The fact that Onodera hadn't shown up to work registered with Takano as soon as he sat down at his desk at Emerald and found his blustering presence to be conspicuously absent.

Strange, because Takano knew how much of a dedicated worker his subordinate was, and this was the first time he'd taken a day off since he'd started working at Marukawa.

Maybe he's really sick?

The worried thought lodged in his mind, he shot off a mail to Onodera, enquiring to the same effect before determinedly burying himself in the flurry of toner-less doki doki scenes populating his desk that had unprecedentedly become his life. Both literally and figuratively, he smirked bitterly to himself. Onodera always had him on edge, unable to think straight (ha) around him. It was only long-ingrained work ethic that made Takano able to work normally around the younger man.

His only comfort was that he wasn't the only one who felt that way. He'd seen Onodera blush and stutter around him, just completely blank out on what he had been doing, even as he vehemently denied it to his last breath. And although it was just part of who his lover was, that he couldn't bring himself to be honest, he could really stand to be a bit more direct sometimes and not do things by halves, like the cryptic reply of come over after work; I need to talk to you that presently sounded at his phone.

He often thanked his lucky stars, whatever those were, for his prowess at compartmentalizing his attention. It made him relatively productive even that day as the dirge of settling dread hammered away at the inside of his head.

Takano ran up the stairs to their apartment building.

And it was so fucking ironic, that Fate had thrown its cards down this way; his kouhai, all eyes and feverish blushes and whispers of Saga-senpai, whose heart had been Takano's to break with a casual flick of his wrist now held all of Saga-senpai's marionette strings firmly in his hands.

Oh, how the tables have turned.

Because much, much as he might like to push Onodera down and make him react to himself, tell Takano with his body what his stubbornness held back,

and much as he might just take what Onodera's reservations refused to give him, the fact was that those green eyes had broken his heart once

And they could do it again.

And Takano couldn't do a damn thing about it.

He rang Onodera's bell, trepidation straining to stay his hand, and held his breath.

The door opened with suspicious promptness, revealing the occupant, who certainly looked in the pink of health. Literally. The blush on his cheeks would give a beet a run for its money.

So it wasn't sickness that kept him from work?

So it was something worse?

"Well? Any reason you wanna give me before I dock your pay? Unless you're on your deathbed, there's no valid reason to skip work," Takano started the conversation with a barb, familiar territory to mitigate the apprehension building steadily in his chest.

Onodera just turned, leaving the door open for Takano to follow behind.

He was never like this.

It's really bad, isn't it?

Takano felt his apprehension curl into noxious fumes of absolute dread as he followed the younger man inside.

Onodera's house had been stripped bare.

The mess so characteristic of him had been packed away into boxes, the couch dismantled and folded away. The tiny apartment seemed strangely spacious in the absence of furniture.

Takano, quickly recovering from his surprise, just looked at Onodera, silently demanding an explanation. Had he finally acted on the moving crap he was always harping on about?

God, he hoped that was all it was, that he could talk, or simply sex Onodera out of it.

The eyes that had enraptured him, ten years ago, and refused to let go were downcast, looking down at the slender fingers that fidgeted in nervousness.

"I'm sure you've already figured it out, but… I'm moving."

"And just what is the point of it? You do realize that this place is walking distance from the train station, centrally located, and at a reasonable price? Are you an idiot?"

Onodera's eyes flashed. There was the fire Takano loved so much, and the signal that it was okay to push him up against the nearest flat surface and extract an assurance that he wasn't going anywhere. "I know that! It's not about that—,"

The taller man stalked towards him, Onodera taking simultaneous steps backwards until his back met the wall. Takano immediately caged him against it with his hands, the fear in his heart somewhat allayed by the old familiarity of this dance, his own predetermined victory.

"What is it, then? Do you just hate living near me that much?"

Just a touch of vulnerability, creeping into the crevices of Onodera's walls, and they'd come tumbling down. Takano began to mouth at his neck, and his lover's hands, expectedly, came up to push him away while his voice offered futile resistance.

