Title taken from the poem Homosexuality by Frank O'Hara.

Yohji ducked his head as he ran out of the lab, but the explosion dogged his heels. Little stings peppered his back and legs, and he figured he'd be picking glass out of his ass for a good hour before he could sit down to drive.

He limped over to his car and bent over it, fingers searching for the remnants of beakers and test tubes lodged in his skin and clothes. The lab had been too clean, too shiny with metal and bright lights. Everything had looked so well scrubbed that it gave him bad feelings about what might have been done there that required so much effort to scrub away. The stainless steel tables had built-in metal restraints at their corners. It had been empty of people, thank god, but stuff still burbled away over low flames here and there, filling the room with a strangely sweet smell, cinnamon and lilac.

He could still smell it, and the smoke rising from the remains of the lab were tinted green. He hoped none of that shit had been in the glass that cut him. Hospital time. He kept a few shards for testing and slipped gingerly into the driver's seat.

Hours of tests and what felt like several gallons of blood later, he was released.

"Everything looks fine, Mr. Kudoh," the doctor told him. She wasn't the same doctor as last time. He'd never seen the same doctor twice at Kritiker's favorite hospital. He wondered if that meant anything, but mostly he just wondered how soon he could get home and pass out.

Under fifteen minutes was the answer. He face-planted onto his bed and didn't move for nearly twelve hours.

When he woke up, it was light out, and Aya was shaking his shoulder.

"Wha--stoppit," Yohji mumbled into his pillow. "Whayoudoin?"

"Are you awake?"

"Maybe. Mission?"

"No."

Yohji turned his head and squinted up at Aya. "My day off."

"Yes."

"So why're you up here shakin' me?"

"The hospital called. They found some anomalous results in your blood work. Do you feel all right?"

"Tired."

"Besides that."

Yohji stretched and rolled over onto his back. "Ow, fuck. Besides the death of a thousand papercuts? Yeah, I think I'm okay."

"What were they working on at that lab?"

"I-- I don't know." He looked at the bedsheets instead of Aya. "I didn't ask. There was no information in the mission assignment. Just--search and destroy." He was supposed to ask. He was supposed to care. He really, really didn't.

Aya was quiet for a minute or so, long enough for Yohji to start drifting, sleep creeping up to swallow him again. He could see Asuka standing just behind Aya's shoulder and blinked hard until she faded away again.

"You should eat," Aya said, finally.

"Yeah. Okay."

Aya actually made him lunch. It was only instant curry, but still, Yohji was forced to wonder just how worried the hospital was about his blood work. He slurped at his curry and watched Aya wipe down the counters.

"What did they say, exactly?"

"Anomalous was about all they said. And to call if you started experiencing symptoms."

"Symptoms of what?"

"They didn't say."

"Fantastic." He caught a flash of movement at the doorway and turned, expecting Omi or Ken. There was no one there. He shook his head. "So if I start turning green or anything, give them a call?"

Aya nodded, no hint of a smile. He sat down across from Yohji and didn't move.

"Are you waiting for me to turn green? 'Cause I wasn't planning on it."

"Just waiting," Aya said. "You shouldn't be alone."

Yohji figured it was a sign of how completely fucked up he was that Aya's words made his throat tighten for a second. It had been a bad few weeks, and he'd gotten used to the idea that no one actually gave a shit about him despite knowing it wasn't true. Guilt, he thought. It was a wonderful thing, for certain definitions of 'wonderful.'

So was the awkward silence that followed. Yohji scraped up the last of the curry and flicked his eyes to the doorway again. Nothing there. Just movement. Some kind of inner ear thing, maybe.

"How's your sister?" something made him ask. He flinched in anticipation of Aya's reaction, but Aya actually didn't look mad at all.

"There's no change," he said quietly. He folded his hands on the table. "She smiles sometimes. Like she's asleep and dreaming."

"She look like you? The eyes and the hair?"

"No. She looks--like my mother. Dark hair, fine bones. She wasn't finished growing yet, but..."

"But?"

"But they say she hasn't aged at all. Physically." His voice is flat, but there's a hint of question in his eyes when he looks up at Yohji through the ragged fringe of his hair. Yohji was suddenly reminded that Aya was actually younger than he was, and had been younger still when he'd lost his family.

"Would there be that much change?" Yohji asked.

Aya shrugged, sort of hunched over, and got up. He yanked two mugs out of the cabinet and started making the angriest pot of tea Yohji had ever seen. "They don't know anything," he said.

"He's right," said another voice. Young. Female. "The doctors really don't know very much. They are trying though."

Yohji turned slowly to look at the doorway. There was a girl standing there, high-school age, with long dark hair and Aya's startling eyes. She smiled at him.

