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Tetsurou sighs. He unscrews the last screw, softly takes off the lid and puts it to the side. The screwdriver gets folded back into his Swiss Knife, which disappears into one of the many hidden pockets in his custom-tailored suit.
“I should not have worn a suit for this,” he says into the hidden microphone. “Suits just don’t mesh well with sewers and basements.”
Basements: like the one he now heaves himself up into.
It’s dark, no light sources except for the one he has created; luckily for him, he can see well in the dark even with his flashlight on the lowest setting, barely-visible and responsible for the fact he doesn’t get caught by shining a giant light beacon saying ‘intruder here!’ whenever he does have to use a flashlight. This low setting his flashlight possesses is the sole reason he buys its brand.
Kenma likes to make jokes about Tetsurou actually just being a giant, very annoying cat. Which is rich coming from the person in their team who has literally pushed a glass filled with water off of a table before.
“I keep telling you not to wear suits,” Kenma says, voice slightly distorted through Tetsurou’s earpiece.
“You also keep peeling me out of them after jobs well done, Kenken. Bad incentive.”
“You’re a menace.”
“One that looks sexy in suits. They add to the atmosphere, you know. They’re important.”
“Nobody’s supposed to see you on these jobs anyway,” Kenma points out.
“Except for some of my victims. And they deserve to get the full experience. Who wants to be murdered by an assassin in sweatpants? I’d personally be very insulted if my murderer didn’t bother to dress up for the occasion,” Tetsurou says.
“I’d personally be very insulted to be killed by you in the first place,” Kenma replies. “I’d hope someone would at least pay Atsumu for the job.”
“Now there’s no reason to get insulting,” Tetsurou pouts.
He’s trying to make sure he talks as quietly as possible as he moves swiftly along the route he spent hours mapping out back at home, staring at old floor plans of the hotel. This part of the basement should be unused, empty, but one can never be too certain.
“I wonder if Atsumu is looking for a hacker,” Kenma murmurs.
“You talk like someone who wants to sleep on the couch,” Tetsurou says, and he can hear Kenma chuckle for a second before he catches and stops the response. Tetsurou smiles to himself.
He’s close to reaching the staircase he plans on using; or at least he should be if he’s done his job correctly.
This means he’ll shortly enter the part of the hotel that’s actually filled with people. And security cameras. Not that either are a genuine cause for concern; Kenma is very good at his job, and his job both includes disabling security cameras and making sure Tetsurou can move safely through the building. Tetsurou knows Kenma will be monitoring everything closely.
He has full trust in him.
Not only because he is, perhaps, more than just a little bit smitten, but also because he knows Kenma. Even if Kenma didn’t care about Tetsurou – and he does – he’d never let his professional pride be insulted by doing a poor job.
Because Kenma is fucking good at what he does. He’s the best – in both Tetsurou’s personal opinion as his boyfriend and his professional opinion as the person who reached out to Kenma and asked him to work with him five years ago.
He wouldn’t have reached out to someone he thought might fuck up.
This is why he knows that the corridor is going to be empty when he steps out into it.
And indeed, after the few seconds it takes him to pick the lock of the basement door at the end of the staircase, he walks out into an empty corridor.
“No people out on this floor right now, but two men on the first,” Kenma informs him. “One of them is heading towards the elevator, so use the staircase instead, it’s empty.”
Staircases usually are, especially in hotels this spacious and renowned.
People who have and spend money on the sort of luxurious hotel where someone brings your luggage to your room for you and the minibar is seen as something to be actually used, a sensible option if you want a Prosecco and don’t want to wait for room service to bring it to you, don’t take the stairs.
But Tetsurou does.
And so it is Tetsurou who makes his way left and enters the stairwell through light wooden doors, decorated with delicate carvings and gold accents.
Such a thoughtless material to use for the doors of a stairwell, as pretty as it may seem; after all, the stairwell is the escape route in case of fire.
It would be less careless if this door at least followed fire door regulations; it doesn’t.
He shakes his head slightly and smirks. Foolish, foolish people. This is why the likes of him never have actual problems.
After a certain amount of money people start believing themselves above such mundane things as fire, believing themselves to be akin to untouchable.
Such a pity, truly, if the people who want them dead also have money.
The stairwell is sleek, beautiful, for a thing that isn’t meant to be used by the actual people staying here. The smooth railing is decorated with more gold accents, and it forms the heads of dragons at every storey, promising good luck and prosperous riches.
Tetsurou’s gloved hands softly glide over the dragon heads, over the ridges by the eyebrows, the flared nostrils, the whiskers.
