Disclaimer: I don't own Gravitation, this is a piece of fanfiction.

The leaves were good in Rikugien that fall, and the weather was spectacular, the crispness of an unhurried autumn taking its time to reach the winter. The air crackled and sang, everything seemed slightly unreal like cardboard cutouts outlined against the sky.

"I should paint this," Ryuichi commented suddenly.

"I can't see you as a painter."

"No? I'm a good artist, no no da? I showed one of my drawings to someone in LA, he said I showed promise."

The injured way Ryuichi said this made Tohma laugh. Ryuichi didn't say anything at all, and Tohma glanced at him worried he'd hurt his feelings, but Ryuichi was smiling - for someone who lived on an emotional roller coaster he'd always been remarkably difficult to offend.

"You'll never believe who I met in LA To-chan"

"Who?"

Ryuichi embarked on a long and possibly slanderous story about an American singer Tohma had long admired. This prompted Tohma into relating the details of a highly irritating encounter with a record executive who had, many years ago, sneered at an early Nittle Grasper demo, but was now looking for a job at NG records. Tohma had borne very few grudges about the rejection of the demo, but it had been very much on the other man's mind and he had tied himself up in knots trying not to mention it.

"Nori-chan cut his photo from a magazine and put it on a dartboard." Ryuichi said when the story finally wound its way to its highly socially embarrassing conclusion.

"Well yes, but I'd actually forgotten that. Anyway it wasn't Nori-chan, it was Roji-chan."

"Was it? What's he doing these days anyway?"

And that got them talking about people they hadn't seen for years, talking about incidents that had happened years before, reminding each other of old jokes that had been told so often that only the punchlines were needed to make them laugh. They talked of bands they had liked, bands they hadn't liked, bands they'd recently heard and thought they would like to hear more of. It was like slipping back in time, back to their teens when everything had been far simpler and much less complicated.

I don't want to grow up anymore than Ryu does Tohma thought as they sampled Ryuichi's shop bought Bento in a pavilion by the water, and Ryuichi performed the Johnny Popeye trick with a quail's egg – a piece of physical comedy which was as hilarious at nearly thirty as it had been when he'd first performed it at seventeen.

They walked down the water's edge, Ryuichi picked up a few stones and started skimming them across the water. It was a neat trick and one that Ryuichi was extremely good at, his stones seemed to bounce across the lake, skipping across the surface of the water three or four times before succumbing to the inevitable and sinking to the bottom without a trace. Ryuichi had tried to teach Tohma the trick on several occasions, but it was one he had never quite mastered.

"It's easy no, no da," Ryuichi informed him, "It's all from the wrist To-chan, like giving a handjob."

Tohma feigned shock and mild disgust. Carried away by the childish mood of the afternoon, he punched Ryuichi lightly on the shoulder. Ryuichi had never taken physical violence against his person well (although he had never had any problems dealing it out to other people). He shoved Tohma with some force and Tohma lost his footing on the slippery stones, being lithe and agile he was able to prevent a serious fall, but still ended sitting in the water.
It was only a few inches of water, but it was freezing cold.
Predictably Ryuichi thought the whole thing was hilarious.
Tohma crossed his arms, bit his lip to stop the shivering and waited for Ryuichi to stop roaring with laughter.

"Are you alright?" Ryuichi asked finally.

"Yes," Tohma responded with as much dignity as he could muster, "perhaps you could help me out."

"Don't splash me, no, no da,"

"I won't splash you."

Ryuichi walked cautiously to the water's edge. Tohma lifted his hand and splashed him copiously.

Ryuichi jumped back quickly "Help yourself out, To-chan, I don't want a cold on the chest, not when I'm starting a new song."

Tohma half stood up, with the admittedly childish intention of increasing the splash radius to include Ryuichi. He stepped back and having missed the fact that there was a sharp shelf behind him, lost his footing and sat down again heavily, winding himself. Ryuichi grinned.

"Oh come on, Ryu give me a hand." Tohma said crossily.