"Everything's not about you, Takano-san, let go—,"

Takano just tilted his chin up, jade meeting amber.

"Stop running, Ritsu."

He kissed him deep and passionate and desperate, willing the hands still pushing ineffectually at his chest to melt at the sensuality like they always did.

Onodera tore his mouth away.

"I'm moving to Switzerland."

Takano recoiled as if he'd been slapped.

The smaller man took shaky breaths, as if steadying himself, before he looked him in the eye. "I'm not coming back."

What.

Why.

The questions reverberated inside Takano's head as he just stood there, numb in shock, the full impact of Onodera's words not quite hitting him yet. But the younger man ploughed on desperately, as if determined to finish his explanation now that he'd finally said those horrible words.

"The Swiss branch of Onodera Shuppen was originally overseen by An-chan, since she's a close family friend. But she just recently took ill and needs a full-time caretaker. Now there's no one to take care of that branch, and my dad can't tell any of his subordinates to do it because the company's going through a very bad period with backstabbers and defectors."

Here he stopped, perhaps sensing the older man's building hostility, before adding a note of entreaty to his voice.

"He didn't tell me to take it up, Takano-san. But I can't shirk my responsibilities, and I know An-chan would be so much more comfortable with someone she trusts taking care of her," he looked at his addressee imploringly.

Takano didn't care.

He was deaf, blind, frozen with shock. The only thing he could think of was not again.

Onodera was not leaving him again.

He was not getting his heart broken again.

He would not suffer through the past ten years again.

He wanted to lock the green-eyed man away, tie him down and make him stay. But somewhere deep down inside, he knew that even if he did that, even if he forced himself into his home and his body, he'd wake up in the morning to find the bed empty.

Because there was just no turning Onodera away from his responsibilities, and Takano knew that better than anybody.

"I'll never forgive you, you know," he whispered, a single tear snaking down his cheek as his knees gave out and he sunk to the floor.

All the fight had gone out of him, the desire, no, desperation to win the green-eyed man leaving him as he did the one thing Takano could never exonerate.

Onodera nodded, silently. "I know."

Then he walked to where Takano was sitting, and pressed a single kiss to his lips, and then his hair.

"I'm sorry, Takano-san."

The taller man stood.

"I never wanted to do anything to you, Ritsu. I wanted to do it, all of it, with you."

"I know."

Takano could still taste the salt of Ritsu's tears, feel the warmth of them in his hair as he silently left the apartment, the building. He broke into a run as the scent of autumn filled his nose and made his eyes sting.

He found himself back at the garden he'd stumbled upon with Yokozawa one day, when the latter had practically dragged Takano along as he gallivanted around town on the pretext of you'll probably end up dead in a ditch somewhere if I leave you alone.

It held many, many precious memories of long, sunny days spent in its embrace, running hands through the clear ice-cold sparkle of its little brook, all while talking about cabbages and kings and shooting stars with a kindred spirit.

The memories it was rife with now, though, blotting out everything good and precious and else, was

Onodera leaning over the bridge railing

Onodera's blush as Takano held his hand

Onodera by his side as they walked the sakura-wooded path.

Onodera, Onodera, Onodera.

Ritsu, Ritsu, Ritsu.

Why had he even come here? A sharp pain settled somewhere in his chest, a pain so sharp and so achingly familiar, that had taken ten years to dull into inconsequentiality, and made all the more keen by his connaisance of it.

He gasped for breath, eyes watering from he sheer intensity of it, turning away when he spotted a figure hunched over the bridge. Its familiar size and shape bespoke only of one person.

Yokozawa?

Their eyes met, and Takano knew in an instant that something even more absolute and terrible than his turn of events had happened.

Yokozawa was crying.

Maybe that was what had him bridging the distance between them in five long strides, taking Yokozawa's face into his hands.

