Catch-22, chapter 14

Catch-22

Welcome back! It’s been a little more than a week, but hopefully we can return to a semi-regular update schedule as of now. We’ve got a lot going on in this chapter, but we can at least promise a bit of a break from the doom and gloom before long :) Enjoy! As always, your comments and feedback are immensely appreciated!

A little bit of Chinese review before we begin:

Diē and niáng – father and mother

Now without further ado~

Ch. 14. The Only Way is Up

It was really the bunny ears that saved them all. There really was no way for Reever to refuse any request Komui had for him when the man looked quite like that, with his hair up in braids that flopped around as he moved. So they went to see Linali, and the two of them made up, and then Reever filled Linali in on the promise Komui had made in exchange for her waking up. They spent the next week or so giving him a hard time about wedding dresses.

The next few weeks passed by peacefully for them, for the most part. Linali spent most of that time resting, though she was beginning to get strength back in her legs. Reever continued to play the part of Supervisor, hating the job as much as he always did — but it was easier on the days Komui came in with him and helped him with the paperwork. Komui continued work on his antivenom theory when he wasn’t with Linali or Reever, and somewhere in there they all managed to work out a design for scented gel pens.

Overall, things were good, for them and for the Order. There were no mass funerals, no Exorcist deaths, and General Theodore even managed to find them a new Compatible somewhere along the way. Johnny finally finished hammering out the last few hitches in the new barrier-projectors for the Finders and Reever approved the final drafts. No word from General Cross. Things were good, and then Reever decided it was time to make them even better.

It was with this in mind that Reever caught Komui in his labs and trapped him to have a little talk.

“Komui~?” he called, an offering of coffee in his hands as he knocked on the lab’s door.

“Reever, you have perfect timing~”

The door did not open, but Komui’s voice — sounding almost disturbingly happy — echoed from the other side.

“…eh?” Reever blinked, then went ahead and opened the door to let himself in. “Komui, what’re you–” And then Reever went silent, as it was all he could do not to drop the coffee. Komui was lying spread-eagled atop the floor, hair loose and spread messily every which way against the dark tiles, staring up at some of the chalkboards on the wall with an expression of utter bliss.

“It’s dooooooone~” he crooned, rolling over a little as Reever walked in to smile at the other man ear-to-ear. He gestured vaguely toward the chalkboards. “It’s doooooone~~ Read iiiiit~~~~”

He beamed up at the ceiling for a moment. “Now all that’s left is to find a compound suitable for a delivery vector…”

“…done?” Reever set the coffee down to look at Komui’s mess of calculations and notes and occasional doodles to try to make sense of it. He wasn’t really checking any of the work just yet, just seeing if Komui had actually gotten through all that had to be done, and, well… it seemed like he had. It was impossible not to catch some of the other’s elation. All the implications, everything this could mean in the war… and not to mention the morale boost it would offer everyone–

“Oh, wow, Komui,” he breathed out. “This is… awesome, it’s… actually, it’s perfect. It’s perfect timing, like a divine sign or something. We should get the team in here, work on finishing this, send it down to the boys on the development floor, and, well. I actually came to talk to you about taking your job back.”

“…Huh?”

Komui sobered a little as he sat up, shaking out his hair and blinking at Reever a little bit quizzically. The elated smile on his face faded out into a quiet, neutral expression.

“I… you did?”

He glanced away from the other man at last with a small, apologetic, faintly pained sort of smile.

“…Reever. You know I can’t,” he murmured.

“Actually, no, I don’t,” Reever answered as he proceeded around the room to peer at Komui’s work, refusing to even acknowledge the other’s change in expression. “It was your job for nine years, you did very well at it, I can do it while excessively intoxicated, and honestly, I have no desire to fill out a permanent transfer application because it’s your job and I don’t want it anymore.”

“…I’m sorry. If you hate it that much, maybe you should pick a new replacement,” Komui murmured. He glanced back toward his painstakingly-completed equations with a faintly timid expression.

Who knew, all this might be just so much rubbish too.

“I was removed from my post. For all I know I’m not even really supposed to be in the building,” he said quietly.

“Komui, that’s not true,” Reever sighed for the, oh, he’d lost count how many times he’d tried to convince Komui that he had not been removed from his post. “You should know that’s not true. I even found that crap piece of paper that told me I was temporarily promoted for you. See?” He dig it out of his pocket and held it out. It was in pretty good condition considering Reever had shoved it under his bed and proceeded to forget about it for the next three years.

“What do I have to do to convince you you’re supposed to be taking your job back from me? Ask the lab boys? Dig up your service record from Mission Ops? Drag you in front of the Head Generals?”

“I–”

For a moment, Komui looked him in the face before glancing away again, expression rather lost.

“It doesn’t matter,” he mumbled. “I shouldn’t be there anyway.”

Far from his good cheer of a few moments before, all of a sudden it felt like everything was… was crashing down on him again. He couldn’t help but think of zhu ren in that moment; days and nights spent following him, becoming what he wanted — a hazily-felt evening in a bathroom–

“I know… what you keep saying…” His gaze was turned timidly downward as he curled up a little where he sat, bangs falling around his eyes. “How, how everybody… you’re waiting for me and all but I– I don’t…”

Why had he been so excited about his stupid research, anyway? There was no way it was actually going to be any help. Surely it had to be all wrong, he’d mistaken his math, the idea was ludicrous in the first place. Just a useless waste of time.

“I’m just going to screw everything up again,” he mumbled toward his lap, arms curling around his waist.

“You’re not going to–” Reever stopped himself, because he was beginning to sound like a broken record. Saying the same things as always wouldn’t do anything, wouldn’t change a damn thing. Komui was just so, so convinced that he was a screwup and underqualified that nothing Reever tried to say to him was getting through.

“I don’t understand, Komui,” he finally managed, voice quieter than it had been before. The frustration was gone, as were any hints of anger. “If you shouldn’t be there, where should you be? You’re our Supervisor. This is our home. Isn’t it…? Where else should you be?”

With–

The unspoken answer hung in the air like an accusation.

Our home– There was something–

He couldn’t say it; it would make Reever upset. But he– He– Dammit, it was the truth, and there wasn’t anything Komui could do about it even if he… might have wanted to.

Just a little bit.

“…I don’t know,” he mumbled toward the floor again, stretching out a little where he was sitting. He stared at the tiles with arms pulled close around his chest and… and wished for…

Things he couldn’t have.

“He made me to be with him,” Komui said quietly. The hole in his chest, the one he’d gotten so good at ignoring except when he woke up in the morning and went to bed at night, gave a single painful throb.

“Komui…” Reever whispered, voice pained. He didn’t know what he could say to that. “Is… is this not home to you anymore, Komui? Would… would you rather be with… with him than here?” And all of a sudden Reever felt strange again, strange like being the only Aussie in his whole school. Strange like the pea he’d found in his scrambled eggs his ma had made for him that one day. Strange like the little square block Gabby had forced into a round opening. Strange, like he just didn’t fit right where he was.

