Archive of Our Own

Ennoshita's occupations involve making pies and waking the dead. Most days, it's just the making pies bit.

Today is not a day that falls under a quantifier like most.

It had started like this: the door had opened, letting in a gust of cold fall air, and Tanaka had come up to the counter of his pie shop, finding his way onto a stool with all the uneasy stiffness of a poor actor trying to fake casualty. "Hey, Ennoshita," he'd said, eyes darting from side to side in a way that'd make Ennoshita call the police, if Tanaka hadn't been part of a private detective agency in the first place.

"Nobody's listening, and nobody is going to care all that much, I don't think," Ennoshita had said, bringing out a plate of pecan pie. "You need my help with a case, right?"

Tanaka had relaxed into a hard slump at the counter almost immediately. "Yeah. You busy?"

"I'll just ask Kinoshita and Narita to cover for me," he'd said with a shrug. "So what's the case?"

An innocuous start to things: Ennoshita hadn't had a reason to think it'd be particularly different from any of the previous cases he'd helped out with. So he'd agreed and listened to the details, and the details were these:

Nishinoya Yuu, twenty-four years old - he'd died just that morning, in the middle of a street blocks away from where he lived, next to a man with who he had absolutely no connection to. There were no fingerprints, no blood splatters to analyze, and no clues as to who or why.

"They set up the funeral pretty fast," Ennoshita observes, studying the lineup of cars belonging to funeral-goers. "Didn't they find him like, this morning? Do funeral homes allow that?" 

"They're a pretty fast-paced bunch," Tanaka says, spinning his keys around his index finger. "Also, I mean, maybe it's like, the same thing as a shotgun wedding, you know, but with a funeral?"

"Is that how it works," Ennoshita says, a little impressed with the efficiency of modern funeral homes. 

Tanaka shrugs. "Hell, I don't know." He rolls the window down, making a face at the frigid blast of air that hits his face. "The service's ending in a bit. You ready to go?"

"I'm always ready to bring the dead back to life," Ennoshita says, only half kidding. "Let's go." 

There's a stream of people dressed in black, all making their way towards their cars with red-rimmed eyes and faces set in various degrees of numb shock and controlled grief. Ennoshita leaves Tanaka shivering out in the cold at the entrance to keep watch, a safe distance away, before slipping through into the funeral home. He's been in enough of these to know how they're usually laid out; more importantly, he's been in this particular building a number of times, and Nishinoya's funeral is the only one this afternoon. The first door he opens is the right one, and the body inside the coffin is Nishinoya Yuu.

Nishinoya looks too small for his coffin, his hands folded neat and small on top of his suit. His eyes are closed, but he's too still to look asleep - for some reason, there's something about him that makes Ennoshita think he must have been one of those people who moved like scattered sparks and never stopped moving.

He's just going to have to touch him to find out.

He sets his timer to one minute, hesitates over the bright yellow streak in the hair over Nishinoya's forehead and settles for a very unceremonious poke at his cheek. Nishinoya's eyes open wide and his first movement makes Ennoshita scoot back on reflex before Nishinoya looks him up and down and appears to come to the conclusion that Ennoshita isn't an aggressor.

"Oh, hey," Nishinoya says, swinging his legs over the edge of the coffin. There's a sort of sharp snap connecting the smooth of his movements, like he'd give you static shocks if you touched him mid-motion. All in all, he looks remarkably alive, considering he'd been dead and in a coffin literally seconds earlier. "So where's this?"

"A funeral home," Ennoshita says, feeling it would be a little rude not to answer, even if he is on a rather tight schedule. He checks the running stopwatch, looks up again with fifty-four seconds remaining. "Because you're dead. So about your murder - "

Nishinoya blinks. "Seriously? That sucks. Are you dead, too?" 

"Will you answer my questions if I say yes," Ennoshita says, watching the numbers dwindle and restart on his phone screen - fifty and a countdown flash, forty-nine, repeat.

"Right, you wanted to ask me something," Nishinoya says, stretching his arms above his head. Would it be poor form to ask him to move back to the coffin? The prospect of lifting his body to rearrange it into something resembling the way he'd been before is morbid and also not a particularly appealing one. Nishinoya doesn't look like he'd weigh all that much, though, even if he'd be kind of dead weight as a corpse. Ennoshita allows himself two seconds to cringe at the unintentional pun before moving on with business.

