Disclaimer: the usual I don't own gravitation, this story is based on characters by Maki Murakami.

Author's note: this chapter keeps changing because I managed to seperate a couple of paragraphs and then I bunched them when I tried to correct it, and then I managed to detete one of the paragraphs altogether and the whole thing didn't make any sense. I should learn to leave well enough alone, I really should. The next chapter says it's chapter nine when it should be chapter six - it is chapter six but I made a mistake when uploading it. um... I'm completely neurotic, sorry.

It was raining on him. Tohma had always hated the rain. He hated his hair getting wet.

"I hate the rain!"

"You're like a cat," Ryuichi said, "a little kitty cat."

Tohma was pinned against the wall of the shower.

"Ryuichi."

Tohma pulled him closer

"Ryuichi..."

"It's alright Little Cat. I know already."

Ryuichi's cheeks tasted salty.

Ryuichi cried when he was sad, which wasn't often, but when something made it through the armor, he cried. He cried over good music, sad films, sad things.
Tohma never cried, not since he was a child, and not much then either. He'd always been the stoical little boy in the playground. He hadn't cried when Ayato-kun pushed him from the tree and he broke his leg, when his mother died, when Mika left...

Sometimes Tohma was jealous of the way Ryuichi wasn't ashamed of his emotions. The way he didn't care what other people thought.

"Why are you crying?" he said.

Ryuichi muttered something. Tohma couldn't hear him.

"What are you saying?"

He still couldn't hear him, he was so far away.

This isn't right. This isn't the way it happened.

Four years ago...

Tohma had never liked mornings. He'd never been good at them. Mika had to wake him at least once a week.

The alarm buzzed insistently. Tohma reached for the off switch. The LED flashed, eight O'clock in the morning. He'd forgotten to turn it off. He curled back into the blankets. He couldn't get back to sleep. Eight thirty in the morning on his day off and he was awake and up, eating miso soup and reading junkmail.

At nine thirty he was sitting in his studio at the back of the house repetitively playing the opening bars of Fur Elise (the musician's equivalent of "the quick brown fox" he and Eiri had once decided).

At ten thirty he started looking for the cases for the CDs Mika had left stacked beside the CD player.

At half eleven he had decided there was nothing on TV worth watching.

Mika had been gone for nearly three weeks. The house was like a mausoleum.

At noon the phone rang.

"Eh To-chan. I rang your office and they said you were off today. I didn't wake you up did I?" It was Ryuichi.

"No. I've been up since eight."

"Eight O'clock! In the morning?"

"Yes."

"That's very strange. Are you feeling well? Do you have a stomach ache?"

That was a very old and very private joke.

Tohma laughed.

"What are you up to today, To-chan?"

"Nothing much."

"Let's go and look at the leaves in Rikugien."

"Since when have you been interested in the leaves in Rikugien?"

"Since..." Ryuichi started to say something, then changed his mind. "A friend of mine went there a few days ago, he told me they're especially good this year. Come on To-chan. I'll bring lunch."

Tohma thought about it. It wasn't as if he'd got plans for the day.

"Alright."

"How long will it take you to get ready?"

"Not long."

"I'll meet you at the gate in about forty five minutes."

"It'll take me a bit longer than that."

"An hour then."

Ryuichi never made much effort to change his appearance when he went out. In many ways he didn't need to, his stage persona was so divergent from his private face: he spoke differently; dressed in a different style; he even moved slightly differently. The changes were subtle, but taken accumulatively they made an enormous difference. He still looked like the Sakuma Ryuichi of course, but the appearance was more familial than anything else; a relative - maybe a cousin or a brother.

Tohma had been there when (at the height of Nittle Grasper's fame) Ryuichi had walked past his own picture blown up to epic proportions on a subway billboard and stopped at a vending machine only to be accosted by a drunk.
The drunk had pulled his arm, and Ryuichi had turned round. Ryuichi was in one of his more ebullient moods and something about the tramp had obviously pleased him, he hugged her joyfully.
The drunk stared at him uncertainly. "Has anyone told you look just like Sakuma Ryuichi," she said before she wandered off.

The trick had not worked today, and Ryuichi had been captured by two very excited schoolgirls. He had his arm round one and was being photographed by the other when Tohma arrived. Tohma stood back, not wanting to get pounced on as well.

"Now me, now me," the girl with the camera said. She gave the camera to her friend and traded places, Ryuichi obligingly put his arm round her and gave a smile. The camera flashed. Ryuichi started to move his arm.

"Oh Ryuichi-sama sorry I'm not as good a photographer as Kumi-chan, can I try again?"

Both of the girls giggled. Tohma bet the camera worked the first time. This suspicion was enhanced when the girl snuggled far closer into Ryuichi's shoulder than was either necessary and polite. Both girls giggled loudly.

These girls were rabid. Tohma wondered how long Ryuichi had been stuck with them.

Ryuichi noticed Tohma, he waited till he was sure he'd caught his eye and winked at him.

Then he looked at his watch.

