the return

"Chiba Mamoru."

The voice came from his right, so softly that only he heard its slight menace. He immediately discarded the words on his lips to face the almost threatening whisper. The two who were walking with him took a few paces beyond him before realizing his abrupt halt. Their younger faces mirrored confusion but he didn't even spare them a glance as his sharp gaze raked the surrounding greenery. It was a large area and he had been walking back to class with two of the junior students. His now gray eyes narrowed suddenly as he finally picked out the still form leaning negligently against the bole of one of the graceful trees.

When the figure saw that he had been noticed, he casually sauntered forward, dusting his hands on the thighs of a pair of worn denims. He strode a few steps towards the small group as Mamoru rose from the slight crouch he had fallen into. Although this was not a friend, he knew that he would not be attacked. At least, he doubted he'd be attacked although nothing was really certain.

"Why are you here?" he said abruptly as the newcomer approached. The two students looked at each other in embarrassment - it was very unnatural for Chiba-san to act so discourteously and hostile. The slim figure did not seem threatening and they withdrew a few steps uncertainly to give the two men the illusion of privacy.

"What? - no words of welcome, no greeting?" came the smooth, mocking reply. He looked the same - casually flippant hair and long hands, a lean form as subtly dangerous as his own. He was dressed more casually than was his normal style, as if hiding his flamboyant nature. Or perhaps not - his eyes were flashing pure brilliant insolence - as if all his fire was focused inwards.

Mamoru appraised his opponent through carefully hooded eyes, knew that he was also being measured in this tight moment of scrutiny after the first volley had been fired and returned. He mastered his initial startlement to thrust back with his normal sardonic humor. "The last I saw of you, you were heading in entirely the opposite direction from here. You will have to forgive me if I seem .. less than overjoyed to find you falling from trees in my neighborhood."

There might have been a flash of hurt in the other man's eyes, but Mamoru could never be certain of that glimpse of emotion. "Well, I was passing by and thought to myself - why don't I stop by and visit? They would be so happy to see me, it has been so long - but it appears I was mistaken." The childish pout was in his voice but Mamoru could see no trace of it in the clean features of the face in front of him. They were so nearly of a height, his own cold blue eyes probing sharply into the eyes of deepest black. He was being toyed with, he knew - the chances of his rival would "be in the neighborhood" were ludicrous. He smiled suddenly, a smoky beautiful flash of teeth.

"So good to see you then," he drawled, forcing all the warmth he did not feel into his velvet voice, his body relaxing with his new, fey mood. He was momentarily rewarded by a look of sheer amazement and something else that fluttered briefly in the dark eyes before being carefully shuttered away.

The other man was only briefly startled by Mamoru's show of personal charm and recovered his aplomb quickly. "Well, now that it's established that I am here and that you are happy to see me, how about we adjourn this little tete-a-tete to somewhere a little more .. private?" One slim eyebrow arched upwards delicately and his posture changed to something infinitely more languid as he relished that last word thoroughly.

Mamoru frowned slightly in puzzlement, before the sudden furious whispering behind him jolted him into realizing that they weren't, in fact, precisely alone. He glanced over his shoulder to his charges, then turned back to smile sardonically into the smiling black eyes, acknowledging silently the accurate strike. By this time tomorrow, the college would be abuzz with the news of his erstwhile male lover returning to the fold. His aloof reputation would only enhance the gossip and after this little show, there would be little point in trying to deny it either.

"Have it your way," he said with a tinge of admiration in his voice. "I've already passed the next class anyway, the professor just refuses to admit it." He turned to explain but saw that words were superfluous. The two boys had already nodded their departures and were racing off to no doubt repeat everything they had heard, or thought they had understood. He grinned ruefully to himself before turning back to face the other man. Now that no one was observing them, his rival had relaxed minutely, his face and body infinitesimely warmer.

"Seiya." His voice dropped somehow into his lower register. "I trust that there is no emergency to bring you back here." For a moment he wondered if this was why he had returned, a real reason to contact them again.

