Notes: Although I do not support the usage of random Japanese in fanfic for the most part, I've chosen to stay with Japanese honorifics in this story because I believe the usage of them says a lot about the relationships between characters, and there is no real translation for it in English.  I have also chosen to switch between Eiri and Yuki when referring to Eiri Yuki depending on who he is with at the time, and what they would call him, because I think it demonstrates their different views of him as well as the difference in personality.

Hope you enjoy this!  See you at the end of the chapter!

---

Vows

Chapter One

"Mika, are we out of creamer?  Mika, Mika are you even up yet?"

The legendary rock star and producer Seguchi Tohma was famous for many things.  His talent, naturally, his shrewd business practice and unique way of promoting bands, his smile, and his fashion sense.  Perhaps most of all he was known for being slightly mysterious, preferring to allow others to stand out, though everyone knew he was the energy that powered that shine.  He kept his personal affairs extremely closed, including his life with his wife.

One of the millions of things the rest of the world didn't know about the Seguchi household was that Tohma was a morning person, and his wife was not.  Perhaps no one had ever asked, or people found this particular detail to be dull.  However, this situation provided for a rather interesting scene.  Tohma was the one fluttering about the kitchen like a ray of sunshine, preparing both his and Mika's things for the day.  It was he who opened the curtains in their all-too-rich penthouse apartment and bid his wife to wake.

One thing the tabloids in particular would have loved to know is this: often enough, Tohma and Mika slept in different rooms.  They told themselves it was not out of lack of marital passion, but merely out of business.  Mika did not like to be wakened when Tohma came home after working late nights.

It was her personal bedroom that Mika eventually emerged from, looking perfectly made up from her Shiseido red lipstick to her finely tailored Armani pantsuit.  Like her husband, she hated to be seen in anything but her best.  Tohma couldn't think of a time, even after sex, that he'd seen her in a ratty bathrobe or any such thing.  Nothing like that for the princess of the Uesugi family, what would people think?

"I made you coffee," said Tohma.  "I'm sorry, but it looks like we're out of cream.  I put some milk in instead."

"Don't worry about it, that junk goes straight to my hips anyway," said Mika.  "…Don't we have a cook or something that should be doing this?"

"We decided that a cook was a needless expense considering we rarely eat at home."

Mika offered her husband a small smile.  "Oh, that's right.  'We' did."  One thing she really liked about Tohma was how organized he was.  In that way, he was a man after her own heart.  She could always trust him to have the house in order.  It almost made up for some things—not sleeping in the same bed, never coming home, that smile that sometimes she just wanted to crack down the middle…

Tohma smiled back, sipping his glass of vegetable juice.  Neither of them were big on breakfast, possibly because neither of them were very good cooks, so he hadn't made anything.  He'd have coffee once he got to NG.  The vegetable juice was to convince his body he didn't need breakfast.

"You had the nightmare again last night, didn't you?" murmured Mika as Tohma turned his back to her, washing out his glass in the sink.

"Nightmare?" when Tohma turned to face her, he was smiling that smile that fooled so many.  For a moment, Mika thought of touching him, of just pulling him close to her over the counter and kissing him, kissing the hurt away.  At least when her brother Eiri brooded she could see it on his face.  Mika never knew what was happening behind the wall Tohma erected.  "Not really.  It's just, this new band we've signed on is really giving me an ulcer…"

Mika got as far as raising her hand before she realized the folly of her desire.  She poured herself another cup of coffee.  "You shouldn't drink so much coffee, Mika-san, it will make you jittery," said Tohma in that motherly way he had.  It wasn't quite a criticism when he said it like that.  It wasn't quite hypocritical.  It was his miniscule way of showing he cared.

Mika sighed, glancing at the kitchen clock.  "I have an appointment to be getting to.  Dinner tonight?"  At the entryway, she pulled on her boots and a fashionable jacket lined with fur to protect from the winter cold.  The hand she did not touch her husband with seemed to burn and tingle as she pulled on fitted leather gloves.

