#inquisitories

In hindsight, it was beautiful, brush strokes across a closing sky, but somehow the view of it through the visor of his motorcycle helmet, upside down, is a little tainted, as he hits a bump too fast and goes careening headfirst into a ditch.

The sunset was the last thing he saw before he flipped over the handlebars, and his last, clichéd thought is, Ma was right, before his back hits the earth and Kuramochi sees nothing but stars.

However, as he lays there, with the world spinning, Kuramochi opens his eyes, and the bottlebrush pink and orange and blue’s merely faded, not melted into the golden gates of Heaven or the flames of hell. Slowly, he shuts his eyes again and then reopens them, to make sure everything isn’t a dream, and the pain hits a second later, an ache in his back that is definitely going to be a giant fucking bruise in the morning.

But that’s it.

Kuramochi pushes himself gingerly up to his elbows and looks down. No protruding ribs, no bloody grass. Just him, his bike, and his helmet, still on his head 

“Holy shit,” he breathes, and reaches up to practically rip it off and scramble up to his feet, grabbing fistfuls of grass until he’s up properly on his knees—all he can do is crawl across to his bike, perfectly unharmed saved for a deep gouge in the gas tank and a flat tire. Kuramochi runs his hand down the scratch, his heartbeat pounding alive and real against his ribcage, and tries to process everything at once, he’s alive, he survived that, he’s—

A cold chill runs down his back.

Kuramochi jerks his head up and looks back towards the horizon. There’s a figure standing there, backlit into shadows by the last vestiges of the golden sky, leaning clearly on what has to be something very, very sharp. Kuramochi squints to try to make the figure out better, feeling the cold sensation creeping back up his spine, but when he looks away for a moment at the rustle of wind, the person is gone.

Kuramochi drops back on his ass and stares at his bike again, his eyes wide and his breath returning like he’d been punched in the gut. It’s all he can do to try and process, and Kuramochi slowly shakes his head, his fingers curling in the grass under his hands.

“Holy shit,” Kuramochi repeats, and shakily pulls his perfectly undamaged smartphone from his jacket pocket to call his mom.

–

By the time Youichi’s mom had finished crying into his ear, he’s dragged himself half a kilometer up the road to what looks like a seedy bar. The wise thing to do would be to call a tow truck to get his bike yanked out of the ditch, but Kuramochi’s knees are still gelatin, and the promise of a cold beer sounds like a panacea, so it’s with that in mind that he pushes through the door and drops at a rickety stool, dropping his head and his arms both on the bar as soon as he’s put in an order.

“Rough night?” comes a voice from beside him, and all Kuramochi does is grunt at first, keeping his forehead firmly on the bartop as he recalls that no one was sitting anywhere near him when he first sat down. Holding still for a brief second, his curiosity gets ahead of him, and Kuramochi lifts his head out of the crook of his arms to get a proper look at his neighbor.

Seated on the stool behind him is a man who must be his age, so out of place against the glowing neon lights and click of pool balls that Kuramochi has to look at him twice. He has on a flannel shirt over a graphic t-shirt, but his skin practically looks like it’s made of porcelain, and his hair is pink.

Pink.

“Huh?” Kuramochi answers, intelligently.

The guy tsks, a delicate noise from a very, very beautiful mouth, and jerks his head towards the beer in Kuramochi’s hand, which is already half finished. It takes him a second to connect action with object, a little stunned, before he snaps back and nods his head, looking back at the glass.

“Oh, yeah. Swear to god, I almost died.”

The guy hums. “Is that so? You don’t look like you almost died.”

It’s so blunt that it’s just as surprising as his appearance, and Kuramochi can’t help it—he laughs, a two note hyaha as he downs the rest of his beer. “I’ve got one hell of a story, if you wanna hear it.”

“I’d like that.” He says, and then lifts his head in proper greeting. For a brief moment, Kuramochi’s already overworked heart gives a flutter. “Kominato Ryousuke.”

“Kuramochi Youichi.” He replies, and feels his mouth crack into a grin. “Better get another beer.”

–

Kominato—no, Ryousuke, “call me Ryousuke”, tells Kuramochi that his story’s lame.

By the time he’s finished telling it, he’s almost forgotten about the unsettling chill that came from the figure in the sun; it’s easier to watch the curve of Ryousuke’s smile and let delusions fade into panic and fright where they belonged in the first place.

His tow’s too expensive, and he regrets drinking too much the minute he steps back outside, but for a man who just had his first near-death experience, Kuramochi’s feeling a spring in his step.

–

No matter what his ma said, Kuramochi’s back up and at work the next morning early enough to unlock the garage door himself, where his bike’s already resting above the floor for his inspection. It’s not the first time he’s changed a tire on his motorcycle, his baby that he’s owned since he was nineteen, and it won’t be the last, either. No matter how much Miyuki makes fun of him for it, no matter how much his family teases him for it, his baby is his baby, and he’s more relieved for her safety than he is for his own.

The tire change itself takes ten minutes; by the time the book keeper comes in for the morning, Kuramochi’s buffing out the scratch with all the attention of a fussy mother. He hears the tinkle of the bell over the office door and grunts in greeting, the routine like clockwork. It’s only when there’s the plunk of something being set down on his tool tray that makes Kuramochi push back from his work, shoving his goggles back up on his face to make proper eye contact with Miyuki Kazuya, who has his hand on a bento box—breakfast.

Kuramochi makes a grab for it, and Miyuki holds it up out of reach as he cranes his head to look up at the bike. “How’s the old death trap?”

“Quit calling my bike that—it’s fine.” Kuramochi grumbles, heavy on the last word as he gets his hand on the box and Miyuki drops it down to let him have it with a snicker.

“Obviously not, if it’s up here. For what, the hundredth time? Have you considered putting it out to pasture? Setting it out to breed?”

“Bite me.” It’s way too early for Miyuki, in Kuramochi’s opinion, and he cracks the lid on his box and almost immediately starts shoveling rice in his mouth. Miyuki sets a thermos of coffee down near his head and plops down on the garage floor in his coveralls, his own box in his lap as he examines Kuramochi’s motorcycle.

“Maybe later. Is that why you came in early?” Kuramochi grunts his answer, a yes, and Miyuki hums, plucking a bite of his food out to stuff in his mouth. “And why you got in so late. Don’t go dying on me, now, Mochikins, we still have to sign the wedding papers.”

Kuramochi scowls, dropping his head back to look as menacing as humanly possible and lifting his hand up to pull up his sleeve, ominously—after years of friendship, Miyuki still appropriately scoots an inch or two away, a fact that’s immensely satisfying to Kuramochi. “I’m fine, the bike’s fine. Lay off, mom.”

“You’re in a good mood for someone who almost became a walking public safety advertisement.” Miyuki observes as Kuramochi moves back to his work, which is irritatingly accurate and makes him squeeze the buffer in his hands a little tighter than necessary.

“Shut up! Look, I had a good night—“

“Besides the dying thing?”

“Yes! Jesus.”

Miyuki lets him go for a second, and the silence is nice, if a little unsettling. Eyebrows furrowed with his head bowed, Kuramochi enjoys the relative peace with his shoulders hunched and his thoughts cursing his bookkeeper before Miyuki practically appears over his shoulder. “And what kind of night’s good enough to make you forget about almost dying?”

Kuramochi feels his ears go red in a matter of seconds, and he jerks back and makes a lunge at Miyuki, who cracks up and dodges out of his way almost immediately, “Shut up, it’s not like that!”

“Don’t tell me you’re cheating on me, Kuramochi! You’re breaking my heart!” Miyuki singsongs, places his hand over his chest, and Kuramochi highly, highly considers flinging his wrench directly at his stupid glasses.

“We’re not dating!!” is the only proper defense he can even get out before Miyuki laughs his way back to the office, waving him off over his shoulder. Kuramochi flips him off in the window and huffs back to his bike with a little more force than necessary, scrubbing at the scratch.

