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They have done impossible things together. They have pulled all-nighters and walked with complete confidence into dangerous territory first thing in the morning.
It's almost 10pm by the time they convince Miri that she has to stay in her own room, that it isn't just for playing, that she has to pick one of her multiple new nightgowns and settle into bed. She has no less than six stuffed animals. She's had a drink of water. She's had Rei's terrible attempt at a story, and Kazuki's attempt at singing.
By the time she's asleep, Kazuki is ready to just lay down right there, in the corner of what used to be the spare room, and expire.
It's nearly ten o'clock.
Ten!
"Didn't we used to be able to stay up until--" It takes him that long to realize that Rei's shuffling off in the direction of the bathroom. "What are you doing?"
"Sleeping."
"Don't be stupid. Go to bed."
"You said I can't sleep in her room."
"You can't." Kazuki attempts to summon up patience from... somewhere. Anywhere. "That's why we got the cameras. But you have a bed, and beds are for sleeping in."
"What does it matter, if she's not there?" Rei mumbles the question, looking off at... whatever he looks at when he's not making eye contact.
Kazuki searches for something plausible. "She could have a nightmare."
"Lots of people have nightmares." The wall must be fascinating.
"She's going to get upset if she comes in the bedroom and you're not there."
A moment's pause. Rei turns back and looks towards the bathroom so wistfully that Kazuki wonders if he needs to switch deodorants. Then, finally: "She's going to get upset if we're both not there."
Kazuki will take whatever victory he can find. "Sure. Fine with me."
If it keeps Rei sleeping in a bed like a real human, then Kazuki will absolutely take it. It's a weird arrangement, but is it any weirder than one of them sleeping in the tub?
Kazuki mentally pats himself on the back, and goes to get changed for bed.
It's weird, he thinks as he's settling in, to remember how long Rei spent sleeping in the tub. Or in the hall closet. Or wherever else he was. Feels like they've been sleeping in the same room nearly forever, not a couple weeks.
He can feel Miri's absence in the bed like a missing arm, even knowing she's just down the hall. To not be able to feel anybody else nearby, to hear the reassurance of someone else's breathing. How had he ever slept like that on a regular basis?
"Isn't that better?" he asks, as he pulls the blankets up. But when he turns over to look, he realizes Rei is already asleep.
Impossible to know whose fault it is. This arrangement has worked fine for a few weeks without incident.
When Kazuki wakes, that particular night, it's simply a fact that both he and Rei are substantially closer to the middle of the bed than he's accustomed to.
Miri had always been there, a little wall between them. Of course, without her taking up so much space, they'd both started sleeping further from the precarious edge. Makes sense. Totally reasonable. And a little further, a little further.
But now they're really both taking their half out of the middle somehow, which is... probably... a problem.
And now Kazuki has woken up with his arm fully around Rei.
He was dreaming. That's all. It happens. He just has to very, very carefully...
Kazuki's arm is wrapped around Rei, and Rei is clutching it like a drowning man with a life raft.
Great.
It's not like Kazuki isn't aware that Rei's had some... challenges. He's not an asshole. Or, you know, not that much of an asshole. Just yanking his arm away, waking Rei in the process? It's not going to save them from the awkward conversation. So it's just waking Rei for no reason, isn't it?
Kazuki just needs to stay awake a little longer, wait for Rei to get past the worst of this dream he's having. Then he'll just gently, gently steal his own limb back and retreat to the far side of the bed.
It's a good plan.
Kazuki lays there a while. Then a while more.
Rei's hair smells like baby shampoo.
Maybe Kazuki hasn't had a lady in this position on a regular basis for a bit now, but old habits die hard. Anyway, where else is he supposed to breathe? It's impossible not to smell it.
He tests his arm again, finds the hold not at all loosened, and sighs as he resigns himself to waiting.
And waiting.
Movement. Finally. But it's Rei's hand on Kazuki's hand, pulling it further up.
His first panicked thought: He's definitely going to break my finger for this.
There's no sudden wrench of pain. Just a little tickle. Kazuki can't identify it until it moves, leaving behind a trail of chill, despite the room being quite warm.
Tongue. It's Rei's tongue on his finger. Then his finger actually in Rei's mouth.
