Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

     The bell over the door jangled its chordless tune, washing a bright sea breeze over the wood musk that lived among the shelves and walls of the little storefront. There was no mistaking the statuesque frame or the olive drab frock coat of the first lady to walk over the threshold. Jounouchi "Ice Machine" Sai tucked a lock of the brown hair hanging at her chin behind her ear and strode straight over to the stupid churning slushie machine that the flower-faced viper of a store owner had somehow rigged up and wouldn't get rid of because pirates liked it so much -- but did Kakei ever step up to shave the barrel full of ice in the morning?! Oh no! Not him! Not that the boss was even here at the moment, and not that he couldn't handle a couple pirates on shore leave (even if the dark, hulking Rikuou, whom he was forced to call his co-worker, hadn't been there).

     Though their second customer could barely be called a pirate. Just look at those sweet pigtails! That angelic smile! The soft, plum colors on her frock coat (when any full-blooded brigand with enough rank for a nice frock coat would be sure to have gone with a much brighter purple)! Saitou-san was just a first-rate medic who happened to be on a pirate ship. Kazahaya was sure she had a good reason for it.

     He peeked out from the back room and let his hand fall off the lever marked with a red, feathered hat. He could no more able to believe his eyes now than he'd been able to believe the sight through the periscope when they'd come up the walk. "What are they doing here? The Queen Cassandra wasn't due into port for another week! At least! Do you think something's wrong?"

     "They're pirates." His oversized landmass of a coworker never talked so much as grunted, which went double for while he was sweeping. "Pirates are allowed to be capricious."

     "I just hope she doesn't expect Captain Doumeki's special order to be in yet. We do operate on a schedule."

     "What was that, Kudou-kun?"

     As his back hit the wall -- thankfully not jarring any of the buttons or levers, although he had to sputter out the tuft of unmanageable hair that'd flown into his mouth -- his savior and tormentor shone an unreadable grin at him. The man might have the grace (and annoyingly perfect, sleeked-down coiffure) of a straight-up prince, but he was indubitably a demon on the inside. Many were the days Kazahaya wished he could either have been rescued from an ice cube death by less sadistic people, or that he could get the man who had taken him in to wear a collar with a bell. "Kakei-san. We weren't expecting you!"

     "Well, I'd say I came just in time. Don't you think, Saiga-san?"

     He also wished he knew who that dark, mountainous shadow of a man was, besides someone who spent most days sleeping on their back room couch. Saiga didn't have the Black Market's seal tattooed around his right arm like the rest of them did, but he still helped out at the store. Well, for a nominal degree of 'helping'. The man dropped a package in Kazahaya's hands and wandered right back to the couch to plunk his ass down to snore. He and Rikuou had to clean and straighten all day like slaves.

     Which technically they were, he supposed. Indentured servitude worked like that. But someday he'd get back on his feet, on the move, and could leave these crazy days behind.

     He also supposed he shouldn't take off the wrappings on the package. Generally when one saw tough, brown wrappings closed up with triple red strings in an intricate knot like the flat, hexagonal creation he was looking at now, the contents were best left undisturbed.

     "One self-targeting map of the North Sea coast for Captain Doumeki," his boss explained, leaning in to tickle Kazahaya's chin with a smile that got less trustworthy every time he saw it. "I had a feeling they might be coming."

     By which he meant, 'a premonition'. And would it kill him to warn anybody else once in a while?

     Well, good to know he could tell a magic seal if ever he saw one. He'd had quite enough of magic, thanks. Ninjas and pirates could keep their tricks, even if technically they were the lucky ones in this world. People who couldn't manage to make it onto a brigand's boat or as an assassin's assistant -- but still had 'gifts' like his -- ended up in the service industry. Oh, would his parents have cried.

     Kakei's laugh rang through the store, and the manager strode off to sit on the couch, setting the snoring giant's head on his lap. "Go help our guests, Kudou-kun. And remember -- the customer may not always be right, but the customer is definitely armed with at least five deadly weapons."

     As if he needed reminding.

     At least the two pirate ladies were ignoring Rikuou. Everything about that jackass -- from his growls to his glares to the mild disorder of his tar-black, so-called hairdo -- seemed designed to grate on Kazahaya's long-past-extant patience, but nothing was worse than watching gaggles of civilian schoolgirls ask where to find the mallowmars just so they could talk to him. Their giggles could kill hyenas.

     "Pardon me..."

     A sunshiney voice pulled him back to the counter and the register, with no time to wonder how long he'd been staring off after his co-worker. Saitou-san had stepped up to check out! Smiling and sweet as ever, with nothing but a magazine in her hand! Jackpot!

     "Did you find everything you were looking for?"

     "That's it, I think. Thank you." Zipping around to the register with as bright a smile as he could manage, he rang up her copy of the Daily Picaroon.

     "Oh, I read this issue!" Kazahaya whispered, leaning in with a laugh. "On page three, there's someone who thinks the wreck he found might be the Clover Belle. About ten thousand salvagers are heading out to see if they can find Mihara Oujirou's lost treasure." He always read the articles about the legendary Prince of the Seas, and not just because it made it easier to talk to pirate customers. "You know, my mother used to tell me he's actually my great-great-great-great-great..." He counted off a hand of fingers then started on the other hand. "...great-great-great grandfather."

     Before Saitou-san could say anything, a slushie cup hit the counter with an absurd gravity to its thunk. "Does Kakei pay you to flirt with the customers?"

     "Ah! Jounouchi-san! I wasn't..." Kazahaya flitted his eyes back and forth between the knifey stare of the Ice Machine and the calm smile of the medic. "I was just making conversation!"

     The pirate didn't spare him another word -- just a silver coin on the counter. "I've got it, Kaede."

     Figuring the price of the slushie plus the price of the magazine, Kazahaya thanked his lucky stars for adding machines, because he couldn't ever think clearly enough to calculate change when dealing with their special customers. But thanks to modern appliances, all he had to do was count out the right number of coppers, and hand them over. "Have a nice day!"

     At least Saitou-san waved at him before leav--

     And there was that bastard, Rikuou, again, giving him dirty looks. Well, all of the great, jet-headed menace's looks were dirty, really, even the ones that weren't particularly mean, so there wasn't anything new about that, but did he have to stop sweeping just to glare across the store? If there hadn't been customers around, Kazahaya would have stuck out his tongue. But there were customers, so he couldn't or he'd get his pay docked, and had Saitou-san just dropped her handkerchief?

     The square of pale purple linen floated to the ground, unremarked by the two pirates walking silently out toward the door. The least he could do was pick it up for her.

     He wondered, as he closed his fist around the fallen cloth, what might have happened if he'd been young and met those two. Sure, there were dynasties of sea bandits as good as royalty, but they still got new blood in. If Kazahaya had been an apt kid, maybe still five or six, and tagged along after Sai, he could have stowed away on her boat and thrown himself on the mercy of her captain. Become a cabin boy, worked his way up through the crew, learning to mend torn clothes and broken limbs alike. And to sail! Oh, to sail...

     If you survived! the sensible part of his brain yelled out at him, but it was so hard to hear through the whistling of the salt winds through the rigging as he climbed with a dirk between his teeth, up to the crows nest to spy out from the flags whether the approaching ship was friend or foe.

     Wouldn't it be something to make a name for himself, maybe be a pirate Lord some day? In charge of a whole fleet that bent on his say-so? And... And...

     And why was he wearing a skirt?

     A hard rap fell on the back of his hand, the pain spreading out from his wrist keeping his fingers paralyzed open as the lavender handkerchief fluttered back to the floor.

     Of course. Those had been Saitou-san's memories, skirt and all.

     "Don't you ever think?"

     The snarl by his ear wrenched him the rest of the way back into reality, with the visions that the hanky had taken from its owner flitting away like a leaf in a storm. Maybe there were benefits to staying in a general store, surrounded by new goods, instead of out pirating or ninjaing, but would it kill the universe to hand him some respect instead of Himura Rikuou? To whom he happened to owe his life, which only made matters worse. Why had the lout even scooped him out of the snow if he was going to constantly be such a monumental jackass?!

     "I was handing that back to our customer!" Kazahaya hissed, pulling his own hanky out of his pocket to guard his fingers as he bent to pick it up again. He wasn't that impaired.

     But Rikuou parried his hand away with the self-same broom he'd used to break Kazahaya's grip. "I've got it. Quit spacing out before Kakei sees you."

     As if anyone had asked for his help! ... Except for when they'd first met. His recollection wasn't too clear (freezing and all), but he thought he might actually have said, 'Help me,' then.

     But. What. Of. It?

     Kazahaya scowled at the monolith's back as he handed the kerchief back to Kaidou-san. Life was so horribly unfair. Because Rikuou was one of the few things he knew for sure was safe to touch, because the bastard was too good at keeping himself locked away. Even that pissed him off, even though he'd spent too many days before he'd come here wishing he could wear gloves every second of every day. You know -- if they hadn't made living practically impossible, and if he hadn't kept forgetting them in washrooms. Being able to wear gloves all the damn time was practically a superpower in itself.

     Then the door jangled, and the two pirates were gone -- and all in an instant, the weight in Kazahaya's apron pocket was suddenly much, much heavier than a few sheets of paper should have been. He'd forgotten to give them Captain Doumeki's map.

     Although she hadn't asked for it. That meant he wasn't in trouble, right? Wandering over to the lever wall, he tucked the package down further, where Kakei couldn't see it. Not even Kakei, not from where he was standing. All he had to do was slip it carefully, nonchalantly, into the special order bin while he reset the pirate lever...

     With a clunk and a squeal and a whoosh of steam from something in the walls that had been built by some man with glasses and an evil grin long before he'd been around to see it, everything transformed. The magazine racks pushed copies of the Daily Picaroon into clamps hooked to a swiveling arm, hiding them somewhere out of all sight like discs in a jukebox. Bins of Salty Dog Rum Taffies and Jolly Roger Jelly Skulls slammed closed and spun to the inside of the rack, revealing rows of innocent chocolate bars and gumballs. Paper signs advertising, "Here be value, Matey!" with women in lacy negligees, boots, and hats rolled around on scroll bars to show the store's seven-leafed logo and assurance that, "Green Market is your one stop, day or night." Everywhere, scalliwag swag and piratey perishables hid themselves in the walls and fixtures, not to be seen by civilians who might be uneasy. Or who might actually be ninjas in disguise.

     They didn't get many normal customers. Yuuko being who she was, he hadn't thought they'd have ninja customers at all when he'd started working here, but it seemed there were things that ninja with the means wouldn't rather put on their Union tab. Like condoms, chapstick, and the occasional rare object that might cost them more than an arm and a leg if they were to get it from the mysterious Shop that only ninja could find. Even more occasionally, they wanted something unique that Yuuko didn't have in stock, but that the Black Market could track down.

     "Ninja," Kazahaya muttered under his breath. Of the rock and the hard place that had their little storefront by the balls, they were by far the trickiest customers. Then, like he'd called down divine wrath, the proximity alarm right in front of him started to beep and glow red. He leaned down to check the periscope window to see who was coming around the corner, and wouldn't you know...

     "Ninja!" he yelled out this time, so everyone could hear, pulling the lever marked with a black throwing star. With another steam-puffing creak, the shelves spun, the magazine rack twisted, and their door barred itself -- waiting for the tap-tap tap-tap-da-dap of the secret knock.

     Not ninja he had to think twice about, either. There were no doubt civilians who actually believed Lantis was the head gardener at Hundhammeren Castle -- and when he was out of armor, he looked plenty unassuming -- but the one-man juggernaut had dealt with the Black Market enough that Kakei never bothered treating him as anything but the captain of the citadel guard. And the blond man next to him, Eagle -- he'd signed on as a "valet" at the castle not four years ago and was already the number one gentleman's gentleman, which according to Kakei meant Black Ops. Between that and the gleam in his smile, Kazahaya always took special care never to touch anything that man wore. Although... he'd always been a bit more unnerved by their little red-headed girlfriend. She looked cute, and she looked harmless, but he had it on good authority that Hikaru could, at the least provocation, whip a flaming sword three times her height out of god knows where and summon mechanical monsters with a single shout. 'Ward of the Queen,' his ass.

     Kazahaya hoped to hell this was a chapstick run.

     At least you could count on ninja not to reveal themselves when other people were about, or to approach when there was a pirate in the vicinity, or to expect their merch on the shelves when they were in disguise. A handy, self-regulating system that kept their store from trying to house pirates and ninjas at once. There wasn't enough property insurance in the world to cover for that.

     Tap-tap tap-tap-da-dap, went the ninjas, and ka-shlunk went the door lock. It all seemed so pointless, since they'd only change the store if there were confirmed ninjas around and no-one else, but none of the ninjas ever complained. Rikuou stood aside with his broom as the three figures entered and set the bells to jingling again. Two of the three flashed smiles at the store, while Lantis headed over toward the chocolate as if he was the only one in the world. Try as he might, Kazahaya'd never seen the man actually take something off the shelf -- nor Hikaru for that matter -- but if he glanced away for a second, naturally the ninja zipped down two aisles and added five things to his basket while Kazahaya wasn't looking. Eagle, on the other hand, didn't bother. He seemed to find it more amusing to study the Shinobi Special hand cream in full view and drop it into his basket with a bedroom grin.

     Guaranteed to make your skin as strong as steel and smooth as silk. Perfect for the ninja who uses a garrote or who wants to learn the guitar. Kazahaya didn't ask which one Eagle was. There was no doubt he was concealing far more than five weapons under that big, green cloak. Thank goodness he took a turn toward the slushie machine before Kazahaya had to decide which of their customers to try to help.

     Leaving him with the tuft of red hair sticking up over the magazine racks and the black-clad man who'd teleported to the juice aisle.

     Right. Lantis it was.

     "Can I help you find anything today?" Kazahaya waited through the usual ten seconds of being ignored as the ninja compared the nutritional content of ordinary strawberry-kiwi juice to that of Satsu-berry Cooler before he considered his duty done. "Okay. Well. Just let me know if there's anything you need!" he laughed, and walked back up toward the register -- where Rikuou was ringing up a newspaper, some fruit jerky, and an extra large box of condoms for the kunoichi he could have sworn was on the other side of the store before he'd turned his back. Why couldn't ninja just move like normal people?!

     By the time he'd gotten behind the counter to start bagging their shopping, Lantis had poofed out of nowhere to add his juice, candy, and a bag of birdseed to the lot, and Eagle was just sauntering up. "These, too, please," he said, pulling up a pack of extra-strong mints to add to his slushie and his hand cream.

     "Eagle, Lantis! Did you see?" Hikaru asked, pointing out a full-page ad in her paper. "The Imonoyama family named Nokoru the new head of the academy in Kragero! He's having a tournament next month for the ceremony."

     "You just want to fight that Takamura boy again, don't you?" the blond teased.

     "Of course I do!"

     Lantis dropped exact change on the counter with a soft clink. "Will the other girls be going with you? Nokoru and his friends are probably still up to their nonsense."

     Sometime between when Kazahaya had dropped his eyes to the newspaper and when he looked back up, all the other goods on the counter had disappeared completely. Fucking ninja. Did they even need bags? Why bother making him pack things up? He supposed he was lucky they brought their things up to the counter at all. "They wouldn't make trouble, but Umi and Fuu'll want to come anyway," Hikaru answered, then flashed Kazahaya and Rikuou a bright smile as she took the newspaper. "Thanks, guys!"

     Kazahaya waved at her with a smile of his own, which felt like it was fading fast. Two pirates and three ninja within ten minutes was a bit brisker than business on a usual Thursday. As soon as their backs were turned, he drifted out of sight behind the lever wall, trying not to thunk his head too hard while he waited for the sound of the door closing. He reached out for the ninja lever with his eyes still closed and pushed it back up and away. The whooshes and whirs of the store going back to normal always helped him breathe more easily.

     Just like that infernal proximity alarm seemed dead set on making his brain jump out of his skull!

     Please let it be a civilian, he thought, willing his eyes open. Please let it be a civilian. Please let it be a civilian...

     The screen showed a figure in black, but it wasn't Lantis coming back for toothpaste. That was the slim and permanently exasperated frame of Watanuki Kimihiro. At least if it had to be another ninja, it was him. Always knew exactly what he needed (although it was usually something special for Yuuko), always shopped quickly no matter how much fuss he made, and never made you feel like you had a knife pointed at your back. Kazahaya was about to pull the ninja lever again with a well-earned sigh of relief when Watanuki started acting strange.

