Summary: A third man has been murdered. New and old suspects are all brought in again.
Warnings: Blood and violence. Homosexual pairings (read: CLAMP pairings). KF with other CLAMP pairings. A little dark, with a generally depressing setting. Arson, murder, crime and scapegoats.
A/N: I know. I know! I have too many chaptered fics going on at the same time!
It is with a detached sense of horror that he comes to office to see blonde hair, blue eyes, and that familiar grin. Fai is leaning over the counter, saying something to the receptionist with a cheeky grin, and Tomoyo is giggling.
"Oi, you pervert!" Kurogane finds himself yelling before he can censor his words, "What the hell do you think you're doing to Tomoyo?"
Fai tilts his hat (it looks strangely familiar) and winks at Tomoyo before turning to face Kurogane.
"Talking," he says, and bats his eyelashes like a goddamned doll, "About you."
Kurogane splutters in outrage, and Tomoyo erupts into full-blown laughter behind the desk.
"My brother is such a bad sport," Tomoyo sighs.
Fai blinks.
"You're siblings?"
"No," Kurogane grunts, "Cousins."
"Siblings!" Tomoyo argues.
"Cousins!" Kurogane corrected once more, "This stopped being funny when we were five, Tomoyo!"
"We're as good as siblings," Tomoyo insists stubbornly, "You play up the overprotective brother too well."
Fai chuckles.
"You can't argue with that, Kuro-pup," he tells him, and Kurogane bristles.
"Kurogane!" he yells, "My name is Kurogane! And how the hell do you know my name? I haven't told you my name, you crazy stalker!"
Fai sighs and pushes himself up to sit on the edge of the counter, crossing his legs.
"Of that I am well aware," he deigns to inform Kurogane coolly, "I know your name because, as I have just told you, I was talking to Tomoyo-chan about you. By the way, I think you should know that it was incredibly rude of you to have left me not knowing your name, seeing as you know my name. Kuro-inattentive needs some lessons in manners!"
"You—" Kurogane splutters, brandishing a finger at the blonde fool, "I— What the hell are you even doing here?"
The man in question taps a finger against the side of his hat, and smiles.
"I left my hat yesterday," he says simply, "I came to get it back."
Kurogane suddenly remembered the hat he'd seen as he'd left the office the night before. The same hat is now atop Fai's blonde head.
"Why the hell did you leave it here in the first place?"
Blue eyes twinkled mirthfully at him from under the hat's rim.
"Is this an interrogation, Kuro-sleuth?" Fai asked, amused, "If so, we'd best take this to your office, yes?"
And without waiting for an answer, the infuriating blonde leaps down from the desk, and invites himself into Kurogane's office. Kurogane scrambles after him, catching the door before it can close in his face.
"Hey, hey!" he yells after the man, "Who needs a lesson in manners now?"
Fai is bouncing in the chair opposite from Kurogane's own, a strange look on his face.
"The chair seems a little bouncier than yesterday," he says, "Bounce. Bounce."
Kurogane snarls and storms in, slamming the door shut behind him.
"Oooo," Fai says, staring at him with childishly wide eyes, "Scary."
The investigator ignores him.
"That's a wooden chair," he tells him, wrenching him out of the seat, "It can't get any bouncier."
Fai makes a horrible whining sound, like a spoilt child.
"I want to sit," he protests, pouting sullenly as he pulls his arm from Kurogane's grip and plops himself back down into the chair, "And I want tea and biscuits. The biscuits here are good."
"This is not a goddamned tea-party! And we don't have tea and biscuits!"
"Yes, you do."
"No, we don't!"
"You do!" Fai insists, "I had them yesterday!"
"We don't!" Kurogane shouts, "Yesterday I told you you couldn't have any, so you had none, dumbass!"
"Syaoran-kun gave me some when I left your office."
"No, we—wait, what?"
"Syaoran-kun gave me tea and biscuits," Fai informs him, "The biscuits were good. The tea was okay; there's no honey here."
"Since when do we have biscuits?"
"Since always," Fai shrugs, "I dunno. You had biscuits yesterday. And isn't it terrible that I, who have only been here once, know that you have biscuits, and you don't?"
