Chapter Text
Reo sits barefoot on a comfy balcony chair, bathing in the cold morning sun, legs crossed, fingers wrapped around a porcelain cup of espresso. The air’s sharper this high up, thinner than Tokyo, the kind with a chill that clings to the inside of your lungs.
Below, the Concorde gardens fan out in perfect symmetry—manicured, weaponized beauty. Hell, even the gravel paths were aligned to maximize the estate’s surveillance sightlines. He’d once seen the blueprints. Reo knows exactly where the motion sensors are hidden in some hedges, where the statue bases are hollowed for rifle storage, which corners had dead zones, which exit cameras his father had installed after Reo tried to escape once, a long time ago.
Trimmed roses, white inlaid mosaics that spell Latin phrases no one actually believes.
The cup’s too delicate, porcelain thin. He’s scared if he grips it any tighter, it’ll shatter between his fingers. His espresso’s gone cold. Reo just holds it between both palms like a handwarmer. Behind him, the tall balcony doors are open, curtains billowing.
He can still hear Nagi in the room. The rustle of movement. The soft cadence of his breathing. And Reo hates, hates unseen movement, having his back exposed, being approached from behind. But when it’s Nagi, and he knows it’s Nagi, can feel that it’s Nagi, it’s not so bad.
“He’s going to make his move today,” Reo says, tone almost bored. “He’s not patient enough to wait. I skipped dinner yesterday. That would’ve annoyed him. Today he’ll retaliate. Something psychological. A disruption to show me I’m not in control here.”
A long pause.
He hears the shift of fabric restart—Nagi moving but not approaching yet.
Reo doesn’t turn around. The words float lazily between them, like he’s talking about the weather. “My guess is the midday course.”
He tilts his head back, squinting at the sunrise until his eyes sting. Still nothing from Nagi. But this genre of Nagi-silence is the loud kind. Reo knows he’s listening without needing to check.
“He’ll sit me between Liu and Kaas,” Reo continues. “If Kaas brings up the disputed contracts, it means Father’s considering undermining the Hong Kong warehouse. If Liu opens with a complaint about the Dalian or Xiamen lines, it means he’s got her watching my logistics chain.”
The words fall out of his mouth mechanically. A lifetime of rehearsal. Strategy. Defense.
“Not for much more than his own amusement, really. Since he knows better than to fuck with my deal with Kaiser’s faction, he going to try to screw with the Itoshi family negotiations and the covenant with Shidou. He’ll try to gauge whether I still have their loyalty,” Reo sniffs in irritation, running his hand through his hair. “They backed me during the Bangkok holdout and again in Osaka last spring, so he’ll test that.“
Nagi’s shadow shifts closer. The radiating warmth of his body reaches Reo before anything else. Sure enough, a broad palm settles gently on his shoulder. Reo hums a sound of inquiry.
His fingers walk across to curl around the back of Reo’s neck, weighted, but not squeezing. Reo huffs softly, a smile tugging at his lips. Nagi’s been like this since yesterday. Always prone to hovering protectively after something unplanned goes down, Reo recalls. Cute.
The silence itself has weight to it, like Nagi is resisting the urge to speak.
The touch is so gentle it barely feels real. Nagi’s fingers press into the hollow between muscle and column, a thumb brushing once.
Reo traces a finger around the rim of his cup in the same pattern.
Nagi’s been handsy all morning—his wrist when they passed each other in the suite, small of his back when Reo leaned over the wardrobe, a hand braced above his head in the doorways like he’s shielding Reo from the walls.
Sayori didn’t get Reo a guard, she got him a damn puppy.
“You’re doing that again.”
“Doing what?”
“Touching me like I’ll break.”
Nagi steps closer, other hand settling on Reo’s shoulder, fingers dipping below the neckline of his sleep shirt—like Reo is something sacred to be touched with reverence and protected with violence.
“Why do you do,” he tries again, nodding toward his occupied neck and shoulder. “That. All of it.”
Nagi’s quiet for a beat. “Because I can’t stop.”
Reo’s breath hitches.
There’s no heat in Nagi’s words, no flirtation. This isn’t transactional. It’s not a power play.
It’s worse.
And Reo can’t stand it. But also, he desperately wants to see, feel more of it, that protectiveness, that care. So, Reo opts for a story kept locked up for years.
“You know,” he says, voice too casual, “he drugged me once. A few years ago. Right here, during Concorde.”
Nagi’s form stiffens behind him like a fuse catching.
“In the middle of a dinner gala,” Reo continues. “In front of a hundred and eighty-five guests. He slipped it into my champagne. I was sixteen, I think.” Tone wavering imperceptibly, “A hallucinogenic cut with a paralytic.”
The silence between them turns razor-sharp. Nagi doesn’t say anything. So Reo keeps going, quieter now. “I remember the lights going soft, voices stretching like syrup. My skin felt like it was too tight for my body.”
He lowers his eyes to his untouched espresso. “He watched from across the room. Just wanted to see if I’d embarrass myself. Cry. Or beg. Or do something humiliating.“
A beat.
“I didn’t.”
Nagi exhales harshly. Reo doesn’t turn to see what face he’s making—instead, he glances at a flock of birds flying close to the horizon. The hand cupping his neck stirs, and Reo almost flinches—but then it resettles, fingers spreading out, for the purpose of teasing just below his ear, tracing the spot from yesterday that makes him shiver.
God. Nagi remembers. He always fucking remembers.
Reo’s throat closes.
“You’re still doing it,” he comments quietly. “Touching me like I’ll break.”
“I’m not,” Nagi replies without intonation. His touch doesn’t fade. It’s as searing as ever.
Reo turns his head slightly, just enough to see Nagi’s reflection in the balcony door’s glass panel. Something in Nagi’s eyes seems to burn like a white flame.
“So? What are you doing?” Reo forces a smile.
Then, Nagi leans in. His mouth brushes the skin just behind Reo’s ear, featherlight, warm breath. “Making sure you don’t.”
Reo shudders pathetically. The cup rattles.
Enough, he scolds himself. Get yourself together. Reo can’t be distracted today. Not when he doesn’t even know what his rat bastard father has planned.
He stands suddenly, and walks back into the room without a word.
Nagi follows.
Of course he does. Reo prays he always will.
—
The tie won’t lie flat.
It coils against Nagi’s fingers, fine silk with a slick finish that’s like liquid with every movement. He tries again, slower this time, adjusting the angle where it knots under Reo’s throat. Tight enough to hold. Loose enough not to crease the collar.
He’s done this before. But today it feels like trying to fasten a blade, not cloth.
Reo doesn’t flinch when Nagi touches his neck, which is worse somehow. Just tips his head back a little, silent, while the weight of his hair spills across his skin in a shimmery purple curtain.
He hasn’t said much since breakfast, actually.
Nagi’s straightens the lapels now. Fixes the cuffs of the soft-shouldered Concorde jacket, deep grey. Tailored to match the monochrome of everything in this place.
Reo looks good in it. Beautiful, even. Nagi hates it anyway. He taps Reo’s elbow until Reo lifts his arms out slightly so Nagi can finish.
His wrists are bare, his usual jewelry removed to accommodate the new accessories gifted from his father for the event. Reo had glared at the delivered boxes tied in black ribbon for ten straight earlier, when they had appeared with another faceless attendant at their door.
Nagi had watched as he had opened them gingerly, wincing as each ribbon slipped away and pooled on the table, like he was expecting a ticking bomb under the matte paper-wrapped lid. Nagi brushes the backs of his fingers along the inner curve of Reo’s wrist as he clips on the watch—subtle, but he feels Reo’s breath stutter. He pretends not to notice.
It’ll be the only piece that’s actually Reo’s; a gift from his mother, Reo told him, for his 18th birthday.
The jewelry comes last.
A new ring on his right hand—Concorde’s. Too large. Too cold. Nagi slips it onto Reo’s finger and hates the way it fits, how it makes Reo look like property, like he belongs to someone other than himself.
Reo just stares at his own reflection, hollow.
“You good?” Nagi asks.
Reo shifts his shoulders slightly under the jacket. “Do I look like I’m good?”
Nagi steps around him. Studies his face. The line of his mouth. The tension in his neck. His body is set like glass—perfectly clear, but strained so tight it could shatter if you breathed too hard.
“You look dangerous.”
