Disclaimer: I do not own Yami no Matsuei

Notes: This has been a long time coming, and has undergone a lot of rewrites and reimagining. I hope the end product is a satisfying conclusion to Cloth and Barbed Wire. Thank you very much for your patience! Please, enjoy.

He hadn't expected to wake before the afternoon, but the misty gray light of early morning greeted Tsuzuki's groggily opening eyes. Or rather, it would have, had he not woken up to the pale skin of Hisoka's face contrasting his sandy blond hair and the yellow of the blanket.

It took a moment for full memory to set in.

Tsuzuki brought his hand up to let his fingertips lightly brush Hisoka's face, letting touch cement the reality of Hisoka being there. He pulled his hand away when Hisoka stirred, but too late: Hisoka's eyes had already blinked open, and then blinked away the momentary shock that sleepy forgetfulness created. He moved his hand to wipe at his eyes, giving a tiny groan as he did so.

"You okay?" Tsuzuki asked, a bit anxiously.

Hisoka twitched his forearm, still encased in blanket. "Arms're sore," he mumbled tiredly.

Tsuzuki slipped his hand down the blanket and lifted it away, exposing one of the arms in question to the open air. His fingers settled against Hisoka's skin and began to attempt a massage. "I'm sorry."

"Don't worry about it," Hisoka said, his voice gently dismissive.

Tsuzuki shifted his way closer against Hisoka and curled up slightly. "So I guess it wasn't a dream this time."

"It was real enough from my end."

Tsuzuki finally let his hand rest, giving his concentration fully to looking Hisoka in the eyes. "Do you…wish it hadn't happened?"

"No, I'm…I'm glad it did." Hisoka shifted his arm nervously; his fingers brushed against Tsuzuki's arm and lightly landed there. He was suddenly aware of how close his face was to Tsuzuki's; a slight movement gently touched their noses together. After a moment of pause Tsuzuki deliberately repeated the gesture and then pushed a little further; his hand left Hisoka's arm to tilt Hisoka's chin up and make it easier to press their lips together. He felt Hisoka's leg bend underneath the blanket, but before that could create a distance between them he swung his own leg over Hisoka's. They turned, half unconsciously and half of their own accord; Hisoka rolled onto his back with Tsuzuki on top of him. His pulse picked up a little as Tsuzuki transferred to Hisoka's neck; Tsuzuki must have felt it because he relaxed, lying down atop Hisoka, resting his head on Hisoka's collar and somehow wriggling his hands underneath the trunk of Hisoka's body.

"Sorry," they mumbled simultaneously, and Tsuzuki had to snort some facsimile of amusement at in tandem speech.

"Don't you have something to do today?" Hisoka asked quietly.

"Do I?" Tsuzuki picked his head up, balancing his chin on Hisoka's collarbone.

"'S'the twenty-fifth. Isn't that some major holiday of yours…?"

Tsuzuki made a face. "Main event's at midnight. I…kinda missed it. There's a mass in the morning, though."

"And there's still that angel waiting for you. Might show itself to you this time."

"Would you want to come wi—" But Hisoka's eyes had already given up the fight to stay open, and the deep, even pace of his breathing told Tsuzuki he was not interested in staying awake. "I should probably do it alone, anyway." He went up on his hands and knees, still not wanting to tear his eyes away from his half-asleep partner. "Hisoka?"

"Nn?"

"Will you be okay if I leave?"

"…Yeah," Hisoka said, tentatively. "I'll be fine."

"I'll stay if you want me to."

"No, you should go take care of this."

"Are you su—"

"Yes." Hisoka's brow had knitted, indicating a growing headache made from lack of sleep.

"Okay," Tsuzuki relented, lowering his voice so as to not assault Hisoka's ears and brain with it. The will to get off the mattress was reluctant to assert itself, but Tsuzuki managed to force himself to clamber out of bed, somehow not kicking Hisoka on the way out.

