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Sakuma had always been glad that he had a good visual memory, it allowed him to always remember people’s faces, to know every single dark alley in Tokyo from the map they had up on the wall in their base. He had believed that to be one of his best qualities, together with his calm demeanor and the ability to think cold-bloodedly.
However, at that time he would have given anything to be able to get rid of that damn image that kept coming back in his mind. In his dreams, whenever he was bored, it filled any empty space with its cruelty. It didn’t matter how hard he tried, the image of Genda laying on the floor, his limbs thrown in every direction, his legs broken, bones exposed, a trail of blood going from his mouth to join the puddle of it on the floor; it didn’t want to leave him alone.
He shook his head, yet again chasing away that memory. He chugged down his scorching hot coffee, which warmed up his guts, while he savoured the rush of energy from the caffeine going through his veins. A sensation of peace which only lasted a few seconds.
Then his agony resumed. Those images, his heart hammering in terror, the emptiness from losing the person he loved.
He loved Genda, he loved him deeply. He had always been there for him, since they were two boys that got in all kinds of trouble together. Then, when Koujirou’s mother died from an illness no doctor could heal, he was there. When his father kicked him out of the house, Genda had always snuck out to keep him company in the freezing cold night. They grew up together, in the streets.
Suddenly, he felt a finger hit his forehead with a snapping sound, bringing him back to reality. He focused back on the real world and found, right in front of him, those eyes of a peculiar blue that only someone like Fudou could have had. He had gotten close to him, hit him on the forehead, and he hadn’t noticed a thing, being too lost in his own thoughts.
“Stop thinking about your dead prince charming, instead think about going back to work. Not to act like your mom, but you’ve been a shut-in for already a month.”
You would have imagined a similar thing to be said with apprehension for him, but that man had said it with disarming nonchalance. He walked around his kitchen, poured himself a generous amount of coffee and buttered a slice of bread, lecturing him about the death of the person he loved as if he was telling him the grocery list. Sakuma sighed, he put down his nearly empty cup on the counter he was leaning on. They looked each other in the eyes for a moment, in silence. One was distracted, the other always insanely unreadable, only focused on biting into his breakfast.
“Bread and butter? Are you for real?” He changed the topic. Mornings weren’t a good time to talk about such things, there were too many ghosts of the night, his senses were too clouded by sleep.
“I’m dead serious. You two never even dated, since he was straight as shit. You should cut it out, now.”
“Don’t talk about him like he was nothing, as if he wasn’t the best person I’ve ever met.” Sakuma exploded then.
“Oh yeah, such a kind hearted mercenary. If only everyone was as good as him.” Fudou rolled his eyes, irony dripping from his words.
“Do you think a month is enough for me to forget how much I loved him?”
“You don’t have to forget it, you have to move on from it.” His tone was so strong and adamant that it forced him to lower his head. “Teikoku won’t protect you for long if you’re not working. Your family kicked you out long ago.”
By then, it wasn’t just his hands that were trembling, it was his whole body. He trembled from rage and resentment towards the whole world, hissing through gritted teeth.
“Do you even know what it means to lose someone so important?”
“Of course I know, you idiot. We’re killers, none of us had a simple and happy life. If everything was easy, why the hell do you think we’d be here?” The way he looked at him seemed like he wanted to read his soul and was actually succeeding. “If there’s life after death, surely he’s in hell and we’ll join him soon. If there isn’t, then he just stopped existing and you shouldn’t worry about him. Accept that he’s gone, your guilt or you ruining your life over this surely won’t bring him back.”
Sakuma felt studied, as if Fudou with just his eyes had managed to read all of his feelings, choosing carefully what to tell him. He used to hate when it happened, but at that point it was almost reassuring to have someone willing to entertain his emotions at all. Even if he did it in such a cruel way.
He put on a bitter smile that made him want to scream.
“Since when are you this…?” He stopped, not knowing exactly how to describe him.
