Hi everyone!

This is the exact same story as Chapters 8 and 9 in my Cherry Blossoms one-shot collection. So if you've already read that, there's nothing new you'll find here. (Sorry to my subscribers who got the notification! Same story, new title!) I just posted up the Undercover Cop story separately because it occurred to me that it's quite elaborate and probably needed to stand alone.

For all new readers, here's the summary/warning: lots of angst. And sex and fluff, but mostly huge helpings of angst.

Set shortly after the epic, Earth-shattering canon kiss in Chapter 23 [UPDATE: AND THEN THE EVEN MORE EARTH-SHATTERING CANON SEX IN CHAPTER 25] of the manga.

Hope you enjoy!

Yashiro should have known something serious was going on as soon as he entered Misumi's office. His Oyaji had always been gruff but even in the thick of the most nefarious of Yakuza wars, there was always a certain detached amusement behind his gruffness.

Now, there was nothing. Only heavy lines across his face.

Yashiro should have noticed it. But he was too caught up in what had happened recently.

The tears. The embrace. The kiss on the bathroom floor. Everything that had happened immediately after that. It was all still fresh. He could still taste Doumeki on him. Doumeki on his lips and skin and in his hair and inside him and around him. The smell of Doumeki on the sheets. Doumeki.

Doumeki.

And so he was understandably distracted.

'What's all this about?'

With his wide, languid grin, eyes half-lidded and seeing something else, Yashiro fell with a huff on Misumi's couch. Misumi himself stood by the coffee table. His Amou replacement,* whom Yashiro would always call his Amou Replacement, hovered nearby looking nervous.

Uncomfortably aware that he was trying to stall, trying to push back the moment as far as he could, Misumi stared at Yashiro for a few seconds. He saw the thinly disguised happiness. He remembered a boy he had once seen lying naked in the snow, whistling.

His insides churned at the thought of what the news would do to him.

'Where's Doumeki?' Misumi asked quietly.

Hearing his name sent a small flare to Yashiro's stomach.

I'm like a blushing schoolgirl, he thought in dry amusement. Again.

'Waiting by the car, like you asked,' said Yashiro carelessly as he lit a cigarette one-handed.

He remembered how Doumeki had looked standing before the Lexus, fists at his sides. His face was as deadpan as ever but somehow communicated his reluctance to leave Boss' side. Yashiro had turned to look at him before he went into the building and, sure enough, Doumeki's gaze hadn't moved from Yashiro even for a moment.

'Good,' said Misumi.

'So what's going on? We were on our way to the docks. The transfer won't oversee itself.'

Yashiro then noticed the file in Misumi's hand, stamped with the Japanese Police emblem.

'We just had a leak from the OCD,' Misumi began.

'Ah. All my hard work with the Organised Crime Division paid off, did it?' said Yashiro, remembering how many times he had bent over backwards for their guy in the OCD. Bent over forwards more often than back, he reflected lightly. He wondered whether things would change, now that Doumeki –

'They found a rat,' Misumi said simply. 'This one's been protected by the very top. Only the highest levels of the JP know about him – the commissioner and vice-commissioner.'

'Sounds like quite the leak.'

Without another word, Misumi handed Yashiro the file. Yashiro opened it.

And the ground fell away.

As expected, Doumeki asked no questions when Yashiro climbed back into the Lexus, this time accompanied by Nanahara and Sugimoto. Doumeki closed the door after them and got into the driver's seat. Nanahara sat in front.

Before the call from Misumi, they had been on their way to the docks. Doumeki headed for the exit to the harbour.

'Drop-off point,' Yashiro said tersely. 'Warehouse 11, in Ueno.'

Doumeki glanced at him in the rear-view mirror. His voice was stiff like Doumeki had never heard before. His mouth was set in a firm, thin line and his eyes were strangely cold. Glassy. They were fixed out the window.

Even Nanahara and Sugimoto seemed tense. Doumeki wondered what had happened in Misumi's office.

'Yes, Boss.'

The warehouse reminded Doumeki of the time Yashiro had rescued him from Ota's clutches.* Boss had put himself and his job and even his life on the line for him.

Unlike that bright, blinding day, clouds had gathered thickly that afternoon and the air seemed somehow muted.

They entered the echoing space, Doumeki walking behind Yashiro and keeping his eyes on the shadowy edges of the empty warehouse. Check your corners and blind spots. Training from his days as a cop.

