Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ My Shinigami, My Hamburger ❯ Ai wo Motto ( Chapter 35 )

Chapter 35

"Ai wo Motto"

The Shinigami fell back against the door as soon as they had passed through it, slamming it shut, with his husband only a foot away, leaning his shoulder against it as well. The once quiet house was filled suddenly with the sound of laughter as the mortal and the god of death caught each other’s gaze and could no longer hold it in, a nearly raucous sound sent bouncing against the peaceful walls. Shini sunk back against the door and held his stomach as the peals of laughter kept coming, replaying the expression of the rather disgruntled police officer and the terribly endearing way Heero had swore and turned red against his lips as they tore apart. He felt it only appropriate that he return the sentiment in someway, if at all possible, and caught the unsuspecting Heero by surprise, pressing his mouth against his thin, smiling lips. The game then began all over again as the smile quickly lent itself into something more productive, as he slid a hand behind the Shinigami’s head, guiding that mouth tighter onto his.

A moment later they had staggered away from the door, mostly due to Shini’s propulsionary force, and a little ways down the hallway, still determinedly locked lips. They parted only minimally when Heero steadied the both of them to hurriedly kick off his shoes. As his feet struggled to coordinate themselves to accomplish such a simple task, it helped none that Shinigami was holding tight to him, awaiting the resumption of the game. His lips were brushing against Heero’s, motionless but wet and tasting impossibly of cinnamon again, as his eyes watched him beneath low lids, his expression almost literally tearing his mind to pieces. Heero groaned, struggling to kick off a rather stubborn sneaker of his, while Shini burnt a lustful look into him, branding him, and then licked his lips in anticipation, catching Heero’s as well. A pure jolt of fire ran through him.

The mortal fell rather heavily onto the Shinigami as he finally managed to kick off his shoe and sent it flying against the wall, rather removed from the other one, his face pressed instead against the crook of Shini’s neck as they staggered backwards together. A pair of arms latched around his back as the Angel of Death gently smoothed out their balance, his wings appearing from his mortal guise, this time a miniature of their usual size and fluttering cutely. There had been a few benefits to contracting the Shrinks, after all, though the disadvantages at the time had far outweighed them.

He laughed as Heero slipped again, his nose and face still squished against the corner of his jaw. The mortal was stumbling over himself in hurry for another kiss, and he could feel the blush warming over his face at his sudden clumsiness. Finally, Shini leaned against the hallway wall, ending their frenzied, halfway-dance, and allowing Heero to get his feet beneath him, though his knees seemed to be entirely another matter.

Shini slouched against the wall, Heero’s arms still locked behind the small of his back in a circle of possession, and lifted an eyebrow at him when he caught his breath. "Feeling all right, Teishu?" he purred, still smiling despite himself.

Heero blinked, but it didn’t clear the dazed look he held. It was rather endearing, the way he couldn’t stop gently licking and moving his lips, as if itching literally for more, and how his hair had become a little more disheveled than usual. "Aa," he breathed, still trying to catch his composure completely. The corner of his mouth curled backwards in a smirk. "Phenomenal."

And it was then that Heero’s stomach chose to chime in and it let off a low sentence of complaint, and both god and mortal looked down at his torso, listening to it growl.

Shini lifted his head first, grinning. "Hungry, I take it?"

"Yeah. Maybe I didn’t get the enough nutrition this morning," Heero murmured, sure he hadn’t taken more than three or four bites of cereal in orange juice in bed, and unsure it would have done any good to have eaten any more.

His husband seemed not catch any of the underlying implications of that mumble, or either not to care about it, as he smiled brightly, straightening up against the wall where he had previously been trapped, and offered him lunch. "I can make pancakes, you know. With chocolate chips—even though I’ve never eaten them!" he said proudly. He moved away from Heero, headed for the kitchen and rolling back his sleeves, getting ready to go to work.

