WIP: "The Stand-in"
As I've mentioned, I've been writing WIPs for months but not finishing anything so thought I might post them here to see if anyone has anything to say that might help or let me know if anyone is interested in them. Writing in mostly monk-like solitude can be dispiriting and alienating. (It does get seen by the wonderful akira17, who does beta for me in e-mails, which I greatly appreciate, but I never fully recovered from the loss of speaking to multiple people about these things in AIM in real time.)
The name of this WIP may change in the future since it's diverged somewhat from my original intentions, but for now it's "The Stand-in," currently a PG-13-rated Yoji/Aya that's Verbrechen/Strafe era but addresses Yoji's ~ahem~ problem with attempting to strangle female partners against his will in other parts of canon. Yoji is surprised when, after finding out about it, Aya tries to help him, which makes him start seeing Aya differently.
==========================
“The Stand-in”
by Viridian5
==========================
Aya watched Yoji walk into the trailer’s kitchen and saw surprise and an attempt to hide being distraught on Yoji’s face. Yoji had probably thought Omi had been the one in the kitchen up this late, not Aya. (The kid rarely slept, almost always working on *something*, and Aya didn’t know how he didn’t collapse from the weight of everything he did with almost no rest.)
Aya would’ve preferred being asleep, instead of here and awake, himself. On nights when the team didn’t have missions, he caught up on the sleep he missed, but the trailer didn’t have much insulation and the winter had turned *very* cold, so Aya--aching, shivering, almost every old injury hurting (and as an assassin, and having been in three building explosions in the last three years, he had a lot of them)--couldn’t.
Given all of his terrible life choices--and Kritiker’s terrible life choices for him--he didn’t know if he’d be lucky(?) enough to survive long enough to be thirty. Or if he’d be in any shape to want to by then.
Right now, he leaned back against the counter and cradled a mug of hot herbal tea in his hands, trying to get some warmth into his body and unlock his stiff muscles. Eschewing caffeine and sugar this late, the apple cinnamon tea was more a fragrance and a faint ghost of flavor than something enjoyable to drink, but he was just doing it for the steam and heat.
The others found his thick layers of pajamas, thick socks, and gloves as sleepwear amusing, especially since he wore a lot less for their missions. But while working he had adrenaline, exertion, and his concentration on the mission to keep him warm, and Abyssinian didn’t feel as much discomfort or pain as Aya did. Lying in a small bunk in a trailer in the dark with no distractions from his suffering body was different.
He and Yoji didn’t have the greatest relationship, Yoji obviously didn’t want Aya to notice his distress or that he’d come home early from his date, and Aya didn’t talk to people much, so should he even say anything or ask about it? In some circumstances Aya would’ve left the kitchen to give Yoji some privacy and prevent a conversation, but the kitchen was warmer than the rest of the trailer since he’d heated his tea water here and he had no intention of losing that.
After a few minutes of tense silence, Yoji sat at the small table, and even though he had most of his face turned away Aya could still see the attempt at calm stoicism fading from it. After a few more minutes, Yoji softly said, “You said that people like us shouldn’t be around normal, decent people. During the Nichol mission.”
“That’s not exactly it.” He’d said that assassins couldn’t just become normal civilians again and easily reintegrate into society after the things they’d done, and part of that talk came from him playing the killer with ice in his veins for the people trying to dupe them into executing each other. They had to believe he’d kill his own teammates if “Kritiker” ordered him to.
He was so glad that was over.
“It’s connected to it though.”
He didn’t want to ask. He didn’t want to ask. “What happened?” How bad was it? Would they need to tell Kritiker to send a cleaning crew? No, they wouldn’t tell Kritiker anything, not with how untrustworthy they’ve been lately, not with Aya also wondering if Kritiker had commanded them to live and work out of small, shitty, traveling mobile home as a punishment for... something, who knew, he didn’t. If Kritiker knew, would they put Yoji down like a rabid animal? Would they decide Yoji had become less discriminating and take advantage of that to send him after targets that wouldn’t be considered “dark beasts”? (Aya didn’t believe anymore that Kritiker only targeted criminals deserving of death; he’d realized even earlier that Kritiker didn’t care that much about the lives or well-being of the dark beasts’ victims. Such as his family.) Or would they come up with something even worse?
Kritiker shouldn’t be notified. Aya would need to put on a coat and boots, put his hood up over his fucking hair, and grab a tarp and shovel. He could ask more about the victim later. Or maybe Yoji would just tell him unprompted given how upset he seemed.
“It’s--” Yoji wrung his hands. “I can’t trust myself around women anymore... civilians. This is the third time, the third woman, that I-- I want to protect women! Including from myself if it comes down to it.”
What did he *do*?
Looking at the expression on Aya’s face, Yoji said, “I haven’t killed anybody!” But with an unspoken “yet” attached to it. “I can’t date anyone anymore. Not with... *this* happening when I--” He shook his head.