As amber stared into blue-gray, each reflecting the other's agony, there was, like so often, no need for words between them.

He didn't know who moved first. One moment, the pools of ice-blue, storm-grey ablaze with emotion were all he could see. The next, they were clinging onto each other, tasting the other's desperation in the vitriol of their mingled tears as their mouths met again and again and again, as if trying to smother the heat of emotion with the scorch of passion.

A sickening sense of déjà vu washed over him, here they were again, drunk on grief, trapped amidst a maelstrom of unresolved emotion, primal instinct seeking comfort, Takano from heartbreak, Yokozawa from goodness-knows-what.

What goes around, comes around.

But not in the way we expect it.

Before he realized it, Takano was being walked backwards, to the end of the bridge, back, back to the lush grass edged with autumn brown. Yokozawa's hands, sure and strong, pushed him down onto it, somehow managing to be steadying even through the muted trembles he could feel racking them.

Their breaths mingled and their mouths crashed together once again, sloppy and violent and wanting only to drown in the battle of tongues and the frantic removal of clothes and the frenzied gripping of hair and the stray, gasping breaths that occasionally escaped.

He was naked in a few short moments, laid barer, with Yokozawa on top of him, eyes wild with crazed grief, fighting to not hurt Takano as he slipped one, two spit-slicked fingers inside him. Takano's breath hitched on a half-sob at the forgotten burn of the stretch. It was good, good as the pain threatening to rend his chest apart found a voice in the noises he made at the intrusion.

Too soon, and not soon enough, Yokozawa pulled his fingers out, lining himself up and pushing in, Takano's body screaming deliciously at the hurt of it.

"Yesssssss….." he hissed in satisfaction at it, and he didn't know how he looked, but he did, he looked absolutely fucking crazy, keening in pleasure at the pain as another man violated his body for all to see.

That was them, wasn't it, two fucking crazy people tearing each other apart and apart with force of their anguish, licking each other's wounds.

His hands tore into the skin of Yokozawa's back, long scratches oozing blood and blue-black bruises from his teeth on his neck and collarbone as Yokozawa started moving, because he knew what the other man needed right then.

The grey-eyed man said nothing, just drove into him harder, harder, harder, returning the favor with the dark purple blotches marring his friend's pale skin.

Takano threw his head back in pleasure, hair fanning out over the grass in a disheveled mess as he let moans be punched out of him on every punishing thrust.

Yokozawa buried his head in Takano's shoulder, the warmth of his tears in juxtaposition to the late-autumn chill in the air, and it was a while before his partner's pleasure-racked brain realized that the man above him was saying something.

"Masamune, Masamune…"

Takano just wrapped his arms tighter around Yokozawa in reply, dug his feet into the man's hard, muscular back, muscle memory canting his hips up to meet him on every thrust, angled perfectly to drive into the spot which wiped all coherent though from his mind. The heady feeling, the overwhelming rush of being so needed heightened his sensitivity to unbelievable levels, so much so that he actually, properly sobbed on a particularly hard thrust. Tears of his own formed in his eyes and mingled with the ink of his best friend's hair. He let the agony of heartbreak burst forth from his lips, let the tears cascade down his cheeks as he clutched on to Yokozawa, moaned in his ear as if this was the only thing keeping him anchored.

It probably was, at this point.

"Yokozawa," he sobbed, again and again until it was a torrent of crying and his friend's garbled name, face contorting in that strange antithesis of all-encompassing anguish and thought-extirpating pleasure.

Yokozawa's thrusts lost their rhythm, coming erratic and choppy and deep, just how Takano liked. His nails retraced their paths along the back of the man above him as the pair let themselves be swept away in a whirlwind of pleasured sounds and throaty groans of the other's name.

"Shit, Yokozawa, Yokozawa, Takafumi, I'm going to—!" Takano's body arched, convulsed, white streams painting both their chests before he sank down, boneless, chest heaving with sobs.

