Work Text:
Like almost everything else, trouble seems to have a season. It doesn't matter if one calls it crime, disease, or stress levels, it still comes in waves. He connects most of his tragedies, personal and otherwise, to the snow and the cold, although he does understand that to be a coincidence.
The Kamui case wrapped a month ago, and since then it's mostly been easy cases, solved on the scene or within a day or two. Body count has been low too, and that's fine by him. He's seen enough blood and death for a lifetime, they all have, and an occasional respite from it is more than welcome.
And then there are days like today, that remind him of the stories his father told him from his day in the police force of old: they've broken up a fight between two middle-aged women in a shopping mall, before they got worked up so badly that they might have to be institutionalized. They took care of a traffic accident, sent the parties involved to a hospital and dissolved the crowd of onlookers. All potential area stress level hazards, and all solved quickly and peacefully.
Now Tsunemori has decided they're due for a few minutes in the sun in a public park, and even though it's probably still too cold for that he's sat in the grass, watching artificial water sparkle in an artificial fountain, lined by artificial flowers. That bothers him more, these days, than it used to. So many things feel more real now, and those that don't unsettle him.
Shimotsuki pouts but doesn't protest, Kunizuka, Hinakawa and Sugou have wandered off to get some pastries from a nearby vendor, and Tsunemori sits here with him, close enough that their fingers almost touch. All he'd have to do is shift a little bit, accidentally, like in the movies. Like he wants to, if he's honest.
That, too, comes in waves.
But she turns her head, squinting against the sun, gesturing for the other Enforcers to join them as they return with their spoils, and the moment is gone.
***
In late spring, he's laid up for a week because of a bad fall during a chase in an abolition zone, and she keeps him company after hours every day. He keeps arguing she shouldn't – she gets little enough time to rest as it is – but he's never been particularly skilled when it comes to changing her mind about anything.
She looks tired, curled up there on his couch, both legs drawn close to her body, absentmindedly scritching Dime's head. It does something to him, seeing her so comfortable in his space, like she belongs here. Like he could have that, could have her for so much more than reconvalescence visits. But that's not a good idea, won't become a better idea the longer he considers the thought – because she doesn't belong here. Not outside of work, not during the night, not as another caged hound. She doesn't belong with him, plain and simple. He still remembers that time last winter he sat here with another Inspector, one who has now joined the ranks of the many ghosts that swirl around his head; that didn't have a happy ending either.
Dime rises to his feet, ears peaked, and she startles, yawns and stretches to cover her surprise.
“You should go,” he tells her, while he gestures for the dog to settle back down, a futile attempt to make it like he never disturbed her in the first place. “Get some sleep.”
She rubs her eyes, and oh, that might just do him in. “I could sleep here,” she suggests. “On this couch. Save myself the drive home.”
He swallows past a lump in his throat and smiles. “Now, Inspector Tsunemori, that would be improper.”
And she barely misses a beat, nods and straightens up, smoothing the wrinkles out of her blouse. “I suppose so, Mr. Ginoza.”
***
A case about a missing child becomes their hardest week and a half since winter. They search through long-abandoned apartment buildings with flashlights in their hands and fear in their hearts, the picture of a grinning, nearly toothless seven-year-old pushing them all past their physical limits. Neither of them has slept in a day or more, the sweltering heat has everyone dehydrated and fighting a headache or worse, but losing this one his not a valid option.
They find the boy just before dawn. The kidnapper doesn't walk out of the building alive.
While the rest of Division 1 returns to the CID, he joins her in delivering the child back home. The presence of an Enforcer would put too much additional strain on the parents, already near the edge of what they can take and still be judged sane by the system, and so he waits in the car. Clouded hues are contagious. Hereditary, too. No one knows that better than him.
Her eyes are brimming with tears when she climbs back into the driver's seat, and he couldn't tell if it's empathy or relief or exhaustion or all of the above. She doesn't start the car for a long moment, gaze trained on her hands in her lap, and it takes him an embarrassingly long time to reach out, place a hand on her shoulder. When she doesn't startle or deny him, he starts gently stroking up and down, and before long he can hear her quiet sobs. She doesn't look up once while she cries, only turns around to smile at him after she's wiped her eyes dry and taken a deep breath.
“Thank you,” she says, her eyes red-rimmed but nevertheless gazing at him fondly.
“You're welcome,” he replies, and forgets to take his hand away, rather slides it down to twine their fingers together. It's not much of a conscious decision; he can't bring himself to stop touching her yet, and so he has no option but to be bold. Tells himself it's for comfort, continued support, and also, she doesn't move to extract her hand either, not even when she starts the car.
