SIGMA Fuji does not study math. In fact, Fuji studies Classical World Literature, the gods alone know why. But he is a prodigy at everything, not only torturing people, and Tezuka is grateful for that, if sometimes grudgingly so. "Fuji," Tezuka murmurs as he stares down the math, "help me with this problem?" He does not know why he decided upon being a physics major, or why Fuji is sprawled on their couch, at Tezuka's beck and call for help. At the murmur Fuji pads over, wearing a soft sports jacket, soft and rustly and light when it brushes on Tezuka's face - and Tezuka knows without looking that it's Tezuka's old jacket from Seigaku. The day that Fuji stopped playing tennis was the day he asked for the jacket. Tezuka had asked in an edge-filled voice ready to cut Fuji into pieces, "Why?" Fuji had giggled with a lilt too soft to be torn, then whispered in a tone like the smooth scuffle of feet over tennis courts, "Because I gave mine up." Fuji easily lost interest in tennis the way a butterfly quickly tires of a single flower and flutters away with nothing but an aftertaste of the last blossom. There are too many pretty things to explore in this world, and he never was able to settle down to one. And he can fly far beyond anyone else, and it's unknown to Tezuka why, at least with respect to him, Fuji has not yet strayed. Sometimes Tezuka sees a wild desire for something that Tezuka cannot ascertain in the soft glimmer of blue within Fuji's hidden eyes - eyes too bright to be revealed too often, for they can blind onlookers, Tezuka is sure. Sometimes they blind him, the way one can be blinded when staring into snow: a vast unbroken ecstasy. It is too precious, and Fuji - in one of the few ways that he is like everyone else - knows when to hoard his treasures, when to be selfish, when to clutch things closely and jealously to his chest. It's in the way he cuddles with Tezuka underneath a tangle of sheets, how he breathes soft and desperate, warm and sweet. It's in the way he so-very-reluctantly relinquishes control and allows himself to fall slackly vulnerable when he reaches his pleasure, and then his eyes flutter open and Tezuka is allowed a long, unbroken glimpse of entirely ceaseless azure. The blue does not end. Tezuka understands calculus and remembers infinite series and sequences. One adds this piece to that piece in some pattern, and that is how one can approximate, calculate, make a guess at some overall sum or quantity that there's no other way to know. If there are enough pieces it will eventually get close enough for all practical purposes. Fuji will never be like that. There is never a chance at approaching the end of him. There is no total. Fuji does not converge. The world is not enough. It would be a waste to limit Fuji to this, that, the other thing. More pieces, Tezuka thinks. More data, like Inui clamored a long time ago. But there is not an end to Fuji, probably even to Fuji's own knowledge. It's Godel's Incompleteness Theorem now: if Fuji cannot see all of himself, and nor can anyone on the outside - then how much *more* is he infinite? It ought to boggle the mind, but Tezuka knows by now, has learned to accept that there are many different kinds of infinities, some greater than others. Maybe that's what genius means: an unending well of potential, dangerous and haunting and enrapturing, and one could fall into its depths and never come back out. Like Tezuka has done. "You can't solve this problem, actually, but you can prove that there's no solution," a pencil stub is humming on a pad of scratch paper, contentedly harmonizing with a voice. When the sounds stop, the silence is satisfying. Fuji's touch breaks through Tezuka's surface the way a pebble falls through water, and Tezuka can almost see ripples spreading in circles. And waves continue so long as there is clear blue to carry them. "Fuji," Tezuka murmurs. "Hmm?" Fuji's voice and smile reach out the way his hands do, and all of it wraps around Tezuka, and Tezuka sees a wisp of blue somewhere in there. Tezuka reaches back for Fuji the way he once reached for everything on the court, and Fuji encompasses too much more than eighteen point two by thirty-six point six meters, squared. But Tezuka will still run here to there to the other place, because there is no remaining still with Fuji. Fuji holds Tezuka close and certainly he will let go at some point, and it is going to feel like cleaving flesh from bone, but as long as everything holds together, time and space can stop just a little while, because Fuji always did bend the rules, always did hold a little more of everything than anyone else should or does - probably more than even Fuji should. And Tezuka is somehow content within the throes of grasping and greed and wanting it all. - the end -