**A REVISION**: I reread this story recently, remembering it unfavorably. Unsurprisingly, it was still as melodramatic as I'd imagined, but in a lot of places I found the kind of simple imagery that I'd been struggling for in the last story I wrote, Under the Influence. (The two stories also have a very similar structure, which embarrasses me)

There were problems with the second to last part, so I smoothed out the other chapters, rewriting the scenes from the fourth. The story is now one long chapter, but the action hasn't changed, just some of the prose.

A Disclaimer: Ronin Warriors is not mine, but I lust after them. Is not my fault, is teenage hormones and pretty boy eyes.

A Warning: shounen ai, angst, melodrama.

A Note: For those of you who have read Peanut Butter Boy, the first part of this story will be very familiar. Here it serves as a sort of prequel to explain something about Cye's character and hint at why he might do the things he does in later chapters.

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o_0

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(prologue)

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I met Ryo for the first time at a bus stop. It was years before saving the world and the shock of using Suiko, but it took me until a while after that to realize they were the same person. It was actually one of those rare times just after he'd cut his hair so he didn't look nearly as wild-child-from-the-woods as he does sometimes. The day was rainy, and I was taking the bus home.

I was also having a horrible day, in my opinion. I'd been late, leaving my lunch behind when I ran out the door. I was cold and ravenous, and I wanted the bus shelter to be empty and warm when it wasn't either of those things.

There was boy on the bench, dwarfed by a hand-me-down jacket on top of clothes he was clearly meant to grow into. (I doubted at the time that he ever would. Even now Ryo is shorter than everyone but Kento.) All of it was patched and worn, making him appear, to me, to be some sort of Precious Moments garden gnome. When he looked at me with his huge, wide eyes, I immediately thought he was very young. At my school, all the kids had adopted the habit of squinting ill-naturedly whenever we could so that we looked jaded and mature.

Ryo's dad was with him, pacing restlessly in front of the bench, radiating energy with a kind of intensity that I can never manage when I'm not at sea. Ryo is like that sometimes. A lot of the time really, but he is capable also of an unmatched calm, a slow, lethargic sort of contentment like the last coals of a fire in the hearth.  In that if nothing else, he is frighteningly similar to that overgrown housecat he calls a tiger.

It was one of the only two times I've ever seen Ryo's dad. Aside from the tan, the two of them don't look much alike. For one, Ryo's dad has brown eyes. Ryo has the kind of eyes that everyone who's ever met him remembers exactly what color they are.

My eyes are blue like Ryo's, but the same way my hair is red. If they were crayon colors, they'd be labeled grey and brown. Ryo's eyes are true crayon blue.

Ryo beamed at me, kicking his feet happily. I felt horribly self conscious and had a miserable time deciding whether he deserved a nasty glare for being friendly while I was in a mood or whether I ought to be nice to a younger kid. I didn't know then that he was so happy because it was the first time in four months that his dad had been home long enough to take him out somewhere other than home.

At that time, I was terrible at meeting new people. The only thing I hated more than new people was how stupid I felt around them because I didn't know how to introduce myself. As you can imagine, I didn't have many friends in junior high, but I had gotten much better by the time I went to high school.

My stomach growled, and I could see Ryo taken aback.  He reached into the huge pockets of his oversized jacket, pulling out a flattened peanut butter sandwich which he offered to me gracelessly. I remember watching him and remembering how clumsy some of my little cousins were.

"I'm not hungry," Ryo explained, extending the sandwich towards me. He spoke too loudly, very awkward. His dad turned from studying to route map to peer at us over strange spectacles that looked as if they came from some bygone era. I don't know if they were antiques or just styled that way.

Ryo offered me the sandwich again. "It's peanut butter..."

I was terrified, I'm not really sure why, but I took the sandwich just as my bus came. I remember thinking that I'd better not tell my mum because she would have been furious that I'd taken food from strangers. Ryo waved from the bench while I stared out the bus window, clutching the sandwich. I spent the bus ride eating it, worried that my mother would want to know where it had come from if I didn't finish it before I got home.

It still bothers me that I forgot to say thank you.

I spent my free time for the next few weeks creating a past for my peanut butter boy. By the end of the month I had a new imaginary friend who wore clothes handed down from giants and never left the house with any less than four peanut butter sandwiches hidden in his deep pockets. I imagined him saving me from my sister's friends and finishing my math homework.

Later, when I'd finally realized that the peanut butter boy and Ryo Sanada were one and the same, I asked Ryo about that meeting at the bus stop. He doesn't remember any of it. I'm certain it was him though; his dad still wears the same glasses.

I remember the only time I've ever been to Ryo's house, seeing his dad and the accompanying déjà vu. I remember the next day bursting out of the half-asleep daze of Sunday mornings with a cry of "Eureka!" I remember also that Ryo wasn't there for my realization, and I had to wait, looking for some premise to bring it up. I was happy then, laughing, because for some reason Ryo's obliviousness just cemented my certainty.

I love him too much, sometimes. All of them.

But forget that, don't bother with it. I only brought it up because I had to start somewhere, and I wanted to use a happy memory. I think its best to start a monologue with a good thought, especially one that can't help but be depressing. I want you to know that I do know what happiness is. If I had started this off bemoaning my uselessness, my stupidity, you couldn't help but suspect me of a certain self-indulgence. I'd be no better than my older sister flouncing around the house before one of her high school dances.

"I'm fat! I'm a whale!" she cries, pretending to rip at the dress she squealed over just days before. Anybody looking at her knows she's an attractive young woman. If nothing else, she is certainly no less wonderful than any other insecure adolescent.

I deserve it though.

Trust. I am trust. Now and in the past, I clung to that like a lifeline. I thought that if I with my fragile power couldn't carry the battle for my friends then at least I would be someone they could trust, always. The one who kept the overstressed heroes in one piece -- made sure they ate and slept and didn't break down, called in motivational speakers if needed. Otherwise what good was I?

They needed me for that. They really did. It was my purpose, my role, and then I took all of that and shattered it across the floor. For nothing more than a crush and a little embarrassment.

Oh god, poor Ryo. I shouldn't have let this happen. He's so easy to hurt.

I want you to know one thing before you start hating me and I don't know exactly how to explain it. I tried, up there with that story because it was the first I could think of. Maybe I showed you and maybe I didn't, but Ryo has always been something vaguely alien to me, beyond my perception. He is not quite real.

On some level, I think I enjoyed the drama of this, but more than that it meant I had taught myself to be completely unable to relate to him like a rational human being.

Ryo makes me over-react. I am so stupid.

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(the story)   

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The wind moved the dappled tree shadows across the countertops, a cold breeze that thankfully didn't reach into the house. Last year they'd all had the windows open this time of year, but it had been a cold spring, keeping everyone inside instead of playing by lake.

Ryo was in the kitchen watching two of the most important people in his world cook, snickering and flicking flour at each other's faces.

The kitchen wasn't large, located in the guest house on Mia's huge property, but Ryo liked the smaller house better. Over the years it had become sort of his, the place he stayed when he visited. Not too hard to fit everyone in here, really, as long as Mia and Yuli slept elsewhere and someone took the couch.

Rowen looked up from rolling the cookie dough. In the lull of supervision, the boy sitting across the table popped a small bit of the dough into his mouth. 

"Don't eat that," Rowen said absently, watching Ryo.

"Mmmm..." the boy said happily. He held a hand of dough towards his older friend. "Would you like some?"

Hair fell across his eyes while Rowen tilted his head in consideration. "Yes, actually," he said, "but I have self control."

He opened his mouth anyway, catching the tidbit Yuli tossed to him in a practiced motion. Ryo laughed softly, watching from his seat at the other side of the table, one knee pulled up to his chest and hands clasped across his shin. 

"Ryo, did you want to help?" Rowen spoke around a mouth-full of sugar and butter, blue eyes watching him through blue hair that wasn't quite as impressive as it should have been with the dark roots starting to show. He must have been very busy these last few months that he hadn't kept up on the dye job.

"We need your help," Yuli told Ryo seriously, rocking back on his heels and eating another ball of dough. "Rowen can't cook at all."

He got a glare and a less than gentle shove for his trouble. "I know too much cookie dough will make you sick," Rowen said. Yuli giggled, sliding off his seat. 

Yuli was not as small as he used to be, especially standing next to Ryo who wasn't very tall to begin with. His infrequent visits brought out his changing height more than anything. He was eleven now, and Ryo could see the difference.

"Do we have cookie cutters? I'm going to make a rabbit, and then I'll bite its ears off..."  The boy was soon distracted searching through cabinets and drawers. There was something satiric in the way Yuli still played the child when he was with them. As if he really had more interest in cookie baking than video games these days.

"Ryo?" Rowen repeated, pausing in rolling out the sugar cookies. His arms were marked with bits of dough, and there was flour in his hair.

Ryo shook his head. "No, it's okay. I don't mind watching."

"If you want," Rowen shrugged. He pushed a lock of hair out of his eyes, leaving a streak of white across his cheek. For all that he liked it cut short, Rowen seemed have more trouble with his hair than Ryo. "It's distracting this brat, that's all. And fuck it all if his parents don't pick him up soon." 

Suddenly, he staggered, Yuli drawing his foot back from a well-coordinated kick at the back of Rowen's knee. "Ow..." the archer said with an exaggerated wince.

Ryo rested his cheek against the cloth of his jeans with a small grin. "I don't think his parents will be happy if he grows up talking like you." Rowen made a face at him.

Flour covered hands shoved metal animal shapes in front of his face. "Which one, Ryo? The rabbit or the cat?" Yuli asked earnestly. "We have a pig too, but it's really... stupid." Young eyes watched him with trust. As it did every time, it took Ryo by surprise.

"Don't start on me," Rowen said, speaking to Ryo. "Cye all but came after me with a knife the other day. Fuck! Like I'm corrupting him or something." Rowen shot a resentful glare towards Ryo's end of the table and the back of Yuli's head. 

The child shrugged it off serenely. "Oh, shut up. I didn't learn it from you," he said, stalking back to his stool, dough cutters clenched in hand.

But nobody was really paying him much attention. Ryo's head had come off his knee when Rowen spoke, his lips parted in just the slightest surprise. Rowen noticed and knew why, watching Ryo out of the corner of a dark, dark blue eye.

"Oh," Ryo said. "Oh. Cye."

