Aki Hayakawa brings you home in his Public Safety uniform. That's the first problem.

You're already nervous. You'd be nervous even if he looked like any other guy. You've just been transferred into a division where the casualty rate for newbies is treated less like a tragedy and more like a weather forecast, after signing a contract with a devil that almost bit your tongue off during negotiations. You were told, very calmly by Makima with that creepy smile of hers, that your new living arrangement is "for monitoring purposes" and that Hayakawa will be responsible for reporting any irregularities.

As if you're a machine that leaks oil, not being assigned a live-in babysitter with a sword.

Then Aki shows up outside the briefing room in a dark suit, white shirt, earrings catching the nasty office light. An expression on his face like he's already decided you're going to piss him off.

Fantastic.

You look at him once and immediately wish your thoughts had a shut-off switch.

Makima keeps smiling when she says, "Please take care of her."

Aki glances over, and you stand a little straighter, because apparently that's what your body does when a hot man looks disappointed in you.

"Yes, ma'am," he says.

That's basically the whole conversation. He's not pleased, though. You can tell. He goes still in a way that makes it obvious he's irritated, just not willing to waste energy showing it.

He barely speaks to you on the way to his apartment. Rain taps against the umbrella he's holding over both of you, even though he never offered and you never asked. You walk half a step behind him because he's got longer legs and because his suit jacket does absolutely nothing to hide the width of his shoulders. How exactly are you supposed to live in the same place as someone who looks like that?

By the time you reach his street, the rain's settled into that steady, miserable kind that makes every shop sign bleed into the pavement. The apartment block ahead looks exactly like the sort of place Public Safety would dump people it expected to die young: narrow balconies, outside corridors, bikes chained under the stairs, vending machines humming by the entrance.

Aki doesn't point it out, but you know it's his before he turns toward it.

"You'll follow the rules," he says.

You look up too quickly. "I know."

"This isn't a social visit."

"Yeah, I got that from the sword."

He steps around a puddle without breaking pace, leaving you to hurry after him. "You don't leave without telling me where you're going. No bringing strangers back. No smoking inside. If something feels off with your devil, you tell me. Don't wait until it becomes a problem."

He lists it all while walking, as if he's done this many times before and hated it every time.

"And for fuck's sake, don't summon it inside my apartment."

"You smoke?"

"On the balcony."

You glance up at the rows of narrow concrete platforms stacked above you, each one half-sheltered and damp at the edges. "Right. Anything else?"

"Just…" He pauses, like this one's somehow worse than the devil thing. "Please clean up after yourself."

You look at him. "That sounded personal."

"Yeah. You're not the first hunter Public Safety's dumped on me."

When you both reach the entrance, Aki folds the umbrella with two sharp shakes, and you make your way up to his apartment in a rickety elevator ride that feels about three hours longer than it is.

His apartment is cleaner than you expected, though definitely not fancy or warm in the way normal people's homes are warm. There are no useless decorations or soft little personal things scattered around—everything is in its place. The sink is empty. The zataku in the living room has been wiped. The whole place smells faintly like detergent, tobacco, and whatever he cooked before coming to work that morning. There's a small fan on the floor, a first-aid kit on top of a chest of drawers, and piles of books stacked so neatly it feels vaguely threatening.

Aki points out your room, the bathroom and where he keeps spare towels, bedding and cleaning products. He does it all in the same flat voice, like he's just listing equipment before a mission.

You stand in the doorway of the bedroom that is now apparently yours and try not to stare at him again.

He has rain on his lashes. Public Safety should warn people about this shit.

"Unpack. Training starts at six," he says.

"In the morning?"

"Yes," he replies, as though there's no other possible answer.

"That's evil."

"Devils are evil."

"I don't think devils invented waking up before sunrise."

"You'll manage."

He turns away before you can think of anything clever to reply, and you watch him go down the hallway, sword case shifting against his back.

Your contract stirs under your skin, restless and amused. It likes him. Or hates him. With your devil, those feelings are basically cousins.

Hungry? It whispers.

You press a hand to your chest.

"Shut up," you whisper back.

Aki pauses near the kitchen.

He looks over his shoulder. "What was that?"

"Nothing."

He notices your hand against your chest. Of course. That is the entire point of you being here after all.

"Report it if it speaks again."

Then he disappears into the kitchen, and you shut your bedroom door before your devil can start mistaking attraction for hunting instinct again.

**********

The first week is mostly rules—Aki is strict at work. And even worse at home, because at home you can't escape it.

He wakes up too early and moves around the apartment as though he pays his rent with discipline rather than money. He has a whole system: coffee first, balcony doors open, cigarette, shower, breakfast. By the time you drag yourself into the hallway, he's already in a pressed suit with his tie done and his hair up, looking mildly offended that you weren't ready fifteen minutes earlier. The only proof he's human is the faint, dark circles beneath his eyes that he can't quite hide, even after coffee.

By the second week, though, you start noticing the rest.

As the routine becomes easier, you start catching him in the morning before he ties up his hair, making coffee in a faded long-sleeve shirt and sweats. He coughs a little after his first cigarette. Washes rice with methodical hands. Shifts vegetables into neat little piles. He calls your convenience-store dinners disgusting and then starts cooking enough for two without asking.

He's a great cook too, which becomes a problem. At first, you refuse because living under his roof already feels like owing him something.

He glances over his shoulder from the kitchen.

"You need to eat properly. Keep your strength up."

"I can feed myself," you say.

"Pudding cups and instant noodles aren't food."

