FIC FOR ALIENASHI part 5
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
He gets the address from some digging at the station and when he arrives, he has no plan other than to camp outside Kame’s door until arrives, be it hours or days later. He has enough anger burning through his veins to keep him sustained for a week at the very least. He’s been up all night but his eyes haven’t even begun to droop.
The faded yellow light of dawn is cutting through the night when he hears steps on the metal framed stairway and turns to see Kame hobbling forward. Not even the sight of fresh blood leaking from Kame’s shoulder stops the acid in his words, although it has a diluting effect.
“Got a ride from one of your pals then?”
Kame stops dead in his tracks, his face small and ragged like he had just climbed out of a grave. He rushes at Nakamaru with a frenzied sort of panic that he hadn’t shown even a sliver of at the docks.
“What are you doing here? Get inside,” he hisses through his teeth and the pain as he unlocks the door and shoves Nakamaru inside. He turns to lock the door immediately and there are three separate locks which gives Nakamaru time to observe Kame’s living space.
It’s a shithole.
It’s a single room with a single door which he guesses leads to a closet-sized washroom. There’s no furniture or personal artefacts besides a futon rolled up in the corner and a pile of clothes next to it. There’s a stained rug in the center and finger-like cracks reach down from the walls. There’s a small portable stove set, the kind used for camping, sitting in another corner and a worn chest used for storage sitting underneath the single, boarded up window.
This isn’t where Kame lives; it’s where he hides.
“So this is what you’ve been up to all along, huh? A cop by day and a criminal by night?”
He watches Kame dart around the small room, inspecting corners for bugs-the kind that record. The paranoia joggles his memory.
“That’s why you attacked me in the locker room, isn’t it?” On hindsight, the irony is funny enough to make him laugh. “You thought I was working for them.”
Kame is refusing to look at him. He opens the chest and pulls out a first aid kit before closing it and sitting on the lid. He grimaces when he peels off his jacket, the caked blood making it stick. Nakamaru swallows and keeps his eyes on Kame’s face and nothing else. He needs his anger to keep afloat.
“Desperation brings out the worst and best in people and your survival skills were too crap to make you anything to worry about even if you were sent after me,” Kame says. He sounds tired but otherwise normal, like he’s chatting up Nakamaru at a bar. The night at the The Beatbox when he smiled drunkenly at Nakamaru, all the while hiding a beating under his shirt-the memory makes him want to walk over and punch Kame in the face because nothing fucking changed.
There’s a ripping sound as Kame tears off the sleeve of his shirt with his teeth and tosses the soaked fabric to the floor. It lands with a wet slap.
“Why didn’t you stay away?” comes Kame’s voice and there’s something about the softness in it, the surprise and the regret folded in the syllables, that makes him snap. The rage spills over like lava, burning them both.
“Are you out of your mind? What the hell were you thinking? You’re not some one man hero, Kame-you’re a lying bastard who doesn’t give a damn about anyone else.” He only realises he’s screaming when he hears his own voice rebound off the walls and back at him, shrill in his ears, but he can’t stop. Kame is watching him numbly with blood dripping down his arm and onto the floor but he can’t stop.
“How long were you planning on keeping this up, huh? Does partner even mean anything to you or are you so caught up in getting yourself killed that nothing else matters? Your badge-” he chokes, “What side are you even on?”
It’s not a question of loyalty-despite everything Kame has done to earn his doubt, he still trusts like a fool, like there’s no going back-but he throws it out there anyway. He wants Kame to blink twice at who he’s seeing, just like the way Nakamaru had when he saw Kame on the dock. He wants to yank the floor from under his feet and watch him fall.
The soundless wobble of Kame’s lips does nothing to sooth his anger but everything to heighten the desperation clawing at him. The yakuza-the fucking yakuza. They won’t ever let him go. They’ll drag Kame to a funeral at sea before they let him walk back to the police station.
Kame doesn’t answer any of his questions as he begins to patch himself up, his bangs falling over his eyes as he pulls out a bottle of alcohol and sloshes it over his shoulder, soaking the rest of his shirt. The room is suddenly filled with the smell of antiseptics and blood; if he closes his eyes, he can imagine himself standing in a hospital. By his father’s bed. At a funeral.
But he keeps them open, sees how the stray beams of weak sunlight that filter through the cracks of the boarded up window shroud Kame in a yellow light and make him look ancient. All bones and fatigue. He’s too tired to even hold back a hiss of pain when he pulls out the bullet and Nakamaru realises that he’s tired too-the anger trickles out of him like sand held in a clenched fist. He’s too drained to scoop it up again.
He walks forward silently and grabs the needle and thread from Kame’s hands. Kame gives them over, surprise making his eyebrows shift, but doesn’t say anything either. He angles his back to give Nakamaru enough room to stitch up his shoulder. His hands, which had been shaking since he had gotten out of the car, go still the instant the needle pierces Kame’s skin.
Nakamaru takes a deep breath and hears Kame do the same.
“I didn’t kill him,” Kame says into the silence. Nakamaru pulls the thread.
“I know.”
He knows Kame is too good to miss, knows that if Kame was aiming to kill, the man on the dock would have fallen over like a plank of wood with a bullet through his forehead. The man wouldn’t have staggered as he fell.
Pierce and pull. The blood makes his fingers slippery.
“Are you going to leave again?”
Kame sounds prepared when the thought never even crossed his mind. He couldn’t leave even if he wanted to. He wishes he could pack up his belongings and end this farce of a partnership for good, return to his hometown before he has to watch Kame die, but it’s the same as wishing his father was still alive.
Wishes couldn’t bend impossibilities.
“No, not this time. I’m still needed here,” Nakamaru replies and Kame’s head bobs in acceptance. There’s no fight or gratitude, just a screaming vulnerability in the bow of his nape. Nakamaru completes the final stitch and knots the thread. He moves around to face Kame with Kame’s blood staining his hands.
“I’m telling Kimura.”
A pause.
“He knows.” Kame won’t look up. “He asked me to do this.”
Nakamaru stares and remembers. He’s likely sulked away to engage in a one suicidal activity or another…
The sound of shattering glass is deafening when Nakamaru throws the empty bottle of alcohol against the wall. Kame jerks around and looks at him at last. The panic dissolves into something that’s harder and ready to put up a fight.
“No one forced me to go undercover. I chose to-and if it means I can capture the Shinigami, then I don’t regret it.”
“Shut up.” There are many things he can’t stand to hear right now and Kame’s twisted concept of heroism makes the top of the list, right along with Kimura calling Kame his son, that fuc-
“You’re shaking again. Look, Nakamaru, this doesn’t have anything to do with you,” Kame rushes, “I’ll take care of it. Nothing will happen to you or anyone, I prom-”
“Shut up.”
This time he knows he’s screaming. If he had another bottle, he’d toss it at Kame’s head this time. Kame’s mouth freezes with his lips parted. Silence takes over, thick and heavy with tension until Kame swallows and says, “I’m sorry…”
Nakamaru can feel it approaching, tentatively, inevitably.
“…but I have to.”
Nakamaru shuts his eyes and takes a long breath, his fists unclenching ever so slowly. When he opens them again, he knows what will have to be done.
“What did the Shinigami say to you?”
“That if my arm ended up permanently out of commission, he’d have to put me down too.” Kame scowls. “The fucking coward only dares to face cripples.”
“He knows about you then. That you’ve been hunting him.”
“He should have known long before Funaki went and squealed,” Kame’s expression darkens as he adds, “I should have killed him when I had the chance.”
“Right,” Nakamaru says tersely, “what better way to show your allegiance than to murder your boss’s son. If you had gone through with it, Kame, you and I both know you’d be an incapacitated corpse lying in a ditch somewhere.”
“It’s not like letting his ass live made much of a difference,” Kame mutters and winces at his shoulder. “A testament to their undying faith in me.”
The blood is beginning to dry on his hands and when he scratches at it, Kame points to the pile of clothes to the side.
“Help yourself. Depending on its mood for the day, the sink might or might not be working.”
It does-temporarily. After coughing up a couple spits it runs dry but it’s enough to clean his hands and wet one of Kame’s shirts. He manages to crawl out of the cramped washroom without bumping into any of the exposed pipes.
“Please don’t tell me you actually live here.”
Kame’s lips twitch, the first peek of humour of the day, as weak as the sunlight. “I won’t, then. But I do miss your couch.”
He helps Kame peel off what’s left of his shirt and drops it to the floor with another wet slap. Automatically, his eyes trace for any more hidden wounds but his shoddy stitch-work is the worst of it. He crouches between Kame’s legs and runs the shirt he had wetted from the sink over Kame’s skin, beginning from his neck, down the slope of his wide shoulders and to the tips of his fingers.
Kame shivers from the contact and Nakamaru can sense his eyes watching him just as closely-just as if they were back in Nakamaru’s apartment with Kame perched on the kitchen counter. When all Nakamaru had to worry about was a scratch on his arm and the Shinigami was their only threat.
The mix of blood and alcohol smudges away as he wipes down Kame’s chest, pausing when he reaches his navel and hears Kame suck in a sharp breath. He lingers there for a few seconds before he changes direction and moves the cloth upwards to clean the other side of Kame’s torso.
“You said they still don’t trust you.”
“They don’t,” Kame’s voice is thick and raspy and he clears his throats before he continues. “I guess shooting their opponent on command wasn’t enough. They’re difficult to please.”
Nakamaru nods and passes the cloth down Kame’s other arm.
“If you have any intention of continuing to live, you need to prove your loyalty to them.”
Kame’s laugh grazes his forehead like a warm, airy kiss.
“I’d offer them my firstborn child but that’s kind’a implausible.”
“You can offer them something else…” Nakamaru begins quietly as he cleans the creases of Kame’s palm with meticulous care. When he’s done, he meets the curiosity in Kame’s eyes head on. “They’d trust you if you offered up your partner.”
Nakamaru can pinpoint the exact moment Kame registers his proposal by the way his entire face caves in.
“Fuck you,” Kame breathes and Nakamaru finds himself being knocked backward onto the slippery floor. He’s at Kame’s mercy but he can’t bring himself to be scared of a man who’s already half dead.
“You said it yourself-it’s something you have to do and it’s a choice.”
“I mean it, Nakamaru, don’t you fucking dare-”
Nakamaru lifts himself up so that he’s seeing Kame eye to eye. “The decision’s already been made.”
*
In his head, it’s a simple plan. Risky, yes, but simple. Kame brings Nakamaru along as a peace offering and Nakamaru acts like he doesn’t know what’s going on. He’s betrayed and angry and he pulls out his gun to shoot his traitor of a partner and takes down the Shinigami instead. The gunshot cues for backup and in the chaos of the blaring police sirens, they get the hell away.
He thinks they can figure out the rest when they get there but they never do because the next day, Kame goes missing. He’d refused to stay at Nakamaru’s apartment and when Nakamaru arrived bright and early at his hide out, the floor was a still a mess and Kame was gone. Nakamaru had waited but Kame didn’t return that night or the night after or the night after that. He’d left his phone behind-his abductors hadn’t given him the time to grab it.
Kame had been found and Nakamaru had lost him.
On the first day of Kame’s disappearance, he crashes into Kimura’s office and slams the door shut. Kimura looks up, surprised but not surprised enough to stand from his chair and demand a reason for such an intrusion. He observes Nakamaru from behind his desk, his expression clear and calm.
“If you had a real son, would you have asked him to give up his life as easily as you asked Kame to give up his?”
The crease of a frown is sweet vindication, a lone wrinkle fraying at Kimura’s serenity.
