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They report the story like this: Nobody’s been able to see much of the victim for the past two weeks so his friend had approached the landlord because people were getting concerned. They find his body in his living room floor.
Strangled.
Initial sweep found no prints, minimal signs of a struggle and no forced entry. The rest of the apartment remains untouched. There’s even a cup of instant ramen on the table, and tea. The goddamn tv was still on.
It’s Morisuke's first case with Lev as his partner, and already it’s making his head spin. Not in the least because Lev is a problem and a half. Morisuke thinks maybe he’s offended the chief somehow and he’s being punished by having to partner with this rookie, who doesn’t know the first thing about investigating and yet, keeps on talking about becoming the Ace Attorney. In which case, he’s in the completely wrong department of law enforcement(!!!!), what kind of idiot is he even, and Morisuke really wants to strangle somebody.
Just once.
Preferably the half-Russian disaster waiting to happen he’d been saddled with, if only it wasn’t illegal.
Why gods?
What did he do?
Morisuke follows the law, gives money to the temple and occasionally feeds the stray cat that likes to wander into his apartment. Do they want him to adopt the cat? He’ll adopt the cat. It’s better than adopting Haiba Lev, because letting him think for himself is like feeding predatory animals in the zoo. Totally unacceptable and also extremely dangerous.
But that’s another story.
They say the victim’s a good guy. Quiet and prone to withdraw from social contact, but a good guy. His friends talk about how he was going to throw a party for his birthday for the very first time. It had been a breakthrough for him. They’d all been very supportive.
He’s no longer throwing that party, unfortunately.
The old lady in the apartment beside the victim’s cries when Lev informs her of what happened because he’s as tactful as a stab in the back. Morisuke would kick him, but he’s busy trying to offer his handkerchief to comfort the lady as she sniffs into her sleeve.
Goddamnit Lev.
She didn’t actually know him that well, but he always acted as her handyman when she needed one. She baked him little treats because he didn’t know how to cook for himself, the poor dear.
Oh, when did she see him last? Her memory’s been really foggy lately, but it was two weeks ago. He was speaking to Oikawa-kun, who lives downstairs with his partner.
Has she been able to see him since? Goodness, no.
But they don’t think it was Oikawa-kun who did it, do they? He and his partner are such sweet boys. They always help her bring her groceries up and ask her about her grandchildren. One time, they gave her a sweater they knitted themselves for the holidays because they heard her complaining about her joints aching from the chill. So sweet. They wouldn’t be able to hurt a fly.
“Of course not, ma’am,” Morisuke says, glaring Lev down so he shuts his mouth and doesn’t say anything more sob-worthy.
It doesn’t work, obviously. “But doesn’t that mean he’s a suspe-“
Morisuke kicks him. Subtly. Lev stumbles in the hallway and bangs his head. “Yaku-san!” he complains from the floor.
“He’s very clumsy,” Morisuke tells the gaping old woman reassuringly.
It’s part of his job, this assurance.
It’s part of his job, to smile and pat her hand, of course we know Oikawa-kun is a good person, and keep his suspicions to himself.
Even though Morisuke knows that sometimes, killers can come from the most unlikely of places. Or put on the masks and airs of a sweet boy who lives downstairs and helps an old woman out with her groceries.
He meets Sugawara Koushi like this: when he opens the door to the ‘apartment downstairs where Oikawa-kun lives with his partner’ and greets him and Lev with the biggest pair of doe brown eyes Morisuke has ever seen.
He’s at a loss for words for a moment, and at least, he’d trained Lev well enough that he actually sounds professional when he introduces himself and inquires if they could come in and ask a few questions about the tragic incident that had been discovered upstairs.
“Of course,” Sugawara says, still with the same soft, beseeching eyes that awaken just about every protective instinct Morisuke owns.
The hallway to the living room is filled with photographs. Always of Sugawara and another man, a little taller and just as pretty. Kissing, cuddling, smiling to the camera with arms around each other. So in love.
