Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A knock at the door came at a very inopportune moment.

Yohji’s heart would have jumped if it already wasn’t trying to leap out of his chest. Panting, he flexed the fists at his sides when the hand at his neck tightened slightly, pushing his head more firmly into the piece of wood at his back. He spared a moment to glance at the door knob by his hip. Was it locked? Would they try to come in? Then the palm firm around his cock sped up and he stopped caring. He shut his eyes and bit his lip hard to keep quiet.

“Yo, Yohji, you in there? I need your help out here.”

Blood was pounding in his head, but he could almost make out...Ken? What did he—

The man against him exhaled into his ear, hot and moist, and the thought cut off. So close, so far. The hand on him sped up momentarily and Yohji drew air hard through his nose and struggled to swallow, only to choke against the hold.

“I can hear you in there, asshole. Open up.”

Fuck. And as if it couldn't get any worse, a voice just barely audible climbing up out of the depths of hell vibrated out of the chest hard against his, rough and low:

“Answer him.”

A shiver went through Yohji when the hand at his throat loosened. Permission? Command. He swallowed freely but he didn’t try to speak. How did he dare, with his cock being tormented and his lungs shaking hard enough to break? But at his stubborn silence, that hot palm shifted to his balls and squeezed just enough. An instant, and Yohji’s resistance broke on a wince, air hissing out between his teeth.

Goddamn the man’s vindictive streak. And goddamn Ken and his bad timing.

“What’s up Ken?” He tried to sound casual but he wasn’t sure he managed with his balls in a grip. “Can it wait? I’m a little busy.” He'd barely finished the sentence before a tongue ran hot and flat up the skin of his neck, and he nearly brained himself jerking back in surprise. The fucking tease was trying to ruin him.

“Busy? Doing what? It’s mid-morning and we don’t have a mission.”

Feeling the pressure back on that sensitive part of himself, Yohji opened his lips again to answer, only to have a hard mouth cover his own. That teasing tongue was back, hungry, pushing in hard enough to choke him. Yohji almost moaned around it, feeling his knees go weak at the metallic taste of it. Seriously. Out to just ruin him.

“Hey! You gonna help or not?” The door knob rattled now dangerously but Yohji was more than glad to ignore it. There were two grown men solid against it so it wasn't like there was a real risk of the door opening. Not that Yohji would mind terribly at the moment if he was found like—

The other mouth retreated, teeth biting unexpectedly at his lips, and an explicative escaped him.

Shit. Too loud.

“What happened? What did you do?”

Yohji cracked his eyes to see the other man staring at him, eyes glittering terribly.

No, not ruin him. More like fucking destroy him.

“Ken, go away. It’s fine. I’ll be out in a few minutes—ugh.” And that wicked, wicked man with that wicked, wicked mouth was already down on his knees swallowing him whole. Yohji bucked only to have strong hands slam him back into place. His body hit with a thud, and he heard Ken curse through the wood behind him in surprise.

“An hour! I need an hour!” he sounded strangled even to his own ears.

“What the hell. What are you— Is there someone in there with you? Shit, nevermind. Come find me when, I’ll just come later.” Footsteps retreated at last.

“Oh god, you fucking tease,” he hissed. That mouth was so good, so wet and soft and warm as it pulled back to suck at the tip of his cock before taking the whole length down again. All the while those unreadable, breathtaking eyes stared up at him.

“Hn.” Was he smiling? He couldn’t be. Not this asshole.

If this was anyone else Yohji might have grabbed hold of the man’s head and fucked his throat right then. God knew he was quickly losing control of his greater senses. But that wasn’t his role in this. No, not with this man.

With this man it was surrender or nothing.

Still, he couldn’t help the more contrary side of himself and ran his fingers up into that silky red hair to grip right at the root. He didn’t dare push or pull, but he could do this: Feel. And hold on.

His erection was released with a wet smack as the man in front of him stared up at him. The white flesh of his face was flushed at the cheeks, the dark pupils of his violet eyes dilated out. Fucking incredible. Yohji’s cock jumped at the sight, his balls tightening as if he could come right there.

The man waited then, watching just long enough to see Yohji struggle against himself, to feel the fingers spasm in his hair, before knocking the hands away and flowing back to his feet. All the way up, he rolled those tight muscles against him. This time Yohji didn’t resist the impulse and moaned low in his throat, goosebumps shooting down his back. Why he so sensitive, so hungry, for this, he didn’t know. He’d long ago stopped asking.

Yohji was panting again, breathing in the smell of the other man’s hair, turning his head right into his neck where he could suck at the skin under his ear. His arms came up before he realized it, wrapping around broad shoulders, his leg wrapping around the man’s hips. They tipped momentarily before a palm hit the door near his shoulder, bracing them.

As always, the more Yohji gave in and made his own desperate need plain, the more the other man lost his composure. “Aya,” he begged, rubbing himself against an answering hardness. He couldn’t see the other man’s face but he could feel him shaking now, his back gone rigid as if he was trying to maintain some control.

Yohji smiled against the burning flesh he was kissing and thought: we can’t have that, can we?

“Aya. Fuck me already.” They were just words, said plainly enough. But the man reacted as if he had been scalded. There was a violent tremor, then Yohji suddenly found himself lifted and thrown onto his back on the nearby bed. The air shocked right out of him with the sudden impact against the mattress.

Before he could get his breath Aya was on him like a man possessed, straddling and pushing him down with his body. Yohji hissed to feel a zipper press against his own sensitive flesh and moved his hands quickly downward to rid the redhead of the offending garment. But Aya wasn’t having it. He growled deep in his throat, smaking Yohji’s hands away as he recoiled to sit up and stare down at him. His eyes were flaming.

Fuck yes. Punish me.

“Fucking bossy.” He couldn’t help his mouth. It did what it did. And he couldn’t help his body, either, which did what it did and writhed against Aya’s hold.

“Fucking slut.”

Oh, Aya was livid now.

Yohji couldn’t say he always knew how Aya would react to being provoked but neither was he ever unpleasantly surprised. No, there was nothing unpleasant or surprising about a furious Aya straddling and pushing down against his hips. That silky red hair had gone wild around his face. Those thin lips had curled into a nasty snarl worthy of his glare.

And Yohji’s heart raced to see it.

“Yes, I’m a slut,” Yohji moaned. He shifted his hips, trying to press his cock against the heat of the other man: playing with fire. “So fuck me already.” He wanted to be burned.

Aya’s hands were on his own pants now, unzipping himself quickly. When Yohji saw his hard cock pulled free, he wet his lips. He silently thanked the gods for his foresight, having taken a long shower before this to prep himself carefully, stretching and lube and all. Because now they could get straight to the point.

Strong hands stripped him of his pants before flipping him over onto his stomach. Silky skin crawled up his back and then a hand pushed into his hair, gripping hard before pressing his face into the mattress. Something pressed in at his ass then, making him jump reflexively. It was just a finger though, testing him, and Yohji relaxed into it.

“Slut.” That deep voice sounded stilted, gritted out between clenched teeth. The fingers in his hair flexed dangerously while the one in his ass twisted. Aya was fighting for control, it seemed, having found Yohji not only desperate and willing, but ready.

“Yesss.” He wanted that finger deeper and tried to push his hips up into it against the weight of a full-grown man sitting on the back of his thighs. But the finger was already gone and teeth instead came to latch onto his shoulder, biting deep enough to draw blood. Yohji’s mouth opened wordless, the sharpness there momentarily distracting him from what was now pressing into his body. So much more satisfying than a finger: thick heat on a twinge of pain, relentless.

Then the real pleasure of it began: feeling Aya move against and inside him until he couldn’t think, couldn’t plot or plan or brood, but just react, jerking his head to the side to try to breathe as something built dangerously inside him. Aya’s mouth was hot against his neck, panting hard, his teeth sharp, but Yohji couldn’t hear if he was making any noise past the pounding of blood in his ears. His own lips were moving, he knew, his throat vibrating, so his mouth must still be running.

And then Aya pulled out from his body and the weight of him disappeared. That was definitely a moan that fell from his own lips, not any words, as he was flipped over again. He opened his eyes in surprise to see Aya, flushed from the skin of his face all the way down to his now-bare chest, put one of Yohji’s leg on his shoulder and press right back in.

Something went taut inside Yohji then as the other man stared down into his face with unblinking eyes. Sweat on Aya’s face dripped down his neck as he moved hard against him, but he didn’t say a word. He just stared with an intensity that screamed. Furious. Possessive. Yohji found himself reaching up to dig his fingers into the man consuming him, only to have his wrists snatched and pushed down into the bed by his head.

“Did I say,” that voice was so low, so terrible, goosebumps sprang up all over Yohji’s arms and neck, “you could touch me?”

He didn’t mean to but he knew he must have smiled at that. He could see the way the light in those eyes, inches from his own, changed as they flicked down to his mouth.

He couldn’t help it. Aya was just too hot when he wanted.

And now Aya was unforgiving, pushing his mouth down on Yohji’s enough to make jaws crack, his tongue rushing in to dominate. Below, he was pushing in and out of Yohji’s body with more urgency, bending the man uncomfortably to get more leverage. Once those strong hands let go of his wrists, Yohji dug his fingers into the comforter to hold on. Then there was a touch at the sensitive skin of his erection and his higher brain functions shut off completely. Aya might not be able to get a good grip at this angle but any touch at this point set Yohji’s nerves on fire.

He knew he was doomed long before the moment of climax. Having the other man hot and demanding against him like this was poison in his veins. “Aya…Aya…” Yohji would beg, was begging, shamelessly to have this. He would kill to have this. The day he realized it was the day he had surrendered fully, and today was only a reminder of how deep the craving went, how much he wanted the other man to want him. “Let me come.”

His hair was pulled, exposing his neck, and Aya’s mouth was on him biting and licking at the sweat there. Yohji’s whole body took to shaking, feeling electric shocks run straight down to his toes every time the other man slammed into his body. He bit his own lip then hard to distract himself. He hadn’t been given permission yet and had to hold on while Aya did his best to drive him insane.

“Aya. Please.” He was melting now, dissolving into sobs. His waist was going numb from the position, his arms flexing painfully from how he held himself. Yet Aya did not let up until every nerve in his body was singing, until the sweat between them made every movement sound slick and wet. The bastard, the utter bastard. The tongue in his ear was too much: his legs spasmed and Yohji just barely held back.

“Come. Now.” That command almost sounded like a purr, almost sounded like…But Yohji didn’t have the capacity to puzzle it out further, because it had been what he had been waiting for so desperately. He shook hard and let out all the tension in his body, mind whiting out on a high note.

Aya was not far behind him and with a few more rugged thrusts, jerked and froze. Then he dropped Yohji’s leg from his shoulder and collapsed forward into his chest, breathing hard. Yohji didn’t think, he had no energy to, he just found that his hands had left the bed sheets and were now against Aya’s head and back, holding him in place.

There was a moment like that. Their hearts slowing with their breath as they laid there together, limp. Smells came back to him then, of shampoo, musk, and sweat, and he felt his toes begin to tingle. Lethargy and warmth: his breath steadied. It was almost peaceful. It was almost satisfying.

Then that knock on the door was back. Like the rap of fireworks in the dead of night, its urgency cracked the stillness and set off a flare of anxiety.

Aya went absolutely rigid against him and Yohji could only mentally curse when the man elbowed him moving away. He tried to keep his grip on him but it was no use. Aya had already pulled off and out of him, rolling away to sit up leaving Yohji to gasp and wince at the jostling.

Damn the man and his reflexes.

Wanting nothing but to curse at the intruder for coming back a moment too soon, Yohji frowned and opened his mouth. But Ken’s muffled voice through the wood stopped his voice in his throat. Even with the remaining throbbing in his ears, Yohji could catch the strain in it.

“If you’re done with whatever you’re doing can you come help now, Yohji?”

Aya must have also picked up on the odd tone because he paused in getting off the bed to shoot Yohji a look. Too many years training and working together and now they could all read each other too well.

Ken was stressed. Something had happened. And now Aya wanted Yohji to find out what.

Yohji pushed himself up onto his elbows and looked down himself before calling out. “Yeah, Kenken, give me a second." He was a wreck. Covered with bites and semen and sweat. He turned his eyes on Aya then to watch that strong back as he gathered his clothing and dressed. It always impressed Yohji how quickly the man could compose himself after sex. Yohji wasn’t sure his legs would even hold him just yet. “Meet me in the kitchen, yeah?” he added.

Ken mumbled out his assent and could be heard moving away down the hall. He might be a clumsy jock with a foul mouth, but he couldn’t be faulted on his manners. Yohji knew he had willing left the vicinity when he wouldn't otherwise--probably to give whatever woman he suspected Yohji had brought back the opportunity to leave discretely.

If only he knew who was really in here.

Even after Ken faded away, Yohji didn’t move at first. He stayed where he was, how he was, long enough to earn a glare from those violet eyes. The look became more lethal when Yohji only smiled back.

“Get dressed.”

“Or what?” Whatever suicidal impulse Yohji had tried to surpress over the years always flared its ugly head around this man. He couldn’t help but to push.

Aya was fully dressed now, running his fingers through his own hair to put it back into place. He barely paused at the door to flick his eyes at Yohji, but it was enough. The fire was there, barely restrained: a warning. Yohji shivered to see it, his cock jumping despite his exhaustion.

Oh man, if he thought he was doomed before.

“Alright, alright. I’ll go deal with it.” His capitulation earned him a fuller-eyed look that went straight to Yohji’s gut. He paused in getting up to try to understand what lay behind it, watching Aya’s eyes sweep up his body from his toes to his face.

It was like a hand had stroked him, possessive and pleased.

Then Aya was out the door, down the hall, and likely out of the Koneko. He had places to go today, things to do that Yohji knew nothing about and likely never would. And only by leaving the building could he guarantee Ken would continue to think an unknown woman had been the one to play here.

There were few women in the world, though, that could rough Yohji up like this.

Laughing cynically, Yohji finally picked himself up and limped over to the mirror. Getting dressed to be seen in public was going to be an ordeal today. Tilting his neck to the side to see more clearly, Yohji wondered if he even owned anything demure enough to cover this. He looked like he’d been mauled, for godssake. Not to mention the sting in his ass...

One little knock was all it had taken then to make Aya downright vicious, huh? He should see what he could do to play into that voyeur streak more often, then.

Chapter Text

“Yo, so what kind of Timmy you got in the well, Lassie?”

At last, Yohji had deigned to join him. Ken should’ve known he’d be annoying about it.

“What?”

“What’s got you panicked?”

Ken was sitting at the kitchen table post-breakfast, sipping on a cup of coffee from the pot he’d just brewed. He'd had his back to the stairway so he couldn't see anything happening upstairs should it make its way toward the kitchen, but at the sound of Yohji’s voice he deemed it safe to turn around—until he caught a glimpse of the man and gagged on his coffee.

“The fuck’s with you?”

The lanky man was dressed in black from head to toe in an oversized turtleneck and sweats: no coordination, no style, no weather appropriateness even. It was absolutely unnatural. Which was not to mention the rest of him, with his hair a mess about a haggard face and deep circles crouched under his eyes. To top it off the asshole was smiling like the devil.

Ken blanched, feeling something deeply personal about it all. Yohji only winked at him.

“Things got a little rough. I’ll need to take it easy today.”

So he was right. Yohji had been fooling around with someone. Hopefully a someone that had already safely departed.

“Yeah, okay.” Ken swallowed, unsure what to say beyond that, and put his mug down on the table. “Anyway.”

He waited as Yohji turned to pour himself some of Ken’s coffee without asking, and decided to let him do so without comment. He was the one asking for a favor, so he’d hold his tongue. In the meantime he set to stacking his dishes so that Yohji would have a space at the table. Once he’d turned back around, though, he realized Yohji wasn’t coming to sit down but had settled himself against the counter.

The man winced a bit as if searching for a comfortable position then looked at Ken expectantly. And, just like that, Ken felt it was going to be a long day.

“So, it’s Omi,” he sighed. That got the man’s attention, who finally stopped smiling and fidgeting to scrunch up his eyebrows.

“What about Omi?”

Yohji might be the least dependable of them but he was protective. The man tried to hide it but it was there for anyone who knew how to look: an instinct perhaps, or more a habit built up these years watching each other’s back. It had taken some root in Ken too, he knew, but Yohji was the one who could still act on it as if they all might be more than what they were...something like family.

It was this inclination Ken was counting on.

“I found him this morning on my way out for a run. He was sitting here before the sun was even up. I don’t think he slept.”

“And?”

“And well,” and this Ken found a little embarrassing but he knew it had to be said, “he was crying.”

Yohji quirked an eyebrow at that.

“I don’t mean a little bit, Yohji. I mean sobbing his guts out, like he was sick. I tried to ask him what was up but he shook me off and ran to his room.”

“Huh,” and now Ken knew he had been right to call on Yohji so insistently. He could see the glow in his eyes, showing that thing that none of them should: concern.

“You know Omi doesn’t cry. Like ever. But he was bawling, right out in public in the kitchen.” He waited for Yohji to respond but the man only sipped at his coffee, eyes unfocused.

“Think we need to call Manx?” He offered after a moment. Manx was their keeper. She also had a soft spot for Omi, having watched him grow up after he had been orphaned and the organization took him in.

“Hm…maybe. You try knocking on his door first?”

“Yeah, I did. It was locked and he didn’t answer.”

And that was what had shaken Ken most of all. Their team technician wasn’t often emotional, but there had been times. All of those times, though, had due cause. This time not only had Omi been strangely upset—not wailing or raging but in the midst of a silent grief, shoulders locked up and shaking, his hands held up to his red mess of a face—but he hadn’t explained a thing. He’d run off instead to lock himself off. In Ken's memory, he’d never done something like this before.

Obviously, something was terribly wrong. Ken just didn’t know how to fix it. At least, not on his own.

“Think you can go talk to him?”

This was what Ken had sought out Yohji to ask. Because he knew Yohji could do what no one else could: handle it without a fuss. The blonde man had a way about him that just got under people’s skin, and while it meant he was annoying most of the time, it also made him endearing—like he could see into people and pry them out. Ken wouldn’t admit it aloud but he worried about the man sometimes for this, fearing that his big-heartedness would one day get him, or all of them, killed.

Still, it came in handy.

“I dunno Ken. We haven’t been getting along lately if you hadn’t noticed.”

Ken tried not to cringe. Oh, yes, he’d noticed. Everyone had, even the customers. The way Yohji’s words had sharpened and Omi had turned cold around the edges these past couple weeks had not exactly been subtle.

“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask about that too. You guys fight or something?”

Yohji made a face and shrugged. “Naw. He’s a teenager, Ken. Probably has too much stress pent up with everything going on. Our cases haven’t been the easiest lately, you know. And we did lose that girl last week.”

A dullness passed through Yohji’s eyes then, the only hint of the wounds he carried inside himself, and Ken looked away to give him some privacy. That case had truly been a mess, one even Ken had been unable to stomach—and mess was what he did. For the first time in a long time, they’d had to call in an external crew to finish the clean up.

“He’s just taking his frustration out on me.”

“Okay, sure,” Ken shook off the dark memory to return to the conversation at hand, something not sitting right about it. “I could almost buy that...But then why you, Yohji? He’s not been giving me the cold shoulder and he’s been downright clingy with Aya. It’s never been like this. It was always you he followed around like a puppy. So what happened?”

This was something that had been bothering him for a while and now that he had an excuse to ask, he wanted to get to the bottom of it. He was sure that even if Yohji didn’t know everything about what was going on, he knew enough. With the way he read a room, how could he not? It was time Yohji stopped making excuses and spilled.

But Yohji didn’t answer his question. Instead he stared at Ken over his mug. The assessing look there was cold, too cold, and as the seconds passed unblinking the hairs begin to rise on the back of Ken's neck. Not a word, not any perceptible movement, but all at once Ken was highly aware that despite his apparent softness, Yohji was a trained killer. A moment passed, unmoving, and Ken didn't dare breathe. He waited, uncertain, back rigid. Then Yohji sighed and blinked, and just like that the tension went out of the room.

Ken shivered at the sudden change in atmosphere, forcing himself to swallow around the knot in his throat and unclench his hands. Touchy fucking assassins. He tried not to let a sense of whiplash infect his heart, but damn.

“Fine.” Yohji sounded affable if not bored now as he put down his coffee mug on the counter, wincing a bit as he resettled facing Ken. The danger had passed, it seemed, and now he would talk. “Omi found out something about me that he didn’t like, okay? It looks like he’s having a hard time with it.”

That gave Ken pause for a different reason and he felt his face scrunch in confusion. “Wait. Are you saying that he may have been sobbing today because of you?” Ken hadn’t thought to stand up, but he realized suddenly that he was on his feet. Something dark was rolling in his stomach. Yohji only rolled his eyes at his reaction and come closer at last. He patted Ken on the shoulder before telling him to sit back down, which wasn't reassuring at all.

“God, I want a cigarette.”

“Yohji,” Ken warned. He wasn't in the mood for this anymore.

“No, not because of me, dumbass.” Ken scowled at the curse but let it slide, eyes trained on Yohji's face. “If it’s what I think, it’s because he’s heartbroken.”

“Over you?!” Ken almost screeched it. Good thing today was Sunday and the shop was closed because surely his voice traveled, ringing in his own ears. His mind had begun to spiral but Yohji snapped fingers in his face to bring him back.

“God, do you listen? I just said no, it’s not me.”

“Then who!”

His heart was racing, but Yohji just looked even more tired. Only a moment ago the blonde had radiated death, but now that Ken was aggitated he just seemed exhausted.

“It’s his business Ken. You shouldn’t be asking me.”

“I’m asking you because he won’t talk to me. I mean, this morning was…something's definitely off. What if this affects the team, huh? We’re being watched now more than ever after that last one. You know we can’t afford to screw up.”

