#brainworms time

⤘❅⬽

Rye

Shuuichi's ears are still ringing faintly by the time he has successfully taken out the last of their targets. Fucking hand grenades.

It's precisely this kind of mission that he least prefers: not because the targets are armed (although they often make for the messiest, most drawn-out kills as opposed to a politician who may be wary and hire bodyguards yet remains powerless to prevent his impending death), but because the entire operation was a rush job and it shows— it's in Shuuichi's ears, still grappling with tinnitus, in his aching shoulder (not dislocated, but it got way too close to that for comfort), in his broken comms and fucked up phone, and in the fact that at this point in time he's not sure where he is (this place is a goddamn maze and he wants out) nor where Scotch and Bourbon ended up, let alone if they're still in one piece.

(He shoves down the urge to wrinkle his nose at the strange train of thought. What the hell was that?)

Bottom line is, this is only happening because someone high up in the ranks— Rum, Shuuichi has heard operatives whisper with fear and reverence in equal measure; they sound like a right wanker if you ask him— got too impatient and ordered a last-minute operation against a no longer useful asset, which translated into whoever was closest being dispatched with little more than basic intel to work with.

Overall the mission was a success, because nobody in the Syndicate gets a codename if they're not deserving of it and because Bourbon managed to miracle them a little more information just in time (he had Scotch forward the details to Shuuichi, unwilling as always to even consider interacting with him unless there are no other options, which is as vexing as it is amusing), but nothing can change how utterly annoyed Shuuichi is. Figures that he'd be able to pinpoint this feeling over anything else.

Once he's fairly sure that walking around isn't going to unleash any more bouts of dizziness, he tackles the task of finding his way out of the building. If Scotch and Bourbon are alive and mobile, he figures they'll be doing the same; with no way of discreetly trying to contact them and more aware of how little time they all have before the police inevitably show up with every second that passes, their best bet is to vacate the premises as quickly as they can.

He gets down two flights of stairs, then up a separate staircase and through at least six corridors (why this place only has the one entrance is genuinely beyond him) before indistinct chatter reaches his ears. Instinctively, Shuuichi flattens himself against a wall— ignoring the twinge of pain radiating from his shoulder—, although he relaxes a tad when he recognizes one of the voices as Bourbon's. Shuuichi can't make out what he's saying, but he sounds calm enough: with a bit of luck, the other voice will turn out to be Scotch's.

He makes to check around the corner, then, and immediately regrets it.

Well, not regret, per se, but... hm.

Slowly, Shuuichi peeks around the corner a second time. Maybe his eyes were playing a trick on him the first time— he is a little banged up. Maybe he imagined it, or misread the situation, or—

No can do. They're still there.

Even so, they might as well be existing in a bubble of their own, Scotch and Bourbon. Scotch— from what Shuuichi can see of him— is sitting against a wall, one hand resting on his flank, right below the ribs; his fingers are red with what Shuuichi can only assume is Scotch's own blood. Bourbon has crouched in front of him, his usually impeccable attire stained by dirt and yet more blood (someone clearly got real close to his targets), and he has leaned so far into Scotch's personal space that their noses are on the verge of touching.

Bourbon says something else, to which Scotch responds by chuckling— though his expression briefly contorts into a pained grimace— and closing his eyes. The burst of laughter echoes in Shuuichi's ears, impossibly melodic, as Bourbon wordlessly leans even closer, presses his forehead against Scotch's and just... stays there.

Silence falls. For a while, Shuuichi doesn't dare breathe no matter how much his lungs burn. One of Bourbon's hands has moved up to cradle Scotch's cheek, and although minimal there is movement: the two are rocking in place as much as Scotch's position will allow, pushing into each other, back and forth and back and forth and there's a knot stuck in the back of Shuuichi's throat, now.

(He has seen this before, late at night when his body inexplicably demanded water, more tender than he could ever have imagined, and if it had been a kiss then Shuuichi would have gladly made a face and stomped through the living room just to make it stop, but that— that, he could only stare at, wide-eyed, before tiptoeing back to his room and under the covers, something nameless swirling inside his chest, beyond skin and bone and muscle. Deep inside, where he couldn't dig it out and study it, so very warm.

The faded memory springs to the forefront of his mind, haunting and ever so soft.)

Fully retreating beyond the corner, Shuuichi counts to ten before deliberately knocking the butt of his handgun against the wall. That prompts a little commotion in the other hallway, followed by a tentative, "Rye?" courtesy of Scotch.

"Do remind Bourbon not to shoot," he drawls, silent on his feet as he rounds the corner for real this time. His gaze flicks once more to Scotch's wounded side, a little less visible now that the man is standing and facing him but no less obviously troubling. His raised eyebrow earns him a dismissive wave, so he doesn't bother bringing it up.