"No, no," Heero quickly cut in, taking Shini by the elbow and gently circling around him, getting in front of him. He made a somewhat sheepish sound, but masked it as he continued. "It wouldn’t be fair. You made breakfast for me, so I’ll make lunch for the both of us. It’s more equal that way, since I couldn’t buy you some ice cream. Is that alright with you?"

Shini pouted a little, pointing over his shoulder at the kitchen. "But Teishu, I wanted to do it for you." For a moment, he lifted an eyebrow at him as the tiniest sprout of suspicion stirred. "This does not have anything to do with Shinigami’s cooking, does it?" he drawled.

Heero only blinked at him once or twice before cracking a slightly nervous smile in defense. "Of course not." Somehow, his previous, imperious expressions seemed no more powerful than a house of cards beneath that violet stare and he was completely susceptible to their twists and turns. Another few moments of agonizing appraisal passed, as the Angel of Death’s eye still trained on him, arching his eyebrows and pulling back a corner of his mouth.

"Well, if you insist, Teishu," Shini finally conceded, though Heero could see that he knew the truth, and curled his mouth mischievously around the forbidden pet name as penalization for that fact. And no more. He smiled brightly and nudged his shoulder, pushing him towards the kitchen. "Then get to work, if you are so eager," he purred. "And don’t over cook his ambrosia, either."

"Is that even possible?" he asked as he was pushed into the kitchen, turning his head and smirking.

"Is anything really impossible for you?" Shini quipped in return, stretching his arms above his arms, and disappearing for a moment, only to reappear at the kitchen table, legs folded on the seat, grinning, cat-like, as he watched his mortal husband go to work.

Heero raked a hand through his hair quickly before going to work, trying to restore it to a relatively normal state, try to flatten that which had been ruffled unnaturally, and went to the cupboard over the stove. Pulling out first a frying pan, and then a wok from the next one over, he placed them on the stovetop, each on its respective burner, and flicked on the power. Shini watched him stroll over to the refrigerator, pull it open, and then place the bowl of fresh peapods, chopped meat, and teriyaki onto the counter beside him for his stir-fry.

"Need help, Teishu?"

Heero simply leveled an even look at him, but a corner of a smile thieved its way out. "No. I don’t. And no calling me Teishu." Shini just sent him a raspberry instead, and quickly went back to admiring his ring while Heero moved about the kitchen.

Bending down again, he squinted down at his refrigerator shelves, which had found themselves the victim of a major renovation by Iria’s hand when Shinigami had moved back into his household, as one of her mandates for the proper care and maintenance of his very own Angel of Death. The shelves, ascetically no different than before, now stretched for what seemed like an eternity of fluorescent lighting back, back, back, into an artificial space filled with innumerable glass vials, bottles, and boxes of ambrosia and nectar—lemon-flavored ambrosia drops, steak from an amrita heifer, even bright yellow ambrosia carrots, as far as a mortal eye could see. And as soon as Heero had taken one, like an impatient assembly line, another one had moved up from the back to take its place. Too bad the stuff tasted horrendous, otherwise he could have gone for a lifetime without stepping foot in a grocery store, but Shini was forced to suffer the lackluster taste, lest he want to revisit his time writhing on a couch and whimpering in pain as the Shrinks came upon him. It was not something Heero wished to ever see again.

The Shinigami sat calmly by himself while the sound of Heero cooking continued on, droning gently off into the background, and lifted his hand to admire his ring again, wiggling his fingers and humming an old, archaic tune to himself. The sounds of the stovetop hissing and the pan warming, of Heero opening the container of snow peas, drawing a knife from the top drawer were taking a backseat as the Angel of Death began a slow and casual stroll into his memory, one that was currently saturated with recent, euphoric images of his husband. His long history previous to this blue-eyed mortal was suddenly a blink of an eye and all he cared to concern himself with was replaying three-day’s worth of happy memories as he watched Heero’s mother’s diamond wink at him. He even let out a small smile, wondering what his mother would think, were she alive to see just who was currently wearing her ring.

