Disclaimer: I make no profit from this fic and I dedicate it to all Mikaoba and Aomika fans!

Beta readers: ThatOneGirlwiththeM, Cheshire XIII (up til ch.11), Norway517 (since ch.15)

Pairings: Mikado x Aoba

MONDAY

"Mikado-senpai…" Aoba mumbled, purposefully looking like a naïve fool. "How could you call me a sociopath? I'm a decent guy!"

They were at Mikado's apartment, where Aoba often visited to discuss their Dollars' activities in private. Mikado didn't mind, even though he suspected that Aoba visited to spy for his admin account password for the Dollars site, hoping to steal it, kick Mikado out of Dollars and pretend to be the founder himself. Someone else would feel hurt or used, but for Mikado it was entertaining to have Aoba at his home. His two-faced behavior was so different from everybody else's, and it amused him.

"Let's read a bit." Mikado said with a book in his hands. "It's written here that sociopaths are characterized by: hypocrisy that leads to pathological lying…"

"Mikado-senpai, have I ever lied non-stop?"

"…manipulating other people for the sake of one's own goals…"

"Everybody cares for their goals, Mikado-senpai. Why am I being picked on?"

"…superficial charm…"

"Superficial? I'm wounded."

"…inability to form bonds of attachment to other people… Eh, what's wrong, Aoba-kun?"

"I am NOT Orihara." Aoba said with quiet resentment, but internally laughed at his own theatrics. "Stop confusing me with that bastard…"

He buried his face in his hands, pretending to feel frustrated with Mikado's opinions and hoping to elicit a sense of guilt from him. Sure enough, Mikado felt guilty instantaneously, but focused and pulled himself together. No way, he thought, he won't be tricked by these transparent manipulation attempts.

"Aoba-kun, it's not like I'm judging you." He smiled peacefully and put his hand on Aoba's shoulder. "On the contrary, this makes you all the more… interesting to me."

Mikado's face lit up with an abnormal smile he had no conscious idea about.

For a few moments Aoba felt confused. Then it dawned on him. Mikado was crazy for everything unusual and extraordinary. What Aoba could never imagine in his wildest dreams was that he himself would make it on the list of the extraordinary and would become an object of Mikado's fixation! That's convenient, he thought, that gives me more ways of manipulating him. With great effort Aoba suppressed a content smile.

TUESDAY

Next day, after classes, they were at Mikado's again. Aoba forced his homework on Mikado and while the latter was busy doing it, he was happily rummaging inside of his kitchen trashcan. Aoba believed that the "examination of left-overs" was an under appreciated spy trick. He always managed to learn a lot about people from things they threw away. In this particular case, Aoba already knew that Mikado was in possession of gay magazines; he found one in a recycling bin near his apartment not so long ago. Aoba enjoyed the feeling of secretly knowing something so intimate about his senpai.

"Aoba-kun!" Mikado called from the room all of a sudden. "Come over here…"

Mikado was worried that Aoba was spending so much time at his kitchen, unwatched. What was he even doing there alone? Poisoning food in the fridge? Sneaking hidden cameras and "bugs" between the floorboards? When Aoba's footsteps reached Mikado's hearing, his heart rate picked up. It was so thrilling to have no idea what he was up to, as if he had a wild, unpredictable animal walking around his home.

"What's the deal, Mikado-senpai?" Aoba asked innocently, holding a teacup that he snatched as quickly as possible from the kitchen. "I'm hungry, and was looking for anything to eat, but you've got… nothing today. I helped myself to some tea."

Yeah, right, of course, Mikado thought. But he smiled without giving away these thoughts and ushered Aoba closer. As a matter of fact, about a week ago Mikado discovered that Aoba liked to rummage in his garbage from time to time, and had a brilliant idea to place a gay magazine into the recycling bin. This way he could safely hint that he was gay without being open about it. Aoba bought it. He didn't suspect at all that he was being fed that information as part of a plan. Mikado, on another hand, knew that Aoba would find it hard to resist using such an ace up his sleeve. He wondered if Aoba would actually go far enough as to create "feelings" in Mikado to use them shamelessly for his goals later. Not that Mikado actually had feelings for him, of course. Of course! But he certainly could acknowledge that had a wish to get as close as possible to the object of his interest.

Aoba sat down beside him with a teacup, smiling cutely: sainthood incarnated, a model school student and a nice boy. Mikado nearly forgot to breathe seeing that fake disguise right in front of him. So dirty, hypocritical, mean, and yet, so thrilling!

