previous

As the moon filtered through the moth-eaten blind, Yohji woke up. He always did, around this time. He kept expecting to have a date or a mission, but that life was long ago now. He stared up at the ceiling, weighing to pros and cons of having a cigarette. He might set fire to the bed and burn the whole building down, or something bad might happen. He smiled at his own defeatist humour in the dark.

"Scheisse, does anyone sleep?" a soft voice muttered.

"Too many kids," Yohji replied, before it registered to whom he was talking to.

"Ja. You've no idea. And there's such a scintillating night life around here," the heavy sarcasm made Yohji snort.

"Oh yes, it's absolutely abuzz," he joined in. "So many hot chicks to chose from, you know? And the music's great."

"Yeah, I heard Rammstein were playing [1]," Schuldig grinned at his own ceiling as Yohji's confusion bombarded him. The guy wasn't as stupid as he let people think, though.

"That music earlier?" Yohji questioned.

"Ja."

"Never understood the appeal of that stuff."

"Oh? And what do you understand the appeal of?"

"Blues."

"What? You've got to be kidding me!" Schuldig sat up and gazed through the hole. "That slow moany shit?"

"There is nothing sexier than Blues," Yohji insisted, also sitting up. "If I had my CDs, I could show you!"

"And if you had something to play them on," Schuldig pointed out.

Yohji flopped back down. "Yeah," he murmured, more to himself than Schuldig.

"How the mighty have fallen," Schuldig said, and fell silent as well. The rest of the night past slowly, as each man pretended to sleep.

It became a nightly occurrence. During the day they hated each other with abandon, but at night, in the dark, it was all the same. The lonely men, left behind by a world that didn't want them any more, no matter how much they wanted it. Driftwood on 'night's plutonian shores'.

"Do you miss it?" Schuldig asked one night, through the darkness.

"The killing?" It didn't take a genius to work out what two such men would find their minds drifting to in the darkness. Yohji frowned in the darkness. "Yes," he said eventually. "It was all I had, sometimes."

"Ja. The killing in itself you didn't mind, but it's everything that came with it you miss. The money, the power, the sense of purpose…" Schuldig smirked at Yohji's indignation at having his mind read. "You don't miss the madness, though," he continued. "You don't miss the asylum, you don't miss the guilt, you don't miss the looks the others gave you. Especially Ken's. That understanding. He wasn't much better off than you, was he?"

"Opening my mouth is just a waste of time, isn't it?" Yohji said dryly. "You might as well have this conversation with yourself."

"Tried that. People look at you funny." Yohji chuckled. Schuldig sat up, and Yohji could see his pale face through the hole. Schuldig grinned easily, and Yohji pushed himself up at bit to return the grin. "Is this not incredibly weird?" Schuldig smirked.

"Us? Chatting?" Yohji considered. "We're assassins who spent months trying to kill each other, you can read minds, I spent several months in a mental ward. For us, no."

"True. I mean, it was always a little odd. I knew you guys inside out, better than you did. Nagi and Omi spent half their time chatting on the internet, both pretending to have no idea who the other was. Brad and Ken went to the same fucking gym." Schuldig leant against the wall, pushing his and through the wall. He waved lazily at Yohji who grinned and grabbed the flailing appendage. "Sometimes I wondered if we were really fighting each other, or just the future. We were all going to be defunct, soon enough."

"We saved the world," Yohji pointed out, separating Schuldig's fingers and bending them. Schuldig's hand snapped around and grabbed Yohji's wrist, dragging the Japanese man so that his arm was through the wall. "We still have a place. You can keep trying to destroy it, we can keep-"

"-hunting the tomorrow of the dark beasts?" Schuldig sighed. "Come on, you're cynical, jaded, world weary. You can see that lie, right?"

"See it and through it," Yohji sighed. "It's so fucking transparent I keep walking into it, like a pane of glass. Don't even notice it's there."

"You ever done that?" Schuldig was momentarily distracted by Yohji's imagery. "It fucking hurts. Those glass doors ought to be banned."

Yohji laughed wryly. "Yep. That they oughta. Can I have my hand back?"

"Nein," Schuldig grinned. "It's on my side, it's mine now!" He started sucking on Yohji's fingers. Yohji's eyes opened wide, and he started to pull seriously, trying to make the German let go of his arm. If he hadn't known better, he'd have said Schuldig was flirting with him. "What makes you think you do know better?" Schuldig growled, but released the arm. Yohji lay down on his on bed, and tried to ignore the man who was literally within touching distance.

next