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Tohru properly meets Yu Narukami in the spring, just a day or so after the start of the school year, in the genkan of the Dojima household.
“Oh,” Tohru says, startled, when he opens the door to the house, and finds the man from yesterday, drawing at the table with Nanako.
He glances up to Tohru, only a mild surprise in his expression before it smooths over into a welcoming smile and warm grey eyes. His light hair falls neatly over his forehead, and though it’s undeniably the same person, he looks almost nothing like the austere detective that Tohru had spotted with his uncle at that… crime scene.
“Hey there,” he greets, and his voice is rich in a way that makes Tohru push his glasses up higher on the bridge of his nose to hide his face. “You must be Tohru. Dojima told me that you were coming to stay with him for a while.”
“...Yeah,” manages Tohru, then stagnates in the awkward silence that falls between them for too many heartbeats as the man’s gaze pierces through him, as though he’s waiting, or searching for something.
He must not find it. “Sorry, I should have started with introducing myself, what am I doing?” He stands, brushes off his crisply immaculate slacks, and strides to meet Tohru by the shoe rack.
He’s tall. Much taller than Tohru, and frankly he doubts that even when he’s a few years older he would be able to catch up. His shoulders are broad, too, his torso slimming to an attractive V at the waist that Tohru can’t look at for too long.
“I’m Narukami—Yu Narukami. I’m your uncle’s partner on the force.”
He bows, and though it’s shallow, it’s still deeper than the head nod that Tohru expected, and he feels his face flush. What is with this guy?
“I’m still pretty new here too, though,” Narukami laughs when he rights himself. “But I hope you can rely on me.”
Tohru coughs, bobs into a rough approximation of a bow, and finally remembers to toe his shoes off. “Nice to meet you,” he says, swallowing. “Tohru. Adachi. I’m Tohru Adachi.”
Narukami’s smile curls into something sharper, more knowing, like they’d just shared a joke that Tohru is meant to be taking part in, before it settles back into politeness. “Sorry to startle you in your home like this,” he says, turning back and sitting down near Nanako again. Tohru bites back the correction that this isn’t his home, to begin with. “I’m here pretty often, if that’s okay.”
Nanako, who had until now only murmured a quiet “Welcome back,” to Tohru, beams and adds brightly, “Mr. Narukami cooks for us sometimes. His food is the best!”
Narukami pats her head, and she giggles, and Tohru has to look away from them, something restless stirring in his chest.
“That’s fine with me,” Tohru shrugs, setting his bag down by the kitchen table for now. “Is Uncle not here?”
Nanako looks down at her hands. “He said he was too busy to come home tonight. With the case.”
“I see.” Tohru strolls into the kitchen, looking for something small and easy to eat. “And you don’t have to work on it right now, too, Mr. Narukami?”
“Just Narukami is fine,” he says mildly. “And I’m the junior officer here—my workload is a little less… severe. I already finished all my paperwork for the day, so he said he didn’t mind. Besides… if he’s not coming home to see Nanako, then I think that I ought to. By the way,” he adds, more cheerful, “there’s leftovers from tonight in the fridge. They should still be pretty warm; I only just put them away. Please help yourself.”
Tohru takes a second to eye Narukami, searching for any sort of backtrack, or punchline, or catch, but the man just continues to watch him in return, mannerisms pleasant and a softness in the way that he holds himself that feels incongruent with the edges of his body. “Alright,” Tohru eventually relents. He’s never been one to turn down food. “Thanks.”
Narukami looks like he’s going to say more, then thinks better of it, and just lingers on Tohru. Tohru squirms under the attention. It’s… exposing. A little uncomfortable.
He shoves it aside in favor of grabbing the plastic container of leftovers and dumping some on a plate. It’s still middling to lukewarm, so no real point in heating it up more. He hesitates, glancing over at Narukami and Nanako, then swallows the lump that’s formed in the back of his throat and moves to sit with them at the chabudai. He doesn’t make eye contact with either.
Wordlessly, he brings the first mouthful to his lips, testing the noodles between his teeth, the sweet sauce on his tongue. Wait, this is actually amazing. He can’t keep down the pleased little hum that follows.
“This is… really good,” he says, looking up at Narukami, whose eyes have been burning expectantly into him this whole time.
The man breathes a sigh of relief, tension that Tohru hadn’t seen before releasing from his jaw. “I’m glad to hear it,” he says, and it sounds genuine. “I’d be happy to cook for you any time.”
Tohru stares down at his plate.
He didn’t think… Well. He didn’t think he’d ever get to hear something like that.
Tohru watches the Midnight Channel. His TV tries to eat him. Something awful and exhilarating awakens inside of him. The other side of the TV is horrifying. It’s still better than only worrying about his grades for all of high school. Yosuke Hanamura convinces him to do something really stupid, and though their personalities clash they’re irrevocably bonded now, or something.
Which is exactly how Tohru ends up at the station, after having agreed to Hanamura’s plan to meet back up at Junes only to find out that the boy brought real swords and brandished them in a public place.
Damn him. His fourth-ever day in Inaba really could not get worse.
“Tohru?”
Tohru grimaces and turns to see Narukami—tall, coffee in hand, button-down tucked neatly into his pressed slacks, looking altogether immaculate—striding towards them.
The day got worse.
“I… heard you got brought in. I didn’t hear much else, though. What happened?”
“You know this guy?” Hanamura asks, and Narukami’s smile is thin but polite.
“Yu Narukami,” he introduces, nodding at him. “I’m Detective Dojima’s new partner.”
“Oh.” Hanamura flounders for a moment, a new flush rising high on his cheek. “Cool.”
“Go on,” Tohru says flatly, unwilling to lump himself in with Hanamura’s stupidity, “tell him what you did.”
The other boy shifts uncomfortably, eyes flickering between Tohru and Narukami, who just waits. “We, uh, we’re totally… weapons enthusiasts, right, and I had some swords at home that I wanted to show him, and I just sort of. Brought them with me.”
Narukami’s lips twist, wryly, and Tohru decides he likes the sharp edge of it. “You have to make your own entertainment in this place sometimes, don’t you?” he says agreeably. “But next time, maybe not the kind that will get you arrested. You might be lucky Dojima isn’t coming home tonight,” he comments to Tohru, and despite his vaguely sardonic tone, the weight of his full attention sends a small thrill down Tohru’s spine.
