He looked down at the floor to see a massive puddle forming at his feet. Mamoru sniffled and swept his hair back, "I'm really sorry about this, I left my umbrella at home and it seems that I'm ruining your carpet."

The blond man merely smiled. "Hey no worries, we found a few mushrooms growing in it the other day so the water's probably doing them some good. It just means more free food for us."

Mamoru wasn't exactly sure how to respond to that, or which part to be more horrified by: the fact that they had indoor mushrooms or the fact that he had called them 'food'. The latter won out, "You…eat them?"

The American rolled his eyes. "Almost. Ceithin and I dared each other to try one, but he chickened out at the last minute."

The silhouette came closer at the mention of his name, holding a bowl of cereal. "I didn't chicken out, I just sobered up long enough to realise that it was a stupid idea. I probably saved your life." He was indeed half naked, just as Mamoru had suspected, and was built like a brick shit-house for that matter, making Mamoru immediately feel like his impressive six pack was a measly Volkswagen Beetle compared to a sixteen wheeler Mack truck. What struck Mamoru most, though, were his eyes: a shining silver that matched his short hair, giving him a strong ethereal quality. Mamoru recognised him instantly.

"Whatever. I'm Jared by the way, this guy is Ceithin. You want a cup of coffee or something? And maybe a towel?" he added with a blindingly friendly smile.

The offer of coffee, as wonderful and distracting as it was, was not enough for Mamoru not to notice that Ceithin was staring at him. "Both would be great, thanks," he said gratefully to Jared. He noticed that the taller man was at that stage in his mind where he vaguely recognised Mamoru, but he hadn't quite pinpointed from where. As Jared led the way to the kitchen he decided to help him out. "We were in the same hall last year. I was in B block."

It took a second before it clicked. "Yes, that's right," Ceithin said, nodding once, "you used to come to our floor and talk to Amano."

"Amano...Amano...Amano..." Jared repeated the name with a slight furrow of his sunny blond brows, "wait, wasn't he that Japanese geek in 220? The one that used to run away from the communal areas when anyone else was in there?" He didn't bother waiting for confirmation and barrelled on. "I tried to talk to him a few times, but he'd just shoot out the room before I'd finished saying 'hi'. I'll admit, they have a lot of crazy cool things going on in his country but, like, I've never in my entire life met a single Japanese person who was not completely socially inept. I swear, they're like hobbits. I suppose that's why he was studying medicine. Seriously, props to him because it's a hugely tough course, but let's face it, unless he did something ridiculously difficult like something biological or engineering or some kind of math he just wouldn't have been happy. Although medicine can involve a significant amount of social interaction, I suppose. How the hell is that guy going to cope with that?" Jared looked at Mamoru, who just stood there, deliberately letting the blond talk himself deeper into his own hole. "I suppose it's programmed into them from birth, you know? They probably start playschool at two years old, except they don't play, they're learning advanced calculus. So, what do you do?" he asked as they arrived into the kitchen.

Mamoru couldn't have asked for a more perfect setup. "I study Medicine," he sat himself in the chair offered to him, "and I'm from Japan."

"You're kidding."

Mamoru decided to be ruthless. "No," he said with his straightest, most serious visage, which, given his many years of experience playing it cool back in high school, was pretty intense.

"Right," Jared gave his best attempt at a cheeky smile, "I should've figured really. Yeah, well Amano was a pretty decent guy, just a little serious about his work." His features took on a look of panic, but Ceithin decided to let him wallow in his own awkward situation, probably for his own entertainment. When Jared realised he wasn't being rescued, he bailed. "I'm going to go get Zach so you can meet him too." He started to walk away before doing a one eighty. "And I'm also going to get you a towel," he said, feeling more and more tongue-tied. "Uh… I don't remember your name, brah."

Mamoru finally decided to crack a smile, "That's because I didn't give it. It's Chiba Mamoru."

Seeing that he didn't seem to be too offended, Jared relaxed, "Chiba. Right."

"Uh, it's Mamoru actually," he hastily corrected. "Mamoru Chiba. I'm sorry; in Japan we transpose it. Sometimes I forget."

Jared smiled. "Right, Japan, of course." He walked off, turning the corner. It sounded like he'd climbed one or two stairs before he yelled out, "ZACH!"

There was another shout upstairs. "WHAT?"

"COME DOWN AND MEET MAMORU!"

"WHAT'S A MAMORU?"

"THE NEW GUY!"

"WHAT NEW GUY?"

"JUST COME DOWN!" He paused. "AND BRING DOWN A TOWEL!"

"A WHAT? WHY?"

Mamoru shook his head and looked up at the shirtless man wall in front of him. "Is it always like this?"

Ceithin handed him a cup of coffee. "Only most of the time."

Mamoru laughed. "It must be... interesting" He was about to take a sip and stopped, noticing the mug had writing on it. He rotated it from one side to the other as he read aloud. "'Fuck off and die'?" He raised his eyebrows, "Should I be taking that as a hint?"

Ceithin sighed, twisting his own mug to show Mamoru, it read 'Jizz cup'. "I gave you the politest one we have. You also had the choice of 'The only thing that gets me up in the morning is Viagra'; 'I taught your girlfriend that thing she likes'; and 'Sheep shagging wrecks lives but makes 'ewe' happy', with 'you' spelt E-W-E. That one was actually a birthday gift to me." At Mamoru's confused and slightly concerned expression he clarified. "I'm Welsh. There are a lot of sheep jokes."

"Ah."

"That's what you get for letting Zach do the house shopping."

"Do I want to know what your plates and bowls are like?"

"Surprisingly normal, actually. I'm pretty sure they were already with the house." They heard someone thumping down the stairs. "That would be Zach. He's living in the room next to the available one so he'll be your direct neighbour once you move in."

The name was the one that had been hastily scrawled on the sopping wet piece of paper, now slowly turning to moist mush in his pocket. "I think I spoke to him on the phone."

As Zach made his entrance into the kitchen, Mamoru felt the same sort of mysterious feeling he'd had when he'd been staring at the door and, just like before, it had him routed to the spot. Zach was not as tall as the other two housemates, but he was by no means short. He was also much leaner than they were, and while Mamoru guessed that his body was fit and stronger than it appeared under his uncomfortably tight-looking clothing, there was a gauntness to him: pale skin, rough fingers and a certain hollowness to his sharp cheeks.

Zach's eyes are what caught Mamoru the most, however. Despite being just slightly sunken in and surrounded by tired, darker skin, they were intensely green, shining out like a caged tiger's and holding Mamoru hostage for a few seconds. He stood up, his throat suddenly very dry. "Hi." When he received no reaction whatsoever from Zach he began to panic, searching desperately for something to say. "I'm Mamoru. Um, I called you the other day?"

Once Zach heard his voice it seemed like he recognised it. The intensity of his gaze was blinked away quickly and he moved suddenly into action. "Shit, sorry, yeah sorry, I remember now. It's nice to meet you," he said, lifting his arm out to shake hands.

Mamoru noticed that Zach had plastered on a smile but it didn't put him at ease, in fact it did the opposite, unsettling him even more. He also didn't fail to notice that Zach pulled away quickly, as if he had been uncomfortable touching him. He looked down at his cold, clammy hand and compared it briefly to Zach's smaller, warmer one. To be honest, he wouldn't have enjoyed shaking his hand in its current state either.

"I was told to bring a towel down, looks like you could use one." Zach's wide smile was still in place, like he was making too much of an effort to look happy.

Mamoru didn't know how to respond to that and gave a single, "Thanks" as he wracked his brain for something else to say. "I forgot my umbrella, and it was raining outside so, you know, I got wet." Mamoru simply couldn't figure out why he was so shy around these people and he berated himself again for his inability to communicate anything sensible or interesting.

"Yeah, that's usually what happens. Simple cause and effect really, isn't it? It rains and people get wet. Hey, you're a little late actually, did you find the place easily? I realised after had I hung up that I hadn't actually given you directions from Brunel Hall and I had never given you my number. I tried calling one four seven one to see what your phone number was, but it came back as withheld."

The sheer amount of info Mamoru needed to process and respond to sent him into a stuttering panic, and then to his complete embarrassment he realised that Zach was still holding the towel. He took it quickly and started wiping his hair. "Uh, yes." Oh my God, you idiot! Keep talking! "I called from my mobile and I tend to keep my number blocked."

"I don't blame you, I'm not really a fan of giving out my number either."

"That's because if most people had it, all you'd ever get is abuse from women you haven't called back." Jared lifted his hand in a celebratory low-five and Ceithin obliged, a small smile on his face.

They were given a menacing green-eyed glare and were then ignored. "I'm glad you made it though, I've been shifted with the job of finding us a new flatmate and it hasn't been easy."

"That's because you've turned down anyone who's been interested so far, dip shit." Jared said, giving him a look.

Zach scoffed and turned his head to look at his housemate, cocking one eyebrow up. "You seriously wanted the guy who wouldn't stop picking his nose? He was rolling chunks tighter than a spliff and flicking them directly onto the bloody carpet."

Mamoru blinked and tried his best to avoid springing off of the kitchen floor in horrified disgust.

"Dude, he was working part time at the Odeon!" Jared's hands went up in what appeared to be exacerbation. "Free movie tickets versus mildly gross, I think it's obvious which one wins, especially considering the fact that the communal areas of this place haven't actually been cleaned since before we moved in."

Zach's nostrils flared and he raised his dark blond eyebrows like an angry mother signally for her child to shut the hell up in front of their guest.

"If I remember correctly," Ceithin piped in, "and I'm absolutely certain that I do, you were the one who practically kicked him out," he said, looking at Jared like he was the biggest hypocrite known to man.

Jared huffed. "Fine, the guy was a selfish a-hole. He screwed up what could have potentially been the start of a beautiful friendship because he was a nasty pig." He glanced at Mamoru as if he were sizing the Japanese man up. "You don't happen to work for the Odeon by any chance, do you?"

Mamoru gave him an apologetic shake of his head.

"Cineworld?" Jared tried hopefully.

"No, sorry," Mamoru said, "I don't work in any cinemas. Are there a lot of people interested in the room?" he asked, genuinely worried about potential competition.

"No!" Zach glared at Jared again, obviously annoyed that the topic had been brought up. "You're our best candidate so far." The wide smile reappeared and Mamoru had difficulty returning it. "You look like you're a tidy person, we don't really care unless you spread your mess outside of your own room. You seem responsible though, so I'm sure you'll be fine. Are you a smoker? It doesn't matter if you are, I don't smoke personally, it's not exactly good for your health. But obviously if you are, you'll need to smoke outside."

"What's with the twenty questions?"

For a third time, Zach glared at Jared for his comment, "It's called 'getting to know each other'. You people forced finding a new housemate on me, let me do it my way?" He looked at Mamoru. "Do you mind me asking these questions?" he asked, as if it was an afterthought.

"Uh, no. I don't mind," Mamoru replied, "and I don't smoke either." He gave them all a nervous smile, feeling like he was talking to a girl he liked for the first time: his heart fluttered, his cheeks burned, and every word needed to be forcibly wrenched from his mouth. He hadn't even been like this with Usagi; he needed to get away for a second, he decided, to rally himself. "Um, could I use your bathroom?" He looked over at Ceithin as he asked permission.

"Of course!" Zach said before anyone else could reply. "I'll show you."

Mamoru looked awkwardly at Ceithin for second, as if implicitly seeking his consent anyway before he stood up and followed Zach out of the kitchen.

"It's just in there," Zach said as he pointed to a door at the opposite end of the house.

Mamoru thanked him quickly and politely and did his best not to run into the toilet and slam the door shut.

When Zach returned to the kitchen it was to find both of his housemates staring at him. "What?"

"Are you on E, brah?" Jared looked genuinely worried.

"What?" Zach frowned. "Why the hell would you say that?"

"You're acting a little eager." Ceithin was looking at him like he was trying to figure out what was going on inside his head. "He's only been here ten minutes and you've already tried to pull his entire life history out of him."

Zach dismissed Ceithin's observation like it was an annoyance. "Don't be ridiculous, I'm only being thorough. I'm not going through this housemate search again, it's been nothing but a huge pain in my gorgeous but tiny arse. I want to make sure we're going to like him, and more importantly, that he's not going to cry off back to wherever he came from and leave me footing his part of the fucking rent, like I am now," he stated pointedly.

Jared laughed. "This whole situation is your own fault. You're the one who slept with Will's girlfriend. If I'd been Will I'd have left too, and I would have kicked your ass for good freaking measure."

"You'd try, you mean."

"And I'd succeed." Suddenly it became a competition about who was the more dominant male between the two. "It wouldn't be one of your pussy French dance-offs," Jared said, grinning.

"Who said anything about dancing? I could beat you at anything you could ever conjure with your intellectually inferior brain."

"Bullshit. I will always make better nachos than you, I'm way more attractive to the opposite sex than you are and I don't think I have to remind you, hombre, of the fact that you can't even swim," Jared said, putting his main achievement forward.

"I can't float," Zach corrected, "that's not the same thing. I'm just covered in too much muscle."

Ceithin effectively solved the argument with a clear statement of who was the alpha male. "You seem to have made up your mind about him very quickly," he stated interrupting them and gaining their attention immediately. He stared at Zach as if he hadn't even heard the previous light-hearted conversation, and it was plain to see how uncomfortable it was making the smaller man. His silver eyes stayed fixed on Zach's green ones until Zach looked away.

"Like I said," Zach replied, his voice lowered, "I want this search for a housemate over and done with. He's the one we need."

Ceithin eyed him carefully. "I thought you wanted to be thorough."

Zach didn't miss a beat, dramatically rolling his eyes. "I can be thorough and quick at the same time. If I can build a car that drives on Mars-"

"You did not build the Mars Rover," Jared said.

"I didn't say I did, I said I 'can', you idiot. Anyway, my point was this: unlike you lesser beings, I can handle being both quick and thorough at the same time."

