Archive of Our Own

i.
In the earliest days of what is to become a legendary case of workaholism even for the Port Mafia, Chuuya decides he hates Christmas, Christmas parties, and all six of his days off a year.

ii.
"Let me down," Doc says, but Chuuya accelerates over a windowsill and it comes out like pptueuetm over the bike frame rattling. Tainted's barely quick enough to keep a syringe from his subcutanea. It's the sixth attempt in as many minutes; Chuuya has no idea how Doc's priming these with both his hands white-knuckling his shoulders. "I am asking you nicely."

"No."

"Yes."

"No! Fucking quit squirming!"

"You're a terrible driver," Albatross says gleefully, "such a shame. I'm never loaning you a bike again." His face consumes Chuuya's entire phone where it's strapped in-between the handlebars; he's holding his end too close, like a jackass. "No, wait! Beg me to teach you."

"I'm making sure he can't get a grip on me!"

"What a lame excuse!"

Chuuya swerves at an acute angle to avoid the quicksand suddenly feet from the wheel. "Yeah, excuse me for trying to bring you this ugly bastard in one piece! How about the next time Doc tries to break a bike while we're both still on it I just mail you whatever's left of him."

Albatross cackles.

"He has a worse death wish than that freak D—"

"He's not like that when I—"

"I'm going to throw up," Doc informs them. It's the most excited he’s sounded since Chuuya tore him from the operating theater mid-stitch.

"Whose fault is that?!"

iii.
Days on mean training with Kouyou and hoping shit goes wrong and the promise of close-quarters combat, if it does. Days off mean thinking. Today Chuuya’s thinking about the fully stocked kitchen in his Port Mafia apartment and how far he can get from it without being named defector, like Randou. Today he’s thinking it’s too cold to eat roots.

It’s too easy to think useless things on a full stomach. He’s damn glad his work phone rings when it does. Shitty black plastic shocking his fingers. He’d been clutching to it all morning; his hands are dead sore; Pianoman’s voice, coming through the disposable, could be mistaken for a Christmas miracle even in a city like this. Something something mission something something coordinates--that's all it takes, all Chuuya wants to know; he's already got his new coat on, even, had barely slept the night before and not long enough to bother putting it up.

"Of course you can't tell anyone about this," Pianoman is saying. Chuuya can practically hear him twisting the phone cord around his fingers:  corny bastard. "Not even the Boss. The less he knows, the better—and those are his words. You understand?"

"Sure," Chuuya says, "if you say so, whatever." It's hard to sound unimpressed with one foot already out the door.

"Wonderful. And one more thing. You remember our good friend Doc—?"

iv.
Our good friend Doc. If Chuuya wasn't currently in the business of looking for work he would've let him skive.

The bike bounces over onto the top of the building with minimal encouragement from Chuuya. From here, he can see the woods they’re meant to cut through on the way to the rendezvous point, covered in snow turned to glitter by the midmorning sun. The air’s so thick with chill that cars look like fish under cat ice; the shadows things throw are pure blue. Even the screaming coming from whoever had their living room wall transformed into a writhing pit of magic sand doesn’t dampen the effect. Sounds like wind.

Doc notices Chuuya’s slowed down before he thinks to hide it.

“Pretty, is it?”

“We didn’t come here to sightsee.”

"No?" Chuuya physically turns to stare at him, incredulous, but Doc's face gives nothing away. "Then why did we?"

I don't have time for this.

After that he doesn't warn his cargo before gunning it off the back of the roof.

"Aw," says Albatross, catching Doc's expression from where it hangs over Chuuya's shoulder. "Don't look at me like that, man. Makes me sad."

"What did you—hkk—"

"OI!"

"—tell him?"

"Just that we really needed you here but you weren't cooperating... What? It's the truth!"

Chuuya would’ve caught on then, if he’d been paying attention, but he isn’t. He's not. He’s thinking about not slowing down.

v.
There was a time Chuuya would've killed for a day off.

He’s eight years old when the Sheep take him in; twelve when they crown him, six months after he gets a hang of the trick with the reversible bullets, which is really too good not to reward. So it's the Sheep who teach him to play and it's the Sheep who teach him to stop. That’s their stop-and-go adolescence, where adulthood’s granted to the last man standing.

The day he becomes king Shirase takes him to a bridge.

“Dunno if you remember, but this is where we found you,” Shirase says. His face looks wet, burned; his cheeks are scoured, the corners of his eyes leak the dust the wind kicks up.

It's uncomfortable. To look at him. "So…"

"So don't forget."

"Wasn't planning on it," Chuuya says.

Shirase searches him for a long time. He must still like what he sees, because he suddenly deflates.

He says, “With your brains, that doesn’t mean much.”

“With your brains, I wouldn’t worry about what shit means.”

Shirase punches his shoulder.

The novelty of being in charge wore off before the terror of it. The terror went before the loneliness, and the loneliness never did. A real sheepdog would’ve at least had a shepherd to handle the consequences of his errors. Chuuya had no one, or at least no one big enough to fix the kinds of mistakes he could make now.

But Chuuya didn’t need. Not to be a real sheepdog or a real kid, or anything. Hand to god. He just wanted, which was different. He wanted a day to lie in a field of tall grass. He wanted Shirase to keep an eye on the littler kids when he said he was gonna so Chuuya could work on his letters or something. He wanted a day off, and then he wanted an apology that didn’t bruise in the morning.

That was four months ago. He doesn't want stuff like that anymore.

vi.
The boat turns out to be a truly pathetic rowboat someone’s spraypainted over the sides with the name S.S. ORTABLA. It’s not a funny joke, but Albatross laughs his stupid ke-ke-ke hyena’s laugh so loudly it scares the birds out of the trees before Chuuya hangs up, embarrassed for him.

