Notes: Before setting out to write this, I already expect it to be very, very close to my heart. On the bright side, it's not a really depressing one!

Maybe love is always in the wrong time-zone.

12:35AM

He had been waiting up for hours and already knew it would show come morning. His deep blue eyes flitted from the time flashing on his touchscreen to the lights of the still-alive city. The cold February air had not yet left and he almost regretted not wearing his jacket over the flimsy cotton of his pajamas as the cold seeped under the thin fabric of his t-shirt.

Four minutes to go.

Yamato coughed into his fist, turning his nose upwards to gaze into a practically starless sky. If it was almost 1am it meant that ... it would be barely noon over there. The thought that it was still yesterday somewhere in the world was something he couldn't quite wrap his mind around. That you could lose or gain thirteen hours of time in a transoceanic flight was truly one of life's strangest bits.

One minute to go.

He thought about how happy she'd be he called, how she'd laugh, almost breathless, and tell him she had been waiting all day to hear him. And when she answered, he had to bite down hard on his bottom lip to stop himself from grinning like an idiot.

"Hello?"

"Hey."

"Yamato, is that you? Oh, hi! How are - can you shut up for a moment please? No, it's not for you. What do you mean? Stop! Goddamnit - ahh, wait, Yama-kun, I need to move out — get out of my way, Michael.

"You sound kind of busy—,"

"Not at all! I'm sorry, they don't know how to behave," she yelled the last word and Yamato had to move his phone away from his ear to avoid permanent damage to his hearing. "Sorry, you were saying?"

And the words simply failed him.

"I—I just wanted to wish you a happy birthday," he murmured, burying his fingers in the nape of his neck.

"Oh, that's so sweet of you, thanks! It's not until tomorrow though. You're a bit early."

"It's already the 28th in Japan."

"Is it? I forget about that sometimes. Wow! It's my birthday! Can you believe it? Twenty-one. In just one year, I'll get to be your age."

"In one year, I'll be twenty-three."

"Hm, I guess you're right. Never meant to be."

He knew she didn't mean anything by it but her words cut his breath short and he had to cover it up with another cough.

"Are you okay? You're not outside without a jacket, are you?"

"Mimi—," he protested, shocked and embarrassed that she knew him so well that she could make him flustered from across the Atlantic Ocean.

"Yamato, it's February. Go put something on, for fuck's sake."

It was a combination of her not-so-gentle chiding and her far-too-strong language that floored him. Yamato frowned, running his fingers over his forearm as he held his phone to his ear. "Are you celebrating right now?"

"Just having lunch," Mimi said absently, and he imagined her wrapping a lock of hair around her finger, chewing on her bottom lip. "I'm having a party tonight. Balloons, fireworks—all that jazz," she paused. "I wish you could come."

"Stop. You'll bust your lip and then look horrible tonight."

"What—you're so weird, I swear."

"Weren't you?"

"That's not the point!"

"That's exactly the point, though.

"Whatever, weirdo. You're right, anyway. I can't wear a bust lip tonight, it'll show in all my pictures and I don't think I could endure one single 'I told you so'."

"Have fun tonight," he murmured quietly, the last dregs of his laughter dying on a lingering smile.

"You haven't even seen my dress," she continued, as if she didn't quite hear him. "You'll be wishing you were here!"

"Pink?" he asked, figuring he could entertain her for a while. Twenty minutes more, twenty minutes less ... it didn't matter at this point. He might as well just wait for the sunrise.

"Obviously."

Yamato shrugged against the cold air, his voice nonchalant when he spoke. "I've seen you in pink before."

"Not this shade of pink!" she huffed."You're insufferable, did you know that?"

"Mimi—,"

"So mean and on my birthday, too—,"

"Mimi," he squared his shoulders, re-adjusting his phone against the other ear and let out a slow breath. "We miss you too. You don't have to coax it out of me, you already know we do," he paused, pulling at a loose thread in his shirt. "Me, most of all."

She had gone strangely quiet on the other end and he almost thought they had lost connection when he heard the first quiet sniffle.

"I hate it here," she moaned, and he grew tense at the stark quality of her voice.

"No, you don't," he said gently, turning his back against the cold current of air, wishing not for the first time that he had gotten that jacket.

"I do."

"You don't. And you shouldn't say that, because I'm sure Michael's overhearing this conversation and you know how sensitive he gets."

Mimi chuckled, choked on a few sobs. "I miss you. Loads."

"Yeah," he said absently. "You should get back to your friends. It's getting late—,"

"Okay, thanks for calling. And, you know—everything else," she laughed, and it was the sort of laughter that often caught him off-guard and made his breath hitch. "Kiss you goodnight?"

He rolled his eyes, did a harsh tch sound from the back of his throat. "Such a child."

"Go to bed, old man," she giggled. "I'll send pictures!"

"Yeah, yeah," he sighed, ending the conversation when her laughter cleared and the breathless quality of her voice was too much to bear. He stretched his arms over his head, stiffled a yawn and awkwardly shuffled back into the warmth of his apartment, falling on an empty bed. The clock on his bedside table flashed 1:47AM in large green numbers and he buried his face in his pillow, because it was unfair that he was sleep-deprived and cold on a Sunday while she basked in the glow of a still sunny Saturday afternoon, and it was unfair that their clocks would never really coincide.