"We don't have biscuits!" Kurogane insists, still disbelieving, "We don't!"
"You do!"
"We don't!"
"You do!"
"No, we don't!" roars the sleuth, "And if you disagree with that you can get out of my office!
Fai looks at him for a long moment with wide eyes and downturned lips. Kurogane wonders for a moment if he's gone too far again as Fai's bottom lip begins to tremble. Then the man slides off his chair, dropping to his knees on the floor, and begins to shake his fists up at the ceiling.
"What a way to treat your wife!" Fai wails, shaking his fists once more before hunching over his knees and pounding his fists against the carpet, and then straightening up to shake his fists at the ceiling again, "Are you going to throw me out into the streets? Cruel. Cruel!"
Kurogane grabs the man by his blonde, blonde hair and attempts to tug him up to his feet.
"I am not married, and you are not my wife!"
Fai starts to make an unholy din, shrieking and yelling and flailing the likes of which Kurogane had never seen before. The man suddenly lunges forwards, and sinks his teeth into Kurogane's knee.
"Fuck!" Kurogane yells at the top of his lungs, knees Fai in the gut, and topples backwards—like a plank—to land with a whump! on the carpet. When he gets over his shock at being bitten, bitten! by a grown man, he sits up and opens his mouth to yell at said man. Fai is sprawled across the carpet on his back, arms and legs out in a perfect X, eyes closed in a strangely solemn expression.
Kurogane shuffles closer gives the man a wary poke, on the leg, in case the man decides to try and bite his finger off. When there is no response, he crawls over and shakes Fai by the shoulder.
"Oi," he calls, "Oi! Idiot! You okay? Oi, answer me!"
"I am giving you the silent treatment," Fai announces with his eyes still closed, expression unchanging from its solemnity, as if he is merely reading the morning newspaper out to him, "I may be Kuro-neanderthal's cavewoman wife, but Kuro-caveman may not drag me to bed by the hair until you have properly propositioned me."
That said, he makes a motion as if pulling a zip across his lips, then reverts back to playing his strange parody of a corpse.
"You—" Kurogane splutters, "What—You can't—"
Fai is unmoving on the floor in front of him.
"You do realize that my office is as good as the police station, don't you?" Kurogane tries to reason, "You can't just… lie there like that!"
Silence meets his statement.
"Get up, suspect!" he tries again, deepening his voice for the effect of it, "I command you!"
The blonde ignores him. Kurogane caves.
"Okay fine!" he yells, sitting back on his heels like a sullen child, "What the hell do you want me to do to make it up to you? Just tell me what the fuck it is and I'll do it. Happy?"
Fai immediately springs up with a cry of delight, launching himself at the investigator and choking Kurogane in what seemed to be a murderer's version of a hug.
"I knew it!" he crows, "I knew Kuro-hubby loved me!"
Kurogane is too short of breath to protest the sentiment and the nickname. Fai abruptly lets go and sits back, blinking up at him with big, blue eyes.
"I want tea and biscuits!"
"Tea and biscuits again?"
"You said you'd make it up to me!"
"Fine," Kurogane acquiesces, standing back and throwing his hands up, "Fine! I'll go look in the kitchen for your damn tea, okay?"
"And biscuits," Fai reminds him, "And I want you to take me out for lunch,"
"That wasn't part of the deal!"
"It is now," the blonde tells him triumphantly, standing up and dusting himself off, then holding his hand out, "Now kiss my hand, take my arm, and bring me to a nice restaurant."
Kurogane turns sharply away with a snarl, and storms out of his office.
An hour or so later, he is horrified to realize that he is sitting in a nice restaurant with Fai, handing his credit card to the waiter to pay for the meal.
The smell of miso is nostalgic as he spoons the paste into the hot water. He adds in the diced tofu, and just a bit of seaweed, then the fishcake and spring onions. Stirs. He can't really cook anything much, completely unlike his mother, who was (and is) the best cook that ever was. Even now, as he cooks, his mother is giving him instructions over the phone.
"Did you clean the spoon before putting in the spring onions?"