Doc does not help Chuuya with the boat. But he doesn’t run away or try to bury Chuuya in sand the second he turns his back on him, either, so he doesn’t say anything about it.

Instead he leans over the side to jab at some ice with the oar his ability obviates. “You hate this job that much, or what?”

“This… job? Oh, no. Not at all…” Under his white coat, Doc’s hugging himself with a shocking lack of self-consciousness for Port Mafia. “I like it here very much… I don’t like where we’re going.”

Chuuya can’t believe his ears. He’s seen this man stroll down streets so saturated with corpses the butcher’s looked like a petting zoo. A chill goes down his spine. “That bad?" Maybe the safehouse has a torture basement and he's only here because they expect him to stand in for Kouyou. He's going to have to find a way to tell them that's not what she's been teaching him without letting them down (or letting them know about the etiquette lessons, which they would never let him live down). "Not that I care, I mean. I just didn't take Pianoman for the type."

“I wouldn’t lie to you,” Doc mumbles, lying. “Unlike some of us."

Little by little the opposite shore comes into view. There’s the blurry suggestion of a lakehouse imposing itself onto a clear blue sky, and all the associated accouterments; a dock and a rotunda patio, an untreated pool. That can’t be it. Chuuya flattens his hand over his eyes like a brim. He squints against the sun.

Then he just squints.

"Doc," Chuuya says slowly, to a man who now looks preternaturally occupied with the holes in his Crocs. “What the fuck is that?"

"I tried to warn you."

"The hell you did!"

"Chuuya!"

There’s Pianoman at the lip of the lake, waving his arms over his head. And behind him—

"Chuuya! I don't think he can hear me. CHUUYA!"

—in front of the lakehouse, is that a—

"So fast… I'll get seasick."

"Lippmann, do you still have that megaphone?"

"Do not," Lippmann says, "speak to me."

"Oh, get out of the car, he's almost here. CHU—"

Chuuya rams the rowboat against the shore with a wild juddering of rock underhull and a thunk that can only be Doc falling over. He leaps from the boat to the dock and makes good time striding down it, boots hammering the wooden slats. “Keep your voice down! What if someone heard you?"

"Yes, what if," Lippmann says from the shotgun of the pickup truck (!) parked next to Pianoman, in the bed of which there is a—

Pianoman ignores him. “No need to worry! I have great news. The mission is over!"

Chuuya stops in his tracks.

Lippmann claps. “Convincing,” he says. “Bravo.”

From the truck bed, Albatross lifts a branch of a truly gigantic fir over his head and shouts, “Lippmann, the tree you picked fucking sucks."

Then he spots Chuuya. “Hey! Help me get this thing down. That softhanded guy’s no use at all.”

Lippmann puts his face in said hands.

At this distance, Chuuya can see that he’s covered from head to toe in fir needles. They’re buried in his hair and in the fur collar of his nice winter coat, and there’s a few sticking out from underneath his dress shirt, too. The palm of one of his nice gloves is torn; it's the worst Chuuya's ever seen him. Albatross looks less abused and completely unbothered—as Chuuya watches, he hefts a truly concerning amount of tree over his shoulder single-handedly, whistling to himself as he goes.

"What was the mission?"

That is absolute acid in Chuuya's voice. Pianoman's smile doesn't so much as twitch a muscle out of place.

"Pianoman, what was the mission?"

"Why, to put together the perfect holiday party, of course!"

Click. Lippmann locks the truck doors.

"Pianoman."

"Yes, Chuuya."

"This isn't the time for jokes."

"I would never joke about something as serious as the Christmas spirit, Chuuya."

"Doc tried to kill me," Chuuya says loudly. "I drove a motorcycle across a building in broad daylight."

Still smiling. "Why would you do something like that?"

"Because you told me to 'be here ten minutes ago!'"

"Ah."

"There were cameras."

"Not really an issue in Yokohama…"

"Doc tried to kill me!"

"He doesn't like my parties," Pianoman admits.

"Yeah? I’m starting to think I don’t like them either!” Chuuya spins and kicks the side of the S.S. ORTABLA and Albatross makes a noise like Chuuya’s kicked him in the stomach instead. “A heads up would have been nice!"

"But then there’d have been no surprise!” he argues. “And we wouldn’t have had your childlike sense of Christmas wonder to keep us warm on this cold winter’s day.” While Chuuya’s still spluttering over that one, “Doc, we don’t use our abilities on each other."

"I did not." He actually sounds offended. "It was on the building… he had ample time to get out of the way."

"Come on, Chuuya,” Albatross says. “It’s nothing to get mad about, right? It’ll be fun! Who doesn’t like a day off?"

It's not that, Chuuya thinks, but then he doesn't know what it is instead.

He doesn't like surprises, but he doesn’t hate them; he hates being tricked but this wasn’t bad, it wasn’t a mean trick. It’s a nice lake. It’s a nice tree, despite Albatross’s illegible problem with it. It’s a nice house. Everything’s nice.

Chuuya’s chest feels tight. If he calls that anger it’s because he doesn’t know the other word.

“Take off your shades,” he blurts.

There’s a feeling like everyone’s holding their breath, but Albatross does it like it’s something he does every day. Whisks them off into his pocket and doesn’t say anything, just smiles down at Chuuya from on top of the truck.

The sun’s dropped directly behind him; light shoots through his feathery hair, wreaths his face like a halo or a mane, turns him a little pink around the edges with transluce. What had Shirase been looking for? Chuuya looks, and he looks, and he looks. But he doesn’t see anything. It’s just Albatross. There’s a needle on his cheek. He’s got a lazy eye.

“Whatever,” Chuuya says, finally. Albatross whoops. Doc looks slightly more ill, which could be good or bad. Pianoman and Lippmann exchange smiles before Lippmann remembers he's angry at him and turns away again. “Lemme see that tree before you drop it on someone.”