“Will you bring luck to me, little dragon?” he whispers. There is a skip in his step.
“Will you stop talking to the railing and hurry the fuck up? There’s someone about to enter the stairwell a storey below you,” Kenma says into Tetsurou’s ears.
“You could have told me that earlier,” Tetsurou admonishes, only half-seriously – he knows Kenma would never actively put him in danger – and straightens up.
“And you could have been out of here already,” Kenma shoots back.
Tetsurou speeds up his walking while simultaneously softening his steps. Only two more storeys; he cannot risk to be heard or seen.
He knows he is difficult to forget, with his wild black hair and tall stature. While the sleek suits and eccentric air about him, the smug, confident smirks Kenma complains about at every turn, fit in just fine in a hotel such as this, people seem to have a hard time letting go of the memory of him.
It’s not that that’s necessarily a problem: most people don’t think twice about it. In an establishment filled with cocky rich people, there are bound to be some people one runs into who are hard to forget, which in turn makes them forgettable again. Nobody bats an eye at him, and it’s this that makes it easy for him to blend into crowds when necessary, even though everything else about him should make it impossible.
Still, one person who might dig the memory of him out if asked is a person too many; Tetsurou is good at not leaving traces that could lead to his whereabouts, but getting seen and remembered is not only foolish, it’s amateur work, and whatever Tetsurou may be, he’s not an amateur.
He hears the door to the stairwell open below him just when he reaches his; and as the other person enters, he leaves, the imprint of a dangerous presence lingering long after he does.
“The floor is currently empty, but the elevator isn’t and will stop at your storey in seven seconds,” Kenma informs him.
Six, Tetsurou counts and fastens his steps,
Five, four, he’s across eight more doors,
Three, two, one, he can hear the elevator ding just as he rounds the corner into the part of the hallway where his victim is located.
“Room 113,” Kenma reminds him.
Thanks kitten, he thinks rather than whispers back; too risky.
He can hear the voices of the people leaving the elevator. Three of them. They’re talking in French and German both, a mix of languages, some Italian words thrown in. Swiss, the dialect tells him. Born rich, the confidence in their voices says.
He reaches door 113; it opens when he scans his fake keycard. Of course it does. Kenma is, after all, fucking good at what he does.
Tetsurou enters and closes the door behind him swiftly.
“Oh, room service?” the man in the armchair asks without turning around.
It’s a beautiful armchair, sleek and modern, coloured a light cream. It’s placed next to a glass table, positioned so that the person sitting in it is gazing out of the room’s window front that overlooks the hills behind the hotel, a dreamy, bewitching picture. One speaking of the sort of nature this man has only ever experienced through at least two layers of separation.
“You could call it that. It’s certainly a service,” Tetsurou says.
That does get the man to turn his head around, confused. Good. Though he’ll do it if need be, Tetsurou doesn’t much like striking from the back; it always feels a bit cowardly to him.
His eyes take Tetsurou in, and Tetsurou can see the split-second it takes for him to register that he’s in danger.
It’s his bad luck that Tetsurou is good at what he does (although Tetsurou being hired has nothing to do with luck); by the time he opens his mouth to speak, perhaps to scream, Tetsurou’s knife has already found its target.
The man falls back, mouth still open.
Tetsurou goes and picks up his knife, wipes it clean on his handkerchief, and pockets both.
He could have used a gun with a silencer, of course, but he much prefers knives and swords for close-range kills. They feel more personal to him.
“Is the air clear?” he asks Kenma.
“Air is clear. Floor is empty. The stairwell is too. You should have at least ten seconds to get to it.”
Ten seconds are easy.
“Thanks kitten, you’re the best,” he says, and leaves the room without looking back.
He doesn’t have to look back to know the red of the blood is already slowly seeping into the light cream-colour of the armchair, impossible to remove to a degree where the feeling of the murder won’t cling to it even long after the colour of the blood has been chemically removed, as Kenma mutters “don’t call me kitten” into his ear.
- -
The basement is still just as dirty. So are the sewers when Tetsurou hops down into them and screws the lid back into place with precise movements.
“I should have gone in through the front lobby. Such a clean job, but it’s going to take me ages to get the sewer smell back out of my nose,” he complains.
“If you’d gone through the front lobby I would have left you to fend for yourself,” Kenma says.
“I wouldn’t have, but you could at least let a guy dream,” Tetsurou complains. He’s going to have to get his dress shoes deep-cleaned after this. Not that that’s anything out of the ordinary; he always gets the clothes he doesn’t dispose of deep-cleaned after he’s finished a job.
