Tohma stood in his office feeling disgruntled. He'd thought he'd come up with the perfect plan to get Eiri away from that Shuichi Shindou kid. It should have all gone fine and married people had affairs all the time right? Eiri could have been his, but of course, that stupid brat had messed it all up. How he yearned to kick that pathetic, so-called "lyricist" and his stupid band out of N-G, but their newest song "Half a Day" was shooting up all the charts and keeping Shindou close kept Eiri close.

There was a knock on the door.

"Come in."

Tohma turned around and found himself face-to-face with K and, more importantly, one of his guns.

"K-san," he said taking a quick step back.

"I just had a quick question about Bad Luck," K said closing the door behind himself. "And about Shindou-kun."

"Ah."

"Yeah."

"Well, K-san, with Bad Luck doing so well I was going to, uh, up their priority in, uh, getting them gigs and, uh, such," said Tohma uncomfortably.

"And Shindou-kun?" asked K.

"Well, he seems to be, uh, recovering nicely. How did he hurt his head again?" Tohma gave an extremely nervous and shrill laugh.

"Why you little-! You know exactly how he hurt his-!" K began as he advanced on a cowering Tohma with his gun raised.

"K-san!" snapped a voice. "That won't be necessary."

"Eiri-san!" cried Tohma in misguided relief.

"I'll deal with him, thank you," said Yuki to K.

"Figured you'd show up," K said with a wicked smirk. "I'll let you take it from here." With a smile and a wave of his gun, K left.

"Eiri-san, please listen," began Tohma fearfully.

Death was gleaming in Yuki's eyes as a glared at his bother-in-law.

"I've let you get away with a lot, Tohma, a whole lot, and this is how you repay me? You know he could have died."

"What ever do you mean, Eiri-san?" asked Tohma in a shaking voice.

"Well, let's see. I've let you hit on me since I was a little kid; I've never told my sister, who, for some godforsaken reason, I didn't stop you from marrying, that you'd rather be with me than with her; I've let you arrange my life more than my own parents do; I've let you throw all kinds of abuse on Shuichi; and never once, not once have I really tried to stop you from getting your way. Well guess what, Tohma? I'm not a little kid anymore and you're not my father nor are you my love interest so I suggest that you stay away from me and from Shuichi unless you want to end up like the last over-aggressive lover I had."

"Would that be Shuichi?" asked Tohma coldly.

For a spilt second Yuki just stared at him in horror. Tohma had, in four short words, summed up all his fears about his relationship with Shuichi by insinuating that the relationship was somehow detrimental to his lover, that it would go the same way as his connection with Yuki had so long ago. And he'd thought Tohma had gone too far before.

In two steps Yuki was feet from Tohma and, before the other man could even react, he was sprawled across his own desk, thrown there by the force of Yuki's punch, which had caught him squarely on his cheekbone, his knuckles grating across Tohma's bloodless skin to smash into his nose.

Tohma remained there for a long moment without moving while Yuki stared at him. Then he shakily pushed himself up onto an elbow and raised his free hand to his nose, pulling away his bloody fingertips for examination. Yuki took another few steps forward causing Tohma to shrink away as much as he could, but all Yuki did was slowly and methodically wipe Tohma's blood from his hand onto the older man's pants. Then he turned and walked to the door.

"Eiri-san," Tohma called in a pleading voice.

Yuki stopped and looked back with one hand on the doorknob.

"What?" he asked sarcastically. What could that pathetic excuse for a human being possibly say to defend himself?

"You know I saved you."

It was true and Yuki knew it. He had to struggled not to fall back into the memory of that night so long ago in that horrible old New York apartment with those men, with Yuki...

"That's all in the past," said Yuki sharply, pulling himself back to the present. "Now, you're only hurting me and the person I love."

"I'm trying to protect you from him. You know he's hurting you!" cried Tohma, pushing himself to his feet. Tohma thought that Yuki's knack for self-preservation might be triggered by memories of what might be thought of as the "hospital incident," but he was wrong.