“Aye-aye!”

vii.
Lippmann gives him The Tour. It’s got capital letters even though it’s the first time Lippmann's ever gotten to give it—maybe because it’s the first time he’s ever gotten to give it.

“There’s the foyer," he pronounces it stupid, "and there’s the dining room…”

Out of the corner of his eye it’s wood and more wood:  wood paneling, wood pilasters, chopped wood by the fireplace. Tapestries deep reds and greens under vaulted shaft skylights on faux log walls. It would be a disservice to what is probably Lippmann’s taste to say it screams expensive; it "whispers" it, along with rustic and cozy and a home away from home and all the other advertisement words.

“The living room’s just through here, you can just leave that in the planter.”

“I’m not your damned handyman."

The usual effect of Lippmann’s innocent smile is dulled by the resin on his clothes. Chuuya has no idea how his ability didn’t activate; it’s obvious that the tree had tried to kill him. “That’s the kitchen. Iceman’s—”

The man in question sticks his head through the doorway. 

“You made it,” he says. He gives Chuuya a curt nod and disappears back into the kitchen before he can respond.

“—busy, so don’t expect him to…”

Albatross, who'd been finagling the tree into the planter alone after Chuuya dropped his end in protest, lifts his head and laughs in Lippmann’s face.

“You’re so,” he says, wheezing, “your face is so, you look like—pfft—”

“Thank you, Albatross.”

“He's been ignoring us all day!”

Pianoman chooses that moment to come in with a great big fuckoff box. That’s a leader’s intuition for you.

He whistles when he sees the tree. “Fantastic work. This was a great choice,” he adds, as if to appease Lippmann, who does look slightly mollified. He accepts the box when Pianoman offers it to him.

It’s Lippmann’s job to decorate, Pianoman explains. It’s their job to make it as annoying and difficult as possible, Albatross explains. Their job is actually to sit there and let him work, Lippmann explains. That’s not really true because that’s not any fun though, Albatross explains. While they are cross-explaining things to Chuuya without acknowledging each other like divorcing parents Doc, who’d snuck in after Pianoman, wanders up to Lippmann, removes an ugly Santa bobble from the box, and hangs it on the tree.

“Cute,” Doc says to himself. The silence is broken by the cardboard box crumpling at the edges under Lippmann’s hands.

Albatross attempts a followup by sticking his hand in the box as well, rummaging around like it’s a bag of chips. Pianoman establishes teams for them by yanking his arm out before he can pick something; Doc goes back for seconds while Albatross is still squawking. Lippmann sets the box down behind him to mount a more effective defense. If there had been any age-appropriate mafia-style maturity in the building, it has, at some point, forsaken them.

The question of whose side Chuuya’s on is settled when Lippmann hears a rustling behind him and spins around just in time to see him abscond with a handful of felted gingerbread reindeer.

“Et tu, Chuuya?”

Chuuya hooks it over a branch and looks over his shoulder, smirking. Albatross sends him a double thumbs-up. “My man!”

“That’s two points,” Doc says, and they’re off.

Despite being one man down, Lippmann and Pianoman do well for themselves; their experience in the field together is evident, while Chuuya and Albatross are not yet nearly as coordinated. Their edge comes down to their raw speed—unparalleled—and Doc running interference whenever the mood strikes him (which is not as often as it could be “if he really wanted to, like, be helpful, man”).

There is a fair amount of throw-pillow blunt force violence; at one point someone flips a coffee table and introduces shards of glass as a stage hazard. The box’s offerings dwindle until there’s only one ornament left:  the star. 

Nobody has a clear lead. A silent understanding runs throughout the group that whoever’s team can put it on will have won the night.

“Chuuya, you gotta. It has to be you. You’re the only one left!” Pianoman has knocked Albatross back against the couch while Doc watches from his perch on one of the arms, amused. “Hurryyyy!”

“I got it!”

Chuuya ducks the couch cushion Pianoman whips at him and feints left around Lippmann, slide-tackling the box out of his reach. He closes a hand around the star without looking and grins up at them both before kicking the box—still padded with tinsel and lights—into the air between them. The momentary distraction’s all he needs to shoot between them, Albatross shouting encouragement that had started feeling genuinely encouraging about ten minutes ago.

Chuuya bounds up the side of the tree in two quick jumps and slams the star down onto the top like he’s dunking a basketball. He hangs off one of the star’s spines with one hand, nearly weightless.

“And take that!” Chuuya shouts. It’s not until he looks down at the rest of the Flags’ smiling faces, heartbeat slowing, that he realizes he’s been tricked again. 

“That was clean,” Pianoman says. “Very clean.” He looks disgustingly proud for someone who just got made a fool of. Maybe Lippmann too.

The shiteating grin slides off Chuuya’s face. For a minute he looks startled, like a child that’s just fallen over and hasn't decided if it hurts.

Sensing his precarious position, Lippmann makes a show out of gathering up the strings of tinsel and lights. “I can’t believe we forgot these.”

“Nothin' unbelievable about it. Open up your mind a little, Lippmann.”

“And risk having everything fall out of it, like yourself? Pass.”

“Just put it on top,” Pianoman says, so they do.

It ends up looking bad.

“I don’t know why you couldn’t have sent Iceman with me after all,” Lippmann says gloomily. He picks a needle from his hair and makes a face.

“You missed one,” Albatross interjects. “No, wait, two… three… four… five…”

Lippmann gives him a dour look.

“Six… seven…”

“I am so very thrilled,” Lippmann says, with a voice like flat soda, “that you have learned to count. Though you might do it faster, if you can, or in your head, if it has enough room.”

“Ladies don’t like sore losers, Lippmann. Eight…”

Lippmann delicately touches the back of his hand to his forehead in a move straight out of one of the godawful fan videos Albatross likes showing him. “I’m going upstairs. Chuuya, come with me?”