"I can't tonight," said Tohma.  "Tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow, always tomorrow."  Mika didn't realize she was muttering under her breath.  She wasn't quite sure why she was in such poor spirits today.  Most of the time these things didn't bother her so much.  Tohma was just Tohma.  He was kind and gentle and organized and one of the best businessmen on the planet.  To make up for it, he was also very busy.

"What's that, Mika?"

"Never mind," said Mika.  "See you later," she said, "I'm off!"

"Be safe!"

As she stepped into the elevator, Mika bumped into the elevator lady and a tenant locked in a heated embrace.  She watched the elevator lady straighten out her skirts, then gave the young, pretty woman the floor number she needed.

Mika reflected that it wasn't the fact that Tohma never had free time that really bothered her.  She'd married him expecting that.

The tenant, in his suit and tie, made excuses to stand near the elevator attendant.  Mika knew him vaguely; he was from a well-to-do family, working, but very single.  Wedding bells might be in their future, if he loved her enough to ignore his family's complaints.

There they stood, their eyes shining with the secret of their love, hands straining, just barely caressing…

Mika thought about her husband again.  What bothered her about him was nothing about his schedule, but rather, the fact that Tohma never let anyone touch him.  Not even his wife.  It wasn't really surprising, but sometimes she wondered what it would take to break through that wall…and if she even had the tools to do so.

---

The author known as Yuki Eiri sat in the kitchen, reading the morning newspaper, eating breakfast at a leisurely pace and smoking a cigarette.  It was nice and quiet.  Really, it was too quiet.  His lover of four years, the famous rock star Shindou Shuichi, had not made a stir this morning.  This was rather suspicious.  Shuichi was loud in everything he did.  He was loud when he performed, loud when he was happy, and loud when he was sad, angry or frustrated.  He was especially loud in bed.  In the morning, after a night of lovemaking, he was cheerful as a rabbit in a field of… other rabbits during mating season.  He was also much louder.  Yuki was accustomed to his sounds, the sunny, half-coherent, off-key songs he'd sing to himself as he picked out his clothes for the day, brushed his teeth, washed his face, and styled his hair.  He always made a racket.  It seemed like he must slam down the even the tiniest toothbrush to announce to the world, "Hey!  I'm Shuichi, and I'm in a good mood because I had wonderful sex last night!"

Yuki peered over his newspaper.  Golden sunlight streamed through the windows in generous quantities, warming the polished hardwood floors Shuichi tended to skin across in his indoor slippers.   There was no sign of Shuichi.  Yuki frowned, something he did rather often.  In fact it seemed sometimes like his face naturally frowned even when he wasn't thinking about it, so really, the frown on his face just became a little more creased.  To the average eye, the difference wasn't even noticeable, but anyone who knew Yuki would take this as a sign he was remarkably concerned about something.  Where was Shuichi?  The last time he refused to get out of bed he'd had a dangerously high fever and Yuki had to take him to the emergency room.

Much to his relief he saw the hint of a pink head peering around one wall.  Shuichi wasn't any good at being sneaky, even in his footed pajamas.  Yuki went back to his paper and decided that his boyfriend was just plotting something.  It would all come to light soon enough—after all, Shuichi never stayed quiet about much for long.

"How long are you going to just sit there hiding?  I made breakfast, now hurry up and eat our I'm just gonna throw it out." Yuki didn't have to look up to know that Shuichi was slinking into the kitchen, picking up some toast slathering it with strawberry jam, pouring himself a cup of coffee in his favorite oversized mug with a weird little face on it.

"Ne, Yuki."

This was the code word; this meant that Shuichi had been thinking hard about something.  The tiny singer tended to agonize over the silliest, most mundane things, but he was sincere about it, and until he got it up it would eat him up inside like a cancer.  Yuki set down the paper and gazed at Shuichi across the table.  The younger man's face was drawn up in a quiet, thoughtful sort of sadness.  No, sadness wasn't the word.  The word was… disappointment?  "About last night… what I said… You don't have to come to California with me if you don't want to.  I understand you're busy with the new book, and all the tours and signings… and I understand if you don't want to do the other thing… I mean… everything you said made sense."