“I… I don’t get it, Komui. Any of it, I just–” He looked down at his hands. Strange like the puzzle piece that had fit until Marleen got it all soggy. There was just no making it fit again.

From Komui’s direction, there was a little noise of almost physical pain.

He had curled up tight with knees pulled against his chest and face pressed against those, arms hugging his legs close, shaking his head slowly, trying to — to think–

Home– he kept saying–

Home? What was home? Where was — was this — Had he ever once thought — this place– Anywhere– Nowhere–

Where zhu ren was–

Do you really think that will save you, Little Bird?

“Home–”

Komui sucked in a trembling breath and tried not to cry. “He took it…” His voice dwindled to an unsteady mumble. This place was–

“He took it away.”

“What…?” Reever asked in response, not really comprehending what Komui was trying to say. He moved over and knelt down next to where Komui was, holding out his hands uncertainly. Should he hold him…? Would Komui want him to? Would Komui let him?

“Took away what, Komui?” Reever questioned quietly, hand finally coming to a rest on Komui’s shoulder. “This is home now, isn’t it? Here, in the Order. But you’re back now.”

“…We went there.”

Komui didn’t seem to really be listening.

“We went there and he took it too… The very last place…” Gradually Komui’s voice rose in pitch, still shaking; quietly, composedly hysterical as he sat there with trembling hands fisted in the fabric of his shirt. The tears leaked out before he could keep them away.

“Diē and niáng died downstairs and he didn’t care… He didn’t care…” Komui lapsed into Chinese, mumbling.

“He took everything.“

The image took a while to paint itself into Reever’s mind, all the blanks filling in. There was– Cross– Even a man like Cross couldn’t possibly– But he had. Completely desecrated Komui’s childhood home, took something that Akuma had already ravaged and then– The place Komui had grown up, all of his happy memories of before the war, everything. Reever suddenly understood, understood it all. How Cross had finally, finally taken all that was left of Komui. How Cross finally managed to break him. Why Komui was so lost now.

Slowly, carefully, Reever reached out and pulled Komui into his arms, pressed the other’s tear-streaked face against his chest. Held him there. Just held him, tried to show him that he wasn’t alone. Reever didn’t really know anymore, if anything he did could undo what Cross had done. But he had to try. He couldn’t call himself someone who loved Komui if he didn’t even try. He pressed his lips against the top of Komui’s head.

“He’ll never have everything, Komui,” Reever whispered softly, finding Komui’s wrist with one hand. He ran his fingers over the bracelet there, the one that had once been his. “He can take everything around you away, but he’ll never have all of you. I won’t let him. You’ll never belong to anyone but yourself.” There was a promise there, one that Reever would never take back.

Because.

For the longest time, he had felt almost guilty for hoping against hope that Cross would die in Japan.

Now he didn’t feel guilty at all anymore.

The hole where Komui’s insides used to be was throbbing like someone had thrust their fist through it. He couldn’t — couldn’t think right over the pain and the terror and the– the plaster-covered wall; the dust on his bed; the faded wall hanging; Cross–

zhu ren–

touching him–

He shuddered against Reever for a while, barely registering the tears on his cheeks or the shirt against his hands or anything at all, until the hurt grew so intense he couldn’t even really feel it anymore and everything started to go numb. He stilled gradually and went limp where he lay against Reever’s chest, staring down toward the hem of the Supervisor’s coat the other man was wearing, breath unsteady.

Reever… Reever was saying things. Things about. Him. Himself?

…belonged to himself?

He hadn’t for such a long time.

“…I don’t belong to me,” he said slowly, after a while. Hoarsely. When his voice would work. When he could… make words.

“I belong to zhu ren.”

And… the others. That he’d managed to forget, somehow, over the last three years.

“To Linali. The Order. …. to you.”

“No, Komui,” Reever repeated softly, though he managed a watery little smile to hear that Komui remembered even a little of what they had once been. “You always belong to you. And the rest of us… Linali and me, we don’t want to own you. Loving you is enough. Loving you is enough and being loved by you is all we could ever ask of you. No one owns you, Komui.” Except for perhaps the Order, but the Order owned them all. That was a depressing thought for another day. Reever tightened his grip on Komui a little.

“I’ll never let him get away with hurting you again, I swear.”

A hand curled loosely around Reever’s shirt.

“…I still want to go with him,” Komui whispered, voice a rasp, exhausted.

“I want to. I want to so much. I need to.”

He took a deep breath. “…Please.”

–Linali and Reever and the Order, Jerry, Johnny and Tapp and 65, Komurin, his labs and his office and his stupid experiments and his brilliant ones and his Finders, oh his Finders, his brave Exorcists, the big old silly castle with its cathedral and its halls and the stairs that wound up to his room and Reever’s room and the balcony outside in the rain–

“Please don’t let me.”

Reever felt himself ache at Komui’s words, deeply and painfully as though someone was pouring something hot and blistering into the very marrow of his bones. His chest constricted, stopped his breath. That Komui actually wanted to go with Cross, wanted it badly and desperately and– Reever understood. Komui wanted Cross and needed Cross and knew he had to be stopped and because of that, Reever understood.

“I won’t,” he promised fiercely in a breathless but steady voice. “I won’t let you go with him again. I’ll keep you with us here forever.”

Because he understood. Komui needed Cross the way Reever needed a drink in the morning, wanted to be with him the way Reever wanted his blackouts. They terrified him, but he didn’t know how to live without them anymore. Reever didn’t really know if he could ever kill his reflex to have a drink whenever anything went wrong, but now he knew he had to try. Because if he couldn’t even stop his dependence on alcohol, how would he hope that Komui could ever be Komui again?

Komui nodded slowly against Reever’s chest. He slid his arms around the other man as they sat there still, clutching at the back of Reever’s coat — his coat — thinking about zhu ren– about, about Cross and…

There had been — a promise– One night when they–

He was pretty sure.

He pulled his arms tighter around Reever’s body, and quietly let himself cry again for a while. He cried, and Reever simply waited and held him, let the other’s tears soak into the white of his jacket. Reever held him and let him cry and gave himself that time to really appreciate holding Komui again, having him there in his arms. It was something that, for the longest time, he had feared he would never feel again.

“…I’m here,” he murmured. He wasn’t sure where the words were coming from, but they felt right. “I’m here. I’ll always, always be here.”

Komui held on tightly.

When he finally calmed again at last, he felt… drained. A relieved kind of drained, almost; like he’d lanced an infected sore and watched all the disease dribble out of it. Slowly, he shifted his arms up to stretch around Reever’s neck, turning on his side a little to rest his cheek near the other man’s heart; and just lay there and quietly breathed. For a little while, he let his eyes drift closed.

“…Reever?” he murmured, some time later.

“Yeah?” Reever answered tiredly, absently stroking Komui’s hair and back.

Komui kept his eyes closed as he lay there just a moment longer, feeling, breathing. Funny. He’d forgotten Reever smelled so nice, under the alcohol.

Then he shifted a little to glance up at the other man’s face, looking ever so slightly sleepy as he blinked red-rimmed eyes, tilting his head slightly to the side.

“…you brought coffee, didn’t you?” he said, faintly speculatively.