"Masamune." Yokozawa cried in his ear, voice laced with the same heartbreak that seasoned his own, tears drenching Takano's shoulder as his hands gripped Takano painfully tight before his body stiffened and something warm filled him up.

They collapsed next to each other, catching their breaths, and somehow, instinctively, their hands found each other and held fast.

"He's dying," Yokozawa said, head in Takano's lap as the amber-eyed man stroked his hair by the rising twilight. The antithetical calm that came with having sunk as low as they possibly could have pervaded both their psyches. "Cancer. He's got two months to live and he didn't tell me."

The fingers stroking through jet-black strands froze as the man sitting groped for words. What could he say? The only thought, echoing in crazy laughter through his head was, fuck, this guy is really unlucky with love.

And then, fuck, it's not like I can talk.

"…fuck."

It was all Takano could muster, thunderstruck as he was. He'd expected a breakup, maybe even a similar situation to his, but this? It didn't seem possible to him that Kirishima-san, the calm, capable Kirishima-san, could be dying.

He'd grown so used to having the man's presence around the company in general, his firm guidance, his light-hearted banter, his encouragement, that the thought of its absence left a strange feeling in even his chest.

Just went to show that Kirishima-san had a way of endearing himself to the people around him, so he didn't even want to imagine what it was like for Yokozawa, just watching the man he loved waste away slowly.

At least he'd had a clean break with Onodera.

"He has a daughter, Masamune. His wife's already passed away. I don't even know how she'll deal with it when he tells her. Imagine trying to tell your motherless, ten year-old daughter that her father, who is the person she loves most in this world, is now also dying. She's already been through this once, and no child deserves even that."

Takano just resumed the path of his fingers through Yokozawa's hair. There was nothing he could say.

"This is horrible," Yokozawa said, raising his head. "And so, so unfair."

Takano silently held out his arms. His friend sank into them, his sudden, vehement sobs shaking both of them.

"I love him," he was barely coherent. "God, I love him so much. I should've told him, I should've told him so much more often. It's not fair; it's just not fair. What will I do without him? What will Hiyo do without him?"

Takano let him get it out, listening patiently to his tirade before chipping in with practicalities.

"I'm really not the one you should be telling this to, you know," he whispered into inky hair, stroking his back to soothe his vicious outpouring of grief. Yokozawa stiffened at his suggestion.

"I have no idea how I'm ever going to face him again, let alone tell him this," he said, making to disentangle himself from his companion. Belated guilt reflex kicking in, huh.

Takano let him go.

After Yokozawa had put a safe distance between the two of them, he shifted uncomfortably for a beat, not knowing what to say.

"...So what about you? You never told me what happened," he finally filled the silence.

"He's moving to Switzerland," the Emerald editor-in-chief replied expressionlessly. "Forever," he clarified, on seeing his companion's incredulous expression.

"What the fuck?" he said, scooting forward to place a hand on the amber-eyed man's arm. "Masamune, shit."

"Apparently his fiancée's ill, so he's swooping in, all fucking Superman-ly, to take over the Swiss branch of Onodera Shuppen and look after his ailing betrothed. What a knight in shining armor," Takano spat out bitterly.

"That bastard…" Yokozawa muttered. "Again?"

His friend let out an acrimonious laugh. "Yes, again. That was my first thought, too. At least he gave me fair warning this time."

A beat of silence passed before Takano's eyes suddenly burned like fire, the glowing embers of resentful hurt in his chest sparking anew as the remembrances replayed like a malicious reel. "I won't forgive him, Yokozawa. I won't ever forgive him."

"As you shouldn't," Yokozawa replied, back to his usual brusque pitch.

But this time, it was the salesman who kissed the ebony-haired man first under the moonlight that illuminated the trees and rivers into silver and their forms into the ethereal.

Let's see just how far we can sink, shall we?

And Takano wrapped his arms around Yokozawa and let his mind go blank.

When they pulled away, he stood up.

"Come on," he started to walk. "I don't think either of us should be alone tonight."