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“Going on sixty and secretly hooking up with some girl.” Quanxi sighs, toneless as always, no inflection to indicate any feeling any way, lest it goes too deep and manifests as an emotion. “Just don’t drag the rest of us into it.”
Kishibe doesn’t bother to correct any of her major incorrect assumptions – what would it change? At the crux of it all, it’s all the same. He shoots for the lower hanging fruit, instead. “Going on sixty?”
A wave of her hand, dismissive. “Close enough.”
They lapse back into silence, homely enough for Kishibe to sit back and let it happen. He’s used to this bar, at least – it’s a couple of blocks away from Tokyo’s Public Safety headquarters, and yet far enough that they haven’t run into any coworkers in the past few months. A calm little place, tucked into a side-street corner with orange light spilling into the dead-end road outside, undeterred by the dark that seems to fester in a trail behind every Devil Hunter that roams the city.
And it’s only early evening, but it’s a slow day and Kishibe can’t say he has anything better to do than sip whiskey beside his closest coworker at five in the evening, mind mostly and blissfully tranquil.
Except – as always – these moments of mental platitude never last. He should have learnt that by now, but Kishibe is a little too naïve for his own good, sometimes.
Katana gets under his skin, insidious, even when he’s not present. He’s the kind of man that forms the total antithesis to Kishibe: too brash, too stubborn, too fucking much, and Kishibe should hate him. Maybe a couple of years back, before work mellowed him just a little, he would have done. As it stands, Katana’s personal number is saved in his phone, keyed in under his family name (they’re too close for titles, too distant for given names), far enough down his contact list that Kishibe only has to think about it when he’s looking for it.
“You’re so predictable.”
Kishibe sips his drink, rolls his eyes when he thinks Quanxi isn’t looking over. “It’s been a long day.”
“And you’re placating yourself thinking about your girl?”
He doesn’t call her a hypocrite, though he could. Kishibe hasn’t seen one of Quanxi’s girls reappear more than once, always with Quanxi’s same possessive arm around her waist and a dreamlike daze in her eyes, like Quanxi hung the stars in the sky just for her – it’s a vision that makes him take a swig from his hip flask every time he’s hit with it, a preemptive drink for a newbie’s inevitable demise. He respects her ability to detach, at least. A non-zero amount of the women are Public Safety, and a non-zero amount of them become mission collateral, and yet she throws herself back into another relationship a few weeks later.
Perhaps it’s loneliness, Kishibe ponders, without really caring that he’s lapsed into another obvious silence, contemplating. A mantra as old as time, Devil Hunting is solitary confinement, and so he knows too many of his coworkers have turned to casual relationships and nightly outings, any kind of connection that might fill the void.
Kishibe’s weapon of choice is booze, not as a replacement for people but as a salve, for the daily grind and the nature of the work and all the rest of it. Quanxi accompanies him most evenings, and they’re not particularly friends but closer to amenable coworkers these days, enough so that she’s the perfect kind of drinking partner, kept at a distance.
He doesn’t get lonely, not any more. It’s been beaten out of him.
What can he call this, then? Whatever it is, this— fling with Katana isn’t born from patented Devil Hunter loneliness, nor a deepset desire for a life of normalcy and picket fences and two kids, one dog. It’s a difficult feeling for Kishibe to put his finger on, when he can barely make sense of his day-to-day despite how many times he’s been through it.
An urge to satisfy, a sick sort of intrigue. Both of those work well enough, Kishibe supposes. He’s a man with needs and wants, with hormones that continue to spike despite decades of trying to get used to them.
Quanxi swears like a sailor from somewhere beside him, waving her glass around in the air as if to illustrate some point she hasn’t made, and then slams it back down on the wood bartop once she’s regained Kishibe’s half-hearted attention. “Stop zoning out.” It’s evident enough that he’s lost in thought, considering his glass is still more than half full after twenty minutes of being here.
“I’m not.” Kishibe lies. “I’m reminiscing.”
The woman beside him scoffs, throws back the rest of her drink while Kishibe sips his own, slow for once. “What is there to look back on fondly in this job?”
He doesn’t say her name – Quanxi’s past mentee that she was a little too fond of, tender where it hurts every time she’d take her home from one of their drinking outings, and Kishibe may be down on life but he’s not a cruel man at his core. He still has a couple of soft spots that haven’t quite calloused over, for Quanxi and the soft lights of an izakaya at closing and hell, for Katana as well.
It’s nowhere near closing time now, they’ve basically just gotten here, but Quanxi sighs once more like she’s got Minami on the mind as well, and stands from her stool with only the slightest quake in her step.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Kishibe nods his assent, knows he’ll be back in the building by nine no matter how fucked up he gets tonight, and with that Quanxi leaves into the dwindling evening light. He watches her walk away, a familiar sight throughout the years, though the pull at Kishibe’s heartstrings has lessened with the passage of time.
