A/N: I literally only wrote this because I love you guys. I estimate about two more chapters or so to this story.

Hugs and kisses.

P.S. check out my new fic: What Goes Up, Must Come Down. And read my other stuff.

XXX

When Rin woke up, he felt an odd sense of deja vu. He hadn't felt this way in a long time, but it was familiar. His lungs were full of smoke, he was naked, and he was on the right side of the bed, near a window.

Shit. He thought.

He turned to his left side. Haruka was sitting up against the headboard smoking. He looked down at Rin. His lips parted and he started to say something but no words came out.

Rin looked away and bit his lip.

Both of them wanted to talk, but neither knew where to start.

XXX

"I...As you know, I...I've been having difficulties at work too," Nagisa started. Rin never complained to Nagisa, Nagisa had gone into the private sector instead of teaching and that had been a mistake. Nagisa had many more student loans to pay than Rin, and he thought that he'd be able to pay them back faster if he went into the private sector. That was true, but money came with a different kind of price, it sucked out Nagisa's vivacious energy.

Rin nodded, "Yeah."

"I...I asked my supervisor for a recommendation for a position," Nagisa took a big gulp of his drink.

Rin started to smile, "That's great! You'll be able to get out of that crappy place. What's the job? When will you hear back? Have you interviewed?"

Nagisa's face fell. This was difficult, "I...I start next week."

"What?!" Rin practically shouted, "I'm buying you another drink."

"I'm not finished," Nagisa played with the straw, "It's in California."

Rin almost dropped his beer. His eyes widened, "What?"

Nagisa nodded, "I've packed everything, and my flight is in two days. I start next week in California."

"N-no…" Rin said. He was in shock. He would have said more, but he simply couldn't believe this. This was completely surprising news for him.

Nagisa closed his eyes, "I'm sorry, but it's at a community college there, and you know I always wanted to teach adults."

Rin knew this, Nagisa, inspite of his personality, wasn't great with kids. He did better working with adults and he said that he enjoyed seeing the improvement in their writing over time. It made Nagisa more satisfied. Rin was afraid of the answer, but he asked anyway, "So...so are you leaving for good then?"

"There's something else," Nagisa started, "when I applied, I was applying for everything. Not just to teach, I applied to go back to school. And...I talked to some of our old professors and they remembered you. They may have filled out applications for you too."

"Wh-what? That was a waste of time," Rin laughed cooly, "I'd never get into a doctoral program," he sipped on his beer.

Nagisa, however, was not as amused, "I didn't get in, but Rin...you did."

"The hell?" Rin almost fell off his chair, "You're kidding."

Nagisa shook his head, "You remember the teacher that used to give you a hard time? In that class we had during our last semester?"

"Yeah," Rin said. The class with Haruka. And Nitori, Rin sighed. Neither of them were people that he liked thinking about.

"She remembered you being one of her best students."

"She failed my first paper."

Nagisa shrugged, "You did well on the final paper though."

That was true, "So...I got into a grad program at our old school? And you think I should do it? To try to get the hell out of my middle school situation?" Rin smirked a bit.

"No, it's not Tokyo U," Nagisa said softly, "I didn't apply for anything in Japan. It's in California too, the prestigious Stanford University. Rin, I want you to go to California with me. That's the other thing that I wanted to tell you."

"Huh?"

Nagisa sighed, he had practiced this many times in his head, but the alcohol wasn't helping dull his nerves. As a result, he spoke very quickly as he spilt it all, "I...I haven't been with anyone in a while, as you know…And, to tell you the truth Rin, I've always sort of...thought we had a good time together. Since this is the last chance to tell you, I wanted to let you know. And if you want to, you can come with me. My school is like 20 minutes away from Stanford and we could live together and be together and I just think maybe you know… Well, either way, I bought you a ticket. You can come if you want, if not I can get it changed."

This caught Rin off guard. He had flirted with the blonde, hell, he liked the blonde, but, to leave his job and move with him to California?

Nagisa looked at him with his wide red eyes. Rin felt himself begin to blush, "I-I...wow. This is a lot."

Nagisa's face fell.

But, what the hell did Rin have here anyway? He was almost 30 and he had no one and nothing in his life. He didn't even have a pet. He hated his job. It wasn't going anywhere. He had no other future options, not until now. And Nagisa, his best friend was going to leave? No way.

"I'll go with you," the words fell out of Rin's mouth and surprised even himself. He didn't think of himself as someone willing to take risks like that, but he had always thought of America as a place for opportunity, and he sure as hell could use some opportunity in his life right now. What was the worst that could happen? It couldn't be any worse than his current situation.

