Silent on the sill, one knee drawn to his chest, the other foot braced on the floor, Yoji lifted his face to gaze out the window at the deepening night.  There were no stars - there were never stars this deep in the corrupted heart of the city - but a full, mist-muddied moon wobbled in the blurred, uncertain darkness above.  It shed light like a membrane, a tainted silver shroud over the desperate and the angry and the lost and the fates that held them here.  Safehouse: it was an odd connection of words for a place that was truly neither, just a bad alternative in the midst of a sea of worse ones, yet no more painful a contradiction than he deserved for a night full of successful failures.

Vague-eyed, vague-minded, Yoji traced the delicate, frozen-lightning glimmer of a crack in the window pane with black-gloved fingers.

Three weeks to complete a mission that shouldn't have required more than three *days*, reckless as the target had been, consistent, cocky.  Three *fucking* weeks, and even then the final clues had felt more like some twisted sort of charity, a game played with their incompetence in the face of something not quite more than human, not quite less; something that knew their every move almost before they made it . . . something they hadn't expected to face again, not so soon.  They hadn't been ready, not even close, and it was the innocent who had paid for that failing tonight.

He'd crucified them, he and his latest band of disposable disciples: former men of God, turned to hurt Him.  He'd even done it right, though that was hardly surprising.  Three nails apiece, squared and rustic and lovingly hand-hammered: one for each forearm, one through the bone of both heels, barbed wire for a crown of thorns on otherwise naked bodies . . .

Weiß had come and twelve tools had fallen, twelve mere humans who'd had no idea what they were toying with until doomsday followed them home.  The thirteenth, the placid-faced demon with moon-white hair and a laugh like the damned: that one had escaped into the conspiratorial darkness, back into the nightmares that were his more usual dwelling place.  The unnumbered voice of Kritiker had declared the mission a success, though Weiß had managed no more than the slaughter of used-up accomplices, saving their erstwhile master the trouble of sending them to their eternal reward himself.

More than thirty children had stayed dead on their crosses.

He could still feel the sharp bite of nail-heads between his fingertips, blood-slick and driven deep, far too deep for him to withdraw them on his own . . .

Aya was a reflection in the flawed glass long before he was a sound, pale flesh and blood-streaked leather faint under Yoji's memory-numb hand, source as silent as illusion.  He met Yoji's eyes briefly in that dark-silvered mirror, confirming in his usual all-business manner that he had indeed been seen and identified before moving to the far corner and sinking gracefully down to sit with his back to the wall.  His katana slipped from its sheath with a musical, metallic whisper, Aya first wiping away the few bits of half-dried gore that had escaped his on-scene attentions, then settling almost ceremoniously to sharpening the mission-dulled edge.

Whetstone and blade had been grating rhythmically together for perhaps a minute before Yoji finally spoke.  "Any of that yours?" he asked quietly.

A pause as Aya glanced up, then down in the direction of Yoji's reflected gaze, at the blood staining his purplish-black leather coat.  "No," he said, an invitation to Yoji to mind his own damn business explicit in his tone.  The grinding resumed.

Yoji's fingers fell away from the window, both gloved hands settling into his lap to rest amidst the silvered spiderweb shadows of moonlight through cracked glass; he studied them for several moments, the stains that marred them as well, the little nicks carved out of the leather by rough-forged metal . . . "Where's Ken?"

Aya gave no indication that he had even heard the question.

Turning on the sill and leaning forward, elbows on knees, Yoji repeated it for him.

He knew where Omi was: forced by the specter of approaching exams to sit this one out, luckily for him.  The kid probably wouldn't have dealt well with what had awaited them in that warehouse turned madhouse.  Ken, though, he had been there for the mission, first into the warehouse and first out again after the indoor targets were down, hot on Farfarello's heels . . . for all the good he could have expected to come of it.  Aya had agreed to follow him, keep him out of trouble as best he could while Yoji stayed behind to deal with the grisly but necessary process of confirming that none of the young victims could still benefit from earthly help.

He had more child's blood on his coat than murderer's tonight, and he swore he could feel the difference, *smell* it.  He could feel the taint of it seeping into his skin through mission garb that somehow, *somehow* he just couldn't bring himself to change out of yet, as if something in him knew he deserved that badge of shame.  It was doing nothing for his patience with Aya's characteristic terseness, especially as Aya continued to ignore a genuinely important inquiry.

"He wouldn't have gone home," Yoji pressed, lurching tiredly to his feet and striding up to loom over Aya in a manner calculated to annoy, "that's too many hours to ride a motorbike down public streets in bloody work clothes."