Yuki rubbed his temples, nursing a headache that was sure to set in by noon.  He'd thought this fight was done with, the decisions final, the apologies accepted, the make-up sex sealing the deal.  But things with Shuichi were never that simple.  "You're upset.  Because I said I won't marry you."

"No, it's not that.  You're right about everything, Yuki, it's just that…"

"What?  Just spit it out, Shuichi.  It's too early to play games."

"Don't you want to show your commitment to me?  I, I know it's just a symbol, and it's not legal here, and it might not even technically be legal there… but I just think it would be sweet… I don't know… to be able to tell everyone we got married."  Shuichi squirmed like a six-year-old in a barbershop.  "I mean, we love each other, everyone knows it… why can't we get married?"

Yuki frowned and watched a tiny column of ash fall from his cigarette onto the polished on the table.  Then he looked up at Shuichi.  "For all the reasons you said… why should we have to prove it?  We know how we feel, hell, the whole world seems to.  Why do we have to prove it with a piece of paper?"

Instead of the whimpering and wailing Yuki expected – Shuichi' typical reaction when his lover told him something he didn't want to hear— Shuichi just went silent and nodded.  "I guess I can see that.  It's just, with Ayaka and Hiro getting so excited over their wedding plans, and Noriko having another baby… I just thought… why can't we have that?  Maybe we can't have a big wedding like Ayaka's parents are planning, but at least we could have our own little ceremony… invite our friends… say vows…"

Yuki gave Shuichi a tender look.  It was a rare expression outside their bedroom, and one that Shuichi liked to think Yuki made for him only.  "This really means a lot to you, doesn't it?"  Yuki realized, not for the first time, how much being with Shuichi had softened him up.  Early in their relationship, he would have scoffed at Shuichi, no matter how much he loved him.  After all, the idea of two men marrying was absolutely ridiculous here in Japan.  Yes, it was true they'd gotten away with coming out on TV, but homosexuality in Japan still mostly existed mainly between the covers of manga.  Though there was a gay rights movement, especially here in Tokyo, Yuki never took part in it, still not sure if he even considered himself to be part of that 'crowd.'  Bad Luck had played for their Pride parade before, but that was the extent of it.  Mostly, people just preferred for gays to be discreet.  That was something Yuki fell into easily.

"Will you at least come visit me while we're recording in Los Angeles?  We don't have to go to San Francisco to get married, or any of that.  But we're going to go to Disneyland and Hollywood and stuff when we're not working on the record, and I'm gonna miss you if you don't come.

Yuki touched Shuichi's hand.  "I'll come to California.  I'm due for some time off, anyway."

Shuichi glanced at the clock.  "Uh-oh… I have an interview today!  I'm late!  K's gonna shoot me!  Yuki!  Why didn't you wake me earlier?"  Gobbling down his toast, Shuichi clamored to get ready for work.  Yuki smiled as Shuichi filled the apartment with noise.  Yes… that was better.

---

"When did you first decide to marry Tohma-san, Mika?"

The question caught Mika by surprised.  Eiri wasn't the type of person to pose such personal questions; especially in a public place like the restaurant she'd taken him for lunch.  She put down her chopsticks, fixing her pale-haired brother with a stare.   Mika was one of few people who could level with Eiri's cold stare, and she was doing that now.  "What kind of a question is that?"  Maybe she meant for it to be a joke, and Eiri just hit a nerve, or maybe she didn't.  Whatever the case, such a question didn't come without baggage from Eiri.  As far as Mika was concerned, nothing ever came without baggage from Eiri.  Really, she was asking his motive.

"Well, I was just a kid when you two got married, but I seem to remember Tohma-san didn't want to at first.  It was an arrangement by his and our parents.  The subject of marriage has come up lately, what with Ayaka-san and Hiro's engagement."

Mika raised a cup of coffee to her lips and took her time sipping it.  She never, ever smudged her lipstick.  "Those two are such a sweet couple.  Her parents can't stand him though— her mother told me, he's a nice boy, but he's so common.  He graduated at the top of his class from a mediocre school, his parents have no money and his brother's an unreliable, unsuccessful actor.  And his hair…"

"You're stalling, dear sister of mine." Now Eiri was just saying things to get to her.  She knew that gentle, mocking tone.  She was the one that taught him it, dammit!

