Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

It’s Tetsurou who contacts Kodzuken first. The elusive Kodzuken: he’s known pretty far and wide, if you work with a very vague definition of known. Nobody truly knows Kodzuken: his name, his face, not even his age.

Kodzuken keeps his identity and secrets close to his chest.

All that’s truly known about him is that he’s damn good at his job. Tetsurou likes that in a person.

So it’s him who tracks Kodzuken down. Tracking him down, in this case, is asking around until he gets to the right people, who know the right people, who know someone who can help him contact Kodzuken. 

Tetsurou’s job is murder, and it’s one he’s damn good at; people are willing to pay him almost anything, because they know he gets the job done and gets it done well. And yet, he scarcely uses the dark web. The people who need to contact him can find out how to do so without needing to go online if they know where to look. And he, personally, is of the opinion that the less traces you leave online, even in spaces meant to not be traceable or governable, the better.

Kodzuken is different. Kodzuken doesn’t really do people, doesn’t really do in-person contact. Where Tetsurou seeks to avoid the risks of being traced by his electronic footprint, Kodzuken seeks to avoid the risks of being followed in person.

So Tetsurou goes on the trek of tracking Kodzuken down online.

It takes him almost a month, but finally he gets rewarded with a dark web place and contact to send encrypted messages to. 

He keeps his message simple:

I’m Kuro. You may have heard of me.

I’ve got a business proposal for you.

I’d like to work together with you. You’d get 30% of the profits of any jobs you help me with and veto power on who I agree to target.

After he has sent it, he waits.

Kodzuken lets him sweat for a bit.

Then, finally, he gets a message back.

It’s also short, simple, and to the point.

No.

- -

Tetsurou has never been the type to simply give up. If he were, he wouldn’t be as good as he is at his job.

He’d anticipated this might happen. In fact, he’d almost counted on it. It would have been almost too boring if Kodzuken had just given in; Tetsurou likes to play his little games.

But now that Kodzuken is aware of Tetsurou, or, more accurately: aware of Tetsurou’s interest in him, he’s going to watch Tetsurou. Tetsurou knows that much with certainty.

It would be beyond careless not to.

So Tetsurou does what he does best: he kills.

- -

He’s had the job prepared ahead of time. A good assassin is always prepared. 

Tetsurou knows what he wants, and he’s going to get it. For that people will have to die. People always have to die. That’s his line of work, after all. 

He doesn’t feel that bad about it.

Some people want others dead. They hire people like him to kill. He kills. Someone dies. If he didn’t do it, someone else would; that’s just life.

In this case, he’s the one making the decision. But isn’t it always his decision, at the end of the day? Whether to take on a job or not. Whether to pull the trigger. 

Who sends the pay-check – and whether there is a pay-check at all – has only so much to do with it.

So Tetsurou pulls the trigger.

The man falling in on himself in the hotel room across the street, window left foolishly open, wasn’t a good man by any means. Kodzuken seldom makes enemies out of good men. Kodzuken has a moral code, so to speak: he only goes after the rich, the elite, those with blood on their hands, those who’d have the money to pay Tetsurou for his job. Those who don’t care who dies for their bank accounts to look the way they do.

He hacks corrupt agencies, hacks those who deserve to have their dirty laundry aired online.

Tetsurou admires what he does. Koduzken’s work is clean, efficient, self-evident in its statements. There is a beauty to it, to the way he exposes people, sneaks money from those who don’t actually need it, brings people to fume in anger while he himself stays hidden, a mystery.

There is also a beauty to the way the man in the hotel room across the street is bleeding out, carpet colouring red and then, soon, when the oxidation sets in, a rusty brown.

Tetsurou doesn’t have time to watch the process; he leaves just as silently as he’d come, through the back door. Nobody thinks to give him a second look when he drives off in the car he’d hijacked for this. Nobody even knows a death has occurred yet.

But soon they’ll know. Soon Kodzuken will know.

And he’ll know exactly what message Tetsurou is leaving him with this little gift:

Trust me, you’d rather want me on your side. I could be an asset.

- -

Tetsurou finds a message waiting for him the next morning.

I demand 50%.

His own answer doesn’t take long.

Done.

He knows it’s not the one Kodzuken expected; and why would it be. Criminals don’t typically make concessions. 

But Tetsurou doesn’t necessarily see himself as a criminal, not any more than the rest of the world are criminals, and he doesn’t see this as a concession he is making. He could have haggled, but what for? He’d been willing to go fifty from the start. He couldn’t let Kodzuken know that, of course, needed to leave room for him to make demands, but if this is going to work out the way Tetsurou wants it to, they’ll both be equally important for any future job, will have equal amounts of work and responsibility. It should only track that they should get the same amount of profit.

Tetsurou may kill people for a living, but he’s not dishonest.

And, even more than that: why would he risk annoying Kodzuken into withdrawing his offer by haggling? No.

Tetsurou likes games, but he knows when to stop. He’s not stupid. 

There is a second message yet to be sent, though.

On one condition: I like to conduct my business in person.

- -

He and Kodzuken meet up in an old, abandoned warehouse somewhere wide outside the city lines, a location Kodzuken has chosen.

Kodzuken is already there when Tetsurou arrives; or at least Tetsurou assumes the figure clad in black is him.

“Kuro,” he says, and yes: that’s Kodzuken.

He’s wearing black from head to toe, black shoes, black sweatpants, a black pullover, a black face mask that hides the entire lower part of his face. Only his eyes and forehead are visible. From what Tetsurou can estimate based on visual clues, he is about Tetsurou’s own age.

His hair is long; longer than Tetsurou had, honestly, imagined. Badly dyed blonde, put up in a bun, revealing pierced ears. It’s impossible to guess exactly how long his hair is, but Tetsurou would put good money on waist length.

And he’s small. His voice is unexpectedly soft, although his intonation very much isn’t; he looks tiny standing in front of Tetsurou. His eyes are a breathtaking shade of gold.

Oh, Tetsurou thinks, oh no. He’s cute.

“Kodzuken,” he says, trying to catch himself. Kodzuken is watching him intently through slightly narrowed eyes.

“I can’t believe I’ve never heard a description of you before. Surely someone must remember that insufferable face and horrible hairstyle,” Kodzuken says, and Tetsurou is so completely taken off-guard for a second that he laughs loudly before he can stop it.

“None of them live long enough to tell the tale,” he replies, smirking, and watches, fascinated, as Kodzuken rolls his eyes. A part of him is perking up, flames licking at his inside, nagging him; it wants to keep poking at Kodzuken, really annoy him and then keep doing it until he snaps. 

“Or so you say,” Kodzuken says. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Wasn’t my gift enough?” Tetsurou asks, still smirking.

“No,” Kodzuken replies, open, honest. “I’ll work with you. For now. If you mess up just the slightest bit, you’ll never see me again.”

“What makes you think I wouldn’t kill you before letting you leave?”

“What makes you think I wouldn’t leak your best-kept secrets to every single one of your rivals and to every government agency in the world, to leave you ruminating in the chaos, too busy to take revenge while I disappear without a trace?” Kodzuken asks.

Tetsurou grins wide. “We’ll just have to trust each other then,” he says.

“No,” Kodzuken replies once more. “I’ll work with you, but I’d rather die than trust you.” 

“Then you’ve come to the right place.” 

And Tetsurou almost thinks he can almost make out a smile under Kodzuken’s mask then.

- -

Their first job together is an easy one to agree on; Tetsurou gets contacted by a rich senator’s wife. 

“What are we thinking?” he asks Kodzuken, who’s lounging against a steel beam, once more clad in all black. Tetsurou wonders what his face looks like.

“I’m thinking we didn’t have to do this in person. I came here under the impression you had something important to talk about.”

“I do!” Tetsurou protests. 

“No, this could’ve been an online conversation.”

“Well, excuse me for preferring my conversations untraceable.”

“You can make them as good as untraceable online if you do it right,” Kodzuken grumbles. “Of course you would only put yourself in danger.”

Once again, Tetsurou feels the urge to keep poking at him, do it until Kodzuken snaps, but –

“The senator’s wife contacted me,” he gets them back on track. “Apparently he’s an asshole. Cheated on her several times, evaded taxes for years, is trying to pass some truly horrid laws. I’m more interested in the laws. They’re disgusting. I think we’d do the world a favour in disposing of him.” And the wife is willing to pay him a good amount of money.

Kodzuken cocks his head to the side. “You’ll have to give me more detail than that. Give me a name and what you have on him, and I’ll check the wife’s info.”

“I knew I could count on you,” Tetsurou says, and, just to be annoying, blows Kodzuken a little kiss. He doesn’t have to see the lower half of Kodzuken’s face to know his mouth is tugging downward and his nose is scrunched up in disgust. 

“Don’t ever do that again,” Kodzuken says.

Tetsurou steps closer and blows him another kiss. He winks at him. “You don’t have to hide your love from me, babe,” he trills.

“I will kill you myself, so help me the Gods,” Kodzuken murmurs, and Tetsurou feels something a lot like delight making his stomach flutter.

- -

The wife’s info checks out. He’s scum. And I found even more dirt on him. All attached.

The message waits for Tetsurou only three hours after he’s arrived back at home.

Thanks, kitten! he writes back.

Kodzuken responds within seconds.

Never call me that again. 

Tetsurou grins.

- -

“I really don’t think it’s necessary for us to meet in person every single time,” Kodzuken, predictably, grumbles the next time they meet. 

“I very much think it is,” Tetsurou replies. “Are you hungry?” 

Kodzuken looks at him with narrowed eyes. 

“I cooked too much yesterday,” Tetsurou offers, which is a lie. He cooked exactly the amount he’d planned to cook: enough to make a little bento box for Kodzuken. He has to admit he’s curious to see what lies beneath his mask. Food may not be the way to uncover that, but it’s certainly worth a shot. He’s also curious how Kodzuken will react to being offered what is essentially a gift – the kind that isn’t lethal for anyone.

“I’m not sure how smart it is to accept food from a contract killer, full offence,” Kodzuken replies.

“You wound me,” Tetsurou says, and clutches at his chest dramatically. Kodzuken rolls his eyes. He has really pretty eyes, Tetsurou thinks.

He hands Kodzuken the bento box nevertheless, and Kodzuken even accepts it. Instead of opening it, though, he just holds it loosely in one hand.

“I’ll take this apart at home. There’d better not be any trackers in this.”

“That’s paranoid, kitten,” Tetsurou pouts. “And you’re the tech freak out of the two of us.”

“I’m your coworker,” Kodzuken responds, “and I told you not to call me that.”

Tetsurou coquettishly bats his eyelashes at Kodzuken. Kodzuken huffs an annoyed breath.

“Work, Kuro,” he says, with the air of someone who’s dealing with a particularly annoying and dense four-year-old. 

“Okay, okay,” Tetsurou says, and gets the folder he’s put together for this particular job out of his briefcase.

“I can’t believe you’re seriously working off a paper folder,” Kodzuken murmurs under his breath, and Tetsurou grins at him again.

“I’ve got his building plan and activity hours. I was thinking the Thursday in two weeks. Let’s play this through,” he says, and that’s when Kodzuken straightens up and his eyes become more alert. There’s a dangerous air about him when he’s fully focused, Tetsurou thinks. It makes him feel strangely warm.

- -

He gets into the building through the back entrance. 

“Third storey,” Kodzuken reminds him through his ear-piece, as if Tetsurou didn’t know.

“You’re supposed to keep an eye on the building’s security feed and disable it in the rooms I’m in, not tell me stuff I already know,” Tetsurou complains. He looks right, looks left –

“Shut up. Air’s clean,” Kodzuken says, and Tetsurou gets up the stairs. First storey, second, third –

“Room eleven,” Kodzuken says.

“I know,” Tetsurou hisses, and picks the lock; he’s good at this, so the door jumps open within seconds, and he scurries in, closing it behind him. He can see through the window, and then the window of the building across the street, and there is, in all his balding glory: the piece-of-shit senator he’s here to kill. 

Dispose of. He thinks that sounds nicer.  

“I hope you’re as good of a shot as you say you are,” Kodzuken murmurs as Tetsurou cocks his gun.

“How the fuck did you know I’m about to shoot,” he says, looking around the room with narrowed eyes. He fucking hopes Kodzuken actually disabled the security cameras.

“Your breathing,” Kodzuken says. “Don’t let me distract you. Just hurry up.” He actually sounds a bit nervous, Tetsurou notices curiously, but then the target across the street moves, and he adjusts his weapon and focuses again.

The shot hits cleanly; the senator keels over immediately. Of course he does.

“Get out, get out, get out now,” Kodzuken chants in his ear. “Floors are safe. Come on.”

“Calm down,” Tetsurou says, but does as he’s told; the way back down and out of the building, into the vehicle he’d rented for this specific job, is quick. 

The way down the road, driving away, isn’t; the senator won’t be found for another few hours, if Tetsurou memorized his timetable right and nothing unexpected happens, but even so, he can’t afford anyone being asked if they remember anything around the time of death and them recalling a vehicle speeding away. There is nothing more suspicious than a vehicle speeding away from a crime scene.

So he’s slow; but slow and steady brings him out of the city, back to the place he parked his actual vehicle, and then, roughly an hour later, with his own vehicle, to the meeting place he’d settled on ahead of time with Kodzuken. 

Kodzuken is already waiting when Tetsurou shows up, his car slowly making its way down the logging road towards a seldom used wooden shack; Kodzuken is in front of the shack, black mask in place, leaning against a stack of wood.

Tetsurou jumps out of his car and grins at him.

“A job well done,” he says, maybe a tad smugly.

“I guess so,” Kodzuken says. 

“And you were so worried,” Tetsurou teases, remembering the nervous cadence to Kodzuken’s voice. 

“Because I have zero trust in your abilities,” Kodzuken grumbles.

“You’ve hacked into government servers and you were worried about a simple murder,” Tetsurou teases again.

Kodzuken’s eyes narrow to slits. “Maybe you should be more worried about trying to kill a high profile politician without getting caught,” he almost hisses.

“Oh, come on, this is a normal Tuesday afternoon for me,” Tetsurou says. He’s aware he’s actively trying to rile Kodzuken up, but he finds that can’t stop; he loves the way Kodzuken’s eyes narrow, the way his whole body stiffens as if gearing up for a fight.

“It’s Thursday,” Kodzuken says, and then, “just shut up, you unbearable prick.” 

This probably shouldn’t make Tetsurou feel warm.

“I appreciate you too,” he purrs, making Kodzuken hiss, but, because he isn’t a total dick, he also gets Kodzuken’s share of the money out. 

“You’re an arse, you’re insufferable, and I hope I never have to see you again,” Kodzuken says.

“But babe. What about our next job?” Tetsurou asks, batting his eyelashes because he is, in fact, an insufferable prick who Kodzuken will have to see many more times if they plan on working together further.

“Don’t contact me before you have a good one,” Kodzuken says, taking his money and stomping off; he swings himself onto a motorcycle Tetsurou is only noticing now, putting his helmet on with harsh movements. He holds his body like a pissed-off cat. Tetsurou thinks it’s adorable.

“Can’t wait to see you again, kitten!” he calls, just to watch Kodzuken go from standing to full-speed in the middle of a forest road, shoulders squared, motorcycle roaring.

He’s still itching to tease Kodzuken more; especially after a successful job he’s always filled with adrenaline. But for now he delights in the adrenaline of the day, in knowing he has gotten away with something, the way he always does after a well done job, humming along to music as he drives home.

- -

Guess you didn’t leave any trackers in the food. You can make food again, if you stick to that. This isn’t an endorsement of your cooking skills. Fuck you. Tetsurou finds in his inbox the next morning. He grins.

Kitten, are you saying you want me to make you lunches? Take care of you like a housewife would? he writes back, delighted.

He doesn’t get an answer, but his mood is fantastic for the rest of the week.

- -

He uses the time between jobs to spend some time socialising; he schedules an evening out with the usual group, has them all get together. He doesn’t see them too often; usually, he is busy with work: either being on a job, or preparing for one, or hiding his traces after the last one.

But he has to see them sometimes.

Because this life he leads is one spent in the shadows, for the most part; and of course any good person hiding in the shadows must make an impression just as bright and even more unassuming in the light.

It’s impossible to hide from the public gaze fully. It is, however, very possible to paint yourself so terribly unassumingly fitting-in and boring that nobody could possibly remember you to be anything but another person lost to the anonymity of the big city.

Kurono Tetsuya is a twenty-eight year old business graduate who loves talking about stocks and investing and entrepreneurship and the grind. He loves claiming that he gets a little wild on nights out, but the wildest he gets is talking about how he could absolutely bed that woman in the corner who isn’t paying him any attention.

Kurono Tetsuya works an adequately-paid job in a normal office and talks about how soon, he’ll have his own start-up and will be so incredibly successful, and how he’s only single because women would be hindering in his endeavour to be a millionaire before thirty, not because he’s bad in bed.

Kurono Tetsuya is an absolute dickhead the way there are a dime a dozen; he’s the perfect civil persona to take on. Nobody remembers this specific brand of arsehole.

When Tetsurou puts on his ill-fitting jeans and mono colour button-ups, when he slicks back his hair and listens to his ‘inspiring rap music’ playlist, he transforms.

By the time he steps into the pub, he’s no longer Tetsurou, he’s Tetsuya.

Tetsuya’s friends are already there when he arrives, although Yamamoto is busy losing to someone at darts.

“Bro!” Bokuto greets him, and Tetsurou smirks a version of his smirk that’s a lot slimier and just a tiny bit more insecure than his real smirk.

“Bro!” he greets. “Have you seen the Dogecoin crash? That’s so insane!”

And just like that, Tetsuya blends in.

And Tetsurou, not that he’d admit it, doesn’t have to think about how it’s a bit weirder to be home alone, now that he isn’t working alone anymore. How he appreciates getting to bicker with someone who knows who he really is; the kind of companionship he gave up on when he crafted a new identity at eighteen and disappeared into the shadows, only to reappear as a slimy business major on the other side.

Only to shoot rich assholes for a nice chunk of money.

The sort of assholes Tetsuya would look up to.

The pub is loud and crawling, and Bokuto has the sleeves of his button-up rolled up, forearms on the table. He’s not on his first beer anymore, and his usually impressive owl-spiked hair is flopping to the side a little bit.

There’s a ring on his finger now; a pretty but simple golden one. It shimmers in the dim lighting of the pub, cheap-orange. 

The table is heavy, oak, and sticky with spilled alcohol. On the walls of the pub are images of city skylines, as if its customers won’t be standing in the middle of a huge metropole simply by stumbling outside, no more than a door away from the light-polluted night sky of Tokyo. 

“So glad I didn’t have money on Dogecoin, man, all my savings have gone into the wedding,” Bokuto, who would be a better person if Tetsuya wasn’t such a shit one, probably, says. 

Tetsurou orders a beer, and a second one for Bokuto, and listens to him ramble about how stressful wedding planning is, and how glad he is to have it over with, that he’ll never have to do it again.

- -

The next morning, he wakes up with a horrible headache, and almost goes back to sleep. But his job requires him to stay fit, so instead he throws on his work out clothes and goes for a jog.

At least the morning air will reliably clear his head.

His neck aches and his mouth tastes foul, but the repetitive, soothing slap-slap-slap of his feet against the pavement makes him feel marginally better.

Sometimes he thinks it’d be fun to have a dog to take on morning runs. But in his position, he can’t actually afford to get attached to a pet. 

Being good at what he does comes with a price.

It’s a fine one to pay, as long as he gets a new job soon; his head still hurts from having to talk about the stock market for five hours.

The morning air is crisp. The streets are empty, the way they always are at half six in the morning. His jogging route takes him uphill, towards the rising sun. He won’t have a dog waiting at home, but he will have his water boiler and a great selection of tea, as well as a list of potential clients to follow up on. 

There’ve been almost two weeks of downtime now, and he doesn’t like to sit still for long. 

Slap-slap-slap his feet on the pavement make, the only thing on the street other than him a lonely Ford Fiesta with a broken headlight, a tired man behind the steering wheel, probably on his way to work.

Slap-slap-slap.

- -

The next job, surprisingly, doesn’t come to them through someone reaching out to Tetsurou or through an older request Tetsurou follows up on.

It’s Kodzuken who contacts Tetsurou.

I have a possible job. Details @ meet-up. 9.30 friday @ old factory, don’t be late.

Tetsurou raises his eyebrows. This will be an interesting one. He’s never had a job picked out by someone else; he will, of course, still do his own careful vetting. He’s more than a bit intrigued, and part of him delights in knowing he’ll get to see Kodzuken again soon, get another shot at riling him up and maybe getting a peek behind his mask.

Tetsurou has never been able to resist a good mystery.

He opens his bookmarked recipes on his phone, humming happily. Time to prepare.

- -

The old factory looms unforgivingly under a dark but clear, star-lit sky. The building is rusty, withering before their very eyes; weeds are clinging to old steel beams. Huge, menacing chimneys climb into the sky, no longer coughing out steam and smoke; all that remains of the loud days of a bustling factory are the warning signs littered about, reminders to pay attention, wear helmets, keep your distance to the hungry mouths of heavy machinery.

The factory is not far from the warehouse where they first met, just as far outside the city lines; once well-used tracks used to connect the two, now no more than dirt and pebbles littered with engine-choking potholes clamouring to rip into any unsuspecting vehicle’s tires.

Kodzuken arrives shortly after Tetsurou, his hidden face reflected in the water of a puddle, a reminder of the early morning rain showers the past days have seen.

“Look who’s late,” Tetsurou says, just to see the way Kodzuken’s eyebrows furrow. His eyelid is fluttering in what he’s pretty sure is poorly-concealed annoyance. Tetsurou is absolutely thrilled by that.

“Kuro,” Kodzuken says, short and to the point. He leans against his motorcycle, a dark red machine, slender but powerful. Tetsurou can only imagine how easily it must weasel through the traffic of an ever-busy Tokyo; much easier than his own cars, certainly. Kodzuken makes a powerful image, leaning against his motorcycle in the dark, face obscured, stray hair that has escaped his bun curling around his hidden cheeks and covered-up neck.

“You have a job, kitten?” Tetsurou asks, and watches Kodzuken clench his jaw so hard it’s visible even under the face mask.

“Don’t call me that,” he hisses, verbally punctuating every word. 

Tetsurou is having the time of his life.

“The job, kitten,” he reminds, elated. He can see Kodzuken’s desire to just get on with it and his desire to punch Tetsurou right in the face war in his eyes. It’s beautiful.

“The job,” Kodzuken says, his desire to get it over with apparently winning out. He closes his eyes for a second; Tetsurou is almost certain he’s breathing out and then in again deeply, centering himself.

When he opens them again, they’re clear and deadly focused, and Tetsurou, for a second, thinks about someone seeing those eyes right before they get shot, nothing but cold intent; thinks that maybe, out of the two of them, Kodzuken would make the more ruthless killer. He pushes the thought away.

“It’s not a job for which we’re going to get paid,” Kodzuken says, simple and nonchalant.

“Oh?” Tetsurou makes.

“But if we don’t take it, we might not get to see another one.”

Tetsurou’s eyebrows shoot up.

“I’m intrigued,” he says, lips curling into a smirk. “Go on.”

“You don’t live to see your late twenties without making enemies in my profession,” Kodzuken says, and something about him, the way he’s still leaning against his motorcycle in a faux-relaxed pose, only the narrowing of his eyes belying the tension thrumming through him, ready to have him spring into action at any second, reminds Tetsurou of a cat.

He simultaneously does and does not want to be a mouse.

“His name is Tsunoda,” Kodzuken says, “and he’s wanted me dead for a while now.”

“What makes you think he’d succeed now, when he hasn’t before?” Tetsurou asks, cocking his head to the side.

“Easy,” Kodzuken replies, eyes not leaving Tetsurou for even a split second. “I don’t work alone anymore, and two traces are harder to erase than one.” 

Tetsurou can feel the smirk that has been pulling at his lips widen into a sharp grin. His heart is beating fast, excitement and adrenaline running through his veins.

“You sneaky little arsehole,” he says. “You’re gonna lead him right to me to save your own ass, aren’t you?”

Kodzuken, eyes still locked onto Tetsurou, pulls a knife out of his pocket and spins it as if it were the easiest thing in the world. “Told you not to trust me, didn’t I,” he says.

“Well,” Tetsurou says, “today’s your lucky day, then, because I happen to be in the business of killing people’s enemies, and I would’ve agreed even without the threat.”

Kodzuken snorts, eyes crinkling up a bit.