“There aren’t many men out there who are as brave and dutiful as Kazuya.” Kimura speaks as if he’s a professor in a university class, slow and patient as he shuts down an outspoken student with veiled condescension. “It is never easy to put any of my men in danger’s way but this city isn’t kept safe by putting our officers on a leash. You of all people know that would never work on Kazuya anyway. The Shinigami is just the tip of the iceberg here, Nakamaru. This way we can take down two birds with one stone.”
Two birds that can fly away and one stone that has no choice but to plummet to the ground.
“Is that how you justify it then?” Nakamaru releases a hollow laugh that tapers off into fury. “You trap someone-someone who looks up to you-in a scenario where he’ll end up dead either way and that’s worth it to you? You sent Kame in alone and it’s because of you that he’s gone now.”
“Gone...?” Kimura stands and rounds his desk until he’s close enough for Nakamaru to see the honest fear lurking behind his searching eyes. “What happened to him? He was injured when I drove him home last night but it wasn’t fatal. Kazuya is good at taking care of himself.”
So Kimura was there too then-watching the exchange at the docks from the shadows just like Nakamaru. Both of them useless. Nakamaru wants to know what Kimura felt when he saw Kame get shot, wants to know if it was anything close to guilt.
“Not always,” Nakamaru returns; when he wasn’t being underestimated, Kame was being overestimated. After working with him for years, Kimura should have known better. Nakamaru squares his shoulders and looks Kimura straight in the eyes.
“I don’t care what the reporters will say,” he says flatly, a hard edge in his voice that he doesn’t bother sanding down in a show of respect. “Pull out all your resources. Every single one. Call in all the favours you’ve gathered over your years in the force, and tell everyone to get ready to dive in head first like he did. You owe it to him.”
When he turns to leave, Kimura calls out, “You sound a lot like Kazuya. He’s rubbed off on you.”
“You’re not the first one to tell me so, sir.”
Nakamaru slams the door again as he exits.
On the second day, the news has spread throughout the station and a cloud of anxious tension hangs above everyone’s head. There are whispers about the yakuza and the various kinds of torture methods they use and the whispers die as soon as Nakamaru enters within earshot. Nakamaru calls together the three other people Kame trusts most and by the end of a six hour meeting, calls have been made and they have a diagram and a plan to go with it. In theory, it should work.
On the third day, Nakamaru strolls down the street at his usual place. It’s a drab day with thin clouds that trap most of the sunlight and the air that fills his lungs is cool. Nakamaru recognises the footsteps that follow his own. When he passes the window of a bookshop, a discreet glance at the reflection tells him he’s being tailed by a man in a green trench coat. The same man who couldn’t take his eyes off Kame when he got himself drunk at The Beatbox.
Nakamaru had only realised a few days ago that he was seeing the man everywhere and after Kame’s abduction, the serendipity of it all took a more sinister turn.
He walks to the decrepit row of one-room lodgings that nest Kame’s hidey-hole and climbs up the metal framed staircase. The previous times he had come here, he had left when he heard the approaching foot falls of someone too heavy to be Kame. Now, he enters Kame’s room and leaves the door open behind him. He kneels as if he’s inspecting a stain on the rug and his heart thumps along with the footsteps outside.
They grow louder and louder until they stop and Nakamaru takes a breath to brace himself for the blow to the head that knocks him out in an instant.
On the fourth day, Nakamaru wakes up and sees Kame.
*
There’s a throbbing pain at the back of his head that makes his vision blurry but even after blinking the worst of it away, Kame still looks like he’s ready to murder him. So much for a happy reunion.
“Are you fucking insane?” Kame hisses through the bars of their adjoined cells. They’re more like cages though, square with crisscrossing bars that make square spaces that are large enough to allow his entire arm or leg pass through, but not the rest of him.
Nakamaru winces as he sits up, still feeling a bit dizzy. “And here I thought you’d be happy to see me.”
“Yes, you fucking moron,” Kame is gripping tightly at the bars, his face stony with rage, “you have no idea how much joy I feel seeing you trapped in here with me. I’ll be over the fucking moon when I watch them kill you-after they torture you that is. Nothing would make a sick bastard like me happier than hearing your screams.”
In another time and place, Nakamaru would hear the last line as flirty quip and turn red. But seeing as they’re trapped in what looks to be an underground storage area-judging by the damp cold chilling his bones and the stacks of crates-with a death sentence hanging over their heads and little time to spare, the gravity of the situation takes over.
He runs a thorough scan of Kame’s body to check for any additional injuries and catches Kame doing the same to him. He gives a wry smile. “Just a knock over the head. You?”
“A sore shoulder. You can stop trying to undress me with your eyes now.”
“I’m not-” Nakamaru sputters and stops. He takes a calming breath and observes their surroundings. It’s all dank darkness where the overhead lights aren’t shining. They’re caged in the corner of a spacious room that’s cluttered with crates that likely hold smuggled goods. The ceiling is low and the entire place smells like mold. They’re the only ones in the room, the only captives. Nakamaru can’t hear anyone else.
“Do you know where we are?”
“You mean besides trapped in a cage? No fucking clue.” Kame flings himself back against the bars, scowling at the entire room. “I was shoved in the trunk of a car when they drove me here so I didn’t see anything… but whatever route they took was pretty quiet. Either there were no other vehicles on the road or we’re stuck somewhere that doesn’t get any visitors from outsiders. Sucks to be us.”
Nakamaru chews on that for a moment. A hidden warehouse sounds like the most likely bet.
“Why did they bring you here after letting you go?”
“It was Funaki’s dear old dad who had given me a pass. Funaki Jr., on the other hand, still has a boner for me. He just can’t let me go. He can’t seem to forget about our brief affair in the interrogation room.” Kame sounds smug, like he’s proud of pissing off the son of a yakuza leader so thoroughly. “I wonder what his dad will say when he learns that his son disobeyed his orders for a personal vendetta.”
“You know, none of this would have happened if you had-”
“What? Let him get away with threatening to kill you? Try again, partner,” Kame says scathingly and his eyes slide back to Nakamaru like dull blades. “You’re right though. If I had known you had a death wish anyway, I’d have let him talk shit and then at least I wouldn’t be here, caged next to a dumbass.”
Nakamaru blinks. “It’s not like I expect you to be grateful or anything, but you could at least stop insulting me to my face when I’m here to rescue you.”
“…Rescue?” There’s so much incredulity in his voice that it overflows into a laugh. His humour is short-lived because the next second, he’s glaring Nakamaru down. “Whatever you’re doing, it’s not for me. I don’t need your blood on my already bloodied hands.”
Too bad, I’ve already got yours on mine, Nakamaru wants to answer back but he keeps that guilt to himself, locked away in a cupboard with other things he’ll never let happen again.
“You say that like I didn’t come prepared,” he says instead and reaches forward to slip off his shoe and then his sock. From between his toes, he pulls out a small chip and grins victoriously. “The real difference between you and me is that I at least rush in with a plan.”
Kame leans as close as he can get with the bars between them. “What’s that? A tracer?”
Nakamaru nods. “We don’t have to know where we are to be found. They’re probably already halfway here already.”
“They…?”
“Oh right,” Nakamaru says, loving how he has the upper hand over Kame for once, “another difference between us is that I know when to ask for help. And lucky I did because Taguchi got me this.” He pulls out a pen from inside his jacket and dangles it before Kame. Luckily, it had appeared too harmless to be confiscated.
“A clicky pen… Is this some joke?”
“Watch,” Nakamaru says and aims the tip of the pen at the hinges of his cage and holds it close to the metal. When he presses on the top, a beam of red hot laser shoots out and burns its way through. “Taguchi figured we’d end up trapped in something tougher than a knife could cut.”
When he turns, Kame looks a little awed. “Not even Taguchi could have designed that on such short notice.”
“No… but Ueda has scary connections and Tegoshi has money so the problem solved itself.”
“Tegoshi. You went to him for help?” Kame asks in visible disgust and Nakamaru can only shrug.
“He owed us,” Nakamaru pauses and remembers Tegoshi’s starry eyes when he agreed to lend Koki his whole month’s allowance in a heartbeat, “and I think he likes Koki.”
“Huh, I thought he was sweet on you.”
A hinge breaks loose and Nakamaru quickly moves onto the next, the pen heating up in his hand.
“I don’t think I’m his type.”
Kame hums at his back. “What is your type then?”
It’s the weirdest conversation to have in a moldy warehouse. He can feel Kame’s eyes scraping at the nape of his neck as he cuts through the second hinge and begins to work on the last. The metal is strong but thin, which is good because Nakamaru doesn’t know how much time they have until they’re no longer alone.
“I like them tall, calm and collected, and with a sunny disposition.”
There’s a snort. “Hate to break it to you, but Taguchi’s taken.”
Nakamaru smiles to himself and calls back, “Your turn.”
“Hmmm… I like them sweet as caramel.” There’s a pause. “How did you know I was still alive, by the way?”
Truth was, Nakamaru had never spared a thought otherwise. “The same way you knew I’d come for you.”
The last hinge breaks and with a shove of his hands, the side of the cage creaks and opens enough for him to slip out. Kame gives him a round of applause and it takes Nakamaru a moment to face him.
“Great, now open mine,” Kame says and watches him expectantly. His eyebrows furrow when Nakamaru shakes his head.
“We’re not going to fight them. Our safest bet is to sit still and play along until we get the signal and the squad comes to get us,” Nakamaru explains tersely and watches Kame bristle with every word. “I’m not taking any more chances with you. This is strictly a rescue mission.”
“You’re shitting me, right?” Kame stares at him angrily from behind the bars. “I’m not leaving without the Shinigami. He’s here. I saw him. I’m taking him down.”
“Er, no you’re not. You’re trapped in a cage for one,” Nakamaru points out. Kame rams himself against the bars in a futile effort and lurches pack with a grimace of pain. “And two, you’re not in your best shape.”
“Nakamaru. I swear if you don’t let me out I’ll-”
“Make my life a living hell yadda yadda. I doubt you can do worse than what I’ve been through the last few days,” Nakamaru interrupts easily and turns his back to peek into the crates. They’re not going to fight but if it comes down to it, they’re going to need ammunition for defense.
Kame keeps up his chant of curses as Nakamaru searches for a suitable weapon. Most of the crates hold rifles, the sight of which would make Ueda jump in joy, and it take him a couple of minutes before he finds pistols that are small enough to hide inconspicuously under their belts.
“You know, with all those death threats, I don’t know if I should give you one,” Nakamaru says thoughtfully before his lips quirk and he hands a pistol to Kame through the cage. “Be careful, it’s loaded.”
Nakamaru slides back into his cage and pulls back the wall of bars until it jams to give the illusion that he’s truly trapped.
“You mentioned something about a signal… what is it?”
Nakamaru shrugs and leans back to wait. “Koki said it’d be too obvious to miss.”
Kame inspects him slowly. “You’re oddly calm about this. What happened to my cute, fumbling, lamb of a partner?”
Nakamaru returns his look flatly. “You’ve antagonised the biggest criminal organisation in the world. I just figure things can’t possibly get any worse.”
*
Nakamaru has to rethink that when Funaki, followed by a cluster of his men that include the masked Shinigami, enters and descends the stairway and stops directly in front of Nakamaru’s cell.
“Drag him out,” Funaki orders and whips around to sneer at Kame with a manic glint in his eyes. “I did promise you the pleasure of seeing your partner be put to sleep. The Shinigami is going to put him down like a dog.”
The door to his cage is unlocked and rough hands grab at Nakamaru’s arm and toss him out onto the cement floor.
“You fucking son of a bitch,” Kame screams, pounding at the bars. “He has nothing to do with this! You’re a bastard but if you’re even half the man your father is you’ll finish your battles with the ones who start them.”