"It's complicated," said Mika.

"Were you in love?"

"Not to begin with."  The real answer might have been 'not ever,' but Mika never asked herself what the real answer was.  It was inconvenient.  Surely Eiri knew he was asking inconvenient questions!

"When did he ask you to marry him?  As I recall, you'd asked father to call off the engagement when he finally agreed to it."

"Things were different then."  Mika picked up her cup again, staring into the depths of the murky brown liquid.  Tohma was right, she'd had too much coffee and now she was jittery.  Her stomach hurt.  "Tohma was different then.  But… I was there for him at a very difficult time."

It was a memory Mika found herself playing over and over again sometimes in the middle of the night when Tohma wouldn't come home.  He'd been so different then, when they were both eighteen…

She had just graduated from the top girl's school in Tokyo.  While on a tour of Ivy League schools over the summer, she decided to spend sometime in New York City.  Though her father had offered to send one of her school friends along with her, she decided to go on her own, relishing a chance to wander city streets without wondering how it would reflect on the renowned Uesugi family.  Tohma was attending Julliard, but he did not invite Mika to stay with him, and even if he had, it would not have been appropriate.  In fact, he had not responded to her since she told him she was coming to the city.  She left a message on the machine, leaving all the details about where she could be reached.  Mika had faith Tohma would call her.  Tohma might have been a man, but he always returned calls promptly.  It was something she enjoyed about him and made her think he might be a good husband.  At the time, she had no idea what Tohma had reserves about this.  They'd known each other since childhood, although not well, and Tohma was always very polite.  Always smiling.  Nothing ever seemed to trouble him.  And he was from such a good family!

Mika remembered every detail of that night clearly.  It was approaching evening, and she was eating dinner in her marble and gold suite after a day of sightseeing, watching as dusk settled down on Central Park.  She was staying in the Plaza Hotel of course, and the wait staff doted on her, pretty, young, rich and influential as she was.  Just as she finished up, she received a phone call.  Assuming it was Tohma, she picked up.  It turned out to be from the front desk.  "There is a man here by the name of Tohma Seguchi… he says he is your fiancé."  Even though English was not her first language, Mika could definitely hear the lady's lip curl upwards slightly at the world.  Mika made mental note of it.  What could anyone find offensive about Tohma?

"Send him up.  Ask him if he wants anything, and if he does, have it brought to my room." Mika used her princess voice, she could turn it on at will, and sometimes, as in the case with the snotty front desk woman, enjoyed reminded people that they were there to serve her.  How dare they treat her fiancé like some bum off the street!

However, the boy that greeted her a few minutes later was much more bum than fiancé.  Mika, like everyone in her family except Tatsuha, was very good at restraining herself, and at that moment it was a very good thing.  Otherwise, she may have just slammed the door in his face.  "Toh…ma…?"

The figure in the doorway was pale, thin, bruised, and shaking.  Tohma was dressed in leather pants and a blue silk shirt, unbuttoned and torn.  It looked like he'd been in a fight; he had a split lip that was still trickling sticky blood down his chin.  Mika grabbed him by the arm and pulled him inside to sit on the davenport, praying that no one who knew either of them had seen them.  In such a high-class place, it was certainly possibly some one might have.

She took her napkin and dabbed at the blood on Tohma's chin.  "What happened?  Did some one hit you?"  Mika couldn't help but notice how shallow and quick Tohma was drawing breath.  He did not respond to the question.  His pupils were dilated to pinpoints, the blue of his eyes not carrying their usual depth, and he was sweating.  "You've lost so much weight…" Mika hadn't seen Tohma since New Years when he came home to Japan to celebrate.  Before, he'd actually been a little bit on the chubby side, not fat or anything close, but with a peasant roundness on his face that made him look like some one's kid brother.