"You're going to pull me in, no, no da,"

Tohma thought about it. "Yes," he admitted honestly.

"No," said Ryuichi and shook his head.

"Oh come on."

"No." Ryuichi sat down on a large stone and pulled a stick of pocky out of his jacket pocket. "Help yourself out. I didn't think that big shot business men usually sat in lakes," he added, conversationally.

Tohma muttered something quite unrepeatable, but made no attempts to stand up.

Since both Tohma and Ryuichi were extremely stubborn, they might have remained in this impasse for some time. Luckily they were interrupted by a passerby – a fat jolly woman in late middle age.
She looked at Tohma curiously and then at Ryuichi who was calmly eating pocky and staring at the lake as if Tohma was some form of performance art produced for his personal viewing pleasure.

"Is your friend alright?"

Ryuichi nodded, "he's fine." he said.

"He must be cold."

"Nah, he's used to it. He does this all the time," Ryuichi confided.

Tohma caught this remark and glared at Ryuichi fiercely.

"It's a meditation technique," Ryuichi added, "it's all the rage at the minute. My friend is a master of the art."

Tohma's expression was priceless. "He plans to sit in every lake and pond in Japan, you know" Ryuichi was enjoying himself and getting thoroughly carried away. "He's sat in Biwa, and the Shimona, and all if the five lakes. It's like a compulsion with him now. If there's water he just has to sit in it. He sat in my fishpond last night and frightened the carp. So I told him 'you can't sit there again, those fish are priceless, no no da. Come down to Rikugien Park,' I said, 'they've got water there, and you can look at the trees.' So here we are."

The woman looked at Tohma thoughtfully.

"He looks cold," she said.

"He won't be there much longer," Ryuichi said, "he never sits in any of them very long. Twenty-three different watering holes he's been in this month, 'you've got to pace yourself,' I tell him, 'it's the quality of the experience that counts, not the quantity of the ponds.' But you don't know what he's like once he's got an idea in his head."

Tohma could quite happily have killed him by this point.

"You know what it's like, no, no da."

The woman studied his face intently.

"You're that singer," she said suddenly.

Ryuichi stared at her blankly, he'd been enjoying himself hugely and had got so carried away that he'd put himself quite firmly into character, he was quite prepared to be an overly chatty and slightly camp fishpond owner with eccentric friends for the remainder of the afternoon.

"You know, from that band – you did that song Sleepless Beauty."

Ryuichi came back down to Earth sharply. "yes," he said.

"He's familiar too," the woman pointed at Tohma, "he's in the band as well isn't he?"

"yes," Ryuichi agreed meekly.

"You're pop-stars," said the woman, in a voice that seemed to suggest that this job description explained everything – including the sight of of a naturally blond haired Japanese gentleman wearing a frock coat and a bowler hat sitting in a lake. "My brother's a guitarist," she confided "he's in a band called 'Tenchi Tokyo', you won't have heard of them," she added.

Ryuichi shook his head in agreement, and thought better of it, politeness suggesting a different response. "I think..."

"you won't have heard of them," the woman repeated firmly, "it's not that they're bad. I mean they're not my cup of tea, but they're not bad. They just don't publicise themselves enough, and they don't have the looks. You don't get any where in the industry if you haven't got the looks. You've got the looks, I'll give you that." She added.

Ryuichi stared at her, appalled by this onslaught.

The woman opened her handbag and rummaged for a pen and a piece of paper.

"I suppose I ought to ask you for your autograph," she said, "it's not for me, it's for my nephew."

Tohma bit his lip to stop laughing. He knew he probably ought to rescue Ryuichi, but this seemed like suitable payback.

"Oh, it's good to have a fan," Ryuichi said, without any obvious irony, "who do I make it out to?"

"To my nephew," said the woman, "I already said. He works at that new bar in the city centre. You've probably heard of it – all the stars drink there."

"Oh I won't have heard of it," Ryuichi said disarmingly, "I don't drink, you know. Now what is ..."

"You are a sensible boy," said the woman, "most of these pop-stars do nothing but drink and take drugs."