     Well. More strange. He always looked a little strange, like he was ranting to himself when he walked, but this was odder than usual.

     This time, he jumped a mile in the air then disappeared into the shadow of a fence post -- completely invisible, as if he'd vanished. When he stepped out again a second later, he was wearing a funny red-and-white paper hat (probably the first thing Kazahaya'd ever seen clash with an all-black ninja outfit) and pushing what looked like a popcorn cart. For what reason, he wasn't about to ask.

     Definitely a popcorn cart, though, confirmed by the carton of puffed, yellow kernels he dished out in a flash and shoved with an arch-backed flailing of arms at the man who'd just stepped into view, walking down the street.

     A man with the unmistakable feathered hat and gleaming hook-hand of Captain Doumeki Shizuka.

     "Aah!" Kazahaya yelped, backing slowly away from the display. Ninja and pirate. Together. And because he couldn't take his eyes off the screen for some reason, he could tell they were still walking toward the door. And had he mentioned, together?! "Aaaaaaaah...!"

     "What's the matter, Kudou-kun?"

     Kakei's footsteps coming up behind him were not helping!

     "It's... It's..."

     "It's what?" Rikuou growled, trying to nose in on the display.

     "It's..." Kazahaya whipped around, shoving his back up against the image of the two men approaching, trying to explain, but found he could only get a faint squeak out of his throat. Then the big, green button that suddenly felt so friendly under his hand caught his attention and he knew what they had to do. "Let's hide," he suggested, every window and door slamming locked as he smashed the button with his fist and dropped like a sack of flour to the ground. Something about the three identical thuds hitting the floor around him and the breath tickling his ear hinted that, maybe, this hadn't been his best idea ever.

     Hide?

     Had he actually just suggested they all hide?

     And they all did?

     "You even duck like a cat," Rikuou murmured where only he could hear, rendering him suddenly and uncomfortably aware of how he was crouched over his elbows and knees with his chin jammed against the wood. "Nice ass, though." He tilted his head to the left only to find his co-worker's dark eyes narrowed at him, and that when the man's breath was running over his lips instead of his ear he suddenly had no idea what he was thinking at all.

     "Kudou-kun..." Kakei whispered, barely louder than the rustle of his clothes as he and Saiga crawled over the wooden floor, with a hint of a giggle. "Why are we hiding?"

     "--dare to infringe upon my place of business! Again! This being the second time, in case you don't remember Sunday night or still plan to claim that was a dream. It wasn't! It was very, very real, and exceedingly uncalled for! And now, you have gone too far! Too far, I say!" their customer's voice rang from the door.

     As the ninja rattled the door, then knocked out a rushed, Tap-tap tap-tap-da-dap (which, thanks to the green button, did nothing), Rikuou pushed up to his feet. "It's just Watanuki, scaredy-cat."

     "Open the door this instant! I know you're in there!" the ninja screamed, rattling the door handle again. "I can hear you laughing!!"

     Kakei was the only one laughing, though.

     And once Rikuou's brute face was out of his sight, the training that'd been drilled into Kazahaya's head suddenly snapped back, and he jumped up. In the one in a million event that a pirate and ninja actually showed up together, and they weren't actively destroying the scenery by trying to kill each other, the ninja must be incognito. Hence the popcorn cart, he assumed. That could be a disguise. When that happened, he was supposed to pull the pirate lever -- not have a panic attack.

     The creaking and puffing of the gears and steampipes in the walls sounded far more like a scream than he'd ever heard before, and for some reason the whole shop echoed with a loud... song. With drums, and very energetic guitars. Around the lever still in his hand, he saw a memory forming of the bespectacled man who'd built the system installing a record player that used the rafters as resonators, chuckling the whole while. And then a singing voice declared all around the store, "Soon this whole world will break apart, with whatever dreams and hopes you have..." in a way he could only describe as suspiciously ominous.

     That had definitely never happened before.

     Then he saw Rikuou's hand next to his. On the ninja lever. Pulled down at the same time as the pirate lever. And the store... Oh god, the store. It was full of dancing magazine racks where ninja newspapers and pirate periodicals were fighting for space, while the candy racks spun around and around, tossing rum toffees everywhere. Only the slushie machine kept churning as normal, without a single jitter or cringe. He pushed both levers back up to the 'off' position, but nothing changed. The store was broken. Kazahaya could only stand there with his jaw trembling while the door swung open and the ninja stomped in, with the pirate eating popcorn behind him.

     "The banana sauce isn't bad," Doumeki called out, eating the last few kernels as he dropped the empty carton into the trashbarrel with his hook.

     "I should think not, you lout! That was my own personal creation! Now you may have that side of the store," Watanuki answered him, toeing an invisible line between them on the ground, "... and I'll do my business over here! Understood?!"

     "Wow," Rikuou said, nodding at the pending apocalypse in the aisles.

     "Wow?!" Up on his toes where he had a chance of getting his eyes at least as high as his co-worker's nose, Kazahaya hissed, "You screwed up the entire store, while there's a pirate and a ninja inside, and all you can say is, 'Wow'?!"

     In his classic jackass style, Rikuou blocked him in against the wall, where the pirate and ninja levers were sticking into his back and the man's dark bangs were nearly falling into his eyes. "I think we can call that a joint effort, Mr. Let's Hide. I'll clean up out there. You think you can handle the counter, or are you gonna spaz out again?"

     "I'll be fine!"

     And he would. As long as he ignored the sarcastic glint in his co-worker's grin as he walked away, and ignored how Kakei was doubled over and turning blue from laughing into Saiga's shoulder. He must have known this was going to happen. Fucking sadist.

     "Even as a memory," sang the song playing through store, from the record that Kazahaya was going to find and smash when this was over. "A dream is nothing but a dream. You are... star light!"

     That. Was his new least favorite song. Ever. Most especially because it was so damned catchy.

     Captain Doumeki leaned his back up against the counter with the copy of the Daily Picaroon he was theoretically reading, but mostly just holding open as he tracked Watanuki dodging around the store. "The wreck of the Clover Belle, huh?" he murmured with a scoff, and turned the page. "People need to stop looking for ghost ships. Never ends well."

     "Did you find everything you were looking for?" Kazahaya asked, hoping if he stuck to his script that his voice wouldn't tremble too much.

     As the pirate looked up again, the clerk thought he might have seen a hint of a smile behind his stoic mask while he stared down the twitchy ninja hiding behind a display of chocolate gift boxes. "Absolutely." Flipping another page, he asked, "Did that special order come in yet?"

     "Just arrived today!"

     With a sigh and a big, plaster smile, Kazahaya pushed the brown paper package over the counter. The pirate captain seemed to find it in order, which at this point had to be the best thing that had happened all day. "Thanks," Doumeki answered, stowing the bundle inside his jacket and resuming his pattern of reading articles and watching Watanuki. "You know if there's anything to this story about the FTO getting spotted in Hundhammeren Bay?"

     Between the song still pounding through the walls, the whine of the displays going crazy, and the day he'd been having, Kazahaya's brain felt like a sieve that'd caught the tea leaves from what the pirate was saying and missed out on all the tea. "The... ah... I'm sorry, the what?"

     "FTO."

     Kazahaya shook his head. Hadn't made any more sense the second time.

     "The personal longboat of the White King of Autozam?" Doumeki explained. "That he ran off with when he disappeared?"

     Ah. Well. All he knew about Autozam was that the fleet served a couple oceans away at the bidding of "Devil-Breaker" Satsuki on the Dragon of Earth, and that was all he needed to know. He'd take his local, halfway friendly Takifugu pirate fleet any day of the week. Shaking his head again, he told Doumeki, "Sorry. Autozam's a little out of my way."

     "Nevermind, then."

     "Did... you want me to ring you up?"

     This time, Kazahaya was sure he saw the pirate grinning. "Register's on his side of the store," he said, nodding at the figure in black sneaking up around the still-spinning barrels of granola.

     "I... um. I can go over there and... you know..." Miming typing on the keypad, Kazahaya finished, "You don't have to move."

     Captain Doumeki dropped two silvers on the counter. "That'll get me a slushie, too, right?"

     "Ah. Yes."

     "Keep the change."

     As the pirate strode over to the spinning mess of shaved ice and sugar syrup, the ninja finally popped into view by the register -- fuming and muttering and clearly opening his mouth to say something Kazahaya didn't expect to find pleasant. Right on cue with the reverberating chorus of, 'I am... moonli~ight!' that simply would not stop playing throughout the store, Doumeki turned around, holding up a full-page graph of multi-colored bars and yelling.

     "Hey!"

     "You know my name, you feather-headed nincompoop!" Watanuki yelled back, business forgotten. "Learn to use it!"

     Without a blink, the pirate captain pointed to a blue bar, stretching almost halfway across the page. "Any chance a ninja got onto the Dragon of Heaven?"

     "Do I look like a ninja to you?" screamed the man who, Kazahaya was certain, was Yuuko's personal assistant despite the red-and-white paper hat at which he was pointing so ferociously. "How the hell would I know that?!"

     Doumeki pulled the tabloid back down to where he could see it. "Right. So did the 'popcorn vendor's union' send someone to 'make popcorn' for the Pirate King?"

     Kazahaya backed as far away as he could from Watanuki, whose face was now fading into crimson, starting from the tips of his ears and working its way to his nose. The way he was tapping his fingers on his crossed arms bore an unfortunate resemblance to a ticking timebomb. "I have no idea, and even if I did I wouldn't tell you! That's none of your business!" Then, with a cough into his hand, he said more quietly, "Why do you ask?"

     The pirate resettled his hat, shaking his head at the numbers that even a non-pirate like Kazahaya had noticed surging, although they weren't yet close to the frontrunner whose purple bar spanned the page. "Nobody'd lie about getting over eleven thousand points in a day, which means somebody got one hell of an epic somebody into bed last week."

     "What?!" All of that red drained out of the ninja's face in an instant, leaving it as white as fresh linen in the sun.

     "Don't worry. We're still in first."

     Ah. Ha. Well. Now Kazahaya knew who was purple. And why he was winning.

     "Now, wait just one minute, you ass! What do you mean, 'We're in first'?! You said you weren't sleeping with me for the points!"

     Even over the ear-numbing music, Kazahaya could hear Doumeki call out as he headed for the door. "I'm still turning 'em in."

     "This conversation is nowhere near over! Villain! Scoundrel! Pernicious, good-for-nothing libertine! Don't think you can escape when you walk out of here! I will track you down! I will find you!"

     "I'll be right outside when you're done shopping."

     The usually calming jangle of the bells on the door faded into the din, and Watanuki whipped back toward the register with a twitch that made both his eyebrows quake like a tin can on a string in a gale-force storm.

     "Kakei. Now."

     "I presume Lady Yuuko has a special request," the store manager answered, stepping out of the back before Kazahaya could even think of calling him.

     "I should say so! Although I wonder if Mistress Yuuko will be so gracious in the future towards persons who are clearly doing business with pirates!"

     With his usual pleasant mask, Kakei laughed, barely loud enough to hear. "Green Market has always been a free agent, Watanuki-san. Lady Yuuko understands that. It's the only way we can provide the services we offer."

     "Well, we'll see. In the meantime, she has a request, if you think you can handle it." The ninja whipped a large, paper-wrapped bundle out of nowhere, which Kakei took with the kind of care that implied magic and handed over to Kazahaya. "You'll need that," was the last thing the clerk heard the ninja say -- the crashing and confusion of the store, including the gesticulatory explanation Kakei was listening to, faded away in an instant. All Kazahaya could hear was a woman's voice.

     Clear and calm over a low clink of glasses and a haunting piano strain, she sang, "Away... far away..." It wasn't wasn't a sound he'd ever call 'catchy', or even tuneful, but only in the way quiet brooks didn't have a tune. "Memory fades into the breeze. Nothing there remains..."

     The song was only a faint impression, echoing around his ears without blocking out the sight of the mania surrounding him. He could tell it wasn't 'now' or 'here' -- a sense he'd struggled with for so long that sometimes he had to win. Today it was enough of a sense to let him find the slip of cardstock under his fingers, tied onto the package in his hands. Plain black, but for the green of a four-leaf clover. Careful not to drop the bundle, he moved his hands to safer parts of the wrapping. Kazahaya only caught one last, fading bit of the woman's song as real life flooded back in.

     "Where it begins, where it ends... As it runs far, far away."

Chapter Text

     Taking one last look around the patched-together storefront, Rikuou turned the sign in the window from "CLOSED FOR REPAIRS" to "COME IN, WE'RE OPEN!" He wouldn't have minded spotting Kazahaya's tight little ass on the ladder a little longer, but all the hanging displays were back up, now, hidden in the ceiling. Still a few signs rolled halfway between Pirate setting and Normal, plus a mountain of mixed-up candies on the floor, but they couldn't stay out of commission much longer. They'd been at it an hour and a half already, on top of the hour to trace the system to the reset switch -- specifically, the toaster, where they had to set all the slots to make extra-dark toast at once, and then go pull the pirate and ninja levers both down and push 'em back up again. Because that made sense. Somebody's idea of a practical joke, Rikuou had no doubt.

     Kakei must've finished realigning all the shelf stock. He was behind the counter now, piling up dog-eared magazines that hadn't survived the mechanical war on the periodical rack. Except for the candy, which was going to take at least another forty-five minutes to sort out of chaos, Rikuou could fix everything with two flicks of a lever on the control panel. It'd just take a second, he figured, and stopped to watch the pretty kitty kneel down next to the sugar mountain. No big hurry. No reason he couldn't pause for a breather.

     He ran his thumb over his lip as he stared, willing away the incomplete feeling on his tongue that wasn't quite hunger. Who knew strays you found in the snow could clean up that nice? A little bit useless -- probably wouldn't ever grow a lick of common sense -- but that was fine. He was cute enough that Rikuou could be sure Kazahaya would never hurt for people to take care of him. Especially when he had that zoned-in focus in his eyes like now, sitting on the floor with his tawny hair pushed off his face in a mess, grabbing things from the mixed-up mound of confections and tossing them one at a time into the open bins. He didn't even notice Rikuou walking up behind him, or leaning over to watch -- just kept staring at the display, biting his lip while he worked as if he wanted to prove he could concentrate when he tried.

     "How about you give me a kiss?" Rikuou asked.

     His coworker dropped his handful of sweets in a foil shower and scooted back into the candy pile. They scattered all over the floor again, chocolate and butterscotch and licorice flying halfway to the door, while the only sweet Rikuou hadn't tried yet lay sprawled on top of the lot. Blushing red as a Cinnamon Firecracker, too, and looking like he had twice as much bite. "Excuse me?!"

     Rikuou dropped to his knees and reached a hand under one of the man's legs, bracing the other next to his head on the floor. "A little sugar's the best pick-me-up after you've been working hard," he answered, pulling Kazahaya's knee up closer to his hip. "Didn't you know that?" His hands felt the same strain as his tongue, but he held back from stroking the long lines of the man's thigh. He knew what was coming.

     "I'm not giving you anything, pervert!"

     For the best. Even if his stray cat hadn't been able to read the past with his fingers, Rikuou had known from the beginning this was one craving he shouldn't indulge. Right from the second he'd seen those big, dewy eyes waking up that first morning, about to thank him for saving his life. He'd have been hooked for sure. The last thing he needed was a reason to stay when Tsukiko was out there, somewhere. Only God knew where, but she had to be alive long enough for him to find her. And if Kazahaya hated him too much to let him close, there wasn't anything to worry about.

     "I guess I'll have to take it from you, huh?" With a grin, he pulled his hand out from under Kazahaya's knee -- with a foil-wrapped, bite-size cone of chocolate. As soon as his partner saw it, his fair eyes went wide again and his nose flared. Rikuou chuckled, standing up and heading for the counter to mark it on the waste sheet. It all came out of his paycheck anyway. "Did you think I was after something else?"

     "Would it kill you to learn some manners?!"

     "That's enough flirting, boys," Kakei called out, folding up the ladder with his usual smile agleam. "Your costumes will be ready for a fitting any minute now."

     Rikuou popped the chocolate kiss into his mouth and shot the manager a scowl that went unnoticed. Who'd be looking at him when their kitty cat was back on his feet, peeking over the candy rack with his eyebrows in his hairline.

     "Costumes? Is this for a side job?"