“Dojima just let us go,” he says to fill the void.
The flicker of sympathy on Narukami’s face suggests he knows exactly the lecture that entailed.
“Hey, can we ask you something?” Hanamura cuts in. “Yukiko… Er, Yukiko Amagi. Did something happen?”
“Ah.” Narukami turns the cup of coffee in his hands thoughtfully. “I shouldn’t say anything… But if you’re friends with her…" He trails off, assessing them. "Here, how about we trade? Has Ms. Amagi told you anything about going through some hard times, or that she’d be leaving the Inn? Or if she’d seemed particularly upset after Ms. Yamano’s… disappearance.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Hmm, let me put it this way: reports have come in saying that Ms. Yamano was rather cruel to Ms. Amagi’s mother during her stay at the Inn.”
Tohru catches on, breathless at slotting one more piece into the puzzle. “He means that she’s missing. And possibly a suspect.”
He looks up to find Narukami approving eyes on him as Hanamura sputters. “Are you kidding? She’d be the victim here, not the suspect! What, you think she murdered someone just because some TV lady was rude?”
“Remember, I never said anything.” Then Narukami tilts his head, raises his coffee, and says, “I’d better get going, anyway. I’ll see you later, Mr. Hanamura. Tohru.”
“Unbelievable,” Hanamura fumes beside him as Tohru watches Narukami’s back.
He comes over after they find her.
Dojima is at the station doing paperwork following Amagi’s rescue, leaving Tohru and Nanako to fend for themselves—and Tohru barely even flinches anymore when the knock comes at the door. It’s getting… well, perhaps ‘normal’ isn’t the right word for the way Narukami smiles at him when Tohru answers it, arms full to bursting with fresh groceries, but definitely ‘comfortable.’ ‘A relief,’ even, as he makes way for Narukami to take total and effortless control of the kitchen, knife sure in a practiced hand, heady smells drifting from pans.
“You seem like you’re in a good mood,” Tohru observes, gaze skirting over the softness of the man’s lips before ducking his head away from Narukami’s knowing eyes and pushing his glasses up.
“Of course,” says Narukami, sounding amused. “We’re celebrating, aren’t we? Here’s to Ms. Amagi’s safe return, and to the paperwork waiting for me come tomorrow. Now begins the interesting part, which is figuring out how her disappearance happened at all.” He sweeps a look over Tohru, like he can see right through him. “Have any insight?”
Tohru bites his tongue to keep himself from spilling it all right there. There’s a part of him that he’s a little scared of, the part that wants to trust Narukami as an ally.
But for now, he promised the group—whatever they are, together—utter secrecy. “None,” he lies. “We’re just happy to have her back.” Even if it mostly feels less like ‘we’ and more like ‘them-and-Tohru.’
Narukami’s smile is a rare, and modest, but dazzling thing. “I’m glad you’ve come to care so much,” he says. “I hope you all stay friends.”
The next time he sees Narukami it’s on the banks of the Samegawa, staring out across the water, surrounded by a frankly ridiculous number of the local cat population.
“Aren’t you going to ruin your uniform like that?” Tohru asks.
Narukami doesn’t even startle. “Tohru,” he greets warmly, barely looking over his shoulder to not disturb the cats settled around him, forcing Tohru to come up beside him on his own if he really wants to talk. Which Tohru… does. “It’s good to see you. I’m glad you’re keeping safe with everything going on.” He glances down at the tabby in his lap. “Don’t worry about me, though. It’s just a little fur.”
Tohru stands there, feeling adrift. It’s not like he has anything to say, but he doesn’t have anything better to do, and for whatever reason, seeing Narukami compelled him to approach. “But what if they scratch you?” he continues dumbly.
Narukami gives a quiet laugh. Tohru can’t tell if it’s pity, but either way, the motion shifts some of his hair loose where it lays along his forehead, and it softens his entire face. His hair looks so silky. Tohru sort of wants to touch it. “They won’t,” he assures. “And if they happen to, I know how to sew. It’s fine. I’d rather be happy for a moment than care about a shirt, anyway.”
Tohru can’t really argue with that. Narukami is looking at him, sidelong—but then he shifts his gaze away first, back out over the burbling water of the river. “So,” Tohru prompts, “what are you doing out here?” He cringes as the words leave his mouth and readjusts his glasses to cover it up.
There’s a small smile on Narukami’s lips. “Just admiring the view,” he says, then explains, “I’m on break. It’s been a tough few days with… you know.” He tilts his head to catch Tohru’s eyes again. “Would you like to sit and keep me company?”
“...Yeah, okay. Sure.” So he does, though not so close that he disrupts the cats. This is, maybe, the first time he’s really taken a moment to look at Inaba’s nature, and suddenly a half-yearning sort of serenity settles over him.
“How have things at school been, otherwise?” Narukami asks blithely, just filling the space between them. “Are your friends handling everything alright? Getting along okay?”
No, Tohru almost says, things haven’t been super and I already feel way in over my head. “Yep,” he says instead.
Immediately he knows that Narukami sees through the lie, piercing into him, but he just smiles, mercifully, knowingly, and says nothing.
Tohru is determined not to breach the silence after that, and Narukami seems content to do the same, but the blissful detachment in Narukami’s expression as he runs his fingers through cat fur suddenly knocks a question loose from Tohru’s teeth. “You’re from the city,” he blurts. “How do you make it look so… easy, to fit in here?”
Narukami sucks in a breath.
Worry prickles his skin—should he not have said that?
Eventually, Narukami exhales, and he turns to look at Tohru. “Can I tell you a secret?” he says. “It’s not easy. Everyone knows too much about you and nothing at all. And I had… worked hard, to get where I was in Metro.” He shifts to reach into his pocket, taking out a pack of cigarettes. “I don’t want to move her too much,” he says, looking at his lap full of purring tabby cat, then at Tohru. “Could you reach into that jacket pocket and grab my lighter?”
“Uh. Sure.” Tohru does so, leaning in close, feeling the heat radiating from Narukami’s body even through the jacket, and pulls free a small silver lighter. He swallows. “Here.”