And then he’s alone, still nursing a drink, hunched over in his jacket like the pathetic fifty-year-old man he truly is at his core, still letting the cacophony of the place’s other patrons wash over him like a too-cold shower, water bill nowhere near the front of his mind, as always. It should be jarring, it should be uncomfortable, to be alone like this and unprotected most of all, but Kishibe prides himself on his reflexes and his ability to claw and kick and fight dirty, and at the root of it all: he doesn’t care.
He finishes his first whiskey in silence, lets the bartender place another in front of him, equally as full-bodied and wordless. The second goes down just as smoothly, halfway, before he’s interrupted.
“Didn’t expect to see you here.” Fuck.
Katana slides into what was previously Quanxi’s seat, doesn’t bother to ask if he can or not, doesn’t bother to question the glare obviously painted on Kishibe’s face either. He flags down a staff member for a drink with all the grace expected of a man embroiled in the Yakuza, shaped by violence until he grew, through his adult years, into the exact stereotype that now has the people around them glancing nervously at Katana, and at Kishibe beside him.
Kishibe allows himself a moment to swallow the sip in his mouth and the aftertaste as well, while he tries to figure out if and how he can steer the situation. “You knew I’d be here.”
“You give me too much credit.” Katana smirks, one thick hand wrapped around the stein of his beer, like he wants to crush it. “It’s been a long day, and I want to unwind.”
That tone of voice is too familiar to Kishibe, enough so that it makes his stomach clench. Not out of regret or anything of the sort – but because he’s given into it enough times for that exact timbre to trigger a sort of Pavolvian response. Hearing Katana speak to him like that lowers all his defences, too easily.
An arm is thrown around Kishibe’s shoulders, casual to any onlookers but a sordid little promise to Kishibe himself; slowly, Katana’s fingers trace around the edge of Kishibe’s chest, thumb brushing nearly imperceptibly against his nipple through the thick material of his shirt. He doesn’t lean into the sensation, he doesn’t, he vehemently denies it with just a half-hearted shove to Katana’s upper bicep. “Stop.”
Katana looks at him like being denied is a total foreign concept, and maybe it is. They don’t talk about their personal lives or anything that could be misconstrued as emotional in that manner, but Kishibe has heard a tale or two about Katana’s time in organised crime, enough to know that he’s stubborn enough for rejection to be near meaningless.
Still, Kishibe doesn’t bother trying to stop him, not properly, the drink dulling his senses the the point at which Katana’s hands on him are a touch he leans into rather than away from.
They continue for a little while, usual back-and-forth, Katana’s hands wandering across Kishibe’s body regardless of who’s watching them. After all these years of numbing everything with alcohol, Kishibe’s become resistant to it, and so he’s nowhere near drunk enough when Katana’s fingers wrap around his upper thigh, pressing into the crease of his limb.
”Aoi.”
Katana grunts at the sound of his own name, hissed between Kishibe’s teeth like a dirty kind of admission. His body betrays his façade, muscles twitching into the contact no matter how he grimaces in Katana’s general direction.
“Don’t be stupid,” the other man replies, simple enough like it’s nothing. “You know what we’re going to end up doing with the rest of the night, you’re a smart man. You know why we’re here.”
Kishibe can’t particularly think straight enough to comprehend any of it as Katana’s hand settles still, fingers occasionally shifting closer and closer to his dick as the dark-haired man moves to drink, look around, gesture for a refill. It’s not like Kishibe’s some kind of blushing virgin, far from it, but he’s not the kind of man to share details, not like some of his colleagues tend to when they’re firmly in the middle of a drunken afterglow.
He presses his eyes shut as Katana’s whole palm wraps around his cunt, pressing the heel of his hand against his cock despite the thick fabric of Kishibe’s slacks separating the two of them. Katana is unreadable as ever; even when the older man stares at him, nothing in his gaze once he’s managed to suppress his desperation, Kishibe can’t figure out what his goal is here. Does he just want to fuck in the seedy bathroom, second stall from the right, a hand clamped over Kishibe’s mouth to shut him up? Or is he trying to rile Kishibe up, enough that he gives in and calls them a car, takes him back to his apartment where he can ride Katana until his brain stops trying to make sense of something senseless?
“Let me finish my drink.” Kishibe mumbles an octave deeper, and Katana’s hand doesn’t withdraw nor speed up its ministrations at the admission, the way he’s giving in.
And so he’s left in the cold, to sip at whiskey that doesn’t heat his insides the way it should while Katana strokes him off in the middle of Kishibe’s favourite izakaya. It’s embarrassing to admit that he’s more than turned on, hunched over on his seat like he’s going through a midlife crisis and not dripping into his underwear, and it’s somehow even more embarrassing to acknowledge it’s some bull-headed Hybrid doing it all to him.
The bartender flashes him a look when Kishibe manages to drag his head upright rather than staring at the veins of Katana’s hand and the floor past that, like he knows what’s going on and he’s disgusted, pitying him, concerned not for his safety but for his lacking rational thought. That makes two of us, Kishibe thinks to himself wryly, shifting on his seat in search of a little more friction.