The grinding continued.  Aya's silence did.  The hoped-for irritation pulsed off him in tangible waves, but that hardly qualified as an answer.

"This is our only safehouse in this city, not to mention the fact that he left his street clothes here . . . was there a problem?"

Ceaseless motion of nimble hands in their fingerless gloves, ceaseless skitter of stone over metal; Yoji could feel it in the place where his spine met his skull, like a stabbing of dull needles . . . of dull nails.

"I was given to understand that you were taking responsibility for him, Aya.  Yet you're here, and he isn't and . . . will you goddamn well *stop* doing that!?"

Finally at the end of his patience, Yoji grabbed Aya by the upper arm, dragging him roughly to his feet and thus to eye level.  Aya hissed in pain as stone and sword clattered to the ratty carpet together, five parallel slashes gaping open in the arm of his coat, fresh blood welling out over Yoji's hand.  It looked far more painful than it did serious, but Yoji managed only a few seconds of sympathetic guilt before Aya turned one of his patented amethyst-ice glares in Yoji's direction, bringing all the annoyance and anger and pure frustration of the night back in a miserable, head-throbbing rush.

Biting back the more unkind words that first sprang to mind, Yoji murmured, "You do have an absolute *talent* for pissing off your friends, don't you?  Not to mention being a liar . . ."  Pushing aside the shredded leather to peer at the flesh underneath quickly confirmed Yoji's initial estimate of the low severity of the injury.  "Let me guess: he wanted some time to think, and you tried pulling imaginary rank on him . . . again.  Am I close?"  Aya's scowl waxed even darker, and Yoji knew he was right; he released Aya with a snort of angry laughter, heading for the dingy bathroom and the smallish but adequate first-aid kit stowed there.  "Take off your coat.  I'll patch you up."

"It's fine," Aya assured him coldly, bending to retrieve sword and whetstone, checking the former to make sure it hadn't suffered any damage from its collision with the latter; both had been set neatly in the corner by the time Yoji returned, but the coat was still in place.

"Fine doesn't bleed," Yoji stated firmly.  "Off with it."

Aya turned his back, pushing aside the dusty, wind-shredded white sheet some previous tenant had hung up for a window shade - or perhaps a *window*, considering the absence of glass or frame in a socket that looked wide enough for two sashes - and gazing out at the blank brick side of the building across the alleyway through the rusty security bars.  "I said it was fine."

"And *I* said . . ."  Yoji cut himself off with an angry sigh.  "I refuse to play circular logic with you tonight, Aya; I'm not in the mood."  Coming up behind the redhead, he laid a forceful hand on his shoulder, preparatory to spinning him around and trying his own luck with the complicated buckles.  "Just give me the damn coat."

He didn't see the fist coming until it had already connected with his face, smashing flesh against teeth and sending him sprawling to crack his head a solid thump against the wall.  The first-aid kit flew from his hand, breaking open on the floor and spilling sterile contents thankfully still individually wrapped in plastic across the filthy carpet.  There was blood in his mouth when the fog cleared, dribbling down onto the white cross that embraced his upper arm, onto the black leather that made up most of his sleek knee-length coat, mixing with what was already there.

The glare Aya fixed him with when he raised his head was utterly unapologetic, punctuated by a harshly spoken, "Not now, Yoji!"  He might just as well have been trying to seduce the touchy bastard, not looking out for his welfare.  He might as well have been the one who bloodied him.

Aya then turned back to the window, dismissing the supposed friend and occasional lover he had just decked for no terribly good reason with that simple gesture.  One hand toyed idly with the slashed leather of his sleeve, testing the length of the gouges.  He looked more distressed by the damage to the coat than the damage to himself, by the likely expense and trouble of having the damned thing repaired.

It might have been the taste of his own blood, or the nightmarish mission still fresh in Yoji's mind.  It might as easily have been that Aya had just proven his status as an unbalanced prick one time too many.  Whatever the reason, Yoji's entire body was thrumming with rage by the time he got to his feet, all of it directed at that slim back, that thick fall of auburn hair and purpled moonlight shadows, the closed set of that body.

"Not now," he grated, "that has got to be your fucking *motto* as often as you say it.  Everything is 'not now' with you.  If it isn't part of your precious, 'innocent' past, you don't want to hear it."

His tone must have given away the depth of his anger because Aya turned to cast a look back at him over one shoulder, something like a vague, condescending sort of surprise cold in his eyes.  He probably wasn't accustomed to Yoji pushing his luck this hard, especially when - as now - the supposed source of the conflict was so entirely Aya's own problem.  Fine if he let the damn thing fester; no skin off Yoji's nose if he was forced to sit a few missions out.  Besides, it wasn't as if Yoji had taken off his own coat and checked himself over for injuries the instant he made it here.