"Why none at all - as I said, I was merely in the area and thought a visit might be in order."

Mamoru absently stirred his coffee as he attempted not to stare too closely at the man across the table. Perhaps boy might be a better term, for the face under his covert scrutiny was unlined and smooth, if not at this moment particularily carefree. Seiya was impeccably dressed as always, although all he wore was a soft black shirt and softly worn denims. He somehow still managed to convey a careful elegance, a single ring glinting coldly in his ear, even though he lounged moodily in his seat with no apparent regard for clothes or style. His eyes were as piercingly brilliant as Mamoru remembered, the hair immaculately groomed. Idly, Mamoru wondered which of them would be the first to break down and start this awkward conversation. He could feel himself bursting with questions but restrained himself with long years of practice.

The waitress came to refill their coffee cups and she gave them both quizzical looks as she poured the hot liquid from her carafe. Her bubbly gaze lingered over Seiya's face in mute puzzlement as she tried to place him. Mamoru shooed her away with polite but clipped words - she took the hint and left quickly to resume her perusal from the other side of the cafe. Mamoru rolled his eyes slightly at the dawning adolescent worship in her regard, and to his mild surprise, Seiya grinned in rueful acknowledgement of the conquest he had unwittingly made.

Mamoru decided abruptly that he'd had enough of this waiting game. "You're going to be in real trouble if she remembers that face belongs to Kou Seiya-sama of the Three Lights before we leave here," he warned mockingly.

"The warm notice in a young girl's eyes should never be discouraged," Seiya replied facetiously before finally raising his eyes to look steadily at Mamoru.

Ah, already we cut to the chase, he thought. Carefully, he replaced his cup back in the saucer with a small clinking sound, loud in his own ears. He tried for casual, but knew he probably sounded accusing instead. "So why are you here, Seiya, if there is no trouble to concern the ... Three Lights?" Icy blue eyes stare into determinedly calm black ones before Seiya dropped his gaze.

"What? I can't even drop by to visit old friends without obtaining clearance from you first?" he joked weakly, an answer that they both knew was no answer at all.

Mamoru decided to press the advantage and leaned forward slightly, strong forearms resting on the table between them. "You will admit that your presence here fills me with anxiety one way or the other, whether you are here for business or pleasure," he said quite calmly. He was rewarded by a perceptible start in the younger man's body as he moved closer and Seiya grabbed unsteadily at his coffee cup. Mamoru saw with astonishment that the younger man was gripping the cup hard enough to turn his knuckles white - it was a wonder that it hadn't shattered. Concerned, he reached out unthinkingly and touched him on the arm. Truly startled, Seiya pulled back much too abruptly and spilled the coffee on the table. The famous idol of the Three Lights singing sensation turned a bright red and cursed softly but inventively at himself as he ineffectually dabbed at the stain with a table napkin. The hovering waitress appeared of of nowhere and began to chatter fixedly as she cleared the table, her eyes glued to Seiya's suffering face, ignoring the presence of Mamoru entirely. When the stain had been cleared and new coffee poured, Mamoru settled back in his chair to give Seiya a moment to regain his composure. He grinned at the discomfited man. "You have an interesting way of avoiding confrontation," he said wryly, deliberately trying to rattle him further.

Seiya took a few deep breaths, wrapping his hands firmly around the warm cup. His color heightened again briefly but then faded away as he got himself under control again. "I am not used to being ... in awkward positions," he said finally. "Chiba-san... the reason I came her has nothing to do with the Three Lights and there is no danger that I am aware of that might threaten you." He pulled his mug a little closer and look a slow swallow of the bracing liquid, trying to pull a little needed warmth into his body. He raised serious eyes to the older man, with only a ghost of his usual arrogance lurking in the corners. "I .. returned here specifically to talk to you. Although," he said as a self-depreciating grin crossed his face, "this is not how I wanted this conversation to go."

"It's a long way to travel just to talk," Mamoru said blankly, not sure how to respond.

