Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Reason ❯ Chapter 2

Then Aya’s face gained expression, becoming very human, and he shifted his grip on his sword as if he were about to throw it like a javelin. "Yoji--"

Yoji finally heard the man behind him, turned around, and whipped his wire around the gunman’s neck, tightening it until he got a kill. Yoji heard Aya take a deep breath behind him, but when he turned to look Aya only looked like his impassive, non-mission self.

Omi had commandeered the building’s camera system, so he had to know that Weiß’s primary target had been eliminated. Time for all of them to go. "Shall we get out of here?" Yoji asked Aya.

"Yes."

Aya sat atop him, riding his cock, and it felt so good. Yoji gripped Aya’s bony hips like handles and thrust harder, while Aya threw his head back, making a smooth curve of his bared neck.

Simple fucking. Everything felt so fucking simple.

Aya wasn’t simple. Ever.

Aya leaned down over him with his katana set to Yoji’s neck, his face dead, his inhuman purple eyes glittering. "You don’t have to know me," he said. "We’ll never meet again." Then he slashed down, the bright metal giving Yoji a red, second smile.

Yoji woke with his heart pounding. That had been bad, on a par with his nightmares of Asuka and Neu’s deaths.

"Yoji?" a soft voice whispered.

Yoji yanked the privacy curtain away and saw Aya standing there in the dimness. "I hate this fucking trailer," Yoji growled. When he’d still had his apartment, no one could hear him scream. In a room of bunks, he could wake someone up by breathing heavy. It was one of the reasons he tried to avoid sleeping in his own bed whenever possible.

"I do too."

"Are we ever going to do anything about it?"

"Not tonight."

Yoji had to get away from his clammy, sweaty sheets, so he pulled himself out of the bunk and started walking. Aya followed like a shadow. He turned on the light in the main room, winced at its harsh brightness, settled on the lumpy couch, and lit up a cigarette, deeply breathing the smoke in, trying to get back to himself.

Aya set a mug down on the table in front of him. "I don’t do tea," Yoji said.

"Yours isn’t tea."

The brandy burned going down, just like it should. "Thanks." Still, right now he was glad Aya hadn’t handed it right to him, touching him.

Aya nodded, sat down near Yoji, and cradled his mug of tea, breathing in the steam. He wore a faded, stretched out blue T-shirt and boxers and had a bandage on the arm he’d injured recently. The lovemarks still looked livid on his neck. If you set aside his unreal beauty, he looked very mundane right now. No one would recognize him as a killing machine that inhaled a man’s last breaths before shoving a sword into him.

But did Yoji really have a right to draw that line? He was a killer too. He just didn’t attain that graceful, demonic efficiency doing it.

Few demonic killing machines handed people a comforting mug of brandy.

Still, he didn’t think he’d be able to bear it if Aya touched him right now. Tomorrow might be different, but at this moment his nightmare clung to him like cobwebs.

"I’m sorry my nightmare woke you up," Yoji said.

"I have them sometimes too." Aya didn’t elaborate.

Yoji wondered if Aya’s nightmares struck the expected notes of murdered parents, demolished home, sister in a coma, and the faces of those dead at Aya’s hand or if they went off in utterly bizarre directions. He decided not to ask.

He found himself asking something else instead. "Aya, if Kritiker gave you a legitimate order to kill us, would you do it?" Now there was a question he’d only ask point blank at, dammit, three in the morning.

"I would investigate--"

"A real, verified, legitimate order from Kritiker. ‘Hunter of the night, deny the futures of these black beasts that were once your teammates.’ Would you do it?"

Aya shook his head almost absently. "It wouldn’t be just. If you’d gone utterly-- No, even then, there’d be other ways. If Kritiker commanded that of me, it would have lost the moral high ground and the right to command me."

"You’d go rogue with us?"

Aya looked down at the floor. "If you’d have me."

Yoji’s chest hurt. "If we left, the executions we did would become murders. You would be declared a murderer."

"They always have been. We always have been. The people we’re sent against are evil, but we do evil to stop them. Necessary evil, perhaps, since the law cannot bring them to justice, but evil nonetheless. Kritiker doesn’t wave a magic wand and make it clean and bright."

This was the kind of conversation you never wanted to have when you were tired yet awake at three in the morning, yet that was when they always seemed to take place. "You don’t believe in sugarcoating, do you?"

Aya looked at him. "You’d be surprised."

Between the words and the brandy’s warmth in his belly, Yoji felt a little comforted. But not enough to let Aya touch him tonight. "I think I might be able to sleep again."

"Oh." Aya looked sad and a little confused, but Yoji didn’t have the strength to get into it with him. If Aya wanted to say something, though....

Aya didn’t.

Yoji left the room but cast one last glance back before he closed the door again. Aya had his head back, his eyes closed, and a vaguely miserable look on his face. At least Yoji thought it might have been misery. Yoji fought with himself but finally closed the door and went to change his sheets.

Everything would be better in the morning. It had to be.

Feeling unusually restless, he stared out at the rain. Another problem of their current setup with the trailer was that they couldn’t do their open-air shop during bad weather. Thus, they couldn’t open the store. Sometimes, if they knew rain or snow would be coming they’d temporarily rent a space with a roof, but today’s rain hadn’t been expected. Thus, no work today.

Having nothing he had to do left him out of sorts, when it shouldn’t. He could exercise. He could read. He could stop brooding on whatever the hell it was he’d done wrong last night with Yoji.

Yoji had been strange since the end of the mission. Maybe Yoji had been annoyed that he hadn’t trusted him to deal with that final guard alone. It had been stupid of him to worry so, since his teammates were professionals.

Then he’d tried to be so good after Yoji’s nightmare had woken him up, but Yoji had reacted badly, shying away from him at all points, asking him that question as if he expected the drink to be poisoned. Then Yoji had left, alone.

He knew he’d been unavailable the past two days, but everything had its proper time and place. They couldn’t have sex on the job, either of the jobs. Landing in that sewer had so disgusted him that he really hadn’t been in the mood afterward. Who would be? Aside from Yoji. The wound he’d gotten that night ached badly in the day’s damp.

Last night, all the rejection had been on Yoji’s side. Yoji had gotten bored or finally understood how much trouble he was. He should have expected it. Hell, he had expected it.

He didn’t do nice very well, and he just confused people when he tried.

All this longing for approval left him feeling pathetic and destroyed his focus. He had to snap out of it. He’d realized a while ago that if he survived to reach an old age, he’d be some bachelor living alone. Maybe he’d have some cats. It wouldn’t really be so tragic, since being alone near other people was far worse than just being alone. Years of sitting in Aya’s hospital room had underscored that.

Now that he had Aya awake and back in his life, he could be her kids’ weird but doting bachelor uncle; he’d be good at that. He’d teach them submission holds that would make sure no one would ever bully them. And he would bring them toys. Maybe there would be one shy, solemn child in the bunch....

Then Yoji walked into the room, and that future fell apart like wet tissue paper. Why did the man have to look so good, so golden? Why did he have to have such wonderful, talented fingers? Yoji’s mouth, another favorite feature, twisted as he looked out at the rain. Lately, just watching Yoji smoke drove him insane.

Wanted him. Wanted things he couldn’t have. He’d always been like that. Except that recently he’d gotten some of those impossible things....

"I hate this fucking trailer," he said to Yoji, and Yoji smiled, really smiled.

"You know, sunshine, I think I’ve heard that before."

He wanted to rest his head on Yoji’s shoulder, and wasn’t that so fucking sweet you could just die? Pathetic. But he wanted it. Yoji said that he liked being touched whenever, which was almost an invitation, but that was before last night had happened.

What the hell. He knew that they all thought he was crazy anyway.

He leaned back and rested his head against Yoji’s shoulder, letting their bodies touch haphazardly elsewhere. Warm. Warm here. Yoji took a breath and let it out in a soft "hmm" sound, then his fingers approached his hair but didn’t quite touch.

"Yes, please," he said and was rewarded with stroking fingers zinging along his scalp. He wanted to purr. He wanted to fuck.

Maybe Yoji just had times when he wasn’t in the mood too, not that Yoji would ever admit to such a horror.

"Aya," Yoji said, his voice deep and low with sex, and that was it. Now. Wanted it now.

He grabbed Yoji and kissed him hard. Good thing Yoji hadn’t been smoking at the time, because that would have wasted precious seconds. He felt wonderful fingers at the small of his back and the nape of his neck. Body to body, they rocked together.

"Wanted this last night," he admitted.

Yoji actually laughed. Bastard. "See? See how it sucks when you don’t tell people things?"

He growled and put another bite near the one he’d given Yoji’s shoulder two days ago, this one closer to the junction of his neck and shoulder. Yoji stopped laughing.

He vaguely heard something in the distance, but it seemed more important that Yoji was trying to smear him against the wall with his body. He jumped up a little and wrapped his legs around Yoji’s waist, which applied pressure and movement to parts of his ass that really liked it as Yoji thrusted. Maybe they’d even get their clothes off sometime soon.

"Guys! Isn’t someone going to get that? Aya, are you-- Oh, for-- I can’t believe you guys! I’ll get it, then!" Ken yelled.

Yoji snarled, "I’m going to--"

Aya grabbed some of Yoji’s hair. He’d noticed that Yoji hadn’t tied his hair back into a ponytail for the last few days. Like that would make a difference. "Kill Ken later. Fuck now."

"I like the way you think."

"Aya, it’s your sister! She sounds really upset!"

It was like being hit in the face with ice water. He unhooked himself from Yoji and ran to the phone, yanking it from Ken’s hand. "Aya-chan, what’s wrong?"

"It’s not... like I’m in trouble or anything. It’s not that bad." She sounded hoarse and congested. He knew her "I’m not crying" voice when he heard it. "I just... really wanted to talk to you."

"I’m here. I’m here. I can talk to you on the phone if you want, or I can come to school for you. You’re still at school, right?"

"You’d... come for me? You’re at work."

"It doesn’t matter." Even if he had been working, it wouldn’t have mattered. "I’m driving over to see you."

"Th-thanks. I’ll be at the front door."

"I’ll see you soon. I love you."

"Love you too."

He ran back out into the main room. "I have to-- I--"

Yoji, who looked badly mussed, just said, "Go."

"Yeah. Thanks." He threw his coat on. "Don’t kill Ken for this while I’m gone."

Yoji smirked. "I’ll wait until you get back."

"Hey!" Ken said.

As he reached the door, Ken yelled, "Aya!" and tossed an umbrella to him. He caught it and ran. He was sitting in the driver’s seat before he realized that he could have used the umbrella to keep the rain off. If he kept being this sloppy, he’d drive so fast that the car would hydroplane, he’d hit something and die in a flaming wreck, and Aya wouldn’t be helped by any of it. So he checked his speed carefully as he drove.

Aya stood in the doorway at the academy’s entrance, just as she’d said she would. He would have been standing in the rain. She’d always been more sensible.

He parked, remembered the umbrella and opened it, and went up the stairs at a fast walk. Breaking his neck wouldn’t help her either. Her face looked swollen and red, making him wonder how long she’d been crying and whom he had to kill for starting it. But, still, there she was, standing in her school uniform, unhappy but alive in the world. He’d fought for that. Unhappy was so much better than comatose.

She threw herself at him as he reached the top. "Nice car," she murmured into his chest as she trembled.

He put the umbrella aside and hugged her. "It gets me around."

"It’s a Porsche."

"I’d noticed. What’s wrong?"

"It’s stupid. Stupid. Some stupid filmstrip. ‘This is the family,’" she parroted in a scathing voice. "I started thinking about them, and then I couldn’t stop crying. Pathetic, huh?"

He petted her hair and felt tears in his own eyes. Crying had never done him any good so he’d sworn it off, but for her they’d only been dead for a few months, so she’d more than earned the right. "It’s okay to cry."

"In class? Everybody thought I was nuts." She sniffled. "This is probably old business to you, though. Old business to everybody else."

"I thought about them all the time for a long while. I went a bit crazy." A bit. He rocked her. "You would have dealt with it much better. You’ve always been stronger than I am."

"No way. No. I mean, look at me. I’m crying because I’m an orphan and everybody I knew is two years older and went on with their lives and it’s raining and I just feel like crap. It has to seem so small to you."

"Oh yeah, my life is so grand and glamorous that I had to slog through a sewer the other night. Your life is precious to me, Aya. You have a right to be depressed sometimes."

"And yet you have a Porsche." She sniffled again. "You have such a purty mouth on you." She rubbed her eyes. "Thank you so much for letting me cry on your coat."

He didn’t want to leave her alone while she was feeling like this. Why hadn’t he realized that she’d be mourning their parents? He’d left her to do it alone, as he had.... "How much longer are you in for?"

"School? About another hour."

"Blow it off."

A smile came out on her face like the sun breaking through clouds. "Ran! Scandal!"

"I’ll pull you out for a family emergency. They’re lucky I didn’t decide to discipline them for making you cry."

"Spanking?"

Where did she get these ideas? "I was thinking something more threatening."

"Oh. You know, I really don’t use the ‘my brother will kill you’ excuse often enough."

"Besides, your face is red and swollen. You look like a bit of a mess."

She smacked him, putting extra torque in the wrist so it really stung.

Aya’s school wasn’t so different on the inside than the last one he’d gone to, and walking through its empty, echoing halls while classes ran gave him that same, shuddery feeling of the forbidden. Funny to think that such a thing still had some power over him. He kept his arm over her shoulder and reflexively shielded her reddened face with his arm and hand the few times students passed them.

He didn’t like the way the director looked at them as they entered his office, but this little toad had power over his sister and had to be treated cautiously. "Good afternoon. I’m Ran, Fujimiya Aya’s brother. There’s been a family emergency, and I would like to take her with me. She doesn’t have much time left to her day anyway."

"Yes. I’m familiar with her odd circumstances," the director said, with far too little respect. The little toad.

His fingers itched for his katana. "Please, sir. She will be back tomorrow, as usual." He could have simply rode off with her, but he was trying to do things the right way here. Besides, the Tomoes would no doubt be informed if Aya simply disappeared from school.

The man looked bored and annoyed suddenly. "You may take her with you." And dismissed them by looking down at his desk and papers as if they’d ceased to exist.

"Thank you, sir." He left with Aya before thoughts of taking advantage of the toad’s inattention overwhelmed him.

Aya stayed solemn as they walked through the halls, but once they left the building she grabbed the umbrella and said, "How fast can the Porsche go?"

"It’s raining. I’m not going to get us killed just because you want to speed test my car."

"Spoilsport. You are the antonym of fun. You’re the anti-fun!"

At least she took some benefits from her education. "If I’m the anti-fun, pairing me up with fun would destroy the universe. You seem to be feeling better."

"Much. But I could still use some coddling and a ride in a Porsche."

"Then you shall have them."

"Wow, I never realized a Porsche was so small on the inside!" she said as she got in.

"Bitch, bitch, bitch."

She smiled. "Oh, just drive."

So he did, even driving a little faster than was strictly safe in this weather just to see her eyes light up. Watching her enjoy the car so much made him see it in a new way.

Eventually he stopped at a restaurant, where they very decadently ordered only dessert and drinks. "Vanilla," she said with elaborate disdain as she enjoyed her piece of chocolate mint pie. "That is so you."

He wasn’t going to divulge details of his sex life simply to defend his choice in ice cream flavors, so he only said, "I like it."

