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Dorks. They look like a couple of dorks.
- Pulp Fiction
Step 1: Assess the situation. (Don’t bother cursing God; he’s not listening.)
It’s a white carpet.
Sakusa Kiyoomi is kneeling in the center of it. Blood—still warm, squelching as the ruined knees of his suit press into the sticky-black puddle of it—never comes out of these white fucking carpets. He’s told Hinata a hundred times, a thousand, probably: Please don’t shoot them in the middle of the white fucking carpet, and yet.
Their target’s apartment is forty floors up, dangling high in the heavens above the neon sprawl of Tokyo. All naked white-walled minimalism, accented in chrome and—red, now, after Hinata’d streaked through. Kiyoomi snaps on a fresh pair of gloves, assesses. White fucking carpet.
Earlier, Atsumu’s platinum head had appeared from behind the sprawling bar, working the cork out of a bottle of Cristal with his teeth. He’d laughed around it at the telltale way Kiyoomi’s mask had folded around the sour line of his mouth. Kiyoomi had hoped for the cork to pop out and break Atsumu’s perfect nose. You gonna give us the white fuckin’ carpet speech again, Omi-kun? Spare us.
It’s quite the scene: the way the setting sun’s streaking long and pretty through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the bare white walls glowing pink-gold with it. Atsumu’s spinning an old soul record soft and sultry from the sound system under the bar. It’s all very cinematic—or it would be, if approximately one gallon of foul red blood wasn’t currently seeping through Kiyoomi’s favorite suit pants, trickling into his socks. Disgusting.
“Shouyou-kun, look at that.” Atsumu’s voice curls like smoke from somewhere in the gleaming white kitchen. He whistles, long and low, and the sound of it rakes sharp over the back of Kiyoomi’s neck, slithers tight round his throat. Kiyoomi doesn’t have to look up from the slow, methodical circles he’s scrubbing into the carpet; Atsumu’s stupid-lovesick smile swims in front of his eyes anyway.
“There’s blood all the way over here,” Atsumu continues, cooing like he’s paying Hinata the world’s sweetest compliment. Kiyoomi supposes that, in their own fucked-up way, that’s exactly what he’s doing. “Helluva shot, baby.”
It’s embarrassing, the way that the word strikes somewhere beneath the surface of Kiyoomi’s skin, ignites. It’s embarrassing, and Kiyoomi rolls his eyes at the distorted funhouse reflection of himself in the chromed surface of the coffee table. It doesn’t do anything to tame the flaming scarlet tips of his ears, the whiteknuckle clench of his fingers as he presses a damp rag into the darkest part of the stain. Presses and presses and presses until pinkish water rises in the craters that his fingers are crushing into the fabric. Presses and presses and—
Hinata’s laugh rings bright, crackles along Kiyoomi’s heated skin until it’s buzzing like a livewire. “Thank you, Atsumu-san.”
Kiyoomi chucks the rag into the bucket, retrieves a fresh one; won’t lift his eyes from the floor when he hears a thud that can only be Atsumu’s back against the cabinet. A gasp, a snicker, then Hinata’s speaking again, his voice pitched lower, rougher now. “Hang on, we shouldn’t—”
They shouldn’t, but they do. Every single time.
Step 2: Dab at the stain with a wet rag, lifting as much of the blood as you can manage. (You’re thinking about them, aren’t you? Stop that.)
Hinata Shouyou’s a pistol pressed up against Kiyoomi’s temple from the moment he’d stepped into Meian’s office.
He’s a dead shot. It was the first thing out of Hinata’s mouth, launched across the broad mahogany top of Meian’s desk along with half of his body before Kiyoomi had even settled into his chair: I’m Hinata Shouyou, and I’m a dead shot. I’ve never missed.
There was something there, lurking in the flash of Hinata’s eyes under the dingy fluorescents, the wringing of his tiny bird-boned hands like he itched to close them around the pistol sitting between them and prove it. There was something there, the air around Hinata thrumming with it—something electric, ferocious. Dangerous. A quivering trigger finger of a person.
And—all Kiyoomi could think to do was laugh in the face of it, the sound rising sharp and mean and unbidden in his chest. Laughed again at Hinata’s answering scowl when Kiyoomi replied, Whatever. I’m Sakusa Kiyoomi.
(Hinata does prove it, later. He’s a dead shot. He’s never missed.)
Miya Atsumu is something else entirely; more hunger than human like Hinata but with exactly none of the shivery, overeager charm. Atsumu’s all slick smiles and sharp teeth and terrible pink shirt unbuttoned halfway to his navel. Held all of the attention in the room tight in his ringed fingers—until Hinata rested a casual hand high on his thigh halfway through the interview.
