//Something's not right//, came Hisashi's unbidden thought at the last question posed at him. The dread he felt that night Jiro got into the accident swept through him again. Only this time, it was more powerful and threatening. He had the feeling Jiro wasn't talking about his idea for the video anymore. //'Of course not'//, he recalled answering. His own response proved to be more revolting the more that he thought about it. Inwardly, he cursed himself for doubting the question. //I should've asked him pointblank what he meant.//

His eyes were focused on the other man from across him, as the two brown orbs had been glued to since Jiro returned his attention to Masahide's droning voice. From his seat, Hisashi couldn't see anything that appeared to be troubling the bassist. In fact, things looked quite normal, especially with Jiro yawning like he did sometime between Masahide reading the agenda and Toshi's bubble gum popping splat onto his face. Besides, he'd already clarified to Jiro about his real relationship with Teru, or with any person for that matter. Teru also said he'd done the same and that Jiro now knew everything. The only thing missing was a formal declaration of his feelings, that it was Jiro he truly loved, that he'd vowed not to lose him again, that there was nothing more he wanted than Jiro himself. Everything was clear.

There was nothing to worry about.

//Is there? //

Hisashi didn't feel settled. Jiro had smiled so easily at him after he answered the question.

It scared him.

Hisashi took a sheet of paper off his pad and picked up a pen. Before he could start writing the cursive initial of Jiro's name, he felt an elbow poking at his side. Momentarily forgetting the note to ask if he and Jiro could talk after the meeting was through, Hisashi subtly glared at Teru. "What?"

The vocalist leaned closer to him. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing that concerns you."

"Yeah, sure." Teru rolled his eyes. "You never take down notes during meetings and I can't see why you'd start doing it now." Teru scooted closer to Hisashi, peering at whatever scribble the guitarist might've already made on the paper.

"Teru, bug off," Hisashi muttered under his breath while checking if Masahide had been noticing that he hadn't been paying attention. If he'd get caught another time, Masahide might make him sit in a corner of the room and wear the 'Dunce' cap.

The vocalist was undaunted. "Hmm…writing a love letter for him, aren't you?"

Hisashi would've whacked Teru senseless if he could. "Get off my case, Teru."

"Why are you being all so sensitive and touchy?" Teru teased, amid the monotonous business meeting voice Masahide employed. "You've got things all cleared out, don't you? He knows there's nothing."

"I know, but stop all these flirty things we used to do. He might be getting jealous with you all over me and everything."

Teru chuckled slightly. "Then that only goes to prove that he loves you, too."

"That might be true," Hisashi replied between gritted teeth, all the while resisting the craving to push Teru away from him. "However, I don't want to take that risk. I've almost lost him before on the night of accident. I'm not gonna lose him again."

In a mock act of utter shock, Teru gaped his mouth open while a hand dramatically pressed to his chest. "Goodness, Hisashi! I never thought you could be so romantic. That's a very sappy way of putting it."

Hisashi almost couldn't take it anymore. "Teru, what drugs are you on?"

This time, Teru's face showed feigned pain. "Aww, Hisashi. Couldn't you allow me to get all chummy and stuff with my little brother for a while?"

"What?"

"I think we both know that after this meeting, you'll be out on a talk with him, tell each other how much you love the other, finally get it on and then start counting the days until you celebrate your silver anniversary. And I'm gonna miss my two little brothers like hell. So yeah, please allow me to pester my brother off for the last time."

Hisashi couldn't help smiling. Sometimes, when Teru shoots him his pleading brown orbs, Hisashi often finds himself giving in. "You can be so damn obnoxious sometimes, you know that?"

"Obnoxious? Me?" Teru poked him kiddingly at the side. "If there's anyone here who's obnoxious, it's you. Imagine letting a surprise visit and an accident happen first before you realize love was right before you all the time."

"I know, I know," he muttered. "You don't have to remind me for the rest of my life." Hisashi placed the pen on the paper and started scribbling some in pretense of actually talking down notes from the meeting. After all, he already saw Takuro sending him three warning glares.

Teru was persistent. "Wouldn't it be so wonderful if you'd become Hisashi Tonomura-Wayama?" He scratched his chin. "It has a nice ring to it. I like it." Apparently, he had more ideas in mind when his eyes suddenly lit up. "Promise me I'd be the godfather of your beautiful children. Pretty please, with him on top?"

"Teru, you do realize we'd be needing certain things to produce a baby: a healthy dose of estrogen, an ovary and a uterus. So far, we've got zero out of three."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'll bet with all things considered, you two would've produced a hefty round of really beautiful children." Casually, Teru draped his arm across the backrest of Hisashi's chair and leaned even closer to chant. "Then I'll go round singing, 'Jiro and Hisa sitting on a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N--' "

"OH GET SOME FUCKIN' ROOM, YOU TWO!"