“Oh, this is going to be fun,” Tetsurou says. He feels a little bit like a little kid in a candy store. Everything about Kodzuken is proving to be a gift: danger wrapped in cold nonchalance and insulting barbs, all for Tetsurou to play with.

“I’m gonna kill that man,” Tetsurou says, “and I expect you to bring everyone else you want dead right to my doorstep.”

Kodzuken is watching him, eyes narrowing again, but this time in what seems less like annoyance and more like utter concentration. Tetsurou would call it fascination and curiosity, if that weren’t a bit presumptuous. 

“Oh, by the way, kitten,” he says, unravelling the thread of their conversation just to see Kodzuken’s response, “I made you something again.” 

He throws the bento box he’s kept hidden in one of the big pockets of his coat at Kodzuken, watches him catch reflexively.

So he doesn’t have a killer’s instincts, he thinks, curiously. If Kodzuken were to throw something at Tetsurou, his first instinct would be to evade it.

So the killer in Kodzuken’s eyes is only a lazy house cat and not yet a battle-hardened predator; another delightful bit of information Tetsurou stores away, to revisit in future instances.

“Let me know what you think of the food this time,” Tetsurou says, grinning.

“You’re unbearable,” Kodzuken responds. Then: “Three days from now. Same place, same time. To discuss details.”

“Can’t wait, kitten,” Tetsurou says, and watches as Kodzuken narrows his eyes but swallows the retort back down, instead tucking away the bento box, pulling on his helmet and driving off.

He’s a lovely silhouette to watch speed away; Tetsurou could get used to this.

The moonlight gleams silver in the puddle where, just seconds ago, Kodzuken’s reflection shone.

Tetsurou gets into his own car to drive home. Time to prepare for the next encounter; he may not have much information yet, but he has a name and his own methods. There’s no way he’s going to leave the details and set-up to his sharp new partner, not when he, too, has surprises up his sleeve.

- -

Tetsurou shakes the rice another time in the sieve, letting the last bit of water drip out, before putting it into the rice cooker. He takes a look at the pot on the stove; the meat and veggies are looking lovely in the broth. He adds all of the last vegetables except for one, only leaving the broccoli out; there is nothing worse than soggy broccoli. 

He makes sure the timer is on – it is – and sits back down at the living room table. It currently looks like an absolute mess, papers and markers strewn about. It always does when he’s deeply in a planning phase.

It took a little bit of time to make all of the calls and send out all of the messages he deemed necessary, more time than he would have liked; but as always with these things, caution is of the essence. 

His fingers glide softly over the paper of the building plans he  has procured. Tsunoda’s family house, his vacation home, his work flat in New York, the building his firm is located in; the buildings he frequents, banks and temples and offices of business partners, his favourite restaurant, even the secret second home he has with his secret second wife; they’re all there. 

He only has one more evening to prepare before meeting up with Kodzuken again, but he’s no stranger to losing sleep to hard work, and he certainly is no stranger to learning detail quickly, if need be.

He uncaps his favourite fountain pen, leaves notes in neat black kanji next to the plans, important rooms marked in differing colours for differing activities, a first vague timetables sketched in that only weeks of careful surveillance will prove to be correct or wrong.

From what he’s heard so far, Tsunoda seems to be a creature of habit, which benefits Tetsurou greatly; but he who is too certain of himself soon ends up dead. If Tetsurou has learned one thing doing the job he does, it’s this. 

After all, he’s the one who kills the sort of men who are too certain of themselves.

- -

The second meet-up with Kodzuken regarding Tsunoda comes by without much fanfare.

Tetsurou gets up early, shakes his legs out and goes on his early morning run. The sun still isn’t up, but the air speaks of a cold and cloudy, but not a rainy day; after all this time, Tetsurou has developed a feeling for it.

He comes by his favourite bakery on his run, a small, hidden building, a bit run-down, with chipped wooden furniture and a coffee machine that voices its disgruntlement at still being in service through loud rattling.

Yui, the owner’s daughter, smiles at him nicely when he comes in, and goes to fetch his favourite pastry for him.

“Early morning again, Kurono-san?”

“Always, Michimiya-san,” he replies, his best friendly smile on his face.

“Long day of business meetings ahead, I reckon?”

“Always,” he repeats, and she chuckles. She blinks her lashes at him as she hands him his pastry, and their fingers brush for a second; he plays the idiot working in finance who’s horrible in bed and doesn’t know when women are flirting with him and gives her her money and a small tip. 

“Have a lovely day, Kurono-san,” she says.

“You too,” he replies, and is out of the door with a little wave, playing oblivious to how she watches him leave. He thinks about Bokuto, who met his husband in the book shop he sometimes peruses for life coaching books, a young manga editor who didn’t know what to do with Bokuto’s enthusiasm, really, but was still drawn in by his natural charm. Or his big pecs; who’s to say.

Tetsurou has only met the guy a handful of times; much like Tetsurou, he is always busy with work.

Bokuto would probably encourage him to go for Yui; but Bokuto doesn’t know that Tetsurou spreads the building plans of the houses of men he plans to murder on his living room table and cooks food for Japan’s most notorious hacker in his free time. Bokuto doesn’t even know that his name isn’t actually Kurono Tetsuya.

So Tetsurou lets his favourite tea steep while going through this morning post-jog workout, the one he studiously upkeeps because he needs the muscles to kill people, not to look like an alpha male and everything else he tells Bokuto, and he eats his breakfast-replacing pastry over the morning newspaper; not the business insider, but rather one that will keep him updated on what the general public thinks of recent murders.

He neatly sorts all of the papers on the table, drinks a second mug of tea in case it will help with the headache he has from only sleeping for three hours, and shoots a message from his burner phone to his favourite informant again.

Several hours later, he packs everything necessary up into his favourite car, which he only uses to drive himself to a cheap secondary car in which he makes his way to their location, music on, hand tapping out the rhythm lazily against the steering wheel, the sun blessedly not shining into his eyes, hidden behind clouds but not rain.

He turns into the parking lot of the old, abandoned factory a good fifteen minutes before Kodzuken, who shows up in an unfamiliar car and his baggiest clothes, as if there were a prize to be won for the rattiest outfit, a backpack slung over his left shoulder.

“You’re late,” Tetsurou says, grinning.

“You’re early,” Kodzuken replies, which is a lie and only makes Tetsurou grin wider. “Want to go inside? I’m cold.”

“I expected nothing less,” Tetsurou says, and follows Kodzuken through the old halls, up creaking stairs, through rooms filled with heavy machinery and rooms filled with nothing but endlessly determined weeds growing from every crack in the flooring and ceiling.

There is an office in the third storey which is still furnished. It’s a small room, floor covered in a once-white carpet that now looks dusty and yellow, wallpaper peeling from the walls. An impossibly dirty window looks out over the parking lot from the left side of the room. In the middle of it is a big steel table surrounded by five chairs that, Tetsurou is pretty sure, were once six; half of them look like he should better not try sitting down on them.

In the far corner on the left side of the room is a metal filing cabinet, one of the doors missing, the other hanging uselessly from just one hinge.

Kodzuken sits down on one of the chairs and puts his backpack onto the ground. There is tension in his posture, the kind that shows that he’s still ready to jump up at any moment, if given half a reason.

Tetsurou sits down across from him. The chair creaks ominously when he does so, but does not break.

“So,” Kodzuken says, “Tsunoda.”

“Rich asshole with a secret wife and a lot of money first saved through tax evasion then lost because of you,” Tetsurou says, grinning. “I’ve heard of him.” 

Kodzuken’s eyebrows raise. His eyes sparkle.

“I see you’ve done your research,” he says, and his posture relaxes ever-so-slightly back into the chair. Tetsurou is almost certain that were his mask down, he’d be able to see his mouth twitch up. 

“You expected nothing less from me, of course,” Tetsurou says.

“Of course,” Kodzuken agrees. He opens his backpack and takes out three thick, leather-bound folders and a laptop. “But I also expected you to scratch nothing but the surface, and I’m not surprised to be proven right.”

Now it’s Tetsurou’s turn to raise his eyebrows. “You sure about that?”

Kodzuken’s entire voice is a challenge when he pushes the folders forwards towards Tetsurou. “Why don’t you decide that for yourself?”

Tetsurou grins.

“I’d be delighted to, kitten.” The leather feels plush and expensive under his hands. “But I’m sure I can surprise you a little bit.” His voice, in turn, can only say one thing: challenge accepted.

- -

Tetsurou prides himself on being well-organised with his case notes; everything has its proper place, is colour-coded according to a strong system, and his annotations are as uniform as handwritten script can get. In fact, he prides himself on doing his organising so well that anyone could immediately find what they needed in his notes. Perhaps not the best quality for a contract killer’s notes to possess, but alas.

Kodzuken’s notes are not like that.

They are well-organised, certainly, that much is immediately obvious; what is, however, also obvious, is that unless you are Kodzuken himself, his organising system will forever remain mysterious. Tetsurou has a strong feeling Kodzuken’s system is probably stricter and more detailed than his own, but with only confusion to offer as to what that system could possibly be, it will have to remain a feeling without evidence to back it up. 

This makes looking through his folder harder.

And still: his folder is a gold-mine of carefully documented information.

- -

Tsunoda is not only a rich asshole, he is the rich asshole.

Tetsurou and Kodzuken spend the entire night hunched over Kodzuken’s folders and the plans and notes Tetsurou brought along, Tetsurou’s back cramping as the sun slowly rises again, a part of his body recognising he’s stayed up not only past his bedtime, but past the time he typically gets up in the mornings again, and this on nothing more than three hours of sleep.

Finally, Tetsurou sits up.

Kodzuken, who’s finished two bottles of energy drink outside the room, so that Tetsurou may not see his face, stretches his back and makes a pained expression. He rubs slightly at his neck and shoulders.

“Crick in your neck?” Tetsurou asks, sympathetically. There are dark rings under Kodzuken’s eyes, but he looks like he’s familiar with this type of late night. The times he’s set for their meetings had already made Tetsurou suspect this, but now he’s almost entirely certain; where Tetsurou is the definition of a morning person, Kodzuken seems to be a night owl.

“Ugh,” Kodzuken makes.

“I propose,” Tetsurou says, trying and failing to suppress a yawn, “that you give me three weeks to scope him out, see for myself if the routines my contacts and your hacked data got are correct, get a feel for everything in person.” 

Kodzuken musters him for a moment, entirely silent.

“Alright,” he says eventually. “Message me when you’ve got everything you need.”

“Perfect,” Tetsurou says. “In the meantime, make sure he doesn’t kill me before I kill him, yeah?”

“If you can’t make sure of that yourself, you’re really bad at your job,” Kodzuken says.

Tetsurou laughs. “Just erase the digital trace to me you’ve laid.” Kodzuken’s eyes narrow again.

“Maybe,” he says, at the same time as Tetsurou’s brain starts to race, working overtime to interpret the expression in his eyes.

Oh, he realises, delighted. He lied. He never started setting me up in the first place.  

He suppresses a grin, determined to not let Kodzuken realise he realised. Opens his own bag.

“By the way,” he says, taking out the bento box. “This is for you.”

He leaves it on the table, only takes the folders and his notes, packing both up carefully.

Kodzuken is still rubbing at his neck when they make their way out of the room, down the hallway, three sets of stairs, through rooms that look even more run-down in the quiet of the morning, sun shining through cracks in the ceiling, walls and windows.

They drive off into two different directions; at least Kuroo’s is a lie, just another careful trace of disinformation planted.

He makes a stop by the bakery after he’s arrived home, showered and re-dressed; Yui is behind the counter, smiling at him.

“You’re late today,” she says, friendly.

“Slept in,” Tetsurou lies easily. “Felt exhausted, even called in sick to work. Don’t tell anyone.”

She giggles. “I won’t,” she says. “You do look tired.”

“You know me, the grind never stops,” Tetsurou says. “Maybe today is the day I finally come up with the perfect idea for a start-up.”

“Let me know if you do,” she says. “You can always come in to tell me more.” She rubs at the back of her head, blushing slightly.

Tetsurou gives her his best oblivious idiot grin, the kind that says I would invest in crypto and all my talk about women is nothing but hot air, and leaves the bakery, breakfast clutched in hand.

Then, he takes a three hour nap.

When he wakes up, he has a single message from Kodzuken waiting.

Your food is so pretentious. Are you trying to pass off something you bought as your own. Be honest.

He grins.

You wound me! he replies.

Then, he gets to work.

- -

He scopes out Tsunoda’s main family home first; a modern three-storey house, beautiful if you’re into stainless steel, hard edges and cubic design. He spends two weeks hidden and just watching: it’s just Tsunoda, his wife and his servants. The children he has with his wife are all well into adulthood and moved out already, or so intel tells Tetsurou. Good.

He doesn’t like killing people who have young children or are still children themselves. As a matter of fact, he doesn’t kill anybody under eighteen, and he only kills people with children younger than eighteen in absolute exceptions. Those are two of the main rules he works by; more often than not, they’re the only rules.

After scoping everything out, he spends a week just tailing Tsunoda. And then, he focuses solely on his work office for a while.

Only the very early morning hours and late evenings find him at home, pouring over all of his notes, making easy and quick soups on the stove. His bed, a high-quality investment he made a few years ago, just the right firmness to grant a deep sleep and relief on back pain, sees too little of him.

Yui also sees very little of him; he still comes by every two days or so to get himself breakfast, pastries he eats at home instead of a proper Japanese breakfast, before further making notes on Tsunoda’s routines. 

The work office, he decides finally, would be the most risky place due to the many people working in the building, but also his safest bet, seeing as Tsunoda doesn’t have any travel for work coming up. Tetsurou tends to like doing his jobs abroad, when his targets are travelling; it leaves him with less time to scope out the place, but having his targets removed from their comfort zone and familiar surroundings more than makes up for it.

Lacking any sort of travel in his near future, not even a trip to see his secret second wife, Tetsurou hones in on Tsunoda’s place of work.

Tsunoda’s office is in the fourth storey and he tends to be in there for hours, not taking calls, blinds closed, because he apparently hates being distracted at work. He is, in fact, known not to emerge but for coffee breaks for days at a time when he has a bigger project going on. His fellow workers know to leave him alone when he’s in there and the blinds are closed.

This means that if Tetsurou plans everything just right, he should have hours, maybe more than a day, before anyone considers checking in on Tsunoda; enough time to have safely vacated the crime scene and erased all of his traces.

This also means he’ll have to be very careful about absolutely everything, even more so than usual, because the safest course of action will be getting in as early as possible, to surprise Tsunoda in his office, and then leave when the building is already filling up again, bustling with people who will remember an unfamiliar face in their place of work.

While he has done similarly complex jobs before, he has never done them so close to home. Tsunoda’s office is in Annaka, only a two hours’ drive from Tokyo; Kodzuken’s help will be instrumental in ensuring everything goes off without a hitch.

He gives himself an additional two days before contacting Kodzuken. He goes grocery shopping at the farmer’s market to get some fresh produce and tries out a new curry recipe that he’s been meaning to attempt for a while; it turns out absolutely delicious, and he makes note of it in his carefully organised folder of recipes.

He goes on his morning runs, lets the cold air blow against his face as the morning dew still clings to fence posts and grass.

He flirts a bit with Yui in his best useless-business-guy way and buys his usual pastries.

On Thursday, he goes out with his cover ‘friend group’ and pretends at drunkenness while he gets Bokuto truly drunk, watches as he dials up his husband and mumbles into the phone how much he loves him, and feels incredibly out of place when he walks home hours later, surrounded only by people who similarly stayed out too late and unlucky workers who are working night shifts.

A trio of what look to be university students is leaning against a street post, one of them looking seconds away from expelling an excess of alcohol from his stomach alongside its various other contents, one of the other two talking to him in a soothing, low voice.

When Tetsurou gets home, he brushes his teeth dutifully, dresses for bed, stares out of the window for a few minutes and wonders, just ever-so-briefly, if genuine human connection will ever be in the cards for him again.

Then, he goes to bed.

The next morning, even before he’s gone on his daily run, he shoots Kodzuken a message.

I’ve got everything I need. At eight this evening?

He gets the Okay. @ river? back only minutes later. He squints at the clock – it’s a little after five in the morning – and hopes Kodzuken will go to bed soon.

Then he puts his running shoes on.

- -

The ‘river’ is actually a small hunting lodge by what can only generously be called a river; it is more of a small stream, really.

It’s almost a three hour drive from Tokyo, but Tetsurou cannot deny the serenity to it, this small wooden lodge, half-hidden in the foliage.

There is no path wide or secure enough for a car or motorcycle to it, so Tetsurou parks almost two kilometres away and makes the rest of the trek on foot; the path is almost entirely overgrown because of disuse, and when he arrives, the key jams in the lock and only manages to unlock the door with a bit of finesse and some adjustments from Tetsurou. The door, when he opens it, creaks.

The lodge itself is tiny: it consists only of a bathroom, a main living space with two sleeping cots in one corner, a small oven that is used for both heating and cooking in the other that barely does manage to heat the lodge up, a table with some chairs in the middle, and then a small shed in the back with enough space for wood and weaponry storage.

Tetsurou fires up the oven so he can make some tea and waits for Kodzuken.

- -

Kodzuken arrives almost an hour late; at this point, Tetsurou is getting used to him coming late. He’s got leaves and sticks sticking to his hair and his entire body is taut with annoyed tension.

“This is a fucking stupid place to meet,” he says.

“You suggested it,” Tetsurou points out.

“It’s your safe house. I didn’t think it would be this horrible to get to when you told me about it.” 

Tetsurou chuckles and takes a sip from his tea.

“You’ve got some foliage in your hair,” he says, and watches amusedly as Kodzuken’s eyes narrow.

“I know. Believe me, I know,” he half-spits.

He takes a folder out of his backpack and almost slams it down onto the table before gliding into a chair and simply collapsing, like a puppet whose  strings have been cut.

“I’m a hacker, I wasn’t made for exercise,” he moans.

“Two kilometres aren’t exactly exercise,” Tetsurou replies.

Kodzuken only narrows his eyes further. “Shut up, Kuro.” 

Tetsurou cackles, but opens up his own folders.

“So,” he says, “I’ve got a plan. But I definitely need your help.”

“Not surprising. If you worked great on your own, you would never have contacted me,” Kodzuken murmurs. “Alright then. Let’s hear it.” 

“So. You’re not going to like this, but I think the best idea is to kill him in his office. It’s simultaneously the most and least risky route.”

Kodzuken raises his eyebrows. “Oh, you’re wrong,” he says, and his voice sounds intrigued. “I like this very much. Go on.”

Tetsurou smiles. “I’ll have to get a key duplicated and then I should be capable of sneaking in just fine. It’s the sneaking out again and the security feed that’s going to be almost impossible to pull off alone.”

Kodzuken leans forward. “And I bet you made some notes on their security system,” he says.

“That I did.” Tetsurou nudges the second, still closed folder forward. “Quite a few, in fact.” 

Kodzuken takes it and opens his up; his eyes flit over the first page, sparkling slightly.

“This’ll be like a video game where the first mistake is game over,” he says excitedly.

Tetsurou can only watch him as he files that information away; he has never seen Kodzuken’s eyes sparkle like this, and in the dim, red-orange lighting of the hunting lodge, his golden eyes look like molten lava. He’s hidden himself away beneath layers of baggy black clothing again, but even like this, he is a sight to behold.

Hunched over Tetsurou’s notes, intrigue written into every line of his body, he is the most beautiful thing Tetsurou has ever seen.

Tetsurou wants to study him forever, wants to bicker with him and make him food and watch him shine.

He is everything.

- -

Kodzuken says he’ll need a week to get into all of the systems and set everything up properly; “I could do it quicker, but that’s risky and so much effort,” he says. 

Tetsurou has his own preparations to carry out during this week.

First on the agenda is the acquiring of keys; without keys to the building and the office, his plan would not fall apart – Tetsurou is a skilled lock pick; he has to be, in his profession, especially seeing as he’s worked alone until very recently – but it would be slowed down, more prone to risks; and Tetsurou strongly believes in giving himself the best chances possible of not getting arrested.  

Scoping out the premises brings getting to know the staff with it; now, after several weeks spent on watching the building, watching who comes and goes and when , Tetsurou knows the security staff, and knows them well.

He knows exactly who’s in charge, high up enough to own a key to every single door in the building. And he’s memorised the shape of the keys he needs.

It’s this that brings him to the café two streets further, a small, somewhat grimey place hidden in an alleyway and frequented by not the rich business men going to work all around, but by the delivery people, the security guards, the cleaning staff and all the hard-working under-paid people in-between; it is here that he finds Oise, his target.

Oise is a heavy-set man, with long black hair he wears in a ponytail and tired brown eyes, his skin a sickly white that speaks of too much time spent inside under harsh industrial lights.

Nothing about him looks remarkable.

It’s easy to come into the café wearing heavy boots, jeans and flannel, dark rings under his eyes, hair a mess, to fade into the background between everyone waiting in queue for a much-needed cheap caffeine boost. It’s easier still, under this flickering light of a lightbulb long past its prime, to ‘accidentally’ hip-check Oise on his own way out, coffee in hand, and in this process remove the keyring from where Oise has it fastened to a belt loop.

He loiters in front of the building, in appearance to drink his coffee away from the stress of his job, but in truth to make wax imprints of the needed keys, his torso blocking the view.

Oise comes out not much later, his own coffee in hand.

Tetsurou wishes him a nice day, solidarity between workers, a friendly tap to the shoulder; with Oise’s eyes on his upper hand and face, he clasps the keyring back into place on his belt loop.

Oise leaves, none the wiser. Tetsurou finishes his coffee before making his way to his trusted favourite key forger.

- -

Kodzuken gets access to everything he needs access to; Tetsurou gets the keys he needs replicated. He makes Kodzuken check the calendars a good ten times, just to make sure they’ve picked the right date.

Tsunoda’s personal assistant keeps his calendar on her laptop, entirely digitalised and uploaded into a cloud so she can access it whenever and wherever she needs to.

It’s all too easy, says Kodzuken, to access it and find out everything about Tsunoda’s schedule that they need to. Scarily so, Tetsurou thinks, who is beyond glad he refuses to digitise anything at all. 

If someone wants his calendar, they’ll have to take it off his dead body.

They settle on a Wednesday, one filled with projects Tsunoda needs to work on but with zero meetings or phone calls; a day that guarantees there will be nobody who’ll question Tsunoda spending the entirety of it in his office, not responding to anyone.

Tetsurou runs almost five kilometres longer than he usually does on the Tuesday morning ahead of it; he always gets just a little bit antsy before jobs, his body filled with adrenaline.

“You look good, Kurono-san,” Yui tells him, cheeks flushed.

“Thank you,” he replies. “I’ve got some exciting opportunities coming up at work.” 

- -

Tetsurou gets there at four thirty in the morning. He’s got his earpiece and microphone fastened, hidden. Everything works well. He knows this because Kodzuken has been using the earpiece to insult him for having to go to bed and wake up early for this job for the past fifteen minutes.

He goes in through the front entrance; the keys he’d had made work perfectly, so he gets in without hassle. He trusts Kodzuken to disable any security cameras for the time being. 

The building looks eerie, this early in the morning, the hallways empty, his footsteps on the linoleum echoing through them, the only light being scarce moonlight coming in through some of the windows. 

He takes the stairs up to the fourth storey; he always takes the stairs. There are risks involved with taking an elevator that could jeopardise the entire job, such as getting stuck, or someone noticing the elevator being at an odd storey upon arrival, or even just the elevator’s own security feed.

He doesn’t trust technology much anyway; less now that he knows Kodzuken, whose opinion on tech seems to be ‘it’s a nice tool that I can use to my personal advantage, but all most people tend to do is leave the door to all their secrets wide open, and I would rather shoot myself than allow an Alexa into my house’. Tetsurou thinks that’s pretty fair. 

He unlocks the door to Tsunoda’s office easily. The blinds are still closed, so it is pitch black in the room, but he has a flashlight for exactly this reason. 

He closes and locks the door behind himself. 

The office looks eerie too, especially under the sparse light of his flashlight, only illuminating one spot properly at a time; it makes every piece of furniture paint long, dangerous-looking shadows.

The office is pretty spacious, with street-facing windows, even though the view is obstructed by blinds most of the time; there is a big, sleek glass desk with a plush-looking leather chair right under the main window. Why it is placed there when Tsunoda barely lets any daylight into the room remains anyone’s guess.

On the left side of the room is a white couch that can be pulled out into what must be a pretty uncomfortable bed that, apparently, nevertheless does its job. 