***
It's dark outside and he keeps glancing out of the window while he watches her train, having promised to observe and correct her technique, even though there's not much left to nag about. She's not a born fighter, has to work hard for her strength and form, but the same was true for him once upon a time.
There's something surreal about watching a world dipped in darkness from out of a brightly-lit room. The shapes and contours are all wrong, distorted, swimming with white noise. A few leaves fall from a tree that's caught in the glow of a nearby streetlight, and he's captivated by their slow descent, no wind or breeze to carry them further away.
His attention is drawn back to her when she says his name, tutting at him disapprovingly. “You keep straying from me. That's not very helpful.”
“Oh, but you're mistaken, I wouldn't,” he says, and he's not sure he manages to keep the earnestness out of his voice, the promise. She should know by now; he picked his place in life when he was still allowed the choice, and it lead him to her. It lead him to her side. That's where he intends to stay, now, one of the few choices he still gets to make.
She eyes him, and he stands still under her scrutiny, resists the urge hide himself away as she reads him like an open book. He can see it happen, too; there is little sense in denial at this point. They are, after all, both detectives.
“I know,” she says, and for reasons he cannot put together, she sounds almost sad.
***
Shimotsuki has taken the others to the harbor, investigating a tip-off from a dockworker about illegal aliens. She doesn't like him very much, leaves him behind when she goes out alone more often than not, and he stopped caring about it early on. Recently he even welcomes it; winter is his season in the worst way, and the beginning cold out there makes his skin crawl.
Besides, he much prefers the company that leaves him with anyway.
“I still have the letters on my wall,” Tsunemori says, apropos of nothing, abandoning her report to whirl around on her chair. “WC. I can't bring myself to explain to a repair worker how they go there. So I just cover them with the holo.”
He wants to argue that most repair workers won't ask, won't care, have seen weirder, but then he remembers that most of their ghosts are the same. He sees his every time he looks in a mirror, feels them whenever his brain randomly registers that the weight of the prosthetic at his side isn't natural. She summons hers with cigarettes she doesn't smoke, and by leaving the abbreviation on her wall. But maybe it's time for an exorcism.
“I could do it for you,” he says, in a sudden fit of bravery. The suggestion requires a private visit on their time off, an affront, a taboo, but he figures by now there aren’t that many rules left to break. And it's not like his intentions are entirely impure – first and foremost, he does want to help.
She cocks her head, confusion etched into her features. “Call them for me?”
“My father used to do small repairs around the house when I was little, taught me all sorts of tricks,” he says, smiling, and shakes his head. She still looks lost, so he clarifies. “If you'll have me I can fix that for you.”
It takes her a moment to react – might be that she's working through the same implications he did – but then she nods, grateful. “Thank you very much. I will gladly take the offer.”
***
This is the second time he's in her apartment, and the first time he insinuated she might have lost her mind. It seemed like a logical assumption, back then; he doesn't regret it. But the irony of volunteering to help her make the reminder go away isn't lost on him.
She looks at him, wringing her hands in front of herself. “We should have have gone, uh. Do some shopping? Surely you'll need tools and – “
“A kitchen knife – doesn't have to be sharp – and some toothpaste will do,” he says, and her eyes go wide in disbelief, but then she nods and goes off to collect the requested items.
As he takes them both from her, uncapping the toothpaste and squeezing some onto his fingers, it occurs to him that she'll find him out in a minute. It'll be blatantly obvious that he could have just told her what to do. The whole trick is far from rocket science: fill the scratches with the paste and flatten the latter with the knife so its even with the wall, let it dry, paint it over later if the color doesn't match. No big mystery to it, no actual skill needed.
He turns to hand toothpaste and knife back to her, holding out the hilt of the latter, and she doesn't move to take them back. She stares at him, like she's trying to solve a riddle. Feeling awkward, he deposits them at a table nearby and massages the back of his neck. He considers apologizing, an explanation, but he's not quite sure what he'd say. Or what he expected. Or why he's here, really.
“You can drive me back now,” he offers instead.
She squints at him. Takes a step towards him, then another, until they stand maybe a hand's with apart. Goes up on her tip toes, and oh no. Oh yes. He has to lean down a little before they can meet, and his heart beats in his throat for a few seconds – he'll never be able to look her in the eye again if he misinterpreted this – and then she delivers him from that agony, hooks her arms around his neck and kisses him.
Neither of them is particularly good at it, having had other priorities for the most part, and this first kiss doesn't last long. It's maybe a minute before she breaks it off, buries her face in his neck.
“I’m sorry”, she says. “I'm taking advantage.”