Reo’s eyes flick to him in the mirror. “Good.”
But it doesn’t feel good. It feels like Reo’s armor is on too tight again. Like he’s layering it to protect himself from something he isn’t saying. And Nagi can’t stand it. He can’t stand watching him vanish behind silk and polish and performance. So he steps behind him again.
Hands at Reo’s shoulders. Then down, slowly, to the narrow dip of his waist, pushing, self indulgent, until the tips of his fingers almost touch. He feels Reo tense—just a flicker—and then relax. Sort of. Not enough.
“You don’t have to go in alone,” Nagi says, low into his ear.
Reo lets out a soft breath, a laugh, a synonym of it. “I always go in alone.”
“But you don’t have to.” Nagi’s hands grip him tighter. Not to hurt. Just to anchor, like if he presses hard enough, Reo might stay here instead of slipping into the lion’s den for another round of games.
“I’m not letting him near you,” Nagi says. He means it.
But Reo’s laugh is dry, sardonic and amused. “He owns the room, Sei.”
“I don’t care.”
Reo’s fingers twitch. Nagi watches in the mirror as Reo slowly presses his hand over Nagi’s.
“I know you don’t,” Reo says with a smirk that holds some unspoken sadness at the edges. Nagi wants to tear into it, ask what it is that’s making Reo look so worried. But the clock ticks on the far wall.
Somewhere beyond the door, the Concorde’s day moves forward on schedule—security rotations, estate staff, the beginnings of service prep for meetings and the garden course.
But in this room, Nagi keeps him. For just one more minute.
—
Every voice, every clink of crystal against glass, every too-familiar perfume curls in the air—as nauseating as ever. Because nothing ever changes in this damn place. This idiotic gathering is too full of men of strict tradition. Save for a few. A few who will be important, soon.
The plans are why Reo manages to walk in with his chin higher than the clouds. That, and maybe partially Nagi beside him.
He’s not holding Reo. Obviously. Not touching him outright either. Obviously. But he’s close, one half-step behind and to the side, in his line of vision, enough that Reo can sense his presence, locate him in a millisecond if needed, feel his tug like a planet, like Jupiter, pulling Reo into his lovely storm.
The gardens sprawl, a stage: perfect lawns and parasol-shaded tables, lush flower arrangements masking the rot underneath.
The summer sun casts golden light on everything, blinding in its civility.
But Reo knows better.
He smiles as he makes eye contact with an ambassador’s wife, bowing graciously; laughs at a minor lord’s joke about port trading routes; endures a peck to his cheek; returns one. All of it is rehearsed. Planned. Because this is a play. And Reo’s rehearsed it a hundred times in his head.
Everyone here is a power piece or a pawn. And Reo has no interest in playing either.
Still, ridiculously, in the midst of this screen for empire shifts and power plays,
Nagi shuffles along, hands clasped behind him, occasionally stopping to pluck a tiny cucumber sandwich from one of the waitstaff running around. Reo’s weird, stupid but sweet bodyguard takes a tiny bite from the corner, chewing it thoughtfully, the white bread soft in his mouth, his brows all furrowed up in concentration, before he deems it proper and passes the sandwich to Reo. It’s so hilarious in the midst of everything that Reo feels the practiced smile on his face becoming more uncontrollable and real.
Dammit, Nagi, he swears internally as he tries to smother another laugh as his bodyguard treats himself to a glass of champagne, deciding he hates it after one sip and handing it to Reo.
Reo shoots him a pathetic excuse for a glare, but Nagi just shrugs, mouthing ‘it’s gross.’
Idiot.
God—fucking focus, Reo. He’s here to plant a seed. Strategically.
Near the shade of the marble fountain, Uncle Oliver tends to linger. A Concorde cousin removed, who runs part of the London-Tokyo operations and, crucially, has long-standing tension with Reo’s father over divisions on the East China ports. Useful tension. Especially since the man’s ambition always outpaces his caution. Case in point: useful.
“Uncle,” Reo slithers over, greeting him smoothly by offering a cheek and a well-tempered smirk. “You’re looking vigorous today.”
“And you look expensive,” Uncle Oliver chuckles, teeth too white. “So the world balances. I swear, my son could take some lessons from you on that. He insists on walking around looking like a bum.”
Reo chuckles. They exchange pleasantries. Code, updates hidden in weather talk.
Then Reo drops it: “Y’know, Uncle, I’ve been thinking about offshore flexibility lately. Funny how restrictive things can get when there’s only one gatekeeper.”
Oliver’s brow arches. Rather, his eyebrows fly, whip into his hair with the speed of a rocket shooting to outer space.
Reo leans forward, hammering the final nail. “Maybe someday there might be a more, hm, progressive host to sponsor the holdings in London. Someone less interested in ornamental loyalty. More interested in growth. You understand,” his sly grin doesn’t waver.
Oliver blinks once.
Reo can almost hear the wheels turning. “You’re saying this while sharing the same name as the gatekeeper. I’ll assume that you mean what you insinuate by that?”
“Are you planning to sound the alarms?”
“Not at all,” he picks up the glass of whiskey he was nursing before Reo came over and cradles it in a palm. “I was just confirming. I will suggest you choose your allies for this project of yours wisely.”
“But of course,” Reo muses. “Why do you think I came to you, Uncle?”
“I see.” Oliver snorts, taking a sip, eyes twinkling with amusement, but there’s an undercurrent of grave consideration there. “I’ll keep that in mind. Remind me to put you in touch with my—I doubt you remember Aiku, it’s been so long since you met, you two were just kids then. But you could teach him a thing or two about guts.”
“I’m flattered.”
It’s not a promise. Not even a real offer. But it’s bait, laid delicately in front of a man who’s been waiting for incentive to act. Someone powerful, who’d back him. Reo.
Reo pulls away, gracefully, spins the conversation toward art and Milanese exports. The moment passes.
A small move. A quiet fracture. But one day, it’ll split open.
Reo pivots away from the fountain, pulse racing higher than it should be.
He doesn’t make it far before a new presence stops him—Lady Hirai, draped in burgundy, her cane too decorative to be functional. Theatrical.
“Ah, Reo. I was wondering when I’d see you,” she croons, holding her cane-less arm to him. “You always vanish when the conversation turns strategic.”
“You wound me, Auntie Hirai,” Reo says with faux hurt, offering his elbow. “You know strategy is my favorite turn of subject.”
With a high-pitched chortle, she takes his arm and they begin to float to a less crowded garden corner. But, without warning, she stops, and her gaze drifts to Nagi.
“Oh my. And this must be the guard I’ve heard so much about.”
Reo stiffens. Nagi does not.
Hirai steps closer.
Her rings flash as she reaches toward Nagi’s lapel. Luckily for her, Reo possesses the impulse control to not slap her hand to the side, likely breaking several of her osteoporosistic finger bones, despite how much he (impulsively) really wants to.
But Nagi remains statue-still.
“Such a shame to waste beauty on bodyguards.”
Reo winces. Lady Hirai still oversees all of the ‘SD’ tagged brothels all the way from Osaka to Seoul. “I’m afraid he’s not open for that kind of work.”
Lady Hirai pulls her hand back, smiling like she knows something she shouldn’t. “Mm. Lovely.”
She leaves a moment later.
Reo doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. Each conversation he has here pressurizes his head a bit more. But Nagi leans over his shoulder, only for him, “What was she talking about?”
Reo shakes his head, exhales. “Nothing important.”
It’s nothing, after all. It’s not like he’d ever let Nagi go. Or let him fall for such an obvious trap, either. He’s not about to tell Nagi that Hirai just attempted to solicit him with a golden ticket to a deep, dark hole no amount of desperate groveling would get him out of.
“Well,” Nagi hums, irritatingly reluctant, like he knows Reo is lying to him for his own sake, and will resign himself to accept it this time (Reo’s fucking overthinking it again. Nagi doesn’t know him that well. Or care, so shut up, brain). “Either way, Reo did—is doing—good.”
Reo snorts, (shamefully) indulging himself by leaning one shoulder back into Nagi’s chest, feeling the world around them come alive again, the tether of Nagi’s body grounding him in the moment (it’s so stupid, Reo is so damn stupid). “Oh yeah? And how do you figure that, hm?”
“Reo’s always good.”
