A/N: Hello and welcome back! Thanks for everyone's reviews in the past chapter, I'm really happy that people seem to be enjoying this. Hope you have a good read this chapter too. I'm like sooo close to 100! Hugs and cookies to the ever patient hakkaisensei for beta-reading. You're the best! -hearts hearts-

Bunny Poll: A bunch of really random plot bunnies came to me the other day and now I'm having trouble deciding which to write first, so please participate in the Bunny Poll to help me decide. Thankies!

Cipher: If anyone hasn't read Cipher yet, please do so! It's my latest brainchild and I'm quite proud of it.

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VII

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The food was always extravagant when dining with Atobe Keigo; even as a casual guest, lavishness was the norm. As he always did, Tezuka ate sparingly, even knowing that these meals of such exquisite caliber were few and far between.

"...Tezuka, are you all right?" Atobe asked tentatively, after a few moments.

"I'm fine."

"Food not to your liking?"

"The food is fine."

Atobe frowned. Even if Tezuka Kunimitsu did define careful to extremes sometimes incomprehensible to the normal human mind, this time was different. Atobe always trusted his instincts.

"I'm glad. Why aren't you eating, then?"

Tezuka sipped slowly at his cocktail and didn't say anything.

"Look...you're killing the mood; at the very least, you could tell me what's wrong." Atobe shook his head; he was a brilliant host, all things considered, but Tezuka always liked making things so difficult. Atobe blamed it on Tezuka's inhumane work ethic.

And then he paused.

"Who called you?"

Tezuka paused. "No one," he said curtly.

Atobe pressed his luck, and usually he got lucky. "Liar. It has to be someone, you're upset."

The other man bit his lip. "I could still be angry at you."

"Nice try," Atobe smirked. "But no, you're not."

Tezuka let out a resigned sigh. Atobe Keigo was too accomplished a liar. "What's Fuji's favorite color?"

Atobe stopped. "Fuji?"

"Yes, Fuji." There was a faintly wan smirk on Tezuka's face; it was there for a half second, and then it was gone. "I hear you gave him a very interesting present on his twelfth birthday."

Atobe found himself smirking. This was a subject he knew well; he just never would have expected Tezuka to initiate a conversation like this, not that Atobe was complaining. "I'm guilty. Are you jealous?"

"Of you?" Tezuka's voice had a disbelieving edge to it.

"Of me. Yes." Atobe took a sip of his own cocktail, "After all, I was his first."

"I'm not like you, Atobe."

Atobe shook his head. "Oh, but you are. We're more alike than you think."

The inference that he might be similar to Atobe in any respect alarmed Tezuka. But he took a small bite of fried scallop to keep from replying. Atobe's perpetual need to have an annoying smirk on his face was really starting to get to him.

"Will you tell me his favorite color now?" He asked blandly.

"Yeah, it's white." Atobe shrugged, "But let's talk about something else, the fact that Fuji likes white isn't terribly interesting." He switched subjects. "How did you know that I was his first? Did he tell you?"

Tezuka didn't want to talk about it. But he just nodded.

Atobe laughed. "I bet he just did it to make you jealous. He's a conniving little slut. You'll learn that, Tezuka. But he's good for you if you want to lose your virginity. I bet he's angry that you refused to sleep with him on the first night. He hates being rejected, it hurts his pride."

He hated Atobe's smirk, more than anything at the moment. Tezuka could not figure out which of his companion's comments were more degrading. So far, it was a tie between Fuji being a slut, and the fact that the boy wanted nothing more than his virginity. "Don't say that."

"...It's true." Atobe shrugged, and his smirk was mocking. "I've known Fuji a long time, Tezuka."

"You have a talent for making people sound depraved." A waitress came by to refill Tezuka's cocktail glass, this time, with a lime-green liquid. He took a sip; it was distinctly bitter and matched his mood.

"So? That's not a bad talent to have. It's practical, you know." Atobe always had to have an excuse for everything. That was practical too, probably. "Besides, it's true. Fuji is not like you. The boy is what he is for a reason."

Tezuka bit his tongue. "Let's not talk about this."

