Due to the lack of reviews (constructive or otherwise), this right here folks is a rewritten chapter. I sincerely hope that this version is better than the last one.

"So they're from Russia?"

"Yes, that's why the place is called "Russia Sushi"."

"Do they know what sushi is?"

"Gee, Carney, I wonder what the hell Setsuko and I are eating? Oh, wait, that's right, it's sashimi and yellow tail! Of course they know what it is dumbass!"

"Then why the hell am I eating pork?" Carney asked, invading my personal space by waving a cube of the other white meat in my face with the ends of his chopsticks. Irritated, I took the offending meat and popped it into my mouth, chewing it with a delighted expression before swallowing and saying,

"I don't know why you're complaining. You asked for something off menu and you got it! Be happy they put up with your selfish request." Beside me Setsuko ignored out argument, calmly flipping through a college visit pamphlet and picking at her sashimi every few paragraphs or so. I envied her, if only because she had the ability to ignore my brother better than I could. Carney scoffed, skewing another cube and bringing it up to his eyes to scrutinize, a few grains of rice falling back onto the plate before he put it in his mouth and chewing it.

"Whatever, at least it's not raw," he said around the meat and rice before swallowing and picking up another piece. "Hey, so, why are we here?" he asked me, leaning back on one of his hands while he ate, despite having complained about it just seconds earlier. "I thought we were going to your boyfriend's place?"

"Because, even though Shizuo's apartment would be perfect for loud, unexplainable noises without anyone suspecting anything suspicious, I don't want you anywhere near it because I just know you'll go snooping around. And besides I've already done that, there's almost nothing to tease him about," I explained, taking a sip of water before eating more of my yellow-tail.

"Yeah I know, we were there for an hour before heading over to your job," he said dejectedly placing his chopsticks down and leaning back on his hands, done with his meal.

"Ha! Find anything good?" I asked him, knowing that the best he could find were a box full of x-rays taped together to form several full-bodied skeletons—a small project of mine when I had gotten bored one day while waiting for Shizuo to get done with his shower.

"No…there was nothing good," he said mysteriously, suddenly grim looking and hollow-eyed. Curious, I leaned over to Setsuko and asked him what his deal was. She raised a thin eyebrow, wondering what I meant as she had not been paying attention the last few minutes, and looked over the top of her book to see what I was talking about. Her eyes filled with recognition of the expression and, leaning close to my ear so Carney couldn't hear her, answered my question.

"He's just emotionally scarred because he accidently touched your panties," she explained through a whisper, her light, nearly imperceptible voice bringing Carney to a shiver as if he had heard her.

"Never again," he said harshly.

"Well what did you expect Carney? Shizuo and I have been dating for the last six months, of course I'm gonna have clothes over at his place!"

"Just…shut up. Everybody just shut up," he said monotonously while he rubbed his temple with his thumb and his forehead with his fingers, trying to still a growing migraine. Having had enough of his mild "traumatic" experience, I ignored his plea for silence on the matter and continued on the anti-modesty trek, aiming to go from mild to major.

"Hey Setsuko-chan, did I ever tell you that until he was three he thought I was a boy?" I asked her, aiming to rub more salt in his wounds and also to embarrass him.

"Amai! Amai you wouldn't!" Carney shouted, reacting violently as he snapped out of his self-induced blackout, slamming his palms down on the low table and looking at me with half-crazed, half-betrayed eyes.

"Well apparently despite knowing me for the better part of your nineteen years of life, you seem to not know me at all!" I rebutted, snarling at him because, I'll be honest, this is also a bit of punishment for breaking into Shizuo's place.

"Umm…Amai-chan, why did Carney-kun think you were a boy until then?" came Setsuko's timid voice, bringing a smile to my face as Carney's eyes burned with mixed warning and hatred.

"Well," I began, watching semi-mutely as Carney's face turned a feint shade of red—not of embarrassment, of anger. "I kept my hair short a lot and my temperament wasn't all that great. Actually I think Carney wasn't all that perceptive as a toddler. He only found out when we started throwing mud at each other one day and Mom made us take a bath together—"

"Amai, stop it!"

"And he asked me where my "thing" was. When I told him I didn't have one he started screaming—"

"Amai I swear to God if you repeat that line—!"

""Okaa-sama! Okaa-sama! Nii-san doesn't have a thing between his legs!"" I laughed, repeating his young high-pitched squeal before I was knocked backwards against the floor as Carney kneeled over me and shook me.