“Thank you.” Narukami lights one up, movements languid as he breathes the smoke out downwind, away from Tohru and the cats. “But it’s not all bad, Tohru,” he says. “Being out here. I’ve met a lot of really good people. Like your family. It’s just about taking it one day at a time. I don’t like to sit still for too long, but…” He puts the cigarette back to his lips and inhales deeply. “Well, that’s been hard, recently, so silver lining, I guess.”
“You worked for MPD,” Tohru clarifies.
Narukami nods. “For a few years.”
“What happened?”
He truly looks away from Tohru then, not just simply gazing out thoughtfully but turning his head completely. “Something that shouldn’t have happened,” he answers simply. He lingers in that for a moment, then sighs, finally looking back at Tohru. “It’s not like it’s really a secret. I got assigned to a big case. Just when we were starting to uncover some major evidence that could put away a lot of big names, the case got pulled and forcibly closed. Or—blocked, rather. But the people deserved the truth, so… I kept digging. And I got punished for it.”
“But,” Tohru protests, suddenly indignant. “But—”
“People do want the truth,” Narukami says after taking a drag. “Just—sometimes their own truth. People really came together in that case, and they wanted to stay united, so they ignored the world’s truth in favor of their own. I think I can understand.”
“But you took the fall for it.”
Narukami’s gaze, fully on him now, is like the sun, and Tohru wishes, deliriously, he could stretch into its rays like a cat. “I guess… some sacrifices are seen as necessary,” he murmurs. “But I can’t say it wasn’t lonely.”
Tohru swallows. “It gets pretty lonely out here, too.”
He shrugs, and the casual gesture looks unnatural on someone like Narukami. He brings the cigarette to his mouth and absently pets the cat in his lap. “Sometimes,” he allows. “But I have company here. People I want to keep.”
Gaze like the sun. Tohru finds him hard to look at—there’s burning, somewhere behind his eyes, as he keeps them trained on Narukami.
“People like Dojima,” Narukami continues. “And Nanako. And you.”
Tohru wants to die. He knows his face is a mess of red and sweat at his temple and he laughs, “I think you’re really more part of the family than I am.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” says Narukami steadily. He looks radiant in the afternoon glow. “You’re irreplaceable.”
“I should go,” Tohru blusters, standing, realizing that it had felt like the whole world had fallen away while they talked.
“I’ll walk you home,” Narukami offers.
“No!” He takes a breath, steadies himself, desperately wills the rush of blood to drain from his head. “No, that’s okay, I have to make a couple detours first.” And he flees.
When Tohru gets to Junes after school, instead of seeing Hanamura in the lobby, he sees Narukami.
More accurately, he sees the back of Narukami’s head, towering over the crowd of housewives and little old ladies that seemed to flock to him wherever he goes recently, and something like irritation flares in Tohru’s chest.
“I’m flattered, Mrs. Takenaka,” Narukami is saying diplomatically, and he turns just enough for Tohru to see the flash of his bright smile. “Your daughter is very beautiful. But—”
“Nevermind that, you should come over for dinner sometime,” another, younger woman interrupts, leaning into him. “You said you would, and it’s been pretty lonely without someone else to cook for…”
Narukami laughs. It’s rich, and lovely, and Tohru’s irritation quickly drains into something even more sour. Even so, he steps closer, like some kind of masochist.
“Things have just been so busy, Ms. Sakoda, I apologize—”
“Dearie, you simply must try this dish I made for you,” says an old woman, thrusting a lidded pot into Narukami’s hands, which are already laden with grocery bags.
“This really isn’t necessary—”
“Nonsense, you don’t have a pretty wife to take care of you yet. And besides, dear, your cooking advice last time made all the difference in the world, and I would love to get your opinion on this one,” the woman says, steamrolling protests from both Narukami and any of the others present.
He smiles again, accepting the pot in his hands and hefting it. “Thank you, Mrs. Naguri,” he says, sounding genuine.
“Mr. Narukami, please teach me how you cook,” a different assailant pleads. “I—”
This is gross to watch. Tohru’s lip curls, and right about now he ought to just spin on his heel and leave, his meeting with the Team forgotten for later. He steps back.
Narukami’s attention is finally drawn by his movement, and their gazes meet. “Tohru,” he says, and it’s matter-of-fact rather than a question.
“...Detective Narukami. Erm.” He’s being stared at from all angles now. He touches his glasses. “Uh…”
The man’s grey eyes glimmer arrestingly, conspiratorially. “I suppose Dojima is asking after me?”
Oh. He’s looking for a way out. Tohru controls the twitch of his lips, feeling victorious for reasons he can’t interrogate. “Yeah, he says he hasn’t been able to reach you, but it’s important.”
“Thank you, Tohru.” He addresses the crowd around him. “I apologize, but it seems I’m needed—I hope you all have lovely evenings,” he says over a chorus of dissent, extracting himself and speedwalking out of the Junes lobby with as much humility as Tohru supposes is possible.
Tohru trails after him, following when he ducks around the corner to an alleyway beside the store mostly used by employees on smoke breaks. Narukami sets the pot and his groceries on the ground, brushing himself off, then reaching for his pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
He leans on the wall next Tohru once he lights one, arms crossed, somehow looking at once stretched thin and still impossibly put-together. Not for the first time, Tohru feels small beside him. “Thanks again,” Narukami says quietly. He glances over at Tohru, tired and amused. “My hero.”
“Ah—yeah. Sure. You’re really popular, huh?”
“Seems that way. It’s useful, sometimes.”
“You’ve got grandmas cooking for you now?”
Tohru nearly thinks he imagines the sneer that ghosts across Narukami’s face, and he blinks, breath catching with the glimpse beneath the perfect mask. “She’s a bit of a miserable old woman, looking for replacements for her son.” Narukami scoffs. “His name is Tohru, apparently. Bet she’d start cooking for you if you told her your name.”
“Sounds like I’d better not. Besides, I’ve got you to cook for me now,” Tohru adds cheekily, thinking about the ones that wanted to marry Narukami, ice clutching his heart and pushing him to lay some kind of claim.