“Skeptical, cold, calculating? You can say all of them, I’ve probably already heard every negative word in the vocabulary. I’ve seen a lot of shit, Sakuma, my father, my mother, the only woman I’ve ever loved. You know what you do when you can’t take it anymore? You change. In the end, I learned not to let everything slide from my reach. People leave us, we’re still here and we won’t be for long.”
Only a few seconds after Fudou was done talking, he realised that he had been staring at him like an idiot, enraptured by his impactful words and surprised by his profoundness. He looked pitifully at that last bit of coffee, now cold, left in his cup. He felt bad about assuming so much stuff about him.
“Maybe we should just stop with this, you’re not even with them, you don’t have to worry. We could have a normal life outside of here.”
Akio erupted into a loud laughter, threading his fingers through the brown locks of hair that fell into his face.
“Shit, Sakuma, you’re even more stupid than I thought. Do you think Kageyama would just let you go? You’ve worked for him for three years, have you not learned a thing? The ones who leave, it’s because they’re dead. That’s why I never joined, that and the fact that I hate being told what to do.”
“To forget, to leave something behind, you need to do something stupid, right?” He insisted, his gaze that of someone who’s simply too fed up with life.
“Go fuck someone, do drugs, kill some prostitutes if you really need to, but you have to be crazy to think you could leave Teikoku all in one piece. That sicko would send every assassin in the world after you if he had to, but he would find a way to hunt you down.”
Sakuma pried Fudou's cup out of his hands, to put it in the sink next to his own. He stepped in front of him to stare at his face and his eyes that looked like the sea.
“Fuck someone, you say?”
He jumped on his lips, pushing him against the sink. After the initial surprise, Fudou parted his lips, guiding Sakuma’s more avid and hasty ones, the kiss deepened just like that, into something less desperate and more sensual. When they pulled away from each other, seconds later, he stopped for a while to nibble on his dark lip, which tasted like coffee. It was a kiss that tasted like something prohibited, of caffeine and sin. Sakuma pressed their chests flushed together, while the other let his hands roam on his back, eventually stopping them at its base.
“You're sure about this?” Is all he whispered in his ear.
“I'm sure.” Sakuma confirmed, as he entangled his hands in the brown locks that were starting to grow long. They had accumulated so many sins, he thought that surely one more wouldn't determine their damnation to a hypothetical hell.
Fudou's mouth voraciously looked for the soft skin of his neck, torturing it until he left signs of his passage. Grasping onto his back, the other fumbled to lift his black t-shirt, revealing his sculpted abs, pressed against his. He let his hands run across his body, happy to feel him shiver when they dragged across his spine, on the curve that delimits the beginning of the backside. He let his hand wander to one buttock, grazing his inner tight and then he brought it back up. Akio let out a dissatisfied growl, he pulled away from his neck to forcefully take his shirt off. They started to trudge towards Jirou's bedroom, leaving a trail of their clothes behind.
-
Sakuma was staring at the ceiling, one hand placed on his chest, he was lulled by the sound of running water in the bathroom next door. He wondered when it was exactly that Fudou switched from crashing over whenever he was in danger from work, to calling that place his home. How they went from being two people who sometimes worked together, sometimes against; to lovers. After all, he thought that having certainty or, even less, stability with Fudou Akio was out of the question. It had been almost a year since they started a relationship that began and ended with sex. They killed and they had sex.
The agony from Genda’s death had slowly dissipated, until it became a melancholic memory. He hadn’t forgotten him, but that image of his body destroyed by a fall far too high had been pushed at the back of his head. Although, it still frightened him. Working for Kageyama frightened him too, his life frightened him. But Fudou constantly reminded him he had no choice.
Fudou was a very peculiar thing in his life. He wasn’t quite a friend, he wasn’t a boyfriend, he never even loved him after all. He was like caffeine in the morning when he felt like shit, he gave him energy, warmed him up and somehow he made him go through his day, for the most part. It was a short term remedy, but it was all he had and that was good enough. He couldn’t really do long term either way; Fudou’s views had permeated through him and he was convinced life must be really short, especially for people like them.