AN: Please bear with this chapter. It's long enough to be two chapters and I almost scrapped it and went straight to next chapter, which is Yu's chapter, because I had to write 1500 words in order to be able to write Yu into this chapter anyway. But I promised some Guren, so here is some Guren.

I'm not hugely confident in this chapter - it is a little bit fillery and slow, but it does contain some important events for later. So I hope you'll stick with it. ^_^

(I think I could really use a beta reader but I will do my best in the future C: )

Guren and Yu may be acting a little bit out of character in this chapter - I am aware of it. It is due to certain events that will be later revealed (in Yu's case, next chapter).

Warning: Guren is still Guren. There is swearing in this chapter. It is exclusively Guren.

Sayuri was being way too nice today. It started when she had correctly predicted that Guren would be late, blocked him in his driveway with her Land Rover Discovery and asked if he wouldn't mind hurrying up because they she would like to be as early as possible this morning.

Being driven to work by an employee was strange but not unheard of. His secretaries and friends knew too well that Guren often viewed meeting times as guidelines, especially when he disliked the topic or people involved. Granted, it was normally Shigure who opted to personally escort him to these events on time, but Sayuri having come wasn't too strange.

What was strange was that on arriving at his office, there was no important meeting that morning which he would have put off. In fact, when Sayuri handed him his daily schedule, it was abnormally bare. Stranger still, Sayuri herself kept popping into his office unnecessarily. She took his hole punch and brought it back, even though she had her own damn hole punch on her desk. She brought him paperwork only to return to remove it without Guren even looking at it. She kept asking if he wanted coffee. He didn't but she kept it coming anyway. He had to leave the office twice that morning just to take a piss.

To top it all off, she delivered lunch to him at his desk – curry no less – and then sat down to eat with him in spite of her lunch break having supposedly been an hour earlier than his. Something was up. And Guren ate through half his curry casting her suspicious glances before he could stand it no longer.

'What is it?'

She looked up from her curry, startled. 'I'm sorry?'

'You brought me lunch. What did you do?'

She looked away. Guren prepared himself for the incoming headache of somebody else's fuck up. Somebody else because Sayuri was not prone to fuck ups. Sayuri was efficient, polite, kind – far too kind, which usually led to her being chosen as the person to break the news of whatever momentous mistake had happened this time. Considering the effort she'd put in, Guren's money was on Goshi. Goshi wasn't above bribery and while he constructed elaborate and entertaining stories explaining why something wasn't his fault, he'd obviously picked this skill up through years of having to use it.

'N-nothing,' Sayuri answered, mixing curry and rice with the tip of her fork. 'I just thought that… you know, since Yuichiro is coming today you might want a nice, peace-'

The rest of her sentence was drowned out with name Yuichiro. Of course, the kid was coming today. Had he forgotten? Of course he hadn't. He couldn't have forgotten even if he hadn't spent the past two weeks getting through those damned parenting books whenever his literal waste of space leg woke him up in the night. It was right there on the calendar Shigure had forcibly placed in his study, with all the other obligations he didn't want to deal with.

It took more self-control than it should have to not bury his face in his plate.

'Um, G-Guren?'

Oh crap, she'd been talking to him. Smoothing the frown from his face, Guren looked up from his meal and went with what seemed like the safest option: 'Yeah?'

Not safe. Sayuri smiled like he'd answered a question. 'Great! I took the liberty of getting a few things – nothing huge, just… finishing touches. I-'

The phone at her desk started ring. With an apologetic smile, she jumped up, leaving her lunch on his desk.

'You can eat the rest of that,' she threw over her shoulder before closing his office door.

Guren stared at the wooden panelling where she had just been. What the hell had he just agreed to?

After work, he found out that 'nothing huge' meant four bags that Sayuri had to bring into his house one by one because they were so full of crap. From this, he assumed that 'finishing touches' meant effectively redecorating his property.