Then again, it may have been a larger shock when she discovered who was living with her son. Almost dazed, Shini glanced back up at his husband, the mortal in question, and remained blindly smiling, crossing his arms over the back of the chair and resting his chin there. For a moment, he made no real notice of anything happening around him, but soon a twin pair of white saucers appeared as he rapidly blinked his eyes wide and sat up ramrod straight. His mouth dropped in a gape. It took him another entire moment to gain enough control of it to squeak out, "T-Teishu?" and another few moments after that to wrap his mind around the task of getting to feet. The motion came out jerky and startled, and he teleported nervously only a foot and a half before dropping back into existence, unable to concentrate on it.

"Heero?" He called out again, but again nothing happened. He moved up to his husband cautiously and stared at his motionless expression. He threw a hand up, swinging it in front of his face. Nothing. He had completely frozen in his step, walking back over to the other side of the kitchen, as if some invisible voice had screamed, "Simon Says stop!" and he had immediately and completely obeyed. His eyes remained fixed on the wall just beyond Shini’s head, not even his attractive lashes giving so much as a twitch.

Now he was starting to get worried. He grabbed him by the shoulders to shake him, letting out now a squeal of rather anxious Japanese, and then let go of him. He was completely inflexible to the touch, and would not budge an inch.

"Heero, what happened to you? Heero? Can you hear me?" he asked, afraid to get closer to touch him, but his cord of worry not in the least bit severed from him. "Teishu, please!" Finally, he could not think of anything to do, he again reached out for his shoulder. That’s when another hand laid upon it, startling him to high Heaven and causing him to let out a yelp of terror and vanish.

A moment later, the Shinigami reappeared in reality behind the being attached to that white hand, wielding the knife that Heero had left on the counter, and holding it tight to the intruder’s back, the point just a deadly twitch away from the precious nerve endings that animated it.

"What the hell did you do to him." His voice told he was definitely not in the mood for negotiations.

"Shinigami!" a familiar voice suddenly scolded him, spinning around and knocking the knife out of his hand with a small gust of air and sending it clattering harmlessly to the ground. She turned and pinned a rather harsh look on him. "Young man, don’t you ever point that thing at me again!"

The Angel of Death went two shades paler. "Okasan!"

"Glad to see you still remember me," she answered him sarcastically, pinching her brows together and creating a crease Shinigami rarely saw. She was truly unhappy about something—again. When she lifted her arm, creating a short, sharp sound as she did so, and sent the knife flying solidly into the wall just above the counter for safekeeping, it only served to reiterate that fact.

Shinigami gave her a cautious look before taking a tiny step in front of his comatose husband. He did his best to subtly puff up in his mortal husband’s clothes to warn her to step off. For some reason, he just knew that whatever new rage she was harboring was most likely directed at the Arrogant Mortal, but he didn’t deserve this kind of treatment, like he was just any mortal for her to carelessly toy with.

"What did you do to him?" he growled at her, as if she were a demon that had crept into his household in the middle of the night. "And set it right again."

"Oh, for Heaven’s sake, I just stopped time. I didn’t kill him, Shini! Your precious husband’s just fine and will be for a while. Just let him sit, would you?"

The Goddess of Love angrily put her hands on her hips and strode over to the kitchen table in a pair of fire engine red pumps to match her red mini-skirt and long-sleeved white shirt—an item which would have been demure enough in itself had it not been buttoned down the last lowly three buttons, revealing the equally garish color of her brassier. Her rather anxious-looking secretary was with her as well, standing in the archway between the kitchen and the hallway, in a short white baby-doll dress and red-ribbon bow at her back. She was looking at Shinigami through her cat-eyed glasses with a little apprehension, for the last time she’d seen him, he’d been completely and thoroughly heartbroken, and that haunting image was hard to wipe from her memory as she stared at him, but he wasn’t looking at her in return. Instead, he was focused on the bundle in a red velvet sack she clutched to her breast. He tilted his head as he looked, his expression going askew, but his mother’s deceptively conversational voice drew him back to her.