“Is this something your dates would report to the police and look for you about?”
“No! It hasn’t gone *that* far. They could excuse it as....”
Shit, this had to be about Yoji’s sex life, which Aya did *not* want to hear or know about. But Yoji dated and spent time around people as an outlet to get away from the Weiß part of his life, and how would he let off steam, what would he do, without it? Yoji needed other people, in ways Aya didn’t, and if Aya sometimes felt superior about that.... The four of them living together in a small trailer could get claustrophobic, and Aya had never lived so perpetually close to other people yet also isolated from them before. They just about lived in each other’s pockets these days but tried to give each other some small semblance of privacy by not engaging with each other much. Probably a recipe for disaster eventually.
Aya’s outlets tended to be dissociation, repression, and existentialism, probably also a recipe for disaster....
He’d thought *Ken* would be the team member they should worry most about cracking into violence against innocents, not Yoji.
“...is... there anything I could do to help?” Aya asked, regretting everything, but he’d stand by it. They couldn’t go into therapy, not when they couldn’t trust Kritiker therapists not to take advantage of them and knew Kritiker would severely punish them for seeking outside help. It wasn’t like they could tell outsiders what they really did for a living.
Yoji looked at him in surprise, probably that he’d offered. Did Yoji know that if he said it, he meant it, that he didn’t make empty offers out of some urge to be polite? “I... don’t know.” That look at Aya lengthened and... deepened.
Working in the flower shop, Aya had been forced to become somewhat inured to people staring at him, but he had no idea what Yoji was thinking or doing. “Yoji. What.”
“I’m just thinking.”
“Is that why you look like you’re in pain?”
“Hilarious.”
Finishing his apple and cinnamon-tinged hot water gave Aya the excuse he needed. “I’ll leave you alone to do that. Let me know later if you come up with something I could do. Good night.”
Unfortunately, he might be somewhat warmer now but still couldn’t sleep well, not with Yoji weighing on his mind. About an hour after Aya left Yoji in the kitchen, he heard him get into his own bunk and also fail to sleep well, though Yoji seemed to be deeply asleep when Aya got up to start his shift at the flower shop.
******************************************************
Yoji didn’t feel rested at all when he woke up, not surprising considering everything. He might have a kind of emotional hangover after what had happened last night. His body certainly felt about as shitty. (But he deserved that.) He took a shower, got dressed, and ate what he considered breakfast even though it was the afternoon on autopilot, letting routine and inertia keep him moving, as he tried not to think and feel about the things he didn’t want to think and feel about. Failed at that. He had experience in worrying about becoming one of the things he hated, but he hadn’t expected this flavor of it.
He loved women. He protected women. But he hadn’t managed to protect Asuka, either time, and now she seemed to be related to something inside him trying to strangle every other woman he tried to get close to, thus he now had to protect women from himself. He was never conscious of it when it started, and so far, he’d stopped himself in time, but.... He didn’t know for sure what triggered it. Because they were women? Because he felt romantic feelings for them? Because he didn’t deserve to have a romantic relationship? His date didn’t deserve such treatment, none of them did. He was a monster, so he had to stop getting too close to anyone he could hurt... or kill. Women. “Civilians”. Since he couldn’t tell anyone he dated about what he actually did for a living, he couldn’t warn or prepare them for what he might do, and they wouldn’t have the training or probably the strength to resist him anyway.
He’d have to stop socializing and flirting as much, which would hurt but better he hurt than they hurt. Still, socializing and flirting helped him stay healthy and as close to sane as an assassin could be, so that would be a problem. He might become more dangerous to himself and others.
He needed a break from these thoughts and feelings for a while, so he tried to think about something else but the closest he came to that turned out to be thoughts and feelings on Aya in the kitchen that night, which remained related to the rest of his horrors but apparently that would be as close as he could get.
Fine.
When he saw the light on in the kitchen from under the door, he’d expected it to be Omi, not Aya. He didn’t want to burden Omi with any of this either and had tried to hide his existential horror over what he’d nearly done, but that kid was *sharp* and would probably have gotten it out of him, even if he might take a different approach than Aya had. Yeah, he hadn’t expected Aya to be there. Hadn’t expected to see him in heavy, fuzzy pajamas, socks, and gloves, hair more disheveled than usual, hunched around a steaming mug of something that smelled spicy and fruity either. Although Aya had mentioned once or twice that how cold the trailer got at night bothered him, Yoji hadn’t guessed he suffered this much and hadn’t noticed before how much he layered up against it. Aside from seeming uncomfortable about parts of the conversation, Aya had also seemed more human and approachable, ironically *warmer*, willingly engaging with him about something personal and messy he didn’t need to be involved in instead of walking away. Offering him help!
And that was after he’d wondered at times if Aya hadn’t been acting during the Nichol mission, that he might actually be cold and inhuman enough to willingly execute Omi and Ken. But it *had* been an act, and Aya had even protected Kaori against seeing Weiß kill their target, blocking her view of it with his own body.
