Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Feeling Like a Fool ❯ Worried Emerald Eyes and an Encore Assignment ( Chapter 3 )

Title: Feeling Like a Fool [chapter 3 of 6]

 

Book 2 of the Realizations Arc

 

Author: Enigma (also known as “E-sama the Llama”)

 

Series: Weiss Kreuz

 

Rating: NC-17

 

Pairing for Lemon: Aya x Ken

 

Warnings: Yaoi, angst, violence, bloodshed, coarse language, past abuse, sexual triangle (Yohji/Ken/Aya), rough sex, detailed lemon. AU-OOC.

 

Disclaimer: “Weiss Kreuz” is the property of Koyasu Takehito and Project Weiss. All original characters, including Hanagawa Reiko, Kenji-kun, “Christie”, the unnamed drug dealer, etc. © Enigma, 2007. This unauthorized work of unpaid fanfiction is intended for entertainment only.

 

//internal thoughts//

 

 

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Bringing himself back to the real world after his brief reminiscence, Ken belatedly recognized that he was still standing alone in the kitchen, crying his eyes out due to the neglected onions. Or at least, that was what he convinced himself was the cause of his current condition even as he tried to snuffle away the pesky thickness in his nose.

 

What he tragically failed to note was the fact that such a graphic recollection had left no telltale state of even moderate sexual arousal. This was a painful testimony to Aya's lack of skill compared to the way a similar period of reflection regarding his first encounter with Yohji had left him.

 

“Well, this sucks,” Ken muttered angrily as he set aside his knife and reached blindly for a paper towel with which to dry his eyes.

 

In the process of attempting to do so, however, he knocked over the full bottle of Ramune that he'd forgotten that he'd opened before starting to get supper ready. It unhelpfully rolled to the edge of the counter and then tumbled gracefully onto the floor as if in slow motion.

 

Luckily the remarkably thick glass bottle didn't break even as the little marble inside of it jingled merrily, but that was the only “plus” that the miserable young cook could see in the situation.

 

“Damnit!!” Ken exclaimed as he lunged for the soda which was now pouring itself all over his usually clean floor. Falling to his knees and using a hand towel to ineffectually try to mop up the growing puddle of colorless, lemon-lime soft drink, he angrily exclaimed, “Fuck, fuck, *fuck*!!”

 

The fresh pair of jeans that he'd donned after his pleasant afternoon shower in Yohji's company was now getting soaked by the rogue beverage. The clean polo shirt that he'd slipped on would've been safe if he'd remembered to don one of his full-length chef's aprons, but that small detail had eluded him earlier. Hence, his entire outfit was about to join his cargo pants, t-shirt, and cum-soaked work apron in the rapidly growing pile of laundry in the basement.

 

//Why the hell do I have to have so fucking much bad luck at times?!//

 

Miserable in every sense of the word, Ken then had to stop and dash tears from his eyes before continuing his clean-up work on the floor.

 

~+~+~+~+~+~

 

Even as Ken had been struggling solo with his own concerns as well as starting to prepare a meal, Yohji had been two floors below him working on equipment maintenance in the basement.

 

Considering the amount of work that they did, it was no wonder the equipment that the Weiss assassins used to complete their dark tasks took such a tremendous beating.

 

Other than his simplest hand-thrown darts, Omi's projectiles and their launching systems often needed repair or improvement. Aya's katana required cleaning and sharpening after every mission whether it saw much action or not. The garroting wire that Yohji's own life depended on also had its share of issues, not the least of which was that the watch which it hid within had to be maintained as well. At least Ken's bugnuks were of a straightforward mechanical design and were easily maintained.

 

Once all of their weapons were properly secured in the large storage cabinet that took up the entire wall behind the repair bench, Yohji felt that his commitment to Weiss was done for the day.

 

As he exited the back corner of the basement en route to his return to street level, he passed the open doorway of the locker room and smiled to himself. Earlier in the day when he and Ken had made their way back down for their second sexy tryst in the showers, he'd been pleased to know that leaving some high quality lubricant in his locker there had been worth the effort.

 

“Gods, he's just too fucking sensitive! It's great!” Yohji licked his lips lightly then headed for the spiral staircase reminiscing about the rapturous cries that he'd wrest from Ken's throat mere hours earlier.

 

Of course, he was referring to his young lover's sexual appetites as well as his baser proclivities, but whether or not he knew that this observation was far truer than even this remained uncertain.