True to form the water was freezing when he stepped inside the shower, but he had long since acclimated himself to his temperamental piping. A quick glance around the stall let him note that Hisoka had thoughtfully, or at least compulsively, arranged the items in the show into some semblance of neatness. He had spent a long time in the bathroom last night…

An unsettled feeling came over him at the thought of Hisoka sitting in the water as it grew even colder, maybe scrubbing his skin off or contemplating drowning or…no. No. He couldn't induce those feelings in Hisoka. Hisoka said so, said that Tsuzuki couldn't hurt him—

Against his will Tsuzuki rushed through the shower and back to his room, the anxiousness he hadn't felt building up in his stomach mitigating upon seeing Hisoka still there, curled up tightly under the yellow blanket, asleep.

Briefly he contemplated staying, a thought process that ended when he remembered Hisoka's insistence that he should meet whomever was waiting for him at St. Mary's. Besides—he couldn't stop himself from thinking—if Hisoka wanted to leave, he didn't want to be around to prevent him.

It was earlier than he had thought. A quick glance informed him that even the priest wasn't yet there to prepare the church for Mass.

He'd been sitting for a few silent minutes before he felt something that he thought was akin to what Hisoka felt with his Empathy: some sort of presence with emotions emanating off it, nudging at the shores of his mind. It took a few more moments for intuition to turn into certainty, and for color and form to fill in the spirit lightly bumping into him.

"You were waiting for me to have sex with my partner?"

The wild, heartfelt laugh had not been changed by over seven decades and dimensional boundaries. "I was waiting for you to do something that would make you happy, Otouto. I didn't know about the sex yet, though. Way to kiss and tell."

"You didn't?"

"There's only so much I can do in the lower dimensions. In Heaven I can siphon off a part of myself and let it follow you around—which I've done, by the way—but there's a whole different set of rules here. Lack of remote viewing, for one thing. Besides, do you really want me tailing you everywhere?"

"Honestly Ruka-nee, it would have been nice to see you."

"I think you wouldn't have believed it was really me," Ruka said, more resignedly than accusingly.

"Yeah…illusions are occupational hazards."

"Moreover you wouldn't think that I'd bother showing up." Tsuzuki felt warmth settle atop his hand. "I'm sorry, Otouto. I really thought the Shinigami post would help you."

"I don't blame you."

"Yes…you're still reserving all the blame for yourself, we've noticed. Mom wants me to tell you to stop it. She'd tell you herself, but the one you always listened to was me. She also wants me to tell you that she misses you like hell, by the way."

"Tell her…tell her the feeling's mutual," Tsuzuki said, with difficulty. A few seconds of comfortable quiet passed. "Ruka?"

"Hmm?"

"Is this it?"

"Is this what?"

"You said you would send me a sign when I was ready to join you. I think this goes a bit above and beyond a sign, but…"

Ruka sighed. "It hasn't even been two months."

"What hasn't…? Oh." Tsuzuki suddenly tensed at the thought of Kyoto.

"I think that if I took you there now you would be just as miserable as when you first died. Maybe more so." Ruka surveyed her younger brother's crushed expression. "You know, Otouto, it doesn't reflect badly on you to not be in Heaven. People do leave it, after all. Dad did."

"He what?"

"Yeah, he reincarnated awhile ago. But that's my point. Heaven's…you go when you're ready for it and you leave when you want to go somewhere else. It's not some ultimate final destination. You're not a shitty despicable worm doomed to fry in Hell, Otouto. You've just got something here that makes it so you can't rest until it's taken care of. Or someone, as the case is now." Ruka cleared her throat. "As much as it pains me to concede that I'm no longer the center of the universe in your eyes, I don't think you should wait on me telling you you're ready for Heaven anymore. That's something you and him should decide."

"You put an awful lot of stock in my relationship with Hisoka," was the only thing Tsuzuki was able to force himself to say.

"Even if I didn't have remote viewing in Heaven…and even if I hadn't seen your exchange a week ago…I know how you love someone, Asato. And it's hard to walk away from something like that, especially if you don't have a reason to."

Ruka cut him off before he could even open his mouth. "He doesn't have a reason to, Otouto. I don't know how you manage to throw your whole being into hating yourself and loving someone else at the same time, but somehow you do it, and it's always driven me nuts. More importantly it's driven you nuts, literally, and maybe this time you'll believe me when I tell you that you don't deserve that."