“I’ll go because I want to get away from them, not because I want to be around you. Clear?”

“As crystal, don’t worry.” 

The sprawling first floor’s interrupted chiefly by a spiral staircase with glass-and-wood banisters, leading to the second-floor bedrooms. Lippmann takes it two stairs at a time, which, for him, is an unhealthy amount of excitement. 

“Come on,” he urges. “We draw lots for the rooms every year. This time you’re with me.”

Blankly:  “This time?”

Lippmann surmounts the flight and turns on the landing, neat as a dancer. “Well, of course,” he says. Leans over the railing and props his chin on his hands to watch Chuuya climb after him, much less enthusiastically. “Short of killing someone here, you’re obviously invited next Christmas, too. And the one after that. And even then, between you and me, it would really depend on who you killed.”

“What?” 

Lippmann sniffs. “I mean obviously it can’t be me. I secure the venue.”

“Oh.”

“And it can’t be Iceman, because—you haven’t had his cooking yet, have you. Well, it can’t be him. Doc’s somehow rigged one or all of us to go into immediate cardiac arrest if we so much as raise a finger to him—”

“WHAT?”

“—so after this morning you can be sure he at least likes you, but don’t push it. Albatross, though—have you heard they’re coming out with this application, Ubers, I think it’s called—what I’m saying is we’re going to make him obsolete in a few years. Take him out back and. Hm! You know. Be merciful. Won’t that be fun?”

“You’re insane,” Chuuya says, more stuck on the casual this time more than Doc’s surgical liberties.

“You don’t want the honors?”

“Hang on! I didn’t say that.”

“Well,” Lippmann says. “Then you have to come to next Christmas.”

viii.
Chuuya’s actually excited for his first Christmas with the Sheep. It’s close enough to his one-year anniversary with them to make him really feel something, nonexistent relationship with religion aside, so he doesn’t understand why everyone’s faces fall when he comes back from his not-shopping trip with their supplies.

“It’s not that kind of party, Chuuya,” Hiyori says. “We don’t need candles.”

He tosses one pack of the little pink sticks back down to the foldaway table. Momentum skitters it off the edge. Gravity disappears it into the campsite’s dead grass.

“Why not?”

“Just because, I guess,” he says, and then, at the look on Chuuya’s face, “don’t worry about it, alright?” The words are nice except for how he sounds like he's talking to a five year old even though Chuuya's probably already nine. 

“I got a lighter too,” Chuuya tries. “We can still—”

“Don’t worry about it!” Lately Chuuya’s been getting better at identifying expressions. Hiyori’s smile looks a little agitated. “It’s fine. It’s good that you got live practice in with your ability. As for the gifts, we’ll figure something out. Won’t we, everyone?”

Hiyori’s almost sixteen so he's in charge. If he says something will work out, then it will, even if everyone else has to work hard to make sure. That’s the understanding. 

“I got gifts,” Chuuya says, affronted.

Chuuya works hardest of all, and harder every day. For the Tainted Sorrow is easy when he’s using it reflexively, but it’s more difficult to channel into premeditated action. That takes practice, and lots of it. Chuuya’s grateful to be given the opportunity to practice. He’s grateful to be pulling his weight. Even though he’s turning out to be a kind of heavy his ability can only make worse.

“But they're not really any good, are they?”

Shirase is as stiff as a jackhammer at Chuuya’s side. “Like you could have gotten better?” he spits.

“Of course I couldn’t have. I’m not blessed. The point is that he could’ve gotten better. And I know he will,” Hiyori tacks on, “next year.”

“You—” Shirase starts.

Chuuya turns away.

It isn’t right for Chuuya to punch things the way he wants to around kids without abilities. To avoid that, he disappears into the mouth of one of the tunnels into the hillside without saying anything. The ground eats more and more of the argument the further he goes until all he can hear is dull muttering and the squeak of his sneakers on metal.

From here it’s a short climb down to the Sheep hideout in the sewers, but he can’t go in case something happens without him. It's always a risk, Chuuya being unreachable. 

Instead he stops at the top of the ladder down and sits, heavily, on the ledge. When he went to the city he'd stolen cake, and he'd stolen candles, and he got a pack of balloons for them too. That's what you do for parties. Chuuya wasn't born yesterday. Somebody told him that once and he remembered. Chuuya’s not stupid. He knows he’s not.

It’s not until the muttering stops that Chuuya risks climbing back up.

“Chuuya!” Shirase and Yuan are all over him; she squeezes his hand. “We missed you!”

“You feeling better?” Shirase thumps him on the back. They get him a piece of cake with no candles and lead him over to sit in the field where the Sheep are playing—something. He could figure it out if he watched for a little. Chuuya's not stupid. “I realized we could use the candles for the games,” he says, proud. “We’re betting ‘em on stuff and we’ll be able to trade them in to pick someone else to saddle with our chores.”

“Sorry about freaking out earlier," says their leader.

Chuuya’s too aware of the fire in his blood to let himself feel anything but cold. “It’s alright. It worked out.”

“Yeah, thanks to you,” Hiyori says. He slumps next to Chuuya in the grass and puts them shoulder to shoulder. Bumps their shoulders. “This is actually better than if we’d just tried to guess what everyone wanted. This way nobody feels like they got the short end of the stick.”

The short end of the stick, Chuuya mouths, hoping it'll make sense if he says it slowly. In front of him, somebody screams; they're out, but Chuuya didn't see what happened, wasn't paying attention to find out why. Somebody's going to have to explain it to him. Hiyori, probably. The lone point of contact between them suddenly feels like it may as well be a million degrees. Or Shirase. I'm not stupid.

Chuuya stands up abruptly. “I’m gonna turn in,” he says.

Hiyori blinks up at him from the ground.

Shirase says, “Dude, at least try some of the games.”

“I’m tired. You can teach me later.”