"Rei," he says, without thinking of what he's going to say after that. "Um," it starts. Not a great start.
A strangled noise. His finger is free. His hand, his whole arm is free.
"Fuck," comes from Rei after a moment.
Kazuki can't quite figure out what to do with his arm. Jerking away would be wrong, wouldn't it? It'd make this worse. "It's fine. You were asleep."
The response sounds like it was spoken directly into Rei's pillow, but Kazuki can pick out the words. "You were awake."
"Uh." He regrets a lot of his life choices, but presses on. "Sort of. Look, I just woke up like... that. I didn't mean to..." Usually he has an easier time with sentences. It would help if he were less tired. When are they not tired, now?
A slow exhale in the dark. "Right."
Kazuki starts to gently take his arm back, then stops. No, he shouldn't stop. This is stupid. It's really stupid. Or is it stupider not to? It's just that he can feel Rei's back, now, the way it tightened there, and suddenly it registers. "You meant to."
Silence.
No girlfriends, not ever. No clamoring to get his shot at the seduction routine in any of their plans. No big-titted figurines of girls from his video games.
He could have made an awkward joke and laughed it off, in the light of day. But it's dark.
Baby shampoo smells quite pleasant, actually.
And it felt much the same in Rei's mouth as did in any other mouth Kazuki has ever been in.
He lets his hand rest against Rei's sternum. And lacking the first fucking idea what to actually say, he waits.
And waits.
It could all be a mistake, Kazuki realizes. But if there was a Rubicon to cross, it's behind them. Nothing to do but wait.
He waits.
He waits a little more.
"I meant to." The words sound like they've been pulled out of Rei with pliers.
Kazuki can play a girl like a fiddle. Is this different?
No plan survives contact with the enemy, as they say. You just have to roll with it. Eventually, you build up not so much a script but a repertoire. Enough material to improvise, without thinking too much. You say things, and they turn out to be the right things.
"Good girl," he murmurs against the back of Rei's neck, on auto-pilot.
Sometimes they turn out to be the right things. Sometimes they aren't. Kazuki has been single for a... while now.
He can tell it's wrong. Feel how Rei tightens up. Every muscle at once.
No, no, wrong, abort, wrong answer.
They are both killers, but every nerve in Kazuki's body is suddenly aware that they are not the same. He is a predator, but he is an opportunist. Rei...
Make a life out of keeping the wolf from your door, to find another in your bed.
And yet the relief bubbles up with a laugh that Kazuki has trouble stifling, in the rush of endorphins. He squeezes against the tension. "Boy," he manages to correct. "Good boy." He shifts, just to deliver the words closer to Rei's ear, to compensate.
The reward is instant. All that resistance, melting away. Just to be sure of it, Kazuki sets his teeth lightly against the earlobe. The response is a soft whine.
It's like driving a car. He still knows how to do it, yeah? But this is a new model, and maybe it'll take a bit to figure out where the corners are.
So you might as well put her through her paces, get a feel for it.
Him. Put him through his paces.
And probably not get murdered for it? Probably.
Kazuki slides his hand down, finds the waistband of Rei's pajama pants. Past that, and the elastic of his underwear.
"You don't have to," Rei is murmuring, even as Kazuki's managed in a matter of moments to work him up from half-hard.
"Shh, kitten."
He would never have said that he was dying to get his hands on Rei's dick, but now that it's actually in his hand, it feels reasonably natural. Why hasn't he done this before? Maybe it just never came up. Maybe it was just safer to stick with the familiar, to not risk feeling like an awkward adolescent when confronted with his own lack of experience.
Later, maybe, they'll talk about that. Right now, Kazuki has to keep pretending that he's got this situation perfectly under control. Like his life depends on it, which it still may. The less time Rei has to think, the less he can realize this isn't true.
"Fuck," is technically a word, but it seems like Rei's hips are working more than his brain.
Kazuki has a bit of a time getting used to the idea that his hand needs to stroke in time with someone else's body, but it's progress. He's getting the hang of it. Barely. It might take a little longer, but--
No. No, it doesn't take any longer. It takes a lot less time than he expected. He notices when Rei puts a hand to his mouth, but doesn't realize why until the man spooned against him is desperately attempting to smother the noises coming out of his mouth, and the dick in Kazuki's hand is throbbing.
