FIC FOR ALIENASHI part 2
For: alienashi
From: scorch66
Title: No Sugar, No Cream
Pairings/Characters: Nakamaru/Kame
Rating: PG13
Warnings: AU, violence, cursing, mentions of euthanasia
Notes: Before anything else is said, I’d like to say: I know.
Summary: Nakamaru is a small town police officer who transfers to a branch in the city in hopes of making a real difference. He’s partnered to a senior officer whose methods fall outside the law and eventually, Nakamaru finds himself playing the good cop to Kamenashi’s bad cop. He’s determined to make their partnership work, if only to save Kamenashi from himself.
part 1 || part 2 || part 3 || part 4 || part 5
After a drive up what felt like a mile long driveway of the Tegoshi estate, they’re asked to wait in the gallery. Nakamaru trails behind Kamenashi, feeling lost in the wealth being boasted at him by every square inch of the estate. The foyer itself feels like standing inside a ballroom with its high ceiling and crystal chandelier; Nakamaru can see his reflection in the marble flooring. It’s nothing compared to the gallery which has Nakamaru sucking in a breath as he steps inside, floating past the estate guards who hold open the doors for their entry.
If Kamenashi is even slightly impressed by the display of Tegoshi Yuya’s collection of artefacts, he doesn’t show it. While Nakamaru finds it hard not to feel overwhelmed, his eyes flitting between a jeweled mask encased in a glass box and a life-sized statue of entangled bodies that look to be made entirely of gold, Kamenashi looks little more than impatient.
He catches Nakamaru trying to make sense of the statue and rolls his eyes.
“Only a ponce with access to too much of his daddy’s money and too little sex would invest in fornicating gold.”
“Oh,” Nakamaru says, finally piecing together the parts and quickly looking away with an embarrassed cough.
He feels Kamenashi’s gaze fall on him and stick. When he looks up, Kamenashi is giving him a funny look, like he’s trying to swallow a smirk. Nakamaru doesn’t know why he bothers with the half-hearted attempt.
“I’m not a virgin,” Nakamaru says defensively.
“Okay.”
“I’m not. I know where things go.”
The smirk is loud and clear now. “It’s good that you’ve taken biology.”
“Oh for the love of-I’ve had sex before, okay.”
And of course that’s when Tegoshi Yuya enters the room.
*
Tegoshi Yuya looks just as doll-like in person as he does in his many tabloid snapshots, although this time there’s clarity sparking in his big eyes to match his saccharine smile. He keeps throwing glances at Nakamaru with the wide sweep of his eyelashes and his lips pursed in worry.
“Is he okay?” Tegoshi asks when Kamenashi is in the middle of debriefing the situation. Nakamaru doesn’t understand why he’s whispering when he’s right there.
“Don’t mind him,” Kamenashi responds without pausing. “He was born with a bad case of sun burn.”
Nakamaru forces a smile. “The room temperature is just a little too high for my liking.”
They’re sitting on one of the gallery’s expansive couches and Tegoshi leans over to stroke the back of his hand consolingly. It doesn’t match his flirtatious smile. “That statue always makes for interesting conversation.”
“I’d worry less about him and more about yourself,” Kamenashi interrupts brusquely. “The Magpie is notorious for getting his hands on what he wants and what he wants is currently in your possession. I believe you received a ring today-”
“Just this morning actually! It arrived earlier than expected.” Tegoshi fans his fingers at them to flaunt his new ornament. The ring is a chunky piece of antique silver, moulded into the shape of a skull. It’s not at all something Nakamaru would have classified as Tegoshi’s style. It looks almost grotesque on his dainty fingers.
“Beautiful, isn’t it? Of course people would have their eyes on it, although…” Tegoshi’s eyes snap to Kamenashi, narrowing in suspicion. “How did you know I’d have it?”
“It’s my job to know,” Kamenashi replies smoothly, “and if you want to keep that ring, I suggest you hand it over to the authorities for safekeeping until we know the Magpie has left town.”
Surprised, Nakamaru turns to the side to give Kamenashi an inquisitive look but something tells him he’d be wiser to keep quiet and nod along.
Tegoshi is less docile and immediately bristles at the idea of giving up a coveted accessory he had spent a week’s allowance on. Nakamaru expects the shrill insults and colourful display of spoiled self-absorption to crack Kamenashi’s calm but Kamenashi appears unfazed, almost pleased. It makes no sense because Kamenashi nearly threw a paper weight at Nakamaru’s head for the squeak in his shoes but now can’t be bothered to show the slightest offense at a rich boy calling him variations of dickhead.
Nakamaru is slowly learning that Kamenashi is one of those people who don’t follow patterns. Choking you one moment and then casually questioning the existence of your love life the next.
“I’m not taking it off,” Tegoshi emphasises as he winds down from his hissy fit. “It’s safer on me-and prettier.”
“I’ll repeat since it seems you were too distracted by my colleague to listen the first time,” Kamenashi says with a patience that’s rare enough from him to be considered creepy. “The Magpie is known to get what he wants. At all costs. We have documented cases of encounters that have resulted in casualties.”
“He’s right,” Nakamaru adds. “It’s for your own safety.”
Tegoshi lounges back on the couch with a sniff and a toss of his bleached blond head. “Which is why I have you. You’re the police, right? I shouldn’t have anything to fear with you around. Do your job and protect me… or my father will have you sued.”
Kamenashi returns Tegoshi’s sweet smile with one of his own and Nakamaru feels the eerie sensation of ants crawling up his skin. The temperature in the room is suddenly sub-zero.
“Well then,” Kamenashi rises and Nakamaru follows suit. He needs to be standing if he’s going to stop Kamenashi from lunging at their client. Tegoshi looks just as surprised as him when Kamenashi offers a handshake. “I hope we’ll suffice as your escorts for the time being.”
They’re making their way back to the foyer when Nakamaru can no longer contain his confusion. He has to lengthen his strides to keep up with Kamenashi’s pace.
“I thought the point of this operation was to lure out the Magpie, not to protect the ring,” Nakamaru whispers and nearly topples over when Kamenashi stops to pull out his phone.
“It is. If you think getting the ring off of that is a chore, then it’s a good thing you didn’t decide to become a notorious thief.”
Nakamaru follows his eyes to a gap in the door of the gallery which gives ample view of Tegoshi tittering in front of an ornate mirror. Nakamaru has to fight the urge to facepalm when he sees Tegoshi strike a pose with his ringed finger outstretched, free for the taking.
“He’ll do all the advertising for us,” Kamenashi says with a smirk and begins to dial a number.
“Who are you calling?”
“Koki.” At his confused look, Kamenashi expands with, “I need him to bring Sakura.”
His confused look remains until, hours later, Koki drives by with a forbidding looking Doberman sitting in the back seat. Nakamaru trips backward when the large dog unfolds from the car, the baby pink collar wrapped around her neck doing little to distract from her sharp canines.
“That’s my girl. She’ll do you proud!” Koki calls through the window before driving off, leaving Nakamaru frozen and helpless as Sakura stalks towards him. She pauses just a foot away, craning her head to look Nakamaru straight in the eyes, as if trying to decide if he’d make a good chew toy. Slowly, he takes a step back and is met with a rumbling growl.
Behind him, he can hear Kamenashi laughing.
“I don’t think she likes you.”
That makes two of you.
*
Sakura is a lot like Kamenashi with her dark, watchful eyes and unnerving stares that cast a judgement on him with his every movement. She watches Tegoshi just as closely which makes the young heir quiver and duck behind Nakamaru’s shoulder with an accusing glare aimed at Kamenashi.
“Trust me,” Kamenashi says, running a hand down Sakura’s back and smiling at how she melts under his touch, “if there’s a stranger nearby, she’ll smell him way before we do.”
Even Tegoshi has to concede to that fact and while he lets Sakura trail after him at a safe distance, convincing him to stay put inside the estate proves to be more difficult-which is just fine, Kamenashi tells him when Nakamaru expresses his concerns.
“I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be done with babysitting a rich brat sooner than later. If he wants to walk around as the Magpie’s bait then he’s doing us a favour,” Kamenashi drawls.
“Won’t it be harder to catch him in the open? He could be anyone.”
“Well then, you better keep your eyes wide open. No blinking allowed, Detective Nakamaru.”
Nakamaru gives him a deadpan look and Kamenashi laughs, leaning back on the wall outside Tegoshi’s bedroom as Tegoshi gets changed for a night of clubbing. For someone giving him tips to be more vigilant, Kamenashi looks strangely… relaxed. Save for the Glocks tucked into the sides of their boots, they’re dressed to match the scene: Kamenashi in jeans cut across the thigh and a t-shirt with an obscene glittery design across the front; he looks younger than he should, like someone who could enter the club and waltz away ten minutes later with a dozen phone numbers slipped into the back pocket of his low-hanging jeans.
Nakamaru is wearing a looser pair of jeans himself with a plain black shirt. It’s a safe choice but he stills feels uncomfortable outside his uniform, his shoulders already beginning to slouch. It’s especially strange to be dressed in such casual attire around Kamenashi of all people, like they’re meeting outside of work. Like they’re good ol’ buddies and Nakamaru doesn’t mind exposing the side of himself that’s supposed to be private and his to Kamenashi’s criticism.
He seems to be the only one who minds though; Kamenashi wears his clothes like a costume, slipping into the role of a carefree clubber with ease. He looks more excited than Nakamaru has ever seen him in the office and he has to ask because it doesn’t fit with the snippets he’d gathered from the talks about Kamenashi in the lunch room. He finds it hard to believe that Kamenashi’s bursts of absences result from a hangover of a night of partying.
“So… you go clubbing often?”
Kamenashi’s eyes are bright under the mini-chandeliers lining the ceiling of the corridor, his smile wide. It makes Nakamaru more wary than even Taguchi’s.
“Nah, I’m just looking forward to see how you’ll fare. It’s going to be a fun night.”
Nakamaru doesn’t understand what he means until Tegoshi finally comes flying out of his bedroom in a flurry of glitter and feathers and skirts and painted lips. There’s a long blond wig tied into a ponytail trailing down his back and he twists a lock of it around his ringed finger, looking the definition of a babe.
Nakamaru stares and turns to Kamenashi who claps him on the back with a smile that continues to grow. “Don’t worry, Nakamaru, I’m sure there will be plenty of men who prefer the quiet, indoor-guy look too.”
*
The only constructive thing that comes from Nakamaru’s first foray into a gay club is a hangover that puts Tegoshi out of commission the following day. Nakamaru had been tempted to head for the safety of the bar himself when one of his more aggressive admirers had launched an attack of lips at his cheek. He’d been rescued by Kamenashi creating a scene a few feet away and getting them kicked out. All in all, it was a night of first experiences since Nakamaru had never been manhandled and thrown out the door by a burly man dressed in nurse costume before.