"Oh, Mika-san…" The man speaking to her was not the winsome little brother type she'd known before.  It was someone who had experienced horrible things, who had used his last ounce of personal strength to come to her.  Mika would later understand Tohma's pride, and admire him for sacrificing so much of it to come to her.  At the time, all she could think was that Tohma was going to die.  He was going to collapse there on the fancy embroidered furniture, and she'd be stuck with a skinny corpse pumped full of drugs.  That was the conclusion she came to, of course.  Mika wasn't stupid.  Though she'd been raised in an environment clear of drugs aside from the prescribed kind, she had read about them for health classes and seen them dramatized in foreign movies.  However… she'd always thought drugs were something that only sick people did, people with nothing to look forward to in life and not enough guts to end it all.  There was a lump in her throat that she couldn't swallow away.  She realized for the first time that she didn't really know Tohma at all.

"I'm calling the hospital," said Mika, speaking around the lump in her throat somehow.  It seemed to be growing.

"No, please," said Tohma, shaking even worse.  "You can't tell anyone!  If my parents found out, they'd kill me, they'd absolutely kill me, my father hates me enough as it is, you can't let them know!"

"I have to, Tohma!  You're in trouble."

"But I'll be in worse trouble if my parents find out!"

Mika stared at the wispy figure that was once a boy she knew.  There was a bruise darkening beneath one eye, the color of eggplant.  Tohma's expression registered genuine fear.  Mika was reminded of a dog her grandmother adopted.  Though she could easily afford a purebred of any kind, she picked one up from an animal shelter.  The mutt was scared of his own shadow and cowered under furniture and only ever approached her grandmother.  Mika's grandmother said it was because his old owners were mean to him, and he didn't understand that not everyone was like that.

Mika tried to swallow the lump away again, but it just got bigger and drier in her throat.  She could feel the muscles in her neck constrict and sting.  "Surely… they only care for your safety, Tohma."

"Like hell they do!" Tohma looked near tears now, and he was talking very quickly in a high pitch.  Mika never saw him talk like this again, not even when Eiri killed Yuki.  "They'd probably be happier if I died of an overdose!  Any time my father gets mad, he beats the living shit out of me!  Remember two years ago when I broke my arm and collarbone?  I did something that got me in trouble and he shoved me off the back deck then said I crashed a bike and I don't know how to ride a bike!  I'm not letting you call them, you can't call them!  I swear to fucking God if you tell anyone, I'll, I'll, I'll make you shut up, you'll be sorry!  I'll kill—"

"Shut up, Tohma.  Shut up and breathe.  Here."  Mika shoved a glass of water, left untouched from her meal, into his hands.  Tohma was barely together enough to hold it in two hands.  "Drink that.  I won't tell your parents… stop raving like a madman and let me think for a second.  You can't just show up on my doorstop and expect me to be okay with this.  Look at yourself in the mirror, Tohma."

After taking a sip of the water, Tohma did as Mika bid him.  He stared at the wall across from him, into an ornately carved mirror.  Immediately, sourness welled up in his throat and he bent over, covering his mouth, praying not to vomit all over the rust-colored davenport.  The glass fell from his hand, seemingly in slow motion, and shattered on the floor.

"You're a mess, Tohma.  You're thin as a rail.  You're not happy like this…" Tentatively, she put an arm on his shoulder.  Tohma jerked away, but Mika kept talking.  "I won't let them know.  I'll have it all put on my father's account, and I'll make sure no one ever say a word about it.  I can't believe that you just came here to yell at me like a madman.  You came here because you need me to help you.  Now you just have to let me."

"Ohh, Mika-san." Tohma looked up at Mika with eyes filled with tears, and again Mika thought of her grandmother's dog.  Once bitten, twice shy, wasn't that the saying?  And yet in the end that stupid pet still learned to love some one.  Maybe… maybe she could be…

It was after Mika made the call that Tohma told her.  She tried to hug him again but he wouldn't let her, but he took her hand.  "You're right… tonight… after these guys beat me up… I opened my eyes and realized I didn't have a friend in the world.  I had no one I trusted, no one I could turn to.  Then I heard your message on my machine…"

"Shhh… it' okay.  It's just the same thing any decent person would do." Mika tried to shrug it off; after all, that was the truth.  But that lump in her throat still remained.

Tohma chuckled. "You act like such a brat sometimes, like you don't care about anyone, but deep down inside, you're a very sweet person, Mika-san.  You're some one good that I should keep in my life.  Forever."  He squeezed Mika's hand.  It was a rare feeling, her soft bare flesh to his callused fingers.