"That's it," hardly more than a whisper. "Good boy," again.
Easy.
An orgasm is a powerful thing. Play your cards right and you can get anything you want, in the moments right after. Your target is helpless.
Rei. It's Rei, gasping against Kazuki. Not some girl with a key card, a password, a compromising photo on her phone.
Reality is right there, pressing itself against the windows, peering in at them with a hunger .
Then Rei's hands are pulling on Kazuki's hand, bringing it back up to his mouth, and the mouth is a good enough excuse to delay the cold shock a little longer. It's so warm , there.
His hand is clean and then some before Rei lets it go. He laces his fingers with Kazuki's, for a moment, then frees them to twist around. "Let me suck it. Please." Sweet desperation. "Please."
The number of times that Kazuki has had to hint around about it. Wheedle a little. Bargain. Good girls don't offer, after all. Good girls definitely don't beg for it. Kazuki's dick is intrigued--no, fascinated by this prospect.
"If that's what you want." The magnanimity is entirely bullshit. If Kazuki has to wait another sixty whole seconds, he might just shove Rei down--
There's a thump, and they both go completely still.
Another thump.
Silence.
Silence.
Then, the keening wail. "Pappppaaaaaaaa." The sound gets ever closer. Built-in proximity alarm.
They have just enough time to sort themselves out a little before the door opens, and Miri deposits herself in their bed like the coldest shower Kazuki's ever taken.
By the time they get back to bed, everything but sleep is forgotten.
Kazuki wakes to an empty bed and heads downstairs.
"Get down," comes the hiss.
His first instinct is to do it. Heart racing, he drops, and finds Rei behind the sofa, sitting with his back right up against it. The floor around him is covered in--
"Is this breakfast cereal?" Kazuki attempts to stand again, gets pelted square in the forehead by a desiccated pink marshmallow, which he catches and eyes as he settles down next to Rei again.
There's a cackle on the other side of the living room.
"Why--"
"She started it." This is clearly not reassuring. Rei doesn't look reassuring. Rei looks like a man who has been too long in the trenches.
"Are you even attempting to return fire?"
The shock, suddenly, on Rei's face. The absolute heartbreak. The betrayal.
"With," Kazuki clarifies, "the breakfast cereal ."
The expression lessons only the tiniest bit. "I can't hit a kid."
"It's breakfast cereal ." But it's a lost cause. Kazuki knows it is. He climbs back to his feet, hands raised. "Look, we surrender, just return the..."
She's sitting there with one very sticky-looking hand emerging from what used to be a brand-new cereal box.
"Maybe don't return the box," he revises.
She regards him, stuffs a handful of cereal into her mouth, chews thoughtfully. "Goo mwoheen," she says cheerfully through the mouthful.
They do not, therefore, talk about it in the morning.
Or that afternoon. Or after dinner, when Kazuki is attempting to pry a tearful Miri off of his leg, explaining that he just has to go to work but he'll see her in the morning.
It is work. It's not a date. It's just work that involves going to a bar and surveying the crowd, looking for a woman's face.
His profile said he was 27. Very nicely altered photograph suggesting a recent trip to Paris, actually taken just days ago at the park. The dossier had suggested he'd have the best luck saying he worked in television. He remembers that much.
But Kazuki's memory for the details is a little hazy, owing to the prior night's distractions, and he was expecting a wannabe actress in a low-cut dress. Instead, he gets a young woman with a pixie cut and a quirky sweater who drinks IPAs and spends the whole time talking about the relative merits of various film cameras.
He glances at his phone, now and then, worried he might somehow miss it vibrating in his pocket. Rei did say that he'd text when he had Miri in bed.
"Sorry," says the girl. "I know I'm really boring."
"No, I should be apologizing." Phone in pocket. Focus, he tells himself. "Left, ah, my kid with a sitter, and... you know. Just worrying over nothing."
"You didn't say you had a kid." She leans forward across the table, like she's studying him.
"Is that a dealbreaker?" He shouldn't have said anything, he realizes. Though--she doesn't sound scandalized. She's already two drinks in. Two and a half.
