Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Reflections ❯ Pictures ( Chapter 6 )

Author's Rant

Well… I *know* that Reflections is at the very least getting pinged, thanks to the hits counter at Media Miner, but I confess I was hoping that it would stir up a little conversation regarding plot bunnies, or style, or characterizations. For one thing, it would help ensure that I'm not missing the proverbial boat on some plot twist.

I suppose I shall just have to do it myself.

I have a great fondness for taking conventional plot devices and abusing them. But there are things that I really did expect someone to call me on. For example, Ken's leap to the conclusion that Aya wasn't Aya, and the subsequent discovery that he is. Why would Ken make that assumption? Truthfully, the logic isn't so strained, at all. When faced with a choice between acknowledging that someone has been hurt to the point of being altered to that extent, or the very improbably conclusion that he's someone else, the human thing to do is to take the improbable. And no one, not even Superman, is likely to have survived three weeks of captivity without being affected. I've tried to think of Ken as a real person, and to write his response as such, even if he - in his POV - doesn't express or even understand his reasons.

Another common plot device was trashed during Ken's encounter with the hooker, Honey. The standard (dum-de-dum) path would have been for them to arrange to meet the following night. Cue complications, possibly enemy inspired, and Honey isn't able to make it. Instead, Ken felt uneasy, and insisted on taking care of business immediately. It's what I would have done, and something that I have often banged my head against the desk over other writers NOT having their characters do.

At the present time, I've finished Chapter 8, and gotten started on 9. Because I'm posting nearly as I write, I'm being forced into a much more linear plot than my usual, and also arguably fewer twists than usual. That said, I still don't know how many chapters it will take to finish Reflections. The word count of the first draft of an Inuyasha fiction is the equivalent of a 400-page paperback novel. This story probably will not run anywhere near that long, as I don't have the luxury of doubling back to plant the seeds for new twists as they occur to me. (Although I may have to make an exception, and re-post in order to fix some grammatical and spelling errors. In particular, a wonderful friend, Shay, has pointed out that Omittchi is closer to the correct pronunciation than Omittche, which I occasionally have used. Thank you, Shay. I promise I'll watch for that in the future).

Enough ranting. I hope that those of you who are reading Reflections will enjoy the next chapter.

L.A. Mason

Reflections: Pictures

Chapter 6

A Weiss Kreuz fanfic by L.A. Mason.

Standard disclaimer applies: No copyright infringement intended. No profit being made or sought.

Judging by the collection of wrappers and disposable paper plates in front of Yohji, he had taken Honey's advice about the pie. And anything else that had caught his fancy on the revolving shelves. Personally, Ken would have given most of the food a pass; he didn't trust stuff that had been in the automat for who knew how long. But at least Yohji was willing to sweep the whole mess into a trash bin and hustle for the door when he saw them come back.

The blond woman glanced between the two men, still calculating and assessing. "How do I get in touch with you if I `remember' anything else?" she demanded abruptly. The former detective returned her look coolly, considering whether it was likely or not. Finally, he pulled a low denomination bill from his pocket and scribbled the number of a voice mail service that they used across the back.

"Here. This should stick in your memory." He stuffed it down the front of her halter top and pushed past out the door. Ken followed without comment, leaving the whore standing in the doorway.

Yohji tossed him his helmet, and directed him toward the motorcycle with a bow and a flourish before setting a helmet on his own head. "Your bike. You drive." Technically, it wasn't, being just another of the loaner vehicles from the Kritiker stable. The shorter athlete was too surprised to argue, slinging his leg over the machine as the older assassin took postillion behind him, strapping the black nylon bag onto the seat as well. Ken opened his mouth to say that it was Aya's bag, then closed it. There was no point in handing the watching woman any more information. It would have to wait until they were somewhere safe.

Safe. Now, there was a concept. His mind was too busy swirling around over the presence of Aya's small suitcase in the office of the men who had run the Hot Body. If it was only the swordsman's cover story that compromised, no big deal, but the question remained as to how it had gotten there. Had they grabbed him as he was voluntarily leaving his hotel, or had they forcibly checked him out? And what had become of the redhead's laptop? Ken was barely aware of Yohji's arm wrapped around his middle, or the warmth of another human against his back, as they roared down the largely deserted streets. Even with taking a circuitous route to drop off the bike and pick up a car, they would be back at the mountain cabin soon, and he would just have to hold his questions until then. Even if it made him crazy.