     With a laugh, Kakei petted the flighty fool's head. "Of course, Kudou-kun. They're part of what Watanuki dropped off earlier, but Saiga wanted to make a few alterations. I assume you'll take the job?"

     "Absolutely!"

     "What is it?" Rikuou asked. He couldn't even think about saying no -- the last time Kazahaya had run off on a side job without him, he'd come home with blue-egg flu and pants full of self-sprouting aster seeds -- but he'd like some idea what they were getting into. Kakei would never ask them to do something safe.

     The store manager lounged against his stepladder with a deadly grin, tapping his manicured fingers on his chin. Like always. "How much do you know about the Dioscuri?" he asked.

     Little enough, Rikuou wanted to say. He hadn't much liked bedtime stories as a boy, and forgot most of what he'd ever heard. But before he could get a word out, Kazahaya had run around the displays to Kakei's side, clutching his clasped hands to his chin and with all the stars from the night sky shining in his eyes. "The Six Divine Warriors?! They were my favorite! Are we putting on a play?"

     It never failed.

     Whether it was parades or balloons or peanut butter sandwiches, you could count on Kazahaya for the squeal and dash most people grew out of when they were ten. As if Yuuko would send her henchman over here to ask them to put on a play. But, running his tongue so fast Rikuou couldn't believe he didn't trip up, his partner bounced up and down on his toes. "I can do all the lines for the Heavenly Twins! I even learned a couple songs on the mandolin for it growing up, though I know he's not supposed to play a mandolin, but I just can't handle a bow... and for the one where he and his sister had to switch places, Kei--"

     Rikuou could barely hear his own chuckle, but of course the kitty's sensitive ears picked it up.

     "What are you laughing at?" he snarled, furrowing his forehead. As Kazahaya zipped into his space, Rikuou shifted away from a less-than-threatening fist if only so it didn't block the view. His coworker could scowl all he wanted; a pissy kitten was still a pretty one. "Well, I guess there's no way we look enough alike to play the Twins. A big, gloomy, vile jackass like you is no good for playing anybody but the Barrows-Guard! I always knew you'd be a beast from Hell in disguise. It can be your fault they were cursed to live as stars forever, and never join the human race again." Then, whipping around to face nobody in particular, his growls gave way to more delighted squealing. "Does that mean I could play the Dreamseer this time? Or...! Or we could do the one where the Snow Fox tricks the bunny in the moon into chasing its shadow! I love that one!"

     Catching Kazahaya's wrist and grabbing his waist from behind, Rikuou whispered in his ear, "You know they're just stories, right?"

     "You can keep your asshole opinions to your asshole self!," Kazahaya yelled as he whipped around. He nearly overbalanced the both of them in the push, standing on his toes to get on eye-level, though he didn't seem to notice that Rikuou's hands on his hips were the only reason they were still standing. "I know people can't really go to the Heavens and talk to moon bunnies and stars and things, but legends come from somewhere, damn it!"

     "Well, at least I shouldn't have to explain what you're looking for," their slick viper of a boss cut in. Sometime while they'd been arguing, Saiga had reappeared from the backroom, and now had his arms around Kakei's shoulders while the store owner studied a big blue and black jacket Rikuou had to assume was his. The frothy white thing on the counter'd be a much better match for Kazahaya. "You'll know all about the orbs the Dioscuri used to communicate."

     Rikuou felt a chill running over his spine, just from the easy way Kakei was talking about finding artifacts out of full-blown myth. They weren't all nice myths with moon bunnies, either. Of course, Kazahaya was dancing in place.

     "You mean the ones the Dimension Witch won from the god Clow Reed? Really?! Then... Wait." He spun right up to Kakei, with his eyes so melting and shining, you'd think they were made of honey. "Looking... for? We're looking for them?" At the shop owner's smile and nod, a sound more like a steaming teakettle than a person came out of Kazahaya's throat. "They're real? Does this mean Jason and the Argonauts are real, too?!"

     Taking the white outfit from the counter, Kakei walked over and dropped the pile of fabric in the too-trusting man's arms. "No," he answered, and from his nose to his knees, hope leaked out of Kazahaya's frame like helium wheezing out of a balloon.

     Once he looked about as shriveled as he could get, Kazahaya's eyes darted over the waves of translucent silk. "But if it's not a play, why do we need costumes?"

     "Because we don't want to risk anyone identifying you when you steal the orb, of course."

     Of course they were stealing it. At least they were dealing with Yuuko's people, so crime was going to pay a fair wage. Something about the cut of his jacket bothered him, though. The closed collar wasn't like most he'd seen on ships around here, but it still looked an awful lot like a pirate's coat for him to wear on a ninja job. And there was something familiar about it, like he'd seen it before somewhere. "The ninja ought to send their own to get it," Rikuou growled. "What else are they good for?"

     "I think Watanuki agrees with you, Himura-kun, but Lady Yuuko insists. If it were activated, it could draw too much attention. Someone without ninja training, however--"

     "Kakei-san! There must be some mistake!" Kazahaya cried out. Rikuou looked up to see him holding a tight leather top up to his shoulders, sewn to a full, white skirt that showed a peek of very short shorts in the front. As he swished the fabric around his hips, Kazahaya's cheeks blushed redder and redder. "Why did you give me a dress?!"

~//~

     "It looks cute. You should've kept it on."

     The moonlight catching on Kazahaya's hair was the worst. If the man kept his mouth shut and his eyes serious, add the moonlight in his hair to the trim torso and legs for miles... He could look downright divine sometimes. Luckily enough, Rikuou had always been able to get a rise out of him, and nothing broke Kazahaya's spell like having to shush a hissy fit.

     Rikuou told himself that, anyway, as he put a finger to his lips and watched his partner suppress the urge to claw his eyes out.

     Downtown streets in Hundhammeren were crowded enough after dark that they had to keep their voices low, although no one listened too hard to what strangers were saying in a town crawling with pirates and ninja. That went double when the stranger was -- like his partner -- stomping down the road with his back arched and a rumble like an engine in his throat.

     "I can't hide that thing under my coat!" he insisted, a blush that showed even in the gas glow of the streetlamps deepening over his cheeks. "Isn't it bad enough that I have to flounce around a bar in a puffy skirt and a train without having to wear it on the way over?! And of all the bars in all the world, we have to be retrieving the Dangerous Mystical Artifact of Mysterious Significance from the one bar that's haunted by a girl with a fairy princess complex." Kazahaya scowled up at the four green leaves on the sign above the door and drew his coat so tight that Rikuou would've worried the costume's wings might break if they'd been under it. "Does this place really have to be haunted?"

     "What'd you expect? It's named for the damned ghost ship for a reason."

     And he knew now why the clothes had looked familiar. He'd met the bar haunts himself once, when he'd been waiting at Clover for a contact who'd never shown. Just before closing time, Rikuou had seen the flickering image of a slight man wearing leather armor over a blue mandarin coat. He was a dainty type, though, not a man Rikuou thought he could pass for. Kazahaya was a ten times better match for the pale-haired girl who'd hovered by his side on metal wings. And who'd complain about legs like his partner had in a dress built to show 'em off?

     Besides Kazahaya himself.

     Before his hissy cat could reach for the door handle, Rikuou grabbed him around the waist and buried his nose in Kazahaya's raw silk hair. "You wanted to change here, so no complaints about what I have to do to get us a room," he whispered, willing his pulse not to race as he closed his arms tighter to stop Kazahaya from struggling. He had to at least try to keep this strictly business. "And try to look like you're having a good time, all right?"

     "I can do my job!"

     "You don't act like it."

     Step one, get the lay of the land, he thought, walking his partner in with an arm around his shoulders. Kunogi, the barmaid with the long, dark curls, was pulling someone a beer off the tap, which meant Caldina was on tables. So much for just asking for a room. The pink-haired wench wasn't quite as lenient Kunogi was, but sitting at the bar was no good. They'd need to get to one of the tables closer to the stage or that detector widget the ninja had supplied might not catch everything.

     Across the floor from the warm glow of the bar, the lights around the booths and tables hid behind colored glass. The air shone blue as if you'd stepped into a shadow that here or there let a face catch the light of the moon, which might as well have been the singer -- silent mid-song, in a dress as black as her hair that showed an ivory cut of leg right up to her hip. Every light was trained so a pale glow bloomed around her without casting a shadow that could be seen from below.

     Chatter ran at a hush while the piano played. The brunette on the keys hadn't noticed them, which was a good start. Kazue? Rikuou thought that was what she'd called herself last time. She might be able to ID him tonight if they weren't careful, although he'd passed on meeting her after shift. The girl was kinda pretty, sure, but 'kinda pretty' had stopped doing it for him after he'd started spending at least eighteen hours most days with Kazahaya. About the only man or woman in the joint who could measure up to his partner was the woman standing center stage with her microphone -- Oruha, who owned the joint -- and apparently he'd heat up over fair and flighty before he'd go for a sable-decked siren. Who'd have figured?

     Rikuou spun his partner into a corner, stroking his cheek for the benefit of anyone who might be watching. "Most people'll have their eyes on the stage when she starts singing again," he whispered. "That's when we move to that booth on the near wall and check the scanner. It's the darkest spot we can get."

     "All right," Kazahaya muttered, twisting his head to glare at Rikuou's hand in his hair.

     Leaning in closer, he hissed, "Play along or we won't get a room. This isn't a hotel."

     As the man looked up with a snarl in his eyes, the crowd dropped silent. Like a winter frost crept over glass, the woman's voice filled the hall. "Take me... far away..."

     That was their cue.

     "Ready?" he murmured, brushing his thumb down Kazahaya's neck. The man didn't say anything, but at least his expression looked right now. More than right. He'd closed his eyes on that pissy glare from a second before and leaned into each touch, managing a thready breath that even Rikuou thought sounded turned on. "Not a bad act you got there." The way he bit his lip alone was more cooperation than Rikuou had expected.

     Kind of hot, too. But he had to get his mind back on track. The song wouldn't last forever, and Kazahaya's patience was sure to be a lot shorter than a song.

     From the stage, he heard, "Hold me while the wind blows by..." while he pulled Kazahaya the few feet across the floor -- not easy, walking backwards and staying nose to nose so no one could see their faces. "... til then, and ever."

     It was a sweet song, not one she'd sung last time. Maybe someday he'd come back when they weren't on business and hear the whole thing. For now, he had plenty to steal his attention, since he couldn't ask Kazahaya to act horny and coordinated. Rikuou managed to sit them both down without the people around them noticing they'd passed. Not easy, since Kazahaya was still doing a better job than he'd expected on playing along. While Rikuou might have said, if he'd been asked, that his partner should smile and flirt and cling to his shoulder, the stormy expression on his face right now suited him better, like he was fighting not to moan every time his body made that subtle twitch. Even clutching tight fists in Rikuou's jacket, and spreading his legs as he sat, trying to buck into his leg. Playing rough right back, Rikuou shoved Kazahaya's hip down into the seat. They weren't gonna make that much of a scene.

     With a chuckle, he whispered, "If you're half this feisty when you're not faking--"

     "Don't. Start."

     Good thing no one could see them now that they were in the booth. He was having to push to keep Kazahaya still in his seat, and the last thing they wanted was to disrupt the show. They'd get noticed for sure that way -- or worse, thrown out. "Cool it a little. Stay steady til the girl takes our order, and we'll get out the scanner."

     "Adrift... I tatter and fade," Oruha's voice rang out, louder this time. "And even earth blows to dust."

     Kazahaya managed to sit more still, but he didn't look like he'd cooled off. Instead he was pushing his head against the seatback, eyes glimmering with a kind of lust that looked too damn honest. Had something knocked him out of reality again? Rikuou didn't see anything in the man's hands but his own shirt, which he sure as hell hoped wasn't forcing some memory on his partner. Just because it hadn't happened before didn't mean it couldn't happen at all. He pulled Kazahaya's hands off, holding tight to the one he couldn't push to his partner's knee, and leaned down to nibble a patch of exposed skin on his neck. If he couldn't stop the fuss, at least he could make it look natural.

     "Oi," he murmured, as soft as he could. "I said to look like you're having a good time, not like you're having an orgasm."

     "And we didn't come here so you could molest me in public, you bastard!" Kazahaya hissed. "Now stop dicking around and get us a room right the fuck now!"

     Even the sound of a lady clearing her throat six inches away didn't do as much as Rikuou would have hoped to make his partner fit for polite company. When they looked up, the pink-haired barmaid was leaning over the table with a strict patience in her grin he hadn't seen since his math teacher had caught him jacking the candy machine for a freebie after lunch. "Hi, boys. I'm Caldina. I was gonna be your server tonight."

     "Sorry," Rikuou answered with a smirk. "If I'd known we'd hit it off this good, I'd have taken him straight to a hotel."

     "I can see that."

     Kazahaya curled up to his side, tremors sneaking out faster and stronger as he tried to hold still. The man sounded like he was honestly begging when he whispered, "Please. I won't last much longer." The sound shot a chill down Rikuou's spine that his partner was going to answer for later if this was all an act.

     With a sigh, Caldina crossed her arms over her chest and nodded at the stairs. "You better put loverboy to bed. Twenty for the night. We don't charge hourly." Rikuou dropped a handful of silver coins on the table, not bothering to count them as he helped Kazahaya to his feet. "I'll throw you a key," she whispered with a wink.

     He'd definitely earned whatever miracle got them to the stairs without the whole bar turning to see what was the matter. Of course, he couldn't blame them for keeping their eyes and ears on the stage, transfixed. Even with the situation at hand Rikuou found himself wanting to listen, wanting to let the sound pull him in.

     "Secrets fade to light," Oruha sang out. "For the wind bears no memory, though carved deep in stone..."

     It stunk of magic if anything ever had. Rikuou narrowed his eyes at the stage, wondering what it could be. But it wasn't a crime for a singer to bewitch her audience, and he had his partner to worry about. Kazahaya had his face buried in Rikuou's shoulder, now, to stifle the sound of his breathing, and it felt like the man's grip on his shirt was the only thing keeping him upright. His knees were trying to give out by the feel of it. No time to listen to music. Not even time to think as he swept the man up. Good thing Kazahaya was light enough to carry.

     And he had to grant the barmaid a right to that grin on her face.

     "Thanks," he said, taking the key she was offering.

     "No sweat. You two have fun."

     As they turned the corner, the piano and the noise of the bar grew more distant, but somehow the song seemed to follow, like Oruha was singing right to him.

     "Should stone trap a seed, roots grow... and I'll stay to remember..."

     Maybe that was a skill great singers had, or maybe it was a spell. Whatever it was, it made him feel like the past was breathing down his neck, and he didn't have any patience for it. He couldn't quite breathe until the last lines faded into distant applause.

     "...When memories were secrets as I ran far... far away."

     The heavy silence settled on the upstairs hallway that let Kazahaya's heedless moans echo undiluted by his ear. Took a little juggling, but he got the key where he could see it. 203. Good. They wouldn't have to go far.

     He stumbled through the door into a room with a king bed, a window, and just enough floor that the table by the wall didn't crowd the space. Onto the bed they went, and Rikuou looked again for anything that could've trapped his partner in a sex frenzy. Something had to be causing this, and him getting in Kazahaya's space had never been a turn-on before. Definitely not grounds to lose his shit like this, clutching at the sheets and his shirt while his body arched against Rikuou holding him down.

     "Take it..." he gasped. "Take it out!"

     Most days this would have been one hell of a wet dream, but in dreams he didn't have to worry about the why and the what next. Rikuou pushed Kazahaya's chin to where he could see the man's face, not even sure what he thought he'd find. Glowing eyes? Purple spots on his tongue? But he looked like his normal, raging self. All that was off was the part where the virgin princess was riding against him and begging to get stripped. "You didn't drink anything funny before we came, did you? No weird pills from strangers?"

     "I said take it out, you asshole! What the hell are you waiting for?!"

     Pulling Kazahaya's hands up and pressing them down against the bed, Rikuou growled, "I'm not touching you while you're going crazy. Tell me what happened so I can fix it!"

     "Can't you feel it?" Kazahaya asked, his eyes closing again as his voice came out in groaning gasps. "That thing... in my pocket... take it the fuck out!"

     Rikuou didn't ask any more questions. He couldn't feel what Kazahaya was talking about, but he could empty out someone's pockets with the best. Then, when he pulled out a long, smooth cylinder, he suddenly felt the whole thing buzzing like a wind-up alarm clock and dropped it on the bed. It seemed impossible that he couldn't hear it, or that he couldn't feel the blankets around it shaking, but when he prodded it again, it was definitely still going off. "What the...?"