And things suddenly didn't seem so great after all.

"Ryo?"

"Ryo - Ryo!"

Ryo started, looking up to see Rowen tossing down a handful of clothes in front of the basement stairs. Briefly, it looked as thought the taller man might turn and go, his errand done, but he kept walking into the dark room where Ryo was zoned out in the flickering light of the old mecha anime. The beaten, ancient couch bounced when Rowen sank into it next to him.

"What?" Ryo said shortly. It came out badly, almost like he was irritated when he really wasn't.

Startled by that, Rowen pulled back, searching Ryo's face for some explanation. Ryo cringed but turned back to the big robots on the TV. 

He really hoped Rowen didn't feel motivated enough to ask him what his problem was. 

"Kid's gone home," Rowen said after a bit. Ryo relaxed minutely as Rowen kept to safer topics, but it didn't last. A shift in the couch while Rowen got up the nerve to be awkward and that was all the warning he had. 

"I meant to ask, do you know what's up with Cye?" Rowen asked carefully, pretending to be casual. He hadn't asked the right question exactly, but it didn't matter since it was all the same thing anyway.

"Cye?" Ryo repeated uselessly, eyes fixed on poorly a animated battle mech, but his hand was fidgeting uneasily with the cuff of his jeans, one knee drawn up to his chest. 

Rowen heaved a frustrated sigh, shifting impatiently and making the couch rock with the restless motion. "Yeah – Cye. I thought you must've noticed the way he's been. In the kitchen..."

"Yeah, I know," Ryo cut in, this time honestly irritated.

Silence stretched. Rowen was waiting, relaxing comfortably at the end of the couch and determined to outlast Ryo's silence. In the end, Ryo would give in because he wasn't so rude as to just get up and leave, and Rowen sure as hell wasn't going to leave first.

With a desperate sort of moan, Ryo sank, falling back into the cushions that obligingly tried to swallow him up. "I don't know, Rowen."

"But you know what I'm talking about - don't you?" Rowen insisted, leaning forward the grip Ryo's wrist. Whether he meant it for comfort or just emphasis, Ryo couldn't tell. He felt he should manage a better response, but he didn't have the energy to move. 

"I don't know," Ryo repeated softly. "He's been weird

for... months. Since it rained." 

Rowen's lips twitched. The darkness and the flickering screen distorted the expression, made him look manic. "That wasn't the only time in the world it's rained, Ryo. Rain isn't so uncommon around here."

"Not like that. It's never rained like that." Ryo shot him an accusatory glare. "And don't tease me! Since you knew what I meant!"

"Yeah, and?" Rowen watched him expectantly.

Ryo sighed like a dying man who never expected to take another breath. Rowen almost didn't hear him when he spoke. 

"I think he's mad at me... and I don't have any idea why..."

"Won't do you any good anyway," Rowen said thoughtfully over the breakfast dishes.

"What won't?" Ryo asked numbly, handing him another dirty glass. 

Rowen looked over at the cleared table, nodding at the woman's jacket slung over the back of a chair. "Mia gone yet?"

"No," Ryo said. "Almost. Rowen, what won't do me any good?" 

But Mia walked into the kitchen then, patting her hair busily and talking to herself about the things she would need at work that day. She snatched up the prettily cut jacket and the newspaper.

"Have you seen my purse, boys?" she turned to them, unfailingly bright in the wet and dreary morning.

Ryo winced. "Yuli might have moved it to make cookies yesterday?"

Mia flashed him a nice smile, "Probably covered in flour and other messes by now then."

Rowen gave her a gallant, hunky grin. "No, but I let the tiger chew on it. Was that bad?"

Mia shifted her weight, a hand on a hip and watched him with her lips pursed unhappily. He shrugged as though it didn't matter to him, a noncommittal gesture, the kind he was good at. "I think it's on the table in the dining room."

"Thank you, Rowen." Gifting them with one last smile, Mia walked out again, heels clicking on the tiled floor. She didn't need the shoes. She was already Ryo's height without and Ryo wasn't all that short. Sure, he was shorter than everybody except Kento, but there were a lot of tall people in the house these days.

"Hey," Rowen called after her. Ryo could hear her moving around in the front room. That and the kitchen and the den with the TV made up the ground floor.

"What?" Mia said. Rowen shrugged again out of habit, even though she couldn't see it.

"Nothing big, but could you leave the keys out when you get back? I'm gonna need the car kinda early tomorrow. Unless you want me to wake you up..."

"I'll park in here, instead of at the big house then. Ta ta for now," Mia's voice drifted back in. A little while later the door opened and closed. They heard a car start in the driveway.

Rowen went back to washing dishes, humming and not answering Ryo's question at all.

Even Kento might be taller now, Ryo admitted to himself. It had been almost a year since he'd seen Kento, and the last time Ryo hadn't seen any of them for half so long, everybody but Ryo had grown. And Mia, but she was too old for that now. Maybe Kento was too. Ryo didn't know.

"Rowen," Ryo repeated, "_what_ won't do me any good?"

"Well," Rowen said slowly as if he were only thinking of this now and not just trying to mess with Ryo's head, "Cye's coming in tomorrow, and then all this bit about avoiding him is going to come to shit, now isn't it?"

With relief, Cye set the two pieces of luggage by the curb. The airport was busy, and he did not enjoy carrying a two week supply of clothes across a terminal of people trying to get in his way. Resting his aching arms on weary knees, he sat on the suitcase that didn't carry presents for everyone packed carefully away and waited for his ride.

Which was late, but when both Ryo and Rowen were working together to the detriment of everyone's punctuality, he hadn't really expected anything else.  He watched the overcast sky warily. With any luck, they'd scramble their way here before it started to rain. It had been raining already, he thought. The concrete was mostly dry, but puddles survived here and there where the sidewalk met the road. 

A large SUV motored through one, nearly catching his nicely pressed slacks with muddy spray. Fast and reckless, the car screeched to a sudden halt a few meters past him. A door clicked open and a voice called out.

"Shit, Cye. A _suit_?" 

Oh, Rowen. Of course. Who else could it possibly be? Rowen would like the sheer ridiculous size of it, a joke on every other person who dared to share the road. Except that it was probably Mia's car, but Cye could gripe about Rowen if he wanted to.

Another door opened. Rowen and -

Ryo. Obviously.

...god damnit.

Cye stood up as Ryo got out of the car. Rowen went right for Cye's luggage and Ryo came after, not sure what else to do.

"A _suit_?" Rowen demanded tactlessly. As least when Rowen was without tact, it always seemed deliberate. Ryo was simply hopeless.

Cye was watching Rowen jerking his luggage around with disapproval. "I had an interview for an internship next year," he said coolly. "There weren't any other appointments and I had to leave for the plane from the interview." His tone was cool, but he tugged self-consciously on the gray jacket when he noticed Ryo looking at it curiously. 

"Yes," Rowen agreed, throwing the first suitcase into the back of the jeep, "but _whose_ suit is it? It fits you horribly." As if Rowen were the person to know.

Cye let go of the jacket and decided to ignore Rowen. But when Rowen reached for the second suitcase, Cye bodily cut him off. 

"No - no, that one's got presents, thank you." So Ryo reached for it. 

"I'll take it," he offered softly. "I won't break anything."

Ryo felt a little stupid, really. Nothing had seemed unusual so far. Cye was just...Cye, but when Ryo spoke, that pleasant make-believe shattered into so many broken pieces. 

"You just want to look before everyone else," Rowen observed with amusement, always fond of bugging Cye to the end of his patience.

But Cye didn't respond. Not to Rowen and not to Ryo because he had frozen in place as soon as the first word left Ryo's mouth.

He just stood over the brown canvas roller and watched Ryo, his face dark and severe. He didn't look away or falter when Ryo stared back, abashed. Even Rowen noticed that something was horribly wrong. 

Finally Ryo just said, "I'm glad you came, Cye," and got back in the car, letting the suitcase stay where it was at Cye's feet.

After a bit, Cye carefully put it away himself.

The ride back was awkward with Ryo trying hide in the front seat and refusing to speak, wishing the car's cushions would swallow him up the way the couch in the TV rooms had tried to, but Rowen drummed up conversation in spite of it. Sitting behind the driver's seat, Cye made very good small talk back at him, but he never stopped looking solemn.

Or glancing at Ryo with unhappy eyes.

----

The door slammed open at exactly seven o'clock the next morning, leaving a mark on the wallpaper that Mia would mourn months later when she finally noticed it. It was a loud entrance and not only for the sound of the wood rebounding against the wall.

"HEY there!" Kento roared into the quiet house. Rowen came in after, kicking the door shut ill-naturedly behind him.

"It's seven a.m., reject," he groused, wincing behind his ray bans.

The contrast between the two was only exaggerated by appearances. Rowen, thin and bony, slinking around like a rat behind Kento's beaming form. Rowen was still taller, but Kento had grown, as Ryo had feared. He had also trimmed his curling blue-gray hair down to something like a respectable cut while Rowen had let his short blue air grow shaggy.

It was the eagle and the crow, nit-picking in the foyer.

At Rowen's complaining, Kento gave him a grin that spanned his wide face. "And here I am! Hey, house! MISS ME?" One large palm pounded Rowen enthusiastically in the middle of the back. He nearly hacked up a lung.

They heard footsteps and saw Cye, dressed for bed in t-shirt and shorts, stalking to the top of the stairs, glowering down at them. "Kento, if you don't shut up now," he warned, "I will strangle you with your own bed sheet." Then he turned abruptly and disappeared back into his room.

"I'll also kill you." Rowen added, stumbling into the kitchen. "The next time you pull an early flight, you can walk home."

Still grinning, Kento followed him, though it was with a more subdued exuberance. He dropped his duffle by the door to the dining room, leaning against the kitchen counter while Rowen shuffled to the refrigerator, pulling out the milk. It was quiet enough, aside from the two of them, that the sound of the clock ticking on the wall seemed loud and intrusive.

Rowen stopped, frowning as thoughts came slowly to his morning mind, and then gestured at Kento with the milk carton. "You want breakfast?" he said suspiciously. He might have narrowed his eyes under the sunglasses, but Kento couldn't tell.

"Uh...yeah?"

Rowen slammed the carton onto the counter, muttering something unpleasant. Just general Rowen in the morning, Kento decided. "There's cereal," Rowen offered finally, glaring at the wall clock over Kento's head.

