I still write songs about me leaving you.

"It's - it's fucken' brilliant."

Yamato peeked out one startlingly blue eye to look at the man who had spoken. He had just turned off the speakers and was looking at him as though he had brought back the son he lost years ago. Not that he had any kids to begin with. Akamatsu Hoshi had been his seal into stardom and Yamato was, to him, the biggest, fattest cow in the meadow. And boy, did he milk him. Yamato and his band had been hashing out new albums left and right, each better and higher grossing than the last. And finally, after taking a well-deserved break from touring, The Wolves had taken the backseat and Yamato had produced a small studio album, all by himself. It was supposed to be a small project - it was a small project, he kept insisting, but his producer and his band and everyone who was anyone in the music industry agreed that it was so much more.

"Is it finished?" he asked, pushing his glasses further up his nose.

The blond nodded once. "I have nothing more to add."

The older man looked on the verge of tears. "We'll release it now!"

Yamato looked up suddenly, brow furrowed.

"This month?"

"This week," the man expressed with glee. "By Friday!"

His blue eyes were fixed on the calendar standing erect on the expensive crystal desk, lingering for too long on the number eighteen.

"Next week," he murmured softly.

"I thought you had nothing more to add?" Hoshi almost seemed disappointed.

"I lied," Yamato replied, sinking down on his chair. "There's always more to add."

"Well," Hoshi sighed. "If you must."

"It'll be ready by next Thursday."

"The eighteenth?"

Yamato's eyes finally left the calendar, fixing his manager with a distant, vacant stare. "Yes," he said quietly. "The eighteenth."

.

.

It was an instant hit.

His label released the first single at midnight, just as the clock in Japan struck twelve. In the first two hours, the song had already been purchased by hundreds of thousands and Akamatsu Hoshi was probably crying in ecstasy as the numbers kept piling up. His phone rang numerous times, but Yamato did not pick it up. He sat on a low couch, legs spread in front of him, half a bottle of Yamazaki gone. It hadn't been his intention to stay in, half-drunk and half-dead, but once he had put his jacket on, he had found that he could not face his own reflection. He had taken two showers since then and sat in silence; his hair was still damp, his bare feet crossed at the ankle.

A part of him had known it'd be her, when the doorbell rang. He opened the door casually, unhurriedly, as if he had been expecting her (and he almost had been). Mimi stood on the other side, shuffling awkwardly on high-heeled, over-the-knee boots. Her hair, once neatly curled, framed her face in soft, almost limp curls that barely hid her bright pink nose and cheeks. Even in her state of partial inebriation, she looked stunning.

"Mi," he said quietly.

"Me," she giggled, pointing at herself and then letting her arms hang heavily on her sides. She looked at him from behind kohl-lined eyes. "Won't you ask me in?"

He stepped to the side, letting her inside his apartment and hesitating to close the door behind her as she quietly slipped out of her high boots, throwing them carelessly near the entrance. She sank on the low couch, arms spread wide. Under her coat she had been wearing a flowy navy blue dress, dark tights underneath. With her boots on, the outfit had to have been exquisite and he wondered why she would choose to waste her good looks in an empty apartment.

"The party," he mentioned after a moment, and Mimi cocked her head to one side, peering curiously at him. "You left?"

"Oh, the party is still going," she said. "It was a great party, everyone was saying so."

"They always are," he agreed quietly, taking a seat across from her, his drink in hand. "Won't they miss you?"

Mimi reached out for him, fingers barely brushing his as she took the drink from his hand, downing it in two long gulps.

"They'll hardly notice," she breathed out, glass and ice clinking as she set it down on the low table.

"They'll notice," he said simply. "You're hard to miss."

"Am ... I?" she teased, voice trailing off on a shaky breath. "You seem to be alright."

Yamato watched her quietly, heart racing as he appraised her lithe form, nervous as he saw her big, shining eyes. The question begged to be asked but he thought, if he could only stall for a moment, maybe - maybe she wouldn't leave again, not so soon. He licked his lips, let a sigh escape him.

