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i. i’m the only one who's gonna get away with making excuses today
“I wouldn’t care if you died,” Sakusa says, out of the blue. It’s rude, considering Rintarou is shirtless and in his lap, so Rintarou pulls back from him to give him an unimpressed look.
“And?” Rintarou asks, raising a brow.
Sakusa’s hands flex where they’re gripping Rintarou’s waist. “You’re supposed to say that you don’t care about me either.”
“I’m not in the business of being so blunt,” Rintarou replies, winding a finger through one of Sakusa’s thick curls. “Ruins the mood.”
Sakusa scoffs. “You’re one of the bluntest people I know,” he replies. “You, the rest of your crew, and your Kita-sama more than the rest.”
Rintarou pouts a little. “I thought we agreed not to bring up our bosses when we do this.”
“Why? Does it ruin the mood?”
“Unless Iizuna-sama makes you horny,” Rintarou replies. Sakusa grimaces, which makes him snicker. “He’s good-looking,” Rintarou offers with a smirk. “Kita-sama too; they’re attractive bosses.”
“You go around saying so in front of the Miyas?” Sakusa asks.
“They’d agree with me,” Rintarou says, moving his hands from Sakusa’s hair, down his neck and shoulders, to rest on his chest. “It’s just that Osamu might also stab me for pointing it out. But Tsumu would laugh…” Rintarou trails off, idly tapping his index finger just below a clothed collar bone, distracted by the thought of Miya Atsumu. He’s a hard man not to linger on, but Sakusa distracts him before Rintarou gets started, bringing him back to the present with another squeeze of his hips. Rintarou shakes his head, and then leans forward so he can flop it onto Sakusa’s shoulder, forehead first, and nuzzle a little. His shirts are always so soft, and—hey, wait, why does he still have his shirt on?
He moves his hands even lower down and tugs at the hem of Sakusa’s shirt to even the playing field. Hopefully to heat things up again before he gets too cold, half-naked as he is, kneeling on the couch in his own living room with Sakusa beneath him. He’s so unfairly pretty, from this angle. From every angle.
Sakusa stops him with a hand around his wrist, interrupting his thoughts again. “Can’t you just say you don’t care in return?”
Rintarou frowns and pulls back once more. Sakusa’s fingers are warm, and pressed right up against his pulse. Is it for comfort? To measure out the beats to see if Rintarou is lying? Or did they just happen to land there?
“Sakusa,” he says, nearly sighs. Debates being petulant about it, but ultimately figures he’ll get what he wants faster if he’s less of a brat about it. “If you’re looking for the reassurance that I’m not in love with you and this is still casual, then here: I’m not, and it is.” He looks straight into Sakusa’s eyes, hopes it conveys honesty instead of a challenge. “Can we get on with it now?”
Sakusa still takes a moment longer to drink in whatever’s on Rintarou’s face before he clearly gives in. He rolls his eyes for good measure. “You’re insatiable,” he says, but in the next moment, his hands are back where Rintarou wants them and reeling him in. Rintarou hums with it, delighted, and loses himself in Sakusa’s mouth and his skin.
Maybe if he drowns in everything Sakusa, he can forget about the way his heart thumped like he’d been lying about something.
But everything he’d said was the truth.
Wasn’t it?
ii. but don’t get the wrong idea
The gun is cold and hard underneath Rintarou’s chin. Sakusa is so close, his breath would make Rintarou’s bangs flutter, were it not for the mask covering the bottom half of Sakusa’s pretty face.
“Put your hands in the air,” Sakusa growls, pushing his gun into Rintarou’s jaw and making him stretch out his neck. “Don’t make a sound.” Rintarou’s Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, but Sakusa’s gaze doesn’t waver. (Privately, his ego is a little wounded.)
