Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Discord in the House of Assassins ❯ Suit the Action to the Word ( Chapter 8 )

Discord in the House of Assassins (8)

 

Morning greeted Yohji indifferently (since it was technically not morning anyway) as he stumbled down the stairs, precisely 12:04 noon, four minutes late for his shift with, whom else, the redhead scourge of the night. As it was, Yohji seemed to have no plans at all to take his shift, as he stumbled down the stairs garbed in his loose flannel pajama bottoms, no shirt and bare feet, scratching his chest and yawning. And who else greets him in the kitchen but, surprise surprise, Aya himself. As it were, Aya had no intention of even acknowledging Yohji as another life form, discreetly looking at everything other than a bare-chested Yohji in the middle of the room (something that some people would find hard not to look at). Still a bit groggy, Yohji slowly made his way to the countertop where a pot of coffee was, surprisingly in the middle of the day, boiling and ready to pour. Aya moved away from Yohji's path as if it was a contagious biological hazard, though this was lost to Yohji who seems to never function correctly until the first hit of caffeine.

 

“…Mrrnhnayan*…”

 

Aya gave an imperceptible nod as he tried to, but ultimately miserably fail, not watch Yohji's transformation from a stumbling, slurring, incoherent thing to a Yohji with a hit of caffeine. When Yohji finished a whole cup, he turned to Aya, made a face, and said the sentence he always utters after the first cup.

 

“This… (points to the pot of coffee) is absolutely dreadful.”

 

But that never stopped him from pouring himself another cup, which was what he promptly did. Turning towards Aya's direction and leaning (in what he hoped was a sexy and model-ly way) on the counter, he stared at Aya as if willing the other to speak. The other, however, had no intention of starting any conversation, so he opted for his usual conversational sentences **.

 

“Get a shirt on and start working.”

 

And with that, Aya gave a sharp turn and went walking stiffly towards the direction of their un-manned flower shop. Five seconds later, both men simultaneously did a Homer***, shook their heads, and thought about how they think they acted so stupid. Which is actually a funny thing to think of, given how they acted the usual way they always did… save for Aya's apparent embarrassment and Yohji's counter-leaning move. Another few minutes, with Yohji dawdling with his cup of joe and irately depositing it in the sink and Aya pretending to move things about in the shop and finally giving up, both men resolutely stood up and walked to each other's general direction. Their paths met halfway (Yohji may have longer legs, but a resolute Aya on the move makes up for that), both stopped, surprised. Aya was the first to get over the initial surprise.

 

“What are you doing here?”

 

“'S a free country. What are you doing here?”

 

Both eyes narrow down to dangerous slits (although, with Aya it may look dangerous, with Yohji it just looks like he's trying to seduce someone), and both crossed their arms over their chests at the same time. And, as if on a crazy romantic comedy movie, the two men spoke the following sentences simultaneously.

 

“I just wanted to say…”

 

“You go first.”

 

“No you go first.”

 

“Okay!”

 

“I just wanted you to know that I wasn't up all night thinking of you!”

 

“Me too!”

 

“So there!”

 

Both incredulous but also both pretending not be, the two men went back from where they came from in an exaggerated huff. Their minds, however, seem to still be somewhere in the vicinity they just left.

 

Somewhere, somehow, an orange-haired telepath enjoying a breakfast of frankfurters must be enjoying it even more.

 

* * *

 

“Afternoon Yo-tan, Aya.”

 

Not even deigning to turn and greet a cheerful and polite Ken, the two older men mumbled their greetings, Aya to the cash register and Yohji to a plant conveniently located at the far end of the shop, far away from the counter. Unusually perceptive, Ken scratched his head but left it at that, walked through the shop like a gust of wind through a deserted town. Getting to the kitchen, where he deposited, or more appropriately dumped his soccer gear on the table and raided the icebox for some sports drink he was so fond of drinking, he met a grimacing Omi.

 

“What's with the face kiddo?”

 

Omi raised an eyebrow, pointed at Ken's muddy cleats on the dining table, and went back to his laptop. A sheepish Ken, remembering his manners, took away his cleats and hid it somewhere underneath the table, as he popped a bottle cap and sat down beside an Omi staring at the ceiling as he tried to remember a word.

 

“What's up with the old man and the fearless leader?”

 

“What's up with the nicknames?”

 

Ken smiled a winsome smile and shrugged his shoulders, took a long gulp of his sports drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

 

“What can I say, I'm on a roll. So, what's up with those two?”

 

“Hn, I don't know for sure, but they're avoiding each other like the other's a plague carrier.”

 

“Nothing new there.”

