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 Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2024 4:54 pm
As they got closer and closer to home, Kiyoshi kept an eye on Leandro. He tried to be subtle about it, nothing too obvious or too creepy, but……well. Leandro had met Yuki before. He’d come over to play games at Yuki’s before. Granted, Leandro’s ADHD often made Kiyoshi feel like “Okay, so you’re like a world-class grandmaster of four-dimensional chess while I’m playing Go Fish and an invisible gremlin keeps eating my cards,” so there was always a chance that he didn’t necessarily remember the neighborhood around Yuki’s place. The neighborhood, after all, probably wasn’t the part that he’d been most interested in.
Still, it didn’t hurt to watch, Kiyoshi figured. Trying to gauge where Leandro was emotionally ahead of time meant there was less of a chance that he’d surprise Kiyoshi by reacting badly.
When they finally hit the path from the sidewalk to the front porch, Kiyoshi quit paying attention to Leandro, but only because other matters required him to mind them. Like, fishing around in his skirt’s pocket for his house keys. Fortunately, finding them wasn’t difficult—Kiyoshi kept them on a sparkly rainbow lanyard for a reason, after all—and fumbling with the lock wasn’t terribly hard, either. A little bit finicky with the outer door—it was pretty old, the lock’s halfway-rusted tumblers refused to let things unlatch unless you pushed the door so it was lined up exactly how the tumblers’ path wanted to go—but the inner door cooperated easily. Trusting Leandro to close and lock the door behind him, Kiyoshi set about toeing out of his cute Mary Jane heels.
Almost immediately, a fifty-some-odd-pound hurricane of white fur and wagging tongue came rushing down the stairs, her brown eyes bright and her whole face lit up. This little baby, Leandro would definitely recognize—and Cersei recognized him. She barrelled right past Kiyoshi to go sniff at Leandro and dance around his legs, looking up at him and wagging her tail like “Friend!! Hello, friend!! It has been so long since the last time that I got to see you!!!”
She didn’t wait for his attention long, though. Cersei Rokugin Sakurazawa was full of love and ready to make friends with everyone, but she was forever attached to Her Person in particular. And letting Leandro just drink everything in and process it all, Kiyoshi knelt down so he could ruffle his baby’s fur with both hands and coo at her.
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Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2024 6:01 pm
Leandro's head tilted like a confused puppy as he realized that he... recognized where they were headed? Sort of? Maybe? He didn't think... Okay, well it was familiar, but that didn't mean they were headed to someone he knew? Goddamnit, if it was, he was going to kick himself. He was so forgetful— And then a big dog nearly bowled him over, knocking at his legs in her eagerness to greet him, and he wrinkled his nose in confusion as he knelt to scrub firm pets through her fur right next to Kiyoshi. "Hey Cersei baby," he cooed. "How are you doing, baby? Did Reiki—" His breath hitched for a moment and he rubbed at his eyes, trying to prevent tears before they fell. His voice turned ragged. "Yuki took you in, didn't he, good girl," he murmured, pressing kisses all over her face when she turned to him. "Oh, baby girl. I'm so sorry..."
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Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2024 6:46 pm
Kiyoshi frowned bemusedly as he realized what Leandro was saying, and forced himself to keep looking at Cersei—or if not her, at the floor or the stairs or anywhere but at Leandro—so that he could not pull a face at his old friend directly.…… Gods, Leandro could be so blessedly stupid sometimes……but on the other hand, it wasn’t his fault that he didn’t know. It was Kiyoshi’s fault that Leandro didn’t know anything, because he hadn’t known if it was safe to tell Leandro anything or not.
Still, how the ******** was Kiyoshi supposed to respond to Leandro getting choked up over a friend going missing when Kiyoshi was the friend in question and was literally sitting right next to him?Fortunately for Kiyoshi, he didn’t need to figure out how to respond to Leandro on his own. Prior to running off for the door, Cersei had been snuggled up with Yuki while he worked on a review of a new indie fighting game they’d played recently. Feeling her shift on his feet, then hearing her run off, Yuki had figured that ******** would be getting back in from his shift of magical girl duty.