'Doumeki,' Yashiro said without turning. 'Your gun.'

Doumeki reached under his jacket and slipped it out of his belt line. He handed it to Boss.

He missed the subtle signal Boss gave to Nanahara, who had followed immediately behind Doumeki.

Something sharp and heavy collided with the back of his head. He saw stars and stumbled. Nanahara then came around and threw his knee into Doumeki's gut.

Winded, Doumeki fell to the floor of the warehouse. His mind flashed through a million possibilities, all of which centred on the likelihood that Boss was in danger.

'Boss –!'

He craned his neck up and was immediately relieved to see Yashiro standing nearby, unharmed. He held Doumeki's gun loosely at his side. Nanahara stepped between them, his face livid like Doumeki had only seen it once before.

Relief turned to confusion.

That was when the awful, impossible thought occurred to Doumeki. The one thing that he had done everything in his power to keep from Boss. The one thing that would destroy everything, everything, if Boss ever found out.

Right before Nanahara's foot collided with him again, he looked up at Boss' face. And his insides went cold.

The icy, dangerous gaze. The desire to hurt. The betrayal. It was all there in Yashiro's eyes. It was a look Doumeki had prayed he would never see.

He barely felt the kick in his stomach. He barely felt anything at all. He didn't even try to fight back.

'It's the perfect time to go undercover.'

His bosses – bosses as high up as bosses go – sat across the desk from him. The Shinseikai group's files were spread before him.

'The whole world, including your immediate commanding officer, thinks you've been kicked off the force. Everyone knows what you did. They'll lap it up at Shinseikai. A cop turned bad. Easy sell.'

Doumeki had remained silent. The operation was simple enough. Gather enough on the young leader and others, Misumi included, so the cops could build their case and bring down the entire group once and for all.

There was a photo of the young leader of the group in one of the files. His target, if they were lucky. He would have to start small. Start from the bottom. But if things worked out…

Yashiro. A name that rolled pleasantly off the tongue. A face that seemed too perfect for his world. A world that Doumeki was on the point of entering.

His superiors sensed his hesitation.

'The only question you need to ask yourself is whether you want to keep your job,' the commissioner said. He spoke slowly and deliberately, with a measure of care in each syllable, so Doumeki could feel the full weight of the decision.

'We know we're taking a risk even coming to you like this. But frankly, we don't care why you snapped and tried to kill your own father. Your record was impeccable before that… incident. And you know this beat, you know the neighbourhood back to front. Best of all, no one will suspect you. You're our guy.'

Another long silence. Doumeki felt his life stretch away before him. Perhaps it was the one way to redeem himself after the mess that he had left behind. The one way for him to forget the look on his sister's face when he saw her that day.

'This is your chance,' the police commissioner told him, with all the gravity and wisdom of a higher power, 'to prove who you really are.'

The warehouse door was wide open. Yashiro could see the thickening layers of clouds above. The way it plunged Tokyo into a heavy sort of silence which shielded it from what was taking place on the warehouse floor.

Yashiro watched as Nanahara's fists pounded into Doumeki's face. He felt each blow in a deep, private place. One that writhed in the reception and revelled in the infliction. He wanted Doumeki to hurt.

He wanted him to hurt as much as he was hurting.

He wanted Doumeki to feel as though the ground had fallen away. Like he had forgotten how to draw breath.

'As far as we can tell,' Misumi had said gravely back in his office, 'Doumeki Chikara is still under the gainful employment of the OCD.'

Sugimoto watched from nearby, his gun trained on Doumeki's huge form, to keep him in check. But Yashiro could tell that it was unnecessary. Doumeki wasn't even trying to defend himself, let alone fight back.

Yashiro was both there, where Doumeki was being beaten, and back in Misumi's office when he had found out for the first time. It hadn't yet caught up. Not really. Not enough for him to look back on every little moment and understand what it had all really meant. Why it had turned out that way. How he could have been so blind.

'I'm sorry, Yashiro,' Misumi had said, using a voice Yashiro had rarely ever heard. 'I know what it's like when those closest to you…'*

Yashiro turned to look at him and felt a spark of pure, white anger grow in the pit of his stomach. It came from everywhere and nowhere and it was so powerful it threatened to overwhelm him, but it was focused on Misumi at that moment.