Yohji scowled at that, looking both resigned and angry, before sighing deeply and rolling his eyes up to the ceiling. Through gritted teeth he only said, “it won’t affect the team.”

Ken could only give him a dubious look at the strange response. One which Yohji returned until he suddenly pivoted and made his way to the stairs, shocking Ken's strained nerves. He called after him but Yohji waved him off.

“I’ll talk to him, like you wanted. But you wait here.”

“Why?” Ken was more than suspicious now. It was obvious this was more than just Omi being emotional, and whatever it was it had been causing problems for weeks. Yet neither Yohji nor Omi had said a word to him about it.

“Because you’ll only make things worse, dammit!”

He was on his feet again at that, reaching out a hand to restrain Yohji, but one potent look from the blond man had him thinking better of it. It was clear Yohji was losing his temper-- again--and trying to control himself. Honestly, what was going on with his teammates?

Maybe the older man sensed something of Ken's increasing anxiety or else had glimpsed it in his expression, because he did pause then and turned to face Ken properly. As he watched, Yohji took a breath and smiled softly before tucked his hair behind his ears, as if to say that it was nothing to be so worked up about, and if Ken didn’t know the man well, he may even have been reassured by the look. But he did know Yohji, and the sudden shift in his expression only managed to give him the creeps. In the second he thought it, though, Yohji's expression morphed again to something more natural, with the eyes less dead and an overall exasperation more befitting the situation.

“Kenken, it’s not as bad as you think, okay? It’s stupid really, when we get down to it. It’s just the poor kid doesn’t know when to stop fretting. So, wait here and let me see to it, yeah? Isn't that why you came to me anyway, because you wanted my help?”

Yeah…yeah he had. But now he wasn’t sure what kind of mess he’d stumbled into. “You swear it’s not a big deal?”

“Only if you find sex a big deal.”

Ken almost fell over right then. Did Yohji just say—

But the man was already walking away up the stairs, and Ken did not have the breath to call out to him yet again that morning.

Chapter Text

Someone was knocking again but Omi had neither the energy nor the will to answer. He put a pillow over his face instead and in exasperation attempted to muffle his own noises. For some reason the tears wouldn’t stop. He didn’t even feel sad anymore, just wretched and hollow. Yet liquid still seeped from his eyes and nose unbidden, soaking the sheets of the bed where he lay.

In all his life, he couldn't recall a time he'd been torn-up lost like this. Just what was he supposed to do with these feelings?

Complex personal problems weren’t new to him. He’d been challenged since he was young with the seemingly impossible, forced to solve conundrums most would never face with a level of finesse, efficiency, and innovation unbefitting his age. He did it, though, time and again, because he had to to survive. But now…

There was nothing to work out in this. He was the problem.

Distracted as he was he almost missed the the lock on his door clicking, but all too soon a weight was pressing down on the mattress next to him and Omi knew he had to face what had come to confront him. Someone was sitting on his bed, a someone who apparently would not be ignored.

Aggravated, he pulled the pillow off his face and nearly chucked it at the intruder before he saw who it was. Then he quickly changed course of action and put the pillow back over himself in an attempt to hide. The person he least wanted to see had apparently decided on today of all days to come calling at last, going so far as to pick his lock and break in, and was now staring down at him.

The sound of the older man’s laughter filtered through the cotton, disabusing him of any notion that he could still hope to salvage his pride. That split second he had moved the pillow, it seems, had exposed enough of his swollen, sticky face.

Oh, if he thought he’d been miserable before.

“Don’t fucking laugh at me!” He moaned into the fabric, hoping to choke on it.

“Why the fuck can’t I laugh at you when you’re being ridiculous?”

This man! This terrible, terrible man.

“Don’t think I won’t hurt you, Yohji-kun.”

“Try me. Probably can’t see straight anymore, you snot-nosed brat.”

Omi flung the pillow away and sat up, pulling a dart out from under the headboard as he did. He aimed it right at Yohji’s eyes, but Yohji had moved when he did and he had moved faster. A length of wire wrapped around his wrist and the blonde man yanked it back to tie off against the bed post. Omi's arm flew back, nearly tipping him, and he screamed in fury. How dare the man use his weapon on him like this!

“Like you didn’t just try to blind me. Taking it a little far, aren’t we chibi? Didn’t expect that from you.”

Yes, well, every man has his limits.

“Everything okay up there?” That was Ken calling. Damn the man, getting Yohji involved.

“Yeah, it’s fine. Got it handled,” Yohji called back through the open door, never taking his eyes off Omi bound up where he was, before he lowered his voice again. “You can struggle but don’t blame me if you start bleeding.” Omi glanced himself at the wires around his right wrist, reminding himself of all the reasons he should calm down and not take his own hand off against their razor sharpness out of impatience or stupidity.

“Now that you’ve managed to scare poor Kenken, I think it’s time we had a real talk. About that night. What you saw.” Omi’s back went rigid, his wide eyes narrowing dangerously at that teasing tone. “And what I saw.” He knew Yohji was nothing but serious when he sounded like this, but he still despised the cajoling, flippant manner with which he spoke. “What do you say, eh?”

“Sure. Fine. We can talk about you! You, being...being—“ Omi had wanted to just say it, had just wanted to fling the words at him, but he found himself getting hot instead, his mouth sealing up tight around the embarrassing words. He knew he had to be blushing and damned his own body for it, damned his own nerves for failing him.

“Fucked silly?” Omi choked as Yohji laughed around the words. “Goddamn, but I really need a cigarette now.”

Omi was still sputtering when he realized Yohji had stood up to move toward his window. He walked stiffly, as if he was sore all down his back and legs, and for some reason Omi blushed even harder. His mind went right to where he didn’t want it to go, replayed for him exactly what he didn’t want it to replay. Having swallowed his heart, he couldn’t bring himself to respond, and just watched as Yohji opened the window, lit up a cigarette, and drew hard on it. That’s when he noticed the man’s clothes.

“Why are you dressed weird?”

“Found your voice, then? Don’t change the subject.” He finished the cigarette, far too quickly in Omi’s opinion, and tossed it outside. “I’m not here to waste time with you.” Ice was in the man’s eyes then and the younger blonde man swallowed hard, knowing he couldn’t avoid it any longer.

“Okay, fine. I saw you…with another man.”

“Yes, and I saw you, Omi-dear, holding hands with—“

“Don’t say it!” Panic had crawled up his throat to suffocate him.

Yohji just looked at him from where he stood across the room. He leaned his back against the wall and waited, watching, as Omi tried to regain his breath. A moment passed, and once Omi felt his breathing come easier again, Yohji made a noise that sounded like disappointment.

“I had a feeling that’s what this was about. Do you think I care, Omi? Me?”

Now the tears were threatening him again, and Omi swallowed tightly to try to will them away. Things were unraveling too quickly now. “It’s not you. It’s me. I’m—" it was like it was being dragged out of him, “I’m the one that’s wrong.”

Yohji sighed and then closed his eyes. “Being into men doesn’t make you wrong, Omittchi.”

But it was more than that and as soon as Yohji spoke, they both knew it. Omi didn’t know how to face it yet; he didn’t have the words. “Manx, Persia…they’ll never stand for it. They’ll kill me…or him.”

Omi felt his eyes blurring when he saw recognition in those green eyes staring at him, and then he couldn’t see the other man clearly anymore. He heard him come closer though, moving towards the door. Good. Let him go. Let him wash his hands clean of this mess. Let him abandon Omi to it. Because it was one thing to fool around with men without telling your team.

It was another thing entirely to fool around with the enemy.

But Yohji didn’t go. He merely closed the door and came back to the bed to sit down again next to Omi. He hissed when he sat, wincing suddenly. The noise was enough to distract Omi from his own misery briefly.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing a day’s rest won’t solve.” Then Yohji leaned over him and cut the wire holding him in place with the razor edge on his watch. “Don’t attack me again, okay?”

“Okay.” Somehow, Omi was beginning to feel lighter. He hadn’t been on good terms with Yohji since that night a couple of weeks ago, angry that the secret he’d been guarding so desperately for the last 6-months had been discovered and equally terrified at who Yohji might tell. But the man hadn’t said a word to their teammates. He hadn’t even tried to bring it up with Omi. He’d acted like nothing had happened at all. And that had made Omi feel even more uneasy, and his temper tore at him.

Now though he had some hope that maybe he had misunderstood. Maybe this man wasn’t interested in patronizing or blackmailing him. Staring at him now, sitting so close by, Omi even thought that maybe, just maybe, Yohji could be trusted.

“We’re finally getting to the heart of the matter, after weeks of you dancing around me. Can I tell you something then, once and for all?”

Omi looked at the older man suspiciously, his back stiff. He had promised not to attack him again, but if the man proved unworthy than he had no qualms going back on his word.

“I really don’t give a flying fuck, Omi.”

What?

“I don’t care who you’re fucking.”

“We’re not fucking!”

“Or whatever you want to call it chibi. I. don’t. care. Look at my face. Look. Do I look like I care one bit?” Hesitantly, Omi searched the man’s haggard expression and found nothing there but exhaustion. There was no judgement, no interest, nothing.

“Even if he’s—“

Yohji put up a hand to stop him. “You were right before. Don’t say it. Some things are safer unsaid. But sex isn’t taboo Omi. If it doesn’t hurt anyone that doesn’t want to be hurt, do what makes you happy, okay? I trust you not to get things mixed up.”

Hearing the bored tone in the other man’s voice, especially after these anxiety-filled past few days, Omi was suddenly sullen. Sure, a ball of barbed wire tightly wound in his chest did feel like it was finally, slowly unraveling. But he was also kind of embarrassed.

“I told you…we aren’t doing that…yet.”

“What? Fucking?” Yohji laughed then, genuinely. “Fine, then what do you want to call it? Love?”

What was unexpected wasn’t that Yohji said it, but that pain shot through his eyes when he did. Omi felt it, and it hit him similarly hard in the chest. The room went quiet then as they both glanced away to swallow around things amorphous and clumped in their throats.

“But Omi, now that I’ve said my piece and you know you’re safe from me, I need to know the same.”

“What do you mean?” And then it slowly dawned on Omi that the other man had been just as wary of him these past few weeks, just as tense and unwilling to broach the subject. For fear.

Of what?

“Why were you at the club that night, Omi?”

“I went because I didn’t want to stand out…I heard that it was a popular club for—“

“For gay people, yes. So you went there to blend in.”

“And enjoy a night out. I thought it’d be safe to be where no one would recognize me.” Little did he know that one of the very people he wanted to avoid most would be there, blending in as perfectly as Omi wanted to.

“I know the feeling,” Yohji smiled around the words, but Omi could see he was on edge, waiting for something. “Surprised to see me there, eh?”

“You could say that.” More like floored. Not only was Yohji—the infamous ladies man—in a gay club, but he had been held up against a wall by another man who had clearly been the aggressor. Quite the aggressor, too, by the way Yohji had been pressed by the leather-gloved hand on the back of his neck as he...

Oh god, and now his face was burning.

“See more than you bargained for?”

About to nod his head and let it all out, Omi paused. Yohji’s tone had been even stranger then, as if he was fishing. Yes, Omi had seen more than he bargained for…but something in Yohji manner made him think that there had been more yet than that to be seen. Was there more to this than just a rather scandalous rendezvous?

Omi was uncertain but forced himself to go on in good faith. For the moment.

“I saw a man…” He was already blushing but this conversation wouldn’t progress unless he said what needed to be said. Yohji stared at him, not saying a word. “Having sex with you in public.”

At the confession, the memory he had been unable to successfully suppress was back with a vengeance. The smells of smoke and leather, the pounding of music, the lights and tightly shut eyes and panting mouth—

Omi had stumbled into the scene trying to escape the crowd. Apparently, in this club there were back corners set aside for more private activities. Not that Omi had known, it being his first time in a club, nonetheless a gay club, and with everything so new he had been both too thrilled and overwhelmed to scout his surroundings carefully.

Pressed on all side by noise and people, the young man had jumped into an alcove for a break while pulling his partner along with him, only to find the space already occupied by two men. He thought at first they were fighting. Then he'd seen the way their bodies connected, how they pushed harshly against each other, groaning, and things crashed into harsh clarity: Omi had stumbled into the middle of something absolutely mortifying. He could not imagine what had possessed them to be so exposed, but right in front of him two people were in the midst of invading each others bodies in a place the whole world could see.

It was while Omi was gaping, trying to figure out what to do, that he suddenly realized he wasn’t looking at a stranger. It was his own teammate there, pressed up against the wall, and his stomach turned over anew to see him handled so. He was sure it couldn't get any worse, too...until Yohji opened his eyes and saw him too, fingers interlocked with—

They'd fled the premises after that, terrified.

Omi took a breath, willing both the memory and the searing feeling in his face to abate.

“I didn’t realize you were gay,” he ventured, and flicked his gaze back up at the older man.

Yohji was still staring at him, unmoving. But after an intense moment of scrutinization, he took a breath and let it out on a laugh.

“I’m not gay. I’m—" Then he stopped, the smile frozen on his face. “You know what, no, I’m not doing this.” Yohji suddenly stood up from the bed. “I’m not explaining this to you. I’m not your buddy or your parent, I don’t have to walk you through this.” Yohji straightened his back and ran his hands through his hair before picking up the strands of wire he had cut from Omi’s wrist. He gave Omi, still sitting on the bed stunned at this rapid change in temperament, a last look.

“All I wanted you to know is that it’s none of my business and I never thought it was. I very much don’t care. So, no one’s going to hear a word from me. I trust you'll extend the same curtesy?" When Omi numbly dipped his head, Yohji's lips curled up without feeling. "Great. So now you can clean your face up and stop being an asshole about it."

The man then headed toward the door and Omi watched him go, looking strange with his oversized clothes and stiff gait. He stopped before he exited.

“Oh, and Omi? Not that you need to be told this, but as long as you don’t let it touch the team, I don't see why Kritiker would ever know. Just…be safe, okay?”

And then the man was gone as suddenly as he’d come and Omi wasn’t sure what to feel. Yohji’s nonchalance about the whole incident gave him a strange sort of confidence that what he had been up to, and what he wanted to continue doing, really wasn’t a big deal. In that, a weight that had been heavy on him—menacing—suddenly fell away. Yet at the same time, Omi couldn’t say he was relieved.

Glancing at the door one more time, Omi felt a sense of foreboding settle like a ringing in his ears. He shook his head to try to dispel it, but it was there, the instincts that had kept him alive all these years, screaming. He was sure he'd missed something crucial in this encounter. There was definitely more here than had been said.

But he was tired now, too, too tired to ponder it out. He'd been up all night crying his guts out and now that the tears had finally stopped—and one imminent threat had been dealt with—he didn't want to squander an opportunity to rest. Whatever other complications were trying to fall into his lap could wait. At the least, this talk with Yohji had assured him of that: there was time left enough not to lose his head over a single battle. Not in the course of war.

Omi rubbed his right wrist absentmindedly and narrowed his thoughts. No, this was not going to be quick or easy. This was an impossible situation he'd never before faced, and he needed to pace himself for the long haul. Because he, Omi—the coolheaded, team technician—was courting danger without a plan. And, he, Omi, was still unwilling to stop despite how miserable it made him.

For now, he'd take what he was given and recuperate with a shower and some sleep. Then maybe he'd consider calling someone he’d been avoiding. He'd let them know that maybe things weren’t so doomed after all. Not immediately, anyway.

Chapter Text

Aya’s tasks for the day had taken him longer than he anticipated, which was why he arrived at the club later than he would have liked. There was no time then for careful speculation. He’d have to make a quick pass of it and take with him the best he could find.

He put on his gloves before entering and fastened the hooks on his long coat, making sure every inch of skin others could bump against were covered. There would be no weaknesses: if there was to be touching, he’d be the one to touch.

It didn’t take long for Aya to scan the crowds and find what he was looking for. Long years of hunting targets by glimpsing features in the dark had honed certain skills in him; now, he rarely doubted what his eyes told him. And tonight, he was looking for something much easier to find than a dark beast. He was seeking his own kind: the ones that craved and bent to those cravings. And out of those he needed one type in particular.

Someone willing to kneel and beg and take orders.

There. The woman with shoulder-length dark hair. Short and slim in a black dress, she smiled generously as she danced with a group of other women. But not too close to them. She was willing to be picked off by the right partner.

He didn’t approach at first, waiting until he got a look at her eyes as she turned: bright but sharp. Good, not drunk. But open. Friendly and adventurous. Reminiscent enough of that wicked shadow haunting a man’s dreams.

He closed in.

Aya didn’t dance tonight, even in pursuit. He had more immediate goals. So he didn’t waste any time in sidling up next to the woman with a drink. He offered it and held her eyes as she took it and sipped. Then she placed it on a nearby table and allowed him to lead her away from her friends. It seemed she had more immediate goals as well.

Testing the waters, he reached out a hand and put it on her hip. She smiled; he didn’t. He only pulled her closer and asked close to her ear so as to be heard over the music: “What are you looking for tonight?” He left it an open question on purpose to see what she would say. He wanted to see how honest she was, how brave. He wasn’t just scouting for looks here but boldness.

The curve of her neck smelled of lilacs and sweat but her breath was sharp with liquor and lime. She laughed as she pulled back enough to look into his eyes, a bit skeptically but also with wonder.

“What are you offering?”

That wasn’t compliance. But it wasn’t refusal either. She even lifted her hands to curl her fingers around his shoulders. Promising but…

Slowly, so as not to scare her, he reached up and took hold lightly of one wrist in each of his hands. He pulled her fingers away and moved her hands down toward her waist, making himself clear.

She tensed at the action and his heart sped up at her fear. He resisted the urge to grip her wrists harder, however, and suppressed his breathing. Consciously, he blinked and look away. Others were calmer, he found, when he wasn’t looking at them directly.

Feral urges ran hot in him tonight it seemed; he needed to be careful.

“Sex,” he said in her ear once he had control of himself. When she shivered, he felt it run through her. He glanced once more at her face to be sure of what kind of shiver it was. A brief look was all it took to know he had placed his bets well.

“Direct much?” She laughed, breathless. The expression on her face looked like mirth. But Aya knew it for what it was: anticipation.

“I’ll be more direct,” he replied. He released her fully then to let her make her choices. “It will only be sex. And only one night. No names, no talking.” Sweeping his eyes over her, he took in her hair, mouth, neck, breast, waist, legs.

She would do perfectly. If she was willing.

“Okay.” She had whispered it but he was looking at her mouth when she did so he caught it.

“And you will do what you’re told?”

Her fingers jerked at her sides when he asked but she didn’t reach for him again. The acquiesce in that gesture pleased him. So he placed his gloved hand lightly on the side of her neck and waited for her to meet his eyes again. It took her a moment, as if she were thinking or perhaps just gathering the courage to make good on what she’d already decided, but eventually she did. Deep pools of brown to drown in. Then she nodded, turning her head in just enough as if to nuzzle his palm.

He nodded himself in approval, sure of her now. Still, he had to be sure she understood him.

“If you come home with me, know that you will not touch me.”

This confused her. He could see it in the way she drew back a bit and her eyes cleared and flashed, suspicious.

“What?”

“You will not touch me.” He paused, enunciated. “You are not for me.”

She caught on quickly then, either experienced or smart, and the suspicion turned into hesitation.

“Can I say no later if I’m not into it?”

“You are free to stay or go as you want.” He ran his thumb over her bottom lip. “But I think you’ll stay.”

The terms were set, and, after another breath-span of a moment, she nodded again to accept them. Then she glanced at her friends who were still dancing while keeping watch on them out of the corner of their eyes.

“Go then. Tell them you’re coming with me for the night. And that you’ll text them regularly that you’re safe.” Despite his darker impulses, an image of his sister flashed before his eyes then. If this woman did not have a check-in system with her safety-net yet she would learn to establish one tonight, if only for the sake of Aya not having to find her later mangled by the terrible things in human disguise he hunted regularly.

“Okay,” she said, seemingly relieved at his concern, and he let her step away from him. He didn’t take his eyes off her, though, tracking her through the mass of bodies and flashing lights. If she ran now, he’d need to find someone else quickly. Not that there wasn’t time to do so, but after the day he’d had he was running low on patience.

But she didn’t run. She made her rounds, nodded at a few of the girls around her who were smirking, received her jacket and purse from a brunet who whispered in her ear before hugging her, and then came back.

“Good. Follow me then.”

And as he preferred it, she was silent as they got into his Porche and headed to the Koneko no Sumu Ie. She had listened well and did not touch him. Which was a good thing, because he was too on edge with the need in him gone dagger sharp, and while the woman might be brave she wasn't anything to be compared to that one person who could dare put hands on him during moments like this.

At that unbidden thought, images suddenly assailed him. Golden skin yielding under his fingers, bruising where he gripped it. Cracked moans and green eyes and musk flooding his senses. The response was immediate, heat flaring hot in his chest as his foot turned to lead on the gas peddle. The woman next to him gasped at the acceleration.

He could feel her watching from the corner of his eyes now, could feel her body tense enough that she might start trembling. But there wasn’t much he could do at this point to reassure her. If she stayed, she'd have to figure out how to deal with it. Because the fight he desperately wanted was so close he could taste it, and like a predator faced with bleeding prey, it occupied the full force of his attention.

Only minutes and miles to go. Anticipation and hunger made him swallow hard.

Chapter Text

Yohji was on alert as soon as he heard the backdoor to the Koneko open. He didn’t change his posture though, leaning back in his bed with a cigarette in his hand. There was no rush. Aya would come to him as he wanted and getting up wouldn’t change that. So he stretched and prepared for a wait. A wait cut surprisingly short.