The passionate violence on his behalf is touching to witness but does nothing to help his situation. Nakamaru keels over, gagging on the floor when Funaki kicks at his stomach with a steel-toed shoe-the same way Kame would have done to him earlier in the interrogation room, if Nakamaru hadn’t stopped him. Way to repay the debt, asshole.
When the Shinigami steps forward and pulls out a dart from the pouch belted around his waist, Nakamaru catches Kame going for the gun hiding at his back and shouts a strangled, “Don’t!”
Kame’s eyes snap to his and Nakamaru holds onto them, urgent in his demand for patience.
Wait. Wait for the signal.
Kame drops his hand and Nakamaru takes a breath of relief. Kame shooting at them whilst trapped and surrounded in a cage would improve their situation for a split-second at most before everything spiralled to an end. Nakamaru had come here to make sure he lived.
“Not keen to die a dog’s death, hmm? I’ve just thought of something better, don’t worry,” Funaki says, his voice like oil and cruel pleasure twisting his face. He gestures for the Shinigami to step back and turns to Kame. “Today’s your lucky day, detective. You get to come out and play with us.”
The door to the cage squeaks on its hinges as Kame is pulled out and pushed to stand a couple feet opposite to Nakamaru. Kame’s expression has gone eerily blank again, his poker face pulled up so that not even Nakamaru’s eyes can reach him. It’s like whatever inbuilt security system his body protects him with has entered the lock down phase.
While Funaki counts the bullets in his gun, Nakamaru uses the opportunity to count the number of men surrounding them in the room. Eight in total, including the Shinigami. Odds of one to four. Nakamaru takes a shaky breath, hoping that it won’t come down to it.
“I learned this game overseas. It’s called Russian roulette,” Funaki says jovially and steps towards Kame with his gun held out handle first. “There’s room for twelve in this revolver and I’ve put in four. Ideally it should be one but, sadly, I have to speed up the process. I don’t have all day to watch you kill your partner, after all.”
“And if I shoot you?” Kame says, voice low and menacing and making Nakamaru panic more than anything else he’s heard today.
“Be my guest. You have a one third chance of getting me right in my blackened heart,” Funaki smiles slowly, “but if you miss, my men will put so many bullet holes in you that you won’t even get a chance to feel them. I’m sure your partner will agree that it’d be a fascinating sight, isn’t that right, Nakamaru?”
Funaki turns to him with the look of a child who has finally managed to trump the adults. He might be the first person in Nakamaru’s life to earn this much hate from him.
“My profession requires that I carry a badge with my name at all times,” Nakamaru says placidly. “It’s not exactly hard to find out who I am.”
Funaki’s face instantly puckers at Kame’s snort and he steps back with a mean snarl.
“The real question is whether you know what kind of a killer Kamenashi is, but I guess you’re about to find out.” Funaki turns to Kame. “I know how good your aim is. For each bullet you miss, I shoot one of my own. If I were you, I’d make it end quick. For his sake.”
“If you were me, Funaki, you’d have balls.”
Funaki’s lips curl to bare his teeth. “On my command. You disobey and my men will kill you both.”
“Point proven, then,” Kame mutters but raises his arms slowly, his eyes locking onto his target. Nakamaru still can’t read them. He’s standing at the end of Kame’s gunpoint and his palms are dry, his heart beating a slow drum, and he doesn’t feel a single sliver of fear.
Kame had made him eggs, that’s all he can think. They’re going to die anyway.
Kame pulls the trigger and in the painless silence that follows, something explodes nearby and the ceiling shakes over their heads.
Funaki swivels around to stare up at the door by the stairs. “What the hell was that-”
The second explosion makes the walls shake along with the floor and sends them all askew.
Their eyes meet and Kame’s face cracks into a wry grin. “I guess that’s your signal.”
They reach for their guns simultaneously and it’s a blur of adrenaline from there on out. In the midst of the raining bullets, they find each other and stand back to back as a duo of deadly synchrony as explosions outside continue to shake their world. Debris continues to fall from the ceiling like confetti and the lights begin to flicker, casting them in blips of darkness.
“Watch them overdue it and bury us alive,” Kame shouts over the noise. “This is why we never let Ueda get near the explosives.”
“To your left,” Nakamaru shouts back when he’s too preoccupied by the guy reaching for another gun after Nakamaru had knocked the first one away. This time, Nakamaru shoots at his hand. “That’s five down.”
“Six,” Kame calls a second later as a body crumples to their side.
Nakamaru coughs when a cloud of dust showers down on their heads. “We should get going before the ceiling collapses.”
“Right behind you.”
They shuffle towards the stairway with their backs still glued together and Nakamaru tries not to look down at the wounded and dying bodies they leave behind. They made a choice, he tells himself, even as he promises to send down the paramedics as soon as the situation is brought under control.
“Did you see Funaki?”
“No,” Nakamaru shouts, “please don’t tell me you killed him.”
“I wish,” Kame scowls in his ear. “That coward was probably the first one to run-there.”
Nakamaru suddenly finds himself leaning on air, his back bereft. He swirls around to see Kame streaking after the Shinigami who had slipped away, hiding under the cloak of chaos and biding his time to escape.
He should have waited longer.
Nakamaru watches as Kame tackles him in the side like a human-sized bullet and pins him to the floor, the force of his punches sending the Shinigami’s mask flying.
He’s following after, just a few meters away, when a pair of arms spring out from behind a crate and grab him in a choke hold. Kame pauses at his strangled cry and that gives the Shinigami enough of an advantage to throw him off and grab his mask.
“Humans are the biggest handicap,” the Shinigami says from behind his leering Noh mask before he slithers away.
Kame doesn’t chase after him.
Eleven consecutive rounds and a few seconds later, the grip around Nakamaru’s neck falls slack and the man who had been choking him hits the floor with four ruthless bullets embedded in his back-when only one would have sufficed.
Nakamaru wheezes, trying to get the walls to stop spinning. He keeps his gaze to the ground for a moment, to steady himself, and notices a pair of steel-toed shoes enter his periphery. They’re pointed in Kame’s direction.
Nakamaru moves without looking up.
He doesn’t remember the rest.
*
It’s the second time he’s woken up to Kame’s frown.
“I distinctly remember someone lecturing me about how there’s more to protecting people than jumping in front of a gun to take a bullet,” Kame says, seated close to his hospital bed. “I’d rather you stick to stopping speeding cars than continue playing the hero. You’re only going to get lucky so many times.”
Nakamaru glances down at the dull blue sheets that cover his legs. There are pillows inclining him forward and there are bandages covering the most of his torso. He feels too stiff to move and doesn’t bother to what with the way Kame is watching him like a hawk.
“So I guess it wasn’t an imaginary bullet this time,” he says dryly and Kame’s frown deepens. “I know, I know. I’m an idiot. What happened with Funaki?”
The question brings out an unexpected smile from Kame. He looks infinitely better than when Nakamaru last saw him, fisting it out with the Shinigami. For the first time in a long while, there’s no tension in his small build and even if it looks like he’d been camping in Nakamaru’s hospital room, judging by the mess of pillows and take-out cartons on the bench against the wall, he looks well rested. He doesn’t smell like smoke for once, just a refreshing combo of coffee and soap.
Nakamaru can’t take his eyes off him as he talks, carefree and animated.
“I think he’s lying in a bed on a floor above us, in the ICU quarters,” Kame says cheerily, “and before you start to freak-no, I didn’t touch him. That’s the beauty of it all. I saved his life.”
Nakamaru stares. “You what?”
Kame looks gleeful at his disbelief. “The poor bastard was standing in the wrong spot at the wrong time. One of the ceiling lights fell right on top him. Would’ve completely crushed his guts if he had any.” Kame gives him a soft smile and adds in a lower voice. “It was a good thing too. I was ready to murder him when you went down.”
“But you ended up saving him,” Nakamaru repeats, still not connecting A to B.
Kame shrugs. “It’s not like I wanted to. Believe me, if it was up to me, I’d have left him to rot but a little voice in my head that sounded suspiciously like you convinced me otherwise.”
Nakamaru nods with a burst of pride. “Because it was the right thing to do.”
This time Kame stares at him.
“No, because saving his yakuza ass would give us an advantage with his father,” Kame says slowly and sends him a smirk that’s both confused and pleased. “I wonder what I’ll have to do to make you let go of the idea that I’m actually a good guy deep down in my fuzzy core.”
Nakamaru wouldn’t have chosen the word fuzzy but he does believe it, lingering on the pages Kame would rather he flip past. Kame was a liar and a killer and had the temper of a raging bull, but in the moment when he could have captured the man he had been chasing after for years, putting his life on the line and laying waste to his life in the process, all that effort and physical endurance-he had let it slip by. Kame had turned his back to the Shinigami, all for him.
For a man who didn’t want a partner, Kame was sure bent on keeping one.
He didn’t even look angry.
Nakamaru clears his throat and the way Kame’s eyes instantly snap to him, attentive and caring, doesn’t help to ease his guilt.
“Did you catch him? The Shinigami?”
Kame shakes his head with a smile that doesn’t make sense. “Not yet. I didn’t want to close the case without my partner.”
*
They stop in front of a quaint apartment complex that doesn’t scream money but has a quiet, home-like comfort. There’s a park just a block away and families with strollers walk by in the courtyard, laughing and enjoying the good weather. There are three levels altogether and Nakamaru follows Kame up to the third, looking down at the colourful patches of flowers in the open courtyard that sway with the breeze.
The doors they pass each have a number and Nakamaru smiles at the quirky doormats and ornaments that decorate and separate each apartment from the next. It’s a cosy sort of neighbourhood where people feel safe enough to leave their shoes outside without fearing them disappearing the next day.
“Are you sure this is the right place?”
Kame turns over his shoulder. “Definitely. We’ve been tracking the Shinigami for days.”
“Right,” Nakamaru says, “how did you manage that again?”
Kame brandishes his hand, the sunlight hitting the silver skull of his ring and making it shine like a diamond and not some tacky piece of jewellery.
“It was a good thing I had it on that day,” Kame says with a smirk. “I broke his nose with the first punch-I can’t tell you how satisfying the crunch was-and then Taguchi figured out we could use the blood caught in it to trace back to a name. It led us straight to him.”
They stop in front of a door at the corner of the square complex. It’s a drab white with a #36 screwed on in the center. Nakamaru looks around and returns to Kame with a doubtful crease lining his forehead.
“I don’t know, Kame. This doesn’t look like his style.” Nakamaru had been expecting a high rise with a view of the entire city or a makeshift lair in the basement of a dilapidated building. Something that was either too good or too incriminating-not a normal apartment complex with normal people who sundried their laundry in the open instead of hiding it in a closet.
“You are going to be shocked,” Kame returns with barely suppressed excitement and turns to knock on the door in three sharp strikes. He angles his head in a way that will only allow his hair to be shown through the peephole.
Nakamaru feels his pulse quicken when he hears the door knob turn.
He stares when it swings open.
Kame shoves a foot in the doorway before it can be slammed closed again.
“Don’t be like this, Takeda,” Kame says in a low whisper. “Everyone will know about your late night ventures soon enough but let’s not create a scene here.”
For a moment, there’s no movement as they stare each other down, but it’s broken the next when Takeda gives one last slam of the door before disappearing inside his apartment. Kame dives in after him and Nakamaru follows right at his back, taking a second to secure the lock on the door; with the two of them, he’s more concerned about someone entering from the outside and serving as a shield than Takeda escaping.
Humans are the biggest handicaps. Nakamaru remembered.
He hears a crash and turns to see Kame heading for the washroom just as Takeda lunges out with a syringe in his hand. He stabs it right into Kame’s arm and a scream rips itself from Nakamaru’s throat. He has his gun out in the next second and it takes Kame stepping in front of Takeda for him not to press down hard on the trigger.
