Crawford asked the sleepy-eyed girl at the desk about Yohji. She tried to give him details, and found herself pinned to the wall. Crawford didn’t want to know what he was missing, he wanted to know where Yohji was. Understand?
It would be nice if the place’s bookkeeping had some kind of rational order to it, even better if names were taken rather than just marking which room were full. Crawford contemplated going around and knocking on each door in turn, but rationality interrupted and he decided he’d got a better chance of finding Kudoh at his office. Even if it was a three hour walk away. A three hour walk Crawford found himself making, since Kudoh had apparently decided to drive. In Crawford’s car.
It rained.
* * *
Yohji slipped another sheet of paper into his typewriter. He was very attached to that machine. It sounded right. It smelt right. It looked tatty and old and rusting and greasy. It looked right.
Crawford could go and shove his shiny multifunctional swish computers up his Armani clad behind.
Computers hummed. That was what irritated Yohji the most. A typewriter could be trusted to sit silently. And the keys were too quiet on a computer. How was someone meant to know that you were working if they couldn’t hear you from the next room? So what if when you made a mistake you could correct it without rewriting the entire document? At least with a typewriter you didn’t have to worry about several pages you’d already written just disappearing.
“’While the evidence is not one hundred percent conclusive, if Takatori Mamoru did survive where the media claimed he didn’t, Tsukiyono Omi would be a prime suspect for his new persona.’” he read back to himself. “’The boy is the correct age and shares the pigmentation of the missing child in aspects of hair, eyes and skin.’”
Photographs were scattered across the desk, the video was sealed in an envelope and the report didn’t seem to have any obvious spelling or grammatical errors. Still, he needed to know what else was on that tape. Which meant waiting for Crawford to turn up. Yohji’s hand moved to the bottom drawer at that thought.
Glass crunched and Yohji looked up.
“I thought you weren’t going to drink any more,” Crawford said. He took off his glasses to shake water from them, and glowered at Yohji. Well, squinted. Yohji smirked.
“I’m not. Looking for a stapler,” he lied smoothly.
“May I look at your summary?” Crawford asked.
“Was there anything else on the tapes that I ought to add?” Yohji asked first, leaning on the paper.
“Not really, no. I suppose you could say that Kritiker clearly has access to specialists in a variety of fields, but considering their head it’s hardly surprising.” Crawford pulled the paper out from under Yohji’s elbows and frowned. “Why English?”
“American typewriter,” Yohji explained. “I’m actually better with the English than the romanised Japanese. Comes from reading all those books in the language they were written in. The Maltese Falcon lost a certain something in translation.”
“I was eight when I read the Maltese Falcon,” Crawford commented. “I spent the month after that wearing my father’s longest coat and wandering around with a plastic gun and a glass bottle full of cola flavoured Kool-Aid watered down to look like Bourbon. I thought that was going to be my life.”
“So?” Yohji spat.
Crawford sighed and turned to the sheets of paper. As he skimmed through the brief report he noticed something. “’Our research suggests that Tsukiyono Omi is a member of the terrorist organisation Weiss, who in turn are controlled by a much larger vigilante operation that we believe to go under the name of Kritiker’” he read. “Why don’t you mention Takatori Shuichi?”
“Because I’ve had it up to here with family feuds and shameless killers,” Yohji said bluntly. “Takatoris everywhere hiring people to kill each other, hiring each other to kill each other. It’s too fucking screwed up for me.”
Crawford inwardly agreed. “Hirofumi won’t appreciate you hiding information from him.”
“He’s going to kill me anyway,” Yohji said. “Who gives a fuck?”
“You’ve become very abrasive since last night,” Crawford observed in the voice he usually reserved for Schuldig’s worse moods. “I suppose you’re still against the idea of dying.”
Yohji shrugged irritably. Who did this man think he was, walking in here and ruining his life? Nothing could ever be the same, and he wouldn’t even get a chance to get used to the changes.
“Do you think Kritiker would take me in?” he asked suddenly.
“You trust me,” Crawford managed incredulously.