Nagisa's eyes widened and he looked so happy. Without hesitation, he leaned in and kissed Rin. The kiss caught Rin by surprise, but Nagisa tasted sweet, like strawberries. And Rin found himself wanting to taste more of him.

XXX

Somehow, Nagisa managed to talk Rin into going to graduation. Rin himself couldn't be sure how that had happened. Rin looked around the room. It was packed with people from all the different Masters and Doctoral programs that Tokyo University had. Somewhere in that crowd was his sister.

Rin was seated with the other members of the English Education program. There weren't many of them, somewhere around 30. Nagisa was close to him. Rin expected to see Haruka there. He had gone onto facebook recently to try to find out what Haruka was up to. Rin didn't dare text Haruka to ask. No matter how tempted he was, what Haruka said after their one night stand played again over and over in his head. Rin was not about to embarrass himself by reaching out to Haruka. That said, he couldn't help be intrigued.

Haruka's facebook was gone though. Haruka was gone. No one seemed to know what had happened to him. Rin had asked around as casually as he could. No one seemed to know.

Most people guessed that he was off doing something great. Who knew what though? Rin pushed it out of his mind.

Today was a big day for him. Today was the last day of his schooling.

Thank God.

XXX

What Haruka had said would happen, that he would never talk to Rin outside of class was what happened for the rest of the semester. Haruka always left the classroom the second that they got out of class or he'd awkwardly evade Rin, if Rin tried to engage him. They occasionally spoke, but it was school related and solely for a minute or so. It was uncomfortable for Rin because Haruka made it clear in his body language that he wanted to leave.

Haruka's whole manner completely confused Rin, given that Haruka had been the one to call it a perfect night, but before Rin knew it, the semester was over. Rin finished the program early, as he had always planned to. It had been his last semester, and now, he was eligible to be a teacher. Yes, it had been a great one night stand, but sometimes, we meet great people and we have a slice of them and that's it. The attraction wasn't enough, Rin thought, and this often caused him to think about exactly what Haruka had said the night they spent together.

After Rin's program ended though, Haruka, the mysteriously attractive person faded into nothingness. The person Haruka seemed to disappear completely. So did most of the people in Rin's program. Really, the only one that Rin talked to as the time went on was Nagisa. As for Haruka, Rin assumed that he must have gone abroad or maybe he stayed at the university, but whatever he was doing, it didn't matter to Rin. He was in another corner of the universe. And the years went by.

Rin occasionally thought about the mystery man that he had once hooked up with, but mostly the time simply went by. He did his job, his job that he hated. He made enough money to get by and that was that. Time passed.

And it was years, before Rin saw Haruka again.

XXX

Haruka Nanase checked Facebook one final time before he deleted his account. He had actually typed out a full post written to Rin. In the post, he recounted everything about himself. He explained that he had lost been in a relationship with someone for his entire life and he had lost his memory. He explained that he was attracted to the redhead, and that although he had meant for it to be just a fuck, there was something about this semester, there was something about their last semester that just simply drew him to Rin. He wanted more. He wanted to make it work. He wanted to see what would happen.

Instead, he grabbed his bong, took a few hits, and deleted the message and then, deleted his Facebook.

This was going to be the end of an era, he decided. He looked again back over his acceptance letter to Oxford. They were going to do an accelerated doctoral program for him. Two years. In two years he'd have two extra letters and a period in front of his name and the ability to go wherever he wanted. Haruka looked over at the envelope from Stanford.

It was unopened, but it was thick. Thick envelopes always meant acceptance. But, Haruka didn't want to know. If he didn't open it, then he didn't have to decide.

Besides, hadn't Makoto made that decision for him already?

His attention went back to the computer screen. He thought about reopening his account. He thought about retyping that entire message to Rin. He thought about simply calling the redhead.

No. He told himself.

And so, instead, he went on Expedia and ordered a plane ticket. He was going to Oxford and he was going to have a new life.

XXX

"So what was the most exciting part of your day?" Rin asked mostly trying to make conversation. There was something off about Nagisa tonight, but Rin couldn't put his finger on what precisely could be wrong. Ever since Rin had gotten home, Nagisa seemed like he was in a bad mood. Rin assumed that it had to do with the fact that Nagisa's job wasn't what he had expected. To be fair, returning to graduate school hadn't been what Rin had expected either.

Nagisa had ordered in food, choosing not to cook for them, which was a surprise to Rin, given the pancakes that he had received that morning, but Rin didn't say anything. Nagisa had a long day, but he didn't want to explain or talk about how his interview with Rei had gone. He certainly didn't want to inform to Rin that it ended up being the only interview that he did. He had a list of ten names, and somehow he ended up spending the entire day with Rei. No, there was no way that he was going to get into that with Rin, so instead he turned the question back around, "Um, it was fine. It's definitely different here than Japan. I told you in my text earlier that they messed up my contract so it turns out I'm doing testing related stuff."