Maybe she’d reminded him of his little sister. The little sister he’d sold himself and his innocence to Kritiker for so he could pay for her medical treatment, only to have Kritiker send him across the country killing people for them after she’d come out of her coma instead of letting him spend any time with her. He’d gotten his revenge against Takatori Reiji and succeeded in protecting his sister’s life, the things he’d joined Kritiker for, and what had he gotten for it? More of the same, more killing, and these days he spent even less time with his sister due to Kritiker. You’d think he’d be more sullen and even less friendly to other people as a result, and yet he’d been there for Yoji in the kitchen last night.
Maybe the current Aya didn’t need to see Kaori as being like his little sister to feel the need to protect her from seeing any more bloodshed and horror after what she’d already been subjected to. Or maybe Yoji was being too kind to him, he didn’t know yet.
But Yoji had dawdled too much and had to put his customer service face and a smile on, no matter how he felt. Nobody wanted to see his emotional crisis; hell, he sure didn’t.
Once Yoji started working, he noticed Aya at his periphery. A few minutes later, Aya had quietly worked his way over to him and made a hand signal to come with him, farther away from the customers and Ken. After they’d found a much more private spot away from everyone, a somewhat dusty storage closet space, Aya said very softly, “I didn’t tell Omi or Ken about our conversation last night, leaving it up to you to decide what to do.”
Yoji had been too much of a mess to even think about that possibility. “Thanks.” Aya looking out for him.... “Do you think I *should* tell Omi?”
Aya’s brief “huh?” expression was kind of funny. “You’re asking this of the man who worked for the team for two years without telling any of them his real name or about the comatose sister he wanted to get revenge for?”
“Well.”
“No, I don’t think you should. I don’t trust Kritiker, not in general and especially not after Nichol and his crew recently infiltrated them and affected the orders we got. But Omi does, and he would tell them. I don’t know what they’d do to or with you if they knew, but I doubt it’d be anything good for you.” Aya had just admitted that he cared about Yoji’s welfare, possibly enough to get in trouble with their bosses.
“But, in a way, not trusting them is also a bit like not trusting Omi.” Nichol had tried to divide and conquer Weiß by splitting the team in half, setting Aya and Yoji to kill Omi and Ken for supposedly betraying Kritiker, forcing them to fight each other, knowing that would break some of them even if they lived. Although the team hadn’t fallen for it in the end and only pretended to turn on each other, the situation had still left a crack in their morale and sense of trust and they didn’t know how to talk to each other about it. Yoji still felt like Weiß had been divided in half, and he thought Omi and Ken might as well. He didn’t know for sure about Aya’s feelings.
“It is what it is. You haven’t noticed that our lives are shit?”
That surprised a laugh out of Yoji. But: “That... this thing with Omi and Kritiker... might become a problem.”
“We’ll add it to the list.”
Which *sucked*, but being here with Aya, right now.... Yoji used to feel like there was a wall between him and Aya, even when they talked and looked right at each other. Nothing he said or did could touch Aya, and Aya wasn’t really there with him. Once in a rare while, now and then, Aya would briefly put that wall down but it always went back up. In this conversation and earlier in the kitchen together, he didn’t feel that wall at all. Aya *looked* at him, warmly even, and let himself be seen. He made a connection to Yoji and encouraged it back. It made Yoji feel something.... (What was happening?)
“Where the hell are you guys?” Ken yelled. “I need you out here!”
“I needed Yoji’s help to find something!” Aya shouted back. “We’re done!”
“Good! Get out here!”
“Duty yells,” Aya said dryly.
“Thanks, Aya,” Yoji said, and didn’t know if it should hurt him that Aya looked surprised at being thanked.
When they returned to work, Aya’s wall went back up, for Ken, the customers, and for Yoji. Yoji tried not to take it personally or think Aya would never be open to him again. It went down a *tiny* bit when Omi came in for his shift but just when talking with Omi and not all the way. Yoji kept his quiet and cool until the shop workday ended and all the customers had left, going up to Aya as he closed out the register, counting the cash, and asked, “Aya?”
“Yoji?” Aya replied, looking directly at him. Thankfully, Aya was *there* again.
“Nothing.”
“Yoji!”
“Sorry! I didn’t mean to annoy you, I just needed to check something.” He didn’t want Aya to go back to shutting him out from annoyance.
“We have a mission tonight. Omi told me this morning.”
“Yay,” Yoji replied as flatly as possible.
Aya’s mouth turned up a little in a tiny smile in response. The sight did things to Yoji he didn’t understand. What the fuck.
******************************************************
Just as Yoji finished dressing for their mission, Aya walked into the room, and Yoji noticed that Aya’s pants, gloves, and shirt were made of thicker material than usual, Aya finally adjusting his uniform to colder winter temperatures. The mission shirt, fetishy as Aya’s often were, had straps that held it closed that went all the way up his neck. Still wore that flowing white coat open though. “I still don’t think you’re dressed warmly enough, given how much you seemed to be suffering from the cold last night,” Yoji said.
