Something became different.

Something became different about HIM.

Musashi didn't bookmark the morning when he noticed something changing. The only thing counting for him was this sort of strange behavior.

Hiruma had never been a lazy person (obviously). So this seemed absolutely unreal, to watch him sleeping silently beside him, not even waking up by the yelling alarm clock.

With deep grumbling Musashi bent over and switched it off. Hiruma didn't move a single bit. Not even his eyelids twitched. He just lay there, looking as if he'd dream of something really nice. Well, probably in this case nice didn't mean something like a big cake factory in the clouds. Maybe it was a liquid dream or something.

Musashi let his head fall on the pillow again while rubbing over his beard stubbles. He tried hard to remember the last time when Hiruma didn't wake up before him. Usually he woke up alone, finding him downstairs in the living room in front of his laptop or being off to somewhere already. Sometimes Musashi woke up by a merciless tackle in the morning when the first thing to see was a big grinning and mischievous face.

Looking at him he turned softly around and hugged him tightly. He really knew, that Hiruma didn't like such things. He wasn't the kind of person who could spend all day long with hugging and kissing and all that stuff. So Musashi jumped at that opportunity and, being the total opposite, pressed his body against him. Sometimes Hiruma would call him 'fucking cuddle bear' just because he needed to be just as close as possible to him.

He rubbed his cheek against his temple, humming quietly into his ear, closing his eyes and stroking tenderly over one of his arms. And then he began to realize that waking up first hadn't been the only thing changing in the last weeks. Somehow Hiruma seemed to have lost his drive. He seemed to be tired. Slowing down. Zoning out all the time. At first he ignored it. Nobody would have expected it, but maybe even a demonic person like him might be able to lose his energy.

But know, rethinking all this, Musashi wasn't sure if this really was normal. And, as he knew him too well, he figured out for himself that it absolutely couldn't be normal. The solution could never be as simple as it seemed. Burn-Out, Midlife-crisis and such things seemed too simple for a complicated personality like him.

Something was terribly wrong about him.

Musashi started worrying.

No. It was more. It somehow felt like a terrible premonition lying like heavy dust around his heart.

A slight move under Hiruma's blanket pulled him out of his thoughts. Silent grunting followed by heavy breathing made Musashi moan a bit. Carefully he started groping to find the cause of the sounds and soon pulled his hand away in disgust.

'Cerberus…', he sighed and tiredly looked at his hand full of dog slobber. Cerberus II really was the most fattest and laziest dog he had ever seen. But still Hiruma hadn't given up yet trying to educate a second Cerberus. Though two years of hard work didn't show any success, Musashi was sure about it being some kind of 'fun' to Hiruma. Anyway he let him have his ways, as usual. It must've been Hiruma's way to deal with losses, trying to fix the hole by any chance. That's why he didn't really talk about Cerberus' death, he simply tried to replace him. Yeah somehow nobody would have expect him to cry over it but not even Musashi believed his eyes when he saw Cerberus II and Hiruma excitingly explaining the mad education plan.

'Come here, boy', he whispered, sat himself up and groped in front of Hiruma's belly to grab the whimpering dog that had snuggled secretly against his master. Deciding to let Hiruma have his sleep, he got out of the bed and wobbled downstairs to feed the damn dog.

'You're a little bitch', he said smiling while filling Cerberus' bowl, 'that should be my place. If someone snuggles onto him at night it should be no one but me, you know…' he mumbled, obviously trying to joke around a bit.

He fondled him behind his ears for a second and left for the bathroom, showering, being too lazy for shaving and returning to the bedroom to dress himself up. Hiruma was still sleeping. Usually he had such a slight sleep, waking up by every single sound with twitching ears. Musashi tried to calm himself and his heavy heart down. Maybe he really had nothing else but too much work. Everyone is stressed out from time to time. And Hiruma being the workaholic he was might need a little bit of sleep now and that's it. So he left again, cooking coffee, doing a little cleaning here and there.

He was just about to take the last sip of his coffee and thinking about waking him up, when he noticed sounds coming from upstairs and just a few seconds later, after he filled a second cup with hot and strong coffee, Hiruma running downstairs like a devil.

'Goddamn alarm clock. I'll sue that fucking company for their shitty piece of NOTHING.", he grunted angrily, packing his laptop into his bag. He rushed through the living room and the kitchen, ignoring Musashi, who stood there with Hiruma's cup, waiting for him to notice.

'Your coffee…', he mumbled.

'Why didn't you wake me up?', Hiruma yelled at him furiously, groped the cup rudely and took quickly a few sips.

'You were sleeping…'Musashi replied calmy. 'Don't you want to sit down a second?' Though he knew his trying to calm him down wouldn't show any results. Hiruma looked mad and angry and horribly tired with slight bluish grey marks around his huffly sparkling eyes. Musashi sighed, when Hiruma pressed the cup back into his hand and rushed towards the door.

'Got fucking appointments', he mumbled, putting his shoes on and Musashi rolled his eyes. He must have known that he would get this angry. He slowly put the cups down at the table, almost tripping over little fat Cerberus II, who moved slowly from kitchen to corridor.

