Misu’s skin was warm against his, the water in the tub moving around them in gentle waves. His arms were looped around Misu’s body, ensuring that he wasn’t going anywhere he couldn’t follow. Misu’s fingers were in his hair, damp from the steam coming off the warm water. It was so comfortable, there in each other's arms, hidden from the world and anyone who might mean them harm.

Misu’s lips were soft against his ear, against his cheek, his lips...

The water had grown unpleasantly cold. His grip on Misu tightened, but his arms came up empty, nothing but air between them. The water sank, collecting in pools around his ankles. When he opened his eyes, he was standing on top of the water, its surface rippling against the soles of his feet. He stared down into the water, his heart sticking in his throat.

Misu’s lifeless body was floating right below him, just beneath the surface. Amane fell to his knees, water splashing all around him. He tried to reach down, to pull him out, but it was as if an invisible wall was keeping them apart, even when he should’ve been just within reach.

He could hear the blood rushing in his ears, tears gathering in his eyes. He tried to reach down again and again, slamming his fist against the surface of the water. It refused to give way.

Pressing his forehead against the barrier that separated them, he begged. Over and over again, until his voice was hoarse and nothing else came out except for violent sobs that made his entire body shake.

He stared into the water, the depths of it far too clear despite its darkness. Misu was right fucking there , why couldn’t he get to him? He barely even took notice of the way the water rippled as his tears fell into the vast sea it had become. Then came the realisation that with each fallen tear, Misu was sinking, as if they were contributing to the weight of his body, his despair taking Misu farther and farther away. His fingers tried to dig into the water, gather it up, to take his tears back, but every drop slipped between his fingers. He screamed, voice cracking, heart breaking.

Amane woke up to the sound of his own scream.

For a while, he could only lie there, body trembling like an aspen leaf while his brain caught up to his heart. When it did, a violent sob wracked his body.

Two months had passed since Misu’s death, and time wasn’t making anything easier. In fact, it felt like each day it just got harder and harder to deal with the loss.

Maybe living with the man who had raised him again was contributing. It certainly wasn’t doing anything good for his mental health. Mental health that had already been shot to hell well before he even met Misu. And now the one person whom he’d grown to trust with his whole being was gone. He had no idea how to deal with it.

He couldn’t stop crying, all the swirling emotions inside him overwhelming, the nightmare still vivid in his mind. He’d felt loss before, but losing Misu was like losing a huge part of himself. He hadn’t even realized just how important the man had become to him until he was in that control room, begging Misu to choose himself over everyone else. He’d never missed someone so bad; it tore him to pieces.

Heart-wrenching sobs turned into tired sniffles as he cried himself into exhaustion, yet he couldn’t fall back asleep. As soon as he started to relax, he felt his heartrate pick up without his bidding, a fresh wave of grief hitting him straight in the chest like a sledgehammer.

Amane rolled over to his side, staring out the window. The curtains were open. Misu had always been the one to remember to draw them closed. It was a habit well-worn into the other man’s soul by the time they met. Once they started living together, it hadn’t been something Amane had even thought about. Misu remembered, after all. Though sometimes, if Misu fell asleep first, the curtains were accidentally left open.

He curled in on himself, clutching the necklace around his neck, trying to focus on the texture of the beads rather than the grief that was consuming him. It didn’t do much, so he quickly let it go. Instead, he moved his eyes to stare out the window again. It was still dark outside, early in the morning. He didn’t need to check his phone to know it was too early for anyone decent to be outside.

He pulled his phone close, checking the time anyway. The numbers on his lock screen read 3:41 in white letters. He thought about breakfast, about the hostile air still around him and his brother. He doubted it would ever dissipate. Shougo didn’t want him there, nor did Amane come back because he wanted to play family. This was all a means to an end, and he had a feeling his so-called ‘dad’ knew he was plotting something. There was not a shred of trust to be found between them. Not that there had been any from the start, even when he was a kid.

He couldn’t do this today. He felt like shit and didn’t want to feel even worse being around the other people in the house right now. He needed to get out, if only for a few hours, before having to face them. Sometimes, Amane Kouzaburou still felt threatening, like there was still a part of him that was still that little boy waiting for him to strike at the smallest mistake. And living on the somewhat straight-and-narrow now made him so damn uncomfortable, even without having to deal with his family to boot. Misu had been a way better family than they could ever hope to be.

He needed a break, no matter how small.

Rolling over, Amane got to his feet. He was still in the clothes he’d worn the day before, a habit from his previous life that was hard to break. When you were dealing with shady business, making as many enemies as him and Misu had, it was good to be ready to run or fight at a moment’s notice. It was easy to forget to change into pyjamas in the evenings when he hadn’t even owned one in years. The one he had now stayed unused in its drawer.

His body was still shivering, his limbs feeling like jelly even though he had been awake for most likely over an hour at this point. An hour later, his body still felt the aftermath of the night terrors, even as his brain tried to repress them.