Mamoru walked back into the kitchen seemingly more relaxed. The towel was folded and being held in one hand. "Is there anywhere I can put this?" he asked politely.

Ceithin shrugged. "Just dump it by the stack of washing over there. I was going to do a towels load next anyway." He pointed to the washing machine which could be seen in the small extension room of the kitchen.

Mamoru did as he was told and then looked at Zach. "So," he struggled, desperate to make decent conversation, "are you French?"

Zach blinked at him owlishly. "How did you know that?"

"It was mentioned earlier." Mamoru thought it best not to remind Zach that Jared had called him a French fruitcake.

"I'm only half French actually; my mother's from Avignon but I was born in Paris. The other half of me is English, which is why I can pronounce the letter 'h'." His eyes shifted to Ceithin, travelling up his body to his face. "Is there a reason you're semi-naked?"

Having been semi-naked during the entire time Zach had been downstairs, Ceithin frowned. "I don't have anything left to wear. I'm waiting for my shirts to dry." Despite his apparent blasé attitude, Mamoru noticed that Ceithin crossed his arms across his well chiselled chest, disguising the move by making it look like he was only trying to sip his coffee. It was reassuring to see he wasn't the only self-conscious person in the room.

Zach shook his head. "You need to buy more clothes, mate."

"No, I just need Noel to stop hogging the washing machine."

"Well you need to put something on; your pasty white abs are reflecting too much light and it's hurting my eyes."

Ceithin didn't miss a beat. "You're just saying that because your best physical asset is that bird's nest you call 'hair'. You're jealous of my abs."

Mamoru spluttered into his coffee and Jared smiled broadly.

"This," Zach said in a low and venomous voice, running his hands through his shining curls, "is a thing of divine beauty and it pulls in more than enough to satisfy my sexual needs."

Mamoru raised an eyebrow. "I take it modesty is not counted as one of your main qualities."

"Shut it, sushi roll." He pointed at Ceithin. "I was going to let you borrow one of my shirts, but after that comment, there's no bloody way in hell that's going to happen now."

Ceithin scoffed lightly. "That's an empty promise if I've ever heard one, me trying to fit into your clothes would be like the Hulk shopping in Mothercare's."

Zach rolled his eyes at what he thought was blatantly an exaggeration. "Don't flatter yourself. You're not that big and what I wear isn't that tight."

"Well, not if you're anorexic, no. You'd have trouble fitting Kate Moss into your clothes, let alone me. I'm twice your size."

"He's got a point there," Jared said, "the corduroys you're wearing look like they're being eaten by your ass."

"You told me that yesterday."

"And yet," Jared said, shrugging his shoulders as if he was confused, "you're still wearing them."

"They're my pulling trousers," Zach replied defensively, "women flock to me when I have them on."

"Maybe they want to take you on shopping trips with them for shoes and Prada handbags?"

"Fuck off, what are you doing staring at my arse anyway?"

"It's hard not to notice something so horrifying."

Zach flipped him two fingers and decided he wasn't going to give him time to respond in kind. "Have you checked out the room?" he asked Mamoru, who was still trying to recover from being likened to raw fish and rice.

"Me?"

"No, I was talking to the imaginary person sitting next to you."

"Oh," Mamoru hesitated, weary of how far he could tease someone he'd just met. He had no other responses lined up in his head though, so he went for it. "I see, and is this imaginary person one of the people you've pulled with those trousers on?"

Ceithin let out a loud "Ha!" and patted Mamoru on his back with enough force to almost send him flying out of his chair.

Zach glared. "Just go see the bloody room," he said, doing his best to hide a smile from creeping onto his full lips.

"Come on, I'll give you the grand tour," Jared offered, grinning as he stood from the creaky wooden kitchen chair and led Mamoru up equally creaky wooden stairs. "There's the main bathroom in the far corner - it's shared between me, Zach and obviously you. There's also the smaller bathroom downstairs, but as I'm sure you noticed when you were in there, there's no bathtub; it's just a shower. It's a more powerful one than the one up here but it's full of Ceithin's and Noel's shit and it's tiny. I imagine it's hilarious to watch either of them taking a shower in there, kind of like in the circus, with the huge clown in the small car?" Mamoru nodded. "But at the same time, it would be pretty gay, you know, watching another guy shower, especially since they're going to be your housemates, so I'd recommend avoiding it or it could get awkward."

"Got it. So use the bathroom upstairs but if I fall into a pile of manure or something equally foul smelling, use the shower downstairs. Also, you appear to have latent homosexual urges towards your flatmates." Compared to how he'd felt when he'd been in Zach and even Ceithin's presence, being with Jared was relatively comfortable. He also couldn't help the small amount of smugness he felt for his line.

Jared smiled and shook his head. "You're going to fit right in here." He pointed to the room next to the bathroom. "That's mine, if you couldn't guess from the photographs on the door and the little American flags."

Looking at the hoard of photographs of Jared either with friends on a beach, or him topless with board shorts on, or holding a surf board (or in some cases, all three), and judging by the other pictures tacked onto the door of surf art, surf labels, giant waves and girls in nothing but Hawaiian grass skirts and flower garlands, Mamoru made a relatively safe guess as to what Jared enjoyed doing for fun. "You like surfing?"

"What gave it away?" Jared pointed to the room opposite his own, across the corridor. "That one is Zach's. I wouldn't go in there unless your life depended on it. There's about an eighty seven per cent chance you won't come out whole. It's full of his killer robot prototypes and posters of porn and math." He led Mamoru to the adjacent room, "This one will be yours." He opened the door for Mamoru and indicated for him to go in.

"Wait, I'm sorry but did you say 'porn and maths'?" Mamoru asked, wanting to make sure he heard correctly.

"No, I said 'porn and math' without the 's' at the end, but you're forgiven for making that mistake."

Mamoru had forgotten that Americans spoke slightly differently, but that hadn't been the point he was making. "Oh, I'm sorry, no, I was confused ab-"

"Zach's doing a degree in mechanical engineering," Jared interrupted, knowing what Mamoru was going to ask. "He should really be doing a PhD in it or something because the guy's a genius. Seriously, he knows more about the subject than his lecturers do, but the university wants his qualifications on paper before they actually let him near a significant pile of university cash and allow him to abuse it horrendously. I'm sure you can figure out for yourself why he likes porn. If you can't, I'd seriously reconsider whether this is the right house for you."

Mamoru laughed although his cheeks flushed just a little. "I see. So he's very intelligent?"

"Yeah, he's a dick about it to. He doesn't go to lectures or tutorials and still aces everything, something which he will rub in your face excessively, especially in those low periods, you know? When you're panicking over the essay you're desperately trying to finish? And if he's bored, instead of going to his classes he'll go to random ones like Marine Archaeology or Veterinary Science."

Mamoru balked at the idea; he did not understand this. He may have let loose in his first year, but he always, always went to his classes, he took immaculate notes, and just in case he missed anything - on the off chance he was a little hung-over from his shenanigans - he recorded everything and backed it up on Dropbox, his external hard drive, CDs and in hard copies. The idea of skipping even one class was enough to make him anxious, it was just something Chiba Mamoru did not do. "How do his professors let him get away with it?" he asked, remembering that the University tended to be very strict on attendance.

Jared shrugged. "He's just that good at his subject. He's like Tony Stark good, except without the Ironman suit, and less rich. And definitely much less charming." He leaned against the desk in the room, which was the only piece of furniture aside from a chest of drawers, a wardrobe and a bed. "He'll probably make his own flying Ironman in a few years, though. I wouldn't put it past him."

Mamoru smiled, having caught the film reference. "Zach seems like an... interesting person," he said, remembering the odd feelings he'd sensed and the unsettling looks and grin he'd been given.

"Yeah, Zach's actually a good guy when you get used to him," Jared returned Mamoru's smile, "Which I suppose is a nice way of saying he's a total d-bag but he'll somehow grown on you."

"That's an interesting way of, um, describing a friend."

"Everything I tell you, I tell him directly too. It's not like I'm lying about it, and I figure it's better for you to know upfront exactly what you're getting yourself into. That way you can't blame us later."

Mamoru blinked. "Uh, ok. Thanks?" he said, unsure whether he was meant to be worried.

"Don't stress too much. We're not completely unreasonable here. We like late nights like everyone else, but we're all in our second year and when it comes down to it, I'm paying international fees. I'm not leaving this country without a first and I like to study at home, so does Noel. Unless, of course, we're aiming to scope out hot booty. Then it's to the library we go. The ASS is an excellent location if you're searching for female companionship."

"Ass?"

"Arts and Social Sciences Library."

"Oh."

"I've got to be honest, I'm a big football fan, and by that I don't mean soccer, and I will often yell at the TV. The problem is the time difference, most of the time, the game is on in the middle of the night here, but I make sure and watch it downstairs in the living room, so you shouldn't really be affected by it unless you're a really light sleeper. Ceithin's probably the tidiest and quietest here, so you shouldn't really get any problems from him. Noel has a tendency to spread his shit everywhere, so you have to yell at him every so often and he'll eventually put it away. Zach can play his music excessively loud, but he's pretty considerate when there're other people in the house who're working or sleeping. I hope you like techno, house, French house, tribal house, hard house, cybergrind, drum and bass, progressive drum and bass, dance, trance, electro, reggae and The Verve."

Mamoru frowned. "The… Verve? I don't think I've heard of that genre of music." (To be honest Mamoru had heard of nothing on that list. His awareness of music consisted of owning a few Schubert and Tchaikovsky albums for when he wanted to relax and a load of JPop songs that he'd been forced to listen to when he was with Usagi or the girls, but that was it… he also secretly enjoyed the musical talents of a certain Curtis Jackson, better known by his stage name '50 Cent', although Mamoru shared that fact with no-one. Ever. And he never would).

"They were a British band, I don't actually know if they're any good because I've never actually listened to them sober, but Zach can't get enough of them, especially after a big night. You probably would know them if you heard one of their songs. They did Bittersweet Symphony, that one's pretty famous."

Mamoru gave him an apologetic smile. "I don't recognise it."

"It featured heavily in Cruel Intentions." He received a helpless shake of Mamoru's head. "You know, the one where Selma Blair and Sarah Michelle Geller have that hot kiss?" Being met with no response, he sighed. "We're really going to have to work on your film-knowledge, amigo," he said, patting him on the back.

Mamoru gave an awkward smile, unfamiliar with such casual contact on his person. "That's a long list, Zach appears to be very interested in music."

"Yeah, he is. Personally, I can't really hear much of a difference between all those sub genres he keeps telling me about. I'm a big old school fan… and maybe a bit of the Chili Peppers if I'm feeling it, but I'll pretty much listen to anything. He's a fantastic pianist, though. He's got a keyboard in his room. I'm more of a guitar man myself. You play?"

Mamoru was finding it funny how much information Jared could pack into what he said without somehow sounding like he was a teenager on speed. "Only Garage Band on my iPad, and I'm not very good at it since I don't get to practice much. My fiancé uses it most of the time."

Jared smiled broadly.

"Is there anything else I should know?" he asked directly, considering Jared seemed to willing to share details.

"Yeah, hide your underwear."

He immediately regretted the question. "Excuse me?"

"Like under lock and key if you can. That shit's like gold here. Just like socks, they're shared around. Often they go missing, especially if you're not monitoring the washing machine. Why do think Ceithin's down there in the kitchen shirtless? Actually," he said, thinking about it aloud, "if underwear is like gold, then socks are definitely freaking platinum, because all of us wear socks. We almost had a full blown sock-war last Tuesday. How big are your feet?"

"Um, normal size?"

"Then your main competitors will probably be Zach and possibly Noel. Watch out for those two. Oh, and speaking of feet, never lend Zach a condom."

"What?!" His face began to warm instantly.

"I'm not kidding. If he asks, tell him you're out because otherwise you'll set a precedent and he'll ask all of the time, the smug little shit."

"I- I mean, I don't-"

"To be fair to Zach, though, he has this awesome feature. Because he's an engineer, he can pretty much fix anything. And I mean anything. Plus, he knows a guy who knows a guy who could totally hook you up." Seeing Mamoru's frown at the idea of being offered drugs, Jared backtracked. "Uh, only if you're into that kind of stuff, which none of us are, of course, we're all very serious athletes and would never dream of engaging in such dangerous and illegal activity." He changed the subject quickly. "So, the room. Decent sized space, double bed and a nice view of the back yard. I hope you don't mind powder blue, for some strange reason this is the only room in the entire house with walls other than eggshell white, or off-white, or whatever you call paint which isn't quite white."

Mamoru smiled again. "Powder blue is fine with me."

"Great. Now, there are actually one or two more things that you have to know." Jared's light blue eyes looked away for a second before looking back. "A few little quirks, if you will, but they're important so take careful note."

Mamoru felt a little wary considering what he had already been told. "Ok..."

"First, I don't know if you noticed, but there was a large A1-sized piece of paper stuck to the living room wall."

Mamoru briefly searched his memory and then nodded. "Yes, I did see something, with a lot of handwriting on it?"

"That's the one."

"What is it?"

"'It' is a sacred document in this house. Our Bill of Rights, our Magna Carta, if you will."

Mamoru raised his eyebrows slightly in amusement, curious now as to what it contained.

"They're the house rules." Jared explained. "The fact that you'll live here means that you must abide by these rules. These rules cannot be broken, under any circumstances, without facing a penalty."

"What's the penalty?"

"It depends on the breach."

Mamoru briefly wondered if Jared was trying to evade answering the question. "What kinds of things does it have written on there?"

Jared noticed Mamoru's trepidation. "They're not creepy or dangerous or anything like that. They're not unusually restricting either, just things like having an obligation to notify your housemate if you've dropped their toothbrush in the toilet, and if a competitive drinking game is to take place then tequila must be the first choice of beverage, if food is left out for longer than thirty minutes then it becomes house property. It's that sort of stuff."