It was too bad that it was so hard to hold a conversation while riding the bike; he would also have liked to ask the older Hunter what he thought about the series of attacks against them. Manx would be putting two and two together as soon as she saw the report from the clean-up detail at the loft, given that the attackers there and at the estate were largely the same. But it would take her a bit to track down their wayward team, and that was just as well. How could they be sure that they had been discovered only because of the chips secreted on Aya? For all Ken knew, there could be a leak from within their organization, as well. No one could blame him for feeling a little bit paranoid after a mob of people had tried to punch, shoot, blow up, and otherwise maim and kill him within the past twenty-four hours. Kritiker might pay the bills, but the brunet's loyalty went first to his team.

He sighed against the rushing wind of the bike skimming down a ramp into a parking garage at a substantially faster pace than was strictly safe. It wasn't as if Ken was stupid; he was nowhere near Aya or Omi's league for brains, or education, but he was smarter than most people gave him credit for. It wasn't his fault for hanging around with a couple of geniuses. And, truth be told, Yohji wasn't exactly stupid, either. There was something going on behind the tiny lift to his lips, and the humor in lazy, hooded green eyes. Yohji on a bad day was almost as cheerful as Omi, although he lacked the hyper-squirrel mannerisms. Ken had long since concluded that the blond's behavior was as much a shield as his sunglasses. Unfortunately, the man ignored his efforts to start a conversation, bundling them into a nondescript silver Mitsubishi and then driving up the ramp to exit onto a different street.

***********

Being able to sleep in a moving car had both advantages, and disadvantages. On the plus side, Ken figured he was actually coherent enough to enter the codes on the remote in his pocket to disarm the house. On the minus side, however, his rump and back were now conspiring with his aching feet to make him miserable. The only good point to it was that the playboy looked every bit as exhausted as the younger man felt, with a cigarette hanging at half-mast from between his lips. Yohji leaned carelessly against the log wall of the cabin while Ken fumbled for the ordinary key to the kitchen door.

Once inside, Ken noted that although it was much warmer than it had been, the house still had that stale, closed up feel to it. There were a couple of dirty dishes abandoned on the counter, just as there had been when he and Yohji had headed out hours earlier, and a forlorn pile of groceries still sat on the maple table waiting to be put away in the cupboards. Granted, Aya was the anal retentive neat-freak in their household and he might not be up to it, but even Omi liked to see things put away. The pair must not have set foot in the kitchen after they had left for Tanagawa, and that was kind of chilling. Omi would at least have stopped down to get a can of Coke for himself, or to make tea for the convalescent man. Ken wondered just the heck where they were, anyway.

Some of the same thoughts had obviously run through Yohji's mind, because the blond straightened from his lazy slouch and slipped silently through to the living room. Ken rearmed the back door and went the other direction, passing through the utility room with its washer and dryer, checking the half bath tucked under the stairs, and coming through the hall from the den cum library just as Yohji finished testing the sliding glass doors of the balcony. The blond gave a tiny, negative shake of his head; everything was just as it should be, with no sign of an unauthorized entry.

Then again, Ken reminded himself, the estate that had been their initial safe house was supposed to have been wired with every defense known to Kritiker, including some that Omi couldn't breech. And they had gotten hit very hard there on two fronts, with no alarms or other warnings. If he and Omi hadn't been lucky enough to hear the water carafe and glasses in Aya's sick room get knocked down and broken, they probably wouldn't have survived the assault. Just because Villa Weiss was their house was no guarantee that it would have fared any better. The two men exchanged uneasy glances. The house was dead silent. Too quiet. Yet the ingenious mix of physical and electronic protections on the house had been intact when they entered. There were no strange tracks anywhere in the light dusting of spring snow outside. There simply couldn't be anyone in the house but them.

Well, if there was no one in the cozy living room, then they would have to check upstairs. It didn't seem possible that both Aya and Omi would miss hearing them come in; it was more likely that Aya was out cold again, and that the kid had noted their arrival, and, being busy with his computer, had opted to blow them off. At least that was what Ken hoped had happened.

Exchanging a silent Up? and Yes, they ghosted up the broad staircase, both hugging their own sides and avoiding the places where the treads creaked.

At the top of the stairs, the team's technophile's room was vacant, and dark except for the flowing fractal pattern of his laptop's screen saver. Omi had been in there, but not recently since the default time for the dancing lights to take over was ten minutes of inactivity. Faint light streamed out of the half-open door of the bathroom, next in the hall. The smaller fixture above the sink had been left burning, sparking a shiver of light every time the sink faucet dripped. There were damp towels hanging on the towel bar, but no signs of life.

Next were the open doors to Ken and Yohji's own rooms, diagonally across the hall from one another. Both were unlit and unchanged from earlier in the day, and would stay that way until they found the missing team members. Worried, the compact athlete had to hustle to keep up when Yohji mouthed Aya at him and strode off toward the last door in sight. Same as all the others, it stood open, allowing only a dim light to spill out into the hallway.