Yoji's rage wasn't buying the logic, though.  It was almost . . . almost *hatred* burning in his gut.  Hatred for the beautiful, terrible, ice-cold creature standing there with so much passion in him and so little capacity to demonstrate it as anything but violence and withdrawal.

"The past is nothing but an overrated *shit-pile* for some of us, Aya," he growled, "nothing but a series of disasters we've barely survived, nightmares that we almost didn't wake up from."

Yoji stalked closer, fists clenched and shaking at his sides.  When his foot came down on a plastic roll of tape with a fatal *crunch*, Aya turned suspiciously around to face him.  He looked slightly confused, slightly off-balance, struggling with something.  Maybe he'd been affected by the mission more than Yoji realized.  Didn't matter; Yoji was far beyond the realm of empathy by now.

If Aya had genuinely expected anything more intense than a shouting match, Yoji would never have succeeded.  As it was, he'd already started moving cautiously in the direction of his katana before Yoji reached for his wire.  Yoji was quicker, though, and the moon-silver filament sailed true, wrapping around Aya's injured arm and the security grate behind him, around the chest-high, horizontal bar that held its vertical companions in place.  When Yoji yanked it tight, Aya was slammed back against the grate, his bleeding arm pinned out straight from wrist to shoulder.

"Some of us prefer to live in the 'now' that you've devoted your life to denying the existence of."

"Bastard!" Aya spat past clenched teeth, struggling despite the obvious pain, clawing angrily at the wires with his free hand.  "Let me go!"

Pulling the line even tighter, Yoji tossed him a mocking grin - more a baring of teeth than anything else - the expression dampened only slightly by Aya's breathless gasp of pain.  "What, so you can grab your katana and gut me two seconds later?  I don't think so . . ."

Yoji had thought himself well out of range, but he'd obviously underestimated the redhead's reach, at least with pure fury to give him that extra little push.

When Aya launched a high, hard kick at his face, Yoji actually felt Aya's boot graze the tip of his nose.  He responded out of startled anger as much as instinct, striding forward while Aya was still off balance and backhanding him hard enough to stun, hard enough to bloody his face just as he had bloodied Yoji's.  Aya slumped, glassy-eyed, and Yoji took full advantage, completing the trickier task of fastening Aya's other arm to the grate before he could recover.  He was a squirming, hissing mass of wide-awake fury by the time Yoji finished, obligating him to secure Aya's hips and legs with the pressure of his own or risk a hard-driven knee in a tender location.

His original intention - as clearly as he'd thought it out, which wasn't terribly - had been to secure Aya to the grate and leave him there to stew, teach him a lesson.  Being what he was, Aya would fight the wires until exhaustion forced him to stop, which would increase Yoji's chances of not getting filleted when it came time for liberation.  Anger might even have given way to pragmatism by then, reminding Aya that Yoji made a more valuable ally than a corpse, however infuriating.

The feel of Aya's muscles bunching and straining under all that leather, though, with his well-toned arms stretched out and his dark-clad body surrounded by softly billowing tatters of white; the intense shimmer of amethyst eyes inches away; the faint flush on alabaster cheeks that seemed ill-suited for such a display but wore it so well nonetheless . . .

It was all starting to give him . . . other ideas.

Even through tight black hip-huggers and sleek leather, even through his own thick clothing, it was obvious that Aya felt Yoji's growing arousal, the switch from bloodlust to plain *lust*, felt the subtle difference in the way Yoji was holding him, moving against him.  Even if he hadn't already experienced Yoji's hair-trigger hormones a few times before, it would have been difficult to miss the gleaming emerald leer intense in his eyes.  Aya tensed briefly, flush and scowl deepening by equal degrees, before launching into a new, almost frantic attempt at freeing his legs well enough to effectively kick.

"Get off me!"  It was something between a hiss and a snarl, the slightest tinge of fear raising the pitch at the end.

Yoji regarded him dispassionately.  "I'll tie your legs too, if you make me."

If dirty looks were poison, Yoji would have died a horrible, convulsing, gut-ripping death on the floor at Aya's feet.  Luckily for him, they weren't, not even the worst the redhead had to offer.  Aya stopped struggling - mostly - but his body stayed tense, almost vibrating, taut as a bowstring ready for the deadly task appointed it.

"That's better.  Now, about that coat . . ."