     He'd never understand ninja stealth tech.

     With a sigh and a whimper, first Kazahaya's body relaxed, then he curled up on his side. Somehow, even with his face pushed into the blankets, his snarls came out clear enough to hear. "Fucking ninja set the fucking sensor widget to vibrate. God! This isn't fair..."

     "Why didn't you take it out of your pocket when it started going off?"

     "How could I?" Kazahaya snapped, whipping back around to face him. "Was I supposed to wave it around and yell, 'Okay, who's got the magic orb?' or something? What happened to 'Secret Mission is Secret'?"

     Rikuou held up the gray rod, which hadn't had any features at the store but now had an arrow glowing blue at the tip. "Would anybody've known what they were looking at if you'd kept your mouth shut?"

     "Oh."

     "Well, at least we know there's something to find." He crawled off the bed with one last look as his partner rolled his face back into the blanket. "You all right?"

     "I'll be fine. Change, go, I'll catch up."

     "You're the one who knows what we're looking for." Rikuou paced over to the corner by the window, pulling his costume out of the package that looked at least fifteen times too small to hold it. "What do these orbs look like, anyway?"

     "A silver ball, unless someone's activated it. Then it changes to a shape that suits them."

     "Great. So it could be anything. You know, there's a reason I don't like legends."

     "Well, that's why they gave us the goddamn..." He looked over his shoulder to see Kazahaya on his knees on the bed, coat and costume bag cast aside, shaking the sensor with a rabid grimace on his face.

     "What is it?"

     "It stopped!" he yelled, and threw it at the floor by Rikuou's feet. When he picked it up, sure enough, it was as still as could be. "The fucking thing stopped! What're these ninja trying to pull?!"

~//~

     Scaling a drainpipe wasn't a task Watanuki would ordinarily have found hard, or even worthy of consideration, although the outlandish blue brocade jacket he'd had to put on for this costume was a gaudy pain. No, the problem was having to resort to jimmying a window while balanced on the drainpipe with a pirate making commentary behind him. That qualified as more than a little annoying. Watanuki would have preferred to slink in through a shadow or a crack, but he couldn't use any of his secret techniques lest he give himself away as a ninja in front of Doumeki, who certainly wasn't his boyfriend so he didn't care if they never saw each other again after this, but this particular moment would be a decidedly inconvenient time to break up!

     They had an artifact to retrieve.

     Couldn't risk a ninja touching the orb inside city limits indeed. Well, he could get his own somebody who wasn't a ninja, couldn't he? Clearly Mistress Yuuko hadn't known that Doumeki would haul ass back into port ahead of schedule or this would surely have been the plan from the beginning. Otherwise what was the point of a pirate stalker?

     Besides the sex.

     "We could go in the front door like usual," Doumeki called up. The silvery plates of the wings anchored to the pirate's back swayed in the breeze with the barest hint of a clink.

     "Himawari-chan would recognize us. And I thought you said this sounded like fun?!"

     With a shrug, Doumeki answered, "It does. But you look like you're having trouble."

     "Well, I'm not!" As Watanuki slid the window up at last, he saw a white figure dash across the far end of the hallway. Same wings as he'd put on Doumeki, same billowing train on the skirt, same black stockings clipped to a garter belt halfway up the thighs, but much paler hair coming down to the chin. The amateurs from Green Market must have shown up already. Well, a slight head start didn't matter, and neither did him being handicapped by a pirate. They'd still win. That was... He'd still win. By finding the orb first and getting Doumeki to put it in the box for him.

     He hung off to the side and let the pirate crawl in first, poking the points of the wings down so they'd fit through the window frame. As long as nothing happened to complicate the situation, finding an inert Clow artifact and retrieving it would be at least ten levels easier than befit his paygrade -- but still well within the bounds of what ought to be handled by a professional. If someone had activated it, of course, heaven only knew what could happen. Clow didn't believe in subtlety. And he was supposed to leave it to those two convenience store clerks?! Honestly! Mistress Yuuko might even thank him when this was done!

     Not likely, since his job had always been and would probably always be thankless, but it could happen.

     As he set his foot on the window ledge, Watanuki paused. Something wasn't right. He'd learned to trust that tightness in his gut when it told him trouble was around the corner.

     "What's the hold up?"

     Well, he couldn't tell Doumeki that his ninja senses had gone off, and he wouldn't say that he had any 'popcorn senses' whatsoever. Turning his face out of the pirate's line of sight, he answered, "I thought I heard something."

     He'd no sooner spoken than a carriage pulled up in front of the bar, dropping off a blond man who looked particularly out of place in red-lacquered armor emblazoned with the six-dot seal of Sanada Yukimura.

     What was a horrible disguise! Everyone knew Yukimura had been dead for centuries!

     Horrible or not, the man who stepped out beside him, streetlights catching blue on his hair, was wearing a shredded uniform that any ninja would identify as Sarutobi Sasuke. What, was a slicked-down Kirigakure cosplayer going to step out next?!

     Worse. The black-haired man who stepped out of the carriage next was wearing the same blue brocade as Watanuki, with a lady on his arm wearing a copy of the same dress he'd foisted off on Doumeki. "Nokoru-sama," she laughed, glancing around the street. "This doesn't look like the costume ball."

     The blond in the red armor pulled his hands to his hips, never taking his eyes off the building. "A necessary detour, dear cousin. The heart of a lady in tears cried out to me as we drove, and I cannot ignore a damsel in distress."

     "No," the Sarutobi cosplayer muttered as he dropped his face into his palm. "You can't. May I remind you, sir, that you're to deliver the keynote address after the banquet?"

     "We'll arrive in plenty of time, Suoh."

     "And that you still need to write the keynote address?"

     "No task is too heavy! No crisis too paltry!" called out the blond, whom Watanuki recognized with a curse as the new head of the Imonoyama clan, with his two lieutenants in tow, and the woman was the heir to the Ookawa clan for good measure. Now that was a complication. "The balance of a single tear shed by a maiden's eye is as all the floods of Babylon. Suoh! Akira! Follow me! My lady Utako, I beg your indulgence for this brief delay."

     Watanuki waited long enough for them to walk out of sight before ducking in the window. As best he could tell, they hadn't spotted him, which meant he still had the advantage. Pulling Doumeki into a hidden corner, he whispered, "There's a contingent from Kragero entering the building. We'll have to work fast. I can't risk them getting their hands on the... Ah..."

     "The ancient popcorn-making artifact?"

     With a cough, he answered, "Yes. That."

     "Must be one hell of a doohickey."

     "You have no idea."

~//~

     A glass of water between sets was generally uneventful on a weekday night, sitting at her own bar with one or two regulars who'd been around too long to drop the same old compliments. She'd squeeze a lemon into the glass, sip it slowly, maybe laugh at a bad joke -- if she was lucky, a good one -- before she went to her room to freshen up. Most Thursdays didn't find Oruha staring down four nobles visiting from out of town, two of them dressed up as Suu and the Captain, who'd haunted her halls for nearly two years now.

     She'd seen cosplayers before, at least once or twice. The sight of a young man in full armor kneeling by her seat, however, wasn't a sight Oruha remembered ever facing. "Dear lady," he announced, without so much as giving his name. Not that Imonoyama Nokoru would need to. "I heard your song as I rode by in my carriage, and the sorrow I felt in your heart bids me come before you now to set it right. Would you tell me, stranger that I am, the reason for your tears?"

     If she'd thought he was an ordinary man, she'd have assumed he was exaggerating about hearing her from such a distance; but no one thought that the Imonoyamas' school in Kragero was a place for ordinary men -- Oruha especially. Kazuhiko had studied and worked there. He'd never said anything about being a ninja. He hadn't needed to. Bartenders made their living reading secrets.

     That, and breaking the heart of a man who kept hoping that, this time, she could say yes instead of no.

     "Please, stand up, Imonoyama-san. And you can call me Oruha." Even after he took his feet, he bowed again before standing straight. "You're hardly a stranger here. An... acquaintance of mine went to your school. He's told me so much about you."

     "Oruha-san." Imonoyama reached out to clasp her hand. "Whatever I can do to ease your heart, I am your humble servant."

     She arched her fingers out of his grasp and trailed them back along the bar. "Himawari-chan, see that Imonoyama-san and his friends have anything they need -- on the house." Smiling as much from practice as from humor, she told her guest, "Thank you so much for thinking of me. And please, make yourself at home here for as long as you like. But I'm afraid I don't have anything to tell you. I've no reason to cry."

Chapter Text

     If there were any way to return an evening and get his money back, Kazahaya wanted it. Packed off to a haunted bar to find a legendary mystical artifact (okay, that was cool, but only that), where he'd managed to get 'stimulated' beyond all his embarrassing nightmares by a scanner-slash-sextoy (which, to be fair, had gotten them a room, but was uncalled for), and now he was trying to figure out stockings --

     -- emphasis on the 'trying' --

     -- because he had to wear a fucking dress. At least he'd gotten Rikuou to start off without him. The last thing Kazahaya wanted was more snark about how he should wear fluffy nonsense around the store because the pervert wanted panty shots. And he definitely didn't want any opinions about how only a useless moron couldn't put the damn thing on without help. It was staring back at him from on top of the blankets, the bright whites practically glowing under the light of the full moon coming in the window. Yard upon yard of ruffly ridiculousness, and it wasn't even a skirt that came all the way around! The teeny short-shorts in front meant he had to wear special underwear on top of everything, and you could see all the way up his legs!

     And the lacy undergarment with weird buckles hanging all over the place was harder. It went somewhere around his hips -- he knew that much. Kakei'd said they held up the aforementioned stockings, which wouldn't stay on their own, but he'd be damned if he knew how it was supposed to work. Tights were so much better. Tights that went all the way up and...

     ... and he was not going to have opinions on the best way to dress in drag. He was sick of dressing in drag! The number of creepy delinquents who'd had asked him, 'Hey sister, what's cookin'?' since he'd gotten this job would probably reach the moon if they all stood on each others' shoulders, and that was just the creepy ones! Tugging off the black silk tube that was his most immediate hell, Kazahaya fell onto the sheets and pounded his fists at his side. Could this night get any worse?!

     As he rubbed his face and tried not to whimper too loud, the tumblers clicked in the door. It hadn't been that long since Rikuou left. He couldn't possibly have made a real search of all the rooms on this hallway, let alone the whole second floor, not to mention that the goddamn sensor had gone off on the first floor and then stopped, so the orb might not even be in the building anymore. Through his tear-blurred eyes, Kazahaya saw a dark-haired head poke in.

     "Is that what you call working, you lazy, good-for-nothing lug?!" he snapped. "I'll bet you--"

     The door swung the rest of the way open, and Kazahaya was pretty sure his throat had closed up tight enough that only dogs would hear anything he tried to say.

     That wasn't Rikuou.

     That was Captain Doumeki. In... his dress. And his stockings. And his wings. And wow did all that look weird next to the hook on his right hand. Though he made it work somehow -- probably because he didn't look at all like a girl, which was the part Kazahaya took most exception to. He hated it when people mistook him for an actual girl.

     And to top it off, he himself was naked, except for tiny briefs and one black stocking hanging loose, and ...

     Even getting to touch an actual orb owned by an actual one of the Dioscuri wasn't worth this much humiliation. He swept up the dress from the sheets, holding it over his indecency as much as possible. Should he duck behind the bed? Probably a good idea. He'd just insulted one of the most dangerous pirates he personally had ever met, while naked in a room over a bar. The extra defense might buy him a whole half a second of life.

     Not dignity, but dignity was a wash at this point.

     "Relax, kid," Doumeki said, shutting the door behind him. "Nothin' I haven't seen."

     He kept the dress pressed to his chest as he squeaked, "I... I... ah..." With a gulp, Kazahaya forced a breath into his lungs. "Hi. Fancy meeting you here."

     "You look like you're having some trouble."

     How was he supposed to answer that? Tell a pirate that ninjas had demanded he wear the same dress Doumeki was already wearing? You couldn't tell a pirate his clothes were silly! That was suicide! Nor could he mention the magic orb that might be lost forever because their signaly whooziwhatsit had pulled a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am. He'd probably get laughed out of his current incarnation.

     Playing with the stocking he'd dropped on the bed, Kazahaya threw on his best customer service grin and forced a tinny laugh out of his throat. "Trouble? I don't know what you mean."

     Doumeki winced and unstrapped the hook on his hand (apparently it was fake -- who knew?), fastening the whole attachment somewhere out of sight under his skirt. "I mean you don't know how to wear a garter belt. What was your name again, kid?"

     "... Kazahaya."

     "Underwear goes on after stockings, Kazahaya, unless you like unbuckling to go to the bathroom. Take those off."

     Gosh. To strip or not to strip. That was the--

     Nevermind. No questions asked. Before his brain had managed to translate semi-comprehension to any level of motion, the pirate had pulled him up by the arm and turned him like a mannequin to face the bed. The offending black satiny panties were down around his ankles so fast, he could already hear Rikuou making jokes about dropping his knickers for pirates. He didn't know which was worse -- the way his face felt as hot as a Christmas turkey, or the slight breeze around his nether regions while -- oh my fucking god -- a pirate captain was fastening the mysterious lacy strap around his hips. And even in that tiny little dress, he had to assume Kakei was right about the number of concealed weapons. Knowing "Deadeye Doumeki", there was at least a wrist-mount repeating crossbow next to the hook-hand under that cloud of white silk.

     If this was a dream, Kazahaya wanted to wake up five minutes ago.

     "I'm surprised your boyfriend ran off before getting you dressed," Doumeki said, as if stripping and redressing near strangers in rented rooms was perfectly normal.

     Of course, maybe it was perfectly normal for a pirate. How was he to know? Usually he only dealt with them in a professional capacity. And clearly the captain was versed in the how-to of making him stand on one leg so he could slip the other stocking back--

     Wait.

     Had he just said... boyfriend?

     "You don't think I..." Kazahaya whipped around, falling to a seat on the bed with only one buckle clipped and a pirate staring at him without a flinch. Best not to assume he was joking. "I'm not dating Rikuou! I'd never have anything to do with that enormous walking boulder! He's rude, and he's a pervert, and I don't know why anyone would--"

     Doumeki caught a chuckle in his fist, the same curve on his lips that Kazahaya could have sworn was a grin earlier today.

     "What's so funny?"

     "Sorry. Deja vu." Pulling him back to his feet, the pirate snagged one of his front clasps. "No wonder he left without doing your stockings. Must feel like Tantalus in hell."

     Kazahaya went numb to everything but the gentle tug of silk to metal clips, which shouldn't have been able to unbalance him enough to need the support of the bedpost, but that sort of thing happened when his head went awash like this. Too many of his own memories were flooding back in, of a thousand times Rikuou had closed in on him only to pull away with a sneer and a joke. "There must be some mistake. Rikuou doesn't..."

     Well, more importantly, he didn't want Rikuou! So why was he even flashing back to all the times he'd blacked out and woken up back in his bed -- the sense lingering that someone had carried him the whole way?

     Just thinking of it woke up that strange hunger that lived in his skin, shooting from every nerve up his spine to cloud his brain. Usually, he didn't have to wait long for it to go away, since he could count on Rikuou to pull some jackass stunt that overrode everything with the need to punch his smarmy mug. But Rikuou wasn't here to be a jackass at the moment. If this quivering didn't go away soon, he'd have to think of a name. He couldn't go on calling it, 'How he felt every now and again when Rikuou wasn't living to torment him'.

     'Rikulated', maybe, since it was...

     No. He couldn't just assume it was Rikuou who made him feel this way. And it was a ridiculous way to feel at all, so 'ridiculated' was clearly a better choice. Much better. Just kind of a mouthful.

     At least Doumeki was looking down where he couldn't see Kazahaya blushing. He could see his own face in the mirror, with the long sunset of his dignity staining his cheeks while the pirate toiled on those stupid buckles, with those wings and that dress and everything making him look like some absurd fairy godfather.

     "If you say so," Doumeki answered him. "But then I don't know why he looks jealous whenever somebody hits on you."

     "He does?"