Narukami hums. “Yes, you do.” There’s not a trace of irony. He breathes in the nicotine fog, attention on Tohru, and Tohru has to hunch into himself to shy away from the intensity of it.
They stand in silence for a heartbeat longer, long enough for another drag of the cigarette, before the follow-up question claws its way from Tohru’s throat. “Would you ever do it? Marry one of those girls? Seemed like you… had a lot of options.”
“Absolutely not,” Narukami answers, and Tohru pretends he wasn’t invested in knowing. “I don’t even know any of them. And even if I did…” He shakes his head, flicking the cigarette butt to the ground and stamping it out. “Not really my thing.”
“Relationships?”
“People who wouldn’t understand me.”
Vindication swoops low in Tohru’s belly at the admission. That’s right—none of them would truly understand Narukami, would they? Not when Narukami is here with him, confessing that those smiles were fake, showing Tohru more of his true self than he shows anyone else. He spies the disdain in Narukami’s eyes and treasures it.
“I understand you,” Tohru says, then flushes and amends, “I mean—I understand that.”
Narukami’s real smile is small and soft. “I knew you would.” He lays a hand on Tohru’s head and ruffles his hair, gently and fondly. Tohru is sure the man can hear the rapid thrum of his pulse.
“Hey, Adachi,” Satonaka prompts. “You’ve got good grades, right?”
Falling back on the habit of rigorous, obligatory studying is sometimes the only thing keeping him sane. “Yeah. Why.”
“Help us study then,” she demands. “Please? Let’s all meet at the big table at Junes for a study group.”
He grimaces. “I don’t like studying in public places,” he argues. He’d intended to go home right after school, then sequester himself in his room.
“Oh, come on,” she presses, setting her hands on his desk to get closer into his space. “We’re supposed to be a team.”
As the only one they still refer to by surname, he’s uncertain about that. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll help you. But I’ll only explain things once and you have to do the rest of the work.”
She blanches, then recovers. “Fine, deal! Better than nothing. Maybe I can convince you later with some, uh…” She searches his face for a hint and finds none. “Steak?”
He doesn’t really like steak very much. Especially from Junes. They’d gotten into a fight about it a while ago already—though it was less of a fight and more that Satonaka had been appalled at him. “Sure, you can try that,” he says blandly. Why even bother to remind her?
Tohru is exhausted. He regrets signing off on making Hanamura the team leader, with how often he’s having them train on the Other Side following Morooka showing up dead. Nothing wrong with being cautious, but it doesn’t change the fact that Tohru is tired.
Narukami hasn’t been around recently to see it, and Tohru misses him more keenly than he expected.
Not that he cares that much, mind, just that—well, he and Nanako have hardly been eating as well, is all.
So Tohru doesn’t expect to find him today, either, until he sees the broad-shouldered silhouette in the near-dusk by the Samegawa. Of course, the Samegawa.
Narukami’s eyes are tired and dark when he turns to acknowledge Tohru. He has no smile for him this time—he just nods, setting his cigarette between his lips, and looks back out over the rush of the river.
Tohru is content with this, watching the way Narukami is bathed in the late golden hour, until the silence and distance between them stretches too long and he hedges, “The investigation isn’t going well?”
“You could say that. Things haven’t exactly been going to plan, no matter how hard I try.” Narukami blows smoke, and when he finally gives Tohru his attention, it’s cold. Cruel, even. “Not that I could expect a kid like you to really get it yet.”
Tohru bristles. “I get it just fine,” he snaps. “Not like my life has been all sunshine and rainbows, either. And I’m not a little kid.”
Narukami hums as if he’s considering that, but his gaze is still clinical, like he’s mentally dissecting Tohru piece by piece. “Maybe not.”
He shifts away again. Tohru suppresses a shudder at being freed—or maybe at the loss.
The man sighs on another cigarette puff. “I apologize,” he says, and mostly sounds like he means it. “I’m just… stressed.” Eventually, his lips curl upward just slightly, and Tohru hates how sad the smile is. Then he immediately hates how much he hates it. “But really, though. You should be hanging out with your friends and not worry so much. You know, people closer to your age.”
It shouldn’t feel like a slap to the face. It shouldn’t feel almost exactly like the day back in Tokyo when the girl threw his confession letter into the trash right in front of him: utter, disinterested rejection.
“Is this your way of saying we should stop talking so much?” Tohru asks, voice unintentionally small.
Narukami takes a long pull. “I’m saying that it would probably be better for you, in the long run.”
Tohru’s nails bite into his palms as his fists ball in something quickly approaching rage. “Better for me? Or for you?”
Narukami goes totally still, and his silence is damning. The only thing keeping Tohru from just swearing and fleeing is the fact that he is inexorably anchored here, waiting helplessly for—fuck, who knows, a sign? Confirmation that Narukami has tired of him just like everyone else?
“Tohru,” Narukami starts, warningly.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you practically live in my house,” he spits. “You can’t just say all of a sudden that you don’t want to spend time with me anymore. You can’t.”
“I think you deserve the world, Tohru,” Narukami says abruptly. “And I want to give it to you.” Tohru forgets how to breathe. “You also deserve more than wasting your free time like this.”
“...Like what?” he manages through a tight throat.
“Chasing each other around. You’re something special, and I…”
His blood feels too hot to be rushing beneath his skin and it’s dizzying. “What, so… so you think that means I can’t decide for myself that I… I want to? I don’t care what everyone else might think. You’re not like everyone else. And that’s why I—” He chokes and has to swallow to get his mouth working again, head bowed, addressing the damp ground, cheeks definitely flushed a humiliating shade of red. “Why I hang out with you.”
He peeks back up and is confronted with Narukami’s incredulous stare. “I… I shouldn’t encourage it.” It’s his turn to briefly look down, dropping what’s left of his cigarette and stamping it out on the soil. His expression is carefully schooled when he lifts it. “Your friends? Hanamura and… the rest.”
The truth is out before Tohru can halt it. “They don’t understand me like you do. None of them do.”
Finally, finally, a true smile crawls to Narukami’s handsome face, and though it’s not enough to quite reach them, his eyes glitter with something Tohru can’t name, and it lights something in him, a spark cast onto oil.