Ignoring the way that sparks a tingle at the base of his stomach, “Flatterer. What’s this about, suddenly? Trying to butter me up? Get on my good side?”
He can hear Nagi’s small smile, innocent and dangerous, “I’m already on your good side.”
“Cocky.”
The sun has started to dip by the time Reo finds his final mark.
He’s tired. Not just physically—he’s trained his body well enough for endurance. But tired in every other way too. He can feel the strain along the edges of his mouth and cheeks where he’s been smiling too long.
The backs of his knees throb from all the precise angles his posture has held today. He also feels bad for Nagi, having to remain obedient and without complaint beside him for hours.
The pressure of legacy, inheritance, eyes—all of it—crawls under his skin like secondhand smoke.
But the moment is now.
He sees her across the garden; a red-hot, blazing aura that’s impossible to miss. Chigiri Koyuki, one of the three brokers at Concorde who handle a large fraction of contracting across a huge stretch of coast from Yokohama-Kawasaki down to Shimonoseki.
She’s slender but sharp as a rapier, draped in pink lotus silk and pashmina the same color as the silky hair that tumbles down her back. Her eyes are fiery—always watching. Calculating. She sees too much.
But Reo’s counting on that, crossing the garden painted sunset orange.
Expression dialed to disarm: calm, curious, never too direct. He opens playfully, a greeting, “Madame,” his bow is deep, respectful; he kisses the back of her hand as she places it in his palm. “May I steal a moment of your wisdom?”
“Only a moment?” She replies, lifting a brow.
Reo grins. “You always ask the right questions.”
They settle on a bench tucked beneath a wrought-iron awning laced with ivy, close enough to the main patio that they’re not completely obscured. Private, but not isolated.
Nagi stays in his peripheral vision, not interfering.
Reo shifts, adopts a quieter tone. “You heard the rumors of the Yokkaichi and Mizushima changes, I assume.”
“Of course,” she murmurs. “Rumors grow faster than Concorde roses.”
“They’re true,” Reo reveals. “But I think my father wants the transition to fail.”
She doesn’t react.
So Reo leans in, just slightly. The movement is intimate by design. Nagi stiffens. “If I were to, say, preempt that failure with a third-party broker. Someone who could guarantee smooth and discreet outflow and investment layering.”
She tilts her head. Bites. “Then what?”
Line, sinker.
“Then, maybe, with a bit of dismantling, Kawasaki gets the autonomy it deserves.”
She’s silent for a long beat. Then: “Send the terms once you’re back in Tokyo. I’ll read them.”
Reo bows his head in a gesture of thanks. It’s not a promise, but it’s good enough.
One more line pulled taut. One more crack in his father’s foundations. Reo’s planting doubt, forcing loyalty shifts. It’s starting: a slow unmaking.
He rises, striding back toward the main garden, weaving through courtiers and businessmen, political parasites and arm-candy.
No one stops him as Reo walks straight past the refreshment tables, past the waitstaff, past the canopy of orchids shading the main platform. And he hears the familiar gait—Nagi follows, half a pace behind, in lockstep.
They reach the marble steps at the yard’s edge.
He looks over his shoulder, once glance at Nagi and understanding flashes in those silvery gray pools of liquid moon.
They don’t run—that would invite questions. But their strides lengthen. Purposeful. Clean. It’s not running, but it feels a bit like flying away.
They disappear into the side hall and glide through stained glass passages just as the music starts up again outside; but the thrum of strings and chatter fades into the distance.
By the time they reach the quiet stone corridor that leads back toward their suite, Reo’s laughing.
It’s not a nice laugh—it’s like—it’s more—Reo himself doesn’t really know how to describe it. Not grating or strained, but not pleasant. Supposedly relieved, but it sounds too hollow. Which is weird, because Reo’s relief is genuine. He accomplished everything he planned to.
However, when he scans his keycard and pushes the door to their room open, the sound dies in his throat, instant and brutal.
The oxygen he’s just taken in suddenly feels thicker than molasses, clogging his windpipe.
Atop the console table sits a fresh vase of orange tansies.
Dainty stems, dewdrops on smooth petals like they were just picked mere hours ago. The room lurches and tunnels around him as he stares down the vase, standing in the suite’s entryway like he’s looking at a ghost.
He’s fourteen again, and throwing up necklaces of amaranth.
He’s not even close enough to smell the faint bitterness emanating from the center of the bouquet, but his throat still convulses, a placebo effect.
‘You make me sick,’ he tells himself. He bites down on his tongue until canines split flesh and his mouth fills with metal.
He could take a few steps forward. Throw it against the wall. Shatter the glass and shatter the reality. But he knows one of his father’s wretched rats is waiting in the corridor’s intersection, peeping around the corner and waiting for Reo to explode. To react.
So he doesn’t.
“Reo? What’s wrong?” Nagi’s head pops over his shoulder, a loose white strand brushing the side of Reo’s face as Nagi looks around the room.
Untouched, save for the new vase on polished wood.
Taking in a breath that weighs several tons, Reo walks into the room, Nagi following.
Unfortunately, Nagi seems to notice the way Reo walks in a semi-circle around the console table to ensure he’s as far from the table as the wall allows—arm pressing against the paneling.
“Reo?” Nagi pauses, eyes flicking from Reo’s back to the flowers.
“Is there a card?”
“Huh?”
“On the bouquet.” Reo, forgetting the tang in his mouth, wets his chapped lips with his cut, maybe spreading blood onto his lips. He runs his tongue along his teeth. They’re probably stained too now. He doesn’t want to look in the mirror to find out. Or turn back to Nagi. “Is there?”
The silence between them, a blank scroll. The floorboards creak, Nagi leaning over the table. Checking. “No.”
Fucking fantastic. ‘You’re not a king. You’re hardly even a man.’
“Okay.” Clenching his jaw, he walks toward the balcony doors. “Throw them away.”
He waits, listens to the plink-plink-plink sound of the flowers being lifted from the vase water. But as Nagi mistakenly shuffles toward (presumably) the kitchenette’s trash bin, Reo has to force his voice to work, but it’s weirdly raspy and stupidly conspicuous, “No—not here. There’s probably a trash can or chute in the hall by the elevators. Toss them there.”
More silence, and Reo already knows Nagi is contemplating whether to obey or to question him. Not out of anything but curiosity, of course. And this time, it wins out, “Why?”
Reo still doesn’t turn to face him. His jaw aches. His tongue stings. He swallows, and the blood-saliva mixture sticks to the sides of his throat. “Do you know anything about flowers, treasure?”
“No.”
“Figures,” Reo snorts. “I used to like them when I was younger. I was really sensitive to smells. They reminded me of my mother’s perfumes. Want a fun fact? Actually—wanna know something about me?”
Nagi doesn’t reply, but he shifts his weight warily, unsure of what Reo is playing at.
Reo doesn’t expect a verbal reply, honestly. So he just calmly says, “Those are tansy flowers. I’m deathly allergic to them.”
The door slams loudly as Nagi walks (or dashes, Reo can’t really tell) out of the room with the flowers, leaving the empty vase and splashed water on the tabletop.
Reo turns and heads for the bathroom. Sorry, Nagi, he thinks as he closes his eyes and locks the door behind him. ‘Sorry, Nagi. I can tell you some things, but not everything. Not that. Not ever.’
Reo needs to recalibrate. Needs to scrub his skin raw with scalding water and hope that the pain reminds him that greed pollinates pride and an empire made of parasitic weeds will burn to the ground.
—
Nagi’s getting irritated. Not at Reo, but also, entirely because of Reo. Because Reo is on edge again. Nagi had thought everything at the garden had gone so well, Reo had looked so pleased, so relieved after his final conversation with the lady who looked like a princess.
The way Reo looked back at him before they started running through the halls, like a cosmic weight had been lifted from his shoulders, Nagi will remember it for as long as he lives—the way Reo's eyes were shining with mischief, with something adorably boyish and so human.
(Nagi wants to peel back all the layers and cradle that side of Reo like a fragment of painted and chipped porcelain, like a sweet bael fruit, with its impossibly soft, floral interior. To bloom, huh? Nagi imagines all the dormant bulbs under Reo's skin, waiting in darkness.)
(What would it take? Reo would fight, he'd stab and scream and thrash, but maybe Nagi could pry him apart, let sunlight spill in. Maybe it's selfish. Disloyal. But wants to watch Reo blossom like that under his hands, opening under him like a violent violet desert superbloom.)
