Mikau: Hi all! Welcome back! I'm so glad that so many of you enjoyed the last chapter! Thank you so much for coming back to read this one too. ^o^ Special thanks to reviewers: madelita, kakashikrazy256, LadyShadow26, and arccie. I don't have much to say today. I'm super tired, but if you're interested in more Hakuba angst ending in cute/sweet HakuKai, I have a new one-shot called "It Pours". Check it out if you have time and or interest.

Disclaimer: A quick reminder that I still own nothing and continue not to be very knowledgeable about ice skating. Special thanks to internet research made possible by YouTube, Wikipedia, and Google.

…..

Chapter Two

"Dance lifts," Hakuba announced, "are lifts that don't go above the man's shoulders, and they count towards the score for presentation and choreography instead of the technical score for other lifts and jumps."

Seeing that he was losing his audience's interest, Saguru added, "But we don't have to go into that much. I looked at the Suzuki competition rules, and they're being utterly informal about this without any required elements or strict adherence to normal scoring procedure, so you don't need to worry about all that."

Kaito nodded, giving the thumbs up. "I'll focus on not falling and cracking my skull open." A thought crossed his mind. "Though, I guess with lifts and all that, I'll just have to leave the not falling part in your hands too."

Saguru tensed, a solemn expression overtaking his face as he vowed, "Kuroba, I would fall myself and let you fall on top of me, risking getting cut up by your skates, before I would ever drop you. I promise you that, so don't worry."

Kaito smiled sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck as he chuckled, "You're always super intense, Hakuba. Don't stress so much. I know you would never drop me. So ready to get started?"

Saguru nodded, relaxing only slightly. "There's just one thing before we begin."

Kaito inclined his head to the side and waited for Saguru to elaborate.

"You've seen the moves they do in the videos I've shown you. It can get a little…" Saguru grimaced. "…intimate. You're not going to feel uncomfortable doing those kinds of things with me, are you?" He could feel his cheeks start to burn with embarrassment.

Surprisingly, Kaito just shrugged. "You mean like wrapping my legs around your waist or hanging off of you? Not really. I've had to get lovey-dovey with the spouses of both genders of people I was impersonating before for work, and you're a lot younger, more attractive, and of less uncertain origin than a lot of those people, so I honestly don't have a problem doing a little risqué dancing on ice with you."

All Saguru could do was stare as his mind reeled. He tried to shut out images of what getting "lovey-dovey" might mean at the same time as he tried to ascertain whether Kaito had just said that he was attractive or if he had been hearing things again.

In the end, the first words to successfully take form on Hakuba's lips were "'Of less uncertain origin'?"

Kaito averted his gaze, lifting and dropping one shoulder in what he hoped appeared to be nonchalance. "The worst part of having to kiss someone you don't love is not knowing where they've been. You, however, are of less uncertain origin. I mean, you're still a virgin, right?"

Saguru stared at Kaito for a poignant moment. "Virgin?"

Kaito's eyes widened slightly as, instead of getting flustered and scolding Kaito, Hakuba just looked sad.

Kaito was about to make an attempt at turning the whole thing into a joke and try to get Hakuba to laugh it off with him when Hakuba finally spoke, "I would have thought that the worst part of having to kiss someone you didn't love would be demeaning such a sacred thing as a kiss, the guilt of tricking someone into infidelity, and, at the same time, betraying your own future mate by giving away a piece of yourself and cheapening the act of kissing."

The words weren't exactly accusatory. Hakuba's tone was merely morose and full of regret, not the least bit scathing towards Kaito, but Kaito felt those words as if they had been nonetheless. He'd never thought so much about it. He'd never considered that he was doing something wrong…besides the underlying vigilantism, but…

Saguru noticed the shock and distress on Kaito's face, and his bereft expression changed into a melancholy smile that Kaito got the impression was supposed to be cheering him up. "Sorry. I'm a little overdramatic at times. Don't think about what I said too much."

Saguru turned to go and fetch his tablet from his bag, and Kaito could have sworn he heard the detective mutter, "Besides, I've done much, much worse."