So you eat what he gives you. Grilled fish. Rice. Miso soup. Vegetables that taste better than they ever have before. You make a whole thing out of not reacting too much, but he notices when you finish everything. And, the next night, the same amount is waiting for you.

He's still mean, technically. That's the thing with Aki. He doesn't say nice stuff if he can avoid it. He just does things and pretends they don't mean anything.

But whenever you come home bleeding, he cleans the cuts himself. When your hands shake too much after a rough mission, he puts a cup of tea in front of you and says nothing.

When your devil wakes you at three in the morning, whispering through your bones until you are sweating into your sheets, Aki knocks and opens the door with a knife already in his hand.

You're sitting on the floor with your back against the bed, palms pressed to your ears as if that will help.

He takes one look at you, then crouches in front of you.

"Name three things in the room."

"I'm not a kid."

"Just do it."

You hate him for the fact that it works.

"Wardrobe," you mutter. "Lamp. Your ugly slippers."

His eyes narrow.

"These are house slippers."

He says it with enough offence that you almost laugh.

And then he stays.

He stays until the pressure under your skin fades. He doesn't touch you. He doesn't soften his voice. He just sits on your floor in old clothes with his hair down, knife resting loose in one hand, and waits out the devil with you.

That's when the crush stops being a crush and becomes something far more concerning.

You try to act normal. You're terrible at it.

By week three, you know too much about him.

You know he likes the kitchen cleaned before bed. You know he smokes more after reports with high casualty numbers. You know he checks the lock twice at night. You know he gets annoyed when you leave crumbs on the counter, but he still makes you breakfast anyway.

You know his hair is longer than it looks when it's tied up. That he has a small mole low on the left side of his neck, almost hidden by the collar of his shirt. That his shower gel smells like lemon and cedarwood, the kind of clean, practical scent that shouldn't be distracting and absolutely is.

You know his forearms are ruining your ability to function. (That last one's his fault. Nobody told him to wash dishes like that.)

Tonight, you're at the zataku, eating dinner while rain specks against the balcony glass.

He is in a loose dark shirt with the sleeves shoved up, grey trousers low on his hips, hair tied back badly as if he did it without a mirror—a few strands have slipped free around his face. He looks tired. He looks good. He looks like you should get up and leave the room for your own safety.

Instead, you stare at his hand when he reaches for the soy sauce.

Bad idea: his sleeve shifts, his forearm moves. Your brain immediately starts acting like it's never seen a man before.

"You're quiet tonight," he says.

"You complain when I talk," you murmur, focusing hard on your rice now.

"I complain when you say stupid things."

You huff a laugh. "Yeah, well... unfortunately for you, that's most of my personality."

"Yeah, it is."

You kick him under the table before you can stop yourself.

Aki pauses with his chopsticks halfway to his mouth and looks at you.

You wait for the lecture.

Instead, he takes another bite of fish. "Childish."

Your face heats because that shouldn't do anything for you. But it does. Lately, every blunt little comment from him seems to take the shortest possible route straight between your legs.

After dinner, you help wash up. He dries. Steam rises from the hot water and dampens the little hairs at your temple. He reaches across you to put a bowl on the rack, and his shirt pulls tight against his stomach. Your shoulders nearly touch. Now and then, your fingers brush as you both go for the drying rack.

It's boring. It's painfully domestic. It's making you insane.

Hungry? Your devil asks again, smug as hell.

You almost drop a plate but Aki's hand closes around it before it slips.

"I'm going to bed," you say quickly, retreating to your room.

"You're never tired this early," he says, confusion in his voice.

"Congratulations, you've witnessed personal growth!"

Then you slam your bedroom door before your face gives you away.

The apartment doesn't go quiet. That's the issue. You can still hear him in the kitchen—water running, cupboards opening and closing, his footsteps, the balcony door sliding open. He's smoking. You know exactly how he'll be standing: one arm folded, cigarette in the other hand, head tilted slightly as he looks out at nothing.

You collapse on your bed and press your palms over your eyes.

This is so stupid.

Aki is your supervisor. Your housemate. The guy who has to report if your contract devil starts acting weird. The guy who told you this morning that your footwork looked like "panic with shoes on."

And still.

You think about his forearms half in the soapy water, his mouth when he says your name in that irritated way, his fingers around a cigarette, the hard lines of his body under clothes he wears around the house because he isn't thinking about what he looks like.

Your hand slips under the waistband of your underwear.

"Fuck," you breathe.

Too loud. Maybe. You stop, listening.

Nothing from outside your room except the distant rush of rain and the low hum of the fridge.

You continue because you're weak and alive and twenty-something and sharing an apartment with Aki Hayakawa, which should count as an unsafe working condition.

You're wet embarrassingly fast. You try to keep quiet at first, biting the inside of your cheek, fingers moving under your underwear. It's not enough. Your brain keeps handing you more of him. Aki looking down at you. Aki telling you to behave. Aki's hand in your hair. Aki hearing you right now and finally doing something about it.

Your hips jerk.

"Aki," you whisper.

Then again, louder.

Your own voice embarrasses you so badly you cover your mouth, but that does not help the bed, or the slick sound between your legs, or the way his name keeps wanting out. There's no way the room's silent enough to hide everything, not if he's still awake, not if he's anywhere near the hall. That thought should stop you.

It really, really doesn't. It makes you come.

Harder than you expect, thighs shaking, and afterwards you lie there horrified, hot all over, listening for proof that your life is over.

The balcony door slides shut.

Footsteps pass your door.

Pause.

Your soul leaves your body.

Then Aki keeps walking.

You pull the blanket over your face and silently beg for a devil to eat the entire building.