All of it came crashing down over a vase of flowers. Nagi can hardly believe it. He didn't get it at first, watching Reo stare at the petals, lower lip wobbling faintly like he was about to cry.
Reo's father had sent the flowers. Obviously. Nagi can at least tell that much.
Reo's father sent him a vase of orange flowers that would kill him.
(Nagi slammed the flowers down the disposal compartment in the floor's lobby with enough force to make the entire metal chute rattle, fingernails biting into his palm with how hard his fists were clenching.)
(He files the information into the little Reo folder he keeps at the forefront of his memory, the 'important' section, that holds things like instructions of his essential functions—how to speak, move, exist.)
(Is Reo allergic to other flowers? Nagi should know. It's his job.)
(Getting rid of the flowers didn't help. Nagi should have just burned them in front of him, eviscerated them, and thrown them from the window. (It wouldn't have made a difference.)
Reo's been set off again. Buzzing like there's a barbed livewire coiled around every axon terminal.
Nagi quietly watches him pace the suite, on and off the phone, as the sun sets prettily through the balcony windows, and night takes over the evening.
The stars are exceptionally bright in Davos. Nagi's never seen anything remotely like it in Tokyo's light-polluted metropolis.
Reo doesn't even spare them a second glance. He's used to them, Nagi figures, he's seen them so many times, and he probably hates them, just like he hates the rest of this place. Not that Nagi blames him for any of it.
Switzerland makes Reo look too pale. Nagi doesn't like it. He doesn’t like any of it.
Reo hates Switzerland. Now, Nagi does too.
Reo hangs up with god-knows-who only to instantly make another call, speaking rapid-fire into the receiver, a hushed but urgent hiss of mixed Chinese-English-German that Nagi doesn't even bother trying to comprehend with his decent but still pretty limited language skills.
More importantly, he's ignoring Nagi. Well—no, that makes it sound like Nagi's some petulant child and not his subordinate. Rather, Reo's hardly looked at him once since he first started pacing in that aggravating way Reo does when he feels like his control is slipping.
Loyalty, power, control. The three commandments that were drilled into Reo as the only things that mattered. His father's commandments. He despises them, yet doesn't know how to live without them.
(I could show him, Nagi thinks, as untoward and indecent as it is, I want to.)
It would take time, though. When pushed too far, Reo will lash out, or worse, run. And if Reo decides it's enough and sends Nagi away? What can Nagi do then?
It's okay. He can be patient.
What's important is the present moment. And how Reo adamantly refuses to settle down.
Fact: the calls he’s taking are routine work calls back to Tokyo, rather than a product of a present emergency. When stressed, Reo takes his mind off the stress by working more, therefore offsetting his stress by handling even more stress.
Nagi doesn’t understand it. Reo is weird.
Reo is weird. And Reo is annoying the living shit out of him with all his restless all-over-the-place-ness and his constant muttering under his breath when he’s not too busy yelling into his phone in another language.
Right now, he’s alternating between biting his nails and flicking his wrist to ease the tension in his body. He’s rambling to himself, something about, “Fucking shower drain cockroach, fountain of youth obsessed greedy manwhore, Kafka’s grotesque life-sucking leech—”
But he’s finally, finally not on call anymore.
“Reo.”
Ignored completely. Reo simply pivots on his heel upon reaching the edge of the carpet and walks past the coffee table again.
A sigh. A glance toward the empty vase that neither of them have touched, hollow crystal glass under the fluorescent lights, glowing like a ghost.
After wringing his hands another few times, Reo self-soothes by scratching his inner forearm with the middle and index finger of his other hand with enough force that it looks like he’s trying to rip his skin clean off.
Nagi frowns. (Why must he always soothe himself with pain?)
“Reo,” he tries again.
But Reo just makes an absent, haphazard hum of acknowledgement, his thumb twisting the heavy ring at the base of his middle finger that bears the Mikage crest in gold on oxidized silver.
(Part of Nagi wants to pull it off with his teeth and swallow.)
He stands up, shrugging and dumping the blazer he still hasn’t changed out of over the arm of the sofa. Reo doesn’t seem to notice.
Reo doesn’t seem to notice him approaching, either. Or maybe he does. It’s hard to believe someone as constantly alert as Reo wouldn’t.
But the Persian rug under them muffles the sounds of his footsteps as he tries one more time, this time louder, maybe more vexed a tone than he’d ever like to use on Reo, but shit, Reo won’t stay still. “Reo.”
He grabs Reo’s shoulder lightly.
But that ends up being a mistake.
He barely closes his fingers around Reo’s bicep when Reo whirls around, smacking his hand away with a resounding slap that echoes through the room.
“Don’t fucking touch me!” He screams, eyebrows furrowed in undirected anger.
Nagi’s palm throbs faintly, still suspended in the air. Reo’s pupils are blown wide, his expression a mess of anger and exhaustion.
Nagi’s jaw tightens, patience wearing thin. “Reo—stop it, you’re making it worse.”
“Worse?” Reo’s laugh is shrill and his smile is manic. “It’s already worse. It’s always fucking worse.”
His eyes scour the room as he spins again, arms flailing like he’s looking for something to throw.
Nagi follows him. “Reo, you’re gonna hurt yourself—”
“Fucking tansies,” Reo spits, his grin all teeth and terrifying. “Know what those mean? Means he’s fucking mocking me, Nagi.”
“I threw them out,” Nagi cuts in. “It’s fine.”
“I know it’s fine!” Reo’s voice spikes. He moves suddenly, storming close enough that Nagi has to straighten. “So why won’t you fuck off?”
Nagi starts to reply when Reo shoves him. Hard enough to send staggering a few steps back.
Recovering fast, Nagi lifts his head, done now. If Reo was trying to provoke him, he sure as hell succeeded. A fucking pain.
But as he’s about to lash out with the same level of fire and frustration, he notices a trapped, desperate undercurrent in Reo’s gaze that stops him cold.
Apparently, something in his expression must soften a grave amount, because Reo’s eyes grow wide before his rage rears its ugly head again, and, “Shut up!”
He swings a hand in Nagi’s direction—not really aiming to strike, rather, perhaps just desperate to push the world off him.
“You’re going to hurt yourself,” Nagi repeats; his voice barely staying calm, his pulse isn’t.
“Can you shut up?” Reo shouts. Then laughs self-deprecatingly. “Fuck, I can’t even tell you to mind your own fucking business—you’re so diligent,” mocking now, “so good your job, huh?”
More sarcastic, sugar-coated, sharp insults follow, slipping between Reo’s bitten-up lips. They’re supposed to hurt, but all Nagi feels are inconsequential words pattering on his eardrums like rain.
(Any urge to punch back evaporated the second he saw the way Reo was actually looking at him, from the eye of the storm.)
Because he realizes it, standing firm and watching as Reo grows more frantic the longer Nagi just stares unwaveringly, that Reo is lashing out, trying to jab weak points, get a reaction, hurt Nagi, and by extension, himself. Wants Nagi to hurt him back too, maybe.
To vindicate himself. (Of what? That pain and loneliness is the kingpin of inevitability of his very existence?)
Either way, Nagi’s never seen Reo like this. Maybe a more milder version. Busy days, stressful nights, Reo’s bad habits tend to sneak out, but never to this extent.
Still, Nagi’s untenably confident that he could talk Reo down, ease him, if he could only get Reo to hold still.
(The absent half of his consciousness that lacks urgency chooses now to offhandedly note, ‘Reo’s still so unfairly gorgeous like this, even in all his volatility.’)
Nonetheless, Reo's going to hit something, break a hand, do something stupid because he’s letting his father's cruelty boil him down to this frantic mess.
"Reo, stop it,” Nagi defensively raises his arms.
Reo takes a wild swing that Nagi easily dodges, his focus narrowing.
He needs to contain him, stop the movement, stop the self-destruction.
Reo is a natural disaster, but not one Nagi can name. Maybe it’s one that has yet to even occur on Earth, one that’s too powerful to even speak its name.
But disasters ease over time.
‘Sirens will wail, and it will pass.’
Tornados return to the sky within minutes. Floodwaters evaporate. The ground ceases quaking once the tectonic plates part ways. Magma cools and hardens onto volcanic rock post-eruption. Storm clouds stop screaming when its tears run dry.
