Title: Dog Days (Five Times)
Rating: PG

Author's Note: This was written for the "5 things" meme. The challenge in this case was, "5 times that Kurogane Sorta Forgot He Wasn't A Dog Any More."

1.

The first time that the weather was nice after Fai had completely recovered, Kurogane took him out to their park. He felt a little self-conscious to be out in public in his new shape for the first time, with his boyfriend by his side, but nobody looked at them twice.

In fairness it wasn't that he'd exactly forgotten that he was no longer a dog. He'd actually been considering with some satisfaction how much advantage his new height and reach was going to give him, when flopping about on the soft thick grass turned to playful wrestling. He almost pinned Fai four times in a row, but the smaller man was as agile as a cat and always managed to slip away.

The last time Fai danced away, laughing, with a retaliatory glint in his eye; he snatched up a long thick stick from the ground and waggled it back and forth. "Remember this, Kuro-chan?" he said teasingly, then drew back his arm and threw it. "Fetch!"

Without thinking, Kurogane charged off after it.

At the last minute he remembered to catch it with his hands and not with his mouth, but all the same when he trotted back up to Fai - embarrassment warring with a deep-set satisfaction - he found that they had managed to attract some stares after all. Fai noticed it too, his ears gone pink despite the carefree smile still on his face.

"Next time, we'll bring a football," Fai said, and Kurogane agreed.

2.

The second time was when Fai was calling around, looking for new apartments. It wasn't quite fair, he thought, how even as a dockworker Kurogane still managed to make more money than he had as a waiter; but he had, enough to pull them through the winter. Now that he had all his time to devote to job-hunting, Fai had managed to find a part-time job as a clerk in a nicer part of town; and with the doubled income it was finally time to think about moving.

"Uh huh, that sounds reasonable," Fai said, shifting the phone from one ear to the next. "And are utilities separate or included? Okay. Uh huh... Is there a nearby bus stop?"

He'd phoned half a dozen apartment managers today, but none of them were quite right; his mouth was on autopilot as he scanned down the list of questions. The next one popped out completely involuntarily. "And do you allow large dogs?"

Across the living room, Kurogane looked up at him, his eyebrows rising expressively.

"Um - never mind!" he said hastily into the receiver, overriding the landlord's adamant refusal that dogs were NOT allowed. "It's not important, forget I asked."

"What do you mean, never mind?" the landlord asked suspiciously. "I won't have you trying to sneak any animals past me into the building, do you hear?"

"No, it's nothing like that," Fai denied hastily. "I just, um, I don't have that dog any more. I gave it away. To a neighbor. I mean, it was a neighbor's dog I was taking care of because he gave it away. Anyway, I don't have that dog any more..."

"You'd better not be trying to pull a fast one on me," the landlord grumbled. "Damn kids, think the universe turns around them. If I catch you with a dog I won't hesitate to throw you out!"

"Yes, sir, I completely understand," Fai said weakly into the receiver. He snapped the phone shut with a sigh, and crossed off the next item on the list.

3.

The third time was another simple, thoughtless moment. Fai was going shopping in the grocery store near their new place, and enjoying every minute of it - this new store was so much bigger and cleaner and full of good things than the grungy little shop he'd frequented on the way home from his old job. That combined with the knowledge that he COULD buy all he needed - even all he WANTED - contributed to Fai going a little drunk on power.

He didn't have to buy the smallest sizes, the cheapest knock-offs any more. He could plan for the future. He could STOCK UP. He could take advantage of deals and buy things when they were cheap, and so save money in the long run...

And so when Fai passed by a display of heavily discounted, bulk-rate bags of premium dog food, he didn't hesitate to load down his cart with half a dozen of them.

When he got up to the checkout and began unloading his purchases onto the conveyer belt, the clerk looked at the heaps of dog food and smiled. "So, you've got a pretty big dog, huh?" the clerk asked, making friendly conversion.

It was only then that realization set in; Fai turned beet red and stammered some excuse, reaching for the bags to set them aside. At the last moment, he slowed and stopped. "No," he said to the clerk, overcome by the simple brilliance of a new idea. "No, these aren't for me. I'm... I'm making a donation to the animal shelter on 53rd street."

"Oh, that's real nice of you," the clerk said approvingly, scanning the items and chucking them into bags. "They always need help. There are a lotta pet owners out there who have trouble getting enough food for their animals, in this economy."

"I know," said Fai, because he did. But the world had turned. Once he had been the recipient of charity; now, he gave to others instead. Once he had taken care of a dog; now, Kurogane took care of him.

4.