It only took a few minutes for the door to open and there he was, that redheaded monster covered neck to fingertips to toes in hard leather. Yohji’s fingers twitched to see it, an impulse to try to tie him up and strip him of his armor manifesting before he could suppress it.

Had Aya come for a fight then? He sure looked like he had.

Then behind Aya came the woman, wide-eyed and hesitant but obedient, and Yohji closed his mouth against any provocation lurking in his throat. Instead, he took a drag on his cigarette and watched her carefully, taking her in. She was lithe in a black dress, her head bent so strands of dark hair fell around her eyes. It seems Aya had picked up a rabbit on the way home again. Poor girl.

Yohji put out the fag and reached his hand out to her. “Come here sweetheart. Let me look at you.” She looked old enough to know what she was getting into but Yohji wanted to be sure.

The woman hesitated then, and lifted her head enough to see clearly. But instead of looking toward Yohji her eyes sought Aya. Ah, Yohji thought. She does know what she’s doing after all. He felt relieved then that she’d not be hurt.

Aya had closed the door to the room behind her before moving toward the chair in the corner. Yohji watched him, saw him glance at the woman and nod slightly. She saw it: her permission. But Yohji saw something else, and as the woman came closer to him he tried to hide the tension in his back. 

She was standing by the bed now and Yohji moved at last, putting his legs on the ground on either side of her. Her eyes were still wide but something mischievous had entered them as she took in his smile and swept her gaze over the bruises and kiss marks on his bare chest. With a look she traced the curve of his arms where they hung over his knees, the pupils dilating and stopping at the tattoo on his arm.

“Sin?” She asked.

They both heard the creak of leather and Yohji flashed her a smirk. 

“Shh,” he warned her, watching the way her smile fell. He knew this game and was sure the rules had been set. Her eyes lowered appropriately in answer and Yohji felt his body stir, cursing himself silently. It seems when he’d pushed to be punished this morning, he hadn’t anticipated well enough how it might happen. 

Aya knew his tastes too well. And his weaknesses. 

“Are you staying?” He asked. Goosebumps ran down his back after he spoke and he didn’t need to turn his head to know Aya was now watching closely. Yohji’s stomach tightened at the sensation and his thighs jerked as if to clutch around the woman to keep her in place. He swallowed and smiled around the slip; he hadn’t meant to do that.

This time she only nodded and, without further bidding, went to her knees. Yohji let her, hands falling to the bed. He sat up straighter, let her rub her palms on his knees and run them up to his inner thighs. No noises. He just watched her as she watched him, those fingers getting closer to a certain goal, creating the right mood, the right tension. 

How long could he keep this up? Yohji wondered. How long could he go without caving in? Already his eyes were itching to look where he shouldn’t. Already he was swallowing hard.

She pulled at his sweatpants after a few minutes, and when no one protested her proximity, moved the waistband down his hips. Yohji felt cool air hit sensitive places followed by hot breath. He was finding the pace now but still not quite ready for the tongue that traced him from root to tip. A groan escaped him and his fingers twitched in the sheets. But he didn’t touch her. 

Because just as she had her rules, he had his.

She had one hand wrapped around the base of him and then her mouth lowered down to take in the tip on her next breath. She was so quick, so eager to please, that if Yohji hadn’t been completely willing before he was now. Her tongue moved and he hissed air in between his teeth, jerking at the hips.

He didn’t mean to but his gaze slipped then, right into those wicked violet eyes, staring, unblinking. A shiver went through him and he bit his lip. He’d meant to hold out, to go as far as possible without it, but already he was caught. The best laid plans of mice and men: he was unable to look away from what was devouring him. 

As the woman’s mouth worked on him, he saw Aya unbuttoned his jacket, slowly, pulling it off to reveal a sleeveless black tank and the bare, pale definition of his arms. The man’s skin seemed to glow in contrast to the dark fabric; the muscles and sinews shifted, movement long and mean and ending at the wrists in the straight line of leather gloves. 

Yohji’s throat went dry and his cock jumped to the woman’s moaned surprise.

It was as if that noise called him. Aya got up, and though lust was quick to fog certain cognitive functions, Yohji still read in that something too eager. Something threatening. He didn’t dare look at the woman now, even as he feared for her, and kept his eyes firm on the target, waiting. Maybe she sensed something in the way Yohji froze, or maybe she had a keen sense of self-preservation, because she stopped what she was doing and waited as well, mouth stretched but stilled on Yohji’s cock.

Aya put one leg on the bed, then another, reaching for Yohji as he did. He was rarely this active so quickly and Yohji had to adapt quickly. He lifted his chin and, predictably, those leather-clad fingers skimmed the offered column. They traced his Adam’s apple, ran slowly down as Yohji swallowed to the hollow between his collarbones. 

“Continue.” That low command sent a shiver through him as a wet mouth went back to work then and his lungs tried to catch up.

Aya was behind him now where he sat, pulling him against a firm chest as legs bent on either side to brace him. The leather of Aya’s pants rubbed at the bare skin of his hips and sides while the leather of one glove ran up into his hair, pressing his head back onto a hard shoulder while the other ran down the slant of his chest. A palm moved over his nipple and the skin of Aya’s arm touched him briefly. Yohji gasped as if the contact burned him.

He looked down himself now and saw the woman staring up at him as she sucked gently, taking in how he sat held in Aya’s arms. He could almost see the redheaded man reflected in her eyes, turning his head in to breathe hot against Yohji’s neck and run his tongue hard over the spot under his ear. Coming back to himself, he realized he was panting, reduced to a bundle of searing nerves too quickly for his own comfort. 

Yohji was tipping his head then, unable to stand it, wanting to feel Aya’s mouth on his all the more because he knew the man wouldn’t allow it. Then he froze when teeth clamped down on his ear.

“Fuck her,” that voice said, too calmly, and he jerked. “I want to see you make her scream.”

The woman drew back then and Yohji felt something revolt inside of him. Normally he’d not think to complain, he might even squirm a bit to incense the man. But this was escalating too quickly with too little explained and not enough distance. Something wasn’t right here, hadn’t been right from the beginning, not with the way Aya was so hot and hurried. 

“Baby,” he whispered, holding stiff in the man’s grip. But those leather hands were already at work putting a condom on him—when had he brought that over? when had he opened the package?— before moving back to hold him in place. And then as if the woman herself had lost all protective reservations, she was straddling his lap. Yohji’s hands fisted in the sheets and his breath left him as she lowered herself on to him with a deep moan. She hadn’t even taken off her dress in her hurry to obey the implicit order. She’d only pulled her underwear to the side enough for access.

Yohji’s eyes were back on her as her body clutched him, wet and hot with instinctual carnality. But she wasn’t watching him anymore. No, she was looking behind him at Aya, face flushed like she was drunk.

Only then did Aya kiss him. Pulling his face around to bury his tongue in his mouth, jaw wide and lips forceful. Yohji didn’t need to be told this time. He immediately buried a hand into Aya’s hair and pulled the man in, trying to devour him. As he twisted his body to lean into it, though, he unbalanced the woman on his lap, who to catch herself from tipping clawed fingers into his stomach. 

The slight sting made him jump, and his eyes flew open to see fury flash bright in those violet orbs. 

Fuck. 

Fear shot cold through him and he went back to work immediately on that hard mouth. He earned a bite for it but was able to distract the man long enough to remove the woman’s hands from his stomach.

Aya possessive was damn hot. But Aya possessive with potential victims around was outright dangerous. 

No choice now it seemed but to give the man what he wanted and fuck this woman senseless. That way, if she had accidentally left any marks, Aya wouldn’t notice them until after she was long gone.

So with Aya’s arms still wrapped around him, Yohji put his hands on the woman’s hips and pulled her down as he thrust up. He bit his lip again, not daring to make any noise until those leather gloves ran over his nipples and he couldn’t help but to cry out. A bulge near his lower back hardened and Yohji would’ve felt gratified if he had any clue at what they were playing at. Normally, when Aya brought someone home, he kept a careful distance while he watched and gave orders. Sometimes, if Yohji was particularly good or Aya was feeling felicitous, he’d be rewarded with a hand through his hair or a kiss. Other times still, Aya might return after he took the woman back to fuck Yohji himself.

Tonight, though, Aya was right here with him, angry and insistent like he’d been this morning. But it wasn’t just the two of them this time and it wasn’t safe to be like this. Aya was supposed to be collected enough to call the shots and walk Yohji through his demons. Instead, he was hungry and losing to his own. 

It was even worse that he’d brought home someone who looked so much like her that Yohji’s heart ached. It made him want to hurt her, want to throw her away, want to hold her until she never forgot him again, to protect her. So he fucked her even harder and tried to make her sing with his fingers busy at her clit until her legs vibrated and she hiccuped air. But Yohji couldn’t focus on her, couldn’t lose himself to the smell of her body like he could with other women, because this time Aya was breathing in his ear and grinding against him so slowly, and all Yohji wanted to do was fall into him and be invaded.

Yohji was quickly losing his shit. If this was punishment then it was the most exquisite punishment ever invented. Teeth were sharp at his bare shoulder, leaving another mark, and his fingers unconsciously gripped harder until the woman he held in place cried out. Her eyes seemed to clear a bit then and she tapped Yohji’s wrists. He didn’t know what that meant though, because everything in him had turned in, feeling the goosebumps and breaking skin under the mouth on him, nerves gone tight in expectation of what came next, what always came next when Aya rolled against him like this.

“Hey, hey!” She was breathless with the words but he hardly heard them. “Stop.” She smacked at his wrist now even harder, which drew Yohji back to himself enough to realize that he must be causing her pain.

Oh, he realized suddenly, she was afraid. The encroaching fear in her eyes was real, growing more palpable the more she stared at him and he didn’t respond. He watched it suffuse her features, twisting the mindless lust that had been there with dreadful awareness. She was terribly vulnerable. And the man holding her wasn’t listening.

Yohji shivered and released her then. She didn’t waste any time climbing off him to retreat across the room, spooked. Aya went still against his back at the movement, no longer gripping him but still holding on. Since the room had taken to spinning a bit around him, Yohji was glad for the support, intentional or not.

“Sorry, sorry.” He said, trying to sound casual. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

The woman shook her head at that and laughed shakily. “No, no. It’s fine. I’m just…,” she took a careful breath, “I’m just not into blood. I should’ve said that earlier.” She’d been raised right: apologizing like what had happened was actually her fault. 

Taking in her haggard expression, Yohji felt guilt take him until he realized what she said. Then he was shocked. Glancing at his shoulder, he realized then what must have really set her off. It hadn’t been him holding her too hard at all. It was this, the red running freely down his arm and onto his chest. 

Aya had drawn blood. He had let Aya make him bleed. In front of a stranger. 

And just like that the fragmented pieces of his mind crashed back together, and the spell cracked under the force, like a frozen lake dangerously beneath his feet. A solid turn of his thoughts and he knew the moment was over. He needed to get her out of here.

Moving slowly enough to not unsettle anyone, Yohji took off the condom, tucked himself back into his sweat pants and sat up. Aya let him go but Yohji didn’t dare look at him at the moment. He knew what he’d find if he did, the burning fire in the man’s eyes as he sat crouched with blood smeared stark on the ivory skin of his face. It was an image Yohji knew well: the killer in him. It was an image that made Yohji’s heart race. But there were innocents in the room and if Aya didn’t have control of himself, Yohji would need to step up.

“It’s not your fault,” he said offhandedly after taking a breath. It was a bit late, though. Awkward silence had already fallen as the woman pulled her dress down and gathered the things she’d placed near the door. It made Yohji feel like a jerk. 

“Let me take drive you home, then?” And when she shook her head, shoulders tensing, Yohji switched tactics, “Or call you a taxi, at least. It’s late and I want you to get back safe.” That earned him a strange look, but after a moment she relented.

“Okay, thanks,” she said, her eyes shifting to look at Aya behind him. The man hadn’t moved, and Yohji, all too aware of the measured pace of Aya’s breathing, shifted his body and stood up on shaky legs to block her line of sight. “You can use the bathroom if you want before you go. I’ll show you where it is, at the end of the hall.”

He grabbed his cellphone from the bedside table and ran his fingers through his hair, then he walked her out into the hallway. Only then did he glance at the bed, and then only long enough to see what he knew he would and mouth two words soundlessly: stay there. Eyes followed him out as he carefully closed the door behind him. 

To his terrible misfortune, they didn’t get far down the hallway before Ken appeared. Yohji cursed the set up of the house, and the fact that Ken’s room was on the same floor as his and on the way to the bathroom.

“Yo, so that was you that came in the backdoor earlier. Got a moment?” Then Ken saw he wasn’t alone and flushed. “Ah, sorry, didn’t realize I was interrupting. Carry on.” He winked and turned to go back into his room, but if there is one thing an experienced killer can’t overlook, it’s blood, and in seconds Ken’s full attention was back on Yohji, eyes riveted. 

“Why the fuck are you bleeding, what happened?” The woman next to him flinched at his tone, drawing Ken’s narrowed gaze her way as he took a step forward. Fucking wonderful. 

For the second time that night, Yohji couldn’t help thinking poor girl. Stuck in a house full of killers all because she’d been adventurous enough to agree to what she thought would be a night of kinky fun.

In attempt to break the murderous tension, Yohji laughed and wrapped an arm around Ken’s neck, dragging him away from her. “Way to be intimidating. I thought you’d already gotten the memo this morning that I’m into rough stuff.”

The mention of this morning was a misstep. Ken began to scrutinize him right then and there, and Yohji could only silently curse himself for leaving his room without a shirt—especially with how much evidence from the day was still fresh on his skin. “Fuck that. You’re covered with bruises. You expect me to believe this girl—“ Yohji put a hand over the brunet’s mouth then to shut him up. If they were going to get into it, he wanted to get the woman out of the house first. Before they did something even stupider than fighting in front of her. Like using names or revealing professional secrets.

“Don’t be rude. She’s a woman. And I’m sending her home. If you want to talk we can do so after, yeah?”

And Yohji ground his thumb into Ken’s side until he nodded before moving away. The man was glaring venomously at him, though, which did not bode well for the rest of Yohji’s night. He had hoped that once he saw the woman off he’d be able to get back to Aya and find out what the fuck had made him so unstable. Now he was facing an interrogation ontop of interrupted sex. God but his patience was wearing thin.

He put on a smile though, to reassure their company, and finished escorting her to the toilet. She was in and out in minutes, perhaps having picked up on the tension herself and wanting to get out before anything further escalated. Smart girl.

“I’ve texted a friend,” she said when she came out. Yohji didn’t ask what that meant and took it at face value that she was letting him know others were waiting for her. Very smart girl, indeed.

“Good. I hope they’re waiting for you when you get home.” That earned him another weird look. “Anyway, I’ve called the cab. They’ll swing by the back of the building where you came in in another minute.” 

In all honesty, he hadn’t called a cab but their own car service. It would know to pick the woman up and drive her back the way it came, the route he was sure Aya had taken earlier in the evening that avoided the front of the building. This might be a GPS deadzone but people were curious things that tended to pick up on too many details when anxious; it was safer to provide the woman as few visual clues as possible as pin down their location. That way she couldn't feasibly come looking again after tonight even if she wanted to.

Not that he thought she would want to. Not after this glorious array of fuckups. 

Again he silently cursed the way things had turned out. All he had wanted today was to spend some more time with Aya. He hadn’t cared how Aya came to him or what he came wanting. He never did. Just as long as Aya came wanting. 

So how had something that started so promising end up like this?

When his phone alerted him as to the car’s arrival, he walked the woman as far as the backdoor. He was about to ask her if she was really alright to get home on her own, but to his surprise she spoke before he could.

“You know. This has been a weird night for me. I’ve played with all types of people who have all types of tastes, and that’s all well and good. But tonight was…what I mean to say is, are you sure you’re okay?”

That threw Yohji entirely. He had no idea what to say.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he managed after a moment, not sure himself why he felt compelled to answer at all. “Sorry if it scared you, though. It usually doesn’t get so rough when we’re with others.” He wanted a cigarette now desperately and regretted that he’d left them behind.

“That’s what I mean,” she continued, not really meeting his eyes. “It’s none of my business at all, I get that, but I had this feeling that if I hadn’t been around, it would’ve been…”

“What, bad?” He scoffed.

“No. Dangerous.” 

And Yohji could only swallow as she finished that sentence and avert his eyes. 

Poor girl was too smart, apparently, and for once he didn’t appreciate it.

“You both seem like good people, which is the only reason I’m saying this I swear. Looking out for me all night, concerned about me staying safe and giving consent. 

But I just felt like what happened back there…wasn’t playing.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said, too brave, reminding Yohji more and more of the woman that had broken him, first with death and then with betrayal. “It felt like…he was really going to rip you apart. And that you were going to let him.”

That was too much and Yohji felt his back go rigid. He couldn’t help the way he looked at her then. Maybe she had thought he was more approachable than Aya, which was why she was saying these things to him. Or maybe she was genuinely concerned. But she had guessed wrong about his temperament: he was not a safe a person to provoke. No matter how he might wish otherwise, his control was weaker and his temper meaner than the animal currently curled up in his bed. Just because he hid it better did not mean he wouldn’t bite.

And the fact was that he didn’t want to talk about this.

She must have seen it, though, the threat in the shift of his features, because she apologized again and quickly excused herself. 

“Anyway, thanks for the cab and sorry I ruined the mood prematurely. It was, uh, nice to meet you.” And then she was out the door and into the night, faceless again as she was nameless, and all the safer for it.

Yohji took a breath then, after the car rounded the corner, and tried to settle his nerves. Ken was probably waiting for him to come back, though he hoped he wasn’t. And Aya likely wasn’t waiting, though he hoped he was.

What the fuck was he supposed to do, then, huh? How was he to make sense of this? His heart was a mess and now the woman’s words weighed heavy on it like a prophecy. What if she was right and they were losing control? Would they end up tearing each other apart before they realized it?

And with a pit in his stomach, Yohji suddenly realized that he was, unquestionably, hard—his bad mood and the thought of violence had gone straight to his cock. And it made him want to do terrible things.

So much for maintaining a semblance of sanity. 

But there was no way to turn back now, he figured. So he adjusted himself more comfortably in his pants, and shook all over from his shoulders down. Like a dog trying to rid himself of something making him itch.

Chapter Text

Ken wasn’t sure what to expect when Yohji came back up the stairs other than for things to not go smoothly. On the best of days, the man could be damn secretive if not a downright liar, and Ken already knew this wasn’t the best of days. 

A part of him had really been hoping that the foreboding feeling he’d had earlier in the kitchen would prove unfounded, that he'd check in with Yohji and be able to call it a night, relieved to hear all the weird stuff this morning had been settled. Apparently, his luck was poor. The scowl on Yohji's face as he made his way toward him only confirmed it.

“What is it with you and my door today?" The man sneered once he was close enough. "It’s like you can’t stay away. Got a secret relationship going on you’d like to confess to?”

“You’re one to talk, sneaking around at midnight looking you've the shit beat out of you.”

To his surprise that brought the guy up short. Ken took advantage of the still moment to scan him over now that he had both a clearer view and the presence of mind. There were marks on Yohji’s arms and throat and the streak on his shoulder was definitely blood not well wiped off. No way that flinching woman Yohji had escorted out was responsible for this.

Yohji seemed to notice his scrutiny because he crossed his arms over his chest and sighed. “What did you want, Ken?” He sounded exhausted. 

“To ask about about what happened with Omi. But forget that.” He nodded his head at the man’s shoulder. “What happened to you?” He asked hoping that Yohji would cooperate and save Ken the headache of digging it out of him. But Yohji’s expression only twisted and Ken knew he’d hoped in vain. If only those school girls that fawned over the blonde man in the shop could get a good look at him now, he thought, and this sullen ugly-hearted side of him.

“Don’t try to bullshit me, Yohji,” he cut in when he saw a nasty smile taking shape on the man’s face. Dark suspicions were swirling in his mind and it was wearing out his patience. He’d be more direct then, and see if that didn’t get any answers. 

“Are you taking external missions?”

“Fuck, Ken, is that what you’re worried about?” The man actually dropped his arms and laughed, airy and shocked. There was nothing humorous in it. “Then let me reassure you. No. Killing on command for Kritiker is enough, why the fuck would I go looking for more?”

Ken stared at him then, right into his face, long enough to be sure. When Yohji didn’t blink, he tried to accept his words as they were but instead of feeling relieved the possibility of it made him more nervous.

“Then why are you skulking about, Yohji? And disappearing randomly? You’ve been all over the place lately and this morning you were beyond ragged and testy. If you’re not moonlighting, then what? And don’t tell me it’s just sex, especially with how you’re standing here looking like you’ve been chewed.”

“I have been chewed. You saw. Real tight piece, wore me right out. Now let me get some rest, okay?”

Slippery bastard, always twisting words. 

“Ha. Ha. You know what I mean, Yohji. What’s going on with you? Even putting aside the bruises...two women in 12 hours. It’s a bit much.”

Yohji scoffed at that and smirked cruelly. “And here I thought guys were supposed to fist bump or something over high scores.”

Ken took a moment then, running his hands into his hair to ruffle it and groan in frustration. It never used to be like this, all the back and forth. They'd used to be able to have a decent conversation, for godsake, to sit and share a laugh now and then—almost like friends. But anymore all it took was a few wrong words at the wrong time and Yohji was utterly unapproachable. So much so that Ken hadn't really blamed Omi for turning on the man these few weeks, considering Ken himself was near his wit’s end. And here he thought himself rather forgiving.

“Ugh, why do you have to be such a dick all the time?" He said it through gritted teeth, expecting things to escalate now. "Don’t you get that I’m worried about you? Fuck!” He almost welcomed a fight, just to relieve this frustration. 