"So, darling, how have you been?" She had slung one leg over the other, sitting in the chair he had just recently vacated. She was smiling. It was not right.

So he lifted an eyebrow at her, setting his mouth. "I’d be much better if you let my husband back into the normal flow of space of time."

She tilted her head to let an innocent smirk unfurl across it. "My, my—not very well then, I see? You’re much more cranky than usual," she purred. "So maybe he hasn’t been treating you as divinely as you claim he has?"

He lowered his jaw, an undeniably defense stance, as he grit out a dangerous voice. He put an arm out, gripping the shoulder of his frozen husband, the other at the ready to fight. "Just fix him and leave us alone."

"Or you’ll do what, Shini?" she suddenly raised her voice at him, standing up from her chair abruptly.

"You’ll disobey me again? You’ll stomp and cry and throw a tantrum? You’ll complain? Fight me? For all of your life, it has been I have who has taken care of you, defended you from the Gods themselves, and risked my neck and reputation for your sake too many times to count, you know. Do you remember me now? I think it’s about time you stopped this ridiculous bratty behavior and did what I say!"

"You haven’t even told me what you want!" he snapped back. He may have even stomped his foot at her in an earlier time, but he had since learned a new stubbornness from his husband and instead shot a scowl at her.

"Oh." She hesitated. "I didn’t?"

Shini emphatically rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest. "No."

"Well, then, why didn’t you just say so, Shinigami? For Heaven’s sake," she muttered to herself. "Standing there like the Damned Mortal himself…"

"Excuse me?" the Angel of Death interrupted his mother, his face quickly growing sour. He certainly disliked this new, rather affectionate nickname even more than the last.

Iria dismissed his protest with a wave of her hand, tossing her long, bright blonde hair over her shoulder as she strolled casually over to Shinigami and his motionless statue of a husband. He still maintained an unwavering staring contest with the wall just behind the kitchen table, and at this point he stood a good chance of winning it. It wasn’t a thought that necessarily comforted the Shinigami, and he was still standing protectively in front of Heero, the corners of his mouth drawn into unhappy hooks, as his mother approached. She stopped beside him, tilting her head as she examined the side of his face.

Shini tensed up, more than willing to retaliate should she come too close to him, but she didn’t. Instead, she glanced up at her son, after carefully studying his choice in a spouse.

"I’m going to be honest with you, Shini," she began, in a voice that seemed unusually serious. He had to resist a little snort—when was she ever tactful? "I don’t think you deserve such treatment from your husband, no matter how much you love him. It’s getting to be intolerable, in fact. I’ve been watching carefully, and this ungrateful creature doesn’t so much as—"

"Treatment?" Shini interrupted again, his brows shooting up, then dragging back down to furrow in skepticism. "What are you talking about, Okasan?"

"You know exactly what I’m talking about, Shini. Don’t play dumb with me just for his sake! I am still your mother, you know!"

Shinigami wasn’t sure what had happened to upset his mother so, for she was behaving much more bad-tempered than was even normal for her, and even Nadette was cringing in the doorway at the tone of her voice. And still she clutched that inexplicable bundle, her eyes flickering back and forth from Shinigami to the comatose Heero—yet another detail that did not sit well with him.

"No, I don’t," he restated, putting his hands on his hips. "Teishu has been treating me just fine. So why are you here asking me? Can’t you just yell and complain on his phone?"

"Shini," Iria cooed, in a tone that could only be described down as well-meant condescending, "you don’t have to lie about it to me. I can help you fix this whole thing. It’s simple."