Kaito was about to say something, but Hakuba turned back with his usual encouraging expression and cheerful smile, and Kaito lost his nerve and, with it, his chance.

"All right. Dance lifts. Let's go over the basics."

By the end of that day's lesson, Kaito's head was so full of new information about the techniques that the whole incident got pushed to the very back of his mind.

…

"This reminds me of the tango," Kaito remarked a few days later during their lift practice on the tumbling mats.

"Oh?" Saguru hummed as Kaito (currently with his legs wrapped around Saguru's waist) leaned backwards until his head was only a foot or so from the ground while his fingertips grazed it. "Why do you say that?"

"Because, like the tango, this is just like having sex with your clothes on," Kaito replied simply and thoughtlessly, caught up in the joy of hanging upside-down.

Saguru gave a start, physically jerking Kaito out of his daydreaming state.

Kaito pulled himself up so that he was face to face with Saguru, wrapping his arms around the blonde's neck so that he was hanging off of Saguru like a baby koala. "What?" Kaito laughed mirthfully. "Have you honestly never thought that before?"

"N-No!" Saguru stuttered, cheeks quickly taking on a red stain.

"Really?" Kaito tipped his head to the side, studying his partner in earnest. "Damn. You've got some serious self-control if you can endure having beautiful young women hang off of you like this and not even think about getting laid. I'd have sex on the brain all the time, if it were me."

"I begin to think you a nymphomaniac anyway," Saguru grumbled, avoiding Kaito's gaze. "Besides, it can be cataclysmic to harbor feelings for you partner," Saguru informed Kaito as well as reminded himself. "What if they find out you've been fantasizing about them and become offended? You lose trust that way, and a loss of trust breaks partnerships. If you allow yourself feelings for your partner, you risk rejection, the pain of unrequited love, and then the disintegration of your friendship and partnership on top of all that."

"But has there ever been a partner you've had a thing for?" Kaito pressed. "Come on. Tell me a story about star-crossed lovers and taboo romance in the ice skating community."

"Why must you tease me so?" Saguru sighed, still refusing to look at Kaito.

"It's fun?" Kaito shrugged. "I like seeing your face go all red, Hakuba. It's adorable," he chuckled. "But right now, I'm honestly not teasing."

"You may not think that you're teasing, Kuroba, but I assure you, you are," Saguru insisted.

"How?" Kaito grinned at the impressive blush quickly spreading across Saguru's cheeks. "Because it embarrasses you to talk about attraction and desire?"

Kaito unhooked his left leg from around Hakuba's waist and let it drag up Hakuba's leg with a tantalizing languidness.

"Do I make you uncomfortable because you think I'm sexy?" Kaito whispered huskily, just waiting to get a big reaction out of his partner, fully expecting Saguru to drop him and give him a serious chewing out.

Kaito never could have foreseen the way in which Hakuba actually responded.

He grabbed Kaito, pulling the magician in until their bodies were flush against one another. One hand grabbed Kaito's butt while the other took hold of the back of his head. Saguru gently pressed his lips to the base of Kaito's neck and chuckled, "God, what would you do if I told you how much I wanted you? Would you stop baiting me if you knew you were prodding a hungry tiger with a stick?"

Saguru slowly pulled away, leaving Kaito to stand on his own.

The stunned Kaito failed to support his own weight. His legs crumpled underneath him as he sank to the ground, looking up in dazed confusion at Hakuba.

The blonde blushed, frowning down at Kaito, even though he was really only upset with himself. "Do you see, Kuroba?" he challenged. "How does it feel when someone turns the tables and does it to you, making you feel awkward and uncomfortable like that?"

Kaito just stared, his entire body tingling, then burning, and then going numb in turns. His mind was racing and yet oddly blank.

Saguru shifted uneasily, beginning to fear he'd ruined everything. "Do you see?" he demanded again to fill the crushing silence. "So please stop doing things like that to me."