     The pirate captain raised his chin enough for Kazahaya to remember his fear of brigands in his cutting eyes, then grabbed the back of Kazahaya's knees and pivoted him back toward the bed. Doumeki pulled on the last clip on the stocking-holder-upper thing and said, "Ask him that, not me. I thought you looked jealous, too, so what do I know?"

     A gulp stuck halfway down Kazahaya's throat. Had he? "But why would I--"

     Before he could finish, the light from the hallway broke into the room, leaving Kazahaya to wonder for all of a hundredth of a second how he hadn't heard the door open. Then he saw Watanuki, staring so hard that a heat mirage seemed to bend the air around him. Yuuko's errand ninja was likely to snap over something as minor as the store missing a pattern from the new fall line of bentou boxes, and at the moment he looked ready to take the building with him in a blue-brocade hurricane. Because, for some reason, he was dressed in the armored outfit that matched the one Rikuou had gotten.

     "Why. You. Dou... me... ki..."

     Kazahaya looked over his shoulder at the pirate, down at his own functional nudity, and at the dress in a rumpled heap on the bed -- which he took up again for what little cover it offered him in front. "This isn't what it looks like!"

     "Sure it is," Doumeki cut in, standing and walking for the door. "The kid needed help with his garter belt. He's good to go now. And whatever you're looking for ain't here."

     "I should think not! And too bad for your story that I saw him running through the hallways in that dress not five minutes ago! He didn't seem to be having any trouble--"

     "Hey!" Kazahaya yelled out. If there was one thing he liked less than getting called a girl, it was getting called a girl who stole other people's pirates! As if he would! Pirates were sharp!

     So were ninjas, he remembered as Watanuki zipped over to him and screamed, "My name is not 'Hey'! And I expect you to keep away from that particular marauder!"

     Oh God. He'd just yelled at a ninja.

     And you know what?

     He didn't care.

     "I don't know who you saw running down that hall," he snapped right back in Watanuki's face. "But it damn well wasn't me! I've been stuck in here ever since your stupid vibrator went off in my pocket! Putting on your fucking clothes, to do your fucking--"

     "It was vibrating?!"

     "It was vibrating! And a little warning would have been nice, so I didn't put it somewhere quite so delicate!"

     He wanted to stay mad, but the blue cast to the ninja's skin and the strange gasps he was making had Kazahaya trying to remember everything Kakei had taught him about the difference between choking and anaphylaxis. "It shouldn't have been vibrating!" Watanuki wheezed, sinking to his knees and cupping his ears in his hands. "Someone must have activated the orb. The Kragero team couldn't have gotten it that fast. It must..." After two seconds of pulling out his hair in relative silence, he whispered, "Shit," and hauled off for the door with Doumeki by the elbow.

     Whatever he'd realized, he wasn't inclined to share, and Kazahaya didn't plan to run out naked. Not for that. Not if Yuuko had picked him and Rikuou for this job in the first place. She must have had a reason to think they could do it, and he'd taken the job, which meant he owed Kakei the orb -- or the breach of contract fee that was probably worth more than his life. All he had to do was follow his orders. Use the widget, find the orb, put it in the box. Period.

     And for that, he would need clothes.

     Kazahaya pulled up his embarrassing panties, which did go on as easily as the pirate captain had promised, and pushed his feet into the black, gold-trimmed boots that went with the outfit. Then and only then could he will himself to pick up the dress for real and face the prospect of wearing it.

     On second thought, maybe he shouldn't have put the boots on first. Just to fit the leather through the shorts legs, he had to point his toes far enough that his feet screamed. At least they weren't pants. He'd have had to take the boots off and start over if they'd been pants. Then again, if they'd been pants, the stockings would have been unnecessary.

     The gloves were anchored right into the sleeves -- he presumed so they didn't fall down or get lost -- but they slipped on easily enough. Thanks to Saiga's fittings, the whole bodice fit him like a second skin when it was closed. Fine for the clasps down by his ass where he could reach without pulling his arms too much. As he reached the ones by his rib cage, the damn thing wouldn't even shut! His muscles were straining the fabric, the stupid wings were pulling it out, too, and the clips were impossible to work with his fingers dressed in cloth...

     And damn it, where was Rikuou?! Out looking for orbs without him because he'd said he'd be fine? Because he hadn't counted on girls' clothes being so much work? Well, he'd just have to be fine, then, or the jerk would never let him live it down.

     A regular yank wasn't enough to pull out Saiga's stitchery, but he had a pocketknife. He could cut the fingers off the gloves, at least. Then he pressed every breath of air he could manage out of his lungs to give the fabric a little more slack and managed to force two halves of a clasp together, although the shoulder pulled oddly as he did it.. Of course, it wasn't as odd as the chill wind tickling up his back.

     He hadn't opened the window. There was no reason--

     Except maybe a blue-clad, armored figure reflected in the mirror, standing in the shadow by the bed. He must have gotten in somehow. "Rikuou!" Kazahaya yelped. "When did you--"

     After he turned around, he saw the figure was nowhere near tall enough or hulking enough to be his coworker. And of course, the other clerk shouldn't have been able to sneak in when even Watanuki hadn't managed it.

     It wasn't the ninja, back for blood, was it?

     Kazahaya stared at the corner, certain he couldn't have made his lips move, even if he'd had the breath to ask, 'Who are you?' The figure took a step forward, but he didn't move with a normal gait. His whole shape blinked in and out like a twinkling star, gliding with an unnatural phase across the floor and into the light.

     And he was translucent. The corner of the bedframe shone right through his hips, the lines of the wall moulding through his... face...

     It... was like looking at a reflection in the water. Hazy and strange but... his own eyes, his own chin... the ghost even had his hair styled with the same lock running down one cheek, albeit the actual hair was obsidian dark and the bit of his bangs trailed the opposite cheek...

     Which just meant they'd look exactly the same from the front. Even their eyes were on a level.

     Dress unbuttoned or not, Kazahaya wasn't staying to ask why.

~//~

     With the Chairman's business taking them all around Hundhammeren, he'd thought they'd never get to stop at the famous Clover bar! Not only was the proprietress just as pretty and talented as Kazuhiko-san always said, Akira simply needed to reverse engineer their recipe for pan-seared oysters. The sauce tasted like a reduction of champagne and tarragon, certainly, but experiment would show if shallots or leeks worked best. If his... (he could barely think it!) ... if his fiancee liked them, he had to know how to reproduce the flavor.

     Squeezing his hand under the table, Utako asked, "Do you think we'll get to see the real ghosts?"

     "Oh. Gosh. Well, I hope so. They must be nice ghosts to live in a place like this." The two gentlemen who'd snuck past the corner at the top of the stairs had clearly been living humans, not the ghosts in question. In fact, one of them had looked like Watanuki -- Akira was certain of it. Maybe the local ninja would stop by downstairs before the Chairman had finished saving the day, and he could ask about that beef au jus recipe Watanuki had used to win their last cook-off! It'd make a perfect entree for his engagement dinner, especially with ginger-blueberry tarts for dessert.

     Almost a week had passed since Utako had asked him (after explaining that she'd waited ten years, she wasn't waiting any longer, and she thought fifteen was quite old enough for her to marry, thank you), but he still blushed every time he saw a peek of the ring hiding on the chain around her neck. Even with all his ninja training, Akira wasn't sure he could keep this secret until the official announcement. Now if only he could settle on a cake recipe for the actual wedding...

     Across the table, Takamura-sempai sighed, "Ghosts aside... Sir. Perhaps this particular matter could be settled tomorrow. We can stop back after--"

     With a shake of his head, the Chairman flicked open his fan. "Suoh. The sun should neither rise nor set on a lady's heartache."

     No one reminded him that Oruha-san had claimed not to have any, since the Chairman had never once been wrong about a woman, although Akira was certain Takamura-sempai wanted to mention it. Something in the way he kept shaking his head at the lamp and silently asking, 'Why?'

     "No, we'll see this out. First, we'll need lyrics to all her songs. Akira, can you get us a copy?"

     He glanced up the stairs again to check the angles and the shadows for how he might sneak up into the corridor, and Akira saw Watanuki again. He'd popped into view outside one of the upstairs doors and opened it to walk in, plain as day. Having someone else sneaking around might complicate matters, of course, but if Watanuki wasn't hiding...

     Not an insurmountable problem. "Well, sure, if she has a book inside the store," Akira answered. He could steal anything without people noticing -- and put it back, too, as he'd proved to himself that time he'd needed to borrow the budget notebooks from the office but the Chairman had somehow convinced Takamura-sempai to ravish him on the desk when he was so much more of a bedroom-only sort. They wouldn't have wanted to be disturbed, so Akira had done his best to get the books without disturbing them. Which he had. And without mentioning to Takamura-sempai that the peony birthmark on his tush really wasn't anything to be ashamed of, either.

     After a bit of humming and tapping his fan on his chin, the Chairmain turned to Takamura-sempai. "Suoh. Could you ask--"

     "Good evening, everyone," a girl's voice called out. It was the dark-haired barmaid with the sunny smile, the one Oruha-san had called Himawari. "Can I start you off with anything to drink?"

     "Ladies first," the chairman laughed, beaming over his fan at Utako. "I insist, fair cousin."

     "Well, I suppose I'll have some green tea." Akira's fiancee curled up to his elbow. "We both will. Won't we, sweetie?"

     "That sounds lovely."

     "And for you?" Himawari-san asked the Chairman.

     "Could I trouble you for a hot chocolate? Maybe with a shot of Chambord and some whipped cream?"

     "Of course."

     Takamura-sempai sat up straighter in his chair, which he always managed even when Akira thought his posture was as perfect as it could be. "Sidecar, please. Double."

     "No problem!"

     "Thank you."

     No one jumped at the light click of a door upstairs, nor at Watanuki running full tilt out of view (hauling a large man in a dress by the arm). One learned not to jump at things you could only hear because of ninja powers while one was in public.

     "I'll bring those right up," the barmaid said. Flashing them another smile, she headed back to her post.

     Akira stood as soon as she was out of earshot, dropping Utako's arm with a sigh. He had lyrics to find. Somehow. "I'll be right back, darling. You won't even notice I'm gone."

     "Oh, I'll notice, honey bee. And if you're not back before our tea's ready, I'll come after you."

     "Excuse me," Takamura-sempai said, stepping away from the table and blinking out of sight behind a pillar. It was just like him not to need actual instructions from the Chairman!

     With a pout, Utako adjusted the gloves on her costume so all the seams were straight. "I guess if you have to go, you have to. But I'll miss you."

     "I'll miss you more."

     "Then do your job and hurry back! No dawdling."

     "Never," he answered, and leaned over to kiss her cheek.

     Akira took advantage of the same pillar Takamura-sempai had used to fade into a shadow, out of normal view, which luckily trailed up onto the stairs. From there, he could edge up the steps, one toe-touch at a time. Kazuhiko-san had said Oruha-san lived in one of the rooms above the bar, and it probably wouldn't be hard to say which one.

     There were numbers on all the doors, for starters. The owner's would probably be alone in having no number at all. Who'd number the door where they actually lived?

     He stepped past 203 just in time. The swinging door missed him by a hair as a young man sprinted down the hallway in a blur of white and black. Whoever he was, he seemed in an awful rush for someone who was staying upstairs. There didn't seem to be a fire or anything. But the gentleman whipped around the corner near the end of the corridor so fast his feet nearly skidded out from under him.

     And so fast that he didn't notice the young girl hovering just past the turn, whose outfit matched Utako's costume to a stitch. She was resting four feet off the floor as if sitting on an invisible perch, tilting her head to watch the guest who was in such a hurry. Her image flickered and faded as her wings buzzed to life, letting her drift down til her feet rested an inch or two off the ground. Akira decided to leave her to stare down the turn at the runner in peace. He could start his search down the near hall instead. After all, you could never be too careful with ghosts.

     A pity Utako hadn't been there to see her.

~//~

     Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!

     Watanuki shut the door to whatever room he'd ended up in and counted to ten in his head. He had to handle this rationally. The least he could do was count to ten! Well, to two anyway. What the hell came after two?!

     "You okay?"

     "No, I am damn well not okay!!" Marching straight over to the bed, he picked up a pillow and thwacked it down on Doumeki's infernally calm reasonableness. That bastard was not allowed to keep his cool when it was flipping-out time! "You...! You were supposed to be useful! Insalubrious varmint! Do you have any idea how much shit I'm going to have to clean up when this is over?!"

     "No, you were kind of vague on that."

     "That's because I don't know!!"

     His next two smacks with the pillow hit Doumeki's guard, and the third ended with Watanuki rolled back on the bed with the feather-stuffed sack flattened between them. He was getting too used to this. Twining his legs around Doumeki's thighs shouldn't have been where he naturally ended up when he panicked, and he was definitely not going to nuzzle into his neck. Not now.

     "Are you done?" Doumeki asked.

     "Done with what?! Done with these stupid costumes? Done with trusting pirates?! I never did, you know! Not once! Now the entire mission is kaput, left to the whims of those untrained, uninformed... Agh!" There was no way he could let Doumeki near the orb now, not if someone who wasn't a ninja could activate it, which was the only thing that could have happened. Although it was decidedly annoying, he had to admit that the pirate captain was both skillful and powerful, and that might be all it took. Might. If some mischance had led to Doumeki actually touching it...

     Mayhem! Indubitable havoc, courtesy of Clow Blast-fuckery Reed, Supreme Wingdoodle of Chaos and Paragon of All Ass-hats Everywhere! Ass hat?! He was an Ass Tiara! He might call himself a god, but as far as Watanuki cared, he was nothing but an infernal danger to life, limb, and various other parts of one particular, unsuspecting swashbuckler. Possibly other people as well.

     Not that he cared.

     Not about Doumeki.

     Caring had not been on any terms he'd agreed to when entering into this... arrangement of mutually stimulating interactions between two people that was in no way a relationship.

     As if trying to make matters worse, Doumeki pushed his chin up until Watanuki had no choice but to stare into those stupid, deep, dark, depend-on-me, I'm-a-man-of-action, soulful eyes. Man of action indeed. Watanuki could feel the growl rumbling in his throat before he could hear it. "I can't even say it's all your fault, because you didn't do anything but fondle that pretty-boy clerk!" Grabbing the other pillow from behind his head, he smacked it against Doumeki's back to punctuate his primary point. "So I'm. Definitely. Not. Done. Hitting. You. With. Pillows!"

     The pirate grabbed his plush weapon and threw it off the other side of the bed. "Fine. Next time, you can clip the stockings. Now are you going to talk to me or not?"

     He wasn't dropping the matter simply because he trusted a pirate about having honorable intentions. It was because he wasn't going to be pissed off even if something had happened in the other room, because Doumeki wasn't his boyfriend, he didn't want Doumeki to be his boyfriend, and thus allegations of being an unfaithful cad were stupid. Besides, it had actually looked like Doumeki was fixing the man's garter clips, but who didn't know how to wear a garter belt? Amateurs, that was who. Amateurs whose hair was darker than Watanuki had remembered, and thus probably hadn't been the one in the hall before, so he didn't need to trust Doumeki about that to know it was true. And most of all, Doumeki's eyes hadn't looked at the convenience store kid with even one one-hundredth the fire they had right now.

     Watanuki pointed his eyes quite safely at Doumeki's ear. "I'm not talking about Sunday."

     "Then I'm not leaving."

     His attempts to roll out of Doumeki's arms and off the bed were only a partial success. Success in that he was off the bed. Mostly. Less than total in that he was straddling Doumeki's lap, and though the pirates arms weren't around him, Doumeki's hands had found his ass and thighs, a familiar ache quickening his breath with every stroke. With the mixed-up evening they'd been having, Watanuki couldn't remember if he'd started kissing the pirate before or after that. He just knew that as long as their mouths were otherwise engaged, his rapscallion bedfellow wouldn't be talking.

     Almost nine months of linen-leaping, spring-snapping, and trundle-tripping, and not once had he realized when they got out of their clothes. Watanuki would always come to his senses for some half-second, and know he'd lost his pants but forget to mind. Doumeki happened, like April turned into May, and for all he cared their buttons and buckles might have given way like the earth over an iris. He barely remembered how they'd twisted around to lie on the bed, the pirate's kisses tracing out his shoulderblades.

     His lover had trapped both his hands on the mattress above his head while his breath beat into the sheets, a caress on his spine short-circuiting all the control he had left. "You can change the subject, but I've still got something to say," Doumeki murmured in his ear.