The Angel of Death drew his eyebrows tighter together than he already had and halfway grimaced. There was a sudden horrible taste in his mouth that foretold of something ridiculous about to creep out of his mother’s mouth. And he was right.

"I’ve been watching you and your husband, Sugar, and I know that you haven’t slept together and as far as I’m concerned he hasn’t really so much as touched you. But don’t worry about it—we’ll turn that Damned Mortal around and make sure you are treated the way you are supposed to be treated, and not like you’re some antique or withered old lady, for Heaven’s sake—"

"Wait, wait, wait. Is that what this is about?"

Iria straightened up, painting a look of almost-surprise on her face. "What else would it be about?"

And it was just at that moment that Shinigami would have liked nothing more than to scream at his mother to get the hell out of his house, but it was the fine wave of shock that rolled over him at that moment and the rising sense of disgust and revolt that prevented him from doing just that. He even leaned slightly backward into Heero’s unmoving form, still staring at the wall. The frozen fist of Time had glued him to the spot and he didn’t so much as budge. But the slight loss of what to do quickly faded away and was replaced with true outrage as his mother continued without too much concern as her son stumbled and gaped at her.

"I mean, what kind of marriage is that, anyway?" The Goddess of Love had sunk back into her seat, as she was through with fussing and standing up at the same time (it was not good for her complexion) and waved a hand at her secretary. Nadette startled for a moment, then quickly clip-clopped over, still clutching the strange velvet bundle in one hand as she lifted the other and summoned a delicate, blood red fan to hand to her employer. With a rather disinterested look, her lips pinching together as she fanned herself.

"You should remember how lucky you are to have me and my connections to get you such a marriage—it’s a high treason against the High Council, you know. I’m constantly risking my neck and my eternal soul just so you can lie around and cuddle with your mortal hubby? I don’t think so, Shini. This is going to be a real marriage. Immediately."

Shini stomped his foot, trying to get her attention. It only made Nadette flinch and watch him, wide-eyed. "Okasan—!"

"It’s ridiculous!" She rolled her eyes in her painted-up face, brushing the long blonde hair from her eyes with long, red nails. "You’re the most seductive Angel of Death to ever grace the pits of Hell, because you are my son, after all, and he doesn’t even so much as look at you lustfully. Just ridiculous!"

He was now turning slightly red. "Well, I’ve caught him doing it a few times, but he gets shy and pretends not to—"

"I mean, it’s not like you’re inexperienced, by any means! And not the least bit shy about it, either! When was the last time you even had some fun, Shini? Hundreds of years? More than that? Let’s face it, it’s about time you had something to do. It’s not good for you—"

"No, no, no!"

Shinigami suddenly barked at his mother, stepping sharply away from his comatose husband, as if he could actually hear the conversation being currently held in a pocket outside of Time, and shot over to her side, glaring down at her as she sat in the chair. She glanced up from fiddling with her newly done nails to gaze up at him in return, and saw a frustrated flush burn across his face. His newly acquired sense of defiance and independent sovereignty (a product of staying in close proximity to the Arrogant Mortal, she had no doubt) was shining through cleaner and clearer.

"Whatever it is you want me to do, forget it!" he snapped, suddenly unable to stand the look of her face, that disinterested but faultfinding stare beneath her makeup. It made something hot and tight wind in his stomach, a feeling stronger than any that he’d drudged up in all their disagreements, and quickly growing in contempt. "Heero and I are doing just fine, and whatever happens between will be because we want to and we won’t be let ourselves get bossed around just because of your opinions."

The Goddess of Love’s face had turned to mild shock, then fury as her son continued, towering over her, and quickly clenched the arms of the chair, itching to fly to her feet and return the argument in full. "I never—! That bastard’s gotten his claws into your, I knew it!"

"You helped pick him out!"

Iria shot up to her feet, the red fan disappearing as she moved, and caused her son to step back, but only minimally. Nadette had shrunk off into the distance, listening to the voices rapidly heat up, crowed behind the wall and peering around the corner. "I should have forgotten him the instant he tried to abandon you and then—"

He stomped his foot. "No, I ran away!"