On the right side of the room is a big wardrobe with barely anything in it at all. This wardrobe is where Tetsurou plans on remaining for the next four hours – until Tsunoda comes to work, has settled down at his desk, and is engrossed enough in his paperwork that Tetsurou can open the wardrobe door just a split and shoot him through it without him looking up and calling for help.

If Tetsurou gets noticed by Tsunoda before he’s pressed the trigger, he is fucked; no amount of silencers on his gun will save his cover from a loud scream.

He carefully opens the wardrobe door with his gloved hands and fits himself into it. 

“I’m in,” he says.

“I can’t believe I got up this early. You will pay for this,” Kodzuken responds, yawning. 

“I’m literally about to murder someone for you,” Tetsurou says cheerfully.

“And now I have to stay awake for four more hours.”

“More like five or six, probably, if we count in the time it’ll take me to kill him and carefully leave the building,” Tetsurou says.

“I cannot put into words how much I hate you,” Kodzuken says.

Tetsurou grins, even though nobody can see it. His heart is fluttering in his chest; the annoyed and deeply tired rasp to Kodzuken’s voice makes him feel warm and, once again, it makes him want to push. See how long it takes him until the bubble pops and all that’s left is Kodzuken, in earnest angry vulnerability.

“You’re cute when you're angry,” he says, and delights in the annoyed huff he can hear through the earpiece.

- -

Tsunoda comes in at shortly before nine, just like Tetsurou expected; by the time Tsunoda arrives, the building is already bustling with activity, according to both Kodzuken’s observations of the security feed and the noise Tetsurou himself can hear.

“He’ll be there any second,” Kodzuken informs him, and then Tetsurou hears the door to the room open; Kodzuken is entirely quiet in his ear as Tetsurou hears the door creak closed again, then the sound of footsteps, and finally the sound of a chair scratching over linoleum floor. 

Tsunoda heaves a big sigh, and Tetsurou can hear the squeaking of the chair, probably him settling in; and, shortly after, the shuffling of paper and energetic opening of a laptop. Finally, Tetsurou hears the unmistakable sound of him typing on his laptop’s keyboard, the keys clicking loudly when he hits them.

Tetsurou’s hand is very calm where he’s got it around his drawn gun; his finger is already on the trigger. His other hand rests ever so slightly against the wardrobe door.

He waits another several minutes, listening to Tsunoda typing; he’s slowly getting into a rhythm, only stopping shortly every thirty seconds or so. 

Tetsurou’s timing here is instrumental. He has no view of Tsunoda; doesn’t know where he’s looking. All he has to go off is the sound of his typing. If he opens the wardrobe door at the wrong second or too widely, if Tsunoda looks just a bit to the side, Tetsurou will be directly in Tsunoda’s line of sight. 

A mistake could be fatal, Tetsurou knows this. His heart is pounding in his chest, adrenaline shooting through him.

This, perhaps, is part of why he likes this job; the seconds where everything is suspended in mid-air and he doesn’t yet know if he will pull it off. The risk of getting caught, of messing up. The fact that every target could be his last.

How close and personal it is. 

There is no grey-zone in his job: it is black and white, dead or alive.

Either he succeeds or he fails, no in-between.

Tetsurou nudges the wardrobe door just the tiniest bit. Tsunoda is looking at his laptop.

Tetsurou aims. 

He sees the moment where Tsunoda’s fingers stagnate, come to a halt on top of the keyboard, softly hovering over the keys.

Tsunoda looks up.

He is too late; his eyes widen, his mouth opening to form the first syllable, just as the bullet from Tetsurou’s gun hits him right in the heart, and all that comes out is an aborted, quiet noise. 

His hand falls to his chest, where the blood is rapidly spreading; he looks like he wants to attempt to speak again, but he doesn’t get to. His hand falls away, soaked in his own blood, just as he’s falling forward, entire body slumping like a puppet whose strings have been cut.

“We did it,” Tetsurou whispers. He can feel a smirk take place on his face, unbidden but unstoppable.

“Now to the hard part,” Kodzuken says. He sounds tense. 

Tetsurou’s smirk widens. “Now to the hard part,” he replies. “Ready to get me out of a busy office space unseen?”

“No,” Kodzuken says. But then, just seconds later: “The hallway is currently empty. Unless someone is about to go on a coffee or bathroom break right now, it should stay that way for the next few minutes, as far as the office schedules tell me.”

He must have hundreds of calendars pulled up at the same time; Tetsurou does not envy him.

“I will be leaving the room in ten seconds. You have that long to take care of the security feed. Tell me if I need to abort,” Tetsurou replies.

“Alright.”

Tetsurou counts as he sneaks out of the wardrobe, as he pockets his gun and closes the wardrobe again, as he makes his way to the office door.

Zero, he counts, stepping outside.

There are two staircases and one elevator; the elevator and main staircase are closer, to his right. They ultimately lead to the entrance hall. The second staircase is further away, to his left. It leads to the back entrance, where the security quarters are stationed. It also leads, importantly, down an additional flight of stairs, into the basement.

The second staircase is the one he hastens towards; Kodzuken knows this.

“Giving you five seconds until I replace the security feed of the stairwell with a stagnant picture,” Kodzuken says.

Tetsurou doesn’t respond, not out in the hallway where someone could hear him. He makes it unseen in six, as light on his feet as possible.

The way down the stairs is quick, too; only when he gets to the bottom floor does he slow down.

“Two of the security guards are outside on a break. The third is inside, glued to his coffee and monitor,” Kodzuken informs him.

Tetsurou slips by the door to the security office and down another flight of stairs. The door to the basement is a big, heavy metal fire safety door.

His key unlocks it perfectly.

He closes the door as quietly behind himself as he can, which isn’t very quiet.

“Nobody looked up,” Kodzuken says. “I think they’re all tired. Like me, you ass.” 

“Fuck off,” Tetsurou replies, cheerfully but whispering. 

He finds what he’s been looking for on the right hand side, behind several big shelves filled top to bottom with cardboard boxes, probably hiding dirty corporate secrets.

“I will mourn this suit,” Tetsurou says as he removes the manhole cover behind which the access to the main sewer line lies.

“Nobody forced you to murder people in a suit,” Kodzuken grumbles.

“I’m certainly not gonna murder people in joggers,” Tetsurou says, closing the manhole cover again.

“Nothing wrong with them.”

“Yes there is. Have you seen yourself?” 

“I look a million times better than you and your horrible rooster hair.” 

“My beautiful hair and I look dashing, kitten,” Tetsurou replies, making his way down the sewer line.

“Your ability to lie to yourself is astounding.”

“Everything about me is astounding, because I am perfect,” Tetsurou says. He can’t stop grinning. His face feels heated in a way it usually isn’t after a job, even with the adrenaline rush. 

“No you’re not.”

“Yes I am.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Again the astounding ability to lie to yourself.”

“Kitten!”

“I told you not to call me that.”

- -

They meet up fifty kilometres to the west of the city, at a lay-by by the side of the road that very rarely sees any use.

They’re alone on it; the street to their right, cars passing by too fast to pay two strangers by the roadside any attention, asphalt and grass to their left, the resting area nothing more than two wooden picnic tables and a portable dixi toilet.

Tetsurou gets out of his car, still smelling unfavourably like the sewer he made his way through, and gets greeted by the sight of Kodzuken, once again clad in oversized garments. Kodzuken has had the longer drive here by far; but, other than Tetsurou, he didn’t have to switch cars halfway through and re-dress. 

Tetsurou is now wearing simple jeans and a t-shirt, which is hidden under a thick black coat; he doesn’t feel as comfortable in clothes like this as he does his suits, but he’s used to putting on whatever the moment demands of him. Currently, the moment demands anything but a suit he made his way through a sewer in.

“Kitten!” he greets, smirking and waving, and he can see the way Kodzuken’s shoulders drop slightly from where he had them hunched up, his entire posture relaxing infinitesimally. 

“You made it,” Kodzuken says. He’s wearing his hair in a ponytail today, a few escaping strands clipped back with hair clips; a figure hidden under layers of baggy clothes should not register as pretty to Tetsurou, and yet he does.

“I always do,” Tetsurou says, still smirking. “Someone on this team has got to have some skill, and that someone is me.”

“Oh, shut up,” Kodzuken responds. “You wouldn’t know skill if it bit you.”

“And with what did I murder your dear friend Tsunoda then, pray tell?” Tetsurou raises an eyebrow.

“Pure luck,” Kodzuken says, zero inflection in his voice.

“You wound me, kitten!” Tetsurou says, dramatically clutching at his chest as if he’d been shot in the heart. 

“You’re so annoying,” Kodzuken says.

“Well, So Annoying did kill someone for you and would like to make out a time and place to reconvene, so we can make sure we’ve both handled the aftermath to the best of our skills and discuss how to deal with the police investigation, if necessary. Not that you have to worry about me,” Tetsurou says. 

“The only thing I worry about is how to make sure I never have to see your unbearable face again,” Kodzuken grumbles. 

“Ten in the evening in two days, the dollhouse?” Tetsurou offers.

Kodzuken narrows his eyes. His shoulders are hunched back up. “Deal,” he says. 

As always, he is the first to drive off.

- -

Tetsurou burns his suit, mourning it only a little. He makes certain his alibi is perfect, not that he should need it; if he did his job correctly – and he always does; he makes sure of that – there should be no clues leading to him at all. 

If Kodzuken did his job correctly – and Tetsurou works with him for a reason, after all – there should, instead, be a lead to an equally corrupt business partner of Tsunoda, who knew about the secret family and has many secrets of his own. One of them being that he’s a secret affair the secret wife keeps.

Rich people are all so messy.

There’s nothing else left to do other than keeping his ears open, going on his morning runs, flirting inexpertly with Yui, and keeping the façade of Kurono Tetsuya well and alive.

He happens to be an expert at keeping façades well and alive.

The meeting with Kodzuken to discuss the aftermath also goes smoothly, without a hitch; Tetsurou watches him, and his fingers itch to get behind his façade.

- -

Their next target comes through Tetsurou again; yet another rich asshole.

This time, the guy he’s killing is very busy earning money through his oil business. Too busy to consider the nature and lives he’s ruining.

Kodzuken agrees directly.

To be exact, the word “Good,” leaves his mouth when Tetsurou tells him who the target is.

“I can’t believe people pay you to kill people who I’d kill to see dead myself,” he says then.

Tetsurou shrugs. “It’s not always that fun. Most of the time my clients are just angry wives who want to see their husbands gone for cheating, or business partners who want revenge after their entire company has been destroyed by someone who doesn’t know how to handle money, or people who want to keep their dirty secrets dirty.”

Kodzuken shrugs. “Couldn’t care less about most of those people,” he admits freely.

“Me neither.” Tetsurou grins. “And it pays well.”

Kodzuken looks him into the eyes.

“So, this asshole. Will we get paid well for him?”

“We’ll do the world a good deed and you can buy yourself a second motorcycle, if you want, baby,” Tetsurou responds.

“Don’t call me that,” Kodzuken says, but he looks intrigued.

It’s only later, when Tetsurou watches the arsehole in question bleed out on an expensive white carpet, that he notices that the mood between him and Kodzuken seems different.

Their bickering is still the same; but the genuine rumble of annoyance that has been present in every single one of Kodzuken’s sentences before lacks now. Instead, sometimes Tetsurou is almost certain he sounds amused.

As fun as it is to rile Kodzuken up, he finds that he likes the change.

Chapter Text

The bar is loud. So unbelievably, overwhelmingly loud.

This is not surprising; Bokuto does love a loud bar. Tetsurou usually doesn’t mind it too much; but he stayed up until two thirty in the morning after the murder of a man who spent the last years very involved in high-stakes sports betting, and then got up at five for his usual morning run.

This is to say he got less than three hours of sleep after a very exhausting day; and the current day has been no less exhausting. Checking and re-checking there are no traces leading back to you and making sure that all of the evidence has been adequately disposed of does tend to make for a busy day.

Now, though, he is having a busy night; it is close to midnight, and he’s only kept Bokuto from climbing up onto a table with sheer strength.

“We need to get you laid,” Yamamoto is saying with an intensity that is frankly a little bit terrifying, staring straight at Tetsurou.

“No you don’t,” Tetsurou responds. Yamamoto has dyed his hair very freshly, and the blonde turned out less blonde than it did orange; it’s actually a pretty good look on him. A bit fiery. Fitting.

“Well, Bokuto’s already getting laid, and I need at least another five years of staring before I am worthy of even the attempt of saying hello to Shimizu-san,” Yamamoto says. “And you’re tall, and women like that. Ergo, we need you to go and fuck someone hot.” He sounds like he thinks he’s being reasonable. He’s also slightly slurring his voice.

“Absolutely not,” Tetsurou says. He thinks about whether or not he should go on a few bad dates with Yui just to have something to talk about, just to get these idiots to shut up. But he actually likes Yui as a person, and he really likes the food she sells. He doesn’t want to destroy that, not really; it’s the closest thing to friendship he has, next to the people he’s currently sitting at a table with. And they’re not his friends, they’re a cover. Yui is too, for the most part; still.

“Come on,” Yamamoto says, “Isn’t there anyone in this bar who interests you?” 

There isn’t. “There is,” Tetsurou says, “but I can’t talk to her. I need for her to come to me, so she thinks she’s the one in power in the situation.” Yamamoto is nodding along very seriously.

Then, his eyes widen. “But bro. How do we make sure she comes over?” 

“Well,” Tetsurou says, “she might be intimidated by the fact I’m sitting at a table with two big, handsome guys.”

Yamamoto is nodding again.

“I will get Bokuto home,” he says, grabbing at Bokuto’s shirt and tugging him back from where he’s once again trying to climb up onto the table. “And you go make that woman want you and fuck her.” 

Now Tetsurou is the one who’s nodding as seriously as he can.

Sometimes, he thinks, watching Bokuto and Yamamoto slowly make their way out of the bar, they almost make it too easy for him.

Or maybe he’s just a genius; the jury’s still out on that one.

His fingers itch to text Kodzuken that: are the people around me stupid or am I just a genius? 

He itches to see what scathing insult Kodzuken might reply with; maybe something along the lines of, the people around you are even more stupid than you? Where are you, the zoo?

But he doesn’t have Kodzuken’s phone number, of course. He knows how to reach him through the dark web and sometimes he gets the phone number of a burner phone that lasts a day or two; but he’s never gotten a number to just chat with.

Which is sensible, really. 

Even though Kodzuken probably knows him better than anyone else currently alive, they’re not friends. They’re just work colleagues. There is no reason to send him dumb, teasing texts, just to get an insult, just to get a little bit of his attention.

- -

He wakes up and goes for his morning run; he still feels tired, a bit sluggish, getting up so early after a night out. But the wind is cold on his face, biting, making his ears and throat hurt, his eyes burn just the tiniest bit; he’s at the crossroads where he’s starting to get too warm from the exertion for the most part, but the biting cold against his ears and throat reminds him that as relief-bringing as he imagines taking his jacket off to be, it’s still cold outside, and sweat and open, cold air don’t work well together.

By the time he has reached the end of his usual route and slows down to step into the Michimiyas’ bakery, he feels wide awake. He still has his jacket on.

Yui is behind the counter, short, brown hair adorned by a multitude of sparkly hair clips. They look incredibly cute on her. Tetsurou, just for a second, imagines what they’d look like on Kodzuken; the thought makes him chuckle quietly and his cheeks warm up.

“How are you this fine morning, Kurono-san? You look tired,” Yui says, friendly and sociable, and he smiles at her.

“Late night out with my friends, but now I’m ready again for the corporate grind,” he replies, winking at her. “I like your hair clips.”

Yui blushes all the way up to her roots. “Thank you,” she says, ducking her head a bit. Then, her gaze snaps back to him. “What can I do for you?”

“I was thinking about mixing it up a bit, getting two classic Anpans,” he says, and her face lights up.

“Oh, we just changed up our recipe for them, I think you’ll really like them!” she says, smiling. “Did you know, Kurono-san, that when I still went to school, my dad would often put a sesame anpan into my bentos? I still thought that maybe, I could make a career out of volleyball one day, back then. Always felt a bit bad about getting so excited about sweet treats when some of my volleyball friends were really strict with their diet.”

“Eating well is important,” Tetsurou says, giving her another smile. He almost wants to tell her he used to play volleyball, too, back in school, that this memory of hers itches at one of his; but that’s Tetsurou’s past, not Tetsuya’s, so he doesn’t.

“It is, isn’t it?” She ducks her head again, and he fishes his wallet out of his pocket.

- -

He uses the afternoon to try out a new recipe, one that he’s been itching to do for ages. The main reason he hasn’t, yet, is that it takes several hours and demands a whole lot of effort; but, well, he does have the time, considering he doesn’t yet have the next job lined up, so all that’s left is the discussion of the last one, and he did leave the timing of that particular meeting up to Kodzuken. 

So he has nothing better to do.

He checks on the pot he has simmering on the stove, then on the one that’s living its best life in the oven; when he opens the oven door, the smell of duck fat hits him in a warm cloud, entirely delicious. The food looks good so far. He gets back to where he’s breading some meat, whistling.

The recipe he’s working on is pretty fatty, and it does have lots of meat in it; it does, however, also have some citrus and vinegar in it for an acidic tang, which he hopes will balance everything out nicely. If it turns out the way he hopes it will, it will have been a monumental effort, but one well worth it.

He thinks Kodzuken would potentially like it. Especially if he took the time to make some dessert to round it out with. Perhaps even a soup as a pre-course; Kodzuken seems to like simple soups for how easy they are to slurp down while he’s in front of a computer, not that he’s ever said it in so many words. It hasn’t been hard to guess at.

So maybe he should make a soup and some dessert for this the next time he makes it, plan the making of it around a meeting with Kodzuken. The ritual Kodzuken-feeding has almost become a tradition, and Tetsurou does enjoy it for the routine it brings, and even more for the way Kodzuken likes to act annoyed but eats his food every single time.

It is, certainly, a highlight. And when Kodzuken doesn’t act annoyed; well. Tetsurou likes to rile him up, but he also likes it when something like affection slips into his voice. And the fact he can never begin to guess as to what he’ll get this time keeps things interesting.

That is all there is to it; he likes to spice his life up a bit, and Kodzuken just so happens to be the newest spice on his shelf, and therefore the most interesting one.

He does wonder how Kodzuken would react to a proper three course meal; he does wonder what Kodzuken is up to in general.

He puts the breaded meat into the fridge, where it has to sit for a short while, and decides he might as well use the time to find out. He boots up his computer.

Ten minutes later, he has their chat log open, and a new, shiny message from Kodzuken sits at the top of it: telling Tetsurou that he’d like to meet the very next day.

Tetsurou grins. Not enough time to perfect this new recipe to a degree he feels comfortable with putting it in front of Kodzuken, not with how finicky it is; he is sure he’ll have to practice it a couple of times.

But certainly enough time to get something else together.

Oh, he is excited; and if only for Kodzuken’s reactions to him presenting him with a meal with flourish. 

-  -

“You look horrible,” Kodzuken says, eyes raised, as Tetsurou steps onto the roof of the abandoned school building. 

“That’s not my fault,” Tetsurou says.

It isn’t, not really. The building they’re meeting at is well within Tokyo’s city lines. Clouds are gathering dark and angrily in the sky. Kodzuken, he, and the entire roof are shrouded in shadows. 

The clouds are not an omen of bad weather to come, but rather the passers-by on their way to delivering it onto someone else – after having soaked Tetsurou, who thought it a good idea to make his way to their point of rendesz-vous by bicycle, entirely through.

He’s dripping more water into the puddles the rain shower has left behind. Kodzuken, holding an umbrella, wearing a hoodie that is not black but a dark, burgundy red for once under a thick coat, is dry.

“If you were stupid enough to come by bike it really is, Kuro,” Kodzuken points out. 

Tetsurou feels, suddenly and entirely unbidden, the urge to tell him to call him Tetsurou; to say if you insult me, at least use my real name to do it. 

It’s a stupid thought, putting him in active danger, and yet perhaps it isn’t; they have murdered together before. Surely that, if nothing else, should cover the basis of names – given names, family names, anything that isn’t just a codename, another layer of anonymity to hide behind.

Tetsurou doesn’t say any of that.

“Shut up,” he says instead.

- -

It’s odd, how used he has become to Kodzuken being a part of his life. He has that thought when he gets home and gets ready for bed, later than he used to. Tetsurou likes to go to bed early and wake up early; always has. Up until a few months ago, he was never in bed after ten, unless he’d been dragged out by Bokuto or he had a job that absolutely depended on him doing a night-time stake-out or murder.

Lately, though, his hours of sleeping have been shifting. He slips into his pajamas shortly before midnight, his favourite ones that are old and worn-out and overwhelmingly comfortable.

He got them from his grandfather, before. They are almost the only thing he still has to remind him of his grandfather, and they make him feel close to his family when he wears them, comfortable and safe. 

They are dark blue with little volleyballs on them, an unbelievably silly pattern. 

Tetsurou can’t remember the last time he watched a volleyball game in its entirety; Bokuto has been angling for them to go see one live, though. Perhaps he should give in.

His dreams are calm, when he slips into them; when he wakes up the next morning, he remembers nothing except for golden, cat-like eyes, and the echoing rumbles of a deadpan voice.

- -

Down-time between jobs can be boring, but Tetsurou refuses to let it be. 

Instead, he has a new recipe to perfect, skills to hone; and, if all that fails, a fictitious identity to keep up. Admittedly, he has been more antsy for new jobs to come along, lately. But that would happen to anyone gaining a partner in crime – literally – after working alone for so long; it is nice to have someone else’s scathing insults in your ear. It is nice to know there is someone else to help you with the clean-up.

A good encouragement not to take long breaks between jobs; although it has been years since Tetsurou had more than a month of downtime at a time. The world doesn’t sleep, and so humanity’s thirst for bloodshed, for revenge or power or material gain, doesn’t either. 

And Tetsurou is one of bloodshed’s most skilled harbingers, after all.

- -

Bloodshed doesn’t let him wait too long for it. 

On Monday, he makes his way to a rarely frequented-temple on the other side of the city, one that promises fortune in life and especially in your job if you leave an offering to the Gods. If there is one thing Tetsurou can always use, it is to have luck on his side during his work. 

The temple itself is small, built out of brick that has become weathered with age; Tetsurou leaves his offering and kneels down to pray.

Then, he gets up and makes his way to the back of the temple; nobody else is around, and still, he has another look to make sure that nobody is watching. Then, he softly feels for the loose brick he knows is there, and tugs it out. 

There are ways to get into contact with him; of course there are. No amount of skill, no reputation will bring you people looking to have you do their dirty work for them if there is no way to get into contact with you.

It’s not easy to find those ways, of course; that would not only be risky, it would be boring, and Tetsurou refuses to be boring, of all things.

He personally is of the belief that if you’re going to take another person’s life, you should at least do it stylishly.

And so he makes sure to wear a suit when he’s killing people, and he lets potential clients go on a little hunt for clues to get their job proposals to him.

This time, someone has gone on the hunt, and come out successful; there is a slip of paper in an envelope behind the brick, the paper revealing contact dates and a name in neat, small kanji, written carefully with black ink. The envelope had been closed with a wax seal.

Oh, this will be interesting; Tetsurou loves it when people deliver their requests for murder with a flourish. This is the type of style he gets excited by. This will be fun.

- -

The client is an older woman with a severe grey ponytail, face scarily wrinkle-free in a way that suggests not cosmetic surgery, but an acute lack of showing emotion throughout her life; the only exception are the frown-lines around the corners of her mouth. 

She meets Tetsurou in her vacation home, a clean, sharp designer house by the Kobohama beach. He used the ferry to get to the island; he is almost entirely certain she owns her own boat.

She bids him to sit and serves them matcha tea herself; despite the fact she must usually have servants do this for her, her movements belie no rustiness in carrying out a perfect tea ceremony.

Once he is sipping on his tea, she wastes no further time with small talk, getting straight to the point.

“I would like you to kill my nephew,” she says.

Tetsurou can’t help a smirk; he does like this woman. She insists on etiquette, she is dressed delicately and her spine is ramrod-straight, she knows her way around polite formality, and yet she has no issues saying exactly what she wants, with a directness many people tend to struggle with.

She is very obviously a woman who has never waited for life to hand her what she wants, who likes to take care of things herself; Tetsurou respects that.