For some reason this thought lead her into a series of amnidiversions on the subject of the music industry. These included the possibility that that all the charts were fixed – according to her brother at least, though he was an idiot, and Ryuichi wasn't to take offense at that; the possibility that you couldn't get anywhere in the music business without being gay although of course, she added, Ryuichi wasn't to take offense to that remark either; and that everyone knew that all these pop-stars were terrifically overpaid – but then being a singer was probably like being an athlete, you didn't really have a career once you hit thirty, so it was probably fair that they all received plenty of money young to give them money to invest for the future; and what was Ryuichi doing now Nittle Grasper had split up? Was he thinking of starting a business? – she knew lots of them did. She seemed surprised to discover that Ryuichi still believed he had a career as a singer.

Tohma was shivering with cold. He was also starting to feel almost as sorry for Ryuichi as he was for himself. He was considering getting out of the lake and rescuing him, when the woman's mobile rang.
She answered it, and turned to Ryuichi.

"That's my husband on the phone," she informed him, "wondering where I am. You know what men are like, can't do anything on their own. Are you married?"

"No," said Ryuichi, thoroughly de-moralised and reduced to mono-syllabic replies.

"Have you got a girlfriend?"

"Not at the moment," Ryuichi replied numbly.

"That's a great shame, a pretty boy like you. You need to settle down, there's no point leaving it too late. My niece is single at the moment, she's a lovely girl, works in..."

A sudden squawk from her mobile phone interrupted this remark, so Ryuichi was spared the continuation of the comment.
The woman muttered something to her husband and this time remembered to end the call.

"Well I've got to go," she said. "Wasn't it lucky that we met today, my nephew will be so jealous when he hears. Ah so, I must go now, you've kept me jabbering here for ages. Your friend's been in that lake a long time now, he looks blue. It's strange the things people do, isn't it? Well I better say my goodbyes."

"You can come out now" Ryuichi shouted to Tohma, largely for the fat woman's benefit, "your fifteen minutes are up."

Tohma accepted defeat and got out of the lake.

"What a frightful woman," Ryuichi said, when she had safely gone round the bend in the path, "silly bloody cow. Did you hear her. Stupid fat slug. I hope she gets gonorrhea and dies. That hag!"

The woman had riled him badly, Ryuichi could often be extremely rude to people, but he was seldom nasty about them behind their backs. He had also always had a high tolerance level for fans. Much higher than Tohma, who tended to become formal and off-putting when confronted with gabby strangers.

"Oh come on Ryu, ignore it," Tohma said through chattering teeth, "you know what people can be like."

"Yeah." Ryuichi shrugged, he stared back along the path morosely. He suddenly brightened. "It's good people still remember me, no no da?"

"Course people still remember you, Ryu, you're a success in your own right."

"yeah well, you know I think people liked me better when you two were still around."

Tohma suddenly realised how cold he was. He had become acclimatised to the water, but now that he was on the footpath and moving around the cold hit him forcibly.

"Now... th...th...that's not t...t...t...rue," he said. He couldn't stop shivering.

Ryuichi looked at him concerned.

"You're freezing," he said.

"I'm fine."

"You're not fine, you're shivering. We need to get a hot drink into you, no, no da? Get you warmed up. To-chan, you're blue with cold."

"You sound like my wife." Tohma complained, so cold that he was speaking on automatic pilot.

"I do?" Ryuichi was struck by this, "Mika-san doesn't give a shit though," he added.

There were a number of things Tohma could have said to this, but he was too cold to think straight, and not in the mood for a conversation that could easily have turned into a row.
He patted Ryuichi on the shoulder companionably; since he was still soaking wet this left a huge wet patch across his shoulder blades.

"Splashed you after all," he said gleefully.

" Eh, To-chan?" Ryuichi slung his arms around him. "You can't go home like this. Mika-san'll think I don't look after you properly. Come round mine and have a hot shower. I'll get you warmed up."

"Sure."

It had been a forgone conclusion even before the handy excuse of the lake.