On some level, Ken wasn't particularly surprised to find the missing pair inside, together, sound asleep in bed. Sprawled on top of the covers, Omi lay on his back, with Aya tucked snuggly against his side. From the door, he had a good view of the boy's normally sleek blond hair twisted into snarls that looked like someone had tried to get a good solid comb into it, and failed. Other than that, his head was tipped back, and a faint snore emerged. Even if that uncanny sixth sense they all had had made it clear to the sleeping Weiss Hunters that it was only their own who moved through the house, it was unnatural to see them so soundly asleep.

Was that how he had looked, Ken wondered, when the others had come in to find him in bed with Aya? It didn't seem possible. For one thing, Omi's shirt was unbuttoned nearly to his navel, ghostly shadows playing across the unexpected definition of firm muscles, reminding Ken that while the kid might be the smallest and physically least dangerous within the unit, to the sheep of the outside world he was a deadly assassin. And Aya's hand was lying across the boy's stomach, pale fingers and splint splayed across a warmer color of skin.

The scene was disturbingly erotic.

But at the same time, Ken felt bad when Yohji growled, lifted the redhead's limp arm, and peeled the startled kid out from under it. The fact that the boy must have been aware of their identities on some subliminal level was probably the only thing that saved Yohji from being turned into a pin cushion stuck full of deadly silver needles. They were halfway across the room before the petit blond's feet hit the floor and he began struggling to twist free, but the older man had his tricks, as well. Their hacker was trapped into a headlock and muscled out into the corridor in a matter of seconds, the door swinging shut in their wake.

"Yohji-kun! Ow! Let go, would you?" snarled a surprisingly non-cuddly Omi. Fury flushed his fair skin, turning him from cute to deadly. Ken figured the former PI had at most two more steps before adrenaline flipped the boy into his own version of a berserker rage. A hard shove into the log wall delayed the reaction long enough for Yohji to lean into the kid's face and growl back, "And what the fuck do you think you're doing? Trying to seduce him, or what?"

"You jack-- " The message within the words caught up to Omi's brain, and he froze, mouth still open. Paling, he swallowed hard, and squeaked, "I'm what?!"

Sneering, Yohji leaned closer, well into Omi's personal space, and flipped the collar of the open shirt with his index finger. "We come home, and what do we find? Mr. Sweet-and-Innocent in bed, dressed like a slut. Don't you have any respect for Aya, and the kind of crap he's probably been through during the past month, that you have to add your two yens' worth, too?"

"Me?!"

It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Neither of the pair had raised his voice above a harsh whisper, presumably in the hope of not waking Aya up, but the static charge they were generating was enough to raise the fur on a cat at twenty paces. Ken took an involuntary step backwards, unwilling to be anywhere near the epicenter of what was likely to be a very ugly explosion. Omi almost never lost his temper, but on the rare occasion that he did, it tended to be spectacular. Smallest and youngest though he might be, he could still terrorize Yohji into lending a hand during early shifts if they were backed up on orders in the flower shop, and had drummed it into Ken's head that dirty soccer gear was not to be left in a trail on the floor to the shower, nor were soccer cleats appropriate wear indoors. It was funny what things were important enough to get a rise out of him, but they had all learned to live with it.

Yohji flicked at the loose, open front of Omi's shirt again.

"Hey! Lay off on the shirt! I didn't plan to show skin!" By some supreme effort of will, Omi reigned in his annoyance, barely managing to keep from flipping Yohji off. "It would be helpful if you could be a little more mature about this. Please?" Shifting to the right, out from being trapped between Yohji and the wall, he paused to gain Ken's nod of agreement before plunging on. The taller of the blond contingent seemed miffed at being ignored. "I didn't get to take a shower before you two left, so once the house was secure, Aya-kun and I headed upstairs. He wanted to rest while I got cleaned up. Afterwards, while I was in my closet digging for something to wear - you do know I don't keep a lot of clothes here, right? This shirt is what I had - I heard talking… and realized it was all one-sided, like a phone conversation. I… could hear Aya-kun's voice, so I… went to see if I could find out what he was talking about, and maybe to who."

The kid did have the good grace to act embarrassed over his plain intent to eavesdrop. His gaze wavered, sliding to the side as he turned pink and floundered his way through the recitation. It was kind of sweet that while he could role-play and lie to a target so convincingly, he had trouble covering up even a fairly minor transgression when it came to his partners. Ken certainly wouldn't have been that embarrassed over something trivial like that. And it was even nicer that the boy could set aside the urge to kill the team's wire man in favor of what he obviously thought was an important revelation about Aya. Ken smothered a grin behind his hand, turning it into a quiet cough as Yohji took a step backwards, going from scarlet with anger to sheepish in a heartbeat. Collecting himself, Yohji shook his head in disbelief, demanding, "So? Did you? Find out who he was talking to?"