— — —
It’s exhaustion and being too pent-up that has Kishibe throwing himself back onto his sheets, jacket shed somewhere in the hallway, shirt unbuttoned at some point in the genkan. His lips ache, still slick with Katana’s saliva and the taste of too much liquor and being chewed like a rabid dog, like the man he’s hooking up with is more Devil than human.
Katana watches, idle, from the corner of the room, slowly undressing himself in stark comparison to the way Kishibe kicks off his dress shoes uncaring of where they land. He’s not used to this level of desperation, and it’s especially uncharacteristic when Katana is the one who propositioned for the night to end like this.
Kishibe doesn’t want to think about it anymore. He’s done more than enough of that for one day, one lifetime – he needs to be driven out of his mind instead, and he tells Katana as much while trying to drag air into his lungs.
He’s met with a scoff. “You can take what I give you.” Hedonistic as fucking always.
Once the dark-haired man finally, finally shuffles to stand in between Kishibe’s open thighs, he’s taken his time so much that Kishibe’s had too many moments to lie with his simmering irritation. Katana’s very existence pisses him off to his core, and the fact that the man can’t even fuck him like he promises leaves Kishibe with very little to look up to.
Without even half a thought about the action, Kishibe wraps his hand in the collar of Katana’s shirt, still on for some fucking reason, and drags him down until he’s throwing a hand out onto the mattress to regain his balance.
”Fuck me, Aoi.”
It might be underhanded to throw Katana’s name in there with all the malic Kishibe can dredge up, but he couldn’t care less. He’s been wet since they left the bar, cock twitching every time he shifted and was reminded of Katana’s firm hand against his most sensitive area, and Kishibe’s not a man who likes to wait for what he deserves.
Katana laughs again where he’s hovering over Kishibe’s form. “Is that how you want it to be?”
Considering Kishibe actually bothers to contribute to society in a roundabout way, their mid-week encounters normally fall into the usual dynamic, easy enough – Kishibe lets Katana rail him like a challenge, trying to make the older man’s composure shatter, reminding Kishibe why he keeps and keeps coming back. Rarely, Kishibe has the energy to take any kind of control, but he’ll happily run on spite if it lets him put Katana back in his place.
He doesn’t answer with words, lest they give him away once again, only pushes Katana back to stand and follows him upright, before twirling him around and dropping him down to the bed, leaving Kishibe himself in Katana’s earlier position. It’s something of a dance, perhaps more suited to two lovers that fit seamlessly together rather than clashing at every step.
From there, it’s easy enough for Kishibe to settle with his knees either side of Katana’s thighs, stripping his shirt from his shoulders and letting Katana’s fingers come up to trace the various scars across his torso. He’ll allow him that much, at least.
“You’re beautiful.” Katana doesn’t say it particularly reverently, not like he’s looking at Kishibe like some sort of higher power – instead it’s plain, calm, like a fact of life or something. He can’t tell if he hates it, the compliment tainted by their circumstance, or if he’ll revel in it once Katana’s left.
In this moment, he meets Katana’s sudden tenderness with a sharp glare, fingers clenching at the duvet beside him. Kishibe isn’t here for emotion. He never has been.
They slip into sweet silence as they strip down to nothing, Kishibe shivering a little at the stillness of the room and Katana’s heavyweight stare, cold even despite the thick layer of hair across his body induced by hormones. And stare he does – Kishibe can feel the other man’s eyes trace him like a laser beam, cutting through his soft flesh, sloughing off the bone.
Katana is evidently wasting very little time, already half-hard with one knee on the edge of the bed, hovering like some sort of insect, hands already cupping Kishibe’s hips on either side. On the back of his own tongue, the older man tastes his earlier whiskey, begs somewhere in his hind brain for Katana’s spit to replace it.
He’s just about to speak again when there’s a blunt pressure at his hole, all too familiar, and Kishibe sprawls his legs a little wider, waiting for it. “You fucking— Stretch me first.”
“I am.” Katana bites back, and Kishibe realises it’s the other man’s ridiculous thick ring finger splitting him open rather than his cock. No matter how often they do this, how long Katana spends inside of him, under his skin – maybe Kishibe isn’t quite accustomed to it. Decades of security in his body still can’t replace formative years of unease, and a small little part of the Devil Hunter still feels like he’s putting an act on, every so often.
Kishibe thickens his skin with booze and women and the endless, endless spiel of self-satisfaction that he rattles off every time he gets inside his head again, and he’s coming back round to reality with Katana’s digit shifting inside of him, an indicator that all the usual vices that Kishibe uses to placate himself have become null, void. The uncomfortable reality is that sex with this Fiend is suddenly special, and Kishibe can think in depth about it as much as he wants but he’ll keep coming back.
Katana’s other hand meets the meat of Kishibe’s upper thigh, not particularly a slap but not gentle either. “Stop spacing out,” a drawl. I’m not, Kishibe’s unvoiced retort.