No, they’re not dating, because Kuramochi would arguably rather drive his baby straight off a cliff and into the ocean than date Miyuki Kazuya, but then again, Kuramochi hadn’t managed to ask the guy out from the bar last night, either.

The more he thinks about it, the harder and harder Kominato Ryousuke had been to read. He was fun to talk to, definitely, told stories and cut through Kuramochi’s with a scythe of commentary, biting and acerbic. But there was something quicksilver about him, something he hadn’t put his fingers on.

Not that it mattered, because it wasn’t like Kuramochi’d ever see him again. Slumping forward, he presses his forehead to the motorcycle’s frame and leaves it there—it’d be weird if he went back to that same bar, at that same time, where he almost died. A little masochistic, probably.

So he definitely won’t do it.

–

It’s six pm, and Kuramochi’s sitting in the same seat at the bar.

This is a new level of pathetic, he scolds himself, staring into the head of his beer with his eyebrows furrowed. He’d been so occupied last night he hadn’t even bothered to ask for Ryousuke’s phone number, even just to hang out with him again or talk to him again or something. He wasn’t sure if like was the right word for wanting to spend time with him, but Ryousuke was—he was something.

“Oh, Kuramochi. Have you crashed your bike again?”

Kuramochi jerks up, nearly spilling his beer as he hurries to turn around, and after twenty minutes of waiting, there is Ryousuke, looking just as resplendent as he had the day they first met, his hand on the back of Kuramochi’s bar chair. His smile is exactly the same, but he looks a little wicked at the corners, and he slides into the seat beside him gracefully, removing his hand from the chair and setting down a large bag across the back.

“Ryousuke,” Kuramochi says, and he sounds a little more delighted than he meant to, a little less cool, but it’s hard not to, and his grin spreads across his face. “Can I getcha a drink?”

“That’s alright.” Ryousuke says, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a wallet, slim black leather. He holds it up for Kuramochi’s inspection, and when he flips it open, the identification card is assuredly not Kominato Ryousuke. Kuramochi blinks, and takes a look behind him, where a large, burly man is bent over a table playing pool, completely focused on his game, “Someone’s offered to pay our tab.”

The smile on Kuramochi’s face ticks up another wild notch or two, towards playing bully around the schoolyard when he was in middle school; there’s something dangerous about Kominato Ryousuke, and god damn if he’s not into it, if he’s not going to be showing up at this bar every night for the rest of his life if it means a little more of Ryousuke’s company.

He raises his hand and orders a Crown and coke just because someone else is buying, and Ryousuke’s half of a laugh beside him makes him feel a little like he’s floating on air.

–

They meet up four times that week, and by the fourth time, Kuramochi has yet to ask for Ryousuke’s number.

–

Hitting the bar on the side of the road has become a bit of a tradition for Kuramochi now—he finishes up at the shop, leaves Miyuki to close up like always, and makes his way over promptly at six. He has a beer, and Ryousuke shows up a few minutes later, always out of nowhere, like quicksilver running out of Kuramochi’s hands. It’s been like that every time now, with Ryousuke dodging questions and turning them back on Kuramochi before he can blink, but the less he learns about Ryousuke, the more he wants to engage him, to try and find out whatever he’s hiding, to dig deeper under the surface. So far he knows that Ryousuke works an office job that keeps him busy, that he lives somewhere near this bar, that he rarely finishes his drink, and that he’s older than Kuramochi (“I would have been your senpai,” he says, offhanded, makes Kuramochi laugh), but that’s it.

Today, however, he gets no chance to ask questions.

When Ryousuke comes up to the bar, he has a split lip and a bruise blossoming across his face, and he leans on Kuramochi’s chair a little more heavily than usual. Kuramochi jolts and shoves out of it in a second, lifting his hands to do—something, anything, “Ryousuke, are you okay?! What the hell happened?!”

“Nothing.” Ryousuke says, and it’s as sharp as the crack of a whip, a we’re finished with this conversation, but Kuramochi’s not having it. He drops his hands from where they were middling between them, even if the urge to cup his cheeks in his hands is still there; the closer he gets, the better he can see the dark circles under his good eye, the slump of his shoulders. Holy shit.

“Nothing—jesus, did you get jumped or something? Do I gotta kick somebody’s ass—fuck, you’re still bleeding.”

“Am I?” Ryousuke glances down at himself, and there’s a growing spot of red blood on the sleeve of his crisp white dress shirt, “How unfortunate.”

“Ryo-san—“ Kuramochi says, heavy with concern, and the nickname doesn’t even register as weird or wrong as he makes a move to grab his arm. Ryousuke pulls his hand away, but his sleeve drops where it’s not sticking to his forearm, and he can see the tip of a bright red gash, the stark contrast of his pale skin. “You need to go to the hospital, holy shit, like, right now.”

“I don’t, and it’s fine.”  Ryousuke says, again with the finality, and Kuramochi drops his shoulders, rolls his head, disbelief and worry all at once.

“Let me—shit, okay, fine, let me get you a bandage or something.”

“Kuramochi—“

“Seriously, and some antiseptic, there’s a convenience store we can just walk to like two blocks away—“

“Kuramochi—“

“Ryo-san!” he says right back, with the same sort of intense finality, and Kuramochi doesn’t even care if it sounds like he’s begging. “Please.”

There’s a long, tense silence between them, Kuramochi staring at Ryousuke, Ryousuke staring back, before finally, Ryousuke reaches up to peel the sticky red fabric away from his arm with two fingers. He doesn’t look at Kuramochi, but he recognizes the acceptance fast—faster than he should, having known Ryousuke for a week, but he knows—and the worry oozes out of his shoulders. Immediately, Kuramochi calls for the check and gets up, fully expecting (or at least hoping) Ryousuke will follow.

–

“This is ridiculous.” Ryousuke tells him twenty minutes later as he holds out his arm for Kuramochi’s inspection. He’s got a roll of bandage in his teeth, and presses the square of gauze over the cut on his skin that he bought with a clumsy attempt at precision. He’s fully aware that Ryousuke is poking at him, but Kuramochi just grunts and wraps the end of the bandage around the delicate bones in Ryousuke’s wrist, handling him as carefully as his calloused hands will let him, “You’re going to get a disease.”

“Do you have diseases?” he says back, lifting his eyebrows, and Ryousuke just tilts his head to the side, his unreadable smile not moving an inch. Kuramochi snorts, rolling his eyes and wrapping the bandage, “Whatever, at least I’m dyin’ a hero.”

“Oh, of course.” Ryousuke replies mockingly, looking away from Kuramochi as he finishes his business. So far, Ryousuke’s turned down Kuramochi’s offer to clean his lip and an ice pack for his face, but maybe it was the fact that he probably needed stitches that he at least allowed Kuramochi to patch his arm. He’s learned a new thing about Kominato Ryousuke tonight—he’s stubborn as all hell.

Standing up fully once he’s finished, Kuramochi looks back into his convenience store bag and pulls out his final purchase, one made while Ryousuke waited outside of the shop, and pulls it out with a flourish.

“A popsicle.” Ryousuke says drily, but Kuramochi wouldn’t be observant if he didn’t notice the amusement in his tone, the curve of his smile threatening to pull up another centimeter, and it makes his heart sing somewhere in his ribcage.

“Yup.” Kuramochi replies, holding it out, and he knows he’s trying not to smile like an idiot, trying to pretend that even beat to all hell Ryousuke isn’t beautiful, that the lights from the streetlamp above their heads are making him look like an angel, “’s my version of a lollipop. Y’know, for bein’ a good patient.”

“How kind of you.” He replies, but neither of them are idiots—it’s ice, after all. There’s a brief pause before Ryousuke reaches for the popsicle, like he’s making him wait for it, and when he wraps his fingers around the stick, their hands brush and it feels like static electricity.

