Archive of Our Own

“Ho-ly-shit, karaage? Are you God?”

The door isn't even completely shut before he starts gushing about the food. Ibuki raises an eyebrow exaggeratedly, and crosses his arms.

“You got that right. Get on your knees and repent for your sins!”

“Ooh, Ibuki Ai-sama~ Mad Dog Cop-sama~ bark bark!”

“You need to get over your barking problem, garbage bastard.”

Somehow, this has turned into a habit for Ibuki. Having a visitation and a meal with Kuzumi, that is.

It’s been a couple of years since the arrest. As soon as pandemic-related restrictions on visitations were lifted in most prisons, Ibuki had tried and failed to visit Gama-san six or seven times before starting to take out his frustrations on hours of sitting with Kuzumi in a white, sterile interrogation room. At first, he thought he could persuade him, maybe finally make him spill something of value or apologize to the world, even though the latest intel he had on him was that he wouldn't speak a single word to anyone; to his surprise, however, the very first visit they had together, Ibuki found Kuzumi in an awfully good mood.

“Whaaat, so it was you? I really was wondering who could be stupid enough to come see me here,” he’d said, voice not one bit less insolent than it had been at the Marina all of those years ago. “What’s up? Want me to cooperate in a gruesome serial killer case, or something?”

So the bastard could still talk, after all!

Ibuki foolishly let himself fall into a routine of visiting Kuzumi once in a while and chatting for hours – all he had to do, as a detective, was to call him in into questioning rather than pay him a visit as a civilian, and he’d have essentially unlimited time to sit with him. Sometimes, they’d provoke each other like two highschoolers in an endless game of chicken. Sometimes, Ibuki would gravely scold Kuzumi for minutes that feel like hours while the latter watched with an infuriating grin on his lips. Nowadays, they usually have a meal. Not once does Kuzumi say anything worth listening to, even though he does a hell of a lot of talking.

“I realized it a while ago, but this place kinda’ rules,” he confesses to Ibuki one day, gorging on a store-bought salmon-filled riceball. “Free meals, free shelter, and get to watch the scum of the Earth and a varied assortment of imbeciles wander aimlessly for hours. Sometimes, they even ruin their own lives even further in the process. You can smell the despair seeping through their skin, it’s delicious.” He finishes the riceball in all but two bites, and licks his fingertips one by one, very meticulously. “This is my Heaven.”

A long moment of silence transpires between them while Ibuki chooses how to respond. “Get a haircut already,” Is what he says at the time. “How long are you trying to grow it? Are you a shrine maiden?”

Kuzumi’s hair has grown quite long since his arrest – at the time Ibuki first noticed this, it seemed to be past shoulder level, though he couldn't tell for sure because Kuzumi had taken to keeping it tied in a weird dead-anime-mom side-ponytail that fell over his right shoulder. He has also lost quite a bit of weight, and has clearly been grooming himself differently.

“That's not a bad concept,” he taps a finger on his chin as if in deep thought. “Though, I think an OL vibe is more my style. I look dashing in my suits, I’ll have you know that.”

Nowadays, he’s been trying different things with his hair. Today, karaage-don day, he has it in a trendy messy bun more on the side of his head than on the back. It's like he's gotten his hands on a 2000's issue of Popteen and has been using it as reference.

“So, what brings you here today?” Kuzumi asks with his mouth full. “Still trying to get a tearful confession out of me?”

“I've been told that I don't know when to give up,” Ibuki grins, a little self-deprecating.

“That you don't. And speaking of that,” Kuzumi points at him with his chopsticks, “how's your hunk of a partner doing? Are you still together?”

Ibuki takes a long pause. “You mean…?”

“Who do you think I mean? Detective Shima Kazumi, duh.” Kuzumi rolls his eyes. “What, did you break up? Damn, being partners in the force really doesn't mean much.”

Ibuki is thrown off balance. In the entire time he's been doing these pointless visits, Shima hadn't come up in conversation, not even once. Not from Ibuki's part, and certainly not from Kuzumi's.

“What, are you panicking?” Kuzumi grins in sadistic pleasure, slowly bringing a chunk of chicken up to his lips. “Are you wondering why I still remember him after all this time? Lemme’ tell you, I have really good memory.” He taps his own temple and pops a piece of chicken into his mouth, chewing it with deliberate languor. “And he made quite the impression on me. So, did you break up?”

“Why should I tell you anything about Shima? Don't play around, you bastard.” Ibuki kicks a leg of the table, suddenly irritated. “You almost got him killed. You have no right to even ask about him.”

“Now, now, let's leave the past in the past.” He finishes the karaage-don and leans back, opening his arms wide. “I'm a changed man now, am I not? Reformed by the glorious Japanese penal system. Didn't you know I'm a star employee at the electronics assembly workshop?”

“Good. You keep up the good work over here, then.” Ibuki leans over the table menacingly. “Shima's still none of your business.”

Kuzumi also leans over to meet him in the middle, and raises his eyebrows. “Sounds like you didn’t break up after all.” His eyes move around as if trying to sus Ibuki out. After a pause, he lets out a small gasp, as if realizing something scandalous. “So it's the opposite? Are you together together?”

“You really don't listen, do you?”

“You shouldn't be so uptight about this. Unless I get released early for good behavior, I'm in no capacity to steal your man.” Kuzumi nudges him on the arm in an overly friendly manner. “I just wanna hear about him. You know, I remember his face with so much clarity that it's like he's standing right in front of me.” He closes his eyes and smiles. “I bet I can count his moles.”

“Like hell you can,” Ibuki swats the air in front of Kuzumi's face as if to dispel his thoughts by force.

“I'm telling you, I'll bet. Have you ever counted them?” Kuzumi opens his eyes, smile never leaving his face. “If you have the right number, I’ll try and guess. How's that? Do I get three tries?”

Ibuki sets his jaw, hard.

Lucky for him, or for both of them, their highly intellectual discussion about Shima Kazumi's moles is interrupted by a prison guard at the door. He looks somewhat apologetic. “Excuse me, officer. The prisoner has been called back to work.”

Ibuki has had a laptop open in front of him for the last hour, and the document open is still completely blank. Sitting directly across from him, Shima had been clicking and clacking endlessly at the keyboard, not paying him a second of attention despite the continuous stare Ibuki has had on him as soon as he got busy with the reports.

He wishes the office had better lighting. They're not quite close enough.

Shima has probably noticed him staring by now, but he has, gracefully, refrained from commenting on it. Maybe he's coming up with the perfect quip to make fun of Ibuki with, or maybe he's feeling shy? Ibuki remembers making Shima shy on accident once, by coming a little too close to make a joke; he remembers the strange, spotty way color came into his complexion, until his face was completely bright red. He remembers a mole on Shima’s eyelid, and one under his eye…

“No matter how hard you stare,” Shima says quietly, “I'm not filling the report for you.”

That was relatively devoid of bite, to Ibuki’s own surprise. “That's not it. I can fill a report in my sleep at this point,” Ibuki lies with confidence, lazily typing a couple of random words into the document with his index finger.

“What is it, then?” Shima still hasn't looked up from the computer.

Figuring out going for it directly is more his style, Ibuki rolls his chair over to the other side of the desk. “Hey, Shima. Have you ever counted them?”

“Hm?”

“The moles on your face. Have you ever counted them? Or—or, like, had someone count them for you?” Recently, Ibuki has been feeling uncharacteristically sheepish when touching on the subject of past romantic endeavors with Shima. Maybe, as they've grown inseparably close, he’s become self conscious about his own lack of experience in comparison with Shima, who…. well, honestly, he never talked about those things in seriousness, refusing to bite even the best of Ibuki’s bait – but that makes Ibuki all the more certain he had to have some juicy, torrid, possibly tragic experiences under his belt.

“Why would I waste time on something like that?” Shima frowns, giving Ibuki the ‘are you crazy’ look. “Is it some esoteric fad, like palm reading?”

“How dare you call chiromancy a ‘fad’!” Ibuki clutches his pearls. “It's not anything like that, though. It's just, have you never been curious? Not even once?”

“I’m afraid that, at this point in time, you're the only one on Earth who’s paid this kind of attention to my moles.”

Ibuki barely has time to swell with pride before a memory bursts him like a pin to a balloon. No, I’m not. There's Kuzumi.

Shima doesn't know about the visits.

“Stay still.” Ibuki instructs, and starts counting. Instinctively, Shima turns his face away; Ibuki grabs it, one palm in each cheek, and turns it back towards him. “I said stay still!”

“Let me go! I have work to finish,” Shima complains, shaking his head to release it from Ibuki’s hold. “In fact, so do you! If you're gonna slack off, don't drag me into it!”

“Ugh, you're so difficult! Fine, go back to your boring work!” Ibuki flails his limbs in frustration, but he's far from giving up. “I can do it like this, too. I have really good eyes!”

“Be my guest then. Stare the night away.”

Despite talking big, Ibuki finds some difficulty in the actual task of counting the moles he sees. Of course, there's the stars of the show, the mole near his lip, the one near his eye, the one on his eyelid, the one on his ear – wait, does the ear count as part of the face? Should the ones on his neck count, too? – and there's a constellation of little dots that he keeps losing count of, on his cheeks, temples, jaw, forehead…

Suddenly, Shima turns his head to face him.

Their noses almost bump against each other. “You're close,” Shima says simply, like a warning.

Ibuki backs off in a jump, swallowing hard, spooked for reasons he can't understand. He didn't mean to get this close.

“And you're taking too long. I'm sure there's not that many,” he adds, right before Ibuki starts feeling a little too weird about his own reaction.

“I keep losing track of which ones I already counted.” He pouts. “If I could grab a pen…”

“Absolutely not.”

Ibuki clicks his tongue. “Can I use my finger then?”

He thinks Shima will refute him similarly, and maybe make a witty quip about how much of a pain in the ass he is… but instead, he sighs and says, “you'll quiet down and finish work after you're done, right?”