“Maybe it makes me a bad man, but that makes me happy to hear,” Narukami says quietly. “It’s… nice. Knowing that you would choose to be here with me. It’s isolating sometimes, doing what I do, and feeling like no one quite sees you for you.”
“I think we see each other,” Tohru ventures, hiding behind a hand to the rim of his glasses. “I mean—we don’t have to feel lonely or isolated anymore.”
Narukami watches him, smile in place, for long enough to bring the heat back to his cheeks. “Thank you, Tohru.”
Dealing with Kubo is a pain. The worst part is knowing that this is all far from over, but at least after this Tohru isn’t stuck in a dungeon made of someone else’s opportunistic nihilism.
“—and with her school recital coming up you can’t just—”
“Narukami, I don’t need to hear this from you.”
There’s some shuffling by the door as Tohru nears the house after school, bone-tired but on alert to the sounds of argument. He quashes the inane instinct to hide and just tries to make himself look as innocent as possible as the entrance is flung open.
“Oh. Tohru,” says Dojima, looking rumpled and surprised, a bag flung over his shoulder. “Er—welcome back.”
“Tohru,” says Narukami at the same time, expectantly, commanding Tohru’s attention at once. “Please help me convince your uncle not to go back to the station tonight, when we’ve already just closed the Kubo case, and his own daughter requested him home.”
“You have no right bringing my nephew into this,” Dojima seethes. “And neither of you have any business prying like this.” He scowls between both of them, and while Tohru takes a step back, cringing at his tone, Narukami looks undaunted.
“Dojima—”
“Just tell me if you’re coming back to the station with me right now,” Dojima sighs over him.
Narukami straightens, frowning ever so slightly, and Tohru is convinced he would just lay down and die if he were ever on the receiving end of that disapproval. “I promised Nanako to cook dinner, since it’s my day off,” he says pointedly.
The two measure each other over for a moment longer before Dojima acquiesces, “Alright. Okay. I’ll… see you two later, then.”
Watching a father walk away is an uncomfortable and not unfamiliar thing, so Tohru pushes his way inside.
“Where is she, anyway?” he asks Narukami, who lingers in the genkan before stepping around him towards the kitchen.
“A friend’s house to work on a craft project,” Narukami says. “She should be back soon. Help me prepare dinner, won’t you?” he adds, interrupting Tohru as he’s about to settle on the couch to observe Narukami work.
“Um… okay. I don’t know what help I’d be.”
“Moral support, mostly,” says Narukami breezily, “but maybe you can handle a vegetable or two.” He unfolds a length of fabric and slips it over his head.
Tohru pauses dreamily marveling at the ease with which Narukami can joke around him to blink. “Is that an apron?”
It’s a light pink that Tohru would find absurd on someone like Narukami if it didn’t settle too-well over his white button up and accentuate the striking grey of his eyes and hair. “Yes?” Narukami cinches it around his narrow waist, and Tohru has to look away. “They’re useful.”
“Just… unexpected, is all,” Tohru defends weakly, and Narukami’s eyes shine with a humor he rarely shows. “A-anyway, what am I doing?”
“Washing and chopping those, please,” he says, nodding at a number of organized vegetables as he pulls ground pork from the fridge, already busying himself.
“Sure.” Tohru can do that. Washing, he can do no problem, that’s self explanatory. As for cutting…
He supposes holding the knife is the easy part. But he does alright, probably, and he moves to dump carrot pieces into their own bowl, feeling ready to tackle the cabbage somehow.
“Oh,” Narukami’s flat voice says by his ear, and Tohru nearly drops the knife. “Those are really bad.”
The back of his neck warms in embarrassment. “It’s not like you really told me what you wanted…”
The man sighs, and Tohru desperately tries not to think about being able to feel it puff across his skin, or the way he’s close enough that he can feel the proximity of the body behind him. “Don’t they teach you this in home ec? You’ve got to make clean, even cuts of equal size. And adjust your grip like this, here—”
He curls his hand around Tohru’s, manipulating his fingers into different positions, and all Tohru can do is become as malleable as Narukami wants him to be, because all his brain power is being redirected to remembering how to make air pass through his lungs.
“There,” Narukami murmurs, chest warm at Tohru’s back. He puppets his arm, assured, pushing the blade through shredding the cabbage. “You feel how much more control you have?”
No, Tohru wants to cry, I don’t feel in control, not even a little bit. “Mhm.”
There’s movement at the door. Narukami lingers for a moment, Tohru shivering on a caught breath, before lifting away just as Nanako’s soft voice calls, “I’m back.” Her eyes sweep over them as she rounds the corner, bright and expectant. “...Where’s Dad?”
“Welcome home,” Narukami replies kindly. “Your dad…”
Her expression falls in realization. “Oh…” She shuffles away to the chabudai. “I’m going to work on my homework then…”
Tohru’s heart aches in empathy. Narukami gives him a significant Look, tacitly releasing him from his role as shitty sous chef to keep Nanako company, so Tohru goes, feeling clumsy and watched. He touches a hand to his glasses. “H-hey, Nanako,” he tries. “You have that book report, right? I’ll help you with that, if you want.”
“Oh, really!” She pulls a book from her bag. “I have to finish reading this and then build a flowchart.”
“Well, remember to always work smart, not hard,” Tohru says.
The evening passes in this way, Nanako’s sweet voice reading sections of the book aloud over the sizzle of oil as Narukami seals dumplings and sets them in the pan. Tohru’s mouth waters when Narukami brings food to the table, and there’s something therapeutic in the way Nanako lets herself forget about Dojima for a while to exclaim over the dumplings. The chill of the approaching late fall can’t reach them, here.
On the TV, an announcer declares the recent arrest of Mitsuo Kubo. The dumpling flavors flood his mouth. Tohru can feel Narukami regarding him, across the table, and he hopes the man can’t hear his racing heartbeat or see the sweat on his palms. He wipes them on his pants.
“Nanako,” he prompts as Narukami begins to clear away the dishes, “want to see a magic trick?” Nerves sizzle through his limbs and he needs to do something with the energy in his hands.
She’s focused on him instantly. “Show me, show me!”