Jared's examples were both odd and disturbingly specific. "Where did these rules come from?"

"Experience mostly. It's not exhaustive either, we usually add a new rule if it's required."

Mamoru briefly debated whether or not to ask if someone had really dropped someone else's toothbrush into the toilet bowl and decided that he would be safer not knowing.

"Another rule is that every Sunday one us cooks for the others. It's not as onerous as it sounds, that's one dinner every five weeks. Although we tend to make an exception for Noel since he managed to give us all diarrhoea the last time he tried, including Ceithin, Ceithin, who I hasten to add, once ate an entire half-frozen, half-melted, three months out-of-date steak pie and was fine." At Mamoru's raised eyebrows he explained. "He was hungry so instead of sticking it in the oven at gas mark six for forty minutes, he nuked it in the microwave for five."

"I see," said Mamoru, not really seeing at all, but enjoying listening to Jared's story all the same.

"Yeah, so normally Noel just gets take out, it's best for all of us."

Mamoru guessed that Noel was the missing housemate.

"Oh, and as an advanced warning, Ceithin is a pussy when it comes to spicy anything, seriously, too much black pepper can send him over the edge."

"I heard that," came Ceithin's voice from the stairs as he made his way up to see them.

"You're acting like it's not the absolute truth."

"Don't listen to him, his taste buds burnt away a long time ago, so he's an unreliable judge in the matter," he smiled as he walked into the room, just as bare chested and physically intimidating as before.

Mamoru felt that nervousness creep through his body again, as if Ceithin was someone he wanted to impress, like a teacher or some kind of mentor. "Which are yours and Noel's?" he asked, not liking the feeling of inferiority at all and doing his best to hide it. It was a difficult one to juggle because from Mamoru's quick assessment Ceithin was nice, approachable and easily likeable. Very few people had managed to create such a tumultuous variation of emotions within him.

"They're both downstairs. We get the bigger rooms, but because it's on street level it's noisier and colder at night. Zach and Jared prefer to temperatures akin to those found in saunas."

"Hey, I'm from Cali and I'll have you know that I spent my childhood in places which were really close to the equator. Some of the people I hung out with did not actually know that it was possible to have temperatures below seventy degrees outside of the Antarctic and Canada. Unlike you insane Northern Europeans, I do not believe that it's acceptable to wear sweaters in a house."

Ceithin looked at Mamoru. "That's about twenty one degrees Celsius for non-Americans."

"Ah," Mamoru smiled, glad that he had something in common with Ceithin, "I prefer sleeping in a cooler room as well." He looked at the radiator on the wall, "I take it I can just lower the heat here?"

Jared smiled. "Sure. You can open a window too if you really feel adventurous. Just do us a favour and keep your door closed so you don't suck out all the heat."

"I will." Mamoru didn't fail to notice that they were all talking to him as if he was definitely moving in. They'd assumed that he automatically wanted the room. It was technically a little presumptuous, but he took it as a compliment. These people seemed to like him, to the point where they were eager to have him after only a twenty minute chat. He didn't find that unexpected, Mamoru was by no means conceited but he always found himself being well-liked by people easily (with the exception of Usagi's father, but that was understandable), what he found so surprising was his own eagerness to rent the room with them and the fact that it had nothing to do with moving out of his damned hall of residence as quickly as possible.

There was something about Ceithin, he didn't know what, but he found himself wanting to please him, he wanted to be liked by him, he wanted to be Ceithin's friend. This hadn't happened before and it put him on unfamiliar territory. He'd only become so close to Motoki because Motoki had foisted himself on him and hadn't left him alone until he'd been acknowledged as a friend. The closest he'd ever come to actively seeking out a friend or deliberately aiming to please was his attraction to Usagi, and that was something very different.

Zach, for an equally baffling reason, made him extremely uncomfortable but from watching the interactions between the three housemates, he thought it relatively safe to brush aside his reservations and assume that it was because Zach probably created that feeling within everyone, it seemed like it was something you just became accustomed to over time.

"Shall we talk more downstairs?" Ceithin tilted his head ever so slightly towards the doorway. "I've made a pot of tea and it's getting cold."

"Sure." Jared indicated for Mamoru to go first and then followed him as they made their way downstairs. "Actually, that's another thing you need to know about Ceithin, he's obsessed with tea. He's like your archetype British-"

"I am Welsh," Ceithin interrupted, "I am not British, not unless the Lions are playing and even then it's uncomfortable."

"Whatever." Mamoru turned around and spotted Jared rolling his eyes with his comment while Ceithin was looking very serious. He figured that this must have been a point often made.

"Ceithin is a tea connoisseur and very fortunately he's passed this trait along to me," Jared said, continuing his original train of conversation as they walked into the living room where Zach was watching MTV Dance. "You can't get shit this good in the States. Over there it tastes like watery ass water," he smiled, "tea over here gives you a caffeine hit so strong you'd think they'd fed it to you intravenously."

Mamoru realised they weren't talking about the green kind. "I'm not the biggest fan of black tea to be honest, although I find Earl Grey quite pleasant, I do enjoy the hint of bergamot in it, but I'm much more of a coffee fan."

Zach looked up at that. "I'll fetch you another cup of it, then. I'll make you some from my own stash." He got up off the sofa and chucked the remote over to Ceithin who caught it on reflex.

"Don't trouble yourself, please," Mamoru said, not wanting Zach to make any kind of effort for him. "Tea will be fine."

Jared placed a hand on Mamoru's shoulder. "You're new, so you're forgiven for not understanding how momentous an occasion this is."

Mamoru looked first at Jared's hand and then at Jared himself with confused blue eyes. "It is?" He looked to Ceithin and noticed that the taller man was staring hard at Zach, his grey eyes analytical, his torso muscles slightly tense.

"Yeah," Zach said, ignoring Ceithin as he walked out of the living room and into the kitchen. "I don't make coffee for plebeians."

Jared scoffed at the remark, plainly aimed at him more than Ceithin, and explained it to Mamoru. "Zach doesn't share his coffee. Like, ever. He makes it himself, roasting his own Ecuadorian fair trade green beans. At least I think it's from Ecuador?" He turned to Ceithin for help, but all he received was a shrug in response. "Whatever, he roasts them himself and grinds them in a coffee grinder he made using other coffee grinders and random stuff he swiped from the engineering department. If he had the time and the space, he'd probably grow the beans himself too."

"So, this is very special coffee?"

"Most definitely."

"And I'm privileged for being offered?" Mamoru followed the example of the two others and sat down on a chair facing the coffee table situated in the middle of the living room. On the table itself was a plain white tea pot, a large four pint container of Tesco's whole milk and three mugs (Ceithin's sheep shagger one, the 'Fuck Off and Die' one that Mamoru used earlier - which he noticed was now clean - and the one which read 'Jizz Cup').

"None of us has ever had coffee made for by Zach from his personal stash. Not even Jared," Ceithin said, sitting on the three-seater sofa, "and Jared was possibly a bigger coffee addict that Zach is when he first arrived. I changed his opinion, though." He seemed pleased with this achievement, if the barely visible smile was anything to go by.

"I'm a born-again tea drinker," Jared placed a hand on Ceithin's shoulder, "and this man right here, he showed me the light. Spot of tea my good fellow?" The last part was said in a forced attempt at Queen's English as he picked up the tea pot.

Ceithin nodded and lifted his mug.

As the other two poured each other tea, Mamoru took the spare few seconds to take a look around the room. For starters the furniture, typical of student housing, was tatty, old, mismatched and overly colourful. Case in point was the couch that Ceithin and Jared occupied, which was bright orange. His own sofa chair was that moss green colour commonly found with older furniture. The material was worn to almost bare threading on the left arm, suggesting that someone used to sit on it regularly sometime in the past. A second couch sat opposite his chair, although that one was a smaller one, a two seater. And it was purple.

The television was probably the most impressive thing in the room: a forty eight inch wall-mounted plasma flat screen. It was new, sleek and completely out of place.

On what seemed like a book shelf on its side, lying directly underneath the television (which Mamoru recognised as one he'd seen in IKEA) sat an Xbox Three Sixty, a PlayStation Four, various controllers and an array of DVDs, Blu Rays, memory sticks and remote controls. They also had an old DVD player and from what he could see under the huge nest of messy black wires which also littered the bookshelf, they had two wireless routers, a high definition Sky Plus box, a Nintendo Sixty Four, the remnants of a desktop computer and various tools. On the floor, adjacent to the bookshelf, was a sub-woofer and, in the corners of the room, small but advanced looking speakers were screwed into the walls. The sound system looked impressive.

The floor was covered in standard low-quality but durable, brown 'student' carpeting (spread through the entire house, it appeared) and a few scattered items like the odd shirt, a pair of football boots with metal togs, and several newspapers and random pieces of paper with mathematical symbols scribbled all over in blue ink.

The only adornment on the walls was the huge handwritten 'Rules of the House' poster. Jared looked up in time to catch Mamoru reading the rules, but before he could comment on it, Mamoru's attention was drawn to the popping sounds and the smell of coffee emanating from the kitchen next door. "Is he really roasting the beans?"

"Yeah."

"I didn't mean for him to go through so much trouble." Mamoru felt a little embarrassed at the effort that was being made for him.

"You won't be saying that after living here for a few weeks," Jared said, sitting back and taking a sip of his tea. "Hey C Dog, you want to change it to Channel Four? Countdown should be on."

Ceithin obliged and for a few minutes they sat in silence as they waited for the adverts to finish.

"Are you a fan of Countdown?" Ceithin asked politely, taking a sip from his mug.

"I've never seen it." Mamoru replied.

"It's a game show, it's sort of like Scrabble but on a time limit."

"That sounds, um," Mamoru struggle for the right word, "exciting?" he said, not really seeing the appeal.

"It's more so than it sounds."

In order to keep the conversation going, Mamoru wracked his head for something television related and remembered two shows Usagi had been forcing him to watch for the past two weeks. "I've been watching these soap operas from Australia recently, I'm not usually one for television shows, and I don't think they're very good but-"

"But you can't help getting sucked into them," Ceithin said with a knowing smile. "Home and Away and Neighbours?"

"Yes, those ones."

"Isn't that where Jesse Spencer started out?" Jared asked.

"Kylie too."

"Kylie Minogue?" Jared frowned as he waited for clarification.

Ceithin nodded and then looked at Mamoru. "I don't have as much time anymore so I rarely catch an episode of either, but it was like an institution when we were younger. What's happened in them?"

Mamoru leaned into the chair, relaxing slightly. "To be honest, I'm not really sure but it's all very dramatic. Someone named Tasha has a newly discovered aunt and there appears to be some secret revolving around her mother."

Ceithin smiled. "I don't recognise the name. It's been so long they've probably changed the whole cast anyway."

"Guys, it's on." At Jared's statement, they all changed their focus to the television screen and began competing with each other and the people on the show itself.

After one round in which all three of them tried to find the longest word they could out of the letters provided for the contestants, and then doing a variation with numbers and sums, Jared couldn't help giving his critical opinion. "It's not been the same since Carol Vorderman left. She made mathematics sexy."

"Rachel's better looking, though," Ceithin said, talking about the woman who placed the letters or numbers on the board and started the clock.

A deafeningly loud drilling noise suddenly began to resound in the house, and if it hadn't been for Mamoru's training he would have jumped a mile in the air. "Is that the coffee grinder?"

"Yeah, sounds like he brought out the big guns for you. He says he could easily make it less noisy, but the sound dampening materials are too expensive." The sound was completely overpowering the television. Jared got up and poked his head out of the living room. "Zach! ZACH!"

Instead of turning off the grinder, Zach apparently decided the best course of action would be to yell back. "WHAT?"

Mamoru expected Jared to complain about the noise, but he didn't. "COUNTDOWN'S ON!"

"WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME?" The coffee grinder seemed to only get louder and risked drowning out their shouting.

"I'M NOT YOUR MOTHER. HURRY UP WITH YOUR RIDICULOUS COFFEE!"

"MY COFFEE'S NOT RIDICULOUS!" Mamoru assumed that the slightly higher pitch Zach took on meant he was annoyed. "YOU'RE JUST JEALOUS BECAUSE YOU DON'T GET ANY!"

"WHAT?"

"I SAID YOU'RE JEALOUS BECAUSE YOU DON'T EVER GET ANY!" There was a tiny pause before he added. "AND I MEANT THAT IN BOTH SENSES."

"I HEARD YOU! MY 'WHAT' WAS NOT A REQUEST FOR YOU TO REPEAT YOURSELF, IT WAS SAID IN DISBELIEF! AND I GET PLENTY OF ACTION!"

"WHAT?" The coffee grinder stopped.

"Never mind, Ceithin's paused it, we'll wait for you!" Jared said as he flopped himself back onto the couch and looked at Ceithin. Mamoru could blatantly see the obvious glare that he was being given. "What?" he appeared completely clueless as to why he was on the receiving end of such a stare. Mamoru couldn't help but let out a small laugh.

"Don't bother!" Zach yelled out (although significantly quieter than when the grinder had been on) "I'll just put it on in the kitchen, we've missed half of it anyway. Play it!"

Jared clicked his fingers and turned to Ceithin. "You heard him. Let's watch the hell out of this show, I think I've spotted a six letter word."

Ceithin gave Mamoru a smile of apology and pressed play.

Zach came in a few minutes later with two steaming cups of black coffee, one of which was on a saucer, under a napkin and had two round, puffy biscuits next to it. "They're Amaretti cookies. I made them yesterday."

"Dude, how come I never get treated like this?" Jared seemed genuinely put out.

Ceithin simply stared at Zach in the same way as before, as if he was trying to figure out what he was up to.

"Because you're one of the assholes who made me look for a flatmate." He handed Mamoru the plate and then sat down.

