Chapter Text
“Know any good bedtime stories, Kohaku-san?”
Crunch . A grown man’s screams echoed throughout the alleyway. Kohaku felt his target’s fingers go limp underneath his touch; fair enough, he did nearly twist his appendages off.
“Is now really the time?”
Madara’s handsome face looked ghostly in the combination of moonlight and blue light emanating from the phone in his hand, teal eyes fixated even as he placed the boot of his shoe upon the chest of a different opponent.
Bang!
“Madara-han!”
It was a miracle that the bullet only grazed his face considering that there was so much of his large frame to hit. Kohaku was of two minds: the world of violence and crime as they completed their duties, and the dazzling realm of idols as they completed aforementioned responsibilities in their performance garb. He couldn’t help but feel grateful that they’d finished their photoshoot already; it would’ve been hard to explain to a makeup artist the injury on his partner’s face.
“Oops! Looks like I got too distracted, ahaha,” his joyous voice was at odds with the situation, like fireworks soaring high above a warzone.
Kohaku’s hand jabbed against the gunman’s neck. Madara grabbed his head and dragged it down to impact against his knee.
One more body fell to the floor.
“Madara-han, are ya okay?” Kohaku’s question slipped out of him as his feet closed the distance between the two of them. Blood trickled against Madara’s cheek, and he wondered if it was good that there was so much red on their uniforms today. Would that make it easier to obscure the blood if it were to fall?
Or were the dyes of glamor and the sanguine evidence of violence never meant to mix?
“Mm-hmm, mm-hmm,” he hummed his affirmation in a melody, his soul still that of a shining performer despite the grime and muck thrown upon him. “It is no problem at all, haha! And what about you, Kohaku-san?”
“Of course I’m alright,” Kohaku answered with confidence. Some part of him wondered if it was because their opponents put their focus on the seemingly distracted Madara, following his spotlight and painting a target upon his back as a result. Was this another way he was being protected?
“Good, good! Then we can get back to the more important matter at hand.”
“More important? Whaddya mean?” Kohaku echoed, tilting his head. Was this not the beginning of their end? With the most dastardly work done, couldn’t they depart and go to bed once again making play that they were simple citizens of this peaceful world?
“Yes, yes!” Madara sang, lips parting into a large smile that made Kohaku more nervous than any pistol. “Your most beloved childhood tales, please!”
“Eh?”
“I’m sorry, Baby-chan, my Baby-chan, I’ll never take you somewhere that scary again! Look at all this grime and gunpowder on you…”
Kohaku frowned at the sight of Madara cooing so adoringly over his beloved motorbike. The two of them had made their escape from the scene, instead driving off closer to a road that overlooked the ocean. They pulled off to the side, and despite the enchanting way that stars dusted their glow over the horizon line, all Kohaku could do was look at Madara being a six foot tall man baby. Gross.
“You’re thinking I’m gross right now, aren’t you?” Madara asked, because he probably had eyes on the back of his head.
“No,” Kohaku lied, instead turning to let his gaze drift out to the ocean. A small wooden fence had been erected along the side, probably to provide just the bare minimum impression of safety—a barrier between man and nature. Perhaps all too comfortable with the idea of being confined, Kohaku let his hands find the top of the structure like cell bars.
“It’s not good to lie, Kohaku-san! Even if I am the last person that you want to hear that from, probably,” Madara said, as though acknowledging his faults on his own was enough to make them evaporate. “But you’ve had enough time to think, haven’t you? About your beloved little childhood tales.”
“I don’t have any like those,” Kohaku answered plainly. “All I have are second-hand an’ curses.”
“I’m sure those are still plenty good!”
“I don’t think that those’re what Anzu-han wanted t’hear, when she messaged you askin’ for inspiration for our next Double Face appearance…”
“You’d be surprised. I think that girl wants to see us all for who we are.” The sound of Madara’s hands tinkering against the machinery of his motorcycle didn’t cease. “That is what makes her impressive, just as it is what makes her a danger.”