Rintarou huffs, an amused exhale through a smirk. He slowly, slowly lifts his hands up, fingers spread, staring defiantly into Sakusa’s dark eyes. He doesn’t let himself get distracted by how long Sakusa’s lashes are, but the knowledge is there, at the forefront of his mind. Rintarou knows how they feel brushing against his cheek, they’re that long—and the two of them have been cheek to cheek like that before. Plenty of times.
If only the gun were something a little more fun.
"This is different,” Rintarou says, voice slightly strained. “Was gun kink on our interested list? I feel like I would’ve remembered that.”
The gun jabs harder into the underside of his chin, forcing the back of his head to knock into the brick wall Sakusa had pushed him up against. Ouch.
“I’m gonna shoot you,” Sakusa snarls. It’s now that the other man’s gaze wavers, a desperate search into Rintarou’s eyes. Rintarou looks back evenly, far away from panicking.
Instead, he takes the time to wonder if he’s in love with Sakusa.
He wouldn't have said so last year, when they first fell into bed together. Inarizaki’s and Itachiyama’s territories are butted up against each other and the two of them are always the ones forced into proximity: whenever the Itachiyama syndicate needs to follow a hit into Inarizaki’s area, it’s Sakusa they send in for the kill, and it’s Rintarou assigned to babysit in order to ensure nothing else goes on under Kita-sama’s nose while Sakusa’s carrying out business.
Watching Sakusa, already a tall drink of water, systematically torture a man for information in a way so tidy he didn’t even get any bloodstains on the white Oxford shirt he’d been wearing had been very sexy. And this was before taking into account his mole-dotted forearms, framed between a rolled up sleeves and dark rubber gloves, and the no-nonsense kill at the end of a long torture session. Most people in their business tend to savour that part, enjoying the weakness and cowardice of having someone broken down and completely at mercy for the insane power trip it gives. Rintarou just finds the end tedious because it takes forever to get there—unless he’s purposefully seeking revenge, but that’s rare—so he appreciated seeing that in someone who isn’t his untouchable boss.
A man after my own heart, the Rintarou from back then had thought with irony, Sakusa’s merciless kill being the tipping argument in his one-man debate on propositioning an Itachiyama enforcer.
He hadn’t realized then how ironic it really had been, but he’s definitely realizing it now. Rintarou feels numb about this development, when he thinks he should feel angry or betrayed or any number of other negative, furious emotions.
Instead, he thinks maybe he won’t mind if Sakusa kills him.
Is that what love is, in this line of business?
“Shoot me, then,” Rintarou says. Not daring, not challenging—a simple statement. Accepting, even.
Sakusa’s gun doesn’t move, but the rest of him recoils.
Maybe this means he’s in love with Rintarou back.
Does that make this whole thing better, or worse?
Sakusa twitches again, and he tilts his head just the slightest bit to the right, his brow furrowing. Listening to a hidden earpiece, if Rintarou had to guess.
Whatever he hears causes him to look back in Rintarou’s eyes. His face is hard to read with his mask on, but the way Sakusa abruptly closes the distance between their faces to kiss him through the mask says a little more.
Or so Rintarou thinks. Because immediately following that subpar kiss is the disappearance of the gun under his chin, a sharp pain in his temple, and then oblivion.
Fucking ouch.
Son of a bitch.
iii. when i said that i would turn to you, i meant more like a relapse
“You’re not supposed to be here,” is the first thing Sakusa says when he opens the door. “You’re in our territory without permission.”
“Iizuna-sama still owes us from that bullshit in April,” Rintarou replies, waltzing into Sakusa’s condo.
“And Kita-sama won’t have you punished?” Sakusa asks skeptically.
“He might.” Rintarou is nonchalant as he takes a look around Sakusa’s place. The living room is clean and orderly, dark colours and surprisingly warm textures from a blanket and a rug softening up the sleekness of the black countertops and window trimmings. The view of the city out the glass is nice, even from where Rintarou is standing near the entrance. He’s technically been here a lot, but he only really knows the feel of the bed on his back and the view of the ceiling from behind Sakusa’s shoulders, better acquainted with the frameless standing mirror by his closet than where the glasses might be in his kitchen cupboards.