Mamoru took a sip of his coffee after he thanked him. His eyes visibly widened and he looked up at Zach in amazement. "This really is very good."

Zach shrugged. "I know."

Mamoru was starting to understand that Jared hadn't been kidding in his earlier summation of Zach's personality. He was a jerk, but a relatively considerate one, a likeable one even.

"So, would you agree to sign the lease tomorrow?" Ceithin asked.

Mamoru bit into one of the Amaretti biscuits. "Absolutely, this place is a lot better than the others I've seen. May I ask why the last person left?"

Zach flicked his fingers in a snap. "Will woz from Landan en e wo'id to go back as e woz un'appy wiv 'is current si'uation, innit brov."

"I'm sorry?"

Ceithin decided to save Mamoru from Zach's second attempt at a London accent. "He went back to London; he missed home."

"Oh, right," Mamoru seemed slightly sheepish, he took another sip of the coffee before he spoke again. "I'm sorry, I'm still getting used to all these different ways of speaking. Once I stood in Burger King for ten minutes trying to understand what the cashier was saying."

Jared laughed at that. "I had that same problem too when I first got here. You're in South England now. The local dialects take a while to get used to but it's not hard unless you're from London and talk like the Idris Elba wannabe over here," Jared pointed at Zach, "or like Noel, who tries a little too desperately to sound like Sean Connery."

"From what I've heard of Noel, he sounds interesting. Will he be alright with me moving in?"

Ceithin poured more tea into his mug, "Obviously we need to discuss it with him, but I don't see a problem. We can let you know once he gets back," he said as he stirred in a little milk.

Zach pulled out his phone. "Why don't we just call him now?"

His idea would have been protested had Mamoru not asked "Who's Elba?"

Mamoru could not remember the first name.

"Idris Elba, he's Stringer Bell." Jared said, almost on reflex. "Although I've just finished watching series one of Luther. He's pretty awesome in that one too."

"Stringer who?"

"And here we go." Zach rolled his eyes, the phone ringing by his ear.

Ceithin intervened, since Mamoru was unaware of the fact that he'd stepped onto a proverbial land mine. "Idris Elba is an actor from London, he played a character called Stringer Bell in a television series called The Wire."

"Oh."

Jared gave Mamoru a once-over before saying anything. "You haven't seen The Wire?"

"Should I have?"

"Uh... Yes," he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "If you're going to live here, you'll have to be introduced. What do you guys do for fun in Japan?"

Mamoru smiled. "Advanced Calculus. From the age of two."

Jared leaned back in his chair. "Good one."

"Don't worry," Ceithin said, "the only reason I knew the actor's name is because Jared's obsessed with HBO."

"Don't act like you don't love it too. My country makes television beautiful to watch."

"Yeah, and it's the foreign actors who make those shows." Zach, apparently, was having little success with trying to reach Noel and hung up, trying again.

"Please, Idris Elba and Dominic West from The Wire, and Alex Skarsgard from Generation Kill. That's three." Jared said, ticking them off on his fingers. "Three foreign actors does not a-successful-run-of-TV-shows make."

"You forgot Ian McShane in Deadwood, Andrew Lincoln in Walking Dead and James Purefoy in Rome." Zach paused, "Actually the entire cast of Rome is pretty much British."

"That's because it was a joint project with the BBC and that Italian channel. Rome doesn't count, and neither does Walking Dead, that wasn't HBO."

Zach frowned. "You can't limit it to HBO. That's not fair, it excludes all the Spartacus series from Starz."

"Fine, if you get to use Spartacus, then I get to include The West Wing. All of those guys are American."

"Alright, then Battlestar Galactica: Jamie Bamber and James Callis. Both English," Zach said as he removed the phone from his ear, hung up and called again.

Jared scoffed. "Please, if you watched Battlestar Galactica for freaking 'Jamie-I'm-gay-for-Horatio-Hornblower-Bamber' and not for the Cylon babes, then you're basically affirming my already solid belief in your homosexuality."

Zach glared at him for a moment before acknowledging Jared's point, his hand still holding the phone to his ear. "Fine, you get Battlestar Galactica." Before Jared could say anything else, he named another series. "Firefly."

"Who's not American in Firefly?"

Zach shrugged. "Nathan Fillion is Canadian. And yes, I watched Firefly for Nathan Fillion. Don't even try and deny that you don't."

It was Jared's time to glare. "That makes him American, same continent. Doesn't count."

"Oh, that's pathetic, even for you. Game of Thrones."

"Ha! Tyrion Lannister! Best character. Peter Dinklage is from the US."

"Yeah but he's literally the only American cast member there is."

"So? It's Tyrion. There is no one else that awesome."

"Fine, I'm giving you all of those, even though my point is totally being made here. And let's not forget your country came up with How I Met Your Mother and Two and A Half Men."

"Urgh, don't remind me."

"I think, really, I've won this argument."

Mamoru wasn't exactly sure what the argument had been about, he looked to his left and was relieved to see that Ceithin was staring at his two housemates with what could almost be described as mild vexation.

"Why won't he answer?" Zach hung up, a look of disgust on his face, and tried calling again. "It went to voicemail," he said by way of explanation.

Ceithin poured the remaining coffee from the French Press Zach had brought with him into Mamoru's cup without asking. "Maybe he's in a tutorial?" he supplied logically. "Why don't you leave him a message?"

"Because we need to speak to him now. If he was in a tutorial, his phone wouldn't be ringing." It appeared the words 'give up' were not part of his vocabulary. "Hey Mamoru, do you have a lady friend?" Zach asked while he waited, his phone pressed to his ear. It went to voicemail for a fifth time so he hung up and tried calling again.

"Uh, yeah," Mamoru briefly wondered whether it would affect his chances in getting the room. "I have a fiancée. Is that going to be a problem? She's got her own place, so she won't be living here or anything."

Ceithin had to laugh. "Why would that be a problem? So she's here as well?"

"Yes," Mamoru answered, "she lives in Woodland Court with some friends."

"Friends, you say?" Zach asked, his interest piqued. "Who are also of the female persuasion?"

"Yes, the girls all came over together."

"Fantastic."

"It is?" Mamoru asked, not quite understanding why this was the case.

Jared smiled, deciding to explain Zach's line of questioning. "The best way to get tail is to meet the girl friends of your friends' girlfriends."

It took a few seconds for Mamoru to understand the sentence. Before he could decide whether he was comfortable with it, Zach interrupted his thought process. "Boys, I've got him." He quickly lowered his phone and placed it on speaker. "Sixth time's a charm."

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" (Mamoru assumed the angry man on the other was Noel) "I had to make up some shitty excuse about my dog dying so the lecturer didn't think I was one of those stupid prats who forgets to turn off his phone!"

Jared couldn't stop himself. "But you obviously are one of those 'stupid prats' as your phone was evidently not turned off."

"Shut up, you're American."

He scoffed. "What is with all the bashing today? And how is that even an insult?"

Zach patted him on the shoulder. "It is, mate."

"Fuck you both. Obama's the president. That makes us cool."

"Why would you even call?" Noel continued on his rant. "You knew I was in a tutorial!"

"No I didn't!"

"Don't fucking bullshit me Zach, as I left this morning you said 'where the fuck are you going?' and I said 'I'm going to my fucking tutorial'."

"I'm pretty sure I didn't curse like a fucking sailor."

"I don't care if you swore or not, that wasn't the point! I was in a fucking tutorial!" Noel yelled out, not really understanding why Zach was not getting the problem.

"For all you know, this could be an emergency."

There was a pause as Noel took in a deep breath, most likely to control his temper. "Is it?" he asked.

"No."

The sound of defeat could be heard clearly in Noel's voice. "Why aren't you normal?" he asked, practically sighing into the phone.

"Why didn't you just turn off your phone when you heard it ring?" Ceithin asked, vaguely amused at how Noel's temper often meant that his common sense went AWOL.

"I couldn't find it at first. And then it bloody well wouldn't fucking stop ringing! What was I supposed to do?"

"Thrown your bag out the window?" Jared supplied ever-so helpfully.

"I'll throw you out a bloody window before I throw my stuff!"

"You should put it on vibrate when you go into uni, it would have been better than lying about your dog dying," Ceithin suggested.

"It's a bit fucking late now isn't it?"

"Do you even have a dog?" Zach added.

"Of course I have a fucking dog! I've had him since I was fourteen. You've bloody well seen pictures of him, they're plastered all over fucking my desktop!" There was a sudden pause as something suddenly clicked. "Am I on speaker?"

Zach made to say something but Ceithin cut him off before he could antagonise Noel further. "Yes."

"Zach, you complete fucking twat! You know I hate it when you do this!"

Zach rolled his eyes. "You're so aggro sometimes."

"No, I get 'aggro' when you call me in the middle of a tutorial and put me on speaker. Who's there? Are there any birds? I would like to apologise to all the ladies in the room, I didn't mean to sound rude and aggressive. I was only-"

"There aren't any women, just Mamoru, our new housemate."

There was another pause. "Who?"

Zach nudged Mamoru and gestured for him to say something. Mamoru panicked, the man who supposedly sounded like Sean Connery (and didn't, in his opinion, but then he was Japanese, what did he know?) seemed rather hostile, and since he was indirectly the reason for the crazed man's apparent temper, he needed to think quickly of something diplomatic to say. "Uh, hi?" He cringed. "It's Mamoru." He wanted to smack himself, preferably with something heavy, like an iron.

There was a pause from the other end of the line and then: "Boys, seriously now, this was really why you interrupted me?"

"Really, really." Jared said, smiling. "It was all Zach's idea. You can kick the shit out of him when you get home."

Zach gave Jared a dead arm. "Shut up you prick!" he bit out fiercely before turning his attention back to the phone. "We wanted you to be a part of the decision process."

"You couldn't wait until I fucking was home?"

"We didn't want to hold Mamoru up." Zach's comment was met with a dial tone.

"Don't let him scare you." Jared patted Mamoru on the back. "He has a tendency of saying 'fuck' a lot when he's mad. He's usually pretty cheerful."

"So I take it he was very angry?"

Zach scrunched his face with irritation. "I don't see why. I only called so he could be included."


Noel took a breather and put his phone in his pocket. He was about to walk back into his tutorial room but stopped suddenly, a worried frown marring his features. He backtracked to where he stood, making sure he was out of ear shot, and pulled out his phone again. It was answered on the fourth ring, "Hello, mum?"

"Darling! I'm glad you called, listen, as you're going into town anyway could you stop by the butcher's and pick up the meat I've ordered? It'd save cook a trip."

It took Noel a few seconds before he understood what was going on. "No mum, it's Noel, not Max."

"Oh!" she said amid her familiar high pitched peals of laughter. "Oh dear! I'm so sorry darling, honestly, I had no idea it was you! You boys have begun to sound so similar."

"Well that's hardly surprising, he is my brother."

"That's true, and you both sound exactly like your father, who you've just missed by the way. He's headed off to the office in London."

"That's a shame," he said in a tone that implied it really wasn't. "Listen, mum could-"

"Well you can't really blame me for assuming I was talking to Maxi," she said, interrupting.

He sighed, knowing instantly where this was going. "I wasn't blaming you mum."

"I haven't spoken to you in ages. I'd almost forgotten the sound of your voice."

Noel rolled his eyes. "I spoke to you on the weekend, mum. It's Wednesday today."

"Oh darling, it just seems so long ago." There was a tap running in the background; she had a tendency of doing at least three other things at the same time when she spoke on the phone. "Noel, I wish you had come home for the dinner on Sunday, Lord Marshalford came over with his wife and daughter. Pretty little thing she is, she's just started uni."

"Mum!" It never failed to surprise him how quickly she could hijack a conversation and direct it to this particular topic.

"Lord Marshalford is a crossbencher in the House of Lords, you know. His family have royal Prussian ancestry."

"Yes mum, but-"

"I would have loved for you to have met her -yes please, the white lilies first- I'll be inviting them again soon, hopefully. Obviously this time you must be there."

"Mum…" Noel said, in a warning tone.

She ignored it. "Will you be back for half term dear?"

"They don't have half term holidays in uni."

"Oh of course, how could I forget? That means she won't be here either... Natasza? Please be a dear and place these on the table. Thank you. Noel, did you meet Natasza when you were here last?"

"Yes mum."

"She's Polish."

"I've already met her."

"Yes well, as I was saying, if you can, I'd really like you to be home f-"

"Mum! Could you please stop for a few seconds?"

"Alright darling," she huffed. "There's no need to be cross."

"I'm not cross mum, I'd just like to get a word in."

"Well go on then, I'm listening," Noel did not miss the disapproval in her voice.

"Where's Jumble?"

"What?"

"Where's Jumble?" he repeated, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"He's just come inside. He's been chasing rabbits in the garden all morning."

"Will you put him on the phone?"

"What on earth for?"

"Please mum?"

She hesitated before she replied. "Alright dear." Noel could hear her calling Jumble to her, whistling softly and saying his name. "Here you are, I'm putting him on now."

Noel heard the faint sound of doggy breath on the other end of the phone, he looked around quickly to make sure no-one was around before he started speaking, "Hey boy!" At the sound of his voice Jumble started barking. "Who's a good boy? Eh? Good doggy! Have you been chasing rabbits again? Hoppity hoppity rabbits?"

There was another excited bark followed by his mother in the background. "Jumble! Do not lick the phone."

"Oh ignore her," he said as he heard Jumble whining. "Be good for me old boy, will you? Eh? Who's a good boy?"

Jumble barked some more. His mother came back on the line. "Alright dear, that's enough, you don't have to take care of him when he gets over excited."

"He's not that bad."

She didn't reply. Noel could practically hear the cogs turning in his mother's head, "Is everything alright, darling?"

"Everything's fine mum." He tried to sound nonchalant without seeming too rude. Mrs Graham-Asquith always complained that he was too rude.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes I'm sure. I just had a horrible thought about Jumble and I wanted to check that he was alright."