Ryousuke takes his popsicle and steps away, pressing it to his lower lip as he leans on the traffic barrier beside the shop, and Kuramochi follows him, settling on top of it, one scuffed boot against the cold metal surface. Ryousuke’s not looking at him, his head turned up towards the stars, but Kuramochi doesn’t look away, because he can’t, can’t stop staring at the blossom of a bruise on his sharp cheekbone, the flutter of his dark eyelashes against his cheek in the off-color lighting.

He knows he and Ryousuke have at least become acquaintances in the time they’ve spent together—friends feels nebulous and strange, far away, and anything further than that is wishful thinking—but sitting here with him makes it even more blatantly obvious how little he doesn’t know. Ryousuke is a mystery tied up in a pretty pink ribbon, and no matter how much Kuramochi pulls he never seems to unravel: but here, standing beside him with his head to the stars, it seems like he’s frayed.

Kuramochi takes in a deep breath and Ryousuke shifts, finally turning to look at him. His expression’s change a little, his eyebrows lifted as he looks over Kuramochi’s face, and Kuramochi’s not sure what he wants to say besides something, anything. Something about how it feels when Kuramochi looks at him, like the same motorcycle crash that he walked away from, jelly legged and as high on life as he could ever manage, terrified and thrilled all at once, something like the fact that his lips look soft and all he’s wanted to do is listen to him speak from them, about how he wonders a little alone at night if Ryousuke tastes like the gin and tonics he never finishes, dry and citrusy, but Ryousuke suddenly breathes in sharply and draws back.

The moment’s utterly broken, and Kuramochi’s gaze immediately flicks to Ryousuke’s arm as he takes another step back and looks over his shoulder. “I have to go.”

“Wha—Ryo—“ Kuramochi starts, but it’s already been decided.

Ryousuke doesn’t even look at him when he starts walking back, and all Kuramochi does is watch him go.

–

He comes back to the bar three times that week.

Ryousuke’s not there.

–

Life without Kominato Ryousuke does in fact move on, though Miyuki likes to dramatize that for Kuramochi it hasn’t.

He gets up, he goes to work, he bickers with Miyuki and eats his food, he closes the shop, he sleeps. It’s the same routine he was into before he had his first brush with death, and it shouldn’t feel hollow, but it does.

In Kuramochi’s experience, there’s only one thing to fill up hollowness, and that’s the same thing he did all through high school, through a few years of university that didn’t go where he wanted them to, and that’s why he closes up shop and heads out for the recreation center downtown with a beat up old bag slung over his shoulder. It’s a quiet walk, peaceful, and Kuramochi bobs his head to the music in his headphones as he moves along the sidewalk of hundreds, dark browns and blacks and one single head of pink moving through the crowd.

Wait.

Kuramochi’s head jerks up and he follows the person with his eyes. He’s only a couple of feet away, and Kuramochi’s heart jumps up in his chest at the thought, stupidly, pathetically, and before he can really do anything about it, his body moves of its own accord and he pushes through the crowd and grabs for his wrist with a, “Ryo—“

But when the person turns around, he stops, and his stomach falls.

It’s not Ryousuke. Rather, it’s another young man, his hair a little longer and just shy of falling into his eyes, the same shade of vibrant pink as his the hair on his head. He blinks at Kuramochi, obviously startled by the grab too, and time continues to move around them, people and places and things hustling through the sidewalk on their afternoon commutes.

“…sorry.” He says, embarrassed, and drops the person’s wrist, but he just shakes his head and rubs his wrist lightly.

“It’s okay. You know my brother?”

Brother? Add another thing to his Ryousuke list. (Not that Kuramochi’s keeping it or anything, anymore.) His eyebrows raise up to his hairline and Kuramochi nods, hemming and hawing a little for an answer before deciding on an, “Uh, yeah, kinda. You’re—“

“Haruichi.” He says, with a kind smile that would look absurdly out of place on his brother’s face. His eyes suddenly light up with something that must be recognition, and Haruichi snaps his fingers. “And you’re Kuramochi.”

“….uh, yeah.” Kuramochi replies for the second time that day, thrown for a loop as his hand pauses midway to the back of his neck. If Haruichi could recognize him on sight, that meant Ryousuke talked about him, which meant that Ryousuke maybe hadn’t actually disappeared off the face of the Earth, but more importantly, that Kuramochi had made some sort of an impression on him—that maybe he liked him too.

(That was maybe less important than Ryousuke actually being alive.)

“My brother told me about you.” Haruichi says to mitigate some of the confusion, his tone gentle, and he tilts his head to the side in a move that definitely screams siblings to Kuramochi. “I’m actually on my way to see him now. Why don’t you come with?”

Kuramochi looks at the bag over his shoulder for a brief second, remembers the look on Ryousuke’s face before he left—the last time he got to speak with him. It should have been an easy answer, he should have gotten the hint.

But Kuramochi Youichi is a stubborn man, too, and the answer out of his mouth is, “Yeah, sounds great.”

Like hell he’s going to say no, now.

–

It figures, then, that he and Kominato Haruichi had the same exact final destination.

The younger Kominato is a baseball player in university, Kuramochi learns on his trip—he’s a second baseman, like his brother, he says, and by the time they reach the familiar home ground of the closest batting cage, Kuramochi’s decided he likes the kid a lot. He reminds him a lot of his older brother, but a little more open and a lot more friendly—he’s regaling Haruichi with tales of his own university career as a shortstop when he drops his bag on a bench and pulls out a metal bat of his own, scratched and beat to all hell, swinging it over to rest on his shoulder.

It’s while Haruichi’s changing his shoes that he looks up and spots Ryousuke in the cage.

His form is perfect, and he’s hitting one handed off of a machine, different directions and angles and turning the ball. If he’d known Ryousuke was a baseball player, he would have pegged him like this, the troublesome kind, the ones every pitcher hates for their ability to make a pitch count climb. It would figure that Ryousuke was some kind of baseball-playing devil just as much as he was a mysterious, bruise wearing, wallet stealing bar customer, and Kuramochi leans on the chain fence between them and watches him for a minute, feeling warmth and fondness rise up in his chest at the sight.

He’s supposed to be annoyed. He’s not.

Kuramochi’s fingers curl against the fence as the machine stops, and Ryousuke lifts his head to see him—but all Kuramochi does is give him a wave, tries his best to show off the fact that he’s not about to tear this fence down to get to him and see him, that Ryousuke disappearing for a week was totally normal and Kuramochi definitely had not been thinking about him every single day.

Ryousuke doesn’t threaten to call the cops—his mouth just quirks up, and Kuramochi can’t help but grin back in response.

Jackpot.

–

The three of them hit for three hours, and Kuramochi learns a few more things about the Kominato brothers in his time at the machine. For starters, the younger brother is a genius—he’s hit everything the machine’s thrown at him and then some, each one perfectly placed, the tic in his brow like his brother’s showing only when he’s off by a centimeter or two.

Secondly, Ryousuke is just as good as little brother.

Thirdly, the two of them have an entire language going on on the fence when it’s Kuramochi’s turn, and he doesn’t need to look back to know that without saying a word, the entire thing is still about him. He wonders which one of them is really the ‘devil’ after all—this is seeming less and less like an accident the more time that passes by.

As he comes out of the cage, Kuramochi pulls the borrowed batting helmet off his head and shakes out his hair. Ryousuke’s seated on one of the bleachers, and Haruichi passes him a bottle of water, which Kuramochi gratefully takes from him.

“Your batting average must have been awful,” Ryousuke comments, and it makes Youichi snort, choke on his water, “You really sucked.”

“Aniki,” Haruichi starts, and Kuramochi just grins, even if it was a poke directly to the ego and downs the rest of the water.

“Nah, he’s totally right. Maybe if I’d had a hardass senpai I woulda been better.”

“I think your case is beyond help, Kuramochi.” Ryousuke replies sweetly, and Kuramochi can’t help himself; he laughs.