But his words seemed to have a different impact on Yohji entirely. He didn’t yell or come at him; he didn't even speak. He only closed his eyes and took a breath, looking like he was in pain. Then tension began building in his body. Ken could see it coiling in his shoulders and arms, and running straight down his back, setting off all the red flags in his head. When the man opened his eyes again, there was something ugly in them that gave Ken the willies.

Ken could've backed off then, but he didn’t. Just like this morning, he had a feeling that despite it all or perhaps because of it, Yohji might finally say something real; something the blonde probably needed to get off his chest. Just maybe, he thought, standing on this knife-edge they'd come out the other side the better for it. Unfortunately, Ken didn’t get the chance to find out if he was right. 

At that wire-tight moment, glaring at each other breath held, when something seemed it would snap, Yohji’s door suddenly swung in on a whoosh of air and scared the shit right out of him. Anything Ken had been thinking flew right from his head as he jumped back and crouched, heart racing. Already his fists were up, his body twisting as blood pounded in his ears, nerves strung to face whatever was coming. Without his weapons he was at a severe disadvantage but speed might make up for it. So he didn't give it a breath before he hunched to charge the figure standing in the door frame.

That figure only looked at him, though, and said one word, short and curt.

"Stop."

It was enough. 

Ken froze mid-launch and pulled back, his brain spinning to catch up. 

Aya. Standing in the open doorway. Red hair ragged, arms bare in a dark sleeveless shirt, feet bare at the end of leather pants. Posture slack, expressionless. So familiar yet so terribly out of place that for a moment Ken hadn't recognized him. 

Then Aya raised a palm and it was too fast to duck.

Ken flinched to see it, that lean-muscled arm whipping out. But it didn’t come for him. Instead those strong fingers stretched out and wrapped around the nape of Yohji’s neck, taking grip of all that threatening pressure. Ken didn’t have enough time to back up, so he curled into himself, trying to prepare for whatever violence was sure to erupt.

“Enough talking,” Aya said in his perfunctory way. A spring wound too tight. An eternity in a second. Then an exhaled breath from that tight mess of a man in his grip, measured and slow, and all the tension built up in Yohji's body just dropped out.

Which was not what Ken had expected. So he stared, feeling small and stupid. Because he honestly had no idea what he was looking at now. 

“Aah, way to scare a man, Aya.” Yohji complained. But Yohji didn’t look scared to Ken, or even upset. He looked…boneless. Sedated.

The eyes of the leader of Weiss were harder than granite and just as dull. “Go to bed,” he ordered, and without thinking Ken found himself obeying. His spine was already straightening and turning, his feet lifting to move, knowing the tone in that voice too well. Then Ken realized what was happening and damned his reflexes. This wasn't a mission; he needn't heed any orders. He forced a slump back into his shoulders, and coughed lightly to cover his embarrassment. It was only when he shifted his gaze back that he realized. 

He had moved but the others hadn't, and Aya’s hand was still firm on the back of Yohji's neck. Not that there was anything threatening in the gesture but, for some reason, that just made it worse: it just being there...

Familiar.

When that word flashed through Ken's mind certain things began to make a horrifying sort of sense all at once.

“Hey. Aya…” Ken swallowed, not sure he was willing to voice just yet what he was thinking. Words had repercussions after all, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to bear them. “What’re you doing in Yohji’s room?” Well, not exactly a safe question, but much easier to get out than the other one he was mulling: are those marks yours then?

Those violet eyes were back on him now, unreadable. Ken tried to meet them but the pupils were too large and he found himself blinking away.

“Another time, Ken.” That was all the man said, but it was enough to make Ken go numb around the edges. He watched then as Aya dropped his arm and stepped to the side, head tilting slightly. As if Yohji knew exactly what that meant, he used the proffered space to walk into his room without another a word. Aya didn’t move as the other man passed him, but his eyes did, tracking out of the corners as Yohji crawled into bed. Then those eyes were right back on Ken, who was no longer breathing.

Logic was a siren screaming in his ears and his lungs had gone solid in protest.

There were things Weiss had to do to hunt dark beasts. There were habits and ticks and vices that sprung up to help them cope, and most of the time they gave each other leeway to indulge in them. Every one of them knew the way things could run too close to the surface when you were covered with blood, how easy it was to lose yourself. Their very existence was a bane on society; and yet they were needed to stop worse things from happening. So what was a one night stand or three, or five drinks too many too often to get through it?

But putting aside health and nuisances, putting aside the gray areas of the law, there were still things that they knew—had to know— should not be done. Not for any higher sense of morality. No, fuck morality. But simply because those things could and would tear you apart. Little by little, piece by piece, they’d eat you alive. And you’d be lucky if you were the only one.

What Ken was seeing now in the open space of that doorframe…

In a team, secrets like these were deadly.

“When’s ‘another time’?” He tried, feeling the muscles of his mouth strangely sluggish as they moved around the question.

Aya was already turning but paused when he heard the question. While Ken knew Aya wasn’t as comfortable with him as Yohji was, Ken still thought they were comfortable enough. And maybe Aya did too, because after a moment something in him seemed to relent. The man may have even sighed, but Ken was strung too tight to believe it.

“Tomorrow, then? After closing.”

“Okay,” he said, grasping at it like a promise. Then Aya retreated into the room, closed the door, and locked it. Ken stared at the door only long enough to curse his own intuition before turning to head back to his own room. He'd wanted answers, didn't he? And now he was more than willing to see this long day end.

Chapter Text

After Aya closed the door, he stripped himself to his underwear, turned off the light, and got into bed with Yohji. His gloves were long removed, so he used the bare tips of his fingers to seek the other man out, running them down the smooth expanse of the back that faced him. So warm with nothing in the way, like blood over his palms. It took a few seconds but eventually the man turned over so Aya could see his face. 

There was only the dim light from the street below filtering in through the window but it was enough to make out those green eyes looking at him cooly. They ran over his bare chest and stomach before flicking to his face, and like a fool Aya found himself shifting his arm so Yohji could come right up against his side as he leaned back against the headboard. A hand reached out to twitch fingers against the skin of Aya’s chest but being otherwise well behaved Aya allowed it. 

“It smells like sex in here.” There was that crass mouth.

“Aa,” he agreed, turning his nose into the hair on the top of Yohji’s head.

“You’re staying then?”

He guessed he was.

Aya focused for a moment on the rhythm of the other man’s heartbeat against his ribs, wanting to be sure. It had been bad earlier, in the hall. That impossible race of Yohji’s pulse against his palm had felt almost hot and Aya had only thought to hold on. Now the man's breath had steadied and eventually even his hand went still. “You going to explain?” He asked, but there was nothing Aya had to say to that, so Yohji clicked his tongue and sat up, leaving a cool line of goosebumps to light up Aya's skin.

He didn't need to open his eyes to know what Yohji grabbed reaching across him. The click of a lighter and the sound of lungs hauling air were confirmation enough. But Aya did open his eyes. To watch. Yohji settling back against the headboard next to him with a lit cigarette in his mouth; Yohji pushing the blonde strands of his hair behind his ears. Long fingers taking hold of the fag as swollen lips blew smoke up into the air. A dour cloud falling back to settle, obscuring the man’s features. 

When the smoke dispersed, Aya could make out Yohji giving him a sidelong look, dull and assessing. 

“Not that you don’t always keep me on my toes, Aya baby, but apparently I'm out of practice. If you've got a feather on you, nows the time to use it and knock me right over."

Aya snorted at that. It was just a puff of air through his nose but Yohji caught it and grinned. When he placed the cigarette back in the tilt of his mouth that grin had already taken on a wicked edge. And that was all the warning Aya had to brace himself.

So much for being well behaved. In the time it took to blink Yohji had hauled himself up, swung a leg over, and mounted Aya’s lap to hover. Reflex shot Aya's hands up to grip him by the hips, his eyes narrowed in warning. But the man didn’t try to move any closer from there, just inches from contact. 

There he smirked in the face of Aya's scowl, irreverent as always. “Why’re you here, Aya?” He asked. And when Aya didn't answer, he leaned over to put out his cigarette, coming so close Aya could nearly feel the slide of skin. But Yohji didn’t actually touch him. Even as he moved back, the only real contact between them remained Aya's fingers clenched around the sharp bones of Yohji's hips.

“Do you want me to guess then?” That smirk was ingratiating, playing in the sinews of Yohji's arms as he stretched the limbs out, carefully, to brace his hands on the headboard on either side of Aya's head. Then he leaned in slowly against the hold on him, right up next to Aya’s ear, sighing with breath like soldered iron.

“You’re aching, aren't you baby? To finish what you started.” That voice was heat and moisture in his ear; that skin, so close, musk and sweat in his nose. “Are you getting hard again already?" he whispered, low, "imagining the way I’ll taste? Hm? When you push inside me?” The man rolled his hips down suddenly, surprising a grunt out of Aya when crotch bumped crotch. That was a test, there. He was toying with the confines of Aya’s hold—and patience. “Already imaging how you’ll make me scream?” So slow now, that rhythm trying to build against him, and Aya found his fingers flexing, attention dividing with the pound of his blood. “Gonna prove to me once more who I really belong to?” Something close to fury threatened in him now, ripe for breaking when air in his ear made him twitch. 

“Well,” the man said slowly, dragging his syllables out in his breath, “that’s too bad.” And when Yohji pulled back this time it took Aya a few heartbeats too long to realize there was no grin on his face and his eyes were flat.

“I’m sure you heard but two women in 12 hours is a lot, even for a slut like me. I doubt I could get it up again. Even for you.” 

As far as taunting went, that teasing voice now dull and mean in equal measures, it was childish. “Kudou,” Aya threatened, feeling his temper fray. Childish, yes. And, apparently, effective.

The man straddling him did not heed the warning but scoffed and looked away, eyelids dropping unconcerned. Which only made it worse.

“Pet names aren't going to work, baby," and still that mouth was running, "I mean, you could try begging if you want and maybe my dick will reconsider but—” 

And that there was the hard-end of Aya’s patience.

Tipping Yohji backward, he climbed on top of the man, and with no thought in his head but domination, dug his fingers into the roots of Yohji’s hair to grip and pull harsh enough to make the man’s lip curl as he stared down into those eyes. 

He didn't know what he expected to find there, but what confronted him was indifference gone sharp and murderous. Yohji was no longer hiding behind his games, and the challenge in those depths was more than clear, clear enough that something threatened to crack in Aya seeing it, trying to settle in the grip of his fingers and tension of his arms, more than willing to give in to the fight the man beneath him was now clearly daring him to start. But even as Aya stared, making out his own outline as it was reflected snarling back at him, he felt a wave come upon him; he was seen and responsible and all at once things in him twisted sharply sideways.

Gritting his teeth, he dropped his hold and backed off, exhaling against the burn of his lungs. “Enough," he said, lowering his forehead to Yohji’s chest just to take a breath. There were things he wanted here, some more desperately than others, but a fight was no longer one of them. "Go to sleep,” he added, turning his face out so he could place his ear over the man’s heart to listen—steady, steady—willing the other man to give in for once without the struggle. 

But if Yohji was easy…well, if Yohji was easy, Aya probably wouldn’t be here.

“No,” the defiance there was too ready, daring Aya to react, as if it reveled in the tension that ran right back down Aya's back. “I’m not the one who broke the rules, Aya, bringing someone here when you knew you weren’t in control. Not to mention what happened in the hallway. Now I’ve asked once already and I won’t again. Explain yourself or get out of my bed until you can.” 

Goading now instead of taunting, then? Feelings rolled around in Aya, tumultuous, and he didn't have the mind to sort them. He was all too aware of the way the body beneath his refused to go slack. “I won’t apologize,” he said, affronted.

The sigh that answered that was exasperation. “Did I ask for an apology?” Now derision. Long fingers threaded through his hair suddenly and Aya tensed even more in preparation. But they only ran lightly through the strands, clever at his weak spots.

The tactics against him were changing too quickly now and he couldn't keep up. Exhaustion had already dogged him and now it was ugly and demanding at his heels. “God you drive me to distraction,” the man against him mumbled and with that something squeezed in Aya’s chest, and he knew he'd lost. 

Goddamn Yohji and how he didn't know when to stop.

“I saw her today.” Too late. The admission caught him by the throat before he could pull it back. It was out there now, over his lips even as he tried to close his mouth around it, real and becoming realer.

“Ah,” Aya tried to release the clench of his jaw as those fingers continued to work at his scalp; tried to not hate them for their mercy. “And did she see you?” He didn’t say anything to that because this time he didn’t have to. 

“And? What did you see?”

“She was with a man.” The hand in his hair stilled. “They went home together.”

“Shit.”

Yes, shit. Shit shit shit, fucking shit.

“It’s been that long already?” 

That was the same question that had flashed through Aya’s head as he watched his sister from afar, feeling like his heart was bleeding out. He hadn’t realized it had been that long since she woke up from her coma. How many months now? Years? How old was she? 

Old enough, something bitter in him had answered, to be dressing up and going home with men. Old enough that she might soon be marrying, having children, making something of herself… without him. 

She’d keep living, wouldn’t she? She’d move on. And she’d forget. Because she could.

Yohji didn’t ask why he had gone looking for the girl nor did he ask about the tension now running through his body. Instead he said, “Who’s the guy?” and the cool tone in his voice sent chills down Aya’s spine and pulled the tension right out of him. Honestly, how long had it been then? For Yohji to know him this well…

“Don’t worry, baby. Give me the address and I’ll look into it in the morning.”

Aya lifted himself up to look at Yohji’s face then to find the man staring back at him with those cold eyes. He nodded and the pressure he’d been feeling all day—squeezing his lungs, going right to his head, needing an outlet that would know him and bend—abated just enough. He wasn’t appeased but it was enough to take off the edge.

“Don’t kill him yet,” he said, and waited until Yohji sighed and looked away before he leaned in and put his mouth over the hard line of his lips. That mouth fell open to him without hesitation and Aya drove his tongue in until he heard a deep throated groan. The fingers still in his hair tightened but didn’t pull or push—because Yohji might live to push the limits, but he still knew them—and a different sort of heat flared readily in him. So much like fury, yet so different.

Aya drew back enough to watch Yohji pant wide-eyed beneath him with a sheen of saliva on his lips. “We’re not done talking,”the man said, shifting his body under Aya without breaking eye contact, too casual, as if he was only looking to find a more comfortable position; for someone so fond of lying, he wasn’t very good at it. 

“Then talk.” There was too much skin and it was distracting. “Don’t tease.” 

“Who’s the tease?” The damn pest laughed, low in his chest so that Aya could feel it more than hear it. He narrowed his eyes in warning for him not to try his patience again but the laughter only increased in volume. “Don’t give me that look, not after you dare say I tease. As if you weren’t the one who was just fucking around in the hall in front of Ken because you were impatient and horny. Did you see the look on his face when you grabbed me? Probably would’ve been less shocked if you’d pulled out your sword and stabbed him.”

If he was honest, Aya hadn’t noticed much about Ken. There’d been other, more pressing things on his mind, like getting Yohji inside the room before the man truly lost his temper and shutting everyone up before the night dragged on. And sex, too: Yohji had not been—he rarely was—wrong about that. A little blood hadn’t been enough to satisfy anything and the wait for Yohji’s return had drawn his nerves taut. Like an hunger unsated, it was still clawing at him. The reminder only made it rage stronger, demanding to feel this infuriating man give in and shatter in his hands.

“So, what’re you going to tell him?” The source of his torment asked, and Aya shifted his gaze from the man’s lips to his eyes trying to refocus. He stared for a moment, then realized what he was seeing. Unguarded sincerity. No tricks, no games, the other man was asking because he was genuinely interested in knowing. Strange as that alone was, it also made Aya want to…

“Hn. The truth.” Answer it.

Yohji tensed up once he heard that, eyes clouding as if he was suddenly far away. Then he blinked and was back, too sharp, gaze flicking about Aya’s face before settling on his lips. 

“Yeah, okay,” he said, “might as well. Let me know how it goes.” Then he leaned up as if to close the gap between them before pausing a hairsbreadth away, straining. There he licked his own lips, whispered, breath puffing out against Aya’s slightly open mouth. “If he doesn’t understand I’ll—“ 

Aya dropped down and devoured the sound. He’d had enough talking. Enough questions and banter. And the last thing he wanted right now were promises. He released Yohji’s mouth and yanked his head to the side by the strands of his hair, impatient now as the man winced and hissed in air. 

Aya would deal with this. That’s what he had decided when he opened the door earlier. That there were ways to deal with this, and he would. Yohji didn’t need to say anything, didn’t need to think about it. No, no more thinking. Aya dragged his tongue up the skin of Yohji's neck, and bit lightly once he got ahold of the man’s ear. The body tormenting him jerked under him, gratifying.

He knew they were both too wrung out at this point to make much of this. He knew they needed time: to wrap their heads around what had happened in a day and put away the emotions; to recover a semblance of equilibrium. 

“Aya. Please.”

But that word. His reserve shattered on the line of fire that ran straight through his nerves to his head and cock. He could feel how hard Yohji was against him now. And he wouldn’t leave the man wanting. No, not now that he was begging.

----

Later, after Yohji was asleep, Aya got up to retrieve his belongings. He picked up his gloves, shoved them in a pocket, then gathered his boots, clothing, and jacket. On the way toward the door, he paused and considered. He fished his phone out of his jacket pocket and texted Yohji the address he had staked out earlier in the day. Then he glanced at the bed. 

Yohji was wrapped in sheets with his arms around the pillow under his head. The fan of his hair blocked his face from view but Aya knew he was sleeping soundly enough that he shouldn’t wake in the night, screaming…not now that Aya had seen to his exhaustion. That body was perfectly limp as it should be, covered in small marks that proved why that was. Aya’s marks. As it should be. Nothing that wouldn’t heal and nothing that he wouldn’t replace when they did.

The phone in his hand vibrated and Aya flicked his eyes down at it, eyebrows furrowing. A text from Omi. He looked at the time before he read it, and then he was stepping out of Yohji’s room and pressing the ‘call’ button. He moved down the hallway toward the stairs and his own room as he shot off a few questions into the device, and with every response that sounded in his ear his unease grew.

Chapter Text

The burner phone was ringing on his desk. There was only person who used that number. Omi was already blinking sleep from his eyes and reaching toward it, falling off his bed in his hurry to grab and flip it open. 

“Yes, hi,” he said once he had it up against his ear, listening for a moment as his brain woke up. “Understood. We’ll be ready, Manx.” Then he hung up and sighed. 

Fuck. Why was she calling now? What time was it anyway? Omi looked at the numbers that blinked on the closed device then picked himself up from the floor. He went to his bedstand where his regular cellphone was and checked all three of his alarms. Great, he must have turned them off half-asleep. And now he’d lost an entire day. 

Rubbing a hand over his face, Omi considered for a moment before he decided not to call the others. It was well past midnight now, and it didn’t look like they needed to move immediately, so a text should be enough. If anyone was still awake and wanted details, they could always get back to him. Otherwise, they’d talk in the morning.

—Got a job. Details tomorrow.—

He’d hardly pressed send before his phone started vibrating in his hand. He had to blink a couple of times before he believed it. Of all the people to be awake at this hour.

“Aya-kun? Hey. Yeah, I just got the call a moment ago. No, she didn’t say why, just that we’re to open the shop as usual and she’d be by with the files in the afternoon. That was it. It didn’t sound like anything pressing, but—What? I don’t know either. Okay…Then how about I see what I can dig up? If you’re worried you can always meet me in my room in a few—ah, I see. Then tomorrow morning? Got it. Goodnight Aya-kun.”

He stared at the phone in his hand after Aya cut the line, pondering his tone. The man had been monosyllabic as always but the few words he did use raised some interesting questions.

Why had Manx called in the middle of the night to say practically nothing? If there was no rush, couldn’t she have just showed up like she always did?

If it had been just him Omi might have put the strange feeling in his gut aside, but now Aya had weighed in and the cogs in Omi’s mind were starting to turn. Time to take his place at his desk then and see what he could scour off the web. It was unlikely he would find anything with so little to go off of, but after sleeping all day it’s not like he wanted to go back to bed, and now his curiosity was piqued. 

If he wanted to, he could probably go all night. 

——

Omi was sitting in the kitchen well before sunrise. He’d already made a pot of coffee—his second—and boiled some water, and now he sat with his laptop, waiting. Aya didn’t disappoint; he was down the stairs at 7 am sharp, dressed and alert.

“Aya-kun, good morning.” Omi tried to swallow around the knot in his throat, tried to tell himself that he was overreacting. He didn’t quite manage it.

The other man only looked at him, long and hard, then made himself a cup of tea with the boiled water. “Thanks,” he said as he sat down. Omi waited for him to take a sip before he began.

“So, I scouted around to see what I could find.”

“And?” 

“And I think we might just have a problem.” Omi pulled up some files then: an article from Asahi Newspaper’s online website and a document he’d found through the backdoor he’d created in the national police database. Then he turned the screen toward Weiss’ leader.

“Remember that mess last week? With the girl?” Aya’s mouth drew taut as he nodded, turning his eyes toward the information on the screen. “Well, here’s the article that just came out about it.” Omi waited until Aya reached the part that had given him pause and sent him on the goose chase that had eaten up his night. He knew when he found it because the man’s eyebrows drew tight together.

“It’s…an open case?” Aya glanced at him, looking as puzzled as Omi had felt.

“Yes,” Omi said, pulling the laptop back long enough to switch pages. “We failed to save the girl but we did everything else by the book, taking down the target and calling in Kritiker’s clean up team. They should’ve set the scene. The last I was told, anyway, they set the scene.

So why isn’t the media saying murder-suicide?” 

