notes: Below lies proof positive that fanfic can ruin your life in every way. Written at the request of a very special person, and I use the word 'special' liberally. I'd say sorry for making you watch all that pointless fluff, darling, but considering I wrote this in your name, I'll be expecting my golden "YOU TRIED" sticker by morning.

Standard disclaimers—I neither own K nor profit from the following, you catch my drift. Writing quality is about what you'd expect for being finished in three hours up to five in the morning.

ashes burning

Fire's easy.

Yata doesn't get how other people call up their auras. He figures there's gotta be a difference somehow in the way they do it, how the slow bright simmering rolls out from their skins before battle like blood welling, like heat. It's never been like that for him, not once. All he's ever had to do is think a spark and it flares out of him, sharp as light, hot as a knife's touch, like it's been waiting for his call along. He flicks his fingers and the world lights red—HOMRA's color, and that's how things should be.

Anything burns if you crank the temperature high enough. It's always been that easy.

It just gets easier in the two weeks after.

Bugs the hell out of him, but that's how he thinks of the whole thing: "after", when the world's all glass and matchwood and every empty afternoon's just begging him to take off for riding. He does, of course; it's not like any place's gonna need Yata anytime soon, and meanwhile each sunset's painting the sky in streaks of gold and hushed flame, and his wheels are snapping sparks off of steel railings, and he's charging through park after park, startling birds and teachers and businesswomen and lounging teenagers in the grass distracted by their headsets, like he really doesn't have to process anything in the world but angles, distance, velocity—

So that's after—which means there once was a before too. Before, whose ghost winds through all the old haunts: the cafeteria where the gang always taken their lunches; the playground where he'd once flipped himself off the swings trying to get the bastard's attention during a snitfit between ten-year-olds; the cheap little thrift shop he'd hauled Saru into after finding the right kind of gloves to handle his damn daggers and Saru had picked out a bandanna and smacked it over his hair. ("Misaki, think for a second. What kind of punk are you aiming to be? You stick out as it is. Like a nail begging to be hammered down," and the long-suffering of his sigh had prompted Yata to laugh instead—well, and catch him in a headlock, and shove him around a little, because some lessons had to be ground in.) Before lurches through memory like a monster, dogs his shadow across town, sticks in his throat like a disease.

It's enough to choke a guy.

A goddamn bonfire, he thinks. That's what it's like. Doesn't matter how long anything burns and how high the flame, there's always gonna be some residue. Soot, cinders, thinner than water and smearing marks like ink—and sure, a guy could burn those too. Burn the ashes, and the ashes's ashes. Keep scorching black out of the black. It doesn't make a difference. Sooner or later, any flame chokes itself out on dust. And the dust remains.

HOMRA's missions haven't changed—there's always more bad guys and sketchy assholes in the world who need to be taken down an illegal peg or two, and Yata's not so irresponsible as to be disloyal. He shows up to every raid with skateboard and bat, same as always, and he listens to the hard cues in the Red King's voice ringing out, and he smashes and kicks and laughs until the world's ringing with glass and groans, and he wears the raggedy tears that soon begin to show in his trousers like they make no difference (and they don't, right? not like anybody's looking), and after every raid he stops by the bar just long enough to get bandaged up before he takes off again, and he goes on.

That's how living works, that's what not changing means, and Yata'll be damned if anything important's different anyhow.

So he keeps going, and so he'd keep going if Rikio hadn't taken the time to track him down in the middle of his afternoon run to tell him the latest: that Kusanagi's passed out the order for Yata to start showing his face regularly around the bar again, and Mikoto actually looked up from the depths of his afternoon mug at Kusanagi's bar to ask if Yata was okay.

("Actually, Yata," Rikio says, stroking his goatee uncomfortably, "I think he just wanted to know where you were, so maybe you shouldn't read into—"

"Shows what you know! That's how a real king shows concern! Without worrying his followers.")

Here and now, Yata stops on the sidewalk. Kicks the skateboard up and tucks it under his arm, letting people mill around them both. Doesn't look at the sky because he doesn't need the distraction—doesn't need to think at all. Rikio's still looking at him—well, hell, let him look. It's not like they've got anything to talk about when it comes to this. Everybody knows the story already, every scar and day to it. Two weeks since Totsuka's camera had cut a photograph out of sparks and pixels: Fushimi Saruhiko with his head turned to address some stranger, dressed to the nines in blue with a saber slung at his hip. His first public appearance since.