Haruichi rolls his eyes to himself, but it looks awfully fond, and picks up the empty water bottles they’ve left on the benches to toss them, leaving Ryousuke and Kuramochi alone for a few moments. It’s just like before, the familiar warmth of a silence you don’t feel like you have to fill, and this time, there’s no way Kuramochi’s letting Ryousuke get away from him again.

“Ryo-san,” he starts, the nickname from before still sticking, so natural it practically lifts itself off his tongue, and Kuramochi seizes his chance like first base, turns his gaze down to look at Ryousuke proper, who this time, was looking up at him. “Go out with me.”

Well, he’d hoped to be a little smoother than that. It’s no love confession, no roses or yes or no boxes, just Kuramochi, awkward and sweaty and flushed a little pink, and if Ryousuke’s messing with him with all this waiting, Kuramochi figures he’d probably deserve it.

Ryousuke’s looking right at him. His expression hasn’t changed, and if Kuramochi wasn’t as observant as he was, he might not have noticed Ryousuke’s gaze flick to his younger brother’s back, before it returns to him, cool and aloof. Slowly, he tilts his head up a little further, like he’s appraising, the single most terrifying moment of Kuramochi’s life, and he answers, “Tomorrow.”

Kuramochi blinks. “Wait, seriously?”

“Do you want me to take it back?”

“No!” Kuramochi blurts out immediately, and Ryousuke’s smile curls across his face, as familiar as it is strange, and it makes the hammering of Kuramochi’s heart against his ribcage again, makes him feel like he’s flipped over his handlebars for the second time, for something else entirely, and it’s all he can do to add, “Tomorrow sounds great,” and try not to smile like a lunatic.

If Ryousuke had a response, he doesn’t say it—he merely turns back to Haruichi, who approaches with a smile on his face, and Kuramochi has to wonder if this whole thing was planned.

(If it was, he finds he doesn’t mind that much.)

–

It figures that Kuramochi’s still awake and thinking about a date with Ryousuke—time and place given, dinner and a movie– when he gets a call from his mom around eleven, asking him to go to the convenience store and bring her a snack. It’s not a totally unusual call—Youichi’s mom works long hours and lives three blocks away, a fact that Miyuki’s teased him for mercilessly since he signed a lease for his apartment—but he grumbles his way out to do it anyway, phone cradled against his ear as he shuffles outside in his sweatpants and a tank top.

It’s pitch dark outside save for the streetlights, the third beacon down fizzling and sparking like Kuramochi’s mood, a wild strobe light among three or four steady circles of gold, and he steps into it right in time for someone to cross his path and the light to settle for on.

Standing at the crux of the street, directly in Kuramochi’s line of sight, is Kominato Ryousuke, holding a scythe over his shoulder and covered in blood. From here he’s unmistakable—the moonlight makes his hair look like fairy floss, and the weapon looks like it belongs in his hands, even if it’s as tall as he is. Kuramochi’s stunned, caught somewhere between beautiful and terrible, a car crash human being with blood on his cheeks.

Ryousuke lifts his hand up to examine it, his delicate fingers that were wrapped around a bat hours earlier, and it’s then that they lock eyes.

There’s a moment of silence, Kuramochi’s breath a frightened rabbit caught in his chest.

Ryousuke turns towards him, stares at Kuramochi with the blood in his fingers and staining his shirt, and Kuramochi blurts out the first thing he can think of, which is, “You’ve got some on your face.”

“Oh.” Ryousuke says, as if he were talking about the weather, about work, and he reaches up to touch his cheek. The blood smears under his fingertips, leaving a red streak like a tear track down his cheek, and it’s all Kuramochi can do to finally exhale, letting go of a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

Ryousuke pulls his scythe off of his shoulder and it transforms under his hand with a glow of white light that Kuramochi thought he might have hallucinated—the shape melts and changes into that of a baseball bat, a perfectly normal wooden baseball bat, save for a line of what look like carved in symbols up the body. He handles it like he’d done in the cage mere hours beforehand, curling his long fingers around the handle and swinging it back up and around to rest on his shoulders. He looks like a delinquent, like a murder victim and a murderer at the same time, and for a brief moment, Kuramochi reconsiders everything he’s ever considered ‘attractive’ up to this point to replace with Ryousuke’s figure illuminated in the moonlight, either of his wrists resting over the edge of a bloodied wooden bat.

(It has to be a defense mechanism.)

“Well,” Ryousuke says, standing up straight, “How awkward.”

Kuramochi’s brain grinds roughly to a stop, and he shakes his head once, twice, three times to try and shake the image, but it doesn’t disappear. Ryousuke’s still standing there. He hasn’t moved an inch, in fact, still holding onto his bat, and it’s when Kuramochi opens his mouth and closes it a couple of times, working over a question somewhere between what and why and how that Ryousuke looks up off into the corner, squinting in the distance. He returns to Kuramochi a moment later, and a smile crosses his face, eerie in the low light, the blood streak on his cheek an accent that belongs in the horror movie they’re supposed to see twelve hours from now.

(But Kuramochi is observant—it’s his best trait, sometimes his worst—and he can see the strain on the edges of it, something that looks maybe a little, tiny bit like hurt.)

“Duty calls.” Ryousuke says—he snaps his fingers and the streetlamp goes dead. Kuramochi stumbles in the darkness, halfway to a step forward to somewhere, but when the light clicks back on, Ryousuke is gone.

–

At six pm the next day, Kuramochi’s standing on a quiet little street tucked away from the main hustle of the city with his hand half raised to knock on the wooden door of an apartment.

Despite every attempt to convince himself otherwise, what had happened last night had definitely not been a hallucination. The image of Ryousuke, bloodied and smiling like a horror movie villain, has been more or less burned into his mind for the past twelve hours, and the more he closes his eyes, the more he sees it. The more he walks past a streetlamp, the more he thinks about it, about Ryousuke with his dulcet voice and his injuries, Ryousuke with his mystery and his avoidance, the more obvious it becomes.

“I’m going on a date with a serial killer.” Kuramochi mutters, staring at his hand and the proximity to the door.

Then why are you here? Says a voice in the back of his head that sounds suspiciously like Miyuki Kazuya, complete with a nasal laugh, and Kuramochi shudders, shaking his head. Is he so desperate that someone who is probably, almost definitely a serial killer, is his only option? He could marry a nice girl and move to the countryside, have a couple of kids and pretend that he was only going to have nightmares about last night for the rest of his living days. It’d be great.

But, the more he passes streetlights, the more he thinks about Ryousuke and the strained edge of his smile, the more he wonders if maybe he hadn’t known the whole story.

Kuramochi considers his morals.

He knocks on the door.

It’s not Ryousuke who answers, but rather, Haruichi, dressed in sweatpants. He’s only opened the door enough to be seen, and the sight of Kuramochi makes his eyebrows raise minutely. Kuramochi gives him a half-cocked grin, waving a hand in greeting. He sounds a little surprised. “Kuramochi-kun.”

“Yo, Haruichi. Is your brother around?”

Haruichi looks at him for a long moment, and then looks back into the apartment. There’s a moment of silence, some low, murmured conversation, before Haruichi smiles and opens the door all the way. “I think he’s in the restroom. Would you like some tea?”

“Sure—but, uh, we’ve got reservations.” Kuramochi replies hastily, a little embarrassed, and he looks up over Haruichi’s head to see Ryousuke coming out into the hallway.

He looks the same as he did the night before, minus the blood, minus the bat—Ryousuke lifts his head to look at him and looks momentarily as startled as he can, the permanent smile on his face dropped. It’s a good look on him, one that makes a twist of warmth bleed into Kuramochi’s chest, and he decides, yeah. Fuck his morals.

“Hey, Ryo-san.” Kuramochi says by way of being tall, and Haruichi steps out of the way. He feels a little awkward, standing there in his riding jacket, a second helmet under his arm, but the grin on his face is boyish and he can feel it blossoming when he speaks. “Ready to go?”

