Suzuki was taking Golden Week off.

He deserved it. He'd been working hard all year and, well, this was what Golden Week was for. It was good for morale, too, to give the people some time off. Morale was important, the last thing he needed was people trying to defect. That was always tiresome. He had to see to those sorts of things personally, of course, and seeing to things personally took time out of his personal life. Which he now had. So much of his life had revolved around work for so long…it wasn't healthy. That was it. He was taking some time off for his health. That was a good reason.

Shiori had asked him to. That was an even better reason.

An entire week cohabiting together. Another stipulation of hers. They weren't going to make it as a married couple if they didn't know what it was like to live with one another, not just spend the night, she had said. She had all sorts of expectations of him….so maybe this was for the best. Before he wouldn't have seen the merit in this. He would have worked, she would have stayed home with their child, and if she truly needed help he would have found servants for her. She had her own ideas, of course, about how a household needed to be run. The world had changed and Suzuki…well he found himself with a new role to fill. One which he wasn't entirely certain of.

One which Shiori was glad to show him.

There was some apprehension, there, as he stood waiting for the elevator that would bring him one step closer to his future wife and the love of his life. If he ruined this then she would not longer be his future wife…though even apart she would always be the love of his life. He didn't think that anyone else would come along. He was forty six, nearly fifty, and he didn't have time to get back into the dating pool. He didn't even know when he would find another woman, or if he even would have found someone else….and anyway even if he did find another woman willing to be with him he doubted he would ever meet another woman like Shiori.

She was one of a kind….and she was his.

He wanted to press the button again, but he didn't. He knew that pressing the button wouldn't make it come any faster. He needed to get out of here. Every second he spent here was a second away from Shiori. He wasn't going to wait for Hatori, either. It was nice to have a travelling companion but not so nice that he was going to wait around all day for Hatori to pack his things. He knew, and had known, for some time that Suzuki had been planning on brining him with to Osaka. He usually came with. Therefore he should have had his things packed. If Suzuki could pack his own things than Hatori could, too. He was younger and more used to the way things were done now. If Masami had been there then Suzuki would have had her pack him up. If Shiori hadn't minded Shigeko knowing about her then he would have had Shigeko pack his things for him. If he had been married to Shiori then…well, no, she would have told him to pack his own things. She would have said 'king in the castle' and then tossed him his own suitcase. That was just how things were done these days. The lines between a man's role and a woman's role had blurred to terribly over the years….but he was going to have to separate the two again. To see what it was that he was meant to do and what it was that Shiori was meant to do. That was what this generation was good at, blurring roles, blurring lines…

….in more ways than one.

"Oh….hey…" said Tadashi, seemingly out of nowhere….but no, not nowhere. His apartment was right there. Suzuki hit the button again. Fukuda had managed to sneak up on him…well his mind had been elsewhere. On Shiori. The love of his life and the person he most wanted to spend this week with. Fukuda was…there, and he was nice, but he was just…he was….he was….

He was Tadashi.

He was standing right there. He was there in jeans and that ridiculous green sweater he always wore, because it was comfortable, and Suzuki…he should not have been imagining the things he had been imagining. He should not have been imagining how soft that sweater would have felt between his fingers as he raked his hands down Tadashi's back. He should not have been imagining how stiff he denim of his pants would have felt, how the fabric would have strained…..

He hit the button again.

The elevator didn't come any faster. He knew that he had to say something. He had to make words, preferably ones in Japanese since that was both of their mother tongue. He needed…he needed to greet Tadashi, yes, that was normal…but how did one greet another man when that man had been inside of him? There must have been social rules here…ones that he knew that he was going to break….but not saying anything at all was worse.

Come on, Touichirou. Speak.

"Hello. Good…um…good morning." Said Suzuki. He felt like an idiot. He knew that good morning was the appropriate way to greet someone but he knew that it had come out oddly. He had made an idiot out of himself and…and he knew that he shouldn't have cared, he was the one in charge here. He was the one with all the power. He was Suzuki Touichirou and he had no reason to feel anything right now. Nothing. He exorcised his emotions as best as he could. If he didn't want to feel anything then…then he would feel nothing.

There.

He risked a glance at Tadashi.

Damn it.