Apparently already in his assassin headspace, Aya said nothing and had his “wall” up. But he went into some drawers and found a deep blue scarf, close in color and shade to his shirt, looped it around his neck a few times, then pinned the ends together so they’d stay. It covered the lower half of his face too. He still said nothing but gave Yoji a significant look of *well?*
“I guess it’ll do. Better than nothing.” Aya doing things Yoji suggested could be rare, so he could settle on this and be pleased.
Aya responded with a quick obscene hand gesture that made Yoji snicker.
The mission went off without a hitch, almost exactly as they’d planned. Almost boring.
Immediately after they got inside the trailer, Aya unpinned and unwound the scarf and unbuckled his shirt’s straps all the way down to the middle of his chest, revealing that the sections of his hair that had been covered by the scarf were damp, darker in color, and spiked with sweat and his pale skin had a sheen of it. Seeing Aya like that made Yoji feel *hungry*. Something about his shiny, bared collarbones especially.... While Yoji preferred women, some guys got his interest too, especially lithe pretty boys, a category Aya definitely fit into, but the current intensity of his interest surprised him.
Noticing the team, not just Yoji, looking at him, Aya said, “I was trying something different but it didn’t work out. It made me sweat too much and the cold air on my damp hair wasn’t good.” He rummaged for a towel and used it to mop the sweat up off his skin before wrapping it around his head, unused side down, to cover his hair.
Omi looked like he was thinking something.... “You can have the shower first, Aya.”
“Thanks, Omi, but I think Ken should get it first. Since he’s messier, as usual.”
“I’m stuck somewhere between ‘thanks’ and ‘screw you,’” Ken said.
“I could change my mind.”
“Nope! I’m taking that shower!” Ken rushed off for it.
“I’m aware that you haven’t been sleeping much lately, Aya,” Omi said.
“Should I... go?” Yoji asked, not sure where this conversation might be heading.
“It’s not going to be that kind of talk, Yoji! I’m concerned and looking for solutions, not accusing anyone of anything.”
“You don’t have to leave, Yoji,” Aya said. “It’s not for lack of trying, Omi. It just that it gets too cold in this trailer at night lately and....”
“And?” Omi asked when Aya didn’t seem willing to go on, giving Aya that Omi look.
“And... and it makes my muscles stiffen up and a lot of my body hurt, and since I’m trying to *sleep* it’s not something I can just power through or ignore. It shouldn’t be a big deal, and it won’t be this cold forever.”
“Hurt why?”
“It seems like old injuries mostly. Scars, strained joints, broken bones. I’ve been through a lot in the last few years, we all have.” Maybe Aya figured that he’d already admitted a few things so he might as well go all in.
But having revealed all that, Aya probably regretted telling Yoji he could stay and listen. Yoji had figured out that Aya had been very cold last night but not that he’d been in *pain*, bad enough to keep him awake. Old people had to worry about the cold hurting their bodies from wear and decades of injuries; Aya should be too young for this.
“Is there something I could do to make things better for you?” Omi asked.
“I doubt you’d be allowed to do the thing that would improve my condition the most.”
“Which is?”
Aya ruffled through his hair with the towel and set it aside, possibly feeling silly having a serious talk with it on? “Get us out of this trailer and into a stable home base with proper insulation.”
“...that isn’t just about it being cold in here.”
Wow. Things were getting *interesting*. Yoji would be happy to see how this went down.
“Living in this trailer is affecting my physical health. I think it may be affecting the whole team’s mental health as well.” Aya didn’t so much as glance at Yoji while saying that, but Yoji knew. *Could* that be part of his problem?
“Mental health?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t understand, Omi, you’re too smart for that. We don’t have any routine or stable people in our lives; we have no one to rely on but ourselves; we’re constantly moving and having to learn new places and local customs. You’re constantly transferring to new schools and getting used to new curriculums and peers, and while I know you’re capable of it you shouldn’t have to keep doing this.”
“You also don’t get to see your sister.”
“That also being true doesn’t invalidate the rest of it.”
“You said you didn’t think I’d be allowed to get us a change in circumstances.”
“I don’t know why Kritiker thought this situation would be a good idea for the team to begin with. Do they really have no one outside of Tokyo to do the work, so they have to make the four of us cover the whole rest of the country? Surely local operatives with a better idea of local circumstances would do better? It doesn’t help our cover as florists either, being unable to build a steady clientele while we’re traveling Japan looking for people to kill. Do you know?”
Did Aya think Kritiker had put Weiß in the trailer as a constantly traveling murder team as punishment or sign of official displeasure? *Had* they? It made more sense than any other guesses Yoji could come up with.