(Shuuichi isn't sure what compelled him to give them enough time to get their bearings, just so that they could keep their little charade up. He doesn't know why he counted, doesn't know why looking away in the first place felt like tearing stitches, the same way he can't fathom why he never had the courage to take those moments from—

It doesn't matter. It's not as if they'd be talking about it anyway.)

Bourbon, who has already turned away and wordlessly begun to head towards the exit, fishes the key to their getaway car out of his pocket and gives it a single shake, causing it to jangle noisily against its metal keychain. Shuuichi glances at Scotch, receiving nothing but a bland smile in return, and holds back a sigh.

Backseat it is.

⤘❅⬽

Bourbon

Rei would like it to be on record that he doesn't want to be here.

Not because of where they are: the practice room is tiny and nigh-unbearably loud, yes, but Hiro loves it, never fails to get that shine in his eyes when he's got a reservation to look forward to, and Rei... Rei didn't spend months, years of his life learning all he could about guitars and basses and drums and keyboards because of a strike of fancy.

Hiro loves making music. Rei loves making music. It's that simple.

(Everything he is, everything he has molded himself into belonged to others first. He takes what they love and makes it his until he, too, can safely say 'I like this as well'.

Keep looking at me.)

The reason why Rei would like to be anywhere but here is sitting perpendicular to him on a stool on the other side of the room, facing Hiro and using that as an excuse to stare at him.

Rye is nothing special with the guitar. He's good, Rei is man enough to admit it, even if to himself and nobody else, but he's far from remarkable. Nothing like Hiro, who for some reason called dibs on the bass as soon as the idea of pretending to be an amateur band came up. Hiro could one-up Rye on the guitar while blackout drunk— Rei would bet his life on that any day.

"Why not?" Rye is asking when Rei tunes back in to reality. He tamps down the urge to bark at the insufferable bastard to shut up and listen to whatever Hiro said.

Hiro sighs. Rei doesn't like that it's one of his 'endeared and not even mad about it' sighs. Not one bit. "It's eight minutes long, Rye."

"And I'd be the only one having to play from start to finish."

"So you just want to show off?" Rei snaps, already regretting starting to pay attention to the conversation.

Rye doesn't even have the decency to feign contrition. "Don't look at me like that. Besides, the real star is the singer."

They both glance towards Hiro at that (Rei resents their apparent synchrony), who rolls his eyes but gestures for Rye to go ahead. The worst thing is that Rye actually looks somewhat happy about it, as if obtaining Hiro's approval first were a fundamental step: Rei can see the flawless logic in that, although it does little to warm him up to the sniper.

He then proceeds to almost make a fool of himself by realizing a bit too late that he never actually caught the title of the song Rye asked to play and therefore he has no clue what the drums are supposed to sound like, and five seconds after that he very nearly gives in to the urge to faceplant on the floor tom in sheer relief when he recognizes the chords Rye is gliding through.

No wonder Hiro caved so easily.

Rei shakes his head, settling in for his scheduled four minutes of doing absolutely nothing. It proves to be more difficult than anticipated when both Hiro and Rye are well within his line of sight; at least when he's playing he's too busy keeping a steady tempo to be able to watch them.

Hiro has started singing, a foot tapping rhythmically against the ground to stay on beat, his head bobbing delicately in time with Rye's, who in turn is silently mouthing along while he plays. Rei's heart skips a beat.

They're looking at each other, and they're smiling.

(Hiro smiles a lot. Not always for real— and as of late he's had to fake more and more— but when he does, it's blinding. Sometimes, Rei thinks Hiro could burn him up from the inside out with a smile if he really tried.

What Hiro is giving Rye is only a little genuine, but it's more than he has offered anyone apart from Rei in over a year.)

Hiro's voice breaks through the static in his head: it's already time for Rei to join in. He does so seamlessly, with thrice the confidence he's actually feeling.

"Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run," Hiro carries on, his own fingers dancing on the bass strings. His foot taps harder against the floor, deafening Rei even though there's no way he's actually hearing that over their instruments. "There's still time to change the road you're on..."

The beat intensifies. There's sweat accumulating on their hands, their necks, their faces. The beat intensifies. The room shrinks and heats up, pushes them close enough that Rei can feel sparks run across his skin and jump over to Hiro, to Rye, back to him. The beat intensifies. His head feels like a balloon about to pop.

Rye started singing as well at some point, strands of hair stuck to his cheeks, eyes wild and an expression Rei has never seen on him before etched on his face, exertion and elation and something soft that doesn't fit him, can't fit him (Rei doesn't want it to fit him)—

"When all are one and one is all, to be a rock and not to roll..." Rei's drumming peters off at the same time as Rye's guitar, slowly and then all at once.

The room expands. Rei breathes.

Hiro finishes singing the last line with a flourish, bows from where he's sitting for his grand audience of two, raises his head and turns to look at Rei with a smile.