Something closely akin to shock kept Aya still while Yoji fumbled with the buckles.  They weren't *quite* as complicated as they appeared but it was a near thing, and it was almost impossible to tell which had an actual purpose and which were purely decorative.  With a shrug and a slight laugh, Yoji gamely set to undoing them all.  The zippers that fastened sleeves to body were an unexpected boon, one he took full advantage of.  It took him a bit longer to get the front open but he did eventually manage it.

"Yoji . . ."  Aya cut himself off with a gasp, trying to wriggle away from the hand that had slipped into his coat and was now gliding possessively over the tight, sleeveless black shirt underneath.  "Ken . . . what about Ken . . .?"

"He could arrive at any moment," Yoji agreed, reaching into his own back pocket for something special he'd taken off one of the targets tonight, something he hadn't been able to resist for reasons he wasn't entirely certain of.  "All the more reason for you to be a good little boy . . ."

Aya froze at the sight of the switchblade, eyes widening when it sprang into place with the unmistakable *snick* of springs and catches; he was so distracted that Yoji's condescending "boy" reference slipped right past him.  The blade was a lovely, lovingly kept thing, deadly sharp and gleaming in the filtered moonlight.  The fat, smooth-worn ivory handle was yellow with age but one could still make out some of the carvings: a demon's wing here, a lick of eternal flame there, the stricken faces of the damned in their multitudes and over everything words, barely perceptible, as if rubbed half out of existence by reverent fingers . . .

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

"Ground rules," Yoji murmured, touching the tip of the blade gently to the hollow of Aya's throat, scraping it in an excruciatingly slow line down Aya's tight-clad front to his navel.  "Let's lay down the ground rules, shall we?"

Starting under the arm of Aya's coat, where the beginning and end of the zipper left a small gap between them, Yoji began the painstaking process of cutting the redhead free of his leather cocoon.  He wasn't doing anything worse to the coat than Ken had, he reassured himself, nothing that couldn't be repaired.  The material was tough, durable, ideal assassin gear, but it was no match for the direct, determined application of a knife this sharp.  He made short work of the right side, pulling it away and moving quickly on to the left while Aya was still wary enough of the switchblade to hold relatively still.

"You're going to behave yourself, Aya, which means doing exactly as I tell you."  Turning the knife in his hand, Yoji ripped the last bit of mangled leather free, pulling off the body of the coat and tossing it unceremoniously aside; the sleeves he left behind to protect Aya's otherwise bare arms from the razor-sharp wires.  "No struggling.  No questioning.  No choice."

"Or what?"  Aya's tone was dangerous but largely impotent, punctuated by a fruitless tug at his deceptively delicate looking silver bonds.

Yoji laughed slightly, shaking his head.  One hand gently cradled Aya's cheek, slipping down to tip his chin up before descending on his mouth with a forceful kiss.  Aya tried to resist him but Yoji simply pried Aya's mouth open with his own lips and tongue, pressing hard at the hinge of his jaw until he was forced to grant Yoji access.  When he was finished plundering that sweet, full mouth - as if he could ever *finish*, ever get tired of it - Yoji leaned forward with a hand on Aya's throat, pushing him back against the grate, catching Aya's blazing eyes with his own deadly-calm ones.

"Now, see," he admonished, "*that* was questioning.  Struggling, too.  I'll count both of them as just one strike, though . . . if you promise to be good."

Aya just glowered at him, eyes sparking ire, lips swollen with the force of Yoji's attentions.

"Yeah, I expected as much.  I'm a nice guy at heart, though, so I'll give it you anyway."

The redhead . . . declined to show his gratitude for that particular boon.

With a shrug, Yoji slipped the knife between the tight sleeveless shirt and Aya's belly, slitting it open from waist to neck.  "The 'or what' is very simple," he cooed, lapping away the droplet of blood that escaped from a shallow cut in the hollow of Aya's throat.  "Either you behave yourself, *or* . . ."  The next cut took the shirt from armhole to armhole, completing the sign of the cross without any further nicks and freeing the material to be dumped beside Aya's ruined coat.  "Or I tie you up completely, do whatever I want with you *anyway* and then leave you here for Ken to find . . . or whoever."  He gazed into Aya's stunned face with a smug grin.  "Hey, maybe those vagrants downstairs would like . . ."

"Son of a bitch!" Aya snarled, arching his back almost convulsively, frantically trying to buck Yoji off, kick him, bite him, whatever it took to end this.  "Let me go!  NOW!"

Yoji just backed away, raising an eyebrow and waiting patiently for Aya to come to terms with reality.  He decided to forego strike two for the time being, knowing perfectly well that Aya had no real choice but to snarl into the situation.  It was simply who he was.  When Aya finally went still again, turning his face away with a strangled noise of pure frustration, Yoji knelt in front of him to see about ridding him of his pants as well.