When asked why he had felt the need to deck a man twice his size and send him to the floor in an unconscious heap, Kamenashi had hissed, “The fucker underestimated me.”
Seeing Kamenashi pat his backside with a dark look in his eyes, Nakamaru had found it wiser not to ask for the specifics on what the unfortunate man had done to meet Kamenashi’s fist.
“You’re a cop,” he had pointed out instead. We’re supposed to protect people, not send them to the hospital.
“Not today. Today I’m that thing’s groupie,” Nakamaru had turned around to see Tegoshi retching into a garbage can lining the sidewalk. “It’s a sobering experience,” Kamenashi had said with a queasy face of his own. His lip twitched into another smirk when his attention returned to Nakamaru. “I’d wipe off that lipstick if I were you, by the way. Wouldn’t want your girlfriend to misunderstand.”
Kamenashi had laughed as Nakamaru furiously rubbed at his cheek, his face as red as the imprint of lipstick.
Two days later, they’re pretending to peruse the menu in a coffee shop as Tegoshi stands in line for his order. “I need caffeine in my system if I’m going to hit the shops as hard as I plan to,” Tegoshi had squealed earlier, dragging them out, and Nakamaru had to cough to drown out Kamenashi’s mutter of, “Great, I need poison in mine.”
It’s a nice day with clear blue skies and he can see Sakura stretching in the sunshine outside the shop window, her collar leashed to a bike rack.
“I don’t have a girlfriend by the way,” he says unceremoniously because it’s awkward to stand not a foot apart and not talk at all. That and it feels wrong to make Kamenashi believe otherwise; even if it was Kamenashi’s assumption, it feels too close to a lie. “What made you think that I did?”
Kamenashi is wearing large sunglasses so Nakamaru can’t tell if he’s is surprised by the topic. Though even without them, Nakamaru doubts he could read Kamenashi at all if the man didn’t want him to. A teenager races in through the door and Nakamaru senses Kamenashi stiffen alongside him. The boy bustles his way to the front with distracted apologies and leaves the same way he had entered with a small frappuccino to-go.
False alarm. It takes a moment for Nakamaru’s muscles to unlock.
Kamenashi shrugs, his neck craning back to read the menu. “You seem like a pretty stable, healthy guy to me. Most stable and healthy guys are in a relationship at this stage in life.”
“Oh.” It made sense.
“So who was that with you in your picture then? Your ex?” Kamenashi grins. “Boyfriend?”
It takes Nakamaru a moment to realise that Kamenashi is referring to the picture he has propped up on his desk back at the station. He can’t help but snort at the thought which makes Kamenashi turn to him in curiosity.
“That was Massuda. My friend,” he adds when Kamenashi quirks an eyebrow. “We trained at the same academy. The girl was my sister.”
“Ah! I did notice a strong resemblance.” Kamenashi laughs and sends him a sweet smile, “I just pegged that on you being in love with yourself.”
Nakamaru rolls his eyes. “You’re hilarious, sir.”
*
They’ve only arrived at the second stop on Tegoshi’s planned shopping spree and Nakamaru is ready to call it a day and choke himself with a clothing hanger. It’s calming to know that Kamenashi is taking it much worse, a tick beginning to twitch near his eye.
“Blue? Or purple?” Tegoshi asks the mirror for the fifth time and waves the pair of sweaters in his hand.
“How about I beat your ass to match-”
“I like the purple,” Nakamaru interrupts smoothly. He doesn’t care either way but he’d rather not have them removed from the Magpie case because of Kamenashi attacking their only lead.
“Hmm. The purple is nice. It goes well with my complexion.” A few more minutes of waffling that stretch like eons and Tegoshi finally decides to go with the blue. “Now for the shoes!”
Kamenashi sends him a murderous look like it was Nakamaru’s idea to bring him along for shoe shopping.
“I thought you said it was good that he was advertising that he had the ring,” Nakamaru reminds once Tegoshi has skipped off to the washroom.
“It’s taking too fucking long.”
“It’s only been three days,” Nakamaru reasons. “Even the Magpie can’t be that good.”
“You’re right,” Kamenashi says and Nakamaru blinks at his sudden agreement. “He’s out. Find him a nice pair of sandals while I freshen up, ‘kay?”
Kamenashi is speeding away in clipped strides before Nakamaru can say another word.
“He really has to go, huh?” Tegoshi observes in distaste as Kamenashi passes him. “Finally it’s just the two of us!” Tegoshi locks their elbows and tugs him along. Nakamaru is still trying to figure out if Kamenashi just abandoned him to the tedious half of their duties again and lets Tegoshi drag him to the shoe aisle.
The smell of leather and rubber makes him nauseous and when they pass a mirror, Nakamaru finally realises and freezes in his step. Tegoshi nearly trips at the abrupt stop.
“Your ring. Where is it?”
Tegoshi’s eyes widen as he lifts his hand to his face, splaying his bare fingers. “I must have left it in the-”
Nakamaru is sprinting to the washroom in leaps, so fast that he almost slips on the waxed floor. When he gets there, the washroom is empty. He scans the sink and the nooks of each stall but it’s all empty. No sign of the ring or Kamenashi or the Magpie.
There’s a window high up in the corner of the washroom that can be reached by lunging off the toilette paper dispenser of the closest stall. The window is wide open, a scrap of torn fabric snagged by one if its corners.
“Shit.”
*
After looping circles around the mall like a madman and making a dozen calls to Kamenashi’s cell phone that go straight to voicemail, Nakamaru doubles over, panting, and decides to screw it. The car is still there and Sakura barks at him when she sees him return without her favourite detective of the two. Tegoshi is screeching in his ear, bemoaning the loss of his precious ring. It doesn’t help his mood.
He slams the car door when he gets in but can’t bring himself to undermine the speed jurisdictions. He just hopes that, if not him, Kamenashi had called for another back up. Someone who he trusted to watch his back.
The police station is in a frenzy when he finally gets there, Tegoshi trailing after him and Sakura immediately running over to give Koki a face wash. There are phone calls ringing left and right and even Taguchi looks busy. A quick listen tells him that the Magpie has been lost.
“Where’s my ring?” Tegoshi demands again, this time stomping his spiked boot. Nakamaru is ready to ignore him until he finds a concrete answer, when the door to Chief Kimura’s office opens and Kamenashi steps out. He looks like he tumbled down a hill with the way his shirt is creased and stained with dirt. His hair is a mess too but asides from a swelling near his lip, there doesn’t seem to be any injuries.
Tegoshi rounds on him instead. “Where is it?! You were supposed to stop it from getting stolen!”
Nakamaru notices how the nearby officers hedge away when Kamenashi glowers, but Tegoshi is too livid about losing his new favourite shiny accessory to be perturbed.
“Oh I don’t know, did you check the washroom you left it in?” Tegoshi purses his lips together with an angry snap as Kamenashi continues, “I don’t care about how many golden statues your father’s money can buy. You’d be wiser to invest in common sense but ah-I guess there’s a contradiction there.”
“You knew he would,” Nakamaru returns, cutting off Tegoshi’s string of curses. Kamenashi’s wandering eyes, his impatience; Nakamaru should have caught on much earlier. “You knew the Magpie was in the mall. That’s why you didn’t want to wait for Tegoshi in the washroom. You wanted him to go alone. You were baiting him.”
Tegoshi lets out another shriek of outrage but Nakamaru keeps his eyes locked with Kamenashi’s.
Kamenashi’s smirk is more of a fleeting twitch. “I didn’t know… but I suspected. Not many shoppers wear gloves inside a mall-but thieves who don’t want to leave any fingerprints do. And asides from this brat, people who enter the men’s washroom usually don’t wear heels.” The gears turning in Nakamaru’s head must be evident on his face because Kamenashi adds, “You’d do better to inspect your surroundings more carefully, Detective Nakamaru.”
“The Magpie is a woman.” Nakamaru blinks, piecing together what he had missed. “She got away.”
“With my ring. Just wait till you hear-”
“Oh for fuck’s sake-” Kamenashi takes a sharp turn and walks into his office. Nakamaru follows as Tegoshi stomps after him and they watch Kamenashi take out a small box from a drawer in his desk and slide it forward.
Tegoshi snatches it and releases an audible gasp when he opens the lid. Nakamaru stares at the skull ring nestled inside the box from over his shoulder.
“Take it and scram, brat, or I’ll set Sakura on you,” Kamenashi warns and Tegoshi does as he’s bid with a last, haughty huff of, “I’m still telling my father about this.”
Nakamaru watches Kamenashi roll his eyes and push up the cuffs of his sleeves with obvious irritation.
“It was a fake,” he says before Nakamaru can ask how he had wrestled away a ring from the city’s most notorious thief. “Not the one I just gave him, of course. Kimura’s on a damn power trip right now and transferred the case to Koki. He’ll be Tegoshi’s new babysitter.”
“I don’t understand,” Nakamaru says, feeling dumb and useless standing in Kamenashi’s office with no idea what’s going on about the case he was supposed to be a part of. Bizarrely, and not a little pathetically, it feels like Kamenashi locked him out of his secret clubhouse because he wasn’t cool enough. “How did-”
“It’s not that hard, Nakamaru. I sent a fake ring to Tegoshi’s estate and intercepted the delivery of the first one.” It arrived earlier than expected, Nakamaru remembers Tegoshi telling them. “The Magpie will soon find out that the one she stole is a knock-off and make another try so it’s not like I lost the lead-”
“We could have caught her,” Nakamaru says and Kamenashi looks up from where he’s fiddling with his keyboard like it doesn’t even matter that he kept his partner in the dark. Like he doesn’t owe anyone an explanation of why, least of all Nakamaru. “We could have caught her if you had told me or answered my calls or trusted me for even a second. What was the point of even bringing me along? To pacify me with the illusion that I was actually useful? O-or to serve as your entertainment? Something to laugh at and chase away the boredom?”
He doesn’t realise the increase in his volume until he takes a breath to wait for Kamenashi’s answer and the following pause feels too quiet.
Kamenashi’s voice is low to match and Nakamaru senses the pinpricks lurking underneath but is too numb to care. “Careful, you’re giving yourself too much credit, Officer Nakamaru.”
Nakamaru remembers the young couple who had driven away with their middle fingers waving at him through the window and thinks, to hell with manners.
“If you could have stopped to actually think and trust anyone outside yourself, this case would have been closed by now,” Nakamaru snaps, his words too fast and choppy, the heat building up uncomfortably around his collar. “You let all our hard work go to waste for nothing but your damn ego.”