(Bigger, brighter, truer than he's been all evening. As much joy as music brings him, it's still Rei whom he looks at like that.)

"That was good," Rei hears him tell Rye. He pays it little mind: their allotted two hours are over, so they need to pack their things and leave the practice room at once.

Rye snorts. "I fumbled the chords four times and you know it."

"Hey, I wasn't going to say anything," Hiro lightly hits Rye's shoulder with the back of his hand. Rye barely even twitches. Interesting. Infuriating. Telling. Who knows what he would have done if it had been Rei doing that.

(For the record, Rei knows exactly what he'd do if Rye tried that with him.)

They split up painlessly as soon as they're outside, like oil and water. Rye walks off, back to whatever hole he crawls out of every morning, and at long last Rei is alone with Hiro.

"You really do like him," he says conversationally, although only once he's sure he can get the sentence out without grimacing.

Hiro's breath hitches the tiniest bit. Rei notices, of course. He always does. "He... has been growing on me." Rei's stomach sinks. He already knew, but hearing the confirmation— "Does... Is that okay? With you?"

Rei wants to laugh until his throat starts bleeding. With him? Is that okay with him? He's not the one slowly setting himself up for a broken heart here. He's not the one biting off more than he can chew.

"Are you okay with it?" Can you stick to the plan? Can you bear the failure, if it comes to that? Can you bear it if it works and then doesn't? Can you stay safe? Can you put yourself first?

(Will I be enough, if you can't?)

Hiro swallows, knocks their elbows together. The rest of the walk is quiet.

(Behind closed doors, they curl into each other.

I trust you.

I know.

Trust me?

Of course.)

⤘❅⬽

Scotch

Rye is asleep.

Now, that isn't entirely unheard of: their sniper has indeed been known to take the occasional cat nap and, on a few outstanding instances, sleep for more than four consecutive hours on a real bed with real pillows and a real blanket (because none of those three are ever a guarantee with Rye: Hiromitsu once found him napping in the shower fully clothed), so the sight of a conked out Rye occupying the whole couch isn't inherently novel.

What is one-hundred percent new is the fact that, by all means, Zero appears to be willingly sharing the living room space with him— has been for a while judging by how comfortable he has clearly made himself on the small armchair near the window— and is staring at Rye so intently that he didn't even acknowledge Hiromitsu's greeting beyond an absentminded hum.

Rye makes a weird little sound in his sleep, something stuck between incoherent noise and recognizable words, and Zero's face goes through one of the most complex, effortlessly beautiful sequences of expressions Hiromitsu has ever witnessed. Gone is the waspish countenance he always dons around Rye, replaced by a look so soft it threatens to send Hiromitsu down memory lane, back to their late Academy days when things were simpler and better, and then back, back, back again to summer afternoons spent laughing and strumming an old guitar and glancing at each other before turning away, cheeks aflame and heart aflutter.

Ah, Hiromitsu thinks, fond and vindicated in equal measure, so it's your turn now.

It's only as he steps deeper inside their flat that Zero notices him properly. Hiromitsu could swear he sees the exact moment Zero's brain catches up with the situation: he starts fidgeting and pointedly tears his gaze away from the couch, as if that were enough to wipe Hiromitsu's memory clean of what he saw. When he manages to meet Zero's eyes, his partner glares at him and mouths 'not a word', probably trying to come off as menacing and only barely managing to remain a step above woefully endearing.

Hiromitsu, who can't say no to Zero but also really likes winning, gives him his patented 'I told you so' smile and heads for the kitchen. Not a word, indeed.

He counts the unbroken silence in the living room, as opposed to whatever fight would ensue if Zero were to take out his frustration on Rye by instigating an argument the way he so often does, as an additional bonus and goes on to get started on making dinner. If he's patient enough, after all—

"Hey," he says lightly as Zero slides the kitchen door shut behind himself. A few seconds of complete silence is all the warning Hiromitsu gets, and then Zero is leaning his full body weight against him, unmoving, until he's forced to put the cooking on hold in favor of turning around and accepting his temporary pillow status— not that he minds, really. It's actually pretty nice, rare as it is for Zero to initiate anything of the like.

Hiromitsu ends up giving his partner a whole minute of peace before going for the kill, because he's nice like that. "So. Was I right or was I—"

"Don't even start," Zero groans into his shoulder, but he can't be too mad given how he holds Hiromitsu closer. A little upset, no doubt, but nothing catastrophic.

Still... "Is this a problem?"

Zero doesn't answer for longer than Hiromitsu anticipated. In the end, he lifts his head and looks straight at him, Bourbon's mask nowhere to be seen. Shattered into a million pieces in spite of the massive security risk in the next room, whom they can no longer be sure is still asleep— another first. Today is just full of surprises. "I don't... let me think about it?"