There's a weird titillating feeling in Ibuki's chest that makes his throat itch. “Of course! Pinky promise!”

Making a face like he’s resigned to his destiny, Shima turns towards him in his chair, and closes his eyes, offering his own face for Ibuki to explore.

The titillating feeling grows, catches on fire like a blanket left over a heater. Once again, Ibuki swallows, trying to steady himself as one hand comes to cup Shima's chin, and turn his face towards the light.

Shima doesn't react to the touch. His guard is completely down.

With a trembling finger, Ibuki starts his count. One, two, five, no wait, start again, one… what comes after one? His eyes stray to Shima's eyelashes, delicate wisps of black against his pale skin; down to the plush bags under his eyes, always more visible when they're at the end of a shift; down to his nose, and he has small moles there too, he should really be counting… down to his cupid's bow…

“You're too slow,” Shima complains, frowning, but keeping his eyes closed.

“Don't move! I'm trying to focus!” Ibuki lies through his teeth. He resets his mind the best he can, counting from left to right, and just barely manages not to trip over himself and spill the numbers everywhere once his eyes fall to examine his partner's lips once more.

“Seriously, though,” Ibuki restarts the topic, the control over his mouth weaker than ever. “At least one of your girlfriends must have been curious. Maybe counted them while you slept?”

“Like I’d know,” Shima says, a little bitter if nothing else.

“Never got that pillow talk?” Ibuki doesn’t even know why he’s still talking. It’s not helping with the counting. He starts from scratch again. “Like, darling, did you know you have precisely thirteen moles on your face? Hehe~, or anything like that?”

“Thirteen? That sounds like a lot,” Shima opens his eyes. Ibuki manually shuts them with one fingertip to each eyelid.

“Don’t move!!”

“You should be done by now if it’s really thirteen. How bad are you at counting?” The protests continue to spill from Shima’s lips. Shima’s lips. Ibuki starts from scratch once more. “And no, not even once. None of my exes were very talkative.”

Ibuki purses his lips, making a face while whatever synapses in his brain are better oiled up process the feeling that sprouts upon hearing those words.

“How about you, though?”

The quiet question takes him by surprise. “Hm?”

“Have any of your exes ever counted your freckles?”

“My freckles?” Ibuki instinctively touches his own face. “I don't have any, though?”

“Of course you do,” Shima opens his eyes, and this time, his gaze is entirely focused on Ibuki. “Right here…”

Shima takes a hand to Ibuki's cheek, right over where his own hand is. The tip of their fingers brush against each other. Their faces are very, very close.

At the sound of incoming steps, however, the scenes dissolves immediately, each smoothly and automatically pushing their chair away as if they had never been side by side to begin with. Within the second, Jinba walks into the office. “You're still there?”

“Not for long,” Shima responds, so focused on the computer screen no one would think he'd been doing anything else. “Ibuki, how's yours coming along?”

“Great,” Ibuki affirms, finally starting to do actual work on the report; his fingers run the keyboard like he’d run down roads when he's feeling restless. “It’s coming along great.”

“Western food! Is that carbonara?” Kuzumi is, as always, elated to see him again. Today, his hair is tied into a simple braid. “Mamma mia! I'll dig in!”

“A portion for two, if you’ll excuse me~” Ibuki snatches half of the meal for himself, reusing the plastic box of a conbini bento consumed during his most recent shift. He and Kuzumi dig in simultaneously, and the rich, salty flavors explode in his mouth, washing his senses clear of any bad feelings. Delicious! “I counted thirteen, by the way.”

“Thirteen of what? Shima Kazumi’s moles?” Kuzumi asks with barely any interest, not even looking up from his meal. Only when Ibuki takes a little too long to respond does he whip his head up, eyes wide. “Wait, for real? I was joking, though?”

Ibuki doesn’t answer, merely looking at the ceiling, a small smirk and a sense of superiority written clearly on his face for anyone to see.

“Are you serious? You dumbass, you just fucked it up. You were supposed to keep the number to yourself and I’d try and guess it,” Kuzumi complains, acting extremely vexed. “Damn it, I could’ve probably gotten it right! Where did you get the chance to count? Love hotel?”

“It’s a secret,” for once, Ibuki is having his fun toying with Kuzumi, invulnerable to his provocations.

“Acting high and mighty when you probably just ogled at him while you were in that lame car of yours. It’s written all over your face,” Kuzumi points at him with his plastic fork before going back to eating. “Does he even know you have the hots for him?”

“Why do you even wanna know? Like, what are you even gonna do with that information?” Ibuki points back at him with his disposable chopsticks, and Kuzumi rolls his eyes.

“Why bother to come visit if you don’t wanna chat? Were you always such a bore?” For all it’s worth, he does seem genuinely annoyed. “I do get three meals a day here, you know? You don’t have to come just to bring me food. Though, the meals here aren’t as good as this, I’ll give you that.” He eats another huge bite. “Let’s have some girls’ talk, detective. Does he know or not? Are you going out or not? How is he in bed?”

Ibuki almost chokes on the pasta, but manages to keep his cool. He raises his brows, incisively looking away. “Not telling.”

“You should work a little smarter. A catch like him at his age won’t be single for long, cop or not,” Kuzumi warns. “Forget about other guys, you gotta worry about the chicks. Is he gay? If not, you’re fucked. Back when I—oh shit,” he slaps a hand over his mouth, and start laughing, a quickfire and syncopated fit of giggles. “I just almost leaked something I shouldn’t. That was close!”

It makes a light bulb light up in Ibuki’s head.

No, if he thinks well about it, he’s probably playing into Kuzumi’s hand. He’s probably said that to get this exact reaction from him – a, maybe if I give him what he wants, he’ll talk about something useful without even realizing – but still, there could be a chance that that had been genuine. And he does have a point; what’s the use of coming to visit him just to give him a meal?

“He’s not gay,” he gives in, offering the information in a quiet voice. “Probably.”

“Probably, you say,” Kuzumi makes little of it.

“No, he’s not. He’s only liked women, as far as I know.” Which is like, one singular woman, but still…

“You’re done for, then. The day some high-spec girl locks into him, it’s over,” Kuzumi diagnoses, once again pointing at him with his fork. “We can’t compete with the ladies when they’re in their game. You better snatch him from the market before that happens.”

“If someone nice comes around, then it’s cool, isn’t it?” Ibuki finishes his portion of carbonara and sits back. “If he’s happy, I mean. He’d make a good husband and an even better dad.”

Kuzumi looks at him with nothing short of disgust.

“Wow, look at that. Turns out you’re the kind of guy I hate the most,” he declares, half laughing, half looking at Ibuki like he’s some kind of gross bug. “Acting strong because you’re too scared to actually do anything? Laaaame. Be a man, Buki, you should be saying stuff like, I’ll be the one to make him happy!, and that kind of stuff.”

“What’s with the nickname? Gross,” Ibuki laughs at him.

“Dodging the subject, huh. You’re not sly!” Kuzumi doesn’t let him escape.

They both laugh, the most unfriendly conjoined laugh on the planet. A brief moment of silence follows.

“At least give him a chance,” is what falls off Kuzumi’s mouth next, this time surprisingly free of contempt. “To reject you, I mean. To at least think of you as a man and decide whether he wants you or not. You owe him that much, don’t you?”

Ibuki would never admit, not even under torture, that those words resonate with him a little.

Out of anything meaningful to say, he asks, “Is your hair long enough for a fishbone braid?”

Ibuki is just about to clock out when he spots the figure coming into the office from the corner of his eye, tall, elegant, in a blue suit.

Do his eyes deceive him? He turns around at once, eyes wide, and no, there’s no mistake, that’s really—

“Kyuu-chan!” He lets out an elated yell, rushing to meet his former colleague. “It’s been ages! Looking sharp as always! How’s stuff in the NPA?”

“Good afternoon, Ibuki-san. Things are tough over there, but I’m getting by,” Kokonoe greets politely, having brushed up on his manners since the transfer. “Is Shima-san around?”

“I think he just left,” Ibuki looks around, a faint memory of Shima’s voice saying ‘good work today’ to him while he worked on wrapping up affairs just some minutes ago. “What, you have an appointment with Shima? Work stuff?”

“He actually called out to me. I don’t really know what it’s about but it seems important,” also looking around, Kokonoe pulls out his phone, presumably checking for texts. After a moment, he seems to find what he was looking for – and a shadow passes by his expression, unmissable to Ibuki’s eyes. “... seems like he’s waiting in the lobby.”

“Let’s go then!” Ibuki pats him in the back, grabs his backpack, and starts guiding him to the Shibaura station’s lobby. “What could it be, hm? Shima can be so mysterious sometimes, it’s honestly a pain…”

“Um… Ibuki-san, you’re coming too…?” Kokonoe asks, a little hesitantly, seeming to shrink into himself minutely.

“Of course I am,” Ibuki looks at him like he’s said something unreasonable. “Why wouldn’t I go? If it’s about Shima, and it’s important, shouldn’t I go? Ah,” he lets out an exaggerated gast, stopping his steps to hug himself in a dramatic display of shock. “Kyuu-chan, are you trying to single me out…?”

Kokonoe grimaces. “That’s not… but…”

“Then let’s go! We shouldn’t keep him waiting!” Ibuki goes back to pushing him forward, and Kokonoe lets him do it, ultimately defeated.

Ibuki, by now, knows well that Shima is hiding something from him, specifically; he’s only made surer by Shima’s reaction, in the lobby, when he spots the two of them coming. Initially regarding them with disbelief, once he realizes what’s happening, he grimaces as if he’s in actual, physical pain.

“Kokonoe!” He roars, emphasizing each syllable and making Kokonoe shrink a little further with each one.

“Shima-san, by the time I saw your text—”

“Where were you guys trying to go without me, hm? So cold~” Ibuki slings an arm around Shima, who is now rubbing his eyes with aggravation. “Were you gonna get me a present? Birthday present? It’s already gone by though, so, Christmas?”