"Well, okay." Kento took off his coat, dropping it onto the back of a chair before he started opening cabinets. "I can get it. Is it in the same place?"

Rowen slouched at the round table, resting his head on a hand with a yawn. "Yeah," he said. "Maybe."

Kento found it and sat down across from Rowen. "You can go back to bed if you want," he offered politely. "What'd you do – stay up all night?"

"Sort of. Ryo wouldn't go to bed."

Kento paused. Ryo refusing to go to sleep wasn't all that unusual, but it had tended to be a high school stressing-out thing years ago. Usually the rest of them just let him do it since Ryo wasn't the type to make himself sick, with notable exceptions, and most of the time he'd quit it as soon as he got tired enough.

"Why not?" There wasn't much left in the cereal box so Kento poured himself what was left, poking the corn flakes down into the milk with a spoon that was dwarfed by his hand.

"Cye's pissed – at Ryo." Rowen pushed the sunglasses up onto his forehead, stifling another yawn.

That was unusual though, and a little worrisome. Kento looked up from his food, searching Rowen for clues or reassurance, but Rowen just looked disinterested.

"At Ryo?" Kento said. "Not you?" He smiled a little at his own half-joke.

"Surprise," Rowen's mouth twisted in an ironic smile. "Cye isn't always pissed at me."

Kento snorted around his corn flakes. "Not for your lack of trying."

Rowen had no reply, but squirmed for a second before half-sneering, deciding he didn't really need to say anything to that.

"What about Ryo?" Kento asked instead, tapping his spoon thoughtfully against the side of his bowl.

Rowen shrugged. "Ryo said something about rain."

Kento blinked at him. "Rain...?" Then it dawned on him. "Ohhh... well that does kind of make sense."

"What?"

"I mean, he could only be talking about Christmas, right? He did almost get himself killed."

"You've got to be kidding me. It's been three months. You weren't even there. Cye isn't that much of a prick."

"Cye was pretty angry. He called Ryo a whole bunch of names, yelling about self-preservation instinct and whatever. If he hasn't talked to Ryo about it since then..." Kento stopped at the rudely skeptical look on Rowen's face. "Okay, what do you think is going on?"

For a second, Rowen seemed prepared to put some thought into the question. He leaned forward across the table like a conspirator, waggling his eyebrows ludicrously. "I think Cye is madly in love with Ryo and overcome with animal lust."

Kento halted in the middle of lifting the spoon to his mouth. Rowen just returned the stare, pretending innocence.

"You – what? That's - Okay, you know what? I'm just gonna go unpack. You're completely freakin' ridiculous." Kento finished the last bite of cereal and dropped the plastic bowl into the sink.

Rowen threw back his head and laughed. Kento knew, carrying the bag up the stairs, that Rowen was laughing so he could hear.

Mia chuckled to herself when she found Rowen at the kitchen table, dozing uncomfortably on one out-flung arm.

"Rowen," she said softly, tapping his shoulder. "Rowen."

He muttered and shifted, lifting his head painfully. "What?" he said when his eyes had focused on her.

"Kento's here isn't he?"

"Upstairs. Unpacking, he said." He yawned.

Mia cocked her head, tilting an ear towards the ceiling. "Well, someone's taking a shower. We can give them about a half an hour to be up and ready..." She looked back to Rowen. "I thought we'd have a big breakfast with everyone who's here."

Rowen yawned again, hiding it behind a hand. "Kento already ate."

"Don't worry. That won't stop him."

He raised an eyebrow, the two of them sharing an understanding smirk. "No, I guess not," he said. He lurched to his feet to help Mia pull out the pancake mix.

Cye walked in while Mia was cooking the pancakes. He looked awake and no longer angry about Kento's rowdy entrance. This morning was, after all, essentially the norm. Mia looked over, smiling. Her brown hair was pulled up and back, still stylish as the in-house cook.

"Cye, Ryo hasn't gotten up," she said. "Do you think you could...?"

From his position placing plates and glasses on the table, Rowen perked up and shot several unsubtle looks in Cye's direction, but  Cye's reaction was disappointingly undramatic.

"Ok," he said, nodding helpfully. "Will it be a few minutes?"

"Just a few. We're almost ready. Get him up right away!" Mia warned, flipping pancakes off the skillet and onto a plate.

Ryo's door was the same as any other door in the house, but there was something today that made it more imposing as Cye stood in front of it, staring. He tried to remind himself that he was doing Mia a favor, but it wasn't working. Where the hell had all that poise he'd managed downstairs gone to now?

It took another self-pep talk and a nervous swallowing of the throat before he could force himself to push open the door.

Ryo was asleep. He hadn't closed his curtains more than half way, and the sun was slanting across his face. Cye could never sleep with the sun in his eyes and wondered how Ryo could manage it.

He'd meant to just call out from the door and go, but now that he was inside he couldn't do it so rudely. He padded across the carpet towards the bed that was pushed up against the big windows overlooking the lake. A person could climb out them if he wanted to get onto the small balcony behind the house. The room was one of the smaller of the two bedrooms, fitting only one bed, but Ryo had chosen the one that opened to the outside.

When they first began turning the house into a semi-permanent residence, Cye had wanted the room too, but it made sense to give it to Ryo who stayed in the house most often. True, Ryo had offered to share – there weren't enough bedrooms for everyone to have his own – but Cye had fled in indignant embarrassment when Kento had pointed out that to do that they'd need a double bed since the room wasn't big enough for two separate beds.

It was a little surprising to see the tiger absent, but White Blaze came and went according to no one's schedule. Strangely, Ryo didn't take up any more room without the tiger, curled up tightly in the middle of messy sheets and blankets, his longish black hair tangled and stark against the white linens. He didn't look comfortable, lying there with his arms wrapped rigidly around his knees and his eyes squeezed shut against the sun.

Seeing that, Cye reached forward immediately. For a moment, he reacted as he always had – with simple concern for a friend and forget what anyone else thought.

Because Ryo had nightmares. Not consistently, but in storms. No wonder he reacted to stress with voluntary insomnia. Cye hoped that wasn't the reason behind Ryo's sleeping frown.

But as soon as his hand was on Ryo's arm and Ryo's eyes were opening, he had a bit of a panic attack, unreasonably aware of being in Ryo's room and on Ryo's bed. No reason to be so flustered. After all, Rowen was the one who liked to sleep in the buff.

Ryo stretched, pulling a little out of his ball and blinking in a sleepy daze. "Cye?" he asked, recognizing the shape sitting on his bed. It was very bright and he squinted, wavering between keeping his eyes open and closing them against the glare.

Cye snatched his hand back nervously. He thought he must seem silly and childish, but in reality his face closed off and he seemed cold. "Ryo," he said. "I..." He shook himself and started again, businesslike. "Breakfast is ready. Do you want to get up?"

The smell was wafting up the stairs, beckoning. He took a deep breath and saw Ryo do the same as he lay there on the bed, though Ryo's blue eyes, brilliant and deep in the sunlight, were still watching him warily.

It twisted something inside his head to see Ryo watching him as though he were a threat. His cold front broke for an instant, and he leaned forward, meaning to say something, anything really, to reassure Ryo.

With one arm resting across his forehead and blocking out the sun, Ryo watched him, waiting. The shadow across his face made his tan skin look darker than it already was while his eyes were blue coals in the darkness.

I'm sorry, Ryo. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I'm not angry anymore. I just don't know what to do...

"Hey, I smell pancakes!"

Cye jerked away. Ryo glanced to the door, as Cye did, to see Kento standing there, grinning, as open and welcoming as he probably always would be. He clapped his hands together, urging them up and out.

"Come on, kiddies. Let's go, let's go!" He mimicked the cold pout he saw on Cye's face. "Aw, why the long face?" Then he was laughing and turning to go.

Cye stood up, feeling like his joints had frozen. He looked back at Ryo mechanically. The dark-haired man was scrambling out of bed and standing unsteadily. "It's okay. Let's go," Ryo said, reaching out to touch Cye on the arm.

So Cye left, wincing when he heard Ryo stumble over the sheets on the floor and he couldn't make himself turn back to offer a hand, even if it wasn't needed.

Cye didn't stay for breakfast.

The meal wasn't the perfectly cheerful affair Mia had envisioned with Ryo jumping every time Rowen clumsily clinked his glass against a plate and Cye not even there.

It wasn't all bad though. Mia was pleasant, poking Rowen's elbows off the table and teasing Kento about his eating habits while he laughed off her jibes. But when Cye got up and left without eating, Kento stared after him for a long time, thinking hard.

Because Cye was acting stranger than he'd expected from Rowen's warning, and more than that, he couldn't remember coming across Cye in Ryo's room that morning without thinking of Rowen's stupid joke about animal lust.

Breakfast was over quickly, ending on something of an odd note when Mia asked about Cye's departure. She looked up, some time after the fact, glancing at the back door that led to the yard and the dock. "Do you suppose he's sick? Should we save something for him?"

Rowen shook his head, playing absently with the leftover syrup on his plate. "He looked fine this morning," he said, licking a finger. "Probably not in the mood for pancakes." He arched an eyebrow in Ryo's direction. "Unless you did something to him, eh?"

Ryo started at the question, having not been paying attention, and stood up suddenly, his chair screeching against the kitchen tile. "No," he said too strongly.

He colored pink when he saw them watching him curiously, though he was too tan to blush much. "I...I'm going out. I'll be back." More carefully, he pushed the chair back in and left the house, following Cye.

"Jet lag," Kento explained uncertainly to the silence after Ryo went out.

Cye was not very far outside, sitting at the corner of the house near the scraggly rose bush that never bloomed. He noticed Ryo coming, making a face like disgust at his approach. Ryo slowed.

"Cye?" he said hesitantly, almost stopping.

"Go away, Ryo," Cye said simply, sounding tired, and started to get up. Ryo wouldn't follow, Cye knew; Ryo was usually deeply averse to staying where he wasn't wanted.

"Cye, stop it! I want to talk to you." But Ryo was following him, and Cye couldn't bring himself to just take off and run, so he waited around the side of the house, standing in thick uncut grass.

"What's wrong?" Ryo asked when he'd caught up. Tense and jumpy, but his attention was locked on Cye.

"Ryo," Cye forced the sound of reason into his voice, "what are you talking about?" The dew was soaking through his socks; he'd forgotten his shoes. He felt wet and cold.