“Tell me more about your nephew,” he says. He doesn’t ask her to elaborate on the whys of her wishes, certain she will do so by herself. He has found that by the time people come to him, they are certain enough in their assessment of the situation that they can react to these types of questions with ire, feeling interrogated, as if he didn’t agree with their actions. 

When, of course, he doesn’t care to change their minds, doesn’t judge what makes a good reason to have someone killed. People live, and people die; that is simply a fact of life. There is no point in crying over a death that could have been avoided; no point in assigning a scaled moral value to the taking of a life. 

People pay Tetsurou to kill. Tetsurou kills. That’s the long and the short of it; the whys are, at the end of the day, mostly meaningless to him.

There is nobody on this planet he cares enough for personally to wish to see them saved from death, and he makes moral judgements only very few and far in-between, and so usually his only rule remains: no parents of children that are still underage, and nobody who is still underage themselves.

Watanabe Aka tells him about her thirty-two year old nephew, freshly engaged, who is set to inherit the company of his terminally ill grandfather, her father, that she wishes to fall into her own son’s hands; Tetsurou listens.

“I will take a week to think about your proposal, and then I will get back to you. If I take on the job, you can consider it done within the month. You will hear from me,” he tells her.

Then he makes his way home.

He doesn’t act on his own anymore, after all; Kodzuken has a veto right now.

And while Tetsurou doesn’t have a moral code, not really, Kodzuken does. He doesn’t tell his client this, of course; but if his rules are met, then his agreement or refusal of the job depends, at this point, solely on what his partner thinks of it.

The only thing that tends to interest Tetsurou is whether he can get away with it; and because he’s damn good at his job, this isn’t much of a deliberation.

He can get away with anything he sets his mind to, he knows that from experience.

- - 

The beach is cold; water laps against the sandy shore, salty wind blowing through Tetsurou’s hair. He is bundled up in a thick winter coat and scarf, and yet he is not as bundled up as Kodzuken, who must have at least two layers of pullovers beneath his coat. His hair is hidden under a thick beanie, and yet he shivers.

Autumn has changed into winter with nary a warning sign, and the waves strain up and break over and over again as they shiver.

“Don’t you have a nice, warm, empty family home for us to meet in?” Kodzuken complains.

“I thought the beach was fitting,” Tetsurou admits.

“It’s winter. Who spends time on a beach in winter.”

“I’m going to be honest,” Tetsurou says, “you don’t seem like the type who spends time on a beach in summer, either. You look like a basement dweller.”

“Beaches are stupid. There are too many people and the sand gets everywhere,” Kodzuken grumbles.

“Basement dweller, like I said,” Tetsurou says cheerily. 

“Well, you look like the type who gets overly invested in stupid things, so I will take the nice, cosy, temperature-regulated inside of my flat over this beach any day,” Kodzuken says. “Full offence, Kuro.”

And there is the thought again; “If you want to insult me, at least use my actual name: Tetsurou,” Tetsurou says, mouth faster than he can bully the thought back down. Then he stares for a second. 

Kodzuken raises both of his eyebrows and laughs. Despite his next words, it’s not a mean laugh; it’s a bit shocked, but it sounds open, joyful. Tetsurou has only heard him snicker or scoff before. 

This – this is a first.

“You’re stupid enough to meet on a beach in winter and tell me your name? I might have found the worst assassin in Japan,” Kodzuken says, voice mirthful.

Warmth is blossoming in Tetsurou’s stomach, for some stupid, useless reason; it’s not like Kodzuken is entirely wrong.

“Well, our potential client started the beach meetings, technically, although she met me in her family’s beach vacation home.”

“You met her in one of her homes? I don’t even know whose intelligence that speaks lower of,” Kodzuken says, raising his eyebrows again. “That’s fucking careless, Kuro.” 

“Tetsurou,” Tetsurou replies, because now that he’s started it, he might as well double down. He is well aware that he still doesn’t know Kodzuken’s name. He is also aware that he probably won’t find it out anytime soon, if ever. 

It’s fine; at the end of the day, they are nothing more than work colleagues.

“It’s careless,” Kodzuken repeats.

Tetsurou shrugs his shoulders. “I obviously did my due diligence before,” he says. “And, in this case, it might work out in our favour. If you agree to take on the job.”

Kodzuken sighs. His eyes close for a second and he rubs at the bridge of his nose. Then he opens his eyes again.

“Alright,” he says. “Give me the details.”

“Gladly,” Tetsurou says, shooting him a grin. 

“So, the potential target is the client’s nephew – a businessman called Watanabe Haru. He’s in his early thirties, willing to commit all the usual atrocities that come with being set to inherit his grandfather’s big company that deals in electronics, and just got engaged – at his friend’s wedding, by the way. All around wonderful people, this family. No children, no pets.” 

Kodzuken is silent, his head cocked to the side, listening.

“The aunt wants him dead so her own son can inherit the company; he’s a little less willing to commit atrocities and a little younger, hence him being second in line. Doesn’t mean there won’t be atrocities in his wake. I would say he’ll be starting the reign off with a bloodbath, after all, but I’m pretty sure our dear client wants no blood and hasn’t told him about her plans.” 

Tetsurou grins.

“I could go on about their lives, but I’m sure you can find out more if given a name than I could. So here’s the interesting part: the murder is supposed to look like an accident. And our best bet is an upcoming week’s vacation in the family’s beach home in three weeks. It’s just him for the first three days, and then the fiancée will join him on the fourth.” 

“Curious,” Kodzuken says, quietly. His eyes have narrowed slightly; he looks like he’s already running calculations in his head. “Not your usual style, is it?”

“No,” Tetsurou freely admits, “but every man needs to change it up every now and then to keep things interesting.” He grins. “So, what are your thoughts?”

“Give me three days to collect my own intel on the family,” Kodzuken says, “and I’ll get back to you.”

His eyes are sparkling just a bit; it’s his oh this feels like a hard level-look. Tetsurou is pretty sure they will be taking the job.

“Can’t wait,” he says. “Oh, and kitten? I made you some food.”

He’s almost certain the way Kodzuken’s eyes crease indicates a smile.

“I told you not to call me that,” he replies, hands outstretched. “Kuro.”

- -

Kodzuken does contact him three days later; a simple message waiting for Tetsurou: Okay. Time, place?

- -

Tetsurou looks through Kodzuken’s intel and shares his own; then, sitting on the rustic wooden chairs in Tetsurou’s hunting lodge, the location perhaps partially motivated by Kodzuken’s complaints about the previous one, they develop a strategy together. 

One that barely relies on Kodzuken’s help, but Tetsurou’s precision and skill all the more; one in which a handful of things could go wrong. 

The plan is straightforward and simple, the execution much less so; Kodzuken furrows his brows, Tetsurou grins, and they get to work.

- -

Watanabe Haru, on first glance at him in person, looks roughly square-shaped. 

He is a well-muscled man, wearing a blazer, a polo shirt and jeans when he steps out of his car, his fiancée following seconds later. His muscles are the sort that are built for looks, not functionality; Tetsurou has seen and met many men like him, men who spend countless hours in the gym working for their ideal body with zero thought on how to use their muscles.

He doesn’t mind it, of course; it just seems absurd to him, sometimes, this desire to fit into a societally conceived notion of attractive, with nary a thought to a personal goal of function.

Watanabe more stalks than walks, every step demanding attention; his fiancée, who is over a whole head taller than him and has a grand amount of zero fat on her ribs, thus helping Watanabe with the illusion of a square-shaped body, meagrely tries to follow on penny heels, hand tucked into the crease of his elbow.

In his one week of staking him out so far, the main thing Tetsurou has noticed is that Watanabe doesn’t seem to care much for routines, and he likes going out and drinking a bit too much. 

While Tetsurou normally has an easier job with boring, routine-following targets, in this case it plays into his hands; it reaffirms the plan he and Kodzuken had crafted as not only a possible, but a believable one.

He is starting to get excited.

- -

Their murder is planned for the second day of Haru’s vacation.

From everything Tetsurou has gathered about Watanabe Haru, there is a high likelihood that nobody will be sensing anything out of the ordinary if there are no check-ins from him in-between his message that he’s settled in and the day of his fiancée’s arrival.

This happens to work perfectly in Tetsurou’s favour, because if all goes well, it will give him a two day window between the murder and the moment the body is discovered. 

Tetsurou arrives at the house in the evening, this time not by ferry but with his own boat; Kodzuken has disabled the house’s security system remotely, and is now surveying the absent rest of the family, and Tetsurou is holding a collection of all of the house’s keys in his hands, copies courtesy of Watanabe Aka.

The sky is dark, clouds hanging low and gloomy, the vacation home a lonely beacon of light, every window lit up. 

He enters the home in style: in his suit, although it is covered by a see-through forensic plastic cover, hands, as always, gloved up; this way, his outfit is still on show – he stands by his opinion that murder should happen stylishly – but he doesn’t run the danger of leaving behind forensic evidence.

He creeps through the house on quiet soles; when he carefully looks around the corner, he does indeed find Watanabe in his living room, already two bottles of beer in, if the couch table is any indication. He is watching a true crime TV show. Ironic, Tetsurou thinks.

Then, he waits.

Sure enough, eventually Watanabe gets up, presumably to go to the bathroom; as his blocky body makes its way towards the hallway, Tetsurou hides behind a truly ridiculously ugly statue that someone has put into a nook. 

Watanabe passes him by without so much as a look; Tetsurou waits until he has disappeared, and then sneaks into the living room.

The poison he drops into the beer will be perfect for his plan; at this dose strong enough to make Watanabe unconscious yet not enough to kill him, and quick enough to leave the body that by the time Watanabe’s fiancée shows up, there will be no trace left to ever prove its existence.

Tetsurou makes his way behind the statue again just fast enough to hide from Watanabe coming back; his heart is beating faster in his chest, the adrenaline of the high risks of this job now kicking in at full force.

It’s just the two of them in this house; but if Tetsurou messes up, his entire plan of leaving the crime scene to look like an unfortunate accident could be foiled. And if someone shows up early, if anything does not go according to plan – well, he could be in much more trouble than just that.

His profession is a risky one, after all. He has always known that.

It takes around thirty minutes for Watanabe to drink enough of his beer and the drug to make its way through his body, leaving him first sluggish, then unconscious.

Now the true part of Tetsurou’s plan begins.

He makes his way to the bathroom and runs a bath; while doing so, he sets up the bathroom itself: puts bath salts into the water and an empty beer bottle as well as another opened, but only half-emptied beer bottle next to the bathtub; he also turns the bathroom TV on. Everything to make it look like Watanabe planned a relaxed evening in the bathtub but drank too much.

Then, he begins to drag Watanabe up the stairs.

“I can hear you panting,” Kodzuken complains through his ear piece.

“Well, you try to drag one hundred kilograms of muscle up the stairs on your own,” Tetsurou bitches, indeed heavily panting: the first words he’s said all evening.

“Are you admitting you’re weak?” Kodzuken asks. He sounds amused.

Tetsurou doesn’t feel very amused. He is sweating under his suit. Watanabe is incredibly heavy, and the danger of a case is thrumming through him; yes, they’re alone, and everything is going to plan, but especially with these cases, the ones where everything needs to be perfect, where he cannot afford to mess up, to leave any evidence of a crime having occurred, he is constantly on edge.

As much as it thrills him, he knows he cannot afford to slip for even a second.

He gets Watanabe to the bathroom, where he undresses him; he leaves the clothes cluttered by the bathtub, because Watanabe is the sort of man to expect other people to clean up after him. 

Then, he heaves Watanabe into the bathtub; and patiently, carefully so as to not leave any marks, presses his body under water and drowns him.

Watanabe stays unresponsive throughout, the drug doing its job; slowly, his face goes blue and his body slack under Tetsurou’s hands. Finally, waiting just a bit longer than necessary to make sure he is truly dead, Tetsurou steps back, and surveys his work.

Then, he turns to leave.

He’s almost out of the door when Kodzuken’s voice comes through his headphone, sounding not at all as jovial as it did just minutes ago: “Kuro, we have an issue.”

Tetsurou halts. “We do?” he asks, tense.

“You need to get out right now. I’ve just focused my attention back on his fiancée, and she is on her way to surprise visit him.”

“Fuck,” Tetsurou curses, hurrying. He has his speed-boat tied up, but: “The tides aren’t right. It’s going to be almost impossible to get off the island right now.”

“But she can get on,” Kodzuken says, and there is a slight element of shaking to his voice. “She’s not using a ship. She’s using her private helicopter. If I got everything mapped out correctly, you have thirty minutes by the time she gets on.”

Thirty minutes. That is neither enough time to get off the island, nor for the drug in Watanabe’s system to dissolve fully.

Tetsurou is fucked.

“Fuck,” he says again. “I’ll have to go against the tide.” There is no doubt she’ll call the police as well as an ambulance as soon as she finds what Tetsurou has left: Watanabe’s body, dead in the bathtub. He cannot be there by the time they arrive; they will be searching, perhaps even locking down, the entire island. He cannot even be there by the time her helicopter is coming close, lest he be seen.

“You’d better hurry,” Kodzuken says, “she’s just packing up her last few things.”

Tetsurou lets out another round of curses. He arrives at his speed-boat, tied up out of sight behind a few boulders, the water slapping against it almost angrily. He takes the plastic suit off; he knows where he can burn it safely, but for now he needs to stow it away in his boat and pray nobody stops him and finds it. Normally, nobody would; but if a dead body is found before he gets away, that will change.

He gets on his speed-boat. He unties it. He starts the motor.

The thing is: Tetsurou is not good at boating. He barely knows how to handle this boat when the weather and tide are being amicable. He definitely does not know how to dock this boat again when they aren’t. As soon as he sets out onto the water, he knows that is it: for now, he is stuck here, on the water, and all he can hope is that he manages to get off by the coast and disappear before Watanabe’s fiancée calls the police; all he can hope ist that he even manages to make it to the coast.

He’s not good at boating, and the tide is high and the sky cloudy.

“Be careful,” Kodzuken says in his ear, voice still sounding shaky.

“I will try,” Tetsurou responds, the best he can offer; and he sets out.

- -

He makes it to the coast by some miracle alone, Kodzuken’s voice, heavy with nerves, accompanying him the whole way, providing updates. He almost crashes his boat when he arrives, just managing to dock it.

The sky is impossibly dark, the clouds looking even tighter, looming. Tetsurou’s own body is shaky with nerves.

Just as he gets into his car, Kodzuken informs him: “She’s landing right now.”

Tetsurou starts his car’s motor just as the first drops of rain are starting to hit the windshield. “And I’m leaving.” The urge to press the gas pedal down as hard as possible, to floor it, to escape in a rush, is palpable; but Tetsurou cannot allow himself to look suspicious even now.

So, driving just as fast as the speed limit will allow him, he makes the drive back to one of his safe houses, where he can change into different clothes and burn and discard what needs to be burned and discarded.

Kodzuken himself only stops his surveillance once Tetsurou is safely tucked away. 

“I’m never,” he warns Tetsurou, voice trembling, “doing a job on a fucking island again.”

Tetsurou wants to reply something snappy, make a dumb joke; but all he comes out with, all too aware of how uncharacteristic Kodzuken sounds, is: “That’s fair.” 

“We’re meeting in three days. The Stucco-House. Nine in the evening.” Then, the line goes dead.

- -

The Stucco-House has earned its name because of the stucco used for its external and internal walls. It’s a small building, roughly fifty years old, and an attempt at bringing European architecture to the neighbourhood it stands in. A failed attempt, if you ask Tetsurou; it is unspeakably ugly.

Tetsurou doesn’t even blame the stucco for that. He’s been to Italy and Germany; he’s seen stucco done right, and done right it can look lovely. This is not that. Whoever built this house determinedly failed.

This is, probably, why the ceiling is now peeling, and the house has stood empty for the better part of a decade. 

Tetsurou is tired when he enters it; his back hurts, as does his head. He doesn’t have a home-cooked meal for Kodzuken with him either. The past few days have been unbelievably stressful: hiding out in three different safe houses, not being able to contact Kodzuken or his client without potentially endangering himself and them, trying to follow the police investigation as best he could.

As it turns out, there isn’t happening an official police investigation. There wasn’t even a proper autopsy. Watanabe Haru had been declared a drunken drowning, a horrible tragedy but nevertheless accidental, on site, by the medical staff his fiancée had called. 

The client is very pleased with them; she contacted Tetsurou just two hours earlier. He has already received the money and destroyed the burner phone she contacted him over.

Now, he makes his way into the upstairs kitchen of the Stucco-House; the staircase creaks under his shoes. The railing is dusty, as are the countertops of the kitchen. He is the first one here. 

He would make tea, but the electricity and water of the house have long been disconnected. Had he not been in hiding for the past three days, he would have brought a thermos of tea to make up for that. As it is, he is wearing jeans and an ill-fitting pullover, hair combed over in a way that, unfortunately, makes it look even more messy and out of control than it usually does.

He sits down on the bench by the kitchen table; it’s an ugly thing, built into the wall, with green linen upholstery and an unfortunate choice of wood that clashes just ever so slightly with the wood of the kitchen cabinets.

Whoever made the choices in this house didn’t get to make more choices in this neighbourhood; the Stucco-House is the only one built in this style, horribly ill-fitting and standing out in its odd design. 

Tetsurou, unfavourably, always thinks good, when he remembers that there was a plan for a whole row of houses like this that never actually happened. 

He also, however, says a quiet Thank-You for the existence of this specific house, because its architects’ and interior designer’s unfortunate choices have led to it being perfect as another safe house for Tetsurou: people tend to overlook it because there is nothing to be won from looking at it, and any and all unusual activity gets accredited to rowdy teenagers, looking to break into something in order to be cool. 

His fingers drum on the table, a short staccato rhythm to combat the sort of atmosphere born out of having to wait, alone; especially having to wait after a job that was as close to going incredibly wrong as their last one was.

His eyes snap to his wristwatch; a cheap, tacky one. He has a handful of watches of different makes and looks; he knows that even a too-cheap watch with an expensive suit, or, perhaps more notably, a too-expensive watch with run-down clothes, can ruin the illusion he is trying to craft. It can, however, also craft a new one; an expensive-looking suit and a fake designer watch, for example, can say I want to look like I have money, but I do not, crafting the illusion of him wanting to craft an illusion.

The cheap watch says Kodzuken is almost fifteen minutes late, which is nothing new for him. Tetsurou is used to his apparent incapability of being on time. Still, in these circumstances, it stresses him out. 

His fingers drum-drum-drum on the table; the clock ticks twenty-past, then twenty-five past.

Finally, at twenty-seven past nine, he hears the creek of the house door – the hinges, like the hinges of most doors in this house, desperately need to be oiled; this makes them as functional of an alarm system as any. 

Kodzuken steps into the kitchen, looking as tired as Tetsurou feels: deep bags under his eyes, hair in the messiest bun Tetsurou has seen so far, mask sitting half-askew – and yet not revealing anything.

He slouches where he stands, and when he sits down, he doesn’t as much sit down as let himself fall onto the bench with an “oof ”.

“And so the elusive Kodzuken appears,” Tetsurou jokes, and only hopes he isn’t showing any of the absolute relief that is flooding through him at the sight of him, unharmed, whole, as grumpy as ever.

Kodzuken shoots him a look that can only be described as murderous; Tetsurou should know. Not in a joking mode then. It’s still, in a way, odd, that now, more often than not, their bickering is nothing more than bickering. Joking, not mean-spirited; Tetsurou almost never feels genuine disdain from Kodzuken anymore. And yet, for all the oddity of their new dynamic, it’s weird to have the old one back now. Weirder still to realise how used he’s become to it missing in the first place.

“You look tired,” Tetsurou says, softly. He hates himself for the soft tone of his voice, but Kodzuken does, and as much as Kodzuken might use it against him, it is, suddenly, instrumental to him to make sure he is okay. 

Kodzuken scoffs. “Yeah, well, whose fault is that, Kuro?” There is something to the way his tongue curls around Tetsurou’s code name that feels like a slap to the face.

“I know the last job was stressful. But that’s the risk of this profession,” Tetsurou says.

Kodzuken sighs, a long, drawn-out sound. “Let’s just recap and split the money. Just get it over with. I want to go home.” He closes his eyes for a second, rubs his forehead. A strand of hair falls into his face. Tetsurou wants to tuck it behind his ear.

“Okay, he says,” still softly. For some reason, his chest hurts.

- -

He and Kodzuken don’t talk, after that. Not that they talk much, anyway; they talk about jobs, mostly. Sometimes about the food Tetsurou has cooked.

But now there is nothing but heavy silence between them, and that shouldn’t irk Tetsurou, but somehow it does.

Yui notices his sullen mood almost immediately. “You seem down, Kurono-san,” she says, softly, when he comes by after his morning jog.

“Work has been stressful recently,” he lies, and she nods understandingly.

“I did notice you didn’t come in for a few days,” she says. “It must be bad if you don’t even have time for your morning run.”

“It really is,” Tetsurou says, trying not to think about Kodzuken’s scoff, about the dark bags under his eyes, about the shakiness of his voice during the last job. 

Things can always go wrong; he knows that. Maybe if he’d done more surveillance on the financée beforehand, he would have known she was planning to come earlier as a surprise; but most likely she hadn’t planned it, and it was nothing but a spontaneous decision, a coincidence, the sort of thing that can always happen in Tetsurou’s profession, the sort of happenstance that is impossible to eliminate. 

If Kodzuken wants to work with him, he needs to be able to accept that there is no such thing as a risk-free murder; but then again, he knew that and didn’t originally want to work with Tetsurou, did he? It was Tetsurou who reached out.

And while Kodzuken has enjoyed high-risk jobs before, all of them went smoothly. This one? It didn’t. And perhaps that has made him realise that there is, in fact, a huge difference between video games and murder. In video games, there are no real consequences should you fuck up. In video games, no real people die.

- -

Tetsurou spends a whole week thinking about this; by the time the next client contacts him, he’s thought himself into being completely overwhelmed, feeling guilty that he’s dragged Kodzuken into all of this, and scared that maybe this is it, and Kodzuken won’t want to work with him anymore.

The client is a young woman, the owner of a huge make-up company. She wants her ex-husband dead; he is trying to take her company down out of revenge, or so she says. 

Tetsurou feels still raw, tender, thinking about reaching out to Kodzuken. 

Nevertheless, this is a new client. And he and Kodzuken aren’t friends, they’re business partners. They don’t need to talk outside of jobs, and it’s up to Kodzuken to decide whether or not he’s up to a job. 

So Tetsurou does contact him. 

- -

He and Kodzuken meet by the side of the Sumida river. 

Kodzuken is wearing a big, white pullover with a cable knit pattern under an even bigger coat, his usual black face mask on, hair hidden under a fluffy knit hat. The pullover and knit hat look hand-made, and Tetsurou wonders for a moment who made them for him; he cannot imagine Kodzuken knitting.

He remembers the sight of his own grandmother knitting; the family living room was always overflowing with yarn and needles. 

“Kodzuken,” Tetsurou says, bowing slightly, before they start walking together. He himself is wearing a warm coat and thick scarf; like this, they’re just one more pair of people taking an evening walk.

A how have you been is itching on Tetsurou’s tongue, almost desperate to get out. But this is not what they are about, he reminds himself firmly, no matter how tired Kodzuken looks.

And he does look tired: the shadows under his eyes have gotten even deeper since they last saw each other, and there is exhaustion etched into the crease of his brows.

“I’ve got a new potential client for us,” Tetsurou says. “And,” fishing a bento box out of his backpack, “I made you dinner.”

“Oh great, more pretentious food,” says Kodzuken sarcastically, rolling his eyes at Tetsurou.

This is a new recipe I thought you might like, Tetsurou doesn’t say.

“Admit it, I’m the best cook you’ve ever met,” he says, hiding his insecurity behind bragging hyperbole and pretending it isn’t hurting him that there isn’t even an infinitesimal softening to Kodzuken’s eyes.

- -

The job is not quick in its set-up – none of them ever are – but it will be quick in its execution, if all goes to plan: a quiet shot from a bush when the target is alone in his garden, having just hung up on a phone call, and then a swift exit.

Tetsurou doesn’t worry about his own capabilities to do his job well; he does worry, however, about Kodzuken, when they talk just before the job.

“Everything is set up,” he says, and there is a haggard sound to him, tension thrumming through his voice. 

“We can push the date,” Tetsurou says, even though they have planned everything out for specifically two hours from now; re-planning would be a long, tiring act. “If you’re too tired–”

“Shut the fuck up,” Kodzuken says, voice sharp, cutting, a threat. “I’m fully capable of assessing when I can and cannot do a job. So I recommend you focus on yours, Kuro.”

