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Coil's been standing and waiting like an idiot for.. what, an hour?
Or, somewhere around an hour. Whatever the exact number is, he doesn't care. All he knows is that it's been a long fucking time, and his patience is thinner than the skin of his teeth right now.
He gnaws on the inside of his cheek, trying to stave off his annoyance. He's already had a long day. Lingering in some random, dingy alleyway in lower Crossroads is just the addition he needs to add to his day right now.
What's he waiting for, exactly?
None other than Shuriken. Or, rather, Silver Shadow. Same guy.
Coil scoffs. Him, waiting around for some other guy that has around a fifty percent chance of just not showing up.
He's more than happy to wait for Shuriken, sure. He knows Shuriken's probably got bigger shit to deal with than him at the moment, yeah. But damn, how long does it fucking take to get to Coil on time? Given with how the guy had a whole ass grappling hook, he assumed the process would pass by a little quicker.
Obviously, though, he assumed pretty damn wrong.
Coil stares blankly at the glow his gear casts on the dim alleyway, with the other source of illumination being the moon and the flickering neon sign nearby, advertising some sort of product Coil wasn't interested in checking out. He digs his fingers into his palm and slips one of them underneath the bandages he has wrapped around his palm, and makes a mental reminder to himself to change them out when he gets back to Skate's place. If that'll even happen anytime soon.
He doesn't like waiting around. He doesn't like being idle - geez, even something as mild as this has him anxious - and he certainly doesn't appreciate having to waste away in an alley that smells like shit for an hour. He's pretty sure he could've done a lap around the entire lower ring and came back and Shuriken still wouldn't have arrived.
He doesn't even get to see Shuriken all that much during the day. Sure, there's Thieves' Rest, but Shuriken is almost always fed up with his shit when he's working. Or he's asleep at the register.
..It's usually the latter.
And, luckily enough for Coil, Shuriken's almost exclusively out and about when Coil wants to be asleep. So that works great.
(To be completely fair, Coil's sleep schedule is already beyond repair. So it kind of does work out, really.)
Their system's worked for a while, he'll admit, so Coil can't really nitpick about it. They meet up at night and stay together for a solid amount of time (something Skateboard seems to love to tease Coil about) before leaving right before dawn. Problem is, Crossroads is fucking huge, and it takes about a lifetime for them to even meet up.
So, does he understand why Shuriken can't always get to him on time? Yeah, sure. And he is being kind of dramatic about it. But honestly, Coil really does not see the difficulty in getting to somewhere on time, especially if that time has stayed consistent for weeks, now. He manages just fine.
Coil glances around to get a good look at the alleyway, even though nothing's changed about it in the past hour.
Above him is a balcony that's still under construction, which looks so rickety it would probably fall down if a bird landed on it. If he listens closely enough, he can hear music from someone's apartment much farther up in the building, but he can't make out any words. He can hear something like a saxophone, though. Jazz, maybe?
Farther away from him is a dumpster that smells like rotting meat, which he really isn't all that inclined to check out.
And- there's something moving nearby.
It's small, so it's probably not an inphernal (emphasis on the word probably, he's met some pretty short people before), and it seems to pad around rather than walking normally.
Coil tilts his head to the side, trying to listen closer and drown out the distracting background noises of the jazz coming from the building above.
He can't smell anything odd, which means it's been in the alleyway for a while. He doubts that, whatever it is, hasn't been stuck in here for an hour because it's waiting for a guy that might not even turn up.
Coil steps towards the source of the noise, and then is pleasantly surprised to see a cat crawl out from underneath the dumpster.
He doesn't really know his cat breeds all that well, but the cat is orange and black and white, with big round spots all over its body. It stares up at him curiously, with tiny little pointed horns coming out from the sides of its head.
And, honestly, it's really cute.
Coil kneels down and clicks his tongue to hopefully get the cat to crawl closer, although he's pretty sure that an inphernal with glowing tubes wrapped around his arms isn't exactly the friendliest figure.
The cat, however, seems entirely unperturbed, and creeps forward with a curious look on its face. Its eyes are wide and like mini saucers, and he can even see the reflection of the light his gear casts in its pupils.
Coil reaches a hand forward, hesitantly, to scratch behind the cat's ear.
"Aren't you cute?" He murmurs, fingers running through the cat's fur. It's surprisingly soft, considering it's a street cat. The other cats he's seen across Crossroads don't look nearly as well-kept. And they really aren't friendly either.
The cat purrs happily underneath his hand, and he smiles faintly. Not so often he gets to pet a cat. The closest guy he knows is Slingshot, and there's a fair chance she'll kill him if he even considers putting his hands within five hundred feet of her.
Actually, scratch "fair chance". He will kill Coil if he tries anything.
His guard drops, just a fraction, because of how cute the stupid cat is. He's not big on cuteness or being adorable and whatnot, but man, what sort of inphernal can't resist petting a cat?
His distraction, however, ends up being the perfect opportunity for Shuriken to make his grand entrance.
He smells him before he hears him. Shuriken carries the distinct scent of lemons with him wherever he goes, and it's become so recognizable to Coil that you could douse the guy with pepper and he'd probably still be able to sniff him out.