“Don’t be, and no, you're not.” He looks down to his crotch, the bulge there, once again bold because a retreat seems virtually impossible, and waits until she follows his gaze. “I'm here. Willing and able. Exercising what little free will I have left. It’s alright.”
She considers him for another long moment. Reaches between them, brushing her fingers over the confinement of his pants, making him groan, and that seems to satisfy. She dives back in.
The next few minutes happen in a daze, in moments, impressions: he rubs only the heel of his palm over her breast and, through her shirt and thin, plain bra, feels her pebble under the touch. She shimmies out of her underwear – wearing a skirt, to work, always that skirt – and throws it aside, tugs at his arm until he understands and touches between her legs, feels the wet heat there. His pants and underwear are nudged out of the way next, down to barely below his ass, and he picks her up, backs her up against the wall. She looks down between them, at him, if briefly, then meets his eyes with an expression that’s part determination, part wonder, even though she’s the one who initiated this. He can relate; he may have thought about it, but, as recently as this morning he’d have placed every bet against anything like this ever happening between them. But it is, now. It's happening, and the world stops for a second when he sinks inside her, feeling her legs tightly wrapped around his waist, her breath hot on the skin of his neck. He bites his lips and screws his eyes shut, distractions to keep himself at bay, because if he looks at her right now it'll be over way too quickly.
***
They don't return to the CID until a few hours later, that evening. He doesn't get an undisturbed walk of shame back to his room, but if Kunizuka and Karanomori notice that he smells of her fruity shower gel as he passes them in the hallway, they politely, if uncharacteristically, keep that to themselves.
***
It's not an easy thing to make time they can spend alone, away from everyone; there's only so many private drives they can put in before something gets flagged, and their job hasn't gotten any less demanding. The moments they do carve out together are scarce, and most of the time they're still what they always were, in one way or another, for better or worse: part of a team.
She gets called to the Chief's office, alone, in the middle of a case that involves organ smugglers and the thaw in rather disturbing ways, and he manages to sit on his hands for exactly fifteen minutes before he gets up from his office chair and marches to the elevators, paces in front of them rather than waiting with the others. He knows there will be whispers, but at this point, he cares less and less. There are no protocols for relationships between hound and shepherd, mostly, he figures, because the usual Inspector thinks like Shimotsuki does – like he once did. He sees the system behind that now, the arrogance. He also knows that the weight of the punishment, should there be one, will come down on him. He's the aberrant one. He's the risk, the temptation. He's disposable.
His grim thoughts stutter to a halt when the elevator pings. She storms out of it with a force that's usually reserved for the field. Anger comes off her in waves, and he notices the forced even pattern to her breathing, like she's counting the seconds between inhale and exhale, a method she uses to calm down when she's upset.
She sees him, heads right his way. She tugs at his sleeve and turns, walks them both back to the elevator. Once the doors slide closed behind them, she presses him against the wall, pushes herself up and blinks at him in silent request. He nods and leans down, and kissing her back as she seals their lips together is already damn near Pavlovian.
And try as he might, he doesn't care that sometimes she almost acts like this, fucking him, is another subtle act of defiance. She’s not the type for open rebellion, both because it’s not part of her personality and because, at the end of the day, she still believes in the law, believes that justice will prevail. Could be she's not even aware of it, but this, this might be her equivalent of making out with the rowdy boy from across the street somewhere your parents could see.
The thought arises that if she’s looking to make a few bad choices with the black sheep of the neighborhood, he’s miscast in that role. Then again, his hues tells another story, these days, and anyway he’s the closest thing left.
***
Summer brings back another ghost, makes it materialize just out of reach. For him, anyway; Tsunemori runs towards it like her blinders in that regard never came off. She's a good judge of character, if a bit too eager to see the best in people at times, too quick to leap towards trust, but Kougami... He doesn't claim to understand what existed between them. Still exists, possibly. He assumes he'll find out soon enough.
He stays behind, spends his days under Shimotsuki's disdainful command, sneaks off into Karanomori's secluded domain as often as he can at all find excuses for. And she leaves him be, for once. Doesn't tease, doesn't snark, just lets him pull up a spare office chair and stare at the little side monitor she's dedicated to keeping taps on Tsunemori's whereabouts and well-being.
When things go sideways – because of course they do, of course – he doesn't really need to be told. He feels it, the second he enters the computer lap, the second Karanomori swings around on her chair and looks at him, knowing. “We lost her signal. In the jungle. From the photos, the memory, we assume she's with – “
“I get it,” he says, shaking his head – at the words, and their implication, at the manifold possibilities. We assume she's with Kougami, no matter how potentially devastating for him, is actually one of the better options. We assume she's dead. We assume she was taken and tortured. Those are all worse.