Sayuri moved around Guren's open plan living area with an aura of purpose. She picked up that morning's coffee mug from the table in front of the sofa, ran her hands along the glass surface and then circled back to the sink. She did not speak until the kettle was boiling.

Her eyes met his in the mirror. 'Have you done anything to prepare for Yuichiro's arrival at all?' It sounded like she was asking if he had done his homework while the evidence pointed towards a resounding no.

'Yeah, I bought extra food and put a lock on my bedroom door.' He left out the trip to the bookshop and the gaudy parenting books that looked completely out of place on his bedside table. She didn't need to know about those.

Her eyebrows rose. She looked at him in disbelief, shook her head, made a noise that sounded like she wanted to say something but had bitten her tongue. The kettle screeched.

'Right,' she said, making coffee for both of them. 'What time is Yuichiro arriving?'

'Six thirty.'

Sayuri stopped stirring the coffee. 'Guren, it's ten past six now!'

Guren took his mug and began to stir it himself. 'Your point?'

'We have twenty minutes to clean this place up. Have you even vacuumed?' She pushed back her hair like she always did when she was flustered.

'I did it last week – it's fine.' Guren shrugged, took a sip of scalding hot coffee and coughed.

Sayuri took it out of his hands. When did she become so bold around him? Stupid question. It was probably around the time he misplaced his crutches and scooched downstairs on his butt in front of her while keeping up a running commentary about how crutches are overrated pieces of shit anyway.

'No, it's not fine. Go get the vacuum cleaner. I'll clean the coffee stains from the table.'

Guren debated arguing with her – because he was her boss; it was his home; it was as clean as it needed to be and damn it he hated vacuuming – but she was already digging through the cupboard under the sink for his cleaning supplies. When she stood, he saw the resolute look on her face and elected to drag the vacuum cleaner from the cupboard under the stairs.

They worked like they did during crunch time at the office only this time, instead of Guren giving orders and Sayuri giving status updates, it was the other way around. While she cleaned surfaces and sorted out what should be where, he vacuumed around and then under (why under was necessary he'd never understand) the furniture and then moved said furniture to wherever she pointed.

Once this task was done, he limped into the kitchen area and downed the coffee he'd been forced to abandon. He then immediately regretted drinking it so quickly when he could have used it as an excuse to lean against the counter longer with most of his weight on his functional right leg.

It didn't matter how many prosthetics he had, how new the one he was wearing was or how comfortably it seemed to fit him. There were certain activities that always seemed to mess with it. And moving furniture was one of them. He knew that the volume of his residual limb changed throughout the day. He knew that was normal. But it was annoying as all hell and damn near impossible to ignore when you were trying to do something active – like move naturally.

Frowning, he shook the limb around a bit. It obviously didn't help. Why he still tried it, he didn't know. He'd need to go sort out his stump socks before the brat got here. How annoying.

Sayuri looked up like she'd had the same idea, 'Go get yourself sorted – and make sure the bathroom is clean. I'll add the finishing touches down here. Be down and ready in five.'

Guren glanced at the clock. There were ten minutes before impact. Plenty of time.

With a quick nod to Sayuri, he took himself up the stairs and into his bedroom. Once on his bed, the prosthetic leg was cast aside. He let it fall onto the floor as he reached for the socks in the top drawer of the bedside cabinet. His current sock was switched for a nude coloured two ply sock. All of his stump socks were nude coloured – as close in colour as he could get to the actual leg.

Some people liked to decorate their artificial limb. Some people saw it like a part of their outfit – like underwear he guessed, necessary but customisable. Guren did not. Guren's missing limb came with a story – a story he wasn't comfortable sharing. He made a mistake. He paid a price. That price was far higher than one leg. He couldn't stand the looks on people's faces when they found out. He wasn't brave. He wasn't inspiring. He did not want pity.