“Sorry,” Tetsurou says. The odd tension between them thickens even more; this tension that isn’t purposeful antagonism or annoyance, but something much more cloying. 

“I’ll meet you this evening with your cut of the money and to debrief, if all goes well. You know the time and place.” 

“Good.”

- -

The shot from Tetsurou’s gun is precise; the target clutches at his chest as he sinks onto the ground, no sound escaping him. His blood mingles with the red of the roses around him: a morbidly beautiful picture.

Tetsurou doesn’t dwell on it as he makes his exit.

“Job done,” he tells Kodzuken, “and I am safely out and away,” when he is in the car. 

“Good,” Kodzuken says, quietly, nothing of the earlier sharpness left. And Tetsurou has a thought.

- -

There is not much time between destroying the evidence, getting home, re-dressing, and meeting Kodzuken; especially considering their meeting place is safely outside city lines. They always debrief outside of city lines when Tetsurou has a job in Tokyo, just to be on the safe side. 

Still, he makes the little time he does have work: gets his chopping board out, a big pot, and a pie form. Simultaneously baking and cooking always stresses him out a bit, but it’s doable when it’s soup, which mostly needs to simmer for a while, and therefore always gives him ample time to take care of the pie.

Finally, he rifles through his cupboards for his good wooden lunch box to package everything up neatly and, because a part of him tells him Kodzuken probably only has energy drinks and coffee at home and the very thought makes him balk, his favourite tea blend. 

He looks at his lovingly packed up selection, and thinks to himself, oh, I’m an idiot. It’s been years since he’s allowed himself to truly want someone to be happy. Even with his cover identity’s friends, he makes sure not to get too invested; although he does sometimes catch himself caring, and he regularly catches himself hanging onto the fragile almost-friendships he has. 

This, everything about this, is foolery. He knows that. And yet. 

- -

The Old Bread Factory is similar to many of their meeting places, and yet it has a very specific air about it; perhaps because exactly half of it teeters on the edge of falling over, perhaps because the ground is always sticky with the spilled drinks of teenage delinquents who have broken into it, perhaps because some of the rooms still vaguely smell like yeast.

Kodzuken is once more wearing baggy black clothes when he shows up, socked feet put into slippers that he should be doing anything but drive a motorcycle in.

Tetsurou feels something odd and fluttery in his chest at the sight of him, strangely familiar now, after all these weeks of working with him.

“I brought you something again,” he says, a bit nervously, and gets the little care-package out. “Soup, apple pie and some of my favourite tea blend. I know, I know, you don’t need this, and you being tired is my fault, but still. You seemed like you could use it, maybe. I’m sorry for stressing you out. I’m not sure I could have done anything to avoid what happened during the Watanabe job, but I’m still sorry. I know this can be a lot, and that it’s a lot to get used to.” He forcefully snaps his mouth shut there, stopping his rambling. 

I sometimes forget the freak-outs I had after my first murders, he almost adds, but then keeps to himself. It feels too revealing; he’s never talked about them with anyone.

Kodzuken looks at him, just looks at him, and his face visibly softens; his eyes, in particular, look almost tender, and his entire body relaxes just a bit.

“Oh,” he says, “thank you,” nothing more, nothing less, but it is too much already; he takes the offered food, and his gloved hands touch Tetsurou’s, and Tetsurou’s skin burns under the cool leather.

“The elusive Kodzuken, grateful?” he jokes, trying to hide the way his hands are trembling.

Kodzuken rolls his eyes. “Kenma, actually,” he says. “Let’s get inside for the debrief, it’s cold.”

And Tetsurou looks at his retreating back, and his skin feels like it’s on fire, and the fluttery feeling in his chest is doing its very best to entirely overwhelm him, and he thinks, with feeling, oh fuck.

Just wanting to have one actual friend would have been so much easier to deal with than this.

Chapter Text

Things change, after that; there is, of course, still a layer of distance present: Tetsurou doesn’t know Kenma as a person. He doesn’t know Kenma’s family, or whether he even has a family; he doesn’t know Kenma’s favourite colour, he doesn’t know Kenma’s birthday.

But he also does know Kenma as a person: he knows the way Kenma’s eyes roll when he’s annoyed. He knows which dishes Kenma likes and which ones he doesn’t. He knows at which times Kenma typically replies to messages, and how his eyes look when he’s tired, and what gets him to go from this tiredness to excitement.

And he knows, perhaps most damning of all, what a Kenma who is truly enjoying himself looks like.

Because there is no more annoyance in Kenma’s tone now when they bicker; because Kenma rolls his eyes with something dangerously close to affection when Tetsurou calls him ‘kitten’; because it’s as if a dam has been broken with this exchange of names, and now Kodzuken is Kenma: not a begrudging partner in crime, but a person.

Tetsurou would be so much less fucked if he were still Kodzuken, the begrudging partner in crime.

- -

Tetsurou’s ceiling holds no answers for him; it never does. But sometimes he cannot find it in himself to do anything other than flop onto his nice, spacious leather sofa, the sort that both Kuroo Tetsurou and Kurono Tetsuya find joy in, lie on his back, and stare at the ceiling.

There are no holes in the ceiling, no bumps, no spots of discolouration. Tetsurou takes care of his flat; it’s a home, as much as a place can ever be a home, as much as he can allow himself the feeling of home in the first place. 

It’s not the biggest place; it’s just big enough to feel comfortable in, not cramped. Except for the kitchen, which is huge, a luxury Tetsurou allows himself because he makes good use of it. The kitchen looks rustic, with its wooden cabinetry and the sheer amount of spice racks on the walls, and Tetsurou spends a lot of his time in it; especially since he’s started working with Kenma, which is something he attempts not to think about too much.

There is only so much thinking to be done about the oh fuck kind of realisation, and Tetsurou fully plans on not wallowing in it, all evenings spent on plush brown leather staring at a blank white ceiling to the contrary.

Luckily for him, his line of work generally keeps him on his toes. 

Every day that brings him out to scope out a person who will soon find their demise at Tetsurou’s hands is a day that Tetsurou cannot spend rolling the name Kenma around in his mouth, wondering at how much it feels like it was made to sit on his tongue. 

Because it does not matter; because Tetsurou has crafted himself a life that doesn’t beg for companionship; because he knows, better than anyone else, the fragility of human life; how frail, how delicate, how easy to end it is. And what is the point, if all that ever stands between someone and the great abyss of death, if all that ever stands between caring and mourning, is a spark?

Tetsurou is a harbinger of death; he does not need to court it in affection.

- -

Back when Tetsurou first started, he used to wonder at how he never seemed to run out of clients; surely, eventually, there should be a lack of people with the need for murder and the money to see to having it done for them? 

That was years ago; Tetsurou has long since realised that the main thing that stops people from killing is not a lack of want, but a fear of consequences; and he happens to have a one hundred percent success rate of not being found by the police so far, making his involvement unprovable and keeping his clients safe.

Of course, many people see themselves above the law anyway; there is a certain amount of money that seems to gift people the belief of being untouchable. In some cases this is, of course, true.

The woman sitting across from Tetsurou has fair skin and long, blonde hair, delicately put up in an artful braided updo; her make-up is sharp and flawless, and there is not a single unbecoming crease in her dark red blouse. Her perfectly manicured fingers, nails painted a dark magenta, are tapping against her purse ever so slightly, her legs are chastely crossed. The underside of her heels is the same striking red of her blouse; she is wearing Louboutins.

Her name is Yamashita Anne. She is the daughter of one of the richest men in Austria, and she has married into one of the richest families in Japan. She comes, without doubt, from the sort of money that perceives itself as being above the law. And this has, without doubt, been true for her for her entire life; if Tetsurou takes this job, it will continue to be.

Anne most likely wants revenge: she has much the look of a rich, entitled girl being told she will not be getting a third pony for Christmas. She has only given Tetsurou a name so far, not a reason. The reason doesn’t matter very much – not that he cannot guess at it himself – but he’s curious enough that he’d still like to hear it. Unlike most of his clients, she doesn’t seem like the type to get defensive, so he asks.

“Why do you wish to see her dead?” 

“She is a threat to our family and everything we’ve built,” Anne says, lips pursed. There are stress lines forming around her mouth, wrinkles that even being only thirty-three and spending countless Yen on anti aging creams have not saved her from. “She is using very untoward behaviour to distract my husband from his important job, all so her husband’s company can get a leg up.” 

Tetsurou doesn’t point out that he’s been the witness to more than one entanglement like this, and in all likelihood the target’s husband’s company is the last thing on her mind when she fucks Anne’s husband. Professional quarrels turn into affairs more often than one would think, especially in this world of money, where marriages happen for financial and societal reasons, not love.

Anne probably doesn’t love her husband. Nothing from the way she says his name would make him guess that she does, and if Tetsurou’s intel is right – and he is inclined to believe that it is – she is having an affair herself. But she does, evidently, care about nobody taking what she deems to be hers from her, and she cares very much about her husband’s media empire. 

At the end of the day, she is not much better or worse than the woman she wants dead, and either way, Tetsurou doesn’t typically make moral judgements about his clients.

“And she has no young children?” he asks.

“Maybe she’d have some,” Anne, posture impeccable, well-respected wife of Yamashita Mauro and kindergarten bake-sale preparing mother of two five year old twin boys, replies, “if she weren’t so busy whoring herself out.”

Tetsurou has met too many people like her to raise his eyebrows.

“Alright,” he says. “I will run everything by my business partner, and if he agrees, I will contact you to discuss further details.”

Anne smiles a thin-lipped smile, eyes unmoved and cold. “I look forward to hearing from you, Kuro-san,” she says.

Tetsurou bows, suppressing a shiver; he should have packed a thicker coat. It may be moving closer to spring, but the winter cold still lingers.

- - 

Tetsurou stops by the bakery before going to meet with Kenma, much to Yui’s surprise.

“You never typically come by this late!” she says, smiling, her eyes crinkling. She has got a number of sparkly hairpins in her short hair, and is wearing a coral-coloured lipstick, Tetsurou notes. This is the first time he has ever seen her wear lipstick, if he’s not mistaken.

“You look pretty today,” he says, letting his eyes sweep over the baked goods, trying to think about what he wants to get for himself, and what for Kenma; he didn’t have the time to cook what he’d originally planned so he has decided to not cook this time, but showing up without food feels wrong, somehow. 

“I’ve got an appointment to check out a flat two hours from now,” Yui replies. When Tetsurou looks back up, she’s grinning. “At twenty-nine it’s about time to get your own place, even if you’re still working for your parents, isn’t it?” 

“I wouldn’t know,” Tetsurou replies, cheekily, “I’m only twenty-eight.” This is, of course, a complete lie. He is, actually, twenty-nine as well. But his cover identity neither shares his age nor his birthday. It’s a cover he has had long enough that the lying comes naturally to him, that sometimes he forgets when his actual birthday is. He doesn’t dwell on it.

Yui giggles. “And you’ve already got your own place, haven’t you, Kurono-san?” 

“You know I do,” he replies, gaze sweeping back to the baked goods on offer. He knows Kenma has a sweet tooth; he wonders what he’d get most excited about, what he’d perhaps even let his eyes sparkle over.

“Will your parents be helping you with moving out?” he asks, to direct conversation away from himself. 

“They’ll probably even insist on buying me half my furniture,” Yui admits. 

Tetsurou thinks, for a moment, that that must be nice; almost all he has in his flat from his family is a set of pyjamas he borrowed from his grandfather, after all.

“That’s good,” he says instead. “Support from family is so important.” And for a moment he isn’t Kurono Tetsuya, a bit of an asshole, but Kuroo Tetsurou, who does want this woman to know that there’s nothing wrong with letting your family help you out, with not being completely self-sufficient yet in your late twenties yet, even if you could be.

But he wrestles that down again quickly; there is a quick and uncomfortable journey from letting his façade slip to having to relocate and build a new identity.

“Anyway, I’d like two slices of your apple pie,” he says, and Yui changes from her earnest smile to a customer-service expression. 

“Oh, you’re in luck,” she says, “these are right out of the oven and still warm.”

“Perfect,” he replies, already thinking about Kenma’s response to a warm slice of pie.

- -

They meet in front of a run-down office building which is in its last weeks of existence; the date for its demolition already stands.

Tetsurou has a certain affinity for buildings that are about to be demolished: something about run-down walls, a foundation clinging stubbornly to life, gets to him. There is something about looking death in the eye and staying standing, even knowing it is futile.

Perhaps he anthropomorphises buildings too much.

Kenma arrives on his motorcycle, a sight Tetsurou still sometimes has trouble wrapping his head around, and even more so now; a part of him thinks about riding that motorcycle with Kenma, about his arms around Kenma’s waist, his hands big on Kenma’s small hips. About being close, close enough to smell him.

“Kuro,” Kenma greats, a certain stubbornness in the way he sticks to Tetsurou’s code name even here where they’re alone, even now that Tetsurou has a given name for Kenma. It’s stupidly endearing.

“Kitten,” Tetsurou replies, just to see the way Kenma rolls his eyes. “You’ve gotten the information I sent you?”

“Despite your astounding incompetence, I have,” Kenma says. Tetsurou can’t help his chuckling. “And because I’m not incompetent, I’ve done my research.” 

“I expected nothing less,” Tetsurou says. “Shall we go in so you can show me?”

Kenma looks at him consideringly for a moment, head tilted to the side, eyes inscrutable.

Then, he says: “Why don’t I show you at my base. That’d be easier.”

“Ohoho, your base,” Tetsurou says, whistling. “What are you, a supervillain? Is it an evil lair? Do you have a fluffy cat and shark tank?”

“Don’t make me regret this, Kuro,” Kenma says, narrowing his eyes, and walks back to his motorcycle.

Tetsurou, because he isn’t actually an idiot, hastens to follow and get into his own car; as he turns the motor on, his hands are shaking just the tiniest bit.

- -

Kenma leads him through the busy streets of Tokyo and then out to the Tokyo Bay, where, between Tokyo and Yokohama, the industrial area sits, factories next to tall skyscrapers, corporate buildings next to more factories. 

The air is heavy with pollution here in a way it isn’t in the city.

Kenma comes to a stop in front of a small, grey house, cubic in shape, screaming only of cement; it has a garage, and Kenma opens the garage door with a remote. 

Tetsurou parks his car behind Kenma’s motorcycle inside the garage, and then has to watch as Kenma hops off his motorcycle and, with an utter nonchalance entirely unbefitting of a gesture that seems intent on destroying Tetsurou’s sanity, takes off first his helmet and then his face mask.

While Tetsurou is still staring, eyes nearly bugging out of his head, Kenma closes the garage door and turns on the light.

Then, he unlocks a door on the left side of the garage, which apparently leads into the house.

“Come on then,” he presumably says; Tetsurou can’t really hear him, because he is still sitting in his car and staring. Slowly, he gets out and locks the car; taking his eyes away from Kenma’s face feels like a monumental task.

Kenma is pretty. There is no other word for it. Tetsurou had, of course, known this; with Kenma’s intelligent, golden eyes, and his long, dyed hair, there is no hiding how pretty he is. But here, now, seeing the entirety of his face – well. 

His nose is small in a cute way, and right beneath it sits a beautiful, beautiful mouth, the slope of it inviting and utterly maddening. Tetsurou is having all sorts of inappropriate thoughts he can’t remember having about someone’s face before: he wants to bite at Kenma’s chin; he wants to place kisses right on the bow of his mouth; he wants to put his fingers to his cheeks, softly trace his cheekbones, his eyelids, the wrinkles in his forehead; he wants to rest his thumb right under his jaw, the place in-between where the bone of it ends and his throat begins, press there just ever so slightly, tilt Kenma’s head up and set his teeth to his Adam’s apple.

He tries to look at the house instead of Kenma as he follows him in, but he is reeling, every part of him overwhelmed with the sort of acute want he hasn’t felt in a very, very long time; not since he was a school boy, and all of his problems mundane, and Takihira with the long, silky blonde hair, who sat right in the row in front of him in class, smiled at him at the beginning of lunch, teeth biting into lips that were painted a calculated shade of pink.

There is nothing calculated about the way Kenma looks; or at least, it is not calculated to drive anyone to lust. Kenma’s simple clothes are the sort of sign that Tetsurou’s suits are in expensive hotels: an invitation to let your gaze slide right over him without further noticing. Tetsurou wants to do anything but that, his eyes drawn to Kenma like a moth to a flame. 

Kenma’s hair isn’t silky like Takihira’s; it is, at best, a bit greasy. Still, Tetsurou’s hands itch to reach out and tangle into it. The urge to bite at his face persists.

Tetsurou closes his eyes for a brief second and takes a deep breath in; when he breathes out, he opens his eyes again, and, for the first time, properly takes in the house Kenma is leading him into.

It doesn’t look as grey as it did on the outside; on the ground is a plush, geometrically patterned carpet, and the walls are painted a lovely shade of cream, with one dark green accent wall. There is a small wooden sitting table with an inviting armchair right next to it by the front door. The hallway leads into two further doors to the right, one right ahead, and one door and a set of stairs leading upwards to the left; Kenma unlocks the door next to the stairs, which leads them into the basement. 

“Your base is in the basement? How cliché,” Tetsurou mocks.

“I’ll show you cliché,” Kenma retorts, and then he does: behind a row of conserve-filled shelves is a trapdoor which leads into a second basement room, ostensibly fitted out with more conserve-filled shelves; one wall, however, is bare expect for a couple of hooks with gardening equipment hanging from them, and this wall Kenma touches to the upper left, and suddenly it swings to the side, revealing a much bigger second room behind it.

“This is very movie-villain-esque,” Tetsurou says, delighted.

The revealed room in which they step is nothing like the cosy upstairs, or the concrete-walled, storage-usage-screaming rest of the basement. Instead, the floor is entirely carpeted in white, and there is an insane computer set-up with at least seven different monitors on two long, sleek desks, a set-up the size of which Tetsurou hasn’t seen before, blinking ominously at him. On one wall, there is a huge whiteboard; the other is hidden by a storage shelf filled to the brim with technology and trinkets Tetsurou can only partially guess at the uses for.

“All that’s missing is a cat so you can threateningly swivel around with it on your lap,” Tetsurou says.

“Wander is upstairs,” Kenma says. The corner of his mouth is ticking upwards.

“Wander?” Tetsurou asks. He’s imagining Kenma petting a fluffy cat and his mind is sort of blanking out. 

“You’re not meeting him if you don’t know how to behave around cats,” Kenma says, eyes narrowed, and Tetsurou stares in wonder.

“Meeting him is on the table?”

“It can be off the table real quick.” 

Tetsurou holds up his hands. “I’ll be nice,” he says, and watches as Kenma turns his back to him and moves towards his desktop set-up, the wall closing behind them, shutting them off to the outside world entirely.

Kenma looks confident, right here, in his space, entirely at ease in a way Tetsurou hasn’t seen him before, moving about the room with purpose. Tetsurou is utterly, overwhelmingly into him. 

He wants to kiss him so much he feels stupid with it, his entire body screaming out.

His mind is screaming too; a constant litany of oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.

He knows what a small crush feels like, and he knows what strictly physical attraction feels like, and this is neither. This is so very much neither, and he is absolutely screwed.

- -

Kenma’s cat indeed resides upstairs. The upstairs part of the house happens to be a perfectly normal and normally outfitted living space – with cat trees in every nook and a huge gaming set-up in Kenma’s bedroom, because the man has apparent priorities.

“I can’t believe you’re showing me your home. What happened to caution, kitten?“ Tetsurou teases.

“Well, technically I’m not. This isn’t the flat I officially live in,” Kenma says.

“But it’s your home,” Tetsurou says, because there are pictures of Kenma’s cat on the walls, and there’s a shelf with limited edition games, and the bed is unmade, and a tower of dirty laundry resides on a corner armchair under a framed Pokémon Mystery Dungeon print. 

“If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you,” Kenma says with a polite little smile.

“And here I thought that murder was my job.” 

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Kenma says. “If –”

And then Tetsurou never finds out the rest of the sentence, because Wander, a small little white ball of fluff with a slightly smushed in nose and big orange eyes, tail looking much more like a feather boa than a tail, comes around the corner and rubs his face right against Kenma’s leg, loudly meowing and drawing the entirety of Kenma’s attention.

“Oh, hi baby,” Kenma says, dropping to his knees and holding his hand out, which Wander immediately presses his entire face into. “Do you want attention?” His entire voice has changed, gone tender and quiet; his big, golden eyes are filled with such unbearable softness it hits Tetsurou right in the heart.

Oh, Tetsurou thinks, despairingly. Oh no, he’s gentle.

Slowly, he gets to his knees too, holding a hand out for Wander.

Wander, with a completely unfounded confidence that screams he believes himself the most dangerous predator in the room, stops trying to fit his entire, arguably big body into the palm of Kenma’s small hand – Tetsurou has to actively stop himself from thinking how tiny it would be compared to his own; his chest hurts – and stalks over, soft paws skidding over the wooden flooring, sniffing at Tetsurou’s hand cautiously. 

Tetsurou watches as Wander watches him, and then, with none of Tetsurou’s expected apprehension, starts purring like a freight train and rubbing the side of his face against Tetsurou’s fingers.

Kenma is watching him with a slight tilt of his mouth, an expression Tetsurou has to save and savour, so new is it to see the entirety of his face; in his eyes, there is so much tenderness, taking in the way Wander’s entire body is rumbling with his loud purrs.

Tetsurou is so, so done for.

- -

They settle on meeting again three weeks later; enough time for Tetsurou to do more of his own research, which is to say careful staking-out.

“If you need to drop by to discuss information in the meantime, you can,” Kenma says, “just give me notice an hour ahead, and if you complain about untidiness you’re getting kicked out.” 

This is how Tetsurou, several months into working with him, finally gets a phone number he can contact Kenma over. 

“If you use this number to say anything work-related and get uns into trouble, you’ll be wishing I’d grant you a swift death,” Kenma tells him, mouth a stern line.

Tetsurou wants to kiss that mouth.

- -

Tetsurou doesn’t drop by for another six days; he does, however, make his typical daily trip to the Michimiyas’ bakery, entering it to the scent of sugar and honey, cinnamon and cocoa powder in the air.

“It smells good here,” he tells Yui, who gives him a cheeky little smile.

“Be glad you didn’t stop by later,” she says. “My dad’s gonna start experimenting around with rose flavours in the evening, like he always does in preparation of Valentine’s Day, and the whole bakery will smell like a flower shop.”

Tetsurou laughs. “I think I remember that from last year,” he says, leaning his arms onto the counter. “How’d the flat hunt go?” 

“Didn’t get it, but next time’s the charm,” Yui replies.

“I’m sure of it,” Tetsurou says. He thinks about Kenma’s official flat; a place to have as a front, without cat hair or Wander’s fluffy body in it, without mountains of dirty laundry Tetsurou kind of wants to wash for him, without a  charming kitchen that screams at Tetsurou to make use of it – something Kenma certainly doesn’t. Without an incredible tech-set up below a trap door and behind a fake wall in the basement.

Who, in Kenma’s life, knows him as someone other than Kodzuken, as the man in the official flat, as a normal video game nerd or maybe something different entirely, Tetsurou wonders. 

He knows so little about Kenma, about the layers of secrecy he hides behind and that which is hidden both; he is just starting to unravel the layers of secrecy Kenma has clouded himself in for Tetsurou.

But he also knows Kenma: knows the smile on his face when his cat presses close to him now, and a part of him thinks that perhaps, that’s the most crucial part there is to Kenma, really – the tenderness he hides so cleverly behind every one of his verbal barbs.

Yui is wearing a delicate silver necklace today; it falls right into the opening of her shirt. The shop is warm and comfortable.

Tetsurou wants nothing more than to unravel Kenma, take him apart in all the desolate places they meet for planned murders.

- -

Maezaki Kohata is either a great actress or genuinely in love with Yamashita Mauro, not that Tetsurou is surprised at all.

Her face lights up when he steps into the hotel room she’s in, the room Tetsurou is surveilling, all the little laugh wrinkles by her eyes coming on in full force. There are grey streaks in her black hair, and her hands speak of years of hard work. She’s in her early forties, but smiling like this, she looks like a young college girl, dark brown eyes sparkling. Yamashita Mauro, a tall, lanky man, looking like he isn’t wearing his suit to accentuate but rather hide his body, in his mid-forties himself, lights up similarly, opening his arms, pressing a kiss to her hairline, then her cheek, then her mouth.