No idea. Misumi had no idea what it was like. Him and Amou? Him and Amou? It was laughable. Misumi had no idea what it was like. Not a fucking clue.

But in the end, Yashiro didn't even muster a glare. He battened down that surge of anger and instead fed it to the pit of emptiness that had opened up.

The pit of emptiness that had opened in his childhood in the wake of his stepfather. And again when he was fifteen and crying his soul out over something Kageyama had said to him almost in passing. And again when he pushed Kuga in Kageyama's direction. And again and again every time he felt the need to be filled. By someone. Anyone.

It gaped, yawning open yet again, when he stared at Doumeki Chikara's police file which he held in his hands. Doumeki stared up at him from his profile photo, impassive and serene.

You have nice eyes.

Eyes that were steady and unwavering and dedicated and intense. Eyes that Yashiro, in his utter, breathtaking stupidity, thought he was beginning to learn how to read.

Only a month after he had begun working for Kirishima, Doumeki's particular talents, and lack thereof, had been noted by both his immediate superiors and Nanahara. Namely, his silence and his size and his inefficiency as a loan shark.

We're short on people at the moment. On top of that, he's not good at talking so I thought we could use him as a bodyguard. You wanted one, right Boss?

After meeting Yashiro for the first time, Doumeki carried memories of Yashiro's mouth around his cock and the way his eyes had taken Doumeki in. Like he already knew Doumeki's every secret. His sister. His father. His job. All of it.

He called headquarters.

'Only a month in and you're the pervert's lapdog already, huh? Nice job.'

The commissioner's voice was brittle and dry over the phone.

'Do whatever he wants. Be careful for now. Later, when you have his trust, start gathering what you can. When you and all the other informants have enough, we'll round up all the roaches in one big hit at Tsuji.'

Doumeki knew the plan.

'Give us something we can use.'

But Doumeki never did.

His very first day on the job, he had been handed a drunk, half-unconscious Yashiro to take home.

The boss is beautiful. That's what you're thinking right? Your eyes say it all.

Misumi's words had cut him to the quick. He had no idea he had been that transparent. His heart pounded madly, wondering what else they might be onto. Whether this had all been a fool's mission from the beginning.

Yashiro's weight on his back was an anchor that held him to the world. He felt grounded and real for the first time in years. He wondered whether he was still, somehow, trying to prove who he really was.

A few hours later, Yashiro fell asleep with his head still in Doumeki's lap; on the inside of Doumeki's thigh. Dawn leaked slowly in from the world outside and Doumeki turned to look at it.

He moved Yashiro's head gently onto the bed.

And he searched Yashiro's flat half-heartedly.

Give us something we can use.

His heart wasn't in it. Each drawer he pulled open, each file he riffled through. It all felt like grains of sand that sifted pointlessly through his hands.

After a while, he realised he was hoping not to find anything. He was relieved when it turned out, as he had suspected, that Yashiro was smarter than that.

And so he returned to Boss' bed. He intended to just lie there for a few moments. Instead he fell asleep.

It was the following morning that Yashiro found the little newspaper clipping in Doumeki's pocket. The piece on Aoi Doumeki, an up-and-coming artist.

That day was the day everything changed for Doumeki. The day he finally realised who he was. Or who he would try to be. For Boss.

I don't have any more secrets, Doumeki had once told him.

You're a bad liar, Yashiro had replied.^

The thuds of Nanahara's fists and feet impacting Doumeki's body were much louder than the muffled sounds that occasionally came from his mouth.

Yashiro's eyes were cold. His face and body were rigid. But on the inside, he was broken.

'Is that why?' he said suddenly.

It was the first time he had spoken since Nanahara began. The pounding stopped. A long, awful silence claimed the warehouse; a silence that was magnified by the broiling grey clouds outside.

'Is that why you wanted to stay by my side so badly?'

His voice didn't quiver for a moment. It was all delivered in a low, smooth, acerbic tone. The words and the look on Yashiro's face hurt Doumeki more than anything Nanahara had done to him.

He hesitated. He tasted blood. He felt the skin beneath his eye starting to swell. He tried to form words.

'No, Boss –'

Nanahara kicked him again.

Yashiro didn't stop him.

He couldn't defect. He couldn't simply switch sides like he had turned the page of a book. If the commissioner got any wind of his newfound loyalty, he would be arrested in a heartbeat.