Unexpectedly, Ryo's face closed off with anger. Cye thought about just leaving then, but Ryo stepped around him, blocking him off into the wall of the house.

"Cye – " even angry, Ryo nearly pleaded, somehow not realizing that he could ever be intimidating.

No, no, go away, Ryo -

"Ryo, nothing's wrong. I don't know what – "

But when Cye made as if to push him away, Ryo's hands caught his shoulders hard. His back hit the side of the house, the stucco rough even through his shirt and he winced.

"No – that's not good enough."

Then he just... stopped, mouth open but no words coming.

Cye stared back at Ryo's face, Ryo starting again and again to say something but couldn't, in his sudden fervor, put words enough together to express himself. And realizing that he could not say what he wanted, he suddenly deflated.

"Cye, I don't – what happened – it's my fault?" The grip on Cye's shoulders slackened and fell off with that oh so hesitant guess.

"Your fault?" Cye managed, caught off guard. His shoulder was sore. He put a hand up to touch where Ryo's grip must have left a mark.

Now Ryo was embarrassed. Shy even! The was a certain absurdity to the atmosphere, Ryo's blush and all this drama set against the background of sun and dew and morning birds.

Cye shifted towards Ryo, not knowing what he planned to do, but Ryo flinched away. "Why are you mad, Cye?"

Cye protested, unable to bear the reputation he'd created for himself, spreading his hands as if he would both fend Ryo off and embrace him at the same time. "But - I'm not mad!"

Ryo stared at him, and Cye blanched. He hadn't meant to admit that. It was his last defense. "Then what?" Ryo demanded.

"Why do you have to understand?" he said desperately, brushing stray brown hair behind his ears, looking off across the lake and at the ground, anywhere but at Ryo.

It worked like it was supposed to, Ryo pulling away just that tiny bit more, forgetting why he'd thought Cye could be reasonable, why he'd come out here after Cye in the first place.

"Cye, I don't... I'm not good at stuff like this," Ryo pleaded one last time. "Just tell me what's wrong? I'm sorry about Christmas, but it was an accident. I didn't mean to – "

"No, I know you didn't, Ryo. It just made me...think about some things. I mean what if you had – " Cye laughed horribly. "Well, you know the 'what if'."

He didn't want to think about that. About the funeral and the wake and the little piece of stone that would have been the only reminder. An accident.

But it would have been another ridiculous thing to be worrying for months about a tragic death that hadn't happened. Except that it really had made him think about things.

Things there was no way to unthink.

Ryo pulled himself away from Cye, kicking once at the rose bush, tugging nervously on the end of his hair. "You're... not still angry?"

"...No."

"But, Cye, then what?"

It always came back to that.

Back against the wall, trapped, Cye froze, faced again with the major paradox behind it all. He didn't want Ryo to think he was angry with him, but if he wasn't angry then there had to be a better explanation for his behavior. And there just wasn't.

"I..."

Ryo waited, impatient and a little disappointed, but still hurt.

"Things are different," Cye said finally. "That's all, Ryo. It just made things different."

There was a glimmer of a thought that he might say more, but it died and he saw Ryo's confidence in him die with it. There was something huge and dangerous between them that went unsaid, and he thought that for the first time Ryo might see it.  The last of Ryo's energy drained away with his hope, and he left Cye standing there, facing the lake.

"Jet lag, Kento? Jet lag? That's the best you could come up with?" Rowen sneered, still licking extra syrup off his fingers as Mia and Kento cleared the table.

Kento ignored him. Mia paused in stacking plates to frown at him, sensing she may have been behind the times.

"What about it?" she said. "Jet lag is very disorienting. Maybe it isn't time for Cye to be hungry."

"Yes," Rowen agreed. "But Cye had an hour flight. What jet lag? Kento flew in from China. He has a reason to be jet lagged." He popped a finger in his mouth to get the last of the sugar.

Kento turned around from loading the dishwasher, brandishing a dirty fork dangerously. "Hey, listen, buddy - " he started.

Except that then Ryo opened the back door and came inside. "Hi," he said uncertainly when everyone froze where they were to look him over like they hadn't expected him back in one piece.

"Does Cye want me to leave him a plate?" Mia asked, though supposedly Ryo had just been going outside, not after Cye.

Ryo didn't answer for a bit, disoriented and not understanding the question. He watched her blankly, leaning a little bit away from them like he regretted coming back inside.

"No," he said finally. "He's not hungry." Then, before anyone could ask another, more biting question, he walked past them, disappearing deeper into the house.

Nobody speculated much about what had happened after Cye and Ryo had left the house. It was an understood awkwardness, the mystery muck at the bottom of the swimming pool that they silently agreed not to stir up.

Kento kept silence because he would not risk anymore of Rowen's stellar observations. Rowen didn't feel anybody had much to contribute in the way of hypothesizing and kept his own theories to himself. Mia, on the other hand, had been so often out of the house with dinners and fundraisers and social dates that she was not aware of any behavior out of the ordinary.

So just about everyone in the house was avoiding each other in one way or another when the door opened that evening and Sage walked in.

"Hello?" he called to the house when no one rushed into the entryway to greet him. Nobody heard him, but Sage was neither in the habit of shouting nor of repeating himself. So he set his bags down in the foyer and walked into the TV room where Kento and Ryo were watching a movie. Neither of them noticed Sage standing in the door a little behind the couch.

"What movie?" Sage asked when no one looked up, Ryo sitting in the old chair in the corner, as far from Kento on the couch, it seemed to Sage, as Ryo could get. He was half asleep, burrowed into ratty cushions with an arm hanging off towards the floor.

Something big and pale shifted on the floor at Ryo's feet. Sage saw that the tiger was stretched out beside the chair, Ryo's hand curling into his fur. Brown-gold cat's eyes inspected Sage for threats. Finding nothing interesting, the white-furred head lowered, going back to sleep. Ryo looked up when the tiger moved.

"Sage," Ryo said, sounding surprised to see him. Sage smiled back, as always entertained by the antics of people just crazy enough to breathe the same air he did.

"Hello," he said when Kento looked up too, also taken aback, but unexpectedly, the Hardrock's first response was to shoot an uneasy glance at Ryo. He turned back quickly to Sage, smoothing over a moment of discomfort with gigantesque charm but not before Sage had filed the glance away for further thought.

"Sage, hey. When did you get in? Sorry we didn't pick you up." Kento flipped off the TV, sensing Sage's inevitable skepticism of the overzealous explosions on the screen.

"I'm here now. It doesn't matter." Sage reached over to turn up the light switch on the wall. Light flooded the room, everyone but Sage and the tiger squinting with the change.

"Okay," Kento said warily. "Well, glad you came." He shifted awkwardly from foot to foot for a second before coming forward. Sage gracefully accepted the welcoming hug and the accompanying manly slap on the back. Kento suddenly hesitated with his hands on Sage's slighter shoulders.

"Your hair..." he said, staring.

"Yours seems a little neater too," Sage agreed. He tossed his head, sending much shorter locks of blond fluttering back from his face. Sage had always had an amazing amount of hair, hair like soft gold that always fell into his face one way or another. Now, much of it had been sheared away, though lengthy bangs still occasionally brushed his eyes. Sage smiled politely. "I was tired of having only one eye."

"I like it, Sage," Ryo said. He yawned, stretching his hands to the ceiling. "Do you want some food? I think there's some dinner left..."

"I would like a little food. Where am I sleeping?"

"Um... we're out of bedrooms," Kento admitted. Sage nodded, unsurprised. "You can take the couch or make Cye share, though I'm not sure the study can take another bed unless we take out the desk." He shrugged. "Either one."

Sage nodded, accepting his choices and followed them to the kitchen to find something to eat.

----

Morning. Cye stood by the window in the kitchen, staring morosely out the window while the sun finished coming up over the lake. He held a water glass raised to his chin, brought up to drink and then forgotten about. Kento and Rowen were still fast asleep. They usually were, the main reason they shared the bigger bedroom. Of course, this early, Cye was usually asleep too.

"Moping, Cye?" Sage asked.

It was a shock, Cye not having noticed Sage come in, but he rallied well and didn't quite drop the glass. He did spill a little over his shirt, gasping at the cold. "What?" he managed finally, and then, answering the question, "Not moping. I'm just tired really." Followed immediately by, "Sage, you cut your hair."

Sage cocked his head, not bothering to hide his thoughtful study of Cye's face. It made Cye nervous, putting down the glass with a thump that might have broken lesser glassware. He wrapped a veneer of normality around himself, coming over to brush at the shortened bangs across Sage's pale forehead with polite curiosity.

There was something off about Cye, Sage realized. Something he thought he remembered from Christmas, though it had not been so obvious then and anyway, unusual behavior had been easy to overlook in the panic and confusion that surrounded Ryo. He stared at Cye openly, wishing he hadn't spent all his time with Ryo, simply assuming Cye had gotten away unscathed. No, Torrent would have been in the midst of it all, would have had to handle it all alone before anyone else had heard even a whisper of the near disaster.

Cye wilted beneath the stare and left quickly, mumbling something about a television show. Sage didn't pursue him, pouring himself a glass of juice while he mulled things over. He didn't know what was going on, not yet, but there was someone else he could ask.

Putting the empty glass by the sink, Sage went looking for Ryo.

It was chilly outside, a wet breeze blowing off the lake; there had been rain last night. Ryo was sitting on the wooden floor of the wrap-around porch with his head on his arms lying across the tiger's back, watching bugs in the puddles scattered across the yard. "Hi, Sage," he said without looking up.

Sage slid slowly onto the swing seat that hung behind Ryo. The other man didn't turn around, but White Blaze cocked an ear in his direction. He gave the tiger an unseen nod of thanks for the attention.

"Yeah, Sage?" Ryo spoke again, muffled because he hadn't lifted his head away from his arms.

Sage hesitated because Ryo sounded annoyed when the status quo dictated that Ryo didn't really get annoyed with Sage. Rowen maybe. Definitely Cye, which, on reflection, was an interesting point to remember in this particular situation.

"I wanted to ask you about Cye," he said. Now Ryo did look at him, head coming up sharply and studying Sage for a moment before forcibly relaxing into false nonchalance. Or perhaps apathy.

"Why are you asking me?" he mumbled, watching the water bugs.