"Thanks for coming for me. You left work for me. I still can’t believe you-- Okay, I can, but thanks anyway."

"I want you to call me whenever you need me, no matter what you think I’m doing."

"Just--" She smiled. "Thank you."

"Feeling better?"

"Much! You know, I should have a breakdown every day and call you if I’ll get this kind of treatment. Next time I’ll do it earlier in the day."

"Better not."

"Oh, Ran, saaaaaaave meeeeeee...."

He tapped the tip of her nose with his spoon and smirked at her loud "Ew! Cold! Sticky!" as she tried to rub the ice cream off.

"That was disgusting, Ran."

"You think that’s disgusting?" He took another spoonful of ice cream and put it in his mouth.

"I’m going to pretend I didn’t see that."

"Never insult my dessert again."

"I’ve learned my lesson."

"Good."

"I think I’m feeling well enough now to go to work."

"Can I go with you?" He enjoyed working with her.

She had a sudden look on her face. What had he done wrong? She looked down at her pie. "Momoe-san is going to pay you for the time you’ve put in there already."

"What? I didn’t do it for the pay."

"I know, but you’ll take it and like it. You work your own florist job and you have your night job and you come work with me sometimes. Do you ever take time to have fun, Ran? I hope you at least sleep once in a while. You look kind of tired today."

"I enjoy working, and being with you isn’t work anyway."

"Yeah, but I’m talking about fun! You should be doing things with your boyfriend--" Aya suddenly looked horrified. "Tell me I didn’t."

He hadn’t betrayed himself when she’d said that. He knew he hadn’t. "Tell me what I’m telling you you didn’t do."

"Tell me that I didn’t call when you were doing something with your boyfriend."

Everybody kept telling he was inscrutable, and he’d tried to keep his face blank, so how did she know? "You didn’t call while I was doing something with my boyfriend."

"You liar. Go!"

"What?"

"Back! To whatever you were doing!"

He raised an eyebrow at her. "That was over an hour ago."

"You’re guys! Time doesn’t make a difference to guys!"

He almost choked on his ice cream. "If you keep this up, not even Sakura will be enough to scare me away from a conversation with the Tomoes. Aya, I want to be with you. I should have realized that you would be in mourning."

"Do not do that guilt thing. I will not allow it. Next thing I know, you’ll tell me you feel bad that I don’t live with you."

"Um."

"You live with three young guys. It would be awful. Even aside from the pruning."

The thought of her and Yoji sharing a living space did lead to images of tragedy. "All right. I am glad that you have a family structure. I think it might be scarring to you to have Omi acting as your mother."

"From what Sakura told me, he might be good at it. Ran, you come see me and you help support my upkeep by sending the Tomoes money from your sewer-slogging, Porsche-driving profession. It’s enough. It’s more than enough. So don’t feel bad about it."

"If you say so."

"Ran, I’m not going to work today, and it’s all your fault. I feel the fumes of irresponsibility making me high. I’m calling to tell Momoe-san that I have the family emergency of my brother working and guilting himself into an early grave. Immediate fun therapy is in order."

It left him appalled and amused. "You’re an 18-year-old girl. I doubt that we’d be a match in what we would consider to be fun."

"At least give it a try. Hey, the sun’s coming out."

"The roads are still too wet."

"Spoilsport."

"That’s it?" Aya asked. "I guess the gun isn’t your weapon."

"That’s a good score," a strange boy nearby said. Aya gave him a disdainful, "my brother is a professional killer, you idiot" look.

"It’s not my primary, but I’m good with it. On this piece of crap, the trigger’s loose, and the aim and sight are off," he answered her, a bit annoyed. Video games. She’d brought him to play video games, put a plastic gun in his hand, and now was contemptuous of the result?

This trip would have been utterly worthless if he hadn’t discovered that his Aya-chan had a passion and aptitude for fight games. She was a master of a killing move that ripped out all of her enemy’s internal organs. He’d settled on feeling proud of her prowess and refused to worry that seeing their parents’ bodies right before the house had blown up had warped her mind. After all, what excuse did all the others here have?

"Oh, so the machine’s broken? Suuuure, Ran."

His pride stung enough that he decided to do something he told himself he wouldn’t do, not in front of her. But if she wanted a show, he’d give her one. "I’ll do better on a second try."

She smirked. "Okay, hero."

Now he knew how much pressure the trigger could stand and how quickly he could fire with it. He’d seen how he’d have to adjust his aim to actually hit his targets with the faulty gun.

The plastic felt wrong and too flimsy in his grip, but he would make it work. "Start it up."

His world narrowed to movement and color as he picked off his victims with ruthless focus almost as soon as they appeared on the screen. Non-targets he wasn’t supposed to shoot wore different colors than targets, which was convenient. Life didn’t work like that usually. He felt a small crowd gathering behind him, but as long as they didn’t stand too close, he didn’t mind. Once or twice he elbowed somebody who didn’t understand what a growled "Stand back now" meant.

He made it alive through the first nine levels the game had without needing any more coins inserted. When he won that, and saw that it wanted to put him on a slightly modified version of the first level again, he holstered the gun. "Bored now." The crowd let out a small sigh, and the game shot him dead, but he didn’t care. It was just a game.

Some of the watchers started to approach him, but when he looked at them, they scurried away. Only Aya remained. "I see," she said softly, then dug around in the pocket of her coat until she brought the earring out. "Put this on for me?"

When he took it from her hand, the familiarity of the gesture made his throat feel tight. The earring felt warm. Its post slid right back through the hole, and he pressed the backing onto it. It felt so heavy, but it had always been heavy, weighing down the left side of his head. He’d worn it for so long and so often over the last two years that it still felt familiar, like a part of his body, even after months of going without it. The long, swinging piece brushed his jaw as he looked down at her, the reason he’d done all this, the reason he’d gone on living.

"You look-- This is you too, who you’ve been over the last two years. You didn’t want to show me," she said. He couldn’t interpret the look on her face.

He tried to let the ice drain out of his mind and heart. "I tried to tell you, but I didn’t want you to see it." He could lose her now, lose her from his pride and the truth.

She hugged him hard, fiercely, and pressed her face against his chest. "Of course you’re good at it. You’re good at anything you need to be good at. I’m glad I know."

He hugged her back and felt the cold go. "You still love me?"

"Always. No matter what you’re good at." Her laugh had a bit of a choked sound to it. "This wasn’t what I had in mind for fun."

"I enjoyed the game." Though his arms started to hurt now that his killing focus had faded and he’d come back from the cool elsewhere he went to. In most situations, where people were shooting at him from all directions, he didn’t have to keep his body and arms in one position for such a long time.

"I’m glad I could entertain Aya."

Did she really say that? "Aya-chan--"

"Take me out to dinner, Ran?"

It was early--okay, he’d played the second game for an hour and half, so it wasn’t quite as early as he’d thought--but if she wanted dinner, he’d give her dinner. "All right." He took the earring out and gave it back to her, feeling lighter for it.

She held it tightly, then put it back in her coat pocket. "Love you, big brother," she said as she went up on her toes to give him a kiss.

He yawned as he walked into the trailer. How could she exhaust him so easily? Still, it was a good fatigue.

He handed the umbrella back to Ken, who was the only person in the main room. "Thanks," he said.

"No problem. She’s okay?"

"Mostly." Once he would have left it at that, but Ken looked like he really wanted to know. "It’s just that, to her, our parents died a few months ago." He settled into a chair and even slouched a little. He could, here.

"Oh. I’m sorry." And sincerely looked it.

Ken was a good person, and an innocent in many ways. He just occasionally had abominable timing. Yoji really shouldn’t fault him for it.

Ken looked a little depressed, but he’d looked depressed since Akira’s death. It might have been a bit late to say something, but better to be a bit late than to never say it at all. "I’m sorry about Akira." He’d never spoken to Akira, only seen him from a distance. In the black leather and motorcycle helmet, Akira could have been anyone, but the visor had briefly been up, revealing his eyes, the kindred purpose in them....

Ken winced. Maybe that sorry had seemed to come out of nowhere. "They watched their home burn down right in front of them, him and Kaori. Their parents burned with it."

"I have... some knowledge of how awful that had to be."

"Yeah. Only in their case, their parents weren’t even the targets. Their home was just in the way." Ken shook his head, hiding his eyes behind his long, brown bangs. "He ended up seeking justice when the law failed him, like we did, only he didn’t have Persia to provide excuses for him."

"The mission to kill Akira must have been a false one from Powell. Manx was giving us hints of something wrong as far back as the mission to kill Nichol."

"It better have been."

He and Yoji hadn’t thought to question the order to kill Hibana Akira. Kritiker had never sent them after someone who didn’t deserve death before, and Omi, who usually did most of their research, had been in Kaori’s hospital room. He hadn’t started to question until Manx had ordered him and Yoji to kill Omi and Ken for preventing Yoji’s execution of Akira. Then things that hadn’t made sense had started to complete a picture of misdirection and lies.

He hadn’t thought to question. For two years, he’d had one double-edged purpose: kill Takatori Reiji and keep Aya alive. He hadn’t cared about anything else. After he’d gotten over being angry at the high-handed fashion in which Persia had recruited him, he’d never questioned any of the orders he’d taken from Persia or Manx unless they interfered with his quest for revenge. He’d simply killed whomever they told him to kill and trusted that the person deserved it.

And he thought Ken was an innocent?

Finding out that Persia was a Takatori as well had been a shock. A better Takatori than most of them perhaps, but he’d still used and misled Omi, a child at the time, his own kin, and created Weiß to eventually kill his brother. He hadn’t minded the last part much, since Persia’s brother had been Takatori Reiji, but the feeling of being used rankled, though they were both dead now, which ended things.

Some things.

He’d sleepwalked through the last two years, too desperately tired and hurt to think or care anymore. It had been a relief to have someone else do his thinking for him and let him be a mindless sword bent on vengeance. But a mindless sword could be picked up by anyone at all and used to kill.

The Akira question had been violently settled by Powell’s men, who’d left Akira’s bullet-riddled body lying out as they’d dragged Kaori away as bait for whichever members of Weiß would survive to get her. Akira’s blood wasn’t on Weiß’s hands--though Ken seemed to feel personally responsible for having left Akira and Kaori there alone--but it easily could have been.

He’d told Yoji that he would go rogue if Kritiker ordered him to kill his teammates, but he would also go rogue if ordered to kill someone who didn’t deserve it.

"It was a false mission. If it was not, Kritiker does not deserve our work."

He’d shocked Ken. But then a light came back to Ken’s dark eyes that hadn’t been there since Akira’s death and Weiß’s faked turning on itself. He’d missed that light, since Ken’s goodness was something the world needed.

Then again, Ken had chosen bugnucks as his weapons, and the wielder needed to get in very close to his prey with those claws. He’d had bruises on his ribs for days after Ken had "killed" him, retracting the remaining claw on his fist just in time but still punching with his knuckles. Well, Ken had been upset.

He wondered about Ken’s choice of weapon. Hell, he wondered about Yoji’s choice. Omi had probably been trained in the darts and crossbow without even the possibility of making a choice, a situation that could be a metaphor for Omi’s life.

It might be dangerous talking about Kritiker this way in the trailer, but if they were listening, he would prefer that they understood his position. They might be less likely to order him to do something he’d have to quit over that way.

"You look tired, Aya," Ken said, with a look at him that might almost be called fond.

"I think I may be waking up for the first time in years."

"Uhm, okay."

He couldn’t help smiling a little. "I’m sorry. I was just thinking."

"You’re allowed."

"I am tired. Here I am, in the peak of physical condition, and I’ve been exhausted by an 18-year-old girl."

Ken grinned. "Yeah, they do that."

"Is Yoji around?"

Ken blushed a little. Aya thought about the picture that he and Yoji must have made a few hours ago and felt bad about it. Not bad about having done it, but bad that Ken had seen it.

"Uh, when the sun came out and he figured you wouldn’t be back for a while, he took off to get some air."

"Oh." That was... disappointing. "Maybe I should have called to say. Don’t give me that look. I’m still trying to figure out the customs here."

"About that.... Aya, I’m sorry that I keep walking in on you. Trust me, I would never do it on purpose, since I don’t want to see that. Not that I disapprove of you guys--though Yoji would only find it funny if I did--but I don’t want to see it or think about it. Or wonder what you two-- I’m sorry. I’m trying to avoid doing it."

Ken was imagining him and Yoji having sex? "I suppose the sight of me climbing Yoji as if he were a tree could be scarring."

"Oh yes, and thank you for reminding me of it again."

He could see why Aya and Yoji enjoyed being evil this way. It was fun. Still.... "Sorry. I think the phrase ‘I hate this fucking trailer’ has come up before."

"It keeps being true. I think Omi likes it, though."

"Not as much as he used to."

"Then there’s hope. You know, you should take a nap or something, Aya."

"It’s too early."

"So? There’s no work and no Yoji. Take advantage of the peace. I know you got up with him last night. Omi was worried, but he figured that Yoji wouldn’t want everybody hovering over him after a nightmare. A lot of the time he hates when people notice he has them."

"I’ll keep that in mind." Yoji had nightmares often enough for Weiß to have a protocol for them? He really had been asleep. "I think I’ll nap."

"Good. And, hey, Aya, if this is awake for you, I like it. Not that it’s my place to--"

"Ken."

Ken snickered. "Hey, I was here first!"

He made an obscene gesture that only reduced Ken to further hilarity, then went to his bunk.

Yoji walked in and immediately asked Ken, "Where’s my sunshine?"

"What?"

"Aya!"

Ken almost choked. "Aya?"

"Yeah, tall guy, red hair."

"I know that, Yoji. It’s the ‘sunshine’ part."

"I know it’s like nicknaming a giant guy ‘Tiny,’ but I like it. So where is he? Did he get back yet?"

"Yeah, about half an hour ago. I sent him to his bunk. He looked beat."

So many parts of that sounded wrong, but Yoji just said, "Okay." Maybe he could get the story out of Aya, since he figured that Ken wouldn’t know what he really wanted to find out. Wait, he thought he could get a story out of Aya?

Ken, taking mercy on him, said, "He asked about you when he got back. Said that maybe he should have called. Aya-chan was a bit depressed, so he stayed with her to cheer her up, and she wiped him out."

"You didn’t tell him he should have called, he said that himself?"

"Yup."

"I may be making progress with that boy after all."

Ken blushed and quickly turned away. If he kept being this entertaining, he could continue to live. "Thanks, Ken."

"Yeah, yeah."

When Yoji opened the door to the mission room, he heard shooting and screaming but only saw Omi at the computer. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Playing a first person shooter game against somebody across the Internet."

Yoji really didn’t get any of that Internet stuff aside from the porn sites, so he just said, "Are you kicking his ass?"

Omi’s eyes didn’t leave the screen, and his fingers continued to fly across the keyboard with a staccato rhythm. "Of course I am. I’m a professional. Besides, it might be a girl, in which case I’m kicking her ass."

"Wait, did you do your homework?"

"Yes, mother. I also cleaned my bed and made my room. We don’t have a mission tonight, you know."

"I didn’t know." Free night? Well. Maybe he could take up where they’d left off. "Hey, Omi."

"Yeah?"

Omi really had amazingly dexterous fingers. He’d make someone very lucky someday, and Yoji was backing away from that thought fast.