“No, you seriously can’t go to bed yet!” Shirase’s volume means others overhear them, and they join the call, pleading with Chuuya to take some time to enjoy himself. “Go splash water on your face or something. We’ll wait here.”

Chuuya has some appreciation for democracy. It was a democratic decision to save Chuuya from starving to death. Beyond that, he likes the Sheep. So he dumps half a bottle of water on his face and comes back out to learn to throw dice and play pick-up-sticks, and he laughs at the jokes people tell him even when they don't make sense, and when he loses nearly every round he’s touched by everybody who tries sneaking him some of their candles after, even though they know that it's useless, that nobody else can do what he does.

ix.
“Wait here,” Lippmann says, then disappears into the en suite bathroom and proceeds to take the longest shower perhaps ever recorded. Chuuya might have minded, but his stomach had started to hurt sometime between putting the star on the tree and the words next Christmas. So he just lies down on one of the beds. First he tries facing the door, but the sounds of someone moving behind him agitate him even through the wall, so he turns the other way, but having a door to his back is even more unconscionable. Huffing, Chuuya sits up and hunches over, hugging his stomach. 

The room is lavishly decorated. Chuuya suspects that some or all of the amenities are courtesy of Lippmann and wouldn’t be found in anyone else’s room. There’s paintings, tiered candles—even a vanity… it’s got a Hollywood mirror that buzzes when he gets close, and drawers that are almost too eager to leap into his hands when he pulls them out. 

There’s nothing interesting inside, though. So he starts on the wardrobes and the closets. 

Lippmann’s is full to bursting. Chuuya himself doesn’t think he has anything other than the clothes on his back, seeing as nobody could be trusted to fill him in on shit. But he checks his closet anyway, driven by some completionist’s urge.

“What the hell.”

It’s the furthest possible thing from empty.

Chuuya reaches out. He takes one of the items hanging there between his fingers—a red sweater so soft it feels like it was spun straight out of a cloud. It’s not possible to mistake the size for Lippmann’s.

“Finding everything alright?” 

Lippmann’s leaning against the bathroom doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, apparently having accounted for a teenager’s nosiness. 

“My apologies. I took some liberties with your style. If nothing’s to your liking, I’ll have something else brought over.” Chuuya looks up, the fabric of the sweater slipping from between his fingers. “But I don’t think we’ll have that problem.”

He’s right. Chuuya can’t think what to say at all. Eventually he gets out, “How long are we all staying here?”

Lippmann blinks. “Just the one night.”

There’s easily a week’s worth of clothing in this cabinet. Chuuya’s brain turns that over several times, a car engine failing to start. Then he gives up.

“Thanks. I don’t know if I can get you back for this.”

“Think nothing of it.” He’s too good to blanch at the thought of letting Chuuya pick his clothes. “Although, if you’ll indulge me—”

It takes him a second. “You want us to match?”

“Nothing so gauche. Just a suggestion of fraternity.”

It’s a little cuff bracelet identical to the one on Lippmann’s own wrist. Chuuya’s, though, has inlaid sapphires along the clasp (“to celebrate your recent promotion”). It slides on without any fuss or fiddling. 

It’s almost impossible not to think about his Sheep bracelet, which is sitting pristine in his bedside drawer back at home, but then Chuuya has made a living out of achieving the almost-impossible. 

“Thanks,” Chuuya says again. 

He feels ridiculous until Lippmann gives him this happy little look, like he’s said something deeply kind and profound and not just stupidly repeated himself. Maybe it’s impossible to feel stupid around Lippmann if he likes you. He swallows against the lump in his throat.

Lippmann looks away politely. “I’d like to check if dinner’s ready,” he says. “I will see you, Chuuya.”

He closes the door behind him so gently it doesn’t make a sound.

x.
“Since when do you know how to sew?”

The needle slips again. Chuuya swears and stuffs the pad of his thumb in his mouth. “Since shut the fuck up, that’s when.” 

“Boo. Vulgarly predictable and predictably vulgar:  that's Chuuya, alright. Though I suppose some of it's my fault for bringing him inside,” he adds. “His behavior was more understandable when it was coming from a stray.”

Dazai, hanging upside-down next with his feet hooked over the back of the couch, is speaking to some pixellated cat on his Gameboy that looks exactly as scrunched-up and burnt as he does. He says it’s a more interesting conversational partner than Chuuya, which is funny because Chuuya didn’t fucking ask him to be here.

Chuuya drops his Sheep jacket back into his lap and glares sideways at him. 

“You might need opposable thumbs for that,” Dazai observes. 

“Yeah? Looks like there’s a pair right here I could just snap off for the job.”

“Please.” Dazai lifts his from the buttons to wiggle them. He’s overwrapped one of his arms; the extra bandage dangles off his wrist like a kite-tail. “You wouldn’t know what to do with these even if you had them. These are triple-jointed, weapons-grade—HEY!”

With the position he's in, it’s impossible even for Dazai to contort out of the way in time:  Chuuya snatches up the extra bandage and tears it off in one big strip. 

“That is battery! I’m being battered…”

Chuuya tapes it over the hole in the back of his jacket. There. Whatever.

Dazai falls silent. For a while the only noise in the room is tinny meow-meow music.

“Why do you even care so much,” Dazai says. His voice is such that Chuuya glances at him, startled. “Does Chuuya like playing dressup? Is he a spoiled heiress, or something?”

“No, you prick!” Chuuya shouts, and then, in more normal tones, “It was a gift from a friend. That’s all.”

Dazai scrunches his face up. “Not your friends anymore.”

“That’s only true from their end. And even that’s your fault, isn’t it?” Chuuya shakes the jacket at him. “So even though I’ll get disgusted by your droppings later and tear them off, take some responsibility for today.”

Dazai looks between the jacket and Chuuya.