Atobe noted the change in Tezuka's voice and did a smart thing. He stopped and changed the subject to stocks, his latest spat with his fiancée, and amused Tezuka about mothballs and pink lingerie for the next hour.

Tezuka understood why Atobe never wanted to marry.

-

Shiraishi doted on him, Fuji knew that, but this was the first time that such knowledge pained him. He sat naked in front of his vanity table and Shiraishi combed his hair. His chest was sprinkled with faint marks that seemed to just blend into his perfectly flawless skin, like young virgin blossoms, and despite himself, he found them (the marks) wholly becoming.

He looked at Shiraishi through the glass; the man too was at ease just wearing a shirt with no buttons done. He was sifting his fingers idly through Fuji's hair when he saw him looking.

"Syusuke, I love you. You are beautiful this morning."

It was not the first time that Shiraishi had told him that he loved him, and while Fuji believed that the man meant it entirely, this was the one time he wondered if the man understood his own feelings. He only smiled at the man in the mirror. "Aren't I always beautiful?"

Shiraishi laughed. "Of course you are. I get the feeling you don't hear it enough times."

Fuji did not laugh. He couldn't manage to, only the smile stayed, and even that was with effort. He looked away from Shiraishi to his wrist; he was wearing Saeki's real gold bracelet, although it was too loose on his wrist, so he improvised with a bit of silk ribbon and now it fit just right.

"Shiraishi-sama, how do you know you love me?"

The man paused. "I think about you, sometimes, so much so that I can't sleep. And when I'm with you, I'm happier than I've ever been, Syusuke."

"Do I really make you so happy?" Fuji wondered aloud.

It was a mystery to him, how a single person could make another person so deliriously happy. Fuji himself had never experienced this type of happiness, or, if he had, he had completely forgotten how it felt.

"Yes." There were cool lips on his bare shoulder. "What bothers me is that I never seem to make you happy. What makes you happy? Will you tell me?"

Suddenly, it felt strange to be naked in front of Shiraishi and Fuji stood up to put on a new kimono, a black one for a change; he was definitely in the mood for it.

"I don't know." Fuji said, facing his closet, because the kimonos lined up against the wall had no eyes and couldn't see him frown. "If I think of something, I'll tell you." He paused and turned. "But I wish you wouldn't love me."

Fuji thought he heard something shatter.

"Why?"

"I don't like it." He hadn't planned to say it, but it slipped out of his mouth with little effort. Fuji bent and picked up the torn white kimono on the floor and folded it carefully. "You can't just say something like that, when you don't mean it."

The man looked at him. Shiraishi Kuranosuke professed to be an honest man on many occasions, but he had said that he loved him too many times, over the most trivial little things. It seemed ridiculous to Fuji. "How do you know I don't mean it?" His voice was even.

"Because..." Fuji bit his lip, "I know. That, and it's totally ridiculous for you to love me."

"Why?" Shiraishi wore cheap cologne, probably because he was not a wealthy man. The smell was strong.

"It's very hard to love a person who has no feelings for you." Fuji smiled. "Trust me."

Shiraishi said nothing, he only stepped closer and enfolded the boy within his arms.

"You've never minded when I said it before, Syusuke."

Now that Fuji thought about it, he realized that Tezuka had never held him. He breathed in cologne again. "But it's different now, the rules have changed. If you mean it, it's more reason for you to stop. I don't intend to return your feelings, and I won't try either. If you can love me even after that..."

Shiraishi held him tighter. "I'll make you love me, Syusuke."

Fuji pulled back and smiled. "It's impossible."

The kiss on his lips was a gentle one. "Don't be so sure."

-

Tezuka made green tea with no sugar and settled at his desk to pull an all-nighter. An all-nighter was something familiar, and after breakfast with Fuji, and dinner with Atobe, Tezuka longed for something familiar and uncomplicated.

He tuned the radio to an English news station. Portuguese had been a strange language; he was fluent enough in it, but still, it wasn't something he listened to comfortably.

His phone was nearby, not because he was expecting any calls, but because it was familiar.