He can't stop himself from going in for a kiss. "Of course."

Zero's nose scrunches up. Adorable. "I just— how? I looked at him and just kept thinking, 'cute'. He's not cute! Nothing about— about that is cute, Scotch!" he whisper-shouts the codename the same way he'd say Hiro, something dangerously close to a pout on his face, something that is definitely a pout in his voice, and Hiromitsu can do nothing but snicker.

"He really grew on you too, after all," he says once he has composed himself enough.

"Sure. Like mold," comes the grouchy reply.

"— And next time he dares to pull a stunt like that, I'll... I'll..."

Yukiko trails off, blinking dazedly at the tacky dresser that occupies the better part of one of the walls of Sharon's hotel suite. Truly, that thing must have been picked by a blind man.

"You'll...?" Sharon prompts when the silence stretches on a little too long. Yukiko, already lacking filters dictated by politeness when she's sober, has become even more unhinged after an evening spent drinking; she's no lightweight, but she seemed strangely determined to outdo herself tonight, for reasons that became clear almost immediately— another fight with Yusaku over... frankly, Sharon didn't pay much attention to the finer details. It's Yukiko's expressiveness that she was most captivated by, after all: her overall performance as she told her side of the story, incensed and so vibrantly furious because of the tiniest slight.

How could anyone see that and not find themself fascinated by the sheer amount of energy put into it? Yukiko has the uncanny habit of giving it her all in everything she does, no matter how big or small the feat. Sharon would very much like to know how she can just... do that; how she can care so much all the time, as fleeting as her passions may be. Isn't it exhausting?

"I'll..." Yukiko repeats under her breath. Her words have been slurring for a while now. She lights up all of a sudden then, looking immensely proud of whatever punishment she just came up with. "I'll show him! Yeah, I'll show him!"

Well.

"I see," Sharon nods as if that made perfect sense, indulgent. Always so indulgent... Were Yukiko anybody else, Sharon would have done away with her a long time ago. Some days she wonders which wires got crossed inside her head for her to allow Yukiko to get away with so much.

"And then... then..." Yukiko's head lolls to the side, eyes slowly falling shut for the nth time in the past half an hour. Unlike in previous instances, they don't snap open again. Dead to the world on a plush armchair, just like that. She's due for a nasty crick in the neck once she wakes up, that's for sure.

... She doesn't even look like she's breathing.

(Worn out, blazing eyes. Feverish. She used to be more squeamish. "That's the fourth one this month. I still haven't been able to successfully replicate the effects it had on you with any other test subject so far. It seems to me that you may truly be a freak accident— which is why it's so important that I keep studying your body. What is it about you that made the formula work this way?")

Sharon is out of her seat before she can even register that her body is moving. She doesn't sway on her feet, hasn't consumed nearly enough alcohol for that, but she still feels... unsteady. How ludicrous.

She crosses the space between her and Yukiko with decisive strides— to prove a point to herself, if nothing else— and doesn't hesitate at all to place her fingers over Yukiko's carotid artery. Her free hand goes to Yukiko's parted lips: immediately, her skin warms with miniscule but regular breaths, and eventually she finds a strong, steady pulse under her fingertips as well.

How silly of her, to think that Yukiko could be anything but perfectly fine.

Sharon snatches her hands back as if burned (as if the only other person in the room wasn't fast asleep and unlikely to regain consciousness anytime soon), cradling them close to her chest and rubbing away invisible flecks of dirt (proof of her weakness, proof that Miyano Elena can still make her feel something other than pure hatred, even from beyond the grave) before collapsing back on her armchair. Unsteady. Disgraceful.

He snaps back to the present with a blink and a shake of his head; the bead of sweat that had been gathering at his nape, tickling him to the point of breaking through his daze, is violently dislodged and forgotten right away.

Looking down out of reflex, Rei takes in the body beneath him: spread legs held in place through sheer force of will, heaving chest and tense muscles wracked by the occasional tremor— and then Rei's arm is cutting a dark line across the spectacle, reaching down, down, down for that bare neck, fingers wrapping around delicate skin and tightening their hold before he can think better of it.

Akai moans raucously against the pressure, throat promptly bared in demanding supplication.

"Pervert," Rei hisses, makes sure to inject as much disgust into his tone as he can manage. He gets no verbal response, but the says you he sees in the flutter of Akai's eyelids, in the arch of his back and the force with which he clenches around each stutter of Rei's out-of-control hips doesn't need to be voiced to ring true.

It occurs to him, sometimes, that this might be the most honest he's ever going to see Akai— that it is, in a sense, as far as the two of them can hope to reach, sweaty bodies tangled in the dark and not a single kind word exchanged in the yawning gap between them. The prospect haunts him; that's not what he wants, not at all. He has unearthed his greed all at once, as if ripping off a strip of decaying flesh and finding pristine bone underneath. He feels not the pain of it just yet, but he knows.

