It would be a pleasant, temperate, just-right-for-a-picnic day in hell when Kurogane would admit anything to Fai. The man used information like he used a sword.  He would take whatever Kurogane said and shape it and mould it and make it Fai-brain-shaped and shove it back in his face all twisted and distorted and completely untrue.  Even a wrong look and Fai would be on the battlements shouting; “Kuro-pon loooooves me!”  No, it was all too much trouble.  Alcohol or no, he would keep his mouth shut. 

  Fai was slurring.  And everyone (read: Kurogane) knew that when Fai started slurring he had reached that point in drinking when one has had so much that one finds oneself stone-cold sober.  Kurogane wondered why he even bothered.  Fai knew he knew.  And, yes, while they would both have ringing headaches in the morning, they would spend the night staring each other down; Fai in his fake-inebriety and Kurogane in his oh-so-not-fake bad mood.  Kurogane really did wonder why they even bothered.  It seemed unfair too, that they should feel it the next morning without even having the satisfaction of having got rip-roaringly drunk the night before and having had a great time.

  A great time.  Except for Kurogane that usually involved hurting people.  Except maybe that was what he was doing here, with Fai, watching the idiot be… an idiot.  Even so, he wouldn’t leave.  There was something of an unspoken challenge in their drinking together; how much drink can you hold?  How much of me can you really stand?  What will you say?  And that was why Kurogane wasn’t going to admit anything. 

  “You seem tired today, Kuro-pon,” Fai was teasing him now.  “What were you up to last night?”  Kurogane eyed him suspiciously.  His voice, he noticed.  It titled just the other side of innocence enough to set Kurogane on edge.  Don’t admit a thing, he told himself for the thousandth time that night, and instead took a large swig from the bottle in his hand.  Vile stuff.  All vinegar and suspect floaty-bits that reminded Kurogane more of the steaming, rubbish infested rivers of this world than a drinkable liquid.  He was stalling and he knew it.

  And of course, Fai knew it too.  He was smiling, all lop-sided and drunken and what anyone other than Kurogane would call cute.  But there was mischief in his eyes, and to Kurogane’s mind Fai was about as cute as barbed wire laced with poison.  Still, it was an addictive poison, so Kurogane formed his words carefully, and decorated them with a scowl and an annoyed growl.

  “Last night?”  Kurogane motioned to the window.  “It’s almost dawn and you think I look tired because I was up late last night?”  Fai looked blearily then at the window.  He was squinting, as though he couldn’t quite focus and Kurogane wondered for a moment if Fai really was drunk this time. Or maybe he actually had bad eyesight. Who knew?

  “I can’t tell,” he sighed heavily.  Dramatics, Kurogane thought.  “The window is too dirty.”  Pointless, Kurogane thought, and it all reminded him of this world and why he hated it.  There was no reason for anything.  People disappeared and no one cared.  No one tried to live a life beyond that day.  No one helped.  No one hindered.  No one seemed to do anything but make booze in their bathtubs.  Fai was turning his head back to look at Kurogane again.

  “You like this place, don’t you?” Kurogane asked.  Deflection technique.  Fai knew it but would play the game as though he didn’t just the same.

  “It has its merits,” he replied, then laughed.  “One of which is not the drink.”  He waved the bottle at Kurogane, unsettling a mist of unidentifiable dregs.  Kurogane cringed.  He had been trying to forget about that.  “And you,” Fai pronounced, “Do not, I take it?”  And that was a question that was not a question.

  “You’d have to be mad to like a world like this,” he replied, and noted Fai’s smirk at the implication.

  “No one could ever call you subtle, Kuro-rin,” Fai almost-sang, but his eyes were piercing and oddly cold and Kurogane felt there was some kind of dare in that gaze.  Or else he was going mad.  And who could really blame him?  With two kids, a white thing and Fai for company what exactly was there to keep himself attached to reality?  Especially when reality kept changing every few weeks or so. 

  Back to glaring then.  That was fine with Kurogane.  He was good at that.  Glaring was safe and unsurprisingly more interesting than listening to the stupid wizard.  Babble.  And very much like the brooks of this world.  Full of…

  “Kuro-pon is always so straightforward.”

…themselves.

  “You had better not be calling me stupid, damn wizard,” Kurogane countered.  Fai was fishing for something, and, if Kurogane could help it, he wasn’t going to let the fool get it.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Fai replied in a tone which demonstrated he would dream of it, and in fact just had and what was Kurogane going to do about it?

  Kurogane was going to grunt in response and wait.  Kurogane would be no carp on a line.  He wondered for a moment at the fishing metaphors, then decided it must be because he was tired.  The sun was clearly rising now; casting weird shadows over the room shaped through blackened, cracked glass.  And not for the first time Kurogane hated this world and felt justified in longing childishly for home.  Where people were normal.  Mostly.

  “Hm,” Fai sighed, and it sounded final. Then, “I’m going to bed.”  He put the almost-empty bottle down on the floor and made to stand up.  Kurogane stared, and it didn’t involve a scowl.

  “What?”  Fai never left first.  Kurogane was always the one to declare the night’s glaring over.  Fai never left before him.  “You’re acting weird.”  Pissed-off face, Kurogane ordered himself, thinking that maybe this was all an evil ploy to get him to say something.   Fai laughed then.

  “But, Kuro-rin, you say I always act weird.”

  “You do,” Kurogane agreed, and it only struck him then that he hadn’t shouted at Fai for those stupid names in at least an hour.  The thought disturbed him.  The mage was clearly addling his brain.  Or maybe it was the suspect alcohol.  And now Fai really was leaving, and even though it should have felt like a victory to Kurogane, it didn’t feel like anything at all.   And not for the first time Kurogane wondered why they bothered.

  “Oi,” was all he could think to say, as though that would make Fai start acting weirdly as normal and come and sit back down.  There was a good hour left yet until the sun was fully up.  Fai stopped, and turned his head back to Kurogane, a strange smile on his face.

  “Do you like listening to people, Kuro-pon?” he asked, and his smile grew wider.  “I do.”  Kurogane shifted uncomfortably where he sat on the floor.  Fai was going somewhere with this and he wasn’t sure if he was going to like it.  No, he certainly wasn’t going to like it.

  “Seems to me you prefer talking to listening,” Kurogane said.

  “And you prefer fighting to talking, but it doesn’t mean you do it all the time,” Fai countered, in a voice which screamed “I know something you don’t, Kuro-in!”

  “So?”

  “So.”  Fai paused, then asked in what for Fai passed as seriousness, “Why are you talking to me again, Kuro-pon?”  Another pause, for dramatic effect, Kurogane concluded, and was right.  “Did something happen last night?”

  And then there was a whole lot of silence in which Kurogane wished he hadn’t been right.  He was a Ninja after all, and Fai was Fai and always seemed to know everything.  That was annoying.  Kurogane really wished they could just go back to the usual glaring.

  “It’s none of my business what you do.”  And at that Fai really did laugh. 

  “And it’s none of mine what you do! But you mind enough to start talking to me again!”  Well, yes, and if Kurogane was honest with himself, which he usually was, he would have to concede that re-opening normal relations with the wizard had been a bad move.  As Fai had said, not subtle at all.

  “Fine,” Kurogane conceded.  “I know and you know and you knew that I knew, so whatever.”  Kurogane couldn’t deny that his reply made no sense.  “It’s still got nothing to do with me.”  Fai laughed even harder at that, his features fixing into a look of pure… depravity was the only word Kurogane could think for it.  There was smugness too, and definite mischief in the way his lips smirked and his eyes fixed on Kurogane.

  “Then you won’t mind,” he said slowly, “if next time I get to watch…”