-

The next day at the office, Tezuka surprised no one by showing up at his private office on the tenth floor at seven o' clock, sharp.

His secretary was a homely girl named Yukari and she always made an effort to be early. She made him strong coffee with plenty of cream but no sugar at seven-thirty. She was not considered beautiful because it seemed that Atobe screened his secretaries and handpicked ones that he thought were plain. So that Tezuka didn't get 'distracted'.

Atobe himself got distracted plenty. Atobe's secretaries always spoke Japanese with a European lilt and put on too much lipstick. Yet even with that, Atobe still found time to romance an underage lover at a brothel.

Atobe Keigo was that fearsome. Even Tezuka realized that he did admire the other man for all reasons immoral.

"Tezuka-san."

He looked up abruptly.

Yukari was standing in the doorway. "...Sanada-san wants to know if you have a moment."

Tezuka thought for a moment and then nodded. "All right, tell him to come in."

Sanada Genichirou was thirty, and Tezuka can't remember seeing the other man in anything but a suit and tie. Today's suit was dark gray, and today's tie was burgundy. For a man so austere and so ignorant of modern fads, he had unexpectedly good taste in clothing. Or perhaps someone prepared his clothes for him. Sanada had a wife, but she seemed just as colorless.

As for Tezuka, he didn't deny that he was austere too, but being in Atobe's inner circle meant that he knew things like this. He just had enough common sense not to participate.

"Sanada, go ahead and have a seat."

The other man did with a nod of greeting. Sanada did not have an Italian upholstered office on the tenth floor, he was only a second level partner, and worked on the sixth floor in the only personal office around the corner. Consequently, everyone behaved on the sixth floor. Atobe had offered him a first level partner position many times and Sanada was a smart man to refuse him.

But then, Sanada had always been wealthy. Tezuka had not.

"Tezuka, you look like you haven't been sleeping."

Tezuka found the comment amusing. Even though Sanada didn't look the part at all, he was the type to be a mother hen. "Am I really that transparent now? I didn't sleep in college at all, and you never did catch me, except a few times."

"But that was back then, you were young," Sanada told him. "You're not so much anymore."

Sanada would know something about getting old, probably. But if Tezuka had his fair say in things, his colleague knew too much. The three of them had too much of a history together, and Atobe and Sanada knew more about him than Tezuka liked them knowing. They had all studied at Columbia and shared an apartment, but still, the differences between them had been enormous.

Sanada had the habit of going to bed around midnight every night; he was good with time, and always finished his studies before then. On the other hand, Atobe threw party after party in the living room. Atobe didn't sleep much either, but Atobe, as only Atobe could, stayed on top of his classes while sleeping in class. He had probably slept with the professors too.

As for Tezuka, he had kept two night jobs and wrote his thesis while tending bar, and he kept up an impressive record of six cups of coffee a day and only slept all day Sunday. Somehow, it didn't seem fair.

Tezuka looked at the other man and shrugged. "It's a little odd hearing that from you. Now, I mean."

"Is it? Well, I'm not your senpai anymore. So maybe that's why." Sanada gave a vague smile, and laid a thick file on his desk. "Would you look this over? Atobe said his calendar was full."

Tezuka gave a rare half-smirk. "I'm sure it is." He took the file. "I'll have this for you in three days."

"Three days is fine, you can take your time with it." Sanada sighed. "But if I give Atobe the file, he'll drag it out for a month, and that's something I don't want."

Tezuka agreed. "Well, it's lunch now, so I have time."

"That's just like you, wanting to get everything done at once." It was a compliment, and to draw a compliment out of Sanada was hard to do. "Join me for lunch; we'll eat something not so expensive without Atobe."

That idea sounded welcome, especially the 'without Atobe' part. Tezuka nodded, "Sure." He stood.

"Ah, Tezuka, your phone..."

His phone was beeping; it had probably been beeping for a very long time. He held it up and paled at the name.

Fuji Syusuke, 1:25 pm.

He pocketed the phone and picked up his jacket. "Let's go."

Sanada fell into step beside him. "Who was it?"

Tezuka thought for a minute. "No one important, don't worry about it."