“Kame,” he says, his voice wobbly and thick. He needs to call the paramedics. He needs to flush out Kame’s system somehow. He needs to be there to catch Kame when he falls. He can make Takeda pay later.
Kame doesn’t fall though. He stands in his usual ready-to-fight posture and pulls out the syringe with the calmness of someone who knows all the cards. He tosses the syringe onto a table and watches it roll until it hits a pack of cigarettes. Kame’s lips quirk.
“My partner tells me that’s a filthy habit by the way,” he says before he turns around and punches Takeda in the face, knocking him back against a wall; a cheaply framed painting falls to the floor, “but then again, so is killing people. You won’t be short on vices anytime soon.”
“K-Kame, are you feeling okay? How are you still standing?” Nakamaru is still finding it hard to breathe and not only because the apartment is stuffy as hell. There’s clutter everywhere, paint and clay and papers and pens. The room is as colourful as the flowers blooming outside.
“He shouldn’t be,” Takeda says hoarsely, slumped against the wall with blood dripping from his cut lip. He’s staring at Kame as if he’s seeing a ghost. “Y-you should be dead. The pentothal should have-”
“Ah, but that’s not what was in that syringe. All you gave me was a shot of saline solution,” Kame says sweetly and turns to Nakamaru to explain. “Crow has been selling him knock-offs under our orders. It’s why the yakuza isn’t after us. Don’t worry; I won’t be leaving you partner-less anytime soon.”
Kame walks around the room, inspecting the papers strewn over every surface. They’re all drawings and sketches. Faces and landscapes and cartoon animals. Nothing to giveaway the sick mind behind the art.
Nakamaru finds Takeda more interesting and keeps his eyes on him instead; he has no faith in a man who hides behind a mask. Takeda is old enough to have grey in his hair, thin but not scrawny enough to have gaunt cheeks. His face is round, his eyes small behind his square framed glasses. He looks average in every way if one forgets about the fingers of metal poking out from his sleeve.
Nakamaru wants to know how a man with a prosthetic arm could go around murdering people with disabilities and not choke himself to death.
But first, Kame has a story he needs to tell. “What happened with the yakuza?”
“Hmm? My guess was right. He went after Hinamori, Funaki Sr.’s blind daughter,” Kame turns to Takeda briefly. “That was pretty foolish of you, by the way, to bite the hand that was feeding and protecting you. Thanks to us though, all you injected her with was a dose of anaesthetics low enough to knock her out for a couple hours.”
“That’s impossible!” Takeda lurches forward and Nakamaru walks over in three strides and knocks him back against the wall, keeping him there with a fist at his collar.
Kame smiles broadly. “Is it, though? To my understanding, it takes ninety seconds for the lethal injection to do its job and that’s a bit of a long wait for you, isn’t it? Not when you’re preoccupied with scurrying away and saving your hide. Too bad you didn’t stick around to see Hinamori blink awake in the arms of her furious dad.”
Nakamaru stares at Kame in awe. “You saved both of his children.”
The yakuza were all about honour in matters concerning their own blood and this was heavy enough to trump everything else Kame had done, enough to earn him a favour in the future. It turns out Kame was as good at stepping into someone’s graces as he was at jumping out of them.
Kame shrugs with a grin that gloats. “I feel like a kiss-up. I guess your heroism is contagious.”
“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” Takeda hisses and the nails of his prosthetic hand scratch at Nakamaru’s arm. His grip doesn’t loosen a notch.
“I could say the same for you.” Drops of Takeda’s blood fall onto his hand, making his lips curl in disgust. He tries to keep his voice steady. “Who are you? What do you do for a living?”
“Why do you care?” Takeda spits. Nakamaru meets his eyes squarely. He remembers all the faces in the black folder, the troubled lives Takeda had assumed as his duty to end. All the potential he had killed.
His words are cold and unforgiving. “I want to know what could have happened in your life to make you so twisted. I want to know how scum like you could go on existing in society without getting scrubbed off.”
A lopsided smile trips across Takeda’s face. “I was the one doing the cleaning. You don’t know how hard it is to live in this world. It’s survival of the fittest and those who aren’t fit enough are miserable. Ugly, miserable eyesores. They’d be happier de-”
“Leave him,” Kame calls softly and Nakamaru realises his grip has tightened of its own accord. He lets Takeda slip from his fingers and steps back, not trusting himself. He has to take calming breaths so he doesn’t end up screaming.
“With your arm like that, why didn’t you off yourself first?”
Takeda looks down at his arm and rubs at the robotic metal like it carries an itch. When his eyes return to Nakamaru, they blink with a mix of confusion and anger that’s so strong he knows it can’t be an act.
“My arm? What about it? I’ll die before you make a cripple out of me.” Takeda hugs his arm to his chest and glares at them.
“Whoever the Shinigami was, we knew he couldn’t be in his right mind to begin with,” Kame says quietly when Nakamaru turns to meet his eyes. “He’s an illustrator. He has a running manga series and he’s made covers for children’s books. He considers himself an artist. Just look around you, Nakamaru-he does everything that involves creating something beautiful.”
Something beautiful to hide the ugly.
“He’s a murderer,” Nakamaru says tightly.
“No argument there. It’s just interesting how he spends his days creating art and his nights destroying lives. One could say it’s a poetic contrast.” Kame flashes a small, humourless smile. “Like sweet and toxic.”
Takeda lets out an alarmed noise when Kame reaches to open a drawer at his desk. From inside it, Kame pulls out the red mask that had once filled Nakamaru with terror. Without a masquerader to don it, the expression moulded into the mask looks more woeful than menacing.
“Relax,” Kame says to Takeda, “we have much more evidence against you than this mask. You shouldn’t have lunged at me with a syringe if you wanted to play coy.”
“Let me see?” Nakamaru asks and Kame hands the mask over. Nakamaru flips it, inspecting both the front and back. “This is why we couldn’t trace your mask to a seller. No craftsman could identify the design. It’s your own variant, isn’t it? You made it yourself.”
Takeda nods, pride gleaming in his beady eyes. “Death is only an instrument to achieve an ideal existence.”
“Well, I don’t know about ideal but yours is sure about to change.” When Kame steps close and reaches into his jacket, Nakamaru straightens, expecting him to pull out a gun. Kame notices because he dangles the handcuffs at him with a smirk. “Doubted me?”
Nakamaru appraises him. “You’ve matured.”
“Nah, you’re just a terrible influence. Want to do the honours?”
Nakamaru accepts the handcuffs and snaps them around Takeda’s wrists, one flesh and bones, the other rods and wires.
“Takeda Kosuke, you are under arrest for the possession of illicit drugs, for cooperating with a criminal organization, and for committing a series of murders. You have the right to remain silent; anything you say or do will be used against you in a court of law.”
“I personally love it when they scream,” Kame adds and claps him on the back. When they’ve packed Takeda into the backseat of the car, Kame looks over the hood and gives him a grin. “By the way, since you’re the one who arrested him, you’re writing the report.”
There’s too much exasperation for Nakamaru to contain.
“That thing I said about you maturing? I take it back.”
Kame throws his head back and the breeze catches his laugh and carries it to him.
*
They make the front papers and even Massuda calls him to congratulate, amazed at how he went from apprehending teenagers and little old ladies to arresting high profile thieves and serial killers. Nakamaru feels amazed too. He still hunches when he walks when he’s not in his uniform, but it’s no longer because he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He doesn’t need a badge to be someone who protects. Six months have forged him into the kind of hero his dad always wanted him to be.
Six months have given him a partner who once couldn’t stand the sight of him and now steals his caramels and plays with his hands and leans drunkenly onto his shoulder. Nakamaru can’t get rid of him even he wanted to.
A case closed means another celebration at The Beatbox and it’s a déjà vu all over.
“I’m taking you home,” Nakamaru says when Kame starts to slide off his bar stool and into his lap. Kame still doesn’t have a place of his own yet; during the nights he wasn’t playing the double-spy for the yakuza, he had been hopping hotel rooms like lily pads.
“I couldn’t make a home anywhere,” Kame had told him over deep fried shrimp. “If I did, they’d find something to use against me.”
“Where did you put all your stuff then?”
“I didn’t have much to begin with.”
The conversation had made him sad and without really thinking about it, he had offered, “Why don’t you move in with me? I mean, if you want to. Temporarily at least. But only if you want to.”
Kame had looked about as stunned at his words as Nakamaru felt after hearing them uttered in his own voice. Kame played with the shrimp in his paper bowl and gave him a ghost of a smile.
“I’ll think about it.”
Nakamaru had smiled back and quickly ducked over his own portion with the tips of his ears glowing red. He didn’t know if Kame had taken his suggestion seriously but after dumping Kame onto his couch and watching him instantly melt into the cushions, he thinks Kame would fit well. The man curling up like a kitten overdosed on catnip in the center of his living room no longer looks out of place in his apartment. He looks like he’s arrived home after a long adventure.
Nakamaru goes to the closet to fetch a throw-over blanket and when he returns, he finds Kame talking drunkenly into the arm of his couch.
“…shouldn’t have become a cop…”
Nakamaru smiles and tucks him in with the blanket, tucking it back up when Kame kicks it off the next instant.
“Who?”
“Yucchi.”
Nakamaru stills and swallows down the hurt. Six months and Kame still didn’t want him as his partner after all. That’s okay. He’ll try harder. He’ll become faster, stronger, smarter. He’ll become worthy, he’ll-“Why?”
He crouches down so he can hear Kame’s words behind the slurring.
“Yucchi is too kind,” Kame says, his breath reeking of alcohol and sweet, sweet caramel. Sweet and toxic once more. “The bad guys will take advantage of him.”
Kame’s eyes are blurry around the edges but his gaze is strangely steady.
“You’re not all that drunk, are you?” Nakamaru says with a reproachful look. He could have let Kame walk to the car himself instead of carrying him on his back and risking his spine. Something about Kame always made him go the extra, ridiculous mile.
Kame reaches out and grabs his sleeve when he moves to get up. The yank makes him stumble forward until he’s half leaning on the couch, his face dangerously close to Kame’s.
“You said I could count on you for anything,” Kame whispers.
“Is this blackmail? Is this really the best you’ve got?”
Kame’s lips pucker into a pout which is good because Nakamaru was bluffing anyway. The fact that he doesn’t have any alcohol in him spins the illusion that he’s on the higher ground when really, he’d be amazed if Kame couldn’t hear his heart having a riot in his ribcage.
“You know I don’t like to play by the rules,” Kame says with dark eyes shifting under his dark bangs, watching him, testing him. Tempting him in a way that makes his entire body flush.
It was true, too. Kame went against the rules to the point that everything was backward when it came to him. Guilty until proven innocent. Fire before checking the barrel.
“I can’t give you flowers because I broke your vase,” Kame says with sudden petulance, “but I’ve held your hand? I made you breakfast. I gave you happy eggs.”
He can’t stop the laugh. “Happy eggs.”
Nakamaru leans forward to close what little space is between them and plants a chaste kiss to the downturn of Kame’s lips before they can fold into a real frown.
“If you remember this tomorrow, we’ll talk.” He plants another kiss on Kame’s blushing cheek before he moves away.
In the darkness of his bedroom, Nakamaru lifts his hands to his own cheeks, feeling the heat in his face, and doesn’t know what he just got himself into.
*
“How do you feel?” Nakamaru asks the next morning, averting his eyes as he hands Kame a glass of cold water.
Kame is looking down at the scrambled eggs Nakamaru made him like there’s a lover letter written on his plate. All messy and torn up into bits because Nakamaru wasn’t half as good with a spatula as he was with a gun.
“Like I want to move in with you.”
Six months ago, they weren’t even partners.
Seven months later, they’re roommates.
Nakamaru supposes it was inevitable. They go hand in hand like sweet and toxic.