“What Christmas? Off me, now,” Shima wrangles himself out of Ibuki’s grasp, but Ibuki is undeterred.

“So, where are we going, hm? Why can’t I go? If you give me a good reason, I’ll actually leave and go home,” he offers, hands firmly in his pockets, glancing back and forth between them. “Or if it sounds boring. What is it?”

“I would also like to know…” Kokonoe adds, a little hesitant.

Stress is seeping out of Shima’s posture in thick clouds. Ibuki almost feels sorry for him – the word almost being key.

Sighing heavily, Shima hangs his head. “I need your help—your help,” he points at Kokonoe, “to pick up a new suit.”

Kokonoe blinks. “What’s the occasion?”

Ibuki tilts his head. “Don’t you have a bunch of suits already? Well, none are very new, but…”

“I have one, but,” he pauses, clenching his teeth and looking away, as if looking for an emergency way out of the conversation. There is none. “My mother didn’t like it. Says it looks too dark. So I’m getting a new one.”

Now, it’s Ibuki who blinks and Kokonoe who tilts his head. “Your mother…?”

And Shima tries not to sigh once more. “I have an omiai tomorrow.”

So that is how the three of them end up going out shopping together. Under Kokonoe’s guidance, they go from a high-end shop to another, looking for something a little brighter than a simple black suit, but also elegant and befitting of Shima’s character. Once entrusted with the task, Kokonoe pours himself into it as if his honor is at stake, analyzing each detail of the candidates, from cut and color to the shape of the buttons and angle of the lapels.

Ibuki provides helpful color commentary, such as, ‘that looks good!’, ‘that looks even better!’, and ‘nah, I liked the other one!’.

He had, of course, given Shima hell about the omiai, teasing him for it until he looked like he’d collapse from too much mental agony. In the car, he made up a jingle about how they were out on a mission for love, or something similar, and Shima had made enough threats to his physical integrity that he eventually took them seriously and stopped singing. Still, from time to time, he’d make dreamy eyes at his partner and sigh loudly, just to send him the message that he wasn’t off the hook, and wouldn’t be for a while.

Ibuki knows he’s overcompensating, trying to drive over the hole that has just opened in his chest by going as fast as he can, but it’s fine. Everything is fine.

Shima is really fine.

“I don’t know how I feel about this,” he opens the curtains to the fitting room, fiddling a little with the collar of his shirt. Kokonoe had gotten him two dress shirts to wear under the suits, one white and one black; for this suit, a light gray one with a slight pattern?, or is it texture?, to it, he wears the white one. The sleeves are a little big, but it fits him well around the chest, waist, hips, thighs.

“This shade of gray is no good,” Kokonoe shakes his head emphatically.

“Hm? I think it’s fine, though. It looks good,” Ibuki comments, chin propped on the palm of his hand, elbow digging into his knees. His eyes scan Shima’s form from head to toe, over and over again.

“It would look better if it had a cooler tint. I’m sure I saw one over here…” Kokonoe leaves them briefly, looking for whatever it is that he has in mind.

Ibuki’s mistake is to not immediately fill the silence once Kokonoe leaves, because, if he had, Shima might not have noticed something off about him. Instead, he’d been distracted by the way this fabric makes Shima’s thighs look. Yeah, light gray is a really good color…

“Don’t you start crying about how bored you are, or I’ll hit you,” Shima warns him, adjusting his watch around his wrist, even though it had been sitting in place as always. “You were the one fighting to come.”

“Who says I’m bored?” Ibuki retorts, finally managing to get his eyes out of the looping circuit up and down Shima’s body.

“You say the same thing about every suit. Are you even looking at them?” Shima accuses as he turns around to look at himself in the mirror, voice somewhat bitter.

“Shima! What’s up with that accusation? That’s slander!” Ibuki points his finger at him, acting outraged. “I’m deeply invested in finding the perfect suit for Shima-chan’s Super Ultra Important Ultimate Lovey-Dovey Occasion. I look at each option thinking, if I were Future-Fiancée-chan, would I immediately fall in love with this Shima?, and mentally rank them by degree of fall-in-love-ability. See, I’m taking this seriously!”

“Sure, sure,” Shima brushes him off, not even sparing him a glance. Ibuki pouts. “So, how fall-in-love-able is this one?”

“Pretty high in the ranks.” Ibuki’s eyes wander back to Shima’s thighs. “I don’t get what Kyuu-chan didn’t like about it. Well, maybe the next thing he gets will blow the rest out of the water, the kind of suit that would make Future-Fiancée-chan go, Mr. Shima, you’re the only one for me, let’s get married right here, right now!, or something?”

This finally earns him a glance from Shima. His eyes are tired, heavy with something that Ibuki initially thinks to be annoyance; but they look into each other’s eyes for long enough that, maybe due to some kind of distortion or bias in Ibuki’s own sight, it starts to look a little like something unfamiliar, something a little denser, a little stickier than Shima’s usual irritation.

Puzzled, Ibuki blinks, letting out an inquisitive, “Hm?”

Shima sighs, and looks away. “Why do I even try…”

“Found it. Shima-san, please try this on,” Kokonoe bursts into the scene, all but shoving a hangerful of clothing in between the two of them, onto Shima’s unprepared arms. “It’s a herringbone pattern instead of Glen plaid, and the hue is a little cooler, but the cut is pretty similar. This will definitely look better.”

“Yessir,” Shima responds unenthusiastically, disappearing behind the curtain once more.

Kokonoe exhales, seeming to come down from whatever high looking for the right suit got him in. Adjusting his posture and settling down, he turns around to look at Ibuki – and frowns. “Did something happen?”

Ibuki has no idea of what face he must’ve been making, but he tries to fix it. “I don’t think it did…?” He admits.

When Kuzumi sees him walk in with a box of sweet pastries, he looks at him as if he’d lost his marbles.

“What’s the occasion? Is it Christmas? Did you get dumped?” He asks carefully, as if disarming a time bomb. “Two guys eating dessert in a prison interrogation room, huh. You sure have some hobbies…”

“You can just watch if you don’t want any,” Ibuki bites back violently, not in the mood for jokes, for once. He opens the box, and takes out a richly decorated éclair.

“Never said I didn’t want any. Whoa, macarons!” Kuzumi looks into the box and smiles. “Don’t mind if I do!”

For a while, they just eat in silence, patiently making their way through the assortment of sweets. Only when they reach the main event, the matching slices of strawberry shortcake, does Kuzumi break the ice with, “So? Dumped? Rejected? Did he marry someone else?”

“Why a bomb, out of all things?” is Ibuki’s reply. “Did Etori know that much about you? Was he known to be a snitch?”

Kuzumi halts still. “You must be depressed to the point of insanity.” He comments, raising his brows. “I did it ‘cause I wanted to. I like bombs. What’s wrong with that?”

“How did you make it?” Ibuki pushes on.

“Do I look like—are you really a detective?” He takes a bite of the cake, and shakes his head. “Damn, that’s sweet. Why do you think I made the bomb?”

“What’s your real name?” is his next question.

Kuzumi just stares.

“You look so miserable that I coulda’ answered out of pity. This almost worked. Nice effort,” he says, raising the cake slice as if in a congratulatory toast. “How bad was the rejection?”

Ibuki looks down. “He had an omiai.”

“That’s all?!” Kuzumi almost chokes on the cake. Coughing a little, he scowls at Ibuki. “You’re acting like a puppy kicked to the curb because of that? I thought for sure he was married off to some girl with a baby on the way or something.”

“No.” Ibuki shudders minutely. Not yet.

“Don’t give up just yet, then. Even if she says yes, breaking off an engagement is no biggie,” Kuzumi waves a hand, taking another bite of the cake and making a face. “Some guy in here broke up with his girlfriend back home because of me. Isn’t that cute? I bet you could do the same if you put your mind to it. Wanna try growing out your hair?”

“No, thanks. Washing long hair is a pain,” Ibuki eats a piece of his own slice, staring vacantly into space. “We went looking for suits…”

“Hm, nice.” Kuzumi looks up to the ceiling, and Ibuki shoots him a glare; he’s positive that Kuzumi is conjuring some kind of indecent image in his mind. “I wanna see detective Shima in a suit. How was it?”

On the edge of true madness at the memories that flow in, of Shima in suits – a variety of them, all shapes, colors, fits – Ibuki nods, eyes vacant. “Fine. Really fine.”

“Tell me about it. Did you get up to something nasty in the fitting room?” Kuzumi wiggles his brows, and Ibuki clicks his tongue. “I would’ve said, wait, lemme try some suits too, oh it’d be more time efficient if we shared the room, y’know, and then—”

“Stop right there, you crazy bastard,” Ibuki throws the non-edible thing nearest to his hand – a balled up napkin – directly into Kuzumi’s face, hitting him between the eyes.

“How are you gonna steal him from whatever girl he was set up with if you keep being this prudish?” Kuzumi pokes at him, unbothered by the assault. “You gotta use all of your assets. Bring out the whole arsenal. Fight dirty!”

“Why is there no record of you anywhere?” Ibuki eats the strawberry in his slice before Kuzumi can even think of stealing it. “Do you really have no family? Are you really from Osaka?”

“I take offense in that! I’m a-hundred-percent Osakan, born and raised,” Kuzumi protests, unusually serious. Seeing as he’s missed the opportunity to steal Ibuki’s strawberry, he, too, eats his. “Did you at least give him a chance like I told you? I’ve never given advice for free in my life, you know. You should be thanking me for my kindness.”

“I’m already giving you cake,” Ibuki points out, unmoved.

“True that,” Kuzumi concedes. “Does he know you’ve been seeing me?”

Ibuki’s silence says more than a hundred words. He looks everywhere around the room, the ceiling, walls, ground, all while avoiding the wide eyes and O-shaped mouth that slowly overtake Kuzumi’s expression.