(Yuki didn’t want to overly congratulate himself or pat himself on the back too much, but he did have the sense that the reinforced time limit on magical girl nonsense for every week was helping. Getting Kiyoshi to actually invest time in figuring himself out again, getting something relatively close to stable after everything he’d gone through before and during the purification out of the Dark Mirror Court, and listening to his ******** magical girl therapist. Maybe he hadn’t had a lot of opportunities to go gallivanting with any beautiful Chaos boys until recently, so they hadn’t really tested how effective the “Time spent with Chaos friends counts double unless they are Hybris and only Hybris” rule would prove? But still. The intended effects were being had in other areas.)
It only took a few moments for Yuki to decide that……really, he could use a break. The screen brightness in Google docs was starting to get to him, Cersei had scampered off and not yet returned (which made it that much more likely for the person who’d come home to be ********), and checking in on his best boy was always a worthwhile endeavor. Gathering up his mug and his water-bottle, Yuki made his way to the stairs. He was partway down when he noticed that ******** long, black ponytail was not the only ponytail waiting down there.
“Well, there’s some blue hair and pronouns I haven’t seen in a while,” Yuki said, tucking his water-bottle into the crook of his elbow so he could rub at one eye. “How’s it going, Leandro? Have you been……”
And then it hit him. And as Yuki hit the bottom of the stairs, he frowned down at Kiyoshi. “********, what the Hell is Leandro doing here? I thought old friends, the drag fam, and the family were off-limits until……” Well. It was for magical reasons, and who was to know if Leandro would take any mentions of General-King Keep That Slut Away From My Boy, Love Yuki Tsukiyama to the wrong people? “Y’know, for the time being?”“Oh, they are, Gorgeous,” Kiyoshi affirmed, sighing and sounding the exact opposite of happy about this state of affairs. Still, he looked up at Yuki as his best guy deserved (hands never once leaving Cersei or her soft, white fur). “I didn’t exactly intend to run into Leandro, though. We ran into each other powered up, so I didn’t clock who he was until the magical Knight of Neptune glamour came off. And then……well.”
Kiyoshi turned his head to look at Leandro instead. “The ‘for the time being’ that Yuki’s talking about? Is a Negaverse General-King who……” He made a throaty, non-committal, deeply uneasy-sounding noise. “I mean, he might be happy about this? But only because sticking his talons in my chest now can actually do anything. I didn’t want to say anything out in the park, where someone could’ve overheard. And, uh.” Kiyoshi shrugged. “I also wasn’t sure you’d believe me without evidence.”
Evidence like Cersei still recognizing him as Her Person, and Yuki still recognizing him as His ******** yeah,” Kiyoshi said. “In a manner of speaking, Yuki did take me in. Also, one of my cousins, another friend who left the Dark Mirror, a friend who’s a Cosmos Knight, and two friends who aren’t even from ‘round here……by which I mean that Grieve and Soren are from outer space. Literally.”
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Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2024 7:20 pm
Leandro chuckled a bit at Yuki's greeting, hand lifting in a wave. "Oh yeah, most pronouns," he said, then trailed off as the words hit ******** way Cersei greeted Kiyoshi like he was her daddy, Reiki. The thing about a Negaverse guy, stealing Kiyoshi's soul, or trying to— He gasped, turning to Kiyoshi. "You—You—" He cut himself off to launch his body at Kiyoshi, grabbing him in the best approximation of a bear hug his skinny frame could handle. "I thought you'd been youma food," he sobbed into Kiyoshi's chest. "I was so ******** scared, I had no idea—" More sobs cut him off and he stopped trying to speak entirely, just crying out his emotions into Kiyoshi's chest. Reiki's chest. Kiyoshi's.