Omi’s stomach twisted a bit as he continued. “I thought it might just be sensationalism or gossip, but I had the time and I wanted to be sure. So I looked through the police case files. And Aya-kun…they’ve got this as a case in progress.” He pointed at the part that had really gotten to him. “The cause of death is right, listed here as a gunshot wound, but here they write ‘entry-angle analyzed, results inconclusive’ and later on ‘awaiting results from DNA gathered at scene; possible third-party presence.’”

He looked at Aya’s face and waited for a reaction. “Tell me I’m overthinking this Aya-kun. That with the girl involved they’re just being extra cautious and that Kritiker is already handling it.”

But all Aya said was, “Did you find anything else?” And Omi gulped.

“Yes…” Omi had hoped Aya would shut him down and that he wouldn’t have to keep going, but no such luck it seemed. “That’s not the only case.” 

He then showed Aya the three others he had dug up after reviewing incidents from the past three months. “All of these too, as of two days ago, have been reopened on suspicion of foul play. The doctor that was experimenting on his child patients, the sex worker who was eating her clients, and the taxi driver that was drowning passengers. All unrelated, Aya-kun, and all with varied causes of death. The only thing that links them is...”

“Weiss.” Aya finished the sentence for him and then looked at Omi. 

“Yeah. Us. These are our missions. But they were clean ones, Aya-kun. No mistakes, and deaths all made to look accidental or self-inflicted. The first was one I took down with a poisoned dart that can’t be traced. And Ken got the femoral artery of the second with her own knife—” 

“And I drowned the third. Kritiker dumped the body and taxi in the river with his victims.”

“Right. Exactly. We did things right. Any loose ends at all and Kritiker took care of them. So, why have these been flagged all of a sudden?”

Aya didn’t respond for a moment, looking back at the screen. Then he turned to Omi. “When did you say the cases were re-opened?”

“Two days ago,” Omi repeated.

“And Manx called yesterday to say what again?”

“To open the shop as usual and that she’d be by with files for our next job. Said it’d likely be afternoon and asked that we be ready.”Aya held his gaze long enough for Omi to feel his chest constrict under the strain. 

“Did she say who—“

A loud clanging downstairs cut off that question and Omi jumped like a sprung coil. That had been a heavy-fisted knock against the metal shutter over the entrance to the flower-shop. Omi looked at the clock on the wall, confused. They didn’t open until 8:30, which was still some time off. Glancing back at Aya, though, he found him staring hard toward the shop. Then the man reached over and took hold of Omi’s wrist.

“Do you have your cell phone on you?” When Omi said yes, Aya let go of him and stood up. “I can give you five minutes. Clear your PC and go. Not the backdoor but the window in Kudou’s room. Once you’re clear, contact Naoe and say you need a place to lay low. Then destroy the phone.”

Omi froze. “Did you say contact—“

But Aya only glared at him and said ‘go,’ mission mode set in, robotic and cold. 

“Ken-kun and Yohji-kun?” He shot back quickly as Aya made his way toward the stairs.

“Kudou’s already out. Grab Hidaka if you can.”

And like that he was off, moving fast, not even sparing the time to watch Aya leave the room. Five minutes wasn’t enough to do what needed to be done and think, so he didn’t; he just took what he’d been told and ran up the stairs with his laptop in hand. Luckily Ken’s door was unlocked when he got there or he would’ve bruised himself against it. He busted in to the man jumping up in bed, a gun in his hand.

“Ken-kun,” Omi said firmly, and the man’s eyes cleared bit, his finger moving away from the trigger. “Get up. We’ve got to go. Now.”

“What?” He said but he was already on his feet. They’d been at this too many years, living on a wire; those who hesitated did not often survive. 

“The backdoor is surrounded. We’re going out Yohji-kun’s window.” Omi told him before turning on his heel and crossing the hall. As Aya had said when Omi opened the door he found the room empty of its occupant. No time to ponder why Yohji wasn’t here or where he’d gone. No time to try to contact him either. Hopefully, he’d just stay gone until things died down.

But what things? And would they die down?

Omi shook his head. No time for that now either. He hurried to the window and looked out, saw that there was a fire ladder against the brick of the building there, which stopped well before the first floor. Weird. How we’re they supposed to get down? Then Omi realized this ladder wasn’t for getting down but climbing up. It ran up past the third floor beside what had to be Aya’s bedroom window to the roof. So the escape route was what? From the roof to? Ah, there, the building beside this one. They’d have to jump. Fucking lovely.

Omi sat down then on the bed and opened his PC. Depending on who had come for them, and their level of curiosity and skill, there was enough evidence of Weiss’ digital activity accessible through this thing to damn them…if they weren’t damned already. Even if they were, though, there was no need to make it easier to bury them. Omi had to do something—and he only had two minutes to do it. He cursed under his breath and began typing fast.

Ken was in the room now, pants and gloves on, jacket zipped. Omi didn’t doubt the man had a gun shoved somewhere and at least one knife. He only glanced at Omi as he stalked to the window and pushed it open.

“Ken-kun, I need another minute to corrupt the drive in my room so it can’t be accessed if they take it.” He couldn’t reach the thing to physically break it into pieces so he’d have to do his best to fuck it up from here via the LAN.

“Aa, got it.” He was scrounging around in Yohji’s room now and came to Omi’s side once he found what he was looking for. He placed the small pistol by Omi’s side. “Take this, then, and I’ll go first. Aya and Yohji?”

Omi hardly had the brain space to form an answer. “Aya-kun’s buying time. Yohji-kun’s MIA.”

Then Ken was at the window and crawling out, proving just how capable he always was. Absorb, adapt, and—most important of all—scatter: smart teams made themselves too many moving pieces to pin down. And Ken was sure to clear any obstacles on the way.

“Meet up at safe point three?” The man asked, leaning back in briefly through the frame. 

“Five,” Omi said. He was unwilling as of yet to give into his suspicions but he didn’t dare to ignore them. Better to meet up at a location they’d set up for extraordinary circumstances and that remained undisclosed to even Kritiker.

“Ok. See you there. And you better be in one piece.” Then Ken was gone and Omi wanted to laugh hysterically but there wasn’t time for that either. His fingers were flying, doing all he could to destroy his own systems, setting off the programs he’d prepared to run like wild fire through data and key components of code.

There were discernible voices in the shop now, louder but also far too calm, and the fact that there was no scuffling sounds or anything reminiscent of violence worked at his nerves—because if they weren’t being attacked outright then…

Done! Omi let the motor whirr for a moment that felt like an eternity then he looked about and found an ashtray with water pooled in it. That he poured down into his keyboard, right into the body of his machine, before tossing the hardware away. He wrinkled his nose at the smell of the dirty ash, hoping it had been enough to ruin something important. Then he grabbed the gun, made sure its safety was on, and shoved it into the waist of his pants against his hip as he stood and fled. 

He was out the window following the same path Ken had taken a minute before, praying he didn’t run into anyone he’d have to shoot on the way.

Chapter Text

Yohji leaned back against the kitchen counter and took a sip of the 2-dollar coffee he’d picked up on the way here before glancing at his watch. Nearly 8 am. He’d rounded out the hour on this nonsense. If he didn’t finish up here soon, he might be late for his shift, or worse, the blood spatter would set into the fabric of his pants. This guy had five more minutes then to collect himself; after that Yohji would start removing things from the fingers up.

<Hullo darling.>

Yohji nearly spilled down his front when a nasally voice chortled in his head. He looked at the kitchen entryway. Well, well, look what the cat dragged in. The man was in black, nondescript clothes instead of his typical green jacket, with a scarf folded over his impossible, orange hair. Like Yohji in his own dark slacks, gray shirt, and close-fit leather jacket, it looked like he dressed to try blending in. Like he could ever. 

<Schu. Why are you here?>

<To surprise you.> That inner voice laughed and glowing, manic eyes met his. <Would you believe that? No?>

Yohji sighed. He was not in the mood for games. <I’m a bit busy at the moment. Can whatever it is wait?> 

<Ah, yes, what with the torture.> Yohji watched Schuldig take in the mousey man tied to a chair in the middle of the room, too occupied with bleeding and groaning to make a fuss again about someone showing up in his kitchen unexpectedly. <But I am busy, too, you see.> When Yohji raised an eyebrow, Schuldig answered the implicit question with a careless gesture toward his clothing then toward the man. <I am tracking someone for Crawford.> 

Ah, too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence, then. 

<What is he?> The man hadn’t yet said, and now Yohji’s interest was more than piqued. 

<Stupid, clearly. What else is uncertain. A double agent? He claims Esset but that is somehow…>  

Yohji frowned, waited. 

<False.>

Ah, well wasn’t this just getting worse.

<The girl is here?> Schuldig came closer now, close enough Yohji could feel the heat of his skin, and reached a hand into Yohji’s pocket to pull out his smokes. Goosebumps ran down his back at the proximity, but Yohji didn’t waste energy warning the man off when all he did was leer around the cigarette between his lips. That first exhale of smoke, though, was a gasp, and Yohji was sure his train of thought had been followed right down to the darkest of places.

<Aa, she should be here, somewhere.> The burning smell of smoke combining with the sharp, metallic scent of blood helped Yohji refocus, tearing his eyes away from the other man to look back at the tied agent. <Aya saw her come here late last night, though this guy isn’t telling.> 

<Raze the fields by picking guarded flowers? Very stupid, indeed.> There was a moment of silence between them, standing side by side as they considered the mess at hand.

<I’m not supposed to kill him yet.> Yohji admitted, and this time it was Schuldig who shivered. He felt it even through the layers of clothing he wore. Then words crawled through Yohji’s head, insidious, eminent, making him swallow hard before adjusting himself. 

<So you will be punished.> 

Yes. Like that night, weeks ago already, when he’d last worked Weiss’ leader up into a terrible fury. The chase had not lasted nearly long enough before Aya cornered him in that mass of sweat and whiskey. The man hadn’t wasted any time, either, in slamming Yohji face first into a wall before slamming full force into his lower body, growing crueler as Schuldig egged him on. The energy in it had been dangerous with promise, building toward god knows what—until Omi and his little boyfriend had blustered onto the scene and cut things short. 

Not that Schuldig had been any less gleeful to spot the littlest Weiss with a member of Schwartz by his side—though he wisely saved any gloating at eminent chaos for Yohji alone. And luck had been on their side. By the time Schuldig had proven himself smarter still by going docile and pliant at Aya's feet to break the news, he could confidently report that of the escaped couple only Omi had recognized someone and that it was only Yohji who had been recognized. Still, Aya’s anger had chilled from being discovered, and the man lost his focus: he dismissed the telepath without any repercussions and finished much too quickly in Yohji’s ass before taking him home.

Maybe this time though, maybe this time there’d be—

<Focus, lover. Or he might bleed out too soon.> 

The sardonic laughter that accompanied that thought had Yohji setting down his coffee. Schuldig was right. The agent’s five minutes were up.

<What do you need from him Schu?>

<The usual. His orders. His contacts. Networks and plans.>

Yohji nodded, then stepped forward and kicked the leg of the chair, shaking the man who he’d tied to it torso and legs with the thin wire from his watch. The man’s wrists, bound in his lap, leaked blood from where he’d strained against the bounds earlier, trying to free the hands secured in his lap. At the second kick, those eyelids finally flickered, but they didn’t open. So Yohji wrapped a wire around the man’s exposed neck and flexed his biceps to draw it taut. 

People were predictably instinctual when their airflow was cut off and, as anticipated, the agent come to, first slowly, then in a start, tied hands beginning to claw for purchase as his body twisted for breath. Yohji kept his hold until he saw desperation had properly refocused the man to the situation at hand.

“Hey, hey,” Yohji crooned, crouching down to look at the agent’s face now that it was red and puffed and gasping. He clicked his tongue in disgust at the wide-eyed glare he found there. So angry, this one; so shocked and accusing. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said, “I’m not the one using innocent girls in plots against shadowy, underground organizations.” That earned him a series of curses, those bloodied lips pursing as if to spit at him. Yohji didn’t have time to shift aside before a flash of light brought Schuldig up beside him, the knife in his hand hooked into the corner of the agent’s mouth.

<Should I take his tongue?> It was a tempting offer, but Yohji warned Schuldig off before he turned the blade. There were better ways to make the agent cooperate, ones that wouldn’t send him into shock, or worse, have him bleed out faster than they wanted. 

Yohji tightened the garrote again and waited through the groaning until the man’s eyes nearly rolled, then loosened it just enough before tightening again—he continued until he could see understanding light at last in the agent’s eyes. Just as he’d been certain upon first meeting that this man was no one good, and that he had definitely put his hands on things he shouldn’t, Yohji was now more than certain he’d cooperate.  <He will be docile now> he informed Schuldig, who smirked. 

<Are you with mind-reading power as well, now?>

<I don’t need powers to know what people are thinking.> No, there was little perplexing left in most people. Not after the bored repetition of life suffocated the intrigue. And killers like this agent here were no exception. Often, they were worse—arrogance making them thrash and hate against their own weakness. So exposed…so easily made to hurt…so sure they couldn’t be… 

Yohji felt Schuldig shift behind him.

No, Yohji didn’t need powers to gain anyone’s cooperation or know when they’d give it. Lurking in corners all these years, close enough to smell prey who never sensed him coming, had taught Yohji that if you yank hard enough on the strings, anyone could be made to do what they were once unwilling.

He began the interrogation anew.

“Who do you work for?” The weight of Schuldig’s attention in his head dissipated as soon as he asked, and he knew the telepath had turned his attention to the task at hand. No more need to put up with stubborn lies or wheezing confessions, then. The agent was conscious and focusing on the questions, so they’d have their answers whether he had the strength to speak them or not.

<He is not a double-agent, Kudou. No, he is an insurgent. Kritiker but not your Kritiker, and Esset but not my Esset. There has been a break, and an insurrection. A new joining of power.>

Yohji grunted when that blow landed, and went to work immediately to breathe around it since he didn’t have the capacity to process it right now . 

“And I’ll asked again. Where is the girl?”

<Safe. In the apartment next door. Drugged and tied but otherwise untouched.>

Some relief at last thank god. He didn’t ever want to know how Aya might’ve reacted if the answer had been anything otherwise, not if just suspecting she was with a regular man had left gouges in Yohji’s hips that wouldn’t heal for a week. 

Schuldig let out a low sound that sounded distinctly amused, and Yohji blinked, perhaps for the first time in as many minutes. 

“And why did you take her?”

The agent glared again but it was clearly petulance, not resistance, which was why Yohji found it strange that a cold fury began to build in his head. It made more sense when he realized that the fury wasn’t Yohji’s emotion but—

Too late. A heartbeat and the man in front of him moaned low and terrible before his eyes rolled up into his head. 

Yohji sent an inquiry to Schuldig but the answer was hard to follow, like a foreign language or a radio signal he couldn’t quite catch, and it only grew more jumbled when the agent began jerking and thrashing against his bounds. Another heartbeat, and foam began to bubble around the edges of his mouth. Then a wide-eyed, voiceless scream, and an unmistakable terrible odor. Yohji stood up and stepped back with a grimace when the agent went slack, his bowels releasing in death. 

<He tried to hide from me.> The telepath hissed, curses flooding in to occupy the shocked silence in Yohji’s head. <Or something did. So I ripped it from him.>

An explanation that really wasn’t, and then Schuldig was pushing fingers into Yohji’s hair at the side of his head in a gesture utterly unfamiliar to them both. Yohji almost jerked back but the glow in the man’s eyes—crazed, furious—held him still. He needed permission and Yohji gave it; and images poured in. Clear as if they were projected on a screen, but worse, because it contained fragments of sensations that no movie, no matter how realistic, could. 

Yohji clutched at the man’s hand, teeth clenching as the details crowded, flowed, piled; the agent had been a low thing, expendable in the great scheme of it all, but as low things do, he was able to see and hear all the more for how he was overlooked. The now-dead man had known enough to tell them that this new faction was more connected than Yohji or Schuldig could have guessed. A combination of talent between two competing organizations ravenous for a new world order. They were willing to do whatever it took to achieve it.

<The game is changed around us. It matters not if we touch now and are known. So, politics be damned. They are coming for us all now, Weiss and Schwartz. All is at risk.> 

Yohji staggered under the assault of foreign sensations, a terribly sour taste growing in his mouth, and the telepath caught him up and brought him close to steady him, nose to his neck. The heat was a shock; the smell of cloves centering. When was the last time they had touched like this, skin to skin? Decades? Decades. Had they really ever?

<They want him, Kudou. I saw in that fool’s head. They know he works across loyalties, and they want those years on their side. They plan to convince him. To force his hand if they cannot. It is why the girl is here.>

At another time, in another life, Yohji may have had any number of questions burning through his mind, desperate to know all he could of yet another evil faction and its plots. But he didn’t. He had only very few thoughts in his head, prime among them Aya. He placed a steadying hand on Schuldig’s shoulder and pushed him back enough to see his face, getting some space.

<Is he safe?>

The man shook his head, orange hair fraying around the mussed scarf as he frowned. 

<I do not know. The asshole here knew only to wait for a call. That they would move on the Weiss kittens today. He did not expect that he was seen yesterday, nor that someone would come looking today.>

And now the world was back in full color and his heart was in his throat. 

Yohji remembered the message from Omi about a job he’d seen this morning and whipped out his phone from his jacket pocket. When he’d checked with Aya before he left the Koneko and been told he had till afternoon before Manx showed up, Yohji had only taken heed of the time limit he had been given. Now, though, the details of the exchange tore through his mind—he picked them over for new details, came up with bones. 

His finger was already on the fast-dial when he spotted another message from Omi, this one delivered fifteen minutes ago and still unread. Why hadn’t he felt the phone vibrate? He should have felt it. He opened it to find it contained only three characters and knew then he’d wasted too much time here.

— S P 5 —

Swearing aloud, he called each one of his teammates knowing it would be for naught but having to try anyway. Omi’s phone didn’t even ring before the not-in-service message, which was all the confirmation Yohji needed to shove his own phone into the sink, turn on the water, and run the garbage disposal. The sound of twisted broken metal screeched into his ears.

It was time to go. <You coming with me, Schu?> He didn’t have enough information to assume anything, but safe point five was their most secure location. It was a last resort. It was unlikely, then, that Omi expected Kritiker to be on their side. So Yohji took SP5 for what it implied: throw away the trackers, keep on the move — we’re being hunted.

The man stared at his own hand for a minute, the one that had released Yohji’s hair, before he smiled and nodded. <Yes, I am going. The little ones have been rubbing against each other for months, so surely Bombay would not object?>

<Don’t know and don’t fucking care. Let’s get the girl and go.> A low laugh was the only answer to that as he cut his wires from the soiled body, shoved them in a pocket, and stalked from the kitchen.

 Yohji was out of the apartment and at the door next-door before he realized he had forgotten—Schuldig was there, dangling the key he needed in front of his face. For a moment his vision narrowed on it, the world tipping into the dark smears on the fingers holding it, before the presence in his head pressed, hard, and Yohji refocused.

<You might relax the face, my love. To not frighten the girl any more. She is awake and….curious about the noises next door.>

Ah, fucking wonderful. So much for rushing into the room to free her and gaining her trust in the heat of the moment.

Yohji removed his bloodied gloves and went to composing himself, only to be distracted again by the way Schuldig hovered. Glancing out of the corner of his eyes, he gauged the proximately of the man’s face, the wicked set of his mouth. They were facing new realities—the both of them. But there were still lines that could not be crossed. 

As if deeply amused by that thought, Schuldig reached out a hand and stopped just short of running his fingers down the skin of Yohji’s cheek to wiggle them.

<I prefer to be stepped on, lover, not gutted.>

Teasing psychopathic bastard. <Be good Schu. Be good and I’ll see that you’re accommodated.> 

The tension was slowly ebbing from Yohji, enough so that he felt he could deal with an innocent.

<No need to bribe me. I do not plan to *hurt* her.>

A female innocent.

<No playing either.>

Family innocent.

The ridiculous man pouted but Yohji ignored him to open the door with the key he was given and step in, leaving Schuldig to wait in the hall.

Chapter Text

The inside of this apartment was darker and smaller than the one where they’d killed the agent. A studio, with a bed taking up most of the space of room, the curtains drawn and lights off. There, a struggling figure atop the bed, making pitiful keening sounds. When he turned on the lights of the room, wild eyes locked on him, staring through a mess of long, dark hair. Blue eyes, nowhere near as deep or intense as her brother’s. They were watery and soft, haunted. 

“Oh princess,” Yohji sighed, looking over the bindings holding together her wrists and ankles, the gag shoved in her mouth, “how did you end up in this mess?” He tried to smile gently as he approached, his hands held so he could show her he didn’t have any weapons or ill intent, but the fear remained palpable.

<She is like a rabbit, cowering. The fear is sharp like piss.>  

<Schu, don’t be cruel.> The other man scoffed, loud enough to be heard through the door. It seems he’d realized this wouldn’t end with them turning the girl loose. Some shadowy faction had tried to use her as a bargaining chip against Aya. She was exposed and vulnerable, so she was a risk—one that would be coming with them, one way or another.

<What is cruel, hm? I say it is love that is cruel. Otherwise why all these rules and burdens?>

Yohji couldn’t answer that. He didn’t know either why he had to be here now, responsible for another young woman’s life, but here indeed he was. And as they were as short on time as patience, he’d rather not think too much about it, or any redheaded asshole at the center of it.

He reached for the girl on the bed and saw the fear dig itself deeper into her face. “It’s okay, Aya-san. It is Aya, right? Your name?” Recognition there, but only within the fear. “I know because your brother sent me. I want to take you to him.” But the girl only struggled harder against her bounds, moaning. The spit dribbling out onto her chin made Yohji want to sigh again.

<She does not believe you.>

<Clearly, you ass. Stop distracting me.> At the least, he wanted to get the gag from the girl’s mouth, seeing how pitiful she looked struggling to scream around it. But for the precise reason that she was trying to scream, he couldn’t. 