Omi's blue eyes snapped up, locking with the older Hunter's jade ones. "No one." he said firmly. "That's just it. There wasn't anybody there, because Aya was talking in his sleep." At Yohji's skeptical hike of one brow, the boy made a shooing motion, chasing away the unspoken protest. "Yeah, I know. I've never heard him talk in his sleep before, either. But it was that, or he was talking to little green men from Mars, `cause he was spread across his bed like he had intended to just lie down for a minute until I was out of the shower. There was no phone. Nothing. Just Aya, asleep."

If it wouldn't have spoiled the moment, Ken would have applauded. The small assassin had survived a typically crude fight with the playboy, and come out of it with the moral high ground intact. Although, Yohji did have a valid point; dressed - or semi-undressed - like that, Omi sure didn't look like a baby anymore. The billowing looseness of the shirt added the illusion of bulk, while the glimpses of his smooth-skinned, muscular chest were just plain hot. Amused, Ken wondered if Aya had even noticed what he had been hugging close in bed.

Probably not.

But Yohji had noticed. The senior member of Weiss snarled something incoherent, and stalked off toward his bedroom, slamming the door without regard to their final teammate. Ken and Omi both winced, exchanging worried glances. The brunet shook his head foggily. It was too damned late - or early, depending on which way you took the fact that the sun had cleared the mountain peaks yet again - for this kind of crap. He turned away, intending to drag off to his own bed and deal with the whole mess later.

"Ken-kun?" The kid's voice was so small and lost, that the older boy found himself drifting to a halt despite his need to get to bed and get some shut eye, himself.

"What's the matter, Omi-kun." Patience. Ken sighed. He just needed a little more patience, and he'd be able to forget Tanagawa for good, or at least for a few hours of much-deserved oblivion. He was so tired he was dead on his feet. Still, this was Omi, who was just about his best friend in the world. Bed could wait a little while longer. He turned back, forcing himself into alertness.

Miserable, the small blond shifted in place in the middle of the hallway, his slim hands swallowed up by the sagging cuffs of his long shirt, but Ken still had a glimpse of fingers pleating and worrying at the fabric. He was barely audible as he said, "I didn't want to talk about it in front of Yohji-kun, not the way he was going on about stuff, but…"

"Hey…" Gently, Ken ruffled the bright gold hair, and chucked the boy beneath the chin with a curled knuckle. "Have I ever let you down? You know that you can talk to me, so come on…"

A sniffle turned into a wry chuckle. "Yeah, I guess so, it's just… kinda embarrassing, after Yohji got so upset about me and Aya. But, I guess he had some cause, `cuz Aya was, well, petting me earlier."

" `Petting?' You mean, he molested you?!" The urge to go straight back to Aya's room and clock him one cut right through the confusion that flooded Ken's mind. How dare that son of a bitch--! Omi grabbed him before he could act on the thought, and dragged him into his room.

"No! Not like that. Like I was a cat, or something. It was really, really weird." Using Ken as a dress-maker's dummy, the boy's thin fingers mimicked an ephemeral companion stroking his hair, his tense neck, and down over his shoulders. It felt unbelievably good to let someone touch, and intuitively, Ken understood what was bothering Omi: was it wrong of them to enjoy another's warm hands so much? Hell yes, when the hands belonged to someone who would never voluntarily use them that way. Aya's hands killed. They didn't caress. Then Omi softly added, "I liked what he was doing. I wouldn't have minded if it had gone a lot farther."

Oh. Suddenly wide awake, Ken felt his knees go weak, and he had an urge to sit down right where he was standing. This was Omi - the sweet-natured, gentle kid who was always happy, and kept the rest of their odd family on an even keel. He wasn't supposed to turn out to be the one who wanted that kind of attention; he was too young.

Except that he wasn't. It wasn't a kid who stood in front of Ken with such an unwontedly serious stance to his delicate figure, steeling himself to take responsibility for what he had done. Expecting Ken to react the way Yohji had. The older boy groaned, dragging a hand through his dark brown hair. A stiff drink seemed in order, or failing that, breakfast. "Come on. I'll fix us something to eat, and we can talk about this."

Omi's lips twitched. "You? Cook? Geez, Ken-kun. I thought I was safe with you. If I'd realized you were gong to punish me, I wouldn't have said anything."

Growling, Ken swatted at the back of his head, breaking into a grin of his own as the smaller assassin giggled and easily dodged his blow. "Hey! I can follow the directions on a box of pancake mix. Unless you'd rather have me try to fix a wholesome, traditional breakfast, with rice and natto for you!"

"Ew! Okay, I surrender. Don't torture me any more!"