He paused mid-stir.
"No," he says, "Are the onions going to burn or something?"
His mother exhales over the phone.
"No, it's not going to burn," she sighs, "But you've just gotten the miso paste on the rest of the spring onions in the jar. Have you put in the seaweed?"
"Yes," he tells her, and resumes stirring.
"Do you keep your seaweed sliced in a jar?"
"Yes," he tells her, "Just like you used to."
He's always liked his seaweed sliced into tiny pieces, and his mother had taken to keeping them in a jar instead of cutting them up on the spot.
"Then did you clean the spoon before putting it into the jar?"
He pauses again, and his mother sighs.
"Youou," she says, with a tinge of fond exasperation, "How do you survive without your mother, hmm?"
"Hahaue," he complains (and he is not whining), "I'm fine. I can take care of myself. I'm 25!"
He stirs a little more, then adds more seaweed on second consideration. As he upturns the spoon over the pot, he realizes that there is seaweed stuck to the miso paste on the back of it. Well. He dunks the spoon back into the water and hits it against the side of the pot; the seaweed and miso refuses to come dislodged.
"Honey, what are you doing?" his mother asks, "I can hear clanging."
"There's seaweed and miso paste on my spoon."
"Don't mind that, it doesn't matter. You can wash it off later."
"But the seaweed will go to waste."
"So many 'but's," she teases lightly, "If it really bothers you, you can lick it off the spoon."
Kurogane lifts the spoon out of the water and does so. He makes a face.
"But the miso paste is salty," he complains, and his mother laughs.
"Of course it is," she says, "But if it'll make you feel better, if you stir a bit longer the miso paste will dissolve, and the seaweed will come off."
She suddenly makes a strange noise and Kurogane pauses, just about to put his spoon back into the soup.
"But don't put it in!" she cries, "You just had the spoon in your mouth!"
He pauses for a moment longer, then throws the spoon in anyway.
"Youou. You just put it in anyway, didn't you?"
"Hahaue," he complains, "It doesn't matter! I'm the only one drinking the soup!"
"It does matter!" his mother argues, "It's the principle of the matter!"
"Why is there a principle in cooking miso soup?" he demands as he resumes stirring. And exactly as his mother predicts, the miso begins to dissolve, and the seaweed comes right off.
"Well, you can't do that when you're cooking for someone else, can you?" his mother reasons, exasperated.
"But I won't be cooking for someone else," he argues back, "I live alone!"
He clamps the phone between his shoulder and ear, turns the stove off, and pours the miso soup out into a large bowl on the counter. He's not going to be able to drink all of it, but he'll keep the remainder in the fridge and microwave it to go with his meals and as late-night snacks. On the other end of the line, his mother 'tsk's at him.
"What about when you get a girlfriend? Or when you get married!"
He carries the pot, spoon and all, and sets it in the sink. The neon green display on the clock on the window-sill reads 12:03. He turns on the tap as his mother continues to talk about marriage and children and love, and looks up, out of the window. He freezes.
On the other side of the river, he can see an orange glow lighting up the shadows, flickering and crackling angrily. The sky above it is thick with smoke, as if boding a coming storm, and behind the smoke are the real storm-clouds, lit up from within by sparks of lightning. The thunder rumbles menacingly, and he cuts his mother off mid-sentence.
"Hahaue," he whispers, "Something has come up, I have to go."
He hangs up without waiting for a reply, and runs out of the house, donning his hat and coat as he goes. The tap continues to run in the kitchen as, outside, the rain begins to fall.
It's no surprise to find Yuuko waiting for him when he enters the office the next day, but that doesn't make it any more pleasant. Yesterday night had been hell, and he'd almost just called in sick and slept in this morning. The rain had been pouring as he'd run out trying to flag a cab. Good for the lucky bastards who had cars, but he didn't because… well, cars were expensive. By the time he had reached the scene of the crime, The flames had been put out, and the forensics had been mulling around inside the gutter like ants. It had been a large gutter, those almost as wide as a small apartment, built to prevent flash floods around the Divide. When it rained, the dams blocking the underground drains leading to the gutters were lifted, and the water would be distributed to the gutters that were usually dry. The rush of water had ultimately been what had put the fire out, and also caused havoc as the forensics had been scrambling about in the rain, trying to get the charred body out before it could be swept away.