     He'd been done with this conversation before they'd left his place, as soon as the pirate had asked, 'Was that your boss I saw on Sunday?' He'd been ready to pitch this conversation into a bonfire when the words, 'I want you to tell me if you're ever in trouble,' had somehow entered their personal vocabulary. Doumeki wouldn't spill what Yuuko had told him, but what did it matter? Watanuki flipped their bodies around, landing astride the pirate's hips and ignoring how that scalliwag laced their fingers together. "I don't know what got it in your head that I need rescuing, but I don't! And I don't want you riding in on your silly little sailboat to help me whenever the whim takes you, either!"

     "Didn't think you would. That's why I'm not asking."

     "Well, if that's all you're here for--" He barely knew that his lover had surged up from the sheets before his threats died in another kiss. One hand holding his jaw where he couldn't run from Doumeki's mouth, one stroking that spot inside his thigh -- the one that bastard knew made him shudder and strain and-- "Ah! Damn you... you..."

     "When you need me, I'm gonna be there. Got it?"

     "Then I guess I better not walk in on you fixing underwear on someone who isn't me!" he yelled, pushing Doumeki back down on the bed. "Got it?!"

     Was there anything worse than a pirate who looked like he'd just won? Smirking and smoldering and slipping his hands into places that ought to have come with a warning label: 'May be extra sensitive to marauding knaves.' And Doumeki had the gall to chuckle as he whispered, "I can work with that."

     Whatever else happened between now and tomorrow, Watanuki was still going to claim this wasn't a relationship in the morning.

~//~

     Trying not to worry about the lack of Kazahaya in their room and succeeding at not worrying were two different things. Not that Rikuou had expected the kitten to think ahead, but it wasn't like him to run off without his pants. Something had to be wrong, and it wasn't like he had a gadget that homed in on hot legs. He'd have to find Kazahaya on his own.

     If his partner had run down the long hall over the stage, Rikuou would have seen him, or at least heard him. His search hadn't turned up anything useful, but at least he knew the hall was a dead end. Sometimes the widget vibrated, sometimes it didn't, but the blue light stayed on -- never reacting to anything close by. Even now, the inexplicable glowing arrow drooped like a dead fish, but Rikuou planned to worry about that after he caught up with Kazahaya. Staying here and wondering wasn't going to get his partner found.

     Rikuou stuffed the stray clothes around the room into his bag and rumpled the sheets til they looked like they'd seen action, then cracked the door to peek for signs that anyone was around. The trail of white slipping around a corner at the end of the hall looked like Kazahaya's dress, but could it really be that easy? Then again, he didn't have a better lead, and whoever he'd seen was running the way he wanted to go. Rikuou stepped down the hallway, keeping on his toes and near the wall so the floorboards didn't creak too much. He fished the ninja's sensor out of his bag, too. No sense wasting any time. And just his luck, the thing was still half-assedly pointing at the hall he'd checked first, over the stage, where there'd been nothing to find.

     "Take me... to the edge," he heard someone sing out. "...of somewhere beyond moonlight."

     It wasn't Oruha, though it sounded like her song. No polish in the voice, none of that resonance that kept the crowds downstairs in a hush. It wasn't the voice of a pro. More like the wind whipping a girl's voice through the trees. If it sounded like it was coming from anywhere, it was from down the hall where he'd seen the dress slip by. That couldn't be Kazahaya, could it? Telling him where to follow?

     "Sing me Earth's refrain..."

     Rikuou stole a glance at the sensor as he turned the corner. No change in the arrow, and the flitting figure was at the far end of the hall again. He turned just in time to see a flash of skirt vanish, running left out of sight. This time he chased it as fast as he could without making a ruckus.

     "... where memories are secrets... always etched deep in your heart."

     No way in hell that was Kazahaya. Sounded a little too much like a girl -- and too calm, too even. But that didn't mean Kazahaya wasn't running after the sound, or from it. And he couldn't even ask himself, 'What's the worst that could happen?' Kakei's jobs always managed to find trouble he couldn't imagine.

     Once he hit the end of the hall, he peeked left.

     Empty.

     Was Kazahaya running around the center block in circles? Rikuou wanted to think not, but he couldn't quite rule it out.

     "Take me... far away," the voice echoed again, this time echoing as if it came from everywhere and nowhere. "Hold me while the wind blows by..."

     A jerk on his arm pulled him into the short end of hallway off to the right. Wings askew, leather top falling unfastened around his shoulders, there was the pretty face he'd been looking for, shivering by the wall. "Where have you been?!" he hissed.

     "Where've you been?" Rikuou whispered, turning his partner around so he could see his back. The hooks were mismatched all the way up, where they were done at all. "If you needed me to get this, you should've stayed put. I came back for you."

     "I didn't need you!"

     Rikuou declined to point out as he unhooked the whole dress and fixed it that, yes, clearly he did. "So you wanted to go for a half-naked jog with all your gear lying on the floor? Sorry, my mistake."

     "Maybe it didn't penetrate your solid brick skull, but there are ghosts in this place!"

     "You got scared from a little singing?"

     "Why would singing be scary?! There's a stage right downstairs! I mean I saw a ghost!" Kazahaya's shoulders had relaxed enough now that Rikuou could get the clasps closed higher up and straighten the wings. All the muttering and yelling in whispers must have been doing him some good, though the man clearly couldn't tell a pro's voice from a haunt's. "This.. man... was right there in the room! And he had my face! Exactly my face!"

     Fastening the clip on Kazahaya's neck, Rikuou chuckled under his breath. "That's called a mirror. You look at it, it looks back at you."

     "I know what a mirror is!" The man spun to shove his nose into Rikuou's face, ready to yell as usual. One arm around his partner's waist to keep him from going anywhere, Rikuou put a finger on Kazahaya's lips to keep him from saying anything. For once, his partner actually shut up, with a bright pink flush running over his whole face.

     "So are you good to wrap this up, or do you need to flail and hide some more?"

     "I was scared," Kazahaya murmured as Rikuou dropped his finger away. "Now I'm just a little Rikulated."

     It took him a second to decide if he'd just heard his name or not before he settled on, 'Couldn't be'. "You're what?"

     With a quick sniff, Kazahaya pushed away and flicked his hair off his face. "It's nothing! It's just... um. Like being percolated! Only me, and not coffee."

     "You're getting dissolved in hot water and drained through a filter?"

     "It kind of feels that way, yes," the other clerk answered, fussing with the train on his skirt and blushing redder by the second. "Not that you need to know. Can we please get on with this so I can change?"

     Just as he opened his mouth, a door clicked behind them. Not loud. Barely audible. But it clicked all the same. When Rikuou turned around, there was still no one to be seen, and no doors ajar.

     Although he now had a man's chest stapled to his back and breath running down his neck that was making him feel kind of 'percolated'. Or at least turned-on, which he couldn't afford to do over that particular someone, or at this particular moment.

     "Was that a ghost?" his stray kitten asked. "Tell me it wasn't a ghost."

     "Relax. I don't think ghosts use doors."

Chapter Text

     "Ghosts can absolutely use doors!" Kazahaya hissed, still huddled behind Rikuou's back as they waited for another creak or squeak that never came. "In 'The Heavenly Twins and the Butler from Beyond', the brother had to exorcise a ghost who haunted a door!"

     "Well, I've never heard of these ghosts hurting anybody, so keep your panties on, would ya?"

     He inched down the passageway with the warm body that clung to his arms stepping on his heels. The echoes in empty halls could confuse the ears, but he was mostly sure it'd come from the far hall. Whoever it was, they weren't getting the magic blue arrow excited at all, so the orb thingy wasn't on 'em. Nor anywhere else down that hall, which was the last hall they had up here. That was all he cared about.

     Rikuou peeked around the corner, and all he saw was shadows.

     "Good news is, it looks clear."

     "Bad news is we still have no idea what we're looking for?"

     "That, and it's got to be downstairs. Where we were supposed to check before we got ourselves sent up here for the night."

     "That was not my f--"

     At the hint of another sound -- this time from the steps -- Rikuou pushed his partner up against the wall and clapped a hand over his mouth. "Shh." That was definitely footfall coming upstairs, light and quick. "Now that ain't no ghost." For all that their costumes would help them run, hiding was still going to be better. He tested the door handle right next to them, and thanked whatever kind of divinity protected hirelings who raided barwenches' dormitories that it wasn't locked.

     He spun Kazahaya in first, lifting the door up off the hinges as he closed it to keep it silent. Rikuou didn't think anything of his partner shaking his sleeve in a tizzy until he'd gotten the latch shut. He was too busy keeping an eye out the crack of the door for whoever'd nearly caught them. Then he saw the pirate and the ninja by the side of the upturned bed, paused in the middle of what was either sex or naked charades for lawn maintenance. And neither Captain Doumeki nor Watanuki seemed much concerned with rugburn.

     "Wow," Rikuou coughed. "This bar's soundproofing must be amazing."

     Watanuki's ability to return himself to upright from anything but in the blink of an eye was the best proof Rikuou had ever seen that he deserved his ninja rank. "Can you not intuit when two people are interested in a little privacy?! And what the hell are you even doing in here? We don't have the orb! Go on! Leave!"

     "We'll be out of your hair soon as the hall's clear." Naturally, Kazahaya was huddled in a corner, with his face burning up and his hands over his eyes. Grabbing his partner over by the elbow, Rikuou muttered, "That's not helping."

     "But--!" Kazahaya pointed over to the ninja doing his best impression of patience, with his foot tapping out a samba and a remarkable lack of concern for his lack of any clothes whatsoever. "They're--! Um..." He gave a tiny wave to Doumeki, who'd leaned up against the mattress standing against the tumbled bedframe like he was lazing on a hammock on a Sunday afternoon. "Um. Hi," Kazahaya said with a wince. "I guess I didn't thank you for... my stockings..."

     "Don't mention it."

     "Please don't mention anything but why you're not gone yet! You have a job, and we've got business! Of a personal nature! That we'd like to conduct alone! Without you!"

     "Well, I'm sorry if there were people in the hallway!" Kazahaya yelled. He might have done more than yell if Rikuou hadn't grabbed him by the shoulders. "Next time, lock the door!"

     "People in the hallway?!" the ninja cried with a red-faced screech. "You freaked out over Himawari-chan coming upstairs to check Oruha-san's intruder alarm?!"

     Whether the tiny click in the corridor before the silence had resumed had been an 'intruder alarm' or an intruder setting it off, Rikuou had learned not to argue with a ninja who was sure about something -- not that Kazahaya looked like he cared at the moment. When had picking fights with trained assassins become his partner's new hobby?!

     "You know you're the only one with super-hearing up here," Captain Doumeki pointed out, rifling through a pile of strewn clothes for a clove cigarette and a match.

     "Your opinion on their abject failure to be sufficient was not required! And all they had to do was hide!"

     "Behind what?!" Kazahaya yelled just as loud as before, but at least he wasn't struggling to get out of Rikuou's grip. "There's nothing out there but walls and doors! Well, guess what? We're behind a door!"

     Watanuki's eyeroll could have bowled a strike on a ten-mile alley. "Why in hell does this have to be done by... by amateurs?!" He zipped around the room, picking up stray bits of costumes and tucking them out of sight. Pretty damn far out of sight, since the ninja was too naked to hide anything and didn't have a bag. All the fabric and armor just disappeared somewhere like it had never been. If he could've done that, Rikuou wouldn't have worried about barmaids coming upstairs either. "I have no intention of further subjecting myself to the horror of watching you two bumble around! Just make sure you don't go into any more rooms with people in them! I should think listening at keyholes isn't too complicated."

     "Going back to your place?" Doumeki asked.

     "Well, I'm not going to the moon!" The ninja dropped a tangle of white fabric, black leather, and shining metal wings on the pirate's lap. "I assume you're inviting yourself along as usual?"

     With a wrap and a twist, Captain Doumeki miracled the skirt into some kind of toga as he stood up, wings riding the small of his back. He pulled the clove from his mouth, took his hook from god knows where and said, "You should make waffles for breakfast."

     "You will eat what I put on your plate!" In the few seconds that Rikuou and Kazahaya had been watching Doumeki, boggling at seeing a ninja and a pirate in the middle of a domestic, Watanuki had managed to open the window -- and rig a fly line out into the night, and look like he was getting tired of waiting, all while getting his pants back on. "And you will like it," he added, poking Doumeki in the chest as he came near.

     If Rikuou had ever thought he'd witness a pirate, naked except for a silk toga, grabbing a ninja by the waist and jumping out a window to ride them both down a rope by his hook, he never would have called the pirate's last words being, "I still want waffles."

     Must be nice to be a brigand, and never make excuses for laying hands on what caught your eye.

     "And he's telling on us for consorting with pirates?" Kazahaya gasped. His partner relaxed out of Rikuou's arms, staring slackjawed at the rippling curtains. "That's... That's...!"

     "Captain Doumeki fixed your stockings?" Rikuou asked. Before he could get a handle on his mouth, the words fell off his tongue with more jealousy than he'd wanted anyone to hear, his partner most of all. If Kazahaya's habit of saying whatever popped into his head had rubbed off on him, he might need to beg off work at the store tomorrow -- take a personal day to get the man's scent out of his nose and that image out of his head.

     "That's your take-away from this?! Yes, the salty sea dog is unsurprisingly well-versed in frilly underwear, and he saw fit to fix my stockings. I didn't get much choice, not that the elite ninja boyfriend bothered to care before he had a hissy--"

     Rikuou whipped toward the door. He hadn't meant to start this conversation in the first place. "If we're hangin' out, let's do it in our own goddamn room."

     "Hey...!" Kazahaya grabbed his arm as he walked away. "What's the--"

     Jerking his partner around where he could see his face, Rikuou caught Kazahaya in too close -- so close he could feel the brush of his eyelashes before the man leaned his head back. Some comment brewing in his brain dried up on his tongue. Something about knowing better than to ask sharks for favors that personal. The details were gone. One look at wide eyes over blushing cheeks, one touch of the hands clinging to his chest, and the words ripped out of his mind.

     "... matter?" Kazahaya murmured.

     His fair-haired idiot should have been trying to get away. He should have been screaming about how the one he couldn't trust was Rikuou. Instead, Kazahaya was pushing closer like he was trying to read Rikuou's face in the shadows. Like he was realizing something he oughtn't know, and the breath on his chin was making Rikuou forget all the things that kept him off the edge. Forgetting that it'd be better if his kitten found someone else to look after him. Forgetting that he couldn't tie himself to someone when he might be leaving any day.

     Forgetting why it'd be such a bad idea to kiss him after all. At least if he did, he'd have a reason to say he didn't want any pirate so much as fingering the edge of a hem, let alone--

     "Rikuou?"

     The thought of letting go -- and he had to let go -- sent a rough twinge through his chest. Call it a taste of how much it'd hurt to walk away for real, as if he needed a reminder why this was a bad idea. Why wasn't Kazahaya pushing him off like always, telling him he shouldn't bother because he didn't have a chance?

     A man coughed over by the door. So much for no one catching them tonight.

     Blue ghost outfit, black hair. Oddly happy.

     Showed up without knocking, or making any kind of sound he didn't want heard, which meant he sure wasn't some everyday cosplayer.

     On the one hand, Rikuou had only seen the bar's specters from a distance, but the man's frame didn't look quite right, and even with sudden appearance he seemed like solid flesh. That, and he had a thick, black book in his hand. The ghosts here, as far as he knew, were more likely to pass through things than pick them up.

     "Can we help you?" Rikuou asked.

     "Sorry to be a bother," the intruder answered, with his smile too innocent for someone who snuck around like a thief. "I thought I heard Watanuki-san in here. Have you seen him?"

     Kazahaya nodded his chin at the open window. "Just missed him."

     Disappointment flickered across the stranger's face for a bare fraction of a second, but only that. As he backed away, disappearing into a shadow, he looked as bright as before. "Well, there's always tomorrow, right? I'll leave you two to have your moment, then. Really sorry to have interrupted!"

     Except for Kazahaya's heart thrumming hard enough for Rikuou to feel the echoes, the room was still. That didn't mean a man who could melt into shadows was gone, but it was about all they could hope for.

     "What moment?" His partner blinked at the darkness as if it could tell him what the probably-another-ninja-damn-the-fuckers had been thinking. "Rikuou, what's he talking about?"

     "If you can't tell, it didn't happen," he answered, and pushed Kazahaya toward the door. "Let's figure out how to find this orb thing, and get the hell home."