He isn’t sure what he came here expecting, but he knows one thing: “I wanted to see you.”
Rintarou doesn’t turn around to look at Sakusa when he admits this. It’s a vulnerable truth, and one he hasn’t been looking at directly. He avoided it, even in his own mind, but he had already known he would be coming here as soon as his wounds had healed.
And there were many.
Rintarou had been kidnapped and tortured in April by the Itachiyama syndicate at the same time Shiratorizawa got their hands on Osamu, and Fukuroudani on Atsumu. Kita-sama’s top three men spirited away by their three neighbouring territories, in an attempt to dismantle Inarizaki and split the land between them. Kita-sama had been forced to call Ojiro-san away from Onna-Oyabun’s side to retrieve them and re-establish why Inarizaki isn’t a syndicate to be messed with.
Word is, Kita-sama actually got his hands dirty to get Osamu back, and left everyone in the compound alive but kneecapped (only some of them literally). The demonstrated mercy from Inarizaki, whom many perceive as a small-time syndicate, had been one of the biggest insults to Washijou-kaichou than anything that could have come from killing everyone there. To rub salt in the wound, Kita-sama grabbed their dealership contracts on the way out, and now Inarizaki has control of most of Shiratorizawa’s income until the higher-ups renegotiate. Ushijima-sama is apparently being punished, but Kita-sama didn’t elaborate on how.
From Fukuroudani, Atsumu somehow managed to swing his way into their good graces despite having been kidnapped, because the boss of this syndicate branch took a liking to him and he’s always been unpredictable. This means Kita-sama found himself a new ally in Bokuto-sama, and so far they’ve kept up on their end of all their deals. Akaashi-san, Bokuto’s second, has especially been someone Kita-sama has remarked on as being useful.
From Itachiyama, Kita-sama managed to negotiate more territory.
What Rintarou got from Itachiyama was the knowledge that Sakusa can take him apart just as easily in the bad way that he can in the good way, and he makes the same face on either occasion.
It was unfortunately still sexy, even when Rintarou was literally dying. He couldn’t deny it, because it was Sakusa’s methodical precision that had him so thirsty in the first place.
Fingernails, toenails, waterboarding, blood. Lack of sleep, lack of food, starvation, humiliation. Rintarou didn’t give up any secrets, and Sakusa didn’t give up on trying to force them out, and at the end of the very, very long day, the two of them were just doing their jobs.
Kita-sama looked sorry, when he came in with Ojiro-san after his talk with Iizuna-sama. And he said sorry, apologized to Rintarou as he brushed his bangs away from his face and told him he was proud to have someone like Rintarou working for him. He had crouched down in his expensive suit, stepping onto the plastic that Sakusa laid down beneath Rintarou’s chair to protect the cement from bloodstains, and probably got Rintarou’s blood on the nice leather of his shoes. Kita-sama’s touch was kind, and reminded Rintarou of why he loves working for Inarizaki, and for the Kita family. It felt good to lean his cheek into Kita-sama’s palm and know that it was over now that Kita-sama was here.
It felt even better to show off this display of trust and relief and vulnerability to Sakusa, who had been standing to the side with his gloved hands in tight fists.
In the car back to Kita-sama’s compound, with Oomimi-san driving, Ojiro-san in shotgun, and Rintarou resting his head in Kita-sama’s lap in the backseat, Kita-sama had said, “He’s bad for ya, Rintarou.”
“I know,” Rintarou replied, voice hoarse from trying not to scream and failing miserably. Sakusa’s eyes had glittered in the dark. Rintarou managed to get blood on his Oxford shirt, he’s pretty sure, but he couldn’t tell because it had been black this time. His forearms had still been unfortunately sexy, flexing whenever he used the pliers. “There’s something wrong with me, Kita-sama.”