 

“I know, but it's exaggerated, they're really trying to get out of each other's way. Yohji even went the long way around to avoid going through the shop door where Aya was for his cigarette break, like a nervous crab scuttling about.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“Yeah, and Aya's been counting money on the counter like, oh, every five minutes? Business has been slow, just 4 costumers to date.”

 

“Aaaand you noticed all of this while you're here in the kitchen typing something on your laptop?”

 

Omi gave a shrug. “We're assassins aren't we?”

 

Ken just nodded and went his merry way, and when the athlete was way away Omi immediately opened a window in his laptop that showed the flower shop from the vantage point of a hidden camera in the shop's wall clock. Omi resisted the urge to laugh like a conspiring mad scientist, but he did stroke his chin as if he had a beard, and watched the drama unfold in the comfort of the kitchen. Being the group's tech wiz sometimes had its rewards, and with no one the wiser, it just made the snooping all the more sweeter.

 

* * *

 

“I'm telling you, Brad-chan, there's something going on with the kitties.”

 

The light bounced off the glasses, which meant something was going to go down, as Bradley Crawford, oracle and supreme bad guy took them off, massaged his temples, and cursed himself for running out of Tylenol.

 

“I must hand it to you Mastermind, you do go to such creative lengths just to annoy me.”

 

“As much as I love annoying the hell out of you Brad-burry, I'm afraid I'm telling the truth this time.”

 

Raising an eyebrow, Crawford scrutinized his German colleague currently occupying the half of his table, even though there are chairs aplenty in the floating, time-space-warped office. True, the usual smirk was gone, and yes, that must be how Schuldig's face look when it's serious, Crawford wasn't so sure, it was like remembering a distant past, but Schuldig is Schuldig which meant that if the man said something was true, then most likely its false. It's the case of “cry wolf” you see. One never really knows.

 

“You do know you are called the Mastermind for a reason?”

 

“Yeah, yeah, I know, but I'm telling you there was something else in the Balinese kitten. Some foreign thing inside his head that I just can't get into.” As he spoke of his failure, Schuldig broke the pencil he picked up on Crawford's desk. This of course was taken note of, by Crawford, because first it was added expenses (his teammates never seem to realize that the things that they destroy, levitate, and skewer in the house were bought out of their salaries), but mostly because it may mean that the fickle German may be telling the truth after all.

 

“Tell you what, Brad-arama, you let me take the crazy Irishman, the two of us will go ambush the pretty little kitties, we corner the Balinese, kidnap him, and give him to some of those crazy people you know to experiment with.”

 

Crawford made a show of thinking it over, took his glasses from the desk and wore them, then returned to his laptop. “Interesting, but I think I'll pass.”

 

A visibly disappointed Schuldig got off the table and smirked at the team leader who was obviously ignoring him.

 

“Why?”

 

“I've yet to see anything connecting to Balinese, so whatever you're telling me is just not important enough to be given any of Schwartz' attention.”

 

“Well, he didn't mimic your abilities,” Schuldig rolled his eyes and pretended to be interested in his nails, though the bitterness in his voice gave him away,“…just mine.”

 

“I assume you're still better at it than he.”

 

“Darn right I am! That silly little kitten, when I get my hands on him…”

 

Smiling inwardly, Crawford spared Schuldig a look of what to the American would be compassion, but to the rest of the world would be a blank look. Having lived with Crawford for a long time, Schuldig was able to distinguish what the look meant.

 

“Isn't there something you have to do?”

 

“Give Berserker his meds, I know.” Schuldig gave Crawford a mock salute, bowed and made a showy turn, clicking his boots, and sauntered towards the door. Before closing the door, however, Schuldig gave Crawford a knowing smirk.

 

“You do know I'll still go ahead with what I want to do, right?”

 

And Crawford, behind his desk, gave his calculatingly eerie smile of ominous effect.

 

“Oh, was I forbidding you? I remember declining your pitch, but I don't remember telling you not to go ahead with it.”

 

A bit surprised, and certainly impressed, Schuldig gave Crawford another mock salute.

 

“You know, the only reason why I've yet to kill you is because I like the way you think. Ja, and don't wait up.”

 

Left alone in his time-space-warped office, the light from the laptop bounced off of Crawford's glasses as he lapsed into a vision of the future. In the eternity of that time-disjointed office, no one was to ever hear Bradley Crawford laughing his ass off, nor could anyone ever say that it ever happened.

 

 

 

 

 

*a slurred “Mornin' Aya~n”

 

** usual conversational sentences for Aya aren't really for conversational purposes, but rather for stopping conversations.

 

*** Like the incorrigible Homer Simpson on the Simpsons show, raised a hand and smacked themselves on the forehead, while exclaiming “D'oh!”