**********

The next morning, the embarrassment hits before you're fully awake.

It's Saturday. Your first rare day off since moving in, and his too, which means you were supposed to spend the day sharing the apartment with him like a normal person. Maybe grabbing a takeaway so he doesn't have to cook for once. Maybe sitting across from him at the low table and watching something trash on his crappy little television, which you're pretty sure you've never seen turned on.

Instead, naturally, you picked last night to masturbate over him loudly enough that he might've heard you through the wall. Excellent timing.

You stay in bed longer than you need to, listening, trying to decide whether it's better to pretend nothing happened or fake your own death before breakfast.

Eventually, you force yourself up and head into the hallway, already cringing hard enough to make your shoulders ache.

"Aki?"

The apartment gives you nothing back.

You check the kitchen—empty. His cup has been washed and left upside down by the sink. The balcony door is locked shut, and his shoes are gone from the entrance.

Your phone buzzes on your bed. When you go back to check it, you find a message from him sent twenty minutes earlier.

Hayakawa:Gone grocery shopping. Back later.

You stare at the message for longer than you need to, thumb hovering uselessly over the screen. Grocery shopping? On the one day you're both supposed to be off, at an hour when the shops are barely worth escaping to. The heat crawling up your neck tells you what you already know: he heard.

*********

Later turns into hours.

You spend the whole day flipping between wanting to die, wanting to laugh, and wanting to throw yourself at him the second he comes back. Because he heard. He definitely heard. You know he heard. The man notices when a spoon's in the wrong drawer. There's no way he missed you moaning his name through a thin apartment wall. Then you get angry because if he did, he should just say that. Then you get even more embarrassed because what the hell would that conversation even be?

Hello, yes, sorry for masturbating loud enough for my supervising officer to hear. Won't happen again (unless you're into it).

You clean because sitting still feels dangerous.

You wipe the counters, fold every item of laundry in the basket, then panic halfway through because some of it is his. You find yourself holding one a bit too long like a total creep, then catch yourself and shove it onto the folded pile like it's likely to bite you.

"Shit, I'm too far gone," you mutter. Your devil laughs beneath your skin.

You make rice. Badly. It goes a little sticky, but edible. You chop vegetables because you have seen him do it enough times now, and you only nearly cut your finger off twice.

By evening, the apartment's tidy, and you're one awkward conversation away from phasing into the walls.

Aki gets back after dark with shopping bags in both hands and rain on his coat.

By then, you're at the zataku, trying to be casual by pretending to read a Public Safety file while your entire body is trying to crawl out of your skin.

He steps inside, takes off his shoes, and then sees everything: the cleaned kitchen, the folded laundry, the food on the stove. And you.

"You cleaned," he says.

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Because I live here too."

"Uh-huh."

Aki doesn't look at you. He takes off his coat, hangs it by the door, then carries the bags into the kitchen. You, on the other hand, want to be consumed from the inside out by your contract devil. It would probably be less painful than this.

"You were gone ages," you say, drifting over to the counter like you haven't spent the whole day rehearsing how not to sound weird.

It comes out casual. A little too casual. The kind of casual that makes everything you're trying to hide painfully obvious.

Aki sets the shopping on the counter and starts unpacking it like every item has an assigned place, and the whole place will collapse if he gets it wrong. Spring onions first. Tofu. Fish wrapped in paper. A bag of rice with a brand that you recognise from the shop, literally two minutes down the street.

"The shops were busy," he says.

You lean against the edge of the counter. "For eight hours?"

He puts the spring onions in the fridge with intense focus. "I had errands."

"What errands?"

"Household ones."

You stare at the back of his head. "Okaaaay—and I couldn't have helped?"

"I'm done talking about it."

Yep. He heard.

Your face goes hot so fast you nearly get dizzy. The silence after that is awful.

You need a different subject. Immediately. Your gaze darts over the kitchen, uselessly, until it lands on the little beer bottles lined up along the bottom shelf of the fridge.

You point at them before you can overthink it.

"Shit—do you want a beer?"

Aki follows your finger to the bottom shelf of the fridge. For a second, he doesn't answer. He just stands there with one hand still on the door and the other holding a packet of tofu, as though the question has just made unpacking groceries deeply more complicated.

"That's a bad idea," he mutters.

"Probably."

He puts the tofu away and then shuts the fridge with more force than necessary.

"You have training on Monday."

"And... right now it's Saturday?" you reply.

He turns back to the shopping bags, still not looking at you, and pulls out a bottle of soy sauce he definitely didn't need to buy. There's already one by the stove. You both know that. Neither of you mentions it.

"You can't control yourself."

There it is again; not about beer. Not really.

And this time, it pisses you off a little. Not because he's wrong, exactly—last night isn't giving you a lot of room to argue. But he's standing there in his tidy apartment, putting spring onions away, acting like he's never done anything stupid in his life.

You've heard about him at the welcome drinks: knocking back beer like it's part of the job, getting too serious, then too drunk, while Makima sits there smiling, watching her useful little experiment.

You lean back against the counter, arms folded loosely, trying to look less affected than you feel.

"Well—neither can you! I've heard the stories."

Aki doesn't answer right away. He folds the receipt once, then again, making the crease too sharp for something he's going to throw away.

"One beer," he says eventually.

Then he exhales through his nose, opens the fridge and takes two beers from the bottom shelf, looking about as pleased as he would if he'd found a devil in there.

**********

One beer becomes four.

Not in any wild way. You eat first because he tells you to, and you have to pretend not to like he orders you around like that. Your cooking is nowhere near as good as his, but he finishes it anyway.

