- 36 -

The next day, Niou seemed… different. He didn't look any different, but he just seemed to have a different spring in his step. When Marui asked him about it, Niou simply said, "I'm excited to see her." Marui just nodded and went on with his day.

Niou was sitting next to his Nana and Marui was by the door again, and everything felt normal. Niou was smiling, Marui was blowing a bubble, and the world just felt calm. But that made Marui nervous – whenever something in their relationship was going right, something always went wrong again.

"Why don't you come sit down? I won't bite," Nana promised, his lips forming a small smile.

Marui walked over and gently sat down on the bed next to Niou. Niou absentmindedly leaned closer to Marui.

"You're Marui-kun, right?" she asked.

Marui nodded, blowing and popping another bubble. "Yup."

"My daughter says that you make Masaharu smile," she said. "You seem like a nice boy, I'm glad Masaharu found you – good friends, and lovers, are hard to come by." His grandmother's lips curled up in a way that was identical to her grandson's devilish smirk.

"We're not –" Marui looked at Niou and then back at his boyfriend's grandmother. "We're not lovers."

"I don't mean sexually," she said, still holding her smirk. "I mean romantically."

We are not having this conversation, Niou thought, looking at his grandmother with a desperate plea to stop it.

She looked at Niou, narrowing her eyes. "Don't look at me like that."

"Can we not talk about this?" Niou asked.

"Why? I'm not allowed to know about my grandson's life? I'm too old to do anything, so I need to live through you." She had a pout just like Niou's, too. "Does anyone know?"

"People think we're broken up or just friends," Marui mumbled, twirling Niou's pony tail.

"Yeah, we 'broke up' so we could still play tennis," Niou continued, knocking Marui's hand away. "Our captain is a bit of a douche bag when it comes to people like us."

Nana frowned, and it nearly broke Niou's heart. He came here on a whim to see her smile, not to see her frown at his problems.

"That's a shame. If an old fart like me can be okay with it, I don't get why a boy your age can't be."

Marui began to twirl Niou's hair again. Niou was half tempted to cut the damn thing off just to keep Marui from playing with it – he loved it when they were making out, but when they were just sitting there it was kind of annoying.

"A kohai of ours confessed to him, and he treats him completely different now," Niou said, giving up the fight with Marui.

Nana stopped frowning, but her eyes still showed her frustration and sadness. "People suck."

Niou smirked. "Yeah, they do."

"That includes you," she reminded him. "You suck. You're a sucker who sucks."

"Versus a sucker who spits," Marui said, not really thinking about what he had just said.

"Exactly! People don't spit, they suck – for the most part." The sexual hint in her voice made Niou's jaw dropped, and Marui snicker into his hand, finally moving his finger out of Niou's hair.

"Then it includes you, too," Niou said.

"I'm not 'people.' I'm a bitchy old woman."

Niou spent the rest of their visit arguing with his grandmother about how he didn't suck, and how she had no right to ask, "So have you two… you know?" Marui laughed the whole time, just happy to see his boyfriend happy.

Marui thought that if that were the case, and something was right in their relationship and something was bound to go wrong, then he might as well enjoy it while it lasted.

A/N: I feel obligated to write an ending note, but I don't know what to say. So, um… Monkeys.