At first she began to despair, as his usual silence buried her younger brother's voice underneath it. Then she noticed that, for the first time in the hundred years she'd been his sister, the light in his eyes was neither due to tears nor mania.

"I think…" Tsuzuki said, each word painstakingly extricating itself from the self-loathing it had been stuck inside, "that I might enjoy Mass today."

A swell of euphoria that she hadn't experienced since entering Heaven welled up inside Ruka's chest. "Or at least finally pay attention," she teased.

Tsuzuki laughed. "Yeah, I don't think the whole attention-span-of-a-goldfish thing is gonna go away anytime soon."

"I don't think I'd recognize you if it did," Ruka said, now giggling as well. "Hopefully you didn't employ that particular character trait with your partner during what I'm presuming was last night…?"

"Ruka!"

"Sorry, couldn't resist," Ruka said, between laughs. "That's what older siblings are for, right?"

"We're in a church," Tsuzuki continued, not sure if he was horrified or amused at her irreverence.

"Bad me," she said, lightly smacking her hand. "I suppose I'll leave before I offend again…"

"Wait."

Ruka's joking manner melted away at her the earnestness in her brother's tone; she turned back towards him from pretending to start to leave.

"Will you stay?" Tsuzuki asked, sounding and feeling like the child Ruka had always seen him as. "Just for Mass, at least?"

"Of course." Ruka settled back in the pew, the corner of her mouth turned up almost sadly. "I'd stay longer, but I'm not going to keep you. It's far too easy to be distracted by my fabulousness, and you've got someone to go back to now."

Later, halfway through Mass, Tsuzuki remembered what she said, and was surprised that he hadn't thought to counter that with the supposition that Hisoka wouldn't be there to return to.

Tsuzuki walked back inside his house to the sound of dishes clinking together underneath running water. He shook his shoes off as noiselessly as possible and stole into the kitchen. Hisoka stood at the sink, elbows resting against the counter as he determinedly scrubbed a plate, small yellow pieces of sponge ripping off and decorating the bottom of the sink. The dish rack was already filled with the plates and utensils Tsuzuki had left lying around the kitchen, which itself seemed somewhat neater, even with the boxes of memories he had yet to put back in the attic still stacked on the kitchen table.

"I put the laundry away," Hisoka said, not turning his head.

"And scoured my kitchen, from the looks of it," Tsuzuki said good-humoredly.

"It needed it, and I had the time." Hisoka, finally satisfied with the plate, placed it in the disk rack and turned off the faucet.

"Yeah, sorry about that. I got there early and it ran pretty long." Tsuzuki somewhat quickly crossed to the stove and pulled a hand towel off the oven door handle, handing it to Hisoka once he had finished shaking excess water from his hands into the sink.

"Thanks," Hisoka said, taking the towel. "And don't worry about it. It gave me enough time to go out."

"You…went out?"

Hisoka jerked his head in the direction of the table. Tsuzuki glanced in the direction Hisoka had indicated; nestled snugly between two boxes was what looked, from the side, like a picture frame. Tsuzuki glanced at Hisoka, perplexed, before crossing the room and extricating the item from the boxes.

"My family didn't do Christmas at all," Hisoka continued as Tsuzuki did so, "and I didn't know that you celebrated it, so I didn't have anything prepared…frame was a bitch to find; damn near everything is closed."

"What is it?" Tsuzuki asked, looking back at Hisoka as he finally managed to wriggle it from its cardboard prison.

"Calligraphy. Kinda. You had a fountain pen and some blank paper lying around."

"You know calligraphy?"

"I am the heir to a traditional family. But this is nothing spectacular; I just slapped it together while you were at church."

Tsuzuki glanced down at the frame in his hand, turning it over so the glass, shielding a poem, faced him. Hisoka's handwriting was small and almost box-like; even the flowing lines of the characters couldn't escape the regimented, disciplined way he used his hand.

""April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain"," Tsuzuki read aloud. His mind skipped, bittersweet, back two years before. ""Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding a little life with dried tubers"." He looked up. "What is this?"