Pulling on boots over bare feet (sleeping with socks on always made him feel awkward, it was too sweaty), he unlocked the window, leaning out to peer at the ground below. There was only one floor between him and the grass below. He’d be perfectly fine. He’d made sure to check on that right after moving in. Always having an option of escape was preferable to being cornered somewhere. Especially since he wasn’t armed anymore. Not having a gun felt vulnerable.

He jumped, feeling the cold air around him.

He landed with more sound than he would’ve liked, slipping in the wet grass. Fancy suits were less forgiving of grass stains, but the slacks were black, so it was fine. He’d assess the damage when he was somewhere brighter.

Keeping to the shadows, he made his way off the property without being noticed.

He only relaxed once he got farther away from the Amane house. Upscale homes were replaced by regular city streets, dark storefronts and automatically locked apartment entryways lining the road.

The streets were blissfully empty, only the occasional homeless person tucked away somewhere. He only paid them enough mind to make sure they weren’t familiar faces, ones that might be keeping tabs on him. He knew he never met every single member of every single organisation he’d been in, but the least he could do was make sure that the obvious ones didn’t get the better of him.

Amane wandered, ignoring the aching inside his head. He should find something to drink after how much he had been crying earlier. At least it was marginally preferable to the pain in his heart that had consumed him so completely after waking up. Now, it had dulled to a steady hum enveloping his heart, constricting its beat ever so slightly. He was sure it was never going to go away completely.

Coming to a stop in front of a vending machine, he dropped coins into the slot, pressing the numbers for his order. For a few long seconds, he thought the machine had eaten his coins without dropping his drink in the pickup box. He gave it a kick, making the insides rattle, the drink finally dropping into the box.

He kept walking.

The drink was terrible, tasting more like mud than coffee. But at least it was warm. He probably should’ve worn gloves. Too late for that now though. He coughed and snivelled, pretending that it was more because of the cold than his fragile emotional state.

He let his feet take him in whatever direction they wanted, not really thinking about any destination. The cityscape slowly changed from well-maintained and loved, to rundown and kept hidden. Before he knew it, his hand was on the handle of a door, making him pause.

Looking up, he stared at a too-familiar building. The metal of the door handle was cold against his skin, almost biting. He backed up, eyes automatically locking on a specific window. His heart started beating at a deafening volume in his ears when he saw that a light was on.

They had never found Misu’s body.

The tiniest part of him clung to the hope that that meant he was still alive somehow, somewhere. It was unlikely. Impossible, even. The water would have kept Misu under far longer than the most well-trained freediver would be able to handle, Haku and Eiri had told him, sensing Amane’s denial when they came up with bodies missing. It wasn’t just Misu’s body that was gone. Maybe then, if his had been the only one to disappear, maybe he could be out there somewhere, healing. Safe.

Then one day he’d come for Amane. Take him away from all this bullshit.

He knew it was stupid to hope for something that was as unlikely as this, but until he had a body to bury, he thought a little part of his soul would hold on to that hope like a lifeline in a world that didn’t have a place for him without Misu in it.

He picked the lock to the door keeping him out of the apartment building far too easily. It was a shitty lock in a shitty building, in an even shittier area. He still had the key to the apartment itself, could feel it burning a hole in his left jacket pocket. This door though, had always given him trouble. He had always found it easier to just break in rather than try the key at all.

Bounding up the stairs, he came to a halt in front of the door to Misu’s apartment. The apartment he’d left behind with only a letter as a good-bye. The last place they’d lived together. Fishing the key out of his pocket, his fingers trembled as he inserted it into the lock.

When it turned, his heart beat even faster than it had after his sprint up the stairs. It still fit!

He swung the door open, ready to call Misu’s name only to come face to face with a woman breastfeeding a baby. She was staring at him in shock, getting to her feet. The baby screamed as its mother backed away from Amane, shielding it from him.

“What do you want?!”

Amane stood, unable to utter a word, staring at the woman. Then he took in his surroundings. It was clear it was the right apartment, no question about that. But everything inside it was wrong. The couch was wrong, the bed was wrong... His eyes searched for the picture frame and the teddy bear Misu had kept as mementos of his family but came up with nothing.

He snapped back to reality when the woman yelled that she’d call the cops. He looked back at her. They both knew that the police didn’t hesitate to ignore calls from this neighbourhood. But still, in his current life, he actually had to care about having the police called on him.

“I’ll leave. I’m sorry. I got the wrong apartment.”

He clutched the key in his hand. He didn’t want to leave it behind. If everything else was gone, this was the last piece of Misu’s home he had left. No doubt the landlord who managed to find someone new to rent the apartment so soon after realising Misu wasn’t coming back would change the locks. That, or they would ignore the woman asking them to change them. Both were equally as likely in this part of the city.