"You bitch! You promised never to repeat it!" he yelled, his hands fisting my t-shirt as he shook me back and forth, but I didn't mind as I kept laughing my ass off at the memory of his cute baby butt running out of the bathroom as he went to tell Kazuhiro that they had a big sister. Behind him I heard the small tinkling sound of Setsuko's muffled laughter and the unexpected sound of a sliding door as Simon poked his head in to check on us.

"No! No! Fighting is bad! Make much hurt brother of Amai!" Simon said in broken Japanese, reaching far over the table and grabbing the collar of Carney's jacket and lifting him easily off of me and into the air. His legs flailed as he tried to get out of his hold, making little progress as Simon sat him down in his spot and held him down by his shoulders. "Eat sushi. Make you feel better, yes?"

"Fucking giant! I don't want any sushi I just want to kick her ass!" Carney disagreed, fidgeting violently as he struggled to get free.

"Eat sushi, brother of Amai. Make you feel better," Simon said, a little more firmly now, so much so that Setsuko sat still as a startled rabbit and I had stopped laughing. Carney stopped struggling and studied the large man, trying to understand the subtle difference between the words he said now and the words he said earlier.

"…Alright. I mean, I guess it doesn't really matter in the long run," he said. Simon smiled, nodding his agreement before turning away from us to tend to other customers, the door sliding softly shut behind him. He might have been comforted with my brother's words, but me? Like I said, I've known him for nineteen years, and nearly everything he said was either to start a fight or manipulate people—more often than not those two tended to overlap.

"I mean, I guess it's fair really because of what I did," Carney continued, face blank as he watched me for some sort of reaction.

"What did you do Carney?" I asked him, light and jovial as I entertained the thought of what he could have possibly done that I haven't seen him do before.

"I just turned his apartment into the equivalent of a neet's. But don't worry, I didn't do anything gross…because Setsuko wouldn't let me." I looked over at Setsuko and caught her eye before she ducked down behind her pamphlet. Reaching across myself I pulled the small booklet out of her hands and sent her a look that asked her why set let him do it. She bit her lip, glancing down at my cast before looking back at me with eyes that begged me to understand.

"He…he made a sound argument. I-I couldn't go against it," she answered, playing with her fingers and looking down them for some small comfort.

"A messed up room? That the best you got delinquent? I've cleaned up so many of your messes, I'm actually thinking about charging you for this one," I countered, getting my wallet out and placing a few bills on the table, enough to cover the bill for the food, as I prepared mentally prepared a checklist of Carney's usual "mess-up-rooms" crap.

"No, I also shaved your cat." I froze my hand in my pocket as I put my wallet back and my eyes trained on the table. "Make sure you have enough money in your wallet for a sweater. Forgo getting anything else; Setsuko caught me before I could do the rest of his body." I thawed, slowly, retracting my hand from my pocket after making sure my wallet was secure, and reached for my glass of water.

"I'm willing to give you a five second head start before I rub your face against the asphalt," I told him, raising the glass to my lips and drinking the rest of the water. Carney smirked, taking his sweet time standing up and sliding the door open. By the time the door had closed I was on my feet and practically stepping over the table and nearly crashing into the screen. When I finally wrenched the door open I saw the tall end of Carney's jacket disappear out the glass doors of the restaurant and his stupid smirking face glancing at me through the window before running down the street.

"Get back here you coward and take your punishment like a man!" I yelled despite him not being in the building anymore, running after him while behind me Setsuko thanked Dennis and Simon for the meal before jogging to keep up with us.

By the time she finally caught up to us we were rolling around on concrete cursing and trying to bite each other like cats and dogs. A few minutes afterwards we stopped fighting each other and Setsuko and I each took one of his arms and started dragging his protesting self to Shizuo's place, planning to make him help clean up his mess, but the closest we got him to agree to was a promise to half-ass it. Whatever, as long as it got done it didn't matter the method.

DRRR!

Carney wasn't lying when he said that he made the place looked a neet's, although when compared to the picture in my head it wasn't really that bad. Sure there was clothes strewn everywhere, sheets ripped from the mattress, a few boxes from his closet emptied of their contents and their contents thrown on the ground of his bedroom. The nice thing—if there was a nice thing in this mess—was that Carney didn't leave the fridge open or empty the trashcan or completely destroy the bathroom. Still, it didn't help his case when I found my kitten huddled under a pillowcase with his back and sides nearly bald with little tufts of fur left here and there because of a mediocre haircut. No, if anything it made me want to hurt him even more.