His boss exhaled with short-lived amusement, fingers still soft in Rintarou’s blood-stiff hair. “On that, we can agree.”
Kita-sama pulls Rintarou off babysitting duty permanently, and makes Oomimi-san do it instead. Ojiro-san stays around the compound until Rintarou and Osamu heal (Atsumu wasn’t even tortured, the lucky bastard), and it takes months.
It’s November now.
Kita-sama could punish him for being here. He will, if Iizuna-sama finds out and gets angry about it, but Rintarou is also right when he says that Itachiyama still owes them. They’d broken their standing agreement for a selfish ploy that didn’t pan out. Then again, maybe Iizuna-sama might take any excuse to get that negotiated territory back—he probably got chewed out by Itachiyama’s Oyabun for what happened.
Rintarou had thought about all this on the way over here, but the only thing he really double checked was making sure none of the scars Sakusa left on him back in April were visible now.
“You always said I could come here if I was in the area and hurt,” Rintarou says.
Sakusa’s leaned against his closed front door, expression unreadable and arms crossed. “You don’t look hurt.”
Rintarou thinks about how long it took for his nails to grow back, and the permanent divots in his thighs from a drill. There’s no way his blood stayed off Sakusa’s shirt from that, right?
The scars don’t feel as good as Sakusa’s hickeys do. The scars don’t feel good at all, actually, but he’ll learn to love them as long as those hickeys come back.
Has Rintarou left scars on Sakusa anywhere?
“Call it belated hurt, then,” Rintarou replies, shuffling on his feet and putting his hands in his pockets, faux-casual. He tilts his head to the side, stretching his neck out in a way he knows tempts Sakusa to bite, when they stand close. “Or maybe emotional. I haven’t decided.”
Sakusa looks down at that. Away from Rintarou’s gaze, away from his neck, away from his body. It hurts.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Sakusa says again.
“Couldn’t help it,” Rintarou replies. “It’s been months. Needed a fix.” He grins slightly. “You sell drugs sometimes, don’t you? Take advantage of an easy customer. There’s one standing right in front of you.”
There’s no pride in what Rintarou’s doing. He thinks both twins would scold him for being here right now. He thinks Kita-sama would be disappointed.
“Suna,” Sakusa says, and Rintarou shivers. So close to what he wants that nothing else matters.
When did he get this way?
Rintarou rocks back on his heels as he waits for Sakusa to decide, and he wonders again if this is what love is.
Maybe this is the closest he’ll ever get.
Something in Sakusa’s face turns into resolve, and he walks over to where Rintarou is standing, hands already coming up to hold him. Hands that have harmed him because Rintarou had asked, and because Iizuna-sama had asked. Different occasions, different outcomes.
Rintarou realizes he doesn’t mind the latter at all. Just business, and all that. He won’t cave and give any of Kita-sama’s secrets away, but he’s fine giving up his body. He doesn’t care.
Sakusa’s hands feel too good to say no to, so he doesn’t.
Maybe one day, he’ll at least learn to stop asking for them.
iv. you're appealing to emotions that i simply do not have
Sakusa’s ceiling is just like he remembers it.
Well, Rintarou gets reacquainted with Sakusa’s sheets first, facedown and grasping them with both hands. There hadn’t been much ceremony on the way to the bedroom, but Rintarou didn’t mind. He came prepared for this, even if he hadn’t counted on it—just hoped without quite hoping. Sakusa’s hands are rough as they divest him of clothes and open him up, but this is what they do, and it’s been months. He’s been craving this. He’s been craving Sakusa.
When he gets turned onto his back, Sakusa sucks those hickeys into his neck, down his chest, and past where Rintarou would really like his mouth to his thighs. Sakusa’s mouth is still hot there too, but to have them so close to the drilled-in gouge marks left there by Sakusa’s own hand feels like a bucket of cold water splashed onto his entire body.