"I thought you might care if he were upset," Sage said simply. He didn't want to deal with why he had come to Ryo first instead of Kento. The explanation was messy and nonsensical because it was mostly instinct.

Ryo buried his face in the tiger's fur, not answering. White Blaze rumbled, the closest he ever came to a purr, twisting around to whuff worriedly at Ryo's hair. "Yeah, I know. I do care. Sorry," Ryo said, guilt coloring the edges of his voice sharp and sad. He peeked out as tiger whiskers tickled his face. "Go 'way, Blaze."

Sage was still watching him. Waiting much more obnoxiously than Rowen ever could because Sage always seemed to know what Ryo was going to say beforehand.

"I don't know what's wrong," Ryo whispered, wondering if he would have to have this conversation with everyone. "He's mad at me. Mad about... I don't know."

"He's angry?" Sage asked incredulously. He hadn't expected that, but then he hadn't been present for Cye's famed departure from their last Christmas vacation. "Maybe I shouldn't have just let him go..." Sage frowned, remembering Cye avoiding him in the kitchen.

Ryo almost leapt away from the tiger, reaching out towards Sage in distress. "No, no, you don't have to do anything. I talked to him. I did." He was frantic, anything to deter Sage, embarrassed that Sage would take his side.

"And he's still angry?" An arched eyebrow of controlled condescension, Sage didn't particularly care if Ryo were embarrassed.

"I..." Ryo hedged. The tiger started to rise, feeling Ryo's discomfort. For a second, Sage wondered if the tiger might consider him a threat. Hopefully not.

Ryo stood now, pushing ineffectually at the tiger. "Go away, Blaze. It's fine, okay? Go away." It seemed that the tiger glared at him a moment before giving one last unhappy growl and ambling away into the yard.

Ryo collapsed on the other side of the swing, immediately drawing one knee up to his chest in an easily recognized habit. He looked like an impossibility, a child's unblemished skin, colored like caramel candy and strange too blue eyes, like a doll's.

"Ryo, Cye has no good reason to be blaming you for anything." Sage spoke evenly, ringing with recognition of the inevitable. "And if he won't listen to you..."

"No," Ryo protested. "No, I..." he trailed off, saying hesitantly, "I don't think he's mad." The faintest blush was rising to his cheeks.

"Then what, Ryo?" Sage demanded, eerily echoing Ryo's own earlier protest.

"He's... never mind." Ryo picked at his jeans and stared out at the water. Unexpectedly he said, "I don't know. He's being really... I don't know. Stupid."

There was a moment before Sage said simply, "Ah."

"What?" Ryo asked, startled, because he didn't see how Sage could have figured anything out from that.

Sage looked at him, considering, putting together pieces and instincts he had gathered. "Nothing," he said finally, obviously lying. Ryo stared at him now, just a little bit horrified that he might have figured out something important.

"What do you mean 'nothing'?" Ryo insisted.

Sage sighed. "I won't go talk to him if you don't want me too, Ryo. He's safe from me, but only because I'm going to assume you will."

Ryo rested his cheek on his arm, watching the wall behind the swing. "I know I should. I just don't know... what he'll do."

He fell silent then, leaving Sage with nothing but the sick feeling of Ryo's despair. He reached out, pulling Ryo to him, his face against Ryo's hair. "Don't worry, Ryo," he whispered, "Don't worry about Cye. No matter what way he's acting now."

----

"A clean shirt? I don't know," Rowen laughed, "I think the grape juice suits you." He was standing over the laundry he'd separated and piled on the basement floor before the washer and dryer. Ryo watched him warily, lacking sleep and not trusting Rowen to cut him any slack for it.

"If you don't want to look, I can find it," he offered softly, holding the wet purple stain away from his skin, the other hand tucked into the pocket of his jeans.

"No, no, no, you'll mess up all my folding." Rowen waved him back, squinting dangerously from within his polyester bastion of lights and darks.

Ryo hesitated, drawing back from the social pain that Rowen could be and that Ryo did not have the energy to deal with. Rowen saw this when Ryo's eyes flickered away towards the wall and sniffed in good imitation of Cye in a mood, muttering, "Maybe you should do your own laundry."

They had a bit of a stare down before Ryo backed off reciting tiredly, "Thank you for washing my clothes, Rowen."

On any other day, Ryo would have liked the way the practiced gratitude delighted Rowen, the way he turned away with affected embarrassment to look through the clothes he'd sorted on the floor, but today Ryo was tired and feeling rotten and would rather snap Rowen's head off than laugh at him.

"Ah, here's one," Rowen said suddenly, pulling a red t-shirt from the bottom of a pile, pleased with himself. Ryo reached for it, but Rowen pulled it back unexpectedly, his expression gone a little furtive, a little pained. Ryo flinched.

Rowen cleared his throat awkwardly, turning his head towards the stairs. "Look," he said, "just because Cye's in a funk, you don't have to be. I really don't know what's wrong with him."

"What?" Ryo asked. He had been expecting interrogation.

Rowen turned back to him, his head cocked curiously. "Ryo, the grape juice," he said, with an air of stating the obvious. "Breakfast? You fell on your ass." He pointed to the splotch across Ryo's shirt. "You don't trip, not you."

Then after a moment, "Should I talk to him?"

At the suggestion, Ryo felt cold. "No. No, it's okay." He added desperately, "I... I know what's wrong with him."

Rowen arched a cerulean eyebrow, trapping Ryo in a hard edged stare, though he wasn't nearly as good at either maneuver as Sage at his best. "You do?"

"Yeah..." Ryo held out a hand entreatingly. "It's okay. I talked to Sage. Can I have the shirt now?"

Rowen sighed, "Because Sage makes everything better." He glanced at Ryo impatiently. "Well, give me the other one so I can get the stain out."

Ryo obediently pulled the white shirt over his head. "You don't have to do all the laundry," he said quietly as the white fabric passed over his face.

The other ronin snorted. "Maybe I want to do -- " He stopped, red shirt in hand, frozen, staring at Ryo's bare skin. "Shit," he said. "I didn't realize."

Ryo watched Rowen's eyes tracing the line of the thick scar that ate into his side. He dropped his arms so that the stained shirt hid his stomach and the pale scar tissue. "Can I have the shirt now?" he repeated.

Blinking at Ryo as though he'd forgotten him, Rowen handed it over mechanically, taking the dirty shirt from Ryo's hands while he tried not to peek at the scar. "I guess I never knew how close it'd been," he said solemnly. His eyes snapped up to Ryo's face. "I can't believe you didn't tell us until you got back." – his voice turned mocking – " 'So guys, how was his recovery. Hey, what's for dinner?'"

Ryo's temper flared under the attention. "How should I have told you? With what phone? In the netherworld?" The anger faded. "It doesn't matter, Ro. I'm okay, really." He pulled the red shirt over his head, tugging it down to be more than certain it reached his waist.

Rowen asked softly, as Ryo was going up the stairs, "What was it like?" Ryo stopped, turning to look at him with dark eyes.

"I don't know," he said. "I don't remember. It was cold."

"God, Ryo, I don't know why you aren't dead sometimes." He bent over his laundry, shaking his head like it was nothing, but Ryo knew he still cried over them when he remembered Talpa.

"It's okay," Ryo told him. "Cye came to get me."

The cabin had only two real bedrooms, what passed for a third serving as a study at every other time of the year. Cye had chosen privacy over space, rolling out the futon each night with the desk pushed into the corner and away from its usual place at the window.

He relished that privacy now, retreating to it gratefully when he could no longer stand the company downstairs, wondering also if he was beginning to regret coming to Mia's at all.

He had expected to look at Ryo and remember blood, reliving that horrible nightmare over and over again, but it hadn't happened. When Ryo had stepped out of the car after Rowen and looked at him with those eyes that Cye had long admired, it had not been the memory of death that stopped him cold.

The door latched clicked, a warning before it opened, and Cye snatched up a book to hide his distraction. "Hullo, Kento," he said when the ronin of hardrock stuck his head past the door.

"Um... so, whatcha doing?" he asked, twisting a hand nervously on the knob. It was transparently not what he had come here to ask.

For a moment, Cye forgot his excuse. Then his fingers closed spasmodically on the book in his hand. "Reading. I'm reading," he said. He waved the book in Kento's direction helpfully. "Come in, don't just stand there."

"Interesting..." Kento said uncertainly, edging into the room like he might change his mind any second about being there. Cye realized that Kento was a little bit frightened of him. He dropped his eyes to stare at the book he'd opened to a random page, trying to remember at what point he had managed to alienate his best friend. Maybe it was happening just now and he ought to be doing something about it.

"Cye, what's going on?" Kento began vaguely enough. "Seems like everybody else knows something about what's going on, except me."

"Going on?" Cye asked. His finger nails were leaving crescent moon dents in the paper pages.

He felt the heavy footsteps across the floor before he saw Kento's feet, and then his chest as he sat crossed legged by the futon. "All I know," Kento explained, still kind, still hinting like he hoped Cye might finish up the fragments Kento offered up, "is that you're mad at Ryo about... something."

Cye spoke flatly, hating the untruth even if he'd created it, "I'm not mad."

"uh...right. And I'm a vegetarian."

"Well, maybe you are. It's possible." Cye turned the page violently.

"Cye."

One part of Cye's mind carefully reviewed his options, counseling silence. The rest of it was already throwing the book down, lifting his head to meet Kento's eyes defiantly. "Of all the people here," he said painfully, "Ryo knows exactly what's going on!"

Cye stood, trying not to notice that Kento's eyes had gone a little wide at the outburst. Kento was scrambling to his feet, taking hold of Cye's shoulders when the other ronin tried to pass. "Sit down, Cye," he begged.

"I don't want to sit down. I don't need to sit down."

"Sit down, Cye," Kento said and pushed, and there wasn't much small fragile Cye could do about it, but sit.

"Look, could you tell me...anything? Please?"

Cye knew that Kento felt like an outcast and a misfit living among a group of brilliant beautiful people. He knew Kento felt he wasn't really friends with Sage, that Ryo got all the support he needed without Hardrock's help. He knew also that Kento suspected Rowen only found him funny for the ridiculous chasm between their intellects.

Cye didn't believe any of these things, but Kento half-did, especially at times like this, when even Cye had abandoned him, and Cye knew that it was a cruelty he would not be guilty of to refuse Kento now.