Ignoring my base impulse to beat the shit out of Carney, I comforted my shivering kitten and ignored Carney's snarky jabs at my supposed laziness while he himself took his sweet time picking up a bed sheet and folding it slowly while Setsuko set about picking up shirts and socks. Ignoring him I began picking up, setting my kitten down on the newly-righted coffee table, surrounded by a large fluffy towel so I could keep an eye on him and so that he could slightly comfortable, and began picking up black slacks and blue boxers. Things moved quickly after that, but seeing as Carney turned on a baseball game a couple hours later it seemed to be moving slowly. Things went fuzzy after that and the next thing I was vaguely aware of was of being picked up off the floor and placed on a freshly made bed next to my snoring brother.

Shizuo's POV~

There was something wrong with Celty, or at least there was something bothering her. I decided I'd ask her tomorrow about it as I walked home, expecting to find a locked door and an empty apartment. When I found the door unlocked I didn't think much of it since Amai tended to use her "skills" more than her key. It still pissed me off that she wouldn't quit, but I guess it was more of a habit that she couldn't quit.

"Amai, you here?" I called out, closing the door behind me and enveloping the room in darkness. There was a small groan from somewhere in the room and a deeper one resounded after that. Confused, I turned on the light, finding, with some irritation, my girlfriend curled in a ball against her younger sides as he slept sprawled on his back on the floor. Surrounding them were folded piles of clothes, my clothes, and on the table…Hazelnut?

"What the hell happened to you?" I asked him, crossing the room in long strides and stooping down to pick him up off the table, his unusually small body shivering from a poor hack job of a haircut. Half his fur was gone, the only fur that was left fluffy and intact being on his limbs, tail and head. "This kid," I growled, crouching down and grabbing the collar of Amai's brother's shirt, lifting his upper body off the floor.

"Heiwajima-san?" a quiet voice asked, alerting me to the teenager standing at the entrance to my bedroom.

"You're…tch, what was your name again?" I asked her, raking my brain for the name Amai said. The quiet girl…something-ko.

"Setsuko. Um, can I ask what you're doing with Carney-kun?" she asked me, rubbing her eyes and placing her glasses back on her face, squinting at the odd-haired boy still half-dangling in my hand. I looked down at him, wondering how he was still asleep before looking back at the black-haired girl and answering her.

"I was gonna ask him why he shaved my cat."

"I thought Shizu-chan was Amai's cat," Setsuko said, looking confused. I growled at the name, asking myself for the thousandth time why Amai thought he resembled me.

"We share him," was my grunted response. She nodded, seeming to understand before she walked over to where I was standing and crouched down next to Amai's brother, tapping his face and saying his name—Carney?—before the kid batted her lightly away.

"I'm sorry about barging in like this, we'll be out of your hair in a minute or so," Setsuko said, tapping his cheeks again before I moved him away, walking around her and into my bedroom where more piles of cloth were spread.

"I'm not gonna let you go out this time of night. Just sleep here for tonight," I told her, dragging the boy onto the bed and letting his legs fall off the side as Hazelnut jumped from my arm onto his belly, making a show of digging his claws into his shirt before curling up and going to sleep.

"Ar-are you sure? It seems like too much trouble," she argued, leaning in the doorway and looking at me with concerned eyes.

"No shit it's trouble, but I'm not going to kick you out at night. I'll just rough it out on the floor," I told her, walking past her and picking up Amai off the floor, gentler than I had with her brother. She clung to me immediately, wrapping her legs around my waist and her arms around my shoulders, burying her face against my neck and mumbling incoherently about sushi and underwear.

"I thought you all were staying at her place?" I asked Setsuko while I carried Amai back to my bed. While I set her down next to her snoring brother, her body clinging to me and forcing me to pry her limbs off of me, Setsuko answered, confirming my growing suspicion that it had something to do with why my clothes were all over the place.

"It got sort of late and Amai-chan and Carney-kun sort of crashed after they got into an argument over a baseball game," Setsuko continued, wringing her hands as she watched from the door. When I got Amai's arms free from my neck, I grabbed a pillow by her head and tucked it under my arm.

"Good night," was my singular response as I brushed past her into the main room, throwing the pillow on the ground next to the coffee table and routing around for my sleepwear. Behind me Setsuko stuttered a quiet "good night" and closed the door. I probably scared her, she seemed the type to scare easily anyway, but I didn't want to scare her. I sighed to myself, unclipping my bowtie and letting it hang around my neck while I unbuttoned my vest and shirt. After I had removed the material, before I could pull on my night shirt, a hand touched my back, softly pressing against my spine before it moved to my side, a thin arm and its plaster covered duplicate wrapping around my waist and joining fingertips over my stomach. A small pointed nose skimmed the area on my spine between my shoulder blades.

"Long time no see, Shizuo."

