Chosokabe Motochika was right about something. This was worth remembering—an event that should be marked on calendars for years to come. Motonari would let it pass as though it had never happened, however, even if the rightness did benefit him. In this case, the pirate had told the previously ailing man that he would perhaps regain his strength after eating real food. Up until now, Mori's diet was mostly fish broth and only little bits of fish here and there as his stomach calmed. Thus, it was no wonder he was too weak to even stand on his own.

After eating a full meal consisting of Motochika's catch and a small bowl of rice, this was proven to be true. Motonari felt better already, or at least well enough to sit next to the pirate before the fire, drinking tea.

"I believe this is the most ill I've ever been, aside from the time I had the fever," he idly related to his companion in between sips of the hot brew. It was nice and strong, just the way he liked. Not surprisingly, the tea had also been made by Motochika.

"As a kid?" Chosokabe asked, seemingly interested.

Motonari didn't look at him, instead watching embers rise from the fire and float off into the sky before disappearing, the bits of wood that fueled them having burned out before they could go too far. He nodded, being nonchalant about it now. But, back then, it had been a different matter, as he'd nearly died.

"I suppose I am prone to them since then. Whenever I am under the weather, a high fever always accompanies it."

"That would have been nice to know," Motochika snorted. "But I guess there wasn't any reason for you to tell me that."

"Well now you know. It would have been useless information before now."

Yes, but everything was different now. Like a pathetic idiot in an equally pathetic love story, he was drawn to the one who had nursed him back to health. The funny thing was Chosokabe appeared attracted to him as well. Oh, he wasn't too naïve to notice such things over the course of the day. The question was what to do with such knowledge? He could play with him and see where it led—political advantages were aplenty here. Strategic alliances would be all too easy to forge, but did he really want to do that? It was a consideration, and that was a sad thing.

"What happened when you were a kid?" Chosokabe was fishing for him to talk, the Mori clan leader realized. For that, he couldn't entirely blame him. Sitting alone for hours on end with no one to have even the most trivial of conversations with got to be nerve wrecking. Motonari knew this from experience.

"It was nothing remarkable," he indulged. "Children come down with fevers all of the time, don't they? It was just quite difficult to get mine to break that time. Since then, I suppose it always has been."

"Hm, nothing horrible like that ever happened to me when I was a kid," Motochika rubbed the back of his head, earning him a glance with an arched brow from the person he was chatting with.

"Didn't you lose your eye as a child?" Mori snorted as he raised his tea cup to his lips.

Clearly surprised, Motochika continued rubbing the back of his head, now staring at the smaller man. "How did you know that?" He was a sailor and a pirate, first and foremost. This usually meant he made up some outrageous tale about how he lost his eye. Said yarn would be different every time the pirate spun it, but few people would question the Demon of the Western Seas. It was just his luck that Mori was one of those few.

"You are my neighbor and my rival. Do you think that the truth of such a tale would escape me?" Again, the brunette snorted, clearly enjoying the position that he had Chosokabe in.

All of his tales of losing his eye in some noble battle or a fight with some nonexistent sea monster were being discredited in one go. "I just didn't think you'd care, Mori. Knowing how I lost my eye doesn't really benefit you, does it?" The pirate held up his hand. "No wait. Don't answer. I can see how it does."

"Hm," making an amused noise, Mori sipped the last of his tea from his cup and placed it aside, leaning back to admire the moon. "My family got occasional news of happenings in Shikoku, of course. Gossip, mostly. When a little princess lost their eye, my father talked of it a bit because it was the Chosokabe clan's heir, that princess."

"Himewako-chan," Motochika muttered, making a fist.

"So they did call you that?" Laughing, Motonari pulled himself to his feet and started to go inside. "I believe I'll rest for the night, Himewako-chan."

"You're going to leave just like that?" Motochika practically whined.

"Yes, on that very note. Timing is everything," the rival daimyo practically purred in reply, clearly enjoying the grief that his teasing caused. "You will be fine without me. Tomorrow is a new day of my glorious presence, besides. We are stuck together for quite a while, are we not?"

Motochika rolled his eyes, crossing his arms, "That's not what I mean. I mean you're walking away before I get the chance to think of a comeback."

"Yes, exactly! Good night, pirate," chuckling to himself, Motonari started to go inside, pausing at the door to give the other a lingering look. "Motochika?"

He referred to the other by first name merely because he was playing with him, like a fox playing with prey. This move was effective, as he noted how quickly the pirate turned. He was so emotionally ruled, that ruffian. This was partly the reason that the two clashed so much. One kept his heart sealed away, where even sunlight couldn't touch it, and the other kept his heart right on his sleeve, where it was all too easy to get it to start bleeding.

