This one takes place right after the party in episode 11.

By the time they got Omi checked out by a doctor and then home, it was past midnight. The poor kid was nearly asleep when they pulled up outside the shop. Aya all but carried him upstairs.

Yohji grabbed a beer and sat at the kitchen table. Aya came back down not long after.

"Beer?" Yohji asked him.

Aya hesitated and then nodded, slumping into a chair. Yohji got up and opened the fridge for another beer, enjoying the brief wash of cold air. When he handed it over, Aya tipped it back and drank half the bottle without pause.

"Hell of a night," Yohji said. Aya grunted. "That guy," Yohji started, and then stopped short. I've been fucking him didn't seem like a good conversation starter.

"He must work for Takatori."

Yohji drew patterns in the condensation on his beer bottle. He risked a glance at Aya, but Aya had no expression on his face at all. "He did something pretty bad to you, huh?" Yohji said quietly.

Aya's eyes focused on him, and his hands pressed flat to the table. He looked almost stricken at the question.

"Sorry, you don't have to--"

"He murdered my parents." Aya said it so fast that the words ran together. "My sister and I got out and he was there, waiting--" He stopped, jaw clenched.

"We'll get him," Yohji said. It was probably the wrong thing to say and his own revenge hadn't helped--fuck, not at all--but it was all there was to say. Aya thought it would help anyway, and maybe it would, for him.

Aya just nodded and took another pull at his beer.

"That was a good thing you did for Omi tonight." Someone ought to say it, Yohji thought, and Ken wouldn't.

Aya laughed shortly and shook his head. "You really think so?"

"You don't?"

"He's going to kill his family."

And Yohji couldn't think of anything to say to that. It was true, and saying they weren't really his family--well, that was true too, but maybe it didn't matter. Yohji'd never met his father, but that didn't mean he'd be okay with killing him.

"Can't believe he did that," Yohji muttered. "To his own brother. What's wrong with that family?"

But when he looked up from his beer, Aya was gone, mostly empty bottle sweating on the table. Condensation spread out in a little pool around its base. Yohji finished it, and his own.

He thought about Schuldig, something he'd avoided doing all night. He got up and poured himself a shot of whiskey. Not thinking was the better option.

The not thinking lasted all of five minutes. He dialed Schuldig's number as he slogged up the stairs to his room.

"What the hell?" he said, when Schuldig picked up.

"We work for the Takatoris. What'd you expect?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe not torturing my team mate? That would've been nice."

"I barely touched him. His brother was the one smacking him around. Isn't it sad when families fall out?"

"I've seen your faces, now I'll take your lives?"

"What? You don't appreciate my sense of drama?"

Yohji found himself smiling at that, just for a second. It was just so Schuldig.

And he worked for the bad guys. It had been bad enough when he was just some random hired killer. It had to stop.

Yohji hung up on him.

Omi disappeared the next night and returned in the morning, just in time to catch the news on television. He switched it on and sat on the couch, ignoring Ken and Yohji's questions, ignoring Aya's silent anger.

"--whose body was found this morning--" the television said. All three of them stopped and turned to watch the screen.

There were distant shots of Hirofumi's body being pulled out of the water and close-ups of the arrow shaft, already pulled from--the newscaster said--the victim's eye. There was no blood on it, only a translucent residue that could be anything from vitreous humor to brain tissue to some congealed bodily fluid. Maybe it was just gunk from the water.

It took Yohji at least a full minute of the weather report to drag his eyes away from the screen. Ken was looking at Omi with an expression Yohji couldn't read at all. Aya was gone. Omi met his eyes and smiled briefly at him.

"I should write the mission report," he said, and stood up. His expression turned uncertain, and Ken caught his arm as he stumbled.

"You should go back to bed," Ken said, and dragged him toward the stairs with a grip that had to be painful.

Omi was back downstairs by that afternoon, manning the counter, surrounded by the influx of high school girls fascinated by his bruises and abrasions with no idea how they got there.

"Were you in a fight, Omi-kun?" one of them asked, and the rest all leaned forward with a collective indrawn breath that sucked all the air out of the shop. Omi smiled and explained that he'd just fallen off his bike, and Yohji had to step outside.

Through the plate glass window, Omi looked the same as he ever had. The slight reflection cloaked his injuries, and even without the barrier between them, Yohji couldn't tell what was going on in the kid's head. He didn't look like he was trying to put on a good face. He looked unaffected, unchanged, like someone else had stood on that bridge last night and put an arrow through his brother's eye. There was something wrong with the world when Aya was easier to read than Omi was.

He turned away from the window and leaned against the brick wall, lighting a cigarette. A flash of color across the street jerked his head up, but it was only some woman's red scarf.

The brick was warm and rough and caught at Yohji's shirt. He slid down the wall into a squat and ended up with his back bared and lightly scratched. He sucked at his cigarette and watched a trickle of water run from one of the larger plants he'd hosed down earlier to the gutter.

His knees started whining after a minute or two, and the brick bit at his skin, but he didn't move. His cigarette burned down to the filter. The thing was, if he got up, he had nowhere to go but back inside.

Omi was creeping him out, just a little. It was a horrible thing to think about a friend, and he knew it, but still. Even so. He couldn't help it. So it's okay to kill as long as you make sure to bitch and moan about it afterwards?

