A/N: Well, okay, the link to my illustration persisted in NOT showing up. If you absolutely have no life, implied by the fact that you're reading this, do me a favor. Go to deviantART, then to my user (name: TotalEclipseoftheSun). The picture is called Just One More Peaceful Day. Anyway, yo, I love all you guys and Yuki has to angst now, so no more rambling introduction.

Yuki slumped over his computer, staring at the screen. Yutaka had died seven times in three days. He just kept waking up. Or being rescued. And then a few pages would be deleted and it would all start again. It was just getting repetitive. Quite aside from feeble, perverted hope warring with ingrained cynicism festering together to a discordant tune of toxic madness, Yuki couldn't stand this direction from a purely literary point of view.

"Whew! Kuma-chan, open a window! It's smokey in here!"

Yuki was surprised only because he HAD changed the locks. "Who's there and what do you want?"

"Oh, there you are!" Ryuichi spun into the room, leaping acrobatically over the overflowing wastebasket, calling back over his shoulder. "Never mind, Kuma-chan!"

"And what can I do for the prima ballerina?"

Ryuichi did a tentative pirouette. "Hmm, you think I could? Wow?" He spent a moment looking starry-eyed into the distance. "Okay, come on."

"Come on?" Yuki had time to blink a few times before he, a pink bunny, and Ryuichi in a wardrobe pillaged from the artist formerly known as Prince were standing in his driveway. "I'll drive, okay?"

"What?"

"Okay, great!" Yuki never knew how he got into a pink Cadillac half smothered in rainbow-spattered bumper stickers, but there he was. Interesting, really. He wished he had it in him to care.

"Yeah, Noriko-chan never lets me drive. Just because I got my license revoked the one time. And the other time. And the time other than that..." Ryuichi floored it around the inside of a crowded intersection, blowing kisses at the six or eight people who flipped him off. "Can I put on the radio?" Yuki didn't answer. "Okay, thanks!" He tuned it to the Shining Collection, miraculously on the first station he found.

"Are you completely immune to the laws of probability?" Yuki asked conversationally.

"Kumagoro beeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaam!"

"Gotcha. ...Where are we going?"

"Rams eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy... Oh, did you say something, Eiri-kun?"

"I wonder when I was last called Eiri-kun..."

"Wow, what a coincidence!"

"No, that's not what I said, that's- Never mind. Where are we going?"

Ryuichi consulted a printout map on his lap. "This way, and then that way, and then that other way for a while, and then... there!" At the convenient red light, he held up the map for Yuki.

"...The hospital. Do I have to hold your hand while you get your shots?"

"Would you? Oh, wait a minute... Yori-san said to make you come visit come hell. Or high water..." He scanned the road, apparently searching for demonic flames and floods. "She looks a lot like you."

Yuki decided to bypass investigating Yori's acquaintance with Ryuichi. "Did she go blonde?"

"Did she? No... Uh-uh. Same look as you and Tatsuha, though." He started humming and eventually broke into song. "Mushrooms, mushrooms, can't be beat. Mushrooms, mushrooms, on my feet. Mushrooms, mushrooms, they're so good, mushrooms, mushrooms, like they should. Mushrooms, mushrooms, mushrooms... Better leave that one for my solo album. Tohma'd never play it. Oh, mushrooms, mushrooms, mushrooms..." Repeating the single verse, he continued the drive to the hospital more attentive to Kumagoro than Yuki.

Even assuming Yori was being a royal asshole and forcing him to confront all he feared and hated, therefore coming to grips with himself and his life whatever it was to be, Yuki was glad to get out of that car. And the mushrooms.

In a way, he did want to see Shuichi. Hiro had managed to catch him at a weak moment of phone answering to drop the expected bombshell that Shuichi's family had decided to pull the plug that night. For once, Yuki was going to be the tragic hero instead of write him, and say his goodbye. And not run.

And maybe that was the real gift Shuichi had given him, Yuki thought as he climbed the stairs to Shuichi's ward. The end of running.

And long after Shuichi was gone, the memory of that single act of heroism, a thousand memories of the realest, dearest human affection, and a new strength lived on in Yuki.

Until he realized he'd just written Yutaka another ending, and was still walking up the stairs. And that reality was about to intrude. This was the last time he'd see Shuichi, and then he could start running away from yet another facet of his past. "Damn it all to hell. Really, to HELL..." Then he was on Shuichi's floor, and unless a really good idea for stalling came to him, it was time to face the music.

"Ahoy! Eiri!"

He sighed, doubting she really should have yelled like that over a ward full of sick people. "Hi, Yori, what's this about?

"Well, for one thing, would you believe your main squeeze here says I look like you?"

A voice Yuki had never expected to hear again, albeit raspy from disuse and in definite need of coffee, protested. "You do! You and Yuki and Tatsuha should be a sitcom! Two colors AND two genders!"

Yuki was at the bedside in about the time he figured it would have taken Ryuichi. He looked remarkably thin and small amid all the equipment and the bandages that still bedecked his face. He was pale, and his eyes were blurry and half crossed. But, he was definitely alive. "...Shu-chan?"