Yohji closed his eyes tight and swallowed down a rush of panic and adrenaline. "Aya. You see anything over by the door?"

"No," Aya said shortly. He was probably concentrating on the tea.

Yohji opened his eyes. Aya's sister waved at him and faded slowly from sight.

Right. A hallucinogen. He could handle that without ten thousand zillion more blood tests, especially if he hid out in his room all day. It couldn't last much longer. He gritted his teeth until Aya was done making tea and then stood.

"I'm gonna take mine upstairs, okay? Lie down for a while. I don't feel so hot."

Aya frowned. "How so?"

"Nothing to worry about. Just, you know. Tired. And all those little bits of glass in my back didn't help. I'll be okay after a nap."

Aya nodded and handed him his mug, and Yohji retreated upstairs. He stretched out on his bed and closed his eyes. He saw Asuka in his sleep, but that was nothing new. The new part was that she was still there when he woke up.

She leaned over his bed, smiling at him. "You are such a dumbass, Kudoh."

He shoved the heels of his hands into his eyes until he saw stars and nothing else, until he could pretend that the tears were from pain. He didn't stop to think after that, just grabbed shoes and jacket and got out the door. The only thought in his head was escape, but it was worse out on the street.

Just stepping out the door he could see a dozen girls that might've been her and weren't. He knew they weren't. One of them turned around and looked at him with Asuka's face. "Remember that one night," she said, "when you tried to cook me dinner?"

Yohji ran. He didn't stop until he was more or less free of human traffic, in a nearby park. He dropped onto a bench. His hands were shaking.

Aya's sister patted his knee. "Don't worry," she said. "It'll all turn out for the best."

He covered his face with his hands. It worked last time. "Please don't," he mumbled. "You're freaking me out." It was probably a bad idea to talk to hallucinations.

"Why the fuck should I care what freaks you out?"

That wasn't Aya's sister. Yohji opened his eyes and found things had gotten worse. It was Kase. For a second, Yohji if he'd survived, but he'd seen what was left when Ken was finished. There was just no way.

Kase looked past him, out to the field, where Yohji saw Ken kicking around his soccer ball. "That son of a bitch," Kase said. "I can't believe he killed me."

Yohji got up and walked away. Maybe he should go to the hospital. But what could they do? Fuck around with antidotes that might just make it worse. Or sedate him. Later, maybe. If it got worse.

Goddamn Tokyo streets. It wasn't like he'd want to live anywhere else, but maybe just once in a while--like when he was doped up on mystery designer drugs--he could do with a few less people around.

"Hey there, hotstuff," said a voice at his elbow. He was almost afraid to look, and for a few steps he didn't. "Come on," she said. "I know you remember me. It hasn't been all that long."

"Hi, Maki," he whispered.

"I'm not her, you know."

Not Asuka. No, he could tell the difference.

"I know." He kept walking, looking down at the sidewalk, at the little black spots that used to be someone's gum, at the odd sparkles in the cement caught by the sun. It was easier with her than with any of the rest of them, somehow. She'd been easy to talk to when she was alive, too.

"Damn," Maki sighed. "You're still just as fucked as when I met you, huh?"

He laughed. "Worse. God, way worse." He stopped short in the middle of the sidewalk and turned to her. "I'm sorry, he said. "Fuck, I'm so sorry." He reached for her arm, but as his hand closed over it, she was gone.

People were staring, he realized, making detours around him and leaving him stranded on his little bare patch of sidewalk. He couldn't move, felt walled in by all these people and their normal lives happening around him. Freaks on this side of the glass, please, no trespassing. He made himself lower his hand finally, but that was all he could do, and what if it wasn't a hallucinogen? What if it was just designed to drive him fucking batshit crazy?

He thought maybe it'd alrady done the job when Schuldig appeared in front of him. "What the hell," Schuldig said, and grabbed a handful of Yohji's shirt to drag him into an alley.

"Your hair's wet," Yohji said.

"I was in the fucking shower when you started flipping your fucking lid! What is wrong with you?"

"This lab, and this drug, and--" Yohji gestured with his hands. "And, oh God." Kase was flipping him off over Schuldig's shoulder. Yohji jerked Schuldig around. "Can you see him?"

Schuldig twisted back around. "No. But I can see him in your head. 'I see dead people'? Get a grip. This is not a movie, you're not going nuts, and you're definitely not psychic. You're having a bad trip. Pretend it's the sixties, you'll feel much better."

Yohji just blinked at him. He was still holding onto Schuldig's shoulder, and yeah, he still hated him, but he couldn't make himself let go. "You heard me? This far away?"