"I'm not mad at Ryo," he said finally. "Ryo's mad at me, but he won't tell me and I'm tired of waiting."

It was perhaps not exactly true, but it might have told Kento a great many things he didn't know if he had been the type to sort through half-truths for clues. "That's ridiculous," he said bluntly. "He is not."

"He knows that I'm upset," Cye insisted. "He knows he's driving me insane. I know, I know I shouldn't have started the way I did, but I swear to god I wish he'd just admit it instead of pretending like he doesn't know what's going on just because he thinks it's embarrassing. I want to be able to just give up."

"He said that? It was embarrassing?"

Cye looked away. "Hinted. Maybe."

"Cye..."

"Never mind. I can't talk to him. So I'm mean and nasty, but I can't seem to stop and I'd only make it worse if I went near him. Okay? Is that better?"

"No, Cye! If you don't go near him, it won't get better."

"It can't get better," Cye said morbidly. He sounded, to Kento's ears, like he believed it, that it wasn't just Cye's occasional touch of melodrama.

"Cye," Kento said because if he didn't clear this one little thing up there would be no talking about this rationally, "do you have a crush on Ryo?"

Cye blanched, as if he'd wanted it to remain a big, floating ball of indeterminate something forever, no matter how he complained about Ryo doing the same thing.

"Those were kind of not platonic things to say," Kento reminded him apologetically, biting his lip and looking elsewhere. But he wasn't thinking about what Cye had said, he was thinking of Rowen joking at the kitchen table.

What do I think? I think Cye's in love with Ryo and overcome with animal lust. Then blue eyes closing in humor and Rowen's loud laughter at Kento's expense.

Cye stood stiffly. "That's not it. Look, that's...that's just not it."

"Not it?"

"I don't know, Kento," he said. It seemed a defeated thing to say, acknowledging that Kento knew something though refusing to speak any part of it aloud. For now anyway. Not never, Kento hoped.

"I wouldn't mind, you know. If that were it," Kento added as an afterthought, though the idea weirded him out beyond reason, but Cye left without a word.

Later that day, long after the remains of dinner had been cleared up and put away, Rowen was peering down the stairs, wishing desperately that he could go to bed. In this interest he'd put on his pajamas, the kiddie ones printed with Thomas the Tank Engine and even turned down the bed sheets, regretting the lack of hotel chocolate.

And yet, it seemed he wouldn't be sleeping tonight either.

Cye yawned behind him, standing in the open bathroom door. "What is it?" he asked around the toothbrush in his mouth.

Rowen didn't respond immediately, leaning over the banister, balanced with a hand on the wall while he peered into the downstairs hallway, catching a glimpse of the living room and the tiniest fraction of the door to the den. Cye could barely hear the sounds of the television if he strained. Rowen glanced back over his shoulder and grimaced. "I don't think Ryo's going to go to sleep."

"Oh," Cye said mechanically, pretending as best he could that it wasn't really his problem, "if he doesn't want to..."

Rowen frowned at Cye's unconcern, his face a sort of pleading, angry half-pout under ludicrously blue hair. Cye looked away, chewing mournfully on his toothbrush and staring at a spot on the wall past Rowen's head. Only an idiot wouldn't notice that these little episodes of obvious distress all had something to do with Ryo.

Eventually Cye snapped out of it, turning abruptly back into the bathroom. Shortly, teeth clean, Cye came to stand next to him on the stairs. "Don't worry," Cye said uncertainly, his voice tight. "I'll make sure he goes to sleep."

And then like a condemned man, he walked resolutely down the stairs.

The floor boards creaked under careful feet, calling Ryo's attention to the door and away from the television screen. He was surprised to see Cye standing there, having expected Rowen to make a half-serious appearance at which point he would whine about Ryo's bad habits and threaten to stay up until Ryo went to bed. Inevitably though, Rowen always fell asleep on the couch until Ryo woke him much later and took him upstairs.

Rowen wasn't a stranger to staying up until dawn, but he wanted there to be a better reason than a Ryo who was moping and depressed over something Rowen couldn't begin to guess. Not that that would last; Sage knew the answer, and whatever Sage knew Rowen would find out eventually, whether Sage wanted him to or not.

"Hi, Cye," Ryo said because he didn't want to let Cye make the first move, Cye being frighteningly unpredictable these days.

"Hullo, Ryo," Cye said softly, pleasantly enough, sitting down next to him on the couch, crossing his legs under him. Ryo turned down the TV like he wouldn't mind talking, but very carefully said nothing.

"Is there always old mecha on this late?" Cye asked.

"Yeah, somewhere," Ryo agreed after a moment. He sounded tired.

"So... who's that guy with the funny hair then? The one with the curls?"

"I dunno." Ryo shrugged noncommittally.

"Right. Well, I'm going to bed I think. You coming?" Cye asked hopefully, half rising from the couch. Ryo stared at him incredulously.

"Uh... no?" he guessed. Rowen at least didn't pretend to be an idiot, acting like he didn't know what was going on. He turned back to the TV, slamming his thumb onto the 'up' volume control.

"It's getting late..." Cye pointed out lamely.

Ryo looked irritated. "It's not that late."

"But it will be," Cye said, starting hopelessly back the way he had come, hands crossed over his chest. His eyes flickered to the left, watching Ryo while the other ronin pretended interest in the anime. "Why don't you go to sleep, Ryo? Do you want to take something?"

He meant the sleeping pills in the medicine cabinet, the ones they all knew were there. Mia said the over-the-counter medication was for herself, to protect their pride, but Cye knew she kept them for the late-night angst of post-war heroes. He wondered if he was the only one who knew that.

"I just don't feel like sleeping, Cye," Ryo said with a touch of old-fashioned adolescent rebellion.

"Why not?"

Ryo's eyes snapped with fury. "Why do think not?"

Cye felt that one in his gut, slowly bleeding where no one could see, but he only swallowed once before saying softly, "Please go to bed, Ryo. I don't want you to do this to yourself."

"What do you want?" Ryo fiddled with the remote and didn't look at him.

The question floored Cye, even when he should have been expecting it. "I don't – " I don't know. But that wasn't true. He did know. But... "you" seemed a bad answer and one that, as he stood suddenly face-to-face with it, was horribly inadequate for all that he had done.

The ancient couch springs rocked and Ryo was suddenly over him, an hand on the armrest and another on the back of the couch. Ryo's face was close to his and above, the black hair falling down to touch Cye's suddenly sensitive skin. "You used to have a sense of humor," Ryo accused. Cye didn't know what he was trying to say.

"What? I'm sorry – was that supposed to be funny, what you said before?" he fumbled, lost. Ryo only stared, silent and indecipherable, watching him with dark eyes until anger cracked into disappointment.

He sat back suddenly, an equally violent motion, and Cye breathed again, at the same time wishing Ryo would look back. He had forgotten again how blue those eyes were... but then, maybe he wasn't an unbiased observer.

"No," Ryo said, directionless. "Just... you used to."  The room felt hot as if Ryo's cooling fury had given off an excess of heat.

"Yes, I remember," Cye whispered. Energy drained from the room with each word that left his lips. Now he understood exactly why Ryo would stay up all night, unable to sleep, even when his strength were gone. Sleep was restful, and Cye couldn't imagine that now, couldn't imagine a peaceful rest when he felt so empty.

White Blaze pushed open the door, ambling in quietly, seeming unaware or uninterested in the tableau he was breaking. He stopped in front of the couch, watching Cye thoughtfully, very attentive in the twitching of his ears, the big whuffs of air he took in through his nose.

Cye was suddenly terribly aware that the tiger might be unhappy with him, should be unhappy with him, and with meticulous panic, he moved all his limbs safely onto the couch where they did not dangle out enticingly.

Ryo glanced over. Frowned.

"Stop it," he said.

"Stop what?"

"Looking like you think he's going to bite you."

Don't be silly. That's not what I'm doing, Cye planned to say at the same time he said, "Well, he might."

He was surprised to see Ryo look away like Cye had just said something unexpectedly cruel, but then he remembered that the only adult to have ever believed anything Ryo had said about his best friend growing up had responded by calling out Animal Control. It was understandable then that Ryo took any suggestion that White Blaze was a dangerous beast very personally. You didn't admit that White Blaze was an animal. Not around Ryo.

Three months ago, Ryo would have said something about it instead of looking away and maybe gotten mad, but Cye was acting cruel and strange and Ryo didn't want a fight. Any abuse Cye dealt out he would sit there and take it.

Cye understood this with a sudden perfect clarity and fled.

He ended up in Kento's room, Rowen a lifeless lump on the far bed. Kento, for all Cye's horribleness that afternoon, saw the tears looming on Cye's face even in the dark and let him lay down on the bed. He got up once, and Cye heard him talking to someone in the hall that had to be Ryo, but Ryo didn't come in. Then all the lights in the hall were turned out, the bed creaking when Kento lay back down.

It struck Cye with a strange sort of amazement the he had known instinctively how to shred whatever trace of Ryo's trust he might still have had. When Rowen had pouted Cye into going downstairs, Cye had been hit with an unexpected hope. He did need to talk to Ryo despite the dread. Kento was right – how could anything be better without doing that?

Now... His utter failure in doing so...

Laughably, Ryo had come up shortly after he did  instead of staying up until god knows when and he'd come up because of what Cye had done. So in a way, Cye really had gotten Ryo into bed at a reasonable hour. Just like he promised. He pressed his mouth against his hand so that he wouldn't wake Kento while he cried and told himself he was laughing.

----

Ryo slept in. Asleep or merely miserable, he didn't leave his room while an angry tiger discouraged any disruptions with soft growls from the bed. It was horrible, a little sick feeling at the bottom of Cye's stomach, but at the same time the house felt homey like it hadn't in a long, long time. Kento's unquestioning kindness last night had reminded Cye that he had a place here, no matter how he sought to sabotage it.

He surprised himself, getting up to make breakfast for those that came down to eat it. He couldn't quite smile at them, but he no longer flinched when someone looked at him with obvious speculation on his face.

Breakfast went on peacefully for a little while before that confidence failed.

"Um... Cye," Kento started, flicking his spoon back and forth between his fingers, for once not devouring the food in front of him.

Cye put down his bowl, nervously smoothing the place mat under his dish, readying himself for the discomfort in Kento's voice. "What is it, Kento?"