"I'm thirsty," she announced suddenly, running long fingers through fine brown curls. "I need water."

No sooner had her words left her tongue, he was on his feet, pouring two glasses of ice cold water and giving her one. Mimi drank generously, and she truly looked parched. Yamato drank too, if only to fill the silence, to look at something that wasn't her face. Even that felt like too much. When he lowered his glass, she was looking at his feet, her fingers clasping the empty glass nervously.

"Why?" she asked, so quietly it almost broke his heart.

"Because," he answered.

"Because, Yamato," she breathed, "—is not a reason."

"It is an answer," he said, looking up.

"Not the one I'm looking for."

"No," he said. "I bet it's not."

His head was beginning to hurt, and he wasn't sure if it was the whiskey or her scent which intoxicated him.

"I wasn't going to come," she said, still turning the glass between her delicate, long fingers. "I had the party — Wallace and all my friends, all our friends — but I heard it."

In the silence that followed, Yamato could not guess what she was thinking. After all this time, he still did not understand her. Her friends — their friends did, and they loved her, too. Others had come, like Wallace, and he wondered if he too, loved the things Yamato had at one point fallen for.

"It was beautiful," she spoke in that same voice and this time, he had the sense to dodge when she finally hurled at him the glass she had been nursing. "How could you." He heard it shatter against the wall, fall to pieces in the cold tile floor. Yamato ran a hand through his hair, down his face; his mouth felt dry. He watched her walk up to his piano, open the lid and sit down as she had so many times before. He had made love to her once, on that piano. He wondered if she remembered.

Mimi touched the first notes, tentatively, as if she had always known them. She looked composed, not at all as if she had just been shaken by a violent streak. She never did.

"My past is perilous but each scar I bear sings," she sang, so very softly.

Despite himself, he smiled. "Your voice is still beautiful."

"You got it all wrong, in that song," Mimi replied darkly. "I didn't make you happy, or certain, or better. If I had...,"

"You did," he said quietly, touching his palm to the cold piano. "I was too young, and too stupid to know it then, but you did."

"I didn't leave you," Mimi whispered.

"I know, Mi."

"You didn't give me a choice," she continued, and the slight desperation in her voice made him want to break something, the way his passive detachment made her go half insane.

"I know that, too."

"And yet..."

"...and yet."

"He's lovely to me," Mimi said, and she no longer looked like a small, fragile thing. "Wallace."

Yamato took his time, glancing at the piano and then slowly, almost lazily into her honey-gold eyes. "I know."

"I waited for you."

He could feel it welling up inside him, and he made a tremendous effort not to let it show. "I know you did."

"Sometimes, I don't think you ever took me seriously," she sighed. "Did you ever?"

"Not particularly," Yamato answered, a wry half-smile touching his lips. "As I said, I was stupid then."

Mimi laughed, and the sound of her laughter brought him back, back from that dark place.

"You were," she said. "You were so stupid."

"I'm not stupid anymore, Mi." Yamato let himself smile this time, too.

She took her time in answering, walking towards him and pushing herself into his embrace, burying her face in his chest.

"I want you, the way you are, you, the way you are..." he sang, softly, voice trailing off on a whisper. There had never been a chance, he thought, of being something else.

"You are," she told him. "You are so stupid ... and too late, Yamato."

Her warmth lingered, hours after she had gone. The scent of her, like spring in full blossom, and the taste of maraschino cherries and scotch that had hinted at him behind her tongue. How she had looked at him from the door; how she had left, the sound of his name like a prayer or a curse, lingering, too.

Notes: I'm not too crazy about this chapter, but I had to stop working on it or I'd butcher it even more. I have a feeling there's something weird about it, but I'm not sure what it is so if you find it, let me know. The song is Monuments and Melodies, by Incubus.