 

Once he was back in the first floor flower shop, Yohji paused and considered stepping outside into the dreary darkness for a Camel since his nicotine-addicted system was howling for one. Surprisingly, he decided against taking a much needed cigarette break.

 

Even though he tried not to worry about his teammates as a general rule, Ken was increasingly present in his thoughts and he chose to check on him instead.

 

“Considering what kind of day we've had *and* the fact that we're the only ones home, I don't care what he says about,” with a scowl, he shifted into a mocking tone of voice as he echoed something Ken frequently said, “'home cooking is always better'! Ordering a damned pizza really would have been a reasonable thing to do so he could've just enjoyed a little break. I was even going to cover the bill for a change,” Yohji groused to himself while he double-checked the locks on the front doors since even safe neighborhoods have trouble with petty crime at times.

 

At this point, his deeper worries about his young lover remained nebulous at best, yet his sense that something was terribly wrong with Ken kept nibbling at his subconscious. With an unhappy sigh, he added softly, “You'd think the kid would be too tired to mess with that after the way we spent the afternoon together…”

 

Considering the fact that they were only three years apart in age, it might seem odd that Yohji tended to consider Ken to be significantly younger than himself, but he did.

 

Somehow the brunette's youthful, forthright approach to life had lulled Yohji into a false sense of security about many things. Then again, the former private investigator had been hurt far too often in the past when he knew more about the people that he loved than he should have. Perhaps this was why he stubbornly refused to face certain challenges pertaining to Ken that he should've bravely challenged head-on by this point.

 

Trudging up the stairs while absentmindedly considering how last season his current outfit of chinos and a collarless shirt was, the unrepentant fashion hound crossed the short distance from the stairs over to the welcoming kitchen without any serious concerns. The sight that greeted him there, however, changed all of that.

 

Loosely sandwiched between the dinner table and the sink, Ken was on his knees, shaggy brown head bowed low even as he frantically scrubbed something from the floor.

 

Understandably startled, all Yohji could find to ask was, “Kenken? Are you alright?”

 

This sounded lame even to him, but when Ken's head snapped up and bloodshot eyes combined with tearstained cheeks greeted him, he felt his heart contract brutally. Before the teen could even say a thing, he flung himself across the room and landed *hard* on his knees while pulling his lover bodily unto himself and exclaiming, “Ken!! What the hell happened?!”

 

Caught completely off guard, Ken was unprepared to stop his friend's assault, but the moment he could do so, he gazed up at worried emerald eyes and asked, “What's up, Yohji?” He snuffled miserably and then wiped his eyes with the back of a hand which came away wet.

 

With a forlorn groan, the miserable chef-wannabe suddenly realized how pathetic he must now look, cradled protectively in Yohji's arms and seated in the much taller man's lap. This distraction kept him from dealing more quickly with the misunderstanding that was rapidly spiraling out of control.

 

Unaware of anything other than his own concerns for Ken's well being, Yohji started anxiously checking him for injuries that might have resulted from a typical kitchen mishap.

 

“Did you cut yourself on that damned knife of yours?!” Yohji demanded. Not one to ever sully his talented hands with so basic an act as cooking, he had no idea that Ken's enviable Santoku chef's knife was one of the finest on the market and was completely unlikely to cause injury when used correctly.

 

Realistically speaking, he should've had a little more respect for the judgment of a man who relied on blades to keep him alive in the most desperate hours of the night. But this wasn't truly the issue at hand. It wasn't “Weiss' Siberian” that he was worried for, it was the boy that he increasingly considered “his Kenken” and that made all the difference.

 

“No, I was---“

 

Interrupting and continuing his investigation, Yohji pulled Ken's hands to himself as he checked them while demanding, “Did something break?”

 

“No! I was…” Ken was about to be interrupted again when he lunged for the now empty Ramune bottle. The glass sphere trapped within it rattled musically as he shoved it in between them exclaiming, “This just rolled off the counter and made a mess, that's all! Honestly, Yohji, you get so carried away some---“

 

“That can't be it!” Yohji interrupted yet again. The level of fear splashed across his face hadn't declined even as he insisted, “Your eyes are redder than red! You've been up here alone obviously crying your damned eyes out! So what the hell *happened*?!?”

 

Unable to keep from laughing, yet feeling more treasured by this silly moment of misunderstanding than he had been by the extended erotic interlude that they'd shared earlier, Ken burst out, “You idiot! I was chopping onions for dinner and the fumes got to me, that's all! Can't you *smell* them?”