"You’re an assassin and our computer expert. You’re spending your free night killing computer characters over the Internet?"

"You have a gift, Yoji."

"I’m renowned for my insight."

"Where? Hey, you have your fun and I have mine."

"You need a life, kid," Yoji said as he left the mission room. Omi made a rude noise in answer. "Your values are all messed up!" A louder rude noise answered him.

One bunk had the curtain closed. It was almost like unwrapping a present.... Yoji quietly pulled the curtain aside to reveal Aya, curled up and kitteny, in his bunk. He’d traded the turtleneck--Aya had been wearing turtlenecks for days, thanks to him--for a black, short-sleeved T-shirt instead, revealing creamy pale skin and Yoji’s marks. Yoji got harder just looking at him.

Today had been a revelation. Aya had looked like anything but a killing machine as he stood at the window, staring out at the rain. He’d seemed depressed at first, but then a tiny smile had crossed his lips and warmed his face. Remembering the brandy and declaration of loyalty, his night terrors gone, Yoji had come up behind Aya, which had made him twitchy in an entertaining way. Then had come that ruefully said peace offering, the resting of that stubborn red head against Yoji’s shoulder, the request for a petting, and the sexual assault. It was damned unfortunate that Aya-chan and Ken had such lousy timing.

Still, he couldn’t entirely fault Aya-chan, even though he’d been forced to jerk off in frustration. Aya would never have jumped him that first time if she hadn’t come back into his life, Yoji was sure of it.

Aya had admitted that he had wanted him last night but hadn’t been able to say it. Maybe he’d learned his lesson about speaking up.

Probably not, but it was a start.

Right now, Yoji fought with himself. Aya looked so sweetly asleep, but Yoji needed to touch him. If they’d had beds, maybe he could have slipped in, but trying that in a bunk would be a wake-up call. Still, he imagined skin, sleep-warm and smooth beneath his fingers. He remembered how Aya’s eyes had been dark and glazed with lust as he’d turned to devour Yoji’s mouth....

His hand had reached out for that bared arm without him realizing it, giving him the touch of skin he’d wanted. Aya made a soft sound and rubbed his head into his pillow. Yoji stroked, feather light, and breathed deeper as Aya moved sensuously in his sleep and made little burbling noises. This was such a stupid move, since Aya would probably see this as an infringement, but he couldn’t help himself.

"Yoji," Aya murmured.

That was it. Aya could sleep later. Leaning in, Yoji stopped stroking--smiling when Aya made a sound of protest--and said, "Aya. Wakey-wakey."

Aya partially opened his eyes and looked at Yoji sleepily. So, so cute. "Mmmm?"

"Free night."

"Mmmm."

As fired up as he felt, he wanted to really pump things up, and Aya had been so agreeable today and snuggly now.... "Wanna go out."

"Hotel?"

Yoji smiled. "Eventually. I wanna go out out first, show you off."

Aya looked a little more awake now but confused. "What does this entail?"

"Dancing. I wanna see you dance."

Yoji couldn’t quite call the look in Aya’s eyes panic, but it was a close cousin. "A club?" Aya asked.

"Yeah."

"You’ve seen me dance."

"I want to see you dance with music and without a sword."

"Yoji, I hate clubs. The noise, the lights, the smoke, the people.... But you can go. I know you love that."

No way. This wasn’t happening. "You want me to dance by myself?"

Aya closed his eyes. "I don’t expect you’ll remain that way."

This was surreal. He was dreaming; he had to be. "Are you giving me permission to pick people up?"

"We’re different people. I don’t expect you to give up things you enjoy or ask me to give up things I like."

"Do you like anything?"

"A quiet night with a book."

Of course. Unbelievable. "A quiet night with a book? That’s better than a night out and sex?"

"Depends on the book."

Yoji was going to tear his own hair out. How could one person be so infuriating?

"I know that you can’t participate in that," Aya said, "so--"

"Guys?" Ken asked from the door. "Maybe you’ll call me dumb or old-fashioned, but what the hell kind of relationship do you two have?"

"Ken!" Yoji shouted.

"Hey, this time it’s actually Omi. He said he sensed that something really stupid was about to happen in here when he heard Yoji’s voice getting louder, so he wanted me to prevent it. He would have come in himself, he said, but he’s too busy slaughtering commandos."

Okay, maybe this time a distraction was a good thing.

What were they going to do? They did have very different tastes in entertainment. It would become a problem again.

"I’ll try it," Aya said. "I know that it’s really just an excuse to try to get me drunk and grope me in public, but I’ll give it a try."

Wow. But still.... "Don’t martyr yourself, Aya," Yoji said.

"I can still change my mind," Aya snapped back. He looked down. "I don’t like this. I never do well in these places, and you’ll resent me."

Aya was trying. He could try back. "I won’t resent you, and if it really turns out to be a disaster we could go home or to a hotel. Deal?"

Aya looked a little haunted but said, "Deal."

"Now you have to dress up in something worthy."

"How about the orange sweater?"

"No!" Yoji and Ken shouted.

Ken added, "I’m going to burn that thing." When Yoji and Aya both turned to look at him, he said, "I feel very strongly about it, that’s all. It’s ugly."

"Ken."

"I’m leaving, Yoji."

"Thanks." Once Ken had closed the door behind him, Yoji said, "It’s like Omi’s our mother and Ken’s our dad, and that’s fucking disturbed. What?"

"I just had a moment of déjà vu. I’m fine now."

Aya slid out of his bunk and took his shirt off. Skin, skin, skin.... Yoji pulled him in and kissed along the curve of his neck. Aya leaned back, pressing hard against him and rubbing. Aya wore looser pants tonight, so Yoji could just slide his hands under the waistband and stroke.

"You’re trying to distract me," Yoji said.

"Mmm," Aya answered, then licked the curve of his ear.

Yoji wanted this, he wanted this so much, but he figured that he had a better chance of Aya wanting to fuck again another time than he did of Aya agreeing to go to a club another time. He needed discipline. Aya stroked his cock through his pants, pressing down hard on the fly. They could have sex now and go to a club later, right? No, they couldn’t, because then he’d be sleepy and satisfied or Aya would want to go another round and how would he be able to turn down another round when he was already naked anyway?

Yoji took his hands away and backed off. "It won’t work."

Aya glared. "Do you ever think that it’s amazing that we actually completed one night together?"

Aya looked really hot when he was pissed off-- Down, boy. "All the time. Now get dressed."

"Or you’ll do what? Jump me?" Amazing how much more dangerous being self-aware made him.

"Aya!" Unsexy thoughts. He had to think unsexy thoughts. And stop staring at Aya’s bare chest. "You said you’d do this."

"Fine. Just keep in mind that sexual frustration makes me bitchier."

"How would I notice the difference?"

Aya made a hand gesture that Yoji had never seen him use before and did it with grace as well as emphasis. "What am I going to wear? I’m so sick of turtlenecks. You’re going to have to learn to play nicer and stop marking me up."

"Just show them off." When that got Yoji a lethal stare, he said, "Okay, don’t." He rummaged through his things and tossed Aya a black leather choker collar. "Try this."

Aya caught it and walked into the bathroom box. A minute later, he said, "This isn’t going to work. You went too high."

Yoji poked his head in and bit his lip. The tight, black, shiny leather collar rested just under Aya’s Adam’s apple. The buckle shone at the back of his neck. Some of the fading marks did still show.

"You’re doing this on purpose!" Yoji said.

"What? Standing here? Complaining? You’re the one decorating me." Aya unbuckled it and set it on the counter. Yoji knew that if he’d done it, that wouldn’t have been the only thing unfastened.

Aya walked out and rummaged through his closet, finally pulling out a black version of his new blue mission shirt. It too had the cutout and the straps at the high neck. Yoji realized that Aya usually wore slouchy shirts and turtlenecks--and that damned orange sweater--in regular life but dressed up or went fetishy for his mission outfits. What that said, Yoji didn’t know.

"I have to change my pants too," Aya said. "Would you like to stay and watch?"

Yoji grabbed his own clothing and retreated to the bathroom. He wanted to go out on the town sometime tonight.

When he finished and walked out, Aya looked... dangerous. "Are you going out to dance or kill somebody?" Yoji asked.

Tight black pants, black leather gloves, Aya’s original metal-studded dark mission coat and boots, the strappy black shirt, and the set look on his face combined to create a figure similar to one Yoji used to see a lot at night. All the black made his eyes look darker.

Aya closed his coat and belted it at the waist. "Consider it my version of a security blanket. I’ll leave the katana at home."

"Gee, thanks." His nostrils flared as Aya walked past. "What is that?"

"What?"

"Cologne?"

"I’m not wearing anything."

"There’s a phrase guaranteed to raise my--"

Aya raised an eyebrow. "I know, Yoji. Do you still want to go out?"

"You’re a pain in the ass."

"Not yet."

"What’s that supposed to mean?"

Aya added a small pile of clothing to Yoji’s travel bag. Yoji had already called for a reservation at a nice hotel, confident that they’d end up in one no matter how the club experiment went.

"Can we skip the banter and go?" Aya asked.

It relieved Yoji that Aya finally gave up his coat to the coat check people, since for a moment it looked like he’d balk. Yoji couldn’t help wondering if they could smell the very faint scent of blood in it, because that had been part of the scent making Yoji a bit crazy. Once he realized what it was, it had seemed overwhelming. He didn’t use his mission gear for anything else, and the blood scent kept crossing with his night out instincts. Aya smelled like blood, metal, and leather, but less so as he handed the coat over with his gloves tucked into its pockets.

Yoji loved clubs, how they were the opposite of sensory deprivation tanks. He could leave his troubles at the door and submerge himself in an ocean of heat, sounds, sights, smells, tastes, and people. No thinking required, and no brooding possible. Free your ass, and your mind will follow. Relaxed yet anticipating, he could cruise beautiful strangers and give himself up to one with no strings, no tomorrow, and no nightmares.

Tonight, he’d brought his beautiful stranger in with him, and that beautiful stranger had brought in all the things Yoji always tried to leave behind.

Aya gracefully swayed and turned to avoid brushing or touching the dancers around them and walked across the floor with a kind of brittle haughtiness that Yoji recognized as red-alert concentration, with nervousness mixed in. Aya’s eyes flickered in every direction, especially when strobe lights came on. It was like Yoji had brought a wild animal into the club with him. But he didn’t think that a stranger would see it for what it was, since it resembled disdain and a chip on his shoulder.

Yoji was getting tired just watching it. He took Aya’s wrist and led him to a corner booth, giving him the seat that would put two walls behind him. Yoji leaned forward and said, half-shouting over the roar of the music, "Okay, this was a bad idea."

"I’m fine," Aya shouted back.

"You’re acting like you’re on a mission."

"It helps give me focus." Aya almost smiled. "I used to find these places boring...."

"I came out to have fun and show you how to have fun. You can’t be having fun when you’re doing it as a mission."

"You have your fun, and I have mine."

"You and Omi are-- We’re leaving. This place is driving you nuts."

He looked pissed off. "I can do this, and I’m not nuts."

"Aya, you hate it here, and you’re trying to convince me to let you stay."

"There is nothing I can’t do. I can do this."

Yoji lit a cigarette. He desperately needed one. "You don’t need to prove anything to me, yourself, or anyone else."

Aya put his hand on Yoji’s wrist and gave him an intent look. "You want to go?" he asked. "Never to do this again?"

"Can I trust you to say ‘sure, I’m fine, let’s try that again’ and not come in looking like it’s hunting season?"

"I don’t know."

"Honesty, at least. We don’t ever have to do this again unless you say you want to give it another try. No wheedling from me. I want to go."

"That’s good." Aya stood up. "I have one dance to show you before we go, because I promised you. One night, one time only." He backed up toward the dance floor, his faster breathing visible from the movement of the straps at his neck. Panicky. "I’ve never been very good, but I think most of the people in here aren’t either. She always said that I had no rhythm." Painted in colored light, he started to move, a little snap in the hips, a little sway, closing his eyes to better listen to the music.

Yoji’s cigarette almost dropped from his lips, so he stubbed it out instead. Far be it from him to sit here while Aya was out there committing brave, reckless acts of un-Aya-like behavior. He moved in close and saw that Aya hadn’t completely closed his eyes; he was looking out from under his lashes instead, which made it safe to put an arm around him without getting attacked for it.

Yoji molded his body to Aya’s, swaying and undulating with it, and fondly said, "You’re a freak," into his ear.

"You say the sweetest things."

Yoji could feel Aya’s heart pounding and smell adrenaline, no matter how blasé Aya tried to look, and stroked his back comfortingly. He wanted to give Aya something grounding against the lights and the thumping roar. During the mess with Akira, he’d told Ken that people who went after revenge as they had couldn’t just merge back into society after having dealt death, and Aya was an extreme example of that truth. Aya and Omi in particular would never be normal again.

Omi hadn’t even known he deserved vengeance for a wrong done him until recently. He’d been drafted into the killing business.

If you’d told Yoji last week that he’d be feeling protective of Aya now, he would have laughed. Hell, this whole evening shouldn’t be happening.

"Admit it, Yoji. This is frottage with music. If you can call this music."

Yoji laughed. Yeah, they were rubbing and rocking, and he was getting hard, no matter what weird places his mind kept going. But Aya was concentrating too hard to react in the best way. He slid his hand down Aya’s ass and gripped, smiling as Aya hissed. But when he went for the neck, all the straps were in the way.

"It’s a chastity belt for my neck," Aya said.

"Your neck doesn’t need one."

"That’s right, you do."

"Nope." He gripped some of Aya’s hair just to feel him writhe. "Your hair on the other hand...."

"This is very public."

"Nobody will notice us, not when they’re all making out too. Trust me."

The music sped up and so did Yoji, moving Aya with him. They kissed and ground against one another. Aya tasted sweet....

"Maybe we should move this somewhere else," Yoji said.

Aya’s hips pushed against his. "I would like that."

Inching through the tight-knit crowd to get out only inflamed Yoji further. Full dance floor frottage. This was the kind of thing you couldn’t get at home. He could swear that he saw Aya elbow two people who’d gotten too grabby. That was his sunshine.

Getting their coats back took too long. Getting out of the club took too long. Driving took too long. Pumped up and restless as he felt, Yoji thought that maybe Aya would be safer as a driver but reconsidered, since Aya had only two car speeds: tortoise or hare. Yoji would die of either frustration or terror, and he didn’t need that.

Aya sat back in his seat, eyes closed, his pale fingers idly and nearly rhythmically toying with the black leather straps and buckles at his neck. Yoji stomped the accelerator harder.

As Yoji signed into the hotel and got their keycard, Aya stood to the side with the travel bag in his hand, looking bored and haughty, but Yoji could read him better now. To Yoji’s more informed eyes, something in the too straight posture or Aya’s breathing screamed that he was hot to go. Yoji smiled at him appreciatively, leering a little, and Aya raised a disdainful eyebrow. Oh, yeah. Wanted it.

As they walked into the elevator, Yoji thought back to how Aya’s anxiousness and concentration had looked like disdain and how Aya’s horniness now looked like disdain. "Aya, do you know that a lot of your facial expressions look like disdain no matter what you’re actually feeling?"

"What does this one show?"

"Uhm, actual disdain."

"Very good." But Aya ruined it then by almost smiling.