“Maybe they think we can handle it,” Omi replied. Why was Omi baiting Aya like this? Left to himself, Aya wouldn’t have said or revealed much. Was he *trying* to incite him into leaving the team?
“For how long? And if this posting is a sign of Kritiker’s favor, I need to stop working so hard for them.”
~To Be Continued~
The name of this WIP may change in the future since it's diverged somewhat from my original intentions, but for now it's "The Stand-in," currently a PG-13-rated Yoji/Aya that's Verbrechen/Strafe era but addresses Yoji's ~ahem~ problem with attempting to strangle female partners against his will in other parts of canon. Yoji is surprised when, after finding out about it, Aya tries to help him, which makes him start seeing Aya differently.
==========================
“The Stand-in”
by Viridian5
==========================
Aya watched Yoji walk into the trailer’s kitchen and saw surprise and an attempt to hide being distraught on Yoji’s face. Yoji had probably thought Omi had been the one in the kitchen up this late, not Aya. (The kid rarely slept, almost always working on *something*, and Aya didn’t know how he didn’t collapse from the weight of everything he did with almost no rest.)
Aya would’ve preferred being asleep, instead of here and awake, himself. On nights when the team didn’t have missions, he caught up on the sleep he missed, but the trailer didn’t have much insulation and the winter had turned *very* cold, so Aya--aching, shivering, almost every old injury hurting (and as an assassin, and having been in three building explosions in the last three years, he had a lot of them)--couldn’t.
Given all of his terrible life choices--and Kritiker’s terrible life choices for him--he didn’t know if he’d be lucky(?) enough to survive long enough to be thirty. Or if he’d be in any shape to want to by then.
Right now, he leaned back against the counter and cradled a mug of hot herbal tea in his hands, trying to get some warmth into his body and unlock his stiff muscles. Eschewing caffeine and sugar this late, the apple cinnamon tea was more a fragrance and a faint ghost of flavor than something enjoyable to drink, but he was just doing it for the steam and heat.
The others found his thick layers of pajamas, thick socks, and gloves as sleepwear amusing, especially since he wore a lot less for their missions. But while working he had adrenaline, exertion, and his concentration on the mission to keep him warm, and Abyssinian didn’t feel as much discomfort or pain as Aya did. Lying in a small bunk in a trailer in the dark with no distractions from his suffering body was different.
He and Yoji didn’t have the greatest relationship, Yoji obviously didn’t want Aya to notice his distress or that he’d come home early from his date, and Aya didn’t talk to people much, so should he even say anything or ask about it? In some circumstances Aya would’ve left the kitchen to give Yoji some privacy and prevent a conversation, but the kitchen was warmer than the rest of the trailer since he’d heated his tea water here and he had no intention of losing that.
After a few minutes of tense silence, Yoji sat at the small table, and even though he had most of his face turned away Aya could still see the attempt at calm stoicism fading from it. After a few more minutes, Yoji softly said, “You said that people like us shouldn’t be around normal, decent people. During the Nichol mission.”
“That’s not exactly it.” He’d said that assassins couldn’t just become normal civilians again and easily reintegrate into society after the things they’d done, and part of that talk came from him playing the killer with ice in his veins for the people trying to dupe them into executing each other. They had to believe he’d kill his own teammates if “Kritiker” ordered him to.
He was so glad that was over.
“It’s connected to it though.”
He didn’t want to ask. He didn’t want to ask. “What happened?” How bad was it? Would they need to tell Kritiker to send a cleaning crew? No, they wouldn’t tell Kritiker anything, not with how untrustworthy they’ve been lately, not with Aya also wondering if Kritiker had commanded them to live and work out of small, shitty, traveling mobile home as a punishment for... something, who knew, he didn’t. If Kritiker knew, would they put Yoji down like a rabid animal? Would they decide Yoji had become less discriminating and take advantage of that to send him after targets that wouldn’t be considered “dark beasts”? (Aya didn’t believe anymore that Kritiker only targeted criminals deserving of death; he’d realized even earlier that Kritiker didn’t care that much about the lives or well-being of the dark beasts’ victims. Such as his family.) Or would they come up with something even worse?
Kritiker shouldn’t be notified. Aya would need to put on a coat and boots, put his hood up over his fucking hair, and grab a tarp and shovel. He could ask more about the victim later. Or maybe Yoji would just tell him unprompted given how upset he seemed.
“It’s--” Yoji wrung his hands. “I can’t trust myself around women anymore... civilians. This is the third time, the third woman, that I-- I want to protect women! Including from myself if it comes down to it.”
What did he *do*?
Looking at the expression on Aya’s face, Yoji said, “I haven’t killed anybody!” But with an unspoken “yet” attached to it. “I can’t date anyone anymore. Not with... *this* happening when I--” He shook his head.
“Is this something your dates would report to the police and look for you about?”
“No! It hasn’t gone *that* far. They could excuse it as....”