"Its got so late," he announced loudly. "Doesn't time fly when you're having fun."

"Oh do you have to go so soon Ryuichi-sama?"

"Don't go Ryuichi-sama."

"I'm meeting a girlfriend in the park, don't want to be late for her. She's a very pretty lady."

"Ryuichi-sama has a girlfriend?"

"Ryuichi has lots of girlfriends," Ryuichi said, "But this one is the bestest of them all."

He gave them both a wave and walked off to the gate, paid the entrance fee and went in.

Tohma gave it a minute or two until the girls finally stopped squealing and walked off.

Ryuichi was waiting on the other side of the turnstile.

"What was that all about?"

"Oh you know what fans are like."

"No I meant what you said at the end."

"Oh you know, you've got Mika-san. I'm the oldest boy scout in Japan."

"You should be glad we're playing it that way," Tohma pointed out.

"Yeah well." Ryuichi shrugged, he didn't sound convinced.

"How are you anyway To-chan? I haven't seen you for months."

This was true, and for once, wasn't one of Ryuichi's exaggerations. Ryuichi had come off tour and gone straight on to the States to visit his sister who'd just had a baby.

"How was LA?"

"Oh you know what it's like To-chan – shiny, expensive, fun, interesting, too big. It's good to be back in Japan, no no da? It's good to be back."

Tohma laughed. "What's brought this on? I thought you loved America?

"Oh yeah, but you know it's just not the same as home. You know what its like?"

He flung his arms round Tohma, "I've missed here."

"Missed you too, Ryu. I've really missed you."

Ryuichi moved his head back and stared at Tohma, there was something slightly shifty about his expression.

"Yeah," he said finally. "You know how it is. Let's walk. Aren't the leaves beautiful?"

"When did you start being interested in leaves, Ryu?"

"Since Fall in LA was grey, To-chan. Old, rainy, grey; grey and nasty. You can taste the grey in the air To-chan. In LA there's nothing but grey."

"Well you're back home now."

"Yeah." Ryuichi didn't sound too certain. "How's Nori-chan?"

"Haven't you spoken to her recently?"

"No. Every time I ring, it isn't a good time. It's weird isn't it?"

"What's weird?"

"Nori-chan. Remember what she used to be like. Remember how much fun she used to be."

"She's still fun."

"Not like she used to be. She's all grown up now. It's scarey, you know. When do you think it happened?"

"I think it happened to all of us Ryu, without us noticing."

"But it was so sudden with her, you know. I mean you've always been grown up, you just got older, and everything just fell into place the way it's supposed to and everything, but Nori-chan? That just happened over night. You know one day she was having fun, and living it up, and the next day she was all grown up with a husband and a baby, and everything just changed. Like that you know, it just changed. One day she had pig tails and was talking about going back to school, and the next day she was a wife and a mother, and making out that was what she always wanted. Do you think she's happy like that? I mean really?"

"Yes, Ryu. I think she is."

"Yeah. She seems happy." Ryuichi kicked at a stone vindictively, "it's never going to happen to me. Not ever."

Tohma put his arm around Ryuichi's shoulders and hugged him. "It will sometime, you know that."

"No, it won't." Ryuichi moved Tohma's arm from his shoulder. "It won't happen. I don't want it to happen, everything keeps on changing, you know. All the time. Things change you know, they change, they change all the time. Why can't things stop for a moment? What happened to live fast die young? It's not like I don't live the lifestyle, you know."

Tohma tried to change the mood. "That only works if you're in a rock band, and we write cheesy pop."

"Yeah. You're right." Ryuichi smiled wryly, "there's nothing tragic about 'Hey, hey, everything's shiny; I can't ever be as glamorously happy as I am at this moment; beautiful lady will you have my baby?' "

It sounded like a quote, or maybe a series of quotes, but they certainly weren't by Sakuma & Seguichi, Tohma was sure of that; there was also a faint trace of the autobiographical to the line.

"Did you actually say that to someone?"

"No, of course not. That's more your thing isn't it To-chan? How is she by the way?"

And that was the time to tell him what had happened, but Tohma didn't want to. Ryuichi had never understood about Mika.

Never would understand about Mika. He'd either be smug and say 'told you so'; or he'd try and be sympathetic, and fail miserably. He'd never liked Mika, and sometimes Tohma wasn't even sure if he did either.

"Come on Ryu, what's wrong?"

"Nothings wrong," Ryuichi shouted. "There is nothing wrong, you know. In fact." He gave a big smile, "Everything's right for a change. I think. Maybe, anyway. Sometimes you just don't know, no no da?"

"Yeah. I know that feeling." Tohma agreed.

"Yeah well you know, it's that feeling. How's the label coming on?"

"Not doing so badly, I've signed up a new band, they're going to be huge."

"As big as Nittle Grasper?"

"Of course not. We were special."

"Yeah we were, weren't we?"

And that was that, subject changed, without anything having been discussed.

Despite this somewhat rocky start, they had a good afternoon.