Aya didn't try to kick him this time.  He seemed to have at least figured out that he wasn't going to be able to free himself anytime soon, not without being allowed to do so . . . which rendered it unwise to piss off the "jailer" anymore than necessary.  He tensed when Yoji slowly, ever so slowly removed his belt - loop by careful loop - but he didn't fight.  Satisfied with this progress, Yoji set to untucking Aya's pant-legs from his knee-high, black leather boots.

"You know, there is . . . *one* other option." he mused, glancing up thoughtfully.

Aya refused to look down or acknowledge Yoji's words in any way, but it was clear from the set of his body that he was listening.

Yoji couldn't stop himself from smirking.  "Apologize."

"Apologize!?" Aya demanded, incredulous enough to break the self-imposed silence.  "For what?"

"That's questioning again," Yoji reminded him smugly.  "Two strikes.  I'm assuming you don't *want* to make it to three?"

Chips of ice were fairly flying from Aya's eyes, along with promises of every possible method of hideous death a katana could inflict - or bare hands, for that matter - but he kept his peace.

Yoji nodded.  "Yes, apologize.  For hitting me, for not taking care of Ken, for being an all around ass . . . there are so many options, I'd hate to over-classify and miss one."  Aya's pants were tight, but not quite so tight that Yoji couldn't slip them off and still leave those wonderfully erotic boots in place; he hooked his fingers in under the waistband preparatory to doing just that.  "You apologize and I let you go, immediately.  You don't, it stays *my* game.  Clear enough for you?"

Oh, it was clear, all right.  Aya was absolutely *shaking* with rage, with the anticipation of what he'd been programmed by the circumstances of his life to see as shame.  His goddamn pride; he clung to the ragged tatters of it like it was the only thing he had left in this world, like friends and relationships were nothing but dust to him.  He couldn't apologize to Yoji without losing precious dignity, no more than he could sit still and let Yoji have his way without suffering the same damage.  Allowing anyone else to see him so completely at Yoji's mercy, though - especially Ken; irreverent, blabbermouth Ken, who would probably laugh his ass off at the sight - that might well kill him, which meant he *had* to make a choice between two options equally shameful in his warped sense of value.

Fascinated, genuinely uncertain of what the resolution would be, Yoji waited for the decision.

It was silent when it came, but unmistakable.  Aya turned away suddenly, face flushed and blinking back tears of frustration and anger and betrayal, trying to wipe them on his sleeves before they fell but lacking the reach to hold onto even that dignity.  He was surrendering himself to Yoji rather than be forced to admit fault.  Even as a safeword, he couldn't bring himself to say he was sorry.

Stubborn, *stubborn* bastard.

A noise escaped him when Yoji yanked his pants down and tossed them aside, sitting back to survey what he had wrought: a small, close-kept sound that might well have been a sob.

Faced with the gloriously sinful sight before him, Yoji found that he didn't much care.

Aya's brief underwear was of sheer black silk, high-cut at the leg, designed to glide under his clothing without binding or impeding his freedom of movement.  Set stark against Aya's creamy pale skin, their wearer shifting his long legs in a vain attempt to conceal himself, they were among the most erotic articles of clothing Yoji had ever seen.  Mixed with the billowy embrace of the tattered white sheet fluttering in strips and flags around him, the knee-high boots with their shining buckles and straps, the lonely sleeves bound and glimmering with wire in the moonlight . . . oh, God, he looked good enough to *devour*.

Standing to shed his own jacket and gloves - revealing black hip-huggers and a midriff-baring, sleeveless black tee damp with sweat - Yoji couldn't resist the urge to move in for another deep kiss, to feel the damp heat of Aya's flushed cheeks against his own, the resistant cooperation that came with his decision.  Aya's nipples stiffened reluctantly, little warm pebbles between Yoji's fingers: fingers sensitized by their time swathed in the thick leather that protected Yoji from his weapon of choice.  Aya's throat tasted of salt-sweat in Yoji's mouth, smelled of blood and leather and fear, old as well as new.  All of him did, every last inch of skin intoxicating.

Even more intoxicating was knowing that he needn't worry about Aya's notoriously ill-timed changes of mind in sexual matters.  This delicious body was his, the choices all his, his alone for as long as he wanted and he reveled in it.  Ken completely escaped his memory as he traced every hard line and muscular curve of Aya's body with fingers and lips, teeth and tongue, engaging in the kind of ticklish, teasing, tasting foreplay that he loved and Aya *hated*.