“Cheater,” Kuzumi whispers out in delight. “Adulterer! Jezebel!”

“Don’t talk as if there’s something going on between us, ew. I just got the creeps all over my body,” Ibuki complains, crossing his arms over his chest and rubbing his arms to demonstrate his point.

“You’re right, that was pretty gross. I’d rather have detective Shima Kazumi visit me,” Kuzumi sighs dreamily, taking another bite of cake and staring at the ceiling at an angle. “We’d eat spaghetti from the same plate, and somehow put both ends of the same noodle in our mouth—”

“You should’ve given being a love novel author a shot,” Ibuki finishes his cake in one big bite. “With how full of weird fantasies your head is.”

“I could’ve been anything in the world, really. In a way, I was,” Kuzumi retorts, shrugging, directing a strangely analytical gaze to Ibuki’s form. “Say, what do you think he’ll find out about first? Your feelings, or the fact you’ve been coming here?”

Ibuki doesn’t answer. Even after a long moment of silence, the answer never comes.

Seeming satisfied with that, Kuzumi takes the last bite of his own cake, and coughs. “You got any water?”

Giving Shima a chance to reject him sounds fine, and fair, in theory. Not that Ibuki would ever admit to it, because it would mean Kuzumi was right once, and Kuzumi is a complete bastard whom he hates, regular visits notwithstanding.

It sounds right, in theory. It sounds cool, even, very handsome-romantic-tragic-hero of him. But the prospect makes Ibuki cower unexpectedly, terrified of it in a way he’s not of anything else in life – not of ghosts, not of lightning, not of pain. The only thing he finds that can compare, when he lies in bed at night trying to make heads and tails of his own erratic behavior as of recent, is that he’s as scared of it as he’s scared of something bad happening to his loved ones, of losing them in some way. Of losing them…

He doesn’t want to lose Shima, and that’s all to it, in the end. He’s scared of it to the point of total paralysis. If there’s a surefire way to have his more ufufutastic inclinations towards Shima rejected but still keep his position by his side, then that’s alright. But if Shima puts even just one centimeter of distance between them… it hurts to imagine.

It hurts to imagine him loving someone else, too, and holding their hand, and kissing them, and, and—but that, he’ll just have to cope with.

So, what should he do now? How to achieve this perfect confession, the one that allows everything to stay the same?

He’s in the midst of doing such planning and calculations in his head, as well as running down the streets, chasing a guy who’d stolen a whole bag of premium fruit from a supermarket and is trying to flee by scooter, when the unimaginable happens. Really, it must’ve been all that time spent with Kuzumi, his bad guy miasma might’ve rubbed on him somehow and brought him a spell of untimely misfortune – right when the chase is starting to look good, starting to look like it’ll be over, Ibuki trips on something, he never finds out what, and hits his forehead on the very corner of a nearby bollard.

It hurts like hell. It hurts like his skull has cracked open like a walnut. Has it? He has no way of knowing.

“IBUKI!!” Shima’s voice roars, somewhere in his tails.

“Shima!! The guy!” Ibuki screams back, feebly, but his leg cramps when he tries to get up, putting him back on his ass on the ground with a thud. What is happening? His body isn’t responding to his commands, glitching and freezing like an old computer. “The guy!!”

“401 is gonna round him up by car.” Shima’s voice is close, and Ibuki hears a sound, and feels hot, broad palms around his arms, wait a second, why can’t he see Shima? Why can’t he see? “Are you alright? Of all times for you to get hurt, really!”

“I can’t see! Where are you?” Ibuki reaches out his hands to the general direction of where he thinks Shima’s face will be, feeling the complete darkness before his eyes with his palms. His hands find what he presumes to be Shima’s face, at the same time as he feels Shima’s hand – is that his hand? – pressed on his forehead, right where it hurts.

“Don’t fall asleep, Ibuki. Stay with me.” Shima’s voice sounds urgent and hushed, just like it is when he’s trying to calm him down in the middle of a chase. Shima’s worried, Ibuki realizes, and, as if called forth by those magic words, his eyesight starts to return little by little, the shape of the scenery in front of him discerning its edges from pitch black.

He sees Shima first, of course. Shima’s face, pale and very close, his brows knitted together in concentration, his lips slightly parted. As more of him enters his pupils, he can feel his touch better, with more discernment; there’s delicate points of heat where his fingertips hold Ibuki’s chin up, gentle and without force, and a texture stands between Ibuki’s wound and Shima’s other palm. Ibuki blinks. Maybe a handkerchief…?

Looking up to look into Shima’s eyes, Ibuki realizes he’s seen this scene before, but from another angle.

Ah. Back when we arrested Kuzumi, he thinks to himself. That bastard, that must’ve been when he…

“Are you feeling anything? Dizzy? Sleepy?” Shima checks on him in a quiet voice, letting go of his chin to brush some hair off his eyes.

“Nothing,” Ibuki lies as his heart starts performing unfathomable dance moves in his chest. To his chagrin, he understands Kuzumi on a deeper level now. If he knew about this… like hell I’d tell him, Ibuki thinks, shaking his head to dispel the possibility. Or maybe he should tell him, to rub the fact they both got this treatment from Shima on his face…?

The concern in Shima’s eyes grows. “Ibuki, if you’re feeling anything, I need you to tell me. You could be concussed. I know you don’t get hurt too often, but this is pretty serious.”

“I’m fine. I was conked out for a second, but I’m good now,” he reassures his partner, getting up on his feet in his usual jump to demonstrate. He wobbles a little, but manages not to fall. Shima follows him up carefully. “See, all good. Oh shit,” he finally looks down at himself, and his shirt is absolutely soaked with blood, clinging to his skin. “I was bleeding that much?”

“You still are,” Shima rectifies, reaching up with his blood-soaked handkerchief – and blood-soaked hand, there’s even blood dripping down his forearm, and the sight causes an unnameable emotion to start performing somersaults in Ibuki’s potentially damaged brain. “Why did you mention Kuzumi?”

Ibuki freezes.

Oh shit, did he say that out loud?

“Ah, you know, back when we got him? Didn’t he also split his head open, and you stopped the bleeding for him?” Ibuki points at his forehead, and he might’ve been able to keep it normal and plausible if he’d stopped there, but he really must be concussed, because he does not, in fact, stop there. “I haven’t seen Kuzumi in ages though, I wonder how he’s doing. Like, does he still have long hair? I wonder if he has a scar from that time. Wait a minute,” he frowns, immediately getting lost in thought. “Does he have a scar from that time…?”

Shima is looking at him with inscrutable eyes. Ibuki might’ve fucked up.

But then, their earpieces croak to life, and Jinba’s voice comes through. “We caught the guy. We’ll take him back to the station and hand him over. Everything fine over there? Over.”

Shima presses the talk button, and answers with, “Ibuki hit his head pretty bad. I’m taking him to the hospital first and we’ll meet at the office. Over.”

“Damn, alright. Is he alive? Oi, Ibuki, I thought idiots didn’t get hurt?”

“Idiots don’t catch colds, but they apparently do trip on their own feet, sometimes,” Shima raises an eyebrow, offering Ibuki a tiny, mocking smile, and it’s a relief to see it, even though Shima is clearly making fun of him. “We’re going now. Over.”

They leave the scene, and Shima takes him to the hospital. Ibuki gets a funny-looking bandage all around his forehead, and, to kill time while they wait for his discharge, they chat about the morality of producing and selling red grapes that are the size of an apple for a lot of money. He’s diagnosed with a mild concussion, which means he’s off the field for two weeks, a recommendation he whines about in absolute agony to the doctor, like a kid refusing to get their blood drawn. They then head back to the office, in order to wrap up affairs and hand over Ibuki’s medical leave documents, which he tries to do away with several times under Shima’s watchful and disapproving stare.

They only talk about fruit, head injuries, medical advice, and congee toppings. The name ‘Kuzumi’ doesn’t come up again.

When the door to the interrogation room opens, Kuzumi is styling his hair, braiding a thin lock of hair near the curve of his ear without the assistance of a mirror, the rest falling loose and spilling in waves of black over his greyish-green jumpsuit. It reaches almost chest-length now, a little thin and rebellious around the ends.

He sees who’s walking into the room, and stops, hands frozen in place.

Shima Kazumi also stops, raising his brows in unenthusiastic surprise. “Your hair has grown pretty long.”

Kuzumi’s face brightens, jaw falling open. He makes a show out of fixing his appearance and posture before returning the greeting. “Why, detective! I didn’t expect you to come see me!”

“I heard from someone that you were talking again, and decided to come check for myself.” Shima takes the seat across from Kuzumi. He, naturally, has brought nothing with him, not even a snack. “Were you expecting someone else?”

“Of course no, nobody ever comes to visit me. Poor little me,” Kuzumi leans over the table, propping his face on his hands and pouting exaggeratedly. “I’m so lonely here, you know. You should come keep me company. Wanna give first-degree murder a try?”

“Nobody ever comes, you say,” Shima comments, not paying attention to half of what he says. He pulls out a sheet of paper. “That’s interesting. I could swear it says here that you’ve been getting questioned at least once every two weeks, for the past three or four months. Ah, these are the prison’s records, pulled just now, before I came in.”

“Well, if you already know, there’s no need for me to tell you, right?” Kuzumi reasons, smiling. “I’m sure those records come with a name, too.”

Shima shoots him a long look.

Kuzumi’s smile widens.

“You surely aren’t gonna ask me something stupid like, what do you guys talk about, right? You’re partners, shouldn’t you be the first one to know?” He crosses his arms and tilts his head, as if in deep thought. “Ah, that’s right. He might not have told you because he’s scared of looking stupid in front of you. After all, you’d definitely give him shit for coming here, wouldn’t you?”

The silent, long stare from Shima stretches for a second more before he says, “I’d like to hear your side of things. Entertain me.”