"Somebody killed you," Ennoshita says, forgoing tact in favor of saving time. "Do you remember who did it?"

 "Huh," Nishinoya says. He leans forward. Ennoshita takes a step back. "No clue. I was wondering why someone came up behind me like that, but I was kind of busy - "

"Busy," Ennoshita repeats. "What were you doing?"

Nishinoya flicks his fingers out in an oddly elegant gesture Ennoshita can't quite interpret, though he does note that Nishinoya has unfairly nice hands for a dead person, or any person, really. "I was coming back from the convenience store and there was some guy passed out in an alleyway so I went to see if he was okay, you know, 'cause I couldn't just leave him like that, seriously."

"Understandable," Ennoshita says, and marks Nishinoya down as one of those ‘too nice for their own good’ types, or maybe a ‘meddles a lot in other people’s affairs’ kind of person. "What happened then?"

"He was bleeding all over the place, so I tried to get him to the hospital," Nishinoya says, with a sharp shrug. "Like, he didn’t talk about it, but I think he got stabbed? So we were on the way to the hospital, and the last thing I was thinking about was like, should I get him home afterwards, or should I have asked if he wanted to stay over at my place? Home’s a good place to be, you know?” 

Ennoshita blinks. "You were going to let him stay in your home?”

The smile fades from Nishinoya's face. "Well, yeah.” He shrugs again, a little one-shouldered lift. “But I didn't exactly make it home, did I?" 

There's a sort of wryness in Nishinoya's eyes Ennoshita hadn't quite expected to see. "No," Ennoshita says, gently. "You didn't. I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault, you know, unless it was. Then you'd kind of need to apologize." He grins again. "But thanks anyway."

"I'm trying to find out whose fault it was," Ennoshita says, checking his phone. Six seconds left. He leans forward with a sigh, shoots Nishinoya a smile bordering on sarcastic. "I don't suppose you'd mind getting back in your coffin?"

It hadn't been a serious question, but Nishinoya nods and complies anyway, and alarm bells start going off in Ennoshita's head. The ringing sounds an awful lot like you fucked up, you fucked up, you fucked up, and isn't it funny, how these things work? "Yeah, sure," he says, before hopping up and into said coffin, quick as a blink. Ennoshita is by no means slow to react, but it all happens before he can do anything about it. "I'll just close it - " 

"No, wait," Ennoshita starts, regret hounding his words even as he says them. The lid swings shut even as he reaches it, closes with an ominous click that sounds uncomfortably final to his ears. There's still a few seconds left and maybe he can make it, he has to make it - 

The lid is stuck, of course it's stuck -

His phone buzzes, and Ennoshita knows without checking that the minute's up and everything is about to go to absolute hell. A heartbeat later, there's a dull thump from somewhere inside the funeral home and Ennoshita resists the urge to swear. "Unbelievable," he says instead, trying very hard not to think about how he'd just accidentally killed someone again. The fact that it isn't the first time he's done it makes him more than a little sick to his stomach.

He takes a deep breath. First things first - Nishinoya is still alive and still stuck in a coffin. While Ennoshita isn't an expert on coffin structure, he's also reasonably sure there's a limited air supply in an enclosed wooden box. A quick scan of the room tells him there isn't anything as convenient as a crowbar around, but there is a slab of wood meant to keep windows from opening or closing more than the allotted distance, and also a few decorative candlesticks. 

Good enough. He's used to improvising.

Armed with a candlestick, Ennoshita jams the thinnest part of it into the slight crack between the edges of the coffin. The gap widens by a few millimeters, and he abandons the candlestick in favor of the wooden board, shifting his body weight down until the lid comes up a few more centimeters, along with the sound of something dislodging. 

Ennoshita hesitates before opening the coffin. This is a bad idea. This is, actually, one of the worst ideas he's ever had. Nishinoya's supposed to be dead, Nishinoya can't go back to his life, and somewhere in the funeral home a stranger just lost theirs, and what is he doing?

The coffin opens from the inside and Nishinoya sits up, blissfully unaware of the moral dilemma Ennoshita is currently wrangling with. He fixes Ennoshita with a quizzical look, head tilted to the side. "Did you need something else?" 