"No, it's perfect. Hot Dad, meet Daddy Issues." She isn't really what he thinks of as his type, but the giggle is cute enough to pretend.
"You think I'm hot, huh?" He leans in, gives her a certain sort of a smile.
She seems more into venting than flirting. He lets her have at it. It's a relief, honestly, to find out your target is a piece of human garbage whose own kids won't miss him. He just needs to get her into bed, get a copy of the spare key for her dad's place that they've been assured she has, and then vanish.
It's just part of the job.
All this stuff she's venting about would probably be useful information. It would help if he was really paying attention, and not constantly imagining that he can feel his leg buzzing.
It's not. Every time he covers his pocket with his hand, it's not. He orders another beer. Another.
Then, a little after 11pm, suddenly it's producing a chirpy reminder that he did not, in fact, set it to vibrate in the first place.
"I should take this," he tells her, "but it'll be quick. Promise."
11pm. What the fuck. When he gets the phone open, standing in an alcove near the entrance of the bar, the message answers none of his questions.
R: hey
K: Please tell me she's not still up?
R: oh right
R: she's not
R: sorry
Before Kazuki can send off a long spiel about the importance of communication, the image arrives.
Three beers and a whiskey sour are not enough to keep the contents of his stomach from freezing solid.
Closeup of Rei's face. The man can't really take a selfie to save his life. The phone's too close, the lighting all wrong. The room is too dark, except for the one nearby lamp which is almost blinding. He's making direct eye contact with the phone in a way he never does in reality.
And he's got the muzzle of a handgun in his mouth.
Kazuki shoves his phone back in his pocket, nearly runs into people twice making his way back to the bar. "I'm sorry," he says, putting down what is probably an obscene quantity of cash. He can't think well enough to count it. "I have to go. I like you--I like you so much, but it's. It's."
Words. How do words work?
"Your kid?" She's such a nice girl. Woman. Her face is immediately serious, sympathetic. "No, go on. I hope everything's okay, but... look, call me, I'm free Tuesday, but go."
She doesn't make him hang around long enough to lie to her. Maybe it wouldn't even be a lie. He thinks about Miri. Asleep. Hopefully asleep.
The sour, that was the real mistake. He nearly pukes a couple times on the trip back, shoving money at the cab driver when the guy tries to pull over. "To clean, cover a speeding ticket, whatever, it's an emergency."
Twenty-six minutes from the time of the text message to when he gets the door unlocked and gets back into the apartment.
It's dark. Quiet.
The kid's room first, and she's--
Well, she's sleeping in a position that has one leg almost completely hanging off the bed, somehow, but she appears to be completely fine. She's wearing pajamas. He hadn't actually expected Rei to get her into pajamas. It's usually a fight to get Rei into pajamas.
Rei.
He closes the door so, so very gently, and heads to their room.
Kazuki stands at the door for too long. Afraid to open it. Afraid not to open it.
"Shit," he hears in a low voice from inside, which finally gives him the courage to push the door open.
Rei is sitting on the bed, in his underwear, with headphones in and his Switch, brow furrowed with an intensity of focus that he typically reserves for boss battles and contract killing.
The panic evaporates, or seems to, and takes with it Kazuki's ability to do anything but stare.
Rei looks up, blinks at him, takes the headphones off. "It worked? I didn't think it would work."
"Worked," a dull echo.
"To get you home a little quicker." Rei's eyes avert.
The anger is like a sheet of flame in front of his eyes. Vaporized anxiety put to a light, and exploding. Kazuki fully intends to... not kill him, okay, but at least shake him extremely violently. Except that by the time Kazuki gets to the bed, gets his hands on Rei, it has sunk in that Rei is not wearing a shirt with which to do the shaking.
Instead, without thinking, he grabs Rei's hair. Pulls. "You can't threaten that kind of shit to, to," he pulls harder, "to get my attention ."
A series of escalating yelps, before Kazuki realizes what he's doing, and lets go.
"That hurt," sullen. Rei is definitely not looking at him, now, eyes fixed on the far corner of the room.
Kazuki sits back on the edge of the bed. Takes a deep breath. "Sorry."
"I wasn't threatening anybody."
