The only other person in the world who shared the same memories of New York with him was asleep in the passenger seat. Of course, that person wouldn't even be in his Mercedes fogging up the window if he had just taken a taxi. The man was thirty-four-years old! He'd be thirty-five in another eight months, give or take. Wasn't he responsible enough to arrange that kind of thing ahead of time?

No, wait. He did arrange it, the bastard. Tohma knew he could talk Eiri into doing any number of things for him and if he couldn't, he knew exactly who to turn to: Mika. When he'd rejected Tohma's request to pick him up at the airport, Mika called him ten minutes later saying how she was on her way to take him shopping for a birthday present for their father. When he had to choose between five hours of shopping and a two hour car ride with a person who might feed him sweets, the choice was obvious.

Except the bastard didn't have any sweets for him.

Eiri groaned in discontent as he pulled up to a red light. No chocolates, no caramels, no strawberry shortcake. Hell, even a gift card would have been nice. But no, apparently Tohma's presence alone was the gift. He was beginning to wonder if he'd made the wrong decision to pick up his brother-in-law at the airport.

"Seguchi, if you start drooling on my door…."

"I'm not drooling," came the half-asleep reply. Tohma lifted his hand anyway and felt around his mouth to check.

"I thought you were asleep."

"Your voice woke me up."

"That fast?"

"Okay, I was dozing."

Eiri rolled his eyes and pressed his foot against the gas pedal a millisecond after the light turned green. Tohma always did that—he pretended to be asleep or pretended that he wasn't paying attention. Really, Eiri should have known better. Or maybe Tohma had just gotten better at pretending. He'd always been a master of Let's Play Pretend, hadn't he?

"Aren't you going to ask me how my trip was?" asked Tohma as he nearly snuggled against the window. Probably because he knew what would happen if he tried to snuggle against him right now.

"I agreed to pick you up at the airport, not to have a chitchat with you about New York."

"You sound upset," came the accusing reply.

"I am." And he was. Eiri felt like he had gone out of his way for nothing. If Tohma wasn't going to repay him somehow, why should Eiri do any of the work?

"Don't be such a baby," said Tohma. He turned his head just a little to smile at Eiri in cover of midnight's darkness. "You know I brought you a gift."

"Did you now?" Eiri glanced at his brother-in-law before breaking at another red light. Why were there so many red lights at midnight, anyway? Everyone was either at home asleep or having sex. That or drinking their troubles away at the local bar, and he knew from experience that that led to sex, too. So basically, unless you were asleep or some pathetic loser, you were having sex and didn't have a need for a dozen red lights at midnight unless you happened to be an unlucky blond towing your brother-in-law around.

"I did. It's packed away in my suitcase, though. If you swing by my house this evening, I'll give it to you then."

Oh, so that's how it was. Tohma was trying to use a Buy-One-Get-One-Free Coupon. Well, it wasn't going to work. "I'm not making an extra trip. You'll give it to me when we get to your house or this is the last time I'm picking you up from anywhere. You hear me?"

"Okay, okay. No need to get so mean about it."

Mean? How was he being mean. He was doing the bastard a service and demanded payment, that's all. Was it necessary to guilt trip him like that? "So what did you get me?"

Tohma placed an index finger in front of his lips and closed his eyes. "It's a secret!"

"I hope it's non-perishable."

"Oh? So you are coming to pick it up tonight?"

The light was finally green and Eiri slammed his foot on the gas pedal. Anything to get this nuisance home faster. "If I don't pick it up tonight, you'll just bring it over tomorrow morning. I'd rather get it over with sooner than later."

Tohma just laughed. He'd won. He always did, didn't he? That was Seguchi Tohma for you. It wasn't in the man's blood to lose. Eiri watched from the corner of his eye as his brother-in-law shifted in his seat. Apparently, the shorter blond was going to sleep with the back of his head leaning against the window and the rest of his body half-twisted around. Maybe he wasn't such a genius after all.

"Seguchi…."

"Mm?"

"Don't sleep facing me like that. It's creepy."

"I'm tired but I'm not asleep. A seventeen hour flight, even when you're flying first class, is pretty exhausting. On top of that, the plane was delayed."

"Your head's going to break the window if we hit a bad bump in the road and you're going to scoff my leather with your boots."