<- part 4
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
He gets the address from some digging at the station and when he arrives, he has no plan other than to camp outside Kame’s door until arrives, be it hours or days later. He has enough anger burning through his veins to keep him sustained for a week at the very least. He’s been up all night but his eyes haven’t even begun to droop.
The faded yellow light of dawn is cutting through the night when he hears steps on the metal framed stairway and turns to see Kame hobbling forward. Not even the sight of fresh blood leaking from Kame’s shoulder stops the acid in his words, although it has a diluting effect.
“Got a ride from one of your pals then?”
Kame stops dead in his tracks, his face small and ragged like he had just climbed out of a grave. He rushes at Nakamaru with a frenzied sort of panic that he hadn’t shown even a sliver of at the docks.
“What are you doing here? Get inside,” he hisses through his teeth and the pain as he unlocks the door and shoves Nakamaru inside. He turns to lock the door immediately and there are three separate locks which gives Nakamaru time to observe Kame’s living space.
It’s a shithole.
It’s a single room with a single door which he guesses leads to a closet-sized washroom. There’s no furniture or personal artefacts besides a futon rolled up in the corner and a pile of clothes next to it. There’s a stained rug in the center and finger-like cracks reach down from the walls. There’s a small portable stove set, the kind used for camping, sitting in another corner and a worn chest used for storage sitting underneath the single, boarded up window.
This isn’t where Kame lives; it’s where he hides.
“So this is what you’ve been up to all along, huh? A cop by day and a criminal by night?”
He watches Kame dart around the small room, inspecting corners for bugs-the kind that record. The paranoia joggles his memory.
“That’s why you attacked me in the locker room, isn’t it?” On hindsight, the irony is funny enough to make him laugh. “You thought I was working for them.”
Kame is refusing to look at him. He opens the chest and pulls out a first aid kit before closing it and sitting on the lid. He grimaces when he peels off his jacket, the caked blood making it stick. Nakamaru swallows and keeps his eyes on Kame’s face and nothing else. He needs his anger to keep afloat.
“Desperation brings out the worst and best in people and your survival skills were too crap to make you anything to worry about even if you were sent after me,” Kame says. He sounds tired but otherwise normal, like he’s chatting up Nakamaru at a bar. The night at the The Beatbox when he smiled drunkenly at Nakamaru, all the while hiding a beating under his shirt-the memory makes him want to walk over and punch Kame in the face because nothing fucking changed.
There’s a ripping sound as Kame tears off the sleeve of his shirt with his teeth and tosses the soaked fabric to the floor. It lands with a wet slap.
“Why didn’t you stay away?” comes Kame’s voice and there’s something about the softness in it, the surprise and the regret folded in the syllables, that makes him snap. The rage spills over like lava, burning them both.
“Are you out of your mind? What the hell were you thinking? You’re not some one man hero, Kame-you’re a lying bastard who doesn’t give a damn about anyone else.” He only realises he’s screaming when he hears his own voice rebound off the walls and back at him, shrill in his ears, but he can’t stop. Kame is watching him numbly with blood dripping down his arm and onto the floor but he can’t stop.
“How long were you planning on keeping this up, huh? Does partner even mean anything to you or are you so caught up in getting yourself killed that nothing else matters? Your badge-” he chokes, “What side are you even on?”
It’s not a question of loyalty-despite everything Kame has done to earn his doubt, he still trusts like a fool, like there’s no going back-but he throws it out there anyway. He wants Kame to blink twice at who he’s seeing, just like the way Nakamaru had when he saw Kame on the dock. He wants to yank the floor from under his feet and watch him fall.
The soundless wobble of Kame’s lips does nothing to sooth his anger but everything to heighten the desperation clawing at him. The yakuza-the fucking yakuza. They won’t ever let him go. They’ll drag Kame to a funeral at sea before they let him walk back to the police station.
Kame doesn’t answer any of his questions as he begins to patch himself up, his bangs falling over his eyes as he pulls out a bottle of alcohol and sloshes it over his shoulder, soaking the rest of his shirt. The room is suddenly filled with the smell of antiseptics and blood; if he closes his eyes, he can imagine himself standing in a hospital. By his father’s bed. At a funeral.
But he keeps them open, sees how the stray beams of weak sunlight that filter through the cracks of the boarded up window shroud Kame in a yellow light and make him look ancient. All bones and fatigue. He’s too tired to even hold back a hiss of pain when he pulls out the bullet and Nakamaru realises that he’s tired too-the anger trickles out of him like sand held in a clenched fist. He’s too drained to scoop it up again.
He walks forward silently and grabs the needle and thread from Kame’s hands. Kame gives them over, surprise making his eyebrows shift, but doesn’t say anything either. He angles his back to give Nakamaru enough room to stitch up his shoulder. His hands, which had been shaking since he had gotten out of the car, go still the instant the needle pierces Kame’s skin.
Nakamaru takes a deep breath and hears Kame do the same.
“I didn’t kill him,” Kame says into the silence. Nakamaru pulls the thread.
“I know.”
He knows Kame is too good to miss, knows that if Kame was aiming to kill, the man on the dock would have fallen over like a plank of wood with a bullet through his forehead. The man wouldn’t have staggered as he fell.
Pierce and pull. The blood makes his fingers slippery.
“Are you going to leave again?”
Kame sounds prepared when the thought never even crossed his mind. He couldn’t leave even if he wanted to. He wishes he could pack up his belongings and end this farce of a partnership for good, return to his hometown before he has to watch Kame die, but it’s the same as wishing his father was still alive.
Wishes couldn’t bend impossibilities.
“No, not this time. I’m still needed here,” Nakamaru replies and Kame’s head bobs in acceptance. There’s no fight or gratitude, just a screaming vulnerability in the bow of his nape. Nakamaru completes the final stitch and knots the thread. He moves around to face Kame with Kame’s blood staining his hands.
“I’m telling Kimura.”
A pause.
“He knows.” Kame won’t look up. “He asked me to do this.”
Nakamaru stares and remembers. He’s likely sulked away to engage in a one suicidal activity or another…
The sound of shattering glass is deafening when Nakamaru throws the empty bottle of alcohol against the wall. Kame jerks around and looks at him at last. The panic dissolves into something that’s harder and ready to put up a fight.
“No one forced me to go undercover. I chose to-and if it means I can capture the Shinigami, then I don’t regret it.”
“Shut up.” There are many things he can’t stand to hear right now and Kame’s twisted concept of heroism makes the top of the list, right along with Kimura calling Kame his son, that fuc-
“You’re shaking again. Look, Nakamaru, this doesn’t have anything to do with you,” Kame rushes, “I’ll take care of it. Nothing will happen to you or anyone, I prom-”
“Shut up.”
This time he knows he’s screaming. If he had another bottle, he’d toss it at Kame’s head this time. Kame’s mouth freezes with his lips parted. Silence takes over, thick and heavy with tension until Kame swallows and says, “I’m sorry…”
Nakamaru can feel it approaching, tentatively, inevitably.
“…but I have to.”
Nakamaru shuts his eyes and takes a long breath, his fists unclenching ever so slowly. When he opens them again, he knows what will have to be done.
“What did the Shinigami say to you?”
“That if my arm ended up permanently out of commission, he’d have to put me down too.” Kame scowls. “The fucking coward only dares to face cripples.”
“He knows about you then. That you’ve been hunting him.”
“He should have known long before Funaki went and squealed,” Kame’s expression darkens as he adds, “I should have killed him when I had the chance.”
“Right,” Nakamaru says tersely, “what better way to show your allegiance than to murder your boss’s son. If you had gone through with it, Kame, you and I both know you’d be an incapacitated corpse lying in a ditch somewhere.”
“It’s not like letting his ass live made much of a difference,” Kame mutters and winces at his shoulder. “A testament to their undying faith in me.”
The blood is beginning to dry on his hands and when he scratches at it, Kame points to the pile of clothes to the side.
“Help yourself. Depending on its mood for the day, the sink might or might not be working.”
It does-temporarily. After coughing up a couple spits it runs dry but it’s enough to clean his hands and wet one of Kame’s shirts. He manages to crawl out of the cramped washroom without bumping into any of the exposed pipes.
“Please don’t tell me you actually live here.”
Kame’s lips twitch, the first peek of humour of the day, as weak as the sunlight. “I won’t, then. But I do miss your couch.”
He helps Kame peel off what’s left of his shirt and drops it to the floor with another wet slap. Automatically, his eyes trace for any more hidden wounds but his shoddy stitch-work is the worst of it. He crouches between Kame’s legs and runs the shirt he had wetted from the sink over Kame’s skin, beginning from his neck, down the slope of his wide shoulders and to the tips of his fingers.
Kame shivers from the contact and Nakamaru can sense his eyes watching him just as closely-just as if they were back in Nakamaru’s apartment with Kame perched on the kitchen counter. When all Nakamaru had to worry about was a scratch on his arm and the Shinigami was their only threat.
The mix of blood and alcohol smudges away as he wipes down Kame’s chest, pausing when he reaches his navel and hears Kame suck in a sharp breath. He lingers there for a few seconds before he changes direction and moves the cloth upwards to clean the other side of Kame’s torso.
“You said they still don’t trust you.”
“They don’t,” Kame’s voice is thick and raspy and he clears his throats before he continues. “I guess shooting their opponent on command wasn’t enough. They’re difficult to please.”
Nakamaru nods and passes the cloth down Kame’s other arm.
“If you have any intention of continuing to live, you need to prove your loyalty to them.”
Kame’s laugh grazes his forehead like a warm, airy kiss.
“I’d offer them my firstborn child but that’s kind’a implausible.”
“You can offer them something else…” Nakamaru begins quietly as he cleans the creases of Kame’s palm with meticulous care. When he’s done, he meets the curiosity in Kame’s eyes head on. “They’d trust you if you offered up your partner.”
Nakamaru can pinpoint the exact moment Kame registers his proposal by the way his entire face caves in.
“Fuck you,” Kame breathes and Nakamaru finds himself being knocked backward onto the slippery floor. He’s at Kame’s mercy but he can’t bring himself to be scared of a man who’s already half dead.
“You said it yourself-it’s something you have to do and it’s a choice.”
“I mean it, Nakamaru, don’t you fucking dare-”
Nakamaru lifts himself up so that he’s seeing Kame eye to eye. “The decision’s already been made.”
*
In his head, it’s a simple plan. Risky, yes, but simple. Kame brings Nakamaru along as a peace offering and Nakamaru acts like he doesn’t know what’s going on. He’s betrayed and angry and he pulls out his gun to shoot his traitor of a partner and takes down the Shinigami instead. The gunshot cues for backup and in the chaos of the blaring police sirens, they get the hell away.
He thinks they can figure out the rest when they get there but they never do because the next day, Kame goes missing. He’d refused to stay at Nakamaru’s apartment and when Nakamaru arrived bright and early at his hide out, the floor was a still a mess and Kame was gone. Nakamaru had waited but Kame didn’t return that night or the night after or the night after that. He’d left his phone behind-his abductors hadn’t given him the time to grab it.
Kame had been found and Nakamaru had lost him.
On the first day of Kame’s disappearance, he crashes into Kimura’s office and slams the door shut. Kimura looks up, surprised but not surprised enough to stand from his chair and demand a reason for such an intrusion. He observes Nakamaru from behind his desk, his expression clear and calm.
“If you had a real son, would you have asked him to give up his life as easily as you asked Kame to give up his?”
The crease of a frown is sweet vindication, a lone wrinkle fraying at Kimura’s serenity.