The emotion that's churning in his gut as he reviews the last set of data they received isn't jealousy, exactly. That would require a certain level of possession and he wouldn't dare assume, not with her. She doesn't owe him anything. He went in knowing all the facts, still sees the cigarette stubs littering her apartment some days. No, it's more akin to resentment for past pain, dealt to both of them, and the desire to keep her from further harm. She seeks a continuation, seeks Kougami back. All he wants is an ending from which they can move on – move past him. Closure.
Karanomori briefly settles her hand on the backrest of the chair – doesn't touch him, and he doubly appreciates the gesture for that alone, for knowing him that well – and then clicks a few times to force an update on the data stream. Of course it doesn't change a thing.
“I'll make up a reason why I need you down here,” she says, resolutely, accepting no argument, and opens a channel to lie her head off at Shimotsuki.
***
She's quieter than usual, after they get back from Shambala. If he were another man entirely, another kind of person, he'd try and blame that on the fact that it's nearly four in the morning by the time they climb out of the plane and drive back to the CID. But he is who he is, and he's never been likely to sweet-talk himself. He knows there are things she doesn't tell him, that she's chosen to bear on her own, and he never pried for them before. He's tempted, now. Might do it, if it weren't for the fact that there's another worry curled low in his belly, a much more selfish one.
One by one, everyone files out of the office with yawns and mumbled good nights. Tsunemori stays, sitting with her hands in her lap, her eyes downcast. He lingers by the door, somehow reluctant to get too close – like a dog with its tail between its legs, expecting rejection – and feels rather pathetic for it.
“You don't have to wait for me,” she says, finally looking up, and smiles. “I might just go right to work, start my report. I don't think I could sleep now, anyway.”
And he's stuck. Doesn't want to leave, doesn't want to stay. He's in limbo, and it's awful, but falling would hurt more. Yet there's no sense in dancing around this, so he frowns, takes in a breath, and walks back over to her desk. He crouches down before her, sitting on his haunches, and waits until she meets his eyes.
“For a little while, I thought you might not come back,” he says, and his own voice sounds small and foreign. “That you might have gone away. Stayed with him.”
He's attuned to her enough that he can track the emotions as they chase each other across her face in reaction to that admission. Surprise, disbelief, then understanding and something softer. “But why would I do that,” she says after a time, “when I have you to come home to?”
There's any number of things she could have pinned her return on – their work, her duty, the law, hell even her parents and her friends. She didn't have to phrase it like that. She didn't have to mention him directly. And now he doesn't know what to say back. How to react. That voice inside him, the one who asserts, time and time again, that she deserves better than damaged goods, stamped as a threat to society, mumbles something about how he shouldn't be her home, how that's dangerous, how he's going to drag her down with him eventually.
She reaches out to stroke her fingers down his cheek, and he doesn't expect the touch, flinches away, to which she makes a shushing noise. “I know you believe you're second best. That you're bad for me, such as you are now, and probably a few other things I can't even see.”
“I...,” he starts, about to conjure up a denial, but she makes that noise again, shakes her head.
“If any of these things were true, I wouldn't be with you,” she says, matter of fact, her expression determined, like they're working a case and she's defending her point of view. She hefts an eyebrow, like she dares him to argue.
He doesn't. He's lost enough of those arguments to her, albeit about very different subject matter, that he knows when to ground his arms and accept her conclusion. Trust her instincts. Trust her. She's back with him. That has to count for something.
“Tired or not, I don't like the idea of leaving you here alone,” he says. “Come stay with me.”
Her face lights up, relieved, mischievous. “But wouldn't that be improper, Mr. Ginoza?” she asks, but doesn't manage to keep up the tease; a laugh explodes out of her before she's even finished saying his name.
***
The world keeps turning round them, summer to fall and back to winter, and more and more often, they allow themselves the luxury of spending the night, despite the risks. It adds fuels to the rumors – the knowledge, probably, an open secret everyone leaves unaddressed for reasons that might have more to do with her than him – but the hushed whispers are easily ignored in favor of the benefits.
Benefits like these: his hands – both of them, metal and flesh, he’s lost his reservations about that and she never had any to start with – close around her narrow hips to slow down her rhythm, suggest a gentler pace, make this last longer. He knows the way she quietly yields is not a sign of submission; she's merely meeting him halfway. He couldn’t dream of controlling her, now less than ever, but she's allowing his adjustments to heighten both their pleasure. Her small, lithe body continues to move on top of him, on him, taking what she needs and what he's glad to give.
But most of all, it's all worth it for the morning after. For the warm weight of her in his arms, and for the small, sleepy smile she gives him when she wakes – the one that might just mean she's as happy to be here, to be with him, as is true in reverse.