Author’s Note: A seasonal fic that uses one of the oldest cliches in the book. I figure that damns me to at least the third circle of fanfic hell. What makes it worse is that yes, the title is a pun. -_-;; Partly post-Dramatic Precious - there's a passing reference to Takatori Saijou, amongst other things. Youji is acting sane because there's still a year and a half until Fight Fire With Fire. And maybe cutting his hair was cathartic, too. >_< Written in December 2002, posted on New Year's Eve. Hurrah.

Old Acquaintance

Five days since Christmas. The strings of brightly-coloured lights that lined the city streets were still hanging, even after the decorations at the department stores had gone down, and Omi knew they'd last till the new year. They made him smile, almost - he couldn't really recall the last time he'd admired the annual light-up.

It had been a trying six months since Weiss had disbanded. He'd had to learn about the organisation's whole structure, firstly, and then the individual Kritiker units, and Crashers, and he'd had to rebuild the teams in Hiroshima and Kurashiki - and all in all it wasn't a surprise that he'd jumped at the first opportunity to simply take a day off and wander the streets by himself. Christmas had been out of the question, because for the first time in his life - his life as Tsukiyono Omi, at least - he had had a family to celebrate it with.

Not that the both of them made much of a family. But that had been his own doing, surely, those few weeks more than a year ago - but that was the past, an irrelevance now, and he had his grandfather, and it didn't matter anymore.

He looked up at the sky for a while, slowing his pace as he did so. The past few nights had been marked by soft falls of snow, and tonight was no exception. Omi paused outside the door of a bar, only too aware of the warm refuge it would provide. He'd never been in one outside of missions, he realised; partly because he hadn't been old enough, of course, but now...

But now he still had his responsibilities, and if he was going to roam the streets in winter he should try getting used to the cold. Sighing slightly, he turned away - and almost collided with a passer-by who was heading for the door. Reflexively he apologised, the stranger mumbling a half-hearted response and slipping through the doorway. Omi stood there for a while longer, absent-mindedly watching the door swing shut. There was something, some half-formed thought that tugged at his mind...

The stranger had seemed terribly familiar.

But it couldn't have been him, of course. The close-cropped hair, for one, and...well, that was it, really. He hadn't so much as glimpsed the stranger's face.

The street seemed to get a little colder. Omi hesitated, just for a while, before stepping away from the bar, pulling his coat a little tighter around his neck, and moving on.

***

Youji didn't know if criminals celebrated Christmas, or if Persia had the decency to give them the end of the year off, or if it was just pure luck, but the last days of the year were always mission-free. Though in some ways that made it worse. Idle nights meant more time to spend alone with your thoughts, and around the festive season thoughts usually meant unwelcome memories or unwanted musing.

The first Christmas that the four of them had ever spent together, now that Aya had no excuse to go off on his own, had passed uneventfully five days ago. Despite the trailer's small size they'd all managed to avoid each other fairly successfully. Youji took it as a sign that their first New Year's together - he checked his watch - in about twenty-five hours would be just as cheerful.

He breathed out a thin wisp of cigarette smoke in what could have been a sigh, and leant further back into the park bench.

Footsteps approached - he looked up in surprise.

"Omi? Isn't it a bit late for you to be wandering around?"

Omi acknowledged the greeting with a small laugh, and sat down in response to the older man's unspoken invitation. "Aya-kun's working in the back room and Ken-kun's drinking coffee on the sofa and they both seem to want to be alone, so..."

"And you didn't consider that the reason I'd be smoking outside is because I'd like to be alone too?"

Omi gave him a look that was half-apologetic and half-wounded - Youji laughed hastily. "Joking, joking. No other reason you're out here?"

A brief pause followed. The cigarette had just burned out when Omi spoke, voice hesitant and gaze fixed at some distant point in the sky.

"I don't know. I've never actually had a good memory." Weak, self-conscious laughter, even as his gaze took another step towards detachment. "But wasn't there was some stretch of time when we were all closer? I mean, it's weird...we're all living together in the trailer now, but it feels so - so distant." Another pause, thin fingers toying absently with a loose thread on the sweater. "But maybe it's the proximity that makes it seem more distant, ne? Maybe we've always been this far apart, and it's only because we're forced to be together that we actually notice...how far apart we all are."