Still Kaito failed to respond, and Saguru began to panic. "Forgive me," he begged, falling to his knees into a bow so that his head would be lower than Kaito's. "I went too far to prove my point. What I did was vulgar and inappropriate. I understand if you're disgusted with me and no longer wish to—"

"—Hakuba," Kaito called, coming out of his stupor. He reached out and forced his friend to sit up. "Relax," he assured with a nervous chuckle. "It's okay. We're cool. I'm not disgusted or anything. You just kind of knocked the wind out of me there for a second." His laugh gained strength, beginning to sound more like normal. "I always think of you as pretty mild and restrained, so I was kind of shocked. I'd never really thought you could be seductive before, but clearly I was wrong."

Saguru blinked owlishly. "So…I haven't ruined everything? You weren't freaked out?"

Kaito shook his head and grinned. "No. Not at all. Even if you had scared me a bit, friendships don't dissolve that easily. Besides, I should be able to take what I dish out, right? I'm at least that bad to you, aren't I? So it'll take a lot more than that to 'ruin everything' and make me not want to be your friend anymore."

Not it was Saguru's turn to stare speechlessly at Kaito. It took him a moment to reply. "Do you…really think of me as a friend?"

Kaito smiled sadly at the tentative hope sparkling in Saguru's eyes. "Of course I do. Though, I didn't realize it until you told me that you considered me as one the other day. It was then that I realized that we had been friends since high school…only, whereas you had always been wonderful to me, I had only ever been a complete jerk to you. There's no doubt that you're my friend. I'm just wondering how in the world you came to think of me as one with the way I've always mistreated you."

Saguru shrugged. "You were never really that bad."

"I stole your school uniform during gym, covered you in feathers both at heists and in the classroom, and I hung you upside down in your boxers," Kaito reminded stoically. "What are you, a masochist?"

Saguru smiled bashfully. "You were just mischievous and bad at expressing your true feelings. You're still like that. I could see that you were really a good person at heart, though."

"You have the worst taste," Kaito sighed, getting to his feet and then offering Saguru a hand. "But, long story short, we're still friends, everything is cool, and I'm really sorry for teasing you. Forgive me?"

Saguru smiled in relief, allowing Kaito to help pull him up. "Of course. Back to practice?"

"Sure." Kaito grinned as he got back into position to work on the lift they had been practicing before.

"That was kind of fun, though," Kaito chuckled as he gracefully leaned back until his fingers skimmed the ground.

"What was?" Saguru frowned, feeling like he'd entered halfway through the conversation.

Kaito snickered, lifting up a bit to watch Saguru's reaction. "You hitting on me like that. That was some hot stuff, Haku-chan. You made my heart skip there for a minute. I'm still kind of blown away by your secret sexy side."

"Oh, stop," Saguru groaned. "You're incorrigible."

"Seriously!" Kaito urged, even as he laughed at his friend's flustered expression. "I think I fell in love with you a little bit there."

Saguru pursed his lips, studying Kaito skeptically. "…Seriously?"

Kaito smiled, leaning back. "You're sexy, Haku-chan. Own it already."

Saguru sighed. "If you say so…. You're never going to stop teasing me completely, are you?"

"I'm being totally serious," Kaito insisted. "You're a stud…. But no. I'm going to tease you, at least a little bit, until the day I die. That's the price of my friendship."

"Then I suppose I'm doomed to die of humiliation or become immune with time," Saguru muttered.

"You're supposed to say, 'Your friendship is worth it!'" Kaito scoffed.

"Didn't you just get on my case the other day for one such a cheesy manga line?" Saguru reminded smugly.

Kaito pretended to pout. "You're supposed to act cheesy when it suits me."

Saguru rolled his eyes, chuckling, "Back to work, Kuroba."

…

"Show me one more time," Kaito insisted at the end of practice three weeks into training. "I want to be sure I know what I'm doing before you make me try this on ice tomorrow."

"You'll be fine, Kuroba," Saguru insisted, chuckling as he set up to do the axel again. "You're ready."

"I don't feel ready!" Kaito shouted back petulantly as Saguru took off into the jump.

"What? Don't you trust me?" Saguru pouted, even as he landed gracefully and continued to glide across the ice on one foot.

"Sneaky," Kaito grumbled. "Don't you go playing the trust card, Haku-chan. It's your assessment of my abilities that I'm doubting."

"So you don't trust me," Saguru moped as he skated to the exit and stepped off the ice.

