When Takano had woken up naked in Yokozawa's bed, and registered his surroundings, his first thought had been I am so shitfucked.

Literally. When he had gingerly tried taking a step out of the bed, as opposed to burying his face in the pillow and attempting to strangle himself with it, his hips had screamed so violently in protest that he'd sunk back down again with the shock of it. Whoever would have guessed that Yokozawa would still have it in him to fuck him into immobility, after having been a bottom bitch for so long?

A flash of ill-timed humor had had the editor letting out an amused snort as he'd pictured his friend's face if he ever alluded to the ink-haired man as a bottom bitch in his hearing.

His accompanying smirk, though, had speedily faded as the ramifications of their actions the previous night had re-established themselves at the forefront of his mind. Stupid didn't even begin to cover it.

It wasn't that he himself had especially regretted what they'd done, per se, but he had known Yokozawa would. And that had been putting it mildly. If he knew anything of the man, the salesman would likely hole himself up to wallow in his guilt and let overwork and non-maintenance drive him insane.

Great, he'd buried his head in the pillow, I fucked up another relationship.

Eventually, though, he'd managed to clam his racing thoughts, raising his head again to take a good look at the man beside him, something he hadn't had the opportunity to do the day before, and a frown had darkened his face.

Yokozawa had looked like hell, his face unguarded and his eyes swollen and dark-shadowed. Almost instinctively, the other man had sent the back of his hand lightly brushing across that fragile-looking cheek.

But somehow, Takano hadn't been able to look for very long at his friend's face with its customary guard in shambles around the mess they'd made, so, steeling himself, he had climbed of that bed and ignored the protests of his muscles.

Because if there was one thing he knew about Yokozawa, it was that he'd pull through, no matter what.

He had hoped that'd come through in the note he'd left before quietly making an undetected exit, telling the sleeping man to pull through, to talk to Kirishima-san. It would have been transcending the bounds of even his usual insensitivity towards his oldest friend if he had subjected them both to the awkward, painful, morning-after conversation. Yokozawa didn't need his pity, his sympathy, or his apologies.

After what had happened between them, Takano doubted Yokozawa even needed him.

The silence of the corridor in front of Takano's apartment was no different from usual, but, to him, it felt cavernous when he returned there, just as the sun was beginning to trail strains of watery-gold and orange over the rich blue velvet of night. Without the surety of Onodera's presence in the neighboring apartment, Takano felt suddenly, achingly lonely as he trudged back to his.

But the younger man hadn't said it, had he? Not even once.

Not even when he'd been about to leave Takano forever.

Just three little simple words.

Unthinkingly, some instinct of Takano's directed his steps towards the wrong apartment. Maybe it was the faint, faint scent that still lingered there, or maybe it was the headier brew of memories.

Either way, the ebony-haired man walked towards the door in a daze, placing a hand almost tenderly on the cool plane of it when he was close enough, then flinching back in surprise as it creaked. The landlord evidently hadn't been around to lock it up yet.

As though in slow motion, the door swung open, leaving the inside half-cloaked in shadow and ghosts of their past. Takano took mindless steps forward, the half-light seeming to beckon to him. He was almost at the threshold before he froze up.

He could go on.

He could go on and enter this cove rife with reminisces and run his hands over every contour, every little nook and cranny of the life he'd been part of for a few glorious moments and inhale that piquant scent. And then, not finding any depth to the superficiality of imagery and memory, he could head back, his wounds gouged deeper and smarting afresh and the scent still clinging to him.

Takano turned around, on the precipice between light and shadow, and walked towards illumination.

Because there was nothing there for him, any more, the sparking fire that had electrified all these little things, all these insignificant places, was gone, firmly extinguished. And the amber-eyed man suddenly knew what disenchantment meant.

If you really love someone, you'll find a way to make it work, it was something he'd read, something that'd stuck with him because it rang true.

And, well, that gave him a pretty good insight into Onodera's feelings.

He redirected his steps towards his own house, sighing as he brushed off the haunting fragrance that seemed to have twined itself into the very seams of his clothing. He unlocked his door and powered on his coffee machine, putting on his glasses and getting out the stack of proofs he'd neglected to overlook the previous day. He was done.

He was done with feeling this way, tired of wearing his heart on his sleeve and having it spurned. He was done with constantly being strung out and tossed about on the whim of someone. On the whim of someone who'd just up and left without a second glance, hadn't even thought to try for them.

He was done, and if he wasn't, he'd bury it under a mountain of office work until he was.

Loneliness.

Takano was no stranger to the concept, the feeling, as children growing up in a token family seldom are, and he thought he'd had it down pat how to deal with it.

What he was just realizing was, that despite his firm convictions to the contrary, it was possible for people to heal. He'd done it, more that he'd ever realized, in the intervening years from college till now. Steady friendship and work had, without him realizing it, gone a huge way in filling the void his former hobbies had only seemed to exacerbate. And so, he felt it with all the roughness of inexperience, the lonely that seemed to have crept into the hollow that two of the biggest components of his life had left.

Takano hadn't ever really thought about not having the easy camaraderie, the wordless understanding, the familiar voice a phone call away in the form of Yokozawa, because he'd never imagined a scenario where he wouldn't have these things. Now that the grey-eyed man was avoiding him like the plague, though, Takano was just beginning to uncover how much social contact with a few kindred spirits, which was something he'd spurned all through his teenage years, had come to mean to him with maturity.

Which was why he was sitting across from Hatori Yoshiyuki in a booth of a classy, low-key bar, having dragged the man out from where he was always holed up with Yoshino-Yoshikawa-sensei-sama.