**********

In the end, it was Omi who made them breakfast. Not so much because he didn't trust Ken's cooking skills; although he did roll his eyes expressively at the number of utensils and surfaces that the athlete involved in the mess; but more because he genuinely enjoyed doing it. He was the one who had taken the time to learn the tricks to making a box-mix taste homemade, and he didn't see why he should suffer through an amateur's attempts. And Ken didn't mind giving up control that much anyway. He drowned his share of the pancakes in syrup, grinning happily, and asked "How did you learn to cook like this?"

The kid shrugged, waiting for his turn with the sticky bottle. "Self-defense, mostly. I got bounced around a bunch, whenever Manx was busy. If I wanted comfort food like this, I had to make it myself. And it's a good way to take my mind off of things, too."

Ken bit his tongue guiltily. While Omi might not have remembered his bastard relatives, the boy had known that there was something not quite right, even back then. It was no surprise that he had needed comforting as a child, or that there were things that he didn't want to dwell on. They were all so used to taking the littlest assassin at face value that they forgot how capable he was at throwing his teammates - people he had lived with, and killed with - off the track when he wanted to. Ken's jaw slowed and eventually stopped chewing altogether as he stared speculatively at Omi. "So, tell me," he drawled, "Did Aya really talk in his sleep, or was that just to throw Yohji off you getting it on with Aya?" and was rewarded by seeing a totally new shade of red hit every inch of the kid's exposed skin. The effect was pretty neat, sort of the human equivalent of a lobster hitting boiling water. Omi choked on his bite of pancake, and frantically poured himself another glass of juice.

"Ken!" he wheezed. "You're so mean!"

Grinning, the brunet thumped his friend on the back. "You betcha."

Omi glared, watering blue eyes turning pink rimmed. "Yes, he really talked. No, I didn't catch anything useful, just a couple of words. And `you betcha' I'm gonna get you for this! To think that I trusted you, Ken-kun."

Laughing hysterically, Ken made a show out of rolling off of his chair and into a heap on the floor. Disgusted, his blushing opponent wadded up his napkin and beaned him in the head with it, sending his fit of humor soaring to new heights. By the time the older boy was stretched out on the floor, clutching his ribs and gasping for breath, Omi was trying to suppress his own giggles. Ken grabbed him by the ankle and yanked, dragging the smaller blond down to floor level.

"I really hope those guys upstairs can sleep through anything. I don't think I'd want to try to explain this." sighed Omi. He collapsed onto his back, using Ken's stomach as a pillow.

"Yeah." Ken replied. He rumpled his partner's already tangled hair affectionately, amusement giving way to exhaustion. An early breakfast wasn't the answer to everything; Yohji had been smart to retreat to bed with a final cigarette to calm his nerves. His eyes were drifting shut when Omi poked him in the ribs, and asked "So, what happened in Tanagawa, anyway? You guys were so wound up that no one ever told me about it."

Crap. No, they hadn't. Both he and Yohji had been so busy flipping over the team's baby brother being in bed with the team's resident grouch that the tapes and Aya's travel bag had slipped their minds. Ken waved a hand vaguely. "Um… We should probably wait for the other guys to join us. Basically, we found a bunch of the security video tapes from the Hot Body. I'm hoping that we've got mug shots of the guys of did this to Aya, because my only witness - so far - to Aya-kun ever even being there doesn't know squat."

"You found a witness? That's great!"

"Well…" Ken trailed off into a cough. "She's a hooker who used to work there. Not that Honey is stupid. I'd say the opposite, actually. But she only caught a glimpse the one time. And, I think she's telling the truth about that, because she really wanted to make some more money off of us." He hesitated, then decided he might as well satisfy the kid's curiosity. It wasn't as if there was too much more to tell. "Honey didn't know who took care of Aya. She thinks that possibly one of the strange men that were hanging around, or the other owner, Iida, must have because she never noticed any of the prostitutes employed by the house missing. There was no gossip making the rounds, either, which would have been the case if any of them had seen what was going on in the basement." Ken was reminded that none of the other people he talked to in Tanagawa had known a thing, and blessed his luck for letting him run into the one woman who had known something.

"Oh." Thinking hard, Omi stared at the underside of the kitchen table without seeing it. Temporarily stumped, he shook himself and said, "Why don't you go get some rest? I'll stay up since I have to write some kind of a report to Manx anyway, before she gets peeved enough to take matters in her own hands."

Half asleep, the brunet winced. The past forty-eight hours were not going to make them very popular with Kritiker in general, and with their handler in particular. They could make a good case that the swath of destruction wasn't their fault, but with two wrecked safe houses, and an unknown number of dead and wounded, Manx would want a damned good explanation. Omi was a past-master at spin-doctoring, plus he had an insider's knowledge of what made the red haired woman tick, but it would only buy them so much time before the fat was really in the fire. They needed to go through the tapes, and he hoped that there would be something worthy of the outlay of cash and the continuing risk to the group. He rolled over and dragged himself wearily to his feet. "Thanks, Omittchi. Come wake me up when everybody else is moving, okay?"