"It was his careless mistake that gave you the Shrinks and nearly killed you, I’ll have you know, Shini, and—"

Then he groaned and shook his head furiously. "That was mine! It was my fault!"

"What do you think you’re going to do here, Shini? After all this goddamned work, I’m not going to sit back and watch you guys play house. This is the last time I’ll find you a home to stay in, Shinigami, so you’d better make it a real one!"

Finally, the Angel of Death took a step forward brazenly. The sudden, unexpected move, putting him directly into his mother’s face and into the stance of an antagonist, caused her to momentarily hesitate and blink at him. "I’m making tons of progress on my own, Okasan!" he told her firmly, violet eyes turning fiery and dark as he spoke. "And neither Heero or I want you here. Go home and read your magazines or something."

Without missing a beat, she leveled an even look at him, hardening her expression, and took him by the wrist. It took a few moments for him to grasp that she was glaring at the Heero’s ring, clutching her long, blood red nails into his skin as she twisted his arm to better examine the token of commitment.

"What’s this?" she purred lowly.

"None of your business, Okasan," he growled back, pulling his arm through her tight grasp as if she were nothing more than air.

A thin scowl of mixed thoughts crossed her face for a moment, then shrunk to merely a sour corner of her mouth as she opened it to speak again. "I was only thinking of you, Shinigami," she said considerably softer than before. "I don’t want to make you angry, but I don’t want to see him neglect, you either. And such things just happen to be my area of expertise, you know."

Shini resisted the urge to suddenly grimace. He did not like the sound of this in the least. He’d seen his mother’s work.

"That’s why I came here—to make a proposition, a way to instantly fix your husband’s seemingly faulty sex drive."

"It is not!" Shini snapped back. It was harder, this time, to resist making some ill-fated comment on his mother’s rocky and undesirable past relationships and perhaps even the unthinkable—accusing her of any sort of sexual immorality—and risking the launch of another and hellish tirade ten times as bad as the last.

"Shini, darling," came the responding purr as one pale hand came to rest on his shoulder, "I don’t think you know what you’re missing, otherwise you’d been in agreement with me."

A low, almost devilish light had sprung to life in her eyes, reaching down to her mouth, which curled now on each side. The Angel of Death gazed up into that familiar look, one was sure he’d worn quite a few times, and felt something fill the pit of his stomach. His mother’s hand had become unusually warm, all of a sudden, and her fingertips were five, hot contacts on his shoulder which abruptly connected with the feeling in his stomach and abruptly he was no longer in the kitchen. His breath left him as he fell backwards into illusion and onto something soft and flat, but he wasn’t alone. Heero lay wrapped around him as if letting him go would drop him into a cold, black oblivion, and his mouth wandered back and forth on his neck lazily, disheveled, deep brown hair brushing the line of his jaw, as they lay, warm and disconnected from the world but simultaneous touching every part of it.

Shini let out a groan of surprise, then lifted his head, as the mortal continued to brush his half-parted lips against the curve of his neck, to see his mother’s smug expression hanging over him as she bent over the non-existent bed where the two laid. She arched one eyebrow, the garish red tone of her eyeshadow only accenting the smirk she bore. "Convinced yet?" she purred, folding her arms. "No? Or maybe this’ll stir your cocoa a little more."

And then it was brutal lips against his, so anxious and impatient they tasted like liquid fire, jumping back and forth as Heero’s fingers clutched at the clothes separating them, clawing. There was no way to get them away soon enough, and with each layer—a shirt, halfway buttoned still, resisting staunchly the expulsion before being carelessly dropped from fingers. Shini couldn’t breathe as each removal of an article of clothing caused a momentary separation but Heero would close it split-seconds later with a vengeance, uniting the complete plane of their bodies, and turning Shini’s vision into nothing but sparks and a blind need to see nothing but him. A hot coil was turning low in his stomach, and it was a familiar sensation, but his brain was lost, completely annihilated by the lustful sighs escaping Heero’s mouth and the expression in his eyes, beneath lowered lashes, watching him for the moment before he crushed their lips together, accelerating the fire.