But there was something endearing about it too. Something, dare he say adorable, in the way that that singular blue eye was so transfixed on Motonari, waiting to hear what the man had to say. Did the so called Demon realize that he was behaving more like a little puppy right now? What had happened to bring out this behavior, anyway? Just earlier, the man had been so apathetic that it reminded Motonari a bit too much of himself. Did he now feel safe? If so, playing with the pirate's feelings like this was cruel. But then why should he care about being cruel to Chosokabe? Ah, he was going in circles over nothing!

"Try not to make noise," he spoke simply and then ducked into the house, wishing to escape his own thoughts.

Perhaps things weren't as complicated as he was making them out to be. It was just a ridiculous crush, after all. Even though he was such a guarded individual, it wasn't impossible for him to develop them, especially towards someone who had been as kind to him as Chosokabe had. And he was handsome, that pirate. This was undeniable. Everything that was happening made sense. It was just his uptight nature and tactician mind forcing him to put too much thought into this. It was happening. He might as well have fun with it, right?

"We are only going to be on this island a short time," he reasoned to himself as he undressed. "Then he will go his way and I will go mine, and that will be the end of it. Crushes never last longer than that."

Surely he was right in thinking this way. He was already beginning to recover from his illness, which meant that the feeling of being attached to Chosokabe would likely start fading. That would be most ideal, anyway. He didn't want to think of the possibility that it wouldn't because then, things truly would complicate themselves. Things must not be allowed to go any further than friendship, he decided, though he could only hope that this was not easier said than done. Motonari, at the moment, was confused by his own heart.

There was a pirate outside who did want it to go further, even if such a wish was foolish. Motochika did have a tendency to be overly passionate about things, and that was a problem in his life. As he reflected on this, he also realized that no one managed to make him lose his cool quite like Mori Motonari. Usually, his rival was making him pissed off beyond words, but, these days, that little son of a bitch got his heart fluttering. Why was this, aside from the obvious and superficial?

Yes, he wanted to bed his rival, but that was to be expected. Motochika was a man, after all, and he happened to find the little sun brat to be sexually attractive, at the very least. Homosexuality was no big deal to the pirate, either. Long months spent at sea made a romp with a member of his crew seem like it was not that bad of an idea, though he abstained, honestly. To them, he was Aniki, and it felt like that would be betrayed if he tried bedding any of those bastards. What they did amongst themselves was their own affair.

"Tch," Motochika clicked his tongue as he tossed aside a stick that he'd been using to draw circles in the sand. Keiji deserved a good punch in the face for stranding them here, though it was doubtful that he knew things would go this far. Likely, the Maeda vagabond had done all of this with nothing more in mind than the hope that they wouldn't strangle each other. Either way, thinking about it too much wasn't going to help anything. There was nothing better to do, and so the pirate decided he would take to his bed.

By the time he made this decision and laid down, Mori was already asleep, or so it appeared by the oil lamp. Motochika put it out and then laid down on his own futon, turning onto his side facing away from his housemate.

He was actually starting to lightly doze when he heard his name.

"Chosokabe, do you hear that?"

"Hnngh," grumbling, the pirate sat up and waited for his eyes to adjust before looking towards the other's futon, finding that he was sitting up.

Not receiving an answer fast enough for his tastes, Motonari got out of bed and relit the lamp, immediately looking around the room that they were in. "You apparently sleep like a log, but I heard something scurrying about."

"It's probably some little lizard or something," Motochika yawned. "Go back to sleep. It's not gonna bite you."

Motochika was mistaken to believe it would be that easy. Motonari folded his arms and started to glare, making it clear that if he couldn't sleep, Motochika wouldn't be sleeping either. The only way anyone was going to be resting tonight is if the scurrying culprit was found.

"Damn it!" Chosokabe cursed with all of the cheer one might find in a tiger that has a thorn piercing his paw. So this was what his life was going to be like from now until they were rescued? It couldn't be said that he hadn't asked for it in becoming friends with Motonari. He knew the rival clan leader was… particular about things, but he hadn't imagined himself losing sleep over it. Of course, this was exactly what Motochika had sought to avoid their first day on the island—becoming yet another sacrificial pawn to be ordered around on Mori's whims. Yet, he saw no other way, knowing that he likely couldn't sleep with a lamp burning and through the other's bitching. Usually when he slept, the rest of the crew was crashing as well, whatever party they may or not have been having dying down since Aniki was usually the life of it. Thus, it couldn't be said that he was used to sleeping through noise. Definitely not through copious amounts of nagging and possibly being attacked.

"I am only doing this because you needed to rest," he spoke up. But it was really more so for his own benefit. He needed some way to assure himself that he was not about to become Motonari's bitch.