His prosthetic was as close to a real leg in appearance as he could make it. He dressed his fake foot with a new sock on a daily basis, which always matched the sock on his flesh foot. He made sure his trouser legs were long enough to cover all fake flesh at all times. He never wore shorts in public. If he had to adjust his stump socks at work, he claimed to be taking a shit and did it on the toilet. Most of the time, he just put up with it if the damned thing wasn't fitting properly. Sores be damned.

He would do the same thing around Yuichiro, hence the lock on his door. The kid might be his nephew, might be living with him, but that didn't mean he needed to know all of Guren's dirty secrets, or indeed any of his secrets at all. It would be a pain in the ass but needs must.

He sat for a minute on the bed, relishing the relief that came from taking his leg off before reattaching it to the remaining stump below his knee. That done, he stretched his back and stood. Much better.

Deeming the bathroom passable, he returned downstairs a minute later than Sayuri had specified. She did not believe him about the bathroom, took a can of air freshener and went up there herself.

With two minutes to go, they both perched on stools at the breakfast bar to avoid messing up the perfectly plumped cushions on the lounge suite. Sayuri sipped her lukewarm coffee and tapped her nails against the cup. Guren's absent leg stung in time with her tapping. He tensed his knee, rubbed roughly at it as though that might make a difference.

Sayuri laid a hand on his shoulder.

'What?' he said, making eye contact with her in the mirror opposite.

She looked concerned. She was the only one who was allowed to be.

'I hope you intend to be open with Yu about-'

She knew him too well.

'Don't,' he warned her in a low voice.

The doorbell rang. She retracted her hand. Yuichiro had arrived.

An hour or so, another load of forms and a tour of the house later saw them sat around the breakfast bar, Guren with a fountain pen and a coffee-stained notebook and Yuichiro opposite with his own ratty notebook and a pencil. Sayuri was doing something behind Guren on the counter but neither of them were really paying much attention to her. There were more important matters at hand. Like getting through Guren's list of questions before the pizza arrived.

'Favourite food?'

Guren's questions were spoken more like statements, quick fire. He held his pen with its nib suspended just above the page and looked up at Yuichiro with an expression entirely too serious for the subject matter.

'Chicken,' Yuichiro said with such extreme conviction that Guren responded with the kind of serious nod he'd give Goshi after a particularly intense finance discussion.

Guren was already rattling off the next question as he made a note of the answer. 'Favourite colour?'

When he looked up, the kid was staring at Guren's handwriting as though he was being graded on it.

'Red,' he answered. 'Wait no - blue...Um... Anything that's not pink because pink is a girl's colour.'

'Mhmm.' Guren noted this one slowly, just in case the kid changed his mind. 'Favourite-'

'Guren,' Sayuri interrupted, setting a glass of blackcurrant squash in front of the boy. 'Don't drill Yuichiro. You're not in the military.'

Guren could have argued that be that as it may, this was the most effective way of doing things. He had compiled a list of things to know about the kid. This was the fasted way of finding out those things. If they were written down, a list could be consulted and he wouldn't actually have to remember what obscure sweets the kid ate or crap like that. But he didn't.

Instead, he sighed and looked at Yuichiro, who still held his pencil over the top of a blank page. 'Fine. You can ask me anything too, alright kid? Go ahead. Go wild.'

Yuichiro gaze moved behind Guren to Sayuri. When she didn't say anything and instead leaned over Guren to put another glass of squash down, he looked Guren dead in the eye and asked, 'Is she your girlfriend?'

Sayuri, who had just grabbed her own drink, abruptly paused. As she moved to sit down, she smiled and answered, 'N-no, I'm Guren's secretary.'

Yuichiro looked from Sayuri to Guren, head tilted to one side. Tapping his pencil lead to his notebook, he said, 'You're sleeping with your secretary?'

Sayuri choked on her drink. Guren raised his eyebrows.

'No kid, no. Really... no. We go way back, that's all.'

He reached out to pat Sayuri on her back. She mumbled thanks and smiled. Glancing between them, Yuichiro did not look convinced. After a prolonged suspicious look, Guren went with the 'you snooze you lose' rule and broke the awkward silence.

