A/N: Spoilers abound, mainly up to episode 38 of the Anime, but also beyond that. The wonderful characters are not mine, but Naoki Urasawa's (*sigh* - if they were mine, Johan would have A LOT more screen time). I'm trying to do them justice, so I'm really doing my best to stay IC, though I'm not completely sure if I can pull it off. Johan/Tenma pairing – so, obviously, there will be yaoi! Rated M for explicit (and mostly non-consensual) sexual content in later chapters, as well as some instances of language, sexual themes, bondage, mental torture and some kinkiness throughout (do I even need to mention these last elements if Johan is involved? ;D). But there is also LOTS of talking and brooding - so if you're just looking for some quick PWP, this might not be for you. Otherwise, Please enjoy! :)

He's the brat with the sterilized pitchfork

(Adam Green)

Fire.. smoke.. what a splitting headache..

Tenma heard his own groan, seemingly coming from far away. He tried to reach for his forehead. Failed. Tried again. What was happening? He attempted to open his eyes. It hurt. His whole face seemed swollen.

Right, the fire.. that guy beat me up.. and then.. ngh..

He suddenly understood why he couldn't move his hands. They were tied to something with what felt like a soft but firm piece of cloth. He tried moving his legs. His feet were equally tied. Urged on by a panic which was slowly rising to the surface of his clouded mind, Tenma managed to force his eyelids open.

A white ceiling. Walls that probably used to be a pale beige. Yellowed pictures showing random landscapes hanging above the bed he was lying on, his four limbs tied separately to bedposts. Old, tatty furniture dimly lit by what seemed to be the remaining light of a rainy late afternoon.

What the..

Tenma helplessly tugged at his bonds for a while, too dazed to formulate a single thought.

"So you're awake".

Johan's smooth voice cut like a cool draft of air through the black smoke inside the doctor's head, causing him to flinch violently and tear at his bonds with increased force, more a reflexive reaction to that calm voice than a real attempt to free himself. He flipped his head around to see the all too familiar figure standing in a doorway. There was no doubt, despite a shadow that mercifully covered Johan's face – Tenma was quite sure that it bore an expression he could not endure right now. Heavy silence engulfed the sparsely lit room, only softly punctured by the inappropriately comforting sound of raindrops hitting the window pane. It allowed shreds of not-so-well thought out questions to run wild in Tenma's aching head, and he randomly picked one to prevent it from bursting.

"Where.." the doctor's tongue felt numb and refused to finish its work. The silence continued for a few long seconds, and Tenma was starting to wonder if Johan would bother to answer questions before killing him, when the response finally came.

"In a hotel".

This was unsurprising considering the tacky décor of the room, and the older man cursed internally for wasting a question. He licked his lips, not sure if his next one would be a better idea.

"Why?"

The answer came quicker this time, and was delivered in calm, measured statements devoid of any emotion.

"You fainted in the library after you failed to shoot me. You probably would have died. So I took you here, Doctor Tenma." These last words were slightly accentuated, and hit their addressee like a thud in the stomach. Before he could even think of mustering up an answer, or rather an obvious follow-up question, Johan added: "Your head must hurt terribly."

With that, the young man disappeared into the opening behind him, leaving Tenma staring into the now empty space with a mixture of confusion, despair and pain. The monster was damn right, his head was breaking in two, and their short conversation had truly done nothing to make him feel any better. With a sigh, the doctor let it fall back onto the bed, darkness spinning in front of his now closed eyes... how was this even possible?

Just as he was trying to push the unasked (and increasingly eerie) question why Johan had saved his life out of his consciousness, he heard steps coming back into the room. Coming closer. Stopping in front of the bed. Tenma decided to keep his eyes closed.

Just kill me now. End it.

He suddenly felt Johan's weight sink into the mattress beside him, felt his whole body tense in shock, his hands building fists of their own accord. Cold sweat started to build on the older men's forehead.

Now. Please.

He was shaking all over.

"Here".

Tenma realised that he must have held his breath for a while, because he let it out in a surprised hiss at hearing Johan's soft voice so close to his own face. He turned it as far away from that voice as possible, which, considering that both his arms and his legs were fastened to the bed, was not very far.

"Take this", Johan calmly suggested again, seemingly ignoring his captive's desperate efforts to pull away.

"What is it?" Tenma muttered, in an attempt to regain his composure rather than seeking an answer. How was it possible that the young man's closeness caused such stress to his system? After all, the worst thing Johan could do was kill him, and the doctor had been preparing himself for this possible outcome since starting to track the monster down. It was pathetic.

"Just a painkiller".

Instinctively, Tenma pressed his face further into the bed sheet, firmly holding his lips together. There was a soft noise – a sigh or a chuckle, he could not tell which.

"It wouldn't make much sense for me to go through all the trouble of bringing you here only to poison you right away, now would it?" That voice was like silk, a silk sheet covering a shiny set of torture tools, and the words "right away" did not bode well.

"Nothing that you do.. makes much sense to me.. Johan." Tenma silently congratulated himself on finally getting out a whole sentence, though his hope of regaining some confidence by forcing himself to say the monster's name out loud faded when he realised how ragged his voice sounded.

"You break my heart saying that."

