Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Twisted You ❯ Then and Now ( Chapter 2 )

Yohji whistled as he strolled into the Koneko, only fifteen minutes late for his afternoon shift.

Ken glared at him from behind the counter when he thought the customers weren't looking. "You're late. Again," he hissed.

Unruffled by the amateurish Evil Eye, Yohji only grinned and reached out a hand to playfully muss Ken's untidy brown locks. "So you ought to get used to it already."

And then he went right for the door which led to their kitchen and stairs.

"Wha…Yohji!"

"I'm just gonna change and have breakfast, Kenken. Don't worry, I won't miss the schoolgirl mob!"

"Yohji!" Ken cried out again, indignantly this time.

A customer dumped a bouquet and some bills onto the counter though, and the Ken mentally cursed all the lazy, irresponsible blondes in this god-forsaken world as he counted out the change and printed a small receipt for the lady.

Yohji slid open his drawer and rummaged through the contents within until he found it.

It was the book that everyone knew about, and spoke about with varying degrees of awe, disappointment, and disgust. It was the book that contained the names and contacts of people that Yohji thought were pretty enough to have sex with someday.

And it was, appropriately, black.

Flipping through a few pages, the blonde tried to find the description of a suitable female who wouldn't mind just sleeping with him. Weiss would be having a mission that night, and Yohji wouldn't have the time to go pick up someone from a club.

He'd decided, also, that he wasn't going to be too keen on guys for the next few days. That guy last night totally sucked. He wasn't good enough at it, was all too rough, and had left before Yohji had woken up.

Just the latter was enough to earn him a big black cross beside his name. Yohji liked to wake up cuddled next to someone, not all alone in a huge bed with semen-stained sheets.

And he did admit he was using them, just like they did him. Even if it was true that he wanted a source of human warmth as much as someone to just fuck, it didn't change the fact that he felt no affection whatsoever for them.

It was a contradiction, sort of; he wanted warmth and comfort, yet he could hardly bring himself to even really care about them.

Well, at least he could safely say that he wasn't a total whore.

Yohji decided he would call up Miyuki, a pretty, petite blonde that he vaguely remembered. But she could wait. Right now, he was going to take a shower and then have his breakfast.

He really doubted that anyone would pass up a chance at Yohji Kudou, anyway.

Shutting the book, he threw it carelessly onto the small table already cluttered with random rubbish and got off the bed, nearly stepping right onto the dried cattleya flower.

Oh, yeah. That.

It was a gift he'd gotten from…someone he'd met at a club, a long time ago.

Yohji was waiting at the bar for his date. Who was late. Or wasn't coming, but damn it, no one was going to stand him up.

Someone slid onto the stool beside him and, out of simple curiosity, he turned to look.

He certainly wasn't someone Yohji had ever seen before. The blonde didn't think he could easily forget the most obvious thing in Tokyo.

The poor guy stood out like a sore thumb, like a rose in a sea of poppies, like a…like a long-haired redhead in the middle of a Japanese city.

But he wasn't bad-looking. His fiery hair fell a few inches short of his waist, his body was long and lean and toned, and his face was a little too sharp and angular, but he was pretty, in his own way.

As Yohji stared, the guy turned his head and smirked at him. Yohji quickly turned his gaze away, fighting the slight urge to blush. It wasn't often that he was caught looking so intently at someone he wasn't flirting with.

"Hey Blondie. What's your name?"

Yohji frowned, not liking to be called that. It made him sound stupid.

"Hi, Red, you can call me Yohji. What about you?"

The redhead did it again. The smug, self-satisfied upward twist of his lips was both repulsive and strangely compelling.

"What about me?"

"What is your name?"

"I don't feel like telling you."

And Yohji was suddenly very irritated with this obnoxious man, and he turned away once more, determined to ignore him.

That was strange, too. It wasn't often that he got offended or discouraged by something so trivial. Had it been anyone else, he would probably be trying to squeeze the information out with sweet talking and other oily techniques.