“I’m a friend,” he tried, “What can I do to prove it to you?” Schuldig coughed in the hall as he shared a snide thought that most of Yohji’s friendships involved sucking dick and taking it up the ass, which was of no use here. Unhelpful, but Yohji let it slide. As long as Schuldig was amusing himself by insulting Yohji, he’d stay focused and out of trouble. 

<Trouble? Me, trouble?>  Yohji had to resist rolling his eyes at the affronted tone. It had been a careless thought, that, and he had the distinct feeling his time was cut even shorter because of it. <It is this. This which is…it is dull. Hurry.> The edge had set in, now, petulant and threatening and aimed at Yohji as if he had anymore leeway in this, as if his own temper wasn’t fraying. 

<If you can do any fucking better, Mastermind, to get her to calm down and follow us, why don’t you do it?> Schuldig wasn’t all that charming on the best of days and the last Yohji checked his talents didn’t extend to brainwashing. <Or did you want to carry her out of here unconscious?> That cut whatever the man was going to snap back with off prematurely, likely as the consequences of Aya finding out ran through his head. He was probably pouting now, for real, which did not bode well for anyone.

<Show her the bar in your ear. And that is the last I help you, since I am both useless and trouble.>

Now Schuldig had his gratitude. <Thanks Schu. Get her bag if you can on the way out?> He had the distinct impression he’d been flipped off as Schuldig faded from the door, but Yohji was too busy dropping to his knees by the bed to pay it any mind.

Now that he wasn’t looming over the woman, he pushed his hair behind his ears so the long bar there could be seen clearly. “Here, Aya-san, look. I’m not lying. I do know him and he did send me. See this earring? He gave it to me.” More like demanded Yohji wear it but he didn’t need to get into that.

It took the woman a few moments to stop struggling long enough to look at him but when she did her expression changed in such a way he knew he’d gotten through. How could she not recognize what used to be her own earning, the other half of which would have been in her ear when she woke up from her coma? Yohji would comfortably wager hefty money she’d kept hold of that bar the years since—just like her brother had kept this one, wearing it as he’d killed in revenge for all that time she slept. 

“I’m going to untie you now.” And he slowly took the bindings from her, alert all the while should she try to come at him or make a run for it. As soon as her hands and ankles were free, she scooted back from him until her back hit the headboard. There she drew up her legs, crouching protectively as she untied the gag from her mouth to take a heaving breath. 

“How do you know my brother? How did you find me?” The young woman’s eyebrows were furrowed in distrust as she wiped at her face with her sleeves, and now Yohji could make out the resemblance between the siblings. His heart ached to see it. 

“I work with him. He’s the one who tipped me off that there was something off about the man you were with. So I came here to check it out, and well.” Yohji knew the girl had been updated when she left the hospital, years ago now, that while she was in a coma her family’s killers had been justly punished and that her brother had worked as an agent to see to it. He also knew that she had been told that under no circumstance would she ever see that brother again. What Yohji didn’t know was what she had been doing in the time since then or what she might think about all that had happened. 

She seemed calm enough, in any respect, to be hearing about her missing brother from someone who claimed to be a coworker; the look on her face, though, said she was clearly unsatisfied by the little he’d said. Her mouth opened slightly, pursing as she worked at straightening her sweater, patting down the legs of her pants, and Yohji sensed the questions—the many questions—at the edge of her lips. He spoke quickly to cut them off. 

“Now I know this might sound strange, but we can’t linger here. And your brother’s waiting. So, will you come with me?” She appeared more than ready to resist, so Yohji made her an offer—a last ditch effort before he did something unthinkable and let Schuldig have a try. “Come, and I will answer any questions you might have on the way.”

She looked hard at him for a moment, suspicion in her eyes—how lucky for Yohji that the Fujimiyas shared a stubborn streak. “You swear you can take me to my brother?” He nodded immediately, said he swore. He’d swear to finding her a unicorn if it meant she’d cooperate. And after a long minute the woman finally nodded and climbed off the bed.

Yohji kept an eye on her as she looked about for her shoes while he checked in with Schuldig next door. The man was too distracted to share any details but he seemed to be in much better humor—which also meant they should leave very very soon. Yohji focused his own thoughts as a last ditch effort, telling Schuldig that they were going ahead and would wait for him in the car.

The young woman was shaky on her feet but she managed to find her boots near the curtained window. There was something in those boots, big fucking leather things for stomping and maiming, that was too much like her brother. Yohji almost laughed as he imagined the agent struggling to pull them off because he couldn’t tie her ankles together otherwise. Thankfully, the only thing he did pulled off were her shoes—and for that he’d suffered appropriately. 

“So where are we going?” Yohji came to to find the sister standing a careful distance from him, too tense and giving him a side-eyed look. What had his face looked like in that moment of distraction? He shook himself internally, brought out a worried yet good-humored grin. 

“How about first we get away from the baddies, huh?” Yohji had already said more than he was comfortable with in trying to calm her down. Who knew who was watching or listening to these room. It hadn't escaped his attention that Schuldig had been uncharacteristically nonverbal since he’d arrived. 

He must have managed to sound sufficiently conciliatory because the woman’s hackles went down and she finally allowed him to herd her out of the apartment. Yohji smelled gas as they passed the apartment with the agent’s body, and for that moment Schuldig was clear and heavy in his head with glee, increasing Yohji’s urgency. He used the moment of connection to repeat what he’d said earlier about waiting in the car—not because he thought Schuldig had forgotten but because he wanted the man to give them a few more minutes to get ahead. 

Yohji ushered the young woman down the hallway, down the stairs, and out the cellar door so they could avoid security footage at the entrance. When they got to the Porche and he opened the door for her, she flinched in such a way that Yohji was suddenly sure Aya had not gone unnoticed all those days he’d tailed his sister. The ass—if his car had been spotted, it was because he’d let it. Now who was the one playing with fire?

“Me. It is me.” That was a surprise. Yohji turned to see Schuldig saunter toward them, smiling. It was a shame that the only smile he had was predatory. The girl bulked.

“That was quick.” And anticlimactic. But the smile twisted terribly, and Yohji sighed. He’d jumped to the wrong conclusion. They’d best be on their way then. Yohji turned back to the girl beside him and gestured into the car. “It’s okay,” he tried, “he’s with me. Another friend.” The word ‘friend’ made Schuldig laugh again but thankfully only in Yohji’s head.

“Hullo girlie. Hurry, would you, and get in? The master riles when we keep him waiting.” Schuldig waved a handbag at her that he threw into the backseat once he was in the passenger side. Something in that, whatever it was, seemed to reassure the sister, because once Yohji pulled up the driver’s seat so she could, she climbed in after the bag without further hesitation.

Yohji re-adjusted the seat back into place and sat down at the wheel, moving the rearview mirror so he could catch her gaze. “Okay back there?” There was something imperious about the way she’d arranged herself even in that cramped space, the straightness of her back, the fold of her hands over her belongs, the tilt of her chin and the narrow angle of her eyes as she stared back at him. Family indeed. His gut clenched, and so did his hand on the gear stick. 

Schuldig’s fingers brushed against that hand, and the hair rose on the back of Yohji’s neck. Images now of Schuldig taking the girl’s cellphone from her bag and putting it on the dead agent’s body, of covering it in kitchen cleaner before turning on all the burners of the stove to spill nothing but gas, of lighting up one of Yohji’s cigarettes as he paced around, cutting open the furniture with a knife before taking that knife to the agent’s face. Then, on his way out, how he’d tossed his bic lighter into the mess. 

Yohji glanced at the man out of the corner of his eye and moved his hand away to start the car. He could see it for real now, the smoke and red beginning to leak from that window on the third floor.

Playing with fire indeed.

“Alright, then, princess? You’re free to ask whatever you want. But let me warn you now that if you’re asking, you better be sure you want to know because we don’t have time for any hurt fucking feelings. Sound good?” The girl Aya blinked rapidly at that and Schuldig laughed aloud this time before lighting up another cigarette.

<Who is trouble, then?>

Yohji snatched the cigarette away from the other man. He drew on it hard, before tossing it out the window. Then he adjusted the gears and hit the gas to back them out. The girl behind him jerked into his seat before gripping it near his shoulder. He saw those slim fingers pale under the strain, but there was so little room in his head, and none for sympathy. Blood and fear, destruction and pain, shock and horror—Schuldig shivered beside him, smiling like something loosed from hell. 

The car was clear so Yohji floored it, the sounds of sirens and burning behind them, off to take care of the others who had touched what they shouldn’t have dared. 

Chapter Text

Yohji barely blinked as they came up on their target location. He swung the car around smoothly into a nearby street, made a pass at a deliberate speed, and then hooked a left at the stoplight to drive them, not closer, but farther away. 

“Stay down, princess,” he said as he caught sight of the girl’s head in the rearview mirror. She had peaked up with the momentum of the turn, but when she caught him looking at her, ducked back into a slump below the window-line. “We’re not clear yet,” he added, hoping it would keep her out of the way for a few more minutes. He didn’t hope for more. Not when it was clear the knee in his seat as she resettled hadn’t been an accident.

“Clear of what? Where are we?” 

“On the way to the safe house, remember? Better to have you hidden until we get there.” Yohji didn’t usually prefer outright lies, but it was easier than disassembling at the moment. Especially since what he was doing right now might get them killed.

<Shu?> he asked. The man in the passenger seat only shook his head.

<Not close enough with the noise.>

Fuck. 

He turned the car at the closest intersection and then did so twice more to close the distance again. “Are we…going in circles, now?” Yohji ignored her. There was nothing else for it but to drive right past the front of the Koneko and pray there wasn’t anyone laying in wait.

<There.>

A word like the siren in a storm. 

Schuldig grabbed at the door handle, and Yohji lowered his foot against the brake pedal slightly so the other assassin could hit the ground running. <Safe Point Five, Schu!> he sent after him  <Be there within an hour or I’ll fucking strangle you.> Then Schuldig was gone, and Yohji was back on the gas hard enough to shut the door the other man hadn’t as he lept clear.

 Yohji’s gut was screaming at him to stop, to jump out weapon drawn along with Schuldig to see to matters himself, but he wrestled down the impulse. He knew he had another job in this, one for which Aya would never forgive a fuck up. Not that knowing stopped the dark emotions that clawed at his throat, nor how they only grew darker when he glanced again at the young woman in the mirror. She was sitting upright now, arms folded at her chest, staring back at him in what looked like consternation.

“He’ll meet us there,” he said and turned his eyes back on the road. Apparently, though, she wasn’t having it.

“You said I can ask whatever I want. I thought that meant you would answer.”

“I am answering.”

“You respond. Often dishonestly. You don’t answer.”

Yohji could’ve sighed. Instead he shrugged his shoulders a few times to loosen up and pulled out a smile. Time to face a Fujimiya temper, then, with none of the potential benefits. 

“What is it you want to know?”

“What’s going on, to start,” she said.

“Still putting that one together myself,” he confessed, and when she clicked her tongue in disgust, he lost control of the sigh he’d buried. “We’re being hunted. That means someone or something is likely trying to kill us.”

“Why. Why you? Why me?”

“Me? Because I’m a killer and a threat. You? Because you’re related to one and vulnerable.” On the list of things he probably should not say at the moment, that was close to the top. But fuck it. Maybe the fates of retribution would take the bait and have Aya coming for him sooner rather than later.

There was a lull with only engine and passing cars, then that refined voice, deep for her frame much like her brother’s, asked something unexpected.

“What kind of killer?”

Yohji couldn’t help it. “If you’re hoping I’ll say ladykiller, I’m sorry to disappoint.” He wanted to tease her suddenly. “I only murder those who deserve it, none of which I’d refer to as ladies.”

“That’s not what ‘ladykiller’ means.” 

“Well fuck, now I’m embarrassed. I’ve been saying that shit for years.” If only she could be distracted so easily. 

With Schuldig gone, the smell of smoke and blood in the car had dissipated enough that others came to take its place. Warm laundry and soft beds, soap and sweat: he could now pick out the aura that clings to a woman’s skin wafting from the backseat. A previous life would have Yohji rubbing at the back of his neck with a different sort of anticipation. Now the intimacy was discomforting, sharp as the traces of Schuldig’s scent and his complaints about the burdens of—

“You are crude.” He met narrowed, blue eyes in the rearview mirror. Clearly that wasn’t a question.

“And you are not as afraid as you should be.” There was no trace of the fear that had tainted her demeanor when he’d found her tied up in that bedroom, and Yohji was not sure what to make of it. He’d noticed her stubborn courage—how could he not?—and how it seemed to be growing in the midst of this chaos. Maybe she was stupid. Or maybe she was not as unaware as they’d assumed. “How about the two of us get out and take a walk, huh? It’s not like we can drive up on the safe house in this thing anyway.” That would give him a bit more time to gauge her, and some much wanted space. 

“I know what my brother has done for me,” she said, again unexpectedly, “and I suspected what he still does.” It might have been a challenge but for how the steel in her voice had given way, and that she was also no longer staring at him.“They told me he was dead but I know him enough to know when he is around. He has often been around.” 

So much for dragging this out. 

Yohji pulled into a back-alley, turned a few times until he came upon a lot where he could pay by machine and park. The Porche stuck out like a sore thumb here, where the shanties leaned together as if trying to hold each other up, but he couldn’t risk parking further away.  The girl may have a surprising amount of backbone, but that didn’t mean she knew how to move across open space without getting recaptured or killed. He cut the engine, preparing to get out, but before he could she spoke into the new silence. It was then he finally knew it for what it was.

“You say I am not afraid? Well, it is that I look at you and,” she took a breath, “and I know he is nearby.”

Concession.

Yohji stepped out of the car only to reach back through once he’d moved the seat. He offered the girl Aya Fujimiya his hand, gloved but clean. She stared at it for a full second before she sighed, pushed back her hair, and took it, allowing him to help her out of the vehicle.

“Alright princess. You win. Now let’s go meet the rest of the assholes and get you filled in for real. Hopefully your brother will catch up along the way.”

Chapter Text

If Ken had to be attacked and chased from his own home, he guessed he was glad to have it happen on a weekday morning. There was currently a veritable sea of bodies to lose himself in at the station. He bought a ticket at a kiosk and then mixed in, pulling the hat he’d swiped as he walked lower to keep his face covered. Not that any security cameras on the ceiling were built to track someone closely in this writhing mass, but better safe than sorry. 'Better safe than sorry' was also why he stopped near a coffee kiosk after he entered the ticket gates, finding a semi-obscured corner to wait and watch.

On his way out of Yohji’s window, Ken had been sorely tempted to head directly to their safe point; one look over the edge of the roof as he skirted its edge, though, had dissuaded him. Around the entrance and backdoor of the Koneko, just as Omi warned, dressed in suits and looking far too organized and stiff for Ken’s comfort were dangerous-looking people. He counted ten off at a glance but didn’t stick around to confirm the numbers. His teammates had only the one way out, which would remain a way out only so long as it remained unnoticed. So Ken had done his best to stay low, stay fast, and disappear. 

His best, though, apparently hadn’t been enough. All the way in Shinjuku now, and still, at least three people too curious about their surroundings for comfort separated themselves from the crowd. They weren’t together but they lingered, and something in their mirrored tension shouted accomplice. His hands twitched in their gloves, ready, and he had to talk down his instincts. Drawing here would mean blood. Innocent blood. So Ken waited for that precious moment when all three pairs of eyes blinked just right, then he ducked his head and moved away from the kiosk, fading back into crowd, back through the people, back the way he came, right out of the station altogether. 

Keeping his shoulders hunched and hands loose, Ken crossed to another set of platforms entirely to squeeze into the sardine can of elbows and knees boarding a newly arrived train. From here he should be safe, he thought; from here he could work on getting back out of the city to meet up with the others. But, much to Ken’s horror, his skin began to itch in a way that could only mean…

From where was he was still drawing attention?  

Packed tight as all the passengers were, Ken was hesitant to look around too much lest he make a target of himself due to suspicion alone, but each passing second felt like an hour, felt like a noose tightening just that much more his neck, to the point where he couldn't stand it anymore and had to twist just slightly, just enough to see. And there. Over his shoulder, at an angle. Right there. 

Fuck.

Goosebumps shot clean down his back at those unmistakable glasses, that terrible smile. The train jerked and the bodies inside it jostled together, shifting them, and Ken began to panic in earnest. There was no telling how it happened, as a mass of limbs this cramped should have put up more resistance to movement, and yet already he was so fucking close Ken swore the man would soon be breathing down his neck. Two inches, two more inches, and they’d be touching and Ken would have to fight or die. Oh god but his heart was trying to blow out of his chest, desperate now to be out, out of the train, out of the subway, just out, now! Because he could just barely see that fucker’s hand, reaching out to grab hold and—

The train doors opened for the next station, and Ken poured out with the crowd, sweat clear down his back as he pushed past the bulk of them to fly down a flight of stairs, up another, and out into the world. He didn’t care if he stood out now, sprinting full speed across two intersections through suited men and women on their way to work. He just wanted to get away. Because the people who’d come for them this morning, whoever they were, might be a frightening level of professional determination, but they were nothing compared to the monster lurking back there.

Crawford. That had been Brad fucking Crawford. Schwartz' Oracle.

Ken raced across the way, down into yet another subway to board yet another train. His mind was going a mile a minute, sweat pooling on his forehead now and under his arms. Of all the people to run into on this hellish morning, he had to run into the leader of Schwartz. How the hell had he been found? Had he been followed or had that monster just been...waiting? And oh fuck, had he actually managed to put hands on Ken in all that?

Glancing around the train car he was in, Ken tried to breathe against the race of heart. He was safe now, he told himself, once, twice, three times. There is no threat. He looked around to convince himself, stared at the stranglers moving back out of the city at this time in the morning, just to make sure of their disinterest. The freeters and the housewives, the students. Ken took up a place by the door on the train and stared unseeing out the window, folding his arms together at his chest to feel the press of the weapons on his hands. He had gotten away, he repeated, a mantra now, and bid his heart slow down. 

They’d left their phones when they'd fled, left anything and everything really, so they couldn’t be traced. They scattered as they always did, knowing they'd have to trust: trust each other to protect, to survive, and, most of all, meet up at one specific, predetermined, secret location. And now, whoever was waiting, whoever was still on their way…

Staring out the window, feeling the pound of his stubborn heart against his weaponized gloves, it hit him sudden and unwelcome, running through like raw vinegar through his bowels. It was a race then, wasn't it? Against time; against a potentially-oncoming, vicious enemy. Because no, Ken couldn't be sure he’d not been touched back there, that that bastard had put those touchy, freaky hands on him to know things he shouldn’t. Because Ken had no other way to warn his teammates to be on their guard than to tell them directly.

Going out the window this morning, Ken had prepared for a long, hard chase. He had prepared to be clever, scrappy, patient. He had prepared to spend this day taking the long way around, back and forth, making sure any tracks he left were lost in noise and chaos. He had even braced for learning little to nothing of what was going on till evening, when he might find a teammate or two waiting for him in that rundown bungalow called ‘Safe Point Five.’

What he had not prepared for was to be hunted by Brad fucking Crawford on top of all that—and to be the one who may have just pointed the man to where they’d all be, sitting ducks.

Those damn eyes and smirking mouth...they reminded Ken—who always worked so hard to stay alive—of painful, inevitable death; of time like the noose he'd imagined back there around his neck. So he stayed on the same train pointed straight out of the city when he otherwise wouldn’t, disembarking as close to SP5 as he could get. Then he sucked in another breath and, with shoulders clear up around his ears, made straight through the alleys on foot. He was so tense by the time he arrived at the target location, hands too ready to release the blades built into his gloves and take on shadows, that he couldn’t help the sigh of relief that escaped him.

It had been a strategic move on Omi’s part, this place. In a cluster of similar houses marked for demolition, it was unremarkable and overlookable, and right under the nose, as they say, seeing as it was close enough to the Koneko to be considered negligible. Getting here from the Koneko, though, had proved to need a strategy in and of itself, hadn't it? One thrown off again once Brad Crawford had gotten close enough to smell. 

The clang as he slid the backdoor open made Ken cringe, distracting him from his thoughts about one danger for potentially more imminent ones. The roar of the nearby intersection was loud, he told himself, and this was a low-income, colorful area. All migrants, laborers and old folks. No one would hear or care to hear an old house rattle when they all rattled. Right? He shook his head at the anxious scenarios yet unabated, and ducked inside to dust and gloom.

No furniture to decorate the old dirt floor, not even a shabby chair or mat. Thin walls, tin showing from where plaster crumbed from them like mud. Ken’s stomach twisted as he glanced around, realizing no one was here when god knows there’d been plenty of time for at least one of them to be, before he saw him — the small figure standing near the corner in the back. 

“Omi,” he greeted, quickly rattling the door shut before rushing in. Relief was like a breath of fresh air that suddenly turned thick around him, his limbs freezing where they were posed. And that was when Ken realized to the stutter of his already exhausted heart that this was his second, and likely fatal, mistake today. “Prodigy,” he hissed, and then he could speak no more.

Chapter Text

Out of the shadows stepped not Weiss’ young strategist but a slightly smaller young man, this one slimmer with dark brown hair and narrower eyes. It had been so long since Ken had seen him, and even longer so up close, that it took his chest being squeezed for him to recognize just who he was looking at. 

“Prodigy.”

The years had not filled the Schwartz agent out much. What was he, 20 by now? More than. He definitely didn’t look it.

“Omi is…not here,” the no-longer-a-boy rasped, and Ken had to remind himself it wasn’t the time or place for sentimentality. He tried to jerk his arms, his legs, but his joints were held in place, his body covered in invisible concrete. 