The harsh gasp when Yoji bit down on one of those candy-pink, candy-sweet nipples made his cock twitch in his pants like a creature seeking escape.

Yoji settled at last to his knees again, devoting his attention to the sensitive inside of Aya's thighs, to the prize that still lay hidden behind tight black silk.  He slipped a shoulder under one of Aya's legs, bracing the other leg against the wall.  Off balance and deprived of even the possibility of resistance, Aya shivered in miserable silence.

It was almost funny, but the man marked like an overripe peach for all his strength and chill distance.  Even the gentlest of nips left lovely little red marks in a line on the delicate skin of his inner thigh.  As for the heart of the matter: Aya's penis wasn't entirely limp when Yoji finally laid his mouth over the soft, cloth-covered bulge at his crotch, but it wasn't truly erect either.

Well, he could fix that easily enough.

Hot, humid breath through fabric could feel as much like a touch as any pressure exerted by lips, tongue or teeth, and Yoji knew how to use them all to get the reaction he wanted.  Crisp hair and stiffening flesh shifted under the silk with his attentions, Aya's breath coming faster by degrees.  He was well on his way to the state Yoji was after within seconds, despite the circumstances.

"Wait . . ." Aya murmured, pressing his hips back against the grate in his attempts to escape Yoji's inescapable mouth.  "Stop it . . . Yoji, don't . . ."

The rest was lost in a hiss of indrawn breath when Yoji nipped at the underside of Aya's sex hard enough to hurt, hard enough to make his body jerk in reaction.  The icy glare was back, replacing the glazed look that had started to overtake Aya's face, but he didn't argue any further . . . not after pulling at the wires an experimental time or two.  It was just enough to keep Yoji from calling him for strike number three.

He was enjoying seeing Aya fight with the illusion of choice too much to give it up yet anyway.

Yoji stood, bringing Aya's leg up with him, the knee still hooked over Yoji's shoulder.  Aya was more than flexible enough to deal painlessly with the contortion, but it did force his hips to tip forward against Yoji's, pulling him up to tiptoes on his other foot.  He turned his head away again, refusing to face Yoji until the taller man took a fistful of his hair and forced him to.

"You're allowed to enjoy this, you know," Yoji said, reaching down to stroke Aya's growing sex through the saliva-damp fabric of his briefs.  "It doesn't break any of *my* rules. "

Aya only seethed silently at him, turning his face away the instant he was allowed.  Shrugging, Yoji contented himself with nibbling on Aya's ear.  He kept one hand busy with Aya's cock, the other clasped tight across one buttock, holding him in place so Yoji could move his own groin languidly against his trapped companion's body.  He had the redhead panting again in short order, however much he tried to control his breathing to conceal that fact.

"What are you so afraid of, Aya?  What's so frightening about admitting that it feels good to be touched like this?"

The length under Yoji's touch was rock-hard now, held tight against Aya's belly by the pressure of his briefs, the weeping, livid tip exposed just above the waistband.  Pre-cum was a slick presence on Yoji's hand, glistening faintly where it had been rubbed into the sheer silk.  He resisted the urge to bring those fingers up to his lips for a taste, not wanting to interrupt the rhythm that had Aya writhing so deliciously under him, that had his face contorted in an unidentifiable expression Yoji thought to be guilty pleasure but which might as easily have been pain.

"Are you afraid of feeling this good?"  Yoji whispered huskily, biting down hard on the soft, pink lobe of Aya's ear.  "Or are you afraid of *me* making you feel this good?  What do you think it is you stand to lose?"

"Please . . ." Aya murmured, guttural, strangled.

How he'd managed to keep "please" in a vocabulary that denied the existence of "sorry" was beyond Yoji.  He increased the pace, the pressure, letting Aya's leg drop down to rest on his hip instead.  The limb wrapped tight around him, Aya unconsciously pulling him closer even as he tried in vain to back away.

"You're going to have to be more specific, lover . . ."

"Nnnn . . . Yoji . . . no . . ."

He was right on the edge.  Yoji could feel it in the way his thighs tightened and trembled, the heavy pulsing of the thick veins in his sex, the swelling of the pink-tinged head.  He might have slipped over already if he hadn't been fighting it so hard.

It always had to be a battle with him, always, and Yoji had never understood that impulse to run from human contact, to avoid the pleasures that were sometimes the only thing that kept Yoji himself sane.  He *needed* this tonight, this release that Aya was so terrified of for reasons only he could really know.  Oh, Yoji could recite any number of possible motivations for Aya's behavior, all of them dry and useless as textbook fodder.  It seemed that anything, any normal human thing that might prove to the tortured redhead he was still alive and vital - something more than an incinerated corpse, more than an empty shell in a sterile white bed - simply couldn't be accepted unless it was forced.