What he has is not enough.

He growls, mostly at himself, adjusts his knees and pistons his hips harder, the angle studiously cruel. Akai spasms, makes an animal noise beneath him. If Rei strains his ears, he thinks he can hear miniscule tears being ripped into the sheets where Akai is clawing at them like a lifeline.

"Faster," the man under him croaks, throat working against Rei's palm as he swallows whatever he was going to add right after that. "Faster," he says again, a little louder, a little wilder, when Rei doesn't comply on the spot, too taken by the fluttering pulse he's holding hostage.

"Don't tell me what to do," Rei snaps, then betrays himself by indulging Akai anyway. He tightens his fingers around the bastard's neck even more in retaliation, as if he didn't know that's the equivalent of letting him win twice in a row.

Akai's expression— what little he can see of it when the only light they're getting comes from the streetlamps outside— makes it halfway through morphing into pure smugness before losing the battle against the beginnings of oxygen deprivation and going slack, eyes wide and unfocused, lips open around words that just won't come out.

(Even now, with his life firmly within Rei's grasp, Akai's hands twitch but do not come up to pry off the fingers digging into his flesh, and Rei feels— he feels—)

Rei lets go all at once, tumbles over the edge of orgasm with graceless rapture crackling like fireworks under his skin, barely has the wherewithal to pull out before collapsing downward and grunting, dumbfounded, when that leads to a rather painful collision between his and Akai's foreheads. It takes him way too long to think of shifting the majority of his weight onto his forearms.

Then, and only then, are there hands on him, arms snaking around his back to lock him in place so that he's trapped with Akai's raspy, ruined breathing washing over his lips. Rei can barely hold himself up in this position: his arms burn and vehemently protest the strain, his hips demand rest and he's sure to sport an embarrassing bump on his forehead tomorrow with how hard their skulls knocked together, but all of that fades into background noise as soon as Rei presses his lips against Akai's and finds them already quirked into a blissed-out smile.

The inside of Akai's mouth is exceptionally wet and messy when he bullies his way in; hypersalivation— not really a surprise when one was being strangled until five minutes ago. It's really fucking gross, Rei decides, and then he keeps kissing Akai anyway.

(Rei wants— wants— to hollow him out. To pry Akai's ribcage open and crawl inside, dig out his lungs and breathe his air with him and for him, to curl around his heart and feel it go ba-dum, ba-dum, one-two-three-four between his fingers, to become one and the same with each and every atom that makes Akai Akai, that lets him move and think and feel, so he'll never be alone again because he will be needed. He will be priceless.)

"Furuya-kun," Akai murmurs whenever he gets the chance, a little feverish. "Furuya-kun, Furuya-kun."

Rei ignores it all in favor of leaning his weight on him, grimaces minutely as the action lands him on a familiarly cold and sticky puddle. Whatever. All he can think about is Akai's neck: he can't see it, but he knows what's forming there, around his throat.

Rei wakes up a hundred times warmer than usual.

After a brief, drowsy assessment during which he momentarily concludes that Haro must have grown tenfold in size, something bony and distinctly furless digs into his shoulder with a sigh, unceremoniously reminding him of what is actually going on.

It's only thanks to years of honing his self-discipline that Rei doesn't shoot upright without any regard for the man next to him— a man who is currently busy enacting his best impression of an octopus and yet seems to be, much more importantly, asleep. That, above all, is what has Rei hesitating to move away; he even turns off the morning alarm before it can start ringing and burst the strange little bubble he has found himself in.

Akai never sleeps in. As a matter of fact, Akai doesn't sleep in Rei's conscious presence at all, period. Oh, he will lie down on a couch or recline into his seat to rest his eyes for a few minutes, he'll tempt Rei into bed and let himself be trapped under the covers as a glorified human heater after they're done, but not once has he fallen asleep before Rei did, on the nights he could manage that. Rei would know, because Akai's breathing— and, on dire occasions, his heartbeat— is the metronome that lulls him into slumber, and its pattern remains unfailingly within average waking parameters every single time.

He has woken up to Akai staring at him through half-lidded eyes more times than he cares to count (more times than he's willing to admit to having kept track of), always with that self-satisfied smile of his— the one that, as it turns out, is damn near identical to what naked wonder looks like on Akai's face.

(Rei has been ignoring that, too. 'Not caring', as he likes to put it. At least in the privacy of his own mind there's nobody to call him out on his bullshit but the battered remnants of his conscience.)

To wake up first for once and witness a sleeping Akai Shuuichi— the myth itself!— is something Rei had thought he'd never experience, and his stomach sinks a little at the dawning realization that some part of him has been yearning for it all along.