Kamenashi could walk over and try to choke him again, here in this office he had never wanted to share in the first place, and there’s a brief moment when Nakamaru thinks he will-but the moment passes and Kamenashi’s face clears, as serene as a porcelain mask.
He leans back in his chair and flicks a hand towards the pile of paperwork on Nakamaru’s desk.
“Right,” Kamenashi drawls and something about his smirk sets Nakamaru’s teeth on edge, “all that hard work you spent playing origami.”
The silence pulls and stretches and finally snaps apart with a painful twang.
“I quit.” Nakamaru swallows. Kamenashi doesn’t even blink. “You don’t want me to be your partner and guess what? Now I don’t want to be yours either.”
It’s the first time he’s walked out on anyone.
*
There’s sadness and disappointment in Kimura’s face when Nakamaru hands over his request for a transfer, but there’s no real surprise.
“Are you sure this is what you want, Nakamaru? We could use a man with your discipline at our branch. It’s something the rest of the officers here sorely lack, as I’m guessing you’ve realised these past weeks.”
Kimura sends him a hopeful smile.
“When I came here, sir,” Nakamaru begins, speaking to the folded hands in his lap, “I came wanting to make a change. I still do but-back at home, when I wasn’t making sure that the traffic laws were being obeyed, I was in the office or in at the shooting range honing skills that I never had the opportunity to use.”
“A lot of senior officers would agree that that’s a good thing, Nakamaru.”
Nakamaru wets his lips and looks up. “But you see, sir, I can’t make a change-a real-change if I’m going to be stuck in the same situation. I could hardly make myself useful back at home and it doesn’t feel any different here.”
In the end though, he’d rather be a drone than Kamenashi’s play toy. Or monkey, as Ueda had put it. The monkey who waved around a banana thinking it was a sword. Nakamaru winces at himself for actually believing Kamenashi had accepted him, trusted him enough to fight alongside him.
He declines Kimura’s offer once more and Kimura doesn’t try to convince him again. Nakamaru stands to leave but there’s something he’s been wanting to know.
“Sir… can I ask why you assigned me to be Kamenashi’s partner in the first place?”
A soft, faraway look enters Kimura’s eyes. “Kazuya is like my son, one who’s perpetually stuck in that rebellious stage of puberty. He’s reckless but he’s good,” Kimura gives him a pointed look and adds, “or at least when he pauses to think. I read over your history personally, Nakamaru, and I was impressed. I knew you’d be able to take his… eccentricities in stride and work with him as his equal.”
The snort erupts from him without his permission and he bows sheepishly in apology.
“Sorry, sir, but I think Detective Kamenashi would laugh if he heard you.”
A bullet through a bull’s-eye and not even that could impress Kamenashi.
Kimura smiles wide. “He’d curse me behind my back and fantasize about maiming me, more like.” Nakamaru is about to mention how Kimura knows him well when Kimura continues, “But since he has likely sulked away to engage in a one suicidal activity or another to distract himself from losing such a worthy partner, I guess I’m in the clear.”
Nakamaru doesn’t bother correcting him that Kamenashi is more likely having a victory toast somewhere. Kimura seems to guess his thoughts though because he leans forward with his elbows on his desk and his chin resting on the link of his hands. His smile his frank, like one about to divulge a secret.
“The thing you have to understand about Kazuya, Nakamaru, is that he’s alone and he’ll never admit it-and when he’s not alone, he’ll never believe it. Given that I have the advantage of him not being present at the moment, I’ll go ahead and call him a coward. Nothing scares Kazuya more than the thought of relying on someone,” Kimura’s eyes crinkle at the corners, “even when he needs to. That’s why I chose you, Nakamaru.”
“Me, sir?”
Kimura nods. “You have skill, Nakamaru, and character. Kazuya is the type to rush along with the current but Gidou-san’s reference assured me that you’d be strong enough to hold him back. That’s what partners are for, after all.”
“I think that was the problem, sir. In Detective Kamenashi’s eyes, I held him back too much.”
Kimura sighs. “It’s unfortunate that you won’t be sticking around to convince him otherwise.”
Nakamaru bows. “I’m sorry to have disappointed you, sir.” When he stands and offers a salute, Kimura smiles at him warmly.
“You haven’t in the least.”
Nakamaru leaves the office feeling heavy, like there’s sand in his shoes, weighing down his steps. Kamenashi’s office is predictably empty and it doesn’t take him long to pack his belongings back into the same box he had unpacked them from a couple weeks prior. Weeks. It had only been weeks. Not even months. Even the name plaque on his desk was still empty. He came and left as a ghost, a no-name. A useless nobody.
He can already imagine the taunts the officers back home will harass him with and he releases a tired sigh; they’ll be nothing compared to Kamenashi’s verbal lashings. Massuda will be happy to see him at least, he thinks as he takes down the picture frame.
He’ll leave the box on his chair to pick up the next day when he comes to hand in his washed uniform.
“You lost, you know,” he says to Taguchi when he’s heading out. It’s late in the evening and he’s surprised to see Taguchi among the last officers to leave the station. A peek over the potted begonias on his desk shows him that Taguchi is researching the Magpie and Nakamaru has to bite back his curiosity; it’s not his case anymore. “How much will you have to cough up?”
Taguchi is wearing those nerdy spectacles again.
“If my math’s right, then… nothing.”
*
The next morning, Nakamaru wakes up to clouds and rain and it feels like one of those scenes in the movies where the character’s mood is metaphorically expressed by the weather. He feels damp with defeat and exhaustion and while there’s still a flicker of fight left in him when he thinks of Kimura’s request, it burns out under the memory of Kamenashi’s dismissal. Nakamaru has better ways to use his time than to force his presence on someone who neither wants it nor needs it.
His freshly laundered and ironed uniform swings inside a bag in his hand as he walks into the Central City police station for the last time. He waves back at Taguchi and Ueda and the other officers who send him friendly salutes. Barring Koki who is probably off escorting Tegoshi to another gay bar, there are surprisingly a lot of them. Most of them of which who have only previously acknowledged Nakamaru in whispered gossip.
How sweet, Nakamaru thinks, returning a stiff wave to an officer who had called him a ‘weak sort of fellow’. Suddenly, he wants to get out of here and leave everything behind as fast as possible.
He’s hoping Kamenashi won’t be around when he opens the door to his office and isn’t all that surprised when he learns that’s not the case. It comes with his luck. He straightens his shoulders and thinks, so be it. Let Kamenashi have his last parting shot.
He’s prepared for it this time and he moves towards the extra desk without a word of greetings-and freezes mid-step.
Detective Nakamaru Y.
The name plaque sitting on the desk is embossed with the letters of his name. The picture of his graduation from the academy is propped just next to it, along with his other belongings. Nakamaru turns to Kamenashi robotically, his movements so slow that he can almost hear his joints creak.
Kamenashi has his head ducked over his own desk and is scribbling furiously. Nakamaru has to blink repeatedly to confirm that he’s actually seeing Kamenashi doing the paperwork for the first time since he got here, and judging from the pile he had handed Nakamaru weeks earlier, possibly the first time ever. Nakamaru realises his jaw is hanging and closes it in a firm line.
It all feels like a set up.
He checks his seat for any fart balloon gags before he sits and isn’t entirely relieved when he doesn’t find any; that’s not Kamenashi’s style anyway. Kamenashi would go for something more dramatic and heavy, yet subtle, like a noose hidden in one of the drawers.
Nakamaru pulls at the top one and finds nothing.
He pulls at the bottom one and stares. There’s no noose.
Instead, there’s caramel. Cubes upon cubes of his favourite kind.
No sugar, no cream.
Nakamaru breathes and closes the drawer. For a long moment he just sits in his squeaky leather chair, staring at a younger image of himself smiling back at him like it was the best day of his life. When he finally turns to look at Kamenashi, he’s still scribbling, his eyes hidden by the fall of his bangs.
Nakamaru pulls out the pen he had tucked in his jacket earlier for a ‘last hurrah’ in case the situation called for it, and presses down on the top. The click makes Kamenashi’s hand twitch and that’s the only clue he gives of being very aware that Nakamaru is sitting just feet away from him. For now, it’s enough.
Nakamaru falls back in his chair, feeling a smile tug at his lips as he stares at his new name plaque.
“I guess I can accept your apology.”
From his periphery, he sees Kamenashi’s shoulders shake with a snort.
*
Retracting his request to transfer is pretty simple, Kimura tells him with a knowing smile, because he had never submitted them to be processed in the first place.
“I gave them to you four days ago, sir.”
“Did you? I must have misplaced them.”
Taguchi is grinning from ear to ear and even though it’s the default expression from him, it looks extra smug. Nakamaru decides not be baited; there’s still a chance that this is all a bluff. Maybe Kamenashi will fall out of his be-nice-to-Nakamaru funk as suddenly as he had fallen into it. It’s all very perplexing and Nakamaru keeps his guard up the following days to see what card Kamenashi will play next.
It turns out that it’s the same card over and over but with a change in delivery. Instead of throwing his ace at Nakamaru’s face, Kamenashi slides it forward with something akin to hesitation as he waits for Nakamaru’s response. It’s a bizarre role reversal that makes Nakamaru pause and scratch his head.
There are moments-like when Nakamaru will ask Kamenashi to pass him the stapler when he’s in the middle of finishing a report and Kamenashi will snap, “get off your ass and get it yourself” and then go still; he’ll look up at Nakamaru with his eyes strangely wide and hand over the stapler silently-moments where Kamenashi looks at Nakamaru like he’s seeing a ticking bomb and not the mild-mannered rookie officer who he couldn’t stand to share a room with.
It’s weird. Kamenashi is the crazy man, not him. Nakamaru wonders if Kimura had something to do with it but he doubts that even their respected chief could force out that strange smile from Kamenashi. It’s not a bad smile, per se; it’s actually pretty nice. Normal. Maybe a little strained at the corners but overall sweet and quieter than Taguchi’s. What’s out of place is that, more often than not, it’s directed at Nakamaru in lieu of the usual tight frown and mocking smirk he’s used to receiving.
Nakamaru admits that it’s the nice kind of weird, the kind that puts a spring in his step when he walks into the station each morning. The whispers have been snuffed out, at least the ones that made Nakamaru the butt of each joke, and Nakamaru soon realises that his victory in tying the partnership knot with Kamenashi lands him some sort of special status at the station. When he has something to say, the usual condescension he’d been met with is replaced by attentive ears and a silence that is filled with his words alone. He doesn’t even have to wait in line for the coffee machine.