"I... think you ought to talk to Ryo again. Last night, he said – well, he wanted to know you were okay and stuff. But you maybe ought to clear up this whole... um... thing."

Cye looked away. He didn't even take the time to deny there was a "thing" at all.

Rowen watched them both carefully, eating slowly. That morning when Rowen had woken to an extra occupant draped across Kento's bed, he hadn't voiced any theories, hadn't made any unwelcome inquiries, had even run a comforting hand down Cye's back as he passed, glad Cye's self-imposed separation was ending.

Still, that kind of respite from Rowen tended to be the calm before the storm. The archer leaned forward, kicking subtly at Sage's ankle to make sure the blond was paying attention. Sage cast him an barely tolerant glance and kept reading the newspaper.

"I mean, what you're worried about," Kento looked even more nervous, stumbling a little over the words. "Like, rejection..."

"Ryo has no problem with gender, Cye," Sage said suddenly, finishing the article he was reading before looking up.

Cye jumped. Snapped his eyes to Sage's gray ones and stared. "What?" he asked weakly.

Sage smiled. "Trust me," he said. Cye wondered dumbly how Sage would know anything about Ryo's sexual preferences.

Rowen stared at all of them now. Kento's blush and Cye's shock. And the smug secret on Sage's lips. "What are you people talking about?"

"Well, you said..." Kento hedged.

"What? I said what?"

Kento's tone was beseeching. "After you picked me up... in the kitchen..." he hinted, while Sage looked at him curiously.

Rowen put two and two together dubiously. "You woke me up at six o'clock for that plane. I can't believe you took me seriously." Rowen rested his face in a hand, covering his eyes. "Cye, hit him for me."

But Cye stared at Kento with an expression of utter betrayal on his face. He stood and turned to yank open the back door, disappearing outside. Rowen looked up in disbelief at the noise of the slamming door while Kento debated helplessly about going after him. "Maybe I should – "

"No, let him come back in on his own," Sage advised. "He didn't have a coat or shoes. He'll come back soon."

"Or freeze to death," Kento added morbidly.

"He won't stay out that long," Rowen said automatically. Kento nodded reluctantly, watching the door. Sage stood up, looking at his watch.

"Where you going?" Kento asked.

"Out," Sage said. "A few friends from high school are having a small reunion."

"You had friends in high school besides us?" Rowen, with a tone of injured pride and easily distracted from more pressing problems. It was one of his personal commandments –  that no one ever be allowed to understand Sage half as well as he himself did. In the past, when this commandment had been threatened, he had been known to take steps.

"None that I can stand," Sage allowed. He picked up his coat and keys from the table.

"Oh, well, have a fun time then." Rowen waved him out, attention elsewhere.

Time passed.

Kento stared at the door. "Should he have come back in by now?"

"No," Rowen said without looking, picking up the comics section of the paper. "Why was he so angry anyway? I can't believe you told him what I said."

"I didn't..."

Rowen did look up then. "Then why would he...?"

"...because you were right."

"Was not," Rowen said immediately.

"I swear. Think about it."

Kento watched Rowen's eyes get that far away look that meant he running over everything, absolutely everything to see what he might have missed. "Ryo said Cye wasn't mad..." He shot a look at Kento. "This is ridiculous."

"It's true!"

"And yet, still ridiculous. I can't believe he – well, Ryo knows what's going on, at least. I can't believe he didn't tell Sage. He always tells Sage." Then he blinked. "Bastard! That royal bastard!"

"Cye?"

"No, Sage! Of course the jackass does know, obviously. I can't believe I didn't notice."

Kento cracked his knuckles under the table, a nervous habit, and tried to pretend he wasn't doing it. "So what do we do?"

Rowen paused in mid rant, unbalanced. He glared. "Like I have any fucking idea? I would say lock them in a closet or something, except I mean, if Ryo – you know – " Rowen looked uncomfortable, "you'd think he'd have let Cye know by now."

"Maybe he has," Kento said, equally awkward. "Only he didn't want to – you know – and that's why Cye's all weird." This seemed so logical that they seized upon it immediately, regarding each other for a few moments in quiet distress. What happy ending was to be found if the matter had already been settled? How did a person tell anyone it was okay to be rejected?

"Let's just wait for Cye to come back in, okay?" Kento suggested.

"Yes, let's," Rowen agreed.

Ryo woke up to rough hands on his shoulders and a tiger's growl. "What... What?" he mumbled, dazed and half-awake.

Kento was leaning over him, panicked enough to ignore the tiger curled around Ryo with teeth-bared. "Ryo, uh, shit, Ryo. We can't find Cye."

Ryo was instantly awake. His body was cold, something unpleasant in his gut. For an second he thought he was going to throw up. He pulled himself up, hands in White Blaze's fur. "Cye?" he asked softly.

Kento was turning his head from the doorway to Ryo's face. Ryo breathed carefully, but everything was hard. The coldness in his limbs shot iciness up his spine. "Cye?" he repeated. "What about Cye?"

The earth ronin was furtive, bending over Ryo and plucking at his jeans, terribly self-conscious. "He got really upset... he's been outside for three hours without shoes or a coat or anything. Looks like it's gonna rain real bad maybe. It's only noon, but it looks like midnight outside."

"Where outside? Did you look – "

"Yeah, we did Ryo. Around a little. He's not in the yard. In the woods maybe. What if he – " Kento ended that thought before Ryo knew what he'd been about to say.

He got out of bed anyway. Pulled on jeans, didn't bother changing his shirt. Grabbed a sweatshirt, a new one, though he liked them old and ratty. Kento waited, tightly wound, by the door. Ryo didn't like getting dressed in front of Sage, but Kento was a non-entity where modesty was concerned.

"'We' looked?" Ryo repeated, passing Kento, hurrying down the stairs.

"Rowen," Kento explained quickly. "Mia – is Mia ever home? We could call her... I don't know Sage's cell number..."

Ryo was frowning as he went to the kitchen, rummaging through the closet by the back door for a coat. "Why call her? What's wrong, Kento?"

"He's really depressed, Ryo," Kento said mournfully. "Really, really. I don't trust him... to come in if he's cold. Even if he's dangerous-cold."

"What?" Ryo looked heartbroken. His eyes darted away towards the door. "I didn't mean to..." he whispered and stopped himself.

Kento didn't know what to say.

"Fuck!" came from upstairs. Rowen. "Where's my goddamn coat?"

"Rowen, move it!" Kento shot back, uncomfortable looking at Ryo now. His hands gripped each other, massaging opposite palms with nervous intensity.

Ryo stood by the door, shoving feet awkwardly into sneakers, hyped up on their tension. "Why aren't you looking for him? Why did you wait so long?" he demanded, strained.

Running into the room, coat half on, Rowen snapped back, "We were going to look for him! We just woke you up, okay? Okay?"

Kento threw a flashlight at Rowen who fumbled with it, managed to turn it on. Rowen frowned at the gloves Kento was wearing. "It's not fucking January," he said.

Kento glared. "Yeah, but it's freezing. And wet. It'll probably rain." He offered Rowen a pair, old, ratty and tomato pink.

"Jesus H. Christ on a fucking pogo stick," Rowen said, snatching the gloves. "Are we going? Are we going?"

Ryo had the door open. Rowen stalked out past him, trying to hold the flashlight and put his hands into coat pockets at the same time.

Kento came behind, flinching as he hit the frigid air. He hissed through chattering teeth, "Damnit! Isn't this spring? Even if he doesn't throw himself off a cliff, he'll still freeze to death."

"This isn't about suicide," Rowen snarled, lashing out to grip Kento's arm in warning.

"Well, maybe it is." Kento ignored the vise around his bicep. Rowen wasn't much of a threat, not when there were other things to worry about.

"Where the hell is Sage?" Rowen said instead of answering.

"In town," Kento said, but of course Rowen knew that. Ryo had already moved ahead and stood waiting at the edge of the trees, wide eyes revealing his own anxiety. As he had ushered them out by standing in the open door, he led them on now, walking ahead and each time waiting until they followed, bickering.

It took them nearly twenty minutes to calm down enough to split up without fear of losing themselves. Longer before someone found Cye.

The ground was muddy, unpleasant, and cold. Cye couldn't believe he'd walked out of the house without his shoes, but as soon as he'd calmed down enough to regret it, his pride wouldn't let him go back.

And on so many levels, the misery suited his mood.

It was cold outside, too cold for spring. The same kind of weather that had plagued the entire horrible vacation. He didn't wander very long. Fleeing far in those first few minutes of shame before the cold and the rocks and the mud got to him and he slumped to the ground in a break in the trees. The clearing was at the top of a little drop off, man-sized boulders jutting out of the earth.

Cye settled onto one of these dejectedly, staring out across the forest below the drop. He wondered, for one suicidal second, what would happen if he fell.

The idea was followed immediately by terror, for himself because he had almost been serious. "No," he said to himself and the empty air. "Nothing is worth that. Nothing this stupid."

His heart slowed and his breathing calmed as he realized he meant that more than any death wish. God, if he ended like that... killing himself over a crush. And when he'd never even found out Ryo's answer...

No.

Cye saw the future laid out ahead of him then like a disturbing painting. He saw it -- in some ways, he even understood it -- but he wasn't ready to think about it quite yet. He knew that if he decided, finally, to be a rational human being again... that it meant giving up Ryo, giving up this wish for something he so obviously couldn't have, and while the idea hurt, he knew that he could not go back to the house without such a soul-search.

But not yet.

Cye pulled his legs to his chest, put his face against his knees and cried.

It felt better to cry. It took a hold of his whole body such that he couldn't think about the things he didn't want to, didn't notice his body going numb from cold or the darkness that seeped in unexpectedly in the middle of a spring day.

Afterwards, as he brought his face up to again see the world, he thought he might be ready to face the things he had spent the last three months avoiding.

He was surprised, somewhere in the back of his head, to see how dark it had gotten. Rain, then. He pulled his arms tighter around himself, to ward off any of the cold if he could.

"I'm done," he told the rocks, to hear himself say it. "I'm going to go back there and this will be over. My life is not an epic romance."

He laughed, though he didn't think it was funny exactly. Just strange. "I don't know what it will be like," he confessed to no one, "to be around him when this over, but I don't care what it's like -- this isn't worth it."

And because he believed it, he said it again, "This isn't worth it."

