Jenrya can't believe his nine-year-old sister is beating him in Digimon.

"Where'd you get that card?"

"Ryo," Shuichon replies, singsong, and, really, this is as good a time as any.

"Ummm, Shuichon, about Ryo."

She draws a card. "Yes?"

Jenrya glances over his hand. "Last time I checked, he's my boyfriend."

"Well, duh."

He looks up. "What?"

"He's a boy, and he's your friend."

One-handed, Jenrya tears at his hair. "No, Shuichon; Ryo's a really, really good friend."

"I thought Takato was your best friend," Shuichon replies, confused, "who's a boy, not a Digimon."

Time to try a different tactic, Jenrya decides. "Okay, you know Shigeru?"

"Jaarin's boyfriend!" beams Shuichon. "He's a boy and he's Jaarin's really really good friend."

"Er, yeah. Do you remember how he and Jaarin are always holding hands everywhere, and kissing at the doorway and stuff?"

"Yes."

Jenrya wonders if this was a good idea. "That's because Shigeru's Jaarin's boyfriend, so they do all that kissy stuff. I do that with Ryo, because Ryo's my boyfriend."

Shuichon's brow furrows. "But Takato's a boy, and he's your friend, and you don't hold hands with Takato."

Right, thinks Jenrya, the general approach. "Okay, forget about Shigeru. Mom and Dad are married, right? So that means they're going to spend the rest of their lives together. Well, I want to spend my life with another boy, not a girl."

It looks like Shuichon's thinking about it. Then, finally: "Jen," she smiles, "you could have just said you're gay."

"I—what?"

She giggles. "Sailor Haruka and Sailor Michiru on Sailor Moon are both girls and they kiss and hold hands, and I asked Daddy why, because Haruka isn't a boy, and he said they were lesbians, so I asked if boys do that too and he said yes, if they're gay."

"Thank you, Sailor Moon," Jenrya says to the ceiling.

-

"Terriermon, who are you e-mailing?"

"No one!"

-

Jenrya hardly ever goes into Jaarin's room, so he knocks before entering, and is careful not to look at the sketches littering the floor. "Hey, Jaarin?"

She removes her headphones. "Yeah?"

"Can I tell you something?"

"Sure. Have a seat." Jenrya does so. "Having problems with girls?"

"I guess you could call it that," muses Jenrya. "Actually, I'm gay."

Her eyebrows shoot up. "Oh, no; did my doujinshi give you ideas?"

"I don't read it," he replies with a shudder. "And, um, I've got a boyfriend."

Jaarin grins. "Ryo, right?"

"What?!"

His sister snickers. "'I'm going to a movie with Ryo; coincidentally, no one else could come.' Sounds like me and Satoshi."

"Well, yeah, I did get a few excuses from you from over the years." Jenrya allows.

"I taught you well," Jaarin says, ruffling his hair.

-

"Terriermon..."

"I'm e-mailing Lopmon."

"You could just go and talk to him."

"But this is so much more fun! And besides, now Lopmon's family too. Lee dot Lopmon."

-

This could go a lot worse. "Um, Rinchei."

His older brother looks up from some basketball tournament on the TV. "What is it?"

Jenrya sits beside him on the couch. "Er."

"Uh-oh," quips Rinchei, "this sounds serious."

"It is, a bit," Jenrya admits.

Rinchei sighs. "Spit it out, then. You have to go off and save the world again? You're failing Japanese? You lost your virginity in Okinawa? You're gay?"

"Um, that last one," says Jenrya, embarrassed.

"Fag," Rinchei replies, but there's no real heat in it. "Can I have those magazines back, then?"

Jenrya blushes. "Sure."

-

"I swear Terriermon's plotting something! He keeps looking in the fridge."

"Are you sure he's not just hungry?"

"But he keeps checking on the milk!"

"Thirsty, then? Craving calcium?"

"He's lactose intolerant!"

"You're right, that is suspicious."

"Oh, stop laughing, Takato. And he just got his own e-mail address—"

"What is it? I'll add him."

