Disclaimer: Ronin Warriors is not mine, but they have my love.

Warning: Yaoi. Het. Complicated interpersonal relationships.

Summary: In the absence of supervillains, Rowen finds other ways to complicate his life.

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Persuasion – chapter one

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Mia never told anyone about the picture she'd put on Rowen's wall. It stayed behind the dress shirts he wore to work, small and unnoticeable except for being a dark spot against the white wall. He began taking his shirts from the right and hanging the newly laundered at the left. In this way, he created a simple assembly line of fashion and nearly forgot about the frame behind the cloth.

Months passed. A year. He met a crazy girl. He almost married her. Stuff... happened.

And the phone rang.

"Hello?" He ripped it off the hook, one hand plunged into the cabinet in search of the last clean glass. The sound of the old dishwasher was almost enough to hide Kento's voice on the other line. "Oh, hi," and then to his surprise he laughed. "No, I haven't forgotten you."

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Kento said, not for the first time, "He seemed fine on the phone."

His companion, a slender man with strong arms and soft hair, frowned at the table's empty seats and didn't answer, lost in conjecture and hypotheses.

"He said he might be late," Kento said, again not for the first time. "He's been busy, he said."

"I've heard," said the man with a sailor's powerful forearms and nothing else, because a familiar man had just stepped into the restaurant, hesitating at the edge of the crowd. His hair was short and had been blue so long that his friends were no longer certain it wasn't natural. Under the blueberry hair stood a narrow man, thin and long-limbed, shading his eyes unnecessarily to peer over the packed tables.

Kento waved. Rowen wove carefully between the tables and chairs towards them. "Hi," he said, with a self-conscious smile and slid into the chair at Kento's left.

The third man, whose name was Cye, smiled back at him. Sun and waves showed in his face, the mark of an ambitionless man tied to the sea. Now he lived more than an hour from the ocean and it showed sometimes, in a melancholy twist of his face.

It might have been worth it, to be closer to friends, but two months ago, Rowen had turned away from a girl he claimed he loved to retreat into an empty apartment and close the door. No one had seen much of him since. Admittedly, no one had been seeing much of him before that either.

Rowen tugged off his coat, settling it over his chair. He moved more quickly and more violently than was necessary, as though hoping to appear purposeful; he looked merely pretentious. He did not see Cye staring at the street outside because he also was trying to look anywhere else but at the friends who'd invited him here.

"I'm sorry I was late," he said finally, studying a woman's shoes crossed beneath her chair. "I guess I was surprised by the invitation."

"Cye felt neglected," Kento said. Rowen's head jerked back to center and Kento added, "At least, I think he did. He also felt vague and obscure, so I didn't quite get the whole story."

The sailor glared at Kento just as Rowen said, hastily, "I've been busy." Cye's eyes had shifted from blue-gray to dull green, like they did sometimes. It was something Kento hadn't ever noticed until Rowen had pointed it out one day in summer, sitting on Mia's porch waiting for their friends to come home.

Rowen flipped through the menu, absently, his face suddenly less animated than it had been. Kento wanted to tell Cye to get his act together before Rowen suspected an ulterior motive. The casual public lunch (or perhaps better termed interrogation) had been his idea after all.

"Alright," Cye said. Then he put his chin in his hand and gazed out the window. There was nothing absent-minded about it. He said simply, "Ryo's decided to go." He glanced back. "To Africa, I mean. Keisuke isn't going with him."

The table went quiet at the name. No sound but Cye's nails tapping against the menu cover with deliberate casualness. Kento had a moment of inner fury. He really should have known.

For a long time now, Kento had thought of Rowen and Ryo as a sort of unfortunate Siamese twins. Completely alien in mindset but doomed to orbit each other endlessly, bound by some unpleasant yet vital organ. It went like clockwork. Ryo leapt into a horde of demons out for his blood without bothering to plan - Rowen screamed bloody murder. Rowen consumed an entire dinner conversation discussing the meditative qualities of musty library smells – Ryo left in the middle to play video games about ninjas.

But when looking for Ryo, one went to Rowen and vice versa. It was a kind of unholy chemistry that made life interesting.

Mia understood. She flirted with both of them like they were one body. Sage and Kento did their best to go with the flow. Only Cye seemed able to separate the two and conduct his friendships in isolation.

Until Keisuke. On that day, Ryo had walked through that strange, siamese bond as if he'd never known it was there. Like the spider webs that crisscrossed the sidewalk on summer mornings. To meet an ordinary man with broad shoulders and straight teeth, who wasn't Rowen.

Kento lifted his hand to call their server. Better they order. Better to eat than talk about someone Rowen hated for no better reason that that he'd stepped into the middle of something that Rowen held sacred. Something obscure, with smudged edges and an indistinct boundary.

The menu hit the tablecloth with the sharp crack of plastic on plastic. "Fuck," Rowen said and passed a hand through his bright hair. The chair screeched back from the table.