 

Freezing in disbelief before lightly sniffing the air, Yohji paused, inhaled, and then hesitantly stated, “Well, maybe just a little.” Frowning to hide his chagrin about missing such a vital clue, he muttered, “If it was a sexy new cologne that you were trying out, I'm sure I would've noticed it immediately. Smelly old onions just don't grab my attention.”

 

Feeling much better all of a sudden, Ken shook his head and laughed again before attempting to disentangle himself so he could stand up.

 

Yohji held him captive on his lap a few moments longer than necessary since he hadn't bought this story entirely, but eventually he had to accept it or risk further embarrassment for them both. Begrudgingly, he finally released his lover and they rose together even as he complained, “I think I liked it better when I thought you were in trouble.” Running a hand through his silken, blond tresses in an unwitting gesture of self-comfort, he remarked, “Coming to the rescue is my specialty, ya know.”

 

“Sh'yeah, right,” Ken mocked fondly. With a little huff of breath, he then brushed severely mussed brunette bangs from his eyes by wiping his forehead against his arm and said, “I'm not a damsel in distress, Yohji. I shouldn't *need* rescuing.”

 

“That's no fun,” Yohji griped with a rather childish pout. The fact that Ken didn't even bother to stick out his tongue playfully in reply meant his awkward jest had been taken the wrong way, though. Then again, trying to cover up a rather obvious moment of horror for someone he cared about who didn't seem to want that form of attention wasn't something he excelled at.

 

Turning back to face the sink so his elder partner couldn't see the hurt in his eyes even as he rinsed the Ramune out of the dirty towel that he then set aside, Ken remarked quietly, “Sometimes I think all the `girly' stuff I do around here has earned me an unfair reputation.”

 

“What d'ya mean?” Yohji asked even as he rummaged through the refrigerator in search of a beer. His sudden need for at least a little alcohol to steady off-kilter emotions was nothing that he'd have willingly admitted to.

 

How such a simple kitchen mishap had struck him as a true emergency was unclear. But it still terrified him to realize how strongly he'd reacted when he thought that Ken had been alone in the kitchen and possibly injured in some manner.

 

Unaware of his partner's sudden internal confusion, Ken explained, “You know, cooking, sewing, doing the laundry. All that shit.” With a sigh, he dumped the chopped onions into the pot which was still barely at a simmer. He stirred it and reached for the knob to add slightly more heat before moving to the next pile of vegetables to clean. “Just `cause I do all that stuff, it doesn't make me a woman.”

 

Quaffing the better part of the beer without saying a word, Yohji barely even heard Ken's heartfelt concerns. Instead he was still trying to process the maelstrom of feelings that were raging in his heart and mind. By the time he replayed what he thought he'd heard Ken just say, he realized that it was a veritable minefield that the teen was inviting him to walk through and he wisely held his tongue.

 

Feeling his cheeks burn as anger began to smolder a little even though he himself had brought up this touchy subject, Ken demanded, “Well? Does it make me less of a man or not, Yohji? Does doing all of the damned housework around here make everyone think of me like a chick or not?!”

 

Realizing that he couldn't keep doing it for long, Yohji still hid behind his beer for another deep swallow and then said carefully, “Not to me it doesn't. Um, why are you asking that all of a sudden?”

 

Ken cursed himself under his breath for a moment. Retroactively realizing that the biggest concerns that he had about this pertained to the absent swordsman, he was about to try to change the subject. Luckily he was saved by the proverbial bell instead.

 

Mere moments earlier, the door to the alleyway had been opened and then slammed shut a half-minute later even as the sound of running feet came echoing up the staircase.

 

Omi's voice, artificially high-pitched due to his extreme agitation, reached their ears as he exclaimed loudly, “I *don't* want to do it, Aya-kun!!”

 

Sneaker-clad feet hammered several hours' worth of annoyance into the stairs as he raced up them.

 

After dutifully delivering the funereal floral arrangements, Omi had sought the company of a certain young man who always made the pain easier to take. But that hadn't lasted long enough to suit either of them before he had to leave for a previously scheduled appointment with Manx who was concerned about how things were going for the quartet that her boss relied upon so heavily.

 

While Omi had been debriefing her at Kiritker's central command, Aya had conscripted him for his own efforts to close in on the monster whose activities had left him so badly disturbed lately.

 

Patience and understanding---along with a direct order from Persia who was quite tired of having the twenty year old in his face---had led Omi to dedicate the rest of his afternoon and evening to the pursuit of justice as Abyssinian defined it. This was how he had ended up riding home with him. Granted, someone would have to go back to headquarters to retrieve the Koneko's little delivery scooter eventually, but he was less concerned about that than he was about the successful completion of an overdue assignment.