(The peace and the trust and all the time in the world, encased in ever-sharp lines now soft with sleep, languor and warmth and a hollow that fits two.)

The delicate click-clack of tiny claws scraping against the floor alerts Rei to another extraordinary event: Haro is awake and, judging by the way he's crouched next to the bed and wiggling his backside, quite determined to join this morning cuddle by any means necessary.

"Haro," Rei mutters, wrinkling his nose at how raspy that came out. "Haro. Here."

Haro, clever little thing that he is, immediately trots over to sniff at the hand Rei is holding out before graciously letting his human pick him up and deposit him on top of the sheets. Within seconds, there's a Haro-shaped weight wedged between Rei's back and Akai's chest; the latter stirs at the disturbance, but interestingly enough doesn't wake up. He does, thankfully, further loosen his already flimsy hold on Rei's waist, which finally allows him to slip out of bed without too much trouble.

After gathering all the necessities and heading to the bathroom (the sheer amount of products dedicated to crafting Okiya Subaru's face having taken up residence in his cabinets will never fail to irk him), Rei gets ready in record time (unsurprisingly, staring unabashedly at one's sleeping bedmate is much more detrimental to his morning routine than to Akai's), whips up a quick breakfast for himself and for Haro (Akai can have the leftovers: he wasn't even supposed to stay the night anyway, the moron), and makes it approximately one and a half steps onto the genkan before clicking his tongue, turning back, and making a beeline for the bed.

Once there, he puts both hands on his hips. It's not going to help in any way, but the pose almost comes naturally at this point. "Akai."

Nothing.

(To think this guy was once a NOC like him... Good grief.)

Rei's eye twitches. He stomps his foot and repeats, louder, "Akai."

That gets the idiot to stir again; this time around, his eyes flutter open and he rasps, "What."

Rei, who would hate to disturb Haro's morning nap now that the puppy has claimed the only human still in bed as his back pillow, does not bodily drag Akai onto the floor. Instead he takes a deep, calming breath and says, "I'm going. Don't you dare laze around in here all day. And take Haro out for a walk."

Akai blinks stupidly up at him (Rei categorically refuses to classify that as 'cute'), then closes his eyes again and smushes the better part of his face into Rei's pillow. "Okay. Bye. Love you."

Rei, who had begun to turn around at 'bye', freezes like a deer in the headlights. What.

"What," he chokes out, but Akai is already asleep again. Did he really have to choose now to crash and catch up on all the rest he has been precluding himself all these years? More importantly, why did he say that? What is wrong with him? Does he want to get punched? Does he?

"You are not doing this to me," Rei mutters, running a hand through his hair. This isn't happening. This can't be happening. In fact, he should really get going or he might end up arriving at work on time rather than early like he usually does, and he can do just that no problem because nothing has happened.

The sheer amount of bureaucratic bullshit involved in the aftermath of the most grueling five years of his life, Rei decides, is almost enough to make him miss his freshly terminated undercover days.

Almost.

He has been required to give a comprehensive statement on the final joint operation (carried out with the addition of a frankly outrageous amount of foreign entities if you ask him) no less than six separate times in the past two days, and has apparently been designated as the go-to man for anyone who has even the slightest doubt about the current proceedings.

Rei has been handling it all the way he always has— with utmost professionalism and efficiency—, but even he has his limits and this is pushing them. Worse, he knows for a fact this wouldn't be happening if Kazami were here.

(Kazami is still in the hospital, dutifully resting after having to undergo multiple complex surgeries. As he should.

Technically speaking, Rei is also supposed to be in the hospital. However, since he was awake and coherent enough to sign an AMA form, much unlike Kazami, he did just that and was cleared to leave on his own two legs— and crutch— three days ago.)

Today, HQ once again pullulates with American and British agents as well as more diplomatic figures handpicked by each of their agencies in order to handle the minutiae very few of them— Rei included— have enough patience for. It's not as bad as yesterday, luckily: it's not impossible to find a mostly deserted corridor or two now, at the very least.

Rei walks by a small, miscellaneous group deep in conversation next to a vending machine: the head of blond hair he spots as he approaches predictably turns out to be Agent Starling's. They nod at each other in passing, and then Rei is ambling past, deeper yet into the building. The staircase on the left, a long, semi-frequented corridor, then a turn right and—

"Ah. Hello, Furuya-kun."

You've got to be fucking kidding me, Rei almost says. He doesn't, because he has more class than that. But he still thinks it. Very loudly. "Akai. What did I tell you about seeking me out at work?"

Akai Shuuichi, clad in sunglasses due to the concussion he got out of the whole debacle (along with a nasty-looking shoulder injury; the fact that he's up and walking around either means the wound wasn't as bad as it looked, or he went AMA like Rei in order to escape the deadliest of tortures: boredom), raises a hand in surrender. "Actually, I—"

"This is him, then?" What the hell. There's a woman next to Akai, sitting deathly still in a wheelchair she seemingly used to roll up to them without producing a single noise. When all Akai does is tilt his head in her direction, visibly frowning, she adds, "I thought I'd raised you better than this, Shuuichi. The least you could do is introduce us."