"Just find the thing and get it out!" Motonari demanded with folded arms. His only concern here was getting the uninvited guest out of their temporarily shared domicile.

Motochika grumbled and cursed, mostly for the sake of making it clear that he was not happy with what was going on here. The pirate was sure that it was nothing more than a lizard, and if that was the case, it would not bother going near the prissy sun brat. However, it was clear that convincing Mori of this was a nigh impossible task. Thus, here he was, at all hours of the night, being forced to move things around in order to find their little visitor. After a good fifteen minutes of this, he was sure that he wasn't going to find a single thing, and so he turned back to the other daimyo, folding his arms.

"Look, Mori," he began just as the brunette pointed behind him with wide eyes. "Eh?" Motochika turned and found that there, huddled in a corner, was a tiny and very timid little mouse. "Oh!"

"Yes, oh," Motonari rolled his eyes. "I told you that there was something here and it turns out it's a filthy vermin, at that!"

"Oh, come on, Mori! It's just a little mouse!"

Motochika was absolutely still, waiting for the right moment, but he could sense the other's scowl and eye roll combination, knowing that the other's solution would be to throw something sharp at it and kill it where it stood. Moments like this were why the gentle man had been called Himewako-chan. Demon of the Western Seas or not, he couldn't bring himself to kill an innocent creature. He didn't even have cats for the same reason—that and they loved to try chasing and eating his parrot. As he watched the little mouse, Chosokabe had the thought that if he told Mori about what happened with his bird, the sun brat would take in the first cat he could find.

"Are you going to take all night with this? I would really love to get some sleep." Motonari's patience with the matter had run a little thin.

"Your hypocrisy is showing there, Mori," the pirate rolled his single eye.

Slowly, he took a few steps back, looking to Motonari as though he feared the thing. Then, the large man threw himself onto the floor, cupping his hands around the mouse. "Gotcha!" As he stood, he revealed the small creature in his hands, the large thumb of the pirate pressed against the creature's neck gently so that biting would be difficult. But it was apparently not going to do so as the idiot pirate announced that the mouse was "trembling all over, the poor little bastard!"

"Great," Motonari yawned as he crawled back onto his futon. "Snap his neck and turn off the lamp so that I can sleep in peace."

"Mori, you little bastard, just when I think you can't be any more cruel, you show me that there are further levels of downright cold to go!" Chosokabe's one eye was gleaming with fury, which Motonari noted upon sitting up and glaring at him for continuing to talk.

"It is a mouse, Chosokabe," he answered in a huff. "A stupid mouse! Do what you will with it, but get it out so that I can sleep!"

But Motochika could not just leave things at that. He never could, as nothing riled him up and angered him more than Motonari's absolute disregard for the wellbeing of any life beyond his own.

"Everything deserves to live as much as you do, Mori. How can you be so cruel?"

"What answer is the one that will make you shut up and get rid of the damn mouse?" Motonari sighed.

Apparently that was the one, as Motochika turned and left the cabin, taking the mouse with him. After he had gone, Motonari sat there for five or so minutes, just waiting for him to return. It did not happen. Curious as to why, he got out of bed and peered outside, finding the pirate asleep on the ground, curled up a short distance away from the dying fire that had cooked dinner. The mouse was nowhere to be found, from where he stood, but that was beyond the point now.

"Because of a mouse, Chosokabe?" Sighing to himself, Motonari ducked back inside and put out the flame of the oil lamp, hoping it would at least be the last time it was lit until tomorrow night. He was tired, but upon climbing into bed, it was apparent that he was going to get no sleep tonight.

A mouse—that's all it was! Why did the pirate have to make such a big deal about vermin that got into grain stores and ate far more than what they deserved? Useless creatures in Motonari's mind, they contributed nothing to the world but disease and grief. Yet, that idiot outside adamantly insisted that the one who had stolen into their home, interrupting a night's slumber was worth raising such a fuss and ultimately sleeping outside over. He would never understand that man, even if he took a hundred lifetimes trying to do so.

"Idiot pirate," he grumbled as he curled up on his side. "Sleep outside, for all I care. I should have known better than to think that I could be friends with an idiot like you."

Closing his eyes, he sighed, realizing that his usual routine of apathy wasn't working this time. Yes, it appeared that he and Chosokabe wouldn't make it as friends if they were going to fight over something as trivial as a mouse. Why did that make him feel so… sad?

[AN: Well, this took a turn that I didn't have in mind when I started writing, but actually, some conflict is good. Don't want this turning too fluffy or Motonari to just start being this person that's totally nice and not himself. His cruelty and the fact that Motochika hates it makes for a realistic hurdle, so we'll see what happens! Oops. I also forgot I had this finished and kind of failed to upload it. I'm off my game!]