Leading away from the dead body had been bloodied footprints, slightly watered down by the rain, like the trail of a vengeful ghost. It had been clear that the culprit has deliberately left the trail, knowing that he couldn't be traced from it. And he had been right. They had been unable to find anything from the footprints, not even the pattern of his sole, watered down as it had been from the rain. Kurogane with a group of others had ran down the trail, trying vainly to follow it to some location that could give them a lead, but the rain had washed it all away before they could even trace it around the corner.
Yuuko reaches behind her to retrieve a folded newspaper, and tosses it to him. Kurogane catches it and opens it up. On the very front page, yesterday's incident has made headlines: Serial murderer strikes again! Body of 37-year-old Mikhail Antolev found castrated and burnt in a gutter. He ignores the rest of the article, detailing the incident and the victim's background, and looks up at Yuuko. She crosses her legs, revealing a long line of pale skin through her pencil skirt, and inclines her head.
"The suspects are being called in again," she tells him simply, "They will be here shortly."
She pushes herself off from the counter, stilettos clicking on the tiled floor. She brushes her skirt down, adjusts the ruffles of her blouse, pushes her red-rimmed glasses up, then stares down her long nose at Kurogane with equally red eyes, half-lidded.
"Have a good day, Investigator Youou Kurogane Suwa."
She turns, and leaves the office, stilettos clicking a sharp staccato as she does.
Kurogane plops down onto the lobby's sofa, groaning and he massages the throbbing spot between his brows. The suspects begin to trail in through the door, looking confused and lost. A green-eyed, chestnut-brown brunette (what? he wasn't even that fair-haired!) marched up to him.
"Look, I know that Kakei-san is a suspect, and as a person working for him, I must seem pretty suspicious too," he rattles off immediately, and Kurogane stares up at him, trying to remember where he'd heard the name 'Kakei' before, "But I am innocent! And I have more than sufficient evidence to prove that I was not even remotely near the crime scene yesterday night!"
The boy—because he was too young to be a man—begins to dig through his bag, and Kurogane slumps into the sofa.
"Who the hell are you?"
The kid doesn't even look up at him, and continues to rummage through his bag.
"Kazahaya Kudou," he says shortly, and finally draws a crumpled piece of paper out of his bag, "I was having a late night snack with my co-worker, Rikuo Himura at a fast-food joint during the time of the incident. I have the receipt!"
He thrusts the wrinkled receipt at Kurogane, and Kurogane looks at the paper for a moment, still a little dazed.
"Alright," he says, tilting his head back against the seat and closing his eyes.
"Alright?" Kazahaya repeats hopefully, "So I can go?"
"No," he says without opening his eyes, "You will stay for interrogation."
"What?" the boy demands incredulously, panic beginning to seep into his voice, "But I just provided evidence that I am not involved!"
Kurogane groans and slowly gets to his feet. With some amusement, he notes the widening of the boy's eyes as Kurogane unfolds himself to his full height.
"I know. And I'm not saying that the evidence isn't sufficient," he says, popping his spine, "Tell me about it later in my office and I'll take you off the list. The receptionist will send you in one by one."
Kazahaya turns to look at the conspicuously vacant reception desk.
"There is no receptionist," he says, somewhat accusingly.
Kurogane shrugs.
"It's early, you people are gonna have to wait for her to come," he cracks his knuckles, and Kazahaya jerks a little, "In the meantime, I'm going to make some coffee. It's way too early for this shit."
Turning away from the kid, he rolls his neck with a crack! and saunters slowly into the office pantry.
He is too tired to feel anything but a dull dread when his door swigs open to admit a grin that really should not feel that familiar after only two short (albeit memorable) meetings.
"No," he groans, "No, no! Not you!"
Fai lets the door swing shut behind him, and swings his cane as he sashays over with a pout. He tips his hat off and settles himself flirtatiously on the edge of the desk, tickling a finger under Kurogane's chin.
