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Haru's not even halfway to Singapore when Daisuke interrupts the flight. Vague and unwilling as ever, he cuts through the music Haru'd been playing with characteristic abruptness and says, "Turn around."
"What? What do you mean, turn around?"
"HEUSC. Turn the plane around."
Three years and he still gets like this sometimes. Well—not that Haru is allowed to pretend he's much better. It'd taken another six months after the release of adollium to the world for Haru to swallow the pill that Daisuke was never entirely going to lose that upbringing of his—was loathe to, actually, and preferred to be unbearable eighty-percent of the time and positively enraging the other twenty-percent. By that time, Haru, to his own horror, had already learned to tolerate Daisuke's intolerableness to a degree he would have deemed impossible in the first week of meeting him. A hard-practiced art it is, to be able to stand Kanbe Daisuke when you're not getting paid for it.
"We've been over this before," he says, annoyed more than anything, though that seems to be the only consistent emotion he's capable of feeling towards Daisuke, anyway. "Tell me what's going on before you start making decisions like turning my fucking plane around in the middle of a mission."
"There's been a change of plans," Daisuke says. "HEUSC. Redirect route to Salento."
"Salento?" Haru demands. "To Italy?"
"You'll see."
"That tells me absolutely nothing, you know."
"You'll see," repeats Daisuke, the coolness now showing signs of slipping from his voice. He sounds—agitated, almost, the way he only ever gets over either the most trivial things in the world or the severest. Which one it is this time, Haru's sure he'll find out by evening, so he doesn't push. Turns his music back on instead and reclines back. Closes his eyes.
◎
Suzue is the only one who, after a full year of Kanbe's nonsense, actually says something. To Haru. In Macao, bold and neon, all its architecture carved in free, swinging shapes, she slides into the seat next to Haru's and says, "Daisuke-sama will be here shortly."
"Great." Haru takes a sip of his cocktail, then winces—too strong. "Leave it to him to arrive half an hour late when things are like this."
"Any progress yet?"
"No," he grumbles. "Just sitting here and waiting for something to happen, like a fucking idiot. We barely have a lead to work with. If I have to do this for one more hour I might actually just go crazy and kill Kanbe while we're stuck here."
To this Suzue says nothing, which is wise of her. The lights of the casino catch on the jewels laid over her throat when she turns to him, glint nearly white against the gold of her bracelets. She smiles, takes off her tiny cat-eye shades, then folds them in her lap. Looks back up. "By the way, happy birthday, Katou-sama."
Haru blinks, then stares. "Is it the 2nd already?"
"Almost. I'm about a minute early."
"Oh. Wait." He puts down the cocktail. "How do you know my birthday?"
"Ah." Suzue hesitates, then opens her mouth. "Actually, it was Daisuke-sama who—"
Something cuts her off. No—in the next second Haru turns around—Kanbe Daisuke cuts her off. Striding towards them in all his polished, arrogant glory, everything about him so confident that Haru feels it rise in him again, the familiar urge to punch Kanbe right in his pretty pointed chin—get his hands on that ironed suit, unslick his slicked-back hair, as if offenses like putting a dent in Kanbe's car will put any possible dent in his finances.
"He arranged this," Suzue explains quickly, and it's the last thing she can slip in before Kanbe stops before them, before Haru, crowding everyone else out. The world falling away, then condensing into him and him alone. Those blackest gemstones for eyes, and he turns them on Haru, now. Hands him a sealed envelope and smirks. Checks his watch.
"Right on time. Happy birthday, Katou."
◎
It's a lock of hair, one attached to a tiny piece of paper. The paper is a photograph—on the back, a name, age, and a set of coordinates have all been written down in an elegant inky scrawl. When Haru opens the envelope later in his hotel room, he stares, then huffs disbelievingly, then pulls out his phone and—propriety be damned—calls Suzue. Laughs when she picks up, because what else can he do?
"Hi," he says. "Sorry to bother you again. Can you tell me when Kanbe's birthday is?"