Yoji pressed in close. "The doors are closed. This isn’t public."

"We’re going to the third floor. If you’re done that fast, you shouldn’t boast about it."

Yoji breathed hotly into his ear and smiled as he trembled. "Never said anything about finishing here. I thought this might be an appetizer."

The door made a cheerful dinging sound as it opened. "That was more like a single hors d’oeuvre."

"You sound amazingly cheerful about sexual frustration." Yoji ached with lust.

Aya walked out of the elevator. "I know it’s almost over."

Yoji swiped the room’s keycard too fast the first time. He swiped more slowly the second time, aware that Aya was laughing at him behind that impassive mask but not minding too much. Not when Aya would pay for it later. Finally, he got the door opened.

When he got the door closed, Aya dropped the bag, pushed him against the wall, and leaned in on him, smelling like faintly bloody lust and leather along with cigarette smoke. "I told you," Aya said as he nibbled Yoji’s ear and they rocked against one another.

Aya unbelted his coat, pushed it back, and let it slither down off his body and fall to the floor with the faint sound of protesting metal. Yoji took advantage of the opportunity to open his own coat and pants, since he didn’t want obstructing layers in the way. Aya’s expression turned lust-dazed as Yoji hooked one of the straps at his neck with one finger and stroked down the front of Aya’s pants with the other hand, and he breathed harder and thrust into Yoji’s palm for more. Damn, did Aya give off heat when in the middle of sex. Aya’s hands roamed under Yoji’s shirt, making it pull tighter in the shoulders and under his arms. It felt like Yoji had waited all day for this.

Oh yeah, he had.

Haunted by memories of what they hadn’t finished, Yoji turned things around so Aya had his back to the wall and put his knee between Aya’s legs to spread them. Aya responded by grinding against him and riding his leg, desperate with lust and beautiful in it. Loving the attention and friction, Yoji thrust back, making it an insistent mutual humping, and groaned himself as he heard the whimper Aya made at being pulled forward by his neck straps for a kiss. He loved kissing Aya, the way Aya put all of his focus into it, as if nothing else existed in the world except Yoji’s body, Yoji’s mouth. They kissed harshly, needing.

"I don’t know how long I can last, Yoji," Aya said, sounding anything but impassive now.

Yoji kissed him again to feel his breath hitch and his pulse pound. "Go as fast or slow as you like. It’s hot seeing you want it this bad. You feel so good...." He emphasized his words with an especially emphatic thrust.

Aya responded with some insistent rubbing back and a deep, inward drawn gasp, then slumped on Yoji’s shoulder, breathing heavily.

Yoji thought a moment then asked, "That was it?" Aya had just come.

"Fuck you," Aya responded, his voice sounding deeper than usual. "I liked it."

"Nice idea, but--"

Aya gave him a dirty look, then slid down his body until he knelt in front of Yoji. Fuck, he looked good on his knees. He pushed Yoji’s shirt up and ran his lips and teeth slowly down the shivering skin of Yoji’s stomach. "Ah, Aya...." He pulled Yoji’s pants and underwear away to reveal his hard cock, then flicked his tongue out to taste the head.

Yoji came hard from that sight, the hot, hesitant touch, and the thought of Aya’s lips wrapped around his cock. And thus didn’t get a chance to have Aya’s lips wrapped around his cock. It was so damned unfair. Shame about messing up the wall too. But at least he felt good.

Aya looked up, wry. "You almost took my eye out."

"It’s always fun until someone loses an eye," Yoji gasped. "Have mercy. I’ve been turned on all day thinking about what I wanted to do to you."

Aya smiled and ducked his head. "If we hadn’t gone to the club and delayed things further, maybe we would have lasted longer than a few seconds."

"C’mon, you had to like something about the club."

"Anything I liked, I could have gotten at home. Or in a hotel."

"Flatterer."

"I have to get out of these pants. They feel disgusting."

"You’re such a romantic."

"I’m not a romantic?" Holding onto Yoji’s hips to keep him upright, Aya licked his spent cock clean in hard, thorough strokes. "Interesting flavor. How was that for romance?"

"Uh." Yoji couldn’t get any words out.

"Answer enough." Aya stood, patted Yoji’s ass, walked to the bed, sat down, and stripped his boots, socks, and pants off. "Are you coming?"

Yoji leered. "In a little bit." Eventually he would find his knees again. "Isn’t the shirt coming off too?"

"It’s been effective armor."

Yoji pulled his own shirt off and approached the bed. "I want it gone."

"It doesn’t look like you’re up to wanting anything yet."

"The pun is the lowest form of humor, Aya." Yoji stripped naked. He was no hypocrite.

"There has to be something lower."

"Nope." Yoji climbed onto the bed and pushed Aya down, then straddled his hips.

Aya idly batted his hands away from the buckles. "I don’t believe that."

"You’re gonna get the shirt messy."

"I don’t care."

"You look really silly in just the shirt."

"I don’t care."

Yoji started to unbutton it from the bottom, and Aya didn’t complain. Ah-ha. "I love your skin."

"Just my skin?"

"Fishing for compliments?"

"Just getting some bizarre mental images is all."

"Sick puppy."

Unfastening the shirt and peeling it aside, Yoji finally reached the point where he could see Aya’s nipples, and he couldn’t resist. Aya gasped and bucked as Yoji sucked and nipped on one. He tasted wonderfully salty.

Aya ran his fingers through Yoji’s hair. "That’s--"

"Unfair?" Yoji asked, tonguing and blowing on it just to make Aya writhe. He felt Aya’s cock stiffen against his leg. He was already hard, just from climbing around on top of Aya and toying with him.

"Good. That’s really good."

"I aim to please," Yoji said, then went back to work. He had access to lots of goodies, so he didn’t really have to undo the shirt all the way. Besides, Aya seemed to like being pulled around by those straps earlier.

Aya ran one hand down Yoji’s back and ass, then stroked behind his balls, making him groan and nip a bit harder than he’d intended to. Fast learner. He appreciated that in a partner.

Yoji hit that point where he could stop thinking and just feel. Melting, he sucked, nipped, kissed, and thrust, enjoying the slide of his body against Aya’s and the increasingly less hesitant touches Aya bestowed on him. It appeared to be frottage night, which Yoji had no trouble with at all. Watching Aya’s skin suffuse with color and heat, hell, watching Aya just abandon himself to sex, only made it better. No one else got to see him like this. Many of his emotions may have looked like sullen disdain, but pleasure and lust didn’t. Pleasure and lust made him look transcendent. Nobody else got to hear him sound like this either, very vocally if wordlessly satisfied. Yoji could have charged admission.

Aya rolled them over to put himself on top and kissed him searchingly, gasping as he hooked his fingers in the straps again, the buckles hot against his skin. Shouting into Yoji’s mouth, Aya thrust hard and came. Breathing hard, settling down, he sucked hard on a spot on Yoji’s neck, which set him off.

"Was that better?" Yoji finally asked, as he blew tickling auburn hair away from his nose. "Aya?"

Half-draped on top of Yoji, Aya was out cold. As usual, relaxing took a lot out of him. Smirking, Yoji patted his back, unfastened the straps at his neck, and turned off the light.

Yoji woke up to a loud bang. "I have many more objects to throw!" Aya growled at the door as he crouched on the bed nearby, and from the tension Yoji felt in his leg muscle, he was prepared to throw something else. Yoji’s eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness, something that had been useful to him as an assassin.

"Sex mellows most people," a low voice purred from the other side of the hotel room door. Schuldig, Schwarz’s telepath.

Yoji picked up the remaining table lamp, since Aya seemed to have used the other one. He felt a bit ridiculous, but it was better to have a defense ready.

"I assume that you want something," Aya said.

"Only to talk."

"You can do that from outside."

"True. I would have liked to get a look at my work, though, you and Kudou so cozy together."

"I’m to believe that you brought us together?"

"You have to admit that you’ve been behaving oddly for the past few days. Changing behavior is what I’m all about. Don’t you wonder what possessed you to turn an awkward hug into an education for poor little Omi?" Schuldig purred, his voice so soft and insinuating.

Oh, shit. Aya looked thoughtful. "All of my recent changes came from you?"

Could Schuldig really have done a telepathic whammy on Aya to make him more human and receptive? Had Aya been mindraped, forced, into it all? The thought made Yoji feel ill.

But even if Schuldig hadn’t, he might convince Aya that he had, and Aya would reconsider all the progress he’d made lately and go back to how he’d been. Prone to extremes, Aya would retreat behind walls of ice even thicker than the ones he’d started out with.

Having something deadlier than a lamp would be good. Yoji would be damned if Schuldig would walk by now and ruin days of Aya’s efforts in a few minutes. Still, he could beat Schuldig to death with it if he had to.

"Not all of them. Some of them are due to someone else who knows your thoughts and can change your behavior. I wonder why she still looks 16, don’t you?"

Aya’s expression turned harder and colder. "You can wonder from a long distance away from her."

"What would you do about it?"

Yoji was about to let Schuldig know exactly what Weiß would do to anyone who threatened Aya’s sister, but Aya tapped his arm hard for silence, so he stayed silent.

"Do you really want to leave me with nothing but vengeance again?" Aya asked. "I would, of course, hold you personally responsible."

"Never. I set this thing with Yoji up specifically to ruin that focus of yours. Look at you, naked in a hotel room throwing furniture at a door, with rings of bruises around your neck like a slave collar. How do you like the feeling of needing his touch and being incomplete without it? Do you enjoy being so desperate to please him to get it? How about going down on your knees for him? Hardly the samurai way."

Fucking telepaths. Schuldig knew all the right spots to poke. Yoji put a hand on Aya’s arm, but Aya shook it off. It was over. They’d lost.

Aya looked glacial. "Of which you know so much."

"Nothing to say, Yoji? Or are you just too turned on by the images I’m painting here?"

"Go fuck yourself," Yoji said.

"That’s original. I’ll leave you two to your thoughts. Have a good night." Schuldig knocked on the wall all the way down the hall so they could hear him go.

Aya bounced to the floor and started taking clothing out of the travel bag. "I don’t think it’s safe to stay here." He pulled a new shirt on over his head, with all fastidiousness he’d usually have over being sticky and sweaty lost in the cool of business, then tossed a pile of Yoji’s clothing to him.

Yoji put the lamp down and turned it on. "Duh. Aya, tell me what you’re thinking."

Aya kept dressing but turned his head so Yoji could see the small smile. "He’s so full of shit."

"How can you know?"

"I can trace most of my recent decisions back to their origins, and those origins rest with Aya-chan. Unless she’s become an agent for Schwarz, I can be confident that Schwarz hasn’t changed me to render me less effective."

"But how can you know?"

"How can anyone? It doesn’t matter. Most of the time, I’m happier than I used to be, and that’s what’s important."

"Well, yeah-- Wait, most of the time?"

"I’d like you to show me someone who’s happy all the time, Yoji."

"You’re a wise-ass." And staying that way, it looked like. Good for Aya. Yoji knew that he could thank Aya-chan for Aya deciding not to care about Schuldig’s charges, and he could live with that. He had to do something nice for that girl sometime.

Aya smirked. "It would be hilarious if Schuldig came here to shake my confidence but shook yours instead."

"I should have known you’d be fine. Once you’ve had me, you don’t go back."

"That’s not even worth commenting on." Aya strapped a sheathed knife to his wrist and made sure the sleeve of his coat hid it.

Yoji smiled. "Where the hell was that?"

"In the pile of clothing I put in. I needed a security blanket, remember?"

"Why did you throw a lamp, then?"

"I’m not wasting my knife on a door."

Yoji finished dressing. "You think Schwarz is out there?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. I can see Schuldig dropping that on us and wanting us to have time to digest it and angst over it. Or they could be waiting to kill us outside the lobby doors."

"I don’t feel like climbing out the window tonight. It’s my free night." Yoji put his coat on, then lit a cigarette. They were assassins. Strictly speaking, they were never disarmed. "We could get hit by a truck while crossing the street."

"A piano could fall on us from above."

"I’m getting a look at your taste in entertainment that’s intriguing me."

"Don’t get too smug. You entertain me."

"Ditto." Yoji gave him a kiss. Aya allowed it, then leaned into it. "I’m glad you’re sticking around. I like you."

Aya took the shades off Yoji’s nose and put them on his own face, then frowned. "They don’t fit right. What is wrong with your nose?"

"Oh shut the fuck up. It’s my nose."

Aya set them at the crown of his head, with his dark red bangs spiking out around them. It made him look weirdly like a parody of Schuldig. It also made him look younger.

"We’re going through the lobby, not out a window," Aya said.

"We’ll have to pay for our room that way."

"We should." Ever dutiful. "We might want to come back here someday. Aside from their security and pest control problems, this is a nice place." Or maybe not. "But we have to settle the bill quickly. I need to talk to Manx about security for my sister."

As they walked down the hallway and into the elevator, Yoji noticed that they’d matched strides, with Aya even replicating the extra swing Yoji put in from carrying the bag. Instead of declaring himself like this, it might have been wiser to let Schwarz wonder if Aya were having a mental crisis, but, hell, they had a telepath. If Schuldig couldn’t figure it out, he was the most incompetent one ever.

They stayed on the side of the elevator for cover as its door opened, but nothing shot through. Yoji could just about feel Aya’s watchfulness extending out like a field around him as they walked through the lobby. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, with the room having that weirdly echoing feel that many public places took on late at night when few people were in them. No psychic or nutjob assassin types seemed to be lying in wait. Yoji felt like he had a target on his back as he paid at the counter, but he also felt Aya standing at his side, inevitability in full effect.

"We had some nutcase try to break into our room, and that’s why we’re leaving," Yoji told the clerk. "You might want to look into making sure that kind of thing doesn’t happen to anyone else." He turned his back on the guy’s apologies, since they didn’t matter.

Nobody here could have stopped Schuldig from getting in, but at least by reporting it Yoji might avoid paying for the broken lamp and scarred door.

Nobody bothered them on their way out or at the car. Nobody seemed to be around, period. The car started just fine. He didn’t want to jinx it by saying that it looked like Schwarz preferred to just toy with their heads tonight, so he said nothing, but he could just imagine them getting a good laugh at watching their enemies lightfoot it out of the hotel. He took advantage of the late hour to drive as fast as he wanted to, knowing that Aya wouldn’t mind.

"Omi," a voice said. A very determined voice.

Omi woke up immediately and turned on a light. Aya stood next to his bunk and looked so intense that his eyes should have been able to burn a hole right though anything in front of them. But why was he wearing Yoji’s shades on his head? On second thought, Omi didn’t want to know. Yoji looked upset too.

"Can you contact Manx or Persia for me? Schuldig came to see us and implied that Schwarz still has an interest in Aya," Aya said.

Shit. Omi quickly slid out of his bunk. "I’ll try. It’s late. It’s--" 4 a.m.! "--very late, so nobody may answer my hail."

"Try."

"...the hell?" Ken asked groggily.

"Schwarz. Threats to Aya-chan," Omi said.

"Shit," Ken answered and got out of bed.

In the mission room, Omi activated his e-mail account and started sending messages to the applicable places. "Now all we can do is wait."

"I hate waiting," Yoji said. Aya gave him a look and then returned his shades.

Five minutes later, the projector turned on with a click. Manx looked immaculately put together, as usual. "It’s late. Or early," she said.