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Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2024 8:05 pm
Getting tackled by Leandro Esparza was sort of like getting gently knocked into by an extremely apologetic grandmother. Still, Kiyoshi wasn’t expecting to get attacked with a hug, and it was probably only due to him being more physically solid than Leandro that the two of them didn’t completely topple over. It took him a moment to settle all over again, and then to properly reciprocate the hug—but he did reciprocate, curling his arms around Leandro in turn and squeezing him close.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you ahead of time,” Kiyoshi said gently, after giving Leandro a few moments to just cry, and not saying anything sassy or snarky to undercut the seriousness of how he’d thought that Reiki, now Kiyoshi, had been youma food. That was all too serious a concern and all too likely a possibility. Had their positions been reversed and Leandro had left Kiyoshi for a side-swap, he might have assumed the same thing. “Outside of Yuki and people I only knew as Murikabushi, I only told the family. Aside from me and my cousin, nobody else has Awakened into the magical life, so they couldn’t take the knowledge anywhere. And I couldn’t walk out on them without letting them know I’d be okay. I just……”
He gave Leandro another squeeze and gently rubbed his back. “I didn’t know if you were or weren’t in the magical life, y’know? And if you were, I didn’t know which side you were on? Not like you’d knowingly get in on what the Negaverse does, but they could’ve lied to you. Or the way their Chaos works, it does something to people, y’know? One of their senshi who I know? He’s genuinely one of the sweetest people you’ll ever meet like ninety-eight percent of the time. Kind, supportive of others, fun to be around, overall well-intentioned, just wants people to be happy? But then it’s like……”
Kiyoshi shuddered a bit, thinking about Albite and how he could be when he got into the heat of the moment, really hopped up on the Negaverse. “When he’s doing Negaverse work, it can be like this switch flips in his head? I don’t actually know how much he thinks about what they do—” Probably not very much, honestly. Albite and thinking about unpleasant subjects seemed to get along as well as Diet Coke and Mentos. “—or what kind of cognitive dissonance he has going on? And I’m sorry for thinking you might’ve fallen into the Negaverse in the same way, I just……? I didn’t know. And I couldn’t risk it.”
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Posted: Fri Jul 12, 2024 2:03 pm
Leandro squeezed him back as tight as he could, taking a few deep breaths to calm down from his crying jag. Ugh, his face felt all raw and swollen and gross. Eventually, he pulled away, rubbing at his face with his hands to try and dry wash the nastiness away and feel better. "Yeah, no, I totally understand," he said, voice a little bit raspy. "I wouldn't tell anyone, either. Not when you can't be sure..." He swallowed. "I am so glad I'm not from the Negaverse. I don't know how I'd deal, if I lost you like that. it kinda sucks, though, that you can't... trust anyone. but I guess that's just humanity, right? I'd bet you're right about Chaos just, like, flipping a brain switch or something, with this guy you're talking about." His shoulders drooped and he sighed, peering up at Yuki. "So, are you secretly some magic man I might know about?" he asked wryly, standing up and shaking his legs out a bit after they'd cramped from the kneeling on the ground for so long.
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Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2024 1:24 pm
“It’s not just humanity being unreliable; it’s the Chaos too,” Kiyoshi explained, patting Leandro’s back. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Cersei watching the two of them in turn, then looking back at Yuki, all the while wondering what was happening and why she wasn’t still being petted. At least Yuki was around to offer her some pets until Leandro was all hugged out. “I mean, think about what we saw up on Daedalus. That’s what Chaos can do to a world. And when you’re in the Dark Mirror Court, Chaos like that is around your starseed like a straitjacket—which is the biggest reason why I had to get out, I couldn’t ******** live like that anymore, y’know? But Negaverse Chaos gets injected directly into a starseed, so like……”
Kiyoshi sighed and gently ruffled a hand over Leandro’s hair. “Think about the whole mess that we saw up on Daedalus. Now, picture that happening inside of someone’s soul. And it’s not always super-active? Which is how Albite can sometimes be one of the kindest, sweetest people you’ll ever meet. But other times, he gets into situations where things are like, objectively not cool to someone else, but the Chaos that has been directly injected into his soul makes him get like ‘Oh, this is fine.’”“This is one of many reasons why there’s a stipulation about Chaos boys in our rules about his weekly allotment of senshi time,” Yuki said, once more feeling very pleased with himself about that whole arrangement and about getting Kiyoshi to agree to it. “There are other reasons too, but the point is: time spent with Chaos boys counts double against his time limit……well. There’s one Mirror-boy who’s an exception, but only because Hybris is more of a danger to himself than to anyone else.”
Yuki shook his head, thinking about some of what he’d heard from ******** about Hybris’s nonsense. “Anyway, I’m not secretly magical as far as I know. Unless you count at making tea. Speaking of, can we offer you something to drink or some snacks, since you’re over?”
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Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2024 5:22 pm
Leandro took a few deep breaths, still trying to regulate his emotions after... all of that. He barely nodded at what Kiyoshi said, smiling just a little at the hair ruffle, then he took his hair out from its usual ponytail and finger-combed it until it felt nice enough for a loose braid, instead. A headache from crying had worsened the slight one he'd had from a too-tight tail. "Some juice and snacks sounds great," he said gratefully, ready to settle in for a long night of catching up.
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