“You’ve gone where no man, or no man here at least, has gone before,” Koki tells him and claps him on the back with a congratulatory smile. “I knew you’d be a trooper.”
Nakamaru pours a cup of coffee and then another. He stirs in two teaspoons of sugar and a quarter of cream in one and blows on the other.
“You placed money believing that I wouldn’t last more than a month.”
Koki bites his tongue in a guilty smile. “To be honest, I didn’t know you had the balls. Sorry, bro.”
If Nakamaru had known that standing up to Kamenashi’s bullcrap would change everything, he’d have done it a lot sooner.
“Don’t think it would’ve worked that way,” Ueda tells him. He looks a mix of sullen and bored now that his daily entertainment of watching Nakamaru scurrying about Kamenashi’s feet has come to an end. “Kame can be a bitch but he’s not completely heartless. It dragged on so long he probably felt sorry for you. Only a true masochist could have survived.”
“Thanks for the compliment,” Nakamaru says and returns to his shared office.
Kamenashi looks surprised when Nakamaru places a cup of coffee on his desk. Nakamaru doesn’t know if it’s due to Kamenashi relaxing his shield or Nakamaru becoming more astute to the hidden cues embodied in the small movements of Kamenashi’s expressions-his posture, the nuances of his voice-but slowly, Kamenashi has become easier to read. He’s still blurry around the edges but he’s no longer a walking question mark. It’s the difference between manoeuvring in pitch dark and walking just seconds before sunset.
There are shadows but at least now he knows where his steps land.
“I didn’t ask for one,” Kamenashi says, eyeing the innocent cup of coffee with both longing and suspicion.
“You looked like you needed one.” Nakamaru shrugs and sits at his desk. “Besides, I never asked for the caramels either.”
A small smile, equal parts embarrassed and pleased. Kamenashi takes a slow a sip and Nakamaru watches him come to life as the caffeine hits his system. It doesn’t make his eye-bags any less apparent but at least the furrows along his forehead smooth out. Like this, Kamenashi looks even younger than him. He looks good.
“It’s a disgusting habit, you know,” Kamenashi says and Nakamaru snaps his eyes back to his pile of reports, clearing his throat. “Chewing caramels like chips. I’m surprised your teeth haven’t rotted and fallen off yet. It would complete the ‘straight from the senior’s home’ image you’ve got going on.”
The watchful look enters Kamenashi’s eyes again but it disappears when Nakamaru shrugs.
“Say that when you’ve emptied the cigarettes in your top drawer and have managed to go a day without at least three cups of coffee.” He shuffles to straighten a pile of already neat and organised papers on his desk and adds, “I’m not made of glass, by the way, or dynamite or whatever else you think I’m made of. I won’t burst into tears or throw a fit. Whatever you say, I can take it so just… Just be yourself.”
There’s a long pause and when Kamenashi speaks at last, it’s just one word.
“Noted.”
What does that even mean-
Nakamaru turns to face him and the smile Kamenashi wears makes his hands pause.
It’s more real than Nakamaru has ever seen from him before; this time, it stretches up to meet Kamenashi’s eyes. It’s weird in a way that makes Nakamaru stare and for the first time-impossibly-he feels an odd, almost selfish desire to be the sole center of Kamenashi’s attention, the kind that makes his eyes squint and his defenses drop and makes Nakamaru feel like he’s some brilliant person just for sitting in its path.
Nakamaru tells himself that he’s worked hard to earn it, after all. It would be cheap aimed at anyone else. Kamenashi doesn’t trust just anyone. He trusts him.
Partners only come in twos.
*
The slight jump in his limbs when Nakamaru drops a bag of take-out onto Kamenashi’s desk confirms his guess that Kamenashi has mastered the ability to sleep with his eyes open. Every now and then, Nakamaru will be flipping through a file and pause to glance over when it’s been too quiet for too long and he’ll see Kamenashi staring off into space, his eyes glazed over with sleep. It’s creepy; the rings that grow darker around Kamenashi’s eyes each week make him look like a zombie.
Nakamaru doesn’t know how he does it-whatever it is that Kamenashi does when he’s off duty. Nakamaru can’t imagine him having enough energy to do anything other than flop face first onto his bed, but it’s apparent that sleep and Kamenashi are not good friends. Nakamaru wonders what he’s running on because it’s certainly not sleep or food.
He watches Kamenashi inspect the bag with beady eyes.
“Calamari from the Sea Shack… how did you know?”
Nakamaru smiles as he rips into the bag. He’d guessed right.
“I saw their menus in your waste basket. I thought it’d be your favourite.”
He thinks it’s a pretty nice and normal thing to do. You know, make sure your partner is well fed and isn’t about to tip over from a mysterious source of exhaustion. Something that should earn him one of Kamenashi’s rare smiles and a thank you.
Instead, Kamenashi stares at him with a deep fried squid tentacle peeking from his mouth.
“What are you, some sort of creepy stalker?”
So maybe gleaning information of his partner’s personal preferences from his trash can was a tad out of the norm. Nakamaru coughs and returns to his seat.
“You’re welcome.”
Kamenashi chews. Swallows. “Your face is red.”
“I know.”
“Is there something you want to tell me, Nakamaru?” The way Kamenashi says his name in a teasing lilt makes him flush even darker and Kamenashi laughs around his chopsticks. “You always wear that same constipated look but that sunburn of yours gives you away better than any polygraph test. You’re almost like Koki except even Koki knows better and keeps his heart on his sleeve instead of his face.”
“Well, I can’t exactly control the blood flow in my facial capillaries,” Nakamaru returns and watches Kamenashi chew on that thoughtfully along with another chopstick-full of calamari.
“You sound smart. Why did you decide to join the force instead of… I don’t know, becoming a biology teacher? Did the thought of teaching sex-ed to the kiddies scare you away?”
Nakamaru gives Kamenashi a look even though it’s true that he would rather take a bullet than say the words penis and vagina out loud to a classroom full of hormonal teenagers. The question is welcomed, however, because it gives him the opening to ask the same-without coming across as a ‘creepy stalker’.
He gaze falls to the smooth surface of his desk and he remembers the stern way his dad carried himself, the warmth that seeped through the cracks of his stiff shoulders and even stiffer words when he came home, tired but smiling, and ran a playful hand through Nakamaru’s hair.
“My dad,” Nakamaru begins, clearing his throat when his voice gets jammed, “he was your average salary man but he was always… there. For us. For anyone who needed help. He was sick so he couldn’t run around and play with me like all the other dads but he’d read to me. I’d fall asleep listening to him tell stories about super heroes and saving the world. That’s who you should be, he’d say. And then he was gone and becoming a cop was the closest thing to a hero I could think of.”
Nakamaru takes a slow breath and looks up. Kamenashi hasn’t taken a bite since he began to talk and his chopsticks hang loosely between his fingers. “How about you? What made you join?”
“Nothing special. I can’t really top that.” Kamenashi shrugs. He begins to talk only after Nakamaru keeps him pinned under an incredulous stare. “It’s really nothing. I was always on the smaller scale as a boy and you know how it is-the weak-looking kid with the squeaky voice gets the beating. I figured getting my hand on a gun would put an end to that and since I wasn’t particularly keen on landing in jail, I took the legal route.”
Nakamaru frowns and watches Kamenashi carefully. “You were bullied?”
“You weren’t?” Kamenashi gives him an amused look. “I had brothers too. Brothers much bigger than me.”
Nakamaru nods, picturing a younger and scrawnier version of Kamenashi scrapping it out with bigger kids, teeth and nails and all. He had imagined a more angst-ridden motivation for Kamenashi-something with blood and tears and an oath of vengeance shouted out in the rain-but a child’s simplistic desire for more power worked just as well. Ultimately, they had both joined for the same reason-to save.
There’s a tiny burp that Kamenashi fails to muffle under his napkin and Nakamaru grins at how he doesn’t meet his eyes when he says, “Thanks, by the way. I didn’t realise I was that hungry.”
“Soon you’ll fall over and wake from a concussion saying you didn’t realise you were that tired.”
Kamenashi snorts as he dumps the empty food carton into the trash. It’s his usual response when Nakamaru mentions anything about his eye-bags.
“Still trying to take me to bed?” Kamenashi feigns a look of innocence at Nakamaru’s flush. “I’m sorry; that was worded inappropriately.”
Nakamaru ignores his smirk in favour of getting to the point. “You could just let me help you. That black folder-whatever case you’re working on-it’s wearing you thin. Let me-”
“It’s none of your business,” Kamenashi interrupts with a sharpness in his voice Nakamaru hasn’t heard for a long time. “Next time try bribing me with something other than greasy deep fried squid and-oh wait, it still won’t be any of your business.”
Nakamaru wants to remind him that he just finished a jumbo carton of that greasy deep fried fish all on his own but Kamenashi is already standing and heading out the door with the black folder tucked under his arm. By the time Nakamaru manages to hop out of the office after stubbing his toe on the desk leg in his rush to go after him, Kamenashi has already exited the station.
“You just asked about his pet project, didn’t you? Wrong move.” Nakamaru turns around to see Ueda shaking his head at him. “You try taking a dog’s bone and you’ll get bitten.”
“You know about it?” Nakamaru asks with a twisting feeling in his gut. It’s a variation of the kind he gets whenever Kamenashi shares an inside joke with Koki or answers to Taguchi’s call of Kazuya.
Ueda gives him a look, his eyebrows half raised. “Dude, I didn’t steal your bone either. That black folder Kame keeps closer to his chest than his heart-it’s kind of an open secret. Everyone knows Kamenashi’s working on some secret case even the Chief won’t tell us about.”
“It’s confidential?”
Ueda gives a short laugh. “More like Kame’s a possessive hardass. Listen,” Ueda suddenly adds with a frown, “I wouldn’t be too keen on getting into whatever’s in that folder. Kame’s asked me to snoop around for info before and it gets pretty messy. Leave it on Kame’s plate. He’s tough enough to take care of it if he’s not asking for help.”
“Tell me honestly,” Nakamaru returns, “you’ve known Kamenashi for a long time-how many times as he asked for help?”
“Point,” Ueda concedes, “but if he doesn’t ask, he doesn’t need it.”
There’s a difference between want and need and it becomes clear when Kamenashi continues to come in looking worse than he did the day before. Nakamaru isn’t going to wait until Kamenashi gets to the point where he’s too broken to ask even if he wanted to-because that’s what it would take, he realises when Kamenashi dismisses his every offer with a glare and a “fuck off” or a “playing the partner card only works once”.
If Kamenashi won’t take his hand, then Nakamaru will just have to grab his.