Schuldig shrugged one shoulder. "You were loud. And annoying."

"Like half of Tokyo."

"You're worse."

Hate. Right. Because Schuldig was a heartless murdering asshole. He knew that. "Well, great," he said. "You came, you saw, I'm not bugging you anymore. So leave."

"Don't even," Schuldig muttered, and then he had Yohji by his collar and was dragging him onto the street. They were in a taxi before Yohji could say more than two words, those two words being, "Fuck you."

"Whatever," Schuldig said. "Shut up. Two seconds after I leave you're gonna be out of your head again."

"I can deal with it," Yohji snarled.

Schuldig looked startled for a second, but shook his head. "If you could've, you would've."

"I can go to the hospital."

"Ha. Yeah, that'll help."

"They can knock me out."

"No, they can't. They don't know how this shit'll react with anything they give you, so they won't give you anything, except maybe five point restraints." He paused. "Trust me, I know." He gave an address to the taxi driver and sat looking straight ahead while Yohji stared at him.

That sounded like Schuldig was here just to help him out. It suggested feelings like sympathy and compassion, feelings he was pretty sure Schuldig didn't have. Or at least feelings he didn't want to think Schuldig had. Things were complicated enough already.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"Home."

"Whose home?"

"Do I look stupid? My home, the one that's not chock full of people who want me dead."

"They've got good fucking reason to want you dead."

"So do you."

Five minutes of strained silence saw them to Schuldig's door and inside. Crawford, Nagi, and Farfarello stared as they walked by, but Schuldig dragged him along, and no one said a word.

"Are they--" Yohji started as Schuldig slammed the door to his room closed behind them.

"Crawford probably saw it coming. Sit." He pointed at the bed.

Yohji sat and looked around. He'd expected something more...insane...from Schuldig's room. There was a bed, a black leather chair with a curved lucite table beside it, and a black lacquer dresser with a mirror over it. Judging from the rest of the apartment, the furniture had been here when he arrived. The bedspread, though, was a psychedelic flower pattern in orange and purple. It matched Schuldig's hair. And there was a poster on the wall of some guy with crazy gray hair.

"Who's that?" Yohji asked.

"Beethoven, you cultureless dick."

"You listen to Beethoven?"

"Yeah, so?"

"Nothing, no reason." Yohji sat and fidgeted with the edge of the bedspread. "So. Now what?"

"Still seeing dead people?"

"No."

"Then chill."

"Fine."

He lay back on the bed with his arms cross behind his head, and seriously, this was weird. It was too weird to sort through. He wouldn't try, he decided. He'd wait until he could leave and then he'd, well, leave. And pretend this never happened, and everything would be fine. For a certain definition of the word 'fine' that meant really fucking confusing and awkward.

"Get your shoes off my bed," Schuldig said.

He kicked his shoes off. Schuldig sat beside him and pushed him over until he could lie down as well.

"Your shoes are still on."

"It's my bed."

"You walk in the same shit I do all day."

"My shoes, my bed. Shut up." Schuldig punched his shoulder. It wasn't exactly gentle, but it wasn't meant to leave a bruise either. Yohji found himself smiling automatically in response, opening his mouth to say--something. He stopped.

"Are you going to keep being a total asshole about this?" Schuldig said.

Yohji couldn't think of a thing to say to that for a good thirty seconds. "You--fuck, you murdered my friend's sister! I can't believe you seriously need me to explain this! I shouldn't even be here." He started to get up and stopped halfway when Schuldig didn't stop him.

He'd been so, so right about the awkward and confusing part.

Schuldig was frowning at him. "I told you it was Farf."

"Yeah, and you clearly don't give a shit."

Schuldig shrugged. "I really don't. I didn't know the girl. I wish she wasn't dead, because her bastard father wouldn't have smacked me around with a golf club, but apart from the concussion, no, I really don't give a shit. Did you expect me to?"

Yohji slid his socks over the smooth wood floor. It felt very faintly warm. "No. Not really."

He could hear Schuldig breathing and the faint sounds of conversation from the living room. The shuffle of his socks on the floor made little whispering sounds, like voices he couldn't quite hear. He tried to convince himself to get up and leave, but he was still sitting there when Schuldig gripped his sleeve and tugged him back down to lie on the bed again.

More breathing silence, measured by the rhythm of his heartbeat and the dull pounding in his head.

"I might care if I killed you," Schuldig offered, after what seemed like hours.

The words sounded too abrupt in the stillness surrounding them. When they faded away, Yohji wasn't sure Schuldig had really said anything at all. Little pricks of pain from his back prodded him over onto his stomach, and soon enough exhaustion prodded him into sleep.