"No, and also, change of plans," Ennoshita says, turning around to face him. Logically, the best course of action would be his original one - poke Nishinoya in the face again and fold him up in his coffin in time for the burial. He winces. There is definitely something wrong with how casual that thought had been. "I lied earlier. You were dead, which is - you know, that's why you were in a coffin right up until a minute or two ago. But uh, you're not dead any more, if that helps clears things up?"

Nishinoya turns around, eyebrows raised with every intention of rising further. His face is surprisingly expressive underneath the dead-person makeup, as if the general process of death hadn't affected him in the least. Granted, being brought back to life on a whim and a touch probably necessitated some sort of magical bullshit recovery. Super speed cellular reparation or something like that? Ennoshita's been trying to figure out the process since he was four, and nineteen years later, he still doesn't know all that much about how it works. 

"Nah," he says, "not really, but that's okay. You kinda look like you're in a hurry, so I'll ask later."

"That'll have to do," Ennoshita decides. "Sit still for a little bit, I'm going to get you out of here."

"Sure," Nishinoya says, taking it all in stride. He seems to understand the situation as well as anyone could, given the circumstances and limited information, and he lets Ennoshita focus on the more pressing matter at hand. In the meantime, he wrinkles his nose, raises a hand to poke at his cheeks.  "Feels like someone melted a candle on my face." 

"That's not too far from the truth," Ennoshita mutters. He keeps a wary eye on the door, lest an unsuspecting stranger walk in and find Nishinoya alive and out of his coffin, which, out of the many wrong places for living people to be, is probably the worst. The issue after that, as Ennoshita tends to rank his problems in order of descending severity, is the one involving their escape route. 

Two windows let enough filtered sunlight in for natural lighting, but other than that, the only potential exit is the door that opens on the rest of the funeral home. Its function disqualifies itself as a viable option, due to the fact that he'd maybe like to avoid Nishinoya being seen, if possible. The assumption that the sight of a supposedly dead man walking might be a little alarming is one of the only assumptions Ennoshita has ever made about other people. So far, it's proved itself to be a safe one to make.

"Also, this suit doesn't fit me - " 

"You were dead," Ennoshita says, too distracted to maintain his usual modicum of politeness. The hatches on the windows look rusty and unused and while Nishinoya could probably fit if they somehow managed to open it, it seems somewhat pushy to ask him to climb out a window just minutes after his unexpected reanimation. "I really don't think the funeral home brings in tailors for their corpses."

"I guess dead people don't really care if their clothes fit," Nishinoya says, pondering, as if he hadn't been dead just five minutes ago.

An incoming text from Tanaka lights up the phone screen, says something along the lines of are you alive in there and Ennoshita texts back, yeah, but he is, too - 

Which is a problem. Tanaka evidently also considers it a problem, because the next text reads: shit, and then, you fucked up,and Ennoshita can't argue with that, because that is exactly what he did.

I fucked up, he texts, following it up with, And I'm about to fuck up even more. Would you mind helping out?

Tanaka is no doubt swearing up a storm right now, but the next text Ennoshita gets says: give me a minute, and Ennoshita almost laughs, thinking, why'd it have to be a minute? 

Nishinoya looks at him. "What's up?"

"A friend's coming," Ennoshita says. He glances up at Nishinoya with a dry smile. "I think you'll get along."

After a lot of sneaking around and unnecessary running, they'd made it into Tanaka's car without anybody taking particular notice of Nishinoya. Tanaka, though wary at first, had hit it off with Nishinoya, and they'd spent the entire car ride back being grown men singing along to obnoxiously loud music. Ennoshita had slid unobtrusively into the back seat with the hope of disassociation.

"See you tomorrow," Tanaka had said, hi-fiving Nishinoya for no discernible reason. And then Tanaka had left, leaving Ennoshita to explain that yes, you died three days ago - well, no, not natural causes, it was murder, and - no, they haven't caught the murderer yet, they halted the investigation - nobody knows why, but we're trying to find out, and - yeah, you're alive now, because I bring dead people back to life when I touch them and all of this kind of happened really fast so can you please slow down with the questions? 

"Okay, wait," Nishinoya says now, hopping on one of the stools at the counter. His feet don't touch the floor, dangling a good few inches above the tiled floor. He bounces his heels against the chair legs like an overeager child. "So I was dead, and now I'm not, because you bring dead people back to life when you touch them?"