Sparing a brief glance back to his partner, Kohaku admired briefly the way that Madara didn’t want to let even a speck of dust or poison touch that which he treasured.
“My sister told me the story of a bandit who lived in the mountains. One day, he captured the most beautiful woman in the town. But instead of hurtin’ her, he started listenin’ to her—she showed him the way that the world was wider than he knew. All types of new things that he’d never taken the time t’consider before.”
Beauty, virtue, the cultures of faraway places, and the way they were all connected by the sea. Kohaku watched the ripples become waves, and how they crashed against the cliffside. The first time he saw the ocean, the first time he saw the ocean, the first time he saw the ocean —
“But then she started askin’ him t’slaughter the townspeople, so he did. When he got tired of that, eventually he went back to the mountains and, afflicted by a curse, he then ended up killing that woman who taught ‘im so much. Her blood stained his hands.”
Madara’s tinkering paused, then resumed.
“So I’ve been thinking about that curse since I was a kid. Don’t even know what the moral of the whole story was. Aren’t tales for children suppose’ta have some kinda teachin’?”
Maybe this one taught him to be dishonest, more than anything. Even now, he took a blade to slice every cherry blossom petal out of the story; he still wanted to have some secrets kept from Madara. Yet this story still felt like an easier one to share than an impetuous heir and some ants.
“Those morals can be misleading anyway,” Madara answered. His voice sounded faraway, like he was lost in the nostalgia of his own recollections. “Stories about justice and heroes defeating villains… life isn’t that clear cut. Curses aren’t real, but justice isn’t either. If anything, that kind of bloody, senseless tale that you were told better reflects life than anecdotes about turtles or hares.”
Something about that wasn’t satisfying to Kohaku.
There was nothing that he disagreed with. Every word made sense. And —
“Rinne-han said that it had t’have been for love.”
Kohaku still thought that was ridiculous. Matters of life and death shouldn’t be affected by something like love. Wasn’t that too offensive to the people being killed? To say that your heart ruled over your head, getting caught up in a crime of passion. And yet—
For some reason, his eyes fixed upon Madara. Did he know anything of love? Filial, romantic, platonic? Was he not, actually, the exact type of person who would deny himself that love at every single turn?
Madara didn’t look up. The profile of him was so stoic that Kohaku almost wanted to shiver. Whether out of nerve or anger, he wasn’t sure.
“It had to have been anything but love,” Madara said, tone leaving no room for argument. “Or maybe it was something that the bandit would’ve wanted to call love, but a love that turns its blade upon others can’t be the real deal. If you ask me, if it was love, then the first person that the bandit would’ve cut into would’ve been himself.”
He moved to stand, all 180 centimeters of him. Lightly, he brushed debris off his pants and sleeves—and made no move to wipe away the dried blood on his cheek.
To Madara, love was sacrifice. Kohaku knew this since long ago. Today, he had it reaffirmed; to Madara, love was self-sacrifice above all else.
“As is, he’s just another coward, trying to find meaning behind his sins.”
“Preachy of you,” Kohaku said, tone light. Despite the topic at hand, something in his ribcage eased open when lavender eyes met teal. Starlight slid into the open space, filling his chest with its glimmer. To him, that was what understanding felt like.
It was what standing next to Madara felt like.
“What’s your childhood story, Madara-han?” he asked in return, curious. He watched the other lean back against his motorcycle, hip against its seat, hair tousled by the seaside breeze.
“Something about heroes, maybe?” Madara offered up first, and Kohaku thought he could remember something about that—the ways in which Purple used to sit on Madara like a second skin. Rabu mentioned that sometime in the past, when swirling all those different ideas of peace and anti-heroes. That was Ryuseitai.
The follow-up suggestion that he had instead felt more fitting for him as he shook his head, “But we can’t infringe upon already existing themes like that. So maybe something instead like… Little Red Riding Hood?”
Kohaku tilted his head, curious.
