The one that belonged to the smug little freak in the white hoodie.

His trigger finger bounced against the rifle strap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

He was leaving. He was absolutely, one hundred percent leav-

The door opened before he could knock.

"You're late," Chishiya said.

Cool. Cool cool cool. Fucking fantastic.

There he was. Barefoot. Hood up. Platinum hair in his eyes, stupid little mole under the left one flashing when he tilted his head. Barely came up to Niragi's chin without those platform trainers and still, somehow, managed to look down at him. Niragi had spent weeks trying to figure out how the hell that even worked. It was ruining his life.

"Late," Niragi echoed. Tongue barbell clicked against his teeth, antsy. "For what? I didn't come here for you."

"Mmm." Chishiya just stepped back. Left the door open and wandered off into the room like the conversation was already over, like Niragi was a boss fight he'd cleared on the first try and was now bored of the death animation.

Niragi stood there in the corridor with his rifle and his leather trousers glued to his thighs with dried sweat, and he hated him. Hated him so bad it sat in his gut like hunger.

He went in.

Obviously he went in.

The room smelled like Chishiya. Clean, sharp, too sterile for this place, like he sweated hand sanitiser or some shit. Under that, the same damp pool-mildew funk that had seeped into every room since the world pissed off and left them here.

Curtains open. Tokyo was just a dead black wall outside the glass, not a single light anywhere, which Niragi tried not to look at because that way lay brain-rot. Twelve floors down the pool glowed radioactive blue and somebody was laughing, high and drunk and one millimetre off a scream. Everyone at the Beach laughed like that now. Like if they stopped they'd start sobbing.

Chishiya sat on the end of the bed, hands tucked into the hoodie pocket. Watching him. Of course. Always watching.

First week at the Beach, Niragi had clocked him up on the mezzanine, leaning on the railing, tracking the crowd like a cat watching a bird feeder. He'd thought, there, that one. That's the same kind of wrong. Same animal, different coat.

He'd wanted to wipe that smirk off his face. He'd also wanted those eyes back on him forever.

Both. At once. Which had probably been the first sign his brain was not... functioning correctly.

"Heard your game was a Four of Spades," Chishiya said. "You're not shot, then."

"Disappointed?"

"If you died, I'd have heard the militants crying about it." Tiny pause. "Or celebrating. Hard to say with you."

"They'd celebrate," Niragi said, and flashed him the grin. All teeth, tongue out, barbell catching the light. The one that parted the lobby like water.

Chishiya didn't event witch.

Everyone else either flinched or laughed at him, and those were basically the same thing with different subtitles. Chishiya just looked. Like he was reading him. Like Niragi was interesting.

"Sit down," Chishiya said. "You're looming."

"I like looming."

"You're shaking."

He was not shak-

He looked. Fuck. He was. Fine tremor running down his right hand, post-game adrenaline still trying to find something to do. Usually he'd go downstairs and make someone cry until the wire in his chest finally loosened. Instead his feet had marched him up here. Four separate times. To this tiny bastard who talked like a train delay announcement.

He sat. Whatever. The mattress dipped. Their knees didn't touch, and he could feel the exact three centimetres between them like a tripwire.

"Takeda's dead," Chishiya said.

The wire snapped taut again. "What?"

"Takeda. Big one. Militant. Laugh like a blocked drain. Five of Hearts last night, Shibuya. Never came back."

Chishiya picked at a loose thread on his sleeve like they were discussing the weather.

"I know who Takeda is." Was. Takeda with hands like fucking hams and pack instincts to match, who'd grabbed Niragi by the topknot in the lounge two days ago, right at the root, wrenching his head sideways for a joke. Oi, Niragi, do the tongue thing, show them the tongue- for the boys, for the vibes. And Niragi had laughed too, loudest in the room, that was the trick, you laughed loudest so it belonged to you, so nobody could use it on you.

Then he'd stood under the shower on cold until the thing in his chest stopped being fourteen.

Wait.

"Hearts games are random," Niragi said slowly.

"Mostly." Chishiya's mouth curved, lazy. The girls called him the cat and thought it was cute. "The visa rota isn't. Someone pushed him up the list."

The room went quiet. Pool laughter drifted in, distant and warped.

"You-" Niragi's brain blue-screened. "Why would you do that."

"He touched you."

Flat. Like reading off a score. Chishiya looked up through his fringe, eyes dark and calm, except it was the wrong kind of calm, the kind that had never actually been okay. Weeks of pacing around this feeling, trying to stick a label on it, and here was the answer, going off like a flashbang behind his ribs.