He turned and ran.

He ran all the way to that godforsaken bridge where Sakura had approached him months earlier. Amane pressed his forehead against the cold metal of the railing, letting out a sob. Fuck. He was doing a lot of crying today, and all of it before it was even time for breakfast.

The walk back to the Amane household was slow. He was so tired he could feel it all the way to his bone marrow. The closer he got, the more lights started to turn on in people’s homes. The sun was starting to send its rays over the horizon, bathing everything in its glow.

Amane’s heart felt heavy in his chest, like it should be sitting at the bottom of his shoe rather than confined between his ribs. The front door unlocked with ease, nothing like the shitty old lock to the place he’d dared to call home for that precious time, even as he felt so much guilt about dragging Misu down with him. Guilt that still gnawed at his very being, inseparable twins with the grief inside of him.

He still thought it now. Where would Misu be, if they’d never met? Not at the bottom of the cold ocean, that was for sure.

He was picking the lock to his own bedroom door when he felt eyes on him. Looking to his right, he saw Shougo, staring at him with bewilderment. “What are you doing?”

“What’s it look like?” Amane turned his eyes back toward the lock. He needed to practice picking the locks on these fancy doors more often, if it had taken him long enough to be spotted. He had places to go in this house that required no one catching him in the act.

He paused when his brother came to a stop right next to him. “What? I’m not teaching you.”

“I don’t need to know how to pick locks. Unlike you I’m not a criminal.”

Amane snorted, lips parting in a mean grin. He glared up at the younger man from his crouched position. “Right, oh high-and-mighty bocchama. You’d never do something so bad as to commit a crime.” He pushed the door open, getting back up on his feet. Like murder in the name of the government wasn’t still murder. While Amane held no regrets about all the murders he had committed, at least he knew full well what he was and what he wasn’t.

Shougo averted his eyes. “You look...unwell.”

“What, you worried or something?” The laugh Amane let out was bitter, full of all the pain he was unable to hide. “Do you have the time to worry about someone other than yourself right now?”

When he looked at Shougo he recognised the look in his eyes. Amane’d had years of coming to terms with what Amane Kouzaburou expected out of a child. Shougo had seemed to be under the impression that he was looking for something completely different. His worldview had been rudely altered when Amane was accepted back into the family despite his crimes. He’d need to hurry it up and get adjusted to it or he would find himself thrown out in no time.

Amane might not be here to be an actual part of the family, but he knew how to play their games better than anyone. He’d lived them since he was a young child, after all. The same couldn’t be said for his dear little brother.

“Breakfast is in 15 minutes,” was the only reply Shougo seemed able to muster.

The sigh Amane had to hold back could have rocked his entire body with how tired it was had he let it out. He closed his eyes for a moment, gripping the doorhandle tightly.

He threw his head back, staring into the ceiling.

“I’ll be there,” he said.

He didn’t give Shougo the room to say anything else, closing the door behind him.

Amane opened the clasp of his necklace, letting it fall into his hand as he flicked on the light in the room. It reflected off the black beads, and for a moment he just stared down at them.

Then, he found Misu’s key in his pocket, threading the string of beads through its hole. Carefully, he put the necklace back on, walking to stand in front of his mirror.

The weight of the key against his chest felt grounding.

He tucked it in underneath his shirt, buttoning it all the way up. Hiding it from view of everyone else.

Finding his tie slung over the closet door, he tied it around his neck, covering any sliver of visibility the key might have through the white of his shirt. He found his suit jacket thrown over a chair.

Inspecting his slacks, he groaned when he realised he’d have to change them. It wasn’t something you would notice unless you were looking for it, but he knew damn well that the master of the house most certainly would be.

He didn’t want to care. But he wasn’t allowed to do much yet. Hadn’t earned that level of respect, he’d been told. Hadn’t earned enough trust to be let into the fold. And he didn’t want to drag this out longer than he had to. He wanted to get what he wanted as soon as possible; then he could dust his hands of this bullshit and be done with this house for the rest of his life.

Looking into his own reflection, he brushed his fingers through his hair.

He looked boring. The suit he was wearing was a far cry from the velvet blazer he’d worn what felt like such a long time ago. Back before he trusted Misu as deeply as he grew to in the future.

And Shougo wasn’t wrong. He looked like absolute shit. Maybe he should get some makeup to cover it, if he was going to keep on sleeping as terribly as he currently was. He didn’t see the nightmares stopping anytime soon, and he certainly wasn’t going to get medicated for it. He didn’t want to risk sleeping too deep and get taken unaware by an enemy.

Stifling a yawn, he wrapped his hand around the key through the shirt.

He could deal with this a while longer. He would see everything through.

After that, he didn’t know.

Misu had said that you couldn’t do anything for the sake of the dead. But what happened if someone couldn’t let go of them?

He supposed he’d have to find that out for himself.

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