"Part of a T.S. Eliot poem. American. I don't just hide out in the library, you know. I actually read." He paused. "I was never a huge fan of the springtime. The temptation to escape for a few minutes was too great. There was no way I could walk the mountains without killing myself, but I'd want to be outside…winter made the basement feel like a home."

"What about now?"

Hisoka looked off into space and shrugged tightly. "April is okay now, but I still prefer December."

Tsuzuki gently placed the frame atop one of the boxes. "I'm getting pretty fond of the month, too." He smiled. "Thank you, Hisoka. I love it."

"Thought you'd appreciate the gardening metaphors."

"I do. Though I don't know if I should or shouldn't plant lilacs this spring now."

"I think he advises against it."

"Mums are nicer to look at, anyway." Tsuzuki picked the frame up again and read through the lines again, savoring seeing Hisoka's handwriting on something other than an official report. "I'm gonna find a place for this."

Easier said than done. Even if the living room had been totally cleaned up, Tsuzuki couldn't imagine a place for the poem to go. The kitchen was a perpetual disaster area, so that was out, and the bathroom didn't seem at all appropriate. He wandered the expanse of his house slowly, running the list of possible locations in his head, until he trailed distractedly into the bedroom and was confronted by the only place that seemed at all like it would be a home for the gift.

"Did you see her?" Hisoka's voice floated in from the doorway as he watched Tsuzuki delicately place the frame next to the Maria Kannon, the only keepsake of his mother's that he couldn't bear to ignore.

Tsuzuki shook his head. "It was my sister. But she told me that…that Mom is worried about me, and she…misses m—" The words fell out of his throat and back into his heart. After a few moments of silence he heard the floorboards creak underneath Hisoka's feet, and then felt Hisoka tentatively leaning against his back, head resting between his hands.

"Thank you, for making me go today," Tsuzuki managed to choke out. "It was…" He squinted his eyes shut and tilted his head back. "I needed to see her again. I needed my sister."

Hisoka straightened up, his hands sliding down Tsuzuki's back as he did so, and stepped back. "I'm glad you got the chance to," he said, and Tsuzuki heard the knot in Hisoka's throat. "Are you going to see her again, after today?"

"We might meet each other in the church every once in awhile, when I decide to go. She said that she didn't come earlier because she knew I wouldn't think that it'd really be her…she was right, but now…now I think that I can. Believe it, I mean."

Other fragments of their conversation floated in his mind and suddenly Tsuzuki realized how loaded Hisoka's question had been.

"She told me not to depend on her to tell me when I was ready to move on to Heaven." The sense of relief emanating off Hisoka could not have been clearer had Tsuzuki been the one with Empathy. "She said…she said that's something you and I should agree upon."

"So she knows, I take it."

"Yeah," Tsuzuki said, with difficulty, after a moment. "I thought she already knew, so I mentioned it. I'm sorry; you probably didn't want me to say anything…"

"It wasn't a crime. I'm not ashamed of it."

Tsuzuki turned around. Hisoka seemed to be determinedly staring at the wall the head of the bed was pressed up against, until Tsuzuki followed his gaze more strictly and saw it directed at the strip of linen still tied, if somewhat neatly rolled, to the headboard despite the rest of the bed having been made. Next to the pillow it rested atop sat the yellow blanket, folded and tucked into the corner, looking as though it had always belonged there.

"Did you have any plans for today?" Hisoka continued, nonchalantly.

"No, not really," Tsuzuki said. "We would have spent the whole day at church when I was alive, but I haven't done that in…well, a really long time. Some years I visit Saya. She's Christian, too, though she wasn't raised as exclusively Catholic as I was. I think she and Yuma are doing something together today, though. She said that they haven't had a proper date in awhile, and Christmas is a good time to rectify that."

Hisoka shot him a confused look. "Is it?"

"As I understand it, Christmas is more like Valentine's Day if you're not actually Catholic."

"Oh." Hisoka glanced down, sideways, anywhere but at Tsuzuki. "Did you want to do that?"

"I'm sorry?" Hisoka had spoken so quickly, Tsuzuki had momentarily thought he misheard.