And here was the disgusting part. The part that probably had a diagnostic code.

Not fear.

Warmth.

"You're insane," he breathed.

"You keep showing up at my door with your hands shaking," Chishiya said, "and I keep opening it. Rank us. Go on."

"I could put a bullet in you right now."

"You could." Chishiya reached out, small, pale, steady hand, and just... lifted the rifle strap over Niragi's head. Like he was undressing a toddler.

And Niragi let him.

He just sat there, jaw set, letting it happen while Chishiya set the rifle down on the floor with more care than anyone had ever handled any of his. Including him.

"But you won't," Chishiya went on, "because then you'd have to go back to your room. And you hate your room."

"Shut up."

"You hate the militants. You hate the parties. You hate everybody in this whole resort except the one person who looked at you in week one and thought-" his thumb pressed lightly against Niragi's eyebrow piercing, cool and sure, "-mine."

The word went through him like a bullet through wet cardboard.

He should laugh. That was the whole brand, the whole bit, laugh it off, laugh at it, rip it to shreds. He had the tongue stud they'd made him shove through his own tongue, and a rifle, and a giraffe shirt and a reputation, a whole spiky, screaming fortress he'd built around himself, and this anaemic little cat bastard had just walked straight through it like it was made of beads.

"I'm not yours," Niragi said. Voice cracked right down the middle. Sexy. Very convincing.

"Okay," Chishiya said, easy, and kissed him.

It wasn't soft.

Nobody would ever believe that, the Beach girls with their dumb theories, the other executives who had him down as some quiet brainy mascot. Under the hoodie and the bored-employee voice, the bitch had grip.

He grabbed Niragi's jaw in one hand, fingers tight on the hinge, tipped his head exactly where he wanted him, and slid his tongue in past his teeth to find the barbell. Chased it. Played with it. Slow. Like he'd thought about this in detail and was now just ticking boxes off a list.

Niragi made a sound into his mouth that absolutely did not belong to him and never had, actually, and if anyone said different they were lying.

"There it is," Chishiya murmured, pleased, lips barely brushing his.

"Fuck you-"

"Shirt off."

And Niragi, Niragi who had swung guys across the lobby for breathing wrong, who had once held a beach chair over his head screaming until three militants backed up, took his shirt off.

Buttons fumbled like a teenager, giraffe print gaping open the whole way down. Shrugged it off and sat there, skinny and pale and goosebumped in the chill of Chishiya's room, while Chishiya leaned back and looked at him.

Really looked. Top to bottom. Slow drag of his gaze from throat to chest to stomach to those traitor hands.

"Lie back."

"You don't give me orders."

Chishiya just... waited. Ten seconds. Fifteen. Hands in his pocket, head tilted, patient like some unskippable cutscene you're forced to sit through.

Niragi lay back.

The ceiling had a water strain shaped like Hokkaido. He glared at it while Chishiya stripped him with rude efficiency, boots yanked off and dumped, one-two, leather trousers peeled off inside-out, underwear going with them, until Niragi was fully naked on the duvet and Chishiya was still dressed. Hood up. Hoodie on.

Hood still up.

His dick twitched at that. Obviously. Because his body hated him and wanted him dead.

"You're already leaking," Chishiya observed, like he was noting stats, and ran one finger up the underside of Niragi's cock, base to tip, right over the vein.

Niragi's hips jerked.

"Sensitive. Interesting."

"If you narrate this like a fucking surgery report-"

"You'll what?" Cool hand wrapped around him, thumb smearing the precome over the head, spreading it, making it worse. "Tell someone? Tell them what, exactly? That you've been sniffing around my door every night this week?" His grip tightened, one slow, filthy stroke that dragged all the way down, and Niragi's spine came up off the bed. "That the Beach's second-scariest man goes quiet the second someone holds his jaw? Go on. Tell them. I'll wait."

"Hate you," Niragi got out, except his voice had apparently switched languages somewhere and was only speaking want.

Chishiya let go.

Niragi's hips chased his hand before he could stop them, searching for contact like a fucking dog, which, okay, brilliant. Add that to the list of humiliations, why not. Chishiya clocked it, of course he did, filed it away in his Brain Folder Of Blackmail, and leaned over to the bedside table.

Hotel lotion. Already sitting there.

Already open.

"You planned this," Niragi accused.