He’s never particularly vocal in bed, something that Katana seems to take as a challenge every time, and that key little trait comes to fruition again as Katana scissors two fingers in Kishibe’s cunt and the older man’s only reaction comes in the form of a furrowed brow, eyelids shuttering momentarily. It’s not rare for them to fuck but it’s rare for Katana to take his sweet time like this, too consistently impatient to not sink into Kishibe the moment he’s able to.
There’s very little fanfare when Katana withdraws his fingers, instead shifting to thumb the tip of Kishibe’s cock like he’s just now remembered the best way to make the other man feel good. He’s right, annoyingly – Kishibe sets his jaw, wills the thigh that Katana is now gripping not to twitch as he pushes the length of his cock inside the older man.
He fucks unrelenting, harsh, like Kishibe is nothing more than an antelope caught in Katana’s lion jaws. And it’s good, as well, it’s more than good when Kishibe can switch his brain off and relax his muscles after a long, long day and simply become a ragdoll on his own bed, let Katana’s cock drive into him. He’s still quiet, pleasure etched more on his face than the tone of his voice; still, Katana drinks up every tiny thing that Kishibe will give him.
It’s good, it’s good, it’s good, Kishibe repeats like some kind of mantra exclusively in his head, gripping the sheets until his knuckles turn white. Katana’s thrusts are pushing him further up the bed, pulling him back down onto his cock by the waist, a push-and-pull not unlike the war that often rages in his head when Kishibe has a rare moment of lucidity, to figure out what the fuck he’s doing in all of this.
Katana groans, throws his head back. “You feel incredible.”
Kishibe’s just about starting to feel the heat pool at the base of his abdomen when Katana stops for no reason at all, panting like he’s run a marathon and his age surpassed him to the finish line. He grits his teeth as his release steadily but surely abates from Katana’s sudden idleness, tries to fix him with a glare without looking desperate.
“Already?”
“It’s been a while.” Katana hums, looking like he doesn’t remember how to feel remorse. “Plus, you weren’t close.”
He doesn’t even bother to contend with that; it’s true. Hell, Kishibe knows he’s getting on in age now, it’s no surprise that he doesn’t come as quick as he used to, though that doesn’t stop him from letting irritation bubble under his skin.
Katana continues, “I want to hear you,” starting to move again without warning. It’s difficult, too difficult for Kishibe to tune out the rest of the world and focus on himself, but as Katana starts to fuck him again, he thinks it might be possible, easier and easier.
Annoyingly – this time it works, and Kishibe can feel himself getting somehow harder and harder, closer and closer, and his previously gritted sounds are more audible with how his mouth slips open, lax. Aoi leans in closer, every time he hears the older man’s pleasure, and between Kishibe’s moaning and the slick sound of his cunt, it’s a miracle he’s even able to process anything else.
“Aoi, don’t stop,” Kishibe thinks he might groan somewhere in the haze, too far gone to even care about the use of his given name this time around, and Aoi meets it with a wild grin, knowing that he’s finally burrowed through Kishibe’s harsh outer shell and to the soft, unfortunately human flesh underneath.
Kishibe can’t even see straight, all of a sudden, only focusing on the ceiling any time his eyes manage to open. He’s so hard that there can’t be any blood in all the rest of his body, dripping onto his own sheets with very little care for the pain it’ll be to wash out tomorrow morning before he’s back to work, but Aoi doesn’t stop and Kishibe doesn’t dare ask him to.
No matter how much Aoi wants to hear him, and how much Kishibe wants to give in, there’s some mental block there, but that doesn’t stop him from choking out every breath, fists clenched in the duvet because he knows any contact on his dick would send him hurtling over the edge, brainless.
In the end, Kishibe comes entirely untouched, and he knows Aoi can tell by the way he moans and drives ever deeper, relishing in the ever-increasingly obscene slick sound of the older man’s cunt.
Somewhere in the background, Aoi is cursing to himself, over and over again, mumbling simultaneous praise and insult about how good Kishibe feels, how tight he is, nails digging into Kishibe’s waist as he comes, and Kishibe groans at the warmth that spreads inside of him. He feels strangely claimed and that doesn’t irritate him as deeply as it should – perhaps due to the haze of good sex, or something larger and blossoming that he doesn’t have the brainpower to think about right now.
Without being asked, Aoi pulls out and leaves somewhere in search of a cloth to clean them both up; Kishibe pulls himself to a sitting position, ignores the sharp twinge in the muscle of his back and scrabbles for his smokes he knows are always on the left-side table, beside the bed. A vile little mix of his and Aoi’s come slips out of him, and Kishibe still doesn’t have the wherewithal to complain about it.
The other man reappears, tries to meet Kishibe’s eyes and rolls them when the Devil Hunter won’t reciprocate, and just like that they’re back to Katana and Kishibe and all that formality that plagues the two of them and the fucked-up red string in between.