Despite better knowledge, the doctor's head turned around, acting on its own will, to look at Johan in surprise as he uttered this last sentence. His captor's face was hovering only half a metre away from Tenma's own, one corner of his mouth slightly curled upwards in a hint of an ironic smirk. However, as soon as he was sure of the doctor's attention, Johan's face lit in a full blown, most charming smile, and instantly, but too late, the older man knew why he had previously vowed not to open his eyes. Even on the numerous occasions that Tenma had observed Johan from a considerable distance, generally through the sight of his rifle, he found the young man's perfect physiognomy almost painful to look at. However, from this close, his beauty was simply breathtaking. And not in the good way; it was literally choking. The delicately heart shaped face, jaw line just angular enough to suggest masculinity, framed by hair the colour of sunlit sand; the elegantly curved lips; the eyes, clear and deep at the same time, like a winter's icy sky just after dawn, up in the highest, snow-clad mountains; and a smile which seemed capable of radiating enough well-calculated warmth to make these mountains melt into nothingness. To make everything melt away into nothingness. Tenma could only stare helplessly, the striking conflict between his opponent's flawless appearance and history of crimes now joining his headache in its mission to split his head in two.

Apparently, he was staring with his mouth open, as Johan unhurriedly proceeded to slip two tablets into it, followed by a drinking straw which stuck out of a glass of water he was holding. The feeling of the young man's unexpectedly warm fingertips on his lips and teeth sent a shiver down the doctor's spine, from where it slowly and unexplainably took over his whole body.

"Now, drink."

Tenma found himself following the simple instruction without a murmur, as if displaying a conditioned reaction in a Pavlovian experiment. As he swallowed the tablets, he realised that he was dying of thirst, and continued taking slow gulps for as long as he could bear the pain in his neck. The current position of his body was considerably unsuitable for drinking (or any other action, for that matter), even though Johan patiently held the glass in the most convenient way that was possible. When the doctor finally let his head sink back into the mattress, suppressing a groan, his captor leaned away, seemingly satisfied, the deceptively warm smile substituted by his usual calm, unreadable facial expression.

"There's a good doctor. We don't want you in pain, do we?"

With great difficulty, as if pulling away a finger painfully stuck to icy metal, Tenma managed to turn his head away from Johan, deciding to ignore his patronising tone, which, considering their age difference, was thoroughly insulting. Something told him that Johan was quite aware of the fact that this was even more true for a Japanese man of his age.

"If you care about me being in pain, you could release me from these bonds", he noted bitterly, the stiffness in his body becoming more noticeable as his headache started to fade. Whatever it was that Johan gave him – and Tenma tried to not even think about what black market drug he just swallowed – it certainly was powerful stuff, the effects already starting to show.

As expected, Johan ignored his suggestion, but got up from the bed and stepped a few strides away, causing the older man to exhale in relief (quietly enough not to be heard, he hoped). However, in the same measure as his mind was clearing, it was becoming flooded with memories he had been too dazed to put together before. The unbearable heat.. How many hundred people..? Frantic screams.. He shot.. Tenma's eyes widened in shock as he let out a stifled sob. The monster approaching him.. unable.. unable to pull the trigger.. And just before he fainted..

"NINA!" Tenma cried out, facing Johan once again, the image of the girl standing on the stage behind Schubert, engulfed in a sea of smoke and flame, hit him with full force. "What have you done? Is Nina alright? Where is she? TELL ME! Oh God.."

Johan tilted his beautiful head slightly, letting out a soft chuckle. "Oh? So you are more interested in my sister's well-being than that of the other three hundred people at the ceremony? All human life isn't equal after all, Doctor Tenma?" That voice was sweet like the most delicious poisonous fruit, and the torture tools were out now.

I mustn't give in to this.. mustn't..

The doctor gritted his teeth. "What happened to her? What happened to Schubert? How many casualties were there?" He now remembered that he had shot out one of the library doors, helping the trapped people to escape from the main hall, but as the fire had consumed most of the library by that time, the number of deaths could still have been horrendous.

"Doctor Tenma", Johan uttered in the tone of a teacher scolding a bright but inattentive student. "You should have realised by now that I am interested in scenarios, not outcomes. Also, you should know that I would take care of my little sister." With that, he gave another smile, but this one was so cold that it made the blood in Tenma's veins freeze. "Oh, by the way..." Johan continued slowly, the smile broadening to reveal a row of perfectly even white teeth, and it was quite clear that what would follow was not simply an accidental afterthought appearing in the monster's mind. ".. I saw your friend Doctor Reichwein and the little boy on the way out."

The doctor's heart stopped for a long, long second. "Wha.. No.. You.. If you.. I will.." He frantically tugged at his bonds once again, a wave of choking heat washing over his body.

".. kill me?" The young man filled in the last blank, slightly raising one slender eyebrow. "Your last attempt was not very impressive, my dear doctor, to say the very least. I could have hardly provided a better target for you, even if I had painted the bull's eye right in the middle of my forehead. Aah, Doctor Tenma.." Johan lightly shook his head in a disappointment that seemed surprisingly sincere. ".. after all that training you had, all that trouble you went through in order to obtain a sniper rifle, all those times that you observed me from behind a bush – and you still weren't man enough to rid the world of what you have inflicted upon it as a result of your good intentions. But tell me.."

The torture tools were slowly but unrelentingly cutting into the older man's flesh, centimetre by centimetre, aiming for his very heart.

".. it must be frustrating to know that even though you have now stained your hands with the blood of another human being and brought all the people close to you in danger, you have still failed to achieve your goal when it was so close."

This time, Tenma could not suppress the shaky sob that left his lips. His eyes closed, his body limp and covered with cold sweat, he intently hoped that he could die on this very spot.

Thinking that killing me is the worst thing he could do.. how stupid of me..

"I will go out for a while. Make sure to wait for me here." With that final mockery, the doctor was left to his own devices.

A/N: Soo... This is not only my very first fanfic, but also the first bit of prose I ever wrote (I'm more into poetry normally), plus English is only my third language. So please feel free to tell me if you think it's no good, and I will refrain from inflicting my dirty mind on the world in future ;D... ALL feedback is highly welcome! Even if your review is just one word, like.. "crap".. or "great".. or.. dunno.. "grap".. - I would appreciate it VERY much! :D