Knowledge didn't make understanding any easier when it came time to try.

"Please . . ." Aya's voice rose until it was almost a scream, "please . . . Yoji, STOP!"

Obediently literal, Yoji stilled his hand at that final desperate cry, letting it fall to his side.  Aya slumped like a rag-doll in his bonds, panting and shivering, caught in that tortuous nowhere between ultimate arousal and orgasm.  His eyes were half-closed, glazed, lost . . . but relieved.  Actually relieved.  He hadn't lost himself yet, which meant he hadn't lost his precious pride.

Gently, calmly, Yoji cupped his flushed face in both hands, forcing Aya to look up so he could brush away the bangs that clung to his brow, place a soft kiss there instead.  Aya watched him suspiciously, but the faintest tinge of hope sharpened in his eyes.  Yoji just chuckled softly, leaning forward to whisper into his ear.

"Strike three."

He walked away.

That first incoherent scream Aya sent after him *might* have been his name, but it didn't sound quite right; the rest was lost when Yoji closed the bedroom door behind him, muffled, distant, a world away.  He deposited himself on the bed hard enough for Aya to hear the springs creak and lay back, one hand moving in a leisurely rhythm over the rigid, demanding presence in his pants, counting the cracks in the yellow-stained ceiling.  There were plenty to keep him busy.

The shouts, the screams and curses stopped first, fading first into hoarseness and then nothing at all.  The desperate clanking of the security grate as Aya threw his body back against it, shaking it hard enough to rattle the fastenings in their sockets: that took longer to subside, dwindling down to nothing any number of times before starting up again.  Yoji didn't bother glancing at his watch as he listened.  It would take as long as it took, whether he allowed himself to get impatient or not.

When he guessed that the latest silence had lasted long enough - and Ken had failed to show himself and end all such play for the night - Yoji grabbed the waiting piles of his and Aya's civilian clothes and opened the door, casual and calm as ever.

Aya hung from the window grate like a suffering Christ, head bowed, body shining with sweat to which the rags and tatters of sheet clung in patches, sparkling with tiny flecks of rust in the filtered moonlight.  Much of his side was painted with bright ribbons of blood - as were the bits of white cloth that had touched him there - flowing from the severed sleeve over the slash wounds in his arm.  He'd deepened the injuries in his struggles, pulling hard enough to work the wire into the weak places in the leather.  His eyes glittered, fixed on the carpet, as if he were caught in a fever.

He was too exhausted to speak when Yoji came back to him.  It didn't matter.  Yoji hadn't been planning on giving him that option anyway.

The black briefs came away with a snap of elastic, freeing an erection that hadn't flagged as much as Yoji had expected it to.  He knelt before the bound redhead, getting his upper arm under one of Aya's knees so that Aya was effectively sitting on the forward edge of the sill with his crotch bared in Yoji's face.  The other thigh he pushed back hard against the roughened grate, taking away any leverage that Aya might have been able to find, had he had the will.  Finally then, finally, Yoji got a chance to taste what he'd been missing, wrapping his lips around that glistening length and taking it in to the hilt.

Aya didn't seem to have an ounce of resistance left in him.  Not even the intentional scrape of teeth could incite him to struggle, not even the saliva-wet handle of the switchblade inserted into him for a makeshift phallus, pounding against his prostate.  Oh he arched his back at the pain and the pleasure of what Yoji was doing to him, fists clenching, eyes squeezing shut, but he didn't utter a single word of protest, not a sound, not so much as a whimper.  He'd learned his lesson; now he was desperate for redemption, for completion.

He didn't even cry out when he came, a hot flood into Yoji's waiting mouth.

Lapping up every drop of it, Yoji stood without a word of his own, pressing his mouth to Aya's to share what he'd been given.  Aya accepted that willingly as well, compliantly, pink tongue darting out to retrieve the little that escaped when Yoji moved away.  Beautiful.  God, he was beautiful.

There was an ancient, rusting radiator on one side of the window, a narrow pipe running from that across the floorboards and up the wall on the other.  A few more loops of wire securing booted calves to handy anchors and Aya was completely immobilized.  The final touch was a swath of white sheet torn from the window and laced over his glazed eyes as a makeshift blindfold, taking away the centering that only sight could have given him now.