It's been two weeks. Nothing's changed—not really. And he's okay.

Yata clears his throat. Abruptly the rolling chatter of the city surges in his ears again. He makes a face. Yata's nineteen—he knows about stuff like denial and overthinking and forget that. Forget pretending. He's done.

"Shut up! Don't say it," he tells Rikio, who looks nonplussed—but Yata isn't sticking around to check what kind of retort the guy'll come up with. He drops the board again, snaps back up to velocity in one practiced movement as he heads back to the bar. The world's a bright rush of daylight and colors around him—more than red, more than electricity and wheels grinding into cement, more than the twist of heel and hip he throws into angling around a corner, more than anything. City air coils through his lungs, exhaust and steel and the cut of a light wind, unchanging and unchanged.

He's really goddamn okay.

Weeks ghost by. Kusanagi and Anna clear Saru's things from the guest-room above the bar without asking the rest of them; Yata only notices when he crashes in there the night after a clan celebration and winds up scrounging for his own things under the bed in the morning. Nobody says his name even when they bring up the Blues and their usual dumbass interference. He gets to thinking that maybe the sneaking bastard isn't a complete moron after all. 'Cause HOMRA's got business all across town, and the Blues inevitably get caught up in it—nobody could stay so perfectly out of the crossfire unless they were trying to fly under the radar.

The meaning of this observation doesn't click until he's crossing one of the city's busiest streets on an idle day and feels his eyes fixing inexorably on a single source—drawn, before he thinks of looking, even, to see what it is. Not that he's really got to think twice. He knows.

Shit. He's actually been looking for the guy.

Without another thought, Yata twists after him. "Yo, Saru!" he barks, and doesn't even wait for a response. The skateboard races across the street in a single bright stroke, just in time for the expected monkey bastard to glance over.

"Oh," he says, oddly ungentle. "You." It's not the first time Yata's had that voice used on him (privately he's always thought of it as Saru's hangover voice, better known as his I Hate You For Talking Me Into Drinking The Sake Bottles That Led To This Hangover And Yes I'm Talking About You Yata Misaki voice), but it—it's just not the voice he expects from the bastard who worked them over and left them, this mix of informality and disinterest. Yata lets a heel drop to hold the skateboard at rest, looks him up and down.

"Hah!" he says at last. "So it's true. The monkey's found himself a robot uniform!"

"At least my clothes fit," Saru muses aloud. "Who's the one dressing like a middle-schooler...?"

The blatant lie of this question stops Yata in his tracks. "Th-this isn't about clothes!" he manages, and nearly falls for the familiarity of the baiting. This could be any other day—it sounds like any other. But he's got better things to say right now, and the angular turns of Saru's new coat show all too clearly that he's already turning away from the talk. This doesn't matter, ticks at the back of his brain—none of this'll change anything. But he still has to try. "Look," Yata says, clear and firm. "You can do whatever you want, nobody's gonna try and bring you back. Just," he stops. Studies his skateboard, sliding it forward and back in a roll of his foot. "Come and talk to Mikoto some, won't you?"

"Should I?"

"Should you?" Yata mimics. He glances up sharply. "You owe him that. You actually had him worried, you know that!"

"Aaah, did I really?" Saru laughs a little, thinner and lighter; Yata hears his own tone laid over the words like a ghost's. But Saru's brows twitch together as he meets Yata's gaze and—it's not a face Yata's ever seen him make, has ever thought that Saru could hold. Because for all the time they've spent as a clan and before it, Saru's always been looking off and up and elsewhere. It's never been that big a deal, getting him to listen—they've been together through everything, shoulder to shoulder, HOMRA against the world.

He's always had Saru's back whenever he wanted him before. His attention had never mattered.

But here he is now, here he is again, Saru with his rumpled hair and a fist braced against his hip, and his gaze is absolutely focused. Saru looks at him and Yata sees his own reflection mirrored between mirrors, glancing shadows off of his glasses and then behind them: himself like a ghost, scruffed up and young and slinging an arm around Saru's shoulders, history scarring every angle and motion, the oldest and ugliest apparition he could have seen.