Rin nodded.

"How was your day?" Nagisa asked.

Rin sighed. He didn't realize it, but he actually had a strangely similar day as Nagisa. He had the sort of day that he didn't want to share much about. He had gone to his first class, and somehow managed to end up with Haruka as his professor. Surely, if he told Nagisa this, it would lead to some type of awkward conversation. So, Rin evaded the question, "Oh you know, I met some classmates. My professors are kind of weird," well, that was true at least.

Nagisa nodded. They were eating Italian pizza which tasted completely different in America than it did in Japan. The Japanese pizza was much closer to true Italian pizza, and so neither of them had much of it. This pizza was far too greasy for them.

They spent most of dinner in silence. Rin figured that they should be doing something physical, and Nagisa felt compelled to be doing something with Rin, after all, hadn't he spent forever fantasizing about finally being with Rin? Now, he had Rin, but all he could think about was the man that he met earlier. Rin let out a long sigh, and handled their dishes.

Rin ended up giving Nagisa an out that night, "I guess I should get started on my course readings."

Nagisa nodded, "Yeah, I've got work to do too."

Neither of them had anything to do, but they both needed privacy. Rin wondered if agreeing to come to California with Nagisa had been a complete mistake. And Nagisa wondered why he wasn't more happy. Wasn't this what he had wanted?

XXX

Nagisa sat in the cafe waiting for the other man to arrive. He had been informed by his new boss that he had in fact not been hired to become an English teacher at the local community college, but instead been hired to become a combination of a teacher trainer and testing developer. And so, he had a list of people that he was supposed to meet with and he was supposed to help them develop their curriculum and help them become more familiar with testing.

His eyes glanced at the first name on the page. Rei Ryugazaki. It was a Japanese name. He couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy. Whoever this Japanese man was, he was living Nagisa's dream. He was teaching adults and he was teaching English literature.

The bespeckled man who joined him was surprisingly attractive. He had messy dark hair, and was well-built. Nagisa oogled him a little bit, but reminded himself that this was a work meeting.

"So, you're supposed to help me with assessment?" Rei asked, he sat straight down and was immediately on the offensive. Obviously, he had been informed that in spite of his stellar reviews from students, he was terrible with test preparation. His students frequently ended up having to retake his class.

Nagisa nodded. He tried to be upbeat. Most teachers had negative outlooks about his job. This was something that he was used to. Being a professional in assessment gave him access to some of the highest paying jobs in academia, but he was frequently criticized by those around him. No matter how much you think students hate tests, teachers hate them even more, "I'm supposed to look at your lesson plans and help you fit assessment into your classes in a positive manner."

He looked apprehensive, "Look. I've done a lot of research into this. Especially after my chat with our boss," Nagisa was considered a part of the English program meaning that they had shared the head of the department, "I'm pretty convinced that I've gotten a lot better. So, any time you want to, you are welcome to come to my class and you can observe me."

Nagisa nodded, "That'd be nice. That's really the best way for me to do my job. I'm also available, if you would like, to give you some training on the goals and purposes of assessment to try to help you further improve your classroom," offering this was expected given his position, but Nagisa couldn't help hoping that Rei would take him up on it. The man was not only completely and utterly attractive, but he was also clearly determined to improve.

"Well, I'm teaching this afternoon, if you'd like to come by," Rei offered, he hoped the blonde would agree.

Oh what the hell, Nagisa thought, I have to do this at some point anyway, I might as well do this now. And so, he cancelled the rest of his appointments for the day, and decided to focus his attention on improving Rei.

XXX

Rei took Nagisa to his class and Nagisa observed it closely. Nagisa was blown away. He had never seen students so engaged, and he had observed many other teachers before. He had never seen a teacher that loved his students the way that Rei did. He had never seen someone that dedicated.

After class, Rei spoke with his students and stayed answering questions for a good half hour. Nagisa stayed as well.

When the classroom emptied, Nagisa followed Rei back to his office.

"Well? What criticisms do you have for me?" Rei asked. The way that he asked it was different than most. Most teachers asked Nagisa the same question with an air of annoyance. They didn't actually want the answer to the question, they were asking it defensively. Rei seemed genuinely eager to improve.

"I-I…" Nagisa started, but he was dumbfounded. He could hardly imagine that there was someone in the world that was as perfect as Rei. He steadied himself. He knew that he had to prove himself to Rei. After all, with Rei's respect, he'd have an easier time with the rest of the teachers, "I think you spent too much time on page 26."