He smokes until the closed windows render the room even hotter than before, and lets Katana gently clean him up with too much love. It is, simply, what it is – Kishibe will call him back again in a couple of days, and Katana will come back. It is the way it is. Kishibe doesn’t argue with fate, or whatever he should be calling it now.
— — —
It never fucking stops.
There’s a creeping feeling on his spine like a spider embedded in his flesh, tapping up and down the vertebrae until he can’t ignore it for much longer. Kishibe notices his coworkers watching him, out of the corners of their eyes, like he’s a wild animal about to pounce and maybe he is if this tension doesn’t abate.
He’s smoking cigarettes down to the filter like he’s twenty again and pining for a woman who doesn’t want him, stepping outside with barely a wave of his hand to indicate his exit. The fourth time the ache for nicotine hits him, on a casual little Tuesday, nothing of note – rather than head to the usual balcony to smoke, Kishibe steps into the alley that runs beside the building, teeming with rats and grime.
Kishibe knows who the shadow is before he even speaks.
“Are you stalking me at work now?” He asks on an exhale, idle as the smoke tendrils around his face and the bricks above Kishibe’s head. Katana just watches, barely bemused, with a foot up on the wall like he’s playing at being a Yakuza stereotype. More so than usual.
A non-answer is what he’s given, in the simple form of “I was in the area.”
Kishibe throws his first cigarette to the floor rather than a passive drop, needing something insignificant to take his infinite irritation out on, and grinds it into a fine dust with the toe of his boot. “You don’t live near here.”
“You don’t know that.” Katana responds with an accompanying arch of an eyebrow, turns to face Kishibe instead of watching the Tokyo foot traffic pass them both by. He’s right: Kishibe doesn’t know, but he was hoping the fake-out would throw off the other man’s footing in the conversation.
As always, personal life is not a thing they discuss. It’s toeing too many lines for them to even be here – Kishibe is used to only ever contacting Katana when he can’t quite control himself, never in the middle of the day, never outside of Kishibe’s place of work. The only thing Kishibe can bring himself to commend is that it’s daring for a Hybrid of Katana’s nature to show his face around these parts, but that commendation does not necessarily equal respect.
”Fine,” Katana relents, without Kishibe even having to say anything more. “But I was in the area for other reasons, not that it’s anything you need to know.”
“It is when you’re here.” Kishibe mumbles around the length of his second cigarette, snapping the trigger of his years-old lighter like a shotgun barrel until it works. Katana’s quiet off the back of that, half pressed into silence and half enthralled, taking in the sight of a midday Kishibe, while he still retains a little more energy, a little more spite.
Katana continues. “I wanted to case out the place, see who they’ve got in Public Safety these days.” There’s a glint to his eye that implies something Kishibe doesn’t know; he considers, briefly, the mismatch of recruits, Hayakawa and the chainsaw boy and a couple of others, that girl whose Devil contract he still hasn’t managed to puzzle out. None of them seem like the type to be on the receiving end of Katana’s ire.
That same creeping feeling hits again, like Kishibe can tell something is more than wrong, just out of frame. There must be a greater meaning to all of this; there has to be, if Katana’s decided to show his face now, but Kishibe can’t figure out if it’s related to their messy little situation or not. He can’t even read the other man’s expression properly, as he turns to watch the road once more.
“Who are you actually looking for?”
“You, of course.”
He smiles, all unnatural across the half of his face that Kishibe can see, from his position stood a few feet away and in the dark back of the alley. It’s an obvious lie, but Katana is as unmoving and impenetrable as the brick wall he’s leaning against, and nothing shows on his expression that allows Kishibe to call him out on it.
Kishibe takes a moment to inhale, exhale, taste the smoke that curls around his tongue like it’s intending to comfort and failing. “That’s not true.”
Again, Katana doesn’t meet his eyes, a never-ending vicious cycle. “You don’t know that.”
It’s fruitless. It’s hopeless. Kishibe doesn’t bother pressing the matter; they’ll just keep going in circles, Katana refusing to give and Kishibe refusing to take it until either one of them snaps.
Maybe it’s in that moment that he does snap – before logical thought gets the chance to make itself known in the situation, Kishibe is lunging for Katana, knife unsheathed and pointed for the Hybrid’s stomach, the part where he’s still fleshy and human no matter how hard they both try.
Katana responds in kind, a full transformation in the blink of an eye, two blades protruding from his clenched fist and the third jutting from his forehead, human features gone. There’s no eyes that Kishibe can see but he feels pierced a fourth time by Katana’s stare, daring him to push any further when he’s caged.
He is caged. The above blade is flush with Kishibe’s head; the other two katana either side of his throat, the sharp edge just indenting the flesh, not quite cutting yet. Kishibe thinks he can taste blood in the back of his throat, not literally yet, but a promise of what’s to come.
