless kitten. Occasionally, when he felt more relaxed, Atobe would let Ryoma take a turn pounced on top of his chest, but it was better to be in control. That Echizen. Always wanted to be above him, even in sex.

It was arousing. In a kind-of perverted way.

Actually, anything that arouses you could be classified as perverted.

(That was Tezuka's –one of only two– comments on the matter.)

"You've been…using too much American-brand acne medicine, haven't you," Ryoma's breath puffed softly against the clumped, slightly damp silk bed sheets, his muffled laughter creating little cloudlike dents that rippled through. That was the result of high-traffic satellite in the hotel room. Ryoma had been asked to pose in a television advertisement for Clearasil, and Atobe found it very annoying how often the boy had to make a reference to it.

The diva's frown grew as he lifted himself off the younger boy and stood on his haunches. It closed the distance between his pelvis and Ryoma's ass, and the boy's breath hitched in his throat.

He rubbed his temples, and breathed out, slowly.

"I'm tired, Echizen."

And at this, the tennis athlete beneath him flipped himself over so his golden eyes met Atobe's violet ones.

"This is about Tezuka-buchou, isn't it?"

Atobe was always surprised at, how nothing could escape this tennis prodigy. He recalled the first time he'd ever thought of the boy as more than just another opponent to crush, another cocky brat there to challenge his reign as king. During that tennis match at the Nationals in his last year of junior high, right before he'd wrenched the razor out of that idiot's hands and shaved his head, when his was still lying on the ground and trying to get a grip on giving up a match to a freshman. It was still something he was quite sore to touch on, and he didn't know if it was the head or the fatigue that hand rained on him that day, but he could never get the image of Echizen Ryoma, sweating and panting on the other side of the tennis net like his life depended on it, out of his mind, ever again.

And he realized. It wasn't just because Ryoma had beaten him in a match, but because of that glint in the boy's eyes when he had. That look. Those sharp thoughts that reflected right back into Atobe's eyes. They were the absolute same.

It was a little lust, nothing compared to how he felt for Echizen's buchou, but it would have to do.

The next time he'd had a nice talk with Ryoma, anywhere not close to sweaty tennis regulars, it was in his own mansion, where he had the upper-hand.

And he'd certainly used it to his advantage, Atobe remembered.

That had only been a couple years back, probably only a few months after Fuji Syuusuke left them all. Atobe called a business party together at his home, in hopes of a diversion from the recent bar-incident of Tezuka revealing his long-term crush, and stowing away the last bit of compassion Atobe still had. It also provided a nice way to display the power the Atobe Group held in the country. All the Japanese pop idols (those pretty, back-flipping ones that Kikumaru Eiji had joined, included), the famous actresses and writers, athletes made the guest list, Echizen Ryoma included (now a nine-time Grand Slam winner with a cocky air to match).

And when the might host of the party caught sight of the young tennis star stirring his cocktail coolly amongst a group of gushing journalists and high-class socialites, he grew curious and ordered a request for a private meeting to be sent for Echizen: if he could be kind enough to stay after the party for a while and have a chat with Atobe-sama.

He wanted to see if the boy had changed. Even just a little bit…

"What do you want, Atobe?" the boy had worn an annoyed look as he stepped into Atobe's private meeting room, having accepted the invitation politely as a smart step to avoid media confrontation about past-grudges and old-school-rivalry. He looked around the chamber walls with a thinly-veiled look of antipathic disdain in the outline of all the purple décor and unnecessary frills along the curtains.

(So he hadn't changed very much.)

"Ore-sama hasn't talked to you for a few years since high school, and that's all you have to say?" Atobe's voice was a tad bit incredulous.

Ryoma shrugged, "We never had much to talk about,"—and upon the diva's threatening glare—"Except that time when I stole Ryuzaki Sakuno from you."

"You never 'stole' her," the man was a bit miffed at the idea, "I was never with her, and I never intended it."

"But you often gave her the eye. It's not like I don't hear those conversations she had with her loud friend," the boy was getting more comfortable. He sat down on the leather couch, stretching out his tired, muscled legs in front of him and placing them on a nearby chair. He was wearing casual-elegant cut-offs, that showed off his toned skin and tennis muscles. Atobe couldn't help but direct his eyes towards them.

Was he trying to flirt? Atobe's eyebrows rose, but he made no comment about it, "Ore-sama had the impression that you were just trying to challenge me."