"Sure." The blond teen accepted a hand up from the floor and headed upstairs to retrieve his laptop. He looked as if letting Yohji beat him up would be the preferable option, but he gamely went to tackle the report instead. Ken chickened out and fled for his own bed.

************

Wandering the shadowed realm that bordered sleep, Ken mulled over Omi's confession. Resolutely, he ignored the odd fluttering sensation in his chest, determined to examine the situation rationally. The rational stance was that it didn't bother him particularly that the kid was attracted to Aya. At least it didn't once he got over the shock of Omi being interested in another human being, period. If he had been asked a month earlier about the kid's preferences, he would have said `microchip.' But now that Aya had toned down the initial, overwhelming, happy-to-see-you vibe that had freaked Ken into thinking they had grabbed the wrong patient from that hospital, the attraction wasn't so far fetched. Personally, Ken subscribed to the idea that personal tastes weren't as black and white as people tended to make them out to be, anyway. Even the most ardent homophobe would find himself kicking for the other team if faced with the right person, and God knew that the redhead was handsome.

He yawned, squirming deeper into the soft comfort of his blankets. None of it said anything significant about Omi's sexual preferences either way, since he kind of doubted that the young blond had had much of an opportunity to find out what he liked. Oh, Omi was active in clubs and after school activities - to not be would draw even more attention - but there was no chance to develop a deeper relationship that way. Even the whole mess with Ouka would never have amounted to much if the girl hadn't spotted Omi on his way out on an assignment and gotten pulled into it with him.

The trick was going to be keeping Yohji from sticking his nose in. The older assassin was assuming that sex was a part of whatever had happened to their teammate while he was missing. Okay, so he had been held prisoner in a whorehouse, but that didn't necessarily mean that Aya had been brutalized. Besides, being kidnapped and held against his will would have been bad enough for the independent redhead. Aya didn't need more to screw him up.

The only problem with the theory was that Aya was acting less, not more screwed up than usual.

Lethargy was settling into Ken's limbs, turning them leaden and unresponsive. His eyelids flickered once. Yeah, helping Omi was going to be a real pain…

*************

Great. Omi and Yohji were arguing. Again. For about half a second, Ken seriously toyed with the idea of tracking down the Schwartz team and seeing if they could use a hand-to-hand specialist. Of course, he might have to get them to bail him out of jail first, because he was so going to kill those fuckin' idiots! Furious, he threw back the covers, grabbed the first clothes that came to hand, and stormed down the stairs.

The blond half of Weiss was faced off across the width of the living room, and judging by the mess of papers on the floor, one of them had pitched a temper tantrum with Omi's research notes as ammunition. White fluttered across the floor, settling in miniature drifts against the base of the sofa in a surreal cross between snow and autumn leaves. Ken arrived just as the kid drew in a deep breath, his fair skin turning dark with rage as he nearly screamed, "You demented moron! Do you have any concept of how hard I worked to get Manx off our backs?!"

With deliberate slowness, Yohji tapped his pack of cigarettes against the heel of his palm, and extracted a stick. The lighter he carried came out of the other pocket of his tight jeans. The glint in the man's eyes boded no good, and sure enough, he blew the first stream of smoke straight into the younger Hunter's face. "Sure…" he drawled. "I can see what a hardship it must have been for you to run to Mommy." The kid paled, then went livid again. With a wordless roar, he launched himself at Yohji.

Ken wasn't even thinking as he hurried forward, which might have been why he didn't register Aya's presence until the tall man had already captured his sleeve. Recovering or not, the redhead had no trouble intercepting the shorter athlete, wrapping a warning arm across his chest. Ken blinked stupidly down at the dark blue knit of the sweater, exclaiming, "Say what?"

"Just watch." The low murmur above and behind his ear was accompanied by a warm breath that made Ken's bare toes curl inside his slippers. Aya's other arm settled around his waist, tugging him backwards into a hug that not-too-coincidentally also served to keep him from interfering. Ken jerked experimentally against his bonds, then got distracted by the action unfolding in front of him.

It was very obvious that Yohji wasn't taking the kid seriously as a threat, and it was equally obvious that Omi was fed up and not about to put up with the attitude anymore. It was the skinny playboy's own fault. As the boy rushed toward him, he casually knocked the little form to the side, only to discover that Omi wasn't there. Smaller and faster, he instead ducked the swat, and came up inside Yohji's guard. Omi kicked the side of the older man's knee with punishing force. As the leg buckled, the petit tornado whirled, landing a devastating kick to the other's unprotected groin. Yohji gasped for breath, turned an astonishing shade of purple, and dropped like a stone.