Kishibe’s tense, too tense, so tense that he loses momentary focus and that’s always his fatal flaw. Katana doesn’t stab him, nor tear his head from his shoulders, no matter how easily he could; instead, quicker than Kishibe’s feebly human mind can keep up with, he punches him square in the center of the face, the part where metal meets flesh.
Once the pain hits him, white-hot, looping like a siren, Kishibe stumbles back, lets the knife clatter to the floor and clutches at the blood pouring from his nose. It’s gushing but thankfully not broken, and even as he watches the crimson drip across his fingers, it’s starting to slow. Katana has disappeared, already.
Kishibe knows something is going on, just under the surface, but he’s gotten this far by refusing to worry about things he can’t yet fix. Katana is a threat to the careful peace of his life and career, but it’s a threat that Kishibe knows he can handle in the event that comes to fruition, and that’s what allows him to fall asleep on the nights he’s alone.
Kishibe watches the space he used to occupy, drops the burnt-out remains of one final cigarette to mix with the rest of the filth in the alleyway and spits a glob of saliva and blood over it, turns on his heel away from the scene. If anything is going on with the Hybrid, Kishibe reckons he can choke it out of him next time he’s inevitably riding him, and it’s with that idle thought that he brushes the rest of his anxiety and confusion away.
— — —
It’s entirely unceremonious when it happens. Kishibe re-enters the building, gets called aside and told about the raid on Katana and his accomplice. They’re promising this’ll be it for Special Division 4; either they succeed, or they die. He nods, doesn’t say a word in case the unidentifiable emotion burning up his throat like acid spills alongside the speech.
He doesn’t think of Aoi, the tilt of his head, the stubborn look he always fixes Kishibe with that gives way to disgusting endearment when they’re in bed together. He doesn’t think of Katana, either, as his head spins down the hallway, drunken for the first time in decades. He doesn’t. He can’t.
— — —
When he just about comes back to reality, a couple of hours later, Kishibe’s surrounded once more – surly businessmen, women smoking when the staff have their backs turned, new hires trying to impress their seniors. By that metric, he blends in seamlessly, just another regular guy stacking glasses to those that don’t look too closely.
The screen of his shitty phone lights up, some incoherent and meaningless communication, but now the phone’s on and what the fuck, Kishibe thinks with a sigh.
He’s in a different place than usual, the need for a change of scenery overriding the need for a routine, the result of walking to his usual haunt and then continuing past it in a haze. Izakayas of this metric are a dime a dozen in the corporate end of Tokyo, and so Kishibe’s drinking the same whiskey he always does, the lifeblood of a proper Japanese corporate zombie, hunched over and sat alone all the same.
The message he sends to Katana is tapped out without looking, probably misspelt in part but if it conveys his intentions well enough then it doesn’t matter. It chirps at him once the text and the location pin has been delivered, and Kishibe shoves it back in his jacket, still uncaring, still not seeing. Either Katana appears or he doesn’t, after their fight earlier – Kishibe isn’t quite sure which outcome he’d prefer, at this point.
In the indelicate interim, between the vulnerability of reaching out and Katana’s undeniable arrival, Kishibe makes small talk with the bartender, not wanting a repeat of that same scorned look he remembers all too well from his outing a week ago. Nothing of too much interest; they mumble about the bodies in the streets and any impersonal details of their jobs they can afford the other.
He keeps staring at Kishibe, really looking like there’s something there, and the older man can’t decipher what it is. It’s not like he’s a stranger to being observed, but there’s too many people with their eyes on Kishibe as of late and he can never determine why.
Katana appears. As always, unceremonious, and the bartender’s face falls a little when he takes the seat at the bar to Kishibe’s left, immediately shuffles closer than most would even dare. He watches the bar staff’s back as he turns to talk to some other patron instead, leaves Kishibe locked back into a duel in the form of conversation with Katana. It’d be entirely justified if Katana questions his sudden anger from earlier, but he doesn’t, and for that Kishibe’s thankful.
It’s ridiculous; Kishibe called him here, and yet now Katana is present, his skin crawls and his head aches with the early claws of a migraine. In one part, it might be the usual cocktail, regret for being tangled in all of this and some kind of repression he thought he had shed years ago. In another, it might be a new concoction, regret for letting this happen to the man he had allowed closer, repressing his true feelings in the face of his duty.
“You told me you only start drinkin’ early when a recruit dies.” Katana’s eyes narrow, like he’s already accusing Kishibe of something. It’s not even early, really, he’s started drinking earlier in the past, but he normally tries to talk himself out of meeting up with Katana for a few more hours, never normally this weak.
He meets the man’s dark irises with his own, a little dazed in spite of his years of building tolerance and experience. “Are you my fucking husband or something?” Is that too close to the line?
Is there even a line, the other cynical half of Kishibe’s brain supplements.
Katana just laughs, once and barked like a dog, and looks around the place, leaning forwards on the bar counter like he’s a greaser chatting Kishibe up or something. “And do you often come to places like this?”