The fourth time was only as embarrassing as it was because half a dozen other people were there as witnesses. Fai was returning (slightly drunk) from an office party held in his honor for passing the bar. Several of Fai's coworkers and some of his friends (as well as those who overlapped both categories) staggered along with him out of the subway station.

Kurogane was waiting outside, as he'd declared over the phone he had no intention of letting Fai walk back to their apartment alone. Unfortunately, Fai's friends had the same idea, with the result that the whole party continued through the darkened streets towards Kurogane and Fai's apartment, occasionally breaking into off-key song.

They had almost made it home without incident - rounding the last block to their apartment building - when Kurogane's attention had been drawn by something in a nearby alleyway. His brows drew down, and he scowled as his body tensed. "What's that mangy mutt think he's doing?" he muttered under his breath.

The "mutt" in question looked to be somebody's stray dog - it still had a collar on, with a broken leash dragging - and it was nosing around the alley and knocking over trash cans. Kurogane's lips peeled back from his white teeth, he took a deep breath that sounded like a snarl in his throat, and without any more warning he took off after the dog, baying curses at the top of his lungs with mayhem in his eyes.

Fai's coworkers stood stunned at the sudden spectacle of Kurogane running off the dog - the other dog. Few of them had ever had much contact with Kurogane except through Fai's happy retellings; none of them were really his friends. Kurogane had never shown much interest in making human friends, and he barely tolerated them for Fai's sake.

"Jeez," one of Fai's friends said weakly, watching the explosion of territorial fury. "Your boyfriend really hates dogs, doesn't he?"

"Is that why you had to get rid of your old dog? The one whose pictures you have on your desk?" one of his coworkers wanted to know. "He made you get rid of it after you hooked up with him? That's so unfair!"

"Ah... ha ha..." Fai laughed nervously, as Kurogane returned to the group with a dark scowl overlying a deep underlying smugness at having defended HIS territory.

He could feel his hangover coming on already, and he wasn't even done being drunk yet.

...and one time Fai wanted to forget, but couldn't.

WARNING! If you want to imagine a happy ending for Dog Days, you may want to stop reading now.

.

Fai stood in front of the arcade-bright storefront, head flung back to face the sky and feet planted wide on the icy sidewalk. A few specks of icy sleet spun down from the grey skies overhead, but Fai ignored it.

It had taken him too long to track this place down. No longer a run-down storefront in the cheaper part of Chinatown, the mysterious pet store had moved to a small, tenth-story boutique in this multi-level shopping arcade. He took a deep breath, feeling it sear icily in his lungs, and plunged through the revolving door into the bright, chaotic heat of the building.

The pet shop was hard to find; unlike the other stores in the shopping mall, it had no broad plate glass windows displaying its wares. Only slatted blinds concealing the interior, and a small, discreet sign reading Count D's Pet Shop.

Once inside, however, it was as though it had never moved - as though he'd stepped from the tenth-floor arcade to the cozy little building standing freely in Chinatown. Fai blinked, trying to adjust to the dim lighting of the interior after the bright neon outside.

"Welcome," a familiar voice - too familiar - called him from further inside. He took a deep breath and turned, and saw her lounging easily on the couch: skin as smooth and pale, hair as dark as night, as she had been then. It had been ten years since he'd last stood before her, and she hadn't aged a day. Not fair, he thought bitterly.

If there was any sign of the passing years, it was surely in her dark eyes. "What brings you to Count D's pet shop?" she inquired in a neutral voice. "Please be aware that all sales are final, and no refunds or exchanges will be processed."

Fai took a deep breath. "Madame Yuuko," he said. Now that he was here, he felt suddenly awkward, all his rehearsed speeches turning to ashes on his tongue. "Do - do you remember me?"

"Mmm." She took a deep breath of her pipe, then let it out. The cloud of smoke made Fai's eyes sting and tear. "Yes. The most earnest young man with the black Shiba Inu. I remember you."

"And you remember Kuro - I mean," Fai tripped helplessly to a stop. "You said - you said that you granted wishes. Hopes and dreams, I mean. And my dog... I mean, he..."

"Wished to become a man," Yuuko said simply, taking pity on him. "Since you haven't been here in ten years, I assume you were both satisfied with the results. Is there some problem?"

"Problem?" Fai's breath blew out, the tears smarting in his eyes again as his ragged breaths sped up dangerously. "He's dying! He's been getting sicker and sicker for months! The doctors can't find anything wrong, all the tests keep coming up negative - nothing! - but now he's - " His throat choked as he remembered it; the pale sterile hospital room, the steady beeping of the heart monitor, the horrible sound of Kurogane's labored, raspy breaths. His skin drained sallow, his red eyes closed and unmoving, his hands - such strong hands, such beloved hands - slack and unmoving and cold between Fai's hands.