There’s no such thing as too careful.
It takes him almost two kilometres to reach the point where he’s parked the car; he climbs out of the sewer in a side-alley, one he knows is always empty – he’s scoped it out long enough and taken some additional measures to ensure that – pats some lingering basement-dust off, and walks to his car.
Well, the car he’s gotten for the job.
His personal car is a little more flashy than the sedan he jumps into, but he doesn’t usually bring his beloved Porsche 911 to a job; too risky.
It only goes to those where he parks right in front of someone’s mansion, confidently and fitting so well that nobody will bat an eye, license plate swapped out for one of his numerous back-ups.
This time, he drives the job-sedan a good way further before he jumps into his actual car and makes his way to where he’s going to meet Kenma.
- -
They don’t often meet at the same place – to do so would be beyond foolish – but this spot is still their favourite, even though they use it sparingly. They change locations every time, and they only come back to very few ones.
This one, however, they’re both fond of. Kenma pretends it’s only Tetsurou who’s sentimental, but Tetsurou knows that secretly, it’s both of them.
It’s an old, abandoned warehouse in the middle of nowhere. It’s only half-standing; many of the big beams once holding it up have crashed unter the weight of time, and greenery has long since started sprouting out of cracks in the concrete, stubbornly, defiantly reclaiming this place as one belonging to the forest.
Kenma is already there when Tetsurou arrives, wearing his usual black: black sweatpants, black pullover, black face mask.
“You’re late,” he says. Tetsurou isn’t; but Kenma likes to throw it at him whenever he’s the first one to arrive, with how many times he’s heard the words from Tetsurou’s mouth.
Tetsurou grins at him.
“I’m right on time to kiss you, baby,” he sing-songs. He doesn’t need to see Kenma’s nose to know he’s scrunching it up.
“Ew,” Kenma says, and Tetsurou laughs.
He comes closer and softly hugs Kenma, even though he knows he must smell horrendously like sewer. Deodorant can only do so much. Kenma still sinks into his arms.
Tetsurou can feel Kenma’s entire body going lax against him, tension seeping out of him.
Truth be told, Tetsurou didn’t know how tense these jobs really were for Kenma for a long time. He’d always foolishly assumed that the majority of tension was his own – and his is mostly anticipation.
But Kenma gets anxious-tense, and while he keeps it at bay during their jobs – he can’t afford to lose his concentration to it – it hits him in full force after, and it’s only when he can touch Tetsurou that he truly allows himself to calm back down.
Tetsurou has made sure to hug Kenma after every job since he found out; Kenma takes this with a gratitude he would never put into words.
It’s in these small things that Tetsurou knows how loved he is: Kenma isn’t one for big shows of affection, for words of affirmation, but there are a million small things through which he shows his love.
A million small things that relax Tetsurou enough to not shake in fear of rejection as he softly lets go of Kenma and sinks to one knee.
Kenma stares at him with narrowed eyes. “What are you doing,” he says more than asks, but there’s a tremble in his voice.
“Kenma,” Tetsurou says softly, “I met you here for the first time five years ago. And five years ago, on this very ground, is where I knew for the first time that you were something beyond special. I want to say I didn’t fall for you that first day, but I think a part of me did. And every other part of me followed in the months after, in learning more about you. How picky you are. How you look when you’re sleep-rumpled and tired and grumpy. The way you pack affection into scathing insults. The way you smile when you think nobody can see. You’re the only person I come back to, and you’re the only person I want to come back to for the rest of my life. Will you marry me?”
He gently gets the ring box he’s had stored in a suit pocket the entire day out and opens it.
“You smell like sewer and still have blood on your knife,” Kenma says. “This is so unromantic. You could have rented a whole stadium. I know you have the money. I get half of your paychecks.”
“You hate big affairs,” Tetsurou says, “and we both know you secretly think this is romantic.” Despite his confident words, his heart is beating stupidly fast in his chest. Because this – this is it. This is all he’s ever wanted. And he’s terrified of Kenma deciding that maybe, after all this time, Tetsurou is not what he wants.
“Ugh,” Kenma says. “Fine.”
And then he sinks down too before Tetsurou can stand up, reaching for the ring with shaky hands. Tetsurou softly puts it on him: a delicate gold band against Kenma’s small hand, beautiful and simple and a sign of them.
“You know I can’t stand you, right?” Kenma says, and then he rips down his mask and kisses Tetsurou, and Tetsurou loves him more than he could ever put into words.