Warms Morisuke’s heart.
They meet Oikawa Tooru like this: sprawled on the couch, his right leg extended in front of him, knee wrapped in some kind of bandage. He’s pouting.
When Lev asks after the injury – because he’s as tactless as a stab in the back and subtle as a gun, Morisuke should probably start considering the benefits of a fucking muzzle – Sugawara flinches like he’s been shocked. Oikawa’s pout turns down into a full-blown scowl and he acidly informs them that sometimes, working hard to achieve your dreams does not pay off. Sometimes, your knee gives out while you’re in a training camp and you get sent home early for being a bad boy.
Morisuke apologizes profusely, but it doesn’t look like it’s appeased Oikawa any.
“Would you excuse us for a moment?” Morisuke asks, and then drags Lev back to the hallway filled with photographs by the hair.
“Yaku-san! Owowowow, can you let go now please, I have to bend over really low, you know, because you’re so sho- Ack!”
Did Morisuke kick Lev down in a stranger’s home, in full view of their potential suspect? Yes. Does he regret it? No.
“Fuckin’ say that word to me one more time, Lev,” Morisuke growls warningly.
“But it’s true!” Lev protests. “Yaku-san, you really are sho-“
“See what fucking happens.”
Lev deflates like a balloon.
“Now, here’s our gameplan: I will interview these people as the good cop and you... will shut up.”
“But Yaku-san-“
“No, listen,” Morisuke holds up a finger. “Watch carefully so you know how an interrogation should go. What you should ask and how you should talk. Ace Attorneys need to be good at interrogating suspects, so take the time to learn, get me?”
Now Lev looks like an enthusiastic puppy.
Sometimes, Morisuke just really wants to pat himself in the back for having such a smart brain.
Their momentary interlude makes the interview awkward, but not unsuccessful.
Oikawa and Sugawara are quite forthcoming with information.
Yes, Oikawa did speak with their reclusive upstairs neighbor two weeks ago. He’d invited Oikawa to his party, and Oikawa had to decline gracefully, because he very obviously couldn’t have made his way up the stairs to save his life. He gestures at his knee bitterly at this, and it makes Sugawara look like he’s about to cry.
Where were they the whole week two weeks ago?
Home, Oikawa answers scathingly and refuses to say anything else. The unsaid reason is clear enough.
Sugawara, on the other hand, has shifts in the hospital now. They can ask his fellow classmates, if they liked. He’s there in almost all his waking hours, and sometimes, not even when he’s awake. He laughs self-deprecatingly when he says this, and Oikawa’s tough exterior peels off to reveal something soft underneath, as he reaches out to settle hand over his partner’s.
“Koushi,” he says softly, and never has a name been so raw, so intimate, so vulnerable.
Morisuke has to look away.
When they’ve answered all of Morisuke’s questions, it’s Sugawara again who walks them outside.
“Wait,” he says quietly, holding the doorknob between trembling fingers.
Morisuke instantly tenses.
“Is it true?” he asks. “What they’re saying? That it’s not safe here anymore? That there’s a murderer on the loose? Is it true?”
“Sugawara-san,” Morisuke begins placatingly.
“I’m sorry, it’s just... I’m so worried about Tooru,” he cries, shakily reaching a pale, thin hand to wipe at the tears dripping down his cheeks. “He can’t even walk properly. I don’t want to leave him alone but I can't just not go to my shifts, not even when I have so many and he can’t even walk properly. And I just keep on wondering what if, what if, he’s alone and he can’t walk and I’ve left him alone-“
“Don’t worry, Sugawara-san!” Lev pipes up, shoving a thumbs up to the other’s face. “Yaku-san and I are the best in the force! I’m going to be an Ace Attorney someday and the Ace Attorney is the one who solves the most cases! We’ll solve this one, too, you’ll see!”
Sugawara looks up from his hands, his face streaked with tears but diffused with such naked hope, Morisuke feels like he’s having an out-of-body experience.