All heads turned to the owner of that unmistakable deep voice. Jiro was already up on his feet, having pushed his chair back suddenly that it fell back. His palms lay flat against the table, supporting himself. The soft brown eyes Hisashi had always loved about the other man were now two orbs of shiny black, hard with emotion. Never in a million years would Hisashi forget the dangerous look on the bassist's face.

"Jiro, calm down," Takuro, always the level-headed one, said, a hand reaching up to pat Jiro's shoulder but the younger man only swatted the hand off as though it burned. Takuro's mouth gaped open. "Jiro?"

"Couldn't you at least have some decency to spare us the gagging scene of you two eating each other?" Jiro continued, undiscerning of anything else. "I'm just so damn sick and tired of you two making out without even caring whether or not you have an audience who actually enjoys the spectacle."

Hisashi didn't know anything else to say. "Jiro, I--"

"And cut me the excuses, Tonomura!"

Jiro's last exclamation rendered Hisashi immobile. He couldn't understand what was going on. The talk had been done. Everything was clear, wasn't it? So what was causing the surge of emotions the bassist was spitting out? Unless…

"Jiro, are you drunk?" came Hisashi's straight query once he'd found his nerve. It sounded awfully off-tangent, but if his assumptions were right, everything would make perfect sense.

Jiro met his gaze with a cold, accusing one. "What if I am?"

"But that's not possible. I've kept all the drinks far from you. I personally saw to it that--"

"Well, if you had been paying attention to what you claim you actually keep an eye on instead of cavorting around like a black widow spider, sickeningly playing Find-My-Tickle-Spot, you'd know how I got my hands on the booze."

"Cavorting?" Hisashi definitely couldn't believe what he was hearing. Kidding around with Teru was hardly cavorting. Moreover, he and Teru had cleared everything out t Jiro, and Jiro had expressed that he understood everything. So where was all these coming from? "Jiro, I don't--"

The bassist put his hands up in surrender. "Okay, look, you know what? I'd buy you time, Hisashi. Stop wasting your saliva. Nothing that you'd say would make me change my mind and nothing I'd do would ever change what might've been. Things had been clearer back then. I was just downright stupid thinking that for a minute--that for even just one moment in my measly pitiable life--things were looking up. But then I know that's too much wishful thinking. I know better now. So going back into how simple things had been before you come turning my life upside down, allow me to leave in the middle of another argument with you. I'd never win with you, Hisashi. I thought I would during those four days. But one way or another, you'd always end up victorious and I'd always be the one who has to concede. And I don't do that because of my damned thin pride, but because…because I…because--" Jiro never got to finish his say because as soon as Hisashi saw the tears fall freely from the bassist's eyes, Jiro backed off and ran for the way out, leaving everyone present baffled, but one person more distressed than ever.

"What was that all about?" Masahide wondered aloud, his humdrum voice reclaiming all the attention momentarily stolen by Jiro.

//I don't know, I don't know, I don't know// came Hisashi's silent mantra. He tried to think of Jiro's outburst from varied points of view, but he could not make anything out of it. If he and Teru had explained everything to Jiro, it didn't make sense for the bassist to lash out and storm off the way he did.

"Will somebody just freakin' tell me what that was all about?" Masahide demanded when no one paid attention to him. Of course it hadn't been because nobody didn't want to give the producer and answer, but simply because only one person could provide it.

"This is absurd," Teru cried. "I'm gonna run to see if I could talk some sense back into Jiro. He's acting way too weird." He got off his seat and readied to head out.

"You're not going anywhere, Teru." Takuro said before the vocalist could move any further. "Let me do it." And then he was off in a jiffy. Whether or not their revered leader perfectly know what the ruckus was all about, Hisashi wasn't sure. But he felt relieved when Takuro took over the task Teru was so willing to do. Hisashi feared that things would only go more out of hand should they let Teru talk to Jiro. The bassist looked deadly enough to kill.

//But what caused it? We've tried clearing everything out, leaving no stone unturned. I talked to him one on one. Teru did the same. Unless there was something either of us said that Jiro might have misconstrued…//

"This is whacked!" Teru exclaimed, sputtering for effect. This brought Hisashi out of his reverie and watched the vocalist go about ranting like little Kenji on a spoiled brat spree. "I can't understand that guy! One minute, he seems happy, the next minute, he seems as though the whole heavens fell from their place above and landed right smack on his shoulders. If he hadn't been a guy, I'd call him a bitch."

"Hush…" Toshi warned subtly. "Don't make things any worse, Teru."

Silently, Hisashi thanked Toshi for the reprimand. He felt he didn't have enough power to do it anymore. Just thinking of what had gone awry was already as taxing as it was. //But what DID go wrong? The talk was over, the talk was over, the talk was over.//

A spark of thought suddenly hit Hisashi. No matter how puzzled he was, the questions in his mind all centered on one matter: the talk they had with Jiro.