“I did,” Reever confirmed after a brief scrabbling at his memory (as well as a quick glance toward the table where he’d left the drink) confirmed that he had, in fact, brought coffee.

He paused for a moment.

“But I’m sorry, that’s the Supervisor’s mug. Only the Supervisor gets to drink that coffee.”

A faint hint of something like a pout passed briefly across Komui’s face; and then he leaned back against Reever’s chest again, and was quiet for a long while. Slowly, timidly almost, one hand reached up to run light fingers over the silver Rose Cross on the Supervisor’s jacket, laying directly in front of his eyes. Komui’s half-lidded gaze was distant.

“…I don’t… know if I can do it again,” he said quietly. Swallowed, took a deep breath. Traced a cross over Reever’s heart.

“If I– If I mess everything up… will you forgive me?”

“Forgive you if you mess up?” Reever repeated slowly, pondering the thought. “Hm… Now that you mention it, I think that might actually be part of my job description.” Then his expression sobered and he smiled reassuringly at Komui, planting a light kiss on the other’s cheek.

“I’ll always forgive you, Komui. Whether I like it not, actually. It’s one of those package deals that comes with being in love with you.”

Komui swallowed and just… looked at him for a moment, expression rather terrified. Then he took another deep breath, let it all out at once, and pulled away to rise unsteadily to his feet. One hand found Reever’s own and held on tightly.

“I…” He stopped, heart pounding. Lips drew together slowly, brows furrowed. “I… Fine then. I want some damn coffee.”

“One cup of coffee for the Supervisor, then,” Reever grinned, grabbing the mug to hand to Komui. “Now just… hold that for a second and… and… call me Head Officer. Please? And tell me why you can’t possibly go into work today. And then maybe build a giant robot or two and that’ll… that’ll make my day. Especially when tomorrow comes around and I start regretting the giant robots.”

“Well, Officer Reever,” Komui told him primly, taking another deep breath as he raised his eyebrows, “clearly I can’t do any work today because you’ve got my jacket. Which you’re going to go put in the laundry for me, correct?”

He took a sip of lukewarm coffee and… somehow, felt very, very okay.

“…laundry,” Reever repeated, casting Komui a very disbelieving, long-abused look. Then he started laughing as he shrugged the jacket off his shoulders, looking happier than he had in, well, years. “Is there anything else I can have washed for you, Supervisor? Starched? Ironed? Folded?”

Komui glanced down at the floor because, for some reason, he just couldn’t stop the smile creeping across his face.

He just knew that in the end he was going to screw everything up, but… it felt indescribably good to be addressed by that name again.

“No, I think that’ll do, Officer,” he murmured over his mug, smile softening a little as he looked back up almost shyly at the other man.

“If you’re sure, then, Supervisor.” Reever caught that look Komui was giving him and smiled contentedly back, reaching out to take one of Komui’s hands in his own. “But if you change your mind, I’m here. If you need anything at all.” There was a short pause before Reever’s smile broadened into a bit of a grin.

“…aside from me signing all your papers. That you have to do yourself, I’m afraid.”

“Well… I’ve got this research to work on, and Linali to see to and all…”

The smile on Komui’s face widened a little as he glanced away.

“I’m afraid I’m going to be ruining your nice clean floor again, Officer.”

“No, not the floor!” Reever groaned. “And my nice desk! And… and… the office.” He ended with a mournful little sniff and cast his gaze to the floor, looking as though Komui had just told him that they had to put down his puppy. Secretly, though, he couldn’t wait to see the office back to normal. It wasn’t his office anyway, and it had never felt right making it clean. Which was entirely why Reever kept it that way.

Komui just smiled a little more.

“…So,” he murmured after a while, glancing around, “I should probably…” He waved a hand at the chalkboards. “Spend today getting all this stuff down on paper. –Ah, here we are…” He walked over to an oversized portfolio lying on one of the lab tables, hauling it to a closer one and grabbing his pen from nearby to plunk down on top. (He had a sparkly grape-scented purple gel pen, gifted to him by Reever, and he was rather enthusiastic about it.)

“And then, um…” He still looked nervous, but took another deep breath and a sip of coffee, and glanced up at Reever again, questioning. “We can change over properly tomorrow?”

“Sounds perfect,” Reever confirmed with a nod. “I’ll even file the paperwork for you. And get myself fitted for a new lab coat. Oh, the sweet bliss that is being able to roll up my jacket sleeves.” A wistful, fond sigh left his lips at that and he cast a dreamy gaze at nothing in particular.

“…oh, but while we’re still here. You think you could maybe… call me ‘boss’? Just once, before all that abuse starts up again so I can stop fantasizing about it and start fantasizing about you calling me– …well, anyway, please?” Reever begged, not sounding suspicious at all.

For a second, Komui stared at him. Then he raised an eyebrow, and slowly, a wide smile spread across his face. It was a happy, mischievious, amused smile, with the tiniest dash of evil thrown in for taste. It was the most… Komui he’d looked in the entire time he’d been back.

He trotted over to Reever’s side and gave him a peck on the cheek.

“But Reever, you were never my boss,” he said sweetly as he headed toward the door.

“I can still have you scrubbing bathrooms until you’re reinstated!” Reever pouted but found himself smiling still all the same. Then he decided it was about time he came up with a pen that would only wash out with a special solution that only he would be privy to.

Because, well, with all the sleeping on the job the Supervisor would be doing, someone would have to take up the task of drawing on his face.

“I suppose you could, but I’m really terrible at scrubbing toilets, you know, you’d probably have to come help me,” Komui informed him cheerily, pulling open the laboratory door.

“And I’m feeling very French at the moment, so I’m going to go find my beret. Adieu!”

And without waiting for an answer from Reever, the creaky old door clanged shut.

- – -

A few days after Komui was reinstated as Chief Supervisor, things seemed to be falling back into the old routine, or as close to the old routine as they were going to get. The office was a proper mess again, Jerry had regular company in the evenings, and Reever found the words ‘Supervisor, these papers need your signature’ firmly in his vocabulary once more. There were the off times, where parts of the job that had become unfamiliar to Komui caught him by surprise and shook him a little or more than a little, but so far Reever somehow always managed to get a handle on those. Not a great handle, but he was getting better at being Head Officer again, the new demands of the job and all. Overall, everything was as fine as could be expected and their professional lives were almost as they had once been.

And that was exactly the problem in Linali’s mind. Komui and Reever were both so busy fixing their professional lives that they really weren’t fixing their romantic life at all, and that simply wouldn’t do. Komui needed a proper boyfriend now more than ever. So it was with that in mind that she devised her new master plan.

Since she was bedridden two-thirds of the day, she had a great deal of time to plot and thus the plan was needlessly elaborate, but a girl had to do something for entertainment when her legs weren’t working as well as they should.

It started with a call to R&D, to the one boy who she knew well enough to ask favors from.

“…six locks? Who are you trying to keep out, Linali?” he’d asked, but she assured him she needed this and, with a little sigh, he promised to get right on it after his shift.

