Author's note: This is set some years after the end of the series, when the two are assumed to be already in an established relationship. I know, I know, it's hackneyed and saccharine, but I had fun writing it, so I figured someone else might glean some morsel of enjoyment from reading it. Maybe? Let me know!

Coming Home

The sleek black limousine pulled up next to the beach house, looking decidedly out of place as its chrome-hubbed wheels scrunched on the gravel driveway. A uniformed driver respectfully opened the door of the back seat to allow its passenger, a lean young man in a tattered black jacket and purple sweater, to alight. The driver moved to the trunk to heft two large suitcases, following their owner up to the door of the house, depositing both on the light wood decking.

Manjoume shook the driver's hand, crisp paper pressed between them, as the whitewashed door of the house creaked open. Leaning nonchalantly against the doorframe, arms folded, was a tanned, lightly muscled figure in shorts, a Hawaiian shirt and bare feet.

"Welcome home, Jun." Fubuki's smile shone brighter than the spotlights of any stage Manjoume had seen. "Will you never learn to dress for the weather?" He took hold of Manjoume's coat lapels, leaning in for a soft kiss. It was warm outside, a midsummer evening, cooled by the faint ocean breeze sending a salty odour drifting across the sands. The lovers parted reluctantly, Fubuki's large brown eyes smiling into Manjoume's sharp grey ones, each man taking a suitcase into the hut as the sound of the limousine's engine faded in the distance.

Manjoume took his jacket off, throwing it over the arm of a shabby couch covered with a cheery red throw, into which he crumpled with a weary sigh. Fubuki took the jacket to hang on a hook by the door. "It's nearly worn out, you know." He looked over to Manjoume, only half reprovingly. "You should get a new one."

"I can't," Manjoume answered, with a hint of defiance. "It's my trademark. Besides, it's comfortable. And you must have been wearing that shirt for years now."

"I bought this two weeks ago." Fubuki feigned injury.

"Well, one flowery shirt looks much like any other." Manjoume rubbed his temples, trying to ease the tension, to start enjoying his break.

"Have you been away that long that you don't recognise me?" Fubuki plopped down on the couch next to Manjoume, putting his feet up on the cushions to better snuggle against the younger man.

"Maybe." Manjoume curled an arm around Fubuki, kissing the top of his head lightly. "You've got four weeks to remind me."

"Not long enough," murmured Fubuki, nuzzling against Manjoume's neck.

Warm and sticky, and divested of unnecessary clothing, the two men cosied up on the couch, wrapped in the throw, enjoying the comfort of each other's company and the feeling of skin against skin after five months spent apart. Manjoume watched Fubuki twining his fingers around his own, the culmination of all he'd been waiting to come back to, the beautiful brunette with the flashbulb smile, and was seized by a familiar longing to never let this calming influence leave his side again. "Come away with me on the next tour," he appealed.

"You know I can't." Fubuki looked up forlornly. "I've got the business here." Fubuki ran a small, but well-attended, water sports school close to where they lived.

"It'll be autumn soon. No-one takes surfing lessons after October, unless they want to die of exposure. And Mia can look after the place for a few months." Manjoume persevered, stroking Fubuki's back tenderly.

"Your sponsors wouldn't allow it." Fubuki was unconvinced. "You've got to be seen to be available for your adoring fans."

"Pro-dueling fans are weird." Manjoume shuddered. "The stuff girls say… It's not exactly refined."

Fubuki snickered mischievously, remembering a few choice love-letters of his own. "This is all wrong, anyway. I'm supposed to be the one doing the impulsive crazy-talk. You're supposed to be persuading me out of it."

"I just missed you, Fubuki." Manjoume kissed his partner for emphasis.

"Me too." Fubuki became lost in thought, and the two sat quietly before he continued. "One day, I'll marry you. Let your sponsors try to cover that one up." He beamed, the smile of an impish child who had finally reached the cookie jar.

"Oh? And who says it'll be you doing the proposing?" Manjoume challenged, a slight quirk stirring at the corner of his mouth.

"Come on, you have to let me." Fubuki slipped his arms around Manjoume's waist, squeezing him plaintively. "Can't you just imagine it? I'd dress like a prince, and I'd take you riding on a white horse along the beach at sunset."

Manjoume pulled back enough to look Fubuki in the eyes. "I'm not in a big pink frilly dress in this vision of yours, am I?"

"Don't be absurd." Fubuki wrinkled his nose. "I want you in that old black jacket. I love you just the way you are."

"And then what?" Manjoume kissed the tip of Fubuki's nose. This sort of silliness used to only make sense in Fubuki's head. Somehow, over the years, it had come to infect Manjoume, too.

"Then I take you up to the top of the disused lighthouse, and I read you poems about how wonderful you are, and how much you mean to me."

"So you can throw me off the cliff if I say no?"

"You won't say no." Fubuki shook his head decisively.

"How do you know?"

"The poems will be that good. Anyway, then we'll slow-dance under the moonlight."

Manjoume interrupted. "If you bring the ukulele for musical accompaniment, I'm jumping."

"Silly." Fubuki nipped at Manjoume's ear fondly. "And I'd get down on one knee, and… well, you can figure out the rest." He waved his hand vaguely. Out of curiosity, he added: "What would your proposal be like?"

Manjoume considered this for a moment, before concluding that nothing his brain could cook up could possibly live up to Fubuki's inflated ideas of romanticism. "Maybe I should let you do it."

"See? I knew you'd like it." Fubuki beamed.

"Have you been thinking about this, or was that plan made up on the spur of the moment?" Manjoume ran his fingers through Fubuki's thick chestnut hair, wondering idly if he'd ever let it go grey. Manjoume's sponsors had recently bought him dye for his unruly black mop, just in case.

"The plan, I made up just now." Sounds about right, thought Manjoume. It bore all the hallmarks of a Fubuki plan: passionate and with good intentions, but ill-thought-through and wildly impractical. The thing was, Fubuki normally found a way to make them work.

Fubuki tilted his head slightly to kiss Manjoume's hand as it brushed past his face. "But I'd like to. At some point. Get married, that is."

Me too, thought Manjoume, his heart full to bursting as he curled up with the man who'd always been there to support him, to point him in the right direction, to show him the peace and affection he'd never dreamed would be his. Fubuki had been every girl's Academy crush, and somehow practical, prickly, socially awkward Manjoume had been the lucky one to win his heart. "Then marry me," he said, thinking: there's no-one else I'd rather be alone with.

Fubuki looked up, the small smile on Manjoume's face transforming it from its usual taciturn frown into a blushing, almost elfin loveliness. This is the side only I get to see, he reflected. Not Manjoume Thunder, the fierce, proud duelist, but Jun Manjoume, sweet, loyal and eager to please. "Yeah," he said, simply. The horse could wait for another time.