"I wasn't."

"Well, I—"

"…and I think that pretty-much ends our conversation," Ryoma sneered, adjusting his permanently-situated, signature white cap, "and don't you have any idea how conceited you sound? I can't say I'm really enjoying my talk with you, Atobe-sama. If there isn't anything you want with me, I'm leaving."

He stood up, gave a giant, mocking bow, and wandered out of the room.

Atobe, for once, felt rather happy that his mansion was big enough for Echizen to get lost in. The boy had taken a step for what he assumed to be the exit, but by some stroke of obscure luck, ended up in Atobe's private, purple chambers.

Blinded by all the violently violet decorations, Ryoma took another step back, realizing his error, and stumbled into a firm body. A firm, well-built, expensive-cologne-sprayed body.

Truth be told, Atobe really had no idea why he had sent that request. It was impulse, he supposed, and he guessed he really wanted to talk with someone that he'd been familiar with in his school days (Tezuka had grown awfully difficult to converse with, and sometimes a conversation between the two of them consisted of only Atobe going on a lengthy rant and a couple of hn's from the latter). Besides, he hated to be called conceited. Atobe was just beautiful and glorious in nature. He couldn't do anything about what people thought of his beauty.

"What do I want," Atobe muttered, and then he had completely lost it and pushed Ryoma against the wall and kissed him senseless.

Ah, the power of lust.

And yet it was such a thrill to have Echizen give it to him like that, to call him conceited without the bat of an eyelash.

Another item on the Things That Arouse Atobe list.

(That being the second thing that Tezuka had ever mentioned about Atobe's love life, and then having gone into his usual stony silence.)

The experts would have called it sexual tension, but Atobe would've simply defined it with one word: support. Or he might've just insisted that he'd done it entirely out of spite over the whole Tezuka-loves-Fuji…thing. Whatever it was.

It was only after several "meetings", and a few glasses of tongue-loosening Russian vodka, had Ryoma gotten the full truth from Atobe.

"This is about Tezuka-buchou, isn't it?"

"Ore-sama visited him in the hospital yesterday. He wasn't awake."

"What a caring—ah, business partner you are, Keigo…"

"Shut up."

"…to visit Tezuka-buchou like that, all dolled-up in your super-fancy—"

"Why do you still call him your buchou?" Atobe cut him off before Ryoma could go into the gory details, "He's long since resigned from that position."

There was an uncomfortable silence as both of them thought it through.

"You know perfectly well how I feel about Tezuka," the boy's voice was small, soft as he replied, biting his lip, "Just like you know perfectly well how I feel when we're doing…this." He gesticulated towards the bed and the scented candles lining the walls and the closed drapes over the windows.

And indeed, they both knew. And that was precisely the reason they had needed each other for support.

Atobe noted that he was beginning to sound like an old sap.

"Stop thinking about that," he grunted, and then he really did shut the young tennis star up, by licking his chest lightly. All thoughts of Tezuka-buchou were lost as the younger boy rolled over, eliciting a breathy moan.

Tezuka, his ass.

And perhaps not in the most metaphorical way.

/to live/

"Syuusuke…" he rasped, clawing at the air in front of him.

The nurse's head jumped back in shock. Tezuka Kunimitsu-san was awake.

And the man in the bed was too busy within his own thoughts to notice much anything else.

Of course he knew why Fuji had left. It was blatantly obvious, and not simply because he had given up on life. No, that was just the easy way to get out of it. Tezuka had known it all along, that he had been the cause of it all. He just didn't want to believe it, he hoped that Fuji would have forgotten about him and moved on since that night, and let Tezuka be the one who would drown in self-pity and depression, secretly hoping for love. He had just assumed that no one would ever remember those minutes that changed their lives, think of it as just a little blip in the master plan, nothing worthy of attention.

Or it would've turned out rather differently.

Because Tezuka Kunimitsu had murdered Fuji Syuusuke.

Throughout all the years, he had convinced himself otherwise, mapped an intricately-woven web of secure lies that kept his own consciousness from discovering the grave mistake he had made, that kept him in his safe little shell. He had fed himself amnesiacs, painkillers, sleep pills, so much shit that finally one day he had crashed and completely lost the events of that one night where it had all gone wrong, that one night in junior high.

The scary thing was that it had almost very nearly worked. Tezuka had effectively fooled himself, and everyone around him, into believing that it had been he who'd loved Fuji Syuusuke in the beginning, and never the other way around.