“Yeah.” Yohji tipped his chair back against the wall. He’d ‘borrowed’ it from downstairs. They’d get it back soon enough. “You don’t want to kill me any more. I guess there’s some merit to your bullshit about relative times, and stuff. Three days ago you were itching to shoot me, and now I’m so perfectly confident you won’t that I’m asking you if you think your enemy will take me in. So yes, I trust you.”
“You trust me.” That had been an odd speech. Sincere, but full of resentment. Tone didn’t quite match contents. Like Yohji, in a way.
“Yes. I even like you.”
“I know that,” Crawford said dismissively. “You always did. Deeply irritating. I don’t need hate to hate, or ignorance to kill. I don’t think of people as cardboard cut outs to simply resent. I can kill someone I’m fully aware is a living, thinking person, with connections and friends and family, even if I’m included in those friends. But you? No.”
Yohji wasn’t impressed by this.
“You destroyed my life,” Yohji told Crawford. “And you’re still trying to get into my pants.”
“I didn’t destroy your life.”
“Why do you want to screw me so badly that you’ll risk your life to do so?”
“I’m attracted to you. I’m infuriated by you. I find, when I think about it, that I want to be you. I want your life, Kudoh Yohji. I’m jealous.”
“You’re welcome to it,” Yohji said bitterly. “Though I don’t know what you think you can do with it that I couldn’t.”
“I can live it,” Crawford said firmly. “I want to wear the stupid hat and the daft trenchcoat. I want real Bourbon in my pocket and a real gun in my belt. I want to help people who don’t deserve help, befriend people who don’t deserve friends and kill people who do deserve death. I want the dirty office with the bimbo secretary. I’m not going to screw it up with drink and smoke and women. I’m going to do it right, like you meant to.”
“If I disgust you so much, why do you want to sleep with me?”
Yohji closed his eyes. He couldn’t blame Crawford for shattering his dreams. They’d been shattered for years. Crawford had just made him realises that he had to stop trying to pick up the pieces. Asuka wasn’t coming back. Clients weren’t going to start breaking down the door. No one was going to offer him a rent-free apartment. The shattered pieces of his life were like shards of glass inside him, ripping him to shreds. He’d thought the only way to stop the pain would be to put them back together and seal those broken edges. Alcohol didn’t soften the slicing sides, cigarettes wouldn’t burn the corners away, and sex didn’t so much as blunt those splinters.
Crawford had shown him that the best way to stop the pain was to abandon those pieces altogether. Throw them out. He’d be left with a huge gaping hole, but that had to be better than the pain, right? Most people must have that hole. In this world it seemed like no one got to live his or her dreams. He’d been lucky.
“You know, I’m sure LA could use a private eye, especially one with experience in he paranormal and international contacts.”
“Good for you,” Yohji said dully. “Go live my dream.”
“I thought you said it was always easier with a partner.”
“I thought you implied you preferred to work alone.”
“I think you’ve changed my mind.”
Yohji sighed. He knew damn
well what Crawford was getting it, had done from the first words. But
he’d made his decision. He’d cast out the shards already. And
besides, he wasn’t sure he liked the idea of leaving
“I thought you said you didn’t want to die.”
The man had a point.
* * *
“So he made certain they shared a double room?”
“Asked specifically for it.”
“And about Tsukiyono - Have Weiss definitely left?”
“They’ve got a van now. They’ll never have a fixed location again.”
“Through their meddling?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you, Juredehi.”
“It’s pronounced ‘Schuldig’.”
“That’s what I said. Be ready to leave in one hour.”
The red head rolled his eyes. Brad had such fucking awful taste in men.
* * *
Things were awkward. Before there had been tension. He’d been able to slam Yohji into walls and use power to arouse him. He’d had excuses to kiss him and keep bodily contact with him. He’d been able to act sensitive and soothe Yohji’s ego. But now? No. He was just sitting on a desk trying to find some excuse to be sitting on Yohji’s lap. Yohji clearly wasn’t in any kind of mood to have sex.
He’d killed it last night, Crawford realised ruefully. He’d pushed too hard and now Yohji was pushing back stubbornly.
The ball was in Yohji’s court. Yohji’s court had recently been undergoing strange interdimensional warping, so not many games were going on right now. Crawford had no idea how to convince him to try and seduce Crawford.
It was so damn frustrating!