They’re cute, in the way that people who are in love are; from looking at them you wouldn’t guess that this woman helps her husband, the man she is cheating on, sell weapons to the governments of countries fraught with civil war, and Yamashita himself invests the money he makes from his company in a whole number of questionable causes to stabilise his net worth, no matter the blood that comes forth, including rival weapon manufacturers.

There is no such thing as an ethical businessman who belongs to the one percent; there is always blood on the hands of these people. One might as well make it more blood. Tetsurou should know; the one percent are rather regular clients of his.

Mauro and Kohata have rented a small room in a small, family-run hotel. Their room is nice but simple; crisp white sheets, sleek wooden furniture, nature photography on the walls. The sort of room that looks cosy, too cosy for one to expect people of their wealth i it.

Kohata is peeling Mauro out of his several million Yen suit, revealing grey chest hair on a sunken-in chest. Tetsurou decides to give them some privacy and looks down at his notes instead, trying very hard not to think about how much chest hair Kenma might have. These are the thoughts of a fool, not a successful contract killer.

- -

Anne is pleased when he tells her he can deal with Maezaki Kohata on Kohata’s next business trip, that he’s got everything staked out to his satisfaction. 

Life is so incredibly fragile, he thinks, the weight of his concealed gun a heavy one. Just one misstep, one wrong decision, and it could all be over; there is so little stopping Anne from being in the position that Kohata is now in. 

So little stopping Kohata from dying of natural causes before Tetsurou ever gets to her.

So little stopping anyone from taking anyone’s life.

There is certainly nobody stopping Tetsurou; and oh, people have tried. 

He sees flames before his inner eye, licking at a building, smoke curling upwards; sees the smouldering ruins of that building just hours later.

His fingers run along his gun, and Anne and he agree on a sum: the cost of a human life.

- -

Maezaki Kohata takes a business trip to Austria eleven days after Tetsurou’s conversation with Anne.

She spends the flight fiddling absentmindedly with her phone, and then her second, secret phone; the one she texts Mauro from. 

Tetsurou is on the same flight as her; or rather, Kurono is, ostensibly on a business trip as well.

Kenma is working from Tokyo. “It’s not like it’s hard,” he’d said, one hand petting Wander, when they’d talked about it. Tetsurou likes it when Kenma is confident, self-assured. There is something to the line of his shoulders, the slope of his mouth, the sparkle in his eyes that Kenma gets when he’s confident, that makes Tetsurou feel slightly shaky, like there is hot, molten lava in his stomach. He can’t look away from him then.

The Vienna airport is big and loud, a huge building, lots of glass and white everywhere; Tetsurou hears people talk in German and English and French, in Mandarin and Spanish and Tagalog; in a whole handful of languages he cannot make out further.

He makes his way through passport control, and then to the subway station.

It’s been years since he last used the little German he speaks, and the people here speak in a thick, Austrian accent, so he is thankful for the digital terminal to buy his tickets at, which offers a whole host of language selections and the simplicity of letters on a display.

He makes his way to his hotel, only two kilometres away from Kohata; a good distance, he has found. His flight back is booked for a week from now; if all goes well, Kohata will die, in a way that will look much like it has been self-inflicted, twenty-six hours from now, and he will have plenty of time in Vienna after, for his business trip. 

Perhaps he can find a place that offers cooking lessons with traditional, local dishes; he always likes learning more about different international cuisines. He’s sure Kenma would enjoy him coming back with a good Germknödel recipe.

- -

Kohata’s suite is on the sixth storey of her hotel. It’s a big, luxurious five star hotel; befitting of her status, of course. After all, she is here to negotiate a deal for her husband’s company. 

Tetsurou watches her: in her business costume, hands stroking along the dark blue skirt, a contrast to the silken cream blouse. Her hair is put up in a braided crown, sitting tightly and nearly against her scalp. Her lips are pursed; one of her feet is tapping against the ground, filling the air with the loud tap-tap-tap of the tip of her leather shoe against the wooden flooring.

Tetsurou is behind the curtain, the hidden danger, the stranger who has been watching her every move for the better part of a month.

The soft March air outside is thick with pollution, wafting into the room through a half-opened window. 

Kohata checks her phone. The second one, the one she keeps hidden in Japan but is fiddling constantly with here, well-manicured fingers against the dark screen, waiting, waiting for a message that will not come. 

Mauro’s sons’ kindergarten has a play tonight, one Anne is forcing him to go see after he has missed every single activity his children have taken up for the entirety of their young lives so far. It’s a pretty long list, actually, considering how young the boys are. Sports, singing, piano and violin, language clubs and now theatre; their mother keeps their schedules full. No time to play for a child born into the Yamashita family.

Tetsurou takes pity on the waiting woman; the pills might take another twenty minutes to drop her into true unconsciousness and from there on death, but the hit to her head is swift.

She only sees him coming when it is already too late: her eyes widen, and her mouth opens, but her throat makes no sound as she thuds to the ground.

Tetsurou manoeuvres her in such a way that the bruise on the back of her head can be explained by it falling back against the headboard as she drops unconscious; then he uses the time as he waits for death to take her to prepare the room. The open pill bottle next to the half-empty wine glass and the opened bottle of wine, a fountain pen and a sheet of paper on the table, a drop of black ink on the white paper: the image of her poised to write a good-bye note, and then stumped by which words to put onto paper, or perhaps miscalculating her minutes of remaining full mental wit.

Her breath stops a few short minutes later, in-midst of her body cramping up, fighting against the poison.

“If you wait two minutes, the floor should be empty,” Kenma tells him through his ear-peace, voice tight with the tension of being thousands of kilometres and a whole ocean away, incapable of helping if anything were to go wrong.

“Thanks, kitten,” Tetsurou replies.

Two hours later he’s back in his own hotel room, the suit gloves already destroyed.

Five hours later, when afternoon just breaks in Vienna, Mauro sneaks out for a late night call with Kohata, and her phone rings and rings but nobody picks up.

Seven hours later, after Kohata has missed an important meeting, her body is found.

- -

Tetsurou’s plane touches ground in Japan, and he turns his phone back on. While he’s waiting by the luggage carousel to get his suitcase back, a simple, dark brown leather one, he texts Kenma.

Coming by in four hours.

That should leave him with enough time to get home and shower in-between, hopefully. 

His phone pings just as he fishes his suitcase off the conveyor belt.

Don’t you have anything better to do?

He doesn’t, not really. Yes, they were only planning to meet up for a debrief the next day, at one of Tetsurou’s safe houses; but still, a part of him wants to see Kenma, wants to see how he’s holding up. Wants to see the tension leak out of Kenma’s face.

Better than seeing you? Who could!  

You’re the bane of my existence.

Keep telling yourself that, and maybe eventually you’ll believe it!  

He has missed Kenma.

- -

Kenma’s house still looks remarkably non-descript from the outside when Tetsurou arrives.

Somehow, a part of him keeps expecting it to showcase its inhabitants more evidently, now that he knows what it looks like on the inside; now that he knows how Kenma looks when he smiles, the way it changes his entire face.

Now that he knows the sight of Kenma on the ground, playing with a big, fluffy cat with a toy shaped like a fish.

But of course Kenma’s house looks unchanged. 

Kenma lets him in through the front door this time. It says Nekoma on the name sign by the door bell, Tetsurou realises. Not the worst cover name; far enough from his code name, Kodzuken, to not arouse suspicion, certainly. Better than Tetsurou’s cover name, even.

He wonders whether it says Kenma’s real name on the door to his official flat; whether Kenma still has a life he lives inside the bounds of the life he was born into, or whether he has completely left his actual identity behind, much like Tetsurou. He thinks of the hand-made pullover and knit hat he saw Kenma in, months ago, and wonders again who might have made them for him.

He steps into the house and out of his shoes; Kenma has already turned his back to him and is making his way towards the door to the basement.

“Hurry up, I don’t have all day,” he says, and Tetsurou aches in some indescribable way: the image of Kenma’s back turned too trusting and familiar a gesture for him to stow it away without being overwhelmed by it.

“And, pray tell, what could be more important than me?” Tetsurou teases, following, pressing the feeling down, down. 

Kenma looks over his shoulder, one single brow raised. “Literally anything, Kuro,” he says. He’s wearing his hair open, the badly dyed strands of black turned blonde framing his face. 

Tetsurou feels the absurd urge to reach out and touch, stroke his hair, cup his cheek. To just hold him still and look at him, fingers lingering on Kenma’s skin.

“Now that’s a lie,” he says instead, “because I’m definitely the most interesting thing in your life.”

“Watching my computer update is more interesting than you,” Kenma says, sauntering down the stairs, Tetsurou following.

“Considering you’re a nerd, you probably do think watching your computer update is interesting,” Tetsurou replies. “Try harder.”

The piercings in Kenma’s ears shine under the bright artificial light. 

“You’re not even worth the effort of a good insult, that’s how not interesting you are,” Kenma says, not bothering to look back this time. He opens the trap door and climbs down. “You try harder.”

Tetsurou wants to kiss him so badly he’s in actual, physical pain.

“I killed a woman a week ago,” he says, closing the trap door behind him, “you’re not gonna make me believe I’m not interesting.”

Kenma shrugs, making his way over to the false wall. “You kill someone all the time. It’s literally your job to kill people.”

“Not helping you in making me look uninteresting,” Tetsurou says.

“See, I would be intrigued, but I had to guide you like a baby through the hotel for the last murder,” he says. Tetsurou can see the way his lips twitch into a smile as the wall swings open.

“More like a control freak,” he says. “I was very capable of killing before I met you.”

“Is that why you reached out to me, begging me to become your partner?” Kenma asks, turning around again and raising his eyebrows at Tetsurou.

Tetsurou grins. “Oh no, kitten. That was merely for the absolute pleasure of your company.” 

Kenma rolls his eyes. He’s smiling.

Fuck, Tetsurou thinks, again.

- -

He wakes up the next morning to a text from Kenma, left at some point in the middle of the night.

It’s a picture of Wander, curled up and sleeping on top of a laptop in Kenma’s bedroom, with the caption found someone more interesting and useful than you.

Of course he is, he’s more interesting and useful than all of us, Tetsurou texts back. He’s purr-fect, after all.

You’d better make up for your horrible puns with food, Kenma texts, around noon; so he’s finally awake, Tetsurou thinks, fondly, walking over to his fridge and taking a look inside. It’s not really speaking to him; he’ll have to go on a grocery trip before cooking.

I’ll bring something over for dinner, he texts, his heart beating wildly, and gets his keys and shopping bags.

- -

Kurono’s birthday is in late March, right at the beginning of spring time. This is, of course, not when Tetsurou’s birthday is. But every year on the twenty-seventh of March, he and Bokuto, Yamamoto and usually Akaashi meet; sometimes Lev comes along, and whoever else Bokuto and Yamamoto saw fit to drag with them to the pub. But it’s always Bokuto, Yamamoto, and typically Bokuto’s husband: Kurono Tetsuya’s friend group.

He’s the last of the group to arrive; Kurono Tetsuya is the sort of asshole who enjoys making his friends wait for him just a little bit on his birthday. Not that any of them care much.

Bokuto and Yamamoto are arm-wrestling when he arrives; Lev is needling Akaashi with questions; a bald guy, who Tetsurou has not met before, is sitting next to Yamamoto and loudly cheering him on.

Tetsurou raises his eyebrows at them but smiles.

Akaashi slips out of Lev’s hold to greet him. 

“Happy birthday, Kurono-kun,” he says. “Koutarou and I got you a present, but I’m afraid it is currently under Koutarou’s chair and a bit hard to get to.”

“I expected nothing less,” Tetsurou says, looking at Bokuto, who just in that moment presses Yamamoto’s arm flat against the table with a triumphant howl. 

“Happy birthday!” Lev half-shouts, bounding over. Akaashi’s eyelid twitches. Tetsurou thinks, for a short second, that Kenma would absolutely hate the energy Lev brings to the table; not that it matters much. 

The table inhabitants also turn to him now; Tetsurou knows them well enough to know he has roughly a minute to get their attention before Yamamoto will demand a re-match and his and Bokuto’s attention will be lost for good.

“Happy birthday, bro!” Bokuto says, excited.

“I brought my boyfriend!” Yamamoto says at the same time, half talking over Bokuto. “This is Tanaka Ryuunosuke!” 

“I was not aware you had a boyfriend,” Tetsurou says, because Kurono is the kind of person who’d say that out loud, instead of anything polite, like nice to meet you.

“Four days and going strong!” The bald guy, Tanaka, lets him know, grinning proudly. It almost makes Tetsurou want to chuckle. In an odd way, it reminds him of his school days.

“‘Kaashi and I brought you a gift!” Bokuto says happily, interrupting Tanaka and Yamamoto.

“Oho?” he says, with a weird knot in his stomach.

- -

It’s long past midnight by the time he makes his way home. The night air is cold; he is freezing, despite his thick coat. He’s the second to leave; first was Akaashi, begging off because he has work early the next day. Tetsurou happily let that excuse carry him out only twenty minutes after Akaashi.

The bar is tucked between a convenience store and a hairdresser, both closed at this time of day. Their signs, blinking in neon colours, are still, however, blindingly lit up. 

Tetsurou looks at it for a moment before starting to walk. 

It’s the twenty-eighth now; months away from the seventeenth of November. He can’t remember the last time he heard the words happy birthday on the correct day.

Or rather, he can; the smiling faces of his grandparents and sister, the candles on the table, the food his grandmother had spent all day in the kitchen for. 

The knot in his stomach tightens, and he presses the memory away.

- -

When he gets home, he has a text from Kenma waiting for him: it’s another picture of Wander.

He smiles his first honest smile of the night.

He should still have the right ingredients for some good, hearty ramen in the fridge; he brushes his teeth, and thinks about how to change up his favourite recipe in a way that Kenma will find tasty.

- -

There is an odd realisation that comes to him, at nine in the evening, four weeks after Maezaki Kohata’s death, when he finds himself on the ground in Kenma’s bedroom, playing with Wander.

Because he’s here again; because he’s here for no good reason other than to play with Kenma’s cat. Because he and Kenma have been texting every single day for the past three weeks about things that have nothing at all to do with their chosen professions.

Because, somehow, they’ve become friends.

- -

Tetsurou enjoys being out running by himself a lot, the ever-same morning routine he follows as often as he possibly can: the slap of his running shoes on the pavement, the birds’ songs musical accompaniment. 

A bag from the Michimiyas’ bakery in hand, he changes out of his running clothes and into a suit. He doesn’t have time for his workout this morning, but at least he got his run in. 

The sun is up and beautiful by the time he leaves the house; much less beautiful is getting stuck in a traffic jam, but Tetsurou still makes it to the meeting point on time.

Or perhaps less on time than he originally thought: Kenma is already there when he arrives, playing something on a handheld console. He doesn’t stop his playing upon hearing the crunch of wheels on the gravel or the car door being slammed, but he does look up and lift one of his eyebrows.

“Don’t you ever get tired of old factories and houses just before demolition and lodges without wifi? What’s so wrong about a meeting space that’s actually comfortable?” he asks, standing in front of the day’s meeting place: an old, corporate building, its demolition being scheduled for the following Thursday.

Tetsurou shrugs.

“I don’t trust technology not to listen to me,” he says.

“That’s fair, but that doesn’t have to mean a ruin,” Kenma says.

“There are also no other people here. Safety is sort of important for our job, Kenken.”

“I like a people-free space as much as the next person, but I’d also like it if that space were heated,” Kenma grumbles.

“It’s almost twenty degrees,” Tetsurou points out.

“Another way to put that would be it’s under twenty degrees,” Kenma shoots back, huffing. Tetsurou snorts.

“You’re so fragile,” he teases, suppressing the urge to take off his light jacket and hand it over to Kenma, who does actually look a bit cold, his fingers pale where they’re clutching his handheld. “Let’s go inside then, maybe there you won’t be freezing as much in this perfectly fine spring weather.”

“Maybe there I’ll finally get my hands around your neck and throttle you. You’re pretty mouthy for someone whose entire safety net I could crash with ten minutes on any computer,” Kenma murmurs without much heat, following him inside and taking his mask off.

“You wouldn’t,” Tetsurou says, leading them through what was once the foyer and opening the creaky glass door to the stairwell. 

“Oh, and that confidence is based on what, exactly?”

“Well, who’d make you food if not me, kitten?” Tetsurou says, looking at Kenma’s rapidly souring face as they enter the second storey hallway. “Do you really want to go back to ready meals and take-away?”

“You’re on such thin ice and you don’t even know it,” Kenma says, not refuting Tetsurou. Tetsurou grins and then, so impulsively and without conscious thought it’s done before he’s aware that he was about to do it at all, stops in the middle of the second storey and takes off his jacket after all, unceremoniously draping it over Kenma’s shoulders.

Kenma looks at him, squinting, but makes no effort to shrug it off.

“What are you doing, Kuro?” he asks, head cocked slightly to the side, mouth pressed into a suspicious line.

“Well, dear kitten–”

“– I am not your kitten, no matter how often you say it –”

“– you were complaining about the cold, and I can’t possibly let my hacker freeze, now can I? So used to your temperate basement without weather conditions that you’re still shivering, even though we’re inside, saved from the dangerous spring breeze. Fragile.” 

“You’re such an ass,” Kenma says, sliding his arms into the jacket “and if one day you don’t live to see the morning, the world will never figure out who’s responsible, seeing as surely everyone you know must hate you.”

“To be fair,” Tetsurou says, “there are a lot of people with good reasons to kill me, but if any of them were any good at killing, I’d be out of business by now.” He grins.

“I hate you so much. You’re not half as funny as you think you are,” Kenma says, cuddling deeper into the jacket, peeping into the rooms they come across. He finally finds a table and chair in one of the old conference rooms that he seems to deem trustworthy, making his way over to them and sitting down on the chair with a little wiggle.

The sight of him is doing things to Tetsurou: Kenma, with that small crease on his forehead, bundled up in Tetsurou’s jacket, which is way too big on him, even with the thick pullover underneath it. It’s a lot to take in. Tetsurou tries not to think about how warm and soft his skin must be under all those layers.

“But how much do you hate getting paid to kill old, fascist men?” Tetsurou asks, forcefully looking away from Kenma and out of the room’s big window instead, which is broken and missing half of its glass. 

“Go on,” Kenma says, in what is the tone of voice he typically accompanies with raising his eyebrows, “I am listening.”

- -

The target is a man named Kaneko Kouga. He is rich, the sort of rich one gets when throwing all ethical qualms out of the window; he has made, and is continuing to make, a lot of money through oil, and he uses much of this money to back fascist politicians.

The sort of man Kenma would bankrupt just for the hell of it, Tetsurou knows. Well, this time they’re killing him – or rather, killing him first; if Kenma wants to drain his bank account and make a handful of anonymous donations during or after, that’s Kenma’s choice, and all Tetsurou will do is severely encourage it.

Musashijama Shiei, the man who wants Kaneko Kouga dead, has no ethical reasons for it, only revenge on his mind: a rather mundane company bankruptcy at the hands of Kaneko Kouga, who’d sent his knowledge of Musashijama’s scandalous affair to a news outlet; not because Kaneko Kouga cared about the ethics of that – if he had, he would have told the wife, not a journalist – but because Kaneko Kouga wanted to get rid of a competitor. Entirely and utterly mundane. 

The company’s bankruptcy isn’t even a big issue financially for Musashijama; well, he’s no longer overwhelmingly rich to the point he can afford yachts, but he is still rich, coming from a rich family. He’s paying for the assassination out of his trust fund, one sizeable enough it’ll keep him more than afloat for the rest of his life, even unemployed.

Tetsurou has clients like him every second month; a by-product of his reputation and prices. The prices are, in actuality, negotiable. They depend mostly on his client’s income. Tetsurou would not charge someone on a baker’s salary the same as someone who deals in weapons.

But he can’t exactly have people know that; most of his reputation of being not only discrete but also elite comes from the exuberant amount he charges. Rich people like knowing they can afford the best of the best, even if nobody else will ever know. The loss of status if someone found out they hired a cheap contract killer; oh, unimaginable! 

And, well, he really likes having enough money in several different bank accounts abroad that he could skip the country and live only from his savings while evading the police at any time without issues. 

- -

Tetsurou doesn’t remember leaving a pullover at Kenma’s, but he must have.

On Wednesday, after a long day of staking out Kaneko Kouga, he arrives at Kenma’s house with updates on their job and is confronted with the sight of Kenma opening the door for him: in a pullover Tetsurou knows is his, a dark grey one with the lettering ‘play!’ and a softball on it, hanging loosely off of Kenma’s frame, making him look tiny, like something for Tetsurou to take into his arms and protect.

Kenma in his jacket had already been a lot; but this, Kenma in nothing but Tetsurou’s pullover, a pair of sweatpants and fluffy socks, is entirely impossible to deal with.

Tetsurou’s brain is shutting down, overwhelmed. His heart is beating unbelievably fast in his chest.

- -

There is a weird energy in Tetsurou’s bones when he leaves Kenma’s place; the sort of energy that eats and eats at him, makes him want to run and scream, as loudly as he can, and maybe fall into someone’s arms and cry, not that there is anybody whose arms he could fall into.

He hasn’t felt like this in a long time: restless in a way that is entirely his mind, overwhelming and attention-seeking and immediate, demanding he do something about it, without giving him hints as to what it is that he is supposed to be doing.

He feels a bit like a fifteen year old, confused by his own body and its needs, and not the twenty-nine year old man he is who thought he’d figured himself out a long time ago.

So he does what he hasn’t done since he was eighteen, scared and scarred and with no place to put all of his restless energy: he drives. He drives and drives, for hours, well into the night, the engine of his car roaring. It’s not alleviating any of his tension, and yet it is. He feels like he’s about to snap, strung too high: presses on the gas pedal, making his car go fast, then faster, until he’s disobeying speed limits and just racing, no clear destination in mind.

When he finally slows down, he notices he’s made it all the way out to the countryside, only rice fields and farms around him. 

He stops his car on the side of the road, looks at the fields in front of him, then up at the clear night sky. His hands are trembling.

Then, he cries.

- -

Tetsurou rarely uses his katana. He loves his katana; it’s the weapon that has sung with the blood of his first ever kills, and there is something about using a sharp blade to kill that feels much more involved and personal than a gun could ever do. 

But even knives give you a certain level of distance; no, the katana forces him close, and it forces his skills to be sharp and quick, sinks the margin of error all the way down to zero: while it’s not very fun, it’s easy to shoot someone while they’re not looking. 

Killing with a sword, however, is almost impossible to do without getting your victim’s attention, so you must be faster than their cries for help.

For this job, he wants his katana, wants its blade dripping blood again, the satisfaction of a blade-kill. 

Kenma doesn’t get it; Tetsurou knows he doesn’t. Kenma’s job is all about efficiency, about choosing the route to get what he needs done quickest with the least amount of possible dangers. Yes, Kenma delights in the hard jobs; but he doesn’t take unnecessary risks.

There is nothing necessary about using a sword where a gun would have done; but Tetsurou doesn’t dress in his nice suits either because it’s a necessity – although it sometimes is – but because he believes an assassin ought to at least be dressed properly for the job; how horrible, to be killed by someone who didn’t even bother to dress up for the occasion.

Tetsurou arrives at the villa just before midnight. It’s a huge building, rather traditional in style, wood utilised skilfully, big windows along the sides of the house; there is also a giant garden in the back, several times the size of the building. 

Tetsurou has spent the past three weeks scoping it out; he has the plans of the staff memorised, as well as the plans of the family.

It has to be this night, because Kaneko Kouga’s daughter and son-in-law are on a weekend trip with the children, one Kaneko Kouga had begged off from; his mistake. But then, he can’t possibly expect to be murdered in his own mansion.

Tetsurou is all for shattering expectations.

He is wearing one of his best suits, a lovely black one, matching beautifully with his black gloves, katana strapped to his hip. He allows himself a minute to take in the scenery, the beautiful house.

“What are you doing just standing there,” Kenma snaps in his ear, ripping him out of his contemplation.

“Taking in the scenery,” Tetsurou says, honestly.

“You are the worst assassin in the whole of Japan. Taking in the scenery,” Kenma spits. “Unbelievable.” 

“Good things take their while. You cannot rush perfection,” Tetsurou says, just to hear Kenma mutter expletives under his breath. He has switched to English just to properly curse Tetsurou out. It’s kind of hot. 

Tetsurou takes a deep breath in, savouring the crisp night air; then, he makes his way towards the house.

He gets in through one of the side entrances; the gardener always keeps it open, foolishly, most likely because this is a ‘safe neighbourhood’ and nothing bad has come of it in the last fifteen years the gardener has worked for the family. 