Rintarou stiffens up so fast, he flinches.
Sakusa doesn’t look up at him, but his touch gentles in a way that usually only happens after they both come.
The permanent marks he’d taken pains to hide in case they turned Sakusa off before Rintarou could get anywhere feel like they’ve become spotlighted. The drill marks on his thighs are the worst, of course, but there are lines on his arms from the knife Sakusa had taken to him, systematically cut. There are burn marks on his shoulders and back from heated steel.
Sakusa hadn’t explained anything, when he took up new devices to poke and prod Rintarou with. He never does, with his victims—he only ever verbally prods to ask for the information he needs.
Rintarou wonders if he counts as a victim or not, when it had just been business. But, he supposes, all of Sakusa’s other tortured souls had just been business too.
He stares up at that familiar ceiling and asks himself if he’s supposed to resent Sakusa now.
It feels more like Rintarou resents himself, but he’s not sure why.
“You’ve healed well,” Sakusa says, voice subdued.
Rintarou blinks back into the present and looks down his naked body to where Sakusa is now sitting up, between Rintarou’s legs. The back of his bare thighs are pressed to the front of Sakusa’s clothed ones, the insides of them pressed against Sakusa’s hips. His leather belt digs into Rintarou’s sensitive skin a little, and it grounds him, brings him back to this moment, this place—to the Sakusa of right now, instead of the one from April.
Sakusa brushes his fingers against the divots in his thigh. He’d been very good about not letting them bleed out, because he’d needed Rintarou alive to keep questioning, and also because hostages are worth more than corpses. Rintarou knows this because he is as good at his job as Sakusa is his, and it’s the same job.
“Are we talking about it?” Rintarou asks curiously, tilting his head. To his satisfaction, his neck draws Sakusa’s gaze again, but then the gaze dips down to the scattered burn marks on his upper body before leaving him entirely.
Rintarou needs Sakusa to be looking at him. He feels bereft, otherwise. He nudges Sakusa with his knee until the other man’s eyes are on him again.
“We never talk about anything,” Sakusa replies.
“No, we don’t,” Rintarou agrees, but he thinks Sakusa’s wrinkled brow, and the soft sweep of his hand across the way his scars rise and fall in ridges and valleys, say a lot of things anyways.
The operative word there is thinks, as in: Rintarou isn’t certain—but the possibility is enough for him not to want to risk disturbing their careful balance for what amounts to a selfish need to know.
This is the softest they’ve ever been with each other.
Last time had been so, so rough.
For both of them, probably. Rintarou knows he’s being generous when he thinks it, but he can’t muster up anything else. He’s not really a generous person, but for Sakusa, he’s already given himself over and over and over. Some inadvisable compassion seems like a non-issue, at this point.
Sakusa keeps it soft. It's a mercy Sakusa never showed—couldn’t have been able to show—Rintarou a few months back.
He revisits every single wound, every scar, and traces them all with something approaching (kindness? salvation? guilt?) tenderness, and his eyes burn. He cried involuntarily when he was being put through Sakusa’s professional paces. Before that, he’d hidden tears in Sakusa’s chest just once, off another broken heart.
He doesn’t want to cry now, though.
Sakusa kisses him and it feels like an apology. Rintarou wants so badly to hate it, but Rintarou was the one who had come here in the first place. Probably one of his greatest personal shames, if he had the capacity left to feel things like that. But no, he’s already left it all in Sakusa’s hands.
Rintarou falls over the edge wrapped tight in Sakusa’s arms, full of him, feeling branded by him in more ways than one. Sakusa follows soon after with Rintarou urging him on, scratching his back full of marks that will fade before the week is out. Never anything permanent.
When Sakusa pulls back, his face is unreadable again. It’s not an expression anyone wants to see after sex, so Rintarou tugs him back down for a kiss.
Rintarou can’t fathom what any of it means.