Typhoons lose momentum once they hit land.
Disasters lose anger. Even nature’s fury has a limit.
Reo, however, loses nothing but himself.
Nagi closes more distance, unobtrusive, trying to catch Reo in a hold. He manages to snag a wrist, thumb brushing the rapid pulse point.
Nagi’s first disaster was the night his parents died. He heard the sirens while still hiding in the closet, shivering under his mother’s sable coat (the one his father had brought her for their anniversary) with his hands pressed over his ears to drown out the gunshots.
It cracked like thunder, the shouting pattering like raindrops. His mother always used to say silence was a virtue, and sealing your mouth would keep you safe. Nagi perfected the art that night.
And his sirens were, ironically, police sirens, rescuers to pull him out.
Nagi didn’t speak in the police station. The officers called it trauma. Nagi called it self preservation. The lady from the Jinpachi syndicate who came to claim him called
him smart. He didn’t really get it, but fine.
Either way, Nagi had grown accustomed to the cycle of it all.
He’s watched enough disasters from the sidelines. Seen some get triggered. Cleaned up others as ordered.
But Reo is an enigma. Nagi’s watched disasters, heard the sirens. But Reo is the only vicinally divine creature Nagi has ever known that drowns himself in his own chaos.
In the present: Reo begins to spit and thrash, fighting Nagi’s grip with every ounce of his considerable angry desperation. He pulls, kicks out, and tries to twist free, fueled by the sheer need to escape this suffocating adrenaline.
The second wrist is, predictably, much more difficult to catch. It’s another struggle, wild, graceless. For a stretch of what feels like time frozen around them, they’re just unpracticed movement and ragged breathing and sparks, the kind of argument that doesn’t have language.
Reo tries to pull himself free by yanking down, but ends up staggering to one side, forcing Nagi to awkwardly shuffle in a circle to maintain his own balance.
But then, Reo steps back, and his heel catches on the lifted corner of the carpet, and momentum takes them both down.
Nagi, by some miracle, maintains his grip on Reo’s wrists as they crash heavily onto the cushions of the sofa, Nagi landing mostly on top of Reo’s lower body. The air rushes out of Reo’s lungs with a wheezing sound. Still, the moment the impact settles, he starts thrashing again.
Nagi ignores the frantic kicks and the frustrated sounds Reo is making, as well as the sharp order and hissed threats Reo is making in his vague direction. He moves his body to fully straddle Reo's waist, pressing down with his weight.
Fuck, he’s drained. This is exhausting.
With a final, decisive movement, he yanks both of Reo’s arms above his head and pins his wrists against the back of the sofa.
"Stop. Stop, Reo." Nagi betrays a fundamental rule of subordination with two words, in a way that Reo should, would kill him for if he was sensible.
Because the words are a command, an irritated growl by Reo’s ear.
Reo, still straining against his hold, throws his head back and lets out a choked, wordless sound of pure, unspent fury, a guttural noise that makes Nagi’s chest tighten with a dark, inexplicable satisfaction.
Reo gives a final heave of his body (‘adorable’, a vile and grotesque part of Nagi croons, taunting his rational mind, ‘you’re terrible at pretending you don’t like it’), before he goes absolutely still.
His chest heaves, pulling in air, ragged and loud in the newfound silence.
Even Reo’s breathing sounds like music.
Sweat shines on his brow and his sweaty hair is dark violet, plastered to his forehead; his whole body vibrates with the aftershocks of his tantrum. The scent of him is sharp but raw—pain and frustration and a desperate sort of sadness.
Nagi’s heart is hammering, not from the physical altercation anymore, but from the intoxicating sight of Reo beneath him.
The sirens. This is what Reo needed. (Or also, what Nagi needed, but phrasing it like that makes him sound so direly loathsome and selfish.)
(Reo—perfect, controlled, high-strung Reo—lost. No—no, he let himself lose, didn’t he? If Reo truly wanted it, and wanted to hurt him, Nagi would already be a cold corpse, his head nailed high on the wall the way hunters display prize game. But instead—instead Reo’s at Nagi's mercy.)
Nagi stares down at the face that, just moments ago, was so vicious, steeped with ferity, brutal cathexis. Now, the violence is leaching out, replaced by something like petrichor, humid like the aftermath of a storm. Reo’s gaze is fixed on the ceiling, looking almost—faraway.
Glazed, a thin pane of stained glass.
But the restlessness that made Nagi's skin crawl is finally gone. And a dizzying clarity settles over him, replacing any lingering irritation.
(Reo needs this—control taken from him. Needs to be held down until his mind pauses its torment.)
Reo inhales a deep, shuddering breath—and when his eyes finally flick to Nagi’s face, the violet depths have gone hazy and distant, his focus floaty, only half present.
This is better.
This is better than the fighting, better than the pacing, better than the frantic energy.
The sight of him is dizzying. A silent confirmation of his own necessity. Nagi feels a rush of heat, an intoxicating wave of want so sharp it's painful.
He wants this. This everything of a boy he can’t have because of a metaphorical stack of deteriorating documents written years ago that outline the nonsensical rules of money, debt, hierarchy, loyalty, power.
The way things should be. The way things are. The rigidity of the bars of the enclosure Reo confines himself to. The walls Reo desperately tries to put between them.
Nagi wants to break them all.
Ah. He should probably step back. Take several steps back, actually. Lest he do something very impulsive and very stupid.
‘Let him go,’ he hisses to himself. Nagi hums. Says, “So, you gonna try and hit me if I let you go?”
Reo’s mouth twitches—subtle, quiet mirth. “I might.”
Nagi hums. Doesn’t let go. Yet. He’s already treading thin ice, but—but he’s learning the river, learning what pressure makes Reo crack, how much his eyes darken before the calm facade shatters and plunges into freezing water. “Did your father send you tansies just because you’re allergic?”
Reo looks away, his head falling to one side to stare at the half-view he gets from this angle out of the windows. A loose piece of his bangs slips down his cheekbone and catches on the plateau of his nose. Nagi wants to brush it back, tuck it behind his ear. (He doesn’t.)
“You’re simultaneously too clever and too stupid for your own good, sometimes, y’know that?” Reo sighs. “How you survived this long, especially as a Jinpachi dog, is beyond me.” His eyes flick to Nagi as a brief point, rhetorical, “Lucky thing.”
How irritatingly on the nose, Nagi muses. Says, “Ego always complained about that whenever I saw him. Claimed he was waiting for my luck to run out. Kept getting pissed off that I wouldn’t die.”
Reo snorts. “I can’t tell if that’s cold or just immature.”
Nagi shrugs. Pictures his (technically) former boss’s ugly bowl hair and high-prescription wire-framed glasses. The entirely uncanny, unsettling straightness, wideness, and squareness of his teeth. His lanky, stick-like figure and slenderman-esque gait. “Both, probably.”
“He sent the flowers to mock me,” Reo exhales stridently, his chest deflating as he eyes the balcony again. “Tansy flowers are said to be a declaration of war. He’s telling me he knows I’m up to something. He’s taunting me, telling me to try it. Because I’ll never be anything more than what he lets me be.”
Nagi lifts a brow. “You got all that from a bouquet of flowers? I didn’t know you were a psychic like that, Reo.”
“Shut up.”
“No, can you tell me my horoscope, then? Or, like, analyze the way that red-haired lady draped her scarf in accordance with the constellations to tell you about the stolen coke kilos at the Yokohama port?”
“You’re really pushing it, jackass.”
“Is there a pattern hidden in the garden’s bathroom wallpaper that spells out a huge threat hidden in one of the Concorde armories in your father’s clandestine code language?”
“Are you done?” Reo snaps, but he’s smiling now, eyebrows furrowed adorably, like he’s mad at himself for it. The contrast makes his expression as a whole look adorably amusing. Like a kid trying his damnedest to keep a sour face. So precious.
The dichotomy of Reo’s disposition really doesn’t reconcile with itself, sometimes. He’s a master of the art of stone-cold calm, but sometimes, between moments, flashes just like these, he becomes so dangerously easy to read—all the whirring and whittling in his brain painted plain as day on his face. Part of Nagi just wants to know—how much of it is involuntary, and how much of it is a conscious allowance? Where do the two blur together? And at what point do they become the same thing?