"Go out. Do something together. If it's a holiday for…for lovers…" The embarrassment in Hisoka's voice was almost tangible.

"Do you want to?"

"I…I'm fine with whatever you want to do. "

There it was again. Tsuzuki had never known Hisoka to be so complacent, especially not around him. He'd often taken secret pleasure in the fact that Hisoka felt close enough to him to contradict, to argue, to outright fight with him.

"You don't have to do something just because I want to, Hisoka."

"Just because you want to do it doesn't mean I don't," Hisoka shot back. "When was the last time you forced me into anything?"

Tsuzuki was surprised that he didn't have an answer. It seemed as though, before today, he would have had any number of responses dancing on his tongue, starting with the events of the night before.

"If I don't want to do something, I will tell you," Hisoka said, slowly, trying to pick his words deliberately from the swamp of phrases in his mind. "And…and…I want to…if it'll make you happy, I want to do it, whatever it is."

"You know that…that it's the same with me." The statement was more hopeful than conclusive.

"Yeah." The embarrassed awkwardness did not leave his expression; sincerity instead stood beside it, in his eyes and voice. "I do know."

"Hisoka?"

"What?"

"Last night, why did you…why did you take a bath after…afterwards?"

Hisoka sucked in his lower lip, biting down on it as if to punish himself for stupidity or meanness or whatever he was accusing himself of in his head. "It wasn't because of you. It-…" He looked away, up, sideways, anywhere but at Tsuzuki, before steeling himself and turning his gaze back to his partner. "It's like I said. I wanted him off me. Completely."

Tsuzuki swallowed, trying to steady his nerves; seeing Hisoka become flustered and upset made him want to be likewise. "Did you do it?"

"He's got his claws in pretty deep, but I think that I…I think that we at least showed him the door."

"Thank God." The phrase was unmeditated, light, genuine. "So…going out's starting to sound like a fun idea," Tsuzuki said, after a pause.

"Is there someplace you want to go? Like I said, I know absolutely nothing about what people do on Christmas…"

"There's no place, really. Oh, unless we want to ask Saya and Yuma if they want us to join up with them. I'm sure they'll have something nice planned."

Hisoka seemed to seriously mull the suggestion over. "There most likely won't be crowds, wherever they're going."

"You really want to go see the girls?"

"They'll probably be too wrapped up in each other to bother me. We can always make a break for it if they bust out the Pink House."

"True," Tsuzuki laughed. He'd brought up Saya and Yuma believing that Hisoka would vehemently protest this plan of action, wanting to see some of Hisoka's normal temper. He'd been disappointed to not see Hisoka's usual self shine through, but somehow this change of attitude was more satisfying. "Well, I'll go give them a call and see if they want company."

"Asking is a waste of time."

Yuma's ecstatic shrieking over the phone confirmed Hisoka's prediction. Tsuzuki walked into his living room from the kitchen, wincing from the ringing noise she had left in his ear, to find Hisoka standing there, the coat he had worn last night already on.

"Told you."

Tsuzuki made a face at him. "She says to come whenever we're ready, so I'll get my coat…"

"Let's not stay too long with them," Hisoka said, as Tsuzuki pulled his coat from the living room closet. Tsuzuki was ready to make a joke about Hisoka's low tolerance for other life forms, when he continued. "I'd rather stay over here than there."

"You want to spend the night again?" Tsuzuki asked, pulling the coat on.

"Yeah," Hisoka said, embarrassment once more coloring his features. "I think it's a good idea. And more than that…I want to. And not just to get rid of him or because you want to," Hisoka added quickly, earnestly. "Because I want to."

"I believe you," Tsuzuki said, astonished and, with subdued glee, almost proud that he could speak so truthfully so easily, that he trusted them not to lie to each other and themselves. It felt like something was finally working the way it should, and that progress made him feel as if he were getting another glimpse of Heaven.

"Good."

Tsuzuki adjusted his collar; satisfied, he didn't think about offering Hisoka his hand before doing so. "Shall we get going, then?"

Equally automatically Hisoka took the proffered hand, locking their fingers together as he stepped closer towards his partner. "Let's."