"Hey, kitty-cat."

"What?" Yohji responded without much prior thought, and immediately regretted it. "Why did you call me that?"

"If you were a kitten, I guess you would be Siamese."

"Huh?" Yohji replied intelligently.

"Tall and sleek and pretty. But you're long-haired too, so maybe not."

Yohji opted for silence.

"I guess…that would make you a Balinese, huh?"

Time seemed to slow down as Yohji's brain processed this bit of information. Then the shock and irrational fear of being discovered filtered through, and Yohji could only stare helplessly into unfathomable emerald depths and that awful, awful smirk.

And suddenly the redhead was behind him, gently pushing his open jaw into place, brushing something velvety over his cheek, slipping it into the breast pocket of his jacket and whispering in his ear.

"I'll be seeing you around, Balinese."

When Yohji finally snapped out of his prolonged daze, the redhead had already disappeared into the crowd.

Later, the blonde had returned to his apartment above Koneko expecting a sleepless, restless night, because his date, whom he sincerely wished had been run down by a truck, hadn't turned up.

Then Yohji flung his jacket off and onto the floor, and the little purple orchid had tumbled out.

It was his favourite flower, and it was from a pretty, albeit infuriating, mysterious and freaky redhead. So Yohji had kept it between two blank pages of his black book, in place of a name.

And after that, he lay curled in a foetal position on one side of the king-sized bed, wondering how the stranger knew about Balinese. It had scared him. He had thought the redhead knew of his other identity, impossible as it seemed…and that superior, knowing smirk hadn't helped any.

It was an unsettling encounter, but also made him feel oddly comforted, as though the fact that he killed for a living wasn't so anomalous, wasn't so repelling. In the end, before he fell into a dreamless sleep, he had decided that the stranger was someone safe. Someone who knew all his dark secrets, but wouldn't push him away.

On hindsight, Schuldig had probably already known he was the enemy, and was trying to dick him around by getting him all confused and afraid.

Scooping up the wrinkled, brownish cattleya with one hand, Yohji put in once more between those two pages now marked with the faint silhouette of the flower.

Before, he hadn't known it was from his mortal enemy. After, he had simply forgotten. This time, he was going to save it for the day when Schuldig made him really mad, then he was going to have lots of fun shredding it.

Ken fidgeted nervously. Ten more minutes and the screeching horde of teenage girls would be here. He hoped to God that he would never have to face them alone.

He considered going upstairs to yell at Yohji's door, but he couldn't because he was the only one in the shop, because Aya was away to somewhere that none of them knew about, because they didn't dare to ask, because they hated to be impaled by a katana, and because Omi was at school, and because someone needed to tend the register!

Ken moaned, and wished Yohji had just one ounce of responsibility in him.

And he also wished that Yohji would spend his nights with them. Well, not really with them, but in his room above Ken's where he belonged.

There was a time when Yohji always stumbled in in the middle of the night, sometimes too drunk to walk by himself, and Ken would be the one to help him up to his room. He didn't suppose Aya cared much, and he didn't think Omi could handle Yohji's weight, so he would always be the one that woke up at unearthly hours.

Of course he was pissed at the blonde for being an inconsiderate alcoholic, but at least he knew where Yohji was.

He guessed the blonde would think that he was doing Ken a favour by sleeping overnight in motels or whatever - Ken fervently hoped he wasn't stupid enough to pass out in strangers' places - but he was really more concerned about the safety of his best buddy.

Yohji was irritating and thoughtless and liked to tease them relentlessly, but those kind of things made him endearing.

He really should quit some of his more unhealthy habits, though.

Like being late.

And Ken missed the days when he could pound on Yohji's door at seven in the morning.

"Hey! Everyone's favourite Yohji-kun is here," a familiar voice drawled out.

Ken turned to grin at him, and was rewarded with a real, friendly smile that made him feel warm inside.

Then a chorus of high-pitched screams sounded from outside, and it was time to face what was left of the day.