"Rowen – " Cye started, but Rowen was already standing, making a sharp gesture with his hand.

"Never mind. I'm just going to bathroom. Is that okay?"

"But – "

Kento patted his shoulder. "Leave it be. He's gone." Cye watched Rowen disappearing into the back of the restaurant. There was no expression on his face. His hair was bleached out by the white lights, barely even red.

The waitress reached their table, lifting her blue pen and pad. She pulled the cap off with her teeth, snapped it onto the end of the pen. Ready to take their order.

"I didn't chase him off," Cye said quietly, ignoring her, "I didn't say anything. You heard."

This was extremely inaccurate.

"I know, Cye," Kento promised him, smiling at the girl. She stared blankly back. Her face and Cye's – so much the same, but one of them cared.

Kento ordered for them all, glancing wildly at the menu. It was easier to worry about food.

"Keisuke really isn't that bad," Cye was saying. "I've spent time with him."

The waitress gave him a speculative look, gathering up Rowen's forgotten menu. She left Cye with his, like he were dangerous and might bite if she got close. "Ryo seems to like him," added Cye, oblivious.

Kento wondered if there was something about not growing up in a restaurant owned by one's parents that rendered wait staff invisible. Alien. Handing over his menu, he favored Cye with the same strained expression the waitress had worn moments before. "Yeah, well. A guy ought to like his own boyfriend."

"Yes, exactly."

The matter should have been settled. Rowen rarely ever talked about Keisuke anymore. Rowen was out of school and employed. Rowen was on the up and up and, until a month ago, had been in love. Then Cye came at him with words designed to sink hooks into forgotten places and Rowen stalked off to pout in the bathroom.

This shouldn't have surprised Kento. Rowen and Cye fought like teenaged girls. Always had. Always would.

Rowen reappeared, dreary faced. When he saw Kento watching, he mumbled, "Forget about it" and Kento said something about the weather. Cye, who's indifferent expression had been sloughing away like a sand castle under a rising tide, looked heartbroken.

Their food came. Cye rushed out in the middle to attend his class (he'd gone back to school again, though he probably wouldn't have the focus to finish another degree). Rowen poked curiously at the squid on his plate that had arrived without any suckers and tentacles to play with. Then, for no reason at all, he looked up, towards the entrance.

Cye had turned back at the door. He spoke across the din, silently, but his lips said, "This isn't finished." As though, once past a certain radius, heartbreak vanished and courage returned. He whirled, fled.

Rowen stared after him with a little frown, ignorant of the promise of interrogation hidden in Cye's parting threat. Cye was certain there was some clearly defined motive behind the shattering of Rowen's engagement. He believed it could be Discovered with Means and Determination like the villains on Scooby Doo.

Watching this in silence while he chewed thoughtfully on Cye's meal, Kento wondered if they had ever considered keeping score.

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The phone was ringing when Kento returned to his room. It was the same room he'd lived in all his life. He'd only left it once, a few years ago, to attend a small culinary school next door to the university where Cye had earned his first undergraduate degree.

Cye was back at school now, though Kento's expectations weren't high. All of Cye's attempts to earn a higher degree inevitably fell prey to a yearning for the sea. He had tried once to unite the two; after all, what better man to study all things marine? But something about the water turned him too philosophical, draining him of all ambition. He had lost interest in the answers the faculty wanted to find.

Kento roused himself from memory, poised in the open door. There was a teenager on his bed, flipping through the channels on the TV. She ignored the insistent rings of the telephone, remote in hand. She was his youngest sister. Of them all, the best target of brotherly teasing. His favorite and she knew it.

"Hey. Brat. Answer the phone." She glanced up at him, making a face.

"It's your phone." Kento thought of Rowen, whom she aspired to be like in everyway. When she succeeded, it sent chills up his spine like the memory of a treasured horror movie.

To shake the feeling, he lifted a hand as if to smack her, but she knew better. The phone rang again, anxiously. He threw himself across the bed to answer it. "Hello?"

His sister fell backwards, her head landing by his elbow. "Who is it?" she whispered, cupping a hand to her mouth secretively.

"What is it? You forget something?" Kento covered the receiver with his hand, whispering back, "Cye."

Her face flattened out, bored, and she rolled away, picking up the remote where she'd dropped it.

Kento kept talking. "Yeah, I guess he was weird. But Rowen's always been a little neurotic." The bed bounced. His sister was back, blinking up at him with her dark eyes.

"Rowen?" she asked. Kento laughed.

"I dunno, Cye. I've got nothing to tell you, but you're welcome to discuss it with my sister's hormones for as long as you like." He poked at her nose. She huffed and kicked off the bed. Kento listened to the door slam and smiled.

Cye rambled on. Kento asked, his sister's silly Rowen imitations echoing in his brain, "Have you tried asking him if he's going crazy?"

It was a reasonable question, despite its sarcasm. It was what Rowen would have said. If Rowen weren't going crazy.

Cye growled through the phone. And that was the end of that.