Shit, this had to be about Yoji’s sex life, which Aya did *not* want to hear or know about. But Yoji dated and spent time around people as an outlet to get away from the Weiß part of his life, and how would he let off steam, what would he do, without it? Yoji needed other people, in ways Aya didn’t, and if Aya sometimes felt superior about that.... The four of them living together in a small trailer could get claustrophobic, and Aya had never lived so perpetually close to other people yet also isolated from them before. They just about lived in each other’s pockets these days but tried to give each other some small semblance of privacy by not engaging with each other much. Probably a recipe for disaster eventually.
Aya’s outlets tended to be dissociation, repression, and existentialism, probably also a recipe for disaster....
He’d thought *Ken* would be the team member they should worry most about cracking into violence against innocents, not Yoji.
“...is... there anything I could do to help?” Aya asked, regretting everything, but he’d stand by it. They couldn’t go into therapy, not when they couldn’t trust Kritiker therapists not to take advantage of them and knew Kritiker would severely punish them for seeking outside help. It wasn’t like they could tell outsiders what they really did for a living.
Yoji looked at him in surprise, probably that he’d offered. Did Yoji know that if he said it, he meant it, that he didn’t make empty offers out of some urge to be polite? “I... don’t know.” That look at Aya lengthened and... deepened.
Working in the flower shop, Aya had been forced to become somewhat inured to people staring at him, but he had no idea what Yoji was thinking or doing. “Yoji. What.”
“I’m just thinking.”
“Is that why you look like you’re in pain?”
“Hilarious.”
Finishing his apple and cinnamon-tinged hot water gave Aya the excuse he needed. “I’ll leave you alone to do that. Let me know later if you come up with something I could do. Good night.”
Unfortunately, he might be somewhat warmer now but still couldn’t sleep well, not with Yoji weighing on his mind. About an hour after Aya left Yoji in the kitchen, he heard him get into his own bunk and also fail to sleep well, though Yoji seemed to be deeply asleep when Aya got up to start his shift at the flower shop.
******************************************************
Yoji didn’t feel rested at all when he woke up, not surprising considering everything. He might have a kind of emotional hangover after what had happened last night. His body certainly felt about as shitty. (But he deserved that.) He took a shower, got dressed, and ate what he considered breakfast even though it was the afternoon on autopilot, letting routine and inertia keep him moving, as he tried not to think and feel about the things he didn’t want to think and feel about. Failed at that. He had experience in worrying about becoming one of the things he hated, but he hadn’t expected this flavor of it.
He loved women. He protected women. But he hadn’t managed to protect Asuka, either time, and now she seemed to be related to something inside him trying to strangle every other woman he tried to get close to, thus he now had to protect women from himself. He was never conscious of it when it started, and so far, he’d stopped himself in time, but.... He didn’t know for sure what triggered it. Because they were women? Because he felt romantic feelings for them? Because he didn’t deserve to have a romantic relationship? His date didn’t deserve such treatment, none of them did. He was a monster, so he had to stop getting too close to anyone he could hurt... or kill. Women. “Civilians”. Since he couldn’t tell anyone he dated about what he actually did for a living, he couldn’t warn or prepare them for what he might do, and they wouldn’t have the training or probably the strength to resist him anyway.
He’d have to stop socializing and flirting as much, which would hurt but better he hurt than they hurt. Still, socializing and flirting helped him stay healthy and as close to sane as an assassin could be, so that would be a problem. He might become more dangerous to himself and others.
He needed a break from these thoughts and feelings for a while, so he tried to think about something else but the closest he came to that turned out to be thoughts and feelings on Aya in the kitchen that night, which remained related to the rest of his horrors but apparently that would be as close as he could get.
Fine.
When he saw the light on in the kitchen from under the door, he’d expected it to be Omi, not Aya. He didn’t want to burden Omi with any of this either and had tried to hide his existential horror over what he’d nearly done, but that kid was *sharp* and would probably have gotten it out of him, even if he might take a different approach than Aya had. Yeah, he hadn’t expected Aya to be there. Hadn’t expected to see him in heavy, fuzzy pajamas, socks, and gloves, hair more disheveled than usual, hunched around a steaming mug of something that smelled spicy and fruity either. Although Aya had mentioned once or twice that how cold the trailer got at night bothered him, Yoji hadn’t guessed he suffered this much and hadn’t noticed before how much he layered up against it. Aside from seeming uncomfortable about parts of the conversation, Aya had also seemed more human and approachable, ironically *warmer*, willingly engaging with him about something personal and messy he didn’t need to be involved in instead of walking away. Offering him help!
And that was after he’d wondered at times if Aya hadn’t been acting during the Nichol mission, that he might actually be cold and inhuman enough to willingly execute Omi and Ken. But it *had* been an act, and Aya had even protected Kaori against seeing Weiß kill their target, blocking her view of it with his own body.