“If we work together, we can’t have casual sex,” Yohji said slowly.
Well, at least he was thinking about it, Crawford consoled himself.
“Why not?”
“Because I only have casual sex with people I’m never going to see again. I don’t trust people easily, not after Asuka left me.”
They weren’t men who could talk their way into sex. What Crawford wouldn’t give for Weiss to burst through the door. They needed action. Something to get the blood pumping and adrenaline running and then they’d be at it on the desk, fired by danger and triumph and by the time it was over they’d be too exhausted to have any regrets.
“I still don’t understand what you want. If it was just sex, we’d have had it already,” Yohji said firmly.
Crawford frowned. “Why do you say that?”
“Because it’s true.”
“I wasn’t even certain I wanted to have sex with you at first. I wanted to kill you,” Crawford pointed out.
“Exactly. What changed your mind?”
“You did.”
Yohji rolled his eyes. “Sure, it’s that simple.”
“It is. You persevered in your efforts to befriend me.”
“No I didn’t. I gave up,” Yohji snapped. “And I was only trying to make things easier on myself to start with.”
“Oh, quite being such a martyr. What do you want me to say, that I suddenly realised you were my one twu luv and we were destined to be together?” He frowned at the look on Yohji’s face. “Oh, you didn’t actually, did you?” he laughed. “Hirofumi said you were a sentimentalist, but you’d given me the impression you had at least some semblance of rationality.”
“Of course I don’t expect you to be in love with me,” Yohji said too quickly. “It’s only been three days.”
“Exactly.”
“Precisely.”
God, could this get any worse? They both wanted sex, Yohji was certain. And they did like each other. It was just society, leading him to expect that had to be something else in the mix. Yohji really hated ‘society’. Okay, so what if he wasn’t okay with casual sex right now? It was hardly going to be casual, Yohji reassured himself, not after all this. If he could make Crawford turn from blind hatred to genuine amiability in three days just think what he could achieve by the end of the week. Hell, they might even get to know each other!
Actually, Yohji realised, he did know Crawford quite well. He knew that challenging him tended to have quite immediate affects and that danger tended to make both of them a bit horny.
“You trust me,” Crawford tried again.
“I don’t trust you once we start earning money,” Yohji threw himself into his plan with gusto. If it didn’t work he’d have screwed up so badly he’d never see Crawford again anyway.
“I’m not that shallow,” Crawford felt himself getting irritated.
“Why do you sleep with Hirofumi? Power. Power is money.”
“Power is power,” Crawford snapped. “I like power.”
“More than you could like me.”
“What about you? Why should I trust you? You’re twenty-two. Hardly an age to settle down at.”
“Settle down? No, no intention of that,” Yohji laughed.
“Exactly. And you’re afraid that I’ll leave you.”
“We’ve only known each other for three days! I barely know you.”
“You’ve put your life in my hands several times.”
“I haven’t put my heart in your hands”
“It’s just sex. You of all people know that sex is just sex.”
“What is that meant to mean?”
“It’s meant to mean you’re a slut,” Crawford snarled bluntly. “You’d have screwed that strange in the club, wouldn’t you? And that girl at the wedding. And any one of Weiss.”
“Maybe I would. Maybe you’re feeling insecure, because you know I’d screw any one of them and I’m not laying a finger on you.”
“Insecure? I could have any person in this city. I’m sleeping with the future president’s son!”
“Who’s going to kill you for thinking outside the box.”
“He couldn’t touch me,” Crawford sneered.
“I could take you,” Yohji scoffed.
“I’d like to see you try.” And he did, giving him time to jump off the desk as Yohji made the first lunge, launching himself off of the chair.
Crawford found himself backed against the wall as Yohji vaulted over the desk and charged into him. Crawford stepped sideways but Yohji was fast, spinning on his heel and swing a fist wildly. Crawford took it and rolled with it, kicking out to knock the unbalanced Yohji to the floor. Yohji scissored his legs and Crawford found himself collapsing into the wall. Yohji rolled, but in trying to get up he slammed his head into the bottom of the desk. Crawford lunged, but Yohji rolled again and managed to make it upright this time, clinging to the plant. For a second Crawford spared a thought for the idea that Yohji might have hurt his head seriously, but instinct kicked in and he tried to do the same to Yohji’s head.