“There aren’t many men out there who are as brave and dutiful as Kazuya.” Kimura speaks as if he’s a professor in a university class, slow and patient as he shuts down an outspoken student with veiled condescension. “It is never easy to put any of my men in danger’s way but this city isn’t kept safe by putting our officers on a leash. You of all people know that would never work on Kazuya anyway. The Shinigami is just the tip of the iceberg here, Nakamaru. This way we can take down two birds with one stone.”
Two birds that can fly away and one stone that has no choice but to plummet to the ground.
“Is that how you justify it then?” Nakamaru releases a hollow laugh that tapers off into fury. “You trap someone-someone who looks up to you-in a scenario where he’ll end up dead either way and that’s worth it to you? You sent Kame in alone and it’s because of you that he’s gone now.”
“Gone...?” Kimura stands and rounds his desk until he’s close enough for Nakamaru to see the honest fear lurking behind his searching eyes. “What happened to him? He was injured when I drove him home last night but it wasn’t fatal. Kazuya is good at taking care of himself.”
So Kimura was there too then-watching the exchange at the docks from the shadows just like Nakamaru. Both of them useless. Nakamaru wants to know what Kimura felt when he saw Kame get shot, wants to know if it was anything close to guilt.
“Not always,” Nakamaru returns; when he wasn’t being underestimated, Kame was being overestimated. After working with him for years, Kimura should have known better. Nakamaru squares his shoulders and looks Kimura straight in the eyes.
“I don’t care what the reporters will say,” he says flatly, a hard edge in his voice that he doesn’t bother sanding down in a show of respect. “Pull out all your resources. Every single one. Call in all the favours you’ve gathered over your years in the force, and tell everyone to get ready to dive in head first like he did. You owe it to him.”
When he turns to leave, Kimura calls out, “You sound a lot like Kazuya. He’s rubbed off on you.”
“You’re not the first one to tell me so, sir.”
Nakamaru slams the door again as he exits.
On the second day, the news has spread throughout the station and a cloud of anxious tension hangs above everyone’s head. There are whispers about the yakuza and the various kinds of torture methods they use and the whispers die as soon as Nakamaru enters within earshot. Nakamaru calls together the three other people Kame trusts most and by the end of a six hour meeting, calls have been made and they have a diagram and a plan to go with it. In theory, it should work.
On the third day, Nakamaru strolls down the street at his usual place. It’s a drab day with thin clouds that trap most of the sunlight and the air that fills his lungs is cool. Nakamaru recognises the footsteps that follow his own. When he passes the window of a bookshop, a discreet glance at the reflection tells him he’s being tailed by a man in a green trench coat. The same man who couldn’t take his eyes off Kame when he got himself drunk at The Beatbox.
Nakamaru had only realised a few days ago that he was seeing the man everywhere and after Kame’s abduction, the serendipity of it all took a more sinister turn.
He walks to the decrepit row of one-room lodgings that nest Kame’s hidey-hole and climbs up the metal framed staircase. The previous times he had come here, he had left when he heard the approaching foot falls of someone too heavy to be Kame. Now, he enters Kame’s room and leaves the door open behind him. He kneels as if he’s inspecting a stain on the rug and his heart thumps along with the footsteps outside.
They grow louder and louder until they stop and Nakamaru takes a breath to brace himself for the blow to the head that knocks him out in an instant.
On the fourth day, Nakamaru wakes up and sees Kame.
*
There’s a throbbing pain at the back of his head that makes his vision blurry but even after blinking the worst of it away, Kame still looks like he’s ready to murder him. So much for a happy reunion.
“Are you fucking insane?” Kame hisses through the bars of their adjoined cells. They’re more like cages though, square with crisscrossing bars that make square spaces that are large enough to allow his entire arm or leg pass through, but not the rest of him.
Nakamaru winces as he sits up, still feeling a bit dizzy. “And here I thought you’d be happy to see me.”
“Yes, you fucking moron,” Kame is gripping tightly at the bars, his face stony with rage, “you have no idea how much joy I feel seeing you trapped in here with me. I’ll be over the fucking moon when I watch them kill you-after they torture you that is. Nothing would make a sick bastard like me happier than hearing your screams.”
In another time and place, Nakamaru would hear the last line as flirty quip and turn red. But seeing as they’re trapped in what looks to be an underground storage area-judging by the damp cold chilling his bones and the stacks of crates-with a death sentence hanging over their heads and little time to spare, the gravity of the situation takes over.
He runs a thorough scan of Kame’s body to check for any additional injuries and catches Kame doing the same to him. He gives a wry smile. “Just a knock over the head. You?”
“A sore shoulder. You can stop trying to undress me with your eyes now.”
“I’m not-” Nakamaru sputters and stops. He takes a calming breath and observes their surroundings. It’s all dank darkness where the overhead lights aren’t shining. They’re caged in the corner of a spacious room that’s cluttered with crates that likely hold smuggled goods. The ceiling is low and the entire place smells like mold. They’re the only ones in the room, the only captives. Nakamaru can’t hear anyone else.
“Do you know where we are?”
“You mean besides trapped in a cage? No fucking clue.” Kame flings himself back against the bars, scowling at the entire room. “I was shoved in the trunk of a car when they drove me here so I didn’t see anything… but whatever route they took was pretty quiet. Either there were no other vehicles on the road or we’re stuck somewhere that doesn’t get any visitors from outsiders. Sucks to be us.”
Nakamaru chews on that for a moment. A hidden warehouse sounds like the most likely bet.
“Why did they bring you here after letting you go?”
“It was Funaki’s dear old dad who had given me a pass. Funaki Jr., on the other hand, still has a boner for me. He just can’t let me go. He can’t seem to forget about our brief affair in the interrogation room.” Kame sounds smug, like he’s proud of pissing off the son of a yakuza leader so thoroughly. “I wonder what his dad will say when he learns that his son disobeyed his orders for a personal vendetta.”
“You know, none of this would have happened if you had-”
“What? Let him get away with threatening to kill you? Try again, partner,” Kame says scathingly and his eyes slide back to Nakamaru like dull blades. “You’re right though. If I had known you had a death wish anyway, I’d have let him talk shit and then at least I wouldn’t be here, caged next to a dumbass.”
Nakamaru blinks. “It’s not like I expect you to be grateful or anything, but you could at least stop insulting me to my face when I’m here to rescue you.”
“…Rescue?” There’s so much incredulity in his voice that it overflows into a laugh. His humour is short-lived because the next second, he’s glaring Nakamaru down. “Whatever you’re doing, it’s not for me. I don’t need your blood on my already bloodied hands.”
Too bad, I’ve already got yours on mine, Nakamaru wants to answer back but he keeps that guilt to himself, locked away in a cupboard with other things he’ll never let happen again.
“You say that like I didn’t come prepared,” he says instead and reaches forward to slip off his shoe and then his sock. From between his toes, he pulls out a small chip and grins victoriously. “The real difference between you and me is that I at least rush in with a plan.”
Kame leans as close as he can get with the bars between them. “What’s that? A tracer?”
Nakamaru nods. “We don’t have to know where we are to be found. They’re probably already halfway here already.”
“They…?”
“Oh right,” Nakamaru says, loving how he has the upper hand over Kame for once, “another difference between us is that I know when to ask for help. And lucky I did because Taguchi got me this.” He pulls out a pen from inside his jacket and dangles it before Kame. Luckily, it had appeared too harmless to be confiscated.
“A clicky pen… Is this some joke?”
“Watch,” Nakamaru says and aims the tip of the pen at the hinges of his cage and holds it close to the metal. When he presses on the top, a beam of red hot laser shoots out and burns its way through. “Taguchi figured we’d end up trapped in something tougher than a knife could cut.”
When he turns, Kame looks a little awed. “Not even Taguchi could have designed that on such short notice.”
“No… but Ueda has scary connections and Tegoshi has money so the problem solved itself.”
“Tegoshi. You went to him for help?” Kame asks in visible disgust and Nakamaru can only shrug.
“He owed us,” Nakamaru pauses and remembers Tegoshi’s starry eyes when he agreed to lend Koki his whole month’s allowance in a heartbeat, “and I think he likes Koki.”
“Huh, I thought he was sweet on you.”
A hinge breaks loose and Nakamaru quickly moves onto the next, the pen heating up in his hand.
“I don’t think I’m his type.”
Kame hums at his back. “What is your type then?”
It’s the weirdest conversation to have in a moldy warehouse. He can feel Kame’s eyes scraping at the nape of his neck as he cuts through the second hinge and begins to work on the last. The metal is strong but thin, which is good because Nakamaru doesn’t know how much time they have until they’re no longer alone.
“I like them tall, calm and collected, and with a sunny disposition.”
There’s a snort. “Hate to break it to you, but Taguchi’s taken.”
Nakamaru smiles to himself and calls back, “Your turn.”
“Hmmm… I like them sweet as caramel.” There’s a pause. “How did you know I was still alive, by the way?”
Truth was, Nakamaru had never spared a thought otherwise. “The same way you knew I’d come for you.”
The last hinge breaks and with a shove of his hands, the side of the cage creaks and opens enough for him to slip out. Kame gives him a round of applause and it takes Nakamaru a moment to face him.
“Great, now open mine,” Kame says and watches him expectantly. His eyebrows furrow when Nakamaru shakes his head.
“We’re not going to fight them. Our safest bet is to sit still and play along until we get the signal and the squad comes to get us,” Nakamaru explains tersely and watches Kame bristle with every word. “I’m not taking any more chances with you. This is strictly a rescue mission.”
“You’re shitting me, right?” Kame stares at him angrily from behind the bars. “I’m not leaving without the Shinigami. He’s here. I saw him. I’m taking him down.”
“Er, no you’re not. You’re trapped in a cage for one,” Nakamaru points out. Kame rams himself against the bars in a futile effort and lurches pack with a grimace of pain. “And two, you’re not in your best shape.”
“Nakamaru. I swear if you don’t let me out I’ll-”
“Make my life a living hell yadda yadda. I doubt you can do worse than what I’ve been through the last few days,” Nakamaru interrupts easily and turns his back to peek into the crates. They’re not going to fight but if it comes down to it, they’re going to need ammunition for defense.
Kame keeps up his chant of curses as Nakamaru searches for a suitable weapon. Most of the crates hold rifles, the sight of which would make Ueda jump in joy, and it take him a couple of minutes before he finds pistols that are small enough to hide inconspicuously under their belts.
“You know, with all those death threats, I don’t know if I should give you one,” Nakamaru says thoughtfully before his lips quirk and he hands a pistol to Kame through the cage. “Be careful, it’s loaded.”
Nakamaru slides back into his cage and pulls back the wall of bars until it jams to give the illusion that he’s truly trapped.
“You mentioned something about a signal… what is it?”
Nakamaru shrugs and leans back to wait. “Koki said it’d be too obvious to miss.”
Kame inspects him slowly. “You’re oddly calm about this. What happened to my cute, fumbling, lamb of a partner?”
Nakamaru returns his look flatly. “You’ve antagonised the biggest criminal organisation in the world. I just figure things can’t possibly get any worse.”
*
Nakamaru has to rethink that when Funaki, followed by a cluster of his men that include the masked Shinigami, enters and descends the stairway and stops directly in front of Nakamaru’s cell.
“Drag him out,” Funaki orders and whips around to sneer at Kame with a manic glint in his eyes. “I did promise you the pleasure of seeing your partner be put to sleep. The Shinigami is going to put him down like a dog.”
The door to his cage is unlocked and rough hands grab at Nakamaru’s arm and toss him out onto the cement floor.
“You fucking son of a bitch,” Kame screams, pounding at the bars. “He has nothing to do with this! You’re a bastard but if you’re even half the man your father is you’ll finish your battles with the ones who start them.”
The passionate violence on his behalf is touching to witness but does nothing to help his situation. Nakamaru keels over, gagging on the floor when Funaki kicks at his stomach with a steel-toed shoe-the same way Kame would have done to him earlier in the interrogation room, if Nakamaru hadn’t stopped him. Way to repay the debt, asshole.