“He’s so embarrassing,” he says, finally, to the cat. “I can’t watch.”

xi.
Dinner is ready, as it turns out; Lippmann had taken up an ungodly amount of time. The rest of the Flags, Iceman included, appear to have gotten through several rounds of poker by the time Chuuya comes down the stairs. They’re all on the floor where the table’d been before someone flipped it.

Albatross gags when he sees the cuff. “Quit trying to make Chuuya your little lackey, it’s never going to work.”

“I hope you’ll be singing the same tune when we’re costars.”

“Ha? The hell we will be.”

“You tell him! Iceman, we’ll be needing another ten minutes. I need to kick this guy’s ass for a few rounds, since he’s been hiding upstairs.”

“If you don’t eat it while it’s hot, you’re not eating,” Iceman says. “If you try microwaving anything I made, I’ll make sure it explodes.”

“The microwave?”

“The food.”

“Alright, alright!” Albatross throws in his cards and gets to his feet. “Everyone’s so touchy today… What did you have, Doc?—oh, come on!”

Iceman waits by the entryway to the dining room. Nearly everyone (not Chuuya) thanks him on their way in, which he accepts with distracted nods (Chuuya’s waiting to see about any explosions.) He’s underdressed compared to his everyday—just a black cableknit and what barely passes for dress pants, maybe to make standing in a boiling hot kitchen more tolerable—rubs a hand over his cheek like he’s worried something’s stuck there. Flour or what. Either he’s oblivious to the way Chuuya’s staring at him, or he doesn’t care. 

And as Chuuya watches, he holds onto the back of his seat and makes sure everyone’s found theirs before he takes his own, a gesture completely at odds with everything Chuuya knows about him:  nothing useful, evidently.

The spread is to die for.

All along the table, there’s not a micrometer of space unfilled by a bowl, plate or dish that isn’t strictly necessary for an armrest or a candy-cane coaster or a nutcracker that really cracks nuts. There’s winter vegetables plucked, cooked and cut all kinds of ways; potatoes and carrots and sage-onion stuffing. Lamb shanks with walnuts and pecans sweating sweet pomegranate syrup. And how had he managed to get his hands on wild goose last-minute? One bite convinces Chuuya it’d never seen the inside of a freezer. Albatross, who waits for nothing and could make a career out of talking with his mouth full, cuts himself off mid-sentence to eat faster.

Chuuya’s not much better; Kouyou’s lessons feel further away from him right now than the moon. Actually none of the Flags seem to care a thing for etiquette except for Lippmann, which is not a rousing endorsement of anything. At least Iceman doesn’t seem to mind. Pianoman points his fork and all Chuuya can think is that Kouyou would tear it from his hand and kill him with it if this were her table.

“Did you pick this music? It’s delightful.”

It’s disturbing. Is that a gramophone?

Iceman just ducks his head in agreement with one or both of them. He looks downright bashful. He says, “Sure. I’ll loan you the record when we’re done.”

xii.
Iceman survives Chuuya because he tries to kill him with a vase in the Yokohama Museum of Fine Arts.

He’s covered his bases; he’s the best of the assassins the mafia’s sent thus far and it’s not close. Instead of another shitty pistol he's got a modified children's watergun with a barrelful of a corrosive liquid that Chuuya can't manipulate with his ability and which successfully chewed about fifty holes in him before it ran out of juice. He’s tough to hit, and then hitting him feels unrewarding. He doesn’t make a sound when Chuuya shears through his eye.

Layers of fat and humors blooming unflinchingly. Like the man in front of him is made of styrofoam. It’s quiet enough that they both hear it when the knife clicks against Iceman's occipital floor.

Chuuya tries to pull it out before Iceman can take advantage of their close-quarters. He doesn’t exactly manage it. A hand like a hot iron comes clamping down around his wrist; Iceman drags him closer, closer; Iceman lets the knife dig further into his own eye-socket to keep Chuuya right where he is. Iceman takes advantage of the unwieldy position Chuuya’s had to assume to reach his target. For a second Chuuya’s left frozen still reaching over his head and it leaves his flank open. At this distance Iceman’s boot to the hole in his stomach really hurts.

Chuuya lets go of the knife. He doesn’t need it. What he needs is three seconds and a one-liner, then this guy'll be as deep in the ground as any of his buddies.

Then Iceman throws the vase.

As far as attacks go, it isn’t stunning. There are heavier exhibits in the room, and there are ones that would, if pressed, fragment into sharper or more useful pieces. Iceman has done worse tonight even  with his hands, using an apparently supernatural sense for abilities to get around the usual wall people hit up against when they think touching Chuuya during a fight is a good idea. So out of everything in the room, some ceramic flying towards the floor is the least of Chuuya's worries, physically, is the moving object in the room least likely to hurt him.

But it's Chuuya's vase. It's Chuuya’s vase, alright? the one he’d spent all day looking at before sneaking in after hours just to look at some more, which is where Iceman had found him standing unawares. It’s a million shades of black and patterned in a thousand constellations, a singular exercise in celestial cartography. All day today Chuuya had divided his time between glaring at anyone who looked like they were on the cusp of succumbing to an urge to reach past the museum's thin cordons and take the thing and debating doing so himself. And now it's coming right at him.

Chuuya's first time on Earth had been night, and he hadn't known the sky could look any other way. He'd been alive for less than an hour. Everything was eternal, from the heat of the summer to the pounding in his ears:  he didn't understand why the soldier he'd robbed had worn such a thick uniform, looked for the same lanternfly each time its light went out and rejoiced when it came on again, when he found it again. When the stars that had watched over him as he'd staggered down the bay disappeared in the morning light he'd felt sick. When they came back the next night, from amidst a dogpile of Sheep, Chuuya had reached over his head and tried to close his fist around them, over and over, checking his palm for proof against reheartbreak.