“Okay, watch this.” He folds a rubber band between and around his fingers, then presents his fists. “Look, it’s around this finger, right?” He releases the band and it snaps over, appearing to now be around his other finger. “Ta-da.” He ventures a glance at Narukami through his eyelashes and swallows when their gazes meet.
Nanako claps. “I want to try!”
He teaches her random sleight of hand until she yawns, and she stands. “I’m going to my room now,” she decides. “Thank you for dinner Mr. Narukami.”
“My pleasure,” he says. “Do you want one of us to read to you?”
She considers it until some of the old sadness creeps back into her too-young face. “No, thank you,” she says politely. “Um… goodnight.”
She retreats, and Tohru is left with the deafening silence between him and Narukami.
“So you’re pretty good with your hands, after all,” Narukami comments casually, drying off his own after finishing the dishes.
Blood rushes to Tohru’s cheeks. “If I practice.” He tugs at the band. “Did you want to learn, too?”
He doesn’t expect Narukami to actually accept. “Sure,” he eventually says, stepping back into the living room to approach Tohru at the chabudai. “Why not?”
Why is he so anxious over showing him a stupid magic trick? “Like this, see it?” he says, wrapping the band back around and between his fingers, demonstrating from multiple angles. “Now you try.”
Narukami takes the little band, stares at it for a second, and says, “I think it would be better if you helped me through it.”
“Oh.” Tohru feels like a mess. The ground is going to open up and swallow him and he’ll let it. He’s going to go live on the Other Side forever, actually. “Okay.”
He wraps up Narukami’s hand in a mockery of earlier, trembling just slightly as he moves Narukami’s fingers into the right positions, and Narukami lets him.
Narukami hums quietly and says, “I get it now.”
“Do you?” he presses, feeling wildly out of balance and defaulting to an ironic sarcasm.
Narukami pulls away from him, lifts his fist, and effortlessly performs the trick.
“You didn’t need my help at all,” accuses Tohru, to which a smirk briefly surfaces for Tohru to revel in before it drifts away again.
There’s an appraising pause between them.
“I suppose I should get home,” Narukami says at the same time that something edging on urgent has Tohru asking, “Do you want to come up to my room?”
Narukami looks at him like he’s a sample in a lab, head tilted just so to have his soft grey hair brush over his forehead.
“It’s just, you’ve never seen it, and you can, if you wanted to,” Tohru says defensively. Dumbass, what is he expecting—there’s really nothing interesting up there anyway, so he’s wasting both of their time—
“Alright,” Narukami allows, startling him, and this close, Tohru can see how intent his eyes are, how dark. “I’d be happy to get to see it. Lead the way.”
So Tohru does. What else can he do? What else would he even want to do? The detective’s gaze burns into the back of his head as he moves up the stairs, feeling altogether like prey being persistence hunted.
His room is, admittedly, pretty sparse. He’s barely added anything to it since moving in, so he stands awkwardly by the small coffee table as Narukami drifts through, scanning mostly-empty shelves, the few school supplies on the desk, the rumpled futon on the floor that Tohru can’t be bothered to clear away every morning.
Narukami pauses at one of the bookcases. “You like puzzles, Tohru?” he questions, peering at the completed ones that Tohru has kept rather than breaking back down: a couple of landscapes, a cityscape, an abstract painting on desire.
Tohru comes to stand beside him as he looks, a little sheepish despite it just being some puzzles. “Yeah.”
“I do too. I haven’t been able to sit down with one in a while. Maybe we can solve one together sometime, huh?”
When Narukami faces him again, his mouth is smiling softly, gently, but his eyes aren’t. Everything in Tohru’s body screams to take a step back, to put more space between them, but those eyes hook him with no more difficulty than just another fish at the river, and he keeps his feet exactly where they are.
“Narukami…”
“Yu.” The man’s line of sight follows the flicker of Tohru’s tongue on his lips before he glances back up. “When it’s just us, you can call me Yu.”
His heart pounds in his chest and he has to release a slow breath just to remember how. He tests how the name tastes. “Yu.” It rounds nicely, sweet and short and easy to whisper, pinched at the corners like a kiss. “Yu.”
Narukami’s pupils bloom, turning his eyes the color of an oncoming storm, and goosebumps erupt up Tohru’s arms and down his spine at the shift in barometric pressure. Pride rises up from his chest at the effect he can have on such an otherwise stoic man, just with a single word: a power he’d never in a million years thought he could possess.
Broad shoulders shift as Narukami brings his hands to the sides of Tohru’s head, resting on his glasses. “May I?” he asks, lowly, and pulls them free when Tohru nods, setting them on some shelf.
Tohru blinks through the disorientation, feeling exposed with not even a clear piece of glass between him and Narukami, the world taking on a dreamy quality where it blurs at the edges. He bites down on a gasp when Narukami returns to touch his chin, his cheek, to stroke his thumb along his jawline and trace the frantic thrum of his artery.
“Tohru,” he says, and it’s impossible to tell if it’s a question or a plea or something in between.
He’s tall. Tohru knew that, obviously, but it’s one thing to simply stand next to him—
—and another when he can suddenly feel the strain in his neck, the stretch of his entire body to find every point of contact, unsure who moved first or if they both did, surging together with all the violent kinetic energy of a snapped band.
It’s a messy collision, at first, hot breath and slightly parted lips and Tohru feels fucking possessed, grabbing whatever he can of Narukami before settling on fisting his shirt and doing his best to drag an immovable object.
Narukami pulls back; Tohru hears an embarrassing whine that he’ll deny later build in his own throat until the man shifts, grips the back of his head, long fingers threaded through his messy hair, and kisses him again—more controlled, lips soft and demanding, holding Tohru in place as he directs him, melts him.
It’s everything and nothing that Tohru expected. He can barely breathe. Everywhere they touch is searing. Narukami is exceptionally good at taking, capturing Tohru’s lips and biting down just enough to make him shake and hold on for dear life before gentling. A soft sound of pleasure tears free from Narukami. Tohru wants to kiss him forever.
He’s gasping when they break. Even Narukami is flushed, inhaling hard, looking both surprised and hungry, and Tohru is dizzy with it.
Narukami’s palm cradles Tohru’s cheek again, his other hand working to loosen Tohru’s vice grip on the front of his shirt.