His heart was still racing. His mind was still trying to keep up. His lungs were still falling behind. Tadashi had no right to be as…as beautiful as he was. That was a word that could be used to describe men, right? The rules had changed so fast he hadn't even noticed. One minute it had been wrong, the worst thing a man could do, to find another man even the least bit attractive and now Suzuki was standing there in awe over how truly beautiful Fukuda could look under the harsh glow of fluorescent lighting. His hair was starting to grow out, there was a slight curl to it at the ends. Brown, too, dark brown. Untouched by the sun. His eyes were just as dark, as were the eyelashes that framed them. Long eyelashes. So long and…there was a certain softness to his face, a roundness, perhaps because he had never really lost any baby fat. That was what it was called, the roundness of youth. Where Suzuki had just shot up one day, grown taller and leaner, Tadashi had just grown taller and rounder. There was a softness to his body, in look and in feel. The way his stomach moved against his…the way the flesh of his back could give way if enough pressure was applied, he way his thighs felt pressed against….the way they were surprisingly muscular given the rest of him. There was such a beauty to him, and a softness, one which Suzuki couldn't exorcise from his memory.

That or the emotions that came with it.

"Morning. You uh…you know what? I should really take the stairs. It's, um, healthier. Yeah. I'm just going to-" said Tadashi as the elevator finally saw fit to arrive. Minegishi stepped out smelling like the earth and covered in it as well. They stopped, stared at the two of them, and went on their way. He watched them for a moment, trying desperately to move any of the warmth and…other such intimate emotions….he felt for Tadashi to them. They were an attractive person in their own right but they were thin, small, and boney. He couldn't imagine…well he shouldn't have been imagining anything! He had Shiori and she should have been all he desired.

He needed to exorcise his emotions…it had been so easy before….but that was then and this was now.

"…or I could take the elevator. That…that works too." Said Tadashi. He stepped in first and then Suzuki, once he stopped trying to force himself to be transfixed by Minegishi. These sorts of emotions couldn't be forced…or maybe there was no emotion that could be forced. He had spent his entire life trying to force his emotions away, not to will them into existence. He had no idea what he was supposed to actually do with them when they were there or even what he would have wanted to replace them with…and it looked like replacement was his only option….

Since none of this was going to be going away any time soon.

"So…um…." Said Suzuki. Placeholder words. He was using placeholder words…well he had no choice. Sitting in silence would have been the worst possible thing. If they stood there in silence then Suzuki's mind would have wandered and if it wandered then…then it would not have wandered anywhere good. Anywhere that it should have wandered while he was standing in an elevator out in the world. These were the sorts of thoughts he needed to confine to those times in the night when he was completely alone. Those times when he laid down, stared up at the ceiling, and his mind decided to put together a highlight reel of everything he had made an effort to avoid thinking of. Every person.

Tadashi really was a beautiful man.

"Yes?" asked Tadashi. His aura showed when he said that. A startle response. What did he have to be startled over? They had spoken before, many times before, and…and this wasn't new. Even though it felt new. It felt almost like the first time. Almost like that first day of school all those years ago. If he focused he could remember the stiff neck of his gakuran, the smell of chalk, the way the sun hit him right in the eyes. The way his aura wandered around the room, the roomful of strangers. The way it felt, how surprised he had been, when he felt someone like him. Someone a lot like him. Someone who, if he focused enough, was green where Suzuki was red. Someone who made the room feel small. Someone who had nearly made him lose control. It had taken all of his mental strength to keep from losing control, from getting up and demanding everything…every little bit of information he could have gotten from the stranger…the one who made his heart race…

Suzuki had been such an idiot when he'd been thirteen.

That had been the first time he had ever felt something, anything, like this. That had been the first time he had ever looked at another boy and wanted to be near him, that growing need to be beside Tadashi, once that had only gotten worse as the years went by. He just hadn't realized that it had gotten worse. It had been like when he had been a child and he used to boil frogs. They always jumped out when you put them in an already boiling pot but if you heated the water up gradually then they stayed and boiled. And then you wound up with frog broth.

Nobody liked frog broth.