 

“There just isn't time and if I can't do my nails, it won't be believable!” Shouted the typically genki blond whose hair sparkled with rain droplets as he came racing into the kitchen to grab a cold bottle of water from the refrigerator. Glancing over his shoulder at the swordsman who was undoubtedly in hot pursuit, he added, “Let Ken-kun do it!”

 

Omi was about to run out again when the powerful force that was Abyssinian came through the doorway. Standing in the kitchen in street clothes yet simply reeking of mission readiness, Aya growled, “You *will* be the bait tonight, Bombay, whether your nails are painted or not!”

Taking a deep swallow of his water before pointing the open mouth of the bottle accusingly at his field leader, Omi countered with, “What tranny whore in her right mind would be walking the streets looking for johns without glitter on her nails, Aya-kun? It just doesn't happen!”

 

As Aya seethed, Yohji turned shocked eyes to Ken and asked quietly, “Did our little Omiitchi just use the word `whore', Kenken?”

 

Equally stunned, Ken nodded and answered, “I thought so.” His shock vanished as something else the Weiss archer had said came back into awareness. Angry, he demanded, “Wait one damned minute! What the hell was that about *me* being the `tranny whore' instead?!?”

 

Foolishly thinking that he wouldn't be overheard, Yohji made the mistake of mumbling something about the last time that Ken had cross-dressed as a feminine prostitute for the sake of a mission and then burst out laughing. Understandably, Ken punched him in the gut for it.

 

“Oh, you're both here,” Aya tardily noticed. The fact that such an obvious thing had eluded him for even a split-second was a very bad sign.

 

The discovery of the dead girl three nights prior had left the usually stoic swordsman in such disarray mentally that he'd just not been himself and that hadn't changed. The dreadful way this was destined to impact his comrades certainly wasn't something he could have surmised at this point even as he said simply, “Good. We need to head out on a mission in less than thirty minutes. We'll have the briefing here in the kitchen.”

 

“Shouldn't that be done in the basement? Isn't it `mission ops' and all that shit?” Ken asked rhetorically even as he dejectedly plopped down into a chair and tried not to stay mad at all of the idiots surrounding him. The low simmering noises and barely detectable aromas of vegetables just barely beginning to cook on the stove didn't improve his mood either.

 

The others all followed suit even as Aya glossed over the fact that he'd spent the day pursuing his own agenda well before he'd enlisted Omi's aid in his mission.

 

His intended goal had been the necrophiliac rapist who had been codenamed “Christie” by Kritiker's profilers. Putting an end to that particular beast's criminal career was what he felt that he needed to regain his legendary equilibrium as well as his cold-hearted persona. Unfortunately, Persia's research group had made more progress on the entirely separate case that Weiss had been pursuing even as June had been coming to an end three days passed.

 

One of Persia's undercover operatives had finally reestablished contact with the drug dealer who was selling tainted wares and therefore Weiss had a rare second chance to put him out of commission. They still had no idea why the man sought to kill off his own customers. Ultimately, no one really cared about his motivation; they just wanted him eliminated.

 

Aya explained that the set-up for the assassination this time was for the target to make a sale to a transvestite prostitute at a certain corner in one of the crowded, underprivileged districts of the city that very evening. Omi was to be the bait, Yohji would play the role of Omi's pimp, and that would leave Ken and Aya to do the actual execution.

 

This led to a brief though spirited debate and once it was agreed that Aya couldn't very well bring a full-length katana into an area as thickly populated as where they were going, the evening's playbill of actors was adjusted. The very idea that he capitulated on this point should have been a significant warning flag, yet in the flurry of activity as Weiss mobilized on short notice, no one realized how serious this was.

 

To poor Ken's dismay, all of this meant that his efforts on the curry dinner would go to waste. The only solace he found was in the fact that the chicken was still safely ensconced in the refrigerator where it would remain until further notice.

 

Knowing that they'd never cool off enough to go into the refrigerator before he and his teammates all left for the evening, Ken morosely dumped the half-cooked though carefully prepared vegetables into the garbage disposal. With an unhappy grimace, he ground them up and washed them away with a miserable squirt from the spigot before joining the others in preparing for the deadly task at hand.

 

No wonder he felt so unappreciated.

 

~+~+~+~+~+~

 

 

To be continued…