“Are you okay?” Narukami eventually inquires, voice rough, and something fulgent curls in Tohru’s chest and takes root.
He touches his spit-slick lips. “Yeah.”
The hold on him keeps him from launching himself forward again. “If we don’t stop now, it might lead us onto a path you’re not ready for,” Narukami says, though his eyes are still impossibly dark.
I’m ready, Tohru wants to argue, but he’s not even quite sure what that would mean, and for what, and his rabbit heart jolts at the notion of more, of not having an escape.
Narukami releases him. “Will you see me out?” he asks, brushing down his rumpled shirt, his face already fixed back into a deliberate unaffectedness, tone light—an actor putting on a show to fool some unseen and condemnatory audience.
“I—sure. Okay,” he says, disoriented, slower than Narukami at re-masking.
So Tohru does, feeling like his body is moving an inch off of the floor, head stuffed full. Narukami pauses at the door. “Please keep the leftovers,” he instructs, “for your and Nanako’s lunch. And, Tohru…” He lifts a thumb to Tohru’s mouth and sweeps across his lower lip. Tohru burns. “I’ll see you later.”
“We’ll wait for you in the lobby, okay, man?” Hanamura asks, cutting through the haze.
Tohru nods. “Great,” he manages, and his voice doesn’t even crack when he fills it with false cheer. “Thanks, guys.”
The Team each shuffle out of the little white room, made artificially bigger by how tiny the body inhabiting the bed is. Hanamura clasps him on the shoulder on his way, and Tohru flinches out of it.
They’d worked so fast. They’d gone after her so quickly after Dojima’s accident, and yet…
A formless, helpless rage has been swirling in his gut for days, and he’s nauseous with it.
He can feel the pressure of Narukami’s presence behind him before he announces it. “I’m so sorry,” the man murmurs, with more sincerity than Tohru has perhaps ever heard.
Tohru’s become pretty numb to condolences, but this is Narukami’s, and immediately the weight of it has him crumpling. Without even needing Tohru to speak, Narukami gathers him in arms, holding him tight, protecting him from the world. Tohru inhales the scent of him to chase away the smell of sterile chemicals.
“I’m so tired,” he confesses, pressed into Narukami’s chest.
“I know,” Narukami says quietly, brushing Tohru’s disheveled bangs from his forehead, then pulling him tighter.
“I don’t—I don’t even know what to do.” He tries really hard not to cry into Narukami’s shirt.
Narukami’s rubbing soothing circles on his back. “Let me take care of you.” He pets at Tohru’s hair until he looks up at him. “Okay? I’ll walk you home and make you something to eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Then think of it as keeping up your strength for what’s to come.”
Tohru is too exhausted to attempt to parse what he exactly means by that, so he just acquiesces. It’s so easy to just accept what Narukami says. “Okay.”
The others turn to stare in concern when they reach the lobby. “Oh, Mr. Narukami,” Amagi acknowledges. “Everything okay?”
“I’ll be taking Tohru home,” Narukami answers for him, hand on his back, a comfort between his shoulder blades. “So don’t worry too much.”
“Well…” Hanamura and Tatsumi are searching over him for a sign, so he just nods. “Alright then. See you later Adachi; Detective.”
Once Narukami wordlessly leads him past the Team’s watchful eyes and out to the street, he sheds his winter coat and drapes it over Tohru’s shivering shoulders.
“You don’t have to—”
“Please take it,” Narukami presses. Tohru shuts up until they reach the Dojima house.
The house is cold. It never felt particularly lived in, even before, but he feels the difference now. A light that’s been snuffed. He lays on the couch, still wrapped in Narukami’s jacket.
“Can you handle soup?” Narukami asks from the kitchen.
“Sure,” Tohru replies, probably barely loud enough for Narukami to hear, “whatever.”
At some point, between the gradual warming of the house and the familiar sounds of Narukami in the kitchen, Tohru dozes off, nose pressed into the collar of the jacket.
Narukami wakes him some time later, carding through his hair and skirting the back of his fingers along Tohru’s cheekbone, and his small smile is the first thing he sees upon fluttering his eyes open. His face floods with heat immediately, which Narukami graciously ignores. “Food,” he says simply.
When he moves away back toward the kitchen, Tohru realizes he’s once again wearing that ridiculous apron, and everything feels so ideal in this moment that it forces Tohru to remember why he’s here like this. He sits up, mood soured.
The soup is excellent, of course, he thinks. He can’t taste it very well, but it’s good enough that keeps bringing it to his mouth and his stomach doesn’t even feel queasy about it. Narukami maybe says something to him, but if he does, Tohru forgets what it is immediately after. The bowls are cleared away after Tohru manages to finish half of his, and he lays back down on the couch.
He’s jostled awake again, eventually, body swaying, and he blinks blearily up at Narukami’s absurdly handsome face.
Then he startles and makes an undignified noise at the sensation of weightlessness and the realization that he’s being bridal-carried up the stairs to his room, flailing before clinging to Narukami.
“Wh—”
“Shh,” Narukami quiets him.
Under ordinary circumstances, perhaps he would be horrified by how quickly it makes him settle as if compelled. Narukami’s strong arms hold him close, and he’s still wearing that jacket, swaddled in the scent of the kitchen and his cologne and whatever makes him uniquely Yu Narukami.
He lets Narukami lay him down on his futon, already feeling himself dropping back into sleep, limbs heavy and unresponsive. The man removes his glasses for him, setting them on the side table, and lays a kiss on his forehead before starting to disentangle himself and pull away.
Pull away?
Tohru’s hand moves faster than his thoughts, gripping the collar of Narukami’s shirt and tugging him in to kiss him properly, suddenly aflame with the need for touch, to keep Narukami, to make sure he stays. His skin feels at once too hot and too cold, and he weakly hauls himself up to kiss Narukami with a wild fervor of despairing urgency.
Surprised, it takes a moment for Narukami to move with him—but after a heartbeat his arms are back around Tohru, he’s the anchor that Tohru can rest on, he’s wrenching Tohru to him with his hands roaming all over like he needs him just as bad. Tohru gasps into a moan, drunk on fatigue and desire and overwhelm.