Haruichi and Ryousuke exchange a look, before the elder of the two brothers steps up to the doorway to put his shoes on, keeping his eyes down on the ground as he speaks. “You’re on time.”

“You sound surprised! C’mon, Ryo-san, did you really think I was going to stand you up?”

“No, I just thought you might be late.”

“Aw, harsh! What kind of guy do you think I am, huh?”

Ryousuke stands up fully and faces him—for a brief moment, Kuramochi sees a phantom of the night before, the dark circles under his eyes, the red streak down his cheek—but he smiles and it disappears, and Kuramochi’s standing there with Kominato Ryousuke, bar patron, friend, pink haired menace. His tone’s silky smooth as he straightens properly and pulls a jacket from a hook, and Kuramochi wonders if Ryousuke can just see straight through him, all the worries from last night and the sappy thing that’s made itself at home in his chest, through blood or wallet thefts.

Ryousuke hums. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

And Kuramochi’s grin grows; he lifts the helmet on his hip and holds it out to Ryousuke. There’s not a word he has to say for him to take it.

He has a date to attend, after all.

–

The movie is horrifying, and Ryousuke whispers taunts into his ear at the main character until Kuramochi’s in stitches in the back row and the people in front of them are giving him odd looks. He doesn’t bother going for Ryousuke’s hand, too busy snickering and imitating the main victim screaming his lungs out in his best, under his breath high pitched voice.

By the time the movie’s ended and Kuramochi’s warm with the happiness of it all, Ryousuke’s arms squeeze around his waist on the back of his bike, and he doesn’t want to leave—so he doesn’t. Instead of turning back to the quiet little street of the Kominatos home, to Haruichi and a quiet night, Kuramochi peels out of the parking lot faster than he has any right to and takes off down the highway.

It’s worth it for the feeling of Ryousuke’s chest contracting with a breath, the feeling of being alive that comes from whistling down the highway faster than he’s allowed, Ryousuke urging him quicker and quicker in his ears. Kuramochi drops his head back and laughs up to the sky, loud and delighted, and figures if he’s going to die at all, at least he’s going to die happy.

There are worse ways to go.

–

Kuramochi drives until he makes it out of town, to a place where there’s more grass than buildings, and he parks his bike on the gravel when he’s satisfied, swinging his left leg off of the bike and hopping down. Ryousuke follows him, a couple of extra inches down to the floor, small sneakers next to Kuramochi’s kickstand, and he leans back against his bike and digs around in the saddlebag before producing two popsicles, each a little melted, but still mostly good.

He holds one out for Ryousuke’s inspection, and he snorts. “You’re unbelievable.”

“You gonna eat it or not?” Kuramochi taunts, and Ryousuke rolls his eyes and takes the popsicle from him, unwrapping the plastic with a crinkle. For a moment, that’s the only sound between them, and Kuramochi looks down at his own half melted mess in the summer heat and aches with questions—when the warmth of the date itself dies down, he’s left alone with his thoughts, with Kominato Ryousuke and his bloodstained cheek.

For all intents and purposes, he should feel terrified. After all, with what he saw, Kominato could kill him right this second, bat or not. But looking at Ryousuke, too small in Kuramochi’s jacket that he’d passed back to him when they left the movie theater, holding a red and white popsicle in his small hands, he’s finding it hard to be anything but warm, hit in the chest with affection for the mystery he’s gotten himself entangled into, his own personal car crash.

Kuramochi bites the inside of his cheek and considers his questions, feels the swell of anxiety rise up deep in his chest, because in reality he doesn’t want to die, but in reality, he doesn’t want Ryousuke to be a serial killer either. Especially not a magical one. He wants Ryousuke to be—Ryousuke, just as much as he wants to know his truths.

Would it have been easier to keep it as a mystery?

“Ryo-san—“

“You caught me in the middle of a job.”

They both speak at the same time, both stop, silenced, and Kuramochi blinks at Ryousuke. The middle of a job? That means—his whole expression pales, and Ryousuke tsks and jabs him in the cheek with his now empty popsicle stick.

“What kind of horrid things are you thinking, Kuramochi?”

“I saw you covered in blood, Ryo-san!” Kuramochi manages to squawk out, jerking away a little, but Ryousuke just looks back away from him, playing the popsicle stick between his fingers like a pen trick. It rolls back and forth, over his knuckles, hypnotizing, and while Kuramochi’s distracted trying to internalize the fact that he’s dating a serial killer, Ryousuke starts speaking to the sky overhead.

“My little brother died in a car crash.” He says, indifferent, and Kuramochi stops, confusion overtaking panic as he thinks to Haruichi, opening the door just a few hours before, wonders, a second brother, but Ryousuke keeps talking as if he can hear the static in Kuramochi’s head, “It’s always been the two of us since we were young, and his last year in high school, I took him to practice one morning, and someone t-boned my car.”

Kuramochi’s breath catches in his chest, the confusion very quickly bottoming off into sorrow, an ache of pain for a family he only just knows—he can’t imagine, losing his ma, his grandpa, but he doesn’t know what to say short of, “I’m sorry,” even though it feels like empty words. Like nothing.

Ryousuke shrugs. “Clearly it worked out in our favor.”

There’s a twist of dry humor to his tone, and Kuramochi huffs a little bit of a laugh despite himself, despite the thousands of questions that immediately pop up in his head. It’s clear Ryousuke’s just fine with stopping there, and Kuramochi opens his mouth and closes it in search of something to say; Ryousuke, however, returns to turning the stick in his hands, looking down.

Not once has he looked at Kuramochi. It isn’t like him.

It occurs to Kuramochi that this process must be like pulling teeth—that maybe there’s a reason why Kominato Ryousuke has been such a mystery, like maybe there’s a reason why he’s telling Kuramochi, now. He stops trying to speak, stunned by the realization that all of those questions he wanted answered are going to be presented to him right here, under this starry sky in June, with Ryousuke overcoming some kind of something to let him in.

He exhales. Ryousuke inhales beside him.

“I had no intentions of letting it end there, so before his funeral, I sought out information on stopping the process. That is, I made a deal with someone.” Ryousuke’s brow wrinkles a little, now, but besides that, he doesn’t give up a single visual cue, not a single suggestion that something might be wrong aside from the words coming out of his mouth. “I gave up my life in exchange for Haruichi’s, and collect the souls of the dead in exchange.”

Kuramochi’s knocked for a loop. He stares at Ryousuke for a long moment to let the words sink over him, I gave up my life and collect the souls of the dead, to try and reconcile what he saw with what he’s just heard now. Slowly, he swallows down what feels like a lump in his throat, and croaks, “The blood?”

“Sometimes the dead aren’t cooperative.”

It’s so utterly blasé that Kuramochi wheezes a laugh, a dry noise, and lifts his hand up to run it through his gelled bangs. “Holy shit.”

“You’re taking this surprisingly well,” Ryousuke comments, and he can tell even from his posture that he’s gotten cagey again, that he’s scooted a little further away, curled a little further into himself. Now that he knows? Kuramochi doesn’t blame him. His body language gives away more than his voice ever could, the wry little smile on his face still in place as he sticks the popsicle stick back in his mouth and sucks the juice from it like it could fully take his attention away from the gravitas of the conversation.

Kuramochi leaves his hand on his face. “I thought you were a serial killer.”

“Mm, no.” It makes Ryousuke laugh, though, a delighted hum of a noise, and even in the concern and confusion, in the stunning revelation that things like grim reapers are totally real, Kuramochi’s stupid heart swells six sizes at the noise. “I’m flattered, though.”

Kuramochi scoffs again, his laugh half delirious as he scrubs at his face and lets his hands totally fall, rolls his head back to look at the stars for another long moment before something occurs to him—he jerks back to look at Ryousuke with wide eyes. “Wait, so that first night—“

“I was after you.” Ryousuke finishes, pulling the stick from his mouth again. The figure in the distance from the accident comes back to Kuramochi, the dark shadow of a man in the golden light, and he shakes his head, looking at Ryousuke and his backlit moonlight hair, in the curve of his mysterious smile and the sharp, sharp scythe he’d been holding just the night before.