For had it been the latter, Tezuka didn't know if he could still live to bear it all.

That night…

He'd invited Fuji over for a study session after tennis practice, hoping to finish the Algebra homework together so as not to worry about it tomorrow during passing period. Midterms were coming soon, and Tezuka was an anxious student.

The evening proved to be very unlike the one he had planned. Right off the bat, when they had settled down with their books, had Fuji snapped his shut and planted his chin in his hands on the desk.

"Ne, Tezuka, have you ever loved?" It was another one of the tensai's questions, the ones he asked when he wanted Tezuka to talk to him and not just grunt one-worded responses. The ones that you couldn't help but want to answer, because they were so full of thought.

"What are you talking about, Fuji?" Tezuka responded innocently. At that point in his life, nothing had really mattered but tennis. Tennis, and his math homework.

He couldn't ever have been prepared for what had followed.

Fuji had his grin plastered on his cheeks, the one he reserved for the aftermath of feeding a victim a piece of his wasabi sushi or a cup of Aozu.

"You've never kissed a guy before, have you?" it was a subtle move, and had Tezuka not been too tired from tennis practice, he would've caught on much more quickly and stopped Fuji before he could do something completely out of line. He would've been more aware of the environment change, and kept his guard up just a bit higher.

Instead, he just shook his head slowly, and tapped the Algebra worksheet with his pen. Tezuka had been on the receiving end of many-a-fangirl forcing themselves upon him, and been kissed by about half of the Seigaku female population (students and teachers alike), but he'd never felt the lips of a boy's on his own.

He didn't really care about it, much, but then Fuji had suddenly opened his eyes and let out a bark of laughter. The serious blue drifted up to Tezuka's, and before the tennis captain had known what he was trying to pull, he felt a pair of lips, Fuji's lips, being pressed down on his, molding into his mouth.

"Now you know," he heard him mutter, and felt himself being pulled into it, the less-than-willing victim of a violent hurricane.

They were soft, softer than even some girls' lips he had kissed. And instead of the usual strawberry, candy gloss, and occasional mint, there was instead a sharp, though almost tasteless wasabi-filled flavor that Tezuka couldn't say he disliked. But when he realized that he'd actually been tasting Fuji's lips, chewing on it, almost –Fuji's lips!– and that he was already halfway backed-up against his bedpost, his cheeks had reddened and he ended it abruptly by pushing the tensai roughly off of him, glaring and wiping his mouth.

"Why the hell did you just do that?" He had sworn. Tezuka never swore, and Fuji seemed to realize how serious this was, as regular-Tezuka turned into crazy-Tezuka.

"But, I—"

"Don't ever do that again. You will run a hundred laps tomorrow at practice. Get out of my house."

And then he had ordered for him to never come back, something regular-Tezuka would never have done.

Fuji's expression was dark, "Damn it, Tezuka. I love you. Goddammit, you never get it."

"Leave. Now."

The tensai's laughter echoed down the hall, "Don't you know how stupid you sound, ordering me to run laps for kissing you?"

"I told you to leave," he was firm. And he wasn't about to admit that he thought it was rather embarrassing, too, that he had assigned Fuji laps for a kiss. A silly reflex.

"You've killed me," he whispered, his voice now flat and expressionless.

"I don't see how. You're alive and breathing right in front of me."

"Well…you will. One day."

That was the last piece of conversation they shared.

And as Fuji left the room, the tensai continued to laugh. And laugh. And if one had listened closely enough, it was impossible to say that that laughter wasn't complete fake shit as hell.

And the depressing, ironic part? Both of them never truly looked back on it.

Thus the death of his one true friend in the world.

And when he'd finally realized his feelings had been real, it was too late. Much, much too late.

This was only the beginning of a series of events that led to the destruction of Fuji Syuusuke. He'd begun to date, soon after they started high school, and to prove –more to himself than anyone else– that he didn't give a damn for Fuji, Tezuka asked out the most popular girl in school, who'd gladly obliged, having admitted to a crush on the sexy tennis captain since grade six.

He took every chance he could to kiss her in the hallways—often in front of members of his tennis team, the tensai included, openly allowed everyone to know that he was taken, and still the most-wanted lover on campus. Still the heart-breaker, the one who was still a virgin who played it to his advantage. And once, out of sheer pugnacity and self-denial, he'd even had a make-out session with Echizen in the locker room, leaving the boy confused and disoriented after he dumped him at the door.