"How have you been, we haven't spoken in a…a while." Said Suzuki. He felt like he had been dunked in frog broth. He was such an idiot. He needed to stop talking. He needed to just…he didn't know. Stay calm, maybe? He was such an idiot. Tadashi was the only person in the world who could make him feel like an idiot. Tadashi was the only person in the world who could make him feel any of this. He wanted to kiss him and kill him for making him want to kiss him. He wanted Tadashi to grab him, turn him around, bend him over, and then-

"I've been fine, President Suzuki, yourself?" asked Fukuda. Suzuki blinked. The elevator shook. That was…well of course Tadashi, Fukuda, wasn't going to be using his given name anymore. That part was over now. He felt like he had been soaked through, covered in something worse than frog broth, and the more he thought about it the worse he felt. For himself. They'd had sex, it had happened, but now it was over and done with. He had only done what he had done to become more certain and he was. He loved Shiori, he wanted more children, and she was the person he was going to spend his life with.

What remained of it.

He'd actually, now that he thought about it, spent his life with Fukuda. Most of it. He'd met Fukuda at thirteen and now they were both forty-six. There had been a time when they'd be apart, he'd spent his late twenties to late thirties building a family and building Claw, and they had become near strangers at that point…maybe that was how things were meant to be between them. Shiori had said, after all, that he was only allowed to sleep with Fukuda to get it out of his system. He'd gotten it out of his system and now things had to get back to normal.

It didn't matter if he wanted them to get back to normal or not. This was just what had to happen.

"I've been well...Fukuda." said Suzuki. There. That was what they needed to be to one another right now. Suzuki had enough going on in his life without complicating it with all of these…emotions. These feels of lust and…and just lust. Not love. He couldn't love Tadashi…Fukuda. If he loved Fukuda then his entire life was going to end up going off course and he couldn't have that. He needed an heir, not a nightmare, and he would never get an heir if he didn't marry Shiori. So therefore he had no choice but to marry her. Therefore he wanted to marry her. Therefore they would be married. There. A plan…one that did not leave any room at all for Fukuda or any of the emotions he inspired.

There.

"That's good." Said Fukuda. There. That should have ended the conversation. Why was the elevator so slow? He needed to get off. He needed…he needed to stop looking at Fukuda. He needed to take his eyes and his mind off of Fukuda. He needed…he couldn't stop himself. Fukuda was just so…he was Fukuda…and Suzuki was just being ridiculous.

Fukuda had always had a talent for making Suzuki feel ridiculous.

There had been some admiration, back when they had been small, for Fukuda. The way he so effortlessly moved from social situation to social situations. The way that in the beginning of every school year Tadashi managed to make friends with the entire class. Suzuki had admired it, the way he always knew just what to do or say, but eventually that admiration would turn into something else. Something painful. Something that he had never wanted to feel in his life. The first emotion that he had never been able to fully exorcise.

Jealousy.

He had always been so jealous of Tadashi, the times when he would choose his other friends above Suzuki. He had thought that it had been jealousy that his friend had been taken from him, left of his own accord. He knew better, now. It had been jealousy at the fact that the person he'd had feelings for had just…chosen someone else. But it hadn't mattered. By the end of the year Tadashi had always come back to him. Fukuda was loyal that way…something else Suzuki admired…

There was much to be admired about Fukuda Tadashi.

"Do you have plans for Golden Week?" asked Suzuki. He knew he was being an idiot, he knew that the intelligent thing to do would have been to let the conversation come to an organic end. He knew that he should have put Tadashi and all of ha behind him…but he also knew that he could do whatever he wanted. It was just a conversation, anyway. It wasn't as though he was going to let Tadashi pick him up, throw him against the wall, and impale him. This was just…talking. They were just talking…they had done that before.

"I was just going to spend it with the kids…with Sho and Mukai." Said Fukuda, a tone there that Suzuki couldn't read. Was it bitterness, maybe? He would have been bitter if he had been in Fukuda's place. No children, no great love of his life, nothing to leave behind in this world after he died. That was what mattered the most, he decided, the legacy you left behind. Not the pleasure you felt, not the joy, not the things you wanted. All that mattered was the mark you left upon the world…and Suzuki was going to leave a big one.

He had no choice since Tadashi wasn't going to leave any sort of mark at all.