Tohma cracked open a sleepy eye. "Worried about me?"

"No. I'm worried about my car."

There was that smile. The plastic one that said I'm wounded, but was pleasant and polite all the same. Well, wounded or not, Eiri wasn't going to take it back. Tohma would just lecture him about how he should have brought one of his less expensive cars if he was so worried about it getting ruined. It wouldn't matter to Tohma whether or not he liked this car—which he did—just that he was worried over damaging an expensive car he had chosen to drive.

The next twenty minutes were uneventful. A silence had fallen over the Mercedes and from the way Tohma's head was tilted and the relaxed expression he had, the older blond was asleep. Probably. It was hard to tell with a man who wore a mask of emotion every day. It was better Tohma was asleep anyway. A sleeping Tohma meant no nagging about food or health or Shuichi.

Damn red lights. All of this stopping was making Eiri think about the things he didn't want to. Maybe it wasn't such a good thing for Tohma to be asleep. At least he kept Eiri from remembering the things he didn't want to. He'd talk about something else as a distraction or make a promise about how he would fix everything—a promise Eiri knew he was pretty capable of keeping.

"Seguchi."

When he didn't get a response, he was positive Tohma was asleep. He wouldn't pass up an opportunity to talk with him if he were just pretending to be asleep. Tohma may have been a good actor, but not when it came to that. Maybe if he had slept on the plane he wouldn't be so tired. Seventeen hours was plenty of time for sleep, right?

Eiri stared at his bandaged, blood-spotted hands that were folded neatly in his lap—wait. How did blood get on his hands in the first place? He was hallucinating. He had to be hallucinating. His hands were perfectly blood-free and on the steering wheel a couple of seconds ago. Hands that weren't clutching the steering wheel but were instead in his lap.

People who were hallucinating shouldn't be driving. He would have pulled over if the car hadn't dematerialized into a bright room full of empty chairs. Like a timid child, he looked around the room, wondering how the hell he had gotten there when just a few minutes ago he was in the car with—

"Seguchi!"

"Yuki!"

Eiri stared at Shuichi who was standing in a doorway, carrying two cans of iced coffee. Seeing someone familiar was relieving, but that didn't help him understand the situation any better. Shuichi tossed the cans of coffee aside and launched himself into Eiri's arms. He could hear them roll as Shuichi wrapped his arms around him in a tight, iron-like grip.

"Yuki! You finally said something!"

"What—you know what happened?"

Shuichi cocked his head to the side and stared up at Eiri with what seemed to be a worried expression. "Don't tell me you don't remember, either. You've been walking around in a state of shock for almost a week."

No. No he had not been wandering around for a week. Less than five minutes ago he was in his Mercedes!

"See?" Shuichi lifted one of Eiri's bandaged hands and pointed to the dried blood there. "You need your bandages changed, but you haven't let any of the doctors do more than bandage your hands up once. I was worried about you, you know! Do you know how terrifying it was to get a call from Mika-san saying you were in a horrible car accident? Then you go and act like a zombie for an entire week!"

Car accident or not, that didn't explain the apparent week-long gap in his memory. Eiri tried to calm his racing thoughts down and took another look around the room. It must have been a waiting room. There were far too many chairs and not enough beds to be a room of any patient.

"Yuki?"

So there was a car accident. A car accident he didn't remember. Eiri ran his bandaged fingers through his hair, resisting the urge to pull. It was… a green light last time, wasn't it?"

"Your car is totally wrecked," said Shuichi, his voice louder than necessary. Eiri wasn't deaf; he was trying to sort out the situation and account for a week's worth of memories.

Of course. Just as he had been thinking about Tohma chiding him for driving his favorite, most expensive car, the thing gets damaged just to prove the point Tohma would have had if he'd bothered to say anything.

"Hey, Yuki! Are you listening?"

Barely. Where was Tohma? Why wasn't he in the waiting room, too?

"Which side?"

"Which… side?"

"Which side of the Mercedes was hit?"

Shuichi blinked a few times. "You don't remember that, either? It was the passenger side."

Eiri stood up and grabbed Shuichi by the neck of his shirt, staring down at him with hardened golden eyes. "Where the fuck is Seguchi?"