Ennoshita rubs the back of his neck. "Yeah, uh, sorry about that," he says. "I think. You can go back to being dead, you know, if you want, but that'd be kind of a waste - "

Nishinoya's eyes go wide and he leans forward, shaking his head, mouthing no, no, no. "I only did, like, four of the things on my bucket list!"

"Um, right," Ennoshita says. "Anyway. There's kind of another thing, you know, since you're supposed to be dead and all - "

"I know," Nishinoya says, resting his feet on one of the chair's rungs. There's that strange sort of understanding on his face again when he says I know, and Ennoshita wishes it wasn't there, wishes he didn't know, and he doesn’t know why he wants this, himself – isn’t Nishinoya just another stranger in a world full of them? "I can't go back to my life, right? I died, and everybody thinks I'm dead, and people don't just come back to life like that. Well," he amends, lifting a shoulder up at Ennoshita. "They're not supposed to, anyway."

"Sorry," Ennoshita says. It feels a lot like he can't quite find anything but apologies to give. So he tries again. "About where you're staying - I mean, it's best you stay with me, if you don't mind?"

Nishinoya shakes his head, quite emphatically. "Nah. Makes sense." 

"Okay," Ennoshita says, relieved.

To Ennoshita's horror, Nishinoya then steps forward, holds a hand out and says, "So, hey, I'm Nishinoya! Call me Noya, though."

Ennoshita takes a step back, eyes the proffered hand with sudden, inexplicable resignation. "Uh, no, that's not a good idea - "

"Why not?" Nishinoya stares at him. "This is what people do when they introduce themselves, right, I'm Nishinoya Yuu, and you are - ?"

"I'm Ennoshita," he says, giving up on delicacy. "And if you touch me, you're going to die again, so maybe you should," he edges away from Noya's hand, "not do that, yeah - "

"Huh," Nishinoya says. "Okay." He tilts his head to the side, apparently considering the ramifications of making physical contact with Ennoshita. Ennoshita feels there isn't anything confusing about it, especially where the whole dying thing is concerned. 

They take the back stairs up to the apartment complex starting the floor above the pie shop, Ennoshita making sure to keep Nishinoya at least four feet in front of him at any given time. Maneuvering in the hallway is a little bit of a struggle, but Ennoshita gets the door open eventually and with a minimal amount of fuss.

"There's a spare bedroom," he says, stepping to the side so Nishinoya can come in without accidental contact. "Also, please remember that me touching you will result in your instantaneous death. I really don't know how I'd explain a body in my apartment."

"Thanks," Nishinoya says, unfazed. "You know, you'd think you'd know more about body disposal, considering you work so much with dead people."

"They're technically alive when I'm working with them," Ennoshita defends, leading him to the guest room. 

When Nishinoya gets inside, he looks up at Ennoshita with eyes too awfully inquiring for comfort. "So what's going to happen?"

Ennoshita pauses with his hand on the doorframe. "We'll figure that out tomorrow," he says, trying to ignore the dull ache behind his eyes. "You - you should get some sleep for now." 

A small noise of assent, and Ennoshita walks away – because he hadn’t known, then, what to say.

The night goes by fast, alternating between staring at the ceiling thinking about his mistakes and sporadic bursts of sleep that don't make him feel any less tired. To top it off, the next day, the universe grants him with another bit of unnecessary information: Nishinoya is very much a morning person. 

Ennoshita knows this because the sound of activity in his kitchen wakes him up at four in the morning. His policy, in regards to waking up in the morning, has always been something like this: if the sun isn't out do you really need to be awake? But maybe this is the price to pay for both indirect murder and something that could perhaps be misconstrued as necromancy.

So he opens his eyes. It is, after all, the first step in facing the day, and also whatever the hell Nishinoya's doing in his kitchen.

In his kitchen, Nishinoya spins on a heel, leaves the frying pan on the stovetop. "Morning, Chikara!" He blows a few strands of hair out of his face. "Is it okay if I use your kitchen? I was going to ask beforehand, but you were sleeping, and I didn't want to wake you up." 

Ennoshita blinks, opens his mouth to say something like how do you know my first name and why are you calling me by it, but the pile of mail he’d left on the kitchen table answers him, and he settles for, "No, I don't mind, as long as you don't set anything on fire."