<- part 1 II -> part 3
From: scorch66
Title: No Sugar, No Cream
Pairings/Characters: Nakamaru/Kame
Rating: PG13
Warnings: AU, violence, cursing, mentions of euthanasia
Notes: Before anything else is said, I’d like to say: I know.
Summary: Nakamaru is a small town police officer who transfers to a branch in the city in hopes of making a real difference. He’s partnered to a senior officer whose methods fall outside the law and eventually, Nakamaru finds himself playing the good cop to Kamenashi’s bad cop. He’s determined to make their partnership work, if only to save Kamenashi from himself.
part 1 || part 2 || part 3 || part 4 || part 5
After a drive up what felt like a mile long driveway of the Tegoshi estate, they’re asked to wait in the gallery. Nakamaru trails behind Kamenashi, feeling lost in the wealth being boasted at him by every square inch of the estate. The foyer itself feels like standing inside a ballroom with its high ceiling and crystal chandelier; Nakamaru can see his reflection in the marble flooring. It’s nothing compared to the gallery which has Nakamaru sucking in a breath as he steps inside, floating past the estate guards who hold open the doors for their entry.
If Kamenashi is even slightly impressed by the display of Tegoshi Yuya’s collection of artefacts, he doesn’t show it. While Nakamaru finds it hard not to feel overwhelmed, his eyes flitting between a jeweled mask encased in a glass box and a life-sized statue of entangled bodies that look to be made entirely of gold, Kamenashi looks little more than impatient.
He catches Nakamaru trying to make sense of the statue and rolls his eyes.
“Only a ponce with access to too much of his daddy’s money and too little sex would invest in fornicating gold.”
“Oh,” Nakamaru says, finally piecing together the parts and quickly looking away with an embarrassed cough.
He feels Kamenashi’s gaze fall on him and stick. When he looks up, Kamenashi is giving him a funny look, like he’s trying to swallow a smirk. Nakamaru doesn’t know why he bothers with the half-hearted attempt.
“I’m not a virgin,” Nakamaru says defensively.
“Okay.”
“I’m not. I know where things go.”
The smirk is loud and clear now. “It’s good that you’ve taken biology.”
“Oh for the love of-I’ve had sex before, okay.”
And of course that’s when Tegoshi Yuya enters the room.
*
Tegoshi Yuya looks just as doll-like in person as he does in his many tabloid snapshots, although this time there’s clarity sparking in his big eyes to match his saccharine smile. He keeps throwing glances at Nakamaru with the wide sweep of his eyelashes and his lips pursed in worry.
“Is he okay?” Tegoshi asks when Kamenashi is in the middle of debriefing the situation. Nakamaru doesn’t understand why he’s whispering when he’s right there.
“Don’t mind him,” Kamenashi responds without pausing. “He was born with a bad case of sun burn.”
Nakamaru forces a smile. “The room temperature is just a little too high for my liking.”
They’re sitting on one of the gallery’s expansive couches and Tegoshi leans over to stroke the back of his hand consolingly. It doesn’t match his flirtatious smile. “That statue always makes for interesting conversation.”
“I’d worry less about him and more about yourself,” Kamenashi interrupts brusquely. “The Magpie is notorious for getting his hands on what he wants and what he wants is currently in your possession. I believe you received a ring today-”
“Just this morning actually! It arrived earlier than expected.” Tegoshi fans his fingers at them to flaunt his new ornament. The ring is a chunky piece of antique silver, moulded into the shape of a skull. It’s not at all something Nakamaru would have classified as Tegoshi’s style. It looks almost grotesque on his dainty fingers.
“Beautiful, isn’t it? Of course people would have their eyes on it, although…” Tegoshi’s eyes snap to Kamenashi, narrowing in suspicion. “How did you know I’d have it?”
“It’s my job to know,” Kamenashi replies smoothly, “and if you want to keep that ring, I suggest you hand it over to the authorities for safekeeping until we know the Magpie has left town.”
Surprised, Nakamaru turns to the side to give Kamenashi an inquisitive look but something tells him he’d be wiser to keep quiet and nod along.
Tegoshi is less docile and immediately bristles at the idea of giving up a coveted accessory he had spent a week’s allowance on. Nakamaru expects the shrill insults and colourful display of spoiled self-absorption to crack Kamenashi’s calm but Kamenashi appears unfazed, almost pleased. It makes no sense because Kamenashi nearly threw a paper weight at Nakamaru’s head for the squeak in his shoes but now can’t be bothered to show the slightest offense at a rich boy calling him variations of dickhead.
Nakamaru is slowly learning that Kamenashi is one of those people who don’t follow patterns. Choking you one moment and then casually questioning the existence of your love life the next.
“I’m not taking it off,” Tegoshi emphasises as he winds down from his hissy fit. “It’s safer on me-and prettier.”
“I’ll repeat since it seems you were too distracted by my colleague to listen the first time,” Kamenashi says with a patience that’s rare enough from him to be considered creepy. “The Magpie is known to get what he wants. At all costs. We have documented cases of encounters that have resulted in casualties.”
“He’s right,” Nakamaru adds. “It’s for your own safety.”
Tegoshi lounges back on the couch with a sniff and a toss of his bleached blond head. “Which is why I have you. You’re the police, right? I shouldn’t have anything to fear with you around. Do your job and protect me… or my father will have you sued.”
Kamenashi returns Tegoshi’s sweet smile with one of his own and Nakamaru feels the eerie sensation of ants crawling up his skin. The temperature in the room is suddenly sub-zero.
“Well then,” Kamenashi rises and Nakamaru follows suit. He needs to be standing if he’s going to stop Kamenashi from lunging at their client. Tegoshi looks just as surprised as him when Kamenashi offers a handshake. “I hope we’ll suffice as your escorts for the time being.”
They’re making their way back to the foyer when Nakamaru can no longer contain his confusion. He has to lengthen his strides to keep up with Kamenashi’s pace.
“I thought the point of this operation was to lure out the Magpie, not to protect the ring,” Nakamaru whispers and nearly topples over when Kamenashi stops to pull out his phone.
“It is. If you think getting the ring off of that is a chore, then it’s a good thing you didn’t decide to become a notorious thief.”
Nakamaru follows his eyes to a gap in the door of the gallery which gives ample view of Tegoshi tittering in front of an ornate mirror. Nakamaru has to fight the urge to facepalm when he sees Tegoshi strike a pose with his ringed finger outstretched, free for the taking.
“He’ll do all the advertising for us,” Kamenashi says with a smirk and begins to dial a number.
“Who are you calling?”
“Koki.” At his confused look, Kamenashi expands with, “I need him to bring Sakura.”
His confused look remains until, hours later, Koki drives by with a forbidding looking Doberman sitting in the back seat. Nakamaru trips backward when the large dog unfolds from the car, the baby pink collar wrapped around her neck doing little to distract from her sharp canines.
“That’s my girl. She’ll do you proud!” Koki calls through the window before driving off, leaving Nakamaru frozen and helpless as Sakura stalks towards him. She pauses just a foot away, craning her head to look Nakamaru straight in the eyes, as if trying to decide if he’d make a good chew toy. Slowly, he takes a step back and is met with a rumbling growl.
Behind him, he can hear Kamenashi laughing.
“I don’t think she likes you.”
That makes two of you.
*
Sakura is a lot like Kamenashi with her dark, watchful eyes and unnerving stares that cast a judgement on him with his every movement. She watches Tegoshi just as closely which makes the young heir quiver and duck behind Nakamaru’s shoulder with an accusing glare aimed at Kamenashi.
“Trust me,” Kamenashi says, running a hand down Sakura’s back and smiling at how she melts under his touch, “if there’s a stranger nearby, she’ll smell him way before we do.”
Even Tegoshi has to concede to that fact and while he lets Sakura trail after him at a safe distance, convincing him to stay put inside the estate proves to be more difficult-which is just fine, Kamenashi tells him when Nakamaru expresses his concerns.
“I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be done with babysitting a rich brat sooner than later. If he wants to walk around as the Magpie’s bait then he’s doing us a favour,” Kamenashi drawls.
“Won’t it be harder to catch him in the open? He could be anyone.”
“Well then, you better keep your eyes wide open. No blinking allowed, Detective Nakamaru.”
Nakamaru gives him a deadpan look and Kamenashi laughs, leaning back on the wall outside Tegoshi’s bedroom as Tegoshi gets changed for a night of clubbing. For someone giving him tips to be more vigilant, Kamenashi looks strangely… relaxed. Save for the Glocks tucked into the sides of their boots, they’re dressed to match the scene: Kamenashi in jeans cut across the thigh and a t-shirt with an obscene glittery design across the front; he looks younger than he should, like someone who could enter the club and waltz away ten minutes later with a dozen phone numbers slipped into the back pocket of his low-hanging jeans.
Nakamaru is wearing a looser pair of jeans himself with a plain black shirt. It’s a safe choice but he stills feels uncomfortable outside his uniform, his shoulders already beginning to slouch. It’s especially strange to be dressed in such casual attire around Kamenashi of all people, like they’re meeting outside of work. Like they’re good ol’ buddies and Nakamaru doesn’t mind exposing the side of himself that’s supposed to be private and his to Kamenashi’s criticism.
He seems to be the only one who minds though; Kamenashi wears his clothes like a costume, slipping into the role of a carefree clubber with ease. He looks more excited than Nakamaru has ever seen him in the office and he has to ask because it doesn’t fit with the snippets he’d gathered from the talks about Kamenashi in the lunch room. He finds it hard to believe that Kamenashi’s bursts of absences result from a hangover of a night of partying.
“So… you go clubbing often?”
Kamenashi’s eyes are bright under the mini-chandeliers lining the ceiling of the corridor, his smile wide. It makes Nakamaru more wary than even Taguchi’s.
“Nah, I’m just looking forward to see how you’ll fare. It’s going to be a fun night.”
Nakamaru doesn’t understand what he means until Tegoshi finally comes flying out of his bedroom in a flurry of glitter and feathers and skirts and painted lips. There’s a long blond wig tied into a ponytail trailing down his back and he twists a lock of it around his ringed finger, looking the definition of a babe.
Nakamaru stares and turns to Kamenashi who claps him on the back with a smile that continues to grow. “Don’t worry, Nakamaru, I’m sure there will be plenty of men who prefer the quiet, indoor-guy look too.”
*
The only constructive thing that comes from Nakamaru’s first foray into a gay club is a hangover that puts Tegoshi out of commission the following day. Nakamaru had been tempted to head for the safety of the bar himself when one of his more aggressive admirers had launched an attack of lips at his cheek. He’d been rescued by Kamenashi creating a scene a few feet away and getting them kicked out. All in all, it was a night of first experiences since Nakamaru had never been manhandled and thrown out the door by a burly man dressed in nurse costume before.