Akai, the uncivilized buffoon, somehow manages to convey a pointed eye roll from behind his sunglasses. Only then does he comply— not that he would have needed to, but it's good to know that he can use real manners if prompted. "Mother, Furuya Rei. Furuya-kun— Sera Mary, my mother."

Running on autopilot, Rei bows slightly. He could swear he just heard Sera-san muttering something along the lines of 'to my eternal dismay' in thickly accented English, to which Akai's lips minutely twitched upwards.

Sera-san looks... She doesn't look like she's in pain, is the thing, but Rei is fully aware that that means nothing when you're trying to read an Intelligence agent, former though this one may be. As far as Rei knows (which is to say, almost nothing), Sera Mary was present at the joint raid, although she was rushed to the hospital almost immediately after the first major apprehensions began: something about her having collapsed out of nowhere, completely incapacitated.

(Kudou Shinichi would later suffer eerily similar symptoms on top of the various injuries he'd racked up during the operation; as of today he, too, needs a wheelchair, although various indiscretions hint towards a favorable prognosis for him.

All things considered, the natural leap of logic isn't too hard to make.)

For what it's worth, she at least appears to have recovered well. And, if the way she moves around is anything to go by, she hasn't been letting her newfound condition hold her back from being exactly as terrifying as Rei imagined she would be.

She studies Rei for a few seconds, then turns to look at her son again. "I'd like to have a word with him. If you'll—"

"Go get you a coffee?" Akai blithely cuts her off. This entire exchange is seriously threatening to make Rei break out in hives. His one consolation is that it looks like Akai might simply be physiologically incapable of not being a dick and is not, in fact, terminally committed to making Rei go grey before he even reaches his forties.

Sera-san sighs. "Yes, please." Akai offers a non-committal hum of his own before leisurely making his way down the corridor on his lonesome. Once he's gone, she finally addresses Rei. "I take it you have time for a quick chat?"

Startled, he fishes out his phone and glances at the screen. He could fake being in a rush, but that wouldn't go very well with his attitude up until now, would it? Sera-san is much too observant not to notice a detail like that. "I do," he admits at long last.

Sera-san inclines her head, beckoning him to follow, and moves a little farther down the corridor she and Akai originally came from. Rei dutifully takes her side, mindful of his crutch, and waits.

Terrible move. "So, you're the one."

Sera Mary, Rei decides right then and there, is an evil, evil woman. "I'm sorry?"

"I'd rather you didn't play dumb with me, Furuya-kun. Don't pretend you didn't hear what I said earlier, either."

Rei grits his teeth. Against the long since internalized instinct to deny, deny, deny to his grave, a timid second option rears its head. Yes, he heard her perfectly well both times. Yes, he knows exactly what she meant. He's been trying to ignore it because otherwise he might have a mild crisis on the clock, and he can't afford that.

"What did he tell you?" he ends up asking, defeated.

"Nothing." Sera-san scoffs. "You think that one ever tells me anything? But I'm not stupid, Furuya-kun, and neither are his siblings."

Right. Somehow, Rei keeps almost forgetting that Akai Shuuichi is only the oldest of a set of three siblings; the other two are mildly terrifying in their own way, but the dissonance remains strong nonetheless.

"We're not—" together makes his mouth go dry. Involved is even worse. Dating sounds downright idiotic. Rei isn't about to explain himself at length to Akai's mother of all people, either.

Luckily, it doesn't look like Sera-san needs him to. Regrettably, it doesn't look like Sera-san needs him to. "How you two figure yourselves out doesn't concern me."

Rei allows himself a frown. "Then forgive me, Sera-san, but what is the point of this conversation?"

If he previously thought she was holding herself a bit too rigidly, it's nothing compared to what she's doing now. For the first time since meeting Sera Mary, Rei thinks he might not be alone in feeling so off-balance.

"Shuuichi and I... We've never truly seen eye to eye. On a good day, it's a miracle if we can agree on something inconsequential. We're simply too different." She pauses, clearly not done but stuck... somewhere. Eventually she shifts in her seat, dress pants rustling softly, before continuing. "That's fine. It's how things are. But, just this once... I would like to see what he sees."

Rei blinks. He doesn't say unfortunately I can't help you there, Sera-san, because I myself have no idea what your son sees in me; it's the truth, but he might need to bury himself alive if he ever voiced it. Besides, he doubts that would be a helpful answer. He settles for deflection. "I feel like you and him may be more similar than you realize."