Next was Jerry. She asked him for a month’s worth of water and non-perishable food, which he was more than happy to provide once he heard her plan from start to finish.

Finally, when all the food was in her room and all the locks were installed and armed, she had her wireless Golem call her brother’s office. She waited for him to pick up.

In the Supervisor’s office, a certain unsuspecting big brother was sitting at his desk, poring over department progress reports from the years he’d been gone. At Reever’s suggestion, he’d had each department put together a summary so he could properly catch up with the important things that had happened during his absence. Hearing the sound of golem wings fluttering around his head, he glanced up curiously to find the creature blinking at him in call-waiting mode.

“Hello? Komui here?” he greeted whoever was on the other end of the line. Most of their Exorcists were at HQ right now; he wasn’t expecting any Golem calls…

“Ge ge!” Linali called in her very best little sister ‘I’m mad at you and about to throw a tantrum’ voice. “I’ve locked myself in my room and I’m not coming out! I am holding myself hostage.”

“L… Linali!?” Komui stared at the golem in alarmed confusion. “Hostage? What are you talking about? What in the world is the matter?”

“I’ve locked myself in my room with a month’s supply of food and I’m not going to come out until I starve to death unless you do exactly as I say,” she answered, though she was unable to completely bite back a giggle at the end of her little speech. She’d always wanted to fake her own kidnapping. It was a childhood fantasy of hers, complete with Komui riding in on a white horse to rescue her. This reenactment was a little different, but close enough for Linali.

“Wha– Why!? You could’ve just… asked me whatever it is…!” Komui jumped up to pace around the room distraughtly, the golem following him as he made his rounds through the slowly-growing piles of papers on the floor.

“You know your ge ge will do anything for you, right? So why don’t you just come out of there and tell me what you want?” he requested worriedly, pouting at the golem’s mechanical face.

“No, I couldn’t have because you would have smiled that big brother smile and told me you’d try your best and then you would have put it out of your mind until the next time I brought it up,” Linali pointed out. “And so I’m definitely not coming out until my demands are met.” Because, well, she did know that Komui would do anything for her. The problem was that what she wanted him to do wasn’t for her at all.

Komui sighed and plopped down in his desk chair again, grabbing a pen and a blank piece of paper with his expression hovering between worried and vaguely disgruntled.

“All right then, kidnapper,” he wondered irreverently, “what are your demands?”

“You have to go on a real, romantic, full-evening date with Reever-ge ge. Formal dress. Nice restaurant. Reever-ge ge has to bring you flowers and candy. There has to be dancing and other such romantic things. A walk in the moonlight. The works. And photographic proof of all this, or I stay exactly where I am, ge ge,” Linali rattled off. She had been practicing all day.

Komui was silent for a moment, thoroughly jotting down each item on Linali’s list, and then, once he was finished, let out a sigh.

“So how many locks are there on your bedroom door now?”

“Six,” Linali reported proudly. “And my R&D friend installed them all, so they’ll withstand the apocalypse.”

Komui paused, stared down at the paper, and spent a few moments seriously debating the merits of just inventing a device to pick all the locks for him before the month was up.

“Well, Linali…” He paused and sighed a little again, eyes skimming over the list. “I don’t know if Reever wants to go on a date. And even if he does, I don’t know if he’ll want to do all this stuff. What am I supposed to do if he says no? I don’t want my baby sister to starve to death.” He pouted at the golem some more.

“Of course he will. He’s in love with you and he wouldn’t let me starve to death either. And you’re both free to swap the things on the list for events of equal romantic value,” Linali offered. “Sex doesn’t count unless it’s romantic sex. Like in a bathtub filled with rose petals. Or something.”

Komui proceeded to be very glad the golems weren’t on video mode as his face turned bright red.

“Linaliiiiiiiii, I don’t want to think about you thinking about me having sex, ever,” he moaned, dropping his forehead against the desk with sheer horror.

“…fine, I’ll… I’ll ask him, all right?” he mumbled into the glass. “But this might — take a while… Eat your food supply really slowly. …O-okay?”

He glanced up again to frown worriedly into the golem’s face.

“Well, the sooner I’m back on my feet the sooner I’ll be out of free time to contemplate the dynamics of your sex life, ge ge,” Linali answered cheerfully. “And I will! I have a figure to keep, after all. I’ll be just fine, but that doesn’t mean you can drag your feet on this, okay?”

“You say that like it’s my fault.” Komui pouted a little.

“All right, Linali, I’ll get on it, I’ll get on it. You… You take care.”

“I somehow manage without you,” Linali reassured. “…I love you, ge ge! Make sure to give Reever-ge ge an extra kiss for me~!”

“Yeah, I’ll do that,” Komui frowned unhappily at the golem as the signal clicked out.

…shit, what the hell was he going to do.

For a while he just laid his head down on his desk and took deep breaths and, after he’d determined that this was not going to magically produce an answer to his problem, rose and adjusted his uniform a little, swung his long ponytail back over his shoulder, and headed down the hall to poke his head in the door of the Science Department.

“Hey, anybody seen Officer Reever?” he asked, giving a cheerful wave (not that he really felt it, but it was important to keep up appearances).

“Oh, Supervisor!” Johnny greeted him in an enthusiastic but rather sleep-deprived fashion. “Reever was just… hum… I think he said he was going to Mission Ops for more forms and then to one of the storage rooms for a dart gun… oh, I think he was actually going to look for you. That was only a couple minutes ago, so he should still be on his way–” A yawn interrupted him then and he had to wait for it to pass before continuing.

“…to Mission Ops, probably.”

“…A dart gun? Now that’s just mean,” Komui pouted a little, turning around again. He didn’t have any choice about looking for Reever, so he just hoped he didn’t get tranquilized before he had the chance to explain why he was out of his office. “Thanks, Johnny, see you later~”

He headed briskly down the corridor toward the stairs that led to Mission Ops, and in the meantime, tried to decide how in the world he was going to go about this. So far he wasn’t doing very well for ideas. What should he… what should he even say? He wasn’t sure exactly where things stood between him and Reever, and he was more than a little afraid to broach the subject. Did Reever even want to — to… be like that anymore? He kept… well, he kept saying

I love you, Komui.

…..things. But, he. The way he acted was… Komui didn’t even know. But things were different. More distant. It didn’t feel the same as it had once been; that much he was sure about, even if some of the details were still jumbled and trying to fit them together right hurt too much. Things were more distant and Reever was more distant, a little more professional, and Komui supposed it was his fault, and he didn’t want to push the other man into more than he was comfortable with. All things considered, he was incredibly lucky even to still have Reever as a friend. Let alone anything else.

And he…

Did he want anything else?

Did he want…

It was… god… it was too soon. He didn’t know what he wanted, he couldn’t–

zhu ren–

–he knew exactly what he wanted and he couldn’t have it. Couldn’t let himself.

…but he missed Reever. He just… it was the one thing that had never changed, would never change. He just wanted Reever to be happy.

Half-caught up in thought, glancing around for any sign of a familiar dirty-blond head, Komui wandered down the hallway looking, perhaps, a little bit lost.

“Supervisor!”