Madara didn’t question why he wasn’t familiar, instead proceeding to tell the tale: “A little girl goes to visit her grandmother who lives in the forest. On the way, she meets a wolf who wants to eat her. He tells her to pick flowers, and while she’s distracted, he goes to her grandmother’s house and swallows her whole. Then, he disguises himself as the grandmother and tricks the girl—despite her caution. It’s too late, and he swallows her whole.
“Sometimes the story ends there. Sometimes, a wandering woodsman comes to the rescue and cuts open the wolf to reveal the girl and her grandmother both inside its stomach. Sometimes, they fill the wolf with stones and he falls into a well, drowning after trying to quench his thirst after failing his hunger.”
For some reason, when Kohaku imagined the story, he found himself blinking away the ghosts of fallen cherry blossoms.
“And if we were t’take that as our concept, I’d have’ta be the little girl?” He questioned, inclining his chin up defiantly. As much as he knew that his appeal was in his cuteness, and perhaps it was just a little too convincing to have his sister pose as him without a hitch—he still had to be sure.
Madara grinned.
“And I’d be the wolf.”
Some of that stardust in Kohaku’s chest flickered—it felt like those pockets of the cosmos caught aflame.
“You’re tellin’ me not to trust you.”
The idiot—his trusted person, his irreplaceable individual, his partner—smiled. He said nothing.
Madara’s love was self-sacrifice.
Kohaku’s was a blade.
“If you tried to eat me, I’d have to carve your heart out from the inside, Madara-han.”
Treacherously, a lightning strike of delight illuminated Madara’s gaze.
“My heart? Don’t you mean my stomach?”
“No,” Kohaku said stubbornly, pushing himself off of the wooden fence and stepping forward. “I don’t. Because I wouldn’t want you to die, so I’d have to find a way t’save your heart. Aren’t cartoons like that anyway? Where you can sustain any type of injury for the sake of the story, and everything can turn out okay as long as it suits the author? So now, I’m the storyteller.”
He had no experience, but that didn’t stop him in anything before. It was gaining these experiences, learning the world, half the time alongside this infuriating person in front of him that made being outside his prison feel worthwhile.
“No matter how you try to deceive me, Wolf, this Red will make sure you get what’s comin’ to you. That’s the stuff that bleeds, and the stuff that heals too. No shadow without light.”
“You’d turn your weapon on me too, Kohaku? I guess that sort of thing feels inevitable. There’s no way that something like love can exist between the two of us.”
He was right.
(He was wrong.)
Brow furrowing, Kohaku argued, “Don’t impose your values onto me. We get enough of that from everybody else around us, don’t ya think?”
A bandit slicing into the woman he obeyed couldn't love her. A wolf eating his prey couldn’t love her. That’s what Madara believed.
Kohaku felt that missed something important.
He raised his hand up to Madara’s cheek. In a more tender moment, a gentler light, he could’ve cupped his face gently. But that wasn’t who they were.
Instead, his thumb pressed against the line of the bullet’s path. Kohaku knew when he pulled away, he would have some faint imprint of scarlet staining his own skin. Yet even this small gesture managed to get Madara to wince.
“I think that this is the only way you’d listen,” Kohaku argued. “If the way that you try t’save others is by using that terrible mind and big body of yours, if you’re waiting for someone to carve into you so that you can meet all the sins that you’ve committed. Fine. But I’ll be in line, too.
“I’ll carve that twisted type of love into you, wounds and all. If that’s the only way that you can understand it, I’ll leave all my scars on you, Madara-han.”
Madara’s breath stilled, stuttered. It was replaced by a small brush of wind, and there was the barest shiver that seemed to run through him when Kohaku pulled his hand away. Only then did Madara bring a hand up to his own face, seeming to have remembered in the last five seconds that he was injured at all.
“I’m not some type of perverted person that will welcome pain, Kohaku-san. Should we get that straight first?” Madara asked, his lips finding the shape of a joke even as his smile grew sharp. His gaze intensified. “... But if you’re prepared to face this wolf with all his bared teeth, then I’ll welcome you Little Red Bandit.”
If this was the shape of their affection, sharp enough to cut, then it would be a wound worth welcoming.