"Didn't know the Crystal Criminal hung out with cats in his free time," Shuriken calls out. His voice is coming from above, a little bit to his left, but when Coil looks up, he can't see him at all. Typical.
Coil wipes off his hands on his pants and stands up to his full height, staring up at the sky. "Got a problem with that?"
"No," the other inphernal says. "But it's quite the sight, you know. I didn't think anybody like you could be all cutesy with a kitten."
"'M not cutesy, first off. And secondly, you were s'posed to be here an hour ago. I thought a vigilante like the Silver Shdow would have a better sense of time.. or am I gettin' the wrong idea?"
Shuriken doesn't respond, because of course he doesn't. He's all concerned with keeping his mysterious vigilante persona up.
Which- well, he can respect it, sort of. He gave up on being mysterious right after he became one of Blackrock's most wanted and absolutely beating the shit out of several Zeta Biografts.
Coil squints into the darkness and searches for any sign of Shuriken - a silhouette, a green scarf, the tip of his pink horns. Clearly, though, Shuriken seems really intent on staying cloaked in shadow. Coil can't even hear the guy shifting around or anything. And, like, Coil's got himself a pretty good sense of hearing. It considerably creeped him out when he'd first met Shuriken that the guy was almost completely silent.
The cat mewls from below him, and it takes him a second to realize the thing never actually went back under the dumpster. Coil squats down to keep petting at the cat, and the thing leans up into his hand happily.
"Y'know, if you're not gonna come out anytime soon, I'm just gonna keep pettin' this cat here and go." He fixes his gaze on a spot that he thinks is Shuriken and shrugs. "No need to be shy, Silver Shadow."
There's a scoff from above him. "I'm not shy. What did you expect from a vigilante with the word shadow in his name?"
"Well, I just dunno anymore," Coil says with a certain lilt in his tone that he knows will get Shuriken pissed. He's aware of this phenomenon because Slingshot uses it all the time on him at Thieves' Rest, and it works like a charm every time. "I expected you'd be here on time, too, so who knows what to think of you?"
Sure, it's a low blow, but like he said earlier, Coil hates to be left waiting, and Shuriken is plenty educated in this fact.
"Swords above," Shuriken mutters, and he gets the impression that the vigilante wants to say more, but the conversation lulls to a pause instead.
Coil whistles a low note, causing the cat to tilt its head curiously at him with the noise. "You gonna come dwn or what, dude?"
There's a faint shuffling noise, followed by the sound of metal rubbing on metal, and then Shuriken quite literally materializes out of the dark, hanging upside-down fom his grappling hook. He brings his head back to wonder where the hell did Shuriken attach his hook to and how did he not fall to his death, but he still can't see into the dark.
He stands up and lets the cat rub itself all over his legs, orienting his body so that he's completely turned towards Shuriken, with his eyes trained on the green swirls that represent eyeholes on Shuriken's mask. Looking directly at it gives him a shiver, but he doesn't think much of it.
"Took y'long enough," he muses while stepping closer to Shuriken, letting the glow of his tubes better illuminate his body. "I was waitin' here for an hour."
"..Sorry," Shuriken mutters, although he doesn't sound very sorry, at least to Coil. "Got caught up with something."
"Sure you did." Coil crosses his arm and lifts an eyebrow.
Shuriken - or, rather, Shuriken's mask - stares back at him, betraying nothing.
He peers up at the moon in the sky and reckons it's a little bit later than midnight, if he had to guess. "Coulda just gone home, honestly. Real late now."
"Do you want me to say hello or not, Coil?"
Shuriken sounds irritated. Coil pretends that it doesn't bother him.
"..Yeah, sure, I do. How was your patrol?"
Shuriken pauses for a long, long moment. "It was fine."
He wants to ask more, wants to ask why Shuriken paused for so long, and that there's always something that happens in Shuriken's patrols, and that they're never just fine, but instead he says, "Easy night, then?"
"Sure," the other inphernal replies tersely. "You could call it that."
He doesn't like how Shuriken's acting. He doesn't like how off he's being. Shuriken isn't late, and Shuriken sure as hell isn't always this dry. Maybe on his bad days, sure, but not- not normally.
"Bullshit. What's up with you?"
He hears the vigilante let out a long, exasperated sigh. "Nothing's up with me. I'm just tired, okay?"
"You didn't have to come."
"Oh, but I did, Coil, because otherwise you would never stop bitching about it," Shuriken spits out sourly.
Almost as sour as the lemons he smells like.
Coil keeps his voice even, remembering what his ma told him a long while ago about keeping his anger to a minimum. They tune you out if you scream, she'd said. Don't be an idiot. "I just wanted to see you after a long day, alright? My bad for wanting that."
It's more vulnerable than Coil would ever like to admit, but Shuriken's also being more dry than he would probably ever like to admit, so he supposes they're both out of their comfort zones right now.
"Okay." The masked inphernal says plainly. "Sorry."
The cat meows at him loudly before padding away, but he doesn't care for it.