The thought sounded so much like Schuldig that Yohji scanned the street again. No one there. He pushed himself to his feet and started back inside. At least the onslaught of underaged girls would keep him from thinking.

He'd left the window open when he went to bed. That was the first thing he remembered when he woke up with his wrists pinned behind his back and a cool breeze on his bare ass. He held himself still, mind straining for more information. It filtered in: he was naked; the person on top of him was too, at least from the waist down. When he turned his head to the side, he saw his watch was gone from the bedside table. And there was the scent.

"You smell like dandruff shampoo, Schuldig."

There was an offended stillness behind him, a just-perceptible tensing of the thighs that rested outside his own. "Fuck you too, Yohji. Try to show a guy a good time..."

"Your idea of a good time should get you jail time."

"It's a little late to claim you don't want it. Especially since you're already hard."

He was. Dammit. "Get the hell off me."

"Aw, you don't mean that." Schuldig ground his hips down against Yohji's ass. His cock slid in the valley between Yohji's cheeks.

Yohji gritted his teeth. "I really do."

"Go lie to somebody who can't read your mind. Lie to your little friends. Tell them you're not a slut, tell them you don't fuck around with the opposition."

"I didn't know!"

"Oh, yeah. I'm sure they'll care."

Even with as little movement as Schuldig was allowing him, he managed to get one knee drawn up, and that gave him some leverage. Schuldig couldn't be reading his mind all that closely, because Yohji's sudden backwards shove took him by surprise. He wrenched one of Yohji's arms as he fell back, but Yohji was free and on top of him in the next second.

Yohji grabbed his wrists and slammed him down against the bed. "Tell them," he snarled. "Go downstairs and fucking tell them right now. Either that or shut up about it. This blackmail crap is not going to work on me."

Schuldig smiled. "You don't really want that, do you? You think they'd let you stay here if they knew? Poor little Yohji, out on the streets, all alone."

"You don't know a goddamn thing about being alone, not like I do, and I can do it again if the alternative is letting you fuck with my head for fun and profit, so get your bony ass out of my bed and tell them!" He was yelling by the end of that. He hadn't meant to yell. He planted his foot in the middle of Schuldig's chest and shoved him off the bed.

Schuldig landed in an easy crouch and looked up at him through the strands of bright hair that fell across his face. He leapt, and Yohji was suddenly unsure of what he was seeing--feline grace or actual slitted cat eyes and shadow-gold stripes. He hit Yohji's body with bruising force and a solid thud, bearing him back against the mattress. Nails that might as well have been claws raked down Yohji's sides.

"You don't know shit about me," Schuldig said, soft and hot, right in Yohji's face. "You think I'm fucking with your head now? I can make you see anything I want, believe anything--"

"Is this the part where you 'come for my life'? Because I'm bored already."

"I'm going to cut you up in little pieces and feed you to--" And then Schuldig kissed him. Or more accurately bit his bottom lip and sucked hard at the small scrape left by his teeth until blood welled out of it. "I'm going to destroy you," Schuldig whispered, and his lips brushed Yohji's as they formed the words.

Yohji smiled a little. "Drama queen."

"I could."

"I know."

Schuldig frowned a little at that, and the lingering shadows of fur and teeth disappeared.

"A tiger?" Yohji said. "Seriously?"

"Shut up. First thing that came to mind."

His lips were still touching Yohji's, and they were so close Yohji couldn't really focus on his face. His hands were tight on Yohji's arms, not letting go.

"If you're not going to destroy me, I guess we could fuck instead." Yohji didn't know why he'd said it. Just because it was what they did, maybe. Because they wouldn't have to talk anymore, and things would only get worse if they kept talking.

There was a second where Schuldig looked almost uncertain, like he was thinking a dash for the window might be a better option. Yohji spread his legs and wrapped them around Schuldig's waist and kissed him, and Schuldig's hands dug into his hair and held on.

They broke briefly, and Yohji saw Schuldig's clothes wadded up at the end of the bed as if thrown down there with force. Schuldig's hips hitched lower, lined up with his, and their cocks slid together. Yohji reached for the tube on his bedside table, but Schuldig grabbed his wrist and rutted up against him, breath whining in his ear. He reached around and his fingers pressed between Yohji's cheeks. He wasn't trying for penetration, just a rubbing pressure that made Yohji squirm and bite at his neck and shove down hard against him.

Sweat and pre-come slicked their motions a little, but Yohji was getting off on the almost-too-much friction as well, and the way Schuldig's free hand scrabbled and scratched across his shoulders.

That was what made him lose his breath and his rhythm and wedge a desperate hand between them, stroking both of them together as rough as he could take it. His lip was bleeding again where Schuldig had bitten it, and that tang spread through his whole mouth and flavored the incomprehensible words Schuldig was projecting into his head. They followed each other too fast, and all Yohji really understood of them was his own name.

Schuldig came first and drew blood again with his nails as he did. Yohji followed a second later with Schuldig's come slicking his hand and cock.

Schuldig was utterly silent afterwards, even when Yohji stirred himself enough to pull a blanket over them. "You can stay if you want," Yohji said. It was a bad idea, yeah. Everything that had just happened was a bad idea. Yohji was too tired and too fucked out to care. He curled up on his side, facing away from Schuldig.

A few minutes later, Schuldig's tense body uncoiled, and his weight left the bed. The only sound as he left was the window closing.