Rei had allowed the activity to run on for over 10 minutes. The recommended length per activity was somewhere around 5-7 minutes. It was a bit of a nitpicky thing to choose, but Nagisa couldn't come up with any other clear criticism. What had he been watching for the last hour and forty-five minutes? Why hadn't he been able to come up with something more concrete?

Rei looked at Nagisa thoughtfully and smiled, "You're right, of course. It went a bit long. Sometimes I let my activities run longer than they should. The students looked engaged, but I would imagine that solely sounds like an excuse to you. The truth is that I should have spent the time covering more material."

No, Nagisa thought, student engagement is important, because it's how they stay involved in the material. Nagisa hated playing this role. He hated that his new position required him to do the same damn thing he had been doing for the last few years. This was supposed to be his chance. He was supposed to finally get to be doing his dream job. Instead, he was here finding more things to criticize about seasoned teachers who were doing just fine without him, "Remember, Rei, there is a curriculum for a reason," Nagisa internally rolled his eyes, "and if you go too far from the intended curriculum it weakens everything for every other class here."

Rei nodded, "That's true. How long have you been a teacher, Nagisa?"

Nagisa cringed. This was a question he hated being asked. The truth was that he had only ever been a student teacher. No real teacher took that experience seriously. But, he was an expert in the field of testing. And he was actually a damn fine teacher trainer. It just wasn't what he had wanted to do, "A while," it was better to avoid the question.

"Really?" Rei looked at him with suspicion, "you seem so young though."

"I look younger than I am," that was actually quite true.

"How'd you get into testing?"

"It paid the bills," the words slipped out of Nagisa's mouth before he could stop them. That was the sort of honesty that he reserved for Rin.

Rei laughed, "I hear it pays rather well."

"It does, but I'd much rather teach."

Nagisa found himself talking to Rei for even longer than he had expected. There was something about the man that allowed him to loosen up.

XXX

Their dinner conversation hadn't been great. Both men were now keeping secrets.

"Well," Nagisa got up from the table, "I guess I ought to work on my reviews."

Nagisa had only really gotten through Rei's after all. He'd need to do a lot this week to make up for how he had spent today, but he had made yet another coffee date with Rei. He couldn't help himself. There was something about the man that made him feel nice.

Rin nodded, "There's some new student party at campus tonight to welcome us."

This was the first orientation event that Rin had showed any interest in. Nagisa took notice of that, but he thought it was probably a good thing if he spent some time away from Rin to collect his thoughts. Perhaps this thing with Rin had been a mistake? Perhaps they had moved too quickly? He kicked himself for thinking that though. Wasn't I the one who always wanted this?

Nagisa didn't say anything about any of that, "You should go. Have a good time."

Rin smiled, "Yeah I think I will. I'm going to get ready though."

He was sort of expecting Haruka to be there, and he wanted to look nice. Not that that would be right of him, but it was Haruka. He hadn't seen Haruka in forever. He had about a thousand questions for the darkhaired man, but he wanted Haruka to come to him. He had tried so hard to play it cool when he was in class with Haruka, and he had managed to do okay at the end of class, but he remembered nothing about the lecture.

Rin went off into their shared room and took a shower. He put on a nice button down shirt and some tight leather pants. Nagisa had no reason to be suspicious of the outfit, and as Rin left, he called after him to have a good time.

XXX

Rin walked to school. Nagisa's apartment was relatively close to the Stanford campus. It was a cheaper area than the residential area near where Nagisa went to work.

Rin arrived at the party and immediately felt awkward. He was instantly reminded that he was one of the older graduate students. He slightly regretted coming to the party. His eyes scanned the room for Haruka, who was no where to be found. He mentally kicked himself. Why would he have ever thought that a professor would come to a student party?

Rin grabbed a glass of wine and threw it back. He should head back home, he thought. He should go back to Nagisa. He didn't want to though. The blonde had had a rather bad day and so had he, and he just didn't want to be around Nagisa. Being around Nagisa would make him feel guilty, because the truth was that seeing Haruka after all these years brought him straight back to the end of their schooling together.

It had been years and Rin was still in love with Haruka.

How had that happened? Rin wondered, it wasn't as though he had anything that even could be called a relationship with Haruka, and yet, there was something about the mysteriousness and the time that had passed, that had made him fall literally head over heels for Haruka.

Rin wanted to get drunk.

He couldn't get drunk here though. He couldn't get drunk in front of these strangers with whom he would have to have some kind of professional relationship. He was back in school, he reminded himself.

So, Rin walked to the nearest bar. There was a bar a few blocks away from campus, and a safe distance from his apartment. That was where he decided to go.

He strolled along enjoying the California breeze. He had to admit, it was absolutely beautiful in California.

XXX