“Okay, seriously, get off me, now.”
Nagi obeys, drops Reo’s wrist and leans back so the knee not currently between Reo’s thighs can extend fully and stand him up again.
“Yeah, yeah,” he says. “Sure, boss.”
But just as he takes a full step and a half back, putting some distance between them (for both of their sakes, but mostly his—he’s randomly paranoid that Reo can somehow read his thoughts all of a sudden, but better safe than sorry?), Reo clears his throat. “Sorry.”
“Hm?”
“Sorry,” he repeats more forcefully, staring down at his lap, where he’s rotating one wrist, holding it in the other hand, before switching. “I don’t usually lose my temper like that.”
“I know.” Nagi replies unassumingly, feeling his chest warm and fizz. Carbonated hot coffee, but in, like, a good way. “I don’t mind.”
He doesn’t mind at all. Why would someone complain about witnessing a solar storm or divine hail?
—
On the last day of Concorde, the last day he’ll have to spend in Davos for, forever, hopefully (if all of Reo’s future plans come to success and fruition) ever, at about four AM, Reo’s phone begins to buzz. Sprawled out on the king bed and still asleep, Reo has no intention of answering. At first.
The buzzing continues, insistent, a tiny artificial insect vibrating angrily on the nightstand. Reo doesn’t even twitch. Then it rings again.
And again.
By the fourth burst of sound—loud, shrill, violating the soft, sleepy hush of the hotel room—Reo groans, a long, miserable, half-awake noise. He flops over onto his stomach, then immediately regrets it, then flops again, this time in the direction of the nightstand.
By the time he wriggles over on his stomach to the bedside table, he’s annoyed, with half a mind to just throw his cell at the wall and be done with it. But because he’s not immature, and he’s a responsible adult, will not. His fingers brush the phone, knock it once, nearly send it skittering off the wood. He grabs it before it escapes, squinting at the glowing screen.
He barely gets the device to his ear before a voice pours through it, melodic and lazy and gratingly amused.
“Oh, there you are,” the caller drawls. “I was starting to think you died.”
Reo’s eye twitches. The urge to hang up out of pure pettiness is instantaneous. But the voice is familiar, painfully so.
Chigiri Hyoma. The hidden youngest son of the Chigiri family. Koyuki’s little brother, who happens to be Reo’s age. (Familiar, still. Familiar like flaming hair the color of fresh blood. Fresher than the incident that spilled it—how long has it been since then? Since they had to send Hyoma away? Five years? Six?)
“It’s four in the morning, you asshole.”
“Oops, sorry. I forgot about the time difference thing. Kou literally just texted me back yesterday saying you were in Davos for Concorde too. I dropped by your apartment in the morning but all I received was a glare from your receptionist.”
“Damn, it almost sounds like you missed me.”
“It’s just been too long since we last talked and I’m impatient.”
Reo scoffs inward. Long time my ass—it's hardly been a year since they last spoke, and quite honestly, Reo wouldn’t have minded it being longer. (He’s just kidding. Kind of.)
But, wait—he frowns as his brain struggles to catch up with the sudden input of information in concurrence with his automatic cognitive analysis. He rolls onto his side and pushes himself up onto one elbow, phone plastered vaguely to his ear while he wipes the sleep from his eyes by rubbing them against his sleeve. “You—I’m in—where are you?”
“Tokyo, obviously,” the redhead chirps. “How d’you think I went to your place? Got back the day before yesterday.”
Reo stops blinking. Then, starts again. Slowly. “You’re in Tokyo? But I thought—wasn’t your most recent surgery only a few months ago? How long are you here for?”
Chigiri hums dismissively. “Finished Physio and PT early. Felt a bit nostalgic and a lot impulsive so I called Mom and told her I was coming home and there’s nothing she could do to stop me.”
“Still taking years off her life even from thousands of miles away, I see.”
There’s a rustle on the other end of the line, like Chigiri is shifting positions—stretching out on a couch, maybe, or rolling onto his back with that prowling, catlike demeanor he’s always had. For a moment, it’s quiet enough that Reo thinks the call might drop.
No such luck.
“So,” Hyoma says eventually, dragging out the word like he’s savoring it. “Kou told me something interesting when we called.”
“What?”
“Oh, nothing bad,” Chigiri assures him, tone instantly betraying that it is, in fact, something. “Just that you have a new shadow following you. An extra appendage. Right-hand man.”
His sleepy brain takes a full two seconds to recognize who Hyoma means. “Nagi?”
“Is that his name? Nagi, huh.” Reo can practically hear the smirk. “He’s your bodyguard now? Of almost a year, too. I’m offended I was never updated on this development.”
Reo snorts into the crook of his elbow. “Yeah, well, life’s been busy, what can I say. He’s already more popular among those vultures than I would’ve liked. What else d’she tell you?”
“Not much. Just that he looks like he’s one minor inconvenience away from falling asleep standing up.”
“He was—recovering from jet lag,” Reo lies.
“If he’s that exhausted,” Chigiri teases lightly, “maybe he shouldn’t be guarding your life. Just a suggestion. But then again, know you’ve got a soft spot for mega fluffy things.”
“Oh, fuck off. If you’re still alive by the time I fly home, I’ll let you meet him.”
Chigiri is laughing softly—the genuine kind, airy and light, the version of him that existed only in rare moments between surgeries, recovery, and the suffocating expectations of their families. Eventually, it tapers off, the sound dissolving into the quiet static of the early morning line. Reo waits for him to say something else snarky—another jab, another teasing poke—but nothing comes.
Instead, there’s a long, soft exhale. A change in the air.
“So, what’s it like being back?” Reo says finally, the edges of sleep sloughing off. He pushes himself upright again, spine curling, sheet pooling at his waist. “Tokyo. After all this time.”
“Yeah,” Chigiri’s voice is quieter now, maybe muffled. Maybe just the effect of a monodirectional microphone—like he’s turned his head to look at something—the window, maybe the skyline. “Feels weird. Like the city got taller while I was gone. I was hoping it’d be the opposite.”
Wishful thinking. The city is more stubborn than a child. Not only is it resistant, but it’s spiteful. Expecting the pavement roads and skyscrapers to bend to aid you. It’ll jump on the off-beats if you ask it to sing. It’ll drag you through the backwater if you ask for a peaceful night drive. Much like the beauties among nature, the city itself is a living God. But she wasn’t created by a need for harmony and balance and reparation, like the rest of the kami. She was created by people, made of concrete and human interest. She is not a cause, she’s a consequence. She is not a jury, but an executioner.
Reo doesn’t smile. He knows where this is going. He’s been bracing for it since the words got back the day before yesterday.
“Hyoma,” he starts carefully, “you know what coming back means. And things aren’t particularly—quiet, right now.”
“They’re never quiet, Reo.” No bite, no sarcasm—Chigiri doesn’t even sound particularly offended like he typically would. “S’not like I expected the world to freeze while I was away.”
“You know that’s not what I meant. Your family sent you away for a reason.”
Silence creeps between them again, the kind that isn’t uncomfortable so much as it is heavy—like standing in the foyer of a house after a funeral.
“They sent you abroad to keep you out,” Reo continues quietly. “Out of everything. Out of the business. Out of Tokyo. They sent you away to keep you out of this world. Permanently. They were—they are—fully prepared for you not to come back at all.”
Hyoma hums. “Don’t lecture me. Obviously, I know why they did it.”
“Do you?” Reo presses, tension sharpening his tone. “Because returning now isn’t like coming back after studying abroad or something. Things have moved. Lines have shifted. If you’re back, people will start recognizing you. Then they’ll start remembering you. You’re standing on top of a lot of zombies in a lot of old graves right now. And they’re a lot stronger than they were back then.”
There’s no immediate answer.
On the other end of the line, Reo can hear faint rustling—fingers tapping the duvet, or maybe the surgical scars on his knee.
Finally: “Reo,” he says softly, “my entire life was put on pause because of that night. Because of one moment, one mistake,” his voice dips, fragile but steady. “I refuse to live the rest of it hiding overseas while everyone acts like I’m a ghost—a vague silhouette of someone that died a long time ago.”
Reo presses his palm over his sternum like it might help.
“It’s not about hiding,” he tries. “It’s about staying alive.”