"Well of course he's alright. The silly thing still acts like a puppy."

"Have you taken him for a check-up at the vet recently?"

"Honestly, Noel," she was getting annoyed now, "stop being ridiculous, he's absolutely fine. It's you I'm starting to worry about, you're behaving rather oddly."

"I'm fine mum, really."

"You could always come home for a few days, we're having the roof of the barn repaired so the horses have been getting a little too excited, and with the influx of guests for the spa deal we've had advertised, it would be useful if you could-"

"I'm sorry mum I have to go I'm actually in the middle of a tutorial at the moment!" he interrupted as quickly as possible. The spa in their manor was run by his aunt Penelope, with all the German efficiency inherent in her blood, and his sister Georgiana had been the only one who had really ever been able to calm the horses. There was absolutely no need for him to be there; she was looking for excuses to get him home and set him up with every possible eligible maiden in their county.

"You're what?" she asked, confused, "Then why on earth are you telephoning m-"

"Give my love to everyone I'll call soon bye!" He hung up quickly with the speed of a cheetah on steroids and then breathed a sigh of relief. That was a close one!


"So, so, so, so, so?" Each 'so' was punctuated with a poke to Mamoru's ribs. He grabbed her hand before she could leave bruises.

"I'm signing the lease tomorrow and moving in on the weekend."

Usagi's smile reached her ears and she practically strangled him in a hug. "Mamo-chan! That's so fantastic!" She let him go to kiss him. At first it was a solid, excited peck on the lips but it soon softened and then deepened; it wasn't long before their hands began to wander. Unfortunately, Makoto and Rei chose that moment to walk in and made it a point to comment.

"Stop looking for her tonsils, she's had them taken out already."

The couple stopped kissing, sighing into each other with exasperation.

"Good one!" Makoto placed her shopping bag on the counter top and started emptying the contents.

"Thank you," Rei said, smiling brightly, "how about you?"

Makoto stopped and pretended to think for a moment, "I'm a little torn actually; do I go for the traditional 'get a room' or the basic 'ew, not in the kitchen'?"

"How about combining both?"

"What a good idea!" Makoto turned to the couple, "Ew! Guys! Not in the kitchen, other people have to eat in here! Get a room or something, Usa's is only three feet away!"

"Not funny, guys." Usagi turned around, allowing Mamoru to hug her from behind.

Rei ignored her and kept smiling. "Yes it is."

Makoto gave the couple a wink to show that she was just teasing and Mamoru returned it with an indulgent smile, completely content to be made fun of by the girls. The day had been an altogether good one.

Usagi rolled her eyes. "Mamoru's found a place to stay."

"Oh, well done!" Makoto tied her hair back into her usual ponytail in order to start cooking. "Is it close by?" she asked Mamoru.

He let go of Usagi and saddled up next to the brunette. "It's not too far," he said, rolling up his sleeves to begin rinsing vegetables, "it's about ten minutes from here, and then another five minutes into uni."

"That sounds ideal," Makoto replied, looking genuinely pleased for him.

"What does?" Minako walked in, followed by Ami with her laptop. "Are we still going to yoga?"

Rei looked at the gear Minako was wearing. "Damn, it's Wednesday, isn't it? Yes we're still going, just give me a few minutes to go change."

"Apparently Mamoru's found a place to live," Makoto said as she started cutting up some green peppers.

"Really?" Minako asked as she sat herself down on the kitchen table next to Ami. "Where?"

"Oo! Carrots!" Usagi began picking as soon as she noticed the chopped vegetables. Makoto didn't even bother to berate her and just went to the fridge to pull out more.

"About five minutes away from the medical building actually," Mamoru said, answering Minako's question. He tried to pick at the vegetables too, but Makoto smacked his hand away with the flat of the knife.

"No touchy," she said with a mock glare.

"Well, give us the details."

He contemplated trying to steal some food again before eyeing the large, shining blade in Makoto's hand and decided it would be fatal to do so. He looked to his other side and reached over, plucking the carrot stick out of Usagi's hand instead.

"Hey!"

"Could you get me the egg noodles from the cupboard, please?" Makoto asked. When Mamoru obliged her, she passed a handful of carrot sticks to Usagi, who beamed in thanks and returned to munching happily.

"It's a nice place, the room includes a double bed, which I haven't had since home," Mamoru said as he began searching through the cupboards, "there're two bathrooms, a nice sized kitchen and a decent living room with a big TV. They have a small garden so-"

"I meant about your housemates," Minako cut in, smiling at how dorky Mamoru could sometimes be, despite his face-value appearance of aloof-cool.

"Oh. Yes, of course," he tried his best to play it smooth. "They seem very pleasant. Jared's American, from California I think, and Ceithin's Welsh. They lived on the same floor as Amano in BH last year."

"Isn't Brunel Hall the one you're in too?" Usagi asked.

"Yes, it is," he said, handing Makoto the noodles she'd asked for, "I'd spoken to Ceithin a few times, and I'd seen the others around."

"So you've met them all before?" Usagi started humming the tune to It's a Small World.

Mamoru's hand clamped down on her mouth, almost as if on reflex, eliciting a muffled 'mpf!' "Then there's Zach, who seems…nice," he said for lack of a better word to describe him, "and Noel, but I've only spoken on the phone with him." He let go her mouth when she'd gotten the point and stopped singing, kissing the side of her head when she glared at him.

Makoto suddenly seemed very interested. "So they're a house of boys?"

"That must be smelly," Minako commented.

"It was actually pretty tidy. Noel's room looked a little messy, and their kitchen wasn't spectacularly clean, but it was perfectly livable." He deliberately avoided telling them that the house seemed to have a problem with damp. He figured leaving out the indoor mushrooms was for the best, really.

"What about the bathrooms?" Now that Minako had brought up cleanliness, Makoto didn't seem so enthusiastic, the neat freak within taking full control.

Mamoru tried to find the most delicate way of putting it. "It's a man's house."

There was a collective "Ew!" from all the females in the room, including Ami who had plugged her laptop into the socket usually used by the toaster.

"Well I'm just happy there are no girls," Usagi put in, "now I don't have to worry."

Before Mamoru could give her reassurance that she would always be in his affections, strains of Vivaldi's Four Seasons started playing and Mamoru recognised it as his ringtone. He noticed the caller I.D. and frowned slightly; Usagi made sure to perk her ears up just in case it was something important. "Hello? Jared? Yes, I was about to start making dinner."

Makoto rolled her eyes at the credit he was giving himself and shared a giggle with Usagi. Mamoru stared at them both with an 'I-totally-saw-that' expression. "No, no, it's fine, is there anything I can help you with? Is there a problem with the room?"

There was no possible way Usagi could miss the worry in his voice. He wanted this place so badly, he needed it more than anything at the moment. She stopped munching on her carrot sticks to see if she could hear what Jared was saying and then shushed Rei as she came in the kitchen, dressed and ready for yoga.

"At the Cow and Pebble?" Mamoru looked at Usagi quickly for approval as they had planned to eat dinner together with the girls. She raised her thumbs up with an excited grin followed by a shooing motion with her hands, encouraging him to go.

'Love you' he mouthed. "Yes, that sounds great. I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Yes. Alright, see you there." He hung up and tried not to beam. He failed.

Minako's curiosity got the better of her, "What was that about?"

Mamoru shrugged, doing his best to calm his soaring heart and physically stop himself from yelling out 'YES' and punching the air. "Nothing much, the lads and I are just heading down to the pub."

Minako gave a knowing "Oh" as she looked at Usagi. "The lads?"

"Yep, the lads," Usagi smiled with her.

"It's just a few beers," Mamoru tried.

Rei tried to hide her snort.

Makoto was not as delicate as the others. "Aw! Mamoru, you're going on a man date!"

Mamoru almost blushed at the very mention of the idea. "No it's not!"

Ami seemed oblivious as to what was going on, but then that wasn't unusual when she was working. The girl could study in a warzone if she wanted to.

"Stop embarrassing him, it's mean."

Usagi was trying to be the good girlfriend but Mamoru took her comment as pity. "I'm serious, it's not! I'm just going out for a few drinks." He looked at his girlfriend, "Why don't you all come? You might as well meet the people I'm going to be living with."

Usagi was about to agree to his proposition when Ami piped up for the first time that evening. "She can't. She has to finish her essay." She looked up, blue eyes apologetic.

"But I finished it already!" the blonde whined out.

"I'll admit your content seems fine," Ami lifted her glasses from the top of her head and placed them delicately on her nose, looking back at the computer screen, "but you're grammar needs a lot of work. You write too much like you speak, Usagi. And I'm sorry to say that your spelling is... well it's not good. It's atrocious, actually."

Rei looked over at Usagi. "Don't you know how to use a spell check?"

Usagi grappled onto Mamoru's arm, suddenly put on the defensive. "I do! But the stupid thing doesn't recognise most of the words I use."

"Well," Ami tried to put it as delicately as possible, "that's because a lot of them don't exist."

Rei scoffed. "You make them up?"

Ami came to her defence. "She is quite creative."

Minako felt the need to intervene as well. "It's not like your essays are perfect either, Rei."

"Yes, but I don't make up words."

Minako couldn't argue with that.

Makoto placed the noodles into the boiling water. "How's mine?" she asked since they were on that particular topic of conversation. It was the first set of essays that would be handed in for marking, and while Ami and Minako had no trouble with writing in English (it was quite possible to argue that Ami's was actually better than Minako's since she understood the grammatical rules behind it), the others found it rather difficult. Surprisingly, out of the three, Usagi had been the quickest to pick up the spoken language - it was attributed to the sheer amount of English-speaking television she watched - but her writing was abysmal. It had brought down her whole IELTS score to five point five when she'd taken the test back home in Japan. Hoxtorn University required a seven at least, so it was still a mystery to most how she managed to wrangle her way in (Mamoru, once again, suspected Luna's hand in the matter).

Makoto had been panicking about her lack of English since day one. Her parents had both been English, but she hadn't been able to speak it fluently for more than ten years. It was coming back to her, but slowly, and she'd had a very limited vocabulary to start with. Her only relief was that the Geography department didn't ask for big essays, just small, regular chunks of work.

"It's alright actually," Minako said as she readjusted the yoga mat under her arm. "It's much better than the last one. I emailed it back to you a few minutes ago with some changes."

The relief on Makoto's face was evident. "Thanks."

Usagi groaned and she turned accusingly to Ami. "Can't you just make the changes for me like Mina-chan did for Mako-chan?"

Ami did not dignify Usagi's question with any sort of response. She simply stared at her over her glasses. The look even managed to make Mamoru uncomfortable. "I think you should take that as a 'no', Usako."

"Oh, why does it have to be so good anyway?" Usagi grumbled out, managing to sound like she had somehow been terribly wronged in the matter. "It's not like our first year results count towards our final degree mark."

"That shouldn't make any difference," Rei said.

"Of course it makes a difference, why force myself to put in the effort if it doesn't count? It's like they're practically holding up a sign saying, 'don't do any work this year!' and frankly I think we should take the hint and not bother."

Rei simply folded her arms, "You really think people are going to want someone who couldn't pass their first year of university as their planet leader?"

Reluctantly, Usagi realised that Rei might have had a point. "Maybe?" she tried feebly. At Rei's raised eyebrows, she threw her hands in the air and knocked her fingers on an open cupboard door. "Ow!" She glared at the cupboard, rubbing at the sore area. "I've just spent all day doing this stupid criminology essay. I don't want to have to go back to it now, I'll go insane! I need some kind of break."

"Why don't you come to yoga with us?" Rei suggested. "When we get back, you and I can go through our essays together."

The idea of proper exercise was horrifying and Usagi went into a stammer, "Um, actually, um… I've got, like, a lot of corrections and stuff-"

"I could use her help making dinner," Makoto cut in, "I want to get it done quickly."

Usagi threw her a grateful look. "Yeah, I need to help Mako-chan."

Minako checked her watch. "Ok, well we'll see you guys later, then."

"I'll walk with you," Mamoru kissed Usagi goodbye. "Sorry Usako, it looks like you'll have to meet them another time. Work hard on your essay for me, ok? You can do it if you really try."

She scrunched her nose up at the comment. "Yeah, yeah, just go on your stupid man date," she griped.

"I was just trying to be supportive," he said with a teasing smile.

"Sure, that speech would work better on a twelve year old. If you want to make me feel better stick to throwing roses," she rolled her eyes. "At least I get a Mako-chan dinner."

He kissed her again. "I'll text you when I get back," he said, rubbing his nose lightly with hers.

"Here, just take my key, I might be sleeping later," she took it out of her pocket and handed it to him, stealing another kiss.

"Thanks. Bye Ami, bye Makoto."

Makoto waved him off briefly before picking up the pot of boiling noodles.

Ami looked up from her laptop. "Have fun on your man date."

"Not you too!" Rei pushed him out the door before he could start again.

"Save us some dinner!" Minako called out.


"So do any of these strappy young 'lads' of yours have a car?"

Rei poked Minako in the arm for asking that question.

"Hey! It's a valid piece of info. How are we going to move Mamoru's stuff? You expect us to walk from Brunel Hall all the way to the smelly man-house with heavy boxes and suitcases?"

Rei thought about it for all of a second. "So Mamoru, do you know if any of these new housemates of yours has a car?"

"Don't worry about it. I'm perfectly capable of managing on my own. I'll just take the bus." He sidestepped a puddle. "It'll probably only take about two trips anyway."

Minako lifted her eyebrows. "I've seen your room, and you've been amassing since you've arrived here. You're like, king of the flat pack."

"My room isn't that full of stuff, I've only been to IKEA-" he started counting in his head, "six, maybe seven, ok at the very most eight times last year. But I only picked up a few things at a time."

