Doumeki had never before noticed that the world was actually made of cardboard. Drab, grey cardboard. His apartment, the streets, the rust-speckled towel railing in his bathroom, his reflection in the mirror, even the sun. Nor had he noticed that there was a thin laminate over all the drab, grey cardboard. So he couldn't even touch any of it. He sort of glided past it all. He wasn't allowed to absorb or be absorbed.

The phone rang. After a week and a half of toppling over furniture and lamps and wires and his own legs to reach it before the ringing stopped, only to see speak to a telemarketer or some cheerful dickhead from a charity, he started ignoring it. He started hating it.

Once, he even smashed it against the wall. Then he crawled to it and pieced it back together, grateful that he was too thick to appreciate terrible symbolism.

Text from his sister: Where are you?

Text from Kuga: ?

Text from Nanahara: Where the fuck are you?

(He'd never gone to the office. Severance cheques were about the furthest thing from his mind. He assumed Nanahara had been informed by now.)

Just to torture himself, he'd looked at the last text exchange he'd had under the contact name 'Boss'. It was from the day before he'd last seen him. The day before the disaster.

-Go to Kageyama. Painkillers. Morphine. Fucking cocaine, I don't care. My arm hurts like a bitch.

-He told me he won't give me any more painkillers for you.

-Tell him you'll give him a blow job for some.

About twenty minutes later:

-He still said no.

-...no way.

-What?

-You actually offered to give him a blowjob for painkillers?!

-Boss asked me to.

-…

-Boss?

-I'm wanking to the image of you giving Kageyama a blow job. Give me a minute.

-OK.

-I'm kidding you idiot. I was just laughing too hard to text. Buy some aspirin from the pharmacy or something. Arm still hurting.

Arm still hurting.

Arm still hurting. The words rang across the silence of his dark, increasingly chaotic apartment. It was like a warning to the Doumeki in the future who would twist it and wrench it and make that awful sound come out of Boss.

Strange how some ugly gorilla of a cop in a dinghy hotel had seen through him better than anyone else.

He was just like his father.

The new bodyguard/attendant/driver's brains were splattered all over the passenger seat. Real, proper bits of brain, not just the cute splotches of blood shown in the movies. Grey-pink. Mostly grey, actually, Yashiro thought. We're all just lumps of meat.

He sighed and clipped a new magazine into his gun with his left hand, the barrel jammed into his right armpit. Bullets ricocheted off the car. Shouting. More bullets. All the Yakuza stuff, Yashiro thought, almost bored. He turned onto his stomach, flattened sideways against the seat back and raised his head. Aimed and fired.

Left-hand aim still not great. He'd made a mental note that day. That day. When the apple core missed the basket. But he hadn't followed up. To be fair, his mind had been otherwise occupied for the past week and a half.

He heard someone cry out and fall. Perhaps his aim wasn't as bad as all that. But it didn't sound like it lessened the number of bullets trying to find his head. He reached for his phone.

Nanahara wasn't picking up. Useless bastard. Sugimoto was an hour away. Misumi was in Taiwan, of course. Ryuuzaki was… oh, right, still their prisoner.

Fate was sitting back with folded arms and a smug smile. Eyebrows up. Do it. Call him.

He sighed again.

It rang out. He tried again and again. No one picked up.

Heavy breathing nearby diverted his attention. A thin, sunglasses-bedecked face made the stupendous mistake of actually poking his head through the window, probably assuming Yashiro was dead from the recent lull. The bullet passed through the underside of his face and a beautiful, rose-shaped pattern blossomed on the car roof beyond his head. Yashiro was briefly hypnotised.

'Boss?'

Hearing voices now, are we? Yashiro ran his finger lovingly under the dead man's chin. His fingertip absorbed some of the blood seeping out from the entry wound. Such a deceptively small entry.

'Boss, what's happening?'

He held the phone to his ear.

'What took you so long?'

'Sorry.'

'New guy's dead. I'm in the car. Someone's trying to kill me. Not doing a great job of it so far, but things might change.'

Dead man was kind of attractive. Yashiro wondered if he should risk losing his other arm reaching up to take off his sunglasses.