Amai's POV~

It started with Shizuo picking me up and carrying me like a toddler to his bed, but Carney's snoring and Setsuko's trembling voice roused me from sleep and forced me to get up and talk to Shizuo. He seemed mad, and it was understandable seeing as we had sort of taken over Shizuo's apartment and monopolized his sleeping space. As soon as Setsuko closed the door I rose and stood up from the bed, wobbling a bit because, like the rest of my body, they were half-asleep.

"Amai-chan! I'm sorry did I wake you?" Setsuko asked quietly, approaching me quickly and putting a steadying hand on my shoulder.

"It's fine Setsuko. Go to sleep, I'll rough it out with Shizuo," I told her, shrugging off her shoulder and opening the door. Behind me Setsuko started to protest, but closed her mouth and turned back to Carney, crawling back onto the bed and laying next to him. In front of me I delighted at the image of Shizuo clad only in his black slacks as he shrugged his white button-up off and bent down to grab a gray tank top from one of the piles on the floor. 'I really should have put those back instead of leaving them there,' I thought to myself, approaching his turned back quietly and stopping no more than a foot away. 'He has such strong muscles and he doesn't even show it,' I thought, reaching out with one hand and touching his back, the muscles stiffening at the sudden contact. 'What did Shinra say? That they got tougher over the years?' I asked myself, sliding my hand to his side before bringing my other arm up—wrapped, as it was, in plaster—and wrapped my arms around him, my fingers interlocking over his stomach. 'It feels soft though. And warm.' My face pressed against his left shoulder blade, my nose skimming his spine as I breathed in a very feint smell of nicotine and his natural scent. No cologne or aftershave, just him.

"Long time no see, Shizuo." He relaxed, turning his body slightly to look down at me before turning back around again, muttering a small hello before stepping away from me, breaking my hold.

"What happened to them sleeping over at your place?" he asked, pulling the tank top over his head and covering his upper body as he turned to face me, his face set in an expressionless look as he watched me.

"Carney's an ass and Setsuko's sweet but doesn't keep a short enough leash. Sorry. We sort of fell asleep after a baseball game while we were cleaning up. I didn't mean to make you sleep out here," I told him, rubbing the back of my neck sheepishly. "You're mad, aren't you," I guessed, frowning at his unchanging face.

"I'm not mad, I'm just…" he trailed off, pursing his lips unable to deny that he was at least a little mad at the current situation.

"Upset that you have to sleep on the floor because it's too late to kick them out?" I offered, furrowing my eyebrows in sympathy as he looked away from me. He didn't say anything more or deny what I said; he simply picked up a pair of sweatpants and walked around me towards the front door. I stayed glued to my spot, not even turning as the room was suddenly bathed in darkness, the only light streaming in from outside through the square window in front of me. Behind me I heard metal clacking and the shuffling of cloth. My best guess was that he was changing his pants, but I couldn't really turn around and check since he'd probably get embarrassed and yell at me to turn around. Unfortunately, as entertaining a thought as that may be, I couldn't very well exercise it given that as dark as it was I couldn't really see anything.

"Don't turn around," he said, confirming my suspicion that he was changing. I grinned at the challenge but seeing as this afternoon he was attacked with a katana, and until a few hours ago his apartment was a wreck, I decided to cut him some slack and respected his wishes…for the time being. Sooner or later I'd get those pants off, whether by his hands or mine.

Feeling bored I knelt down, patting the pillow he had brought out and collapsing onto it, closing my eyes and moaning in content at the soft squishy feeling. Below me I felt the vibrations of his footsteps as he approached and stopped beside me, letting his pants drop on top of the table beside his shirt, vest and bowtie before lying down beside me, laying his arm over my body and pulling me closer. "Good night," he mumbled, slowing his breathing as he settled down. I repeated it back, laying my forehead against his chest and closing my eyes against the darkness.

After a few minutes of "silence"—by which I mean listening to my brother snore through the door and debating loudly in my head the decision to confront him about his sleep apnea—I decided on something fun. Craning my neck I pressed my mouth against the hollow in his collarbone, feeling the heartbeat in his throat quicken before resting again, seeming to pay me no mind until I trailed my lips up his throat, smiling softly as he swallowed hard before asking me what I was doing.

"Boredom mostly, also Carney sleeps like a log and snores like an old man," I answered, kissing the underside of his jaw, feeling his jaw tighten as a reaction.

"You're not doing anything with your brother in the next room," he warned me, but he neither moved his hands from my back nor moved away from me, on the contrary he held me tighter against him, his fingertips digging into the flesh of my back.