He even tells you "it's alright," which from Aki is basically applause.

Then you sit across from each other with beer bottles sweating on the table and the rain making the apartment feel smaller than usual.

The beer helps because it gives your hands something to do. It helps him too, though he would deny it under oath. His shoulders lower a little. He leans back onto one palm, beer in his other hand, his legs stretched out under the edge of the zataku. Most importantly, his eyes don't move away from you as quickly now.

His hair is down, a little stringy at the ends from the rain, and he has changed into a loose pale shirt and grey sweatpants (actual grey sweatpants!?) that you are trying very hard not to look at.

You fail several times.

Aki catches you around the fifth. He finishes the last of his beer, throat shifting as he swallows, then sets the bottle down with a quiet click. "Stop staring at me. It's creeping me out."

"You stare at me all the time!"

"I'm monitoring you. It's my job."

"Right." The beer has made you braver or stupider. Hard to tell. "Is that what we're calling it?"

His eyes narrow, but there is colour at the top of his cheekbones. The beer has done that too, and the idea makes you reckless. You lean back from the zataku, trying not to smile.

"We've had enough," he says, suddenly, standing to grab his cigarettes.

You scoff dramatically.

"Come on, Aki, we've had a couple of beers!"

"Then you handle your booze even worse than I do." A pause. Then: "You're trying to start something you'll regret."

It annoys you. Mostly because part of you is scared he's right. Not about wanting him; that's not the regret. The regret would be wanting him and finding out he only sees you as a problem with tits.

He slides open the balcony doors before you can respond and disappears out onto the balcony. Classic Aki: retreat to smoke, avoid all human consequences.

"Don't follow me," he calls behind him.

So, obviously, you wait all of thirty seconds before following him.

The balcony's cold and narrow, damp air, wet concrete smell. The street below is all car spray and convenience store lights and people hurrying with umbrellas. Aki stands under the small overhang, cigarette already between his lips, shoulders hunched slightly against the chill.

"You never listen," he says without turning.

"You're only just learning this?"

You stand beside him. The rain does not quite reach you under the overhang, but the air is cold enough to raise goosebumps along your arms. His gaze drops, then moves away.

"You're going to catch a cold."

"That's such an old man thing to say. Besides, I have my beer jacket on."

Bad idea number whatever: taking the cigarette straight from his mouth.

That gets his attention. Aki turns his head, eyes fixed on you as you put it between your lips and inhale like you've done this a hundred times, which lasts about half a second before the smoke hits wrong. It tastes awful. Hot, bitter, too much like him for that to be fair. But somehow, by the grace of every devil in Tokyo, you don't cough.

He snatches it back. "You don't even smoke."

"I could start."

"No."

"You're so bossy."

"You're so drunk."

"I'm really not." You lean against the balcony railing, feeling far too pleased with yourself for someone whose throat is still burning from one drag. "I'm not a lightweight like you, Hayakawa."

He looks away, cigarette back between his lips, and you catch the almost-smile before he can get rid of it. Tiny. Annoying. Devastating.

The beer warms your face while the cold sharpens everything else. Okay, you're not sober-sober. But you're not gone either, not even close. You know where you are. You know who he is. You know exactly what you want, and that's part of the problem.

"You were avoiding me today," you say.

Aki's jaw tightens. He flicks ash into the little tray balanced on the balcony railing. "I had things to do."

You should stop. You know that. But there is a version of you still in your room last night, hand over your mouth, his name slipping through anyway. There is a version of him outside your door, pausing. There is the whole day he spent anywhere but here because neither of you could stand the apartment with that sound still in the walls.

"Because you heard me."

Aki goes still. The cigarette burns between his fingers.

Your stomach drops, then twists hot.

"Oh my god," you say, half laughing because you might cry otherwise. "You did!"

"Go inside."

"No."

"That wasn't a request." His eyes cut to you. "I'm not having this conversation right now."

The tone should sober you. It does, partly. But it also sends a bright line of heat through you because you are apparently built wrong.

You step closer, and he doesn't move away. Instead, his gaze drops to your mouth so quickly that anyone else would miss it.

"Everyone knows you're obsessed with Makima," you say.

Aki turns back toward the street.

"You don't know what you're talking about," he says, quieter than he needs to.

You watch him inhale, then watch the smoke curl from his lips, soft and pale against the wet dark of the balcony.

"I know she tells you where to stand and you act like it's where you wanted to be anyway."

Aki's jaw clenches. "That's enough."

There's that voice again. The one he uses in training. The one that means stop talking, fix your stance, don't make me repeat myself.

It should work. It does, most of the time. Just not tonight.

You are jealous. You are embarrassed. You are so full of him you can hardly stand upright with it. All those weeks of being fed and scolded and patched up and watched. All those mornings seeing him half-awake at the kettle. All those evenings with his cigarette smoke at the window and his hands doing ordinary things, like he could keep a normal life running if nobody looked too closely at how hard he was trying.

"She gets this perfect version of you," you continue. "The suit. The yes, ma'am. The bleeding on command. Whatever she wants."

Aki says nothing.

You didn't plan to sound this upset. You planned to be sexy. Annoying. A tiny bit mean. You had this whole stupid idea of showing off, pulling your top low, making him look at you instead of her. But now you're here, cold and turned on and humiliated from last night, and the joke isn't landing right because none of this feels like a joke anymore.

"She doesn't see you," you say. "Not properly."

He's still staring down at the street. The cigarette has burned low between his fingers, ash bending at the end, but he doesn't seem to notice. You hate how calm he looks, and how much you want to get under it.