“He really didn’t tell you, huh,” Kuzumi clicks his tongue and makes a face. “We talk about various things, y’know, just idle chat. Buki and I are surprisingly compatible, if you really wanna know. We share some key interests.” His eyes fall on Shima once more, with a leer. “Say, Shima-san, are you seeing anyone right now? Engaged? Maybe married?”

Shima remains unimpressed, leaning forward as well. “I heard your appeal for sentence reduction was rejected. That’s unfortunate.”

“Ah yeah, that. What a pain.” Kuzumi rolls his eyes. “Well, just gotta try again in two years. Maybe I should get a better lawyer.”

“I wish you luck.” This time, it’s Shima who smiles, sweet and unassuming. “Right now, you’re sentenced to life. You must think it can’t get much worse, right?”

Kuzumi doesn’t answer. For once, he doesn’t follow with a funny quip, or change the subject; he waits, quiet.

“But it can.” Shima’s smile widens minutely. “It can, in ways you can’t really imagine right now. And if something goes wrong with Ibuki, and you’re found at the cause of that, it will. You should be careful of that, alright?”

Silence.

Kuzumi’s eyes are fully focused on Shima, lids heavy, pupils wide and pitch black. He licks his bottom lip, and swallows.

“Shima-san,” he says finally, voice quieter than it has ever been before. “I didn’t quite hear that. Would you please come closer and say it again?”

Shima’s eyes narrow, but his smile doesn’t fall. “I think you heard me just fine.”

“No, seriously, it’s this attention span thing, I couldn’t hear a word,” leaning over the table even further, to a point where he’s almost crawling atop of it, Kuzumi all but pleads. “If you could come over here so I can hear you – and also, like, put your hands around my neck or grab me by the hair, that would really help me focus. What was it that you said?”

But Shima only lets a soundless chuckle, straightens himself up, and gets to his feet. His smile remains distant, and amicable, and deeply venomous. “Have a good day, Kuzumi. And keep up the good work here.”

Even during his medical leave, Ibuki still shows up to the office, though he’s unauthorized from so much as getting close to the car. He’s been bored to such a ghastly extent that he’s even taken to the job of filling his colleagues’ paperwork and reports, the task he most hates and dreads and bitches about in the usual MIU schedule, because he just has nothing else to do besides picking up phone calls and calling the Captain when something goes wrong, which happens less often than everyone else thinks.

He complains so profusely about the current situation, and makes so many threats of finding a way to go back to action before the two weeks are over, that Shima ends up staying with him in the after hours, helping him with the reports when he’s too bored or just keeping him company when he’s being diligent.

“There’s no way this is really necessary. I feel fine!” That day, he’s feeling diligent, typing furiously at the laptop in intervals and multitasking by spinning around on his chair and whining, as always, about the leave. “I looked up the symptoms for concussion, and I don’t have any of them! No nausea, no memory loss, no mood swings, and I can sleep just fine! Why! Can’t! I! Work!”

“Effects of concussions in the brain can be unpredictable. You can be fine today, only for a symptom to show up before the weekend,” Shima explains to him for what must be the hundredth time. “You know that even light trauma can cause pretty serious stuff in the future if they don’t heal well, like subarachnoid hemorrhages and strokes, right? Those can be instantly lethal. You could just drop dead without warning one day. Isn’t that scary?”

Ibuki does freeze at that, lips pursed. He hates to admit it, but… “That’s pretty scary.”

“Right? That’s why you should always follow medical advice.” As far as Ibuki can see, Shima isn’t really doing anything important lecturing him on brain health. He’d been fiddling with his phone earlier, but now he’s messing around with stuff on the desk, seeming absorbed in making another of his PythagoraSwitch circuits. Seeing him so idle, it really feels like he stayed back just to be together… the thought makes Ibuki’s heart swell like a balloon in his chest.

Still, being together with Shima like this just makes Ibuki wish he could be together with Shima all the time. Now, he can’t even be together with Shima during most of his shift. “So annoying,” he grumbles, proceeding with his typing. “This is all that bastard Kuzumi’s fault…”

That brings a pause to Shima’s motion, and Ibuki freezes too, his reaction to his own words delayed.

Ah, he probably shouldn’t have said that.

“Speaking of which,” Shima starts off quietly. Ibuki doesn’t move. “I paid a visit to Kuzumi, just the other day.”

Ibuki knows, there and then, that this is gonna go some sort of awry for him.

He tries to act normal about it, though, because he’s not known for going down without a fight, be the circumstances as they may. Forcing his fingers to unfreeze, he haphazardly types some random words into his otherwise pristinely done report, eloquently replying to Shima’s ice-breaker with a smile and a, “Huh, you did? There’s better stuff to do with your free time, you know!”

“After you mentioned him, I was curious to see how he’s doing, so I paid him a visit.” Shima’s eyes are focused on a set of identical erasers that he’s trying to line up on a pile of pamphlets. “Took him into questioning, actually, since that gives us more time and privacy than a normal visit.”

“That’s underhanded, Shima-chan,” Ibuki teases, pointing at Shima and laughing, winking, as if he were in on the joke. “Abusing your position as a police officer! You sly fox!”

“I got lucky, really. You’d usually need a document from the squad captain to get permission to pull a prisoner, but not everyone in the team over there knows that. Seems like someone’s been questioning him often lately, so they didn’t bat an eye,” Shima looks up from his circuit, obviously searching Ibuki for a reaction. When he gets none, he presses on. “I talked to him for a while.” A pause. “He told me about you.”

Ibuki keeps on smiling, refusing to back down, refusing to show weakness, but his teeth and jaw feel tight. His stomach feels funny, flipped over itself, and for once, a symptom of concussion decides to show up, in the form of a dull ache behind the healing cut above his brow.

He told me about you, he says. Ibuki has no doubt in his mind, for even a single second, what it is that Kuzumi must’ve told him – he can practically hear the motherfucker’s voice as if he were in the room right now. Detective Shima, did you know that your partner has a humongous crush on you? Did you know he’s been looking at you with indecent eyes behind your back? Did you know he wanted to kiss you so bad when he was counting your moles that he forgot what numbers are?

“Shima,” Ibuki calls out, fixing his posture on the chair and his expression into the best façade of unconcerned seriousness that he can muster. “You see…”

“I don’t mind, just so you know,” Shima interrupts him, and the words strike his newly put-on façade like a sledgehammer. “I’m just… concerned. You never told me anything.”

Ibuki's fists ball up tightly over the keyboard, typing a long line of lowercase L’s into the report. “I really wanted to, honestly. For real! And like, it pisses me off that you didn’t hear it from me first. I wanted you to be the one to tell you.”

Shima finally looks up to him. Their eyes meet; his eyes are… soft, and kind, but… “Why didn’t you?” He puts away the objects in his hands, a plastic ruler and a block of post-its, to give Ibuki his full attention.

To give his own brain some credit, Ibuki immediately realizes that I was scared is the wrong answer. That one will hurt Shima, for sure. He knows it instinctively, at first, and realizes, after consideration, that it might hit The Kosaka Nerve, even though he wasn’t scared scared – it’s all too complicated to be succinct about, but he’s not good enough with words to explain it coherently at length, not at the moment, not under that kind of pressure.

So, instead, he says, “I wanted to explain it properly when I did tell you, but I didn’t know how. Actually, I still don’t.” He lets out a chuckle and scratches his head, a very poor attempt at normalcy, and erases the misplaced characters in the document slowly, one by one. “I… don’t know how or why it happened. And I thought, well, I think I should be able to explain everything to Shima when I tell him, because he might be weirded out!” Is this alright? Is it reaching him? Shima’s face is hard to read; no matter how much he looks, Ibuki can’t parse the emotion in those gentle, slightly distant eyes. “I mean, it’s weird, isn’t it? Even I think it’s weird…”

“Well,” a small smile appears in Shima’s lips. “I can’t really say I understand it…”

Another sledgehammer. This one hurts a bit.

“... but… how should I put this,” Shima averts his eyes to his PythagoraSwitch circuit, giving it a once-over as if trying to remember what he was doing with it. “I’d rather know about it, even if I don't understand it at first, than feel like you’re keeping something from me. Aren't you always saying that we shouldn't keep secrets from each other or do things on our own? We're partners, after all.”

The third hit makes Ibuki’s chest burst into warmth.

Wait a minute, wait a minute now… isn’t this actually kind of perfect?!

I don’t get it, but I don’t mind – isn’t this the rejection he’s been dreaming of? Rather than saying something like it’s weird, it’s gross, I’m sorry or I don’t know what to say – it’s I’d rather know about it than not. We’re partners.

Ibuki’s eyes start to sting. Now, why is that? Mood swings? Concussion symptoms? He purses his lips, still fiddling aimlessly with the keyboard.

“Don’t cry,” Shima jokes.

“I’m not crying,” Ibuki laughs, sniffling discreetly and finding his axis once again. He catches Shima trying to run a small steel ball on his circuit and failing, the ball falling off track somewhere between the plastic ruler and a box of tissues. “I’m sorry, I guess. For keeping stuff from you.”

Shima scrunches up his nose. “Don’t apologize either. It doesn’t suit you.” He offers Ibuki a smile, one that makes Ibuki realize, suddenly and finally, that there’s no turning back from how huge his feelings have gotten for him. It’s love, it’s straight-up love, so big and strong and all-encompassing inside of him that it’s a little scary. “I know now, so it’s all fine.”

It’s all fine. Ibuki nods, emotions lodged painfully in his throat.

Even though it’s scary, Shima knows of it, and accepts it – so it’s all fine. It’s all fine.

Is it, though?

“Speaking of not keeping stuff from each other or whatever,” Ibuki foolishly opens his mouth. “You never told me how the omiai went.”

“Oh, that,” Shima makes a face.

“Soooo? How was it?” Ibuki finally finishes whatever sentence he’s been not-working on for the past fifteen minutes, applying all but two brain cells on it, before fully turning his attention to his partner, hands clasped beside his face. “Was she the kyuru type? Did she fall in love with you immediately? Are you guys getting married in June?”

