At first Shinji wasn’t really heading anywhere, he just stomped around the neighbourhood. But his circle slowly grew larger and larger until the unknown slowly became familiar and he wandered aimlessly up and down streets he’d almost forgotten until his feet stopped in front of a familiar little gate and he nervously pushed it open, [...]

Rien’s flight actually came in at night, very early in the morning. He then had to spend several hours at the office, debriefing and filing reports and doing paperwork, and checking in with his new boss to get an idea of what his schedule might be like the next few months. Then he had to [...]

As the days passed, Shinji grew increasingly tired. He slept badly, plagued with nightmares, and woke no better rested than he’d started out, blearily making coffee and crying over the smell of it, just staring at the hot cup, feeling ridiculously wretched and weak. He tried to be strong for Kippei, gathered himself through the [...]

Rien was so very tempted not to wake them up, when he got up early and eased himself out of bed to get ready to leave in the morning. It was so hard, god so hard to leave them, and to have to say goodbye and maybe see tears, it was going to rip at [...]

Shinji tried to be calm and reasonable and not do anything completely stupid, like panicking so bad his brain swelled and he screamed the house down and made the neighbours call the police, because that would be bad. But the fact remained, niggling at the back of his mind that Rien was going back to [...]