"I know," Seiya agreed with a small sigh. An awkward silence descended for a few moments as Mamoru waited quizically for Seiya to continue. "Look," he said finally, "I feel like a prize fool here. Can we go somewhere, walk for a little?"

Mamoru stood away from the table slowly, gulping the last dregs of his somehow lukewarm coffee. Casually he thew down the money for their brief stay, stalling Seiya's abortive attempt to do the same. Mamoru was very conscious of Seiya trailing behind his shoulder as he lead the way back to the bright sunshine of the street.

As they reached the sidewalk, Seiya lengthened his own not inconsiderable stride so that now they were shoulder to shoulder as they walked. Out of the corner of his eye, Mamoru watched the other man, saw the look of brooding frustration that crossed his features as his contained emotions escaped his normally tight control. With a moment of curiousity, he wondered what his own face looked like when he was trying to hold something in. With any luck, he did a better job than Seiya who couldn't seem to keep his feelings from his mobile face.

Looking up, Mamoru realized that his aimless feet were taking him back to the Azabu University grounds. His steps faltered momentarily, but then he decided it didn't really matter if anyone saw them together or not. The college grounds were quite open in some areas - perhaps a little sky would calm down his jumpy compatriot.

As he walked, he realized that even he was relaxing a little, the warm day coaxing him to remove his school jacket so he could swing his arms a little more. A breeze ruffled his dark hair and he closed his eyes to enjoy the sensation for a moment. The hell with it, he decided in an instant. I'm not going back to classes today in any case so I might as well be comfortable. Mamoru grabbed his hated tie and pulled the knot halfway down his shirt so that he felt like he could breathe again, releasing the two buttons at the top of the restricting uniform so that the breeze could reach to his skin. He raised a long hand to casually rub at the tension in his neck and surprised a remote look on Seiya's face that he couldn't immediately decipher. It was gone before he could identify it, and he slung his jacket more comfortably over his shoulder instead. Seiya turned slowly away from his steady gaze and continued walking, taking the lead in a few long strides. Now it was Mamoru's turn to be the one at the other's shoulder.

The sunlight filtered down through the sparse trees, flooding their hair with light or dappling them with shadows. Absently, Mamoru noticed that Seiya's hair was not a true black like his own, the sunshine revealing the deep brown coloring, honey highlights flashing randomly.

"This is ridiculous," Seiya finally said ruefully. Mamoru had to grin a little - even if they weren't friends, they were certainly not enemies. "I made this 'little trip'," he confessed to the air, "because I wanted to talk with you. And now that I am here, all my fancy words are gone, all my arguments totally unconvincing, even to myself." He bit his lip but then turned to face Mamoru squarely. An errant breeze ruffled his hair with no regard for dignity and Mamoru stopped as well - the two of them staring at each other warily for a long moment.

"After we found the princess," Seiya began haltingly, staring somewhere over Mamoru's left shoulder, "I thought things would be as they were before. Our planets were dust and gone, but we lived and we could always find another place to belong - from the beginning it had always been just the four of us anyways. As long as we were together, then the rest didn't matter. I thought - I swear I thought that things would be just as they were before."

"But they weren't," Mamoru concluded the thought.

Seiya shook his head and stared moodily at the ground a moment, his hands jammed deeply into his pockets. Slowly he turned and started to walk again. Mamoru fell back into step at his side. "For a time, everything was just as I wished it to be. We were together at last and we planned light and music for our new home. It was wonderful to hear Yaten's laugh with no pain or despair echoing through it, to see Kakyuu's bright fall of hair from across a room." He stopped speaking for a moment, before continuing in a voice that contained a thread of agony. Mamoru wondered with a small part of himself if Seiya knew just how much of himself he exposed in his beautifully trained voice. "It is still wonderful to see and hear those things, the joys that I feared lost forever in darkness," Seiya mused, oblivious to Mamoru's thoughts. "But after a while, I realized that something was not right - something .. no, that * I * had changed. It is terrifying somehow to come to understand that you are not as you were before, even though all around you seem not to notice. I pretended not to see the changes in myself, not to feel the confusion in my heart. I mean, I didn't I have everything I needed?" Seiya swung to confront Mamoru with suddenly anguished eyes. "Didn't I have exactly what I had always wanted? I swear I tried to ignore my restlessness, tried to feel the way I had before - except I couldn't remember how that had been, exactly."