"Hmmm?" Saru croons. He closes the distance between them in slackened, lazy strides—and Yata lets him, waits. Watches his eyes lid, his mouth turning up. "Are you really going to tell me you came here to talk? Aaaah," he exhales, cutting short the retort half-lit in Yata's throat, "but you were never the best with words. There's probably nothing new to hear, is there?"

"Shut up! Those damn Blues, did they scrub your memories after you got in? We're comrades."

"Wrong. Wrong by any count," Saru says, and the last of Yata's patience snaps to dust before he even hears the rest of the total stupidity the monkey bastard's spewing. His fist snaps out; the punch hits cheekbone. Light snaps off of Saru's glasses.

Yata barely sees him move as he knees him in the gut.

It's a brawl from that point on, just them, no flame 'cause there'd be no point, not when Saru holds the flame as readily as he does. Just knuckles and impact, just bruises and bone, just blood thickening along his jaw, the skateboard dropped and skidding into the alley, the echo of missteps and shoves, the gasping puff that Saru makes as the wind's knocked out of him, Yata shoving him hard and grinning as he rattles into a trashcan in the alleyway, the clang of his near-stumble, his kick lashing into Yata's kneecap, the ache cracking through Yata's shoulder as he stumbles back into brick, Saru's shadow in a black stroke along the wall and over his eyes, Saru standing over him and the air shivering to suspension between them at last, coarse as ash.

Yata lets his head thud against brick, narrowing his eyes. The instinct to fight itches in his skin. "Saru," he grates. "What're you doing..."

Saru laughs again. "My," he says, ducking closer. The bastard's looking at him with a new little curl to his grin, that smug expression Yata's always loathed which might as well spell out I'm Thinking Things You Wish You Knew And You're Not Getting Any Of Them Out of Me. "You wanted my attention, didn't you? Well, here I am." He's got a fist clenched idly in Yata's shirt, his knuckles digging into ribs, and this single point of contact weighs against Yata's skin like an anchor. "What next?"

The question's completely ridiculous. Yata's mind blanks completely, it's that stupid—and maybe this is it, maybe Saru's just a moron of a monkey after all, and there's nothing left to be said, nothing to be done but to take their bruises away to their separate corners, and there's absolutely no intent in the indulgent way Saru leans over him or the palpable warmth of his breath. Nothing to see, nothing to expect.

Yata swallows—sees Saru's eyes flick down to track the twitch of his throat. "No answers, then?" he murmurs, like the total bastard he's apparently become. "Hmmmm."

This doesn't seem to require an answer, because his fingers are curling under Yata's chin, and he's—

Yata's head jerks backwards two seconds after contact—not exactly effective, he realises, after he bangs it against the wall. "Hell," he manages, out of the ache drilling through his skull, "what was that! What do you think you're doing—"

"Misaki," Saru drawls, honeyed and serene. Irritation curls sourly in Yata's stomach, along with a clenching that isn't. "You'll really like this better if you don't talk." Hooking fingers into the earphones caught around Yata's throat, he pulls him close, kisses him again with the same attentive urgency.

And there's a moment, maybe, where Yata's kissing back—because if they aren't fighting, if this isn't a skirmish between HOMRA and Sceptre 4, if it's enough just to have Saru's attention for five damn minutes—oh, hell. Finishing thoughts is for people with more free time and better self-control than Yata's ever had. Saru's got both of his right now.

Whatever else, a moment's enough: his stiff mouth slackens just a little, just enough. Saru tongues his teeth in a lazy swipe and past as he idly works a hand underneath the hem of Yata's shirt, and the blurring contact leaves him kind of confused as to whether that was more gross or hot. Not that it matters when Saru's hand is sinking against his chest, pressing him back against the wall, as his palm ghosts over Yata's skin while his other hand works at the zipper of his trousers—

Yata sputters, chokes. A hand flies down at once to catch Saru's wrist. All at once, he can feel the bruise thickening in his frame and Saru's arm weighing in his grip and they're in an alleyway with all of this coming out of nowhere—

"Get off of me, bastard," he snarls. "Touch me one more time, I swear I'll—"

"Will you?" Saru croons, and there's a lilt in his voice and a hook in his smile. "Swear?" A nail scrapes against the mark, proof of HOMRA charred into his skin, and Yata hisses as much in objection as in dread, expectation. "Do something to me? Misaki?"