The vase. Instead of leaping to smash it in midair and turn the shards into a thousand bullet counters the way he should, Chuuya dives for it. He rolls in midair, and he cradles it in his gorey arms when he hits, slides against the floor, belly-up.

By the time he gets to his feet Iceman is gone.

xiii.
Conversation goes around the table.

“Do you remember that time when…?”

“I wouldn’t go there if I were you. I remember distinctly that you…”

Their placecards are handwritten. Chuuya hadn’t noticed. 

NAKAHARA CHUUYA, his says, in Iceman’s strikingly delicate cursive. The ink raises divots on the back of the paper, like he’d pressed very hard with a very sharp tip. A flower pattern curls around the border.

“Hey! You agreed never to bring that up again.”

The order of the buds bothers him. It’s different from the one on Albatross’ or Doc’s.

“Did I?”

“You gotta admit…”

Iceman catches his eye, expression unreadable. At that same instant, Chuuya recognizes the pattern—it’s the Ares constellation.

“That’s ridiculous. Nobody would ever go for that shit you’re proposing.”

Is it a threat or a joke? 

“—Chuuya,” Pianoman says. “What do you think?”

It takes him a second to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “I’m thinking if you guys keep licking the fucking plates when you think nobody’s looking I’m not doing the dishes.”

xiv.
All they hear is “Chuuya’s doing the dishes.”

xv.
But then there’s nothing left to do.

The others chatter well into the night. They have stories together, real history. Chuuya declines invitations to participate, he cites tiredness. He sits on the bed closer to the door and plays snake on his phone until Lippmann turns off the lights.

Hours pass.

Whatever their suspicions, the Sheep had never forbidden Chuuya from taking first watch. They supposed that he’d feel their turned backs, their shut-eyed faces, like an indictment or a brand, a torch to keep the wolf at bay. And he had:  there were nights where it felt so big, so impossible of a sin to be the wielder of greatest violence for miles upon miles, maybe from one end of the country to the other, that he choked on their trust. There were nights where all the stars were good for was reminding him that the only reason his hands were clean was that the light had yet to reach them.

What’s something like him doing inside?

What if he forgets how to starve?

Is everyone asleep?

Once he thinks it, he can’t unthink it. 

The floorboards don’t creak under his nearly-zero weight—a neat trick he’s never had reason to employ before the Port Mafia, back when all of his problems could be solved by a proportional application of force. He glances at Lippmann anyway, the ridiculous way he sleeps, head in his arms on his pillow like he’s getting a goddamn massage and not stuck in a twin XL. He looks like he could die at any moment. Like Chuuya could kill him right now. He could launch something small and sharp through his sphenoid bone before his ability so much as flickered.

Lippmann sighs something to himself. 

Wake up, Chuuya thinks. Lippmann doesn’t. Lippmann rolls over. He turns his back to Chuuya entirely.

Heart in his mouth, Chuuya cannot get to the door quickly enough.

He slips down the stairs, a ghost over the lacquer. There’s his reflection in the glass walls of the banister; there it is again, shattering into fractals where the panels overlap. One of him looks nervous. One of him looks trapped under the glass.

Chuuya was supposed to be a sheep. Then he was supposed to be a sheepdog, or a shepherd. Then he was supposed to be a god. 

But he wasn’t.

So what is he? What’s left?

The kitchen’s dead silent. Peeking into the dining room, Chuuya can still see the brilliant impressions left by the Flags’ joy earlier in the day. They’re all so alive. Their outlines still sit at the dinner table, photons suspended on dust. Chuuya’s the only one out of place. Was-Iceman’s turning his head to look at him from the head of the table, wondering why he’s still not sitting down.

CHUUYA, says the little placecard.

Chuuya closes the door. Clear, he thinks. Now the living room.

CHUUYA, say the tags on the presents in the living room. And Lippmann and Pianoman and Doc and Albatross and Iceman. One of them says Go back to bed asshole. But most of them say Chuuya. 

The tree lights flicker red and green and blue and off. Red and green and blue and off.

In the black window, someone stands behind Chuuya’s reflection.

“Can’t sleep?”

“Wasn’t tired,” Chuuya corrects, automatically oppositional. “Thought I’d go on watch.”

Pianoman doesn’t sound mocking. “You think we need it?”

“You’re in charge, aren’t you? You tell me.”

He comes to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Chuuya. They look out of the window at the snow and their red and green and blue reflections.

“To be honest,” Pianoman says, “I had a bad feeling. That’s why I also had the idea to go on watch.”

They watch the relief cross Chuuya’s mirror face.

“You can go to bed,” offers the leader of the Flags, “I’ll wake you later.”

“No you won’t.”

“No I won’t.”

Chuuya doesn’t move.

“Something else bothering you?”

“It’s just…”

“Yes?”

You all already know each other and I don’t know why I’m here.

“I didn’t get you guys anything,” Chuuya blurts, feeling his age and stupid for it. He stuffs his hands in his pockets and then forces himself to take them back out. He’d need both to go up against Pianoman anyway. “So…”

So…  

It peters off into an uncomfortable silence.

You can't out-awkward the turbo virgin. That's Albatross he's imagining, filling him in like a character in a tutorial. You weren’t here when he tried improv.

“Sure you did.” Pianoman snaps his fingers, snapping Chuuya back from where he’d been strangling the Albatross out of his head with a gravity-assisted deathgrip. “Doc wouldn’t have made it out here if it weren’t for you.”

“That wasn’t funny.”

Pianoman laughs and turns away, crossing the room back to the kitchen. “That’s what they all say.”

“You don’t think there’s a reason for that?” He waits for Pianoman to come back without realizing that’s what he’s doing. The hot chocolate he offers burns Chuuya’s hands through his gloves. “Thanks.” 

“Try it before you say anything.”

It feels a little good to stand there drinking it. Drinking and looking and not talking. Not good enough to change Chuuya’s mind. But good enough that when Pianoman says, “Walk with me,” he does.