'My turn. You have a girlfriend kid?'

Yuichiro's expression contorted into unimpressed disgust. 'Ew no. Girls are gross and creepy and they giggle. And sometimes they scream and hit you when you try to show them cool stuff. I don't like 'em.'

Guren raised an eyebrow, leaning his elbow on the table. 'Maybe I don't like 'em either.'

Yuichiro's eyes widened. He chucked his pencil onto his notebook, leaned closer over the table and drew an excited breath. 'Is this a "no girls allowed" zo-'

And then he shook his head and paused, sitting back on his stool properly and retrieving his pencil. 'But you want a family though, right?' he said quietly, exaggeratedly drawing a bullet point on his page.

Guren's honest answer? No. He was just fine as he was. He had no intentions of going out, finding a woman and having a baby. He'd though about it once. And never again. There was only one woman for him, one family, and he had lost it.

Sayuri kicked him under the table. She kicked the wrong leg. On any other day, he would have laughed because how long had it been? But he didn't. He turned his head to look at her and she gave him a warning look in response. Yuichiro was still expanding the blob that once a bullet point.

'Well I've got you now, haven't I?' Guren settled for.

Sayuri nodded approvingly and stood. As she headed over to the counter, Yuichiro's pencil stilled. Without lifting it from the page, he looked up at Guren with wide green eyes. His mouth opened, but no words escaped it.

Guren made an effort to smile and said, though it sounded sickening, 'What more family do I need?'

Yuichiro's eyes dropped back to his bullet point. He drew a line next to it but wrote nothing.

Before anything else could be said, Sayuri returned with a plate full of chocolate cake, obviously homemade and iced in red with 'Welcome Home Yuichiro!' She set it directly in front of the boy. The boy stared.

'Here you go,' Sayuri said. 'I know dessert is supposed to come after dinner, but as we're eating dinner late anyway... I suppose it's fine if we just have a small slice now. It's a special day, after all!'

Yuichiro continued to stare at the cake like he didn't know how to respond. Guren inhaled the strong scent of chocolate fudge. Sayuri had really gone all out. Of course, it'd be better if it was apple pie with cinnamon but hey, kids liked cake.

'Um, actually,' he said, closing his notebook and gripping it tightly. 'Can I maybe go unpack my things before the pizza gets here?'

'Oh, of course,' Sayuri answered, before looking to Guren apologetically.

'We'll call you when the food arrives,' was his contribution along with a frown.

Sayuri added, 'I'll make sure Guren doesn't eat any of your cake before you get back.'

Yuichiro had disappeared up the stairs before she'd even finished.

The pizza took 45 minutes to arrive. For about the first time ever, Guren was already at the door waiting for it. The exchange of money for food had never been so efficient. The food was at the breakfast bar before Sayuri had even had a chance to get plates, for Yuichiro's benefit of course – Guren never used a plate for anything that did not specifically require one. Yuichiro's plate sat untouched. Dinner had arrived – the kid had not.

A well-timed yell up the stairs apparently was not enough to signal him. That or he really didn't want pizza.

'Perhaps he has headphones in?' Sayuri suggested. 'We should go and knock, just in case he hasn't heard.'

Guren deflated and reluctantly abandoned his half-eaten and still steaming slice of pizza. Sayuri followed him upstairs.

'Gently,' she reminded him as he raised his hand to knock.

'Tsk.' Did she think he was going to barge in and drag the kid downstairs by the neck?

He knocked lightly. Sayuri nodded. They both edged closer to the door but no signs of life were heard from within.

'Yuichiro?' Sayuri called tentatively.

No reply. They exchanged a glance. Guren made the executive decision to reach for the door handle. When Sayuri made no move to stop him in time, he slowly turned it and opened the door just enough for both of them to see inside.

The room had exploded. There was a pair of trousers over the lamp. Socks littered the floor. All of the drawers in the chest of drawers were open but none of them were full. And in the middle of all this chaos was Yuichiro, curled up on the bed, partly concealed by the lid of his open suitcase.