Maybe loving someone involves a degree of unfathomability. Does this count?
Rintarou is almost certain this is love, now.
Almost.
v. i got the red carpet blues, baby
Rintarou is bleeding again.
Sakusa is easy to read this time—his face is bare of his usual mask, and his dark eyes are terrified.
The rug he’d been admiring earlier, this warm and fluffy cream thing that contrasts all of Sakusa’s dark furniture, is turning red at a rapid pace. Blood doesn’t pool when it gets soaked up by fabric, unless there’s so much that it doesn’t get absorbed fast enough. Over-saturation? That’s what it’s called, right?
Rintarou looks at the blood pooling fast and tries to remember how many times he got shot. There had been too much noise to distinguish individual blasts, and then his body had been in too much pain to distinguish individual wounds.
When Rintarou reaches up to hold Sakusa’s face, he leaves red there too. It drips down his cheekbones and past his jawline. He’s splattered with Rintarou’s blood too, and it’s dark enough that it takes a moment for him to pick out those two precious moles above his brow.
Taking bullets for someone that amounts to an enemy enforcer—that counts as love, right?
In this business, anyways.
Over-saturation, Rintarou thinks again.
Too much blood for the rug to hold. Too much love for Sakusa to absorb. Too many feelings for a yakuza like Rintarou to have.
Too many bullets for a body to be riddled with.
There’s probably also something to be said about the amount of noise still going on in Sakusa’s stupidly modern condo apartment, no longer stupidly clean because of Rintarou and his blood and the people who kicked down the door and shot him full of bullets, but who cares?
This is just another way he’s putting his body into Sakusa’s hands.
Maybe it means something that Sakusa puts his face into Rintarou’s, in turn.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Will Rintarou ever be sure?
Sakusa blinks, and blinks again, and tears run their way down from his eyes and make clear streaks through Rintarou’s blood on his face. He thinks they’d be hot on Rintarou’s thumbs, if he could still feel with them at all.
But Sakusa cries, and it must be for him. It must be for Rintarou.
Maybe he does love Rintarou back.
Maybe it’s enough to wonder, even if he’ll never be sure.
Maybe Sakusa’s tears are enough of a reciprocation for Rintarou to be okay with it all.
Maybe, maybe.
Maybe.
vi. now press repeat
Rintarou wakes up in Kita-sama’s bed in the Inarizaki compound. He can only tell where he is because it smells like Kita-sama’s favourite incense, and there’s no fucking way any other bed in their compound is this plush.
He stares up at the unfamiliar ceiling for a moment, then turns his head to find a familiar head of dark curls, face buried in the bedding at Rintarou’s hip. When Rintarou tries to move his hand to card through those curls, he finds it warm and heavy, weighed down with another hand.
Oh.
Rintarou’s thoughts are hazy, and his body thrums with an ache that only feels distant because he’s probably been drugged with Oomimi-san’s good stuff, but Sakusa’s hand on his is loud and clear.
How is he even here? How was he allowed in Kita-sama’s personal bedroom? This is one of the most protected areas of the Inarizaki compound, and an Itachiyama enforcer is just—here.
Waiting for Rintarou to wake up. Sleeping at his bedside.
He’s been wondering if Sakusa’s been as in love with Rintarou as Rintarou is in love with him, but now that there might be some tangible proof, Rintarou realizes that this is too soft for them. Not in a bad way, necessarily, but in a way that immediately becomes a target. Sakusa’s presence here, at the heart of the Inarizaki syndicate’s Kantou region compound, is the equivalent of Sakusa rolling over and showing them and his own people the soft of his belly.
It’s just—he wanted to be a few steps closer, but maybe this is too close to be safe.
Shit.