Aya hung bereft for a moment, face turning blindly, casting about for some reassurance that Yoji was still there but too frightened to speak, to risk throwing away whatever favor he'd earned back.  The sound of Yoji's clothing sliding away from his body seemed to comfort him a little.  He jumped when Yoji's hand came down on his hip but he didn't resist when Yoji pulled his pinioned body away from the questionable support of the window sill, uttering only a soft, sighing, sobbing sound, hungry and haunted at the grinding pressure of Yoji's hips.  Yoji could feel pliable flesh shivering and hitching under his fingers when he drove himself dry into Aya's waiting warmth, pounding himself home at long last.

There was blood before too long, yet more blood, yet one more offering to whatever vampiric God drove their existence on and on into damnation.  Yoji barely noticed, just kept slamming himself in mercilessly, holding onto his brief power for whatever his soul could make of it in the time it had.  All around him, the world faded out, shattering into a flutter of sparkling motes, like a spinning sky full of stars fallen out of joint.  Blood was life anyway, blood was light, blood had always eased their way through existence.  Why not now as well?

But there was something fluttering at the edge of his senses as he drew closer and closer to release, the tickle of a whispering presence.  Aya's mouth was right by his ear, breath jarring out through parted lips with Yoji's every hard stroke, carrying a word with it each time.  Every time it was the same word, the same sibilant syllable over and over again, neither word nor rhythm anything of Aya's conscious choosing.

"Sorry," he whispered, again and again, "sorry . . . sorry . . . sorry . . ."

The universe narrowed to the scope of that word, contracted until everything that existed was Aya, Aya apologizing to Yoji while Yoji made him bleed, and he came deep inside that bound body with tears in his eyes and a shout that was almost a sob.

Yoji stumbled away when he was done, almost falling, almost ending up in a muddled pile at Aya's feet.  Suddenly feeling exposed in a way more profound than he could have explained, he left Aya hanging for the moment, slipping hurriedly into his own civilian clothes while Aya was still pinned and blindfolded.  They weren't entirely dissimilar from his work clothes - tight black jeans and a loose, homely black sweater - but they *weren't* his work clothes and, somehow, that was an important distinction, a distinction apart from cleanliness or aesthetics.  He'd meant to shower before changing but . . . he couldn't bear to slip back into the bloody rags he'd been wearing.  He didn't want anything to do with them, clean or filthy, not for as long as he could manage it.

Aya had lost all feeling in his limbs by the time Yoji got him down, collapsing against the taller man, clinging numbly to the soft folds of the sweater for a short, helpless while.  He didn't have the coordination to pull off the blindfold; Yoji had to do that for him.  He was still wobbly-weak when he pushed Yoji violently away, stumbling to the corner where his katana lay waiting for him.  The wall was barely sufficient to keep him upright - even in a low crouch, leaning heavily against it, he looked far from stable - but he still managed to use his free hand to train the weapon on Yoji, warning him to get back, to stay away.  His eyes were bloodshot, glittering, his face flushed and stained with tears.

Yoji spread his hands.  He no longer had the knife with him, nor could he use his wire with his arms apart like this.  Whatever madness had been driving him, it was gone now.  Just gone.

Stepping forward cautiously, wiping angrily at the tears still running down his face, Aya bent to retrieve the clothes Yoji had brought out for him, keeping eyes and sword all trained on Yoji's standing form.  The tip of the katana shivered violently; Yoji could have knocked the thing aside in an instant if he'd wanted to, but he didn't.  He backed toward the window at the front of the apartment even as Aya backed toward the bedroom, watching him close the door behind him and hearing the click as he locked it fast, the sliding thump as he laid his back to it and slipped to the floor, slowly recovering.

Yoji didn't suppose he could really blame Aya for that.

The burbling purr of Ken's motorbike finally echoed up the empty pre-dawn street sometime later, some space of lost minutes that Yoji couldn't really have named.  Dismounting and tucking his helmet under one arm, Ken glanced up, smiling sheepishly and waving when he saw Yoji sitting there in the window, one knee drawn to his chest, the other foot braced on the floor.  Yoji raised a hand to him as well, a faint curve that wasn't quite amusement touching his lips as he watched the dark-haired assassin slip into the building below and out of sight, on his way up.

Outside, the muddy black of midnight was giving way to luminous indigo.  The pale silver moon had long since faded to the tainted yellow of old ivory, covered in faint carvings that mortal eyes had seen as any number of things.  The crack still gleamed in the corner of the window when Yoji laid his hand there, fine as spiderwebs and fading, threads of moonlight drowned out by the jealous coming of the sun, by the tears blurring his own eyes.

There were still no stars.

There were never stars.