"No promises," Nishinoya says, flashing him a cheeky smile, before turning back to the stove. Ennoshita suppresses a tiny sigh and opens the cabinet, humming under his breath between setting plates for breakfast.

He's putting two cups on the table when Nishinoya veers over and scrapes half of the pan's contents onto one plate before emptying the rest onto the other. Ennoshita forgets to keep humming, watches him flip the pan level with a twist of his wrist, studies him with an absent-minded absorption.

“What,” Nishinoya says, meeting his eyes. He’s got a bit of a – glow about him, almost, like someone decidedly healthy who hadn’t died and then come back to life. Quick blinks, normal breathing, presumably warm to the touch, if touching wouldn’t kill him in this case. A medical check-up might clear things up a bit, and it’s actually a viable option as long as he avoids going to an actual hospital or clinic. Suga won’t ask questions, he knows. 

“Hmm,” Ennoshita says, reaching past him to turn off the stove. Nishinoya moves back to accommodate him. “Nothing, really. You look good.” He eyes the mass of blackened eggs and tries not to mind the smell of charcoal. "Want me to make toast?"

"Definitely," Nishinoya says, inspecting the eggs with a critical sort of air. "I heard somewhere eating burnt things was bad for you?" 

Ennoshita foresees hazardous culinary disasters in his future coexistence with Nishinoya. “That’s,” he says, “that’s probably because it is.” Making a decision he hopes he won’t regret, he asks, “Want me to teach you how to cook, later?”

“Yes,” Nishinoya says, sounding maybe a little too enthusiastic to bode well for the security deposit on Ennoshita’s apartment. “

The thing is (and this is where an unconscious resignation settles in his bones), Ennoshita finds that: he really cannot bring himself to mind.

Downstairs, the shop is empty save for Kinoshita and Narita, who are always an hour or two early for work regardless of the day. “Morning,” Kinoshita calls, just as Narita switches on the television.

“Good morning,” Ennoshita says, eyeing the television with equal parts trepidation and intrigue. On one hand, news of Nishinoya’s murder could be helpful in solving it. On the other hand, Ennoshita is not entirely sure he can handle a news segment of a mysterious death at a funeral home this early in the morning, because it is not so much mysterious as it is well, good going, you accidentally killed a man and how are you going to explain that to police officials? 

On-screen, the anchorwoman for the local news station says, “Yesterday morning, the body of two men were found – ”

“That’s kind of, like, really vague,” Kinoshita remarks. “Aren’t news stories usually more detailed than this?”

“To be fair,” Narita says, preheating the ovens, “it’s only been a day, right?” 

“You can do a lot in a day,” Ennoshita mutters, still watching the television. But the segment ends without mention of a sudden funeral home death, and the news switches to politics without missing a beat.

Maybe they hadn’t found the body yet? Or maybe they were just waiting on announcing it? Ennoshita shakes his head, head too full to think without stressing out. The chances of it popping up in the news is closer to a certainty than not. People, after all, were not particularly prone to dropping dead without reason on a regular basis, and there was a specific sort of irony to dying in a funeral home. If Ennoshita, say, had no heart, it would be almost funny. But he does, and instead of finding it funny, he finds himself wishing he was brave enough to take responsibility for the life not his own.

In a sad sort of way, he understands too well the weight of a life, made all the more heavy by his having taken it without meaning to. Today, there is his life to live, and there is waiting, for the one that was not.

At noon, Tanaka says, "Suga said he'd leave the case files for you.” It’s lunchtime, now, and he is consuming the pie in front of him at a prodigious rate that would make a black hole proud. "Why does he have the key to your apartment?"

A few seconds pass where Ennoshita considers the question, because why had he given Suga the key to his apartment? "I don't know," Ennoshita says. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

"Well, I mean, it's not a bad idea," Tanaka says, shoving another forkful of pie in his mouth.

Ennoshita shrugs. "That's just how it is. Suga could break into my house in the dead of night and I'd probably just sit there and let him rob me blind."

"Same," Tanaka says. He falls silent for a little while, like he's trying to decide what to say. "So, uh, have you seen the morning paper?"

"No," Ennoshita says, the look on Tanaka's face sending his stomach sinking like a submarine. Perhaps in the future, he will write a memoir titled, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea Of ‘Well, Shit’. "… Who was it?"