"That's…understandable. Since you have no children of your own and no plans for them." Said Suzuki

"What about you? How are things with your girlfriend? Any plans for children?" asked Fukuda

"We're going to practice cohabiting. Apparently that's important, with how the rules have changed. The rules between men and women." Said Suzuki

"Just don't play dish Tetris, that's all I have to say about that." Said Fukuda….with a laugh. He was smiling….he so seldom smiled, it seemed. Suzuki…he like it when Fukuda smiled. He hadn't ever realized it before but….but his smile was downright intoxicating.

"You were the champion, you know." Said Suzuki. He had to keep this going, this conversation, he had to keep Fukuda smiling. He had to keep everything just…just as it was now.

"No, you were. I was the one who always wound up doing the dishes, back then." Said Fukuda with a wave of his hand. Suzuki…well now that he recalled, yes, it had been Fukuda who had done the dishes. Well the dishes had to be done and, at the time, men did not do dishes. So of course they would have had to figure out the division of labor on their own. They had been cohabiting after all and those were the sorts of things that needed to be…to be worked out.

Cohabiting was important.

"Well then you should have tried harder, or maybe we should have switched to disposable plates." Said Suzuki. He had always considered Masami to be the only person that he had cohabited with, but he had been wrong. Fukuda had been his roommate all through university. They had lived together, worked together, studied together, slept together…not in a sexual way. Just the two of them being together in the night, sleeping, Suzuki occasionally waking up and watching him sleep. To make sure that he hadn't spontaneously died, of course, or at least that was what he had told himself. Now, after waking up next to him at this stage of life, after they had done all that hey had done, just letting himself see and feel without any sort of excuse….he knew what it had been back then….

And he knew what it was now.

"We didn't have that kind of money back then." Said Fukuda. He was right about that. Suzuki had mostly been living on his inheritance and his parents' life insurance. He'd used that money to make more money but that had been slow going. Any money he'd made, anyway, had gone to the future. His education, Claw, money to support any future children…

"Well we would have had more money if you hadn't wasted so much of it on-" said Suzuki

"For the last time, you can't wash clothes in hand soap." Said Fukuda. Suzuki had no idea why not. They'd had this argument before. Soap was soap. They sold different kinds, of course, but soap was soap. Shiori felt the same way, probably, so maybe she could explain it to him better.

"How I choose to wash my clothes was my business and mine alone. How you choose to waste our money, on the other hand-" said Suzuki

"Hey, I was the only one of us with an actual job. If anything you were wasting my money." Said Fukuda

"We had married our fortunes together, we wasted each other's money." Said Suzuki. That was true. They had put their money together into one big house fund and purchased what needed to be purchased with that. It had been a matter of practicality. Suzuki had been taking three major courses of study, as well as concurrent graduate student work, and all of that was in addition to sowing the seeds of what would become Claw. He hadn't had the time to go over the minutia of every single household purchase. Tadashi had been a waster of money, of course, but Suzuki'd also had his vices. Good food, god clothes, occasionally taking women out….and he didn't care what Tadashi said, dating was not just prostitution with extra steps….they had both been bad with money in their own ways but they had worked it out.

It was important to know who you were cohabiting with.

"Oh…we're here. Time to get off-I mean to…um….see you later, hope it goes well with your girlfriend. Have a good Golden Week." Said Fukuda. He left quickly, he'd dashed out before the doors had even fully opened. But that…well there was no reason to be bothered by that. Fukuda obviously had things to do and so did Suzuki.

Shiori was waiting for him.

"You as well…Tadashi." Said Suzuki as he stepped out of the elevator. He knew that Tadashi couldn't hear him. He didn't care. That might have even been better, in some ways. Tadashi not hearing him, not knowing how he felt. He had no idea how Tadashi felt but…but that didn't matter. Nobody else's feelings mattered, not when it came to his life. He needed to stay on track. He knew what he needed, what he wanted, what had to happen…and that was another son. An heir. An heir and someone who he could have by his side. Someone he loved. He loved Shiori, that was why he was doing this. That was why he was going to spend his Golden Week cohabiting with her. This was just another step on the path to…to everything he had ever wanted.

It was a easy step, he decided, since he'd already cohabited with someone once before.