I chuckled, deep and throaty like I was explaining the details of a genius plan to my nemesis. "Notice how my hands are neither under your shirt nor near your groin, not to mention that I'm only kissing your neck," I told him, moving downwards to the junction between his neck and shoulder and nipping it once or twice before biting down on it. His reaction obvious and much to my delight as he groaned once, short and sweet, and removed one of his hands from my back to place it against the back of my head and grip my hair.

"This can't be real," he said through gritted teeth. This didn't sound like the start of a good conversation.

"Why can't it? Because you think you don't deserve it?" I asked, going along with it for now if only because I felt like I could turn it around.

"Yeah."

"Because you hate your strength?" I asked him, retracting myself from his neck and looking him straight in the eye. He looked down at me, silent for a moment before speaking.

"Yeah."

I frowned, unhappy that I hit the mark even though it was less than a foot away. "Then I'll just have to love it for you," I told him, pressing my lips against his chin and then again against his mouth once I realized I had missed my target, despite it being less than three centimeters directly in front of me.

"You shouldn't. You're crazy," he mumbled beneath my lips, kissing me back and burying his hand in my hair, nearly tangling it now that it was growing past my shoulders. I smiled before remembering a similar remark made to me several hours earlier around the time—

"Oh right, I almost forgot. My Dad called a few hours ago, something about reminding you of question five…?" I informed him, trailing off in a question since I still had yet to know what the other four questions were that my Dad had asked him.

"Yeah, I haven't forgotten," he answered, ignoring my lingering question as he rested his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes.

"…can I ask you something? What the hell did he ask you?" I asked him when he gave no explanation. I propped myself up on my elbow and looked down at him, not willing to drop the subject in favor of sleep—no matter how good sleep sounded right now.

"Not ready," he said, not even batting an eyelash—not that his eyes were even open to begin with.

Gritting my teeth and thoroughly frustrated with his vague and half-formed answers I said in a low but clear voice, "Okay, what the hell does that mean?!"

His response was, of course, silence followed immediately by a soft growl and an iron bar wrapped around my hips, pulling me sideways on top of him. his other arm joined it's friend at the small of my back and just rested there as I jimmied myself into a more comfortable position, unintentionally rubbing against him in a way that made him growl and tighten his hold on my body, trying to still me as he squeezed his eyes closed.

"I'll tell you later. Now shut up and go to sleep already," he grumbled.

I sighed, pouting against the expanse of muscle and warmth that made up his chest and laid my cheek against the center of it, his heartbeat pounding out a slightly erratic tune as I shifted once more to get comfortable, my arms flat against his sides and one of my legs in between his. "…fine, but only because I have to deal with Carney tomorrow," I lamented, breathing out a heavy sigh and closing my eyes, letting the mixture of Carney's snoring and Shizuo's rising chest rock me back to the sleep I was in no less than twenty minutes ago. What started out as a supposedly mundane day had escalated to a certain measure of insanity before deflating to a manageable high as I lay, warm and happy like a fat cat in the afternoon sun, in Shizuo's strong arms. His embrace the only reassurance I needed to tell me that the worst and messiest days could end in the sweetest moments.

Now all I had to hope for was that the rest of this week would end relatively well without a need to go to the hospital or to an underground doctor whose entire practice I still questioned.

DRRR!

—Saika has entered the chat room—

Kanra: It's here!

Setton: Ah.

TarouTanaka: Huh?

Saika: I cut

Saika: I want to cut

Kanra: I'm the one who wants to cut you!

Saika: Wrong

TarouTanaka: Is this the person who was spamming any message board related to Ikebukuro six months ago?

Saika: Weak, wrong,

Saika: Can't, control

Setton: You haven't banned this person yet?

Saika: Desire, is, want

Kanra: I did!

Kanra: It doesn't work, no matter how many times I do it!

Saika: Love, not enough, love

Setton: oh, I see.

Saika: Want, love, people

Kanra: I banned the IP address, but they just use a different host and come back.

Saika: More, strong, love,

TarouTanaka: Ah, you mean a proxy?

Saika: Desire, I, mother, mother

Kanra: Hmm, it doesn't look like a proxy…

Setton: Wow, that's scary.

Saika: Mother

Saika: Mother

Saika: Mother, mother

Saika: Mother, mother, mother

Saika: Mother, mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother

Saika: Mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother

Saika: mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother

Saika: Mother mother, mother

Saika: Mother mother mother mother

Saika: Mother mother

Saika: Mother, mother, mother, mother mother

Saika: Mother mother mother

Saika: Mother mother mother mother

Saika: Mother

—Saika has left the chat room—