~//~

     Checking a room for intruders in a world with ninja might be a vain practice for a barmaid, Himawari knew, but she'd rather try to make certain there weren't any loons waiting for her mistress at the end of the night. And the door had been rigged especially with ninja in mind -- it'd even caught Kazuhiko-san that once, trying to leave a rose and a loveletter on the sly. Goodness knew where Oruha had gotten a trap like that.

     Of course, she couldn't find anyone this time. She'd have much rather spotted Kazuhiko-san again, even though she'd made him promise to give all his gifts in person from now on. As it was, she didn't fancy the thought of letting Oruha go to bed alone, but that wasn't her choice to make. The cupboards were empty, the window was latched, no one was outside on the ledge that she could tell. For now, that was all she could do. Himawari locked the door and headed back down the stairs -- back to business as usual.

     With a glance at the clock, she stepped behind the counter to put on a fresh pot of coffee. Quarter past ten. Kazuhiko would be walking in any minute, and even though he wasn't here for the drinks, she'd rather give him the best they had. He was special to Oruha, after all.

     Right on cue, he stepped through the door, fidgeting with his glasses like a grade schooler. Himawari poured a shot of amaretto into a steaming cup of coffee and pushed it to him over the bar. "She's about to start her last set."

     "Thanks," he laughed. "I guess I'm predictable."

     "It's just bartender magic."

     He almost managed to get the coffee to his lips before he met Oruha's eyes on stage. Then his mug hovered in his hands, forgotten while they stared at each other. And while she looked away to fix her microphone, and while she said something impossible for Himawari to hear to a patron at the front table. And the mug went right down on the bar again as soon as the piano started.

     But she always made him a new pot anyway. Some nights he got to drink it while it was still hot.

     "Kazuhiko-san," a voice called out. The blond who'd been so gallant earlier, Imonoyama-san, waving the more familiar ninja over to his table. "Would you mind joining us for a moment?"

     All the missing members of his party had slipped back into their chairs since she'd come down, including the smiling one sipping the tea his girlfriend had poured for him, and the serious one who'd made short work of his Sidecar. Between them, they had a table full of books despite the fact that they hadn't had any bags to carry them in. That was ninja for you. So silly! Always ignoring the laws of time and space.

     "I'll be right there," Kazuhiko answered softly, dropping a few coins on the counter to pay for his coffee. Then he whispered, "What's the Chairman doing here?" as soon as the blond's back was turned.

     "I think..."

     Imonoyama-san's riddles about stopping Oruha's tears rang in her memory, just as the lady's voice rang out across the floor -- straight at her would-be lover.

     "Like the night will find each weakness we betray... The day will take its heartache when I say I can't stay. I'd never leave you lonely if forever could be true, but a lost night's sting walks with you when goodbye comes too soon..."

     Seeing the way Kazuhiko's mouth only set itself firmer every time he heard that, Himawari had to smile. She pushed the ninja toward Imonoyama-san's table and answered, "I think he's here for the same reason you are."

~//~

     "We can't just wait until close!"

     Kazahaya had been jumping up from his seat on the bed every minute or so since they'd set to talking, but so far he'd kept at least arm's length from Rikuou's post by the mirror. Now he collapsed back on the blankets, exposing enough thigh that Rikuou had to look out the window if he wanted to keep thinking. Not that the past hour or so of thinking had gotten them anywhere.

     His partner dropped a pillow over his own face. "We don't even know if it's a worker or a customer who's got it. What if they leave the building?! Or what if they take it with them to a room at the end of the night? Do you really think they'll just leave a legendary magical artifact lying around downstairs?"

     "They might not know what it is."

     "Someone's using it! Watanuki said so!"

     "Well, we'll know if they leave the building." He twirled the sensor widget around in his fingers, showing off the dull, blue glow of the arrow. "We weren't reading anything before we came in tonight, right? I bet this thing goes dark if they leave. We can follow--"

     "You bet?"

     "I ain't heard a better idea."

     "Then at least let me touch it!"

     "Hell. No."

     Rikuou had seen enough missions where his partner got the worst of someone's worst days, or lost himself entirely. For all Rikuou knew, the Barrows-Guard was real, and the orb they were looking for had been his. It was bad enough Kazahaya had cut the fingers off his gloves so he could touch things without him trying to 'connect' to an artifact with a one in six chance of having belonged to a deranged, possibly demonic, psychopathic murderer. There went all the work he'd done convincing Saiga to sew the gloves right into the sleeves.

     Kazahaya sat up on the bed, the pout filling up his pretty face not likely to move Rikuou any time soon. "I know it's a long shot, but if I really open up, maybe I can sense what set it off!"

     "And I said no. You're no good to me stuck in somebody else's head until you faint. Besides, this is ninja tech. You don't know where it's been."

     "I think I can handle--"

     "And I think we're gonna tear this joint apart from shingles to floorboards before I let you!"

     His partner jumped up to argue, but choked back whatever he'd been planning to yell. He blinked and lowered his hands to his sides, whispering, "Are you worried about me?"

     The quiet that followed seemed to fill up the air enough that it itched on Rikuou's skin. He'd been wanting to take off the heavy armor all night, but now it felt too tight to breathe in. Turning to face the wall didn't help. The mirror was right there, showing him Kazahaya's face as the realization that, yes -- he was -- struck it blank. Even in the mirror, they were looking at each other's eyes, and for a second Rikuou wondered if his guard had slipped so his partner's senses could get into his head at last.

     But no. It was his tongue that had slipped. He bit it, just til he could feel a twinge, and walked over to the window where he could stare at the cresting moon instead of falling deeper under Kazahaya's spell. "Who wouldn't be, saving you from certain death five times a month?" Somewhere up there, it felt like the stars were laughing at him, and Kazahaya still wasn't answering back. "It puts me in a bind, you know," Rikuou half-lied through gritted teeth. "Bailing out your ass, working a double shift the next day. And maybe you ought to worry about the chance you never come back at all."

     "Someday, I'll blow away. Just like the wind."

     It wasn't a question. Just a statement that came out of nowhere, like a conversation someone else had been having, and Rikuou turned his head to see Kazahaya slumped back on the bed with his hands hidden under his skirt.

     "Just like my name." The distant look in his eyes was enough to make Rikuou pause when, just as suddenly, Kazahaya blotted tears out of his eyes.

     Something must have happened, before he wound up in that snowbank. Something Rikuou had never thought to ask about. He'd stopped asking about pasts when he'd gotten one of his own.

     His partner breathed in deep and marched over to the windowsill. "I won't! Do you think I don't worry you'll give yourself an aneurysm, breaking things with your brain?"

     "I'm not gonna--"

     "Great! Well, 'I'm not gonna' either! I kind of like being me, ever since you--" Kazahaya turned away, metal wings tinging against the glass. "Ever since I got this job."

     "Good."

     He stepped a little closer, hitting the sensor rod against the windowsill and listening to the knock fill the little room. When his partner finally faced him, the strange amber of his eyes threatened to drive him out of his mind. How lunatic could infatuation get, that eyes made him a fool every hour of the day? Then Kazahaya reached out his hand to ask for the silver rod, showing off his bare fingers with a pout just the cute side of heart-stabbing. "So no asking me not to be me because you don't trust me to stay me?"

     Drawing the rod back, Rikuou took Kazahaya's fingers in his free hand. He didn't think too hard about how they ended up nose to nose again, or how his partner was making a habit of blushing and biting his lip instead of backing off, or how warm Kazahaya's skin was under his fingers. "You really are useless if you faint. Last resort. Deal?"

     "Deal. But you'd better have another idea."

     "We could still wait," he answered, dropping his hand away when he noticed it straying up to Kazahaya's face. And he wasn't going to let the bed behind them suggest any way to pass the hours, because now was no time to push his luck. "Watanuki didn't lay out a deadline. I don't think this thing's going--"

     Before he could finish his sentence, a thin light shot out of the hand where he'd palmed the sensor, hitting the far wall in a bright blue pinpoint. It ran across the wallpaper and the panelling, past the door... at just about the speed of a person walking, if he had to make a guess.

     "Ah!" Kazahaya chirped. "Do you think that means what I think it means?"

     "I hope so. I wonder if it'd actually kill a ninja to pack a damn guidebook with his tech?"

     "Maybe?" His partner clapped his hands over his mouth to hold in a squeal, then vaulted the bed to prance by the moving spot on the wall.

     He'd wait til tomorrow, when they didn't have a job to do, to wonder why Kazahaya suddenly seemed close enough to touch. And maybe when he woke up, he'd realize everything in the air tonight was his imagination.

     "Ohmygodohymygodohmygodohmygod!! I can't believe I'm in the same building as a Divine Warrior's orb!"

     "You have been all night," Rikuou reminded him as he dropped the room key on the dresser. Probably wouldn't need that again.

     "Yes, but now it's right there!" he called out in a hushed squeal.

     The light was stopped now, near the corner of the room, which meant whoever was carrying it had stopped in this hallway. Maybe this was a real lucky break. This time, Rikuou figured he better not jinx it and leaned down to listen at the keyhole for anything he could hear.

     The bar owner's voice he knew. Everybody did. The man she was talking to wasn't so familiar. "Of course I believe you," he said, the pitiful tone in his voice making Rikuou feel guilty for eavesdropping. "I've met people who see the future. But you're cheating yourself if you live like you're already dead."

     "Kazuhiko--"

     "Please. Is it so wrong to take the days we have, before time runs out?"

     Rikuou kept his eyes on the spot dancing on the wall. There was no way to figure out from the glow if it was Oruha or her gentleman caller who had their orb, unless sometime in the next few seconds he got magic vision that could see through wood and plaster. He turned the handle by his ear and cracked open the door as quietly as he could, moving it as little as possible. Just enough to get a glimpse down the--

     "I don't want to disturb any of your guests," the man said, stepping between the singer and Rikuou's line of sight. So much for trying to sneak a peek. "Can we go into your room?" he asked.

     "No, Kazuhiko, I don't think we can." Rikuou closed his door all the way, timing the click of the door latch to Oruha turning a key in her lock. "Let me put down my things and we can talk outside."

     "Okay. ... And you don't need to reset that alarm. I'm right here. I promise, I'll stay where you can see me."

     Holding his breath, Rikuou watched his partner shimmy in silence next to the floating blue dot's path. The singer's door closed again and both sets of footsteps vanished down the stairs. Then, and only then, Rikuou sighed a wordless thanks to the same god that had punked them in the hall an hour before. Their little guiding light was holding steady now, on the wall over the bed. Whatever Oruha had that the ninja queen wanted, she'd left it in her room and walked away.

     The way Kazahaya bounced across the room, Rikuou wondered if the wings on his back had started to work. He didn't seem to touch the floor. He floated as Rikuou stood up, dropping right into whispering distance with his amber eyes twinkling. "You can't tell me this isn't awesome."

     "Let's just get in, get the goods, and get gone." Much more of this, and he'd have to admit that he couldn't see anything right now but his partner's smile. Bad enough that his hands had snuck onto Kazahaya's hips, and he could justify it by saying he had to push the man out the door. Or by saying, if Caldina caught them in the hallway, a little body contact might keep them from blowing their cover.

     "Then maybe you can get me out of this dress," Kazahaya laughed.

     Rikuou cracked the door wide enough to shove his partner into the hall, although he couldn't quite let go. "Don't tempt me," he whispered against the other clerk's hair. That was how their relationship was supposed to work. He traded lewd come-ons for his kitten's innocent nothings, and got himself a stomp on the foot.

     Or, this time, a slap on the wrist. An actual slap on the wrist. He let go of the man's hip by reflex, but it barely hurt at all. Like his partner had been playing. As Kazahaya bounded over to the door marked by the blue light, Rikuou knew it wasn't the time to ask why, but he had to wonder. Did he still have a shot? That bridge should have long since burned.

     Then again, maybe his partner was just too excited over the mission to let anything ruin his mood. Kazahaya's grip on the door handle and pleading eyes while he mouthed, "Open it!" sure looked more like being clueless than like flirting.

     And that was for the better, Rikuou thought, focusing on the knob long enough to snap the lock inside. He didn't want hope fouling up his lifestyle choices. "Ducats to doughnuts, it's her microphone," Rikuou murmured. They stole into the diva's room, following the blue light through the shadows -- and, surprise surprise, their ninja beacon had its sights on a frame of twisted, black metal lying on Oruha's makeup table. He hoped for her sake that wasn't how she held an audience spellbound. What he and Kazahaya had been hired to take, they took.

     A flash of white ran by him, with squeals of "Ohmygodohmygodohmygod!" devolving to a high-pitched shriek.

     It all happened in an instant -- the trailing skirt slipping away before he could grab it, a yell to let someone less at risk pick the damn thing up, cut off before it started, Kazahaya's knees giving out underneath him. Rikuou made it in time to keep his partner from hitting the floor or banging his head, but the real damage had been done. A full blackout meant his partner wouldn't be the one who stood up. As the microphone's black metal dripped up from Kazahaya's hand, changing and collecting into a silver sphere in the air, all he could do was hope that whoever'd stolen his stray cat's body was harmless. If he had to take on a legend, maybe one of those twins he'd said he used to act out when he was a kid.

     The way Kazahaya drew his legs together and his shoulders back said, 'Woman', almost for sure. And the foreign glint in his possessed eyes made one thing harder to deny every time -- the package was nice, but it wasn't what Rikuou cared about. The thought of playing along while some ghost or memory draped his partner's arms around his neck made him sick. Like a whole symphony played off-key.

     How long could he take this? Not that he had a choice.

     "Kazuhiko," she whispered in Kazahaya's voice. So it was Oruha. That figured. And just his luck, knowing the shade was a modern day songstress instead of some fiendish horror didn't take the hurt out of hearing another man's name cross those lips. Same sore twist as had started cropping up in his gut a few months ago. The kind that took most of the next day to unknot. Two days, lately. "Kazuhiko, I want to stop pretending I'm not in love with you. But--"

     He cupped the man's face in his hands and tried to see past the frank expression of the woman inside. Any reasons she had, he could guess. All the feelings she'd sung into that microphone; all the fragments she'd glimpsed of the future, sending her into mourning for the end she could see coming. He knew how it hurt to miss someone, how it hurt to be missed, and he didn't want to hear it. He could already tell, when it came back at him in someone else's voice, it'd just sound like piss-poor excuses. So Rikuou stroked Kazahaya's cheek and let his eyes flit around the mess of tawny hair.

     "If you want to stop pretending, then stop. You're not making anybody happy by lying to yourself."

     Neither was he, although Kazahaya wasn't a sure thing. Not like the man courting the singer in the alley.

     The shade shook off his hands, burying Kazahaya's face in his shirt. "Will you tell me it's not too late?" she asked, while he stared past her at the black metal figure forgetting its shape and held his partner close.

     "You know it's not," Rikuou answered.

     Kazahaya's body went limp in his arms. With a pinch in his throat he couldn't swallow down, Rikuou kissed his partner's hair and let himself linger in its scent.

     "I ought to be saying that. Not you."

~//~

Winter moon hung high,
Shone, twinned in a lake like ink
She, her face eclipsed

A name to him, nothing more,
"Tsukiko's" memory sang

Chill stirs rocked the waves
In words too well remembered:
"Til then, and ever

Adrift I tatter and fade
And even earth blows to dust."

There, amongst the rocks
Summer grass in noontime green
Stood where sky bled blue

"Where it began, where it ends
As you run far, far away."

Chill though in sunlight
Locked within their golden cage
Her voice not her own

She, whose hand was close as air
Who once held his world in bound

He stood as Autumn
With daylight's glow at his back
In his steps, green fades

The dark world looms with the moon
Past not gone, future not here

Chaining summer arms
Tight around his head and chest,
Though winter waited

By his ear, her breath blew cool. The light faded with their voices.

Now, as once seemed sure, he feared he'd melt clean away -- into the darkness.
How could he still be standing? Deserted, both women gone?

     The air felt solid and warm, as if he'd caught some substance.

     Or been caught there, within void and storm, beating his body beyond recalling where he'd been, or how he'd left. As if born new, curled in the dark-kissed space while it closed against his skin -- drawing tighter, drawing soft, wrapping him like a blanket spun out of midnight.

     Never so easy to say, "It's a dream," as that time when reality pushes in, with aches and with scents of sweat on sheets, although fancy kept its hold a bit longer. A warmth clasped near his chest, a memory of wind tickling his cheek.