"But Jiro's mighty weird," Teru went on with his blabbering, unmindful of the straight gaze the guitarist threw his way. "Hisashi had talked to him. I've talked to him. What else is there to tell him?"

"Tell him what?" Masahide asked.

"Tell him that--"

"Exactly what did you tell him anyway?" Hisashi asked, his voice as steely and grim as his determination.

"Jiro, wait up!" the bassist heard Takuro call. At the seventh mention of his name, Jiro finally stopped speeding away on his sneaker power and came to a halt just beside Takuro's car. "What?"

The man towering no more than four inches from the bassist placed a hand on Jiro's shoulder and bent a little to regain his breathing. "Where are you going?" Takuro finally managed to ask.

"Somewhere far," Jiro replied vaguely. It hadn't been a fib. He did feel he needed to get somewhere. And he wouldn't care if he'd end up in Vietnam. //As long as it's far away from Teru and Hisashi.//

"You know you can't run away, Jiro."

"I'm not running away. I'm just making things easy for everybody."

"Well, it isn't helping any! Quit with all the lies, the deceit and the hypocrisy, Jiro! You're hurting everyone else and not only yourself."

"Hurting everyone else?" Jiro cried indignantly, sputtering in disbelief. He ran a hand through his hair as if to suppress his nerves. "If there's somebody else hurting at this very moment other than me, it's definitely not that conniving little bitch you call your goddamned guitarist."

"Jiro!" Takuro yelled, not being able to contain the bassist's ire some more. "Nothing civil would come out with you uttering words like that." He knew pure rage was what drove the younger man to lash out colorful phrases but he just had to bore his way into Jiro's head. He had the feeling Jiro would regret it sooner or later.

Jiro clenched his hands into fists at his sides to calm down somehow. "Look, Takuro. I respect you very much and you know that I'd always listen to you, but this is one instance you can't count on my attention. I'm the one who's feeling so miserable. I know where this pain starts. I'd know how it should end."

"But you're not ending it the right way. Running away wouldn't help."

"Neither would staying back there, stupidly allowing myself be the proverbial third will. Goddamnit, Takuro! I love Hisashi so much, so much that it hurts. I know he knows it, but here he goes showing me just how unreachable he is to me."

"You reached him in those four days, didn't you? He had been yours."

"Just because Teru wasn't around!" Jiro yelled at Takuro's face. "He needed someone and I was conveniently there. And then Teru resurfaced and I was once again shoved into the back shelf. I've got just about enough pride left not to let myself play second fiddle. Can't you understand that?"

Takuro took a deep breath, trying to rationalize what else to say to the irate Jiro. Though Jiro was open-minded on a lot of issues, Takuro also knew that the bassist had one of the worst stubborn streaks he'd ever experienced in his life. "Look, I think it would be better if you'd go try to talk to Hisashi and clear everything up. I'm sure--"

"I'm sick of them talking…and lying."

"But--"

Jiro held a hand up. "Don't try to change my mind."

"Jiro--"

"Are you going to drive me home or do I have to snatch your car keys from your pockets myself?"

"I'm not taking you anywhere."

"Fine. Suit yourself and serve as the minister to their wedding!" Jiro spun on his heels and stomped father towards the road curb. An empty cab appropriately arrived and Jiro hailed it.

"We're not yet through talking. Come back!"

"The last thing I want to do right now is talk," the bassist shot over his shoulder. "If you want words, go get it from Teru and Hisashi. They're full of it anyway, plus lots of horny actions to boot."

Takuro knew he'd had enough. He took long strides towards the other man and was determined to get Jiro back into the studio to try to smooth things out with proper communication. He'd drag the bassist on his ass if he had to. "Yoshihito Wayama, I demand you to halt at this very moment," he cried, employing his leader-type tone he'd always used to stress his authority during serious discussions about Glay's direction. But Jiro wasn't having any of it when he opened the door to let himself in. Angry and frustrated, Takuro had been fast enough to slam the door shut to keep Jiro from going away, almost getting Jiro's precious fingers caught between the door hinges.

On instinct, Jiro drew his fingers close to himself and stared wide-eyed at Takuro. "What the fuck are you trying to do: end my career as a musician?"

"Jiro, this isn't the way. Go back there to listen to Hisashi."

"I have not a single intention of hearing anything from him."

"Then at least try to talk to Teru."

Jiro's eyes once again hardened with danger. "I have nothing to say to him."

"So you're just gonna throw your friendship away like that?"

The bassist set his grim eyes on Takuro, letting a few moments pass before the look of peril died from his eyes, settling his gaze into something pleading for understanding then finally speaking up with collected calmness. "They're obviously in love with each other, Takuro. And because I love Hisashi so much, I wouldn't want to be the one getting in the way of his happiness. I love him too much to deprive him of the one thing that could make him happy for all eternity." With a sad smile, Jiro gently opened the taxi door and hopped in.