Maybe she’d reminded him of his little sister. The little sister he’d sold himself and his innocence to Kritiker for so he could pay for her medical treatment, only to have Kritiker send him across the country killing people for them after she’d come out of her coma instead of letting him spend any time with her. He’d gotten his revenge against Takatori Reiji and succeeded in protecting his sister’s life, the things he’d joined Kritiker for, and what had he gotten for it? More of the same, more killing, and these days he spent even less time with his sister due to Kritiker. You’d think he’d be more sullen and even less friendly to other people as a result, and yet he’d been there for Yoji in the kitchen last night.
Maybe the current Aya didn’t need to see Kaori as being like his little sister to feel the need to protect her from seeing any more bloodshed and horror after what she’d already been subjected to. Or maybe Yoji was being too kind to him, he didn’t know yet.
But Yoji had dawdled too much and had to put his customer service face and a smile on, no matter how he felt. Nobody wanted to see his emotional crisis; hell, he sure didn’t.
Once Yoji started working, he noticed Aya at his periphery. A few minutes later, Aya had quietly worked his way over to him and made a hand signal to come with him, farther away from the customers and Ken. After they’d found a much more private spot away from everyone, a somewhat dusty storage closet space, Aya said very softly, “I didn’t tell Omi or Ken about our conversation last night, leaving it up to you to decide what to do.”
Yoji had been too much of a mess to even think about that possibility. “Thanks.” Aya looking out for him.... “Do you think I *should* tell Omi?”
Aya’s brief “huh?” expression was kind of funny. “You’re asking this of the man who worked for the team for two years without telling any of them his real name or about the comatose sister he wanted to get revenge for?”
“Well.”
“No, I don’t think you should. I don’t trust Kritiker, not in general and especially not after Nichol and his crew recently infiltrated them and affected the orders we got. But Omi does, and he would tell them. I don’t know what they’d do to or with you if they knew, but I doubt it’d be anything good for you.” Aya had just admitted that he cared about Yoji’s welfare, possibly enough to get in trouble with their bosses.
“But, in a way, not trusting them is also a bit like not trusting Omi.” Nichol had tried to divide and conquer Weiß by splitting the team in half, setting Aya and Yoji to kill Omi and Ken for supposedly betraying Kritiker, forcing them to fight each other, knowing that would break some of them even if they lived. Although the team hadn’t fallen for it in the end and only pretended to turn on each other, the situation had still left a crack in their morale and sense of trust and they didn’t know how to talk to each other about it. Yoji still felt like Weiß had been divided in half, and he thought Omi and Ken might as well. He didn’t know for sure about Aya’s feelings.
“It is what it is. You haven’t noticed that our lives are shit?”
That surprised a laugh out of Yoji. But: “That... this thing with Omi and Kritiker... might become a problem.”
“We’ll add it to the list.”
Which *sucked*, but being here with Aya, right now.... Yoji used to feel like there was a wall between him and Aya, even when they talked and looked right at each other. Nothing he said or did could touch Aya, and Aya wasn’t really there with him. Once in a rare while, now and then, Aya would briefly put that wall down but it always went back up. In this conversation and earlier in the kitchen together, he didn’t feel that wall at all. Aya *looked* at him, warmly even, and let himself be seen. He made a connection to Yoji and encouraged it back. It made Yoji feel something.... (What was happening?)
“Where the hell are you guys?” Ken yelled. “I need you out here!”
“I needed Yoji’s help to find something!” Aya shouted back. “We’re done!”
“Good! Get out here!”
“Duty yells,” Aya said dryly.
“Thanks, Aya,” Yoji said, and didn’t know if it should hurt him that Aya looked surprised at being thanked.
When they returned to work, Aya’s wall went back up, for Ken, the customers, and for Yoji. Yoji tried not to take it personally or think Aya would never be open to him again. It went down a *tiny* bit when Omi came in for his shift but just when talking with Omi and not all the way. Yoji kept his quiet and cool until the shop workday ended and all the customers had left, going up to Aya as he closed out the register, counting the cash, and asked, “Aya?”
“Yoji?” Aya replied, looking directly at him. Thankfully, Aya was *there* again.
“Nothing.”
“Yoji!”
“Sorry! I didn’t mean to annoy you, I just needed to check something.” He didn’t want Aya to go back to shutting him out from annoyance.
“We have a mission tonight. Omi told me this morning.”
“Yay,” Yoji replied as flatly as possible.
Aya’s mouth turned up a little in a tiny smile in response. The sight did things to Yoji he didn’t understand. What the fuck.
******************************************************
Just as Yoji finished dressing for their mission, Aya walked into the room, and Yoji noticed that Aya’s pants, gloves, and shirt were made of thicker material than usual, Aya finally adjusting his uniform to colder winter temperatures. The mission shirt, fetishy as Aya’s often were, had straps that held it closed that went all the way up his neck. Still wore that flowing white coat open though. “I still don’t think you’re dressed warmly enough, given how much you seemed to be suffering from the cold last night,” Yoji said.