The dark eyed man took a deep breath, the long cords of his throat working with the strain of saying these things to man that was not a friend. "And so I told my Princess that I had to get away, to come back here - here to where I had been changed from what I was. Here to where she had changed me."

Mamoru stopped walking abruptly. "Usako," he breathed, stupidly thinking that it was somehow the obvious explanation after all.

Seiya's eyes glinted at the casual endearment. "Just so," he murmured blandly.

Mamoru mechanically started to walk again, trying to sort through his uneasy emotions. Apparently, it was the prosaic explanation after all, as much as he distrusted the obvious. His mind started to dwell on the appalling prospect of having Seiya around for any length of time - he truly didn't distrust Usagi even in his heart of hearts, but he was realistic enough to know that she was sixteen and very prone to adolescent fantasy. He muffled a soft groan - he could see some unwitting jealousy in his near future. He shot an obscure look at Seiya, who somehow didn't look like a man who was enjoying Mamoru's obvious predicament. In fact, Seiya's face looked like he would rather be anywhere else but here. Mamoru tried to figure out how he himself would feel if the situation was reversed, but had to admit to a total blank.

"Seiya," he said suddenly as a random thought gelled in his head, "why did you come and see me first? You could easily have seen the girls first, and Usagi would have been so excited and pleased to see you that I wouldn't have been able to pry her away from you with a crowbar."

Seiya grimaced but then gave a quirky smile. "Don't think I didn't consider it," he said warningly.

When he opened the door, the apartment was silent and dark. He must have gone out, Mamoru thought as he removed the reluctant key from the lock. Or perhaps never came home at all. Uneasily, he banished his sudden strange feeling of abandonment, shrugging his shoulders brusquely out of the worn leather jacket. Kicking off his shoes, he strode purposefully through the darkness with the unconscious ease of long familiarity into the tiny kitchen.

Snapping on the light, he winced at the sudden stab in his eyes. Two long strides took him to the refridgerator. Its contents were meager at best - Seiya certainly ate more than seemed humanly possible for such a slender man Mamoru thought wryly. He might have to take out a line of credit at the grocery store if he was going to have his house guest much longer.

The thought brought on another small wave of depression. Things were no closer to being resolved now than they had been when Seiya had arrived. If anything, things were more complicated. Never had Mamoru met a man more infuriating, cold, exasperating, mocking ... and hurting. Standing in his small kitchen, he flushed with a strange mix of emotions - sadness, anger, a raw compassion that hurt. He despised Seiya for playing up to Usagi's youth and inexperience, but knew that Seiya needed that unconditional caring, needed it more desperately than he was willing to admit to anyone. Mamoru gritted his teeth and bared a lean smile. It hurt him to see them together, but it was unclear even to himself which one he was more jealous of. Seiya was such a confusing mix of pain, hurt and stubborn independence, that Mamoru didn't know how to even begin reach him, let alone how to start to heal the damage. Maybe Usagi could reach that core of Seiya, for god knows he couldn't seem to get beyond the outer shell. Mamoru had a shrewd feeling that there was hell of a lot more going on behind Seiya's deep eyes than he would ever likely find out.

With a start, he realized that he'd been staring blankly into the refridgerator long enough for his face to get cold. A second dry grin twisted his features, and he reached out and grabbed the closest, and nearly the only thing in there - a bottle of his favorite beer. Kicking the door shut, he fished the opener out of a cupboard by feel and removed the cap with a faint pop. The first swallow went down long and fine, the second one nearly as well. With a small sigh, he walked on silent bare feet to the living room, snapping on a small table light. He was four paces towards his favorite spot before he realized he wasn't alone.