And then he was in the kitchen again, and his mother was standing before him, neatly folding her arms and smirking. And he was at a complete lost, still searching for an ounce of oxygen in his breath and his mind yet to stop its rapid, erratic spin.

"So," she said, "I take that as a yes?"

Shini numbly nodded to whatever noise had come from his mother’s figure, but he was most definitely not with her, a few steps behind, and understandably so. She smirked.

"Great! Then you’ll be needing these," the Goddess of Love purred, snapping her fingers so the red velvet bundle reappeared in her confident grip. Once so mysterious to him, he now only dully stared through it as she opened it, repeatedly shaking his head to the side, trying to dislodge the very agreeable illusion like it was caught on a corner in his mind.

"Now, you’re going to need to give these to him every day. Whichever way you can, I guess." She removed a ruby red vial from the satchel and lifted it to the light, pinched between her long nails. The thin liquid inside glistened a light pink and she smiled at it. "Yes, this one’ll do, I think."

She then collected a few more similar vials and then reached out to her dumbfounded son, pulled his hands out in front of him, palms skyward, and dumped them into his hands. For a moment, he remained stone still, and then she closed his fingers around them.

"Don’t you dare drop those," she warned. "They’re worth twice my soul in gold, and just as illegal as you and your little mortal hubby. It’s only been used once before—some pair of Italian kids, who got worked up over their in-laws and ended up killing themselves—so I got it for a deal. Damn nymph didn’t even knew what she was giving up."

Shini’s mouth had now numbly parted and his weight was swaying gently back and forth while the better part of his brain was just turning foggy and halfway returned to reality. Just few feet behind him, Heero was soundly on his way to winning that staring contest, still boring a hole into the wall overhead.

Nadette had walked quietly over to Iria’s side. "Take this, would you, hon," she murmured, not really asking, and put the satchel into her hands. The Goddess of Love raised her hand again, lowering the other, palm up, and snapped her finger. A small blood red lacquer box appeared, which she opened up, revealing a light pink layer of velvet inside. She gave a nod to her assistant, who then transferred the tiny vials into their new container, tentatively curling Shini’s pliable fingers away from them first.

Iria clamped the box shut a moment later and her hand continued to press down as it shrunk into a tiny replicate of itself. She put it back into her son’s grasp as he finally seemed to revive, though his eyes blinked and darted in confusion, raking up and down her face. Still clasping her hands over his, she bent down to place a peck on his flushed cheek and straightened up again, grinning. "Gotta go, Shini, but your brother will be here the day after tomorrow to seal the deal, alright?"

The Angel of Death, currently very confused and turning pale beneath his flush, squeaked out, "What? Okasan?" He tried to clamp down on her hand as she moved, but unsuccessfully. In a split second, she was at the archway to the hallway, hurrying on her bright red pumps and looking back over her shoulder.

"No, no, honey, I gotta go, alright? Ciao!"

Shini’s mouth hinged open once or twice, still waiting for some coherent answer to arrive from his brain, but only managed out a half-strangled, "Brother?" before she turned around the corner and was undoubtedly gone.

It was only when he uncurled his fist, revealing the tiny lacquer box in the creases of his palm, when Time finished slowly unthawing, sending the unaware Heero careening neatly into his back and nearly knocking both of them over.

A/N: Long time between updates, I know, but finally my AP classes are through and I can get back to doing what I really want to do. And it's a nice, long, and involved chapter, too, so I hope you enjoyed. The title is a fricking fantastic Pillows song, meaning "Give me more love." Hopefully a new update soon!