Kaito glared, giving his partner a playful swat.

Saguru smirked. "You're going to kill it tomorrow. I know you will. You've improved drastically these past few weeks."

Kaito sighed, shaking his head as they started back towards the locker room. "It's more likely that the jump will kill me."

"Stop," Hakuba chuckled. "Kuroba, do you really think I'd stand by and let you die? I'm going to be right there beside you."

Kaito took a seat on the bench and pursed his lips. "Point. But do you really think I'll be able to do it?" He snuck an anxious glance at his partner.

"Of course you will. Even if you don't get it on the first try, it's not the end of the world." Saguru tried to put things into perspective. "You'll fall, I'll help you up, and then we'll try it again until you're able to do it without much thought. It'll be just like when you were learning to skate backwards and forwards for the first time."

"Only, hopefully not as humiliating," Kaito sighed, taking off his skates and pulling on his shoes.

"It was only so difficult in the beginning because you wouldn't let go of your stubborn hubris," Saguru reminded.

Kaito winced. "So you think it'll be easier now that I have no pride left?"

Saguru rolled his eyes and started unlacing his own skates. "It will be easier because you have a better foundation as a skater now."

Kaito nodded. "I'm actually kind of excited, believe it or not," he admitted with a sheepish smile. "You honestly think I'll be all right?"

Hakuba looked up into Kaito's eyes and declared, "You're going to nail it. If you don't, it'll only be due to nerves, not a lack of skill."

Kaito's tentative smile spread into a full grin. "I hope so. Now that I've been doing this every day for the past three weeks and it's not as scary, I'm actually starting to enjoy skating. It's really freeing, you know?"

Saguru smiled nostalgically and nodded. "I always found it to facilitate good headspace. Whenever I needed to clear my mind and just breathe, I always headed to the rink when I was a young adolescent."

Kaito leaned back, placing his hands on the bench behind him for support. "How did you first get into ice skating anyway? I was pretty surprised when you turned out to be as good as you are. Nothing in particular about you screams 'pair skater', so…"

Saguru gave his right shoulder a small shrug. "It was just one of the innumerable lessons I underwent as a child—fencing, ballroom dance, billiards, card games, golf, chess, swimming, judo… I started ice skating when I was twelve, and, oddly enough, it was one of the few that stuck."

"Why do you think that is?" Kaito pressed out of pure curiosity.

Saguru averted his gaze. "At first the big draw was the freedom and the peace I felt while doing it, but…I probably would have quit sooner if not for Kostya."

"K-Kosuchia?" Kaito tried out the foreign word and frowned.

"Kostya," Saguru repeated slowly, even though it pained him to do so.

"Kostya," Kaito copied, getting it on his second attempt. "Is that Russian or something? Who's Kostya?"

Saguru nodded, still looking down at his feet as he took ample time unlacing his skates. "Kostya was my skating instructor from the time I was fourteen until I turned sixteen." He took a deep breath before continuing, "For me, it was love at first sight, although I must have seemed like such a little kid to Kostya."

"So you kept skating because you had a crush on your teacher?" Kaito chuckled. "That's super cute, Haku-chan. I can just see you as a shy kid, pining away after your instructor. So you like older women? How old was Kostya?"

"Eleven years my senior." Saguru smiled bitterly. "But I didn't keep taking lessons so that I could nurse a schoolboy crush on Kostya; I used lessons and extra training as excuses so that we could meet without my family finding out what was really going on between us."

Kaito's eyes widened as the pieces fell into place. "You sly dog," he whistled. "Geez. Even back then you were already a stud. Were you seriously dating your ice skating teacher?"

"We were together for two years," Saguru confirmed, picking up the pace as he put on his regular shoes. He'd wanted to tell Kaito about Kostya and everything that had happened, but it still felt too soon, and Saguru wasn't ready to share it all—most particularly how "Kostya" was short for Konstantin and the truth about how far the relationship had gone.

"Was she a total hottie?" Kaito begged for details. "She must have been if she was an athlete. Do you have any pictures?"

Saguru bit his lip as he reached for his wallet. "One. Just the one." He selected the photo from the back, lifting it with his index and middle finger and handing it over to the eager Kaito.