Sakusa stirs then, a sigh and a snuffle and a squeeze of Rintarou’s hand. He watches as Sakusa turns his face to the side enough to reveal one of his dark eyes and his twin moles. He blinks twice, his thumb rubbing absently at the back of Rintarou’s hand, and then he turns his face more, eyes wandering the length of Rintarou’s body before landing at Rintarou’s own face.
They make eye contact.
Sakusa stares for a moment, a small smile lighting up his groggy expression, and then his eyes widen and he bolts up in his seat.
“You’re awake,” he says, sounding alarmed and relieved both.
“Sure am,” Rintarou replies. It comes out croaky, and Sakusa blinks a few more times at him, processing his shock or something. He shakes himself out of it to reach for the glass of water on the bedside table, straw already in it. Sakusa holds it up with one hand, the other staying clasped around Rintarou’s palm. Rintarou doesn’t have to strain anything to drink from it, which is more of a relief than he can articulate at the moment. Gods, everything hurts.
When Rintarou pulls back, Sakusa puts the glass down and just stares at Rintarou again. His face is blankly grumpy, set in his usual resting bitch face, and Rintarou wonders what he’s actually thinking about.
“How are you here?” Rintarou asks, breaking the silence first. His voice thankfully comes out smoother after the water, his throat and mouth not as dry. “This is Kita-sama’s bedroom.”
“He let me in,” Sakusa replies. “Said his bed was more comfortable than the medical suite, so he had you brought here to rest.” His face gets aggressively more expressionless. “You ended up caught in a turf war that has nothing to do with Inarizaki, but you did save my life, so. Kita-sama and Iizuna-sama came to some sort of deal, the terms of which include me being able to be here right now.”
“…What’s the deal?” Rintarou asks, not without some trepidation.
“Not sure,” Sakusa replies. “It didn’t really matter to me, so long as I got to be here.”
“Oh,” Rintarou says. It’s subdued. He doesn’t know what any of this means—or he does, and he’s just realizing how bad an idea it is to be connecting these dots now.
“Why did you…” Sakusa starts. He inhales through his nose and exhales out with his mouth, his face contorting into something more clearly frustrated. His dark eyes go shiny under his long lashes, and Rintarou thinks again of the way he cried right before Rintarou passed out. “Why?” he asks. He sounds lost, and small.
Now, Rintarou could be honest here. He could tell Sakusa that he’s apparently no longer capable of standing idly by at the prospect of Sakusa potentially getting injured, let alone dying. He could say that he thinks he’s been in love with Sakusa for a while now, or as in love as he thinks he can be. He could say that his body moved before his brain could even process the men that had barged into Sakusa’s apartment, leading with their guns and their trigger-happy fingers.
But he thinks he finally understands what Sakusa was trying to say and do all those months ago, on Rintarou’s living room couch. It’s not just about what’s between them, or about figuring out his own feelings. The two of them are connected to shit that could spiral out of control so fast, and they’re largely never in control anyways. Their bosses are in control, and even then, Kita-sama and Iizuna-sama have bosses of their own. Maybe Rintarou’s words back then were a reassurance to Sakusa, when he’d been guided by his kaichou to put Rintarou through everything he did. Maybe Sakusa saying that he didn’t care helped him get through the most unsavoury parts of their jobs—not that they have to do what they have to do, but that the people they care about get caught up in it.
So instead of being serious, or honest, or any of that, he gives Sakusa a dry look and hopes it lands on gently teasing, in a sarcastic sort of way—Rintarou’s favourite brand of humour. "I don’t care if you die, you know,” he says, mouth tilting up at the corner.
It doesn’t land like a joke.
In fact, it kind of lands like Sakusa’s the one that’s been shot several times over, which is rich considering… everything. But it’s endearing too, and that’s how Rintarou really knows he’s hopeless.
It’s also a little ridiculous. He’s lying here because he took bullets from a bunch of Itachiyama’s enemies, specifically so Sakusa wouldn’t have to. Rintarou had no business even being there in the first place, seeing as how he snuck into Itachiyama territory without Kita-sama’s permission, just to see Sakusa. He is truly lucky that Kita-sama is in the habit of meticulously counting heads whenever there’s bad news from their neighbouring territories, related to their own syndicate or not.