"All you had to do was ask, Tohma," said Mika, feeling the lump in her throat shrink to the size of a pebble.  It never subsided entirely…

"Mika.  Mika.  Mikarin!" The sound of a rather irritated man broke through her memories.

"What, Eiri?" Mika snapped at her brother in an agitated voice.

"You were just staring off into space there.  Anyway, the reason I asked you was… Well, Shu-chan won't shut up about the gay marriage stuff going on in San Francisco, you know how obsessed he'll get about stuff and anyway he's pretty stuck on the idea of us getting married even though I dunno if it's worth it…but it means a lot to him… so… I was thinking of maybe asking him to marry me… and we could go have the ceremony while he's in California recording for the USA debut album…"

"Wait.  You're actually thinking about getting married?  Do you want to kill our father?  It's good enough that he's finally excepting Shuichi as your lover and inviting you as a couple to family events—"

"—Not that I have any intention of going to any—"

"But to get married?  It's not like your marriage would even be legal here.  It might not even be legal there.  Why bother?"

"Well, Mika, I think that's my own business, don't you?  Why shouldn't I marry whomever the hell I want when the humor strikes me?  Who are you to interfere with it?"  Eiri burned with cold, murderous fire when he was angry, and Mika had obviously hit a nerve.  Never mind that he'd been thinking the same thing this early, this was no longer about getting married.  No, it was about Mika sticking her pretty but prejudiced little nose into every scrap of his business.

"I just want what's best for you, Eiri!  This homosexual stuff, it just isn't you, okay?"  The moment the words were out of Mika's mouth, she knew they were a mistake.  The woman rarely made mistakes, but at this point she could have dropped a bomb on Tokyo and be in less trouble than she was right then.  She swore she could hear the ground shaking.

"I am an adult.  And I love Shuichi, and I will marry him, with or without your permission."  With those words, so calm and yet so livid, Eiri pushed his chair away, stood up, and stalked out of the store.

"Dammit!"  Mika cursed, throwing her napkin down on the table. That storming off bit was something she'd taught him, too!

 ---

The sun was setting and the sky over Odaiba Amusement Park was turning violet, and the day, remarkably warm for mid February, began to cool rapidly.  Shuichi and Yuki walked side by side, hands almost touching but not quite.  Yuki had learned to match his pace with Shuichi, who had shorter strides than he.  They didn't hold hands in public; this was something Shuichi had come to accept.  It wasn't because Yuki had a problem with him, but his proper Kyoto upbringing taught him to practice restraint.  The writer of passionate love stories was shy to express affection in a public.  In a way it was kind of cute.  That wasn't Yuki's most ironic affliction, however, he contained a thousand other contradictions.  Still, Shuichi loved and accepted them, just as Yuki loved and accepted his flaws— overdramatic whiner that he could be.

"Ah!  Look at that view.  After so long, it still hasn't changed."  They hadn't been to this amusement park since their first date, the one that ended so badly four years prior.  Shuichi leaned over on the railing, gazing across the water and smiling over at Yuki.  The salty breeze rustled his hair—dyed pink as was now his signature—and Shuichi took in deep a lungful of the refreshing sea air.  "It was a good idea to spend some time here before I go to California.  This time, you won't run off, will you?"  It was a gentle joke, but not one without pain behind it.  Though their relationship had been mostly solid since Yuki returned from New York, Shuichi still harbored the fear that his boyfriend's past would swallow him up again, and next time, maybe he wouldn't be able to bring him back.  The fact that they were here, treading the same planks as before, made him a little nervous.  Of course, Shuichi was a performer, and not prepared to let his fear show.  "I'm so excited to go to California!  All the things we're going to get to see!  Do you think we'll get to meet any celebrities, Yuki?"  Shuichi had all but turned into a little child for all his enthusiasm.  His eyes were filled with stars.

Yuki just leveled his overenthusiastic boyfriend with a look. "Idiot.  We're celebrities."