Kiyoomi had watched the exposed skin of Atsumu’s chest go splotchy red—then his neck, his cheeks, his ears—couldn’t hold back another sharp bark of a laugh as Atsumu choked around a barb he’d been trying to aim at Kiyoomi.
Fucking idiots, Meian had said, watching Hinata pat Atsumu’s back as he’d doubled over, spluttering. Kiyoomi, resolutely avoiding the twin molten glares of his new coworkers, was staring at the nicotine-yellow tips of Meian’s silver-ringed fingers steepled in front of his frowning mouth. You see why we had to call you, Sakusa-san. They’re the best at what they do but they’re gonna drive me into an early grave if they—well. We can’t afford another close call like their last mission. I can’t believe I’m asking you to clean up after them. But I’m asking.
Hinata and Atsumu burn as they move, golden shimmering heat blurring their edges like they’re both a little too big for their skin. Like they’d burn right through Kiyoomi, if he’d let them. Hinata’s a dead shot, and Atsumu’s dead fucking annoying, and yet.
And yet and yet and yet, despite all signs pointing to a big, red, neon-lit NO by the end of the interview, Kiyoomi had known. The familiar, taut cord of denial had strung itself up in Kiyoomi’s chest, telling him you don’t want this, you don’t want anything to do with them, but he’d already known.
He signed the contract.
Step 3: Use warm water to gently rub at the stain using circular motions. (Listen to your coworkers make out in the six hundred million-yen kitchen while said kitchen’s owner is rolled up in a tarp in the genkan and you’re scrubbing his entrails out of a white fucking carpet.)
The volume on the record player’s too low to drown out the wet sounds of their mouths, the way Hinata’s breath hitches and tumbles into a giggle. Kiyoomi drops his head to hang between the hunch of his shoulders, glaring at the dark tumbling curtain of his bangs. Under the thin latex of his gloves, Kiyoomi’s knuckles rub themselves raw against the grain of the carpet. He’s burning, burning.
Step 4: Apply stain-removing agent liberally. (While waiting for it to set, do not, for any reason, reflect on the Headset Incident from this morning.)
In Meian’s never-ending quest to legitimize their operation (and, Kiyoomi wonders, what the fuck does that even mean when said operation is killing people for money?) they’re given new headsets the morning of their mission: a clear spiral wire tucked behind their ear and clipped to their wrists like Secret Service agents wear in those shitty American spy movies Atsumu’s obsessed with.
Because Kiyoomi’s entire existence consists of nothing but an endless series of fucked-up, cosmic jokes, he’d been distracted watching Atsumu and Hinata fumble through clipping each other’s headsets to their ears, giggling and shoving each other like children. Distracted enough not to notice that they hadn’t read the instructions, hadn’t bothered to learn how to turn the goddamned things off.
The headsets had stayed on during Atsumu’s piss break. (He didn’t wash his hands.) They’d stayed on for Hinata howling his way through a terrible rendition of a Wink song on the radio in the surveillance van. And, because Kiyoomi’s entire existence consists of nothing but an endless series of fucked-up, cosmic jokes, the headsets had stayed on for a conversation that he should definitely not have heard.
Chin tucked deep into the high collar of his jacket, Kiyoomi shifted in his seat to watch their target move into position at the far end of the cafe. The sensation of Hinata sighing heavy into his ear was sudden, startling; Kiyoomi drew a sharp breath through teeth clenched behind his mask—then Hinata was talking, whispery words dropping like a hot coal straight through Kiyoomi into the pit of his stomach. Omi-san is so hot.
Kiyoomi, whose hands never trembled, felt his fingers twitch and slip over the handle of his teacup when Hinata pressed on. With his hair all combed back like that. He’s so hot. Soooo—
Stop! Scuffling, a yelp. Kiyoomi cringed against the sensation in his ear. I get it, jeez, you’re gonna make me jealous, and really, Atsumu’s whine had no business sounding that attractive crackling through a two-bit receiver. Kiyoomi curled his fingers a little tighter around the edges of the paperback he’d been pretending to read. But, God, yeah. Omi’s hands are so...I think he’s giving me a thing for gloves. Is that a thing? A glove thing. I feel like that’s a thing.
They go on—oh my god, yeah, the gloves—wait, wait, but how about when he’s got the mask kinda dangling from one ear, he just looks so—we’ve gotta wear tuxes for the mission next weekend, I’m gonna fuckin’ die—until Kiyoomi’s face was so hot he could feel his pulse behind his eyes, in his fingertips where they’d been rattling against his teacup. He should have left. He should have gone back to the surveillance van and murdered both of them. The mission was compromised. Kiyoomi was compromised—
Kiyoomi should have turned off his headset, then. He should have turned it off.