"Done." Mikado said, nodding in the direction of Aoba's homework. "Aoba-kun, maybe I should teach you? You'll fail to enter a uni in future if I keep doing everything instead of you."

"But I don't need to enter a uni. I just want to help people, Mikado-senpai, I will become a simple social worker. I'll dedicate myself to tending to the sick and the elderly. Education and money mean nothing to me."

He must be having so much fun lying, Mikado thought. But I'll go nuts from this one day! Yet there was something amazing about knowing that you're being lied to like this, with both of you 100% aware that you're seeing through the lie anyway. After all, Mikado already knew Aoba's second ruthless persona, as well. The way they talked, with Aoba still using his innocent persona outside of Blue Squares, even at his home, made Mikado feel like he was fooling around all the time. But on top of that, if he had to be honest to himself, he would admit that he felt frustrated. As much as it was all in good fun, Aoba's true personality was carefully hidden. The way they interacted outside of Blue Squares, like this, he knew it was futile to ask him anything seriously, he would inevitably end up getting a reply from his cheerful persona anyway. The only sensible way to interact was to fool around, as well, playing along. Mikado thought of Saitama's biker gang members who ended up at the hospital thanks to the antics of the real Aoba. "Tend to the sick and the elderly"…

"You're so kind, Aoba-kun." Mikado said with a note of admiration that was reserved for this imaginary, non-Blue Square version of Aoba. "Sorry that I've been reading about sociopaths yesterday. I was teasing you, it's not like I really think you are one."

Indeed, this version of Aoba was certainly not a sociopath. Mikado wasn't lying about it, as far as he was concerned.

"Apology accepted". Aoba nodded and waved his hand dismissively.

Some tea splurted out of his teacup right onto Mikado. Fortunately, it was cold and oddly transparent for tea. Mikado grinned. Surely enough, Aoba wasn't making tea at his kitchen, he just poured some cold water quickly into the cup to create an excuse. And not a soul would ever know what he was really doing in his kitchen.

Meanwhile, Aoba was showing surprise and shock on his face. It looked like the tea accident was a real accident.

"Mikado-senpai, now you'll catch a cold and it's my fault! Get something else to wearwhile I shut the window."

Mikado followed the sensible advice, even though he kept suspecting it to be some devious plan. But maybe he was mistaken this time. You can't be a total paranoid, Mikado said to himself.

While closing the window, Aoba managed to drop a flash-drive that he prepared beforehand from his pocket onto the floor. Then he said that he needed to relieve himself and left.

Mikado snatched a flash-drive and inserted it into his laptop's USB port quickly. While Aoba was busy with his call to nature, he couldn't help but do all it took to discover what kind of things he was carrying around on his flash-drive. Mikado was, after all, starved for information about the real Aoba.

There were lots of small videos on the flash-drive. Puzzled, Mikado clicked on one of those and his face promptly reddened with the most furious blush. It was porn. Gay porn. No, that simply cannot be happening on its own! Thinking of how convenient it would be for two friends to turn out to be closet gays, Mikado drew a conclusion that the flash-drive got "lost" on purpose. Mikado didn't really care whether Aoba was really a gay or not, but surprisingly he found that he liked the idea of him planning to seduce him. By dropping this flash-drive, Aoba was obviously giving him a subtle hint beforehand, to avoid creating too much shock later, so that it wouldn't interfere with Mikado's reactions. It was oddly exciting. Mikado almost started to anticipate the future when…

At the sound of very loud footsteps, he pulled the flash-drive out and threw it back on the floor, the exact same spot it had initially dropped to.

Aoba entered the room, stretching himself in a relaxed manner.

"Aoba-kun, is that your flash-drive by any chance?" Mikado pointed at the floor. "I noticed it just now."

Commanding his face to show surprise and relief, Aoba picked up the flash-drive and thanked his senpai for locating it. He knew that Mikado was aware of its contents, because in all honestly he wasn't relieving himself all this time at all. He was standing behind the corner of the room and eavesdropping on everything that Mikado was doing alone.

"Mikado-senpai?" He asked, picturing a tad of anxiety. "Did you by any chance see what's on the flash-drive?"

"No, no." Mikado assured him. "I don't usually go through people's stuff without a good reason, you know."

"Sorry, Mikado-senpai. Of course you don't."

Both smiled their best smiles at each other, and each of them knew that the other wasn't quite telling a true story.

That's how their complicated relationship used to be. Full of mutual lies and manipulation, the kind the keeps you on your toes. But Mikado didn't wish for anything else at the time. He decided long ago that ordinary normal relationships were utterly boring.