"Yes, but we could meet Johnny Depp!  Or maybe some one who was in Harry Potter.  Or maybe Steven Spielberg!  I'm so excited!  And we can hold hands on the street and no one will think we're weird!"  Shuichi was floating on cloud nine, as if delicate bubbles and splashes of gold and rose surrounded him while he danced in a shower of cherry blossom petals.  "I bet I'll have a million ideas for songs while we're there!"

"You'd better.  I've seen the lyrics you've been working on and all I can say is even after all these years you still suck at writing songs.  Then again, I guess if you're singing for Americans they won't know how bad you are."

"You're cruel, Yuki!" Shuichi sniveled.  "Besides, Sakano-san says I should write all of my lyrics in English if I really want to be successful in the States…"

"Considering your grasp on the language," said Yuki, "You are worse off.  What the hell is 'Spicy Marmalade' anyway?  Did you just flip open your English dictionary and find two words randomly?"

"So cruel, Yuki!" Shuichi whined.

"Anyway," said Yuki, leaning over on the railing, his arm brushing Shuichi's.  He wasn't looking at his lover, but instead, over the water as it changed from blue to a charcoal color.  "Are you still thinking of visiting San Francisco?"

He had one hand in the pocket of his jacket.  In the cup of his hand was a velvet box.  It suddenly felt very heavy to him.

"Yeah, maybe.  I was thinking about going to SeaWorld, so if Hiro or somebody wants to come with me… why, Yuki?  Want to come?"

Yuki tried to say the words, he really did, but the box in his hand was too heavy.  He'd almost got it pulled all the way out before he slipped it back in with a sinking feeling.  He thought of the argument he and Shuichi had, and all of his excuses not to marry.  He thought of all the things they'd gone through together, the devotion Shuichi had shown him.  But an image flashed in his mind, something from when he was eleven or twelve years old.

Mika and Tohma were getting married.  Their family had spared no expense, and they were married in a lavishly decorated banquet hall in the most prestigious hotel in Tokyo.  He did not remember much about the wedding, except that Mika's dress looked like nothing he'd ever seen before, more like a cake or a doll dress than something his obnoxious sister would wear, and how uncomfortable he was in his little tuxedo.  Yuki recalled very clearly being bored and irritated, his father had slapped him upside the head when he noticed his son snuck a book inside, but Tatsuha, who was younger, did not get scolded for hiding under the tables.

He'd averted his eyes when Mika and Tohma kissed (ew!) but looked up just in time to see them turn around and walk back down the aisle, newly announced husband and wife.  For a split second before the cameras went off, Yuki saw Tohma frowning.  In fact, he looked like he might cry.  It was the first time he'd ever seen Tohma frown, and as quick as the moment began, it was gone, and he was smiling as he always did.  It was like some one pulling on a mask…

At that moment he swore he'd never be married.  He was already promised to Ayaka at the time, who was always going on about how wonderful their wedding would be.  Yuki wasn't looking forward to spending a lifetime with some one his father picked out, and this sealed the idea for him.  If getting married was so important, why did Tohma look like he wanted to die?

"What's wrong, Yuki?"

"It's nothing," said Yuki.  "Do you want to go eat?"

"I'd love to!  Where should we go?  I think we should get steak!"

"We can get much better steak in California, and for cheaper," grumbled Yuki.

"But Yuki, you said I could pick!"

"Okay," said Yuki, pulling his hand out of his pocket and straightening his posture.  "Steak it is."

"You're the best boyfriend ever, Yuki!" said Shuichi cheerfully.  And he meant it.

To Be Continued.

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Special thanks go to my girlfriend, Michelle, for her love and support and not teasing me too badly even though I once vehemently swore to never, ever watch Gravitation; to Michael, for her encouragement and support and to Krystal, for feeding my addiction.

Next chapter: Bad Luck has fun in California!  But can they really get people to treat them as more than a novelty act?  How are Hiro and Ayaka coping with the disapproval of Ayaka's parents?  What is Nittle Grasper up to?  Will Yuki propose to Shuichi?  What the hell is Tohma's problem?  Will Shuichi ever figure out that SeaWorld is in San Diego, not San Francisco?  All this and Ryuichi stepping on a kitten in Chapter Two!