Places like this, Kishibe realises upon a cursory glance around, refers to the gay bar he must have stumbled into without realising. As he looks around, he catches sight of too many men eyeing both him and Katana, leather photography framed on the walls, the low pulse of trashy club music betraying the direction of the later night. Those new hires must be chasing attention from their superiors in other, sordid ways. Kishibe can only thank the fact that he had the wherewithal to go far, far away from his usual haunts – and yet, Katana still comes to him.
It should be endearing; maybe in another world, it could, but as it stands, as they stand, Kishibe can’t allow himself to be endeared to anything much. Another one of those survival mechanisms, that allow him to survive rather than live.
“You have plenty of experience with gay bars, don’t you?” Katana continues, waving down a different bartender to make an order, and it doesn’t feel necessarily like the jeer it should be. Kishibe isn’t naïve to think he’s the only man Katana’s hooked up with, in the past and in the present, and he doesn’t want to think about if that does play on his mind or not.
“Less of that.” Kishibe glances around, like he’s the only man in the bar about to proposition another tonight. If it were even ten years before – well. Kishibe has all-too-vivid memories about his attempts in the past. Even if he is in a safer space here, the nature of their relationship is dangerous in too many ways. Devil Hunter and Hybrid, two men in a gay bar, by unconscious intent or by mistake. “Are we going to my place or your’s?”
Normally, it’s Kishibe’s, ever too weak to insist otherwise, so it’s a moderate surprise when Katana swallows the liquor in his mouth and says, “Mine.” His glass clinks as it lands empty back on the bartop, spins a little with the force of Katana’s placement.
That’s it decided then. Kishibe doesn’t want to co-exist much longer with the knowledge of the mission that won’t stop plaguing him, the subordinate’s unfeeling words on loop in his head every time he makes eye contact with Katana. He pushes his glass away from him, next to Katana’s own, and follows the other man with his head down. Katana doesn’t look back, but he only knows he never has to.
— — —
Thankfully, some small mercy, Katana’s own apartment is in the opposite direction to the small sphere of Tokyo that Kishibe primarily exists in. At least, in the low light, Kishibe doesn’t have to see the same convenience store and high-rise buildings he saw on his earlier walk home, as he was turning the mission and every possible outcome over in his mess of a mind.
He’s trying not to think about it again, an elephant in Katana’s own bedroom, when the other man reappears, shirtless, a length of crimson rope in one hand.
“I want to try something,” Katana starts as soon as the door to the outside shuts, and Kishibe can only hope it’s something that’ll allow him to forget everything that dangles over his head, a cartoon anvil. He knows exactly where this is going; Katana’s never tied him up before, their bedroom restraint typically taking the form of Katana’s one hand over Kishibe’s wrists and nothing else, but Kishibe can’t say he’s averse to the idea in the slightest.
He gives himself up in full, content in the mist of submission and vulnerability, kicks off his work slacks and underwear lets Aoi guide him into a kneeled position, head bowed. Kishibe thinks Aoi has some kind of fetish for fucking him still half-clothed in his work uniform, and it’s no different this time as he leaves Kishibe’s crisp shirt partially unbuttoned, the slight bulge of his hard t-dick far too evident. Aoi is staring, mouth dry, that same expression he always has on when he’s about to compliment Kishibe in a way that’s going to itch.
Kishibe’s own voice cracks a little when he finally remembers how to speak. “How are you doing this?”
There are three separate ropes, he realises now, as Aoi lays two of them down on the sheets and moves to sit behind Kishibe with the third. He starts with the older man’s hands, pulls his forearms until they’re parallel and loops red around the tense muscle, brushes work-thickened fingertips across the light scars that cover the skin. Upon guidance, still wordless, Kishibe tugs at the bindings and affirms that he can’t move out of them, that he’s comfortable, that he’s more than fine to continue.
Aoi shifts around with the dexterity of a man who has done this before, too determined, as he ties Kishibe’s lower legs underneath his thighs until he’s stuck in a crouched position, balancing on his knees and his toes, spread wide open and prepared. The final element: a soft black blindfold to shield his eyes from the dim bedroom light, and Kishibe accepts it simply because it’s from Aoi, and he’s throwing self-preservation to the wind just for tonight.
Tomorrow, things will change, and tomorrow’s version of him can deal with that. For now – Kishibe wants to come, hard enough that his rational thought ceases to operate, and that he can look Aoi in the eyes without it feeling like betrayal to both sides.
“Breathtaking.” Aoi says from somewhere in the darkness, and Kishibe drops his head once more. “I’m going to eat you out, alright?”
He slides Kishibe forwards on the sheets until he can feel Aoi’s soft breath under him, against his cock and his hole, and it should be too vulnerable and embarrassing but the man knocks all that nerve out of Kishibe with a single swipe of his tongue. Kishibe’s too wet already, smearing his pre across Aoi’s lips with the small movements he can make – even with the rope ties, Aoi has his arms wrapped around Kishibe’s immobile legs, holding him in place and seated on Aoi’s face.