And it’s unfair that Rintarou’s the one that has to do this, but he's not a stranger to unfair situations. And so, to give Sakusa grace, to show him mercy—to get him to stop looking so goddamn tragic when all Rintarou wants Sakusa to do is scoff like the judgemental bastard he really is and tease Rintarou again—he drops his smile, squeezes Sakusa’s hand, and demands, “Say you don’t care.”
“What?” Sakusa’s voice is hoarse, tired. His hand trembles in Rintarou’s own.
“‘I’m not in love with you, and this is still casual’,” Rintarou states. The words come easy, because he’s spent a lot of time thinking back on that exchange. Not just when he was stuck in Itachiyama’s territory in some random and unforgiving concrete basement, but even before that. And still, after that as well. It's an exchange that haunts him, and he’s about to make it haunt Sakusa too, if it doesn’t already. “Say it.”
“…This is still casual,” Sakusa repeats, voice low. “I'm… not in love with you.” He pauses but doesn’t stutter. His voice isn’t hushed or anything, and it doesn’t get any rougher than it already is. For some reason, Rintarou thinks the words still hurt Sakusa as they come out of his mouth.
“Good,” Rintarou praises softly. He squeezes Sakusa's hand again. “Didn’t ruin the mood or anything, either,” he adds as a joke, trying for the second time to lighten the mood.
Sakusa huffs, eyes downcast, staring at where their fingers are twined together. "Aren't you going to say it back?” he asks quietly.
“Should I?” Rintarou returns, carefully. Do you want me to? Need me to?
Sakusa glares at their hands and seems to really think about it, brows furrowing. His cute forehead moles twitch as the skin wrinkles between his brows, and if Rintarou could move, he’d press a thumb into them with his free hand. Sakusa looks up and interrupts Rintarou’s admiration, catching whatever look is on his face—probably something too soft for the situation. Sakusa's glare lightens, and his shoulders drop. “You should get some sleep,” he says, instead of answering the question.
Rintarou lets it go. He wouldn’t have wanted to say it back anyways, because it would have been a lie. But Rintarou wouldn’t have wanted Sakusa to tell him not to say it either, to have it out there that Sakusa wanted it to be serious on at least one of their parts. Rintarou had already absolved Sakusa of any feelings he might have by having him say out loud that this is still casual. If Sakusa doesn’t want Rintarou to say the same thing and reciprocate the alleged meaninglessness of what they have, then neither of them can hide away from the lies that his absolution hinges on.
The evasion is an excuse, and Rintarou is grateful.
The closest thing to an admission Rintarou allows himself is when he asks, “Will you be here when I wake up?”
Sakusa lifts Rintarou's hand and presses a kiss to his knuckles. “Yeah,” he says into the back of Rintarou's hand, chapped lips moving against thin skin. “I’ll stay.”
This is still casual.
Neither of them have ever said that they’re in love with the other.
They each ostensibly don’t care if the other dies.
Like a verbal contract, the fact that all of these things have been stated out loud make them truth enough to function, and that’s all Rintarou needs. Everything else implied or inferred can remain in the shadows, just like their jobs demand from them. It's what they do best, really; everything that hurts happens in the dark.
It’s the shape of something underneath the table: hidden bills between palms, hidden product packed beneath takeout boxes from a cover restaurant, hidden bank accounts belonging to fake identities.
Hidden machinations from supposed allies, and hidden hostages in windowless spaces.
(Hidden hickies under shirt collars and waistbands.)
Rintarou had forgotten that the mere shape of something makes you wealthier than anything out in the daylight can make you.
So maybe it’s love lurking in those shadows, or maybe it’s just shaped like it—
In this line of business, they’re one and the same.