"Omi gave you some of the details in his e-mail," Aya answered, looking glacial, washed with blue by the projector.

"Schuldig visited the trailer?"

"We were out, and he came to see us there."

Did Manx smirk a little, or had Omi just imagined it? Did she know about Aya and Yoji? Probably. "I see," she said.

"He mentioned Aya as if he and Schwarz had an interest in her."

"We already have a 24-hour watch on her."

Aya’s expression turned harder, which was never a good sign. "I’ve never seen any of these people."

"Kritiker values its agents too much for you to kill them first and ask questions later while defending your sister. They pull back whenever you show up."

"Are you telling me that every time I see someone showing an unhealthy interest in her, I should assume he’s a Kritiker agent? That’s not acceptable, and it’s dangerous!"

"It’s the best we can offer. Surely you knew that these kind of compromises would be necessary to keep her safe."

Aya flinched, though probably only the team saw it. "I didn’t want this for her."

"She was an integral part of Esset’s plan to take over the world. The option of leaving her unprotected now never crossed our minds. You’ll have to resign yourself to her being safe but never having a normal life."

"I hoped that she was out of it. She can’t be valuable to the remnants of Esset anymore."

"You can see her aging normally with your eyes alone? I doubt it. Besides, you know that she still has a value even beyond that, just for being Abyssinian’s sister, the one he’s irrational about. And quitting wouldn’t change that."

"I know. I said nothing of quitting." He shook his head. "I have to--"

"Don’t go see her now. Normal 18-year-olds don’t get a 4 a.m. wakeup call from their assassin brothers. You would only frighten her."

"Don’t give me orders you know I’ll break, Manx."

She frowned. "They might want you to go running in there. Kritiker agents have been alerted to watch even more carefully now. The Tomoes already have their own security detail for Sakura’s sake as well as Aya’s."

Aya’s lip curled. "Of course Kritiker is watching the Tomoes, considering Sakura’s role in Esset’s defeat." Aya hadn’t known. No one in Weiß had known. Omi hadn’t even known.

"I’m sorry, Aya. I know this isn’t fair for you or her."

"Nothing is fair."

"At least we can offer her 24-hour coverage."

"You make Kritiker sound like an insurance company."

Manx looked confused. She might be aware that Yoji and Aya were involved with one another, but it looked like she didn’t know that Aya could be sarcastic. "You have to admit that it’s good for you that you belong to an organization that can spare the people to protect her at all times."

"I’m thrilled. Thank you for showing me how things are. Good night, Manx."

"Good night, Aya."

The projector turned off, and the room went dark, but Omi could feel how rigidly Aya stood. Omi didn’t have anyone outside of Weiß who could be used as a hostage against him, not anymore, but he remembered how it felt. Omi turned the desk light back on and saw that Aya had his arms crossed over his chest, his hands gripping his upper arms so hard that the knuckles looked white.

"I’ve been stupid and naïve," Aya said, looking hard and stiff, as if his fears were turning him to stone. Was that his usual physical response to being worried or overwhelmed? If so, it put a new spin on Weiß’s assumptions of his state of mind over the entire time they’d known him.

"You were hopeful," Omi answered.

"As I said, I was stupid and naïve."

"Are you going to see her tonight?"

"Manx is right. Waking her like this would only scare her and probably wouldn’t do much good. Besides, she has to wake for school in about two hours." Aya’s mouth twisted. "And so do you. I’m sorry, Omi."

"Nah, I like knowing this stuff as it happens. Don’t worry. Aya, if there’s anything I can do--"

"Anything we can do," Ken said. Good Ken.

"Thank you, but not really. I need to be alone to deal with this. I have to find some calm...." Aya’s body all but screamed "don’t touch me." He walked out of the room, then came back with his sheathed katana. "Good night, everyone."

"What are you going to do?" Yoji asked, looking worried.

"Exercises. I won’t destroy anything or hurt anyone." Aya smiled with what looked like bitterness. "Not even myself."

"Aya...." Yoji put his hand up, open-palmed, a slight distance away from Aya’s face.

Aya looked at it, then briefly leaned into it, turning his head to rub his face against Yoji’s fingers. Then he stepped back and walked away, into the main room. Omi heard a thump that might have been Aya’s coat being thrown to the side or might have been something worse. Worried, Omi went to follow him, but Yoji stopped him.

"The exercises relax him. Don’t worry. We should go to bed. I think it would bother him to think of us listening out here." But Yoji looked deeply unhappy.

"Something else happened."

"You are one creepy kid."

"I know, I know. What happened?"

"Fucking Schuldig comes to our door and starts saying that all the changes Aya made lately came from his manipulations. That he did it to degrade Aya. He nailed every single fucking thing Aya is in the process."

Omi knew from personal experience how Schuldig could find your most important concerns and fears and jab them hard. "Do you think Aya will start to believe Schuldig?"

"Fuck, I don’t know. This thing with worrying about his sister is bad enough by itself. Sometimes I feel like I’m on borrowed time with him."

"You’re looking for guarantees?" Ken asked.

Yoji laughed. "Yeah, you’re right. It’s nuts."

"I think it was talking to Manx that set him off, so maybe you don’t have to worry about him thinking that Schuldig has been running him like a puppet," Omi said.

"Yeah, it’s funny; he laughed Schuldig off, but Manx just destroyed him." Yoji pocketed his shades and ran his hands through his hair. "Since there’s nothing I can do right now, I might as well go to bed."

Omi knew that Aya wouldn’t let him do anything to help right now, so he went back to his bunk too, but it took him an hour to go back to sleep. His mind kept swimming with thoughts of Aya and Aya, and how Kritiker had set security details without letting Weiß know about it. He’d have to be more vigilant.

Step. Extend. Guard. Step.

"Aya!" Yoji shouted from the doorway. "Don’t you think you should get some sleep?"

"I’m fine. I’m exercising."

"It looks like you’re punishing yourself."

He realized that his arms were shaking from exertion and very carefully lowered them until the tip of his katana touched the floor. "I’m busily not thinking."

"You’re also busily not sleeping. It’s been two hours. You’re lucky I was so wound up that Omi’s alarm clock woke me up. Hmm. Then again, Omi probably would have forced you to stop."

Now that he was back in the world, he realized that his legs didn’t feel steady either. And he reeked. "Neither of you have to force me. I think it’s time to stop. I’ll shower, then go to bed."

Yoji looked worried. "Just bed."

"I stink of sweat, smoke, and sex. I won’t be able to sleep like that."

"I think you could, but I’ll let you try a shower."

"Let me?"

Yoji crossed his arms and looked stubborn. "I’ll be standing outside the door so I can hear it if you pass out and fall over."

Arguing would delay his shower. He sheathed his katana. "Fine. Knock yourself out. And I do mean that."

As he walked past, Yoji asked, "How do you feel about what Schuldig said about you?"

"Now is really not the time to ask me if I feel mushy about you, Yoji."

"And yet?"

"To borrow a phrase, he can go fuck himself."

It earned him some peace, since Yoji seemed happy with that answer. It was even true. Aya approved of the changes in him, and done was done anyway.

In the shower, he turned the water on as hard as he could, to beat at his body. He felt awful. He should feel awful, having overindulged in everything from oblivion through exercise to self-confidence to pretty delusions.

He’d known that Manx and Birman had been looking after Aya once in a while, but he knew Manx and Birman. He couldn’t call them friends or family, but they weren’t... faceless minions, unknown people whose jobs were to watch his sister. Manx and Birman had just wanted to see how she was doing. Or so he’d thought.

Aya would never have a normal life. Takatori Reiji had taken that away from her along with her parents and two years of her life. What Takatori Reiji hadn’t done, Esset and her brother had. She had a veneer of a normal life with a "family" and school and a brother who pretended that he wasn’t a cold-blooded killer, at least when he was around her. She had excuses for believing in the illusion, since everyone worked so hard to maintain it for her.

He had no such excuse for his belief.

Who knew he’d still had some innocence left to lose?

He wrapped himself in towels and wandered toward his bunk, vaguely aware of Yoji’s presence nearby. Once under his covers, he took the towels off and stared into space.

"You’re not going to argue that you should go to work?" Yoji asked, sounding worried.

Oh for-- "No. Stop worrying about me. I’ll be ready to go on after some sleep."

"Aya."

"I don’t hate you, Yoji." That was true. He hated only himself, now that Takatori Reiji was dead at his hand.

"Good."

"I’m just moody." He’d gone from being quiet to learning to lie to keep the peace. Perhaps that was progress.

He’d be fine eventually. When life had ripped everything he’d loved away from him, he’d found a way to go on. By comparison, this was nothing. He’d be smarter and harder next time.

Yoji kissed his cheek, and it felt really nice. So much for smarter and harder.

Feeling heavy with fatigue, he closed his eyes. Sleep could be an escape. He wouldn’t be any good to her tired and out of his mind with it.

He awoke alone in the early afternoon and quickly dressed, figuring that he could get some work done. With all the guilt he already had, he tried to avoid bringing more on himself.

When he reached the door, the phone rang. The rest of the team rarely let him answer, claiming that his tone discouraged callers, but they weren’t here, so.... Besides, surely he wouldn’t sound imposing today. "Hello?"

"Ran! I called because I wanted to make sure you didn’t get the idea that I only called you when I was depressed or had bad news. I’m at school, but I don’t need a rescue. No evil filmstrips today."

To his relief, she sounded well, but he had a sense of foreboding. "I see."

"Did you do something fun last night?"

"Eventually." But then a telepathic assassin came by and attempted to shatter my world and failed. But don’t worry, because a representative of my own organization succeeded in his place. No, he couldn’t say that.

"Everybody at school thinks I have a boyfriend now. You."

They’d only passed three people in the hall! "What? You’re telling them I’m just your brother, aren’t you?"

"Of course I am, and Sakura is too after she heard that my ‘boyfriend’ had red hair, but they don’t believe us. I think the problem is that we really don’t resemble each other. Everybody’s talking about how tall and mysterious you are and how you drive a Porsche. Boys are suddenly taking a second look at me."

"This sounds like bad news to me."

"Oh, Ran," she said, sounding long-suffering. "It’s just funny is all. Hmm."

Despite everything, the sound of her voice still brightened him. "What now?"

"This sort of segues in to what I wanted to ask next."

"You’re doing this by phone so I can’t kill you with my death glare, right?"

"I want to meet your guy. I have to meet your guy. How can I know if he’s good enough for you if I don’t?"

She was well, and that was the important thing. He kept telling himself that. "Aya--"

"We’re all the family we have left, and I have to look out for you," she said fiercely. "Are you ashamed of him?"

"No! He’s just ‘my guy,’ though. It’s not like we’re getting married."

"I really want to see you together. He’s around, isn’t he? You let it slip about the shared profession. See if he wants a formal introduction to me. If he really cares about you, he will."

Curiosity and the opportunity to make him want to shrink under the table would be reasons enough for Yoji to come. "It doesn’t work like that."

"You know that I’m not going to stop asking."

He sighed. "I know."

"See if he’s willing to meet with me at the café tomorrow after school. Go ask!"

"Yes, master. Hold on." Maybe Yoji wouldn’t want to go.

Like hell. He was so screwed.

Maybe if Yoji could be entertained by the thought of fun to come, he wouldn’t be acting like his lover was a piece of cracked porcelain, apt to break at any moment. He still didn’t know if that would be worth the discomfort of this café meet.

He walked outside and stopped next to Yoji, who smiled. "Hey, what’s up?"

"I have something to ask you."

"Shoot."

He realized that he had his hands fisted so tightly that his fingers were starting to hurt. A chant of "say no, say no, say no, please say no" ran through his head. It looked like he’d rather be treated like damaged goods than sit through Aya and Yoji cackling over him.

"Aya wants to meet you in a café after school tomorrow. Can you go? I can understand if you can’t make it--"

"Sure, I can, doll. I’d love to get a better introduction to your sister."

Shit. "Stipulation number one: you will never call me ‘doll’ in front of my sister. Or ever again."

Yoji looked amused. The bastard. "Yeah, yeah. Wait, stipulation number one?"

"There will be more later. Count on it."

"Of course. Hey, do you think this lily should be placed further to the right or left?"

He reached out and gave it a small adjustment, creating harmony in the arrangement. Yoji smiled. "Thanks. Tell Aya-chan I’m looking forward to tomorrow." Of course Yoji was, especially since he had time to sharpen his material.

Now he knew the definition of true horror. "I will." He returned to the phone and was very proud that he resisted the urge to bang his head against the wall. Normal life. He wanted to try to give her as much of a normal life as was still possible for her.... "He says he’s looking forward to tomorrow."

"That’s great! Get the doom out of your voice, Ran. It won’t be so bad."

"For you."

"I won’t embarrass you too badly."

"You can’t make the same promise for him. It’s one of the great joys of his life."

She laughed. "You’re so easily embarrassed. Somebody has to take the starch out of you once in a while."

He hadn’t been so easily embarrassed when he hadn’t cared about anything. "I’ll see you tomorrow, Aya."

"I’m holding you to that! I will track you down if I have to."

"But no pressure, right?"

"None. I love you. See you tomorrow!"

Tomorrow? No, he couldn’t wait that long to see her. But he was too much of a mess to meet her in a public place. He knew what he had to do.

"I’ll see you tomorrow, but can I come to the Tomoes’ house to see you tonight?"

He could almost hear her brain working. She finally asked, "Is something wrong, Ran?"

"I have some things I need to tell you and do. I also need to settle with Sakura." He did, really. She deserved better from him than he’d given her.

"You’re going to make me guess what this is really about, aren’t you?"

"I want to see where you live." Another truth.

"All right. I’ll tell them you’re coming. I’ll see you tonight too."

"Thank you. I’ll see you later."

"Yeah."

He stood near his car and stared at the Tomoe home, remembering the last time he’d been here, his desperation to make sure that Aya would still be looked after in case he died and his knowledge that the only person outside of Weiß he trusted was a teenage girl he hadn’t seen for months. What a responsibility he’d put on Sakura’s shoulders, and he hadn’t even told her anything about his sister’s circumstances.

He’d come to her window to ask her to help him. No wonder she’d fostered some kind of romantic image of him. Idiocy on his part. And desperation....

Over now, and he’d procrastinated enough. Kritiker’s agents could just clear out for a while. He walked up and rang the bell. When a woman opened the door, he said, "Hi. I’m Ran, Aya’s brother. She told me that she’d let you know that I was coming by to see her."

She smiled, somewhat uncertainly. "Of course. Come in, please."

The inside of the house looked as nice and average of the outside. Normal. It occurred to him that he only walked through people’s homes when he had a mission to kill someone.

"May I take your coat?" Sakura’s mother asked.

"Oh. No. Thank you. I still feel a bit cold."

And there was Sakura, standing on the stairs. He was thankful that she’d bobbed her hair again, since the longer style she’d temporarily adopted had heightened her superficial resemblance to Aya so much that it had made him nearly irrational just to look at her.

She deserved better of life and of him, and it was time he gave it to her. "Hello, Sakura."

"Aya." Then she glanced at her mother, making him wonder how much of that story the woman had gotten.

He stepped up close enough to render her next words private, for her alone, yet not close enough to give her or her mother any ideas about the extent of his... friendliness. "I’m sorry that I’ve been avoiding you. I told myself that I was doing it so you couldn’t get hurt, but.... I’m something of a coward, it turns out."