"And then there was that big shop you did with us when we first arrived. You bought a lot then," Rei reminded him. "Face it, you're an IKEA junky."

Mamoru shrugged. "It's an addiction. I'll start going to the meetings on Monday."

Minako rolled her eyes. "Don't forget about all your medical textbooks you're going to have to move. You could murder an elephant with those."

"An elephant?" he asked, giving her a dubious look and sensing an opportunity to irritate.

"Yes."

"Really?" he said in a way that radiated doubt.

Minako lost confidence in what she'd said. "Maybe a small one?"

"Why would I want to murder an elephant? What did it do to me?"

"Nothing! I was just saying you could if you wanted to."

"With my textbooks."

"Yes! Is that so hard to understand?" Minako was getting agitated. Perfect.

"Well, first I'd have to find an elephant-"

"Alright, you can stop now."

"And then it would have to do something to offend me badly enough that I'd want to kill it," he teased relentlessly.

Minako's hands balled into fists. "It was just a saying!"

"I've never heard that one before."

"I know a lot of sayings you don't know. I speak native English."

Mamoru didn't miss a beat. "Is that the kind of English where you make up sayings?"

Rei was starting to regret her decision to go to yoga, and she almost literally sighed with relief when she saw the dim light filtering through the dimpled glass of the pub.

It was a quaint little building, with a faded hanging plaque above the door illustrating a simple brown cow standing next to what seemed like a grey blob. It read The Cow & Pebble in gold script underneath. Rei wondered what kind of hallucinogenic drugs the owner had taken during the pub's naming process. "Isn't this your stop?"

Mamoru looked across the street. "Yes, it is, but I can walk you down to the sports hall."

"Don't bother, you know we can handle ourselves." Minako waved him off.

"It doesn't hurt to have an escort."

Rei linked arms with Minako. "We'll be fine; thanks for the thought, though."

"Well, try not to hurt anyone."

"We're going to a yoga class. I'm pretty sure it's a non-contact sport."

"I'll see you both later, then."

The two girls watched as he crossed the street, a jovial bounce to his step, Minako couldn't see it, but she was almost one hundred per cent sure he was smiling. "And remember," she called out, "just because they buy you drinks doesn't mean you owe them anything! Your body is a sacred temple! Respect it!"

He lifted his hand and mock saluted without turning back.

They didn't move from their spot for a few moments. Rei watched Minako's eyes as they followed Mamoru's retreating form just a little bit longer than necessary.

"Love is a sweet thing isn't it?" Minako said finally. "I just hope they don't break his heart."

"Minako, he only met them a few hours ago."

The blonde looked at her and smiled, a little too wistfully for Rei's liking. "You'd be surprised how quickly a friendship can happen. It can form in minutes and last a lifetime."

"You're being odd."

"I know love when I see it, and he's giddy with it." She pulled Rei along with her as she started walking again.

"He's just meeting new friends, he's not going gay," she paused for a moment, "although that would explain his film collection." Mamoru claimed his films all belonged to Usagi, alleging she had simply left them, but Rei was almost positive that Usagi had never owned, seen, or even heard of The English Patient.

"Love comes in all shapes and sizes. Just because it's between friends doesn't mean it can't hurt just as much as between lovers."

"I see."

Her cerulean eyes shifted to her dark haired friend for a second. Rei was always very astute, and from her demeanour she looked like she was about to broach a topic which Minako had no desire talking about at the moment, despite the comment she had just made. She was saved by a wayward flyer as it skimmed the pavement and wrapped itself, moist with street water, over her left trainer. She lifted her leg and picked it up. "It's a Sports Union flyer," she said, squinting in the darkness to read the dates. "There's uni swimming trials next Thursday!"

"Ew," Rei plucked the flier out of the blonde's hand with two fingers and tossed it away.

"Hey! I wasn't finished with that."

"You don't know where that piece of paper's been," she said as she wiped her fingers on Minako's jumper, leaving two dark streaks of dirt on her sleeve. "They've probably got it online somewhere anyway."

Minako's mouth opened in disbelief, "I just washed this!"

"Oh come on," Rei said, "it's not even yours, it belongs to that stupid random you pulled last week."

"He wasn't that bad," Mina said in attempt to defend him, "he had an awesome six pack."

"He was an idiot."

Minako sighed. "Yeah, he was a bit," she eyed Rei and quirked her lips, "that was sneaky, by the way."

Rei frowned. "What are you talking about?"

"Wiping your dirty fingers on the jumper so that I would bring it up. So you could judge me in the matter."

"Well, you're wearing it," Rei said, not denying her friend's claims. "I want to know what that means."

Mina shook her head lightly, "It doesn't mean anything. I barely remember his name."

"Then why did you even bother with him in the first place?" Rei said, almost sounding frustrated.

"Oh come on Rei!" Minako glared at the dark haired girl for a second and had to bite back a sharp retort. Pot calling the kettle red, darling. Why do you get a monopoly on the brainless one nighters? It would have caused Rei to close up instantly – something which Minako desired very much at that particular moment in time - but the long term effect would not have been worth it. Rei could be one of the biggest hypocrites, first to point out her friends' flaws while denying her own – at least, denying them publicly – but their friendship had only been recently repaired and Minako didn't want to do anything that could make their relationship take a step backwards. The last year had been hell for the Rei and she'd faced it alone. So instead Minako went for her usual method of disguise: showy with a hint of honesty to make it seem real. "I had three guys fighting over me, I had to get with at least one of them. It would have just been rude otherwise." She smiled at Rei's incredulous stare and waved it off. "He was too drunk to do very much, anyway. He was practically begging all night and then when I finally gave in he fell asleep after a few minutes."

Rei made a face of disgust. "I would have done a lot worse than steal his hoodie," she said after a pause.

"Hey, I'm no thief. I asked if I could take it; he said yes, or at least that's what it sounded like. It was more like a snore really." She tugged at the grey hood string, "Maybe I should give it back to him sometime, but it's actually quite warm," she said, almost to herself.

"You really want to see him again?"

Minako bit her lip, she could tell where this conversation was heading. First it would be about how meaningless sex was an attempt to fill some kind of void, then Rei would try to get her to admit that there was a void Minako wanted to fill, and of course, that would lead to only one man. And then the bashing would start. He was a dick, stop doing this to yourself, Minako; Why are you letting him affect you like this?; How could you have even felt anything for that moron? Rei's motives would not have been entirely unselfish either, bitching about other people, especially men that had done her friends wrong, was one way for her to relieve her own tensions, but Minako was not in any mood to allow her that luxury. "Not in the least," she hugged Rei across the shoulders tightly. "We're a bit of a broken pair, aren't we?" She laughed lightly to fill in the silence, not that she'd really expected Rei to say anything. "Could you imagine how angry our younger selves would be at us if we went back in time?"

Rei's violet eyes stayed fixated on her feet as she walked, her features giving nothing away but a stubborn will to hide anything and everything she possibly thought about that statement.

Minako sighed, she could have said much worse. "He probably wouldn't remember me anyway," she admitted, giving Rei something else to concentrate on.

Rei stopped and swivelled the blonde to face her. "Hey," she said with absolute determination, "I doubt there's a man in this entire Universe who wouldn't remember you. I don't care how drunk and stupid they are." Offering a small smile, she added, "I'm sorry I tried to pry. You know if you want to talk, I'll listen."

Minako smiled back gently. "Thanks Rei. But that doesn't change the fact that I just washed this and you wiped your mucky street water fingers on it."

Rei shrugged, ready to get back to normal ground. "You're the one who picked up the flyer."

As they started walking again Minako began digging around in her bag for her phone. "What was the date I said for the swim trials? Next Thursday?"

"I think so. I'm sure Ami already knows about it if that's what you're thinking."

"Then why hasn't she mentioned it?" Minako questioned, a smug smile playing on her lips.

"She stopped swimming competitively once, you know…" There was no reason to, but Rei couldn't help but look around to make sure no one was in ear-shot, "…once she met Usagi. I don't think she'd be interested in that sort of thing anymore, it would take up too much of her time."

"Well now that she's here and all she does is study she can make time for it. Plus she's been getting overly stressed lately about work."

"So stressing about swimming is a good idea?"

"Ami can use the competitiveness as a distraction without making her feel guilty about not studying, plus it'll mean she doesn't have to force me to go running with her at those stupidly early hours of the morning."

"Ah, there I think we reach the crux of the situation." Rei gave her a sly smile. "I wonder why they're putting the trials so late, we're almost in November."

"Who cares?" She started texting. "I'm telling Ami she has to go. And then I'm going to text the others and tell them they have to tell her too." Rei marvelled at her blonde friend's ability to text and walk at the same time and not hit anything. Even in Tokyo, when they were crossing in the streets through a sea of people, she'd always manage to avoid bumping into others. "Lend me your phone, I want to send her a text from you as well."

Rei pulled out her Blackberry from her handbag - a 'gift' from her father when she'd left the country. The only reason she'd taken it was to stop the constant pestering from the other girls to replace the old brick of a phone she'd previously owned. Once Minako was done she handed it back. 'Ami! Swim trials r nxt thurs! U have 2 go! Xxx' Rei looked up at her friend and cocked an eyebrow. "I don't use shorthand, she's going to know I didn't send it."

"It doesn't matter, I just want to bombard her so she feels like she has to do it."

"I think that's called bullying."

Minako scoffed. "Not if it's for her benefit. Besides, this is only phase one of the plan."

"There's already a plan?"

There was a beep from Minako's phone as Usagi texted back almost immediately, 'Swim 4 Ami on thurs. I'm on it xoxo' "Of course," she said with a self-satisfied smile.

Rei had to admit to herself that she wasn't surprised. Despite her blonde hair and occasional verbal diarrhoea, Minako was one of the quickest thinkers she knew. It was a given really, considering who she was.

"Phase two will come into action tomorrow: gentle persuasion."

Rei finished it off for her, "And phase three will be kidnapping her and dumping her at the pool?"

"No. That's plan B. To be used only if phase three fails."

"Dare I ask?"

"Phase three is holding her textbooks and that creepy photograph of Einstein she keeps by her bed hostage."

Rei couldn't resist laughing. "Sounds like a good plan. I'm in." Their phones beeped one after the other.

"That'll be from Ami." Minako read hers out loud. "She says, 'I can't believe you had everyone text me! I even received one from Artemis. P.S. Stop distracting Usagi.'" She looked up, her eyes practically radiating glee. "What did she send you?"

Rei looked at it again, a wry smile on her lips. "Mine says 'Why did you let her use your phone? You're encouraging her. Tell Mina thanks but I'm not interested.'" She looked up. "That sounds like a challenge to me."

Minako rubbed her hands together, "Indeed. Little does she know the battle has only just begun."


Despite the oddity of its name, the Cow and Pebble was a very nice pub. He'd walked by it a few times before but as he entered it for the first time, it took him by surprise. It was almost certainly one of the older ones, with wooden beams on the ceiling, low lighting and carpeting that was patterned and confusing enough to make anybody who stared at it for too long epileptic. He'd expected it to be filled to the brim with students, like some of the others he'd been to in his first year, but it was devoid of young drunks. Everyone was sitting either around tables or at least in groups, and there was a mix of students who looked slightly older and locals.

He spotted two curly blond heads hunched over a table discussing something; one with longer hair than the other, just about reaching the nape of his neck and bound in a small tie. Sitting next to them was a third man, his dark hair slicked back slightly. He noticed Mamoru staring and tried to get Zach and Jared's attention. When he realised he was being ignored, he shoved Jared and pointed at Mamoru.

"Hey! Mamoru!"

"Hey guys." He sat himself down on the free side of the sofa.

"I'm Noel, nice to meet you. I was the one shouting down the phone."

"Yes, I thought so," Mamoru shook his hand. "I'm Mamoru. I'm Japanese and I study Medicine."

Noel may have been confused, but Jared heard the jab. "Hardy, hardy ha ha, Jared makes stupid comments. Can we give it a rest please?"

"Well, I was hoping to keep it going for a little bit longer." Like the rest of your natural life.

"This is what is known as a classic overreaction. It wasn't even that insulting. I was merely suggesting that your people work too hard. Either way, I was going to apologise."

"You don't have to do that, I really didn't mind."

"Nah brah, I do. I don't want you thinking I'm the kind of guy who starts insulting someone's nationality the first day I meet them."

"But you are," interjected Noel.

"Yeah," Zach wasn't going to let him go scott-free either. "For the first month after you met me you called me Kermit."

At Mamoru's scrunched eyebrows, Jared explained. "He's French, you know, Kermit was a frog?" He waved it off. "And he was wearing a green T-shirt when I came up with it. It was funny at the time."

"It's still funny now." Noel added for good measure.

"So like, anyway, I'm sorry dude. If I cross a line or something, next time just let me know and I'll cut back. God knows these assholes have no qualms about doing it."

Zach shoved Jared's shoulder. "You're an idiot."

"See?"

"No worries. I'm used to it," Mamoru said, trying his best not to smile overly enthusiastically.

"It just took me by surprise." Apparently, Jared's apology wasn't finished. "You don't look Japanese and-I don't know man-there was just something about you that made me incredibly nervous, you know? It was insane. I just spluttered out the first things I could think of." He cut Mamoru off before he could answer. "I mean, I'm not saying I'm gay for you or anything," his sky-coloured eyes widened, "not that I have anything against gays; my brother's gay, and I still love him."

"No he's not," Noel said, completely at a loss from where this was all coming from. Frankly Mamoru would have been too if he hadn't been getting the same sort of odd feeling when he'd met them in the morning.

"Ok, fine that's a complete lie. He's not a homosexual; I just made that up. But I had a very good friend that was gay, and we're still friends now. You're going to be living with me and I didn't want us to start off on a bad foot, so I'm sorry I insulted the Japanese. I actually like Japan a lot. You invented karate, which allowed The Karate Kid to be made, which was like, my favourite movie ever when I was growing up. And you make good food," he thought for a second, "although you guys do have those weird ass vending machines for used panties," frowning, he continued, "and a strange fascination for tentacle porn."