“I got properly rejected within the weekend, if that’s what you wanna know,” Shima raises an eyebrow, giving the circuit another try. This time, the ball falls off course near a pile of CD cases. “The other party… I guess she was on the more kyuru side of things. Very much your type.”

“Whoa, no way! Awesome! I’m so jealous!” Ibuki is, indeed, very jealous. But he winds back after a second. “Wait, you got rejected?!”

“Both of us were doing it just to appease our parents, after all,” Shima smiles to himself, shaking his head. “We talked about how the rejection should go during our time alone. It was pretty fun.”

“What the hell, doesn’t it sound like you’re totally compatible? You should’ve given it a real shot,” Ibuki pouts, conflicting emotions making the ache in his head come and go. Should he tell Shima about that? No, probably not. “And you looked so good in your suit…”

“She has someone she likes, apparently. Hasn’t told the parents yet, so the omiai was a case of unfortunate timing.” Shima tries the circuit again. The ball almost makes it through, but on the last hurdle, a little wooden object that Ibuki is positive he’s never seen around the office before, it comes a little to the left of the opening it’s supposed to go through, hitting the wood with a soft thud and falling off course once more. “We did have some things in common, I guess. But it is what it is.”

“Are you bragging or not? Did you like her or not? I don’t get it,” Ibuki covers up for his headache with a loud voice and a funny face.

Shima just sighs. “Nevermind that. Finish the report, Ibuki.”

In light of their recent heart-to-heart, and seen as he now has nothing to lose, with his feelings being out in the open, Ibuki decides to be more communicative with Shima.

So, next time they have a relatively lax day at work, he walks up to him as they're about to clock off and says, “I'm gonna go visit Kuzumi today.”

Shima raises his eyebrows at him, collecting his belongings into his bag. “What’s the occasion?” He asks.

“Gonna give him a piece of my mind for snitching on me to you,” Ibuki says simply, putting on his jacket. “If you were to pick between dango and oden, right now, what would you pick?”

“Huh?” Shima frowns. Somehow, their packing-up routine seems to end exactly at the same time; giving the rest of the squad a ‘good work today’ in unison, they make for the door at the same time. “Neither. Do you want a ride?”

Ibuki gasps, putting his hands to his cheeks. “Shima-chan! That’s so sweet!”

“I just feel like driving around for a bit,” Shima grumbles, but Ibuki can easily tell that he's making up excuses to hide his embarrassment. Almost at the exact same time, both of them clip their names from ‘on-duty’ to ‘off-duty’ on the whiteboard by the entrance.

“Then, by all means, let me make you company,” Ibuki all but skips along the way, right behind him, as they head for the garage. “Can we stop somewhere on the way there? I guess I’m gonna go with dango…”

“Why dango, all of sudden?” Shima questions, frowning slightly. “It’s roasted sweet potato season. How about some sweet potato?”

“It’s hard to find sweet potato when you’re planning to get it,” Ibuki points out. “Rather than go to the sweet potato, you have to wait until it comes to you.”

“Really? I know a place that sells them, in that commercial street nearby.”

“But is that as good as a sweet potato from a traveling sweet potato cart?”

“Isn’t it the same? What’s the difference between each sweet potato, apart from the potato itself?”

“Shima-chan, you really know nothing! Sweet potato is all about aura!”

The conversation goes for a while, and the subject shifts, and they chat for almost the entire drive, as if nothing really is different between them; it fills Ibuki with a sweet, easy relief that stings just a little at its core, but is mostly comforting.

Apparently, Shima only realizes the why for the dango – despite the earlier discussion, Ibuki ends up going for dango anyway – when they reach the prison’s parking spots. He sees Ibuki stacking up the boxes neatly inside their paper bag and asks, “You’re taking them with you?”

“Ah, yeah. It’s, uh, kinda hard to explain,” Ibuki cringes. “For some reason I started bringing him snacks. Well, I just bring along stuff I wanted to eat in the first place…”

“You sure are friendly to him,” Shima chortles, and Ibuki makes a face of disgust at him. “Should I go in, too? If we’re taking him into questioning, we could go together.”

“No way,” Ibuki replies almost too quickly, shuddering from imagining such scene.

“Why not?” Shima pokes at him with his elbow, and Ibuki finds it hard to tell whether he’s half-joking or doing it in full. “Am I not invited to your picnic? I want some dango too.”

“Here,” without hesitation, Ibuki fetches a box from the pile and hands it over to Shima. “I don’t wanna see you and Kuzumi in the same room. He probably said something indecent to you when you came, didn’t you?”

Shima laughs soundlessly. “He really is a character, isn’t he?”

“Gross, blergh, yuck, don’t wanna,” Ibuki shakes his head, trying his best to unsee the images the most jealous part of his brain is threatening to conjure; after all, Shima never went into specifics about how the visit went… no, but there’s no way, there’s really no way. “Would you let the person you like go into a room with someone who’s gonna try to pick them up the whole time? There’s no way I’m letting that happen.”

For some reason, Shima seems to freeze at that. The smile from before remains on his lips, but it becomes incredibly still for a second.

“... hm?” He lets out a sound.

“At least not when I’m here! Though I’d really rather you didn’t go if I’m not here either!” Ibuki crosses his arms, aware that there’s a slowly blooming heat in his cheeks. Hasn’t this been the first time he’s called Shima a ‘person he likes’ out loud since the rejection? No, at all? It should theoretically feel freeing, but it’s actually kind of embarrassing… “Maybe that’s too heavy? Possessive? Well, but I think nothing good comes out of visiting him anyway, so it’s okay to just not do it!” He throws in a thumbs-up and a tongue-out cheeky smile for good measure.

When Shima doesn’t respond – he looks like he’s a little freaked out but trying not to show it, so maybe, as Ibuki thought, he’d really stepped over some kind of line? – Ibuki just gathers his stuff and leaves the car. “Thank you for the ride, Shima-chan! Bye bye! See ya at work!”

He tries not to look like he’s running away, making sure to do a funny little jog as he enters the facility to signal that everything is fine, everything is good and normal, despite the warmth in his face that refuses to dissipate.

Kuzumi looks thoroughly unimpressed to see him again. With his arms crossed and emotionless eyes, he comments, “Sweets again? Are you still in the dumps?”

“You got something against sweets? Look,” Ibuki raises a skewer of dango to eye-level, a thing of beauty with four different toppings that blend into each other’s colors delicately. “Isn’t it pretty? Shima really knows how to pick out fancy shops. I’ll dig in!”

“Oh, Shima Kazumi picked these out? Excuse me, then,” his previous disdain completely put aside, Kuzumi quickly reaches for a portion of the dango as well. “Are you trying to flex the fact that you went out shopping with him? You have a bad personality!”

“Look who’s talking. I hope the dango is so sticky it sticks your mouth shut,” Ibuki childishly retorts. “This is for telling on me when he came to visit!”

“What are you even accusing me of? Telling what on who?” Kuzumi shoves two dangos at once into his mouth, making his cheeks swell up to a comical size. “Man, these are really good. The texture is amazing.”

“I was really craving them for some reason. I wonder if it’s the season?” Ibuki ponders, regarding the half eaten skewered treats with curiosity. “But after talking to Shima, I’m actually craving sweet potatoes. I wonder if I’ll see a cart any time soon…”

“Oh man, roasted sweet potato! Bring me some if you find it, I love those,” Kuzumi requests as if it’s nothing. Really, when did their talks turn into this? They don’t sound any different from any regular friends chatting on a bench at a park anywhere in Tokyo. “Actually, aren’t you gonna get busted soon by your boss for coming so often? Detective Shima had this piece of paper with him, and it had every time you came written down. Maybe you’ll get fired?”

“I mean, I’m genuinely interrogating you, just squeezing the information out little by little. I’m sure my captain will understand,” Ibuki says without much conviction, but with a lot of pretense. “What’s your real name, after all?”

Kuzumi chuckles. “That was a shit try. Zero out of ten.”

Ibuki clicks his tongue, grabbing another skewer.

“And before you start asking questions, maybe answer mine? Who told you on what? Like I said, he already had the log of all the times you came around before he even walked in,” Kuzumi points out. “Sure, he asked me and I told him we hang out, but he already knew that. What was there to tell?”

“No, but you told him, didn’t you?” Ibuki points back, words slightly muffled as he chews. “About the other stuff.”

Kuzumi blinks.

Ibuki blinks.

Kuzumi brings a hand to the front of his mouth, expression slowly morphing into one of horror.

“This is so scary. Are you really a detective?” he asks, voice faint and trembling. “You think I told him you’re into him?”

Ibuki blinks again.

“You actually fucking stupid or what?” Kuzumi gapes, grabbing more dango for himself, but wide eyes never leaving Ibuki. “Why would I tell him that? So he can give you a chance while I’m locked up here?”

Ibuki looks at the world before his eyes as if it’s been put in the fastest, most intense cycle of a dryer. It’s upside down and it’s still going. Spinning around itself vertiginously…

“You didn’t tell him?!” Belatedly, his face comes to mirror Kuzumi’s horror, which then in turns makes Kuzumi burst out in laughter.

“I’ve met thousands of idiots in my life, but you’re one-of-a-kind.” He bites off a dango to point the now exposed tip of the skewer at Ibuki, somewhat menacingly. “If he finds out you like him, I lose. He’s gonna start looking at you different, and while there’s a chance he might reject you, there’s also a chance he might start thinking you’re not too bad. You see him every day and I saw him for the first time in years last week, how well do you think the odds are stacked in my favor?” He pauses, chewing pensively. “That’s until he takes my suggestion to kill someone and move in, anyway.”

“But then—but then,” Ibuki is desperately trying to make sense of the tornado of his own thoughts. “Didn’t you want me to confess?!”