"Like mine but Terriermon instead of Jenrya. So now he spends half his time on the computer—"

"Maybe he made an e-mail buddy. Really, Jen, you don't have to be so paranoid."

-

Now that he's passed that stage of puberty, there is only one thing that can make Jenrya scream like a girl.

"We're out of milk!"

"How sad for you," smirks Terriermon.

"This isn't funny!" Jenrya snaps. "Mom, I know I'm grounded, but can I please go out and buy another bottle? I won't tell any friends I'm going, I won't talk to anyone, even the check out chick—"

"He won't pass Go, he won't collect two thousand yen—"

"Terriermon!" Jenrya yells.

"I'll go with him to make sure he doesn't break his parole," offers Jaarin, and Jenrya thinks he sees a smirk pass between his sister and his partner, but it's gone before he can check. "Come on, Mom, it's been two weeks and I haven't heard him complain, let him out for good behavior."

"I knew it was a bad idea for Jaarin to study law," Rinchei remarks.

Their mother studies Jenrya's face, then relents. "Alright, you can go."

"Good on you, Mayumi," beams Terriermon, as she counts out money for him. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll be in our room."

-

"Terriermon's been spending more time on my computer than I have," Jenrya sighs, with a longing look at his bike. Despite Terriermon's generous offer to balance him out by riding on his shoulder, Mom won't let him ride it until the cast comes off in August.

"Yeah, sorry about that, I kind of gave him a link to a few websites – chatrooms, fanfiction, that sort of thing," grins Jaarin, but the glint in her eye doesn't exactly say 'I got my baby brother's Digimon addicted to the Internet'.

"Fanfiction? You'll warp his mind."

"Says the gay boy," Jaarin points out, and Jenrya rolls his eyes. "Seriously, though; I never would have thought you'd have a boyfriend before Shuichon."

Unconsciously, Jenrya traces over his cast. "Believe me, neither did I."

Jaarin tilts her head to the side. "What's with Ryo, anyway? I keep seeing his name in my magazines with, what's her name, Ruki."

Jenrya taps on his cast.

"Is he playing you?" Jaarin gasps. "That bastard, I'll go down to Kitakyushu and—"

"No!" Jenrya yelps. "No, it's just that someone took photos of him and Ruki when they were hanging out once, and those ended up in the tabloids, so I was all, what the hell, Ryo, but he was like, would it be such a bad idea for your mom to think I'm going out with her—"

"Fake girlfriend?" his sister summarizes.

"Exactly."

Jaarin whistles. "God, no wonder Mom grounded you."

"Thanks a lot." Jenrya retorts. "The thing is, Ruki's in love with him, which I never would have thought would be possible, but she is, apparently. So we had this massive fight a few weeks before Okinawa where she basically screamed at me that I didn't deserve him because he loves me and I'm not doing anything about it."

He'd never realized how good it would feel to finally get it off his chest. For the first time in years, Jaarin hugs him. "I was wondering what the heart around your name on your cast was about. I was thinking: Surely he's not that vain." Jenrya chuckles. "Do you love him?"

"Ye— what?"

Jenrya squints at the window of the convenience store, still a couple of blocks away. Is that really...?

He sprints the last two blocks to the store, and Ryo lifts his sunglasses and gives him a wave. "Hey. You got out for good behavior?"

Jenrya gapes unattractively.

"You look familiar," says Jaarin, coming up behind him at a more sedate pace, "but I just can't place the name. Jenrya, if you could introduce us?"

This is a blatant lie, but it puts Jenrya's brain on autopilot. "Ryo, this is my sister, Jaarin; Jaarin, this is Ryo, my..."

"His boyfriend," Ryo supplies helpfully, then he glances at Jenrya, eyes hinting at hope. "If you'll still have me?"

"I'll give you a moment," Jaarin murmurs, pick pocketing the money from Jenrya and disappearing into the store.

Jenrya's mind has never been good at dealing with emotional issues on the spot. Instead, he focuses on the practical: "Why are you here?"