All to prove a point he could never prove.

Little did he know, all these actions, each time he dumped another girl and made the school gossip columns, each time he placed another kiss on another girl's lips, Tezuka was giving gut-throwing, heart-wrenching punches to Fuji. Ones that were more strenuous to bear, than even playing a match against hadoukyuu-Ishida, than a hundred cups of Penal Tea (something Inui would've readily denied, but would have been true nonetheless).

It had killed the boy, eaten him up from the inside-out until there was nothing left but hollow stares and broken smiles. Eiji had helped to restore it, much as he could help Fujiko and still remain a happy-go-lucky person, even though it was difficult to coax the tensai out of his ghostly form and give a little hug every-so-often.

And after that, the drugs had kicked in, the sleepless, caffeine-laced nights had shown their relentless effect, and Tezuka Kunimitsu was admitted into the hospital in the name of surgery on his arm, when he was really receiving drug tests and stimulation shots, and a couple of pain-relief pills that numbed-the-flesh for three days.

He'd completely forgotten about that night, and, unconsciously, he hoped that he would never remember, ever again.

/to wish/

He turned the glass around and around the face in front of him, the base of it distorting the boy's features, and catching the light of the delicate chandelier above their faces, changing the color of his skin and casting an apex of brilliant white, flushed skin.

"You're refracted, but you're still you."

Ryoma didn't share his humor, "Well, that's a bit of a duh, now, isn't it?"

Atobe's mouth went south, and his teeth clenched, "That's not what ore-sama meant."

"I know what you were trying to do. You were trying to seduce me with flowery language," the boy sighed, "and, sadly enough, I believe you."

He leaned down to cover his lips with his own.

The boy stopped it.

"Let me show you something," his voice barely above a whisper, and his raven hair covering most of his cheeks, giving him a wild appearance.

It was noisy outside the hotel window. Bare-chested, he pulled the curtains out, rays of sunlight finally entering the room and causing an inhuman screech to be released from the older man on the bed.

"I'M NAKED, ECHIZEN! CLOSE IT!"

But he wouldn't, of course. Instead, he cracked the large, bay window open until a gust of air whooshed through the room, ruffling his hair further and sending a set of goose bumps down his back.

And then, with a move like lightning, the boy had reached out his hand and snatched a loud, squawking pigeon from the window sill, "I've found our noise-maker."

"What the hell are you—" Atobe had curled-up into a ball on the bed, now, shivering from the cold.

"Sch. Shhh…" the tennis star whispered, and took the bird in his palm, cuddling it and petting it and caressing its lusterless, gray feathers.

"It's beautiful, ne?"

"Wish you'd do that to me, sometime," Atobe muttered.

And just like that, the bird had fallen asleep, right there in Ryoma's palm, making a soft, cooing sound as its wings settled down gently and it relaxed, no longer squawking its head off and tense as a brick.

Ryoma smirked.

He opened the window again, and –just like that– he dropped the sleeping bird into the bustling streets below. It plummeted down.

The diva freaked out, and jumped out of bed and stuck his head towards the window frame, "You're gonna kill it!"

He watched the bird drop, like a stone, closer and closer from their 18th Hôtel Royale level towards the black pavement below, not showing signs of waking up any time soon. It was just falling, reaching terminal velocity, like it was never going to stop until it would plop -SPLAT- against the ground.

But then, at the last moment, probably about five inches away from the ground, the bird suddenly opened its eyes, wide, wings flapped outwards, beak gaped open and screech as sharp as any foghorn. Like a bullet, the gray bird shot upwards, its motions already a blur as it flew upwards to the multi-faceted sky, eyes open and not caring, just flying and fighting tooth-and-nail to go anywhere, anywhere but the ground.

"That's me," the boy spoke, after an awed silence.

"That's just like me after he left."

And then he shut the window frame, the shades, the curtains, so that the room was warm again, and climbed back into bed, and then he had stuck his chin in the other man's chest and then he burst into tears.

/to see/

"Tezuka-kun, how are you feeling?"

He opened his eyes. A shaft of light entered his pupils, and he closed them again. The pain had bee on-and-off for a while, but now it hit him with the nozzle at full-blast. Every fiber of his body hurt, burnt, seized with a fiery jolt if he so much as thought of moving. And then he'd noticed that the voice that had spoken was not the usual nurse, but…

Fuji Yumiko?