The three images of Ryousuke—the friend, the shadow, the reaper—combine together into one person, the one standing in front of him, and Kuramochi considers the gravity of the things that Ryousuke had done, the lives he’d saved, the lives he’d taken.

He considers the person in front of him, who almost saw Kuramochi die, who told him stories with a wicked smile and now caught the souls of the wayward dead for his little brother, to let him have a life, to do something so utterly selfless it’s almost mind blowing.

There’s not a single person in this world who could have resisted his next move—Kuramochi lunges forward and cups either of Ryousuke’s cheeks in his hands, and kisses him.

There are no sparks, no fireworks. Rather, it’s a warmth that curls in his stomach and threatens to raise higher, the pressure of Ryousuke’s soft mouth against his own and the way it molds to him, the way Ryousuke’s hand hovers in the air for a brief moment before he drops the popsicle stick and puts his small, calloused hand to the back of his neck, his fingers through the curly hair at the nape.

It’s Kuramochi saying thank you for someone who couldn’t know, not if Ryousuke could barely tell Kuramochi. It’s Kuramochi, head over heels in love with someone with semi-magic powers, someone who kisses like it’s his last breath, who speaks with his fingers and his hands more honestly than he really does with his mouth.

When he pulls away, he doesn’t drop Ryousuke’s cheeks, just moves back enough to look at him, his brows knit together and strokes his thumb over his cheekbones. Any words that come up on his tongue feel stupid, clumsy, and the subtle way that Ryousuke tips his head into his right palm is enough to strike them all down.

It’s Ryousuke who speaks, soft, a little amused. “You’ve always been trouble, haven’t you?”

Kuramochi gets no chance to respond, but when Ryousuke kisses him again, maybe the way Kuramochi smiles against his mouth would be enough.

–

The days of spending time with Ryousuke fade into months, and life isn’t that different when your boyfriend’s a grim reaper. Kuramochi runs his fingers over Ryousuke’s hair when he’s home from a job and spends his extra hours at the Kominato apartment, playing video games with Haruichi until Ryousuke appears in the doorway, bloodied and tired or spry, but never any less successful.

Over time, he learns new things about Ryousuke. He can’t eat much normal food, and thus his horrific cooking skills (as described by Haruichi) are thankfully rendered useless. He likes bad horror movies more than he likes good ones, he’s a voracious reader, and he’s allergic to dogs. Every day that passes, Kuramochi starts to learn to read Kominato Ryousuke like a well-loved book, one he’s cracked the spine on a thousand times.

It’s a good life, magical and strange as it is.

He wouldn’t trade it for much.

–

The only exception to this is the first time they hook up—the first time ever Kuramochi sees Ryousuke naked, the first time his hands run over his bare hips, the curve of his ass, the first time Ryousuke touches him like he’s claiming him, the first time he finds the tattoo of a cheetah that curls down his back, and the demon pulls so hard on Ryousuke that he sways and nearly falls over.

Kuramochi catches him, sitting up immediately as Ryousuke puts a hand over his own chest, keeps his eyes closed, and Kuramochi feels a pang of sympathy in his chest, mixed somewhere with anger, as Ryousuke rights himself again and lets his forehead rest on Kuramochi’s for a long moment.

“Man,” Kuramochi mutters, “I fucking hate that guy.”

“Me too.” Ryousuke replies, and it’s downright venomous, as he presses his lips to Kuramochi’s one final time and pushes himself back to his feet.

The view of him changing is still nice. It’s not as nice as getting laid, and if Kuramochi ever meets this demon, he’s going to punch him directly between the eyeballs, lack of magical powers be damned. He’s contemplating this when Ryousuke disappears, and he’s contemplating it still when he returns less than five minutes later and the scythe disappears out of his hands, bloodied silver blade compacting back into a bat in a matter of seconds.

“Wh—“ Kuramochi starts, but he doesn’t get time—Ryousuke’s on him in a second, practically pouncing as they both go down, as he shoves his hand straight down the front of Kuramochi’s boxers and makes him gasp.

“I can be fast when it’s necessary,” he breathes against Kuramochi’s mouth, mischievous and dark and delighted all at once, “Can you?”

Kuramochi grins like a fool and turns them both over, interruptions be damned.

–

Over the seven or eight months that they’ve dated, Kuramochi’s life hasn’t changed much. He still gets up, goes to work, bickers with Miyuki and eats his lunch, closes the shop at five and then goes to Ryousuke’s or meets Ryousuke at his place instead of going home alone. It’s a good arrangement, and so when Kuramochi hops on his bike after the shop’s closed down for the five minute drive to the Kominatos’ apartment, all he’s thinking about is if he remembered to buy beer to put in Ryousuke’s fridge, and what he might make for dinner.

It’s all he’s thinking about when a car rolls through a stoplight and slams into his motorcycle, too.

This time, he doesn’t just flip over the handlebars.

–

When Kuramochi opens his eyes, the first thing he sees is pink.

At first, he’s wondering if he really has been dragged to hell. All that registers is the feeling that he might be floating and pink hair, and then—the presence of a mouth on his, soft and quicksilver, of two hands on his cheeks and the sensation of another body maybe anchoring him to earth or hell or heaven or wherever he might be.

Everything around him is soft and fuzzy, and he slowly lets himself drift back off into oblivion as what must be a kiss fades to black.

–

The second time he opens his eyes, he’s all alone.

Kuramochi jolts awake, his eyes snapping wide open as he pushes himself up to a fully sitting position and whips his head around, left to right. From the white walls to the sterile smell wafting to the air, his senses come back fast enough to mark his location as a hospital room, and the panic in Kuramochi’s system dissipates to confusion as he curls his fingers in his blankets and tries to remember exactly what happened. There was the car—he couldn’t see the driver—the darkness, and then—

“Ryo-san—“ he gasps, but there’s no Ryousuke—only Miyuki Kazuya, who jumps out of his chair with a clatter.

“Shit, Kuramochi,” Miyuki says, grabbing onto the rail on the edge of the bed and then collapsing back into his chair, pushing his glasses up to rub his forehead, “Maybe you should put that bike of yours out to pasture for real.”

Kuramochi’s shoulders drop and he looks at him, as the details of the accident start to come back all at once. He drops his hands uselessly against the covers and stares down at them, silent for a moment as Miyuki pushes his glasses back into place. “Considering it’s totaled, maybe a graveyard’s more appropriate.”

“Shit.” Kuramochi mutters and scrubs his hand over his face. “What happened?”

“Someone hit you dead-on at an intersection. Not even the doctor knows how you came out of this one.” Miyuki reaches over to pat the bed for emphasis, and Kuramochi turns to look at the heart monitor in the room, beeping innocently in time to his normal heartbeat. He looks down at himself to find nothing—no bandages, no splints, no pain.

Kuramochi remembers pink hair.

The heart monitor in his room ticks up in speed, a notch, two, three, and he pushes himself up towards Miyuki, grabbing the blankets to throw them aside. “Miyuki, where’s Ryou-san?!”

“Ryousuke? I haven’t seen him. Should I call him?”

“I—“ and the idea dies in Kuramochi’s throat as he’s up and out of the bed as fast as his legs will let him, grabbing the electromagnetic monitor on his chest and ripping it off until the loud beeping of his heart rate dies off to nothing, “I have to go, right now, Miyuki, I have to go.”

“Kuramochi—!” Miyuki starts, moving bodily to try and block him from getting up, but Kuramochi’s panic has taken over everything, as the pieces start to fit themselves slowly into place; how else would he have survived a crash that bad? How could he have possibly cheated death twice?

Kuramochi’s pulling on his pants, piled up by the bed, before he’s even explained himself, busting past Miyuki to throw a shirt back over his head and yank on his boots. He’s got no plan, no action, and no possible way of doing anything, but Kuramochi knows where Ryousuke is.