Sakura smiled a little. "I understand that nothing can happen between us, Aya. You don’t have to worry." She was being mature about it, more than he was. He would have smiled if he hadn’t been certain that she’d take it the wrong way. "You probably see me as something closer to a little sister."

"I’m afraid so."

"It’s okay. Really."

"Thank you. You’ve done so much for me and for Aya that I would never try to hurt you."

"Aya’s explained some things to me about you."

"Oh." Shit. He wouldn’t wonder. He wouldn’t-- He was wondering.

"It’s okay."

Well, at least the mystery would be gone. That could only help.

Aya ran down the stairs and took his arm. "Ran! You’re here! Nobody told me."

"We knew that you’d take him away the moment you realized he was here," Sakura said, but in a gently teasing way. He liked that.

But seeing Sakura and Aya standing together on the stairs made two parts of his life collide in ways that left him feeling vaguely queasy. Still, he better get used to it.

"When you’re right, you’re right. I want to show my brother my room. See you all later!" And Aya dragged him away.

Once they finished climbing the stairs and reached what had to be the door to her room, he whispered, "That was really rude. Thank you."

"I know you, big brother."

Her bedroom appeared to be nicely furnished, neither too sparse nor too luxurious. The Tomoes seemed to be providing her with a good balance, neither stinting nor spoiling her. From a look at the racks, she’d replaced some of her favorite CDs. The room smelled a bit like fruity lip-gloss.

The explosion of their house had left them with nothing, no mementos or pictures. Even his wallet had been shredded during the effort to dig him out of the wreckage. Takatori Reiji had killed their parents specifically so they would take the blame for his own corruption, and their names had been so tainted that the rest of the Fujimiya family had wanted nothing to do with the children who’d survived. Many of them hadn’t answered their phones when he’d called, or perhaps they’d avoided answering everyone’s calls for fear of the media trying to interview them. Those who had answered had been either distant or hostile. You’re almost an adult, you’ll be fine....

He remembered starting to hyperventilate while on the phone with the last in a line of relatives, a hostile uncle, as it started to hit him that at 18 he was orphaned, alone, homeless, almost penniless, entrusted with a comatose sister who’d need intensive hospital care, and couldn’t lean on anyone, not even his family, for help. When he’d stopped talking, unable to breathe, his uncle had hung up on him. If he hadn’t blocked it out and gone cold, he might not have survived.

If he hadn’t been abandoned by his family and learned that he couldn’t trust anyone--if he’d had any options--would he have become a killer? He wondered.

"Ran?"

"I’m just thinking that you have a nice room." It was feminine without being girlish. She was growing up. Living with a family that hadn’t known her as a child perhaps made it easier for her to get them to see her as a nascent adult.

"Yours is probably better."

"I don’t have my own room. I have a bunk."

"That really sucks."

"You have no idea."

"Is your team like the army or something?"

"Or something."

"Try the bed. It’s really nice."

"Try the bed?"

"It’s comfortable." She pushed him down onto it.

He sat up. "I’m starting to worry."

"You’re going to sleep on my really nice bed."

"I am? I wasn’t consulted."

"You are." She sat down next to him. "Am I in danger? Is that why you’re here?"

The sound that came out of his mouth might have been a laugh. "No more danger than usual."

"Then why did you come to the Tomoes’ house looking like hell?"

"Thanks. I had some illusions shattered last night, and I was worried about you."

"Am I being watched?"

This conversation didn’t belong in this room. "Yes. By my organization and perhaps another one that I worry about."

"Wow, that was honest." She smiled.

"If I’d lied, would you have believed me?"

"Probably not."

"There’s no point, then."

"I appreciate the honesty."

"You’ll grow out of that...." She did have a comfortable bed, with soft pillows. It felt good to lie down on. He knew she wouldn’t stop bothering him about it until he did what she wanted, so he figured he could avoid a lot of trouble by just giving in.

"Good boy." She petted his hair.

"Yes, patronizing me is always a great way to get me to do your bidding." But he closed his eyes... then jerked them open again. "Hold on, I need to make a call." She handed him a phone. "You have a phone in your bedroom?"

"The Tomoes are sensitive to the needs of a teenage girl."

"Too soft-hearted is more like it."

"Keep talking like that, and I’ll charge you for the call."

Ken picked up the phone. "Hello?"

"It’s Aya, and I’m at Aya’s home. If Omi could contact Kritiker to let them know that I’m napping here and they should put their agents back in position to watch over my sister and the family taking care of her, I’d appreciate it."

"That wasn’t too sarcastic."

"Especially since I’m not bitter at all. Thank you."

"Yoji went out driving, probably looking for you."

Yoji seemed to think that he’d self-destruct at any second, as if he hadn’t already survived far worse. It annoyed him. "Please let him know that I’m safe with my sister, and I’ll get home when I’m ready."

"You’re sleeping over?"

"Aya has promised that no one will molest me in my sleep."

"It’s a better promise than you’ll get at home."

"True."

"I did not promise that," Aya said. "In fact, if Sakura offers the right amount of money, I’ll give her a shot at you."

When he heard Ken laughing, he said, "Ken heard that."

"Hi, Ken!" she shouted.

"She sounds cute," Ken said.

"Don’t even think about it. My sister isn’t dating anyone who’s in the business."

"Is Ken cute?" Aya asked with an evil smile.

"You are not dating anyone who’s in the business."

"Now that’s just discrimination," Ken said. "Tell her I’m cute."

"Ken."

"All right, all right. I’ll tell Omi to get the word out to the security detail and then tell Yoji that he can stop patrolling the streets or whatever he thinks he’s doing."

"Thanks."

He could hear the smile in Ken’s voice. "Good night, Aya."

Aya took the phone from his hand, put a blanket over him, and then pushed his head down into the pillow and kept her hand there to make sure it stayed. "Farewell, dignity," he said.

"Dignity is overrated. Sleep is underrated."

He wanted to stay awake just to spite her, but he felt so comfortable and so tired and so weirdly safe that he fell asleep immediately.

An alarm woke him up, but nothing was where it should be or smelled right. Somehow, he didn’t feel threatened. Then something smacked his arm. Hard. "Hey!"

"Ran? You’re supposed to be my alarm clock."

"I’ll keep that in mind." He found the switch to turn off the alarm, then turned over to face her.

"Time for school," Aya said, then yawned and stretched beside him.

"I slept here all night?"

"Uh, yes."

"In your bed."

"With me. Don’t worry. Your modesty is safe. I slept on top of the blanket I put on top of you, then put another one over us. Cozy, right?"

"Very." He felt warm and loose. It was.... And he’d fallen asleep at.... He’d slept for ten hours.

She rolled out of bed and did another stretch as she stood up. "I told the Tomoes you’d stay for breakfast. Family style! You will stay for breakfast, right?"

"Okay. They didn’t mind that I slept in your bed? That we slept in your bed? Aya, you should have woken me up."

She gave him her "you are so dense" look. "You’re my brother. You were dead on your feet. There were several layers of blankets. I’m in a nightgown that only leaves my fingers, head, and toes bare. Oh, yeah, and you’re my brother? Sakura was a secondary character witness."

"I’m amazed they didn’t throw me out into the street, then."

Aya looked worried. "You’re not mad, are you, Ran? I know you’re not the type of person who likes to touch people or be touched, but--"

There was nothing like starting your sister’s day with an early morning crisis of confidence. Sometimes he really hated himself. "I haven’t slept this well for a while, so I guess I must not have as much trouble with it as you think. Do whatever you want to me, Aya."

"Really?" She beamed. "Because I will remember and take advantage of that offer."

"Really."

"I have to get dressed, then we’ll have breakfast. It’ll be fun!" Then she bounced out of the room.

Breakfast. A family-style breakfast? Whatever that meant.

Far easier to burrow under the covers instead. They smelled like her, warm and somewhat flowery. She used the same soap and shampoo she used to, something sweet but not too sweet. His current, more trained sense of smell made out rose and gardenia tones, with a bit of orange.

He remembered seeing her for the first time after regaining consciousness himself. The tubes, oxygen mask, and bandages had been so immediately and blatantly wrong, the same way her stillness had been, but her scent--fire, gasoline, mud, rain, blood, hospital--had cinched it for him. No trace of her at all. Wrong. So wrong. This wasn’t his sister, this was some broken doll put in her place, the same bastard who’d killed his parents had taken his sister and substituted this thing.... He’d already realized that he mustn’t ever say these things to anyone, because then they’d lock him away alone in some room somewhere and he’d have nothing left at all.

Don’t talk. Talking wasn’t safe. He’d always guessed that, but that night had proved it.

Then there were the times when talking accomplished nothing, as when the media had interviewed him about his evil, bad parents. They hadn’t believed a word he said, though they might have been more attentive if he’d said that his parents had worshipped aliens or molested children, something sordid or sensationalistic that would fit the script they’d been given.

Talking never helped him. There was no justice. No law. No family. It was all up to him to set it right.

He’d done his best, and set things as close to right as he could. Better than he’d expected actually. And this bed and warmth were his reward. And Aya was. He wanted to hold her so close that anything that tried to get to her would have to rip through him first, but he worried that he’d clutch her too tightly....

"Ran!"

He opened his eyes. "Hmm?"

"You’re going back to sleep." At least she sounded amused.

"Yes." He pulled the covers over his head.

She pulled the covers away with a laugh. "Breakfast!"

"Sleep!"

"Breakfast!"

"Breakfast is overrated!"

If he’d fought back, she never would have been able to drag him out of bed by his arm, but he didn’t fight. He didn’t even have anything to say when she muttered that his haircut meant that he didn’t have to brush his hair, because it looked like it was supposed to look like that.

"What did you tell Sakura about me, anyway?"

"That you were the best brother ever. Stop giving me that look."

Breakfast was surreal. This is the family, as the filmstrip that had made Aya-chan cry had said. Mother and father and two daughters and the prodigal son at home. At least Sakura resembled Aya a bit less with her hair cut short again. She really had set something in his soul trembling in terror when he’d first seen her with her hair as long as Aya’s. Sakura was trying so hard to be mature and show that she was over him, so he played along. She was a good-hearted kid and had helped him when he hadn’t deserved it.

Despite everything that had happened to her, she was so young that she made him hurt.

The Tomoes were very nice people... and probably relieved that he had no sexual interest in their young daughter, making them even nicer to him. A cold part of him thought that the cash he gave them to take care of Aya helped. They wanted him to know that he could come by when he liked. They loved Aya and thus loved her family by extension. They loved each other and they loved Sakura. He couldn’t trust them, not where he was concerned, though he had to for Aya’s sake, since she lived with them.

This was not his life. He sat there and listened to the conversation and ate the excellent breakfast and complimented the cooking and felt completely disconnected. Autopilot. He’d done this before.

Finally, the plates were empty, and everybody did their farewells and come back again sometimes, and he was free. He even started to breathe again.

"Aya!" Aya yelled at him, in a tone that suggested that she’d already tried to get his attention a few times.

If she’d used that name, he must not have been playing along as seamlessly as he’d thought. "I’d drive you to school," he told Aya and Sakura, "but the car can’t really fit three people, and it would only fuel the rumors anyway."

"Yes! My mysterious boyfriend! Don’t worry. I’ll see you later."

Right. Today the two most sarcastic, uninhibited people in his life would be sitting at the same table in a café with him as a target. It should seem petty and tiny compared to his other worries but didn’t. "Go ahead. Twist the knife. Have a good day at school."

"See you later!" At Sakura’s confused look, Aya said, "I’ll explain it at school."

That could get messy. Then again, maybe Sakura would feel better about how things had turned out if she thought he was gay.

He didn’t like how distracted he felt as he drove. And Schuldig had said that the sex would ruin his focus? Ha. His current flightiness had his sister’s name all over it.

Yoji met him at the door of the trailer. "You look like you got some. You smell like you spent the night in a woman-- no, a girl’s bed. She was in it at the time."

"Even you can’t tell that by smelling me."

"I am an expert."

Aya was half amused and half resentful at the jealousy he heard in Yoji’s questions. "It was in my sister’s bed. Does that make you feel better?"

"No."

"And you think I’m weird."

How could Yoji dare to look angry? "Because you are. I tell you that you look like you got lucky, and you answer that you spent the night in your sister’s bed."

"I slept. She slept. There was sleeping. There was no getting lucky. And fuck you. There’s no way that you can play the ‘I had no idea you had sister issues’ card, Yoji. Don’t ask me to choose between you, because you know where it will end up."

"That’s for sure."

"Why are you being such an asshole? If our situations were reversed, you’d be pissed off if I asked the kind of questions you’re asking or implied what you’re implying. ‘Don’t you trust me, Aya?’ you’d ask. You’re being a hypocrite."

"I care where you’ve been. So sue me."

"I’m looking at our relationship on a costs/benefits basis, and the costs are starting to outweigh the benefits."

"Why are you being such a bitch?" Yoji asked back.

He felt his body vibrate with emotion. He was cracked porcelain only because Yoji made him so with his overdone concerns and demands and jealousies and accusations. "Because I’m scared and worried, and now you’re accusing me of taking advantage of the person I love most in the world, and I don’t need this! The concept you’re throwing around is ‘incest,’ and it’s not funny!"

He wanted to kill, mow down the obstacle. So many of his problems were things he couldn’t touch, couldn’t get his hands on, but Yoji was solid and here, and it would be so satisfying to put his hands around that neck and squeeze until Yoji never bothered anyone ever again.

Fuck.

Lies. All lies. The bedroom and the sister and breakfast weren’t him. This was him, the kind of person who’d dream of killing a lover and teammate just to shut him up for a moment. He shouldn’t be allowed to be around other people. He shouldn’t be allowed to be around her.

So this was what a breakdown felt like? Funny, he’d done something like this at least twice before in the last two years.

Yoji had backed off and was staring at him, silent. "I’m sorry," Yoji finally said softly. "It isn’t something I should casually throw around."

"I’ve twisted her life. I never should have contacted her, because now she’s knotted herself up with me, and I fucked it up. I’ll devour her whole. I shouldn’t be around people."

Yoji, looking worried again, reached for him, but he batted the hands away. But Yoji moved so fast the next time and grabbed him this time and held him tight. He could fight, but he didn’t because once he started, who knew where it would end? Safer to tremble with adrenaline and the urge to do something but not actually do it. Safer to let Yoji drag him inside.

Yoji had lost it. He understood that. He’d been so worried about Aya yesterday, and he’d had this dream of Aya standing on a chair with a noose of wires around his neck. Somebody unseen had kicked the chair out from under him, and instead of the dubious mercy of a clean neck snap, he’d slowly choked to death. Being Aya, he’d fought to free himself the whole time....

People Yoji loved tended to die horribly.

Then Aya had shown up today looking like he’d gotten laid and smelling like someone else’s bed. It had made Yoji crazy, because he’d worried, and now look at Aya walking in all distracted, glowing, and mussed. He knew that part of the lure of the unattainable that Aya had was that one person would always be higher in Aya’s heart than anyone else, and part of the challenge of Aya was to change that, because how healthy was it for a guy to be that obsessed with his sister? At the same time, Yoji never in his craziest moments thought that Aya would run around on him or even could run around on him. Aya needed to be hit over the head repeatedly with a heavy object to get the idea that someone was interested in him. Watching him with Sakura had been entertaining, because it had taken forever for him to realize what she wanted from him. He’d seemed asexual until recently.