Reever caught sight of Komui over the pile of paperwork Mission Ops had unloaded on him as he headed back down the hall toward the central staircase. Normally, he would have scolded Komui for being out of his office in the middle of a busy day or at least given him an extremely withering, exasperated expression, but not much was normal around the Order anymore. Even by the Order’s standards, which was actually a rather terrifying notion when Reever really got down to thinking about it. So, in lieu of chaining Komui to his chair the way Reever had always secretly dreamed about, he simply made his way over to stand next to Komui so that he could see him better.

“Something wrong, Komui?”

“Um…”

Komui stared at him a second before smiling nervously.

“Before that, um, how about I help you carry those back? Looks a little bit heavy.”

“…the world’s not ending, is it? Call the Earl back. Tell him I have a day off this weekend and if he’s going to end the world, he needs to reschedule for a Monday because I’ve worked too hard for this day off,” Reever groaned half-seriously, then smiled as he offered Komui half the stack.

“Well, Komui. It’s not my birthday and yours isn’t coming up so you must want something. What is it? And don’t ask for the day off because I’m already buried over here.”

“Uh… Actually…” Komui hugged the papers against his chest and glanced back the way he’d come, taking a few steps in the direction of his office. “I found you a lot sooner than I figured I would so I kind of… hadn’t gotten to that part of the… pondering yet,” he confessed sheepishly. The Supervisor paused to take a deep breath. “…Give me a second?”

“Oh, take your time,” Reever answered quickly, offering him another smile. “I found you a lot sooner than I expected too, so suddenly the rest of my schedule for today is full of a lot of nothing.”

“…Okay then.” Komui swallowed and gave a sharp nod before starting down the corridor.

They wandered all the way back to the Supervisor’s office in silence, a trip made much shorter by not having to stop for a dart gun on the way, and once inside Reever didn’t press Komui for any answers. He knew enough to count the little blessings and went straight to sorting Komui’s paperwork into neat little piles so that Komui wouldn’t get thrown off by going from dispatch notices to applications to mission reports all in a row. Komui sorted through his own half with Reever in silence, tossing papers mostly into the same piles (a few went on the floor where they belonged, a few others in his chair so he wouldn’t forget to read them) and studiously avoiding looking at the other man. Then at last, however, he found himself with nothing left in his hands, and…

….he still had absolutely no clue what to say.

Nervously he reached up to brush some hair behind one ear, and his eyes turned toward Reever’s face for the very briefest moment before glancing down again.

“…So. Um.”

“Hm?” Reever asked, glancing up from the last few papers in his hand. He finished sorting those quickly and wiped his hands against his pants, then turned fully to face Komui, trying to decide whether to be curious or worried. “What’s up, Komui?”

Komui looked back up at the other man for a moment, expression rather petrified. Gave himself another three seconds to think of something brilliant and logical and stunning to say. Glanced away again.

“Um… Linali’s locked herself in her room and she refuses to come out until we go on a date. With, um. Romantic stuff. …She has a list of demands,” he mumbled in a rather mortified fashion, fidgeting with the edge of one jacket sleeve.

…This was not going well.

“…demands? She’s… what?” Reever was gaping at Komui with a bewildered expression. Somehow this was all very déjà vu. “She’s… holding herself hostage until we go on a date? And she made a list of– You know, I’m really beginning to think she’s very, very strange and that we’ve been enabling her.”

“Don’t talk about my sister that way,” Komui pouted instantly, nervousness momentarily forgotten. “She’s probably just… bored. And possibly reads too many romance novels… all those long train rides…” he mused to himself, raising an eyebrow.

“Anyway… um. She… called me up on her golem and delivered her demands.” He sighed a little and glanced around his desk until he found the notes he’d made, and then thrust the paper at Reever without looking at him, his other hand agitatedly tugging on a lock of hair.

“If you say so, Supervisor,” Reever sighed, taking the paper. “Let’s see… Full evening date at a nice restaurant… formal wear? Is she under the impression I own anything other than my work clothes? Flowers and candy…? Dancing and a moonlit walk? Photographic proof? What’s this…?” He squinted at something scrawled in the margin. “Or romantic events of equal value,” he read out slowly. Then he spent a minute just staring at the list, blinking. When he finally looked up at Komui again, it was only to find the Supervisor a very impressively bright shade of red. Reever suddenly found himself grinning as Komui’s behavior so far was rather clearly explained. He was sure that Komui’s awkwardness about picking up their romantic relationship really couldn’t be a good sign, but it was endearing somehow. Terribly, terribly endearing. Just seeing that embarrassed little look on the other’s face, and, well… Reever was falling in love all over again.

“Ah, well,” he sighed heavily, frowning in a very troubled way. “I wish she would have come straight to me instead of this silly hostage business. How am I supposed to surprise you with reservations and flowers and candy if you got the list of demands first? But the moonlit walk will have to go. There’s nowhere really good to walk around here. I’d want to swap it for something in an equally poorly-lit environment, though. I can’t really think of anywhere offhand… but maybe Jerry will know!”

Komui attempted to make his mouth work around the mortification.

“U-um… So you… Don’t– …. mind?”

He very narrowly avoided squishing some paperwork, remembering to move the reports at the last moment as he plopped down into his chair.

“Mind?” Reever asked lightly. He knew why Komui might be afraid of that, knew because he had been standing on that side of the fence until about a minute and a half ago. “Unless you only want to go on a date with me to get out of work and to get your sister out of her room, why would I mind?”

Komui looked up for a moment again, looked Reever in the face, swallowed, nodded; smiled a little awkwardly. He might not have known exactly what he wanted, but…

One date wouldn’t… well… It would be– nice.

“All right then, that’s… that’s all I wanted to know,” he said brightly, turning toward the piles of papers. Lately the ability to get drowned in the minutiae of paperwork and not have to worry about anything else for a while seemed scarily more like a blessing than a curse, some days. “Let me work on these so we can go… uh… Plan about that.”

“Komui Li, I think you just stole my breath away,” Reever teased. “Let me go see if I have anything resembling formal wear before I swoon at the sight of you working willingly. Not to mention, God, I’ll have to look up decent restaurants in the area, flower shops, places that specializes in selling chocolates since I don’t think Linali’ll be okay with it if I hand you a bag of jelly beans… I don’t know how people make a habit of doing this, really.” He sighed, rubbing the side of his face.

“Well, anyway. I should get going on that. Good thing I don’t have anything else to do today… You don’t worry about the arrangements, okay? Just stay here and get your work done.” Reever waved as he turned to leave, but then a thought occurred to him and he hesitated, looking back. “One more thing before I go, Komui,” he added quickly, looking a bit sheepish himself.

“Should I shave or not…?”

Komui stared at him for a moment, expression turning speculative.

“…Ummmm.”

Finally he frowned unhappily, laying his chin against the desk. “We’re supposed to take pictures. I imagine Linali won’t be pleased if you don’t.”

“So we are doing this just doing this to appease Linali?” Reever asked, sounding a little wounded. He rubbed his stubble with a little half sniff. “Don’t worry guys, I still love you. It’s okay. We won’t be apart for long.”

