More Post-It-Verse, with Ran and sunshine and a little less angst for a change. Love to
emungere for betaing.
Things were looking up, at least for some definitions of looking up. Weiss was remarkably good at the new missions it'd been given; Ragdoll, in particular, was gifted at reconnaissance, and Rex reported that all the boys had improved attitudes.
Kritiker was not going to be pleased, if they realized. Happy assassins were doubly dangerous, in their opinion.
Mamoru didn't care. He enjoyed drafting the new missions, refining the old ones, doing more with fewer deaths and far more deals. He was creating a web of dependency around his position, where no one would dare question him or his place.
He was almost frighteningly good at it, and with Nagi at his side, he was better. Things started requiring less work, and less stress. Given enough time Kritiker would get nervous, but both Nagi and Mamoru were convinced they had a little breathing room.
Mamoru turned his attention to the castle. Ran needed air, and a better place to stay, and a room for homework...the castle was soon overrun with architects and planners and interior designers. Nagi kept the security team on extra hours and bought them pizza and coffee. On White Day, he bought them all chocolate, and they laughed at him, but he could feel their warmth.
He wasn't happy, exactly, but it was a pretty decent life. He'd been working for Mamoru for three years now, and they trusted each other as much as they trusted anyone; as much as they'd probably ever trust anyone.
"Nagi-kun," Mamoru said one afternoon, keeping his eyes carefully trained on Weiss' latest mission papers. "You don't have anything planned for the first week of April, do you?"
Nagi shook his head.
"Keep it open," he said.
"All right."
February turned to March, and Nagi wondered how long their tenuous balance would hold. They had watched a lot of movies. Nagi would catch Mamoru watching him sometimes, his eyes disconcertingly blue and heavily guarded.
They didn't touch. Most nights, they hardly spoke. It wouldn't last, it couldn't. Part of Nagi wanted it to. Schuldig would have said he was being a coward, and Schuldig would have been right. You're Schwarz, he would have said. Take what you want.
Nagi ate popcorn, and picked the movies every other time, and wondered how much longer he would have.
"Been to Australia?" Mamoru asked one evening, as the maid was clearing dishes off the table. Ran had already left the table, to get "something important" to show Nagi.
Nagi shook his head.
"Good. I'm going to take Ran there for her holiday; I'd like you to come with us."
Nagi snagged one last dumpling off the table as the plate passed by. "You sure that's wise?"
"I'd have to take a security team with us if it was just the two of us," Mamoru said. "It's much easier to go with you. And you could use a vacation, too."
"Working vacation," Nagi corrected.
"Aren't all of them like that?" Mamoru said, smiling. "If we stay quiet and use assumed names, we can be...not safe, exactly, but maybe we can relax a little."
"What about the construction?"
"Tamari's been excellent," Mamoru drew a line on the table. "And Rex has proven reliable. If we take a few precautions when we return, I think we can be confident the castle will be secured. And I'm sick of living with dropcloths and construction workers and picking out new patterns for the bathroom floor."
Ran came back into the room, clutching something puffy, pink, and glittered. "Look what I have for dress-up now!" she crowed. "Will you come play with me?"
Nagi got up from the table. "Sure," he said.
Australia. Well, at least it'd be a break from spring weather.
"Make sure I have my own room," he told Mamoru, as he followed Ran.
In fact, Australia was beautiful. Ran was beautiful. Mamoru--
It's not that Nagi hadn't considered sleeping with him before. It just had never seemed like such a good idea before. Mamoru wore very little and tanned in the sun and smiled more in a day than Nagi remembered him ever smiling in a week. He offered to rub lotion on Nagi's sunburns and reminded him to wear a hat and sometimes walked off to 'get a paper' or run some useless errand; Nagi would watch him walking slowly back, watching Nagi and Ran play together, making a sand castle or just splashing each other in the surf.
They slept in and ate out, and Mamoru dragged them both to a miniature golf course one night when it was dangerously close to Ran's bedtime, and they spent an hour and a half squabbling over what, exactly, constituted a 'stroke' and what the best way was to fish the balls out of the water hazards-- they'd agreed not to use his powers in front of Ran months ago, and it was too public for anything so obvious, anyway.
Ran did manage to make the lucky, free-game-winning shot, and Mamoru kicked Nagi gently in the shin for his trouble.
"Hey!" Nagi said.
Mamoru was already at the hole, hugging Ran and congratulating her on her "lucky shot."
"Did you see, Nagi-nii-san? Did you--?"
"I saw," he told her, wrapping his arms around them both. "Congratulations." He could feel Mamoru's eyes on him. He tried not to think about it.
"Well," Mamoru said. "I guess, since Ran-chan won herself a free game, we should go again, huh?"
"Can we?" Ran begged. "Please?"
"Sure," Nagi said. "This time I'm gonna beat you both."
Nagi was acting weird, had been acting weird all vacation really, but the hug brought things to new levels of weird. When they got in line to play again, Nagi shoved against him, just a little, and he shoved back, and it was oddly like flirting and then Ran asked them what they were doing, and Mamoru had no answer at all.
Nagi just snickered and told her to pay attention or people would go around of them. She nodded and dutifully turned her attention to the family at the first hole.
People had been mistaking them for a couple all vacation. "No, really, he's my bodyguard," didn't make much sense, and Mamoru could have claimed they were brothers, but he'd settled for just letting it go most of the time, and explaining, quietly, "we're just friends," if things got too strange. Nagi hadn't bothered correcting anyone.
Did that mean--?
Nagi's hand touched his back. "Our turn," he said, leaning toward Mamoru, his breath ghosting against Mamoru's face.
By the time Mamoru had collected his thoughts, Nagi was teeing off. Mamoru felt stupid and awkward; and young, for the first time in a long time. When Nagi straightened up from the putt, he smiled back at Mamoru, and he looked oddly resolved.
Well.
Mamoru smiled back, and when they'd finished with the first hole, he took Nagi's hand in his left and Ran's in his right and walked them both to the line for the second hole.
He wondered if Nagi would still insist on keeping his own room.