“I suggested you to, as a joke, because I thought you’re not really gonna do it. You’re the type to back out of it last second every time, that much I know,” Kuzumi replies matter of factly. “And like, if it’s gonna happen, do it yourself then. I’m not moving a finger to help you.”

Ibuki tries really hard to hold a coherent line of thought, but it’s constantly cut off by a barrage of flying cows and car parts that come flying from all directions in his head.

I don’t mind, you know.

I can’t really say I understand it…

But I’d rather know about it than…

Know about what?!

Would you let the person you like—oh, he’s so fucked. This is a catastrophe.

Feeling, out of all things, extremely pissed off, Ibuki leans forward, eyes ablaze and sharper than knives. “This is all your fault,” he accuses Kuzumi in a growl. “Again.”

“Don’t blame me for stuff I had no part in. You did this to yourself,” Kuzumi puts his hands in the air, emphasizing his non-involvement, and the words echo unpleasantly in Ibuki’s ears.

By the time he leaves the facility, Ibuki had spent a perfectly useless hour and a half arguing about nothing with Kuzumi, and he still has no idea of what to do about his accidental spillage of the beans.

The order of events doesn’t make sense to him either. He walks down the stairs at the entrance in a deep state of concentration, trying to put the pieces together; if Kuzumi really didn’t tell on him, then what had that talk been about? What did Shima not understand, but would rather know? Why didn’t he react in the car when Ibuki said what he said? Was Kuzumi lying about not telling on him? Was this some sort of mind game? Well, who ever said Kuzumi’s word was to be trusted to begin with?

“Ibuki.”

The sound pierces through Ibuki’s line of thought and makes him pause in his steps. Now, that’s scary. Why did he just hear Shima’s voice out of nowhere?

But when Ibuki looks up, he actually sees Shima right in front of him, just a little to the right. Ah. That’s why.

For some reason, for whatever reason it is, Shima seems to be waiting for him at the entrance. He's leaning back on the door of the car, his own car, arms crossed casually over his chest, posture relaxed as usual, eyes wandering around, but his body language denounces how much of his attention is dedicated to him, and he's so handsome. This, Ibuki realizes, would be the worst time in the recorded history of mankind to shed a tear, regardless of motive, so he doesn't.

“What? Shima-chan?” His voice sounds a little weird to his own ears, but he smiles and waves as if everything is fine. “Huh, why are you here? Have you been waiting for me?”

“I had to run an errand around these parts, and stopped just now on the off chance you were still here,” Shima says, looking elsewhere, and Ibuki has a feeling that’s not the whole truth. “Didn’t expect to actually see you coming out.”

“Seems like you have pretty good instincts,” Ibuki grins, acting as usual, like he’s trying to rile him up. Shima shoots him a shut up glare as usual, and everything feels so normal that it circles back to being weird, in context. “Are you gonna give me a ride home?”

Shima doesn’t answer at first. He’s not looking at him either; he’s glancing to the side, but, after the silence following his words grows half a second too long, Ibuki follows his gaze to find nothing notable there, so he doesn’t know why…

“You’re probably not hungry now, right?” Is what Shima finally says to break the silence.

Ibuki is a little taken aback. “Hm, not really,” Ibuki confesses. “I guess that was too much dango for two people.”

“Then,” Shima follows up but then, inexplicably, his words falter. He recovers within the second, though, and says, “then, tomorrow, why don’t you have dinner with me?”

Back during his days in Okutama, Ibuki had once spent almost the entire late night part of his shift doing serious research about spontaneous combustion on the police box’s sole computer, because of a urban legend told to him by a junior, and because he’d felt so angry at their supervisor earlier he’d been convinced he could’ve exploded into flames. Now, more than a decade later, he questions the results of said research; there might not be any scientific evidence of human beings exploding into flames so far, but, with the heat and intensity with which his emotions revolt inside him at Shima’s words, he might as well become patient zero of the phenomenon.

Because, really, after all that’s transpired, did Shima really just invite him out to a—

“Whaaaat, what’s that? A date?” He might be shaking pathetically, but he won’t give up on his chance to joke about the matter. Actually, he needs to joke about the matter, or else he won’t be able to channel his energy into anything but making spontaneous combustion into a real thing that happens to people. “Even though we have tomorrow off? Don’t you think you like me a little too much?”

“Oh? You really want to get into that right now?” Shima asks him, eyebrows raised in that look of his that’s pure venom and smartassery, and that’s how Ibuki knows, right at that second, that he’s not off the hook for what he said in the car – the person you like thing – no, not at all.

Ibuki backpedals the best he can. Right now really might not be the time.“Well, I don’t mind going. I know some pretty good spots. Should we get Italian? Anything would be fine, but I found this really good Italian place some time ago, the owner lived in Europe for like ten years,” He keeps talking, because that’s all he knows to do when he’s trying not to punch a hole through the concrete of the roads to hide his head in.

“Sounds good. Send me the address,” Shima says simply, like he doesn’t feel a way or another about any of it, and opens the car’s door to take the driver’s spot. “Get in,” is all he says, and Ibuki does, and Shima drives him home.

Ibuki does know a good Italian place whose owner studied in Sicily for more or less a decade, where he once picked up some spaghetti alla carbonara to take on one of his visits, but he decides, with some regret, that the cramped and homely atmosphere of the cantina won't cut it for the occasion. He floods Kokonoe's inbox on LIME with pleas of a recommendation, which he eventually responds to with a spot that looks just good enough, not too fancy, just a little refined.

After the blunder at the car, he knows he can't mess this up. This dinner is his golden chance at his perfect rejection, at convincing Shima that it's no big deal that he has feelings for him actually, it's fine, it's normal, they can keep going as usual – he needs to make it go just right.

So he dresses up. He rehearses his lines. He tries styling his hair a little differently, a little to the side, copying a famous actor that’s on an afternoon talk show that day. It's been a while since he's been so nervous about shaving; last time was probably on his first day at MIU, wasn't it? He arrives a little early, and waits patiently at the door, hands shoved into the pockets of the single pair of formal black slacks he owns, trying not to jitter too much.

Shima texts him thrice; early in the afternoon, to confirm if dinner is still up, then closer to the agreed-upon time warning that he'll be a little late and apologizing, then once, some time later, to announce that he's arrived. Ibuki feels like he's on the initial rise of the world's tallest rollercoaster ride in the wait between the third text and Shima's arrival; rather than butterflies, he feels a fleet of migratory birds raising hell in his stomach.

Shima arrives, and Ibuki immediately recognizes the suit he's wearing. Cool-toned gray, a slight texture, fishbone pattern? What is it called again? It doesn't look as formal as Ibuki remembers it, with its jacket unbuttoned, matched with all but a simple white dress shirt underneath, no tie or waistcoat, but Ibuki would've recognized the suit picked for Shima's omiai anywhere – most of all, on Shima's body.

“Sorry, I'm late,” Shima greets, and cruelly expects an answer to emerge from Ibuki's parched and nonfunctional airways.

“Hey.” By work of a miracle, he almost sounds normal. Searching for something normal to say, Ibuki adjusts his sunglasses, and his idiot mouth opens to say, “Nice suit!”

A smile forms on Shima's lips, too slow and wide to be casual. If there's one thing about Shima is that, the gentler his smile, the more malicious his feelings are behind it. “I thought you’d like it.”

“Kyuu-chan really has an eye for that kind of stuff, huh?” Ibuki mechanically moves his eyes and body in a way he figures would be natural, to stop himself from accidentally ogling too much. “Well, wanna get in? I’m starving!”

They get in. Ibuki holds the door for Shima, a grin on his lips, under the guise of a joke; Shima shoots him a dirty look, but says nothing of the gesture.

The air between them could’ve been awkward – no, it is a little awkward, stifled and heavy and harder to maneuver than usual – but Ibuki has years of experience with making small talk during unsavory situations, so he thinks he’s been handling this just fine. Shima is a little more laconic than usual, but not exactly unresponsive, keeping up with Ibuki’s chatter about the weather, recent entertainment news, and how strange it is that noodles are so different across cultures, but at the same time keeping a small distance from across their small table for two; Ibuki figures that he must have his mind on the true reason for them meeting there, because he hates beating around the bush, and it’s an attestment to his kindness towards Ibuki that he’s even participating in his idle chat in the first place.

Ibuki’s plan is to confess towards the end of the meal, before they’re offered dessert. He figures it’s the best timing to not force Shima to sit with him and his heavy feelings for the rest of the night if he doesn’t want to, so that’s what he’s going for, and it’s going well, so far.

But Ibuki is reminded that, with Shima, he’s rarely the one in control, when his partner fills a small silence at the tail end of his noodle talk with, “Have you eaten noodles with Kuzumi before?”

It makes his smile go stiff for a second. “Not Kuzumi again,” he groans, making a show out of contorting his face into a grimace.

“What? I’m just asking,” Shima is the face of innocence, his clear eyes all but guilty-tripping Ibuki for keeping the visits a secret for so long. “What did you guys have? Ramen?”

“Ramen, once. We had some pasta too. Not from here,” Ibuki hastily adds when something sour crosses Shima’s expression, but his correction doesn’t make it go away.

“Hm, is that so,” Shima hums, noncommittal, eyes fixing themselves on his diminishing serving of lasagna.

Ibuki knows he should steer clear from the topic for now, wait a little more, just a little more – but he’s anxious, and he doesn’t want to miss on the hook, so he calls, “Hey, Shima?”

“What?” Shima responds immediately.

“What did… when you went to visit Kuzumi,” Ibuki contextualizes. “What… did he say about me?”

That earns him Shima’s gaze back. Cleaning the corner of his mouth with a napkin, Shima makes a face as if in deep thought, but Ibuki can tell it’s fake. “He said you visit a lot, and that you guys have long talks. Ah, and also that you have some common interests, but that’s all.”

Ibuki blinks. “That’s all?”

“Yep.”