So his weekly phone calls to headquarters continued. He would send them things. Small things. Nothings, really. Plans for transactions and drops and deals that would change at the last moment. So Shinseikai was never implicated. So Yashiro was never in harm's way.

'Heard you sliced your pinkie off,' the commissioner said a few weeks later.

Doumeki remained silent.

'You've got balls, I'll give you that. Not a lot of agents would have gone that far.'

If the commissioner ever suspected, Doumeki never found out.

In any case, by then, Doumeki was long gone. He was Yashiro's arms and legs. And he would follow Yashiro to the ends of the Earth.

Eventually, when it felt like years had passed, Yashiro lifted a hand.

Nanahara stepped back, panting and sweating and furious. And still vaguely guilty about the fact that it was his own fault that Doumeki had wormed his way to Boss' side in the first place.

Yashiro stared at him. Doumeki felt small again in a way that had nothing to do with his bruises or the fact that he was curled up on the floor.

He knew and Yashiro knew and Nanahara knew and Sugimoto knew what would happen next. How the Yakuza dealt with rats.

There wouldn't be a chance for him to even explain himself or –

'Do you deny it?' Yashiro asked suddenly. The gun was still by his side, pointing straight down.

Doumeki blinked at him, taking shallow, painful breaths.

Yashiro stared down and there, somewhere, Doumeki saw a chink in his armour. A flash of hurt. Something that he could latch onto.

But the question. The question itself was one he couldn't answer.

Yashiro waited and prayed. He prayed for anything to fall from the sky and tell him he didn't have to go through with it. That it had all been a mistake. That Doumeki cared for him, and it hadn't all been a huge, glaring, hilarious lie. He waited.

The safety clicking off the gun resounded in the cavernous space.

'Do you deny that you're still working for the OCD? And that you have been since the beginning?'

It wasn't a quiver exactly. But there was something in Yashiro's voice, something unlike him, that made the other two glance at him uncertainly.

'Deny it,' Yashiro ordered. It was both an order and not. Both desperate and not.

Doumeki, at the best of times, couldn't express himself with any degree of confidence. Now, with something so important on the line, he had no hope at all.

He breathed heavily and tried to hold Boss' gaze for as long as he could. Then it fell away.

'I can't, Boss.'

In that split-second, Yashiro thought he could pull the trigger. He realised he could, in fact, fathom seeing Doumeki lying there with a bullet hole in his chest. The anger and betrayal that clawed at his insides were powerful enough for all that and worse. He remembered Doumeki's huge hands on his body. The heat and relentlessness of his cock. The way he had watched Yashiro and moulded his body beneath him. The way he had murmured a few words into Yashiro's hair in the burnished light of sunset before they fell asleep.

All lies.

And yet the gun remained by his side. The safety remained off. Time ticked away in that grey warehouse on that grey day. Nanahara and Sugimoto felt the space around them stretch thinly. The world held its breath.

Despite how long it took Yashiro to make a physical move, the desire to pull the trigger only lasted a moment.

He abruptly turned away from Doumeki's battered body and walked towards the warehouse door where the sky was still grey and brooding but where the rain held itself back.

'Boss?' Nanahara called nervously. It occurred to him that he might be left to do the dirty work. He suddenly wondered if he could really bring himself to do it.

'I'm late,' Yashiro replied without even looking at his shoulder. 'Matsubara's waiting at the docks.'

'But what about –?'

'I'll deal with it later. Stay here. Sugimoto, you're driving.'

Sugimoto slipped his gun into his belt line and followed Yashiro to the car.

Sighing in frustration, and a small amount of relief, Nanahara turned back to Doumeki.

Doumeki, whose eyes hadn't left Yashiro even for a moment.

*Author's note: I mixed up canon and my own Careful Now headcanon in this AU. This story takes place shortly after the canon kiss in Chapter 23 [update: and after the first-time canon sex in Chapter 25] but also, somehow, after all the many things that happened in Careful Now, including the fact that Amou was revealed to be a bad guy (and killed), and including the part where Yashiro rescues Doumeki from bad guys in a warehouse, and including the part where Yashiro and Doumeki meet Yoneda Kou (which comes up in the next part). It's all a big confusing mess of a timeline lol. Hope you enjoyed anyway! Part II soon :)