Title: Ten Months

Rating: Teen.

Author: Hirurg

Pairings: Takao/Kai, mentions of other pairings.

Disclaimer: Bakuten Shoot Beyblade and all its characters belong to Takao Aoki.

Warnings: Minor angst warning throughout.

AN: I could dedicate this to a whole boat load of people but I'll keep it relatively simple. To Glay and Ranma who are two of the three reasons I'm even apart of the KaiTakao fandom, to a handful of brilliant writers and artists who wove tales and painted images so brilliant in my mind they were inescapable, and to a couple shadows of my past who showed me through their uninhibited bashing of kaitakao and its fandom that I never wanted to be apart of the kairei ship.

This is the sequel to Ten Days, if you haven't read that story you probably should as there will likely be references from that story in this one. Furthermore this story isn't as solidly plotted out as Ten Days was, so I have no idea how long it's going to be chapter wise.

Some things may come off out of character, keep in mind this plot is set almost eleven years after G-revolution ended.

For those unaware this story picks up Ten Months after the ending to Ten Days, Kai is on business to London, and shows up unexpectedly on Takao's doorstep. Now the two must start a relationship from the ground up around the life Takao build without him.

CHAPTER ONE

First Person, Kai.

I always hated how society was so insistent on over sensationalizing romance and love stories. How every person was conditioned to believe that their perfect person was somewhere in the world waiting for the moment eyes met for the first time, how males and females alike all fell victim to the fake ideals shown to us in books, music, movies and other such things. Furthermore I had always disdained the happy ending cliche, the one that no matter how bleak the outcome appeared to be still love conquered all else and the two perfect lovers would be reunited and live their entire lives in some sickeningly picturesque situation. Reality was a far cry from what everyone was wishing and hoping for. Infidelity, death, violence and betrayal were some of many things that overshadowed all the happy endings leaving most people genuinely disappointed, when everything fell apart and was left irreparable. When people fell away from each other for whatever reason, and moved on in life the reality was just that. They had moved on. They wouldn't suddenly come rushing back in slow motion under a setting sun to embrace you, they would never give you the looks of admiration or love that they may have once given only to you. No the truth was, the propagated love story never really happened, it was a lie.

Yet somehow I found myself stuck in that very unrealistic, perfect and non-existent cliche. Somehow I found myself after almost eleven years making my way in a solid direction to the same person who had held my heart as a teenager, despite everything that had happened to us, and between us. Truthfully I was still in denial about the entire situation, I half expected to snap back to reality at any minute and realize that it had all been an elaborate hoax fabricated by my brain to give me some false hope, proof that even I was susceptible to the stupid sappy love stories men and women fantasized over. But every time the paranoia seeped under my skin, and started to choke me with some figurative rope it all came crashing back to the original point. Somehow, I was legitimately living the insufferable happy ending to every trashy romance novel and chick flick in existence, somehow despite everything he was still standing where he always had, waiting, his hand outstretched and that smile on his face. Somehow after almost a decade with very little contact and entire lives built without each other, still we had found one another against all realistic and probable odds, and somehow would be reunited in that disgustingly sappy, perfect, picturesque moment.

But my relationship with Takao Kinomiya was hardly perfect.

In fact if I were to accurately describe our relationship in a couple words, I would be more apt to pick the words train wreck. Despite what it may seem I don't mean that statement with a negative inflection, in fact I mean it on the contrary. Takao is, or perhaps was annoying, loud, obnoxious and down right childish but he was the only person strong in both skill and sheer will to stand up to me and not simply be pushed out of the way. The only person comparable to myself in every way and yet absolutely different, everything I am, and could have been. Everything I hated, admired and loved. And I had known he was all these things over a decade ago, but at the time I was never ready to openly admit there was more between us than just a childhood rivalry. Even now, almost ten years later as I walked through the empty English side streets, glancing time and time again at the grey painted sky, ignoring the precipitation that fell soaking me to the bone, I acknowledged openly admitting Takao Kinomiya played any important role in my life was difficult and truthfully unlikely.

However there weren't any words to say, there hadn't been in a long time. Both Takao and I had come to accept a long time ago that we were in each others heads, every single thought we had seemed to be shared, as if we were on an identical and exclusive wavelength. Because of this, I would never have to say anything or admit anything to Takao publicly or privately for him to understand how I felt and how I had felt for many years. It was almost amazing reflecting back on it and realizing that something this important had almost slipped through my fingers one late spring and that I'd been too lost in my own denial to chase the one thing that at the time mattered in my life, and furthermore had allowed myself thereafter to fall into the cleverly disguised trap that was Gabriel Sattiay. It would be in non-theatrical irony that almost eight years to the day he'd left he'd arrive almost entirely out of the blue to do the one thing he'd done countless times before. Save me. And while I would never express any form of genuine gratitude for what he had done in those ten days, I knew from the stupid grin he'd had on his face as we parted ways for the second time in a decade that he knew.