◎
Kanbe gets weird sometimes. For example, he scares the shit out of Haru once by showing up unannounced on his doorstep. Injured. The scratches are nasty and deep, two clawed lines raking diagonally down Kanbe's left cheek to nearly touch his ear. Both cuts are bleeding, freshly opened. Blood has already gotten onto his perfect ironed suit and drips still from the jut of his jawline—though that isn't very worrying knowing that he has another thousand identical ones to change into at the mansion.
Apparently, for all that Kanbe Daisuke is fluent in Japanese and English and Arabic and another nine or ten-something languages Haru can't be assed to keep track of, he is, regardless, utterly shit at understanding the language of felines.
"It was stalking me. It began following me the moment it saw me pass by," he tells Haru, sounding so uncharacteristically and sincerely wronged that it draws a laugh out of Haru completely unbidden. Instantly, Kanbe's gaze sharpens in defense. "Is that funny?"
"It's fucking hilarious—oh my God, you were suspicious of a cat."
Kanbe gives him another look, as if Haru is the strange one for being able to find humor in his current predicament. "Cats are extremely intelligent mammals."
"Yeah, sure, okay, but it was probably just following you 'cause it wanted food, or liked your cologne, or whatever. Cats are like that. Oh my God." He stops, sucks in a breath. Looks back at Kanbe's unchanging expression and snorts again. "I thought it might've just been a dog thing, but no. You really don't understand animals, do you? Have you never seen a cat before? Okay, stop looking at me like that—I bought a first aid kit after last time. I'll go get it. You stay here."
As a non-apology for poking fun at his misfortune (though Haru argues that Kanbe'd brought it upon himself anyway), Haru dresses the wound for him. Kanbe can't see it without a mirror, anyway. He could go to the bathroom, use the mirror, but, whatever. Haru's already doing it. Already here. Bent toward him, over him, to peer at the wound, dab at it with an alcohol-soaked cotton wad, trying not to accidentally brush against Kanbe as they stand in Haru's clean, small kitchen.
It's worse here. Worse when everything goes quiet, when Kanbe goes quiet—all of him, not his usual wordlessness. Silence is not quiet with Kanbe. Silence is the absence of sound, not presence. The entirety of him is too loud, always, like a ringing snap of bone, like trumpets all around. Most days he brings with him a marching band. It can't quite fit into the cramped spaces of Haru's apartment, though, and so Kanbe is always quiet here. His presence still ink-stark, but quiet.
Might've been the cologne the cat liked after all. Mint sharp, almost biting, then letting off the moment Haru begins to adjust to it. Clinging to Kanbe's figure like another skin, because he can only smell it when they're this close, leaving no traces of itself anywhere he goes.
Though—Haru can be no judge of cats. Only himself.
"Done." He presses a finger against the last bandage, just to make sure it's secure. "Suzue-san won't make a fuss when she sees you now, so you can go back. I have no plans to whip up some fancy dinner to suit your tastes."
Kanbe blinks at him, then presses his own hand to the bandage Haru'd touched a moment ago. Featherlight, fingers curling, then falling away again. The gesture is—Haru looks at him, at his dark gaze like a blade, then away. Swallows whatever is trying to climb up his throat. Feels nauseous, almost.
"Well? I said you can go."
"I don't have any money on me right now."
Slow, incredulous silence. "What?"
"I forgot my wallet."
He has to be kidding. "You're kidding. Are you kidding? Is that why you were wandering around this part of the city, or—?" Haru shakes his head, rubs a hand over his face. "Never mind. God—fine. Fucking fine. I'm having ramen tonight, just so you know. The cup kind."
"That's fine."
"I snore kind of loudly when I sleep sometimes. And I talk."
"…I'm leaving."
"Ha! I knew you were lying!"
◎
Haru recounts this to Kamei one rowdy weekend, when he's joined the rest of the division for drinks at the yakitori place two blocks down from their workplace.
"Okay," says Kamei slowly, frowning at him from over the lip of his glass. "Well, why don't you just sleep with him?"
