+A Cup of Milk Tea+

Coffee III: Stains

Of all the people in the world Kazuki ever considered taking to meet his parents, Lev Ivanov was about as high on the list as having him bring home a stripper. To be honest, he'd never wanted anyone to meet his parents, it was not the type of a thing a grown man, foresworn bachelor and pactmate that lived with an indecently nude spirit would ever even think about doing. But one cold autumn day, when his parents' transportation and lodging plans fell through, Kazuki was forced to greet them with a stretched grimaced attempt at a smile, the Ivanov an ever oily annoyance (he pictured Lev as a greasy slicked up fly at times like these), buzzing around. He wished he had a fly swatter.

He was so busy trying to keep Lev from digging out any more childhood stories from his polite father who was both way too surprised and pleased at Lev's grasp of the Japanese language he thought, that he didn't notice his mother, like all Asian mothers tend to do, wander into his bedroom and began picking up after him.

"Kazu-chan...what's this?" His mother's eyes were confused, her small hands, the skin thin like an underkimono that'd been washed one too many times, shaking just a little as she held up the blood stained laundry he'd tossed into the corner after their last escapade just a few days ago. Morpheus was gone on his own mission with the Order and Kazuki just hadn't gotten around to washing his clothes yet.

Lev watched Kazuki's eyes move down then up, flicking to the left. Bad liar, he thought to himself.

"Coffee stains." He moved forward qucikly, pulling the shirt out of his mother's grasp and balling it up, throwing them back into the bedroom. He took his mother's hands and led her back out to the tiny living room he shared with Lev. He told his father to take mother outside and wait in the car, he was just going to get his phone and they'd be right down. Lev smiled but declined the invitation to join, watching instead as he lit up a cigarette with the practiced actions of a chain smoker living with other chain smokers, as Kazuki snatched back up the shirt covered with the blood of the blonde boy they'd been forced to shoot. He watched with a curious exhale of his smokey breath as Kazuki immediately went to the kitchen.

"What are you doing? If you are burning the shirt, it is a bit late now." Lev smirked, switching back to English. "You are a terrible liar by the way. I could lie better than you with my hand still in the ah, cookie jar as you say." Kazuki gave him a expression of aspiraty and snatching up the half pot of coffee still sitting on the brewer, poured its contents out over the browned blood stains, further destroying the shirt.

"I'm not you."

Lev took another inhale and then walked over, snubbing his cigarette out on the wet stained shirt.

"No. I do not white wash my lies. I just tell them as it is." He walked away from the sink, leaving Kazuki with his fist clenched tightly around his ruined shirt, coffee dripping down onto the tiled floor.