This time, Hyoma actually laughs—but there’s no joy to it. “Seven surgeries, eight rounds of PT, and two additional years of therapy learning how to walk on marble floors without having a panic attack. I’ve earned the right to decide where I risk my life, don’t you think?”
“That’s not fair,” Reo mutters.
“No,” he agrees. “It isn’t. But I’m done being the fragile one everyone needs to store on a shelf. If Tokyo’s dangerous, then it’s dangerous. At least it’s home.”
Reo opens his mouth, searching for something—logic, reason, any urge to be the better person he knows he’s not and push the issue to the brink, enough to make Chigiri give up. He can’t find anything. Sighs, “Does Koyuki know the real reason you returned?”
Hyoma hesitates. Just long enough to answer without answering.
Wait. Reo stiffens. “Does Kuni—”
“—Do not,” instant and sharp, Chigiri cuts him off with a decisive coup de grace. “Just don’t say his name to me.”
Right. Well, fair enough. Reo can’t (and doesn’t want to) argue with that. “Are you going to go see him?”
Chigiri hesitates. “I don’t know. Maybe. I thought you said he wasn’t the same person he was five years ago.”
“He’s not,” Reo admits. Maybe it’s for the best. That they don’t reunite—at least for now. But if not to reconcile with—why did he come back to Tokyo so abruptly?
“Chigiri,” he says slowly, a sinking and dark possibility dawning on him, “what exactly did you come back to do?”
“Why would someone in my position return home with plans to stay?” His voice is eerily calm. “You know, when you’re in hospital longterm, they send a shrink to talk with you. They give you some bullshit steps for overcoming trauma and all that. It makes sense—stabilization, grieving, support networks, whatever. I’ve got two steps left. One of them was fulfilled by returning to Tokyo. Reconnection.”
A chill runs through Reo’s bones. “And the last?”
“Acknowledge and address the causes and face them—I think you know.”
“That’s—”
But Hyoma cuts him off: “You of all people should understand, Reo. You’re the only reason I believe I can actually do it. You understand.”
And Reo—unfortunately—does.
“Whatever,” he relents. “If all goes well and dandy, I’ll be back soon. Where are you staying?”
“Aw, you’re worried. Don’t be. I’m temporarily at the Jinpachi East Branch in Edogawa, staying at a guest house.”
“Call your mom, tell her you’re back. Just so I don’t get a headache wondering if I’ll find you dead in a ditch somewhere before I come home. I’ll text you in a few days. And try not to find trouble until I get back.”
“Aye, aye, captain.”
—
The air in the exhibition hall is too cold and smells like Windex and tastes vaguely of latex and sanitizer—the metallic tang of security. It’s a high-ceilinged, museum-esque building in the center of Concorde, hosting a private viewing before the auction starts.
Nagi hates it. It’s a hassle. Standing around looking at shiny rocks and shitty art that looks like it's been painted by a wet mop and a poorly crafted metaphor for flower genitalia behind glass is a waste of energy when he could be sleeping on the plane or playing a game on his phone. He wanted to leave and head back to Tokyo as soon as Reo had dragged him out of his bed that morning. Reo, unfortunately, said no. Their departure is scheduled for late afternoon, aka, not soon enough. Nagi reluctantly slumps behind him, feeling utterly bored. His hands are buried deep in the pockets of his comfortable slacks. He’s the tallest thing in the room and the least interested, a white, looming shadow of indifference.
But Reo wanted to come. The Concorde’s high jewelry and fine arts exhibition in an obnoxious, joint Mikage-owned Greco-Roman-neoclassical fusion three-story gallery closer to town, out of place and profoundly odd in comparison to all the smaller chalet houses and family shops placed around it. The windows on all three floors are great in number and gigantic, but the excess daylight pouring through the glass is managed by the ____ curtains meticulously hung over each pane. The rooms are tiled with pristine natural white quartz, each corner decorated with red chaise loungers and artful camel-back loveseats. There’s a small yellow stain on one of them. He wants to nudge Reo and tell him that, but knows Reo won’t give him attention right now.
Anyway, architecture and design aside, back in the present: Nagi trails two steps behind him, slouching just enough to be comfortable but not enough for Reo to scold him. Reo, however, is intensely focused. His posture is rigid, his eyes bright as he moves slowly from display to display. The artifacts range from baroque silverware to abstract modern sculptures, but Reo seems most drawn to the jewelry.
Reo is prowling? That seems to be the only word for it. He moves from display case to display case, admiring the artistry with a critical and sharp gaze.
Nagi can’t figure out the pattern. Is Reo comparing the quality of the artifacts? Is he trying to find something he likes, something he wants to acquire? Reo often buys things for himself without a second thought, but his focus today feels different, more intentional.
Reo stops before a display case containing a single, thick chain—heavy, dark silver links punctuated by dull, uncut emeralds. It looks less like jewelry and more like a tool. He moves on swiftly.
Nagi watches the back of Reo’s head, the way his purple hair bounces under the museum track lighting. Reo stops in front of a case containing Victorian-era chokers. He leans in, his breath fogging the glass slightly, scrutinizing a band of black velvet adorned with a heavy sapphire pendant. He glances at the price tag, a dizzying array of zeroes, and then his eyes shoot back to Nagi.
He doesn’t look at Nagi’s face. He doesn’t check to see if Nagi is bored, or hungry, or tired.
Reo’s eyes drop instantly to Nagi’s throat.
The gaze is heavy, physical. It feels like a touch. Nagi swallows involuntarily, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and he sees Reo’s eyes track the movement with a terrifying intensity. Reo frowns, a small crease appearing between his brows, as if measuring the circumference of Nagi’s neck against the velvet band in the case.
Why is he looking at me like that?
Nagi tilts his head, confused. Aware of the many occupants of the hall just waiting to turn their gazes onto the Mikage heir, he murmurs, "Boss? You want that?"
Reo blinks, snapping out of his trance. "No," he says, his voice clipped. "Too fragile. It would snap."
He turns on his heel and marches to the next section. Nagi follows, the confusion buzzing in his head like a low-static hum. Snap? Nagi isn't going to snap a necklace. He doesn't even wear jewelry. It’s heavy and gets in the way of gaming. It's pointless, bothersome, and a source of unnecessary weight. The thought of draping something this heavy around his neck is exhausting.
Briefly, Nagi floats back to the discarded piece, inspecting the design. It's beautiful, in a violent, loud way. The stones are massive, heavy, built for statement, not decoration. Nagi's mind, usually slow and simple, starts to piece together the unspoken need that radiates from Reo. Reo is looking for something significant. Something costly.
Reo stops again, this time at a modern collection. Thick, brushed platinum cuffs and heavy chains. Industrial. Cold. Brutalist and oxidized. Reo stares at a thick silver chain, the links wide and interlocking. It looks heavy. It looks like something you’d use to anchor a boat, not wear to a gala.
Reo looks back at Nagi. Again, he bypasses Nagi's face. His gaze sweeps down to Nagi’s hands, which are still hidden in his pockets.
"Hands," Reo commands. “And stop slouching.”
Nagi sighs but obeys, pulling his hands out and letting them hang loosely at his sides for a beat before offering them to Reo.
Reo’s eyes lock onto Nagi’s wrists. He stares at the prominent styloid process of the ulna, the thick tendons, the pale skin. He stares at the fingers that, just yesterday, clamped down on his wrists hard enough to leave the faintest, prettiest bracelet of bruises. Nagi flexes his right hand involuntarily.
His expression is unreadable—he looks from Nagi’s wrists back to the platinum cuffs in the case. He shakes his head again, looking almost miffed.
"Not right," Reo mutters, still unsatisfied, a latter part of his sentence dissolving into a mumble. "Not tight enough."
Nagi flexes his fingers again. Tight enough?
"Reo," Nagi says, "I don't need a watch."
"It's not a watch," Reo snaps, though there's no heat in it, only distraction. He moves to the next aisle. “Not like you particularly care for knowing the time anyway.”
“Well, I have a phone, so.”
Reo snorts and pivots, clicking away on his fancy platformed shoes. He’s a couple of centimeters taller than Nagi in them. It’s a touch disconcerting. Nagi decides, selfishly, that he likes Reo better in flats.
He watches Reo go, a strange feeling settling in his gut. Reo is looking for something specific. Something expensive. Something distinct. And he’s sizing Nagi up for it.