Coil feels anxious. He can feel the tension in the air boring down on his shoulders and he hates it. Swords, you'd have to tie Coil down and tranquilize him to deal with any sort of tension. That's not how he rolls. Back when he was a kid, the way you'd deal with tension was to fight and scream until both of you got tired.
Obviously, though, that's not going to work here.
"..I'll go," Shuriken announces after a heartbeat of silence. "Sorry for wasting your time."
He should've let it happen. He should've let the entire thing blow over and descalate on its own.
Instead, he says, "Wait."
The other inphernal stalls. "What is it?"
Coil has an idea. He's got a ton of those, but this one in particular could either go really well or really bad, and there's no clear way to define what exactly happens in those two outcomes. All he has to do is just risk it.
Wolf said it was a bad habit of his. Coil didn't really care.
He steps in close, immediately swallowing up the gap between him and Shuriken.
Lucky for him, Shuriken is just perfectly eye level with him, giving him the perfect angle to reach forward and hold his face in between Coil's two hands.
"What the fuck are you doing?" The vigilante questions, his voice the tiniest bit panicked.
Coil doesn't say a word, and instead slides Shuriken's mask off to the side, ignoring the two hands that fly up to stop him and try and wrench it back into place. Shuriken may be more skilled than him in some aspects (key word: some), but he finds it's pretty difficult to put a significant amount of strength into your arms when you're upside down.
Shuriken's face is handsome, even when all of his hair is hanging downwards and his face has gone a little bit red from being upside-down so long, and he takes a moment for himself to just admire, to stare like that cat had when it had seen him for the very first time.
"Co- Coil, my-"
He puts a finger to Shuriken's lips. "This alleyway is dark enough, 'm blockin' the way of your face, and it's a ridiculous hour of the day. Nobody's gonna see us."
Shuriken stares at him, wide-eyed. He finds the expression sort of cute.
Actually, he finds it really cute. But for the sake of his own dignity, he will not get ridiculously gigglish about it.
Coil cups his hands around Shuriken's cheeks and pulls him inward, angling his face in a way to make the kiss not as awkward as it really is.
Shuriken makes a surprised noise in the back of his throat, and he tries to squeak something out before the words get cut off and he melts into the kiss.
He can't say he's kissed anybody upside-down before, and he's not entirely sure he'd want to do it again, but with Shuriken it is more than perfect. He pulls the vigilante in closer and presses his lips in farther, drinking in as much of Shuriken as he possibly can.
Shuriken awkwardly tries to angle his face better into Coil, since his two hands are holding the rope keeping him in place, but it doesn't work all that well, so Shuriken just gives up and whines into the kiss.
He pulls away and casts his eyes over Shuriken's surprised face, his lips parted from the shock.
And- Swords above, Coil feels fluttery.
He doesn't know why. This isn't their first kiss and it won't be their last (he hopes), but he still feels flustered all the same, feeling as if there is an entire colony of butterflies living inside of his stomach and they won't be leaving anytime soon.
Coil moves down slightly to kiss at Shuriken's nose, and then his forehead, and then each of his two cheeks, and then his chin, and soon Coil is planting kisses over every single inch of Shuriken's face, earning gigglish little noises from the other.
"C- Coil, stop- that tickles-!"
He doesn't respond and only keeps kissing, everywhere he can possibly think of, before leaving a final chaste kiss on Shuriken's lips again and properly pulling away.
Some vigilante this is, Coil thinks fondly.
Shuriken stares at him, completely dazed, his cheeks even redder than before. The only problem is that he can't tell if it's because he's flustered or if it's because there's a ton of blood rushing to his head.
"You should come down from there, y'know," he suggests, beckoning to the rope holding Shuriken.
"I- um. I can't really- get down- all that well. Especially since you just did that."
"Then I'll catch you."
Shuriken blinks. "You'll- huh? No, I can-"
"I'm gonna catch you, Shuri, just let go of the rope."
The vigilante stares at him. Squints.
And then his hands let go.
Just as Coil promised, he scoops up Shuriken with little effort into his arms, taking a minute to flip him around properly so that he's being carried with his legs draped over one arm and his head resting on the other.
"See? I told you, dude. 'M not the sort of ass to let you just fall."
Shuriken nods hastily before climbing out of his arms, eyes wide and face the most red Coil's seen it in his entire life.
"I'm- I'm gonna go back, now. I'll see you tomorrow- and, like, on time, obviously. Yeah? Yep. Alright. Cool. Bye, Coil! Love you!"
He freezes, and so does Shuriken once he's realized what exactly he just said.
Coil grins. "Yeah, I love you too," he answers back casually. "Grab your rope before you go. And fix your mask, too."
Shuriken lets out a little surprised laugh before wrapping up his rope and taking off, adjusting his mask back onto his face as he leaves.
He glances around him and finds that the alleyway is now cast in green instead of his usual blue, and he realizes with a wave of embarassment that the light turned suspiciously Shuriken-colored.
The cat from earlier makes a curious mrrp? sound from underneath the dumpster, and he turns to find the thing peeking its little head out from underneath, with its big saucer eyes.
"You don't tell anybody 'bout this, alright?" Coil says to the cat.
The cat blinks slowly.
He'll take that as a yes.