He drops his mouth to Yata's jaw—bites it like some kind of weirdo with too many teeth to keep track of. But the brittle noise between Yata's teeth fizzles out to a thinner hiss as Saru sucks along the skin. Sensation in the world boils down to Saru: Saru's hand's already skirting back along his belt, his lips trailing down Yata's throat and—and Yata's cursing his name, feverish and furious, a riot of curses 'cause that's all he's got for this: the heat clawing up through his belly—the desperate teenage need, flaying him to nerves and pressure, for Saru to keep touching him.

"There," he says, and just Saru's voice in his ear's enough to drag electricity through Yata's spine. He sounds barely winded. There's something familiar about the delicate, lazy inflection to his voice—a tone Yata can't name, not yet. "Did you forget...? You should try paying some attention, Mi-sa-ki. I'm the one who knows you inside out. If I asked you the right way... ah, maybe if I begged?" His fingers press a little lower, a little more firmly; Yata shudders, trying to curse him, trying to think. "You'd really let me take you apart right here. Wouldn't you?"

Contempt.

The world snaps into focus. Yata exhales a long breath, but he's got both hands fisted in the lapels of his stupid coat in an instant. For a moment he only hangs on—then he pulls them down hard. Just to have that much tension, something to yank—before he kicks Saru in a shin and shoves him away. Even the sight of him pitching headlong's barely any comfort to the heat crawling under his skin, to the sick, slick flush drying along his collarbone.

Yata swallows. He can feel his pulse jabbing at his throat like needles; it shocks through his system in a single hard charge—and he's scrubbing at his mouth before he has to think about why, taking steps backwards until a safe distance's opened up between them and the ground's steady beneath his feet again.

"Heh!" he puffs, but there's no conviction in the sound. Words grind between his teeth. "Look at you now, talking like you know anything about me. You don't." He's clutching his fists tight after all, but the air's quiet and there's no flame rising around him—and maybe that means something in itself, too, and maybe it doesn't; either way, he's damned if he'll let Saru think of that. "About any of us. If you wanna be a traitor, then stay gone."

His voice rings through the alleyway. Into the silence, Saru exhales, and the tension carried in his spine and posture and smile seems to fray out in heartbeats. His eyes focus again, fixing on their target—but lightly, some central cog already lost to another thought, and his skewed attention going to pieces even as he stands with his hands in his pockets, looking amused and only a little more mussed than usual.

It comes to Yata in a sudden kick, then, familiarity like a twist of venom through the heart.

"Aaaaah. I guess I must," Saru says, and nothing's changed about the way he says that, either—edgelessly idle, utterly without inflection. His lips twitch up, and his gaze lingers without interest. "But don't worry, Misaki. You still have time to get it—I can wait for that."

He turns. Steps out of the alleyway. Yata stands stiff for a moment before he's striding after him, kicking up his skateboard as he goes. He hits the edge of the alley just in time to see Saru tuck his hands into his pockets and meander his way across the street—and the crowd's surging up already, a wash of colors and traffic and unfamiliar faces to swallow him whole. Just another citizen in the city, and he's almost lost again, nearly out of reach.

"For what?" he shouts at the bastard's back. "For what?"

But he's gone.

Standing under the beating sun, Yata grits his teeth. His throat's gone dry as scorch, and he swallows the dust of it without a word, thinking bastard, bastard in circles. Thinking, maybe, that he should have known. Saru with his glinting glasses and his blunt little smiles—Saru, who never gives way unless he's getting something out of it—Saru, Saru, Saru. This is Saru as he's always been—as Yata should have known him all along.

Of the two of them, Saru's the one who hasn't changed.

A shudder jerks through him. Yata looks down. Daylight unravels, hot against his nape, and the world's too bright for this. The skateboard's wood rests an easy scorch away from loss beneath his shoe. At his sides, his fists are trembling.

Trembling, and they just won't stop.

end