Haru chokes on his beer. "What the fuck?"
"I mean, seems to me like you're thinking about him a lot these days, so you might as well give it a try, right? You spend way more time with him than we do anyway. Isn't he like, good at everything? Go find out if he's good in bed too."
"That doesn't—” he breaks off to make room for a violent string of coughs. “Okay, first of all, I'm not gonna sleep with him, what kind of—"
"Oh!" Ever the sharp-eared one, and never a worse occasion for it, Saeki immediately makes to throw her tiny form across the table. Somehow her eyes are even wider and shinier than usual when they meet Haru's. Like this, flushed and beaming from the alcohol, she reminds Haru of a rather chipper hamster. A threatening one. "Who's Katou-kun gonna sleep with?"
"No one," Haru says.
"Kanbe Daisuke," Kamei says, at least a hundred decibels too loud. Haru does not consider strangling him to death—only imagines it. Vividly, as the table goes quiet for what will probably be the last time for the rest of the night. Even the director has looked up from his food.
"Well," says Teppei, after a stretch of steady, stifling silence. He grins and raises his glass. "I win. Everybody pay up!"
If Haru makes it through this evening still sober and without committing first-degree murder, he thinks he'll have earned the right to call himself a saint.
◎
Ultimately, if there must be an order to catalogue the events in, things go something like this: it takes two weeks for the scratches on Kanbe Daisuke’s face to disappear, and two weeks and one day for Haru to start sleeping with him.
Kanbe takes the bandages off after two days, so for the following one week and five days Haru becomes an unfortunate witness to the process of Kanbe's skin repairing itself until it can return his face to its usual pale perfection, infuriating in its flawlessness. The day after it disappears and Kanbe is back to being perfect, they're in France, of all places, working with a foreign client on another illegal firearms case, and of all the goddamn places to do anything they end up in an upscale bar in Paris by nightfall, where Kanbe fucking Daisuke kisses Haru before either of them have touched their drinks. Haru kicks him for it, even though he'd seen it coming—they'd both seen it coming—how could they not have? It's been racing towards them since forever. It's been racing, and Haru has been looking away from it before it sears into his eyes like sun, and now Kanbe Daisuke is yanking him towards it, towards doom. Is unshielding his eyes, taking his shoulders and turning him back around. Why aren't you looking? Look, Katou. Look.
So Haru—kicks him, hard in the shin right where it'll hurt most, then takes a deep breath like it's the last one he'll ever need, fists his hands in that stupid million-yen suit, and says, "I'm going to ruin your ugly suit."
"It's not ugly," Daisuke says. Eyes so dark they change color with the gradient of the strobelights: electric blue, then violet, then an impossible red, red, red. Red like rage, like want. "But please, be my guest."
◎
The thing with Daisuke is that there are too many things with Daisuke. To summarize would be impossible, because every summary requires a starting point, which Daisuke does not have. Search him for one and it will feel like clawing through a mile of yarn for an end segment. Pointless, hopeless. The thing with Daisuke is that you can never tell, so you can never win.
◎
"How long?"
Orange flares; Daisuke lights his cigar. Covers the lighter with a hand, flame turning his skin pink and lamp-bright in the dimness, illuminating blood and flesh. Some days it seems impossible to Haru for Daisuke to be human, for him to belong to a species that is not simply Kanbe Daisuke, a peculiar existence all on his own. Some days he is so human as to be insufferable. Never an in-between.
Today it is still too early to tell. Or too late. Something like that.
"Four months in the states," Daisuke says. "Some old family ties that need to be cut and cleaned up properly."
"I see."
“I leave tomorrow afternoon.”
“Okay.”
It's a cooler morning than usual. Summer swelters itself out on the cusp of autumn, so it should be too early for the metal railing of the boat to be so cold. Seeping through Haru's sleeve and into his skin.
Daisuke turns, then. Something in him seems to slice open, like a premature epiphany. Already far too razored when the day has barely awoken. The nature of him, to be early like that—to always be one step ahead of the rest of the world.