That was his rookie talking, right? Haiba Lev? He did manage to insert wanting to be the Ace Attorney in the conversation, so it’s definitely Haiba Lev. It’s just... Morisuke thought he was actually cool for a moment there. Morisuke was actually impressed with him for a moment there.
...What?
Morisuke?
Impressed?
With Lev?
Morisuke feels faint.
It’s probably hunger pangs. A delusion brought on by the fact that Morisuke skipped breakfast this morning. The most important meal of the day. That’ll teach him.
He grasps at normalcy desperately and turns to Sugawara-san to offer an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry,” he says lowly. “We’ll keep you, your partner and the rest of the occupants of this building safe.”
Sugawara looks from him to Lev and back. Eventually, he nods weakly, and manages a wan smile.
It feels like a million victories.
Morisuke thinks of Sugawara and Oikawa when they’re making their way back to the station. Thinks of the pictures, the love they’ve coated all over the walls of their home. Of Oikawa’s resentment and the way he casts it aside to comfort his lover with all the gentleness he can give. Of Sugawara’s pleading eyes, desperate for the assurance that his boyfriend will remain safe.
Good, innocent people who don’t deserve to be cast in the darkness Morisuke knows the world is capable of.
Morisuke chose to become a cop for people like them.
“Hey, Lev,” Morisuke calls, slamming the car door close. “Let’s catch that motherfucker.”
Lev’s face lights up. He’s really just like an enthusiastic puppy. Undeniably more headache-inducing than a cat, but-
Morisuke’s mind flashes back to Lev’s brief moment of brilliance back at Sugawara and Oikawa’s apartment.
Morisuke might actually grow to like him.
Maybe.
“Yes, Yaku-san!”
They don’t catch that particular motherfucker, of course, although they do catch a whole lot of others.
Turns out, he and Lev make a really great team.
But even Ace Attorneys have their own cold cases.
(What people don’t know about Koushi and Tooru’s upstairs neighbor: he’s a snoop.
He can never seem to mind his own goddamn business and insists on poking his nose on things that do not concern him. He sees a bruise around Koushi’s upper arm one day, from one of their... feistier victims, and stupidly falls into the conclusion that Koushi is being abused.
First, he tries to be sympathetic.
And then he tries to talk Koushi into leaving Tooru.
Of course, Tooru didn’t like that. Some clueless idiot, who thinks he knows better when he doesn’t actually know anything at all, is trying to convince his boyfriend to leave him. Who would have stood for it?
There’s a term the police use for what Tooru does when he’s angry and his mind slows down to a cool kind of clarity, where he sees what he wants and who he has to get rid of to get it.
It’s premeditated murder.
Koushi gets angry when he finds out, predictably.
“Are they gone?” Tooru asks, carelessly tossing his old knee support to the back of the closet where it belongs. He’d been telling the truth when he said he collapsed at training camp. He hadn’t been telling the truth when he ‘collapsed,’ however. He’d refused to let anyone see to him except for Koushi, and has spent the last few weeks recuperating. Tooru is very sensitive about his knee injury. Everyone understands.
Even the police, it seems.
It helps that Koushi can cry on command.
Koushi hums an agreement, still brushing away stray crystal tears glimmering on his lashes. “Next time you do something stupid, I’m just going to sit back and watch you go to jail.”
“But I wouldn’t like it in jail,” Tooru pouts.
“Not enough facial care products?”
“Not enough you.”
Koushi presses his lips to hide a smile. “Stop trying to sweet talk your way out of trouble, Stupidkawa.”
“How about,” Tooru grabs his hips and presses himself against the curve of Koushi’s ass. “I skip the sweet altogether and make you cry for real, hm?”
“That doesn’t sound like a good promise,” Koushi tilts his head into Tooru’s shoulder, eyes fluttering shut. “I might decline.”
“You’ll enjoy it, trust me,” Tooru promises darkly.
He does enjoy it.
He enjoys it over and over.
There’s a reason, after all, why Koushi can’t stay angry at Tooru for very long.)