Yeah, until recently. Now Yoji knew how uninhibited and lustful Aya could be, and who knew where else he might go to get a fix....

Yoji had been hurt and angry and jealous. The moment Aya had identified the bed as being his sister’s, Yoji knew he should have backed away. He knew that Aya was tired, off-kilter, and vulnerable. He knew all of these things, yet he couldn’t stop. He’d poked and jabbed and harried without even really thinking about the consequences of what he’d been suggesting.

How could he have suggested that Aya would fuck his sister? Aya would fall on his sword first.

Then Aya had blatantly snapped, his usual impassivity falling away to reveal a murderous hate that was completely different from his efficient, demon killing machine face. Yoji prepared to defend himself. Then that had snapped and fallen away, leaving Aya white and wide-eyed. He’d looked nauseous.

Yoji had apologized, because it was the right thing to do and because he was terrified for Aya. Schuldig had tried to break Aya, but it had taken Manx and Yoji to actually do the job right.

"I’ve twisted her life," Aya said. "I never should have contacted her, because now she’s knotted herself up with me, and I fucked it up. I’ll devour her whole. I shouldn’t be around people." It sounded like he’d twisted and knotted the assassin thing and the dangers to his sister and the incest charge into something entirely new and evil.

He needed to be talked down or petted or something, but he fought Yoji’s efforts to touch him until Yoji just finally grabbed him and pulled him inside the trailer. Aya shook and squirmed in his arms, desperate to get away.

"Yoji, where the fuck did you go? Oh, holy shit," Ken said as he walked in and took a look at what was going on.

"Fuck, Ken, hold onto him. I don’t think I’m doing him any good." Considering he’d started this, probably not.

Ken took hold of Aya from behind and hugged him a bit, awkwardly. Aya’s shaking turned into a quieter trembling, and he closed his eyes and leaned his head against Ken’s.

Yoji paced. Why the hell did Omi and his dossier knowledge have to be at school right now? The hell with that, fuckwit. He knew where he’d gone wrong; he didn’t need Omi for that. He needed Omi for the way the kid understood Aya’s kind of fucked-up-ness from the inside, instinctively. He considered calling Aya-chan, but she was at school too, and did she really need a call saying that her brother had cracked up and could she please glue him back together?

"I am so fucking embarrassed," Aya muttered into Ken’s hair. All expression had cleared from his face. Back to default. It was like when Omi did a reboot of his computer, with all the new stuff wiped out.

This wasn’t much of an improvement.

"Nobody is minding the shop, Ken," Aya said softly, and Ken looked to Yoji for guidance.

"I think it’s safe for you to go back outside," Yoji said. This would probably be better off as a private talk anyway.

"Yeah, sure." Ken let go of Aya. "You’re okay, Aya?"

"I’m fine."

Yoji hated those words.

Ken took one last look back at them, shook his head, and left. Aya sat and hung his head down, eyes closed. Yoji sat down on the table in front of him and put his hand on Aya’s wrist, to Aya’s obvious confusion. Yoji hoped he’d get a more accurate representation of Aya’s state of mind from his pulse than his expression. Besides, the skin was soft there.

"I am sorry," Yoji said. "I know you didn’t do anything to her, but I couldn’t stop running my mouth. I won’t ever do that again."

Aya’s pulse jumped, though his face stayed set. "I was surprised when I woke up and found her in bed with me. There were blankets between us, but I was still worried about... her."

Wow. Talk about picking the worst possible times to say something stupid. "So the last thing you needed to hear today was someone leveling an incest charge at you."

Aya looked very worried, so he hadn’t returned to the default of last week. Plus, he was talking. "Was it all right, what she did? I’m not always the best judge of friendly touch versus sex touch."

Whoa. "She touched you?"

"No!" You didn’t need Aya’s wrist to see a reaction to that one, but Yoji kept his grip anyway. "She smacked my arm trying to turn off her alarm clock, but that was it. I just mean that I have no way to judge whether she was showing sibling closeness or if she’s been messed up by everything worse than I expected."

"It’s not normal."

Aya deflated, sagging as if someone had stabbed him. Fuck.

Yoji sped on, "But as long as it doesn’t become sexual, I don’t think it’s wrong. You’re the last bit of family she has, and she wants to hold on to you. You just have to be careful. It’s not you corrupting her or anything."

At least Aya looked a bit happier now, which relieved Yoji. Incredible. If anybody could have been expected to take the sibling affection into weird, inappropriate areas, it would have been Aya, not Aya-chan. Those poor Fujimiya kids were fucked up.

Was Aya trusting him as a guide to human nature? The urge to mess with him about it was strong, but Yoji knew that Aya would never trust him again if he did.

"I wanted to kill you, Yoji," Aya said.

"Yeah, I saw that. You’re not the first, and you probably won’t be the last."

"It’s not funny. I’m serious."

"You’re stressed, and I was being obnoxious. Again, you just have to be more careful in the future."

"I’m just so tired of you looking at me all the time like I’m going to break. I know that my little display of a few minutes ago isn’t likely to make you change your mind on doing that, but the fact that you look at me that way just reminds me of what’s going on and frustrates me and makes me feel like maybe I should snap and put on a really good show for you. It helped lead to me... losing it a little while ago. I want things to be back the way they were before Schuldig scared you about me so badly."

"You want to pretend that everything’s fine?"

"Isn’t that how everybody else copes?"

"Uh, yeah. Kind of."

Aya made a minimal shrug. "I go on. That’s what I do."

"I’ll try to banter with and annoy you again."

"Thanks. I think."

"Aya, everybody gets a good killing rage going once in a while."

"But I can actually kill."

Yoji smiled and caressed Aya’s wrist with his thumb. "So can I."

Aya looked calm instead of stony now, a definite improvement, but tired too. Of course he did, since he’d derailed and then pulled himself back onto the tracks in the space of a few minutes. Had he done that before?

Yoji had a sudden image of Aya having a breakdown quietly in his apartment, pulling himself back together, then walking back down to the rest of the team without letting on that anything had happened to him. He would have done that, the poor bastard. What a life.

He wouldn’t be doing that anymore, and if he tried, he wouldn’t get away with it now. They’d come to know him too well.

"We could cancel this meeting with Aya," Yoji said.

Aya’s pulse sped up a little, and he looked Yoji straight in the eyes, probably for emphasis. "No. If I did that, she’d know something had gone wrong since she last saw me, and she’d worry. I have a few hours to settle down in."

"Aya--"

"I want to do this. Seeing her makes me feel better too."

"I don’t think this is good for you. You should cancel. Tell her you got cold feet."

"She knows I wouldn’t let cold feet keep me away, so she’d figure that something happened to me since she saw me--"

"Something did!"

"And that it’s her fault."

"What?"

"She would. She had a moment this morning-- She would interpret it that way. This was nothing, Yoji. I don’t want her to feel guilty over it."

"Because this has happened to you before?"

Aya gave him an imploring look. "Yoji, I’m not canceling."

Yoji had to laugh. "This is a change."

"What is? That today I want to go?"

"Yeah, but I’m talking about the whole trying to talk me into going approach."

Aya smiled a little. "Oh. You mean that once upon a time I would have grabbed you by your shirt and tried to shake some sense into you while you smirked and pretended to be unintimidated."

"Pretended?"

"I’m trying to evolve. Besides, that approach never worked."

"I appreciate the thought."

"Yoji, I’m going to that meeting whether you go or not."

Shit. "If I don’t go, she’ll interpret that too."

"Yes."

Yoji laughed. "I never knew you were so manipulative."

"I’m not making threats. I’m just telling you what I’ll do. If you don’t want to go out of some urge to protect me, it won’t work."

Aya wasn’t up to this. He was not. "You shouldn’t go. You’re a mess."

"Sitting in a hospital room gives you a lot of time to swear things to yourself and your loved ones, and I don’t look like such a mess now and I’ll look like even less of one later."

Maybe bringing Aya-chan into this would help. "You say she knows you. You think she won’t notice?"

Aya looked down at the floor, and Yoji felt his pulse thump through his wrist. "Then she’ll know that I’ll always be there, no matter what. You can’t stop me from going."

"I should tie you up and keep you here," Yoji said, half-seriously.

"If you did, I would make you suffer for it for the rest of your life, which would only be as long as I decided it should be," Aya answered, eyes blazing, completely serious.

Yoji caressed his wrist with his thumb again. "I can’t stop you, so I might as well go with you."

"Thank you. And please stop being so blatant in worrying about me. I want you to be every bit as obnoxious at this meeting as you would have been without all of this happening."

"When you put it like that, how can I resist? I’ll go with you and be myself."

"I’m a lot less delicate when people aren’t treating me like I’m delicate. Really. Going is a good idea. You’ll see."

Yoji would still worry, especially with Aya looking so bruised. He’d just be subtler about it. "Hey, sleep on me."

"What?"

Yoji let go of Aya’s wrist, stood up, and sat down beside him. "Lie down." Aya gave him a look but obeyed, and he settled Aya’s head into his lap and stroked his hair. Aya grabbed Yoji’s other hand and brought it to his mouth, but Yoji said, "This is a friendly affection touch, not sex." Aya gave him a look, then kissed his fingers and set them down. "Sleep, okay? I’ll wake you up in time to get yourself together to see her."

Stroking Aya’s hair hypnotized Yoji almost as much as it seemed to calm Aya, who went to sleep but still had a vaguely troubled expression on his face. Some people would tell Aya to just get over his past already, but Yoji had his own unquiet dead he couldn’t let go of, and he didn’t feel like being a hypocrite. Besides, Aya’s past kept coming back to bite him and his sister. Yoji just wanted Aya to hurt less.

Aya’s head felt so heavy in his lap.... Yoji was afraid that he’d screw Aya up worse. Hell, he already had, but Aya had bounced back somehow, resilient in his own odd way, and wanted to go on with him. Why, he didn’t know.

But he liked the new Aya he’d seen before everything had started becoming so damned fraught and wanted to get to know him better. He wanted to encourage him if he could.

"Please remember that she lost the last two years of her life. She’s sixteen in her head."

"I know, Aya."

Aya had obsessed over how casual or formal to dress for this meeting for 15 minutes before settling on a slighty dressy look. Yoji had also gone for slightly dressed up, while avoiding too much razzle-dazzle. Didn’t want to piss Aya off.

Aya’s fingers tapped on the steering wheel, as they had on and off for most of the ride, something Yoji had never seen him do before. Pre- or post-breakdown gesture? "Just behave yourself."

"It’ll be fine. I won’t proposition her or start telling dirty jokes."

"I love her, Yoji."

Translation: Her opinion means everything to me, and I want her to have a good impression of you. "And she’ll love me," Yoji answered. "Women always do." Aya gave him a sour look, and Yoji tried not to laugh. "You asked me to be normal with you."

"I was insane when I asked you to do that, remember?"

Yoji almost choked, but Aya smiled a little Aya smile. "Bastard," Yoji said and put a hand on his knee. Aya made a soft sound that might have been a hum or a purr. Either way, he seemed fine about Yoji’s hand being where it was.

Yesterday, Yoji had said yes to this meeting in the thought that sometimes things needed to be done for Aya’s good and that he’d understand eventually. Besides, Aya had been cute standing there so stiffly, hands fisted at his sides, desperately trying to make Yoji refuse to go meet Aya-chan by sheer force of will. Now, Yoji didn’t know if this meeting was still a good idea, not after this morning, but Aya wanted it and would go ahead with it with or without him, so Yoji would give it to him.

Besides, he really wanted to have a longer talk with Aya-chan and get some idea of what this girl was like. She loomed so large and important in Aya’s tangled brain that anyone who had any involvement with him had to meet her to get a better picture of him. What had happened this morning had only underscored the importance of it.

Aya-chan stood up with a smile on her face as they entered the café. "Hey, you’re Yoji. You’re Ran’s guy? You’re cute."

"I should have known that you’d have good taste," Yoji answered. She gave him a "don’t bullshit me" look so close to her brother’s that he had to smile. It looked less threatening on her wide-eyed pixie’s face, but he knew that this girl had the power to make or break him with Aya. Damn, he hadn’t asked if he was supposed to call him "Aya" or "Ran" here, and he knew names made a big difference to his sweetie, so he said, "My sunshine has told me a lot about you."

"You have pet names? That’s so sweet."

"Kill me now," Aya muttered or prayed.

"Ran...." she said.

Something in Aya changed, softened, brightened. "Don’t mind me. I’m just weeping bitter, bitter tears of humiliation. Is it too early to hide under the table yet?"

Okay, who was this guy and where did he come from?

"Much too early," she answered, like this was normal.

"I have time? Good." Aya took a seat, which forced her and Yoji to take a seat too. "You should probably call me ‘Ran,’ Yoji. It’ll save some confusion."

"We want to avoid confusion at all costs," Yoji answered.

"I like ‘sunshine,’" Aya-chan said.

"You would," Aya-Ran replied.

"Ran."

"What?"

"You don’t look well." She put her hand on his and squeezed.

"I’m--"

"Fine?" Aya-chan and Yoji both asked.

"Oh, shut up."

"I told you she’d notice," Yoji said.

"So what are you doing about it?" she asked.

"Hunh?" Yoji asked and watched Aya-Ran struggle not to smile.

"My brother is depressed. Steps must be taken. What do you do?"

"He threatened to tie me up," Aya-Ran said.

"Aya!" Yoji shouted, forgetting himself.

Aya-chan blinked. "Wow, and I thought I wanted to know this kind of stuff. Turns out I don’t."

Aya-Ran sat back, obviously pleased with himself. "I’m glad to hear it. Here comes the waiter." The Fujimiyas ordered tea, while Yoji asked for a Coke. Aya-chan also ordered some cookies. Once the waiter left, Aya-Ran continued, "I didn’t let him do it. I’m not into that."

Continued insanity or Aya just being Aya? Who knew?

"He gets enough of that during work," Yoji said tartly.

"Yes, being a florist is far more challenging than people realize."

"Ran, you have proven that there are some places even I don’t want to go. You won here. Please let it go," Aya-chan said with a cute little blush.

"Thank you."

"So, hey, Yoji. It’s funny, but now that I’m here I don’t know what I want to ask. I’d feel silly asking where you see yourself in five years and what your prospects are. I know this can’t be a comfortable meeting, so you don’t have to stay too long. Unless you have a particular interest in 18-year-old girls, in which case I have a lot of new questions to ask."

Yoji choked and noticed Aya-Ran watching him with unconcealed sadistic enjoyment. "Uhm," Yoji said.

"Sakura told me all about the following of schoolgirls you guys have, and I just wanted to know."

She couldn’t be serious. Yoji tried to reroute the conversation. "Uh, Ran, she’s staring at me."

Her smile turned more wicked. "She’s sitting right here too."

"She really is your sister."

"I’ve told you that, Yoji," Aya-Ran said. "Thanks for noticing." When the drinks and cookies arrived, he immediately snatched one of his sister’s cookies and deftly avoided her attempt to smack his hand. "I’m glad I came. It’s nice to have someone else be the target for once. I feel better."