“Then…” Ibuki can’t resist. He should stop talking and stick to the plan, but he can’t. He needs to know. “When you said that you were concerned because I didn’t tell you something…”

Shima takes a second, probably to remember their conversation, but then answers, “Because you didn’t tell me you were seeing him. Well, you have no obligation to, but like I said—”

“When you said that you don’t really get it, but you don’t mind,” Ibuki interrupts him, probably coming off a little too strong, but he needs to know. “You meant…?”

“... the fact that you’re on friendly terms with him,” Shima explains calmly. “I don’t understand why you’d keep seeing him, but there’s no harm in it, I guess. I wanted you to know I wouldn’t have… judged you, or berated you, or anything. Well, maybe I’d pick on you a little,” Shima breaks into a smile, a genuine and rather sheepish one. “But, y’know… it wouldn’t be serious. You should’ve just told me.”

The clarification weighs in Ibuki’s head so heavily that he could’ve fallen forehead-first into his plateful of Genovese. Instead, he lets it fall into his palms, letting out a hefty sigh, feeling perhaps the most stupid he’s felt in his entire life.

Kuzumi played him. He managed to lead Ibuki into making a fool of himself from inside a maximum security prison. What a fearsome, sly bastard.

“I really should’ve just told you,” Ibuki laments, eyes squeezed shut. If only he’d told Shima from the start, his confession timeline wouldn’t have turned into such a mess…

“I’m not gonna get on your case for this. Not anymore,” Shima responds in a calm and casual tone, taking another bite of his lasagna. There’s a pause while he chews, before he swallows and follows with, “To be fair, I’m really not one to talk about keeping secrets between us. I’ve been in love with you for the past five years and haven’t said a word about it all this time.”

The world flips around itself suddenly, and rights itself back up before Ibuki can process what just happened.

Wait, what just happened?

He snaps his head up, eyes wide, mouth agape, observing as the perpetrator of such incident calmly finishes dinner before his brain catches up and supplies his mouth with an eloquent and high pitched, “What?”

“You really didn’t realize, huh? That’s terrible,” Shima smiles, as if it’s all a big joke to him. “I thought it was obvious. I mean, I made an idiot out of myself for it so many times that I lost count after a while. Me visiting Kuzumi is a good example,” he metaphorically points it out with a fork, calm and methodic as if teaching a lecture. “I was insanely jealous when I found out you’d been seeing him. Well, logically I knew there’s no way anything happened, but—”

“Holy shit, I just got chills so bad I might catch a cold,” Ibuki interjects, shuddering violently and hugging his own body for protection. “Please don’t tell me you thought you thought we were like that?!”

“Well, how is it my fault?” Shima quips back a little childishly. “Visiting the guy so often behind my back…”

“For starters, Kuzumi is in love with you,” Ibuki points an accusatory finger towards his infuriatingly handsome partner. “Or at least he says he is. No, I’m pretty sure he actually is, that’s gotta be genuine to some degree…”

“But that’s how it is. It was immature of me, but that’s the kind of guy I am,” Shima explains, licking a stray droplet of tomato sauce off his lips before dabbing a napkin to his mouth corners. “I haven’t been in my right mind since the day I met you. It’s a lost cause at this point.”

Ibuki’s brain is still trying to process the last few minutes of their talk, but the words float at zero gravity in his mind, impossible to put together to form a coherent conclusion. Shima said he’s what? With who? For how long?

No, more importantly, isn’t he forgetting something here? What was it that he came out to do today, to begin with?

“What’s a shared interest you have with Kuzumi, anyway?” Shima interrupts his thoughts once more, sounding, out of all things, a little spiteful. “I’m starting to think he said that just to rile me up.”

“It’s probably you,” Ibuki blurts out without much thought, and the answer makes Shima frown in confusion.

“Me?”

“Because we both like you,” Ibuki explains matter-of-factly, as if it’s all very simple to understand, even though he knows it’s not. “Well, we actually fight about it the entire time. I thought he was trying to help when he told me to confess, but he just said it to fuck with me because he thought I couldn’t do it. It pisses me off that I proved the bastard right.” He finally has the presence of mind to take a much needed sip of water. “I wanted to give you a chance to reject me properly, but I was really scared of it. Is that immature too? Aren’t we both just as bad at this?”

Shima bursts into a fit of laughter, so badly restrained that he chokes on something halfway through it, and drinks some of his own water to subdue it. It makes his cheeks pink and his eyes shiny with mirth, and again, it bears repeating, Ibuki is so attracted to him it makes him look stupid – more stupid than normal, that is.

“You didn’t have a chance from the start. Poor thing,” Shima makes fun of him, still coughing a little, voice a little thin. “Of being rejected, that is.”

“Don’t make fun of me,” Ibuki pleads, his own emotions so disturbed they’re indistinguishable from one another.

“It’s my fault, too. I sometimes had a feeling… but I didn’t want to get my hopes up,” he shakes his head, still smiling. “See, if I’d gone with my gut, we wouldn’t have wasted so much time. Seems like I have a lot to learn from you.”

“I could’ve looked at things a little more rationally and not have fumbled it so bad,” Ibuki points out. “Though, I guess it all worked out in the end. It… did work out in the end, right?” He’s suddenly struck with a wave of uncertainty, because he realizes he’s failed to put a number of things he wanted to say into words.

Not just things like I love you, I think you’re really hot, I want to be with you forever, I don’t want you to go to omiais anymore, if you’re going to go on dates, and hold someone’s hand, and kiss someone, that someone should be me – but also something along the lines of, I didn’t want us to change because I thought the only other option was drifting apart, but it’s okay to change if it means we get closer, right?

Is it okay if he doesn’t say it? Should he just try to blurt it all out? He just might make it before dessert if he does…

But Shima kicks his leg under the table to break him out of his reverie, and smiles, and drinks a sip of his wine, licking the dark red liquid off his lips before saying, “You decide. My place or yours?”

When the door to the interrogation room opens, Kuzumi looks at it with slight terror for a split second, before breathing with relief and relaxing. “Oh, it’s you, thank God. I was terrified it was going to be that guy again with another shipment of sweets.”

Shima closes the door behind him, sparing a smile before saying, “I didn’t know he brought you snacks. Very thoughtful of him, don’t you think?”

“I think he’s trying to fatten me up for slaughter,” Kuzumi ponders without any gravity, undoing his ponytail to let his hair fall loose over his shoulders; he styles it with his fingers before fixing his posture into something coquettish, his head tilted to the side. “So? To what do I owe this honor?”

“Interrogation, of course.” Shima pays him no attention, distant once again as he takes the seat across from him at the table. “So, what’s your real name, after all?”

Kuzumi rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “I’ll tell you this, because it’s you. I wasn’t born in a hospital and was never registered. Even at school, I got enrolled under a dead cousin’s name. The only people who knew my name were my parents, and they’re both dead by now.”

Shima raises his eyebrows in genuine surprise. Kuzumi smirks.

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” Shima asks him, voice grave and serious.

“Figure it out. Investigate. Aren’t you a detective? That’s kinda, like, your job,” Kuzumi, in turn, mocks him openly, leaning forward to prop his elbows onto the table. “My turn now. What’s your favorite position in bed?”

Despite himself, Shima does chuckle at that. “I’m afraid I can’t answer that,” he says, his expression becoming softer. “I’m a taken man now, you see, and my partner is the jealous type.”

“What the hell? So you just came here to brag, huh,” Kuzumi groans, leaning back on his chair with a frustrated sigh. “That mad dog bastard, so he really had the guts in the end. I should’ve kept my mouth shut.”

“I have a lot to thank you for, it seems,” Shima pokes fun at him. “You have a talent for matchmaking. If you manage to reduce your sentence, you should consider a career change.”

“Has anyone ever told you you have a terrible personality?” Kuzumi accuses, and Shima answers with nothing but a twist of his lips. “But I guess I like that about you. You were the first guy I ever liked that way, and I’ve been around a lot of really handsome men. I wonder what it was that got me so into you,” crossing his arms, Kuzumi starts to count on his fingers, “Was it your physique? Your voice? The barely contained rage that sits under your skin? Or the fact you were down so terrible for your partner that it was obvious just from the way you looked at him?”

For once, Shima does look a little taken aback, even though he’s still smiling. “So you knew.”

“Anyone with half a brain would know. Give me some credit,” Kuzumi clicks his tongue. “Well, I believe fate will bring you to me one day. I think murder suits you, but you could try your hand at terrorism. Something small, so you don’t end up getting on the death row.”

“I’ll give it some thought,” Shima nods, using the same tone of voice a mother might use to tell her children about the tooth fairy. “That’s going to be all for today. I’ll look into the information you gave me. If it turns out to be true, it can be very useful for your appeal.”

“Sure, sure, whatever,” Kuzumi dismisses him with a wave of his hand, seeming, for once, not to be in the highest of the moods. “Tell Buki I said hi!”

“I will.”

Shima gets to his feet, and it looks like he’ll make his way to the door – but instead, in firm and deliberate steps, he comes around the table, fixing a palm on its surface to lean over Kuzumi’s form, where it sits pinned by surprise against his chair, eyes wide as he looks up to face him.

“I’m going to ask you nicely just this time,” the warning comes in a low voice, tight with danger. “Don’t call him that anymore. Not even once. Alright?”

And before whatever wittily indecent retort Kuzumi manages to come up with can fully form within his brain, Detective Shima Kazumi turns around and leaves, leaving the door to softly click closed in his wake.

It’ll be a rather sizeable moment after his departure before Kuzumi decides to move, busy with committing the scene to memory.

“Sheesh,” he comments to no one in particular, fanning himself with the collar of his uniform. “I didn’t even do anything wrong…”

As it is, life goes on inside prison, just as it does outside of it. Fixing his hair back into a high ponytail, already making plans to gather around his closest circle to relay the gossip on the most recent crazy cop couple developments, Kuzumi knocks on the other door to the room and calls, “Mr. Guard, we’re all done here~”