"I need your advice on something," Takano had bluntly stated his purpose as soon as they'd taken their seats, and, Hatori, bless his unruffled soul, had simply nodded, expression remaining unchanged. These were the times when Takano was reminded exactly why this was his right-hand man. If some fucking shota like Kisa had said something like "Ooh, Takano-san, could it be about your love life~~?", the editor-in-chief would probably have socked them in the face.

As it was, Takano wasn't a fan of regaling others with juicy details of his personal life, but, at this point, he'd deemed himself more liable to cause harm than good in the present situation and his second-in-command at Emerald had seemed like the perfect uninvolved third party to help him not fuck it up anymore.

Now that they were here, though, Takano faced with Hatori's even gaze across the table, he wasn't quite sure how to start.

"What if…" he finally began, years of interpersonal experience leading him to choose his words carefully, "You hurt someone very close to you in a moment of weakness?"

"…!"

This was the first time Takano had seen the other man look so taken aback. The shock hat passed over his features was unmistakable it was quickly smothered with a forced return to calmness. "What kind of hurt are we talking about, here?"

"The kind where you ruin a really precious relationship for them."

There it was again. That fleeting look, which practically screamed oh shit. It had the ebony-haired man regarding the other suspiciously. His subordinates' personal lives were of little interest or consequence to him, but it was nonetheless amusing to see the famously aloof Hatori get worked up over something.

"Well, I'd say to just not to mess with it any more. Just… back off, at least until things settle down. Or, if you've really done something bad, completely stop interfering in their lives," the violet-eyes man said, usual distant expression firmly back on his face, even as the worlds came out in a tighter voice than usual. This pretty much resonated with everything Takano had been telling himself thus far, and yet it felt like trying to jam two jigsaw pieces together that just wouldn't fit.

"But…" he persisted, finally voicing the conflict that had been eating away at him. "I can't do that. I… they're not doing well at all right now. I know they'll never let their job suffer for it, but I also know they'll work themselves into an absolute corner with everything on their plate. And, well, they had always been there for me to tell me when I was being full of shit, and I feel like a gigantic dick that I can't do the same for them. And fuck if I'm sitting on my ass and letting them suffer."

The dim, understated lighting, played out over Hatori's face, and suddenly he looked much older.

"Well, Takano-san," he said, tone soft and altogether different from how his boss had ever heard him sound. "It looks to me like you've fallen for them."

For once in his life, Takano's stock of ready wit was summarily silenced.

"In which case," the man continues, his violet gaze steady and bespeaking almost of experience. "You should just come clean at once. Tell them you love them, because, trust me, you'll only keep on and on hurting them like this if you bottle up your feelings. And then respect their decision if they can't have you in their lives any more."

"Not a chance," the editor-in-chief said flatly, after a momentary, shocked pause. "No way in hell am I in love with this person."

"But you can't be a friend to them, can you?" his second-in-command pushed inexorably. "What a friend needs from you right now is non-interference. Even so, you can't bring yourself to not be by his side, can you?"

"All the same, it's still ridiculous," the amber-eyed man said, making a dismissive gesture. "This person… confessed to me twice. And I rejected them both times."

"Pardon me if I'm being presumptuous, but wouldn't it be correct to say that until recently, certain… factors had prevented any feelings you might have otherwise harbored from manifesting?" Hatori, screw him, said slyly. "Besides, third time's the charm, isn't it?"

"Shit," Takano massaged his temples as he flopped down onto his bed. After he'd bid Hatori farewell, he'd returned straight to Ichinose-sensei's latest draft, scoring vicious red marks into it until an ungodly hour, and their conversation was still keeping him up.

Third time's the charm, after all.

Was there any truth to that?

Takano just followed the slow passage of a ashen cloud over the clear silver of the moon. Did he really think that something had changed between the two of them? Could one stormy, mistake-ridden evening really have changed the course of ten years of convoluted, unrequited feelings?

Fuck no.

There was a reason that shojo was only a genre of manga.

The cloud drifted past the moon, and Takano languorously raised a hand, resting it, palm up, against his upturned cheek, as if to catch the moonlight that suddenly bathed his face, letting his musings flow.

His amber gaze suddenly snapped open as his train of thought, catching on a sudden realization, was brought to a screeching halt.

This wasn't… this couldn't be the first time he'd thought, really thought, of Onodera in the month since the older man's pilgrimage of sorts to his former lover's place?

He. Was so. Shitfucked.

Takano didn't understand.

Takano didn't understand why he was sitting in his car as pristine white flakes fell gently from the sky and silently cast a mantle of pallor over the little picket-edged forest clearing he was watching from a distance, with its small black-clothed gathering.

He didn't understand why he'd actually eavesdropped on the gossip of his department, had listened in to the hushed whisper of "Sakamoto says that he heard that Kirishima-san's private funeral is going to be in the middle of nowhere, right on the outskirts of Hyogo."

He didn't understand why he'd crushed up his copy of Onodera's resignation, dropping it into the trash before summarily ordering his subordinates back to work.

But he did, finally, finally, understand why his heart throbbed with an indescribable ache when he saw Yokozawa emerge from the cemetery after the service, face drawn and eyes suspiciously red-rimmed and swollen, holding onto the hand of a crying child as if his life depended on it. It was the same ache he'd felt when he'd watched Kirishima-san walk out of the building that he'd been a fixture in for as long as long as Takano could remember, head held high and eyes looking like he'd imminent demise had already befallen.

He hurt with this man, and a small, mirthless curled his lips with the realization that it was, now, his turn to wait for Yokozawa. Because, with the two of them, it had never been a chase. It had always been waiting, waiting for the other to come around.

And he would wait. He would lay a wordless hand on Yokozawa's shoulder at the company memorial and give him his silent, unwavering understanding and get to know his little girl until the grey-eyed man was ready, ready to try his first love again. However long it took.

Things did, indeed, come full circle.