When we had made the decision to wait another year I had been content with the idea at the time there were a lot of things going on around me that needed to be straightened out and would require me to invest countless hours of my time into doing so, but as life around me started to settle down to the steady, scheduled pace my mind began to wander. During its wanderings it began to over analyze the Kinomiya situation, causing a persistent paranoia to settle in. The thing about applying for residency programs is that there's no guarantee you'll be placed where you want to be. Takao could apply for every single residency program within fifty miles of his family home and still end up only getting a placement in London. And that begged the question, then what? Statistically most doctors practise medicine in the city they did their residency, meaning if Takao's residency was in London, the odds were that he would remain there indefinitely. Did that mean I relocated to England despite the company I owned and ran having no current UK location, or did I do what at this point was almost unthinkable and let go of the hand that had reached out time and time again and let everything fade away.

Those had been the thoughts that had weighed on my mind for approximately nine months, gnawing at me like a dog on a bone. Eventually getting to a point that it had become a transparent problem some of my employees had seen. At some point I'd been cornered by both a concerned Hiromi and a visibly agitated Tala about the problem and persistently badgered about it until I, much to my dismay spilled my thoughts to the hot-headed duo. Hiromi had seemed to back off when it came out, a somber and understanding expression on her face. Tala on the other hand seemed to shut down over the situation, his eyes dull and unresponsive he had turned on his heels and stalked off down the corridor thus beginning two weeks of Hiromi attempting to console me and Ivanov doing anything he could be be in an entirely different office or even country than myself. Furthermore Tala had gotten incredibly cryptic and secretive about what he was working on, sending incredibly vague reports that caused more stress and frustration than necessary. I was starting to believe he had been intentionally doing it to get on my nerves, to spite me in some unknown way for some equally unknown reason, that was until one morning he came barging into my office uninvited and dropped a single thin envelope on my desk. I recall looking at him incredulously but his void expression never changed as I enquired what this was about, I remember his retort very vividly.

"You'll understand soon enough, Hiwatari." With that he had left the office as shamelessly as he had arrived not caring if the door slammed on his way out or that he'd startled one of the receptionists upon his exit. The flustered receptionist had gathered her bearings and approached me holding various memo's and notes eventually she listed off all the people who had called and left messages, each name more mundane than the last, she had excused herself and I had thrown myself back into work forgetting about the envelope entirely. The last phone call I remember making had been to a firm we'd contracted in England, it had been relatively routine and I had found myself zoning out until the woman on the line snapped me back to reality when she had enquired if there was any chance I would be able to schedule a business meeting in the very near future to discuss the contract and future contracts. Without hesitation I had agreed, planning the trip for a week from the day. In retrospect, I should have known why my brain had jumped into overdrive at the prospect of travelling to London, England. After everything was said and done and flights and hotels were booked and I'd been about to leave the office for the day I had stopped when my eyes had caught the simple unopened envelope that Tala had dropped on my desk earlier.

Without much thought I picked up the envelope and opened it making sure not to tear the contents inside but not caring all to much at the same time, inside was a simple folded sheet of paper, I unfolded it and for a split second I thought my heart stopped beating. In Tala's handwriting was a name I was all to familiar with, the name that had plagued my mind with thoughts both positive and negative for months. Followed by what was obviously a street address and four simple words that I could tell were laced with what would be a condescending tone if spoken, those words read:

"Do something about it."

I stopped walking down the side street, noting that the rains ferocity had at some point increased as it came down hitting the pavement with such force it drowned out all the other sounds, I shoved my hand into my coat pocket ignoring that my entire suit was drenched through and pulled out a damp and crumpled piece of paper reading the information on it for what felt like the several hundredth time in the past week. It wouldn't be long now, I realized as I picked up my pace once again continuing to tread down the street. Perhaps I should have done the polite thing and contacted him in advanced about this, given him some form of warning, but I suppose that had never been my style. I had always disappeared and reappeared without any notice or warning and every single time he had always welcomed me back with open arms, there was absolutely no reason to expect this time would be any different, especially not given the circumstances.

My pace slowed as I started looking at buildings checking their numbers and eventually I came to a stop in front of the number that had been on that piece of paper. I hesitated for a moment and cursed myself for doing so before I moved up the tiny walkway to stand on the stoop and ring the doorbell. I tried to listen for movement inside but the rain was still falling so heavily that the noises were drowned out by it. It wasn't until I heard what I was sure was the faint sound of a door unlocking and saw the door pull open that I came face to face with the blue eyes I hadn't seen in almost a year. At first he didn't seem to comprehend the situation, after a few moments passed the information in front of him seemed to finally digest and a look of both realization and shock appeared across his face, but still he remained frozen and unmoving, eventually I had had enough of the statue act and snapped out:

"Kinomiya it's pouring rain out, are you going to let me in or just continue to stare stupidly?"

And I guess some things never change.

So instead of writing a Halloween story as I had planned originally I decided to start this story. I think I'll take my jack the ripper concept I had drawn up and work it into Equilibrium, though that means I have to do some massive revisions to what I have written already. OTL.

Anyway do that review thing, kthnxbai.