It took Mamoru a few minutes to respond to Jared's ramble. "Uh, I feel the same way, I suppose. Except for the being gay for me part. Although I understand why you'd have feelings for me, most people can't help it. It's both a blessing and a curse."

Jared's eyes narrowed. "I'm only letting that slide because I'm apologising to you."

"What bone is the calcaneus?" Zach looked up from the paper he was staring at. It seemed he chose to ignore the entire awkward spiel.

"Uh, the heel," Mamoru answered. He'd decided it was pointless to get confused about the questions and discussions these guys had. It was easier to go with the flow.

"How do they expect us to know that?" Zach grumbled.

Mamoru reneged on his last thought. "Who?"

"Them," Zach pointed to the men behind the bar, "the pub quiz people."

"Wait. This is a pub quiz?" His stomach felt like it had been dumped suddenly into ice.

Noel looked up at him, "I don't mean to insult your intelligence, but did you not gather that from the big 'pub quiz tonight' sign outside?"

"I didn't see it. I feel that I should tell you guys," there was evident panic in his voice, "that I'm not very good at these things. My general knowledge is practically non-existent. I don't understand when people say 'mange tout Rodney' or why you burn a scarecrow in November or what the 'Ashes' is."

Zach shrugged, not really bothered by Mamoru's anxiety. "You answered the last question pretty well."

"And you can't be worse than Jared." Noel leaned over the table. For the first time Mamoru realised that he had two different coloured eyes. His left was chocolate brown and his right, a rich aqua blue. "He didn't even know the UK was a load of different countries until I told him a few months ago."

Jared didn't deny it. "It's totally true."

Noel blinked and Mamoru had to stop himself from staring now that he'd noticed his eyes. "Don't worry, Ceithin usually changes most of the answers at the end anyway."

"Where is Ceithin?"

"C Dog had training this afternoon," Jared said, "and then I think he went to have a curry with the team for dinner."

"I would have gone with them to eat," Noel said with a rather sullen expression, "except one of my lecturers has decided to be a complete arsehole with no life and scheduled my Competition law tutorials from five to six o'clock. I had to run straight from training to make it on time and didn't get a chance to go eat." It appeared that Noel found this to be a grave injustice.

"Stop being such a pansy," Jared said, "you're getting food now."

Zach smirked. "I don't envy the people who have to sit next to you in your tutorial. You'd stink."

"I had antiperspirant." Noel flipped him off for good measure.

"So Ceithin isn't coming at all?" Mamoru asked, trying desperately not to look as crestfallen as he felt, and then wondered why he felt that way at all.

"Yeah, he will be," Jared said, reassuring him, "he texted me a little while ago to say he'd be late; he's stopping by the house for the three 'S's."

"What are those?"

"Why shit, shower and shave of course." Jared placed his hand on Mamoru's shoulder. "I can tell you have much to learn young padawan. Let's make a deal: I will introduce you to the world of the western man, and you will hook me up with some of the fine honeys you were talking about."

Mamoru shrugged, "You can meet them, but I can't make them like you."

Noel started laughing.

Jared waved him off. "Don't worry, I can handle that part. I'm very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany."

"Wait, that's from a film isn't it?"

The blond nodded, "Obviously. Anchorman. It's based in San Diego, my home city by the way, which was discovered by the Germans in 1904. Loosely translated, it means a 'whale's vagina'."

"There's no way that's correct," Zach answered automatically.

"I'll be honest, I don't think anyone knows what it means any more. Scholars maintain that the translation was lost hundreds of years ago."

Mamoru smiled pleased with himself for at least knowing one reference. "I think I recognise that."

"Excellent, so there's hope for you after all."


"And now we move into the Praying Cat." The class of women followed the instructor's position and sat on their shins, Japanese style. They laid their hands on the floor in front of them and stretched their backs.

"You know," Minako whispered under her arm, "these names are utterly confusing. Does it mean that the cat's hunting? Or is it in prayer? And what cat prays?"

"I don't know," Rei whispered back through gritted teeth, her eyes still closed in an attempt to keep her concentration, "it doesn't matter."

"Of course it does. They give them these names because the poses are meant to look like them."

Rei decided it would be best to follow the age-old adage of ignoring the problem until it went away, but Minako was not to be deterred. "I suppose it doesn't make a difference anyway, none of these poses look like the animals they imitate. 'Praying Cat?' Could you imagine Arty or Luna doing this? I don't think these names are real."

The instructor popped her head up briefly and looked towards the back of the room where they were situated, but by that time Minako had paused in her little monologue. When she seemed satisfied that no one was talking, the blonde went back to expressing her thoughts aloud. "Do you reckon animals can do yoga?"

Rei, by this time, had lost all ability to concentrate on her breathing and simply went through the motions, her temper rising steadily.

"What about when we did the Lying Goat? Was that meant to be a goat lying down or a goat that makes up stuff?"

Rei sat up angrily and practically hissed at Minako. "Ok, now I know you're deliberately trying to distract me." The instructor cleared her throat lightly and eyed Rei up. In complete outrage for being blamed, she lowered her head and whispered fiercely, "What is your problem?"

"I'm bored and this is a crappy yoga lesson. The instructor blatantly has no idea what the hell she's doing. I'm pretty sure she's just making up names and poses as she goes along."

"Well it's the only yoga lesson that's free so shut up."

"We could find better on YouTube. I know, I checked."

Rei received a cutting glare from the instructor. She simply couldn't take it anymore. "Come on!" She practically yanked Minako off of her yoga mat and dragged her outside. Minako was barely able to manage a squeak before she was pulled out into the hallway. "I was willing to let it drop earlier this evening, but something is obviously bothering you and now you're annoying the hell out of me because of it. What is it?" she demanded, hand on her slim hip like a stern teacher telling off a pupil.

Minako stood there for a moment, deliberating what she should do. She finally opened her mouth to say something but closed it almost immediately, choosing instead to slump against the wall and slide down, crouching on the floor. "Ace got married," she said in a low voice. There was no point in trying to make herself believe she didn't care or she didn't want to talk about it. Truth be told it had been eating at her heart for days; there had been nothing else she could think about, whether awake or with the little sleep she'd been getting. "I know I shouldn't have but I looked him up on the internet but I did and there were articles and pictures all over the tabloids back home."

Rei stared at her for a moment, her light eyes softening suddenly from annoyance to sympathy. This was not a time to berate Minako for something she knew she shouldn't have done, Rei had seen first-hand how deeply Minako had cared for him and that wasn't something easy to switch off, despite the pain he had caused. That was something she definitely understood.

They'd heard stories of Ace in the past - very few of them, since Minako had not been a big divulger of information about her days as Sailor V, but it had been enough to gather that there had been a relationship of some sort between the two when Minako had been in London - and then, a few months after their grand battle with Chaos, Minako had woken one day to find that Ace was simply knocking on her door like he was a regular visitor, alive and well but homeless and friendless, a new man thrust back into the present world. She had been too ecstatic, too grateful to question it. When the other girls had asked, suspicious at his sudden appearance, he told them that he knew very little beyond the fact that his soul had been freed from the bonds of the Dark Kingdom and that he was human again, ordinary and without powers. He'd been given a second chance at life and he'd wanted to spend it with Minako.

At least, at first he had.

When they began dating it had taken time to for the Senshi to adjust to him, but they found that as they began to make efforts to trust him (with both Rei and Makoto finding it particularly difficult), he seemed to deliberately try and spend less time with them, even going so far as to noticeably pull away from Minako. The snapping point came during a Senshi meeting which he had been asked to attend. Minako had actively sought to get him more involved, figuring that his increasing coldness was due to his feelings of rejection created by the open hostility of Makoto and Rei, and also perhaps by the fact that he no longer had powers. When Ami brought up the possibility that other old enemies could have also returned and that perhaps they would also have been given second chances, as he had been, Ace had become quiet. Minako tried to encourage him to join the Senshi in a search for these other people, but that had appeared to be the final straw. He had left the meeting in a mood and Minako had followed. No-one really knew what had happened straight afterwards and Rei had been too preoccupied with her own sudden, dire situation and the angry resentment it had caused her to feel against her friends to find out the details, but she had noticed that within a few weeks of the incident Ace had started dating a famous soap opera star who was not Aino Minako.

Rei sat herself on the floor, poised and waiting for Minako's bright blue eyes to make contact with hers. "That's a bit shit," she said bluntly.

A laugh escaped Minako's lips as she leaned her head back and looked up at the bland ceiling. "Tell me about it."

Rei's gut twisted itself tighter. In a way, Ace was Minako's Kaidou: the man that she'd loved enough to let her heart get smashed by. She knew that Minako's mind must have wandered to him when she thought about her life and the loneliness that would inevitably be a part of it. She'd think about what she could have done to make him fall in love with her, and despite her anger and resentment, she would wonder what would have made her enough for him to have chosen her instead. Minako didn't have to hear about or see Ace on a regular basis since she'd left Japan, and as long as they stayed out of London, which was a good two hours away, she'd been fine. Rei was sure she'd be better eventually, but that didn't mean it didn't suck right now; anything Ace-related acted like a festering wound, infecting more and more until it was actively treated. She hated the man, putting him on par with her father. He was weak and selfish, a coward of the worst kind. Ace had not been able to cope with his memories of his past. He resented the Senshi for still having their power and he was jealous of Minako, jealous of the fact that she'd survived everything she'd been put through and that she was still able to face her future head on. Minako was too brave, too strong and too fantastic for him. Ace ran away, preferring the arms of someone who he could be better than. "You're an idiot," she said finally.

Minako pulled away from the wall to look at Rei. "I know."

"No, I mean you should have told me the second you'd heard. Now I'm not just annoyed, I'm fuming."

Minako rolled her eyes, her eyelashes darkened slightly with tears that threatened to spill. "I didn't say anything because I knew you'd react like this." She tucked back some of the blonde strands that had escaped from the confines of her French braid. "It's not a big deal, he broke up with me ages ago. I'm not upset about it, I just hadn't expected-" she looked down at her right ring finger and twisted the pink plastic ring. "I didn't think they'd get married so soon. It's a bit of a shock, that's all."

"You should have told me anyway."

Minako became defensive. "I didn't want to make a big deal out of it, it's not like there was anything you could do."

Rei stood up and made her way back to the yoga room. "I have every right to be angry with you. If I'd known about this, do you think we'd have come to this stupid fake yoga class? We'd be at home with the others right now getting fat on ice cream and discussing my favourite topic of conversation: why men suck."

Minako smiled as Rei took her hand and pulled her off the floor. "That's my favourite topic of conversation now, too."

"I know."

"Do we need to tell the others?" Mina said in a rare show of her insecurity, "They're all working and I don't want to distract them with something so pathetic."

Rei smirked. "Oh please, Ami's so far ahead she could probably take her finals now, Makoto was cooking when we left, that's how busy she was and I'm willing to bet a hundred quid that Usagi is in her room, sitting in her pyjamas and watching reruns of Desperate Housewives online. In fact Makoto's probably watching it with her because it'll help them 'improve their English.'" She used her fingers as quotation marks. "Besides, are you going to deny Usagi ice cream?"

"Point well made." They snuck into the yoga class, collected their things quietly and left quickly, the instructor's glare following them out of the room. Rei was tempted to send an evil glare in the direction of the incompetent instructor but held in the childish urge, choosing instead to quickly bow and mumble "Namaste."

"Can we buy some Flakes to put into the ice cream?" Minako's voice was practically pleading when Rei appeared next to her. "I haven't had Cadbury's in a while."

"Sure, Tesco's should have some, we'll pick it up on the way," Rei suggested as they left the Sports Building and stepped out into the night, "and hey," she said, giving Minako a soft nudge with her elbow, "it's not pathetic."


"For fuck's sake, it was in 2002. I know it was!"

"What, the last time you had sexual intercourse? No, it had to be earlier than that."

There were times when Noel came close to strangling Zach, and this was one of them. "Fox hunting was banned-" he punctuated each point with a gap, like he was trying to explain a very difficult concept to a very stupid child, "-in Scotland-" his hand was deliberately set into the politician's point so that he didn't make a fist, "-two years before it was banned in England."

At Zach's unwavering expression of doubt, he gave up trying to convince him and simply yanked the pen out of his hand, scribbling out the answer that was already written and replacing it with his own.

"Are you absolutely positive about it?"

"I'm about as fucking positive as a teenager's pregnancy test in Wales." He pounded the rest of his lager. "My uncle used to come down from Inverness in the autumn so he could hunt with my grandfather until it was banned here too."

Zach leaned back in his seat, more annoyed about the fact that Noel was most likely right about the answer than about the issue of fox-killing, "You're such a toff."

Noel shrugged. "And your people eat snails and frog legs. I think I trump you there."

"Don't even get me started. Your national dish consists of boiling the organs of a sheep in its own stomach."

"Don't knock it until you try it."

"Whatever, now are we sure the Sex Pistols had their first gig in 1969? Because I think it was '75."

"I don't know," Noel said frowning, his eye colours making him look rather severe, "1969 sounds familiar."

"There was a song called Summer of 69," Zach suggested.

"That may be why. Ok, never mind that one. It's a lost cause." He cracked his neck and shook his fingers, determined to not let the stress get to him. The stakes were high in this pub quiz: a case of Heineken was the top prize, followed by a bottle of Smirnoff. Third prize was a free shot of Jägermeister, and nobody wanted to see what would happen after that. "What was the cricket question?"

"What did they all have in common except for being Indian?"

"What were their names again?"

"I couldn't really be bothered trying to spell them, one of them invented the leg glance."

"No idea. This is a bitch of a quiz, we should complain," Noel remarked.