Youji sighed softly in response, because there wasn't anything else to do.

They watched the snow fall in silence.

***

Youji had frozen, just briefly, when he had heard the flustered apology - the voice sparking a sudden twist of pain in his chest, memories that surfaced like glass shards from sand. But by now he was used to seeing ghosts, and so it had not taken much effort to give the appropriate response, take the two more steps up to the door and escape the cold street and an echo from his past.

True, he mused as he sat down at the furthest corner of the bar, the only ghosts he'd ever seen in strangers were those of her. Nevertheless, he supposed there was a first time for everything. Probably some indication of how pathetic he was becoming, now, so

(lonely)

- lost in the past that he was reduced to seeing his team-mates' faces in the crowd. He wondered if this meant that he missed them - the thought made him laugh, a short bitter chuckle that earned a raised eyebrow from the bartender, who pushed the usual order towards him.

God, of course he missed them. It wasn't like they'd been confidants and painfully close friends or anything, but three years of working together with someone...you couldn't help but

(care for)

- miss them when you finally had to parrt. And then it made sense that it would have been Omi's ghost that he'd seen, yeah, because Omi was the first to leave, had walked out of their lives before the final mission that left the three of them in the same hospital room for weeks afterwards.

He turned his attention to the bottle of vodka that the bartender had left. Much stronger than beer, and ever since Azami and Ayame he'd had a certain bias against sake. Pouring himself a shot, he leaned against the wall and decided to think of other things.

New Year's was coming, which meant the bar would either be crowded with people celebrating or deserted because its patrons would be celebrating elsewhere. Judging by how empty it had been on Christmas night, though, he was betting the latter. Not that it really mattered to him either way.

He finished the shot almost absent-mindedly and reached to pour another. The four of them had never really celebrated Christmas, beside exchanging token greetings. They didn't even have dinner together that night, though they seldom did anyway - Aya would be off at the hospital, of course, and Youji never wanted to deal with the

(painful)

- awkward feeling of being with the othhers on a festive occasion. So he always gave his usual excuse of a date, an excuse which both sides knew was false, and escaped into the anonymous silence of a random bar. He'd neither known nor asked what Omi and Ken did, but he suspected they kept to themselves as well.

It was pretty selfish of them all to leave Omi alone like that, though, he reflected as he filled the small glass yet again. Poor kid probably never celebrated a single festival in his entire life...or didn't remember doing so, anyway, which was pretty much the same thing. Yet despite his messed-up life Omi was always the eternally cheerful one, almost

(heartbreaking)

- remarkable in his optimism, his hopeffulness, the way he tried to bring the four of them together. But they'd never appreciated that, had they? At least he hadn't, ungrateful jerk that he was. Still, the boy should be happier now, wherever he was.

(god, he missed him.)

But he didn't need to be thinking of this again ( who was he kidding? this was all he ever thought about besides her, because his life had been nothing outside of Weiss - after all, he'd died the night that Persia found him, or at least the person he used to be had died ) and certainly didn't need to be thinking of this while drinking himself sick, because he only used to drink himself sick after really lousy missions and drinking now while thinking about then would only bring the memories of the missions back, every single sharp-edged fragment of them, and he really, really didn't need them back right now -

He realised that his glass was shaking, and only because the hand holding it was shaking too. Almost desperately he threw back the shot, which led to a brief spate of coughing. It managed to derail his train of thought, though, which was good enough.

Think of other things, dammit. Think of -

(soft snow, cold streets, a passing stranger with Omi's voice - )

He cursed under his breath, downed another shot, wondered how many more it'd take for him to get thoroughly drunk. Despite himself he glanced briefly at the door, and part of his mind struggled to replay the brief apology he'd heard, as though it would prove more significant now - with a small surprised pang of regret he found that he was already forgetting.

Didn't even get to see his face...

He picked up the bottle, lowered its neck to the rim of the glass, and tried not to wonder if the stranger's eyes had been blue.