"I don't need your protection anymore," snarled Yuki. "I love Shuichi and nothing you can say or do is going to change that," he told Tohma, looking him straight in the eye.

"Eiri-san, wait!"

But Yuki was already out the door and walking down the hall.

If Tohma had had any sense, he would have left it at that, however he ran after Yuki.

"Eiri-san!" he called again, paying no mind to the fact that half the management of N-G was standing up in their cubicles and poking their heads of the their offices to watch him sprint wildly down the hall nor did he notice that several bands, including ASK and Bad Luck, had arrived outside his office for meetings he hadn't known he'd had.

Yuki just kept walking, striding past Shuichi, Hiro, Suguru, the ASK guys, and the N-G management staff to the elevators.

"Yuki?" asked a confused Shuichi whose suspicion that the furious voice in Tohma' office had been his lover's was confirmed.

"Leave it," muttered Hiro.

"Eiri-san, come on! Can't we at least discuss-?" cried Tohma reaching out for Yuki's shoulder as he caught up with him.

Yuki spun round and once again Tohma staggered backwards, this time clutching his jaw.

Bad Luck, ASK, and N-G's management stood in stunned silence as their girly-looking leader stared at Yuki with horrified and pained puppy-eyes and Yuki glared back with a look that told Tohma he was lucky to still have his life after all the shit he'd given him.

Yuki's eyes flicked off Tohma's bloody face and fell on Shuichi who wore the same look of wide-eyed shock with an ever so faint tint of "hell yeah!" behind it as the rest of the people in the room. Yuki's gaze softened slightly.

"Come on, let's go home. I don't think Tohma's going to be having any meetings today," he said coolly.

Shuichi stood frozen for a moment and then, at a nudge in the ribs from Hiro, moved obediently off after his lover into one of the elevators.

Silence filled the small space for the first few floors until Shuichi had found his voice and the courage to speak.

"Thank you," he said quietly.

"Don't say that," said Yuki sharply.

Silence fell on them again like thick smoke. Yuki was lost in the memory of Tohma's words. "Would that be Shuichi?" The words echoed through his mind. No, no. This isn't like that. This is nothing like that. I'm going to protect Shuichi; I'm never going to hurt him. He gave a barely perceptible sigh. But I guess it's too late to say that. I've already hurt him so much. Not physically, but maybe Tohma's right, maybe this is just as bad. If I didn't know how much it would hurt him, I'd stop this right now before I hurt him even more, but it is really too late-for both of us. But I could take. He couldn't. God, I've hurt him so much.

"You're not going to hurt me," said Shuichi in a soft voice without looking at Yuki. "You might say mean stuff, but the only way you could really hurt me would be to walk away. So that's all I ask, that you don't walk away."

"Shuichi," whisper Yuki. How the hell do you read me like that?

Shuichi looked up in time to see that Yuki had somehow moved so he was only inches away. Does he have some kind of weird elevator fetish? wondered Shuichi as the older man moved in to kiss him. Not that Shuichi minded. He had his Yuki back and that was all that mattered.

The elevator doors slide open, revealing the couple to the lobby of the N-G building. Without missing a beat or even breaking their kiss, Yuki reached out, hit a button and the doors slid closed again.

--

Ok people, that's a wrap! Thanks to everyone who read and/or reviewed this thing. And if you're wondering about the K/Hiro thing I just kinda threw that in there because I felt bad for the poor guy (Hiro, not K). I'm not really into the pairing (I don't particularly feel the need to pair Hiro with anyone), but I knew it would make some people happy. Anyway, I hope you guys liked it; personally I'm really glad to be done and maybe just wrote some shorter, lighter stuff for a while, but I don't know how long that'll last. I'm sure some of you have noticed I like my epic sagas.

Until then, peace, guys! –lux-light-hell-