"Jiro…"

The younger man leaned against the window for a final word to Takuro. "By the way, I do have a few words for Teru."

"What is it?"

Once again, Jiro's eyes conveyed a warning. "I find out he hurts Hisashi, I'm gonna kill him myself." Without waiting for the shock on Takuro's face to wear off, Jiro barked his directions to the driver and let the tall leader disbelievingly watch the cab sped off.

"JIRO!"

It was Hisashi's last and loudest call of the bassist's name, hoping to grab the blonde's attention and settle everything once and for all. Almost breathless, he flew out of the recording studio in a desperate attempt to catch up with Jiro. But his efforts proved to be in vain when all that met his eyes were a dumbfounded Takuro and a yellow car running farther away. He followed it with his eyes, silently praying that it would make a complete turn back. "Jiro," he murmured softly, witnessing the car only turn left to join the stream of other vehicles making way into the freeway.

"I don't get it," Takuro said, pulling Hisashi out of his melancholic musings. The blue-haired man looked up to meet his leader's puzzled expression. "I just don't get you two people."

"Takuro…"

The tall man shook his head. "You're making things so damn difficult for both of you and I just don't understand it at all. You and Jiro…you're just absolutely crazy."

Hisashi's eyes narrows down into two slits. "You don't know anything, Takuro. Stop being so damn preachy."

"Well, maybe I do not know anything!" the leader cried, raising his hands up for effect. "But then maybe that's a good thing after all because, hell, if I *did* know anything, maybe I would've killed myself by now. You two puzzle me senseless, I don't have a clue what's wrong with you."

"It's simply something he and I have to figure out."

"Well do it fast, for Kami's sake! It was bad enough that I had to deal with my guitarist and my bassist constantly threatening to start the Third World War some time ago, it's even worse that I be forced to deal with the same people trying to hide and deny something which is unquestioningly, painfully obviously there. And I don't have time for this kind of strenuous mental-emotional activity, Hisashi. Work this out."

"I am! I am!" Hisashi snapped back impatiently. "I'm doing my best, okay? Quit pushing me."

"Your best certainly isn't best enough for me."

"Well, excuse me for not being as good as you in everything, alright? And I'm sorry I'm not half as perfect as you are, always in control of every goddamn situation, ever Mister Calm and Confident, always ready with answers for everything! I'm ever so sorry, too, for not knowing what to do this very moment, with you forcing me to act on this immediate now."

Unexpectedly, Takuro chuckled slightly, baffling Hisashi after his breathless ranting. "There's nothing to it, really. It's just one simple thing you have to do."

"And what's that?"

"Do what you feel is right."

Hisashi bit his bottom lip and bent his head down as though fixated on the asphalt. Maybe Takuro had reason enough. Maybe it's exactly what he needed to do. //But what is right? Somehow, I don't find it easy to forget about how mad I am at Jiro.//

Takuro expelled a deep breath, hooking the other man's attention. "You know, we haven't finished the meeting yet. Masahide's probably fuming his nose out when we get back in there. Leaving it had been a rude thing to do anyway." He set his eyes to the man beside him.

Hisashi had been staring out to the horizon, his face a look of pure deep thought. Without warning, the younger guitarist madly shook his head and walked towards the parked new car, fishing for his keyring along the way.

"Where are you going? Takuro demanded, following the small man with his eyes. Hisashi acted as though he hadn't heard him. "Damnit, Hisashi. I'm asking you. Where the heck do you think you're going? We're not yet through with the meeting."

"I can't make it back," Hisashi replied, not halting for a second from getting himself and his car ready to leave.

"What?" Takuro cried incredulously. He walked towards the driver's side of the car, hoping to catch it just before it departs for its destination. "Where are--"

"I have a business to finish first." The voice was grim, despite coming from the confines of the car. Hisashi pulled the door close then started the engine.

Takuro planted his hands on the roof of Hisashi's car to loom above the smaller man. "You're running away from a meeting to catch up with a hot-tempred bassist who would not even listen to a word you'd say? Do you think that's right?"

Hisashi was beyond care and he didn't heed Takuro's words, preferring to drown the lecture out as he wound his window up close. Left foot on the clutch, hand shifting the gear from neutral to first, release on the left pedal and a heavy foot stepping down on the accelerator and then Hisashi was off, the tires leaving screech marks on the asphalt lot. But a brief glance into the rearview mirror gave him the image of Takuro shaking his head at being left high twice in a row. He knew the leader was royally pissed off, but Hisashi was beyond understanding. His mind was set on just one thing. He'd gather what he would miss from the meeting as soon as he got everything fixed up. Then he smirked. //But I'd have to apologize to Takuro as soon as possible for spewing dust and smoke on him.//

part 12