"I see you making breakfast for me even when I'm too stubborn to say thank you," you say. "I see you checking the door twice before bed. I see you pretending you don't care when you care so much it's actually kind of annoying."

"Just stop." He turns his face sharply towards you, and his eyes aren't angry in the way you expected. They're tired—almost empty, which somehow feels so much worse. "You're saying things you don't understand."

Your throat feels tight, but you keep going because if you stop now, you will lose your nerve.

"And yeah, I'm younger than you, and I'm a mess, and my contract probably wants to chew through half the office." You swallow. "But I'm here. I'm looking at you. Not your job. Not your contracts. You."

Aki turns fully toward you.

You're close enough now to see the rain caught on his lashes again, just like that first night he brought you here under the umbrella. Back then, he was all suit and sword and clipped orders. Now his hair is loose around his face, cigarette burning low between his fingers, and his breathing isn't as even as he's trying to make it.

You reach for him.

His hand catches your wrist before you get anywhere close. Of course, Aki has a habit of stopping things before they become a problem. Except his thumb stays there a second too long, and suddenly he looks like he might be one too.

Your eyes meet.

"Don't say things like that just because you're drunk and pissed off," he says.

It breaks your heart a little.

You step closer until your toes nearly touch his.

"I meant them yesterday too."

His grip on your wrist loosens very slightly.

"I meant them before the beer," you add. "I'll mean them on Monday when you're being a dick about training."

Aki's eyes close briefly, as though you've just made his life very difficult and he needs one second where he isn't looking at you.

Then he drops the cigarette into the tray, pulls you in by the wrist, and kisses you.

It's not smooth. Not at first. His mouth meets yours with too much restraint still in it, like he's trying to kiss you and hold himself back at the same time. Then you make a sound against his mouth, and his hand slides to the back of your neck.

That's when it goes bad.

Bad as in your knees nearly give out.

Bad as in his mouth opens against yours and his tongue slips into your mouth, and suddenly he tastes like beer and smoke and the person you've been thinking about every night for weeks—real in a way your fantasies never managed.

You grab his shirt.

Aki breaks away first, breathing harder than before, eyes lowered to your mouth.

"You're not going to blame this on the beer tomorrow?"

"The beer gave me the confidence. Not the idea."

His brows draw together. "That's not reassuring."

"Then kiss me again and stop making me fill out a safety form."

His mouth gives the smallest twitch. He looks into your eyes again, really looks, and whatever he sees must be enough.

So he kisses you again.

The second kiss has less argument in it. His hand grips your waist. Yours slides over his chest, then lower, over the hard line of his stomach under that stupid pale shirt. You feel him tense, feel him decide not to stop you. That alone sends heat down your spine.

You touch the front of his sweatpants.

Aki inhales sharply through his nose.

He's hard.

Not a little. Not maybe. Hard enough that your brain goes bright and empty for half a second before every filthy thought you had last night comes back with a vengeance.

You look up at him.

His jaw is set, but his face is flushed pink now, which is probably the alcohol, but the look in his eyes isn't. It's dark and hungry and intense in a way he's obviously embarrassed by—only Aki could be standing there with his cock straining against your hand and still look like he's deciding what the correct procedure is.

"You heard me last night..." you whisper.

"Yeah..."

"You thought about it."

His hand tightens at your waist. Aki looks at you for a long second, then takes your hand and presses it harder against him. You feel him twitch beneath your palm.

The answer goes straight through you.

You sink to your knees before he can tell you not to.

"Here?" he says, his voice lowered.

"You want me to stop?"

He looks over the railing, then back at you. The rain's thick enough to blur most of the street. The city is too wet and tired to care. Still, this is reckless. It's exactly the kind of thing he would usually scold you for.

His hand comes to your cheek.

"No, don't stop," he says.

Your hands shake a little as you pull at his waistband. Not from nerves anymore. From the unreal fact of him letting you. Aki Hayakawa, who corrects your form and counts cigarettes like sins and pretends his whole body is a locked door, is standing over you on his balcony, rock hard only inches in front of your face. He sees you trembling and helps, jaw tight, one hand braced on the rail.

Then you free his cock and nearly lose your mind.

He's pretty everywhere, apparently; long, flushed, already leaking at the tip. Your mouth waters so fast it embarrasses you. You wrap your hand around him and hear his breath catch above you.

"Fuck," he growls.

That word from him almost makes you moan.

You lick him first, just the head, tasting the salt-bitterness of pre-cum and warm skin. His hand grips tighter on the rail, and you see his knuckles go pale. So you do it again, because you want him like this—you want proof that he can be shaken, to give him something he can't organise or clean or file away under work. You want the sound of your mouth on him to be something he can't pretend he didn't hear.

Then you take him into your mouth. Aki makes a sound you know he meant to swallow.

It comes out broken off and low, and you feel it all the way between your thighs. So you take more of him, lips stretching around his girth, hand working at the base where he doesn't quite fit.

You look up.

Bad idea. Amazing idea.

The balcony tile is cold under your knees. Rain hits the roof. None of that matters because Aki's above you, head tilted back slightly, throat exposed, hair falling loose around his face. His shirt hangs off one shoulder from where you grabbed it. He looks nothing like the clean senior officer who brought you here under orders. He looks young. Tired. Turned on enough to hate both of you a little.

Aki's other hand comes to your head and settles in your hair.

You hollow your cheeks and keep your eyes on him while you take him deeper.

His hips jerk at the sensation.

"Don't," he says through his teeth, then immediately looks down. "I mean—don't push yourself."

