I edited almost ten times before I was happy with this. Be aware - it is slash; it's also dark and slightly strange. Heed the genre.

The knock on Teru Mikami's door comes at five minutes past eleven at night, as always. He hurries to answer it, because he already knows who it is.

It's a cold night, heavy with silence, and God is waiting on his front step. Without a word, Mikami opens the door for him, and without a word, God enters. He's wearing a thick coat and carrying a brown paper bag, and he hangs up the former but keeps the latter as he leads Mikami upstairs.

It's a familiar ritual now, but no less surreal than the first time. He would call it a dream, except that God has always been like this - and, after this long, he can no longer afford to wake up.

God leads him into the bedroom without looking back.

Mikami goes to the dresser, opens it, and quietly changes his clothes. He doesn't know why he's asked to dress casually when they're here together, but his mind has sought in vain for answers and his voice doesn't dare, so he simply does as he is told.

He's beginning to find that things are much easier that way.

He closes the drawer, turns, and finds the paper bag being pushed into his hands. He's used to this, too - these enigmatic gifts. He peers inside. This time it's cookies; they look homemade. He'll eat them later, even though he dislikes sugary foods.

He goes to wash his hands, and God follows. Possessive arms slip around his waist, and he looks up into the mirror to meet eyes of the sepia that belongs to old memories and past days, eyes that might have been watching the world since the dawn of time.

Gently, God lifts a hand and divests him of both his glasses and his identity in one delicate motion, running the fingers of the other through his hair to ease it out of its careful order. Mikami's reflection changes. It's no longer himself, no longer even quite human, and he doesn't recognize the face looking back at him from the mirror. Its inky hair lies spilt over its shoulders; its skin is corpselike in the sterile glow of the fluorescent light; the sweatshirt and jeans it wears drape loosely on the sharp angles of its thin body. Dark circles, bruises left by sleepless nights, underscore its wide, questioning eyes, and the arms around it are too tight.

Teru Mikami is beginning to look like a ghost.

And he doesn't know why, he doesn't know what it could be, but he wonders - wonders what it is about a ghost that could make a god cry.