"Oh, monsieur!" he cries with a disgustingly thick accent, " 'ow you wound me, mon amour! And 'zis is 'ow you treat your épouse bien-aimée? Mon cher, you disappoint!" (1)
Kurogane jerks his face away from Fai's finger, and presses right up against the back of his chair, glaring sullenly at the blonde.
"Come closer Kuro-aimé," Fai whispers in a sultry voice, lying over Kurogane's desk in an attempt to wrap his arms around his neck, "Ne pas être un inconnu, I won't bite!" (2)
"You think I'm going to believe you after you bit me the last time?"
He cringes and slaps Fai's arms away as the man begins to make kissing noises, puckering his lips comically. Fai laughs and rolls off of the desk, settling himself into the chair opposite.
"Well, I'd love to play more," he says, leaning his elbow of the desk and resting his chin in his palm, "But I do have to get back to work, so I guess it's best to start the interrogation, yes?
Kurogane clears his throat and aligns the papers on his desk.
"Alright, then let's start with that," he declares, "What do you do for a living?"
Fai leans slightly forward.
"Sounds more like you're trying to get to know me better," he teases, "But isn't that in the government database?"
Kurogane picks up his pen and writes the date on the top corner of the paper in front of him.
"It says that you own a business, but it doesn't say what business you own."
The blonde chuckles and leans back in his seat, crossing his legs and folding his arms over his chest. (defensive, closed, hiding)
"I run a… cafe. Of sorts," he says, mock-grandly, "I live above the cafe."
"A cafe?" Kurogane asks casually, making a little bit of small-talk to bring the suspect's guard down, "So you cook? What sort of food do you serve?"
"I don't cook," Fai tell him, "I used to, but I don't any more. My little protége takes care of the food now. I just sit around and look pretty."
"Protege?"
"Yes. She is very sweet, and she is a fast learner too."
"I see," Kurogane says somewhat absently, scribbling down little notes, "I may have to come down one day to taste the food."
Fai smiles, and his smile seems almost bitter.
"As if a man like you would ever come down to Limbo."
Kurogane blinks and looks up at the man. Fai wipes the smile off his face, replacing it with his usual inane one as he laughs airily. Kurogane wonders if he thinks he is fooling anyone. Three knocks on the door, and Syaoran peers in. Normally he gets as long with the suspect as he wants, but with this many suspects waiting outside, they're on a bit of a tight schedule. But it's not like the higher ups are expecting real results anyway.
"Time's up," Syaoran says quietly, "We're sending Kotori Monou in."
A girl comes in, blinking confusedly, and Kurogane groans.
"Are they really that desperate?" he rages, "She's not even a man!"
Fai stands and saunters out of the room. He stops at the doorway and turns to give Kurogane a sultry, half-lidded glance over his shoulder. This time when he speaks, his accent is less exaggerated. It sounds natural, and pleasant even.
"Au revoir, mon chéri." (3)
He blows a kiss, tips his hat, then slams the door shut before Kurogane can throw something at him. Kurogane can hear him laughing as he makes his way out of the office.
A/N: I'm back from overseas! Okay, so translations for what Fai was saying...
(1) Oh, mister (boy that sounds strange in english)! How you wound me, my love! And this is how you treat your beloved wife? My dear, you disappoint!
(2) Come closer Kuro-love. Don't be a stranger, I won't bite!
(3) Till next time (sort of), darling.
I actually had this written before I left, but I decided to post it up only after coming back because I needed to do some proofreading. I actually got back from the airport two hours ago! Anyway, I realized as I was writing this chapter I realized I made a mistake in the last. In the last chapter when Kurogane finds out that Fai is 32, he notes that Fai is more than a decade older than him. I think I meant to say almost a decade older, because Kurogane would be super young if he were younger than 22. So I have gone back and changed it to almost a decade. And I'd originally wanted to have Kuro-mama killed off before the start of this story, thus inspiring Kurogane's aspiration to be a investigator! But in the end, I loved her too much to have her dead, so Kuro-mama is still alive, together with Kuro-papa. Anyway, ending off my author's note here, review please!