You pull off just enough to speak, hand still moving slickly over him. "Are you seriously supervising my blowjob?"

You grin and ignore him, because obviously the correct response is to slide him down your throat until his careful little warning falls apart above you.

The groan that comes from above you tells you he's lost the argument.

You get messier after that because you want to. Because last night you were alone with your hand between your legs, terrified he might hear, and now he is hearing everything on purpose: the wet slide of your mouth, your soft gag when you take him too far, the way you hum around him when his fingers tighten in your hair.

It goes on long enough that your jaw starts to ache and your knees complain against the cold tile, but you don't care. You keep working him with your mouth and hand, pulling off just enough to breathe before taking him back in. Each time you pull back, he's slicker, heavier and throbbing against tongue, the head of his cock catching your lower lip before you take him in again. You're drunk on the way his control keeps slipping by tiny, humiliating degrees, and the longer you stay there, the worse he gets at hiding it.

It makes your cunt ache so badly that you have to press your thighs together for friction.

He sees.

Aki pulls you off him with more restraint than mercy.

You gasp, lips wet, fingers still wrapped around him.

He looks down at you, his chest rising and falling hard.

"Inside," he says.

Your stomach flips.

He tucks himself away badly, just enough, then hauls you up by your arms. You barely find your feet before he is kissing you again, walking you back through the balcony door. You laugh against his mouth because it's absurd, because you're dizzy with it, because Aki nearly trips on the door track and glares at it as if the building has personally betrayed him.

"Shut up," he mutters.

"I didn't say anything."

"You were going to."

"I was gonna say... you're very graceful."

He gives you a look that should kill you, but you're thriving.

Then he picks you up.

Not in some perfect romantic sweep. More in an irritated, practical, I've run out of patience with your legs and decided to solve the issue kind of way. Your arms go around his shoulders, your legs around his waist, and the feel of him hard between your thighs wipes the joke clean out of your head.

"Aki—"

"Quiet."

You grin into his neck—you can't help it. You're excited. Giddy, even. It's stupid, but you've wanted him for weeks, and now he's carrying you down the hall like he's done pretending this hasn't been happening.

He carries you past your room, to his.

You've never been inside before. That fact hits you when he sets you on the bed.

It's exactly what you'd expect and somehow still too much. Clean sheets. A spare uniform jacket hung on the back of the chair. Laundry basket tucked away. Nothing excessive. Nothing careless. His whole room feels like he lets himself need as little as possible, and maybe that's why sitting on his bed with your mouth still glossy and swollen feels even more obscene than the balcony.

Aki watches as you take it all in.

"You can still leave—if you want," he says.

You look back at him.

His sweatpants are sitting wrong. He's tense and hard and still, somehow, trying to be decent about it. Still giving you an exit when he looks like he's one breath away from losing the last of his control. It's so him that you want to kiss him for that alone.

It makes you ache.

"I don't want to leave."

He drops to his knees in front of you.

Your brain goes blank.

"Aki..."

He reaches for your waistband. "Lift your hips."

You do it so fast you'd be embarrassed if you had any dignity left.

He pulls your shorts and underwear down together, over your thighs, your knees, your ankles, then drops them on the floor. Cold air hits the wet between your thighs, and you realise, with a fresh wave of humiliation, that he can see exactly how gone you are for him.

His eyes drop.

The small silence after that is packed with every hour he spent avoiding you today.

You start to close your thighs, but Aki catches your knee.

"Don't."

One word. Quiet. Direct. Horrible for your self-respect.

You let him open your legs and lean in.

The first touch of his mouth makes your whole body jump.

He starts careful, which is insane because there's nothing careful about the way you react. His tongue moves over your clit with firm and wet pressure, then dips lower to taste you properly. You grab the sheets. Then his hair. He makes a low sound against you when your fingers slide into it, and that nearly finishes you on the spot.

Your hips jerk before you can stop them. He puts an arm across your stomach and holds you down with insulting ease.

"Oh my god," you gasp. "Aki—"

He looks up at you from between your thighs.

His mouth is wet. His hair's fallen forward, brushing your inner thigh. He looks focused, serious, devastatingly calm, as if he's taking in every twitch and sound and filing it away.

"You're loud," he says.

You make a strangled noise. "You knew that already."

His gaze sharpens.

Then he lowers his mouth again.

Bastard.

He uses it against you; every time you try to bite back a sound, every time your thighs try to close around his head, he does something worse. His arm stays over your hips to keep you where he wants you the entire time, and the fact that he can hold you there so easily makes you even wetter.

He's far too good at it, because he's Aki: the kind of person who learns fast and refuses to half-arse anything that requires a little patience, even apparently eating pussy. He pays attention to everything, which is unfair. The way your hips twitch when his tongue moves slower. The way your breath catches when he presses harder. The way you say his name, which makes his fingers work a little deeper, as if he heard it and decided to reward you for being so vulnerable.

His tongue stays on your clit while two fingers press inside you. He curls them until your back arches, and you grab the sheet so hard it pulls loose from the mattress. He doesn't rush. That's the worst part. He keeps you there, pinned and shaking, building it up like he's got no interest in letting you escape, even when it gets too much.

Your orgasm starts building too fast, but he keeps it just out of reach until you are furious with him. You hear yourself begging and don't even care what the words are, only that his name is in them.

"Please," you whine. "Please, fuck, stop being good at this and just—"

He lifts his mouth. "Just what?"

You could kill him.

You could kiss him until neither of you remembers how to go to work on Monday.

"Fuck me," you say.

Aki's fingers stop inside you.