She snorts at that. No doubt she knows what Rei is doing; what's far more impressive is that she's allowing it. "All Shuuichi got from me is the color of his eyes."

Rei is replying before his brain can catch up with his mouth. Matsuda would be proud. "Well, he's also pretty hard to kill."

Sera-san blinks. Stares at him for a handful of interminable seconds. Then she throws her head backwards and bursts into laughter— actual, genuine laughter, loud and raucous as if she'd nearly forgotten how to do that until Rei reminded her.

In Rei's peripheral, a familiar black-clad figure (truly, does he not own anything else? Has he incinerated Okiya Subaru's entire wardrobe already?) beats a hasty retreat behind the corner. What an asshole.

Sera-san's laughter eventually peters out, her face contorting into a slight grimace before she manages to smooth out her expression. So she is in pain. "You're not wrong," she concedes, "but that's not the point, either."

"No," Rei agrees, words coming a bit more easily this time around, "It's not. Though, I'll admit, I'm relieved: I was a little worried you wanted to warn me against hurting him, and that's why you asked to speak with me."

She quirks an eyebrow. "You may expect that from Masumi, in case she ever manages to track you down." Oh, lovely. "Otherwise, no. My son is perfectly capable of defending his honor, and he's not one to be unmade by a broken heart." Whatever mirth still lingered in her expression melts away, then. "He is, however, quite careless with his own life. That's why I worry."

Rei's mouth opens on its own, then clicks shut.

(Back when he was Bourbon, he lost count of how many times he'd combed through Kir's recording of what happened at Raiha Pass. He looked at the muzzle of her gun and thought, even if it was loaded with blanks that's still an insane bet to make. And in the same breath he knew that Akai Shuuichi would take his chances with it anyway.

Handcuffed to a steel pole inside a warehouse, then hiding like the rat he was among cold containers, he thought, what kind of dead man waltzes up to a gathering of enemies in broad daylight to risk his— and everyone else's— cover like that?

On top of a ferris wheel, falling down, running for his life, jumping, throwing, waiting, he thought, he must not care.

In the dark, crouched low and aiming straight between those accursed green eyes, he thought, does he really believe he's above that?

Two weeks ago, watching Akai Shuuichi haul a wounded colleague away from the line of fire before flinging himself out in the open for a mad dash towards the next strategic position, he thought, fuck me, he's just careless like that. He lives in the crevice between success and disaster, and if there's a chance to leap for the former he'll take it, whatever the odds.)

He gets it, he thinks. Worrying about Akai Shuuichi comes with the package, whether one likes it or not.

"Now, if we're done circling around the matter..." Sera-san interrupts his musings. Embarrassingly enough, Rei can't make himself come up with any other alternative topic to further delay the inevitable.

Ugh. Whatever. He came this far, didn't he? Might as well get it done with once and for all. He offers Sera-san a faint smile, the pale ghost of what he could do as Amuro Tooru. He doesn't want to be him for this.

"For myself," Sera-san begins, looking almost grim, "I want to know this: if Shuuichi decided he wanted to run off and risk his life on some other mad chase, would you stop him?"

Rei's fingers twitch. This is it. "I wouldn't." Something flashes in Sera Mary's eyes, there and gone in a heartbeat. He swallows. "I'd go with him, and I'd make sure he came back alive."

Minutely, Sera-san sags back in her seat. Her eyes stray away from Rei's and fix on the sky outside; for a while, she's somewhere else entirely.

"I see," she murmurs, maybe more to herself than to him. "Thank you," she says next, this time at a normal volume. Then, as if nothing happened, she shoots him a knowing smile. "Shall we go fetch my fool of a son?"

Rei adjusts his hold on the crutch. "Of course."

⤘❅⬽

(They leave Sera Mary and the coffee Akai bought her with a pair of MI6 agents she appears to be acquainted with. Soon they'll have to part ways as well, Rei bound for a meeting on the fifth floor and Akai for one on the fourth, but in the meantime they walk through HQ side by side.

Rei is still grappling with the notion that that could be considered a normal thing, now.

"How did you do it?" Akai asks out of the blue.

Rei, torn from his nth round against the mortifying ordeal of having to accept a new status quo, grunts. "Do what?"

"You made my mother laugh. How did you do that?"

"I—" Rei replays the conversation in his head. It's nothing Akai would get scandalized over, but there's a nagging little voice in the back of his head that gets all up in arms about relaying the whole truth. "I made a joke about you. Not that it's any of your business."

Akai takes his glasses off and pins Rei with one of those thousand yard stares of his. Frog-faced bastard, he'll— "I think the fact that she was laughing at my expense makes it my business, actually," Akai counters, to which Rei replies that no it fucking doesn't, now put those damn things back on or so help him—

Akai does put the glasses on again, because he knows what's good for him; he balances this by not even saying goodbye when they part by the stairs, of course.