“Well, I’d like for her to come out of her room sometime before her food store runs out,” Komui mumbled, gaze turning down on the desk next to his nose. He stared at it quietly for a second, half-lidded gaze hiding his eyes beneath dark lashes.

“…but, um. No.”

“…I’m just teasing, Komui,” Reever reassured, rubbing the back of his neck. He felt rather silly now. “I’ll shave, go get my hair trimmed. Don’t worry. No one less than Prince Charming’s going to show up here asking for a date from you, okay?”

Komui couldn’t help cracking a little smile at that, sitting up on his elbows and nodding a bit before reaching for a form off the pile. “And I’ll be here, I guess,” he said, grabbing a pen. He tapped it idly against the desk, giving himself a second to breathe. This was… it would be just fine. It would even be fun, he was sure.

“See you later?” he said, smiling shyly up at Reever again.

“Of course,” Reever nodded, flushing a little bit. He… he rather liked it when Komui smiled at him like that. Then he cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck some more before he headed off to get things ready for their date.

What a strange, foreign little word.

- – -

Komui spent most of the rest of the day doing paperwork, and a large portion of the night staring up at his ceiling and not getting a wink of sleep; in the morning, feeling terribly distracted and morbidly certain he’d get his orders mixed up and accidentally send 500 Finders to converge on the Bermuda Triangle or something, he decided to count the day for a loss and didn’t bother turning up in his office. Instead he threw on some clothes and went to putter around a lab or three for a while, walk slowly and cautiously past Linali’s locked door, and then make a rather rambling tour of the castle, wandering where his feet would take him. He stopped on the top floor of one of the high watchtowers for a while to sip coffee and watch the birds, fluttering past the window down toward the islands below, and the clouds drifting by overhead.

…he was changing whether he liked it or not, really.

I’m sorry, zhu ren.

On Reever’s end, the first thing he did after parting with Komui was to go into town and find a proper barber. He had his hair trimmed enough to look tidy, shaved, then dug out all the money he hadn’t managed to blow on alcohol and dropped it all on a clean suit instead. It was dark green, because the man at the shop had told him it suited him and brought out his eyes. Then he went to the flower shop and agonized over what to buy. Roses were a little too bold, he thought. A little too presumptuous. Lotuses were pretty, but there was an unwritten rule that no one was to carry them around Headquarters because they sent Kanda into a vaguely homicidal fit of brooding. Daisies were too childish, too schoolyard ‘he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not’. What Reever finally settled on was decided on impulse. Sunflowers. They were the smaller sort, bright and cheery. They reminded him of Komui somehow. The girl at the register gave him a skeptical look when he mentioned that it was for his date, but she didn’t make any other suggestions because she had seen him stand there looking lost for over an hour and figured it was probably best not to cause him any more frustration.

The chocolates were easier. He picked out a box of mocha truffles and a little bag of chocolate covered espresso beans, then worried that he was being too obvious and that maybe Komui or Linali would get upset that he wasn’t putting enough thought into it– (Why did it distinctly feel like he was dating both of them rather than just Komui?) Then he decided Komui rather liked him sane (or at least he hoped) and to just leave it, because he really couldn’t afford to spend another hour crawling around for the right candy.

The next three hours were spent finding a restaurant that was nice enough to require reservations but not so nice that he needed them weeks in advance. He settled on a French place whose name he couldn’t pronounce and asked for a business card to save him the trouble of explaining that to Komui. The Aux Lyonnais.

By the time Reever got back to Headquarters, all he had the time left to do was collapse in bed and hope he would get enough sleep in to save himself from getting bags under his eyes. Or, rather, rid himself from the bags he already had under his eyes.

The morning snuck up on Reever not entirely unlike a mugger, and before Reever knew it the sun was shining brightly in his eyes and his reservation was fast approaching. He rolled out of bed with an ‘oof’ and somehow crawled into the shower.

He was clean a little after noon, dressed and armed with flowers and chocolate and properly groomed by just before one, and out the door by one-thirty. (He spent half an hour sitting on his bed, busily being nervous.) He went straight to the office only to find that Komui hadn’t checked in that morning.

Well. That helped.

Sighing, Reever ran his hand through his carefully combed hair out of habit and tried to decide where to go looking first. He never imagined he’d have to play this game with Komui when he didn’t even have a pile of papers in hand.

Komui, meanwhile, had eventually run out of coffee, and figuring it would take a while to properly brush out his hair, had made his way back downstairs to his own room. There he cleaned up, sat down on his bed and stroked the black locks until they were about as soft and as orderly as they were going to get; tied them back for the moment, and then wandered over to the armoire. He opened it up and sifted through it almost restlessly, staring at the clothes he had on offer.

His hand came to rest on a certain long, shimmering snow-colored tunic.

It was, by far, the nicest thing he had in his closet. There was a single Western-style suitcoat stuffed somewhere in the back, generally worn on visits to the Vatican. Other than that the majority of his closet was either for traveling, or for working; his nice clothes were basically cheongsam and… and this.

Patterened with birds. Purchased for zhu ren’s eyes, with zhu ren’s money.

Slowly he pulled the hanger down off the rack, looked at the garment for a moment; clutched it against his chest. Pressed his face close to it. It did not smell like zhu ren. It did not smell like his wine or his cigarettes or his hair or… anything at all. Komui had only worn it once or twice since they first bought it.

…he’d never been on a date, a real date, with Reever before, and he felt like…

He wanted. To show him.

Something.

He wanted to… to be…

He stood at the armoire for a little while longer, then closed the door and turned around, and sat down to get dressed.

After searching a long while and finally gathering a general consensus that no one had seen Komui that day, Reever decided to check if Komui hadn’t even left his room yet.

“Komui?” he asked, knocking on the door. Not immediately hearing a response, Reever wondered if Komui was still asleep or something and opened the door to have a look around.

“Are you in here, Komui?” he asked again.

Or, well, he would have if he’d had any breath to do so.

Instead his mouth fell open with the beginnings of the question before he caught sight of Komui, standing in the middle of his room dressed in shimmering white-silver, hair down save for his long bangs which were loosely swept up and clipped together at the back of his head by a beaded barrette.

Reever continued to stare blankly, not realizing that his mouth was hanging open or that he was losing his grip on his bouquet of sunflowers until he almost dropped them. He quickly caught them again before they had the chance to hit the floor and even remembered to close his mouth, but couldn’t remember for the life of him what he was doing standing in this room with such a stunning person.

“Um,” he managed, clutching the flowers to his chest, entire face a light shade of red. “Uh… Um. Hi. Komui.”

Komui, in his turn, blinked for a moment at the way he was being stared at; finished sliding his foot into his shoe; and turned a little pink himself.

He smiled a little abashedly as he walked forward, eyes turning down toward Reever’s hands. “You actually got me flowers…?” He gave a small, slightly nervous but genuine laugh.

“…You look nice. Green suits you,” he declared after a moment, smiling a little wider, feeling incredibly awkward with the look on the other man’s face.