'Where are you?'

Yashiro told him.

Less than ten minutes later, he heard a screech of tires. The bullets glancing off his car were diverted. And there was Doumeki leaping through the passenger seat in front, bits of brain and blood from the seat sticking to his… to his… what the fuck was he wearing?

'What the fuck are you wearing?'

Doumeki was too busy shoving his deceased replacement out the door to respond.

'Is that the tiger sweater but inside out?'

'Are you okay?' Doumeki glanced back once. His eyes were the same as always, Yashiro thought. Such a stupid thought.

'Yeah, just go. Keep your head down. It's what the other guy forgot to do.'

The car jolted and took off, bullets hammering again. Semi-attractive sunglasses man slid from the open window, never to be seen again. Yashiro felt nostalgic.

Doumeki struggled with the wheel.

'What's wrong with...?'

'One of the back tires is flat. It's metal on tar back there.'

Sparks flew while they made their escape. Yashiro wondered, properly, who they'd been and why they wanted him dead. Hopefully the few people he'd just called were looking into it.

It didn't take Doumeki long to lose them. Say what you want about him, the man could drive. And fuck.

They stopped in an abandoned parking lot wedged between two sad restaurants. Yashiro didn't even want to know which part of Tokyo they were in.

'Can you change a tire?'

'Yes.'

'Get to it. I have a flight to catch soon.'

There was something about a man carrying a spare tire, Yashiro thought. He got out, lit a cigarette and leaned against the door, watching Doumeki rest the tire on the ground. He remained there even as Doumeki began jacking the car up.

'I can't believe you're wearing that.'

Doumeki didn't look up from his work. His hair seemed dry and brittle.

'It was the only thing I had that was clean.'

'Why is it inside out?'

'I wasn't paying attention.'

'For a second I thought you were ashamed of the tiger.'

'I don't really care.'

Yashiro looked up and blew out a ring of smoke. It was the time of day when the sky was experimenting with colours. Pinks and purples were strewn through corn-row clouds.

'Where are you flying, Boss?' It sounded like Doumeki had worked up the courage to ask.

'Taiwan. Misumi wants me there for a big meeting. Cloaks and chanting and virgin sacrifices, that sort of thing.'

Silence. Crickets. A few sad patrons shuffling out of their sad restaurants.

'Not sure when I'll be back, but be sure you replace the car before I do. Same make and model. Same everything. Just without the bullet marks. I hate bullet marks on cars. So tacky.'

Doumeki paused. He didn't look up.

'What?' said Yashiro.

'But I… I thought…'

Yashiro smiled and took a drag. He could have come to Doumeki's rescue at any point but he preferred seeing him flail.

'But you thought what?' he said sweetly.

'Am I – are you giving me my job back?' He still hadn't looked up. It was the smallest sound Yashiro had ever heard.

'Idiot, you never lost it in the first place.'

His head snapped up, mouth slightly open. Picture perfect.

'But you said -'

'I just didn't want to see your face for a while. Preferably longer than this, but, well, you can't predict when your new temporary bodyguard's head is going to get blown to pieces. Speaking of, you've got some of that on you still.'

Doumeki couldn't care less about bits of brain on his tiger sweater. Yashiro stood before a halo of harsh, angry fluorescent light cast by the streetlamp behind him. The cigarette smoke lifted up slowly and lazily, carving a ghostly, beautiful path, snake-like. Exactly like his boss. The furthest thing from drab, grey cardboard he could imagine.

Something inside Doumeki expanded and collapsed at the same time.

'Actually, the first time I fired you, in the kitchen, it was because I wanted to see you get pissed off. Worked like a charm. Almost too well.'

How could he recall that so lightly? It was fast becoming one of the worst moments of Doumeki's life. Then again, he'd never understood Boss' sense of humour. He kept screwing in the hubcaps.

'Hurry up. Running late.'

'Yes, Boss.'

Boss.

He lifted the dead tire into the trunk. He went back for the rest of the tools. When he straightened with the jack in his hand, Yashiro ground his cigarette beneath his heel and took a step towards him.