He'd stayed there for hours - days - waiting for Kurogane to pull out of it, to open his eyes again. The hospital staff had been sympathetic, allowing him to stay by Kurogane's bedside despite the fact that he was not the legal next of kin; but eventually they had firmly turned him out. And Fai had run here, to the place that dreams and wishes were made true... "I don't understand," Fai said raggedly. "Why is this happening?"

"Ah," Yuuko said, and her breath let out in a sympathetic sigh. "Tell me - how old is Kurogane?"

"Thir -" Fai broke off and frowned. The answer was the easy old lie they told everyone else, that Kurogane's age was the same as his. The real answer was harder. "I don't know," he admitted in a small voice. "He was still young when I found him... eleven, maybe twelve years old, I guess."

"Twelve years old," Yuuko said, and her voice was gentle. "That's quite a respectable age, for a dog. But it's rare for any of the large breeds to live much longer."

"Kurogane's not a dog!" Fai shouted, temper bursting out of him with all the desperation of his fear. "Don't give me any of this 'dog year' bullshit, he's a human being! He's a man!"

"If that's true -" Yuuko's voice turned steely. "Then why are you here? This is a pet store."

"I -" Fai broke off, his fury draining away as quickly as it had come, and buried his face in his hands.

"Because I don't know what else to do," he said brokenly. "Please. You grant wishes - you did it once. Can't you - can't you do anything...?"

Yuuko sighed again. "I'm sorry," she said, and her voice was sincere. "I really am. But the work I do... the wishes I grant, they are for animals. Not for men. I could grant his wish; I cannot grant yours."

"But this is like his own wish," Fai begged desperately, seeking some loophole. "He wished to stay with me. As a man. Don't you think he'd ask the same thing of you, if he could?"

Yuuko pursed her lips. "I remember his wish quite well, in fact," she said dryly. "He wished to save you."

"Save me?" Fai blurted out, startled. "But I don't need -"

He stopped.

"Do you remember what you were like then?" Yuuko's voice was soft, but merciless. "Hungry, cold, sick. Starving. Working yourself half to death in the cold, no friends, no family, no one to take care of you..."

Fai remembered it vividly.

"And look at you now," Yuuko said, eyelashes sweeping down as she eyed him from head to toe. "Healthy, well-fed - packing on the pounds now, I see, at your new desk job. From the quality of your coat I'd say you're making more than a comfortable living now - where is it that you work? At the law firm over in Green Hills across the lake? Quite prestigious, and not somewhere you can get without plenty of connections. You have money, friends, comfort..."

"What's your point?" Fai snapped, feeling oddly defensive.

"My point is that you don't need a protector and savior any longer, boy," Yuuko snapped in return. "Kurogane has gotten his wish in spades. Now the time of his dream - and his natural life - is running his course."

"I do still need him!" Fai protested, panic threatening to crush his chest at the thought of being without Kurogane - his lover, his friend, his guardian. "I want him to stay with me forever! Without him, I don't want to live either!"

"Forever?" Yuuko's voice suddenly took on a sibilant echo, and the dim light of the shop seemed to gutter even further. Fai's eyes jerked back to her, suddenly no longer an indolent figure lounging on the setee. Her dark eyes were suddenly much darker, a stormy tempest of icy winds and fire, and far, far too many years layered upon them. "You have no idea what you want. You have no idea what you're asking for. Would you curse him with that burden? Would you take his gift and fling it into the gutter so carelessly? So stupidly?"

No words could escape the terrified constriction in Fai's throat; he stood rooted to the spot until the dark conflagration died down.

"I'm sorry for your loss," Yuuko said at last, infinitely gentle. "I truly am. I do not mean to diminish the pain that you're feeling right now. But life goes on, and all living things must end some day."

"Not yet," Fai whispered. It was almost a whimper. "Please, not yet."

"Go back to your lover, Fai," Yuuko told him, and there was a note of command in her voice that he could not imagine resisting. "He will open his eyes one more time, I can give you that much. He doesn't have much time left. Spend it with him, for both of your sakes. Let him die with the knowledge that his wish has been granted, that you will live on safe and well. He gave you all his life. Don't squander it."

Fai stood shaking, tears welling from his eyes and dripping helplessly down his cheeks. He raised an angry sleeve to swipe at them, and turned abruptly towards the door.

"Fai," Yuuko called after him. He stopped, but did not turn around. "Later on... when you are ready... come back here again. I will give you a pet that will help ease your sorrows, and help you go on with your life."

After a moment, Fai's stiff shoulders sagged, and his head dropped. He pushed open the door, and went back out into the night.

~end.