This just had to be the way he fucking died, didn’t it? Spend a whole morning outrunning those bloodhounds, and even goddamn Brad Crawford, only to be crushed in his team’s own safe house by a telekinetic sociopath. At least the world was fair, Ken thought sardonically, to give the one Schwartz psycho with a personal vendetta against him the last crack. He could almost be okay with it, considering he was partially responsible for how the young man turned out. Nagi Naoe had been far too young to fend for himself when Ken had killed the only mother-figure he’d ever known—guilty though she was of terrible things—and it was little surprise he’d ended up…well. Not very nice.

The wet reflection of deadened eyes stared at him, and Ken did not know why, why it was taking so long to be hurt or ended, and it was only because he couldn't turn his head to look elsewhere that he saw them shutter as the door behind Ken clanked open.

“Ken? Why’s your fat ass blocking the door?”

Yohji!

The force around him wobbled and Ken swore he’d kiss his jackass of a teammate silly in thanks if they survived this. He took his chance and lept, but only made it half the distance he needed before he was caught again. But this time he had one bladed-fist cocked, and his feet weren’t touching the ground. 

“Oi, oi. Is that Omi’s little boyfriend in there?” 

The pressure was back, squeezing at his jaw when Ken tried to mouth off. Prodigy shifted positions from cocked sideways to facing out, too, slowly raising up his hand. 

“No, kid, don’t try to hold us both,” his unseen teammate continued, “you’re going to fail and die for it before anyone gets a chance to explain anything.”

“Omi?” 

“Don’t ask me, I’m still catching up.”

The backdoor closed again on a rattle, followed by rustling. He could hear Yohji fretting and tutting before he raised his voice. “What was your name again? Nao or something? How about we call a truce for now, huh? If you let Kenken down, we can hash out some stuff. You know, like why you’re here and we’re here, but the chibi isn’t.”

“Siberian.” 

That was his code name slipping over Prodigy's lips, and Ken gritted his teeth to hear it. Here they go. He was going to be squeezed, or worse, thrown, because Yohji didn’t know how to keep his fat maw shut. And now the asshole was stepping around into view instead of staying in the shadows. The idiocy of it had Ken using precious time to process, which is why he didn’t realize at first that Yohji was standing out and center, but facing him.

“What the fuck are you doing!” He hissed, blinking rapidly. 

“Seems you’ve got the use of your face back, great. Don’t leap on him just yet, Kenken. I want to know why he’s here. And I think he wants to know why we’re here, too.”

“He’s Schwartz!”

“So? He hasn’t killed you yet, and I’m sure he could’ve already. Don’t you wanna know why? Maybe he’s after something a little more interesting than your life.” 

It was when his punch landed with a satisfying suck of air in Yohji’s stomach that Ken knew he’d been released. “Asshole,” he bit out. To which Yohji wheezed, ‘kisses,’ before turing around to properly face the enemy combatant like he hadn’t lost his fucking mind.

“Schuldig’s on his way. You have a problem with that?” Ken didn’t know what to make of the announcement, and apparently neither did Prodigy, who kept his distance. 

“Mastermind,” he said in that stilted way after a moment, and Ken wanted to sigh. He kept expecting the shy boy he’d met at the orphanage all those years ago, and this was a far cry from that. “Oracle’s…tailing him.”

“Fuck,” said Yohji lightly, as if he didn’t mean it. Ken was sure he very much did. Because Ken definitely did. He reached a hand out and grabbed Yohji’s sleeve at this point, his own news about Schwartz’ Oracle on his tongue, but his teammate only gripped his hand where it was, held fast, and shushed him out of the corner of his mouth. “And you?” he said, continuing his conversation with the Schwartz member that was already here.

The young man shook his head. “I was…discrete. Omi called.”

“I see.” Though what he saw Ken had no idea. Nothing in those blank brown eyes staring them down budged either, nothing in that stiff posture gave anything away. “Did he say why, by chance?” 

“Weiss is…betrayed.”

Only Yohji’s grip on his hand kept him from pulling away. “Yeah, I’ve gleaned that much,” he replied. “I even know why. It’s everything else I want to know, the who’s what’s and when’s.” Prodigy shook his head, to which Yohji clicked his tongue. “So, you’re here now because…you’re with us then?” To the slight hesitation in that question, the enemy agent stilled, like he had sucked in a breath, and Ken sunk a bit down on his haunches instinctually. Then he saw the nod. Just the one, tight. And the world turned over again.

“Yohji, what—“

“Great. Schu is going to give himself a hernia laughing the rest of us into insanity. You, kid, stay there, okay? Seriously, don’t move. We’re not going anywhere, I swear, we just need to catch up real quick. Over here.” Then much to Ken’s growing annoyance and bewilderment, he was yanked a few feet away as Prodigy looked on dead-eyed.

“Well this is fucking weird.” Yohji whispered once they had some semblance of privacy.

“You’re telling me!” Ken took the hint and kept his voice low, his eyes flashing back to the threat at the back of the room. “Why am I not dead? How does any of this make sense?”

“Yeah well, seeing you float a foot in the air wasn’t on exactly my list of what to expect for the day either.”

“It’s a whole goddamn theme out here, Yohji. Where the fuck have you been? And what does he mean Weiss is betrayed?”

“I had some business.” And that was far too curt for Ken’s liking considering the circumstances. He narrowed his eyes at Yohji only for him to jerk his chin toward the backdoor. It was then and only then, he was ashamed to admit, that Ken noticed there was someone else in there with them. A woman with long brown hair and narrowed eyes, staring straight at them. 

Ken didn’t mean to say it, but out it slipped.

“I know you’re used to the act, but isn’t dragging a beard around at a time like this a little much?”

“A beard?” Yohji laughed when he said it but there didn’t seem to be any humor in it. Ken cringed, wishing he could both apologize and also change the subject. He didn’t want to have this conversation right now; hadn’t meant to insinuate that he would start it.

Not with the way the very sight of the woman had him recalling the previous night, and how Aya had looked right past him to close that door in his face, shutting Yohji in. It wouldn’t help him now to think of how neither of them seemed to care that Ken was standing there, nervous and expectant, gut clenching as everything he hadn’t known, hadn’t thought to know about his team of years and years had gone right over his head. Letting it bubble up right then and there when there was chaos enough to consider, to let himself be distracted by thinking about how the people he trusted with his life were hiding things, hiding many things, likely had been for a long time, didn’t trust him, didn’t—

“I’ll introduce you later, okay? Can you tell me what’s going on first though, how you got here and where everyone’s at?” 

Ken put it all aside. 

“People came to the Koneko, real early,” he began, and at Yohji’s eyebrows crinkling in went into a quick debriefing, keeping the embellishments to a minimum. It calmed him, in a way, to have something to do, a way to be useful. But also, this, this familiar act of being more than one person working with the details, more than one person coming up with a plan, a strategy. Ken had always worked best in teams—he was wired for them. Let Yohji add his two cents to this, he didn’t have to be alone in this, no matter how desperate the vie for survival. So as quickly as possible, he gave him the important information first, that is, the low-down on their pursuers—the make of their suits, the number, how they’d been at the front and back door, weapons drawn—before circling back to the initial encounter.

“Omi’s the one that woke me, had me jumping out your window for the roof. He said to come here, that he would follow after he crashed the harddrives, and that Aya was buying time. So we split. I’ve been on trains in and out of Tokyo losing my tail ever since.”

“The kid was the one that sent me a message, telling me to meet here, so I knew something had gone sideways, especially since he was already off the grid when I got it. I came as soon as I saw it, but had to tie up a few loose ends. Took some time. And neighborhood’s shit for parking.” 

“Yeah, well, it isn’t exactly Roppongi Hills.” 

“Your words, not mine.” Yohji made a show of glancing around the narrow space, clicking his tongue and grimacing at tin walls, the dirt on the floor, before fumbling at his own pockets. “What a pit. Think the brat could’ve at least set up some chairs or, god-forbid, a box or two if he was going to make us wait on him.” Ken had no idea what his teammate was searching for but he knew from the frown on Yohji’s face that he wasn’t finding it. 

“Why are you fidgeting? Stop it.” He got a dirty look for that, which he gladly returned before he swept his eyes over the man beside him. Nothing was sitting right about this. Not the hovel of a safehouse full of enemies and strangers instead of teammates, not the mute colors Yohji was wearing or the way his eyes kept flittering and his feet kept shifting. Ken felt like how he imagined a dog might feel, scenting traces of another’s markings in his territory. Yohji still hadn’t said where he’d been.

“Do you know what we’re running from, Yohji?”

A shot in the dark, but the question got his teammate to still. “Maybe,” he sighed, running the gloves of his hands up into his hair. “But the pieces are all mixed up and I haven’t sorted them out. I was hoping you’d have more details for me.”

“Could say the same to you,” Ken grumbled, and got a smile for his troubles.

“Great. So, we’ve no word on the chibi or Aya, nor what tipped off who about what, and on top of that there’s mister young-and-stoic over there staring us down like we’ve the answers to life. That about sum it up? We done flirting about it?”

“No. You forgot the girl over there.” Ken could feel a hole burning into the back of his head and when he glanced toward the backdoor, he found blue eyes narrowed on him in particular. 

“God forbid,” his teammate muttered before waving the young woman over. He smiled when she drew up close, but Ken didn’t think he looked happy. “Ken, I’d like you to meet Fujimiya Aya. Fujimiya Aya meet Ken.” 

The young woman, for her part, met his wide-eyed look with a nod, as if to confirm that yes, Ken was very welcome to swallow his tongue because he had indeed taken his final steps through into the twilight zone. Or fast on his way to the inner depths of hell. 

“Aya-chan here was kidnapped last night and, after some sleuthing, I managed to retrieve her. Good thing, huh? I’ve escorted her here to meet up with her brother.”

That bit of bullshit frankly answered a lot fewer questions than it raised. The last Ken had seen this woman, she had been a pigtailed preteen in a coma, hooked up to a machine by a nefarious group running experiments on her body. And now she was awake. Moving. Grown. Here? Just what the fuck was she doing here?

“Ken-san,” she spoke in a low tone, one that, frankly, unnerved him more than anything else that day, as she dipped her head politely. “No family name?”

“Hidaka.” He felt utterly derailed by her composure. “Not that it matters.” And his ears went hot when Yohji chuckled. Ken had the urge to punch the man again, but placated it by yanking him  in close by his elbow. “What in all the deepest, darkest fucks Yohji?” He grit in his ear. 

“A lot going on right now, Kenken, but I need you to trust me. And look out for the girl, okay? There’s a lot of people changing sides suddenly, and I can’t keep track of them if I’m too focused on—“ Then he went stiff and Ken knew the tell, the tightness of posture, the hard and unfocused eyes trained at the backdoor, and he didn’t need to be told to put his hands up.

“Hidaka-not-that-it-matters. If anything happens to her, it’s your neck and my balls.” Yohji swung an arm out and nabbed the girl by the arm, pulling then pushing her toward Ken, who barely had the time to catch her and step back before the door banged. He shoved the girl-Aya behind him before unsheathing his knives, his brain registering a gun flashing in the open doorway before the figure holding it flew off, as if it had been rammed by an invisible car.

Chapter Text

Aya sensed him before he saw or heard him. “Were you followed?” The man stepped into his room, his unblinking eyes staring down from the tilt his head, drawing Aya’s undivided attention. He watched the other man carefully, keeping his sword out and angled at his side, saw how Schuldig traced the blade with his eyes before slowly, so slowly, going to his knees. Perhaps he’d noticed the red smears yet wiped off on the steel edge. Perhaps he put it together with the carnage he must have encountered on the way in. 

“You cannot stay here,” the man said, his face now properly toward the floor. It was not an answer to Aya’s question, though. “More will come, Fujimiya.”

Turning away from Schuldig to grab a nearby rag off of his nightstand, Aya set to cleaning his blade. He had had time to think as he’d darted around his own home, killing marksmen that should never have known how to find him here and should never have gotten so far inside. They had been trained. They had been prepared. They had been too loud and too hesitant to be solely after death. He’d left their bodies scattered where they’d fallen, the first wave in the shop, the second in the kitchen, that last one on the stairs when Aya had missed his neck twice before getting the blade to sink in. If he hadn’t prioritized a brief water-break recovery before changing into proper gear, tougher pants and a long-sleeve shirt covered with a form-fitting jacket, the sword would’ve already been clean by now.

“Yes,” was all he said in response, but he heard the indrawn breath and felt the radiated disapproval. He glanced over at the other assassin, still kneeling beside the door, before reverting his attention back to his weapon.

“You cannot continue to fight alone. Not even here.” Schuldig took a moment to press against his mind, and Aya allowed him to present the flashes, vague images of dullest color, ghost-like with the barest vestiges of feeling. It was enough for Aya to recognize various people consorting, a few of them he knew were Kritiker or Esset, congregating without regard to organizational differences—none of them were theirs, which was only comfort in so far as one of their own hadn’t actively betrayed them.

The flashes made a point about new dangers, but they were not enough to explain them. They were definitely not enough to plan any counteraction. 

“I need more information.” And he knew that the best way to get it would be to wait for the next dispatch of agents who, sooner rather than later, would come to supply it. This time he would not allow them to surprise or rush him; he would leave at least enough of them alive to learn what this was all about and what he could do about it. 

“There are other ways to get it,” Schuldig smirked, but it looked like a sneer as always, mocking. Aya scoffed at him. Schuldig of all people, presuming to tell him his business. He slid his now-clean blade snuggly into its sheath before belting the weapon to his back. Next came the guns and knives, the later of which he sat down on his bed to strap first to his outer thighs.

“Why did you come here?” He asked the other man, who waited on his knees, now scowling at nothing in particular as he gathered his things. The last Aya remembered, he had forbidden Schuldig from setting foot on Koneko premises, for their safety as much as his.  

“Kudou,” he answered, keeping his explanations short. Aya usually preferred it that way. No excuses, no flourishes, straight to the point. But then he said, “he has the girl,” and Aya’s chest constricted.

His hands pausing on his knife belt, he stared at the other man and let the emotions flow through him: surprise followed by confusion, worry followed by dread, all of it swirling together into an icy hot fury. When he demanded Schuldig elaborate, the man sucked in a lungful of air and shivered, silent. 

Aya itched to pull his knife at the slight show of defiance, to angle it just so to make it clear that there was no ‘or else,’ on this, but Schuldig was quick to answer the impulse by inching forward into the room on his knees, the fabric of his pants scrapping against the carpet until he was right at Aya’s booted feet. There he sat back on his heels, smelling ripe with smoke, not just cigarrettes but bonfire and chemicals, particularly the mass of orange hair that fell about his shoulders. 

Aya didn’t hesitate now to grab hold of that mess with one gloved hand and yank. He forced Schuldig to turn his face up, to look him directly in the eye when he didn’t make any move to do it himself. When the man did, it was with a mad gleam that confessed chaos and death and nowhere near a proper level of contrition for any of it. 

“Where have you been, what have you done, and where is my sister?”

“Bossy,” Schuldig taunted, and Aya twisted his fingers sharply to make the man wince. He was in no mood for this, not when agents with unknown motives were on their way.

“An apartment fire. No killing. Well, a little killing. It was mostly Kudou.” Aya used his hold to tug the man’s head back at a sharper angle, making him hiss out in pain as more of his neck was exposed. “He took the girl toward your safe point five.” At those words, the panicked array of emotions settled a bit in Aya’s chest, allowing him to breathe easier, so he loosened his hold on Schuldig’s hair. He ran his fingers lightly through the strands on retreat and felt the man shiver again. 

“Don’t test my patience again,” he said before he pushed the man aside to get to his feet. He had to finish preparing.

At least Kudou had the sense to not bring his sister here, he thought as he rummaged in his drawers for his hand guns, quickly fitting them into the holsters inside his jacket. There were questions remaining, though. Like why Kudou had taken custody of his sister in the first place, and why he dared to involve her enough to bring her to a Weiss safe point. Aya could hazard a few guesses but he’d rather have confirmation.

<Agents approach from the front> Schuldig whispered in his head, on his feet now without having to be told. <They want you alive. Only you.>

Interesting, thought Aya. <Kritiker?> He had to be sure.

<Yes.>

He then debated three separate options, working quickly through the potential consequences. Option one, he could run. He could follow the path Hidaka and Tsukiyono took, get out in order to move more freely or regroup. But that way promised little in way of intel. He might even strand himself with no way to plan the next step. Or, there was option two: he could do what he had originally intended and hold his ground here, where he best knew the territory. With Schuldig here now, they might get answers more easily, if they could get the right person to focus on the right information at the right time. Narrowing down the targets wouldn’t be difficult, either. But this path required time and patience, and Aya doubted the agents had either considering how fast backup had arrived. Aya might just end up exhausted and overwhelmed, with nothing to show for it. Or worse, they might decide during the fight that they no longer needed him alive after all.

So that left the third option. Yes, perhaps that was best after all, especially now that his sister was involved…

There was a sound and Schuldig was suddenly standing in front of him, face impassive but eyes wide. He had his own weapon out but held down, aloft. 

<A fourth. What of a fourth option?>

Anger at the interference was tempered by curiosity as he read the posture of the man in front of him. Tense. But not defensive. Aya raised an eyebrow. 

<Crawford. We go to Crawford. Or have him come to us.> Schuldig must have sensed his resistance to that since he continued, the internal voice coming more quickly, empty hand coming up, beseeching. <He is no friend of Weiss, I know. But he is now at risk, too. Schwartz is also hunted. He will know. He will have no choice but to listen. To consider.> 

Crawford. Aya rolled that around in his head. The leader of Schwartz: a cunning man only interested in his own power. Nothing to this point seemed like it could possibly lure him to cooperate, so Aya had avoided him at every turn, ordered Schuldig to bury their connections, kept everyone else out of the man’s range, all in the hopes he didn’t catch on to the depths of their plans, or, if he did, turned a blind eye because it wasn’t worth the trouble. 

After all, what was a plot for freedom to a man like that, fast rising through the ranks of an organization keen to reward him with power for his ruthlessness?

<You’re sure Schwartz is also hunted?>

<Esset has turned on itself, just as Kritiker here. We are of the old guard, and expendable now.>

Not that they hadn’t expected something like this to happen eventually…but all at once, on both sides? There were even more questions now Aya needed answered.

Schuldig held his breath for a second, two, before he crowded in on Aya’s space again. <All is chaos. So it is a chance. Crawford will know things we cannot learn otherwise. Not here. And *not* at Kritiker headquarters.> Aya glared at the man for encroaching. Impudent. Those eyes were begging, and Aya felt his upper lip pull back in disgust and defiance. <If not us, they may have Crawford first. Then the others will be found. All collaborators. The kittens, too. Kudou. The girl. The one’s here want only you left alive.>

Before the man said anything more, Aya grabbed the neck of his shirt and bodily moved him to get some space. He didn’t like being manipulated; and here yet another person seemed to know how to push buttons he’d thought he’d hidden well. 

Being attacked in his own house, his plan were interfered with, being questioned. Doubt…risk…not enough information…

He ran a gloved hand up into his own hair to pull it at the roots. “Fuck.” And it was all he could say as he rolled the dice on the gamble and made for his window instead of his door.

Chapter Text

Schuldig was on his heels, not a word or motion or feeling that hinted at what he thought about the decision. Which was smart. If Aya had sensed anything at all from the man other than willingness to follow his lead, he might have been more than just tempted to kick him off the fire escape ladder.

As it was, they made it to the roof without any problems, made the jump to the building next door, climbed over the side of the roof there and went back down to ground-level via the escape stairs there. Schuldig hadn’t said they were spotted or followed, so Aya kept moving, jumping the last few steps into the alley, and, once aground, started jogging.

He left the task of watching the periphery to the man behind him, trusting that although Schuldig might test him, might even lie for his own perverse amusement, that he would not risk his safety. If only for Yohji’s sake. So, Aya didn’t worry about the agents at his heels and took a straighter path to the safe house than he would have otherwise. Schuldig had said ‘safe point five,’ which was only a few blocks away. He ate up the distance. 

Drawing up on the shack, Schuldig slowed down and gestured for Aya to do the same. <There are four people inside> he said, and before Aya could ask who, Schuldig darted forward to yank open the backdoor, silencer drawn. The bang of the door was enough to startle Aya, which saved him as he jumped to the side to line his back with the outer wall. He was missed by a centimeter as Schuldig was thrown clear before he’d managed to pull the trigger.

“The fuck! Who was that!” Ken. One of the four identified. Aya drew a pistol from inside his jacket and made to glance inside, but Schuldig was back, too fast for his own good, in the doorway again with weapon drawn. He stilled there, tense, with a none-too-pleasant snarl on his face.

“Everyone calm the fuck down.” Aya’s chest tightened. “Ken, back off. Schu.”A moment passed, nonverbal, and Schuldig snorted. 

“I cannot lower my weapon if I cannot move.” The smile he brandished was hardly an improvement to the snarl.

“Prodigy,” Yohji replied, “let him in.” And that’s when Aya’s mind whirled. 

<Siberian and Prodigy inside, with Kudou and the girl> Schuldig confirmed for him, and any reassurance he’d felt at Yohji’s voice dissipated.

<Bombay?>

<No Takatori brat.> Schuldig was brushing down his clothes, gun still in hand, making a show out of his displeasure at having been thrown. “Nice to see you too, Nagi dear. What brings you to this hell hole?” <Kudou asks if you will stay outside? He can send the girl to you.>

Yes…but where would they go? 

Schuldig sent him an image of his Porche, parked not too far, and how Kudou would give his sister the keys and an excuse before sending her out. The option caught in Aya’s throat. He could run with her before anyone else knew they were running; he could take her somewhere else. He could make sure she, at least, got away. 

But then what? 