It started to rain. Only a drizzle, the kind you can hear but walk through a long time without getting wet. "Inconsiderate," Cye said, louder to the sky above him. "You missed your cue. I'm over my moment, thank you."

There was a still a cold fear in the pit of his stomach, the fear that he would have to face when he finally admitted it all to Ryo, and maybe everyone else, to let them judge his decisions for themselves. What else could he do?

For the moment though, that battle seemed far away and he sat back and basked in the shred of maturity he had gained. It was probably not worth the price, but he felt as close to peaceful as he ever had in three months.

Until one of the tree branches blockading his sanctuary was lifted away and Ryo Sanada walked into the clearing.

"Oh no, not you," Cye said without thinking.

Ryo froze, and his eyes went flat and hostile. Even hurt, they stayed that startling, depthless blue.

Cye slapped a hand over his mouth. "Sorry. I'm sorry! That wasn't what I meant! I mean, I've only just decided I need to apologize to everyone and of course you're the hardest one."

Angry dribbled away a bit into confusion. Ryo walked forward to stop in front of Cye and his rock, looking down through black lashes. He hands were by his sides, relaxed and loose like he didn't know what to do with them. "What?" he said.

"You know what's going on," Cye began painfully, "I know you figured it out or you wouldn't have stopped Rowen or Sage coming after me. They've always  been vicious when you got hurt. You must have kept them back."

Ryo glanced at the trees behind Cye, embarrassed as this evaluation of Sage and Rowen's protectiveness and his power over them. "Yeah," he admitted. "I guess I did."

Cye went on breathlessly. "I didn't really plan this you know. I guess I thought if I stalled long enough it would go away or solve itself. Sorry. This whole thing was just really, really stupid. I'm sorry."

"You don't have to say sorry again, Cye," Ryo said uncomfortably. He watched Cye for a second, then shrugged out of his coat leaving him in the Tokyo U sweatshirt Mia had given him. He held it out and Cye realized he was shaking from the chill.

"Oh -- sorry." He put on the coat, mumbling to cover embarrassment and gratitude. The coat was warm, Ryo-warm, like a fire. Cye sank into it, feeling his body's gratitude.

Ryo smiled, a miniscule, frightened thing. Cye was disgusted with himself for elation it brought on. Ryo paused and the smile faded a little. "So, I mean, you like me?" he asked hesitantly, red-faced and looking away.

Cye's hair was damp, the bangs stuck to his forehead above his eyes. He pushed them away with the back of his hand, mesmerized by the way Ryo stood so perfectly still.

"Yes, Ryo," Cye said, unexpectedly amused by the confrontation he'd dreaded for so long, "I really, really like you." He thought about reaching up to touch Ryo's cheek spontaneously, but his hands were muddy and he didn't want to leave a mark.

The rain really started then. The clouds opened up, and Cye thought of a old forest in December under trees a thousand years old and older demons hiding in their shadows, hit by rain that had been falling, cursed, since the forest began. Cye hunched down, pulling Ryo's jacket over him, but rain dripped down his hair, onto his bare neck.

Ryo flinched when the rain hit him, soaking through the sweatshirt easily. Flinching not from cold. Cye saw it and understood the feeling all to well, for a moment lost in images of darkness and horror and Ryo's blood washing down Cye's arms to the ground and away in the tiny streams and rivers of an ancient storm.

Cye didn't want to stop now, not with such a reminder hanging over them both. It was no time to cower away from it, not when it stared him in the face.

"I thought for a while you hating me would be better than you saying no," he explained, the understanding behind the words coming exactly as fast as he was speaking them.

"But that's what you've been doing for the past couple of days, isn't it?" Cye met Ryo's gaze, hollow like there was nothing inside of him but dead air. "Saying no."

It was true, of course. That was what was so alien to Ryo, what held him so still. He'd never before acted to deliberately hurt one of them before, but he was doing it now, of his own free will.

Ryo expression became pained when Cye spoke. "I don't hate you," he said, like he'd considered it. "We're friends. We still are, aren't we?"

That startled Cye. Then he wondered if it startled him because he'd assumed they would be or because he hadn't thought any friendship was possible after this. He didn't know. "Of course. Always." He said it to erase the devastated expression on Ryo's face but didn't know if he really meant it.

Cye held out a hand then, and Ryo pulled him up. It was heartening that Ryo had done it so automatically, responding to a habit it hadn't occurred to Cye to break, even after months of avoiding Ryo like the plague.

"Cye," Ryo started. "I don't remember, you know. I don't know what you did. I'm sorry if it caused... all this. But thank you –- for saving my life." He waited, not knowing for certain if Cye would reply but expecting it. He was still holding Cye's hand lightly, thumb and forefinger touching in a precise bracelet around his wrist. Cye was so cold and Ryo's hand felt like fire on his skin. It worried Cye, like it had back then, to have Ryo out in this cold rain, like he might be extinguished.

Last Christmas, he almost had.

"It was Cale and Sekhmet and Kayura who did it," Cye told him finally. He spoke with relief, happy to say it. He hadn't been able to speak about it afterwards, afraid to break the spell. "Ryo, they worked for it, but it was me who wanted your life saved. It was so obvious, so painfully obvious that they were fulfilling some kind of penance, trying like they did.

"But I was the only one, the only one there who would have missed you, and that's why you're alive. I can't not believe that if I stop thinking about you or wanting you here then whatever magic brought you back –- it will go away."

Ryo reached out, trailing his fingers along Cye's hair, smoothing it behind his ear. It was the kind of comforting gesture that could be between friends or between lovers and it didn't help Cye's piece of mind much at all, though he was grateful for it.

"I remember you cried," Ryo offered. Rain dripped off of Ryo's hand, ran down behind Cye's ear. Cye shivered.

"I remember that too," he said lightly, and started walking back down the path to the cabin. Ryo came behind. Whatever might have happened, by whatever miracle Ryo might have changed his mind, said "I love you" or at least "I like you" like a fantasy on a dull day...

Those hopes were done now, as they walked back towards the house and oppressive normality.

They ran into Rowen a little ways down. They didn't hear him coming, lost in their own world, until he had tackled Cye, furious with concern.

"You ass! You little bug! Fiendish monkey! Are you all right?" He threw an arm around Cye, the other hand ruffling his hair with rough affection. Rowen more than any of them liked his friends close where they could be seen and properly protected.

"Yes, yes, fine. Sorry." Cye ducked his head, away from Rowen's concern and more than that, his knowledge. What subject Kento had so indiscreetly breeched over an awkward breakfast.

"Sorry?" Rowen asked, as if he didn't know.

"Yes, about just about everything for a very long time."

"That covers a lot of things," Rowen said seriously. He looked at Ryo, who looked back and shrugged. That hurt a little.

"Yes," Cye said anxiously.

Rowen dropped his arms. "Then I forgive you. Of course."

"Oh, thank god," Cye burst out, fiercely ignoring Ryo's dismissive shrug. "I thought you hated me."

Now Rowen laughed at him. "You're so prickly sometimes, Cye."

Ryo stopped Cye on the front porch, pulled him back with a hand on his arm though Rowen had gone inside and Kento hadn't yet come back. Cye wanted to tell him sorry too, though remembering last night, he knew that Kento was still his friend, as much as he had always been.

"Cye?" Ryo said, and there was something in his voice that said he didn't consider this thing as finished as Cye had hoped.

"Ryo?"

Ryo didn't say anything for a long time. He bit his lip and stared and stared at the ground, dredging up unpleasant things he didn't want to say but felt he had to.

"I don't like what you did," Ryo confessed reluctantly. "I really don't like that you got angry about something that wasn't my fault and dragged everybody into it. I wouldn't have minded so much if it was just me, but you hurt everybody else too."

For whatever reason, Cye hadn't been expecting that, more afraid of rejection than condemnation. "Oh," he said, numb.

"It was really stupid, Cye," Ryo said, with feeling, like he was worried he wasn't getting the point across.

"Yes, it was." Cye imagined he had been released from a prison only to find the firing squad on the other side of the door. Understandable, of course. "So you don't forgive me then? That's okay. I can work with that."

Ryo looked dejected. "No, of course I forgive you, Cye! Why wouldn't I forgive you? For all of it."

Cye waited for the other shoe to drop.

"I just don't trust you," Ryo said finally, which was about the worst thing he could have said. Cye wished he could have said he didn't deserve it.

"So that's why I couldn't... I mean, that's why I... said no," Ryo finished.

Shock hit Cye, who had been so completely hopeless from the beginning that he done anything to avoid the risk of Ryo ever finding out that Cye wanted him. But now... It was my fault. He might've said yes. My fault.

"Wait," Cye said hastily when Ryo turned to go in. "Will you ever trust me? Can I make it up to you? Any of it?"

Ryo looked at him and blushed and Cye realized he had taken that in completely the wrong way.  He thought Cye was asking about having another try at love and sex and kisses as much as trust. As if Cye hadn't already given up on Ryo's affections.

Cye meant to correct him, to say quickly, politely, No, I understand you'll never love me. You don't have to answer that. Just tell me you'll trust me again. Please – and so on to cover the awkwardness, but before he could Ryo was speaking again.

"Later, Cye," Ryo said uncomfortably. "Maybe a lot later?" And then he fled inside.

Cye lingered behind, frozen because he had not thought Ryo had anything more to give him, especially not hope. Later, Ryo had said, and he had meant so many things.

Later. Perhaps it wouldn't be so long a wait.

----

o_0

----

The end.

Yes, I know. You want to know if later ever happens. I don't know. Personally, I thought Ryo acted a whole magnitude more attracted to Rowen throughout that whole thing than he did towards Cye. And Sage's comment during breakfast? Whoo.

For all practical purposes, Ryo just doesn't know where he stands with Cye. He's a very simple person; Cye is a very complicated one. Cye has a talent and a fondness for social politics; Ryo's entire state of being is a social faux paus.

Picture a complete lack of common interests.

The upshot is that Ryo won't be able to 'say yes' to Cye until he has had enough time to realize there's something under all that that he likes. He doesn't understand yet that Cye is as vital to his happiness as Kento or Sage or Rowen.

Angst, Ryo. Angst.

Melee

----

Wait, you say, how come there are two more chapters to this story?

Because people whine too much! If you read on, you'll get an epilogue (it' a joke ok?) and the whole long involved story (from Cye's perspective) of what happened that Christmas vacation when Ryo almost got himself killed.

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