"I plan everything." Two fingers slicked, cool and slow. Chishiya pushed Niragi's knee up and out like he was adjusting a limb on an operating table. "Breathe."

The first finger went in slow. Too slow. Chishiya's eyes stayed locked on his face the entire time, barely glancing down, and that was worse than anything, because Niragi could choke down his body's reactions if he had to but his face had always been a traitor.

Whatever was on it right now made the corner of Chishiya's mouth curl.

"Look at that," he said softly. "You do know how to be good."

His cock throbbed against his stomach, drooling a line of wet up his own skin, and Niragi turned his head into the pillow like that would fix anything. Chishiya's free hand came up and turned his face back, firm.

"No. I want to see."

Second finger. Stretch that burned, hot and sweet, fingers scissoring and then curling, searching around inside him. Quartering him like a game grid. Of course.

Then, there. Pressure right on that spot and everything in him jumped. The noise that broke out of him was too high, open and obscene and absolutely not in his approved repertoire. Chishiya prodded it again. Again. Wrote a thesis on it with his fingertips.

The lotion was loud and slick in the quiet room, wet noises obscene in the space between them. Niragi was panting through his teeth, hair coming out of his topknot and sticking to his temples, fingers digging uselessly at the duvet because he genuinely had no idea where he was allowed to put his hands. Nowhere felt safe.

Chishiya noticed. Of course he fucking did.

"You can touch me," he said.

Niragi's hands were in his hoodie before his brain cut in. Fisted the fabric, yanking him closer, hiding his face in the hollow of Chishiya's neck and breathing him in like something starving. Clinging. The word made him want to punch a wall, but it was accurate.

Chishiya didn't laugh.

That was the worst part. Any of the others would have laughed. Takeda would have told that story for months.

Takeda's dead, sang the ugly warm thing behind his ribs. Takeda touched you and now Takeda's dead.

"Third," Chishiya said, right by his ear, and pushed it in.

Niragi moaned straight into the white cotton of his hoodie, grinding down on his hand like he'd never heard of dignity in his life. Pride was somewhere back in the corridor, with what was left of the fortress.

"Chishiya-" The word came out shredded. "Just- come on-"

"Ask properly."

"I'll drown you in the pool-"

The fingers disappeared. All at once. Niragi clenched around nothing and heard a pathetic little whine rip out of him, fourteen years old forever, and wanted to die on the spot.

Chishiya knelt back between his legs, calm as you please, and rolled his sleeves up like he was settling in for a long shift. He had the patience of someone who had never once rushed to be loved. Meanwhile Niragi had been sprinting since birth.

"Please," Niragi spat.

"Please what?"

"Please fuck me, you smug- fucking- cat-faced-"

"There," Chishiya said, and that was as warm as his voice ever got. Two degrees above ambient, maybe. "Was that so hard."

He undid his trousers and shoved them down just enough. Didn't bother fully undressing. Didn't take the hoodie off. The hood stayed up. Filed under Things That Should Not Be Hot. The folder was getting thick.

Niragi's brain clocked every detail. Thick enough to hurt. A curve that just screamed smug. Of course.

Lotion again, then the press of him at Niragi's hole, and then-

In.

Slow. Relentless. No mercy, no stop-start, just one steady push, stretching Niragi open inch by inch until his teeth were sunk in his own lip, jaw clenched so hard it ached. When Chishiya bottomed out and gave a tiny grind right over that spot he'd just spent the last few minutes mapping, Niragi's vision glitched at the edges.

"Oh, fuck-"

"There we go." Chishiya braced over him, forearms either side of his head, hood tipped forward so blond hair dropped down like a curtain around them. Little tent, just for them. Antiseptic, sweat, skin. "Hi."

"I hate- you-"

"You've said." He pulled back and thrust in again, and any follow-up words dropped dead.

He fucked like he played.

Controlled. Focused. Adjusting in real-time. He found the angle that made Niragi's thighs start to shake and then stuck to it with terrifying consistency, the same deep, even rhythm, not speeding up no matter how much Niragi squirmed or begged, and yeah, he was begging now, apparently that was a thing he did, and he never took his eyes off him.

Watching him come apart like he was drafting the patch notes. Every gasp pinned, every twitch filed away behind those flat dark eyes.

Niragi hooked his legs around his waist. Ankles crossing in the small of his back, dragging him in harder every time. His hands had wormed under the hoodie, nails digging hot red lines down Chishiya's back, and he could not, for the life of him, shut up. Moans, curses, half-words, noise spilling out with every thrust.