     More than a memory. No. That was someone close to him, laying near enough to feel his breath. While he'd slept, some other man pressed close, he'd only dreamed it was wind. And that firmness he'd felt -- a body? Arms around his waist, his arms circling that someone...

     Clear as the light glowing through his eyelids from the windows as he woke, now he could feel someone whose shape he knew before he opened his eyes.

     Rikuou.

     He was in Rikuou's bed. He had to be. It didn't smell anything like his own bed. It smelled like shirt, and shampoo, and shaggy idiot. All of that could have been explained by Rikuou being in bed with him, his partner's hand pressing on his back through the sheets, but his wakening senses screamed, 'Not my bed!' from the tips of his lethargic toes to the twitching curl of his ears.

     How he'd gotten there was a no-brainer. His still-sleeping bedmate must have carried him home -- this time, depositing him here instead of the second, equally convenient cot. And lying close to him felt so snug, so different from Rikuou's old games of Space Invasion... Like last night had felt different. The question was, how much of last night might he have been dreaming?

     Where had the sneers gone? When had his partner started touching him and drawing him close without setting off his Lying, Teasing Jerk alarms?

     Because that was kind of hot.

     Kazahaya forced himself to crack open his eyes and look. All he could do now was see if the sunlight showed the same face as haunted his moonlit memories, although the brightness hit him with a fear that squeezed his ribs tight. Riding on the memory of Rikuou acting ... sweet... he remembered that odd lift, the feel of being too happy not to dance. How everything had suddenly seemed better, and now he didn't want the morning to tell him he'd been wrong. The last time he'd been so scared to lose something had been the day he ran away from home. Did he care that much about whether Rikuou wanted him around?

     Their noses were nearly touching, which made it hard to see the shape of Rikuou's sleeping face. Loose hair was falling in front of the man's eyes, too. Closed or open, he wouldn't have been able to read them. But Rikuou's mouth was twitching. It looked like the nervous impulses from a bad dream breaking through, and out of reflex, Kazahaya pulled his hand to the man's cheek. His brain hadn't quite decided whether Rikuou's cheek was cool or his hand was warm when his bedmate shifted the landscape of the narrow cot.

     Fingers he hadn't accounted for trailed into his hair, and as Rikuou pulled tighter on his waist, three things became obvious. First, he had instincts about sharing a bed with Rikuou, and they thought the right thing for him to do was wrap his leg over the other man's hip. Second, he was definitely not wearing any underwear. And third, there were sheets and blankets between the two of them, so his skin was practically screaming to tear off the bedding and feel Rikuou between his naked thi--

     Aye-yi-yi! Had... he just thought that?

     Holy crap. He had. And he'd meant it, too. Worst of all, the flutter in his chest was just enough like what he'd been feeling all year to know that 'how he felt when Rikuou wasn't being a dick' was apparently fucking horny. And he couldn't exactly jack off to deal with it when he was in Rikuou's bed, with Rikuou! Though the sensitivity down in his nether regions wasn't quite severe enough to distract from the fact that an enormous doofus had put him under the sheets, then laid himself on top with only his coat for a cover! But his heart was sprinting and his skin was tingling all over, and his stomach was flippy-flopping, none of which was letting Kazahaya think anything clear enough to say it out loud.

     So he kicked Rikuou instead.

     Right in the shin.

     Dark head jerking and eyes blinking open, his bedmate stared for half a second at his snarl. "Good morning to you, too."

     "Get under here, you idiot! Do you want to catch your death of cold?!"

     "Excuse me for trying not to offend your virgin sensibilities."

     "That's what putting me in my bed is for!"

     Rikuou flung back the blanket, sending a chill blast across Kazahaya's skin -- and with his nightshirt ridden up to his stomach, revealing that he'd been almost right about having no underwear on. He nearly fell off the edge of the bed as he curled up his legs and brought his hands down to hide his 'toy soldier', not covered a bit by the lace and ribbons he was still wearing. "You... you stripped me out of everything but the stockings?!" he hissed. Somehow, having just his naughty bits exposed made him feel more naked than naked.

     And to make it worse, the clippy thing was digging into his thighs with the painful older cousin of an itch. Maybe he could spare one hand, just for a second, to reach for the clips and take the damn things off...

     "I like them," Rikuou said, and brushed his hand away -- off the side of the bed so Kazahaya unbalanced himself and had to grab the sheets with his other hand to stay up! Now he was totally exposed! And... and who gave Rikuou permission to make his pulse race just by pushing a knee between his thighs and leaning over next to his ear? "You should get a pair of white ones to keep."

     "You really are a pervert."

     Somehow, that wasn't as upsetting as it had been yesterday. Not by half.

     "I'm not gonna make you stay in bed with me," Rikuou answered.

     Another toss settled the blanket over both of them, and all at once Kazahaya realized how small the bed was for two people. Rikuou must've had his back right up against the wall while they were sleeping. Letting his legs drift around the other man's hips was much more comfortable. He'd never realized how good it could feel to have someone's skin next to his. Even though he could feel his heart pounding, time felt like it had slowed down and left him calm.

     Kazahaya found his voice somewhere down in his stomach. "So why did you put me here?"

     "I wanted to sleep with you," his partner said, and shrugged. That started something simmering in his belly that wasn't exactly not lust, but it wasn't exactly hunky-dory either. "I might be gone any day," the man continued. "That could've been my last chance."

     "Don't you get all sweet and pathetic with me, mister!" He was up on his knees before he knew it, straddling Rikuou's stomach as he grabbed his partner up by the shirt. "You could've had all the chances! I..."

     Feeling the ... solidness of his fellow clerk's body so close, and the race of his heart in the instant Rikuou's hands reached under his shirt to clasp his back, all Kazahaya could see was his lips. And kissing him felt so much like riding the tide. It was so easy to let his body surge with it, to give in to the tingle of how nice it felt all over and just float. He trailed his hands down Rikuou's arms, letting the touch of skin against skin go to his head. "I might like you when you're not acting like a jackass."

     "You need to stop being so fucking sexy first thing in the morning, or we're going to be late for work."

     "How am I the one being sexy?! You're the one who morphed into Seriously Hot Rikuou and let me wake up with you after spending the end of last night turning me on! How about some responsibility, huh?"

     "Responsibility? Is that how kids are sayin' 'Fuck me' these days?"

     "That's not what I--!" On second thought, and consideration of how his heart was racing, maybe it was what he'd meant. "Would you want to?"

     "You're asking me that?" Rikuou let out a sigh and dropped his forehead against Kazahaya's cheek. "Just... say your name."

     "Why?"

     "For my sanity. Say it."

     "... Kazahaya." The caress of lips on his neck and the push of Rikuou's hands down his back to squeeze his rump made all the answers he didn't know he'd been looking for so clear. Or maybe they just made answers irrelevant. And thinking was irrelevant, too. And everything that wasn't grabbing hold of Rikuou's shirt and straining into his touch. "Rikuou...!" he gasped. "What should I-- Ah!"

     "You've been doin' it all morning, but I don't mind if you wanna play hardball." Between slamming into the mattress and the shock of feeling fingers stroke his... 'back door', all he could do was knot his fingers in dark hair and gasp.

     And moan.

     His hips managed to roll into Rikuou's touch on their own, chasing after more while his partner's hands strayed up again. "Don't stop," he whispered, reveling in the weight of the man's body and the trail of his kisses pushing up his shirt.

     "Not til I hear the word." Pinning Kazahaya's hands over his head, Rikuou knelt between his spread legs. "And so we're clear, the word is 'broccoli'. Say it if you want out, or if you think your mind's going on a vacation. If I'm gonna pop your cherry, you've got to be with me all the way."

     His breath strained in his lungs, pulling his back up off the sheets to follow the pleading hurt in his stiff shaft. It felt like his whole body was begging for Rikuou's touch, and he wasn't interested in vegetables or in safe words! "What if I want you to start? Damn it, Rikuou...!"

     "You like it, huh? Well, all you got to do is ask."

     He didn't have a coherent answer to that one. As they kissed, and his freed hands strayed over every inch of skin they could find, his lover's grip on his thigh pulled him wide open. He was starting to like feeling bare, with Rikuou playing shivers on every nerve, pushing back against each touch. He could be with someone, against someone... against Rikuou, grinding into the sheets -- he wasn't scared of what might happen.

     And it felt so good. The man's whispers in his ear drove the feeling of each touch right into his brain, telling him how he was going to make him come, asking him how it felt, making satisfied noises every time a groan tore out of Kazahaya's throat.

     "Go ahead, let it out. Tell me how bad you want it."

     "Really bad," he gasped. "Like... toothpaste ice cream bad." Kazahaya strained his legs wider to meet the hand stroking his erection.

     "We've gotta work on your vocabulary."

     "Huh?"

     Then all at once a shock ran through him, coming with a raw moan as he reached up for Rikuou's arms. How it spilled out, how it ripped through him, was like nothing his body knew how to feel. But as he sat panting, he could hear his nerves screaming for more.

     Focus eked back into his vision as Rikuou nibbled on his neck, catching the lines of the tattoo etched into his lover's back. His fingers searched out for all the sculpted planes and joints he'd certainly never memorized from the other side of the room. That hollow of his spine, guiding his hand down to a grip on a well-muscled unmentionable. The lines running down from his hip, along every dip of his chest...

     Up to a spot by his pec that was a little wetter than everything else, and in a very particular way.

     He had to glance down, and he was right. That was his spunk. All over Rikuou's chest, just splattered there.

     Of course it was! What had he been thinking?! Where else would it have gone?!

     "I'm so sorry! I got you dirty..."

     "Simmer down, kitty cat. If you're not dirty, you're not doing it right." All the wind fell out of his lungs as they hit the sheets again, Rikuou's fingers laced into his, stretching his arms over his head. The incurable pervert (and that definitely wasn't so bad anymore) was right. The only thing that mattered was the taste of that tongue kissing Kazahaya's worries into oblivion, and figuring out what he could do to keep Rikuou from ever pulling away again.

     He'd never have believed how good it felt to get tangled in a pile of limbs, never minding the whine of the metal cot threatening to give way underneath their struggle. Kazahaya wanted to hear more of the sounds Rikuou made when he started licking his lover's chest clean and sucking at the pert, darkened skin of his nipples. Some tension had snapped all through his body, like a string of magnets pulling into order end to end and patching him into a circuit he'd never known was broken. From his fingerbones to his pinky toes, the energy inside him felt like it was calling out loud, "That's right... right there, just like that... keep goin', baby..."

     Then again, maybe that was Rikuou, too. That was Rikuou's voice in his ears, now that he thought about it. But that didn't make it feel any less thrilling when he reached his hand down to touch his bedmate's erection, fondling the sack at the base with a catch in his throat. "Just like this? Or..." Switching his legs around, Kazahaya straddled Rikuou's shoulders with his back to the man's face. He wasn't quite sure he could do this with those eyes looking right at him. Probably not twelve hours ago, he wouldn't have thought he could do it at all, but there was a yearning in his mouth that made him want to try. With hands tracing tingling trails across his back, he leaned over his lover's sex to lick off the shining drops weeping out of the tip and work his mouth down around the head.

     A gasp rocked the body underneath him. That was all he needed to feel.

     But the click of the door opening was definitely not what he needed to hear.

     "What the--" Rikuou snarled underneath him as Saiga peeked in. "There better be a fire!"

     "Yeah, nobody likes an interrupting llama, I know." The manager's mountainous boyfriend gave a wink as Kazahaya pulled himself up and wiped the traces of damp off his lips.

     Somehow, getting caught in nothing but thigh-highs and a garterbelt with his mouth full of boner wasn't nearly as embarrassing as he'd always thought it'd be. He didn't know what to say, sure, but Rikuou was taking care of that.

     "So you gonna say what you want, or are you just gonna stare?"

     "Kakei said to tell you all the customers are jealous, and that since it sounds like you're not exhausted from last night after all, he'll definitely expect to see you when your shift starts." Saiga checked his pocketwatch. "In fifteen minutes. Make 'em count!"

     As the door shut, Kazahaya felt Rikuou shifting underneath him and pulling himself up to sit. Strong hands found his hips, and slowly Kazahaya pulled them around front until Rikuou was cradling his back and brushing kisses across his neck. "It was nice while it lasted," he sighed.

     "Who said I was done with you?"

     Kazahaya turned his head back, and for the first time today got a good look at Rikuou's eyes, steady and clear. He wanted to believe them so badly. And he wanted to believe the caress of his lips, the presumption of his tongue in Kazahaya's mouth...

     And he wanted the goddamn door to stop opening!

     Saiga smiled the same way Kakei did when he was being an evil bastard. "Also, Watanuki says good job with the orb, and Doumeki says he told you so."

     "Leave us alone!" Kazahaya yelled, hearing a roar of "Get the fuck out!" right by his ear.

     "We should lock the door," he whispered into Rikuou's neck. "You know... next time. If... there can be a next time?"

     "I will fucking nail it shut with boards if you want. I bet Kakei set up the schedule just so he could pull that shit."

     "I don't want to work." To get up, he'd have to leave the press of Rikuou's skin and the soft wind of his breath for the rude world outside the sanctuary of this bed. He clung to Rikuou's chest and traced the sheer precipice of his sweaty side with his palm. "And I don't want to still technically be a virgin, either!"

     Rikuou's laugh rang out low and made the beat of his heart hit his ribs like a hammer. "I got a philosophical problem with it myself," he answered, and grabbed something from his nightstand.

     Biting his lip, Kazahaya let a push melt him back against the sheets. He knew he shouldn't, that they had places to be and they'd probably get in trouble for this, but he couldn't look away from the wicked grin on Rikuou's face as he dabbed something wet and shining out of the tub in his hand. Somehow, it made him think of the old story about the girl and the wolf, and if he asked what the slick cream was for, he just knew Rikuou would answer, 'The better to prick you with, my dear'. As he rolled his hips up and open to his lover's touch, he was starting to forget what had ever seemed so bad about getting eaten alive.

     He shuddered at every play the man's fingers made, pushing his legs up around Rikuou's shoulders. Slipping back into the world of kisses and murmurs against his neck was too tempting to think about much else. The stretch two fingers opening him up hurt, but it was hard to mind the pain when his skin was humming and each slick stroke inside had the same sweet burn as drinking hot chocolate on a cold winter night. "But this isn't too irresponsible? Even though Kakei says we have to work?"

     "Kakei can suck it. You ready for more?"

     Nodding, he grabbed the bar running the foot of the bed with both hands and pushed back. He shuddered around a third finger going in, gasps fighting how he tried to bite his lip to hold the sounds to a whisper. "And what if Saiga comes back in?"

     "He better like watching you writhe and moan down there, 'cause I ain't gonna stop again."

     "See, I knew you..." Kazahaya gasped, bedfellow's touch reaching deep inside. Down to where a jolt blanked out his brain, feeling something that was more like good than anything he'd ever felt.

     "You were saying?"

     "Knew you... were a pervert."

     "You want to be stocking boxes right now? Or do you want me to fuck you?"

     "Fuck me," he whispered. His legs slipped wider open, pushing against the fingers slowly slipping out.

     Rikuou's breath hit his chin as he laughed, that grin peeking through his lips. "Say it louder."

     "Fuck me!"

     "Still can't hear you."

     "I said, 'Fuck me', you jackass!" Kazahaya screamed, rolling them both over and never minding the scrape of his knees as they dropped to the wooden floor or that everyone downstairs could hear. Straddling Rikuou's hips, he could feel the heat of his lover's cock burning against the bottom of his spine. "Is that going to be a problem?"

     "No problem," Rikuou said. "I just wanted to hear that pretty mouth say something filthy."

     He--

     He could kind of see the appeal, actually.

     "Then..." Swallowing, Kazahaya pronounced every word clear and sharp. "You'd better shove your cock up my ass and ride me til I can't see straight. And I'll see what I can do." He'd never felt as out of control as he did with the tips of Rikuou's fingers tracing his cheek, not even when he felt like not himself. This time, it was all them. Just them. Rikuou guided his hips, pushing up against him as Kazahaya drove down. The thrust and ebb and thrust again should have left him breathless, filling him up with so much of that odd sweetness that there shouldn't have been room left for air.

     But his lungs burned with the air, as if every breath with every new push was the first one he'd ever known. His voice rang out into the room more incoherent than filthy, but that was something he could work on. Next time.