When Seiya heard the key in the lock, his first reaction was to sink down into the chair, as if to make himself invisible. Chiding himself, he straightened a little as the door opened, but then sank down a little deeper into the soft cushions as the unmistakeable sounds of Mamoru's presence reached his sensitive ears. He could hear the soft sound of shifting leather, the quieter rustle of the other man's shirt, the small thumps as his shoes came off. He clenched his hand convulsively around the glass in his hand as the shadowed form of his roommate came in sight past the opening hallway.

He watched unblinkingly as the light came on and he tried not to listen as the soothing sounds of the other man intruded on his senses. Why did things have to be so hard, he wondered despairingly. Why could it only be one thing or another, and not some murky color in between? They were both so beautiful and captivating, so perfectly tuned to each other. If either of them were alone, were available, Seiya knew what he would be doing, right down to the words he would use and the clothes he would wear. The fantasies occupied his mind frantically, like little birds chasing around his skull. With Usagi he would be sweet this time, tender and cherishing, and understanding her nature as she bloomed into her life. And with Mamoru, he would be dark and demanding, hot and urgent, forcing his rival to respond to him, to melt that cool exterior. Ah, but they were not for him - they were for each other.

Tormented by these visions, Seiya nearly missed seeing entering the room. With a dry breath caught in his throat, he tried hastily to arrange his expression into something he might reasonably be expected to wear. He hoped for studied indifference, but knew he probably just looked angry instead.

The light came on and the time of dissembling was over. Seiya watched as the lean form of his nemesis burst into color and shape in the warm light. He saw with wry amusement Mamoru start slightly as he discovered he was not alone in the apartment, bore silently the quick scrutiny of his face. Mamoru's gaze dropped to linger knowingly on the negligent glass in his had and the nearly empty bottle on the side table.

"Nostrovya", Seiya murmured clearly, raising his glass to forestall any comments. With a recently acquired casualness, he tossed off the rest of the tumbler before carefully pouring himself another one. Mamoru looked about to comment so Seiya arched a delicate eyebrow at him, suddenly eager for a fight, something to release his tension. Something to wipe away the image of kissing that disapproving expression away.

Mamoru looked away to gain some internal control before turning to face the casually seated younger man. Idly he wondered how long Seiya had been drinking this time. The voice had been clear but so carefully pronounced that he knew the other man had to be seriously inebriated. His heart had a sudden ache and he tried to cover his empathic response by sitting down abruptly, crossing one leg deliberately over the other, resting his bare ankle on his knee. He took another swallow of the beer in reflex and continued to try and shut out the pain and conflict radiating from the other chair. He must really be tired if this much emotional residue was suddenly seeping through his shields. He hadn't sensed a thing when he'd come through the door, but now it was like wading through suddenly thick water, waves of black emotion pouring off the other man.

Seiya felt himself winding tighter and tighter in the coils of self anger and anguish. Mamoru had sat down and was engaged in moodily staring out the window while nursing his beer. Seiya didn't even try to keep his eyes from lingering over that clean profile, raising the glass in reflex to drown his dry mouth in burning liquid. Bitterly, Seiya reflected that the distance across the room might as well have been to another planet. He saw a slight frown appear on the other's face, drawing the mouth down and making the long eyes even narrower. Seiya wished that he could dare to try and stroke away Mamoru's headache and despised himself for his cowardice. He raised the tumbler again, but it was empty. He reached for the nearly empty bottle.

"Stop it," came the unexpected voice. Seiya looked in startlement but Mamoru's impassive face was still turned away in profile. "Stop trying to drown yourself, it's not working." Seiya stared in arrested fascination as finally Mamoru turned back to look at him directly. The impact of those smoky, accusing eyes beneath slitted lashes nearly undid him again. Defiantly Seiya continued his motion and held the neck of the bottle in a tight grip, trying not to let his hand shake as he poured out the last of the amber liquid.

"It may not be working, but at least it's keeping me occupied," he retorted blindly.