Narukami breaks away. “Wait—You need rest, Tohru—”
“Please, Yu,” he begs, breathlessly, hardly even knowing all that he’s asking for. “Please stay.”
For an awful stretch of time, he thinks Narukami will refuse, that he’ll leave him here alone in the cold and drab.
“Okay,” he says instead. “Anything. Anything you want.”
When Namatame awakens and gives them some sob story, Tohru wants to ignore the parts that align too well with what they know. It complicates things. He considers throwing Namatame back into the TV just to see what would happen, to see if he would be strung from phone lines shortly after, to see how well he liked it.
He doesn’t. But it’s a near thing.
Narukami’s face is carefully impassive even when confronted with Tohru’s whipping, unstable emotions.
“So what will you do now?” Narukami asks, his back perfectly straight, hands in the pockets of his slacks, the very picture of easy self-confidence as he stands here in the interrogation room. The lighting casts his face into partial shadow, and his eyes are cold, guarded. Always guarded. “Since you’re so convinced I’m a killer.”
“Stop. Just please stop.” He wants to throw up, or scream, or hurt someone—Narukami, he wants to hurt Narukami, he’s partially bent over and clutching the desk, nails digging in painfully. “I should—I should turn you in.” As if he ever could.
“You have no permissible evidence,” Narukami says, “but maybe you should. Will you?”
“Please,” Tohru begs again, inanely. He doesn’t know what he’s pleading for. Maybe it’s to keep from answering the question. All he can bring himself to say is, “Just tell me why.”
“‘Why’?” he echoes cruelly. “Oh, I see. You mean hypothetically.”
“I won’t run,” Tohru cuts in, a little sickened at the realization of how true it is. “I won’t tell. You already know that I haven’t. But I need to know.” He needs to know if… if all of it was a lie, or…
It’s the first thing he’s said so far that cracks Narukami’s aloofness, his brows raised just slightly in what might be shock before they settle again. “Careful, Tohru. You just admitted to an interest in being an accomplice to a killer. To an officer.”
“Yu,” he entreats, invoking his name like a prayer, like a magic spell.
Narukami stops. Sighs. “I have my assumptions about the killer’s motives.”
Tohru sees it for the concession that it is, the exit strategy, and lets Narukami have it. “Tell me.”
His gaze trains steadily on Tohru. “You’ve seen it, haven’t you? You’ve experienced it yourself. The way a mystery and a simple answer bring people together. It’s a game that everyone wants to say they took part in. And they come out of it loving their neighbors and their community and even the outcasts just a little more.”
Tohru tastes bile. “A game? That’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard.”
“You can’t deny it,” Narukami insists, lifting a shoulder. “Just look at your little team. Would any of you even have become friends if you didn’t share this?”
He can’t answer that, and Narukami knows it, his smile thin and passively smug.
“There’s nothing like a tough case to bring the community together in a shared goal,” he continues. “Trust me. And perhaps this killer was… lonely. Or afraid. And aware of this.” He levels Tohru with a significant look, the kind that sets him alight, the kind that has the ice of Narukami’s eyes beginning to fracture. “Remember what I said, Tohru? People want the truth. Their truth. They want what they can accept, and they want a justice that they can actually take hold of. And to be the one to deliver that truth… means acceptance. It means you’ve just made yourself invaluable.”
Lonely? Afraid? Narukami was? “This is insane,” Tohru says, head spinning. “This—this makes no sense.”
“Does it not?”
It did make sense. He did understand it, in a twisted way. He felt something in him want to reach out for Narukami, despite it all, to go on understanding. The part of him that ached when he would watch the way Narukami would stare out over the river, like he sought something that wasn’t there. The part that wanted to be the one to kiss away Narukami’s pain.
He must see it dawn over Tohru’s face. “If it was going to be anyone that got it in this damn town, I knew it was going to be you, Tohru. You’re special.”
He breathes deep, braces himself on the desk. “But I don’t—Why Yamano? Why Konishi?”
Narukami’s attention slides to the floor and away. “Unfortunate… collateral damage. Targeting Yamano and Namatame was convenient. Perhaps the killer had a bit of a grudge against things that Namatame had helped cover up in the past as a politician, and they knew that the two’s presence was going to finish ripping Inaba apart.” He lifts his head to find Tohru again. “So?” he prompts.
Maybe he should be more upset at the idea of Yamano and Konishi and eventually Morooka being nothing more than pawns set up as collateral damage, but he’s… not. “Can you just talk to me like yourself and not like you’re telling some cryptic fucking riddles?”
“Tohru,” he warns.
“I told you already!” he finally bursts, standing to his full height, fists clenched but trembling. “I told you that I was going to see you. We said that we weren’t going to let each other be lonely ever again.”
Narukami is staring at him. “We did,” he says softly. “And the truth is that I couldn’t lose them. If I played my cards right I could get back at the man that had me exiled from MPD while also saving the town.”
“You wanted to be loved.” Tohru’s voice is hushed, like this is the biggest secret being shared. “Indisposable.”
“I want a home, Tohru,” Narukami says.
His heart hurts. He doesn’t really care about the rest anymore. He thinks that the person in front of him is the one that needs him, and he needs, most, more than any of the Team or acquaintances or his family. And then Tohru gives it to him, the final nail in this coffin he has built for himself, and just prays that Narukami doesn’t use it to kill him, too. “I love you.”
The air between them is utterly still. Humiliation sinks its claws into him, and all he can hear is the rush of blood in his ears, and his glasses begin to fog with the tears that cling at the corners of his lids.
Then there is a blur of motion as Narukami crosses the room, yanks him close, and kisses him hard. Claims him. Tohru buckles into it, happy for Narukami to fill his vision and silence the storm of hurt and confusion and betrayal and desire.
“So what will you do?” Narukami repeats when he pulls away, whispering against Tohru’s lips.
“You don’t have to be alone,” Tohru murmurs, dazed. “Where you go, I’ll follow. If you’ll let me.”
Narukami smiles, for real, dazzling and bright and all Tohru’s. Everything that he is, is Tohru’s now. He kisses him again, sweetly. “You’re so good to me, Tohru.” He pulls him flush and devours him. “So good for me.”