Mamoru and Jared had long stopped listening to their conversation; as they were foreigners, they didn't know about these things and to be honest, between all the Brit-culture questions and the constant Zach-and-Noel bickering, there was almost no chance of winning. The end of the quiz had arrived and there had still been no sign of Ceithin, so the two decided to order food – at least, that had been the original intent. The waitress had taken a shine to the group and was currently conversing with Jared so she had yet to take the order to the till.

Mamoru was suddenly struck with inspiration. "Pass me the answer sheet, please?"

Since he was the new guy, Zach passed it over without complaint. Mamoru slid his phone out of his pocket as discreetly as possible and started texting as many of the questions as he could remember.

Checking to be sure the waitress wasn't looking, Noel leaned over and whispered "You do realise looking these up on the Internet is cheating, right?"

"It's not cheating," Mamoru defended, not liking the fact that he was being accused (however minor the accusation) of being dishonest, "it's just texting the question to a team mate who isn't present, I thought you would appreciate that considering you're a lawyer." At Noel's sceptical look he explained further, "Ami would have been here if she wasn't studying. Trust me, she's like a human computer, she doesn't need to look anything up."

"Ami?"

Mamoru sent his text. "One of my girlfriend's friends." Zach started paying attention after that.

Noel frowned again. "I'm still not convinced."

"I'll pay for her entry fee," Mamoru suggested, "then she can be a member in abstention."

Zach took out the band that held his hair in place and retied it, ensuring all the stray front parts were in place. "Why don't you just get her to come down?"

"She's busy tonight."

"I don't believe she's real." Apparently Noel was still having his doubts.

"Where's your sense of trust?" Mamoru asked with a wry smile. "I bought the first round of drinks, didn't I?"

"That only shows that you have manners."

"Here," Mamoru pressed a few buttons on his phone and held it so Noel could look at the screen. "Ami's on the left. She's the one clutching her laptop like it's the key to the city."

Noel's eyes practically bulged out of their sockets. On seeing his friend's reaction, Zach immediately scooted over to the other side so he could take a look as well. His eyes widened as he took in the sight before him and the colour seemingly drained from his pretty face as his whole body stiffened in some sort of shocked paralysis. He then tried to grab the phone. On reflex Mamoru snatched it away. "How many women like-" Zach hesitated before he spoke again, "like that do you know?" He was looking at Mamoru like he was some kind of divine being.

Noel's cracked voice managed a small "How?" as his opinion of Mamoru decided to do a sudden and complete one-eighty, shooting him from 'possible friend' to 'potential best mate ever if he shares his other friends'.

Mamoru looked at the phone with confusion. "What do you mean 'how'?" It only took a second to click. Truth be told, it was a pretty epic sight for the male species, he'd just been around so many of those types of events that he had become acclimatised to it. On the screen was a photograph which had been taken that summer. All the Senshi had gathered for a farewell picnic in the park and were sitting in various poses on white blankets. He sat in the middle, clutching Usagi with Luna sitting on his head. It had been sweltering, so most of the women were in cropped tops and micro-shorts. Even Haruka had gone with something feminine for the sake of keeping cool. Ami was in white sailor shorts and a pink tank and was sitting next to Setsuna with her arms clasped protectively around her prized possession.

A sudden jolt of pain spiralled out from the top front of his shoulder. He realised belatedly that Zach had hit him. "What was that for?"

"Why didn't you tell us about them this morning?" Apparently Zach had gotten over being awed at Mamoru for knowing such women.

"About the Sen-" he corrected himself immediately, "About the girls?" What the hell was that? That kind of slip had never happened before. "I did. I said my girlfriend lives with the others in Woodland Court."

"Those girls?" Zach questioned. "Those? Here?" He swallowed heavily.

"Yes! I said so this morning. You were there."

"Yeah but you didn't say they all looked like they've been in FHM or Playboy or Nuts," Zach guided Mamoru's hand back so he and Noel could look at the photo again, "or that there were so many of them." His sharp green eyes scanned over the photograph, flicking from face to lovely face as if he were desperately searching for something or trying to commit them to memory, neither option made Mamoru feel very comfortable. He was looking far too intensely at the photograph.

"Not all of them are here. Michiru, Haruka, Hotaru, and Setsuna are all still in Japan."

"Which ones are they?" Zach asked quickly, his sharp emerald eyes never leaving the image.

Mamoru pointed them out. When he landed on Michiru, Noel finally found his voice again. "Heavens above, look at the tits on her. They're like pillows from Heaven."

Technically Mamoru's thought that out of all of the Senshi, Makoto had the larger set of... talents, but he wasn't about to point that out, in the photograph she was sitting on the grass with her knees tucked under her chin. She was in a yellow sun dress and her left hand was set into a salute as she tried to shade her eyes from the sunlight, Michiru on the other hand, wore a sheer light green linen top which emphasised her bust. A smirk spread on his face as he thought about what Haruka would've done to Noel if she'd been there to hear his comment about Michiru. "Somehow I don't think she'd be interested, she's taken."

Zach shrugged, "Just because there's a goalie doesn't mean you can't score."

Noel was still staring at Michiru's cleavage, completely entranced. "I'd fly all the way to Japan just to meet those."

Mamoru laughed. "And then Haruka would pound you into a pulpy mush."

That seemed to snap him out of his spell. "Why? Are they related or something?"

Zach's mind clicked, "Please dear God, tell me what I'm thinking is true."

"What?" Noel seemed confused. He tended to lose his usual sharp perception when drunk.

"Are- are they lesbians?" There was so much hope in Zach's voice that Mamoru didn't have the heart to deny him the truth. Besides, he'd practically outed the couple without their permission with his earlier comment. The damage was already done.

"They've been life partners for a number of years now."

Zach clutched his heart dramatically, letting himself collapse back onto the sofa like he's just been shot.

"I think I've found my perfect woman." Noel greedily snatched the phone from Mamoru and was practically hugging it. "Are they into threesomes?"

Zach hit Mamoru again. "What the fuck is wrong with you? Why did you leave Japan?"

Mamoru hit him back. "I'll go back if you don't stop hitting my shoulder. And I'll take my gorgeous friends with me."

"What's all the commotion?" Jared finally managed to join the group, pocketing a slip of paper. The little action did not miss Noel's attention and he tapped the blond upside the head.

"Shit! Why do you fucking Brits get so violent when you drink?"

Noel ignored the comment and glared. "What do you think you're doing? This is our local!"

"So?"

"So, are you going to call her?"

"I don't know. Maybe. What do you care?"

"You don't shit on your own doorstep. I don't want her saliva in our food and beverages when you piss her off."

"You mean 'if' I piss her off. 'If'. I'm incredibly charming." Noel's face showed no hint of amusement. Jared rolled his eyes. "There's no guarantee I'll even call her."

"I believe the response I was looking for was 'of course Noel, I will call her and keep her extremely happy so she doesn't piss in my friends' drinks.'"

"Whatever. Urine is sterile anyway. Now what are you guys looking at? Does Mamoru have porn on his phone or something?"

Zach smirked. "Almost."

Mamoru frowned, "No it's not. These women are like family to me."

"Bollocks," Noel said rather boisterously, "are you telling me you've never had a little slice of one of these?"

"Never." He stopped himself, since Usagi was technically one of them and she was in the picture too. "Well, excluding Usagi," he smiled, his face taking on a rather smug quality before becoming horribly embarrassed. He mentally shook himself, usually he was so much better with alcohol. Just how much have I drunk so far?

"Is she your fiancée?" Noel asked.

"Yes, she is."

Zach smiled. "Yeah, but you must have thought about it. Just look at them."

"Well I just told you they're like my sisters, so…" he pretended to think about it. "No." Mamoru was talking out of his arse of course; he loved the Senshi dearly, but that didn't mean that he hadn't…noticed them. He was human. And male. Minako was not the Senshi of Love for no reason, she broadcast sexual appeal even the times where she had no makeup, wore kiddie pyjamas and sported a runny nose. As for Rei, she had the sexiest eyes he'd ever seen or ever would see on a woman, that was for sure, and then there was Setsuna…who was a wholly different kettle of fish.

"Are you trying to tell me you've never been tempted?" Jared asked dubiously.

"I'm engaged to Usagi and we're perfectly happy."

Zach practically sneered at the idea. "I'm sure you are."

"And you're bullshitting, too, but I'm assuming that's out of respect for these fine honeys so I'll let it slide." Jared took the phone and looked at the photograph. "You lucky bastard, this has to be fake because you can't be friendly with this many beautiful people without being some kind of celebrity."

"I shotgunned the lesbians."

Jared looked up at Noel for a second, trying to process the sentence, when he looked back at the picture he smiled. "You're a dog," he nudged Mamoru in the ribs with his elbow as he tried to email the photograph to his own phone, "how the hell did you score this big? Why didn't I get to know you before? Do all women look like this in Japan?"

Mamoru yanked the phone from the blond's hands. "Yeah, you're not getting this picture."

"Sharing is caring, dude!"

Zach crossed his legs at the ankles, placing his hands behind his head. "Well I don't need it, it's all stored up here in my own personal wank bank."

Mamoru winced at the idea. "Well when you access your 'bank' make sure my fiancée and I aren't there."

"I can make no such guarantee."

Mamoru looked disgusted. "There is something very wrong with you."

Noel shook his head in sympathy. "What's wrong is that eventually you'll get used to him."

"What's even more wrong is this quiz. You're all thick as shits."

At the sound of Ceithin's voice all four turned and then nearly had coronaries. No one had noticed his arrival, or the fact that he had bought everyone drinks, or that he had moved one of the chairs over and started correcting the quiz sheet.

"How the fuck do you do that?" Jared asked, frustrated.

Ceithin shrugged nonchalantly. "I'm a ninja."

Zach smirked, "He's had years of practicing sneaking up on sheep for his unholy sexual desires back home."

Ceithin flipped him the bird without looking up. "Who put down that Sydney was the capital of Australia?"

Everyone pointed at Noel. "Thanks, you pricks."

"I tried to tell him it was Canberra, but the idiot wouldn't listen," Zach said, sitting back into the armchair he was occupying and crossing his arms, "seriously though, no joke, when did you get here?"

"A little while ago."

"Define 'a little while ago'."

The waitress came back with a tray full of food before Ceithin could answer. She placed several plates on the table.

"Four?" Mamoru asked, slightly confused, only he, Noel and Jared had ordered anything. He scratched his head briefly, "Wait, you've been here long enough to order food?" How did I miss that? Luna and Artemis need to fly over here and whip me into shape.

Noel swallowed down several huge gulps of his newly bought pint. "Ceithin, there are times when I genuinely believe you're the real Jason Bourne," he said, happy now that there was grub and booze to fill his hungry beast of a belly.

Ceithin dragged over the third plate and bit into a chip. "Ta," he said to the waitress. She smiled politely at him and then turned her eyes to Jared, giving him a cheeky wink as she left and taking the quiz sheet with her. It didn't escape Ceithin, however, that she snuck a quick glance at Mamoru as well, but the new housemate seemed too busy in contemplation to notice. Ceithin looked down at everyone's food and realised that Jared had the bigger portion. He stole some of his chips.

"Hey! You just went for a fucking curry with your rugby team!"

"So?"

"Lay off my freaking fries!"

"The curry was two hours ago. That makes it dinner, this is tea."

"No, this," Jared pointed to his steaming mug, "this thing right here? This is tea. Tea is a type of drink, not a meal. And now we are eating dinner because it's night time. Dinner is not lunch. There are three set meals in a day: breakfast, lunch and dinner. Why do you people make things so complicated? You're not Hobbits." Jared usually got agitated about these sorts of things.

"I wouldn't expect a Yank to understand."

"Oh, hell no!"

Ceithin wasn't afraid to continue, "Especially one that eats cereal in the evening and leftover roast chicken at breakfast."

"You know my body clock is still fucked up," Jared defended, "I've only been back for a few weeks."

Ceithin did not buy the excuse, Jared was just weird. "You had the same problem all last year as well if I remember."

The blond cut his eyes at him. "I want my fries back, sheep fucker."

"No. It's your punishment for endangering the relationship we have with the staff at our local drinking establishment."

Noel let out a loud "Ha!"

Mamoru's phone suddenly rang once. He checked his messages, 'I'm not helping you cheat in a pub quiz'. He suspected Ami may have been more obliging if Minako hadn't made him send that text about the swimming trials. Damn.

"By the way, what did we name our team?" Ceithin asked.

Zach simply smiled as he pulled out a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. "Quiz on My Face," he said, and got up to make his way outside for a smoke.


It was a little after two when Mamoru finally made it back to Usagi's. He had stumbled a little on the way, but he attributed it to the darkness of the night and the lack of sufficient government funding for pavement repair as opposed to the seven pints he had had over the course of the evening. He was pitting the disadvantages of buzzing the girls' apartment against those of Tuxedo Masking it into Usagi's open window on the fourth floor for about five full minutes before he remembered that she had given him the key.

He snuck into the flat as quietly as possible, finding it absolutely hilarious that he was creeping around on his tip toes and decided that it would be a great idea to text everyone in his phonebook this fact. Luckily, he gave up after the first six numbers. He cackled to himself as silently as he could as he pushed open Usagi's door and started stripping.

"You're cold…" she half murmured in her sleep as he crept into bed, stark naked. She scooted over to make space for him.

"Yes, I know. Sorry."

Her arm automatically wrapped around his waist, eyes still closed in a semi-conscious slumber. "You smell like alcohol."

"I had a few drinks. Did you finish your essay?"

"No. I ended up watching Frasier online, then Minako and Rei came home and we had a girly night." Usagi yawned wide enough to crack her jaw. "Did you have fun with your new friends?"

"Yes," Mamoru liked the sound of that: new friends, "yes I did. We won a bottle of vodka."

"I'm glad. Love you."

"Love you too," he replied, but Usagi was already asleep.