When the Shinigami steps forward and pulls out a dart from the pouch belted around his waist, Nakamaru catches Kame going for the gun hiding at his back and shouts a strangled, “Don’t!”
Kame’s eyes snap to his and Nakamaru holds onto them, urgent in his demand for patience.
Wait. Wait for the signal.
Kame drops his hand and Nakamaru takes a breath of relief. Kame shooting at them whilst trapped and surrounded in a cage would improve their situation for a split-second at most before everything spiralled to an end. Nakamaru had come here to make sure he lived.
“Not keen to die a dog’s death, hmm? I’ve just thought of something better, don’t worry,” Funaki says, his voice like oil and cruel pleasure twisting his face. He gestures for the Shinigami to step back and turns to Kame. “Today’s your lucky day, detective. You get to come out and play with us.”
The door to the cage squeaks on its hinges as Kame is pulled out and pushed to stand a couple feet opposite to Nakamaru. Kame’s expression has gone eerily blank again, his poker face pulled up so that not even Nakamaru’s eyes can reach him. It’s like whatever inbuilt security system his body protects him with has entered the lock down phase.
While Funaki counts the bullets in his gun, Nakamaru uses the opportunity to count the number of men surrounding them in the room. Eight in total, including the Shinigami. Odds of one to four. Nakamaru takes a shaky breath, hoping that it won’t come down to it.
“I learned this game overseas. It’s called Russian roulette,” Funaki says jovially and steps towards Kame with his gun held out handle first. “There’s room for twelve in this revolver and I’ve put in four. Ideally it should be one but, sadly, I have to speed up the process. I don’t have all day to watch you kill your partner, after all.”
“And if I shoot you?” Kame says, voice low and menacing and making Nakamaru panic more than anything else he’s heard today.
“Be my guest. You have a one third chance of getting me right in my blackened heart,” Funaki smiles slowly, “but if you miss, my men will put so many bullet holes in you that you won’t even get a chance to feel them. I’m sure your partner will agree that it’d be a fascinating sight, isn’t that right, Nakamaru?”
Funaki turns to him with the look of a child who has finally managed to trump the adults. He might be the first person in Nakamaru’s life to earn this much hate from him.
“My profession requires that I carry a badge with my name at all times,” Nakamaru says placidly. “It’s not exactly hard to find out who I am.”
Funaki’s face instantly puckers at Kame’s snort and he steps back with a mean snarl.
“The real question is whether you know what kind of a killer Kamenashi is, but I guess you’re about to find out.” Funaki turns to Kame. “I know how good your aim is. For each bullet you miss, I shoot one of my own. If I were you, I’d make it end quick. For his sake.”
“If you were me, Funaki, you’d have balls.”
Funaki’s lips curl to bare his teeth. “On my command. You disobey and my men will kill you both.”
“Point proven, then,” Kame mutters but raises his arms slowly, his eyes locking onto his target. Nakamaru still can’t read them. He’s standing at the end of Kame’s gunpoint and his palms are dry, his heart beating a slow drum, and he doesn’t feel a single sliver of fear.
Kame had made him eggs, that’s all he can think. They’re going to die anyway.
Kame pulls the trigger and in the painless silence that follows, something explodes nearby and the ceiling shakes over their heads.
Funaki swivels around to stare up at the door by the stairs. “What the hell was that-”
The second explosion makes the walls shake along with the floor and sends them all askew.
Their eyes meet and Kame’s face cracks into a wry grin. “I guess that’s your signal.”
They reach for their guns simultaneously and it’s a blur of adrenaline from there on out. In the midst of the raining bullets, they find each other and stand back to back as a duo of deadly synchrony as explosions outside continue to shake their world. Debris continues to fall from the ceiling like confetti and the lights begin to flicker, casting them in blips of darkness.
“Watch them overdue it and bury us alive,” Kame shouts over the noise. “This is why we never let Ueda get near the explosives.”
“To your left,” Nakamaru shouts back when he’s too preoccupied by the guy reaching for another gun after Nakamaru had knocked the first one away. This time, Nakamaru shoots at his hand. “That’s five down.”
“Six,” Kame calls a second later as a body crumples to their side.
Nakamaru coughs when a cloud of dust showers down on their heads. “We should get going before the ceiling collapses.”
“Right behind you.”
They shuffle towards the stairway with their backs still glued together and Nakamaru tries not to look down at the wounded and dying bodies they leave behind. They made a choice, he tells himself, even as he promises to send down the paramedics as soon as the situation is brought under control.
“Did you see Funaki?”
“No,” Nakamaru shouts, “please don’t tell me you killed him.”
“I wish,” Kame scowls in his ear. “That coward was probably the first one to run-there.”
Nakamaru suddenly finds himself leaning on air, his back bereft. He swirls around to see Kame streaking after the Shinigami who had slipped away, hiding under the cloak of chaos and biding his time to escape.
He should have waited longer.
Nakamaru watches as Kame tackles him in the side like a human-sized bullet and pins him to the floor, the force of his punches sending the Shinigami’s mask flying.
He’s following after, just a few meters away, when a pair of arms spring out from behind a crate and grab him in a choke hold. Kame pauses at his strangled cry and that gives the Shinigami enough of an advantage to throw him off and grab his mask.
“Humans are the biggest handicap,” the Shinigami says from behind his leering Noh mask before he slithers away.
Kame doesn’t chase after him.
Eleven consecutive rounds and a few seconds later, the grip around Nakamaru’s neck falls slack and the man who had been choking him hits the floor with four ruthless bullets embedded in his back-when only one would have sufficed.
Nakamaru wheezes, trying to get the walls to stop spinning. He keeps his gaze to the ground for a moment, to steady himself, and notices a pair of steel-toed shoes enter his periphery. They’re pointed in Kame’s direction.
Nakamaru moves without looking up.
He doesn’t remember the rest.
*
It’s the second time he’s woken up to Kame’s frown.
“I distinctly remember someone lecturing me about how there’s more to protecting people than jumping in front of a gun to take a bullet,” Kame says, seated close to his hospital bed. “I’d rather you stick to stopping speeding cars than continue playing the hero. You’re only going to get lucky so many times.”
Nakamaru glances down at the dull blue sheets that cover his legs. There are pillows inclining him forward and there are bandages covering the most of his torso. He feels too stiff to move and doesn’t bother to what with the way Kame is watching him like a hawk.
“So I guess it wasn’t an imaginary bullet this time,” he says dryly and Kame’s frown deepens. “I know, I know. I’m an idiot. What happened with Funaki?”
The question brings out an unexpected smile from Kame. He looks infinitely better than when Nakamaru last saw him, fisting it out with the Shinigami. For the first time in a long while, there’s no tension in his small build and even if it looks like he’d been camping in Nakamaru’s hospital room, judging by the mess of pillows and take-out cartons on the bench against the wall, he looks well rested. He doesn’t smell like smoke for once, just a refreshing combo of coffee and soap.
Nakamaru can’t take his eyes off him as he talks, carefree and animated.
“I think he’s lying in a bed on a floor above us, in the ICU quarters,” Kame says cheerily, “and before you start to freak-no, I didn’t touch him. That’s the beauty of it all. I saved his life.”
Nakamaru stares. “You what?”
Kame looks gleeful at his disbelief. “The poor bastard was standing in the wrong spot at the wrong time. One of the ceiling lights fell right on top him. Would’ve completely crushed his guts if he had any.” Kame gives him a soft smile and adds in a lower voice. “It was a good thing too. I was ready to murder him when you went down.”
“But you ended up saving him,” Nakamaru repeats, still not connecting A to B.
Kame shrugs. “It’s not like I wanted to. Believe me, if it was up to me, I’d have left him to rot but a little voice in my head that sounded suspiciously like you convinced me otherwise.”
Nakamaru nods with a burst of pride. “Because it was the right thing to do.”
This time Kame stares at him.
“No, because saving his yakuza ass would give us an advantage with his father,” Kame says slowly and sends him a smirk that’s both confused and pleased. “I wonder what I’ll have to do to make you let go of the idea that I’m actually a good guy deep down in my fuzzy core.”
Nakamaru wouldn’t have chosen the word fuzzy but he does believe it, lingering on the pages Kame would rather he flip past. Kame was a liar and a killer and had the temper of a raging bull, but in the moment when he could have captured the man he had been chasing after for years, putting his life on the line and laying waste to his life in the process, all that effort and physical endurance-he had let it slip by. Kame had turned his back to the Shinigami, all for him.
For a man who didn’t want a partner, Kame was sure bent on keeping one.
He didn’t even look angry.
Nakamaru clears his throat and the way Kame’s eyes instantly snap to him, attentive and caring, doesn’t help to ease his guilt.
“Did you catch him? The Shinigami?”
Kame shakes his head with a smile that doesn’t make sense. “Not yet. I didn’t want to close the case without my partner.”
*
They stop in front of a quaint apartment complex that doesn’t scream money but has a quiet, home-like comfort. There’s a park just a block away and families with strollers walk by in the courtyard, laughing and enjoying the good weather. There are three levels altogether and Nakamaru follows Kame up to the third, looking down at the colourful patches of flowers in the open courtyard that sway with the breeze.
The doors they pass each have a number and Nakamaru smiles at the quirky doormats and ornaments that decorate and separate each apartment from the next. It’s a cosy sort of neighbourhood where people feel safe enough to leave their shoes outside without fearing them disappearing the next day.
“Are you sure this is the right place?”
Kame turns over his shoulder. “Definitely. We’ve been tracking the Shinigami for days.”
“Right,” Nakamaru says, “how did you manage that again?”
Kame brandishes his hand, the sunlight hitting the silver skull of his ring and making it shine like a diamond and not some tacky piece of jewellery.
“It was a good thing I had it on that day,” Kame says with a smirk. “I broke his nose with the first punch-I can’t tell you how satisfying the crunch was-and then Taguchi figured out we could use the blood caught in it to trace back to a name. It led us straight to him.”
They stop in front of a door at the corner of the square complex. It’s a drab white with a #36 screwed on in the center. Nakamaru looks around and returns to Kame with a doubtful crease lining his forehead.
“I don’t know, Kame. This doesn’t look like his style.” Nakamaru had been expecting a high rise with a view of the entire city or a makeshift lair in the basement of a dilapidated building. Something that was either too good or too incriminating-not a normal apartment complex with normal people who sundried their laundry in the open instead of hiding it in a closet.
“You are going to be shocked,” Kame returns with barely suppressed excitement and turns to knock on the door in three sharp strikes. He angles his head in a way that will only allow his hair to be shown through the peephole.
Nakamaru feels his pulse quicken when he hears the door knob turn.
He stares when it swings open.
Kame shoves a foot in the doorway before it can be slammed closed again.
“Don’t be like this, Takeda,” Kame says in a low whisper. “Everyone will know about your late night ventures soon enough but let’s not create a scene here.”
For a moment, there’s no movement as they stare each other down, but it’s broken the next when Takeda gives one last slam of the door before disappearing inside his apartment. Kame dives in after him and Nakamaru follows right at his back, taking a second to secure the lock on the door; with the two of them, he’s more concerned about someone entering from the outside and serving as a shield than Takeda escaping.
Humans are the biggest handicaps. Nakamaru remembered.
He hears a crash and turns to see Kame heading for the washroom just as Takeda lunges out with a syringe in his hand. He stabs it right into Kame’s arm and a scream rips itself from Nakamaru’s throat. He has his gun out in the next second and it takes Kame stepping in front of Takeda for him not to press down hard on the trigger.