Shuichi smiled back. "Yuki." He reached up weakly, as Yuki sank into the chair Yori had carefully abandoned and took the hand. For a moment, all he could do was press the wasted fingers to his lips.

After a sustained, touching moment, Shuichi spoke again. "You're not mad at me, are you, Yuki?"

Yuki repressed the urge to slap himself. Those were just the first words he deserved, really. "No. No, of course not. Why would I be?"

"I can't... can't remember... But that's good." His eyes slid closed, and he let out a tiny, endearing snore.

"Wow, he IS cute." Yori offered him a bag of chips, which he made no move to accept. Don't worry; I won't steal him from you. I've got one of my own. Besides, the look he just gave you says it'd be hard."

Yuki looked at her with an odd combination of gratitude and accusation. "You had something to do with this."

"Sort of." She shrugged. "I came to visit a friend of mine who's holed up in chemo again, and I figured I might as well stop by and see him. I figured I'd try something I read about, and just sort of leaned over and whispered your name. Didn't expect anything, but his eyes popped straight open and he asked for you. Weird, huh? Eh, I dunno. The doctor was all astounded, and is busily calling newspapers, his parents, and the local mystic Wiccans to dispense and beg for explanations. I ended up having to pretend to be a nurse and call the Shindous. Amusing. Anyway, they're ecstatic and I assume will be here shortly, he's miraculously not sustained any brain damage-Tatsuha suggested you can't break a window that's not in the pane when I called him- and he should be able to come back home in a few weeks. I'd get out of here if I were you. His Mom sounded a little hysterical, and last I heard the rest of Bad Luck is on the way. Oh, and Ryuichi and Noriko should be around. And Some girl named Ayaka, sounded vaguely familiar when that Hiro guy mentioned her. Anyhow, I'm all for lunch."

~~~

Mizuki blinked a few times at the manuscript she'd just finished reading. "Well, Yuki, I'm... Surprised."

Yuki pretended nonchalance. "Just be careful looking for typos. I was under a lot of stress at some points while I was writing. You want anything to drink?"

"No, thank you..." His editor put down the bundle of papers. "Look, Yuki, are you considering your audience?"

"You mean the one that'll buy anything with my name on it whatever the contents?" He sat on the edge of the sofa. "I don't think more than half of them actually read the books."

"You might be on to something..." Mizuki shook her head. "Yuki, you may want to think about..."

"Toning it down? Trying something else?" He snorted. "I told the truth for once. I don't plan to go back on it."

"Which suggests to me you're feverish." Mizuki grinned. "What I was going to say is, you might think about retiring."

It was Yuki's turn to blink owlishly. "What?"

"What I mean is, maybe Yuki Eiri should retire. Churn me off some more of your best drivel and we'll sell it as your last great work. Probably make enough for you to retire on, as long as you mess around with the stock market and your significant other keeps rolling in the cash. You continue writing as Uesagi Eiri, and I'll make sure it's published and marketed to a very different crowd, if you keep giving me stuff of this caliber."

Eiri grinned. "Deal. I'll have you something entitled Tall, Dark, and Winsome by next week."

"So I'll tell my boss you missed your deadline, you procrastinating hack."

"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by." He glanced back towards his bedroom, where he thought he heard something stirring. "Either that cat Mika thought herself so clever for giving me learned to talk—whine, or my White Elephant is awake. See you later."

She let herself out, and Yuki wandered into the room. Shuichi was sitting up on the bed, petting the gray kitten and looking otherworldly in perfection. "Morning, Yuki."

"Actually, it's about fifteen o' clock." Yuki stretched out on the bed and ruffled Shuichi's hair. "Well, I wrote it the way you said."

"Really?"

"Yep. They lived happily ever after."

the field of view excels the dimension of panorama a perfect mimesis that can only tremble a cheap touch whose reaction is to look for secrets you want to see them even if they are coldly obscene a sea of gushing pleasure that alters the colors of the rainbow that strikes into this world adding shadows to the fringed game Kiss shining, imitating loneliness Cutting into space with entwined regret Make me shining, fragments of my scattered heart A radiance that surpasses hope Kiss shining, we're kissing in my eyes Melting away even the flower petals in our way Kill me shining, changing into the most exciting colors That first shone in a vision Please don't cryin', imitating loneliness Cutting into space with entwined regret Make me shining, fragments of my scattered heart A radiance that surpasses hope Kiss shining, imitating loneliness Cutting into space with entwined regret Make me shining, fragments of my scattered heart A radiance that surpasses hope

A/N: I should note that the little song about mushrooms Ryuichi came up with out of nowhere was written by a sugar-high friend of mine when I accused her of "easting those mushrooms again." Irene reminds me of Ryuichi sometimes, actually. Oh, and Yuki's comment about deadlines whooshing by is attributable to Douglas Adams, God of Science Fiction and Comedy.

Well, anyway, there it is, the end. YAAAAAAAAAAY! Well, I hope everyone's happy. I did my best.