Aya removed the safety from his gun, and Schuldig clicked his tongue before walking into the building, leaving the backdoor open. As Aya passed the doorframe behind him, he felt a distinct wave of tension and disapproval. Schuldig channeling someone else, because the man knew better than to throw his own feelings at Aya this way. It took only a brief glance to the right for Aya to find Yohji’s eyes locked hard on him and his face gone flat. He put a stop to that, pushing both men from his head as he turned his eyes from the man to Prodigy behind him.

His gun was steady as he used one hand to shut the door behind him while he sighted the unknown Schwartz agent over his weapon. 

Nagi Naoe was here, at their safe point. And Omi was not. That told Aya everything he did not want to know: the gamble he took earlier this morning had not been well thought out. 

Before he slept, Yohji had confirmed for him a relationship between Weiss’ strategist and Schwartz’ telekinetic, their Prodigy. Yohji suspected affection, but he had not been able to confirm to what extent. So when agents had come knocking at their door—though Aya hadn’t realized just yet what sort of collector they were—he’d taken a chance. How much did his Weiss teammate trust the Schwartz agent? And what kind, if any, protection would that stone-faced young man offer in return?

Here was Aya’s dangerously disappointing answer.

“Ran!” 

He didn’t dare look at her, but he did anyway. Eyes flickering to the side to catch her held fast by Hidaka, struggling against the hold. He could feel his hand tighten on his gun, his finger jerking to line up with the trigger, his heart racing even as his aim wavered when Hidaka hissed at her to stop. He could hear Schuldig saying something behind him, to the left, and Yohji responding to his right, in the front.

There was too little space in this room and too many dangerous people pressed into it.

“Quiet,” he snapped, but it didn’t help. It didn’t help at all. Not when all the hypotheticals in the world couldn’t have prepared him to be in the same room as his sister. Where she could see him. Reach out to him and touch him, if he allowed it. Where he could hear her, calling out for ghosts.

A blink and musk and smoke were in his nose. Aya grabbed another gun from inside his jacket with his left hand, and unlocked and aimed it right in the face of the man who had dared step up to him like this.

“Aya. Baby.” 

He flicked his eyes to the side briefly, just to confirm green eyes staring him down. 

“Where is Tsukiyono?” He demanded.

‘We don’t know yet,’ was an answer he didn’t want and Yohji knew not to give it. “Give me a chance to defuse this, Aya. To find out what’s going on.” It was that tone, that one that whispered to him in the early hours of the day when the room was still dark, and Aya let the man push the weapon out of his face so that he could come closer. “Baby. Please. Give me a chance to see if we can use him. Schu’s here, and you know he can help me make sure.” He could let it sink into him, to loosen his shoulders. But the way Yohji could sometimes grip him with a look and yank him by the gut did not account for the way his sister could so easily break at a moment’s notice.

She could not handle any more betrayal, and that’s what Aya was nearly sure he was seeing down the barrel of his gun.

“If you pull that trigger now Aya you better have a what next ready to go, because this whole shithouse is a tinderbox.”

He could hear his sister struggling against Ken, calling out for a man who was no longer here.

“I said, quiet.” He snapped, and for a blessed moment no one moved.

“That kid is no good to us dead, Aya. You know it. I know you know it. So give me five goddamn minutes to figure some of this shit out and see if I can better our odds. If it’s all for naught, I promise I’ll string him up for you. He won’t be able to dodge shit when you go to put one between his eyes.”

It felt like his instincts were trying to rip through his chest and out through his teeth when he did it, but he nodded to give Yohji the go-ahead. It took another second for him to will his body to lower his gun. But Aya needed information, and Yohji was good at getting it for him. So he would let him work.

Before the man stepped back, Aya turned and pinned him with a look. “Keep her clear.”

Then he kept careful watch as the people around him talked, as Yohji moved to block him from those eyes trying to dig something out of him. His sister had had enough bloodshed in her life, and he didn’t want to add to it but he would if it meant keeping her alive. No one that threatened her would survive him. Not then, not ever.

Chapter Text

“Ran!” 

Yohji shot Ken a scalding look, and he didn’t need to be told twice before he fastened a hand on the young woman’s elbow to yank her back. “Don’t get too close,” he warned her, and for the generosity he received a sneer. Those dark eyes dipped to narrow on Ken’s hand, only to return to his face in a way that made it easy to see the family resemblance. 

“Yes, rabbit, don’t get underfoot,” Mastermind grinned, his gun-holding hand making a shooing gesture, and Ken took another step back toward the wall, pulling the woman even as she resisted with him as he went. 

“Balinese…” he ventured, mostly out of professional habit.

“Do you always act like a rapid dog?” The woman in his grip was either stupid or insane, turning her ire on the orange-haired psychopath like that. No time for professionalism now; Mastermind had taken to smiling.

“Yohji,” he tried again, because fuck, this was the last place he wanted to be, between a Schwartz agent and Aya Fujimaya’s fucking sister, and if that stupid fucking blonde idiot didn’t do something to help soon than so help him god—

“Better a rapid dog than a quaking rabbit, no?”

The way girl-Aya’s shoulders straightened at that, and her lips parted. Ken clamped his free hand, quick, over her mouth, glove and all, and tried not to think too hard about it.

For a brief moment, suddenly, Ken stepped right outside of his body. Prodigy had gone robot still on one side, and Mastermind was leering with the imminent threat of pain, weapon in hand, on the other. In the middle there were his teammates, and that would have been a relief, if not for Aya standing silent and lethal as Death staring down the barrel of a gun, and Yohji locked on and non-responsive to other stimuli.

Yohji had said to protect the girl, but how was he supposed to do that, in this? He had little hope he could protect himself. 

Ken flinched hard when the orange-haired psychopath threw something at them, only for Yohji to catch it out of the air, apathetic. Said psychopath then slunk off to a corner to crouch down and fiddle with that sharp looking silencer. Ken tracked every minute movement, unblinking, hackles raised. He wasn’t prepared for an elbow to catch him in the side, and his grip on the youngest Fujima faltered.

“Ran!” She beseeched, turned all sharp angles and clenched fists, shaking out the hair out of her eyes. “Please.” 

Those words did not find their intended target. Only two men reacted, neither of them Aya, and the dull sheen in one pair of eyes as they narrowed on the woman was just as unsettling as the mania in the other.

Great, Ken shivered, just great.

“Tell me what’s going on. Ran. Or you. You said I would have answers, any answers I wanted.” Ken has never been particularly mean-spirited before, but he wished he had a gag suddenly because he was beginning to feel real claustophoic. “What there’s been so far is only whispering and misdirection,” she continued. “And violent, grabby men.” The sweep of her glare left no doubt in anyone’s mind just where the line had been drawn. 

“We’re just about to talk it out, princess,” Yohji spoke up now, with the kind of softness that usually hid the way he palmed a knife. “Just give us some time to answer you, okay? To clear everything up.” 

Ken tried whispering to the girl-Aya once more, to let her know it really wasn’t safe to keep butting in like this, but she just struggled against his hold again, even reaching out a hand.

“Ran, please do something.” 

Mastermind sniggered again from his corner, Ken cursed him an ‘asshole,’ and the Weiss leader snapped.

“Quiet.” 

His voice was dry ice threatening to burn. He didn’t glance in any other direction—not toward Yohji, not toward his sister—didn’t move, his jaw clenched tight. A stillness fell, tight.

They watched Yohji take stock; watched him shake out a cigarette from a pack that had appeared in his hand; watched him take a long draw and let it out as he walked forward, evenly, as if there was no rush to his gain; watched him nearly breach Aya’s bubble. 

Ken felt his heart leap into his throat and the young woman beside him gasped—whether at the speed or lethality of the response, Ken didn’t know. Aya had pulled out a second gun in the space of a blink, and aimed it steady in Yohji’s face, safety off. 

“Aya. Baby.” 

That stupid fucking asshole. He almost sounded bored.

Aya answered only with a flick of his gaze. The gun didn’t move, and neither did Yohji. 

“Where is Tsukiyono?” 

A fair question from the Weiss leader. Not that anyone had an answer for the man holding two others at gunpoint. The suicidal blonde man beside him only leaned in closer, whispering something in an exhale of smoke that obscured his features and words.

The memory of last night crawled itself up into the forefront of Ken’s brain. Aya’s hand on Yohji’s neck, the framing of that bedroom door as a half-dressed Yohji crawled into bed as Aya stared him down, dismissing Ken’s existence entirely. All of it superimposed on the scene before him now a sick sense of intimacy, one that had Ken feeling nauseated as he watched Yohji push the gun in his face aside and stepped up fully, close enough to speak directly into Aya’s ear. 

No one breathed. 

The second gun began to dip, Aya’s grip loosening. 

“Brother, what’s going on?” 

Ken winced but it was too late to try to shut her up. The slackening tension of Aya’s shoulders reversed course, the lowered gun re-aimed at Prodigy’s head, and Yohji shot them a look devoid of all emotion that made goosebumps run up Ken’s back. The man leaned back, away from their leader, long enough to puff again on his cigarette and stare at the metal slates of the ceiling. He appeared to think about something before he glanced toward them again, and then leaned back in to whisper something else in Aya’s ear.

Aya’s upper lip pulled back, clearly displeased, but after tense seconds, a minute even, he grunted and lowered the weapon trained on Prodigy fully, turning to the side so they had a clearer view of his back now. That’s when Yohji turned to the rest of them and smiled. A 180 in mood that was utterly chilling. Maybe the woman in he had a hold of realized, at last, what she was dealing with, because she sucked in a breath and stepped back.

“Let’s get some things out of the way, why don’t we, before someone gets shot that doesn’t deserve it,” Yohji offered, easy, relaxed, as if this was a chat in a bar over drinks and not a face-off between differing factions of assassins. 

“To answer your question, princess, about what’s going on. I have to backtrack a little, so bear with me, yeah? Ken there, and the two of us,” he gestured at Aya beside him, who now looked liked he’d vacated his body entirely, “live and work together. There’s one more of us, Omi, who is currently, and disconcertedly, absent. 

“Now, the man lurking over in the corner, the one who was with us in the car earlier.” He tilted his head toward the man nearby the backdoor and Ken bit his tongue to not ask what the fuck that meant. “That’s Schu. He’s a weird sense of humor so try not to encourage him. Or engage him. Or go anywhere near him, really. And,” he hesitated briefly when Mastermind gave him the middle finger, “ah, yes, Nagi. The boy staring over there. Nagi and Schu are part of a group we professionally refer to as ‘hostiles,’ and colloquially as, ‘psychopathic killers.’ Ones with special talents too. Schu likes to read minds, and Nagi moves things with his. So please forgive Ken for being a bit handsy about it, as I’m sure he’s worried about their sudden proximity.” 

This explanation had a bit of a manic edge to it no matter how Yohji rolled his shoulders back and pretended at casual. It did not seem to be helping, either. The sister of Aya Fujimiya, instead of moving forward, shrunk back toward Ken after glancing around the room. He didn’t think about it before he stepped in front of her, giving her the shield of his back.

“So you’re…all of you are…and the three of you are…but then these two…” He could hear the rapid math, felt her come to the conclusion. “They’re your enemies? Why are they here then? Why are you here?”

“Exactly the point, princess. So let’s lay all our cards on the table. Because there’s a lot we still don’t know about each other, which is making everyone tense. So, I told you we’re being hunted?”

The woman nodded from behind his shoulder. Ken looked between Yohji, something manic about him despite the way he rolled back his shoulders, and the rest of the men crammed in there. 

“Well, apparently, so are they. The details of why and by who are a bit fuzzy at the moment, and it doesn’t seem anyone here has anything useful to add to that, so let’s put it aside. Omi, the fourth member of our murderous little family, set up this place for emergencies, to be used by us to regroup, if we ever needed it. Aya sent him running this morning, according to Ken, the one in front of you there, and told him in person this morning to come. And we can trust that, yes? Kenken wouldn’t tell a lie. His nose would get bigger, and handsome man that he is, he wouldn’t want that, would he? Or would he? I’ve heard some ladies really dig the high arch and ridges when they sit—” 

“Kudou,” Aya warned, the first word in so many minutes. Ken was not relieved that the man chose that moment to seemingly tune back in, nor did the feral smile that took over Yohji’s face at being reprimanded do anything else for his nerves.

“Anyway. Omittchi texted me, probably before he even left the house. I would never fib about that. Honest man of god and all that. And well, Schu’s a liar straight through, but he’s come with us, hasn’t he, so that’s neither here nor there,” and Ken banked that absolutely bonkers piece of information beside all the rest he didn’t have the room to process. 

 “But Nagi over there,” and here Yohji gestured at Prodigy. Ken turned his eyes to him. The expression on his face didn’t changed, but the young man in question tilted his head slightly, as if he acknowledged he was being addressed.“He says that he was also expressly invited by Omi. But unlike me, or Ken, here, we don’t know much about Nagi’s truth-telling habits. And, as you’ve surely noticed, Omi is not present to confirm one way or the other. So who’s vouching for him, princess? Hm?”

There was a moment when they took that all in. When wandering eyes refocused, when the three assassins of opposing factions on one side of Ken suddenly did not seem to be so disorganized, so disparate, but more of one mind when they turned to face the young man on his other.

“If we trust that he’s telling the truth about that, and trust is a hard thing for us, you understand, then we move on to equally important questions that could change…well, everything, really. What does Nagi want? How does he plan on getting it by being here, now?” 

“And does he deserve to live?” Mastermind hissed as he stood up straight suddenly, which set off a chain reaction. Ken cursed and released his blades from his glove, Prodigy twitched a hand forward, and Aya put his finger back on the trigger of his re-raised gun.

“Don’t. Move.” 

Ken froze, and he wasn’t the only one. 

“Brother?” The woman next to him asked, hesitantly, and the smile on Yohji’s face tightened when Aya’s only response was to cock his gun. 

“I’m doing a piss poor job of this, aren’t I? God, I wish the kid was here already. Well fuck it. Ken step back a bit. Princess, be real quiet for us, yeah? And Schu,” here he didn’t say anything at all but the psycho went from staring at Prodigy to sighing. He gave a wink to Ken and a finger wave to the girl, before he moved closer to Yohji and Aya near the door, crouching back down at Aya’s feet with a smirk that did nothing to settle Ken’s stomach, his gun gripping hand lax between his knees.

“Nagi, I’ll ask again, at risk of death and his deliverers. You’re here for Omi?” And Ken watched the young man impersonating a statue for the last many minutes round off his shoulders, face shifting like he was nervous…or shy. “You’re not here to do us harm?”

“Omi said…he needed me. To come here. To help.”

Ken’s jaw dropped. Yohji only ground out his cigarette with his boot, not looking as swayed by the apparent vulnerability. 

“But he’s not here now and you are. That doesn’t inspire a lot of trust, Nagi. Especially if I assume he contacted you when he was clear of the house. Means you were the last to hear from him.” Yohji took a moment to look the boy over, from head to foot. “From what you say, Omi trusted you, and not only with his life but ours. Why?”

“I’ll…,” and he actually looked hesitant. “I’ll show you.” The moment his hand moved, Aya’s finger on the trigger tensed, and Mastermind stood. It was tense as the young man put that hand into his pocket, and drew out what, in the gloom, looked to Ken like—. 

“Oh fuck, he’s got a phone in here. Aya, Yohji, we need to move, now!” He had a grip on the girl, ready to propel her toward the door, but even as he shuffled her and she gasped, affronted, that guard-dog group, viciously poised, didn’t budge. 

“Yes, I know Kenken. Stand still for a second,” he hissed, all clever smiles gone. “Clearly, the brat was never trained on how to properly run for his life. Doesn’t surprise me, with a daddy like Crawford.” The name was enough to get Ken to freeze, even as his heart continued racing. And suddenly Mastermind’s eyes were sharp on him. Ken liked that even less than knowing he was in a shoddy tinfoil house with a tracker and no escape plan yet in place.

“Well, stop fucking dallying and toss it over already.” And Prodigy did. Tossed his cell phone up and over to be snatch out of the air by Yohji’s nibble, gloved fingers. “What am I even looking for on this, kiddo? Naked pictures of our littlest Takatori? Because if so, hard fucking pass.”

A pause. Then Mastermind laughed loud enough to echo off the walls, and Aya turned from a formal extension of his fire arm back to a man giving Yohji such a look that someone more sane would likely have withered and passed. Ken swung his head just in time to see Prodigy, fucking Prodigy, blush and bury his face in his hands. 

The world had gone mad. Utterly mad. 

And Yohji only shrugged and smirked.

“See, Aya baby. He didn’t even try to pop my lungs for that. Surely you don’t still think he’s a threat?”

The man did not deign to acknowledge that with a response, but he did flip the safety on his guns, at last, and Ken felt he could cry[, if not from outright relief then bewilderment].

“Don’t fret, Nagi-darling. It’s not like we haven’t known about you two. I just wanted to see if you’d be honest with us, and if you would, how. Now that I know, I will not be reading your little love messages, if it’s all the same to you.”

“I will,” Mastermind snickered, but Yohji pocketed the device and smacked his reaching hand away. A sensation like heartburn took Ken just to see it, especially when he saw Aya’s eyes narrow in on the point of contact.

“Well, lady and killers, it’s been a great show, but we’re now officially at time. Now if you could please file out, nice and friendly-like, so we can take this conversation about our incumbent collaboration, as they say, to-go.”

The response wasn’t immediate, as everyone seemed to take a tense moment to process—god knows what, Ken’s mind was in the blender—but once it sunk in there were voices on multiple sides of the room. Drowning out Ken’s own, “what collaboration?” was a, “I am not leaving…without Omi,” from Prodigy and a  “And who said I’ve to go anywhere else with you?” from Aya’s sister. 

And that’s when flowershop Yohji, the conciliatory flirt with an edge who told fawning young women that although it broke his heart it was closing time so they should scoot, dissolved. 

His eyes were dead dead as he flickered them amongst them, the line of his mouth held weight. 

“If they—whoever the fuck they are—haven’t yet tracked us with this device Prodigy couldn’t part with because sentimentality made him stupid, I have it on good authority Crawford is well on his way.” Ken startled when Yohji’s eyes landed on him, not least of all because he could only think of one way Yohji knew what Ken hadn’t had the chance to tell him. Flitting his gaze toward the psychopath standing next to him found the man twirling the gun in his hands as he swayed on his feet, already facing the door. 

“You really want to be all grouped together like this, squabbling, when he gets here?” 

“Wait. No. We haven’t yet…accomplished anything here.” The woman really must be forged from the same steel as her brother, Ken thought, to step around him and meet Yohji’s flat look. This was not a Yohji that Ken often saw, not in front of so many others. He was more than unaccommodating. He was more than disinterested in her protestations, her discomfort. Right now, he didn’t look quite on the right side of sanity. 

“We’re all still standing. More than that, we now know we aren’t out to immediately kill each other. That’s accomplishment enough.”

“You promised to deliver me to my brother. That’s why I’ve come. As far as I’m concerned the job is done.” 

“It’s dangerous to be stubborn at a time like this,” was all Yohji said to that. “You’ll listen and come along because there is no longer a safe alternative.” All pretense was gone.

But Ken supposed that went for the both of them.

“Ran, what is this? Why won’t you look at me? Say something. Please. Tell me where you’ve been. Tell me…tell me how you are. How are you? Brother. I’m…I’m scared.” 

She tried to cover the space in-between before Ken caught up and held her still. He felt real pity for her. He did. However overwhelming this was for any of them, they were already neck deep in it—had been for years—while this was all new to her, and terrible. But the way she was raising her voice, reaching out and over…she didn’t seem to understand the stakes, the danger, of even asking questions like that. 

These were not nice men. These were not sane men. More than pity he wished she’d take that in, and learn it. That she’d stopped acting like she wasn’t being shown. Worse than Aya pretending he wasn’t being spoken to, no matter how her voice cracked, was Yohji, who had gone too still. Something was terribly off about his face, the way he was staring not exactly at the girl but almost past her—through her.

It was never clearer to Ken then, that these people were damaged, and dangerous. Monsters with a thin human veneers. 

Yohji hand twitched, and with years by his side Ken couldn’t help but catch it, couldn’t help but tense for an attack he was sure was coming but he wasn’t sure he could deflect. The aura of the room had changed too quickly, he wasn’t prepared. But then Schuldig was there, too, and foreboding dropped hard into his gut.

All Schuldig did was reach out an empty hand and put his fingers into the short ponytail of hair collected at Yohji’s nape. Aya, untouched, froze like it was his hair that had been tugged, before he commanded everyone to get out of the safe house immediately in a tone so cold with finality that Ken jumped to obey.

“Okay,” he conceded, soft but loud. “We’re heading out to the car. Me first, then, with Aya-san.” He looked back at Aya’s sister when no one responded, who after staring longingly at brother—her expression some dignified form of bewilderment and suffering—finally turned to Ken and made an aborted gesture with her hands and shoulders that seemed to say, ‘what the fuck?’ and ‘what the fuck do I care what you do?’ and ‘like I’ve any other options,’ all at once. 

She was stuck now with killers and psychopaths. Ken wasn’t even sure he could differentiate which was which anymore.

“So, um, where’d you park, Yohji?” Yohji didn’t answer him, busy lighting up another cigarette. “We kinda need to know? So we can get there?”

It was Schuldig that again stepped up, much to the consternation of Ken’s blood pressure, who said in a less mocking tone than usual, “I will show you. Come along, too, Nagi-dear.” A moment of hesitation, a glance to his teammates who refused to acknowledge him, and Ken crossed the room with his blades consciously retracted, feeling rather surreal as they headed toward the backdoor, Mastermind standing between them and Yohji and Aya as he gestured toward the exit, making it clear that he wasn’t going to let them close despite how the girl stared.

And that’s how Ken, who started this day running for his life from unknown agents, ended up leaving a Weiss safe point willingly with two members of Schwartz and Aya’s civilian sister at his heels.