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When Furuya comes home, Akai is already there with a cigarette between his lips. Grey smoke hangs in cold air, softening the harsh lines of his face, and clowding the green of his eyes.
If Akai has had that look of distance within himself before, right now he is much further than that, just straight out untouchable.
So far out of his reach.
Furuya lets his bag slide off his shoulder, and fall on the floor with a silent thud.
Winter's wind screams through the gap of half-opened window. The heater is also off, and Furuya can't suppress a shiver that runs through his spine.
He tells himself it's only the cold.
"Welcome home, Furuya-kun," Akai takes another long drag, eyeing lazily at him, "How was work?"
"Terrible."
A frown pulls at a corner Akai's mouth, Furuya refuses to let himself think of it as concern. He won't indulge his fantasies that far.
Still, instead of walking away because he is certain more than anything he can't handle Akai right now, he sits down, and snatches the cigarette out of those lips.
Smake tastes good on his tongue, like Akai's kiss, like something he wants, but will never has.
If he were smarter than this, he would just walk away, instead of resting his head on his Not lover's shoulder.
But in the end, Furuya Rei is still a stupid, stupid man.
"I thought you don't smoke."
Akai toys with the cigarette packet in his hand, but pulls none of them out, as if watching Furuya burning away gives enough nicotine for him.
He has always look at him with such an intensity that held no meaning, like he wants to kill him, but he won't, like he wants to have him, but he doesn't.
Sometimes, when Akai looks at him like that, Furuya wonders if they feel the same. If the blurry intention in those green eyes is the same as his, if he isn't the only one who feels the fire everytime as much as the tips of their fingernails touch, but then he tastes the ash in his mouth, and remembers all the bodies he had buried with his own hands.
Don't even talk about love. How could Akaiーanyone wants to look at him, Furuya has no idea.
He takes another long drag, silently hoping for himself to burn with it.
"I don't, I just know how."
(Furuya won't say the truth that he spends way too much time with a cigarette in his hand, nicotine smoldering in his mouth. Just him pretending Akai were there in a cold, dark night he can't stand to be alone.)
Akai watches him, his face carefully closed, "You shouldn't do it, it's not healthy."
Furuya scoffs.
"Tell yourself that."
He hopes his body and bones had disintegrated into smoke, so he won't see the look Akai is giving him. So he won't hope for something that is not there.
"A lot of things I like is unhealthy."
Akai's voice is blurry, just like the meaning of the words in his eyes.
Furuya can't read into it, the depth of the green is too demanding, once he had fallen down, he knows there is no way to recover.
(Just where he is right now, he already has no way to crawl back up from.)
Furuya stands up, and crushes the cigarette beneath his heels, crushes it down like his stupid hope before it blows up in soaring flame that would take his whole life down.
"You're too dramatic for your own good."
He refuses to think of Akai's voice as fond.
♡♡♡
"So, why exactly did you call me, Bourbon."
It's a little bit frustrating that even after the organization's fall, Vermouth still calls him by that name.
As strange as it is, they somehow manage to get over their multiple attempts on killing each other, and gain themselves a weird friend of some sort.
Even if Vermouth is more like a mean, divorced grandma no one loves, he enjoys her company nontheless
"I don't know," Furuya watch his breath turns white as soon as it comes out, "justー"
"Don't tell me even you start having relationship problems too," She laughs, voice as mocking as usual, but he knows her well enough to hear a trace of concern laced in it.
"Yeah."
He doesn't bother lying. There is nothing he had done she has never seen anyway.
Vermouth goes silent for a beat, then she sighs, "I think I can guess."
"Of course you do."
He doesn't try to push the bitterness in his voice down, lying to the best liar is a stupid idea. Furuya maybe stupid, but he is not that dumb.
"By all means, B, if you treat who you're with like you do me, I doubt you'd have to call."
A sound of a gunshot rings through the call. Vermouth still sounds as chill as ever.
"You do things in such a roundabout way, I have no idea how Akai Shuichi stands that," Furuya hears her pulls a breath in, a kill in 1, 2ー
The murder didn't even occur in Japan, he can ignore it.
Vermouth is moving, he can tell, but her mouth doesn't stop.
"Honestly, if I were him, I would've tie you to a pole then put a gun on your head so you would be a little more straightforward with your feelings."
"And that, ladies, and gentlemen, is exactly why no one loves you." He snaps back automatically, his voice lacking its usual bite.
This day has been fucking terrible, Furuya just want to come home, and hopefully die under his soft blanket.
But Furuya can't come home to Akai, can't come home with his blue eyes teary, stinging from cigarette smoke. If he does, he knows he's going to make a mistake, the one he swears he would never do.
"Seriously though, are you playing NOC in your own relationship, rat?"
She brushes his comment off, the demeaning nickname sounds almost affectionate, and Furuya secretly wishes she were here, so he would have someone to go get drunk with. A friend he can spill his guts to without having to afraid of judging eyes.
He rests his head against a side of the vending machine, blinking his emotions away, "I don't wanna to ruin him, so no, Vermouth, I am not playing NOC."
The lit end of a cigarette in his hand is warm, its scent is painfully falmiliar, yet all of that does so little to comfort him, "It's not like he care enough for me to get under his skin anyway."
(It's not like he loves me.)
Furuya forced the words down with a choke.
"My,my, Bourbon, that was quite a slip."
Her voice is soft, despite how mean she's trying to be. If Vermouth were here, she would have run a hand through his hair like an old lady that she is, before smacking him hard with the grip of her handgun, "normally, the suggestion would be don't read too much into it, but I'm gonna say, don't read too little into it."
Furuya can see her winking in his head, can imagine her expression getting serious once again when another gunshot rings out.
"Take care, Bourbon."
The line went dead at that.
Don't read too little into it, she said, but how could he read less into something that aren't even there.
Akai is justーwell, Akai.
He remembers crying in the middle of the night in a tiny bathroom, remembering crawling back into the bed, just to realize someone he loves so damn much was awake, but didn't care enough to hold him, didn't care enough to get up, and ask something as simple as, Are you alright?
Furuya doesn't want to be the one to ask.
He doesn't want to be that weak person who begs for love, and attention, can't afford to be seen as such, yet he wantsーneeds it.
He wants to come home to someone, wants to feel safe in somewhere that is not just a room filled with white noises. He wants to love, and maybe being loved in return.
A sob cut through the frigid air like a knife, and burn his eyes worse than smoke. He hopes no one passes by to see it. A damn PSB agent crying with his head between his knees like a lost child next to a vending machine. A cigarette in his hand.
Furuya still breathes it in, the cigarette scent that clings onto his clothes like a grudge, he let it swallows him down alive like a dream that will never come true.
He chases after it, the image in smoke, times after times, over, and over again.
Nobody is here.
He thinks about Vermouth's mean fondness, thinks about Scotch's gentle kindness.
They are not here.
He thinks about Akai, too.
A smile that is almost loving. The eyes that are too soft to be looking at another someone else.
Furuya cries for them like tomorrow all his tears are going to run out, droplets of them are frozen before it even hit the ground, just like his love: never exist.
Suddenly everything feels so cold.
A night like this is the one he can't stand to be alone.
But, here he is, anyway.