'I know, like always, but shouldn't…', he stopped himself while talking. Not only because Hiruma gave him a furious don't-you-dare-saying-anything-now-look, but he KNEW… giving him advice to slow down would be senseless. Especially he himself didn't behave any better, working a great deal too much for the company.

'Hn… nothing', he then mumbled while noticing one of Hirumas strands being totally messed up. Sure, he had seen him being in a hurry a thousand times. But not being this angry about it. Actually Hiruma was somehow a reasonable person, that knew when his body needed to rest a bit. Musashi's eyebrows moved to different sides.

'Don't give me that fucking housewife-look. '

Even in his late twenties Hiruma looked a little sulking 13-year-old brat. And Musashi started to miss one of that demonic and hoarse laughter of his this morning, knowing they wouldn't see each other until evening. Hiruma opened the door to leave.

'Mh… sorry!?', he mumbled a bit monotone to avoid argues now. 'Do I get a kiss?', he then asked with a crooked smile to make peace fast.

'Yeah yeah whatever', Hiruma answered, giving him a little slap on his lips as a replacement for the kiss he wouldn't give him now. Musashi let his eyebrows sink down. He got used to it. But it was still disappointing when Hiruma tried to avoid physical contact that excluded sexual intentions. After all these years in friendship, after all they had experienced together, this wasn't only a sexual relationship at all. Musashi was pretty sure about it to be love. Although no one of them dared to say that out loud. If Musashi would say those three little words to him from time to time, maybe whispering it into his ear, Hiruma wouldn't react in any other way than bursting out with laughter. So Musashi also tried to avoid this. And still it hurt a bit that Hiruma disliked kissing so much. Sometimes Musashi thought that this might be better, because Hiruma turned out to be a horrible kisser, always biting and starting to move his tongue just too wildly. But just right now Musashi would have loved to get a little good-bye-kiss from him.

'Appointments', Hiruma repeated and just by turning around, Cerberus II raced out of the door suddenly. Unbelievable how such a small fat sausage on legs could move so fast. He raced outside like an idiot, barking like an idiot and being all excited about something.

And Hiruma being in his bad mood today got really pissed.

'You fucking idiotic dog, what the hell is wrong with you?', he yelled immediately. Musashi was about to simply roll his eyes when Cerberus II suddenly jumped over the fence. 'Fucking shit. I don't have time for this now' he heard Hiruma mumble the moment he let his bag fall down and ran after him. Cerberus II didn't really like running around like normal dogs. But he loved cars. Musashi already had a feeling that this dog is going down with his 'hobby' to chase the cars that drive down the roads from time to time. But yet it surprised him somehow, that it really happened.

It always had been Hiruma's job to educate his little experiment and to run after him, when the dog practiced his suicidal hobby, so Musashi hadn't moved by now. But when he heard that crashing sound and saw Hiruma standing still all of a sudden, he slowly moved to Hiruma's side. It was ugly. Really ugly. He had never seen such an ugly thing. The second Cerberus hadn't been in any way prettier than the first one. They both where pretty ugly dogs. But now the only thing left of him was an empty fur swimming in a red pool with intestines flowing out of that frozen brown plush.

When people saw things which kept their attention although it could look horrible, they tend to say 'It was like a car accident, horrible, but you couldn't look away!'. And that was exactly how Musashi felt. He needed a few seconds to take a look at Hiruma, when the car driver slowly stepped out of his silver, now silver with red sprinkles, shimmering car. He expected Hiruma to yell at him, telling him, that his might have found his driver's license in the garbage can. But Hiruma didn't move. He didn't say anything. This was one of the rare moments when Hiruma Youichi didn't knew what to say or to do now.

Because death was something he couldn't control.

Maybe only a few people, maybe only Musashi could imagine that Cerberus really had meant a lot to Hiruma back then. Although he had been some random ugly aggressive dog, they found somewhere on the street. Even if he had never really been Hiruma's 'pet', Musashi was pretty sure that Hiruma had seen Cerberus as kind of 'pet'. When he had died Musashi had started to think over it a little bit. Many people build up strong relationships to animals and feel like having lost a beloved person, when their pets die. He always had wondered if that was what Hiruma had felt for that dog back then. But seeing him now being speechless by seeing how the substitute also died, assured him pretty much in that thought. Hiruma wouldn't want to show it of course. Still, exactly now in that instance, a moment of losing control of something important, Musashi saw Hiruma's hand closed around the doorknob of the gate he had opened before he stopped moving while… shaking.

Nothing unusual for any person, a bit unusual for a person like Hiruma, but totally unusual how it looked. Musashi couldn't describe it. He couldn't describe why it looked so strange. It didn't look like some emotional reflex, it didn't look like a shock. It simply looked weird, as his hand closed so tightly around the knob, shaking like hell and the rest of his body standing still, not knowing what to do.

Whatever had changed.

Whatever had seeded sand on their garden of life.

Musashi didn't want himself to get rid of the heavy thoughts. By now he was 100 % sure of something being so wrong.

Something had become different.