"Come with me," he says. "It's going to annoy me to death otherwise. I've already met with two of the people I have to meet with there and afterwards I almost turned to terrorism. Come with me, Haru—"
Raw, insufferably human, and Kanbe Daisuke all the same. So him that it sends something acute and aching right into the center of Haru's chest.
"Oh," he says. His voice is flung out morning-rough, as though his throat has been scraped open. "Kanbe Daisuke, are you in love with me?"
Daisuke, forever difficult, blows cigar smoke in his face. "Yeah. Are you? And are you coming or not?"
"Well." Haru frowns. "It is my responsibility as an officer of the law, after all, to ensure that justice is—"
"No, don't start with that. Don't fucking start; it's awful. HEUSC, on my command, throw him overboard—"
◎
They go to America.
◎
See, the thing of all things with Daisuke is that the start of him is always the present him. There can be no other way to go about it, to navigate him—he exists fully in every sliver of a second, in the spaces even smaller than those. As himself, with all of his trumpets and marching bands or without. Without apology. Without shame.
◎
"Fucking Salento," Haru is still muttering unforgivingly when they arrive. The Italian shoreside being their destination, apparently, and he still has no idea what Daisuke's been fretting over all day. It's mid-April and already too hot, and only the gusting breeze is saving them now, even as Haru discards his jacket and rolls up his trousers, stares out at the rolling waves only a little longingly. The sun is nothing more than a spot of red peach bobbing above the horizon. Before them, the water is a color so far from blue Haru could've believed it if someone said it never was. As if the daylight had spilled some of itself on its way past the sea, gold glittering on the water's surface, gold all the way to the sun. For a moment, Haru thinks he might just die if he looks away. Might die if he doesn't.
"The schedule," he says, turning to Daisuke if only to force himself away. "It said Singapore for literal weeks—"
"As I told you, there was a last-minute change of plans," Daisuke says. "It couldn't wait."
"Then tell me. You still haven't told me what's going on yet. Tell me right now."
Daisuke turns to him. Stunning sunset, and him—dust on his perfectly tailored suit, Haru notices, then. And dirt. Because he'd been there the moment Haru touched down, something urgent about it, about him, as if Haru would've left if he wasn't. Would've gone right back to New York. As if Haru would—as if he could.
"Haru," Daisuke begins, quiet.
In his hand is a black velvet box. His fingers curl nearly white around it. Haru stares at it for all of one second before his mouth drops open, furious.
"No," he says. Interrupts. "You—Kanbe Daisuke, you did not turn my plane around for this. I take everything back. Don't tell me anything—not a single fucking thing. I don't want to hear it."
But it's much too late, now. Three years late. He's angry for all of two seconds, and then he's laughing like he'll never laugh again. So much affection in him it should be impossible—annoyance and affection and a love that rushes through him so sharply that for a moment, he almost thinks he's been cleaved in half.
"Lie to me, you asshole," he laughs, striding right up to Daisuke and grabbing him by the collar, dragging him in close. "Say you didn't turn my plane around just so you could propose to me."
"For your information, I planned to do it after you returned," Daisuke says, mouth pinching, so comically displeased at being interrupted like this, which. Oh, knowing Daisuke, he must've planned for months. More, maybe. Ruined by his own petulant impatience, which is so Daisuke of him Haru has to viciously fight back a second wave of laughter.
"You couldn't wait?"
"Yes," Daisuke says, his pride coming back to fold up around him—not a shield, for he has nothing to defend when it comes to Haru, but an inextricable part of his person. "Now stand still and let me finish."
"Absolutely not," says Haru. "You've already interrupted my plans, so it's only fair if I get to interrupt yours too. If you don't kiss me right now I'll say no. I'll really do it, I'll throw that stupid fucking ring you bought me into the ocean, Daisuke—don't laugh—"
"I'll fish it back up," Daisuke says. Grinning blindly, blindingly, the most brilliant Haru's ever seen him. "Haru, listen. I'll dive for it myself. Throw it as many times as you can. I'll get it back."