Kaito's face fell as he studied the photo booth picture. There was a sixteen year-old Hakuba, obviously deliriously in love judging by the content smile and the dreamy eyes as he rested his head on the shoulder of his beloved. The other person, supposedly Kostya, was hard to read based on the fluffy, burgundy winter coat they were wearing. One hand appeared to be resting on Hakuba's back while the other was tucked inside their pocket. The face had been burned out of existence with a lighter, leaving a charred hole where Kostya's head should have been.

Kaito looked up searchingly at Saguru, slightly disturbed at the violence of emotion that would lead someone to burn a picture of the person they had once loved.

Saguru kept his gaze down but surreptitiously snuck glances at Kaito as he confessed, "Kostya was an abusive, manipulative jerk who used me, ripped my heart out, and then stomped on it. Kostya made me hate people…myself most of all."

Kaito opened his mouth to say something, encourage his friend, comfort him, but the half-formed words stuck in his throat. What did you say when someone shared something like that with you?

Before Kaito could gather his thoughts, Saguru took the photo back from Kaito and flipped it over, showing Kaito the reverse side.

"Souviens-Toi," Kaito read, frowning. "French? 'Remember'?"

Saguru nodded. "There's a village called Oradour-sur-Glane in France that has stood in ruins for over half a century now. The Nazis stormed the village, rounding up the people and taking the men to be shot in sheds and barns. The women and children they locked in the church. They set it on fire and shot anyone who tried to escape out the windows. Over six hundred people died in a few short hours. After the war, they decided to let the ruins stand as a testament to the atrocities of war, and over the entrance they posted a sign reading 'Souviens-Toi', 'Remember'. I may be a little overdramatic in saying so, but Kostya is my own personal Oradour-sur-Glane. I carry that picture around so that I never forget what human beings are capable of doing to each other."

Kaito sat in stunned silence for a minute before he was finally able to put his thoughts into words. "Believe me, I'm very familiar with how much human beings can suck and how a person you love and trust can turn on you and end up not really being the person you've loved and idolized your entire life after all. I'm not going to say I know how you feel because I only know what my own pain was like, but I can say that I've been hurt in a somewhat similar way before, and it took me a long time, but I decided that I wasn't going to let some jerk ruin the rest of my life. I'd already lost enough time mourning my father the first time when I was little and then self-destructing when I found out he wasn't dead and wasn't the great guy I had always thought either. I decided to keep moving forward."

Saguru frowned as Kaito looked him straight in the eye. "Haku-chan, what I mean is that you shouldn't let what happened with that bitch define the rest of your relationships. What happens when you meet someone worth caring about and offering your heart to but you're still too hung up on something that happened nearly five years ago to be able to accept this new person's love? I think it's important not to forget what happened so that you're not taken advantage of again, but if you hold on too tightly to those bad experiences, you won't be able to reach out and take hold of new opportunities. I'm not trying to tell you what to do because that's up to you to decide for yourself, but, as your friend, I just want to caution you so you don't miss out on future happiness…because there are good people out there worth loving and trusting."

"I'm starting to think so too," Saguru admitted, meeting Kaito's concerned gaze with a slight smile. "Thank you, Kuroba."

"Thank you for putting yourself out there to share that with me," Kaito answered in earnest. "I'm really glad we had this talk."

"…I am too," Saguru finally decided. His heart felt a little lighter now that the matter of telling Kaito about Kostya was mostly off his chest.

"Wanna get ice cream?" Kaito suggested. "My treat?"

"You want to get ice cream in winter after spending the last two hours at an ice rink?" Saguru chuckled.

"Yeah? So? Don't you?" Kaito challenged.

Saguru laughed. "All right. Since it's your treat, Kuroba."

…..

Mikau: Fifty points to anyone who, when I said "Konstantin", thought "Like Konstantin Levin?" But anyway. I hope you liked chapter two. ^.^; It was a little more spicy and angsty than the first one, but it was a lot of fun to write. Not so much fun to edit into readable shape, but…if you guys liked it, I was worth it. Thanks so much for reading. I hope to have another chapter ready to post this weekend. Take care!