Kishibe’s stuck in the middle of some kind of out-of-body experience, pleasured whimpers rough with the tone of his voice but weak little noises nonetheless. He can’t wrap his fingers in Aoi’s hair like he wishes he could, resorting to grinding and writhing and letting Aoi consume him in whole, alternating between sucking his dick and laving in wide strokes over his hole, until Kishibe’s loose enough for Aoi to slide two of his fingers deep enough to rub at his prostrate.
The sensation has Kishibe shuttering, crumpling forward and only upright by virtue of Aoi keeping him in place, groaning even louder until he thinks the surrounding neighbours might be thumping at the wall. “Aoi, Aoi, A— going to come, fuck, coming, f—”
Aoi grips him ever tighter as Kishibe rides out his orgasm on the other man’s tongue, forcing himself to keep moving past the tightening of his abdomen and the sound of slick filling Aoi’s mouth and the oversensitivity that bites at him once it comes to a sudden, abrupt end.
He’s still dazed, still half-present, as Aoi immediately pulls himself to his feet, doesn’t even bother taking his own slacks off and instead pushing them mid-thigh enough to tug his hard cock out, pumping it with the slide of his own pre-come already beading at the head. Kishibe can’t see the movement, but he knows the sounds too well, enough that a flush rises on his cheeks just from the fantasy.
“Lie back for me,” and Aoi sounds so affected by just eating Kishibe out that it almost makes him come again, on the spot. In the state that he’s in, he can just about make out Aoi’s request, trusts in the other man as Kishibe freefalls onto his back, grits his teeth as he lands heavily and bonelessly on his still-tied arms, cunt twitching with the cool breeze of the air that passes him by.
Kishibe’s already loose from Aoi’s earlier frenzied fingering, but Aoi’s dick is bigger than it has any right to be and it’s so fucking thick, it carves him open relentlessly until their combined panting is the only sound in the room, Kishibe shifting a little every time Aoi’s cock twitches inside of him. It feels like he might die, collapse like a supernova star once Aoi starts fucking him like he has so many times before, but the blindfold and the one-sided sentimentality of the whole situation amps it up to a thousand.
His thighs quake where they’re propped up by Aoi’s firm torso, so wet still that he’s making a total mess of Aoi’s own upper thighs and waist and dense pubic hair, creaming on his cock with every harsh thrust and zero capacity to feel embarrassed by how much of a disaster he is.
Kishibe can’t say he’s ever felt so distinctly submissive under the other man, under any man, but there’s tears prickling at the corner of his eyes underneath the blindfold and he’s moving up the bed with the force of Aoi fucking him and moaning so long and low that it could be mistaken for a drone, a hypothetical warning that in reality only serves to indicate Kishibe’s own pleasure.
He can’t even distinguish the build of his orgasm from the actual climax, the ability to think straight stolen from him in the same way his sight is, and Kishibe just lets Aoi use him and focuses on trying to keep himself from saying something he’ll regret. The rope bites at his flesh as he falls apart again and again and again, quivers apart at the seams, wrists rubbing raw from the friction as Aoi finally folds himself over Kishibe’s curled-up frame and comes, hot and white, inside of him, like some sort of claim. Finality.
— — —
Aoi unties him, salves over the rope burn with lotion he seems to have to hand like he’s used to doing this, takes the responsibility of cleaning them both up as he always does and leaves a glass of water on the windowsill behind the bedframe. In the midst of all of that, Kishibe flits in and out of sleep, suddenly bone-tired with the stress of the imminent day and the exertion of being fucked so intensely.
He comes back around when Aoi slides under the olive-green sheets and doesn’t immediately tell Kishibe to leave; instead, he turns on his side to watch the older man, drinks in every muscle and softer curve of his time-weary body like it’s a top-shelf liquor.
Kishibe stretches to open the window above him, itching for his usual post-sex cigarette from the carton he must have abandoned beside the glass. Maybe Aoi did that as well, another too-tender indicator of how well they know each other. Even with that acknowledgement, Kishibe once again can’t bring himself to look at Aoi beside him. Nothing ever changes, does it, really? For all of the previous two hours, all the emotional unravelling Kishibe has pulled himself through – it’s all the same.
The cigarette comes and goes in silence, Aoi still watching, Kishibe still smoking. From an external perspective, maybe they’re the perfect facsimile of content domesticity, married life, put into a vacuum and contextless for the moment. It’s just the moon through the city pollution and the outside streetlights and the cherry of Kishibe’s smoke that illuminates the two of them, casts highlight over Aoi’s bare face like the goodbye caress of some kind of lover.
“There’s something on your mind,” Aoi says into the tranquillity, an attempt to shatter it with a thoughtless admission, and Kishibe shakes his head like the liar he always will be.
“It’s nothing.” He exhales acrid smoke, thinks about katana blades and two sides of a futile war and the end of a life, the start of another, the vulnerability of a given name turned over in one’s mind. “Go to sleep.”