When asked why he had felt the need to deck a man twice his size and send him to the floor in an unconscious heap, Kamenashi had hissed, “The fucker underestimated me.”
Seeing Kamenashi pat his backside with a dark look in his eyes, Nakamaru had found it wiser not to ask for the specifics on what the unfortunate man had done to meet Kamenashi’s fist.
“You’re a cop,” he had pointed out instead. We’re supposed to protect people, not send them to the hospital.
“Not today. Today I’m that thing’s groupie,” Nakamaru had turned around to see Tegoshi retching into a garbage can lining the sidewalk. “It’s a sobering experience,” Kamenashi had said with a queasy face of his own. His lip twitched into another smirk when his attention returned to Nakamaru. “I’d wipe off that lipstick if I were you, by the way. Wouldn’t want your girlfriend to misunderstand.”
Kamenashi had laughed as Nakamaru furiously rubbed at his cheek, his face as red as the imprint of lipstick.
Two days later, they’re pretending to peruse the menu in a coffee shop as Tegoshi stands in line for his order. “I need caffeine in my system if I’m going to hit the shops as hard as I plan to,” Tegoshi had squealed earlier, dragging them out, and Nakamaru had to cough to drown out Kamenashi’s mutter of, “Great, I need poison in mine.”
It’s a nice day with clear blue skies and he can see Sakura stretching in the sunshine outside the shop window, her collar leashed to a bike rack.
“I don’t have a girlfriend by the way,” he says unceremoniously because it’s awkward to stand not a foot apart and not talk at all. That and it feels wrong to make Kamenashi believe otherwise; even if it was Kamenashi’s assumption, it feels too close to a lie. “What made you think that I did?”
Kamenashi is wearing large sunglasses so Nakamaru can’t tell if he’s is surprised by the topic. Though even without them, Nakamaru doubts he could read Kamenashi at all if the man didn’t want him to. A teenager races in through the door and Nakamaru senses Kamenashi stiffen alongside him. The boy bustles his way to the front with distracted apologies and leaves the same way he had entered with a small frappuccino to-go.
False alarm. It takes a moment for Nakamaru’s muscles to unlock.
Kamenashi shrugs, his neck craning back to read the menu. “You seem like a pretty stable, healthy guy to me. Most stable and healthy guys are in a relationship at this stage in life.”
“Oh.” It made sense.
“So who was that with you in your picture then? Your ex?” Kamenashi grins. “Boyfriend?”
It takes Nakamaru a moment to realise that Kamenashi is referring to the picture he has propped up on his desk back at the station. He can’t help but snort at the thought which makes Kamenashi turn to him in curiosity.
“That was Massuda. My friend,” he adds when Kamenashi quirks an eyebrow. “We trained at the same academy. The girl was my sister.”
“Ah! I did notice a strong resemblance.” Kamenashi laughs and sends him a sweet smile, “I just pegged that on you being in love with yourself.”
Nakamaru rolls his eyes. “You’re hilarious, sir.”
*
They’ve only arrived at the second stop on Tegoshi’s planned shopping spree and Nakamaru is ready to call it a day and choke himself with a clothing hanger. It’s calming to know that Kamenashi is taking it much worse, a tick beginning to twitch near his eye.
“Blue? Or purple?” Tegoshi asks the mirror for the fifth time and waves the pair of sweaters in his hand.
“How about I beat your ass to match-”
“I like the purple,” Nakamaru interrupts smoothly. He doesn’t care either way but he’d rather not have them removed from the Magpie case because of Kamenashi attacking their only lead.
“Hmm. The purple is nice. It goes well with my complexion.” A few more minutes of waffling that stretch like eons and Tegoshi finally decides to go with the blue. “Now for the shoes!”
Kamenashi sends him a murderous look like it was Nakamaru’s idea to bring him along for shoe shopping.
“I thought you said it was good that he was advertising that he had the ring,” Nakamaru reminds once Tegoshi has skipped off to the washroom.
“It’s taking too fucking long.”
“It’s only been three days,” Nakamaru reasons. “Even the Magpie can’t be that good.”
“You’re right,” Kamenashi says and Nakamaru blinks at his sudden agreement. “He’s out. Find him a nice pair of sandals while I freshen up, ‘kay?”
Kamenashi is speeding away in clipped strides before Nakamaru can say another word.
“He really has to go, huh?” Tegoshi observes in distaste as Kamenashi passes him. “Finally it’s just the two of us!” Tegoshi locks their elbows and tugs him along. Nakamaru is still trying to figure out if Kamenashi just abandoned him to the tedious half of their duties again and lets Tegoshi drag him to the shoe aisle.
The smell of leather and rubber makes him nauseous and when they pass a mirror, Nakamaru finally realises and freezes in his step. Tegoshi nearly trips at the abrupt stop.
“Your ring. Where is it?”
Tegoshi’s eyes widen as he lifts his hand to his face, splaying his bare fingers. “I must have left it in the-”
Nakamaru is sprinting to the washroom in leaps, so fast that he almost slips on the waxed floor. When he gets there, the washroom is empty. He scans the sink and the nooks of each stall but it’s all empty. No sign of the ring or Kamenashi or the Magpie.
There’s a window high up in the corner of the washroom that can be reached by lunging off the toilette paper dispenser of the closest stall. The window is wide open, a scrap of torn fabric snagged by one if its corners.
“Shit.”
*
After looping circles around the mall like a madman and making a dozen calls to Kamenashi’s cell phone that go straight to voicemail, Nakamaru doubles over, panting, and decides to screw it. The car is still there and Sakura barks at him when she sees him return without her favourite detective of the two. Tegoshi is screeching in his ear, bemoaning the loss of his precious ring. It doesn’t help his mood.
He slams the car door when he gets in but can’t bring himself to undermine the speed jurisdictions. He just hopes that, if not him, Kamenashi had called for another back up. Someone who he trusted to watch his back.
The police station is in a frenzy when he finally gets there, Tegoshi trailing after him and Sakura immediately running over to give Koki a face wash. There are phone calls ringing left and right and even Taguchi looks busy. A quick listen tells him that the Magpie has been lost.
“Where’s my ring?” Tegoshi demands again, this time stomping his spiked boot. Nakamaru is ready to ignore him until he finds a concrete answer, when the door to Chief Kimura’s office opens and Kamenashi steps out. He looks like he tumbled down a hill with the way his shirt is creased and stained with dirt. His hair is a mess too but asides from a swelling near his lip, there doesn’t seem to be any injuries.
Tegoshi rounds on him instead. “Where is it?! You were supposed to stop it from getting stolen!”
Nakamaru notices how the nearby officers hedge away when Kamenashi glowers, but Tegoshi is too livid about losing his new favourite shiny accessory to be perturbed.
“Oh I don’t know, did you check the washroom you left it in?” Tegoshi purses his lips together with an angry snap as Kamenashi continues, “I don’t care about how many golden statues your father’s money can buy. You’d be wiser to invest in common sense but ah-I guess there’s a contradiction there.”
“You knew he would,” Nakamaru returns, cutting off Tegoshi’s string of curses. Kamenashi’s wandering eyes, his impatience; Nakamaru should have caught on much earlier. “You knew the Magpie was in the mall. That’s why you didn’t want to wait for Tegoshi in the washroom. You wanted him to go alone. You were baiting him.”
Tegoshi lets out another shriek of outrage but Nakamaru keeps his eyes locked with Kamenashi’s.
Kamenashi’s smirk is more of a fleeting twitch. “I didn’t know… but I suspected. Not many shoppers wear gloves inside a mall-but thieves who don’t want to leave any fingerprints do. And asides from this brat, people who enter the men’s washroom usually don’t wear heels.” The gears turning in Nakamaru’s head must be evident on his face because Kamenashi adds, “You’d do better to inspect your surroundings more carefully, Detective Nakamaru.”
“The Magpie is a woman.” Nakamaru blinks, piecing together what he had missed. “She got away.”
“With my ring. Just wait till you hear-”
“Oh for fuck’s sake-” Kamenashi takes a sharp turn and walks into his office. Nakamaru follows as Tegoshi stomps after him and they watch Kamenashi take out a small box from a drawer in his desk and slide it forward.
Tegoshi snatches it and releases an audible gasp when he opens the lid. Nakamaru stares at the skull ring nestled inside the box from over his shoulder.
“Take it and scram, brat, or I’ll set Sakura on you,” Kamenashi warns and Tegoshi does as he’s bid with a last, haughty huff of, “I’m still telling my father about this.”
Nakamaru watches Kamenashi roll his eyes and push up the cuffs of his sleeves with obvious irritation.
“It was a fake,” he says before Nakamaru can ask how he had wrestled away a ring from the city’s most notorious thief. “Not the one I just gave him, of course. Kimura’s on a damn power trip right now and transferred the case to Koki. He’ll be Tegoshi’s new babysitter.”
“I don’t understand,” Nakamaru says, feeling dumb and useless standing in Kamenashi’s office with no idea what’s going on about the case he was supposed to be a part of. Bizarrely, and not a little pathetically, it feels like Kamenashi locked him out of his secret clubhouse because he wasn’t cool enough. “How did-”
“It’s not that hard, Nakamaru. I sent a fake ring to Tegoshi’s estate and intercepted the delivery of the first one.” It arrived earlier than expected, Nakamaru remembers Tegoshi telling them. “The Magpie will soon find out that the one she stole is a knock-off and make another try so it’s not like I lost the lead-”
“We could have caught her,” Nakamaru says and Kamenashi looks up from where he’s fiddling with his keyboard like it doesn’t even matter that he kept his partner in the dark. Like he doesn’t owe anyone an explanation of why, least of all Nakamaru. “We could have caught her if you had told me or answered my calls or trusted me for even a second. What was the point of even bringing me along? To pacify me with the illusion that I was actually useful? O-or to serve as your entertainment? Something to laugh at and chase away the boredom?”
He doesn’t realise the increase in his volume until he takes a breath to wait for Kamenashi’s answer and the following pause feels too quiet.
Kamenashi’s voice is low to match and Nakamaru senses the pinpricks lurking underneath but is too numb to care. “Careful, you’re giving yourself too much credit, Officer Nakamaru.”
Nakamaru remembers the young couple who had driven away with their middle fingers waving at him through the window and thinks, to hell with manners.
“If you could have stopped to actually think and trust anyone outside yourself, this case would have been closed by now,” Nakamaru snaps, his words too fast and choppy, the heat building up uncomfortably around his collar. “You let all our hard work go to waste for nothing but your damn ego.”