"You can't tell me--" Hadn't he? Obviously he had. Kazuki gets out his phone, pulls the message again, goes to brandish the picture at Rei like it's some kind of proof of wrongdoing.
A glimpse of bare shoulder in the picture, too. His mouth open like that, the muzzle just visible bulging through his cheek, like...
The obviously comparison suddenly makes Kazuki's face feel hot, but at the same time is no less horrifying. "What if there was an accident, " he manages to object.
"It's not loaded. Safety's on." Rei's tone remains indignantly casual. "Done it plenty of times."
Kazuki keeps looking at the picture. "That's barrel's... what, five inches? Six?" He looks up.
Rei is staring at him, expectantly.
So he looks again. "Deagle," he manages to recognize it finally. "It's a--you hate those."
Kazuki had loved that thing. It was like wearing a brick around, and it kicked like a full-grown horse. But it had looked cool.
Years ago, now. Rei hadn't been any better at cogent arguments, at the time. He'd just sent Kazuki a half-hour-long compilation of probably every appearance of the HK USP in film and television.
Yes, okay, it could look cool. Probably looked cooler in Misato Katsuragi's hands than his, but it was cool enough. The Desert Eagle wound up in a closet somewhere, and the USP became his daily carry.
He's still looking, Kazuki realizes.
Find that last piece of the story. Fits in with a little wiggle of cardboard flange against cardboard groove. "It isn't yours."
Plenty of times .
It's not in a closet. It's sitting there on the bedside table.
It's weird. It's so weird. But there's an almost feverish joy to the revelation. So... Kazuki leans into the obscenity of it. "If you wanted my equipment in your mouth, you could've just said so."
He still doesn't say so . Kazuki's in the process of pulling the shirt over his head when Rei starts unbuttoning his pants for him.
"Have you actually..." Kazuki gets the shirt off, tosses it aside. Wonders why he's even bothering to ask.
"It can't be that hard." Rei's tone is still flat, and he doesn't so much as glance up at Kazuki's face.
"You just don't need to push yourself that much. If it's too much..."
Rei's hand is working its way into Kazuki's shorts. Kazuki is trying to remember why he hasn't spent years fantasizing about exactly this. Such delicate, deliberate fingers.
"Wait." Telling himself as much as Rei, forcing himself to take a breath. "I don't want to do this half dressed."
Rei makes an almost adolescent noise of impatience. "Fine."
Subtlety is lost on him. It always is. "Not just me ," Kazuki says more pointedly.
Good as it felt the first time, Rei's hand feels even better when Kazuki's relaxed, leaning back against a pillow, partner prone between his legs.
Staring.
"It's not that impressive." Half a joke. At least half.
Without the slightest hint of humor: "I don't want a rifle if the target's within twenty meters."
Kazuki remembers a hundred variations on, oh, no, it's so big , despite no objective need for such reassurances. He could take it as an insult, but he's never seen Rei look so intensely at anything that wasn't a threat.
"Take your time," he murmurs. He's patient. Ready to coach Rei through a very amateur attempt at this. Already pondering the not-unwelcome prospect of jerking off into his mouth at the end.
It's about thirty seconds between that and the point where Rei has his nose all up in Kazuki's pubic hair.
If he could think complete thoughts, he would think about how rude it is. How Rei always makes such difficult things seem easy. How he manages to do this while being barely able to operate a microwave.
The actual train of thought is more like: fuck what oh god (tonsils?) shit be quiet (that tongue thing) how oh fuck.
Rei has the technical performance of a professional but none of the art. There's no attempt to occasionally turn his eyes upwards, no theatrics, no big fake enthusiasm.
He only ever pauses to keep pushing his bangs back out of his face; after the fourth or fifth time, Kazuki reaches down to help, just letting his hands follow the bob of Rei's head but keeping the hair out of the way.
He manages to keep silent, but it makes everything else louder. Rei's mouth doesn't just feel wet, it sounds wet.
Kazuki has gotten head plenty of times. He knows what not to do. That a warning is a bare minimum level of consideration. It just... sneaks up on him. He's thinking he's at least got a couple more minutes. The next moment, Rei makes a sort of a low noise, and the vibration of it does something exactly right, and Kazuki goes off the edge of a cliff.