He could foresee Yohji ducking each time, moving, but he didn’t have time to pull each kick. He groaned in frustration and switched to punches, boxing being his preferred form of fighting. Yohji found himself being pummelled back against the wall, taking sharp hits to the chest and abdomen.
He tucked one leg behind him against the wall and pushed, hard, slamming himself into Crawford and forcing him backwards against the desk. Crawford flinched as the sharp edge jammed against his lower back. Yohji kept pushing until they were horizontal, and those long arms reached over and swept everything from the desk, even giving the typewriter a harsh shove, and those long legs kicked against the floor and then they were lying on the desk, Yohji propped on top of Crawford and breathing heavily.
“I can take you,” Yohji smirked, and kissed him hard.
Crawford writhed ineffectually. Yohji straddled him, pinning him effortlessly to the desk. For Crawford it ought to be a point of pride to be on top, but it didn’t seem quite so important now. As Yohji unbuttoned his shirt and pushed away his jacket Crawford slid his hands under Yohji’s tight t-shirt and forced Yohji to cease his ministrations long enough to pull it over his head.
Yohji ground Crawford’s hips against the desk. Hands were grabbing at his nipples, finally finding them long enough to make Yohji moan. Yohji curved over for a savage kiss, lifting his hips away enough for Crawford to grasp desperately at the waistline and work on getting the tight leather off the tight arse. His hands explored the firm muscle as Yohji’s mouth moved down his torso.
Crawford lifted his hips from the desk and tried to wiggle out of his own trousers, but there was too much Yohji everywhere. He needed those trousers off. He could see Yohji’s arousal. He wanted it.
“My pants,” he groaned. “Help.”
Yohji pulled away from him for a moment, looking down with distinct amusement. His own trousers were in danger of climbing back up with his legs spread so far apart. With nimble fingers he undid Crawford’s trousers. He leant backwards, arching his back, giving Crawford a beautiful look at everything Yohji, and grabbed the legs of the smart black trousers and yanked. The friction made Crawford gasp, burning down his thighs.
Yohji found himself with a dilemma. He wanted Crawford legs over his shoulders, that would be most comfortable here, but damn it if he wasn’t pinning them down with his own. The desk wasn’t wide enough for much manoeuvrability. Crawford picked up on this and decided it was an opportune moment to display his own flexibility, some how extracting his legs and wrapping them around Yohji’s waist. Yohji was impressed.
Crawford’s jacket was still spread across the desk, and Yohji dipped into an inside pocket to produce a neat wallet. Crawford meant to snap, but he remembered Yohji’s boasts about going through his clothes already. Inside the wallet were a few condoms and a discrete tube of lubricant, which made Yohji smirk. Crawford just glowered up at him, so Yohji reached down and removed the glasses, turning it from glare to squint, and leant down for a long kiss.
Yohji was not long in preparing, and Crawford was experienced enough that he didn’t need much either. Yohji’s fingers hovered hesitantly, and Crawford wondered what it would be like to have the long slim digits inside him, but he had more pressing needs right now. He wanted relief immediately. He crossed his legs behind Yohji’s back and squeezed encouragingly.
Position, press, push, position, thrust. Thrust. Yohji leant over Crawford, one hand on the desk to keep himself from collapsing entirely. Crawford’s back was arched awkwardly, hips lifted off the desk. He unhooked his legs from Yohji’s back and pressed his feet to the corners of the desk for better leverage, toes curling over the edge, tightening with each sharp thrust. Yohji’s other hand went roaming, eventually locating Crawford’s own, which was pumping hard on his cock. They pumped together, thrust and bucked together, came together.
“I took you,” Yohji gloated breathlessly as he collapsed bonelessly over Crawford, trousers still wrapped tightly around his knees. He kicked weakly. Crawford laughed, managing to convince one foot to detach itself from the desk and push Yohji’s trousers down to around ankle level. A little more kicking and they joined Crawford’s on the floor.
“Nngh,” Crawford said firmly. Yohji shifted sideways slightly, but a narrow desk didn’t give them enough space to do anything over than drape over each other. Sweaty and sticky and slimy, they fell asleep.