Kamenashi could walk over and try to choke him again, here in this office he had never wanted to share in the first place, and there’s a brief moment when Nakamaru thinks he will-but the moment passes and Kamenashi’s face clears, as serene as a porcelain mask.
He leans back in his chair and flicks a hand towards the pile of paperwork on Nakamaru’s desk.
“Right,” Kamenashi drawls and something about his smirk sets Nakamaru’s teeth on edge, “all that hard work you spent playing origami.”
The silence pulls and stretches and finally snaps apart with a painful twang.
“I quit.” Nakamaru swallows. Kamenashi doesn’t even blink. “You don’t want me to be your partner and guess what? Now I don’t want to be yours either.”
It’s the first time he’s walked out on anyone.
*
There’s sadness and disappointment in Kimura’s face when Nakamaru hands over his request for a transfer, but there’s no real surprise.
“Are you sure this is what you want, Nakamaru? We could use a man with your discipline at our branch. It’s something the rest of the officers here sorely lack, as I’m guessing you’ve realised these past weeks.”
Kimura sends him a hopeful smile.
“When I came here, sir,” Nakamaru begins, speaking to the folded hands in his lap, “I came wanting to make a change. I still do but-back at home, when I wasn’t making sure that the traffic laws were being obeyed, I was in the office or in at the shooting range honing skills that I never had the opportunity to use.”
“A lot of senior officers would agree that that’s a good thing, Nakamaru.”
Nakamaru wets his lips and looks up. “But you see, sir, I can’t make a change-a real-change if I’m going to be stuck in the same situation. I could hardly make myself useful back at home and it doesn’t feel any different here.”
In the end though, he’d rather be a drone than Kamenashi’s play toy. Or monkey, as Ueda had put it. The monkey who waved around a banana thinking it was a sword. Nakamaru winces at himself for actually believing Kamenashi had accepted him, trusted him enough to fight alongside him.
He declines Kimura’s offer once more and Kimura doesn’t try to convince him again. Nakamaru stands to leave but there’s something he’s been wanting to know.
“Sir… can I ask why you assigned me to be Kamenashi’s partner in the first place?”
A soft, faraway look enters Kimura’s eyes. “Kazuya is like my son, one who’s perpetually stuck in that rebellious stage of puberty. He’s reckless but he’s good,” Kimura gives him a pointed look and adds, “or at least when he pauses to think. I read over your history personally, Nakamaru, and I was impressed. I knew you’d be able to take his… eccentricities in stride and work with him as his equal.”
The snort erupts from him without his permission and he bows sheepishly in apology.
“Sorry, sir, but I think Detective Kamenashi would laugh if he heard you.”
A bullet through a bull’s-eye and not even that could impress Kamenashi.
Kimura smiles wide. “He’d curse me behind my back and fantasize about maiming me, more like.” Nakamaru is about to mention how Kimura knows him well when Kimura continues, “But since he has likely sulked away to engage in a one suicidal activity or another to distract himself from losing such a worthy partner, I guess I’m in the clear.”
Nakamaru doesn’t bother correcting him that Kamenashi is more likely having a victory toast somewhere. Kimura seems to guess his thoughts though because he leans forward with his elbows on his desk and his chin resting on the link of his hands. His smile his frank, like one about to divulge a secret.
“The thing you have to understand about Kazuya, Nakamaru, is that he’s alone and he’ll never admit it-and when he’s not alone, he’ll never believe it. Given that I have the advantage of him not being present at the moment, I’ll go ahead and call him a coward. Nothing scares Kazuya more than the thought of relying on someone,” Kimura’s eyes crinkle at the corners, “even when he needs to. That’s why I chose you, Nakamaru.”
“Me, sir?”
Kimura nods. “You have skill, Nakamaru, and character. Kazuya is the type to rush along with the current but Gidou-san’s reference assured me that you’d be strong enough to hold him back. That’s what partners are for, after all.”
“I think that was the problem, sir. In Detective Kamenashi’s eyes, I held him back too much.”
Kimura sighs. “It’s unfortunate that you won’t be sticking around to convince him otherwise.”
Nakamaru bows. “I’m sorry to have disappointed you, sir.” When he stands and offers a salute, Kimura smiles at him warmly.
“You haven’t in the least.”
Nakamaru leaves the office feeling heavy, like there’s sand in his shoes, weighing down his steps. Kamenashi’s office is predictably empty and it doesn’t take him long to pack his belongings back into the same box he had unpacked them from a couple weeks prior. Weeks. It had only been weeks. Not even months. Even the name plaque on his desk was still empty. He came and left as a ghost, a no-name. A useless nobody.
He can already imagine the taunts the officers back home will harass him with and he releases a tired sigh; they’ll be nothing compared to Kamenashi’s verbal lashings. Massuda will be happy to see him at least, he thinks as he takes down the picture frame.
He’ll leave the box on his chair to pick up the next day when he comes to hand in his washed uniform.
“You lost, you know,” he says to Taguchi when he’s heading out. It’s late in the evening and he’s surprised to see Taguchi among the last officers to leave the station. A peek over the potted begonias on his desk shows him that Taguchi is researching the Magpie and Nakamaru has to bite back his curiosity; it’s not his case anymore. “How much will you have to cough up?”
Taguchi is wearing those nerdy spectacles again.
“If my math’s right, then… nothing.”
*
The next morning, Nakamaru wakes up to clouds and rain and it feels like one of those scenes in the movies where the character’s mood is metaphorically expressed by the weather. He feels damp with defeat and exhaustion and while there’s still a flicker of fight left in him when he thinks of Kimura’s request, it burns out under the memory of Kamenashi’s dismissal. Nakamaru has better ways to use his time than to force his presence on someone who neither wants it nor needs it.
His freshly laundered and ironed uniform swings inside a bag in his hand as he walks into the Central City police station for the last time. He waves back at Taguchi and Ueda and the other officers who send him friendly salutes. Barring Koki who is probably off escorting Tegoshi to another gay bar, there are surprisingly a lot of them. Most of them of which who have only previously acknowledged Nakamaru in whispered gossip.
How sweet, Nakamaru thinks, returning a stiff wave to an officer who had called him a ‘weak sort of fellow’. Suddenly, he wants to get out of here and leave everything behind as fast as possible.
He’s hoping Kamenashi won’t be around when he opens the door to his office and isn’t all that surprised when he learns that’s not the case. It comes with his luck. He straightens his shoulders and thinks, so be it. Let Kamenashi have his last parting shot.
He’s prepared for it this time and he moves towards the extra desk without a word of greetings-and freezes mid-step.
Detective Nakamaru Y.
The name plaque sitting on the desk is embossed with the letters of his name. The picture of his graduation from the academy is propped just next to it, along with his other belongings. Nakamaru turns to Kamenashi robotically, his movements so slow that he can almost hear his joints creak.
Kamenashi has his head ducked over his own desk and is scribbling furiously. Nakamaru has to blink repeatedly to confirm that he’s actually seeing Kamenashi doing the paperwork for the first time since he got here, and judging from the pile he had handed Nakamaru weeks earlier, possibly the first time ever. Nakamaru realises his jaw is hanging and closes it in a firm line.
It all feels like a set up.
He checks his seat for any fart balloon gags before he sits and isn’t entirely relieved when he doesn’t find any; that’s not Kamenashi’s style anyway. Kamenashi would go for something more dramatic and heavy, yet subtle, like a noose hidden in one of the drawers.
Nakamaru pulls at the top one and finds nothing.
He pulls at the bottom one and stares. There’s no noose.
Instead, there’s caramel. Cubes upon cubes of his favourite kind.
No sugar, no cream.
Nakamaru breathes and closes the drawer. For a long moment he just sits in his squeaky leather chair, staring at a younger image of himself smiling back at him like it was the best day of his life. When he finally turns to look at Kamenashi, he’s still scribbling, his eyes hidden by the fall of his bangs.
Nakamaru pulls out the pen he had tucked in his jacket earlier for a ‘last hurrah’ in case the situation called for it, and presses down on the top. The click makes Kamenashi’s hand twitch and that’s the only clue he gives of being very aware that Nakamaru is sitting just feet away from him. For now, it’s enough.
Nakamaru falls back in his chair, feeling a smile tug at his lips as he stares at his new name plaque.
“I guess I can accept your apology.”
From his periphery, he sees Kamenashi’s shoulders shake with a snort.
*
Retracting his request to transfer is pretty simple, Kimura tells him with a knowing smile, because he had never submitted them to be processed in the first place.
“I gave them to you four days ago, sir.”
“Did you? I must have misplaced them.”
Taguchi is grinning from ear to ear and even though it’s the default expression from him, it looks extra smug. Nakamaru decides not be baited; there’s still a chance that this is all a bluff. Maybe Kamenashi will fall out of his be-nice-to-Nakamaru funk as suddenly as he had fallen into it. It’s all very perplexing and Nakamaru keeps his guard up the following days to see what card Kamenashi will play next.
It turns out that it’s the same card over and over but with a change in delivery. Instead of throwing his ace at Nakamaru’s face, Kamenashi slides it forward with something akin to hesitation as he waits for Nakamaru’s response. It’s a bizarre role reversal that makes Nakamaru pause and scratch his head.
There are moments-like when Nakamaru will ask Kamenashi to pass him the stapler when he’s in the middle of finishing a report and Kamenashi will snap, “get off your ass and get it yourself” and then go still; he’ll look up at Nakamaru with his eyes strangely wide and hand over the stapler silently-moments where Kamenashi looks at Nakamaru like he’s seeing a ticking bomb and not the mild-mannered rookie officer who he couldn’t stand to share a room with.
It’s weird. Kamenashi is the crazy man, not him. Nakamaru wonders if Kimura had something to do with it but he doubts that even their respected chief could force out that strange smile from Kamenashi. It’s not a bad smile, per se; it’s actually pretty nice. Normal. Maybe a little strained at the corners but overall sweet and quieter than Taguchi’s. What’s out of place is that, more often than not, it’s directed at Nakamaru in lieu of the usual tight frown and mocking smirk he’s used to receiving.
Nakamaru admits that it’s the nice kind of weird, the kind that puts a spring in his step when he walks into the station each morning. The whispers have been snuffed out, at least the ones that made Nakamaru the butt of each joke, and Nakamaru soon realises that his victory in tying the partnership knot with Kamenashi lands him some sort of special status at the station. When he has something to say, the usual condescension he’d been met with is replaced by attentive ears and a silence that is filled with his words alone. He doesn’t even have to wait in line for the coffee machine.