Ryo shrugs. "I missed you. I haven't seen you since...ages ago, I think that last sleepover, and you haven't been returning my...anything, actually."

Next problem. "How?"

The older boy smirks. "Terriermon's been keeping an eye on the milk."

"Matsuda Takato, I was right!" Jenrya informs the sky.

"I'm not going to ask," says Ryo delicately. "How was Okinawa?"

"It was good," replies Jenrya, reverting to a default vacation answer. But that's lame. "You'd like it. Tokashiki, I mean. It was this little island, and on the beach there weren't many people around and the whole place was surrounded by the sea, and, you'd like it."

"You said that, yes," Ryo smiles. "What was Takato saying about a sand castle?"

"Well, I didn't feel like swimming, so I made a sand castle. And I was bored, so I made it a shiro."

Ryo shakes his head. "You're weird."

"I know, but..." Jenrya's mind suddenly flicks onto another part of the Okinawan vacation. "Takato's cousin was hitting on me."

"Oh no he didn't," gasps Ryo, but there's something hard in his eyes like the moment before he slashes a card.

"He just kept looking at me, like you used to in the digital world," Jenrya continues. "And then he tried to kiss me at the airport—"

The blue of Ryo's eyes sets into steel, and Jenrya thinks he's only half-joking: "Get me on a flight to Okinawa and I will kill him."

"So I told him I had a boyfriend and he just went damn, and said we must make a good-looking couple."

"Well, we do," Ryo admits modestly.

They fall into silence.

"I told my parents about you," Jenrya blurts out eventually. "And I came out to my siblings."

"That explains why Jaarin didn't react much when I said I was your boyfriend," Ryo reflects. "How did they take it?"

"Dad seemed fine with it, apart from the awkward talk on the bees and the bees," Jenrya notes the faint guilt in Ryo's face with amusement, "Mom grounded me which I'm sure Terriermon's told you all about, Shuichon grasped the concept purely because of Sailor Moon," Ryo snorts at that, "Jaarin's supportive, Rinchei...I don't know what he thinks of it, actually; he called me a fag and asked for his porn back but it didn't seem particularly mean."

"That's good," replies Ryo, smiling.

Silence again. Jenrya looks at the pavement.

"I 'dumped' Ruki."

"Really," Jenrya gets out, blinking.

"Yeah. You were right, she does love me, and it's not fair to lead her on when I'm in love with someone else." Ryo shifts a foot, one of his only signs of awkwardness. "And besides, the look on her face. It wasn't worth you."

"Oh," says Jenrya, and he never instigates affection between them, but now he finds himself reaching up to touch Ryo's hair, and they're in front of a convenience store but he kisses him anyway.

Someone wolf whistles. It's probably Jaarin. When they reluctantly move apart, Jenrya spots her waving from inside the store. "Oh, god."

"Shhh," grins Ryo, hands persistent on his shoulder, on his cast. "When are you un-grounded?"

Somehow Jenrya can't keep his hands off Ryo either. "When school starts."

"First weekend of school," Ryo promises. "I'll come up again."

"I'll talk Mom around," puts in Jaarin, reappearing with the milk. "Jenrya, I won't tell her about this. There was a long queue at the store, that was all."

Ryo claps a hand on her shoulder. "You're a good man, Lee."

"I try," Jaarin giggles, suddenly flustered.

"Hands off," Jenrya warns, "he's four years younger than you."

"Older boys, huh, Jenrya?" Jaarin smirks. "Ryo, nice meeting you, Jenrya will see you again, I swear. C'mon, Jenrya."

Jenrya can't resist one more kiss before waving and walking off, wildly trying to stay calm.

"Wait!" calls Ryo. "Lee Jaarin? The doujinshi writer?"

Jaarin lets out a scream. "I'm famous! I'm famous with my baby brother's boyfriend!"

"My boyfriend reads my older sister's shonen ai doujinshi," Jenrya informs the sky, mortified.