And there’s no way he’s going to let him stay there.

–

“It’s a contract,” Ryousuke had told him, his fingers trailing soft and lazy lines over Kuramochi’s collarbone in the early morning, the hint of a laugh in his voice when Kuramochi buries his nose in his hair and makes an incoherent noise to try and keep him from moving at the demon’s call, “If I break the rules, they’ll take me straight to hell.”

“Then go down there and take over the place.” Kuramochi grumbled into his hair, “I know you could.”

“Sweet talker.” Ryousuke’s fingers rapped against him, just once in reprimand, “And from there, it’ll be lots and lots of torture, or so they say. Until I’ve learned my lesson.”

“You make that sound like a challenge.”

“With me, it should be.”

–

As Kuramochi stands outside of the address of a shack in the middle of nowhere, holding his phone in his hand and looking down at an address punched in by Ryousuke “should he ever decide to get his hands dirty”, he recognizes that this is the stupidest idea he’s ever had.

It doesn’t stop him from knocking, though, once, twice, then three times until he’s pounding on the door. It opens midway through a swing and a voice barking, “What the hell do you think you’re doin’ to my door, huh, what kind of a—“

“Are you Isashiki Jun?” Kuramochi asks, and the man steps back, looks at him down his nose in a look that might have been intimidating if Kuramochi hadn’t made the same face literally a thousand times in his life.

“Who’s askin?”

“I need your help.” He insists, looks down at the phone again, and Jun’s face takes on thunder, his scowl massive as he reaches back for the doorknob.

“I’m not takin’ on any charity cases—“ he starts, grabbing the door to slam it, but Kuramochi jams the steel toe of his boot in the door; the slam still reverberates through his foot, but he shoves his shoulder into the door for emphasis, too.

“Open the door, I swear to god, it’s not me—“

“I’m not helpin’ some shitty kid make a girl fall in love with him again, either, so—“

“It’s about Ryousuke!” he finally snaps, desperation and panic and worry bleeding out through his voice, and the door stops trying to shut on him. Jun pulls the door back open all the way, and gives Kuramochi an odd look.

“What the hell happened to Ryousuke?”

–

“This is a stupid idea.” Jun tells him approximately five minutes later, as Kuramochi’s settled down in a chair and Jun’s holding both of his hands up towards him, glowing blue with something that has to be magic. Kuramochi doesn’t care. He doesn’t want to know.

“Yeah.” He agrees, instead, ignores a thousand questions and trepidations for the singleminded determination of what he’s about to do, and Kuramochi settles back in the chair and drums his fingers back against the arms of it, impatient, his leg jiggling with the need to go go go, “Are you gonna send me down or what?”

“Have some respect! Uppity little—“ Jun seethes, but cuts himself off and presses both of his glowing hands to either of Kuramochi’s shoulders. Kuramochi flinches, expecting—something, the feeling of hurtling or falling or dying, as he’s become recently acquainted with, but there’s nothing, just a hot, warm feeling like drinking a cup of tea after a snowstorm.

He opens one eye, and then another, and Jun leans back away from him and slaps both hands against his shoulders. “What was that?”

“I can’t—I ain’t gonna send ya down there, that’s gonna be someone else. There’s no fuckin’ way I’m dealing with that kinda magic. I’m a healer.” Jun scoffs and pulls his hands away, and the glow fades. Kuramochi glances down at himself, but he doesn’t feel much different—even so, there’s a soft glow of something coming off his skin, like he’s backlit.

“What the hell did you do?”

“’s a power boost. Yanno, since you’re so hellbent on getting yourself killed. Might as well do it in style, ha?” Jun grins at him, and it’s totally wild; he picks up Kuramochi’s arm, where the sleek form of an animal darts from his wrist to his bicep.

“What the fuck—“ he swears, lifting his arm up off the chair, and watching the shape of a cheetah slide around his shoulder blade. It’s a familiar shape, and Kuramochi squints, stunned as it resumes its pathway dashing up and down his forearm, to his shoulder and out of his line of sight. “Is that—is that my tattoo?”

“What kind of witch do you think I am?! Of course it’s your tattoo! Christ, Ryousuke sends me a fuckin’ greenhorn.” Jun grumbles again, and slaps Kuramochi’s wrist—Kuramochi swears and draws it back, but the cheetah comes to settle comfortably there, too big for the skin until its head pops free of his wrist and looks up at him, a maelstrom of golden and black ink.

“What the fuck.” Kuramochi deadpans again, the second time, and reaches out to touch the cheetah—it’s like smoke, disappearing under his fingers, and when he looks back at his arm to see where it’s coming out, the cheetah returns back to his skin.

“It’ll help ya out while you’re down there. If you’re gonna fight it, you can’t go down there with no damn weapons, idiot.” Jun starts to explain, but looks back over his shoulder at the sound of a key turning in the lock. “There ya go. Took ya long enough, Tetsu!”

Another person steps through the door, this one tall and foreboding looking, much more like a person sent to send someone to hell—Kuramochi leans his head back to get a proper look at him, but before the newcomer can say much of anything short of a little noise of acknowledgement, someone steps in behind him.

“Sorry for the intrusion,” comes a voice, a familiar voice, and Kuramochi’s jaw falls open as no one else than Miyuki Kazuya pokes his head out from behind the big guy and waves his hand. “Yo, Kuramochi.”

“You—“ Kuramochi starts, completely and utterly stunned as Miyuki shuts the door and ducks under Tetsu’s arm to lean on the chair where Kuramochi’s currently settled, shitty, familiar grin firmly in place on his face.

“You just had to go fall in love with a reaper, huh, Kuramochi? What a pain.” Miyuki steps back and folds his arms over his chest like he’s surveying the entire situation, and Kuramochi’s feeling his Urge To Kill Miyuki meter steadily rising for the first time that day, “Still, I gotta thank the guy for saving your life, so.”

“How long have you known?!” Kuramochi manages to spit out when he gets his mouth and his brain in tandem again, and Miyuki waves his hand.

“I dunno, since the beginning? You can sense his aura from a mile away.” Miyuki shrugs, and Kuramochi’s meter ticks up another notch—if he wasn’t so worried about Ryousuke, it’d be someone else who was making a trip to the afterlife tonight, “Or at least I could. It’s not like the whole world has the same abilities as me.”

“Miyuki is a witch.” Tetsu offers, standing on Kuramochi’s other side with a book in his left hand, his right starting to glow an ominous red color, “His specialty is traps, though, so we brought him for when Ryousuke returns.”

“Why do you need a trap for Ryo-san?” Kuramochi asks, immediately suspicious, immediately starting to back up, but it’s only the reminder of friends that keeps him from bolting.

“Because you’re going to be gone, don’t be an idiot.” Miyuki chides, leaning on the chair, “We’ll be lucky if he doesn’t kill us all trying to get you back. You are coming back, by the way.”

Kuramochi looks down at the cheetah still curled up on his wrist, and nods. He has no plans of staying.

(Granted, he has no plans at all, short of punch a demon between the eyeballs, but hey.)

Miyuki claps his hands together then, and takes a step back, far out of range of Tetsu, and closer to Jun. He grins, wide, and puts his hands on his hips. “Great. One round trip ticket to hell, coming up. Bring us back a postcard.”

Kuramochi shoots Miyuki a look, but that’s all he gets to do—with the distraction, he hadn’t noticed Tetsu muttering next to him until the glow in his hand was suddenly close, too close, and there’s the burning sensation of heat that claps into the back of his neck. All Kuramochi can do is open his mouth to scream, to swear, something, but before he can react, everything goes white.

–

The fight last seven hours, and the only people who know it are the ones who wait in Jun’s house. Jun, Tetsu and Miyuki, standing silently across from Kuramochi’s body, not moving, not breathing, and Ryousuke Kominato, singed at the edges and sitting in an iron circle trap on the floor.