"Please, Aki, I need you inside me. Right fucking now."

You are both breathing harder now. He looks at you from the floor, and for a second, the whole thing threatens to become serious in a way neither of you is ready for. Then he withdraws his fingers, stands, and pulls his shirt over his head.

You are not prepared.

You have seen hints of him. Lines under fabric. Forearms. The shape of his body when he stretches in the kitchen. But seeing all of him, bare, in the low bedroom light is different. He is lean, built from work rather than vanity, hard through the stomach and shoulders. Hipbones. Scars that interrupt his skin in small pale marks. A dark line of hair disappears beneath the waistband of his sweatpants, where the fabric sits low enough to show the cut of muscle at his hips. There's a damp mark at the front from where his cock strains against the grey cotton, and that's where your ability to think like a normal person gives up entirely.

He sees you staring, and this time he doesn't tell you to stop.

Maybe he likes it? The thought makes you clench around nothing.

He gets a condom from the drawer, then hesitates.

"I'm on birth control," you say, face hot. "And clean. Public Safety tested me after the contract. Everything."

You catch the tiny inhale before he can hide it, his eyes lifting to yours. "You sure?"

"Yes. Very. I need to feel you."

Aki's mouth presses into a line. He looks almost pained by your answer.

He puts the condom down and pushes his sweatpants off.

Your whole body trembles with anticipation.

He climbs over you, one knee on the bed, then the other, and suddenly he's close: warm, bare skin, dark hair falling around his face, the weight of him above you. You reach up and touch his chest because you can. Because last week you were afraid to brush past him in the hall, and now he is above you with his cock sliding hot against your inner thigh.

His hand comes to your face. Thumb under your chin.

"If your contract devil reacts, you need to tell me."

You blink. Then laugh once, breathless and a little mad. "That's what you're thinking about right now?"

"Yes."

"You're literally about to fuck me."

"I can do both."

The annoying part is he absolutely can.

You pull him down and kiss him, and he lets you for a few seconds. His cock presses against your cunt, slicking through the mess he made with his mouth. When you angle your hips up and the head of him catches at your entrance, your whole body goes tense with wanting. He breaks the kiss and looks down between your bodies as he guides himself slowly into you.

Your attitude dies immediately.

It's a lot. He's a lot. You feel every inch because he makes you feel it. The stretch burns in the best way, and he's watching your face, easing in with his jaw tense and one hand braced beside your head, ready to stop if you so much as flinch wrong. Your nails dig into his back.

"You're tight," he murmurs, pausing and sweeping the hair out of his face. "Are you okay?"

"Fuck—yes—keep going."

His forehead drops near your shoulder, and you feel the small huff of something almost like a laugh against your skin.

Then he pushes the rest of the way in.

You forget the room. You forget devils, Makima, Monday, every rule he gave you at the door, yourself. There is only the stretch of him—hot, deep, filling you so completely that your body needs a second to work out what to do with it—and the harsh little sound he makes when his hips meet yours.

Aki stays still, head dipped beside yours, hair falling against your cheek.

You turn your face into it.

"You feel so good," you whisper.

His hand grips the sheet beside you. You can feel the tension in his arm.

Then he starts moving.

Slow at first. Deep enough to make your eyes flutter shut. His hips roll into yours, controlled and steady, like he's still trying to keep the whole thing neat even while his cock's buried inside you and your legs are wrapped around him.

Each thrust makes the bed shift under you, makes heat climb through your stomach and chest until you are clinging to him because there is nowhere else for your hands to go. Every time your mouth opens, every time your eyes squeeze shut, every time his cock hits the place that makes your thighs tighten around his hips, he adjusts until you are making noises that don't even sound like your voice.

"You like that?" he says.

It comes out rougher than his usual voice. Less polished. More dangerous for your health.

"Yes," you pant.

"Here?"

He does it again.

You gasp. "Yes."

His pace changes. The bed knocks once against the wall, and he immediately puts a hand behind the headboard to stop it.

You would make fun of him if you were capable of anything beyond taking him.

Instead, you pull him down by the back of his neck and moan his name until his rhythm slips and comes back rougher. Messier. His hips snap into yours hard enough that you feel him everywhere: the weight of him over you, the drag of his cock inside you, the heat of his breath. Your thighs tighten around him, keeping him close, and he groans like that's the last thing he needed.

His hips find a rhythm that makes sense of every fantasy you had and then improves on it. Sharp hipbones against your thighs, stomach tight under your hands, hair falling in a curtain around both of your faces until the room narrows to just him.

"Fuck Aki, you're—fuck, you're so hot—so good at this," you breathe.

His hips stutter.

You say it again, because feeling him lose control drags you closer and closer to the edge.

"Aki, you're so fucking incredible."

He kisses you hard, trying to shut you up.

"You started all this," he whispers into your mouth.

"You heard me—fuck!—coming over you and still... put on those grey sweatpants."

His face flushes darker, and he answers the only way he apparently can: by fucking into you harder until whatever you were about to say breaks apart in your mouth. Then his fingers find your clit, and there's nothing left in you clever enough to answer him.

"Talk less," he growls.

He rubs you in tight, firm strokes, still driving into you deep, and your body folds around the pleasure.

The orgasm comes up fast. You feel it coming and panic because it is already bigger than you expected. Meaner than last night. Stronger because it's him, because his mouth is near your ear, because his cock's dragging through you exactly right, because he's watching you come apart and won't look away. Your legs tighten around him. Your hands slide over his back, then into his hair.