Tetsurou would hate for the man to have trouble finding work after Kaneko’s death because of this, so he’ll make sure to lay out false proof of entry elsewhere upon his leaving.

The Kaneko household’s security system is no issue either; according to Kenma, it is ‘laughably easy to play with’. It prompted Kenma to go into a thirty minute tirade about how most of the new security systems and all the ‘smart technological assistants’ are not to be trusted, and most people would be better off and safer if all the tech they had in their house were an old fax machine from the eighties, actually. 

Tetsurou, admittedly, didn’t listen properly because the crease on Kenma’s forehead when he gets worked up about something makes him lose his focus.

He tip-toes down the corridor, then up the stairs; Kaneko Kouga should be in the sitting room next to his bedroom in the first storey.

The familiar adrenaline of a job, of the high risk he’s putting himself into, is coursing through his veins, making his senses sharper, him more focused.

“He is still in the sitting room,” Kenma informs him, disgust curling in his voice, “he’s using his Alexa to google things.” 

Tetsurou suppresses a chuckle. The sitting room is all the way down the hallway, the last room before the master bedroom. A small, lavishly outfitted room: in the middle of it Kaneko Kouga, sitting on a pompous green sofa, his back to the wall. He is, in fact, in the process of giving dumb command after dumb command to his Alexa.

Tetsurou waits, just like they’d planned, and then–

“Three, two, one,” Kenma counts calmly, and the Alexa shuts off. 

Kaneko Kouga sputters angrily. “This stupid thing,” he murmurs enraged, slowly getting up to walk towards it, “I knew it wasn’t worth the money. Shouldn’t have listened to–”

Tetsurou takes three quick steps. The weight of the katana is familiar in his hand; its blade cuts easily through flesh and muscle, letting itself be buried between Kaneko’s ribs, right in his heart. 

Whatever the rest of the sentence was supposed to be, it ends in an abrupt gurgle, Kaneko Kouga’s mouth snapping open and closed like a fish, his eyes very wide. Then, he goes limp on Tetsurou’s blade.

Tetsurou slides his katana out of his body, watches it fall to the floor with a dull thud.

“Almost too easy,” he murmurs.

“We’ll talk easy once you’re out of there,” Kenma says in his ear, the tension of the job clinging to his voice like an oily film.

“Alright, alright, kitten,” Tetsurou says.

He sheathes his katana again. He’ll have to wipe it down later, polish it properly and clean the sheath. All in due time.

He leaves the house through the side door, leaving one of the windows in the first storey open on his way down, saying a quick prayer for the gardener.

His car is waiting for him right where he’d left it.

“Floor it,” Kenma says.

“That would be suspicious, my dearest Kitten,” Tetsurou replies, starting the motor.

“I hate you so much.” 

Tetsurou gets out of there, humming to himself happily.

- -

He arrives at Kenma’s house roughly two and a half hours later, in a different car, of course. Normally, he’d like to be asleep at this time of day, but Kenma certainly won’t be; he knows that.

The least he can do is make sure Kenma gets a proper meal into himself before they both go to bed, even if it is the middle of the night.

Kenma opens the door looking tired: hair put back with a headband, wearing an oversized sweatshirt with holes in it and joggers that have seen better days. His feet are in cute little slippers with cat ears.

“Worry not, for I have brought groceries,” Tetsurou says. Kenma yawns. 

“You know where the kitchen is,” he says, shuffling back into the house. Tetsurou is filled with unbearable affection. 

He closes the door behind himself and takes his shoes and jacket off, then makes his way into the kitchen.

It’s a beautiful kitchen, spotlessly clean in a way that screams ‘I never get used’. Tetsurou quite possibly shouldn’t feel that fond about it, but he does. He is glad to find that Kenma, at least, has a proper rice cooker, even if that too looks utterly unused.

He’s not making a big meal; just rice, a vinaigrette sauce and a few pan-roasted vegetables. Simple but filling, the exact thing they both need.

He puts his grocery bags down, emptying them and preparing his cooking station, and then he gets to work.

- -

Seeing Kenma eat is – something.

It makes Tetsurou’s heart beat wildly, too wildly; an uneven, drumming beat inside of his chest. His body feels shaky, a trembling quality to it that has nothing to do with the fact there is still blood sticking to his katana.

Kenma hums around the food, not looking at Tetsurou; and Tetsurou watches him eat this warm meal that Tetsurou has made for him, in his home, an image of domesticity he doesn’t get to keep. An image of domesticity not meant for him at all.

“It’s late,” Kenma says, with a look to the clock.

“Look at you, capable of reading a clock,” Tetsurou teases. Kenma rolls his eyes.

“I’ve got a sofa in the living room,” he says, in a way that’s so noncommittal it can only be an invitation. 

Tetsurou could take him up on it. He could sleep here, and wake up to the smells of the house, to Kenma’s face, learn what he looks like in the mornings after just having gotten up; he could sleep here and make breakfast for Kenma and fall even more into this image of domesticity that doesn’t belong to him.

“I’ve got a perfectly good bed at home,” he says instead.

Kenma purses his mouth, but he shrugs. There is something tightening in his posture. Tetsurou doesn’t want to look at it, doesn’t want to think about it.

So he finishes his meal, does the dishes, and drives home.

It’s almost five in the morning when he finally gets into bed.

Chapter Text

He wakes up half-choking, coughing horribly, his lungs feeling rough and charred, every breath hurting. He sits up, still coughing; the air is thick and cloying, tastes wrong. His chest hurts. He can barely open his eyes, but when he does, he realises why he is having such a hard time breathing, why his body feels heavy, why he struggles to pick it up from the bed, put the blankets to the side: his entire bedroom is filled with smoke.

Panic floods him, overwhelming and immediate; his mind is so frantic it feels almost impossible to remember the things he’s learned about fire safety, about anything – wasn’t there something about getting to an exit, about a wet shirt, about not breathing in the smoke?

His hands are trembling. He’s already breathing in the smoke. How does one not breathe in smoke? The shirt. A shirt.

His hands fumble on his wardrobe, grab the first thing; wetting the shirt, he thinks, vaguely, and dumps the remainders of the half-empty water bottle on his nightstand on the shirt with still-shaking hands, only to panic more; shouldn’t he have water on hand to quell the flames, if he encounters any?

He puts the wet shirt over his head; his breaths are coming hard, and it’s impossible to know whether this is helping at all.

He fumbles the doorknob on his door; his entire body is bathed in sweat, so much adrenaline in him he can barely feel his hands, his face. Or perhaps that’s the smoke. He doesn’t actually know what smoke inhalation does. Why doesn’t he properly remember any of the safety drills they did at school?

He opens his bedroom door and is met by fire. It’s hot, too hot. The entire hallway is on fire. It’s eating its way towards him, faster than he imagined it would. He stumbles back, so quickly he almost falls; catches himself on the side of his bookshelf at the last minute.

His bookshelf. He doesn’t have time, but this is the only good picture he still has, he needs to –

He grabs the picture with trembling fingers, backs away to the window, legs shaking.

Opening the window feels hard, almost impossible; it has never felt this hard before. His sweaty, trembling fingers are unable to find real purchase. And then, finally, it’s open, swings wide to the side, and he stares down at the grass. The flames are eating into the room now. He’s in the first storey; that’s well-survivable without much injury if he jumps right, he’s pretty sure. It should be. He’s never jumped out of his bedroom window before. His left hand is still helplessly clutching the framed picture, which makes heaving himself onto the windowsill harder. He doesn’t have much time to deliberate.

He jumps.

He lands oddly on his right leg, tumbling to the side, sharp pain shooting through him; shaking, he sits up. His right leg is throbbing. The picture frame is digging into his palm but the glass hasn’t shattered; the picture is okay.

He looks at the house, and then starts screaming: only he doesn’t, because his throat gives up on him.

The entire ground floor is engulfed in flames, as is the front side of the first storey. His sister’s bedroom is located on the front side. His grandparents sleep on the ground floor.

There are no ambulances or fire trucks anywhere – why has nobody called the firefighters? Why is there no help?

His phone is in his bedroom. His fucking phone is in his bedroom. More pain, hot and cutting, shoots through his right leg when he heaves himself up and puts weight onto it, but he needs to, he needs to – 

His family is in that house.

And that’s when he sees them.

Four men, clad in black, one of them speaking into a mobile phone, on the front lawn, looking right at the flames. They’re not looking at him, just the house. Tetsurou feels chills run down his body.

He understands, with the sort of immediacy that sits cold in his bones, that he can in no circumstances let them see him.

And then, he does what he knows will haunt him for the rest of his life: on his bad leg, in his grandfather’s dark blue, volleyball-patterned pyjamas that he likes to borrow, picture frame tightly clutched in his hand, he backs away from the house and into the shadows of the neighbourhood, heart beating very, very fast.

Tetsurou wakes up with a start, sweat-soaked and clutching at his blankets. He gets out of the bed slowly, trembling just a little, goes into the bathroom. Almost mechanically, he strips off and steps into the shower, letting the hot water hit him.

He leans against the wall, closes his eyes, and breathes in and out deeply. Then again. In, out. In, out. In, out.

It has been a while since he’s had this specific dream. He doesn’t have it very often anymore.

The last time he had it in full was when he was twenty-four.

That was five years ago; almost as much time as it took him to turn himself into a weapon, to change everything about himself, about his views on life and death, to create a whole new identity and abandon all the foolish dreams of becoming a volleyball star he had before.

Almost as much time as it took him to finally track down and kill the men responsible for his family’s death, one by one.

He sighs and sinks to the floor of the shower, just sits there, back against the tiled wall.

He feels so tired. He misses them: his mother, who died when he was just nine years old. His grandmother, who’d sit on the sofa, knitting, while talking about what the ladies in her Shogi group had been getting up to lately. His grandfather, who’d come to all of his volleyball games, loudly cheering, who’d stay up late to review game footage with him, who always got up early at five to go jogging, who’d mow the lawn at eight o’clock sharp every Friday morning. His older sister, who was studying to become a doctor, who moved out, freshly eighteen, when he was just five, and then back in after his mother had died.

Even his father, who he rarely saw, always out and away on business trips, always working even when he was home. His father, who he didn’t try to track down after everyone else had died, after the news concluded Tetsurou, too, must have lost his life in the fire.

His body is still shaking when he gets out of the shower. His katana is on the table in the living room, and he gets everything he needs to clean it properly. It’s bad to leave the cleaning for the day after. Not good on the blade. He shouldn’t have done it.

It’s been so long since he’s last had this dream. He doesn’t want to think about why it’s back now.

His flat is a bit chilly. He could perhaps put on a thicker pullover. 

He unsheates his katana and gets to cleaning, goosebumps on his arms.

- -

He stops by the Michimiyas’ bakery after, to get breakfast – or rather, lunch.

“You’re late today,” Yui says, “and you look tired. Hard day yesterday?” She smiles at him sympathetically.

“You could call it that,” Tetsurou says, thinking about Kaneko Kouga’s choked-off sounds of death, about the blood stain on his silk shirt where Tetsurou’s blade had punctured his body, about Kenma’s face, tired and soft and too familiar.

“A lot of hard days lately?” she asks. “You’ve seemed a bit different, Kurono-san. Like you’re going through something.”

Tetsurou sighs. The bakery is empty. It’s just him and Yui and the wasps trying to sneak a taste and the blindingly bright light of the ceiling lamps.

“Perhaps,” he says. His lungs still hurt with the phantom pain of the smoke inhalation, and he feels raw, vulnerable, like someone has opened him up, cut his heart out and left his chest gaping and empty for all to see.

“You can talk to me, you know,” Yui says. “You are my friend.”

It’s the first time she’s ever said that to him. He smiles at her, a bit tiredly.

It’s weird, how much more earnest this friendship suddenly feels than the ones he has with Bokuto and Yamamoto, even though she knows him under the same identity they do, as the same prick. Even though he’s spent the last year half-flirting with her, being anything but earnest. Even though she doesn’t really know him at all.

Even though the only person alive who really knows Tetsurou the person , the true self, even the tiniest bit, is Kenma. Kenma, who didn’t sign up for Tetsurou falling for him. Kenma, who Tetsurou can’t let himself get too close to, because it’s dangerous for the both of them, because there is no way it could ever end well.

Kenma, who Tetsurou knows he’s already gotten too comfortable around, who has itched at the back of his mind, burrowed in until Tetsurou woke up gasping with old memories.

“I think I’ve fallen in love with a co-worker,” he tells Yui, not sure why he says it at all, not sure why he says it to her, of all people, chest aching, and watches as her eyes widen, her eyebrows lift up.

“That’s a pretty big deal for you. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you show genuine interest in anyone,” she says, curiously.

“Yeah,” he says, miserably: both a statement and an admission.

“Well, is she cute, this co-worker of yours? Does she like you too?” Yui asks, smiling encouragingly at him.

“He’s very cute,” Tetsurou says, thinking about Kenma’s smug, confident little smile when he’s hacked into a security system, about the look of bliss in his eyes when he bites into a good piece of pie. He’s not sure whether he expects her to say anything to that; he’s not sure why he keeps talking.

“I don’t think he likes me, though. And it’s – complicated. It could never work.”

“Oh,” Yui says, quietly. Her face is very soft. She leans forward, and puts a hand on his arm. 

“I’m sorry,” she says. “That must be hard.” Her eyes are gentle and affectionate.

“It is,” he replies, and it encompasses both everything and nothing. And for a moment, just a little moment, her genuine human touch and compassion – it’s enough.

Except that, of course, it isn’t. It really, really isn’t.

Because Tetsurou crafted an identity he knew couldn’t bring him an honest shot at happiness ever again eleven years ago, watching his entire life go up in flames.

- -

Kenma texts him later that day; nothing big, just a picture of Wander, fluffy and beautiful and white, stretched out over the rug in Kenma’s bedroom, and Tetsurou feels the answering pang in his chest like a knife.

He doesn’t have the time for this, for feeling this overwhelmed, for getting distracted by desire; not when he has a police investigation to focus on, not when he has to make sure nobody finds clues about Kaneko Kouga’s death that could lead to him, not when he’ll have a new job that will demand all of his attention lined up soon enough. 

This line of work doesn’t allow shoddiness; this life doesn’t allow wallowing and wanting, especially not if it’s bad enough he starts dreaming, especially not if it’s bad enough it interferes with his routines and behaviour.

No; this will not do.

- -

The thing is that he likes Kenma as a person, first and foremost. He likes him, as stupid as it may be, as a friend . He likes the way Kenma scrunches up his nose when he’s dissatisfied, and the way his hair is always a little bit messy, and how he he gets this slight crease in his forehead when he concentrates really hard, and the way he puffs out his breath when he’s annoyed, and how his eyes light up with something that looks too much like love to be anything else when Wander strolls into a room and nonchalantly hops onto his lap, demanding cuddles.

Yes, Tetsurou wants to bite at the line of his shoulder, and put his mouth all over Kenma’s skin, and hear him gasp his name, and the look of him in Tetsurou’s clothes makes Tetsurou dizzy with want; but first and foremost, he likes Kenma for Kenma , for his company.

And that’s why he hasn’t sought distance yet, even being aware of how careless allowing his feelings to grow is; because he wants Kenma’s company. Wants something he hasn’t had since he was eighteen: someone who truly knows him. A friend.

Because, deep down in his heart, even after years of only attempting to keep superficial contacts, of only ‘befriending’ people he couldn’t actually care about, simply to keep his cover identity alive – he can’t help but care about people, can’t help but seek closeness. 

It’s why he genuinely wants good things for Yui. It’s why he got a little teary-eyed when Bokuto told him he was engaged.

It’s why Kenma’s smile makes his stomach feel like it’s going to drop out of his body, why Tetsurou wants to do anything to make him smile like that again and again, forever.

Sheer and simple stupidity.

- -

Tetsurou stops driving over to Kenma’s place for no good reason. It’s not easy; visiting Kenma has become too much of a routine. Several times he finds himself with his phone in his hand, about to text Kenma that he’s coming over, before stopping himself.

His bento boxes stay sitting in the kitchen cupboards, and every time Tetsurou looks at them they seem to want to say something; he looks away, and tries not to think about all the things he wants to cook for Kenma.

- -

The next job comes in two weeks later. Two long weeks of not texting Kenma inane things, of not randomly dropping by, of not spending his afternoons researching recipes he thinks Kenma might like. Two weeks in which he’s looked at the pictures of Wander Kenma has sent him hundreds of times, despite his better knowledge.

If his job didn’t require him to travel so much, perhaps he’d get a cat himself. He could use the company.

But even a cat is risky – too risky; just one more thing for people to tie him to, for people to get access to his feelings over. Just one more liability in this life that demands total detachment.

The job is not the usual corporation owner or high society socialite, this time; rather, it’s a high society socialite wanting a reporter dead.

Tetsurou seldomly gets requests for murders like these, and he even more seldomly actually agrees. Reporters are risky, because they get the attention of the public and demands for answers by the public much more than his usual targets do. And, well; much more incriminating than a story posted is a story the public finds out was the thing someone wanted to post just before they died.

“I’ll think about it,” he says. He doesn’t make promises before he has done his own looking into the situation and target; he never does. And he has a partner to run things by now.

The thought of Kenma makes his stomach clench uncomfortably. 

No way to it but through, he thinks, and messages Kenma.

- -

He starts cooking five hours before they’re set to meet. He gets his favourite pot and rice cooker out, then his ingredients, some herbs and spices; he’s in the mood for a stew with a nutmeg note. He’s been craving the flavour of nutmeg lately; an old favourite that has wormed its way back into his consciousness. He bought a package of high quality nutmeg nuts from his favourite organic grocery store just the other day, and simply grating them fills him with joy.

He washes the rice while the ground stock of his stew is cooking down, slowly whistling as he goes along.

It isn’t until he’s looking at his bento boxes, thinking about how to best package everything, pot on the stove happily bubbling, that he realises what he’s doing, and he wants to kick himself for having forgotten.

They meet at the hunting lodge.

Tetsurou is first, the way he usually is; he sets the bento box he brought down on the table and stares at it for a little while, as if that will stop it from existing, as if that will undo him standing in his kitchen, cooking for Kenma, like he didn’t resolve to stop his trying worm his way into Kenma’s life over two weeks ago.

The red, polka dotted cloth he’s tied around the box seems to be almost mocking him. Tetsurou averts his eyes.

Kenma comes in not much later, wrapped in a thick pullover, black with little white controllers on it. Tetsurou feels the dumb urge to point out it’s twenty degrees outside. He doesn’t. 

“Kenma,” he greets. 

Kenma raises his eyebrows at him. “No horrible pet name today, Kuro?”

“Finally thought I’d listen to your demands,” Tetsurou says, halfway to sticking his tongue out at Kenma before realising that bickering with Kenma is not going to help him keep his distance.

Kenma sits down and cracks his neck.

“Never thought I’d see the day,” he says lightly, then tugs off his face mask. The sight of him, comfortably unmasked, still shoots like fire through Tetsurou: it’s so much, to see him like this, too much. He wants to lean forward and cup Kenma’s face, trace the shape of his mouth with this thumb, so desperately it feels like he will combust; wants to fit his lips to Kenma’s so badly his body burns with it.

“The potential target is a reporter,” he says instead, and watches as Kenma raises his eyebrows. “A paparazzi who focuses on the lives of the rich and wealthy. She’s very close to publishing the illicit love affair of our client with the twenty-four year old daughter of our client’s best friend.” Kenma’s eyebrows climb up, if possible, even higher.

“He wants us to not only kill the reporter but destroy all of his files and back-up files, too.”

“Oh?” Kenma says. “And what does your research say?”

Tetsurou pretends not to notice the way Kenma has started tapping his fingers against the table, eyes shining a little bit. 

“My research say that our client, one Hashime Terumori, is a bitch, and so is his best friend, and so is his secret girlfriend, and so is the reporter, who likes to trespass on private properties to take pictures of people in their homes, especially those people who’d much prefer to stay out of the public eye,” he says, “and as far as I can tell, she has never even reported on anything of substance, like all the tax fraud our client does. My research also says this job should be more than doable.”

“Hm,” Kenma makes, and pulls a laptop out of his backpack, “let me see. The files, Kuro, if you have them? Or are you completely useless?”

Tetsurou pulls a binder out of his own backpack. “Who do you take me for?” he asks.

“An idiot,” Kenma says, and tugs the binder towards him. He also tugs the bento box towards him, unwrapping it. “But at least you’re an idiot who can cook somewhat passably,” he says, smiling at the contents: rice and stew, with some egg rolls on the side.

Passably? You know you love my cooking, you live for it, Tetsurou itches to say; but the bento box isn’t professional in the first place, and his fingers are tingling with how much he wants to touch Kenma, and his limbs still feel heavy with the after-images of memory, and he cannot make this worse.

Kenma raises an eyebrow at him when he stays silent, mouth turning down a bit, and Tetsurou averts his eyes. They’re here to do their jobs; they’re colleagues, that’s all.

They sit in near-silence for almost two hours while Kenma looks through Tetsurou’s amassed files. 

“You know,” he finally says, “I could work on this more properly at home, where I’ve got my set-up.” He raises an eyebrow at Tetsurou, a clear invitation.

“You probably could,” Tetsurou says. “Let’s reconvene in three days?”

Kenma frowns. “Okay,” he says, sounding confused. 

Tetsurou aches.

- -

Even though Urayasu Akari likes to focus on the petty private life gossip of rich people, she isn’t bad at her job; in fact, she is pretty good at it. She follows her craft with the single-mindedness of a focused German Shepherd. She wears her hair short-cropped and foregoes make-up for quickness and ease of getting ready. 

Tetsurou watches her through her bedroom window as she sits in front of her desk, laptop open but its screen black, her body slumped over, face resting against the wood of the desk, drool escaping her slack mouth. It’s late, in her defence, and Tetsurou, after following her the entire day, knows that she got up early. 

Kenma is remotely hacking into her online data, finishing the first part of his task, as Tetsurou watches her; Tetsurou will take her laptop – and the usb stick she keeps on herself at any given time – with him after his job is completed, to put them into Kenma’s capable, destructive hands. 

Akari isn’t a horrible person any more than Tetsurou’s client Hashime is; really, for whatever scope of morale one subscribes to, she could be better or worse than him, but neither of them gets off well. But that’s not what Tetsurou kills for.

It matters to Kenma that he not kill any ‘good people’; but not Tetsurou.

She’s no better or worse than any of his other targets; she is single, without kids or pets, estranged from her family because of the long hours of her work. She will leave suffering behind – they always do – but no children. That makes her as good as anyone to net him his income.

Tetsurou isn’t a good person himself.

Not this Tetsurou. 

Perhaps there is an alternate universe somewhere where he is a professional volleyball player, where his grandfather still comes to all of his matches; where he spends his money for good causes and talks about charity, where he works hard at a job that’s deemed respectable and comes home to a loving spouse. 

Where Kenma is a game developer instead of a hacker or a professional esports player, perhaps, and the two of them have never met.

But this is the universe where Tetsurou looks through Akari’s open window, and his bullet finds its target unerringly, and her body goes no slacker in death than it did in sleep; this is the universe where he climbs through the window and extracts laptop and usb stick, and his gloved hands put a warm, fuzzy yellow blanket over her sluggishly bleeding torso before he leaves the same way he came in, the first and last courtesy she’ll ever see from him.

- -

He drops off the things at Kenma’s house in the industrial complex, and he gets home on time to shower and get a good night’s sleep; he gets up at five in the morning, puts on his running clothes and goes for a run. The birds sing, keeping him company, and the pavement is sturdy under his shoes, and the wind playfully ruffles his black hair.

Yui greets him with a smile and sells him fresh, warm baked goods, and he gets home and does his work-out and then makes himself a proper, nourishing breakfast, rice and vegetables and fish and soup, and leaves his baked treats for last.

At five in the afternoon Kenma texts him, Wander is demanding attention and apparently I’m not up to the task, a picture of Wander, lying on Kenma’s ‘for fun’ gaming laptop and completely blocking any attempts at using it for leisure activities, attached.

Poor Wander, he texts back, and nothing else, and his heart feels heavy, as if it were made out of stone, dragging down his entire chest. He doesn’t cry, but his eyes burn.

- -

They debrief at one of Tetsurou’s safe houses; Tetsurou stays detached, professional, the way he should have been from the start. Kenma keeps looking at him, his brows furrowed, mouth a downturned line.

The destruction of everything Hashime wanted destroyed went well; the police still seem to be clueless.