The headboard thumped the wall steadily. The party roared on twelve floors down. Up here, the Beach's rabid dog was getting fucked through the mattress by a boy in a white hoodie and crying about it.

At some point, the tears had just... joined in. Not sad. Just too much. Overflow. Years of too much with nowhere to go finally punching a hole.

Chishiya's mouth brushed his temple. A lazy little kiss to the tear track. No comment. Just... logged.

"You're mine," he said, like he was commenting on the weather. Hips still working in that same boringly perfect rhythm. "You've been mine since week one. I just waited for you to drag yourself here." A thrust that knocked the air out of him. "Four times. I counted."

"Fuck- you counted-"

"I count everything that's mine."

That word again. Mine. Straight through him, no resistance.

His cock was trapped between their stomachs, jerking and leaking against Chishiya's hoodie, dragged along on every stroke. Everything below his navel was drawing up tight as a trigger spring.

"Chishiya- I'm- gonna-"

"I know." Chishiya shifted, braced on one arm, and slid his other hand between them. Wrapped his fingers around Niragi's cock and started jerking him off in time, thumb grinding over the head, ruthless. "Go on. Show me."

Niragi came with a sound the whole twelfth floor probably heard. Back arched, clenching hard around Chishiya, hot streaks painting his own stomach and Chishiya's hoodie, everything whiting out for a second. No ceiling. No Beach. No Borderland. Just this.

Just him.

Chishiya milked him through it, squeezing just right, riding the shudders out. Only when Niragi was collapsing back down, loose-limbed and stupid with it, did his own control crack.

The rhythm stuttered, breath catching for the first time all night, one low, bitten-off sound dragged out of him that lodged in Niragi's brain for permanent replays. He drove in deep and stayed there, grinding through it, coming with Niragi's name stuck in his teeth, quiet and viciously contained like everything else.

Niragi felt it, hot and thick inside him, and the ugly warm thing in his chest just... rolled over. Full belly-up.

After was the part he'd been dreading.

The clinging.

He could already feel it building before Chishiya even pulled out. That bottomless, black-oil need. Stay. Don't look at me. Stay anyway.

This was always where shit went sideways. People loved the act, the danger, the studs, the tongue. They did not want the part of him that would rather gnaw off his own hand than say hold me.

Chishiya eased out. Niragi's body tried to follow. Cum leaked onto the duvet, and he gritted his teeth and started shoving everything back into place. The laugh. The sneer. Exit line locked and loaded.

Well. That happened. Don't fall in love, freak.

He got maybe halfway.

Chishiya lay down, slung an arm across his chest, and dragged him in.

No hesitation. Just yanked him up against his chest like he weighed nothing.

Niragi's face ended up crushed into blond hair, long body curved around a smaller one, one of Chishiya's legs shoved between his like it had paid rent for the spot. The half-built wall crumpled like paper and, fuck it, he held on. Both arms. Tight. Gripped him like a rifle in a live game.

"This doesn't mean anything," he muttered into his hair.

"Mmm." Chishiya's fingers traced idle shapes on his hip.

Not shapes. Strokes.

Niragi blinked through the post-orgasm fuzz, brain squinting at the pattern. Kanji. Two of them, the same careful strokes on repeat. 苣屋.

Chi-shi-ya.

He was writing his name. Labelling him, the way you'd label something you owned so the whole world knew to hand it back.

"You're actually insane," Niragi whispered. "The visa list. Takeda. You do get that's insane."

"You're shaking again," Chishiya said, which was apparently his version of an answer.

"It's cold in here."

"Sure." He dragged the duvet up over them one-handed, tucking it around Niragi's shoulders with the same weird carefulness he'd used on the rifle. Keeping his things in good condition. "Sleep. Nobody comes up to this floor without me knowing."

That should've made him want to chew the walls. Somewhere in him a fourteen-year-old knew exactly what a gilded cage looked like and should have been howling.

But the Beach hummed below like a beehive, the dead city loomed unlit outside, and the only warm thing in the whole fucked-up Borderland had an arm across his chest and its claim written on his skin.

He'd spent his whole life begging to be someone's mine and never getting there.

Nobody had mentioned it might be a cat that answered.

He shoved his face closer, pressed one quick, deniable kiss into the top of Chishiya's head, and let the smug little psycho keep him while he finally, finally passed out.