'You know,' he said in a tone that sent a spark of electricity down to Doumeki's cock. And then Yashiro's hand was on the front of his pants. His sweatpants, Doumeki noticed suddenly. 'I just realised I've never sucked you off when you were hard.'

Yashiro watched his face. He'd done this, or variations of this, to Doumeki countless times and had received no reaction whatsoever on that sphinx of a face. Here now, suddenly, he saw the flinch, the flush, the skewed glance. Something twitched beneath his hand. He wondered when exactly Doumeki had gotten his monster to work again. He bent and knelt on the hard tarmac.

Doumeki stopped him with a hand under his arm. Without really thinking ahead, he pulled him to his feet. The eyes that met his were inquisitive. Challenging. Doumeki touched his face beneath his ear. The tips of his fingers brushed his hair. He hadn't remembered to touch Boss' hair that day.

Yashiro felt a strange surge of anxiety. His pulse picked up for no reason.

Doumeki kissed him then, which, really, Yashiro should have seen coming but he didn't. It hadn't even occurred to him as a course of action until Doumeki's tongue was in his mouth. The jack clanged to the floor as they backed up against the car, Yashiro's face in Doumeki's hands, tongues wrestling. Yashiro felt the hardness of Doumeki's cock press through sweatpants, tiger sweater and Yashiro's clothes.

After all our positions…

Doumeki breathed him in, pushing his lips further apart, delving into the warmth.

And contortions…

Crushed between them, Yashiro's right arm protested feebly. He ignored it. Doumeki's scent was everywhere; a pungent, almost overwhelming concoction of sweat and grime. He inhaled deeply.

Can this really be the first time we've kissed?

Doumeki broke off and dragged his lips down Yashiro's neck, biting lightly. Yashiro shivered. He tried to reclaim his thoughts, which had scattered to the edges of that godforsaken parking lot.

'As much as I'm enjoying… being made to feel like a girl in junior high... we have to go. International flight, and all.'

Doumeki's voice was hoarse, like Yashiro had heard only once before. 'When do you have to be at the airport?'

He glanced at his watch over Doumeki's head. 'Plane takes off in half an hour.'

Doumeki pulled back and looked at him in mild shock.

'Don't worry, we practically own the airline. None of that check in two hours beforehand bullshit. As long as I get there before the wheels are off the ground, they have to let me on.'

'But the airport's at least forty minutes away.'

'Better get going then.'

By the time they arrived twenty-five minutes later, Yashiro was amazed they hadn't flattened any strollers or bicycles along the way. The man knew how to drive. And fuck. And kiss.

Shame he couldn't cook for shit.

'Should I come with you, Boss?' Doumeki had asked while hurtling through the sixth or seventh set of red lights.

'To Taiwan?'

'Yes.'

'Not this time.'

He hadn't offered a reason and Doumeki left it at that.

At the airport, he dragged Yashiro's roller bag for him to first-class check-in. A lot of people glanced up at the huge guy in the blood-and-brain stained sweatpants and inside-out tiger sweater.

The woman behind the counter was being impossible, her face steadily turning a colour that matched her scarlet uniform. Then Yashiro spoke to someone on his phone, who spoke to her, who spoke to someone slightly behind the scenes in a blazer, who apologised earnestly, took Yashiro's bag and told him to head for the gate at his earliest convenience, though he would be eternally grateful if his earliest convenience was somewhere in the next five minutes.

Yashiro left at a sauntering pace. Doumeki followed, impervious to stares.

'You smell awful by the way.'

'Sorry, Boss.'

'It's like you haven't been bathing.'

'I haven't.'

'Really?'

'Yes.'

'For how long?'

'Almost two weeks.'

'Jesus.'

They reached the security check. A few of the officers did a double take when they saw Doumeki.

'Can't go much further,' Yashiro said.

He turned to look at him properly. A laugh welled in his gut. The tiger sweater, whether inside out or not, would probably do that to him every time.

'Bring the car around when I say, okay?'

'Yes, Boss.'

'And, for the love of God, take a shower.'

The security officers were relieved when the large man covered in stains finally turned to go, though it wasn't until long after the other man had completely disappeared from view.