Guren squinted, leaning closer to get a better look. The boy's face was hidden but the slow rise and fall of his chest made his suitcase lid blanket quiver. So he was at least alive.

Sayuri drew closer. 'Aww,' she said quietly and tugged Guren from the room by the elbow. 'The move must have tuckered him out.'

'Mm,' Guren agreed. Still, something made him feel uneasy – not anything about the kid having fallen asleep – as long has he wasn't dead that wasn't a parenting failure. It was just something about this situation in general, the way the kid had rushed up the stairs the moment 'family' and 'home' had come up. How was he supposed to deal with a problem when he didn't know whether it really was one?

He followed Sayuri downstairs and finished his part of the pizza (and some of Sayuri's) without saying anything.

'You'll have to have the cake for lunch tomorrow,' she said, taking the plates to the sink and beginning the washing up.

'Yeah.' Guren took the pizza box out then lingered next to Sayuri with the tea towel, knowing that as soon as she had cleaned the last glass, she would gather up her things and leave.

For the first time in a good couple of years, Guren found he did not want her to go. Sayuri was warmth. She was like honey in hot milk. She was all smiles and vanilla perfume and putting people at ease. They were as different as the moon was from the sun.

It wasn't that he thought the kid might die in his care or anything. He'd owned a hamster once. He was fairly certain he was at least capable enough as an adult to handle the fundamentals – providing food, clothing and shelter. It was just...

Guren was aware that he wasn't exactly approachable. He liked it that way. He'd spent many years perfecting a resting expression that told people exactly where to go (the fuck away from him). He hated being bothered by unnecessary bullshit.

As soon as he'd signed that last form, he had become Yuichiro's first calling point for all matters of bullshit. This was a problem. In the event of bullshit, it did not seem likely that the kid was going to bring it to him. Sayuri on the hand... She was a part time teacher. She had experience dealing with the kinds of crap that came with being 12. Hell, she had experience of dealing with crap period. (A lot of the time it was his crap, he would sometimes admit.)

'Don't look so concerned,' she said and there it was – Sayuri's teacher voice. 'He'll come around. All this is new to him. Just be nice and don't push too hard.'

He watched her shrug on her coat, slip into her heeled shoes. She didn't stay the night. She didn't promise to drop by tomorrow. He didn't ask her to.

When he was woken in the night by the burning of the foot that wasn't there, he did not settle down to read. He got up, put on his prosthetic and sat at the breakfast bar with some reports – just in case Yuichiro woke up early and wanted something.

He didn't.

AN: Thank you for reading! ^_^

Next chapter will be Yu's and as it's half written, I'm going to say it'll be up by this time next week. I'll try to get it up as quickly as possible to make up for the lack of action in this one. If things go as currently planned, Shinya should be back in chapter 4.

Constructive Criticism is always welcome!

Useless Trivia:

- Yu mentioned the sleeping with the secretary thing because he watches a lot of TV - and Akane really like soap operas.

- I know canonically, Yu's favourite food is curry. At the moment it's chicken just because it was the first food Yu thought of to answer Guren quickly. And also, 12 year old Yu in this universe has never eaten Akane's curry. As there are still adults around, she's never had to cook dinner for the group.

- Guren does own still own a pair of crutches. They're meant to be used when he's having his prosthetic altered. The 'scooching down the stairs on his butt' incident happened while he was getting one of his first prosthetics dealt with. After that incident, he stubbornly threw them into the back of the cupboard under the stairs and has not used them since.

- When he needs to get downstairs, he either puts on his prosthetic, or hops. This isn't the safest way of doing it, but it's best for his pride.

- He has fallen down the stairs more times than he'd care to admit.

- Sayuri actually teaches a class of 8 year olds three days a week and has no experience of teaching anyone over the age of 10.

- Sayuri and Guren are childhood friends. She used to be his neighbour growing up.