He opened his eyes again, refusing to fall for the pain, this time, and was greeted with the warmest –and also the saddest– smile he had ever seen.

"Why are you here?" his throat was parched, and the words came out more froggish and croaky than he had intended, grated through like pebbles on sandpaper. He grimaced.

The woman, though she was middle-aged and hardly young, had a simple aura around her that reflected a timeless beauty –far surpassing Atobe's claim, Tezuka thought– that was not obscured by the thin layer of makeup she wore. Her smile, her voice, her looks…it all reminded Tezuka of Fuji…so much that he didn't really want to look at her anymore.

He was the one who had sent her brothers to a place they couldn't return from, dismembered her family and left her as an only (and eldest) child. He wouldn't be surprised if she'd come here to slap him until he really did croak. The red marks would be a sick reminder of what he had done, but totally worth it, from the nail marks right down to the last whorl, last arch, last line of her fingerprint.

He had no such luck.

"The nurse said…that you called for Syuusuke a while ago, when you woke up," She explained, "and I was about to come visit you anyway. You wouldn't know how much security and verification I had to go through to come see Tezuka-san, what with all the media circulating the accident. I swear, those bodyguards outside would've stripped me down, had I not threatened to sue them."

Her laugh was charming, but the thought of Yumiko talking of something remotely vulgar, of any Fuji do so, it sent a set of shivers down Tezuka's broken spine. It was so similar to Fuji's own, and it made him cringe even more.

Her voice lowered, a hushed sound against the already too-quiet background of the hospital, "Syuusuke…he used to talk about you a lot at home, Tezuka-kun. I've never seen him more serious about anything, and you and I both know that he never took anything too seriously. I don't want to pry, but if there was anything between the two of you…? As more than friends, I mean."

Tezuka sighed. And she would want to know. Being the older sibling, the one who took care of Syuusuke and Yuuta, Fuji Yumiko sort of had a right to this kind of thing.

But it was precisely because nothing had happened, nothing except a soft, wasabi-touched kiss twelve years ago, that really dampened her thirst for knowledge; that would "explain" it.

Yeah. Twelve, freaking years ago.

And he felt the urge to cry, again, as he told her the story.

"I killed him…I killed Syuusuke…" his voice was hushed and cracked as ever. What had happened that night, what had occurred beyond.

Ne, Tezuka, have you ever loved?

You've never kissed a guy before, have you?

Damn it, Tezuka! I love you. Goddamnit, you never get it.

I'm sorry, Eiji.

I…I just wanted to talk with you. One last time.

Do you find me repulsive, is that why?

No, it wasn't why. It wouldn't ever be. He had been too scared then, and too late now. But he would change that.

"I came here with my mind set," she said.

"What are you doing?" He asked.

"I'm here," she bit her lip, "to offer myself. If you would ever accept, it would release the burden we've all got in our hearts since his death."

"I believe it."

/to change/

Tezuka. Fuji. Fuji, Tezuka. The words, the cadence, the rhythm, it fit each other like no other words would. They would always be, even if it wasn't the Fuji that everyone expected. That Fuji was gone, because of a mistake. One that Tezuka regretted deeply.

It had been forgiven thought, almost as a light joke, by the woman beside him, Fuji Yumiko. The beautiful Fuji Yumiko, who's long, slender fingers were curled in Tezuka's hand, a ring on her finger and ring on his. The were sitting on a park bench, leaves from the trees swirling downwards in a rustic pattern. He had on a pair of reflective sunglasses to keep the public from guessing, she was cheerful and cuddled against his chest.

He had felt the weight, at last, leave his chest, as the married couple spent the first day of their first week sitting right there on the bench, under the autumn leaves.

And he was almost too happy to see a ghostly mist gathering, and a breeze swirling around the edges of a pale face in the sky…

Goodbye, Kunimitsu.

Farewell, Fuji Syuusuke.

/to love/

"So they got married, hn?"

"Yes, Atobe-sama."

"Well, I guess that's the way it's supposed to end. All happy and stuff."

"Yes, Atobe-sama."

"Well, then. Get me a cab. I need to make a visit to a hotel."

"Yes, sir."

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A/N: And this is the longest thing I've written, or rather, the longest word-count-per-chappie. Amazing, ne? Even though it's absolute crap, I'm still rather proud. :D.

Thanks for reading! If you feel kind enough, give a little review~!