“You’ve gone where no man, or no man here at least, has gone before,” Koki tells him and claps him on the back with a congratulatory smile. “I knew you’d be a trooper.”
Nakamaru pours a cup of coffee and then another. He stirs in two teaspoons of sugar and a quarter of cream in one and blows on the other.
“You placed money believing that I wouldn’t last more than a month.”
Koki bites his tongue in a guilty smile. “To be honest, I didn’t know you had the balls. Sorry, bro.”
If Nakamaru had known that standing up to Kamenashi’s bullcrap would change everything, he’d have done it a lot sooner.
“Don’t think it would’ve worked that way,” Ueda tells him. He looks a mix of sullen and bored now that his daily entertainment of watching Nakamaru scurrying about Kamenashi’s feet has come to an end. “Kame can be a bitch but he’s not completely heartless. It dragged on so long he probably felt sorry for you. Only a true masochist could have survived.”
“Thanks for the compliment,” Nakamaru says and returns to his shared office.
Kamenashi looks surprised when Nakamaru places a cup of coffee on his desk. Nakamaru doesn’t know if it’s due to Kamenashi relaxing his shield or Nakamaru becoming more astute to the hidden cues embodied in the small movements of Kamenashi’s expressions-his posture, the nuances of his voice-but slowly, Kamenashi has become easier to read. He’s still blurry around the edges but he’s no longer a walking question mark. It’s the difference between manoeuvring in pitch dark and walking just seconds before sunset.
There are shadows but at least now he knows where his steps land.
“I didn’t ask for one,” Kamenashi says, eyeing the innocent cup of coffee with both longing and suspicion.
“You looked like you needed one.” Nakamaru shrugs and sits at his desk. “Besides, I never asked for the caramels either.”
A small smile, equal parts embarrassed and pleased. Kamenashi takes a slow a sip and Nakamaru watches him come to life as the caffeine hits his system. It doesn’t make his eye-bags any less apparent but at least the furrows along his forehead smooth out. Like this, Kamenashi looks even younger than him. He looks good.
“It’s a disgusting habit, you know,” Kamenashi says and Nakamaru snaps his eyes back to his pile of reports, clearing his throat. “Chewing caramels like chips. I’m surprised your teeth haven’t rotted and fallen off yet. It would complete the ‘straight from the senior’s home’ image you’ve got going on.”
The watchful look enters Kamenashi’s eyes again but it disappears when Nakamaru shrugs.
“Say that when you’ve emptied the cigarettes in your top drawer and have managed to go a day without at least three cups of coffee.” He shuffles to straighten a pile of already neat and organised papers on his desk and adds, “I’m not made of glass, by the way, or dynamite or whatever else you think I’m made of. I won’t burst into tears or throw a fit. Whatever you say, I can take it so just… Just be yourself.”
There’s a long pause and when Kamenashi speaks at last, it’s just one word.
“Noted.”
What does that even mean-
Nakamaru turns to face him and the smile Kamenashi wears makes his hands pause.
It’s more real than Nakamaru has ever seen from him before; this time, it stretches up to meet Kamenashi’s eyes. It’s weird in a way that makes Nakamaru stare and for the first time-impossibly-he feels an odd, almost selfish desire to be the sole center of Kamenashi’s attention, the kind that makes his eyes squint and his defenses drop and makes Nakamaru feel like he’s some brilliant person just for sitting in its path.
Nakamaru tells himself that he’s worked hard to earn it, after all. It would be cheap aimed at anyone else. Kamenashi doesn’t trust just anyone. He trusts him.
Partners only come in twos.
*
The slight jump in his limbs when Nakamaru drops a bag of take-out onto Kamenashi’s desk confirms his guess that Kamenashi has mastered the ability to sleep with his eyes open. Every now and then, Nakamaru will be flipping through a file and pause to glance over when it’s been too quiet for too long and he’ll see Kamenashi staring off into space, his eyes glazed over with sleep. It’s creepy; the rings that grow darker around Kamenashi’s eyes each week make him look like a zombie.
Nakamaru doesn’t know how he does it-whatever it is that Kamenashi does when he’s off duty. Nakamaru can’t imagine him having enough energy to do anything other than flop face first onto his bed, but it’s apparent that sleep and Kamenashi are not good friends. Nakamaru wonders what he’s running on because it’s certainly not sleep or food.
He watches Kamenashi inspect the bag with beady eyes.
“Calamari from the Sea Shack… how did you know?”
Nakamaru smiles as he rips into the bag. He’d guessed right.
“I saw their menus in your waste basket. I thought it’d be your favourite.”
He thinks it’s a pretty nice and normal thing to do. You know, make sure your partner is well fed and isn’t about to tip over from a mysterious source of exhaustion. Something that should earn him one of Kamenashi’s rare smiles and a thank you.
Instead, Kamenashi stares at him with a deep fried squid tentacle peeking from his mouth.
“What are you, some sort of creepy stalker?”
So maybe gleaning information of his partner’s personal preferences from his trash can was a tad out of the norm. Nakamaru coughs and returns to his seat.
“You’re welcome.”
Kamenashi chews. Swallows. “Your face is red.”
“I know.”
“Is there something you want to tell me, Nakamaru?” The way Kamenashi says his name in a teasing lilt makes him flush even darker and Kamenashi laughs around his chopsticks. “You always wear that same constipated look but that sunburn of yours gives you away better than any polygraph test. You’re almost like Koki except even Koki knows better and keeps his heart on his sleeve instead of his face.”
“Well, I can’t exactly control the blood flow in my facial capillaries,” Nakamaru returns and watches Kamenashi chew on that thoughtfully along with another chopstick-full of calamari.
“You sound smart. Why did you decide to join the force instead of… I don’t know, becoming a biology teacher? Did the thought of teaching sex-ed to the kiddies scare you away?”
Nakamaru gives Kamenashi a look even though it’s true that he would rather take a bullet than say the words penis and vagina out loud to a classroom full of hormonal teenagers. The question is welcomed, however, because it gives him the opening to ask the same-without coming across as a ‘creepy stalker’.
He gaze falls to the smooth surface of his desk and he remembers the stern way his dad carried himself, the warmth that seeped through the cracks of his stiff shoulders and even stiffer words when he came home, tired but smiling, and ran a playful hand through Nakamaru’s hair.
“My dad,” Nakamaru begins, clearing his throat when his voice gets jammed, “he was your average salary man but he was always… there. For us. For anyone who needed help. He was sick so he couldn’t run around and play with me like all the other dads but he’d read to me. I’d fall asleep listening to him tell stories about super heroes and saving the world. That’s who you should be, he’d say. And then he was gone and becoming a cop was the closest thing to a hero I could think of.”
Nakamaru takes a slow breath and looks up. Kamenashi hasn’t taken a bite since he began to talk and his chopsticks hang loosely between his fingers. “How about you? What made you join?”
“Nothing special. I can’t really top that.” Kamenashi shrugs. He begins to talk only after Nakamaru keeps him pinned under an incredulous stare. “It’s really nothing. I was always on the smaller scale as a boy and you know how it is-the weak-looking kid with the squeaky voice gets the beating. I figured getting my hand on a gun would put an end to that and since I wasn’t particularly keen on landing in jail, I took the legal route.”
Nakamaru frowns and watches Kamenashi carefully. “You were bullied?”
“You weren’t?” Kamenashi gives him an amused look. “I had brothers too. Brothers much bigger than me.”
Nakamaru nods, picturing a younger and scrawnier version of Kamenashi scrapping it out with bigger kids, teeth and nails and all. He had imagined a more angst-ridden motivation for Kamenashi-something with blood and tears and an oath of vengeance shouted out in the rain-but a child’s simplistic desire for more power worked just as well. Ultimately, they had both joined for the same reason-to save.
There’s a tiny burp that Kamenashi fails to muffle under his napkin and Nakamaru grins at how he doesn’t meet his eyes when he says, “Thanks, by the way. I didn’t realise I was that hungry.”
“Soon you’ll fall over and wake from a concussion saying you didn’t realise you were that tired.”
Kamenashi snorts as he dumps the empty food carton into the trash. It’s his usual response when Nakamaru mentions anything about his eye-bags.
“Still trying to take me to bed?” Kamenashi feigns a look of innocence at Nakamaru’s flush. “I’m sorry; that was worded inappropriately.”
Nakamaru ignores his smirk in favour of getting to the point. “You could just let me help you. That black folder-whatever case you’re working on-it’s wearing you thin. Let me-”
“It’s none of your business,” Kamenashi interrupts with a sharpness in his voice Nakamaru hasn’t heard for a long time. “Next time try bribing me with something other than greasy deep fried squid and-oh wait, it still won’t be any of your business.”
Nakamaru wants to remind him that he just finished a jumbo carton of that greasy deep fried fish all on his own but Kamenashi is already standing and heading out the door with the black folder tucked under his arm. By the time Nakamaru manages to hop out of the office after stubbing his toe on the desk leg in his rush to go after him, Kamenashi has already exited the station.
“You just asked about his pet project, didn’t you? Wrong move.” Nakamaru turns around to see Ueda shaking his head at him. “You try taking a dog’s bone and you’ll get bitten.”
“You know about it?” Nakamaru asks with a twisting feeling in his gut. It’s a variation of the kind he gets whenever Kamenashi shares an inside joke with Koki or answers to Taguchi’s call of Kazuya.
Ueda gives him a look, his eyebrows half raised. “Dude, I didn’t steal your bone either. That black folder Kame keeps closer to his chest than his heart-it’s kind of an open secret. Everyone knows Kamenashi’s working on some secret case even the Chief won’t tell us about.”
“It’s confidential?”
Ueda gives a short laugh. “More like Kame’s a possessive hardass. Listen,” Ueda suddenly adds with a frown, “I wouldn’t be too keen on getting into whatever’s in that folder. Kame’s asked me to snoop around for info before and it gets pretty messy. Leave it on Kame’s plate. He’s tough enough to take care of it if he’s not asking for help.”
“Tell me honestly,” Nakamaru returns, “you’ve known Kamenashi for a long time-how many times as he asked for help?”
“Point,” Ueda concedes, “but if he doesn’t ask, he doesn’t need it.”
There’s a difference between want and need and it becomes clear when Kamenashi continues to come in looking worse than he did the day before. Nakamaru isn’t going to wait until Kamenashi gets to the point where he’s too broken to ask even if he wanted to-because that’s what it would take, he realises when Kamenashi dismisses his every offer with a glare and a “fuck off” or a “playing the partner card only works once”.
If Kamenashi won’t take his hand, then Nakamaru will just have to grab his.
<- part 1 II -> part 3