They go around to the foyer and the games room. They check both of the first floor bathrooms. They even open the front door to make sure there aren’t any unfamiliar tire tracks cutting through the snow on the driveway. The lack of any external danger makes Chuuya less comfortable, not more. He starts feeling funny. He feels like a kid being shown there aren’t monsters under the bed.

It’s completely unfair.

Pianoman leads him up the stairs again. He’s talking; he’s been talking. Chuuya hadn’t been paying attention. Pianoman’s saying, “Do you feel better? I know I do.” He’s saying, “You know, your dedication to your friends is—”

The mug shatters in Chuuya’s hands. Drink leaks over his gloves, onto the floor. Pianoman falls silent.

Quietly:  “Stop making fun of me.” 

Pianoman doesn’t turn around. “I wasn’t.”

“No, you are. You all are. I’m not stupid,” Chuuya’s voice rises sharply, “and I’m not a charity case.”

“Is that what you think this is?”

“Of course that’s what this fucking is! Why else would you let me be here?”

At that he does turn. An expression flashes over Pianoman’s face:  pity or guilt, it’s too quick to parse. “Chuuya—”

“Have me fetch things for you, have me do tricks for you with my ability even though you can manage it all just fine yourselves—if you seriously think I’m going to hang around until you get to give me your old shit and have me act all pathetic and grateful and kiss your ass for that too, you’ve got another thing coming!”

“Doc’s hardly a thing,” he murmurs.

“Is this funny to you? That I don’t know shit about—” He’s not finishing that sentence, not by himself and sure as hell not in front of Pianoman. “I’ll kill you.”

“You’re overthinking this. Go to bed, Chuuya.”

“What if I don’t?” His heart pounds in his ears. He takes a step closer, then another and another, and each time his foot falls heavier against the wood until the boards are wailing. “What if I leave? Huh?”

Pianoman doesn’t move, even though Chuuya’s close enough to reach out and touch him if he wanted. Maybe before he could react.

“Then we'll miss you,” he says.

“Ha?”

Pianoman’s not smiling anymore. He doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t say you can’t and he doesn’t say you won’t and he doesn’t say the door’s that way, either, and doesn’t—this is the most crucial, the kindest part of all—he doesn’t ask, and go where?

Because by now they must know Chuuya doesn’t know where.

He says, “Lippmann will be upset with me for chasing you off. He’ll be insufferable all morning. I’ll be shocked if I see any hot water.”

What’re you talking about?

“Doc will put something in my coffee…”

I’m not stupid.

It’s with great effort that Chuuya manages to speak. “He was gonna do that anyway.”

“Albatross was going to take you to—”

“Stop it,” Chuuya says, squeezing his eyes shut. “Stop.”

Pianoman cuts himself off so abruptly Chuuya hears his teeth click together.

There’s a long minute where neither of them says anything. Then Pianoman sighs. He sticks a hand in his coat-pocket; he secrets something in his closed fist and holds it out for Chuuya to take.

Chuuya sticks his hand out dumbly, as if in a dream. Pianoman drops it into his palm.

“…What?”

It’s the keys to a car. Their car, Chuuya realizes, the one they came here with.

“It’s cold. At least drive, if you’re leaving. There’s an actual road somewhere around here, no gag boats.”

“But how will you guys…”

“Albatross has gotten better transportation to worse places,” Pianoman says, smiling.

“I don’t care,” Chuuya says, and then, closing his fist around the cold metal, digging the teeth into his palm, “because I’m not—it doesn’t matter because—I wasn’t leaving. I don’t know where you got that dumbfuck idea. I told you I was on watch. Just because you don’t have any work ethic doesn’t mean none of us do.”

“If you recall, I ran into you precisely because I was also going “on watch”.”

“Don’t let him fool you,” Lippmann calls. “He was going to open his presents and then pretend he wraps paper half as well as he prints it. He does it every year. He can’t help himself.”

“Hey now—”

Chuuya kicks their door open so hard it bounces. Lippmann looks completely unembarrassed to be caught with his ear against the wall. “Who said I was talking to you?!”

“Oooh, someone’s in trouble,” Albatross says, from behind a different door, and Chuuya whirls around and bawls, “IS EVERYONE HERE IN MY FUCKING BUSINESS?”

Iceman’s door swings open.

“I wasn’t,” he says, sulkily. “I was sleeping.” 

Chuuya is briefly speechless.

“I told you he wouldn’t want anything.”

“Well,” Pianoman says. “Good thing this isn’t a democracy.”

The bags under Iceman’s eyes suddenly look twice as pronounced as usual. “My Christmas gift to you,” he says to Chuuya, heavily, “is if you want, you can hit him, and I’ll make sure nobody stops you. But you have to decide now, because I’m going back to bed.”

“Really now, Iceman. He just said he doesn’t want our gifts. You know he’s not a charity ca—”

“Hold him.”

“—aaaAAAAAASE—”

xvi.
It’s unilaterally decided that it isn’t any fair for Chuuya to open Iceman’s present and then not anybody else’s, so someone hits the lights and Pianoman gets his stomach punched in, and someone else manhandles Chuuya into a seat on the couch. He gets about a million boxes dumped into his lap, only a few of which are leaking and all of them different kinds of badly wrapped, and Chuuya tears and tears and thinks, Huh.

So that’s how it is.

xvii.
It’s a good day for sightseeing.

Chuuya dangles his legs off the rooftop. From here, he can see what’s left of the woods, covered in snow turned to glitter by the midmorning sun. The angry swathes carved out by his older brother have new growth creeping in.

The Flags aren’t his friends anymore. Sure, whatever. Chuuya gets to his feet and stretches his arms up and over his head. He kicks at the kickstand of Albatross’ best bike.

That’s only true from their end.