Usually, when Reo buys him things—clothes, games, food—it’s for Nagi’s comfort. But this feels different. Reo isn't looking for what fits Nagi's comfort; he's looking for what fits Nagi's frame. At least, that’s what it looks like. He’s always playing a game of what is going on in Reo’s head. And so far, Nagi thinks his success rate at figuring it out within the ambiguous time limit is a rough sixty-eight percent, maybe. But the levels just keep getting harder. Luckily, Nagi keeps getting better. He’ll beat the whole damn game, come hell or high water.
Reo pauses at a display of high jewelry. There’s a piece protected behind a pane of glass thick enough to probably stop a missile—a solid gold torque, rigid and unyielding, meant to sit flush against the base of the neck. It doesn't clasp; it has to be bent into place. It looks suffocating. He stares at it for a long time. Then he turns to Nagi. His eyes drift to Nagi’s throat again. This time, the look is so possessive, so laden with a dark, unspoken desire, that Nagi feels the hair on his arms stand up. It’s a familial sentiment to the one Reo had yesterday when Nagi pinned him—that desperate need to be connected, to be defined by the other person.
But Nagi can't quite parse the logic. Why does Reo want to put metal on him? Is it a reward? A punishment?
Is it a leash? Or a protection?
Nagi recalls the desperate, confined look on Reo's face yesterday, pinned beneath him on the sofa, needing the ultimate control to be taken away. Reo's father sent the flowers, a subtle, vicious reminder that Reo is owned by legacy. Maybe Reo is trying to fight back, in the only way he knows how: by acquiring something that signifies ownership and placing it on Nagi. Self-soothing, but at least he’s not hurting himself this time.
“There’s no clasp,” Nagi points out uselessly. In truth, he’s testing to see how much he can get Reo to reveal on his own terms. Maybe he can find a crack in Reo’s titanium eloquence and crawl his way into his center. “Reo.”
Two cosmic flares of violet drift to Nagi, and the heir subconsciously touches his own throat, rubbing lightly at the sides with his thumb and index finger. The hand falls back to his side, flicking the white acrylic stand on its way down. “Gold’s soft. Really soft. Easy to sink your teeth into. Even easier to pry open and shut.”
Nagi nods at the explanation. But Reo’s eyes zip from the display to him once more. Then, he sighs long-sufferingly, all drama and performance, and runs a hand through his hair, dismissively turning his back on Nagi. “Don’t look so sullen. I wouldn’t touch that eccentric garbage, much less put it on my treasure. You look god-awful in gold, anyway.”
You don’t, Nagi thinks. He nods again. He’s been told occasionally over the years by some of the women he used to escort to events that he tends to suit silver.
He stares at the back of Reo's neck, right where his hair has split to expose skin, tawny butterscotch, dusted with terracotta. The light, every-day gold chains he wears regularly layered against his nape. It’s almost erotic. Nagi shakes the salacious thought away.
He doesn't understand the jewelry. He doesn't care about the gold. But he understands that Reo is trying to solve a problem—the problem of the flowers, the problem of his father, the problem of his own insecurity—by weighing Nagi down with something expensive.
If he wants to decorate me that badly, Nagi thinks, stifling a yawn, I guess it’s fine. As long as it’s not too, too heavy.
"Reo," Nagi drawls. "I'm hungry."
"Just a little longer," Reo murmurs, darting over to a heavy, diamond-encrusted silver chain in the square case beside the avant-garde golds. "I haven't found the right fit yet."
Nagi leans against a pillar—composite Corinthian, recently refreshed capitals—watching Reo hunt around the west side of the third-floor gallery room, the tick of an antique clock punctuating the seconds, chatter of the other guests filling the empty space between. He wonders simply why Reo doesn't just use his hands. He wouldn’t mind. He’d give up oxygen for Reo, any day.
Reo moves to a final case, a quartzite-sandstone finish pedestal holding a necklace designed to be a choker: small, perfectly matched black pearls interspersed with slivers of polished obsidian. Silver chain links small but shapely enough to leave identifying, distinctive indents on flesh. It's dark, elegant, and shockingly subtle. Reo examines it, then turns and gives Nagi a long, evaluating look. This time, his gaze settles on Nagi’s throat and stays there.
Nagi feels a strange, profound warmth spread through his chest. It’s the easiest demand Reo has ever made. He glances over at the plaque mounted on the glass, skimming the lines of text—iridium-palladium alloy; white gold prongs and bed for the diamonds; melee quarter karat adornment diamonds.
He finally moves, closing the gap between them, leaning over so his mouth is close to Reo's ear.
"Looks too light," Nagi almost whispers, his voice tempered and deliberate. "If you're going to put a collar on me, Reo, shouldn’t it be heavy?”
Reo freezes, his eyes wide and stunned as he processes the implication. Then, he smiles, a lazy, amused curve of lips. “And why’s that? Are you planning on trying to run?”
“From you? Never.”
“Bold. I thought I told you to mind your words while we’re in this birdcage.”
“It’s the truth. I made you a promise, remember? You’re holding up your end. Why would I skip on mine?”
Reo looks at him for a second. A lingering, inscrutable look, with all the weight and consummation of a tsunami crashing against a beach. He flicks a piece of hair from his face. “You’re right. Rhodium is brittle anyway, even if alloyed. With your habits, it would crumble dried leaves after a few wears,” he grins at Nagi, jutting a thumb at the necklace. “This is the kind of stuff they try to sell at the auction. S’why we’re not going to it. The geriatric hags with two ex-wives and six and a half mistresses salivate over this shit. Expensive because it’s rare. Rare and classless.”
The heir lets out one final, disappointed huff. “All of this is bromidic bullshit. I’ll call on my mother’s jewelers and have something better made when we get back home. Okay?”
Home.
God, Nagi really, really likes it when Reo says that. That word. He likes the way the syllable rolls around Reo’s tongue, likes the softness that vignettes the edges of his tone. "Okay, Reo. It's a promise. Don't take too long, though."
Reo laughs, "Impatient, all of a sudden? How spoiled."
But the moment between them is shattered as the old lady with silver hair tied in two ponytails steps toward them, flat loafers silent on the hardwood gallery floor. The attendant. Baya, Nagi recalls. She passes a display case of vintage Rolexes, maneuvering around a giggling group of tipsy guests—fun-loving children of some chaebols, Reo had commented when they first walked into the chatter. Big in electronics, or something. Irrelevant—none of their families’ dealings overlap with the Mikage’s, after all. She approaches with her head bowed slightly, a familiar ease of her bottom lip that suggests familiarity with Reo. Nagi wanted to ask him about the old lady, but there wasn’t a light enough moment to bring it up.
“Young Master Reo,” she greets warmly. “You’re departing today?”
“Yes,” Reo nods. “Is something wrong?”
She closes her eyes and shakes her head, hands clasped behind her back. “Your father just wishes to see you in his garden before your departure this evening. I was ordered to just inform you that he would be waiting.”
Any good mood Reo may have had dies here. His eyebrows furrow, and his expression clouds over with anger and anxiety, instantly beginning to fiddle with the Mikage signet ring he’s been wearing on his finger all of this trip. Out of obligation, probably. But Reo looks like he’s being branded with hot coals every time he puts it on while staring at himself in the mirror, a picture of self-hatred looking back at him. Amazing, how Reo seems to think himself such a deplorable fool when he’s the most divine thing Nagi’s ever known.
“Okay,” Reo replies evenly in the present, despite his body language. “Tell the old hag I’ll come by. How dramatic. It’s not like I won’t see him back in Tokyo.”
Baya’s smile turns a touch sympathetic. “I can tell your father that you’re not feeling well,” she offers.
Reo waves her off with a sigh of resignation. Nagi hopes one day Reo will gain the power to say no. “It’s alright, it’s alright.”
“Reo—uh—boss,” Nagi gently nudges him in the back. When Reo turns with a raised eyebrow, Nagi leans forward so his chin is parallel with Reo’s shoulder. “What do you think he wants?”
“You,” Reo replies without hesitation, a wry and cynical grin taking shape. “I told you, he’s not the type to let things go.”
One more trial—there's always one more damn trial—before they can finally leave this place and go home. Nagi hopes Reo trusts him more this time, even just a little bit, to be unwavering, to stand by his side in front of his father, to stay.