Omi dusted off some imaginary fleck of dirt from his drooping shirt sleeves, still so keyed up that he practically twitched. Then he stepped over the now-whimpering body, and strode off into the kitchen. A moment later, they could head the rattle of dishes, and the hollow-metal sound of the kettle being filled with water. The kid was making tea.

Ken simply stood frozen in stunned shock. Omi had just kicked Yohji's butt… or, to be more accurate, his something else, and all he could think about was the solid weight of his teammate's arms holding him steady. Aya's arms. Which he wasn't going to think about. Against a solid, lean chest that rose and fell with distracting regularity. Ken coughed, cleared his throat, and asked in an unnaturally high voice, "Is everybody losing their minds?"

"No. That's just been a long time coming." Amusement trembled on the edges of the baritone voice; Ken could almost hear the red haired assassin's smile.

He wanted very badly to turn around and look at those pale, soft lips, to see if the corners curled up, and whether there really was a small dimple. But he wasn't going to. It was bad enough that he couldn't pretend that Aya was only touching because he was half-dead, or woozy with pain, or barely conscious… Anguished, the shorter man made a tiny, inarticulate noise and tried very hard to stand still. It became even more difficult when Aya's right hand, the one with the velcroed splint that held the last two fingers together as a unit, slid down his chest to clasp his left, holding Ken back against him.

"I thought these pants were going in the trash?" The teasing tone was gentle, barely there, but there was definitely laughter under the surface. Confused, Ken glanced down, sputtered, and felt himself heat with embarrassment. He had grabbed his so-called mission outfit from the floor. Including the ripped up jeans that he had sworn he would never wear again. And he had thrown them on without bothering to grab any underwear. Indignant, Ken snapped, "It's a good thing Yohji is already unconscious, or I'd be the one hurting him.

At that, his partner did laugh out loud, and not the harsh bark of sound that they were used to, either. Aya's arms fell to his sides, releasing the brunet, who turned with as much dignity as he could muster and stalked stiff-legged in the direction of the stairs.

God damned pants. God damned Yohji. And, damned Aya, too.

**************

The technology represented by the video tapes was so primitive that Ken didn't know whether to laugh - or to cry. For one thing, `video' was stretching a point; they were more like a collection of still shots strung together on a ribbon of magnetic plastic. Really, really bad black and white still shots. Omi had hooked the TV and vcr up in a daisy chain with his laptop so that he could step through the images at several times the pace they had been recorded at, something like twenty-four hours worth of images being crammed onto each six-hour tape. He and Yohji were now sitting side by side on the couch as if the earlier fight had never happened, skimming though the debatable high life of the whorehouse together.

Whatever the little spat between the two blonds had really been about, it had cleared the air between them, returning their interactions to very nearly what it had been prior. Although, Omi still wore the large white cotton shirt with the sleeves that drooped over his thin wrists. And Yohji did still turn faintly pink whenever he turned toward the younger blond and found himself looking down the open collar at boyishly smooth skin, and surprisingly adult muscles. Ken shook his head slightly, resolving to avoid so much as touching the whole mess with a stick.

Which left him with Aya.

Why had the redhead continued to hold onto him when it had become obvious that Ken wouldn't - or couldn't - intervene? There had been genuine contentment and affection in the words and embrace, directed not just at Omi, whom Aya had held and petted previously, but at Ken and at Yohji as well. But it had been the firm touch down Ken's stomach, and the way Aya's hands had locked together, encircling the soccer player in an embrace, that had destroyed the younger man's ability to think. It felt so different from being with Kase, or Yuriko, that he hadn't known what to make of it. And still didn't.

Ken resisted the temptation to pull on his tiger claws and rip out his own throat. Hadn't he just gone to all the trouble of convincing himself that he was not going to think thoughts like that about anybody, let alone a teammate? And, God help him, not about Aya who had all the social skills of a rabid dog? He'd have better luck with Omi. At least the delicate looking teen was more clear-cut in his brand of insanity. Aya was a mine field. Had been a mine field? It wasn't completely clear just what he was anymore.

Cautiously, Ken stole a glance at the object of his obsession. Aya was slumped in an armchair off to the side, looking a bit lost and out of the circle of camaraderie represented by the closeness of others. It was odd watching him. He no longer responded with that unbelievable, happy relief, and hadn't since that first time, but he had still changed. Aya's mouth was less hard, wasn't drawn down into that tense line.

But the sadness there wrenched at Ken's heart. He opened his mouth to say something - anything - but a hysterically evil cackle from Yohji forestalled him.