And Aya-chan smiled, and Yoji got it. Aya loved his sister more than anything else in the world, and she felt the same way about him. Yeah, the assumption most people would make about Aya from how he’d behaved where his sister was concerned would be that he loved her, but that had never worked for Yoji because she had been a body, just one step up from dead. You couldn’t love a corpse, a thing. But you could get obsessive about it....

Aya-chan wasn’t a thing anymore. She was a person with wide eyes, a big smile, a wicked tongue, and a sense of humor only slightly less odd than her brother’s. She was a key to a part of Aya no one else got to see, the protective but bratty older brother, someone younger, freer. Aya had lost more than his parents and his sister to Takatori Reiji; he’d lost a large part of himself. Now he had it back, at least part of the time. Yoji hadn’t been able to see it in that last, brief, awkward contact he’d had with her, but it was obvious now.

Aya was better than he’d been this morning, and she’d made him so.

"Yoji?" Aya asked.

"I’m having a moment here."

"Tell us when you’re back, okay?" The look on his face was pure Aya-Ran. Yoji really wanted to see more of this guy.

"Hey, guys!" Omi shouted, Ken at his side. Aya-Ran raised an eyebrow, while Yoji chuckled.

"Ran, give me an introduction, would you?" Aya-chan asked, grinning.

Aya-Ran sighed. "The blond is Tsukiyono Omi, and you’ve talked to Hidaka Ken before when he was on the phone."

"Sakura told me that all of you were cute, but I didn’t believe her. I’ve heard so much about Omi."

"Yet nothing about me," Yoji said, amused and getting ever more so as Omi blushed a little.

"She spent more time talking to Omi," Aya-chan said.

"Speaking of talking to Omi," Aya-Ran said, as he stood, "I’d like to talk to Omi and Ken in private. We’ll be right back."

"I’d like to talk to Aya-chan a bit more," Ken said. "Or, you know, start talking to Aya-chan."

"Now." Aya was back, and he looked ready to grab them by the ears to make them go with him.

"All right, all right."

Once they left the table and stopped on the opposite end of the room, Aya-chan said, "Actually, this works out really well. I wanted to talk to you alone."

This should be interesting. "Yes?" Yoji asked. "If you’re going to tell me that I better take good care of your brother, I’d like to let you know that I’m doing my best." He intended to be much more careful from now on.

"That’s what I want to hear." She gave him a look suggesting that he better prove it to her in the future. "I wanted to have this meeting because I wanted you to see the Ran I know, even if he’s not exactly the same as he used to be. Actually, it would be amazing if he were the same. But I get the feeling that he’s not like this around you, and I wanted you to know he exists. I recently saw who he’s been for the past two years, and...." Something in the set of her jaw in her "determined" expression so forcibly reminded him of Aya that it set him back for a moment. "Be good to him, even when he won’t let you, okay? Maybe if you do, you’ll see the person I see more often, and he’s a great guy." Then she sighed. "Unless you like the cold... pruning guy a lot, but I get the feeling that you wouldn’t."

"I’ve seen traces of your brother before. More lately than usual."

"I’m glad. He didn’t have a good morning. I think it’s like how they say that a housecat gone feral can never really behave like a housecat again, even if you give it food and a home."

"That’s a really interesting simile."

"Oh, shut up. I like it, and it works."

Yoji couldn’t help smiling. "I’m glad I met you." At the other end of the room, Aya had his arms crossed and a skeptical look on his face as Ken and Omi told him something with a lot of passion, so Yoji smiled even more.

"I’m glad Ran didn’t go just for a pretty face. He never has before, but people can change in two years."

"Thanks. I think." Damn, she had a wicked mouth. He liked that in a girl.

"What did you think you were doing?" he asked.

"We wanted to meet her. She’s just about family," Omi said.

That put a lump in his throat. "Everything’s--"

"Fine?" Ken asked.

"Yes."

"Aya, I know that the last day or so has been rough on-- Stop looking at Ken like that."

"Yeah, please stop looking at me like that. Did you think Omi wouldn’t find out about it somehow?"

Dammit. "All right."

"So you’ve had a rough time. We want to make sure you know that we’re here to watch your back. And hers," Omi said.

"We’re a team," Ken said. "A team is supposed to take care of its members. Remember when Yoji killed Neu?" Then Ken looked at Omi. "Omi, did you ever find out that she was Asuka for sure?"

"No."

"But anyway," Ken continued, "you remember how ripped up he was. We just about had him on a suicide watch."

"That woman, whoever she actually was, put my sister at risk, and Yoji let her," he said.

"Yeah, because she was toying with Yoji and us. The worst thing for him is that he finally realized that was what she was doing."

Her identifying Takatori Masafume as her beloved as Yoji garroted her in self-defense certainly hadn’t helped Yoji’s state of mind.

"So he was very broken up," Omi said, "and we looked out for him, kept him from doing something stupid. We did that for Ken too over Akira and Kase’s deaths. You were all so good to me after Ouka was murdered, and when I had my identity crisis--"

"--I castigated and distrusted you," he said. He felt awful about that now, considering how much obvious torment Omi had been going through. But at the time the name "Takatori" had taken away all his ability to reason.

"At first! But when my brother was torturing me for information, you all came for me, even though I’d stopped you from eliminating him before, and, Aya, you cut me loose and told me who I was, even though you had good reason to hate all of the Takatoris. You let me know that as far as you were concerned, I was part of this team no matter what family I’d started out in."

Ken ran his hand through his hair. "Omi, do you ever get a really weird feeling when we talk about this stuff? We live really horrible lives."

Omi gave Ken a slightly confused look, while he bit his lip. Ken shook his head and said, "Okay, then."

"So what you two are trying to say is that we’re all damaged at different times and I shouldn’t feel like I’m getting coddled, because it’s not special treatment, it’s just what we do for one another." That he could accept.

"I wouldn’t use the word ‘damaged,’" Omi said.

"I would," Ken answered.

"We live stressful lives, so we have to look out for one another, and we do. As far as I’m concerned, Aya-chan is part of the team too. We can’t give her a normal life--nobody can now--but we can protect her to the best of our abilities."

"Thank you," he said, feeling very warm.

"No problem." Omi grinned.

"Now please go back to the trailer and reopen the flower shop. I feel self-conscious enough already."

Ken asked, "You sure I can’t stick around and--"

"She is not dating anyone in the business, and in her head she’s still 16."

"She’s 18!"

"16 in her head. Plus, she has a protective older brother who’s not shy about using a sword."

"It was worth a shot. She is very cute."

"Yes, she is. Thank you. Now get out of here before I chase you away from my sister with a stick."

"Where are you going to find a stick?"

He sighed but smiled anyway. "I hate you all."

Aya brought Ken and Omi back to the table. "Ken and Omi have to go, but they’re glad to have met you."

Aya-chan smiled. "You’re tossing them out, aren’t you?"

"They closed the flower shop to come here. It’s dereliction of duty."

Omi waved. "It was nice meeting you, Aya."

"Bye, Aya," Ken said, then mouthed, "Call me." Aya smacked the back of his head. "Ow! What was that for?"

"I saw that."

"How? I wasn’t facing you!"

"Fraternal radar."

Omi grabbed Ken’s arm. "See you later!"

As they walked out, Aya-chan said, "You didn’t have to do that. They’re sweet."

"They were meddling. Wait, you ate all of the cookies?"

"They were my cookies. You could get your own."

"They never taste as good as yours do." Aya-Ran was back. He sat down.

"That’s your problem."

"She gave me one," Yoji said. "It was good."

Aya-Ran looked at his mouth as if considering the possibility of retrieving cookie crumbs via a mouth to mouth transfer. Yoji squirmed.

"If you’re that hungry, order something. You don’t have to eat Yoji," Aya-chan said, rolling her eyes.

"Aya!" Aya and Yoji both shouted.

When Ken and Omi reached the trailer, their waiting clientele squealed. Wincing in pain, Omi asked them to wait another five minutes for them to reopen the shop. Once inside the trailer, Ken smacked Omi’s shoulder. "You do have a crush on Aya. I’m not sure if it’s a man crush or a crush crush--"

"I do not! He’s just had a tough time, and I relate to that."

"Yeah, sure. You don’t have to see the light you get in your eyes when you talk about how he cut you free."

"Oh, shut up."

Ken just grinned evilly.

"I wonder if Aya will ever realize that he’s dating someone who’s a lot like his sister. Not that I’ll tell him," Omi said, retaliating.

"What? Yoji is-- Omi, why did you have to tell me? Do you know what kind of horrible mental pictures I’m getting now?"

Omi grinned. "I have no idea."

"Do you know how much work it’ll take to repress them?"

"Nope. But Yoji and Aya-chan are a lot alike in many ways. They’re both energetic, extroverted, and sarcastic--"

Ken stuck his fingers in his ears and started to leave the room. "I can’t hear you!"

"I wonder if Aya’s conscious of it at all."

In the distance, Ken was saying "la la la" very loudly. That would teach him.

It didn’t really matter what reasons Aya had for picking Yoji, as long as Yoji worked out for him. Aya deserved some happiness. Unfortunately, they were both boneheaded. Omi would just have to help them along sometimes, without them realizing it, of course.

But was that the right thing to do? Omi frowned. While he knew that a tendency toward manipulation seemed to almost be a part of the Takatori family’s genetic structure, he wasn’t sure if he believed in genetic destiny. He only wanted to have things work well and the people he loved be happy, while his family had done evil in the name of personal enrichment and sadism. Even his uncle sometimes.... He didn’t want to be like them in even the smallest way.

But Aya and Yoji were very proud and boneheaded.

Omi swore to use his powers only for good.

Aya-chan insisted on paying for them all and even talked her brother into letting her. Yoji watched, hoping for some pointers, but didn’t see how it worked. Maybe there was no technique involved, only the power of Fujimiya Aya, revenant sister.

"I know I was a bit intense on you, Yoji, but you’re seeing my brother, so you must not scare easily," she said.

"Thanks, Aya," Aya-Ran said.

"I like you, but I just want you to know that if you hurt him, you’re dead meat." She wasn’t entirely joking.

"You really are his sister." But she’d given him the all-important blessing. He had been able to feel Aya relaxing as it became obvious that she approved the match.

"He told you that." She hugged Aya-Ran. "Love you."

"Where are you off to?" Aya-Ran asked. "I could give you a ride."

Sure, the Porsche could fit three people if you folded the third into the tiny space behind the two front seats. Yoji knew where he’d end up and sighed. But Aya-chan said, "Nah. I’m walking to meet some friends."

Her brother’s face lit up. "That’s good. Enjoy yourself. Love you too." He kissed the top of her head.

"See you around. Bye, Yoji!" She waved at them, then turned and walked off, a swing in her step.

"I like her," Yoji said.

"That’s just good taste. Plus, you know how I’d react if you didn’t." Aya’s face had started to harden again, but he still looked a bit younger, with some traces of Ran remaining, at least for now. "I want to walk a bit. Do you mind?"

"Nah. Let’s get some air."

Aya jumped up to a thin, low concrete perimeter piece and walked along it, balancing easily, jauntily. It put him a head higher than Yoji.

"So," Yoji asked, "was that Ran I saw back there?" He already had an opinion, but he wanted to hear what Aya thought.

"As much of him as still exists."

"So there’s a you and a him?"

Aya shook his head. "Not quite, though poor Omi probably got that impression from my attempt to talk to him about it. It’s not like Aya and Ran can hold conversations with one another or anything." Aya put his hands out, had them face one another, and made his fingers move as if they were speaking to one another. "What?"

Yoji bit his lip. "I’m just reminded that I really, really like you."

Maybe Aya would never be normal again, but Yoji figured that he and Aya-chan had a good shot at helping him stay as stable as possible. And Yoji really did like this weird but fun person Aya was turning out to be.

"That’s a good thing to remember."

"Do you ever think of taking your name back and being Ran full-time again?"

"It would be like denying that the last two years happened, and I couldn’t do that even if I wanted to. I’m Aya now, and it’s my name as much as ‘Ran’ ever was."

"Not to her."

"She’s had too much change in her life to have to deal with a brother who’s now named after her." Aya smiled a little. "You also might want to think twice before you ask me to treat you the same way I do my 18-year-old sister."

"Good point."

"Besides, she has this way of whining ‘Raaaaaaaaan’ that I find oddly endearing, and I’d miss it. If you told her about it, I’d have to kill you."

"If you’re going to hand blackmail material over so easily, I have to take advantage of it."

"Bastard."

"Proud of it."

Aya hopped down and walked up behind Yoji. "My sister likes you. Are we going steady now?"

"Yeah, I’d say so. I like the sound of the word."

"I don’t really put out until I’m going steady."

Yoji laughed, remembering their first night together. "You sure you understand the meaning of ‘put out’?"

Aya leaned up close and whispered in his ear, "There are so many things we haven’t done yet."

From the look in his eyes, twist of his mouth, and cant of his hips, it was obvious that Aya really wanted to be touched right now. Obvious. The leaning up close and whispering helped show it too. Yoji backed him into a doorway, giving him a bit of privacy and then a deep kiss. Aya held him and kissed back, utterly into it. Yoji had judged right.

Yoji smiled. "We have time, right?" Then his cell phone started to play its music.

"You should answer that."

"Why?"

"Yoji."

"Fine." Yoji flipped his phone open. "I told you never to call me here."

"This is your cell phone!" Omi protested. "Oh, whatever. I’m just calling to remind you that we have a mission starting in an hour."

Oh shit. "I remembered that."

"Sure, Yoji."

"See you in an hour," Yoji growled and closed up the phone. "Okay, what’s so funny?"

Aya smiled. "‘We have time.’"

"Sure, kick me while I’m down. Looks like we should go back to the trailer."

"An hour might be time enough." Aya pressed up close. "We know we can be quick."

Yoji snorted. "Yeah, sure, but when I’m all satisfied I don’t feel like killing things."

"I’m always in the mood to kill things."

"I’ll keep that in mind."

"You do that."

"They sound much better. Or, rather, they don’t sound like much of anything," he said.

"That’s a relief," Ken said. His bugnucks were much quieter now when he extended the claws, so he must have fixed whatever problem he'd been having.

Despite the delay in gratification it caused, having a mission to focus on tonight felt good after his eventful day. Normal.

Besides, Yoji was right about the grand scheme of things. They had time. Maybe not tonight, but tomorrow and tomorrow....

"Hey, Aya, have you gotten yourself a new purpose in life yet?" Yoji asked with an insolent smile. Well, Aya had asked him to do that kind of thing.

He slanted a look at Omi, who grinned back. "You’re a mouthy little thing," he said.

Omi cranked his crossbow. "You better be saying that with love."

"So, sunshine?"

How did he feel about it? He gave it some thought. "I’ve been thinking about my past quite a bit lately, and I realized that I lived the first 18 years of my life with no purpose other than living. I’ve only had a purpose beyond that for two years. I think I could survive without one again."

"Cool. Living really is its own reason for living."

"That’s--"

"Profound?"

"Stupid."

Yoji pushed his shades up his nose and smirked. "Fuck you."

"Maybe later."

"Oh, give me strength," Ken muttered, and Omi patted his shoulder.

Yoji kissed his nose as they walked out to the cars, and he bumped Yoji’s hip. He had his sister and his team. He might not have a purpose anymore, but he had his reasons.

  ***********************THE END**********************       Feedback can be sent to Viridian5@aol.com.