Towards the end of the meeting, Kenma opens his mouth, as if he wants to say something – but then he closes it again and looks away. 

- -

It takes five days for Kenma to text him again. When he does, it’s simple: black lettering on a grey background, nothing at all complex about them.

No reason for Tetsurou to feel like he might as well have swallowed glass.

Do you want to come over?  

Kenma never asks him directly if he wants to come over, has not directly invited him since that first time; he hints, and he insinuates, and, most of all, he waits for Tetsurou to ask, for Tetsurou to show up at his door, ingredients or a whole meal in tow, and sometimes, seldomly, nothing but himself, the offer of his company.

He doesn’t ask.

He’s asking now.

Important meeting later, Tetsurou lies, and feels like the scum of the earth.

This would be easier if he didn’t consider Kenma his friend first and foremost. But even friends are dangerous. There is no room in Tetsurou’s life for anything true, for anything honest.

- -

So he meets up with Bokuto and Yamamoto instead. They’re obviously up for it; they always are.

2night, 9pm, the use?  he texts their group chat from Tetsuya’s phone, and five minutes later he has their agreement.

Or rather: 

Bro evening?? Yamamoto has texted back.

Bokuto, of course, has replied: BRO EVENING!!  

Tetsurou sends a thumbs up.

Tetsuya arrives late. Stylishly late, of course; hair gelled back, obnoxious smirk in place, clothes strategically chosen – expensive but not too expensive; the second-most expensive button-down Tetsuya owns – and an expensive watch on his wrist.

Bokuto is already there; Yamamoto isn’t. 

Bokuto, because he’s a great friend, presses a beer into Tetsuya’s hand immediately, before Tetsuya has even sat down. 

“We do evenings like these so not often enough,” Bokuto says, clinking his glass against Tetsuya’s.

“You know how it is, always on the grind for that promotion,” Tetsuya says. Bokuto nods solemnly. Then, his eyes light up.

“Akaashi just got promoted!” he says, sitting up straighter so fast he spills beer down his shirt, a gold and black checkered button-down. “I’m so proud of him! He’s been working late for months. For years.” He pouts. “He’s worked late almost every day since I’ve met him.”

“That sucks,” Tetsuya says.

“It does,” Bokuto says, taking a swig from his beer. Then, his eyes light up again. “But ‘Kaashi said he might get more days off now! Maybe two whole days a month!”

“Good for him,” Tetsuya says. 

Yamamoto uses that exact moment to come in in a gush of spring air. His hair is freshly cut and dyed; three thick, actually blond stripes along the close-shaven sides of his head.

He sits down, and Bokuto presses a glass into his hand he fills gratuitously. The pitcher spills a little over his hands. He must have ordered it and the three glasses on the table when he got here, before Testuya arrived.

“You, however,” Bokuto says, turning his entire attention back on Tetsuya, “need a break from that grind, my man.”

Tetsuya raises an eyebrow. “A break?”

“You look miserable, man,” Yamamoto says. Bokuto nods seriously.

“You do,” he says. “I’ve never seen you like this before.”

Tetsuya sighs; he can feel his entire body slumping, until, just for a moment, he lets himself room to breathe, and he’s Tetsurou again; not an asshole who slaves away in a corporate job, but Tetsurou, who is so unbelievably exhausted.

He looks at Bokuto, really looks at him: the sort of person who stays up late for Akaashi. Who’s got bad opinions and worse behaviour, sometimes, but is rock-solid at his core. Who, maybe, in another universe, could have been an actual close friend; who could have been a good person, if his influence hadn’t been a shitty made-up businessman and society’s image of a hard worker. Who could still be a good person, if Tetsurou, for once in his life, said something true to him. Who is, at least, good enough of a person beneath his senseless belief in crypto and the corporate grind and pick-up artists that Akaashi puts up with him.

Tetsurou empties his beer in one long chug. “I need another drink,” he says, instead of anything else.

- -

Tetsurou enters the house through the wine cellar, the wine cellar through the sewers. He feels odd, uncomfortable, tense; perhaps because he and Kenma have only exchanged the most necessary of words. Perhaps because Kenma, himself, is a tense, quiet line over his earpiece; not saying anything, but radiating discomfort in waves.

Even after their job together that almost went bad, it didn’t feel like this: not a single snappish comment leaving Kenma’s lips, just suffocating silence.

Tetsurou knows he keeps telling Kenma that for the most part, he doesn’t need his comments and reminders, that he knows what he’s doing; but now that they’re gone, he feels unmoored, like he’s stumbling, off-centre.

He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t think Kenma is liking it either.

The wine cellar smells of old wood, musky; and, of course, of wine, red wine and white wine and sake, stored on wine racks, framed by huge barrels. The sort of scent and atmosphere that would fill Tetsurou with anticipation, ordinarily. This time, he just feels heavy.

It’s early in the morning; just before five. The target, Tatougawa Mikinari, a lobbyist for the automobile lobby, should still be sleeping. He usually gets up around seven. 

He lives alone in this huge house, throws lavish parties which, to him, probably necessitate both the wine cellar and the roof deck this house has; Tetsurou wonders, just for a second, if his money justifies his job to him, and if the money and parties make him feel any better about his loneliness.

The main bedroom is on the ground floor, right behind the living room; it’s the only closed-off room in the open floor plan of the house.

Kenma is still quiet in Tetsurou’s ear, which is probably a good sign.

He softly opens the door to Tatougawa Mikinari’s bedroom.

Mikinari is stretched out over his western style bed, mouth wide open, snoring. He’s kicked off half of his blankets; they are pooling at his feet.

Tetsurou looks at him, just for a moment. Then he throws his knives. 

His first throw is right on target; it always is. 

“It’s done,” he tells Kenma as he closes the bedroom door and with it the sight of Mikinari, knives sticking out of his chest, behind him; he hears the audible sigh of relief.

“Good,” Kenma says; but his voice is still tension-fraught.

- -

They meet at the warehouse to debrief. The warehouse: the one where they had their very first meeting.

It looms, ominous, before a cloudy sky, as Tetsurou arrives. Kenma is already there: an unusual sight.

Kenma is cloaked in his usual black, hair put up in a high ponytail, ear-piercings glimmering in the low light, eyes right on Tetsurou.

Tetsurou, for all that he has just disposed of a pair of gloves that could tie him to a murder, feels unexpectedly uncertain of himself in the face of him. Kenma’s jaw is set; he doesn’t need to take his mask off for Tetsurou to be able to read the form of his face. His eyes are hard.

Kenma has come for a conversation, and it’s not one Tetsurou is going to like.

Tetsurou is tired.

He’s so fucking tired. He’s had a long week, a long month; a long eleven years, if he’s entirely honest. The deepest, truest parts of him, the parts he has surrounded with walls, by changing his moral code, by adapting a new view on death, by taking his revenge and changing the possible trajectory of his life entirely in the process of it, are still raw. 

And Kenma, just looking at Kenma, not bringing Kenma food: that feels like another raw part.

If this is it – if Kenma has decided he doesn’t want to work with Tetsurou anymore; well, then perhaps that is for the best.

Tetsurou is so fucking tired.

“Kodzuken,” he says, “shall we go inside?”

“Kuro,” Kenma says, not moving, “I think it’s best we talk.”

Tetsurou lets out a long, heavy sigh.

“Talk, then,” he says. He doesn’t like how small he sounds even to his own ears. How small and deflated he feels. Everything is off, wrong. This should be fine; he should be fine. He worked so hard at being good at keeping people out. At not showing vulnerabilities. But every single day of the past few months has left him feeling more vulnerable than before; Wander baring his stomach for him, Yui earnestly listening to him, Bokuto saying he looks miserable and like he needs a break; Kenma, and time and time again, Kenma.

He doesn’t know where Tetsurou the assassin ends and where Tetsurou the person begins; he’s tried so hard to keep Tetsurou the person locked away. 

And here he is, and Kenma is looking at him with his beautiful, golden eyes, and Tetsurou is so tired. So, so unbelievably tired.

“If we want to work together,” Kenma says, “then I need to be able to talk to you. Kuro, every single day something could go disastrously wrong in this job. In our job. You’ve been off. And I can’t work with you like this. It’s simple, Kuro: if we want to work together, I need to be able to trust you again. So would you please tell me what the fuck is wrong with you?”

Tetsurou stares.

“Oh,” he says, very, very softly. “Oh.”

Kenma wants to trust him. Again.

But – he thinks about being eighteen. About building a wall. About deciding to not let people in again; about changing. He remembers what it feels like to trust. What it feels like to lose someone. He realises, stupidly, that he already trusts Kenma. But still. If he bares his soul now –

“Tetsurou,” Kenma says, very quietly, “please.”

Two words. Two words, and the wind has been knocked out of him. Two words, and he shatters.

“Alright,” he says. “Alright. Follow me then, if you would.”

He gets into his car. Kenma hops onto his motorcycle.

It’s not a short drive to Tetsurou’s flat from the warehouse, but Kenma follows without complaint; passing old buildings, and then newer ones, parks and subway stations and busy streets; paths he likes to jog, the small, sweet bakery in which Tetsurou buys treats for himself after jogging.

And finally, they stop in front of the house in which Tetsurou’s flat is located. Kenma keeps following him; takes his shoes off in the genkan, and steps into Tetsurou’s bedroom, right after Tetsurou.

Tetsurou sits down on the bed.

Kenma sits down next to him.

He opens the nightstand drawer, takes out the picture. The frame is old, a bit cracked. The glass is dusty. On the picture, his mother is smiling, arms around a young, four year old Tetsurou and his teenage sister, her parents, his grandparents, flanking them on the sides. Young Tetsurou is smiling a shy smile, a little bit intimidated by the prospect of having his picture hung up, his sister, in all her teenage moodiness, staring into the distance, and his mother looks sweet, and loving, the way he remembers her.

The only good family picture including his mother that he had; the only family picture he still has at all now.

“All of them are dead,” he tells Kenma. The words feel rough in his throat, almost impossible to get out. “I loved them, and they’re gone.”

The sentences sound odd, almost stilted to his own ears, detached and too vulnerable all at once.

Kenma is looking at him, something unspeakably soft on his face. Tetsurou hates him, just a little bit: that he is here. That he is making Tetsurou take a look at this picture for the first time in years. That he’s not just letting Tetsurou fade into the distance.

That, inevitably, Tetsurou will ruin any sympathy Kenma has for him.

“I’m in love with you, probably,” he says. “I don’t really know you, and it doesn’t really matter, but I like you a lot, and it scares me. I want to kiss you, constantly, but most of all I want to make sure you’re happy and safe. It’s been a long time since I let myself care about someone else’s safety.”

And there it is: a confession concluding a confession, hanging in the air between them.

“You,” Kenma says, “are an absolute idiot.”

He says it with a gentleness that makes Tetsurou tremble; even more than that, he trembles under Kenma’s hands, when he softly cups his face, and then, just as softly, Kenma kisses Tetsurou.

His lips are a bit chapped, and he tastes like energy drinks, and every move of him against Tetsurou is making Tetsurou gasp, overcome with it, his body on fire; Kenma kisses him like he’s precious, and Tetsurou wants him so bad he feels dizzy with it. And he’s scared; he’s terrified. The last time he was this scared he was eighteen years old and watched his family home go up in flames, not certain he would survive the day.

He isn’t sure he will survive this day; not with the way Kenma kisses him, with the way his body wants so desperately to be closer to Kenma and to shy away at once. But Kenma isn’t letting him; he’s just kissing him, taking all of Tetsurou’s helpless gasps, and his hands are soft and overwhelming.

Tetsurou has to break away for a moment, just to get some air back into his lungs, just to calm the thundering of his heart. His hands are still clutching at the family picture.

“In case that wasn’t clear, I care about you, too,” Kenma says, “and I wasn’t exactly excited when I noticed, either. You’re not exactly a catch.” He just looks at Tetsurou, then adds, more quietly: “I don’t know what exactly you went through, but I’d like to know, whenever you’d feel comfortable telling me. I’m not good at this, the whole feelings thing, you might have noticed.”

Tetsurou lets out a choked laugh.

“But I’d still – I’d try, for you. That’s all I can offer. I’ll try. And I’m honoured to be trusted. You kind of are a catch, actually.” He narrows his eyes. “But don’t let that get to your head.”

Tetsurou chokes on another laugh; it turns into more of a sob. 

“Kitten,” he says, and then stops, unsure what else to say.

“Yeah,” Kenma says. And Tetsurou puts a trembling hand to Kenma’s face, and just touches him; smoothes his thumb over his mouth, strokes along his cheekbones, his nose, his forehead. Finally, he lets it rest on the nape of Kenma’s neck, and then he leans in again, and kissing Kenma is just as dizzying and overwhelming the second time around.

- -

Having Kenma close, and his, is a revelation; Tetsurou almost doesn’t know what to do with it. 

He’s never had this before: a relationship. A partner. He doesn’t like the word boyfriend; feels silly using it, when he’s almost thirty and would paint the world in blood for Kenma’s safety.

It’s a lot; it’s exactly why he shouldn’t want this. It’s dangerous to care about someone so much, and he’s terrified of getting hurt, of losing Kenma, of making a huge mistake. And he doesn’t know what to do with this.

He’s dated, a little bit, before. Gone on a handful of meaningless dates and snogged girls when he was a teenager, like most of his classmates did. And then he went on a handful more meaningless dates as Tetsuya, to keep the cover going; but not many. He figured out early that it was easier to make a date up than go through the trouble of having one, and he couldn’t afford to get attached to anyone anyway, and. Well.

Tetsurou is twenty-nine years old, and when he looks at Kenma he burns; and he hasn’t allowed himself to truly care for anyone in over a decade, and he hasn’t ever done more than kissed someone else, and he is entirely in over his head.

He sleeps over at Kenma’s almost every second day, helpless to stop himself from seeking out the closeness.

Yui he tells, sheepish, “So the coworker does actually like me back, it turns out. We’re keeping it secret for now, though.”

She raises her eyebrows at him and looks a bit judgmentally at the hickey on his neck, which makes him blush horribly. But she also says, “I was wondering why you showed up so much less. I’m happy for you,” and gives him some sweet baked treats on the house, and then they talk for a bit about a rich asshole who’s new to this area and has been trying to buy up the small businesses in it, including the Michimiyas’ bakery, before she mentions off-handedly, blushing sweetly, that she actually has a date lined up for the weekend – and how she hopes the trouble with the bakery won’t keep her from going on it.

Because it’s what Tetsuya would do, Tetsurou leers at her a little and wiggles his eyebrows horrendously and says, obnoxiously, “Good luck with the date,” with a horribly suggestive undertone to it, and watches as she rolls her eyes fondly at him.

Tetsurou doesn’t want to let the conversation end there; he wants to talk more about Terushima’s threat to the bakery, and he wants to talk more about dating, and he wants to confess how horribly insecure he is and that every time Kenma presses his lips to his neck, his lower stomach tugs so hard he feels overwhelmed, and that even though three weeks have gone by since their first kiss, he has yet to get his hands under Kenma’s clothes, despite how badly he wants it. 

And that at night, during those nights he sleeps at home, he dreams of Kenma, and some of those dreams are nightmares that he wakes up from crying; and oftentimes in the mornings he battles with himself over whether to text him because he knows how dangerous it is, to get this attached.

He wants to say that he’s overwhelmed, and he could use someone to tell him how to be a person, because he’s spent over a decade banishing any and all feelings that could make him vulnerable; but he doesn’t, and he takes the baked treats, and he drives to Kenma’s place.

- -

He’s in the process of making them dinner when Kenma steps into the kitchen and winds his arms around Tetsurou.

“I was thinking,” he says, “that I can’t give you your family back, but I could offer you mine.”

Tetsurou goes very, very still. For a moment, he doesn’t as much as allow himself to breathe. His body is frozen, his mind filled with static.

“I don’t have siblings,” Kenma says, “but I have a mother, and a father, and a grandmother who likes to be really annoying and meddle in my love life. They don’t know about any of this. They think I live in the nice flat I keep as a front in the city centre and that I do some sort of IT job for some sort of company that pays well but is horribly boring. It’s okay if that’s – too much. I told you I’m not very good at this.” He sounds uncomfortable, nervous; his face is buried against Tetsurou’s back.

Tetsurou doesn’t dare to turn around. He feels like if he were to look at Kenma, he would simply combust, overcome.

His throat feels raw when he speaks. “I think I’d like that,” he says quietly, “very much.”

“Good,” Kenma says against his back. “You’ll have to make some food for them. My grandma has been hounding me to get a nice girlfriend who can cook and make me eat more healthily for years.”

“I’m not exactly a girl,” Tetsurou says, hesitantly.

“You can cook, can’t you? You would not believe how low my family’s expectations are at this point.” That gets Tetsurou to smile and relax a little.

“Actually, kitten, I would. What you consider a meal is horrific at best.”

“You’re such a dick,” Kenma says, but his arms hug Tetsurou a little tighter.

- -

They’re on the couch cuddling, watching a film Kenma has picked out.

Kenma is half-draped over Tetsurou, leaning against his chest, one of Tetsurou’s arms around his waist; he has one hand on Tetsurou’s thigh, and Tetsurou wants him so badly he’s dizzy with it.

He feels like he’s going insane; he’s hard in his pyjama bottoms, and his entire body is thrumming with how much he wants to touch Kenma, but he doesn’t know how to go about it. He doesn’t know what to do . And what if he’s bad at it? He has never done this before. He feels in awe of the fact that Kenma puts up with him at all on most days, Kenma, who is so overwhelmingly smart, impossibly quick-witted, and snappishly closed-off to most people, who shares his time with so few, his personal space with even less; Kenma, who has a family who loves him, a grandmother who knits pullovers for him and wants to see him settle down with a partner; Kenma, who is so unbelievably pretty that Tetsurou still doesn’t know how to even look at him on some days.

He buries his face in Kenma’s hair, overcome, just letting it rest there.

“Are you even watching, Kuro?” Kenma asks disapprovingly, his small hand petting Tetsurou’s thigh through the soft fabric of his red pyjama bottoms, and Tetsurou is going to combust.

He makes a vague noise into Kenma’s hair, breathes him in deeply. Kenma smells like coffee and the vanilla-scented shampoo he likes to steal from Tetsurou, and Tetsurou has never wanted anyone this badly in his life. He feels like a teenager again, sixteen and out of his mind, only worse; he never wanted anyone this much when he was sixteen.

“You’re so useless,” Kenma says, his hand stroking little circles that make Tetsurou’s cock throb, and then he turns around in Tetsurou’s arms, making Tetsurou lift his face out of his hair.

Kenma just looks at him; the light from the TV is painting his face yellow-pink, then blue. His eyes are big and beautiful and golden.

Tetsurou feels overwhelmed under his gaze, his body almost trembling.

“Useless,” Kenma repeats again, and then he leans in and kisses him.

Tetsurou’s hands settle more firmly on Kenma’s waist almost reflexively; he kisses back eagerly, soft and yielding under Kenma’s touch, opens his mouth for him, making an embarrassing noise at the back of his throat.

He’s had weeks of this, of kissing Kenma, of Kenma’s hands in his hair, of Kenma’s mouth on his, and still it makes him tremble, his skin on fire everywhere Kenma touches him. Kenma kisses at the edge of his jaw, sucks at it, and Tetsurou whimpers.

“You need to learn to ask for what you want, Tetsurou,” Kenma says, and the still so rarely used first name alone almost undoes him; and then Kenma presses his hand against Tetsurou’s aching cock, and he gasps, overwhelmed.

“Kenma,” he half-begs, everything in him wanting, wanting.

Kenma slips his hand into his pants and closes it around Tetsurou’s cock, and he’d feel embarrassed at how wet he is, leaking precum, but all he can think about is Kenma’s hand on his cock, Kenma’s weight on top of him, and all he can do is grasp at Kenma’s hips and hang on for dear life as Kenma rubs his hard cock.

It’s so much, it’s so good; he’s keening, can’t stop himself from making sounds, knows he won’t last long. Kenma is slightly shifting his hips on top of Tetsurou.

“Yeah, that’s it,” he’s saying, soft but firm, and Tetsurou clings to him as he comes, wetly panting.

He must have closed his eyes at some point during his orgasm, although he can’t remember when; when he opens them again, it’s to the sight of Kenma, looking smug and pleased and impossibly hot, hair open, lips red from kissing, very clearly tenting his own pyjama bottoms.

“Kenma, can I –” Tetsurou asks, stroking at his hip.

“You’d better,” Kenma says.

His cock is silky soft to the touch when Tetsurou takes it out, a bit on the smaller side and slightly curved to the left, and Tetsurou gets rolled over with another wave of want so acute it’s disorienting.

He wants to sink to his knees for Kenma, get his mouth on his cock, so badly; but he already has Kenma in his hand, and the idea of letting go of him now feels impossible. He strokes him, slowly, presses his thumb to the slit, the way he likes it on himself in the rare instances when he takes the time to get off; Kenma hisses a little and pushes harder into his touch, and if Tetsurou were actually sixteen instead of twenty-nine, this is where he’d be getting hard again.

He jacks Kenma off slowly, can’t choose one place to look at; he wants to look at Kenma’s beautiful face, cheeks red and mouth opened in a little o, but he also wants to look at Kenma’s pretty little cock, the weight of it utterly perfect in his hand.

When Kenma comes, he kisses him; he has to, needs to taste his mouth again, feel it slack with pleasure under his own.

Kenma sighs contentedly after, rests his forehead against Tetsurou’s. They’re both sticky with cum, but Tetsurou doesn’t mind.

He wants to say something stupid, like is it always this good? but doesn’t.

Kenma doesn’t leave them to bask in the afterglow for long, anyway; just a few short moments later, he wrinkles his nose.

“Ew, I hate being cum-sticky,” he says, annoyance clear in his voice. “Let’s go shower, Kuro.”

Tetsurou can’t help it, he laughs. 

“You’re so picky, Kenken.”

“Don’t call me that. And anyway, you’re the idiot who fell for me, you’re not allowed to complain.”

“Yeah,” Tetsurou says, and can’t help the way his voice goes soft and wondering, “I am.”

“Horrible sap,” Kenma murmurs. 

“Your horrible sap,” Tetsurou points out, heart fluttering happily.

“Too bad I didn’t get a return address,” Kenma says, and gets up. Halfway out of the room, he stops and looks over his back. 

“Well, are you coming?”

Tetsurou, still sitting, is struck again with how much this man means to him.

“I am,” he says, and he couldn’t get the tenderness out of his voice if he tried. Kenma’s eyes, before he turns away, are terribly tender too.

- -

Tetsurou makes his way to an unassuming apartment complex late on a Monday evening.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Kenma asks again, for what must be the tenth time in a row. 

“Yeah,” Tetsurou says. He shouldn’t, of course; it’s foolish at best, laying out a trace to his own front door for anyone who bothers to follow the hints, put everything together just right. But he wants to. 

This is why he shouldn’t get attached to people, he knows this; his utter willingness to take care of those he cares for, even if his care comes on the heel of violence.

It’s not hard to get into the building, easier still to make his way towards and into the flat he’s looking for. 

“Just for the record,” Kenma says over the ear piece, “I think this is a horrible idea.”

Noted, Tetsurou doesn’t say, because he can’t afford to speak, not yet. And anyway, it’s not like he doesn’t agree with Kenma.

Terushima is in his office, staring at his tablet, hair falling into his face, suit rumpled and tie askew. He doesn’t look up immediately, only when Tetsurou is already right behind him: his face flushing with surprise and terror when he turns around. 

Tetsurou’s katana is faster than his screams.

Terushima’s head falls to the side as his body crumbles, a now unconnected piece of a former person.

“The hallway is empty,” Kenma informs him.

“I still think it’s creepy how well you can read the scene from my breathing,” Tetsurou says, shooting one more look at what was a breathing person terrorising his favourite bakery just moments ago.

“It’s very prominent breathing. Hurry up, Kuro.”

“Alright, alright, I’m moving.”

- -

They meet on the side of a patch of land that used to be a rice farm but now only belongs to nature; Tetsurou softly takes Kenma, already waiting for him, into his arms.

“You don’t have to worry that much about me, kitten,” he says, “you really don’t,” as he feels the tension slowly bleed out of Kenma.

“I don’t worry, shut up,” Kenma says, but he holds on just that little bit tighter.

“You know, I really do love you,” Tetsurou says, terrified and happy and alive.

“What has that to do with anything,” Kenma complains, but he tugs Tetsurou down and kisses him with a fervour that can only mean one thing. It’s enough.