“Kame,” he says, his voice wobbly and thick. He needs to call the paramedics. He needs to flush out Kame’s system somehow. He needs to be there to catch Kame when he falls. He can make Takeda pay later.
Kame doesn’t fall though. He stands in his usual ready-to-fight posture and pulls out the syringe with the calmness of someone who knows all the cards. He tosses the syringe onto a table and watches it roll until it hits a pack of cigarettes. Kame’s lips quirk.
“My partner tells me that’s a filthy habit by the way,” he says before he turns around and punches Takeda in the face, knocking him back against a wall; a cheaply framed painting falls to the floor, “but then again, so is killing people. You won’t be short on vices anytime soon.”
“K-Kame, are you feeling okay? How are you still standing?” Nakamaru is still finding it hard to breathe and not only because the apartment is stuffy as hell. There’s clutter everywhere, paint and clay and papers and pens. The room is as colourful as the flowers blooming outside.
“He shouldn’t be,” Takeda says hoarsely, slumped against the wall with blood dripping from his cut lip. He’s staring at Kame as if he’s seeing a ghost. “Y-you should be dead. The pentothal should have-”
“Ah, but that’s not what was in that syringe. All you gave me was a shot of saline solution,” Kame says sweetly and turns to Nakamaru to explain. “Crow has been selling him knock-offs under our orders. It’s why the yakuza isn’t after us. Don’t worry; I won’t be leaving you partner-less anytime soon.”
Kame walks around the room, inspecting the papers strewn over every surface. They’re all drawings and sketches. Faces and landscapes and cartoon animals. Nothing to giveaway the sick mind behind the art.
Nakamaru finds Takeda more interesting and keeps his eyes on him instead; he has no faith in a man who hides behind a mask. Takeda is old enough to have grey in his hair, thin but not scrawny enough to have gaunt cheeks. His face is round, his eyes small behind his square framed glasses. He looks average in every way if one forgets about the fingers of metal poking out from his sleeve.
Nakamaru wants to know how a man with a prosthetic arm could go around murdering people with disabilities and not choke himself to death.
But first, Kame has a story he needs to tell. “What happened with the yakuza?”
“Hmm? My guess was right. He went after Hinamori, Funaki Sr.’s blind daughter,” Kame turns to Takeda briefly. “That was pretty foolish of you, by the way, to bite the hand that was feeding and protecting you. Thanks to us though, all you injected her with was a dose of anaesthetics low enough to knock her out for a couple hours.”
“That’s impossible!” Takeda lurches forward and Nakamaru walks over in three strides and knocks him back against the wall, keeping him there with a fist at his collar.
Kame smiles broadly. “Is it, though? To my understanding, it takes ninety seconds for the lethal injection to do its job and that’s a bit of a long wait for you, isn’t it? Not when you’re preoccupied with scurrying away and saving your hide. Too bad you didn’t stick around to see Hinamori blink awake in the arms of her furious dad.”
Nakamaru stares at Kame in awe. “You saved both of his children.”
The yakuza were all about honour in matters concerning their own blood and this was heavy enough to trump everything else Kame had done, enough to earn him a favour in the future. It turns out Kame was as good at stepping into someone’s graces as he was at jumping out of them.
Kame shrugs with a grin that gloats. “I feel like a kiss-up. I guess your heroism is contagious.”
“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” Takeda hisses and the nails of his prosthetic hand scratch at Nakamaru’s arm. His grip doesn’t loosen a notch.
“I could say the same for you.” Drops of Takeda’s blood fall onto his hand, making his lips curl in disgust. He tries to keep his voice steady. “Who are you? What do you do for a living?”
“Why do you care?” Takeda spits. Nakamaru meets his eyes squarely. He remembers all the faces in the black folder, the troubled lives Takeda had assumed as his duty to end. All the potential he had killed.
His words are cold and unforgiving. “I want to know what could have happened in your life to make you so twisted. I want to know how scum like you could go on existing in society without getting scrubbed off.”
A lopsided smile trips across Takeda’s face. “I was the one doing the cleaning. You don’t know how hard it is to live in this world. It’s survival of the fittest and those who aren’t fit enough are miserable. Ugly, miserable eyesores. They’d be happier de-”
“Leave him,” Kame calls softly and Nakamaru realises his grip has tightened of its own accord. He lets Takeda slip from his fingers and steps back, not trusting himself. He has to take calming breaths so he doesn’t end up screaming.
“With your arm like that, why didn’t you off yourself first?”
Takeda looks down at his arm and rubs at the robotic metal like it carries an itch. When his eyes return to Nakamaru, they blink with a mix of confusion and anger that’s so strong he knows it can’t be an act.
“My arm? What about it? I’ll die before you make a cripple out of me.” Takeda hugs his arm to his chest and glares at them.
“Whoever the Shinigami was, we knew he couldn’t be in his right mind to begin with,” Kame says quietly when Nakamaru turns to meet his eyes. “He’s an illustrator. He has a running manga series and he’s made covers for children’s books. He considers himself an artist. Just look around you, Nakamaru-he does everything that involves creating something beautiful.”
Something beautiful to hide the ugly.
“He’s a murderer,” Nakamaru says tightly.
“No argument there. It’s just interesting how he spends his days creating art and his nights destroying lives. One could say it’s a poetic contrast.” Kame flashes a small, humourless smile. “Like sweet and toxic.”
Takeda lets out an alarmed noise when Kame reaches to open a drawer at his desk. From inside it, Kame pulls out the red mask that had once filled Nakamaru with terror. Without a masquerader to don it, the expression moulded into the mask looks more woeful than menacing.
“Relax,” Kame says to Takeda, “we have much more evidence against you than this mask. You shouldn’t have lunged at me with a syringe if you wanted to play coy.”
“Let me see?” Nakamaru asks and Kame hands the mask over. Nakamaru flips it, inspecting both the front and back. “This is why we couldn’t trace your mask to a seller. No craftsman could identify the design. It’s your own variant, isn’t it? You made it yourself.”
Takeda nods, pride gleaming in his beady eyes. “Death is only an instrument to achieve an ideal existence.”
“Well, I don’t know about ideal but yours is sure about to change.” When Kame steps close and reaches into his jacket, Nakamaru straightens, expecting him to pull out a gun. Kame notices because he dangles the handcuffs at him with a smirk. “Doubted me?”
Nakamaru appraises him. “You’ve matured.”
“Nah, you’re just a terrible influence. Want to do the honours?”
Nakamaru accepts the handcuffs and snaps them around Takeda’s wrists, one flesh and bones, the other rods and wires.
“Takeda Kosuke, you are under arrest for the possession of illicit drugs, for cooperating with a criminal organization, and for committing a series of murders. You have the right to remain silent; anything you say or do will be used against you in a court of law.”
“I personally love it when they scream,” Kame adds and claps him on the back. When they’ve packed Takeda into the backseat of the car, Kame looks over the hood and gives him a grin. “By the way, since you’re the one who arrested him, you’re writing the report.”
There’s too much exasperation for Nakamaru to contain.
“That thing I said about you maturing? I take it back.”
Kame throws his head back and the breeze catches his laugh and carries it to him.
*
They make the front papers and even Massuda calls him to congratulate, amazed at how he went from apprehending teenagers and little old ladies to arresting high profile thieves and serial killers. Nakamaru feels amazed too. He still hunches when he walks when he’s not in his uniform, but it’s no longer because he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He doesn’t need a badge to be someone who protects. Six months have forged him into the kind of hero his dad always wanted him to be.
Six months have given him a partner who once couldn’t stand the sight of him and now steals his caramels and plays with his hands and leans drunkenly onto his shoulder. Nakamaru can’t get rid of him even he wanted to.
A case closed means another celebration at The Beatbox and it’s a déjà vu all over.
“I’m taking you home,” Nakamaru says when Kame starts to slide off his bar stool and into his lap. Kame still doesn’t have a place of his own yet; during the nights he wasn’t playing the double-spy for the yakuza, he had been hopping hotel rooms like lily pads.
“I couldn’t make a home anywhere,” Kame had told him over deep fried shrimp. “If I did, they’d find something to use against me.”
“Where did you put all your stuff then?”
“I didn’t have much to begin with.”
The conversation had made him sad and without really thinking about it, he had offered, “Why don’t you move in with me? I mean, if you want to. Temporarily at least. But only if you want to.”
Kame had looked about as stunned at his words as Nakamaru felt after hearing them uttered in his own voice. Kame played with the shrimp in his paper bowl and gave him a ghost of a smile.
“I’ll think about it.”
Nakamaru had smiled back and quickly ducked over his own portion with the tips of his ears glowing red. He didn’t know if Kame had taken his suggestion seriously but after dumping Kame onto his couch and watching him instantly melt into the cushions, he thinks Kame would fit well. The man curling up like a kitten overdosed on catnip in the center of his living room no longer looks out of place in his apartment. He looks like he’s arrived home after a long adventure.
Nakamaru goes to the closet to fetch a throw-over blanket and when he returns, he finds Kame talking drunkenly into the arm of his couch.
“…shouldn’t have become a cop…”
Nakamaru smiles and tucks him in with the blanket, tucking it back up when Kame kicks it off the next instant.
“Who?”
“Yucchi.”
Nakamaru stills and swallows down the hurt. Six months and Kame still didn’t want him as his partner after all. That’s okay. He’ll try harder. He’ll become faster, stronger, smarter. He’ll become worthy, he’ll-“Why?”
He crouches down so he can hear Kame’s words behind the slurring.
“Yucchi is too kind,” Kame says, his breath reeking of alcohol and sweet, sweet caramel. Sweet and toxic once more. “The bad guys will take advantage of him.”
Kame’s eyes are blurry around the edges but his gaze is strangely steady.
“You’re not all that drunk, are you?” Nakamaru says with a reproachful look. He could have let Kame walk to the car himself instead of carrying him on his back and risking his spine. Something about Kame always made him go the extra, ridiculous mile.
Kame reaches out and grabs his sleeve when he moves to get up. The yank makes him stumble forward until he’s half leaning on the couch, his face dangerously close to Kame’s.
“You said I could count on you for anything,” Kame whispers.
“Is this blackmail? Is this really the best you’ve got?”
Kame’s lips pucker into a pout which is good because Nakamaru was bluffing anyway. The fact that he doesn’t have any alcohol in him spins the illusion that he’s on the higher ground when really, he’d be amazed if Kame couldn’t hear his heart having a riot in his ribcage.
“You know I don’t like to play by the rules,” Kame says with dark eyes shifting under his dark bangs, watching him, testing him. Tempting him in a way that makes his entire body flush.
It was true, too. Kame went against the rules to the point that everything was backward when it came to him. Guilty until proven innocent. Fire before checking the barrel.
“I can’t give you flowers because I broke your vase,” Kame says with sudden petulance, “but I’ve held your hand? I made you breakfast. I gave you happy eggs.”
He can’t stop the laugh. “Happy eggs.”
Nakamaru leans forward to close what little space is between them and plants a chaste kiss to the downturn of Kame’s lips before they can fold into a real frown.
“If you remember this tomorrow, we’ll talk.” He plants another kiss on Kame’s blushing cheek before he moves away.
In the darkness of his bedroom, Nakamaru lifts his hands to his own cheeks, feeling the heat in his face, and doesn’t know what he just got himself into.
*
“How do you feel?” Nakamaru asks the next morning, averting his eyes as he hands Kame a glass of cold water.
Kame is looking down at the scrambled eggs Nakamaru made him like there’s a lover letter written on his plate. All messy and torn up into bits because Nakamaru wasn’t half as good with a spatula as he was with a gun.
“Like I want to move in with you.”
Six months ago, they weren’t even partners.
Seven months later, they’re roommates.
Nakamaru supposes it was inevitable. They go hand in hand like sweet and toxic.
<- part 4