He’d make out with us, right? If we asked? I’m going to ask.
He didn’t turn it off.
The pit in Kiyoomi’s stomach burned, heat rolling searing-red down the back of his neck, branding his cheeks beneath his mask—burned hotter still at the jagged uh, what, I mean yeah, you should, please do that that Atsumu had wheezed into the earpiece.
Kiyoomi kept his eyes fixed on their target, watching as they unknowingly moved through their last day on Earth. Watching without seeing; instead Kiyoomi’d only seen them, hovering half-transparent in his vision like ghosts. Hinata and Atsumu, always them, only them; eyes gleaming mean, the matching wide white grins they seemed to reserve just for Kiyoomi.
For the first time in his life, Kiyoomi saw a mess that he didn’t know how to clean up. A mess he wasn’t sure he wanted to clean up.
Step 5: Repeat steps 1-4 as necessary. Be sure to clean up after yourself. (That’s what you do best, right, Kiyoomi? How are you going to clean this one up? How many steps do you think that’ll take?)
The stain’s faded to a pink mist that near-vanishes under the heavy red stripes of the setting sun rolling across the floor. Kiyoomi sits back on his heels, swipes a stray curl from his forehead with the back of his wrist. It’s not perfect, and it’ll probably only slow the Adlers down by a day or two when they come sniffing around, but—white fucking carpet. It’s as good as it’ll get.
When Kiyoomi looks up, Atsumu’s tilted against the doorframe to the kitchen, hair disastrous, horrible floral shirt gaping across the gold plane of his chest. He’s so handsome Kiyoomi feels it in his teeth. “You almost done in here, Omi-kun?”
“Yes.” Kiyoomi peels off his gloves and deposits them into the bucket. His pants are stiff and scratchy with dried blood when he heaves himself to his feet. Atsumu wrinkles his nose at the sight of it. “Have you finished dicking around with Hinata?”
Atsumu curls his lip at the acidic edge to Kiyoomi’s words, opens his mouth to strike back, but the phone in his hand lights up, beating him to it. Osamu’s probably pulling the van around. “All done dicking around, Omi-kun.” Atsumu wedges the phone between his shoulder and ear as he steps around Kiyoomi, purposefully hip-checking him on his way to the balcony. “Shouyou’s all yours.”
Hinata’s perched on the marble edge of the counter in his shirtsleeves, swinging his socked feet through the air. When he sees Kiyoomi cross through the threshold, his smile breaks his face, pink kiss-bruised mouth stretching wide until his nose scrunches with the force of it.
Hinata waggles his fingers in a stupid little wave—fingers that just an hour ago had been wrapped around the grip of his pistol when he’d burst through the door like a crow-eyed angel of death. There’s a stark-red spray of blood against the shiny white of the cabinets above Kiyoomi’s head—Atsumu’s not wrong. It was a hell of a shot.
Kiyoomi’s heart clenches. Wallops. Drops to his feet.
“Hi, Omi-san,” Hinata says as Kiyoomi nudges past him to dump the bucket of gore into the sink.
As he watches the red water swirl around the drain, feeling the heat of Hinata’s gaze searing the side of his face—Kiyoomi realizes that doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do now. Doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do when his hammering heart claws its way up his throat as Hinata scoots closer—smelling like nitroglycerin, like the iron tang of blood, the revolting cinnamon gum Atsumu was chewing—Kiyoomi doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with himself, with any of this, now. He lets the bucket clatter into the sink and turns to look Hinata full in the face.
“You didn’t turn off your headset,” Kiyoomi grinds out, suddenly grateful that the twisted line of his lips are hidden behind his mask. “This morning.”
Hinata’s grin curls at the ends. The pink tip of his tongue flashes between his teeth. “Oops.”
(Oops.)
You like us, don’t you, Omi-san?
Kiyoomi’s arm was numb from the weight of Atsumu half-draped over him, warm and heavy with sleep and too much tequila. Kiyoomi had looked at Hinata long and hard across the booth, the piss-drunk tilt of his red, red mouth, the way he seemed to absorb and refract all of the pulsating lights of the nightclub like a prism. It was the end of their second month working together, and Kiyoomi was in love, and he was scared, and he was fucked.
So Kiyoomi’d snapped no, of course not, because it was easier than saying yes. Easier than saying Yes, I want you. I want you both so badly that it tastes like blood in my mouth.
And Hinata just said oh in that soft little voice of his, like all of this made perfect fucking sense to him somehow. Like, despite Kiyoomi’s best efforts to remain opaque, Hinata’d seen straight through to the center of the wild red thing thrashing in his chest. Oh, Omi-san.
(Oh, Kiyoomi.)