There’s silence between the three of them before Ryousuke speaks up, tersely, angry, “Jun, now that you helped him, it’s your soul I’m coming for next.”

“Yeah yeah.” Jun grumbles, drops down next to the iron trap perfectly within reach of Ryousuke, separated from his bat, which rests harmlessly in another circle in the room. For what it’s worth, it’s a good trap, not that Ryousuke would want to admit it, but he can’t cross it without admitting his intentions in this room, and there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell he’ll say that he’s not actually going to end his lifelong closest friends for letting Kuramochi—Kuramochi, that absolute idiot—to dive straight down into hell.

(Maybe he’ll just end Miyuki. That might save the world some headaches.)

Jun drops down on his ass around hour six and a half, where Ryousuke’s settled with his hands folded in front of his mouth and watching Kuramochi’s motionless body, watching the tips of his fingers turning a pale shade of blue. Ryousuke’s hardly moved out of his trap short of pacing in a circle and flinging threats at anyone who approached close enough to try and say something, but with Jun close, he does nothing, only stares forward.

“Your little bro’s fine.” Jun says, dropping his smartphone down to show the screen to Ryousuke. “Talked to him a couple minutes ago. He’s wonderin’ where you went, told him you spent the night here.”

Ryousuke doesn’t respond, but inwardly, he’s thankful. With Haruichi fine, whatever happens down there could mean anything—another hour or two, and Kuramochi might not be able to come back up at all. Kuramochi, with a life and a family and friends, people who cared about him, willing to throw his life away to keep Ryousuke’s family together—to knit the very thing that Ryousuke’s worked tooth and nail to hold onto back together with his own blood and sinew, to give his own body to keep the two of them alive and together.

Kuramochi’s not breathing and Ryousuke is.

It’s a sacrifice he’s familiar with, one he feels whenever there’s a tug on his very soul, when he reaps sniveling criminals and sick children alike, when he pulls bodies from a car crash like he did for Haruichi, his pale pink hair in a halo of blood. It’s a sacrifice he’d chosen to make when he brought Kuramochi back to life only two or three days ago. A sacrifice he’d chosen. A pain he’d chosen, to be dragged back to hell and have the death beaten out of him, because of a stupid, foolish thing he wanted to pretend he’d never felt.

Something he never should have felt in the first place.

Now, looking at Kuramochi’s body, Ryousuke wants to summon regret more than he wants to summon the storm of emotions in his head, the repetitive you were selfish that’s been rolling through his head for the past three hours. But he can’t find it—only gratefulness, maybe, and a hollowness deep somewhere in his chest.

That hollowness spreads, though, and Ryousuke stops, abruptly, his eyes snapping open and wide as he jerks his head up across the room. It’s like having a drain pulled in the bathtub, something disappearing and washing up hot and warm instead, the weight like lead on his chest suddenly lifting.

Ryousuke recognizes it before he sees it, and he’s up, scrambling to his feet and shoving Jun out of the way—

–

“Shit!”

Kuramochi Youichi has never been an eloquent man and now is no exception—sensation and feeling slams into his chest as he gasps for air like a man who’s been drowning, both of his hands lifted in the air and his back coming off of the back of the chair he’s seated in as life returns to his body all at once. He barely has time to process anything short of the air in his lungs before he hears a shout of “Youichi!” from across the room, and for the second time that day, something slams into him.

Kuramochi coughs, his head dropping back from the force of it, but it’s not a danger or a threat. Rather, it’s Ryousuke, up out of the trap without even a whimper of a defense and hitting directly into Kuramochi’s chest at the same time the relief of seeing him alive does. It’s all he can do to drop one of his arms to wrap it around his shoulders as he feels the bite of tears starting to well up in his eyes, and Kuramochi drops his head against Ryousuke’s shoulder, holding onto him as tightly as he can, his fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt as he relishes in the fact that he can breathe.

“Ryo-san,” he says, his voice hoarse and muffled, as he remembers the reason he came up, remembers what happened—he shakes Ryousuke until he looks up, and Kuramochi opens the fingers of his left hand. There’s a scorch mark the size of his entire palm, but what remains of a piece of paper are clenched in his fingers, and when he opens it fully, it crumbles into ashes.

For a moment, they stare at each other, and then Kuramochi’s mouth breaks into a grin, wild and huge despite the pain, the ache of every single bone in his body and the new bruise starting to bloom over his face, because he did it, because Kuramochi Youichi broke a demon’s contract, by sheer, brute force and the crazy things that people do when they’re in love. “Ryo-san,” he breathes, because it says more than I love you and I did it and you’re normal that anything else could ever say.

And Ryousuke looks at him with his eyes, round and as pink as his brothers, and it’s the first time he’s ever seen them for real, not clouded a demonic red, and Kuramochi’s grin gets even stupider as he says, “Your eyes are awesome.”

Ryousuke picks up his face in his hands, small and calloused palms scooping up his face as his expression stays open and wide and shocked (the most beautiful thing Kuramochi’s ever seen in his life, not that he has the words to say that now) but it disappears promptly as he lifts his hands and slaps either of his cheeks. “You’re an idiot,” Ryousuke hisses, and Kuramochi laughs, laughs because it hurts and laughs because Ryousuke’s so indignant, and laughs because he just punched a demon between the eyeballs, just like he promised.

Ryousuke kisses him, firm and insistent and unrepentant for any other occupant of the room, slaps his cheeks again. “You go to hell, and that’s what you have to say? Your eyes are awesome? You’re such an idiot they’ll have to change the definition of the word.”

Between each phrase there’s a slap, a kiss, and Kuramochi mumbles a “Yeah, Ryo-san,” against his mouth after each one, a sorry, but he can’t stop smiling and Kuramochi kisses him anyway, slap happy and hurting and holding onto Ryousuke like he’ll never let him go again.

“My bad,” he murmurs against his lips, kisses Ryousuke again because he can, curls his fingers tighter in his shirt and brings his other arm down around his waist, because even if he’s not got a romantic love confession, it’d cheapen the moment, make things feel less real. Besides, nothing is more important than what happens, than the pink shade of Ryousuke’s eyes and the way he broke free of the iron circle trap. “But you’re out now, right?”

“He’s out.” Comes Miyuki’s voice from somewhere in the room—Kuramochi had forgotten about him entirely, and he looks over his shoulder to see him checking his trap on the floor, “He couldn’t have gotten out, otherwise.”

Kuramochi nods—the motion makes his head feel like it’s coming off of its hinges, and he drops it back on Ryousuke’s shoulder as he relinquishes his grip on his face. He grunts and shuts his eyes, feels the bruises and aches from the fight starting to crawl over his body in slow time, the damage to his soul now matching the damage to his physique, and Kuramochi asks, half to Ryousuke and half to his lap, “Can we go home? If you’re gonna kill me for doin’ that, let me go feed an orphan or somethin’ so I never have to go back there again.”

Ryousuke’s laughter is quiet in response, and he kisses the top of his head, something meant for no one else in the room. It’s enough of an answer for the both of them as Ryousuke starts to climb off of their arrangement in the chair, and Kuramochi pushes himself into enough of a standing position that Ryousuke can scoop up his shoulder and get his arm over him to walk with him, murmuring quietly, “Home it is.”

Kuramochi groans in response, letting his head loll back on Ryousuke’s and leaning heavily on his weight to force himself up to his feet. He makes eye contact with Miyuki, who claps him on the shoulder and takes his other arm, and Kuramochi lets himself move to deadweight between the two of them for what feels like a damn well deserved way home.

–

Life with Kominato Ryousuke is not all that different than life without him. Kuramochi’s routine rarely changes once he’s healed enough to return to work: he gets up, he opens the shop, he bickers with Miyuki, and then he comes home.

He comes home to Ryousuke, now, to the sound of Haruichi returning from practice, to the jostle of a family dinner and to Ryousuke’s ankle brushing against his foot underneath the table.