"Aki," you whimper, and it sounds too close to last night. "I'm gonna—"

He changes the angle of his hand before you even finish. His fingers press down on that swollen little point of your clit, faster and more exact, and the pleasure snaps so sharp through your hips that you can't get the rest of the sentence out.

You nearly sob.

"Come," he says.

Not pretty. Not coaxing. An order.

So you do.

It tears through you hard enough that you grab at him with everything you have, cunt clenching around his cock, hips lifting into his hand. For a few seconds, you cannot hear anything. Your body takes over completely. You say his name again, too loud, shaking under him while he fucks you through it with his face pressed near your temple.

Aki curses. His rhythm breaks.

You feel him try to hold back. Feel the strain of it in his shoulders, the way his hips slow like he is giving himself one last chance to be sensible. The last stupid bit of discipline.

So you tighten around him on purpose.

His eyes snap to yours.

That is all it takes.

He comes with a low, helpless sound, burying himself deep and trembling as warmth spills inside you. His body goes rigid above yours, then shudders once, hard. You hold him there with your legs around his waist and your fingers in his hair, feeling each pulse of him until he has nothing left to hide behind.

Afterwards, he does not collapse on you. Aki catches himself on one arm, breathing hard, face turned partly away as if he can somehow be modest.

You smooth damp hair from his cheek.

He lets you.

That feels almost more intimate than the sex.

He pulls out very carefully, and you wince.

"Sorry," he murmurs.

"I'm fine, I promise."

He doesn't believe you. He gets up, pulls his sweatpants back on, and leaves the room. You hear the bathroom tap. When he comes back, he's got a damp towel and a glass of water.

Your chest does something stupid.

He sits on the bed and takes care of you without making it weird. Or he tries not to. It's still weird because you're naked in his bed and his cum's leaking out of you and he's dabbing at your inner thigh like this is a first aid situation. The sex is one thing; his cleaning you up with red ears and a serious face is another entirely.

"So," you say, because silence might kill you. "Great supervision tonight."

He closes his eyes. "Don't start."

"You're really committed to your job, Hayakawa."

"I said don't."

But his mouth twitches.

He hands you the glass of water. "Drink something that's not beer."

You take it because you know he'll just sit there holding it until you do.

"Bossy," you mutter, before swigging some down.

"You like that."

You nearly choke.

His face goes blank in self-defence. "See, this is why I don't drink."

You laugh so hard you have to press the glass to your chest to avoid spilling it. "Because you end up fucking your subordinates?"

His ears go redder. "Because people make stupid decisions when they're drunk."

That kills the laugh a bit.

"...Was it stupid?"

The question sits there, ugly and honest.

Aki looks down at the towel in his hand, then puts it aside. His hair's still damp around the edges of his face. There's a scratch on his shoulder from your nails.

"No."

Your chest loosens. The relief is embarrassing in its size.

He rubs a hand over his face. "Just—complicated."

"Yeah..."

"We work together," he says softly, taking the glass from your hand and setting it on the floor.

"Yeah..."

He gives you a tired look. "Makima will notice if this affects anything."

There she is. You hate that her name can enter his bedroom so easily. You pull the sheet up over yourself, not because you're shy, but more because the mention of her suddenly makes your skin feel too exposed.

"She notices everything," you say. "Doesn't mean she owns everything."

Aki goes quiet.

You watch him start to shut himself away piece by piece again. It's subtle, but you know him better now. Maybe not enough. Enough to see when he's leaving without moving.

"She's not good enough for you," you say.

His expression hardens by habit. "You don't even know her."

He looks toward the window. Rain moves down the glass in thin, uneven lines. His profile is severe again, but tired under it, old grief sitting somewhere behind his eyes.

"It's just work," he says finally, quieter now.

"No," you keep your voice softer, more careful this time. No balcony bravado. No showing off. No trying to win. "It's not just work."

You wonder if he knows how young he looks when he has no uniform to hide inside.

"I don't know what she is to you," you add. "I don't even know if you know. But I know how she looks at you. Like you're—I don't know—just useful."

"I... don't know what it is," he says.

That honesty costs him. You can tell.

So you decide not to push. Not tonight. Not after everything. The last thing you want to do is put a sour taste on all of this. Instead, you reach for his hand where it rests on the bed.

He looks down at your fingers covering his.

"I'm not asking you to figure everything out right now," you say. "I'm just saying... I see you. That's all."

His fingers shift, barely, then settle under yours.

"You should sleep," he says.

"Are you kicking me out?"

"No."

The answer comes fast enough to make both of you lift your heads. He clears his throat and looks faintly mortified by it.

"I mean... You can stay—if you want."

You lie back and settle beneath his duvet before he changes his mind. "How very romantic of you."

He shoots you a warning look, but there is no real bite in it. Then he gets into bed beside you, stiff at first. You can hardly believe that he's still not realised that there's no way to do this neatly.

So you shuffle closer. He sighs, but his arm comes around you anyway.

The apartment feels different now. Same clean sheets. Same rain on the balcony glass. Same quiet rooms. Only now you know what he sounds like when control finally slips, and he knows exactly what his name sounds like in your mouth. Monday will bring uniforms, reports, training, Makima's calm smile, and whatever version of normal you're both supposed to perform after this.

But tonight Aki's skin is warm against yours, his hair down and tickling your cheek, his hand resting at your waist by accident and staying there by choice.

Your contract devil stirs sleepily under your skin.

Hungry?

You close your eyes.

"Not anymore," you whisper.

Aki's head lifts slightly from his pillow.

"What?"

"Nothing."

He exhales against your shoulder.

"Get some sleep," he says.