Kiyoomi’s staring at the crisp white collar of Hinata’s shirt where it lays against the tawny skin of his throat. There’s a stain; a stark pinprick of blood that Kiyoomi reaches out to rub at before he can stop himself. Hinata’s laugh rumbles against the press of his thumb.
It’s so quiet. The record’s long ended, and the soft static hiss of the needle against the vinyl is the loudest sound in the room, suddenly, filling Kiyoomi’s head and mixing with the roar of his heart in his ears until he’s dizzy with it. When Hinata speaks, it sounds like he’s underwater. Sounds like he’s a million miles away, instead of a foot in front of Kiyoomi’s face and clumsily hooking his ankles around the backs of Kiyoomi’s knees to make him stumble closer.
“Omi-san.”
The feeling of Hinata’s small, callous-rough hand wrapping sure and fast around Kiyoomi’s wrist wrenches him back to the moment. Hinata’s grinning that same boy-grin he does after he neatly delivers a bullet through the skull of a target: all at once earnest and predatory, syrup-sweet and dangerous. Kiyoomi wonders if this is what it feels like to be on the other end of Hinata’s pistol.
“Omi-san.”
Pin meets cartridge.
“I want you to kiss me.”
Bullet meets temple.
Kiyoomi tears his eyes away from Hinata’s to peer over his shoulder, through the tall glass walls of the living room. Atsumu’s still got the phone pressed to his ear, watching them. Smiling. He’s a beacon on the balcony—the light caught through the blonde of his hair, winking through the transparent yellow lens of his sunglasses—too, too bright. It’s all too bright. Kiyoomi squeezes his eyes shut against it, but Hinata's white-light laugh flashes behind his eyelids, lingers and burns like he's looked too long at the sun.
“You can kiss him too, Omi-san. But”—and here Kiyoomi can only stare helplessly at the shiny pink swell of Hinata’s lower lip, the way it snags between his teeth when he smiles—“Me first.”
There’s a dead body in the genkan. Kiyoomi’s not sure how many trips to the dry cleaners it’s going to take to get the blood out of his favorite wool pants. There’s a three-foot stack of paperwork and a stern lecture from Meian waiting for him back at their office.
But Kiyoomi’s mind empties like a sieve at the way Hinata walks lethal fingers up the front of Kiyoomi’s shirt, then carefully, so carefully, unhooks his mask from one ear and lets it dangle.
“Only if you want to.” Careful, so careful.
Kiyoomi’s burning again; heat rising under the light press of Hinata’s fingers against the bare skin of his wrist, the white-hot churn of his stomach as he turns Hinata’s words over in his head. Both of them. Both of them?
This is insane. Kiyoomi’s clamped against the edge of the counter between Hinata Shouyou’s thighs and hopelessly trapped in the sticky amber of his gaze, and Atsumu’s draped over the balcony railing, grinning like this is all he’s ever wanted, and—this is insane, and Kiyoomi doesn’t do insane—except apparently he does, because then he’s lurching forward to crush his mouth against Hinata’s.
They’re ridiculous. They’re lethal. They’re twin sledgehammers to Kiyoomi’s sanity. They’re all he’s ever wanted.
Hinata makes a bright sound of delight into Kiyoomi’s mouth, hands sliding up and over his shoulders to tug him closer until their chests are pressing together and Kiyoomi’s sweating palms are slipping against the countertop. The wanting’s an alive thing in his chest, buzzing in Kiyoomi’s fingers when he presses them hard into the trim cut of Hinata’s waist and kisses him again.
Like everything Hinata does, the kiss is sweet until it’s not, and the way he presses the sharp edge of his teeth to Kiyoomi’s bottom lip makes him gasp, loud and embarrassing—then Hinata’s laughing again, pulling away. The hand that’s tangled deep into Kiyoomi’s curls slides down, along the curve of his forehead, until Hinata’s gently pressing a finger-gun against Kiyoomi’s temple.
“Bang,” Hinata whispers.
A dead shot.
Kiyoomi feels an involuntary upward tug of his lips that—well, it might be a smile. Stranger things have happened.
“Is he looking at us?” Hinata asks when Kiyoomi’s eyes wander back to Atsumu where he’s frozen on the balcony, the phone in his hand dangling limp and forgotten at his side. His expression is half-shock, half-delight, all stupid. They’re all stupid.
“Yeah,” Kiyoomi breathes, and then he’s tilting forward to kiss Hinata again. Again. Again, because this is insane, and they’re all stupid.
Then the balcony door’s sliding open, smooth and silent. Atsumu steps through, and the last rays of the sun lean over him. He goes wavy at the edges, like he’s burning. Like he’s about to burn straight through Kiyoomi, if he’d let him.
(Let him.)