Reever turned a slightly deeper shade of pink. He didn’t have the best self esteem in the world, but he made a career of not caring so most of the time it didn’t matter. He mostly expected to be dead before he turned forty anyway. But hearing Komui say he looked nice, well, it made Reever want to go stare in the mirror and try to figure out what Komui was talking about and make more of it happen. But since that would look silly, he just rubbed the back of his neck again and smiled awkwardly, wondering how long it would take before his face started resembling a tomato.

“Not as nice as you,” he offered rather quietly. Then he held out the flowers in a way that was alarmingly reminiscent of a six year old boy holding out a dead bug as a romantic offering to the teacher he had a crush on. “They’re, um. Sunflowers. Which were probably a bad idea because the lady selling them gave me this look, but… um. They reminded me of you. I-in a good way, of course!”

“They reminded you of me…?”

Komui blinked for a second and then gave another quiet, breathy, helpless little laugh, accepting the bouquet into both hands with his lips curled into a warm, pleased smile. He fingered one soft yellow petal as he gave the gift all due attention.

“I don’t know anything about this stuff either, so maybe we can ask a girl later if you accidentally told me you never want to see me again in flower language or something,” he offered cheerfully, gaze flitting up to meet Reever’s again for just a moment, a little bit shy. “…I think they’re perfect. Do they smell like anything?…”

He brought the bouquet to his face with a smile.

“Um… flowers?” Reever offered helpfully with a little shrug. “The most I know about sunflowers is, uh… you can eat the seeds, I think. Except not in those. They’re kind of small. I guess you put them in a vase and… watch them. I don’t know. You… like them, then?” He sounded a little breathlessly happy just then. “I, um… There’s chocolates too, but… they’re kind of… kind of… simple.”

Komui blinked at him again, eyes lighting up as he shifted the flowers away from his face. “You got me chocolate?” He beamed at the other man briefly, wondering meanwhile whether he had anything in here that would serve as a vase. Maybe the long skinny pencil holder sitting on his desk…

–and Reever had gotten him sugar. Granted all this stuff had been on Linali’s note, but he hadn’t really expected…

Maybe this dating business wasn’t so bad after all.

“…I didn’t think to get you anything,” it occurred to him after a moment. Komui frowned abashedly. “I’ll have to make it up to you later.”

“I was beginning to notice that the man doesn’t seem to get much out of it but the affections of the lady in traditional relationships, but I’m beginning to get how that’d be enough,” Reever answered with a little embarrassed smile. He took the box of chocolates out from under his arm and dug the chocolate espresso beans out of his pocket, then held out both to Komui. “Mocha truffles and chocolate covered espresso beans.”

“Are you calling me a lady?” Komui pouted, reservations mostly forgotten in the face of… chocolate covered espresso beans. He accepted them eagerly and, because he was Komui and not a lady, tucked the truffle box in the crook of his arm with the flowers and immediately tugged the bag of beans open to pop a couple into his mouth.

“…Ooh. These are good. Want one?” He extended the bag toward Reever with a bright smile.

“No, thanks,” Reever declined politely, though he smiled rather brightly at Komui’s enthusiasm for his chocolates. “They’re for you. And don’t eat too many, okay? We have reservations at, um… this place,” he paused to hand Komui the business card, “in a couple hours. I still haven’t figured out what to do after, but maybe we can discuss that at dinner.”

“…French?“

Komui was completely out of hands now, but he looked impossibly pleased and even a little astounded, beaming at Reever warmly.

“Poor Jerry, we’ll hurt his feelings at this rate,” he said with another quiet laugh, turning around to walk over and set his gifts down on his desk. He upended the tall pencil holder and let its contents clatter atop his scattered collection of papers before picking up the flowers again, turning around.

Looking at Reever speculatively, he took one step forward, then another. Slowly he walked up close to the other man, expression faintly nervous again. The smile had faded from his face.

“…Um.”

…. well.

There was… there was really no use thinking about it too hard.

He leaned forward to give Reever a single brief, soft kiss on the lips, smiled at him from up close as he pulled back just a little.

It felt like the right thing to do.

“Thank you,” he murmured. “This should be fun.” And then he turned away to the bathroom to put his flowers in some water.

“Y-you’re w…welcome,” Reever managed to choke out, turning a near luminescent shade of red as Komui thankfully turned away. He scowled at himself and turned away to rub at his cheek with the back of his hand and found it strangely smooth. And warm.

“I’ll. Uh. I’ll go see about borrowing one of the Order’s carriages. The restaurant’s a bit of a walk. I… I think Toma might be convinced to take us there, too. I’ll give him the day off tomorrow or something as thanks. I’ll be back as soon as that’s done to, um, escort you downstairs. That’s what… dates do, right?” he rattled off, still rather nervous-sounding. “Anyway. Okay. Be right back then.”

“Um… okay.” Komui poked his head out of the bathroom again to carry the makeshift vase back over to his desk, now full of the strikingly yellow sunflowers. “I guess… I’ll be waiting?” He smiled a little awkwardly again.

After a quick tour around the floor and a quick shout down to Toma that they were about ready to leave, Reever managed to stop blushing enough to go back and fetch Komui like a proper gentleman.

“Komui!” he called as he knocked on the door once again. “Ready?”

Inside, Komui pulled on a coat and headed over to let himself out.

“As I’ll ever be,” he said good-naturedly, pulling the door closed and bending over to lock it behind him. “So, um…”

He glanced back toward Reever, grinned a little abashedly, and offered his hand.

“Shall we?”

Reever only nodded in response and tried not to blush again, taking Komui’s offered hand. It was going to be a beautiful night.

Dinner went about as well as they could have hoped; a little bit awkward, a lot happy, full of smiles and laughter and pleasant conversation and food whose names Reever couldn’t pronounce. (Komui made his best go, but truthfully his French wasn’t too great either.) They lingered over several courses of appetizers and entrées and dessert; toasted each other’s health over glasses of sparkling grape juice (the waiter had offered them the wine menu first, but Komui had taken one look and gone a shade paler, and Reever, of course, had his own reasons); and then, once their meal was done, nibbled a little on after-dinner bonbons and sipped potent French coffee and attempted to decide where they wanted to go.

“Well…” Komui said eventually, blinking a little in perplexment as he reached for another candy. “The park here is pretty.”

“Well, tonight’s your night,” Reever began with a small, vastly content smile. “The park sounds like a wonderful idea.” Which all sounded very poetic and romantic, but Reever wasn’t without his manly ulterior motives. The park sounded like a lovely place to continue admiring Komui at. And, honestly, he didn’t care where they went as long as the company remained the same.

“I’ll take care of the check and then you lead the way,” he offered, flagging down a waiter to do exactly that. Once their meal was paid for, Reever stood and offered his arm to Komui because he felt the need to act like the gentleman he really wasn’t. He was far too rough around the edges for this sort of thing, far too… Australian. But he wanted to try for Komui, even for one night. He felt Komui deserved at least that much out of him.

Komui just laughed a little as he rose, pulling his coat on, and linked arms with the other man.