Apparently already in his assassin headspace, Aya said nothing and had his “wall” up. But he went into some drawers and found a deep blue scarf, close in color and shade to his shirt, looped it around his neck a few times, then pinned the ends together so they’d stay. It covered the lower half of his face too. He still said nothing but gave Yoji a significant look of *well?*
“I guess it’ll do. Better than nothing.” Aya doing things Yoji suggested could be rare, so he could settle on this and be pleased.
Aya responded with a quick obscene hand gesture that made Yoji snicker.
The mission went off without a hitch, almost exactly as they’d planned. Almost boring.
Immediately after they got inside the trailer, Aya unpinned and unwound the scarf and unbuckled his shirt’s straps all the way down to the middle of his chest, revealing that the sections of his hair that had been covered by the scarf were damp, darker in color, and spiked with sweat and his pale skin had a sheen of it. Seeing Aya like that made Yoji feel *hungry*. Something about his shiny, bared collarbones especially.... While Yoji preferred women, some guys got his interest too, especially lithe pretty boys, a category Aya definitely fit into, but the current intensity of his interest surprised him.
Noticing the team, not just Yoji, looking at him, Aya said, “I was trying something different but it didn’t work out. It made me sweat too much and the cold air on my damp hair wasn’t good.” He rummaged for a towel and used it to mop the sweat up off his skin before wrapping it around his head, unused side down, to cover his hair.
Omi looked like he was thinking something.... “You can have the shower first, Aya.”
“Thanks, Omi, but I think Ken should get it first. Since he’s messier, as usual.”
“I’m stuck somewhere between ‘thanks’ and ‘screw you,’” Ken said.
“I could change my mind.”
“Nope! I’m taking that shower!” Ken rushed off for it.
“I’m aware that you haven’t been sleeping much lately, Aya,” Omi said.
“Should I... go?” Yoji asked, not sure where this conversation might be heading.
“It’s not going to be that kind of talk, Yoji! I’m concerned and looking for solutions, not accusing anyone of anything.”
“You don’t have to leave, Yoji,” Aya said. “It’s not for lack of trying, Omi. It just that it gets too cold in this trailer at night lately and....”
“And?” Omi asked when Aya didn’t seem willing to go on, giving Aya that Omi look.
“And... and it makes my muscles stiffen up and a lot of my body hurt, and since I’m trying to *sleep* it’s not something I can just power through or ignore. It shouldn’t be a big deal, and it won’t be this cold forever.”
“Hurt why?”
“It seems like old injuries mostly. Scars, strained joints, broken bones. I’ve been through a lot in the last few years, we all have.” Maybe Aya figured that he’d already admitted a few things so he might as well go all in.
But having revealed all that, Aya probably regretted telling Yoji he could stay and listen. Yoji had figured out that Aya had been very cold last night but not that he’d been in *pain*, bad enough to keep him awake. Old people had to worry about the cold hurting their bodies from wear and decades of injuries; Aya should be too young for this.
“Is there something I could do to make things better for you?” Omi asked.
“I doubt you’d be allowed to do the thing that would improve my condition the most.”
“Which is?”
Aya ruffled through his hair with the towel and set it aside, possibly feeling silly having a serious talk with it on? “Get us out of this trailer and into a stable home base with proper insulation.”
“...that isn’t just about it being cold in here.”
Wow. Things were getting *interesting*. Yoji would be happy to see how this went down.
“Living in this trailer is affecting my physical health. I think it may be affecting the whole team’s mental health as well.” Aya didn’t so much as glance at Yoji while saying that, but Yoji knew. *Could* that be part of his problem?
“Mental health?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t understand, Omi, you’re too smart for that. We don’t have any routine or stable people in our lives; we have no one to rely on but ourselves; we’re constantly moving and having to learn new places and local customs. You’re constantly transferring to new schools and getting used to new curriculums and peers, and while I know you’re capable of it you shouldn’t have to keep doing this.”
“You also don’t get to see your sister.”
“That also being true doesn’t invalidate the rest of it.”
“You said you didn’t think I’d be allowed to get us a change in circumstances.”
“I don’t know why Kritiker thought this situation would be a good idea for the team to begin with. Do they really have no one outside of Tokyo to do the work, so they have to make the four of us cover the whole rest of the country? Surely local operatives with a better idea of local circumstances would do better? It doesn’t help our cover as florists either, being unable to build a steady clientele while we’re traveling Japan looking for people to kill. Do you know?”
Did Aya think Kritiker had put Weiß in the trailer as a constantly traveling murder team as punishment or sign of official displeasure? *Had* they? It made more sense than any other guesses Yoji could come up with.
“Maybe they think we can handle it,” Omi replied. Why was Omi baiting Aya like this? Left to himself, Aya wouldn’t have said or revealed much. Was he *trying* to incite him into leaving the team?
“For how long? And if this posting is a sign of Kritiker’s favor, I need to stop working so hard for them.”
~To Be Continued~