And remembers, a second later, that Rei is not a professional, because suddenly there is choking, sputtering, coughing.
"Fuck. Baby. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Are you okay? I'm so sorry."
There are big shiny trails of tears streaming down Rei's face, but he doesn't actually look much more distressed than he ever does. Just... stunned.
Kazuki reaches for him, pulls him up into... something like an embrace, anyway, rubbing his back while he coughs a few more times, reaching to get him the box of tissues.
Rei blows his nose, wipes his face. His eyes first, then his chin. "Didn't think it'd be so hard to swallow," he mumbles. Kazuki would be worried about how distant he sounds, if he weren't still leaning against him.
"You did great." He presses his lips against Rei's hair. Thinks, only for a second, before turning Rei's head his direction with a press of fingers, and kissing him on the mouth.
Not in love with the taste right off the bat, but the kiss part is nice. Very nice.
It's Rei who, mid-kiss, takes Kazuki's hand and puts it on his dick, guiding it through a couple strokes to make clear what he wants without being forced to say the words.
It's better, with kissing. With bare skin against skin. If there was a question yet about Rei actually being into it, the speed with which he falls apart in Kazuki's hand seems like enough to answer it.
Only after he's gotten Rei off does Kazuki really press his luck. He pulls the duvet up over them, then settles his arms back around Rei's torso, pulls him in properly close. "Are we just fucking around, or is this a thing?"
Rei's noise is not something any normal human could interpret as an answer.
"Just, you know, I need to know if I have to come up with another way to get into this guy's house," he tries.
"You didn't get the key?" At least they're words, even if they aren't helpful words.
"I was supposed to be doing that tonight, remember?"
"You were gone for hours." As though accusing him of having abandoned his family for months, maybe even years.
"It's not like I could just show up and go, hey, take me home with you and I'll fuck your brains out."
"Why not? That seems dumb." A moment of silence. "You think she won't talk to you again?"
Kazuki elects to not attempt to explain the nuances of other people's romantic entanglements just now. "I'm sure she would, but if you and I are... you know."
"But you like girls. Like that."
Okay, first step, not throttling him out of frustration, even if his slim neck is right there . "Rei, I'm not gonna make you say anything sappy, just... I don't want to hurt you. If you... you know. Have feelings. For me."
A new, different sort of silence. Fragile. Too long. Finally: "It doesn't matter if I do, if you don't."
Does he?
He tries to imagine a life without Rei in it. He tries to imagine a life with Rei in it, but without doing this again. Is that enough?
"I might," he experiments with. "If you did."
Rei twists slightly in Kazuki's grasp, then proceeds to bite his shoulder. Not hard? But there are definitely teeth.
Is it an answer? Close enough. "We'll figure something else out."
"Huh? No, it's fine. I don't mind if you do her."
"Rei, for the love of god, are we or--"
"It's work," Rei says, pointedly. "That I don't have to do." Lips against Kazuki's skin. Then teeth. Again.
Then, from a space just beside the bed: "How come Rei-papa is allowed to bite?"
Kazuki scrambles, attempting to grab both their underwear without exiting the relative safety of the covers, while Rei smirks at their child, the apparent goddamn ninja . "Because I stay in my own bed all night," he says, looking like he thinks he is a genius.
"If I stay in bed, I can bite?"
"No!" And, at the same time, "Sure."
There will be angry calls from the day care, but... that can be a problem for tomorrow's Kazuki.
Tonight's is going to pull his shorts back on, though.
It's months later when the message shows up. Forwarded through a service, of course. A photo, first: One Japanese girl, one blonde lass, some kind of Nordic probably? Quite tall. Flushed cheeks. Big smiles. Eiffel Tower at night. Then, utterly innocuous:
H: Thinking of my fairy godfather~
Kazuki gives it a long, wistful look. He indulges a few moments of fantasy. Oh, to go back to that time he managed to get his partner alone and awake for long enough to get them both off. No making plans for a week straight only to be too busy to think. Nobody falling asleep halfway through at 9pm. No having to wait until morning only to find that Rei refuses to be woken by anything short of a brass band.
It has to happen again sometime, right? Sometime before she's in high school? Surely.
He deletes the messages, blocks the contact, and drags himself out of bed to start breakfast.