A few minutes later found them strolling in an English garden in the moonlight. The park was quiet, ringed around by trees and around those by houses dotted here and there along the street, and Toma and their carriage waited patiently for them by the entrance as they wandered their way inside. The path and the scattered terraces they passed under were lined in blossoms, peonies and hyacinths and all manner of flowers curled up under the moon; most would begin to wilt any day now as the temperature continued to drop and autumn came upon them, but for now they were still alive, pale vibrant spots of color against the darkened greenery of the park. The waxing moon shone down overhead from a clear dark sky, and Komui leaned against Reever’s side a little as they ambled aimlessly down the dirt pathway.

“You know…” Reever mused after a long stretch of comfortable, almost relaxing silence passed between them. “This was a great idea. Maybe Linali does know what’s best for us better than we do. Maybe… maybe it wouldn’t hurt to do this more often.” Then he went a little red around the ears and he laughed a bit nervously. “Um. That is. If you’d like to. I know the chocolate-covered espresso beans will eventually stop being worth all this trouble, but… maybe until then.”

An easy smile passed across Komui’s face as they walked along, and he reached over a little for Reever’s hand, idly twining their fingers together. He hadn’t been in this good a mood since Linali woke up, and he knew exactly why it was: spending all this time with Reever doing absolutely nothing, thinking of nothing save making him happy. Making him laugh, watching that cute grin of his, the endearingly embarrassed way he’d had of going about… just about everything they’d done tonight, really. His unruly hair combed into something that vaguely resembled order; impeccably dressed — Komui had never seen him in anything but work clothes before today — fresh-faced and clean-shaven… (Admittedly, Komui missed the stubble a little. But Reever cleaned up handsomely.)

He remembered why he’d been so desperate to hold onto this, before. Even though it could have destroyed the both of them.

And he could have stopped to regret things, and fear things, and worry; but that would completely put a damper on their pleasant evening, and Komui was in far too good a mood to spoil it.

“That wouldn’t be a bad idea,” he said, tugging Reever’s arm downward so he could swing their linked hands a little as they walked. He raised an eyebrow brightly. “I imagine I’ll keep accepting the caffeine as long as you keep bringing it. But you could probably also get me out here without bribing me,” he admitted cheerfully, pausing for a moment as he glanced up.

“Look — you can see the North Star.”

“So you can,” Reever agreed, looking up at the night sky as well. “The view’s even better from Headquarters. I used to get bored and memorize all the constellations. Are the stars pretty in China?” The question slipped out without notice. Tonight had been so peaceful, so healing that Reever had managed to put the three years that had come between them out of his mind completely, and he had always wanted to ask Komui what China was like. The stars in Australia, for example, always glowed from the mist that rose from the surrounding sea.

Komui’s smile twitched slightly.

He slowly wound his other arm around Reever’s so he was hugging it against him a little, and was quiet for a long several moments, staring up at the sky. That place in his chest gave a halfhearted sort of throb.

“…They’re very beautiful,” he murmured after a while.

“Especially out in the country, in the lowlands… you can turn around in a circle and see nothing but stars… going on forever and ever all the way to the horizons.”

“Back home,” Reever whispered into Komui’s ear, still watching the sky with some measure of longing, “the stars’ll right up and take your breath away. You’re right by the sea, right? The waves crash on the shore and send up this mist of water that hovers up in the sky and gives every star a little halo of its own. My ma used to tell me that’s where angels live. I think I might just still believe her.” He tore his gaze away from the stars to watch Komui instead, shifting his arm so that he could slip it around Komui’s waist and hold him.

“That’s your fault, you know.” His voice was soft, almost somber save for the little smile that played upon his lips.

“My fault?” Komui’s murmur matched Reever’s in softness, expression a little perplexed, but full of affection as he slid one of his own arms across Reever’s back, another over his shoulder. Instinctively he leaned closer.

“Mm, your fault,” Reever repeated with a mysterious little smile, pulling away. He caught Komui’s fingertips just as he was about to wander out of reach and pulled him towards a small rise in the ground that could almost be called a hill, beckoning him to sit down. Reever’s arm went right back to its place around Komui’s waist once they were seated, and Reever’s gaze turned back towards the sky. He was still smiling, gaze somewhere faraway.

“You make me believe in good things again, Komui Li,” he finally sighed, then paused, shaking his head. “No, it’s not even that, really. You make me want to believe in the good things again. You make me care about happy endings. You make me want there to be angels in the stars.” His face might have been a little pink just then, but in the darkness it was hard to tell.

A slow, quiet, rather bashful sort of smile spread over Komui’s face, and, gaze drifting toward the grass in front of their feet, he laid his head down for a moment against Reever’s shoulder. Stopped to breathe in his scent.

He’d made Reever believe in bad things, too, he knew. An awful lot of bad things. But… but maybe… the good things made up for all that. At least just a little.

“If you want them hard enough,” he whispered, eyes falling half-lidded, leaning closer to slide up across Reever’s jacket front and twine his arms around the other man’s neck, “I’m sure there’s one waiting up there just to oblige you.”

Then his lips were pressing against Reever’s, and it was right, and natural, and perfect.

Reever’s eyes closed instinctively and his arms wound around Komui’s body as well. He kissed back tenderly, not for anything but because it felt right, because it felt as though in that moment everything was okay because they were where they were supposed to be, doing what they were supposed to be doing. And when the kiss finally came to a reluctant but natural end, Reever smiled a content, slightly delirious little smile and sighed out his breath. He held Komui to his chest, grip momentarily tightening.

“…I love you, Komui.”

Komui laid his head back down on Reever’s shoulder, nuzzled his neck a little, and faintly smiled.

“I love you too,” he murmured.

He didn’t quite know why there were tears pricking the corners of his eyes, but he didn’t really mind.

“H-hey,” Reever stammered when he opened his eyes to find tears about to escape the corners of Komui’s. He quickly brought his hand up and brushed them away with his thumb. “You’re not crying, are you, Komui?” he whispered as he tucked a stray lock of Komui’s hair behind his ear. “Don’t cry. Don’t ever let me give you reason to cry, Komui. I never want to see anything but your perfect smile.”

Helplessly, as though spurred on by Reever’s insistence, the smile on Komui’s face grew wider. He closed his eyes and sunk down a little where he was sitting, sliding his arms down as well, to twine loosely around Reever’s waist. He blinked back another few stray tears.

“People cry when they’re happy, too, you know,” he murmured warmly.

“So that’s what this feeling is,” Reever mused with a quiet little laugh, leaning down to kiss one of Komui’s cheeks, tears and all. “You’ll have to forgive those of us who are a little slow. I’ve never been happy enough to cry before.” Then he let himself fall back against the grass and took Komui with him, staring up at the now-slightly misty stars (or perhaps it was his eyes that were misty), arms still draped over Komui’s shoulders.

Komui watched the stars with him some more for a little while before turning his face against Reever’s chest, nuzzling the other a little with a contented sigh and letting his eyes fall closed again. Resting.

“Well,” he remarked, slowly stretching out his legs to twine around Reever’s, “I guess there’s a first time for everything.”

“I guess there is,” Reever murmured back, absently stroking Komui’s hair.

“…I want to have them all with you.”