The image editing software loaded on the laptop was having a hard time doing anything with the blurry shot, but Omi nearly spontaneously combusted anyway. It took a long minute for Ken to figure out exactly what the two women and one man in the grainy picture were doing - long enough for the cycle of still shots to come around to the view from one of the Hot Body's private rooms several times. If he concentrated on the image, and ignored the views in between, it was like one of those do-it-yourself animation things where you were supposed to flip the pages of a little book to give the illusion of motion. Not that there was anything illusory about the tool that the one woman was pushing into the man while he did essentially the same thing to the other one. Ken swallowed hard and allowed that maybe it was a good thing that the security system wasn't state of the art. He didn't think he would survive watching that sequence in color. And especially not if it came with sound.

The same thought had to be running through Yohji's mind, because he left off bouncing on the couch and draped himself over Omi, crooning, "Hey… I thought this would be old hat for you. All that internet porn, ya know?"

Irritably, Omi shrugged him off and captured a screen shot, popping open another application window and running a search against local politicians until he found a match. Then he read off the details of the man's career and home life with sick fascination. Blushing, he added, "…that's it; I'm setting this thing up to stick to one view at a time. Like that corridor. I want to see people's faces, not their… you-know-whats."

The corridor camera was good choice. It seemed to be located between the front entrance and the unofficial rear one, and served to catch all the visitors to the brothel, either coming or going. Now that they had the pattern down of how the system cycled through the handful of cameras, they could let the computer follow it. It cut the time per tape to a minimum, and Omi calmed down. And better still, the miserable security system had recorded a date and time stamp in the corner. The combination allowed the kid to quickly discard most of the unmarked tapes as being far too old to be of immediate interest. That left them with only a half-dozen or so black plastic cartridges, the earliest of which bore a date of February 13th, just about the time of the auction of stolen art that Aya had attended. Omi muttered that he would go back through them later to see if he could find earlier contacts between their quarry and the whorehouse, but that it wasn't his primary goal just at the moment.

And it wasn't like they couldn't explore the blackmail potential later. Even if, as Yohji muttered sourly, the knowledge probably wasn't good for much besides fixing parking tickets.

Omi popped another tape into the vcr announcing "February 16th," as though it were the most interesting thing in the world. He wore a cute look of mingled embarrassment and annoyance now, as though he felt that it was his personal fault that Aya's jailers had used inferior equipment. Yohji chuckled, then leaned forward, elbows on his knees, every bit as absorbed as their hacker in the rapid gray flicker. For his part, Ken was bored and tired, and found himself watching the faint down turn of their redhead's mouth. It made him the only one to see the sudden surge of outright terror that flitted across the man's normally closed off features, and made Ken in turn shout, "Stop the tape. Now!"

Then he turned to look at the image on the screen.

There was Iida, the other owner of the whorehouse, frozen in mid-step with a taller man in an expensive suit at his side.

Aya shook his head mutely, savagely, fragments of his peculiar calm crashing around him. His unnatural pallor gave way to patches of hectic color high on his cheeks, drowning out even the yellow/purple/black of his fractured bone. He sucked in a shuddering breath, pupils dilating until there was only the barest sliver of purple, like the corona of the sun being all that remained during an eclipse. But unlike an eclipse, this fit didn't look like it would be over in a few minutes. A fine sheen of sweat started on the smooth, pale skin, and a tremor made the reflected light of the TV dance crazily. It was kind of like watching one of the frequent, low-level earthquakes making a priceless vase shiver on a shelf; Ken just knew that the crash was coming, that the redhead, like the vase, was headed for the precipice, but he couldn't seem to get his lungs and legs to work. Omi was the one who growled, blanked the screen of both TV and laptop, and launched himself at the slim man. Aya toppled backwards into his chair, arrested in mid-flight by the younger Hunter's tackle.

Yohji's ever-present sunglasses slid off the end of his nose and dropped to the floor. He caught one of Aya's arms, with Ken landing a moment later on the other one. Grappling with someone who could kill them all with little effort was probably the worst idea in the history of Weiss, which might be why they did it. None of them had forgotten the violence that had been part of the redhead's initial introduction to the group, and they had all seen him in action countless times since. Ken winced as he felt the stitches in the gunshot wound give in Aya's shoulder beneath him, but didn't dare let go. The only sound was the man's harsh, panting breath in his ear, not a single cry or curse having passed his lips. Then a tremor passed through the muscular body of their teammate as it melted from strained to limp. Aya had passed out.

"Holy shit." Yohji gasped. He was sporting a fresh scrape across his chin, and his still dyed black hair was a messy, snarled halo around his head. He looked more than a little frightened by the fact that seriously injured or not, the slim figure pinned by the three of them had nearly gotten free. It wasn't just that Aya was a skilled fighter; he had been moving in unthinking desperation. It made them all wonder just exactly what was going on in that head of his.