"Oh, no, not the, uh, person in the morgue, though they're in there," Tanaka says, hurriedly. "It just says they died of a heart attack. I mean the other victim in Noya's case. No name, no obituary, just that he was there, and that he's dead now." 

Ennoshita blinks, and makes a mental note to pick up a copy of the morning paper for the name of the morgue victim. “Isn’t that... kind of odd? Was it because the family didn’t want it revealed?” 

“I don’t think so,” Tanaka says. “Actually, they didn’t write anything about the family.” 

“Okay,” Ennoshita says. He closes his eyes. Unnamed co-victim in Nishinoya’s murder case – but why? “This is weird for you, too, right?”

“Yeah, honestly,” Tanaka says. “Usually the police don’t really care about releasing names? The commissioner – the toupee guy, yeah – he’s kind an asshole, you know?” 

“It’s a really bad toupee, and also he should learn how to put it on properly,” Ennoshita says, pondering. “He is kind of an ass, though.”

“Well, he’s in charge of the current investigation,” Tanaka says. “You might want to look into that." 

"Got it," Ennoshita says, and leaves.

“So you know how I kind of brought you back to life and everything,” Ennoshita says, when he gets back to the apartment. Nishinoya looks up from the table, where he’d been constructing something out of popsicle sticks of unknown origin. In retrospect, Ennoshita will admit that he hadn’t exactly used the best conversation starter. Current Ennoshita, who still ranks his issues in order of descending severity, decides retrospection can wait.

“Yeah,” Nishinoya says, snipping a popsicle stick in two with the kitchen scissors. “Thanks for that, by the way, ‘cause going out at twenty-four would’ve sucked.”

"I can imagine,” Ennoshita says, because dying at twenty-four is dying much too soon, and hell, he’s not even twenty-four yet, but he’s nowhere near being ready to die. “I mean, there’s something else, though.”

Nishinoya tilts his head. "Something else?"

"If I bring someone back to life, they only have a minute before someone else dies, to take their place, or something like that," Ennoshita says, slowing himself down so the words don't come out in a confessed rush. "So I messed up, and you ended up living more than a minute, and someone else died in that funeral home, I don't know who."

“Oh,” Nishinoya says. He frowns. “Wow.”

Seeing Nishinoya speechless feels a little wrong, somehow. Ennoshita pushes aside the thought, because he’s known Nishinoya for all of a day and there is absolutely no reason for the look on Nishinoya’s face to make him feel as bad as he does. “Yeah,” he says, feeling like a mess. “I don’t know what to do yet, I just – felt like I had to tell you. That I killed them, I mean.” He bites his bottom lip before he can apologize, because in his mouth the words I’m sorry feel like: an excuse.

“You didn’t do it on purpose, though,” Nishinoya says.

The sureness in his voice throws Ennoshita completely off balance. “Well, no,” he says, a little confused. “But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s my fault.”

Nishinoya fixes him with a look that is altogether too piercing for Ennoshita’s liking. “Why’re you still beating yourself up about it, then? I mean,” he adds, cutting another popsicle stick in half, “I’m not saying you shouldn’t feel bad that you like, kind of killed a guy. ‘Cause it sounds like you totally did." 

“Yes, that’s kind of the problem, Nishinoya,” Ennoshita says. Outwardly he probably looks dry, a little exasperated. Inwardly he is thinking oh my god I killed a man -

“Yeah, but you didn’t want to,” Nishinoya persists. “You were probably flipping out on the inside, weren’t you? Like, you seem the type to regret accidentally killing a man.”

“You mean I seem like a normal person,” Ennoshita checks. 

“Sure,” Nishinoya says, his smile bordering on sly, which is a very odd look on Nishinoya specifically.

Ennoshita rolls the sure over in his head before shrugging with a sigh. “Thanks, I guess.” He slides a plate of pie over to Nishinoya, who accepts it with no complaints. “Well. In that case, do you mind if I ask a few more questions?”

Nishinoya picks up a fork. “Hey, man, go for it.” 

"So you said you were busy, trying to find a hospital in the dark, probably," Ennoshita says, remembering their conversation in the funeral home. "Was there anything odd about the person you were with?”

"Oh, yeah," Nishinoya says, taking a bite of pie, as if talking about the circumstances of his own death wasn't anything out of the ordinary. "See, it was weird, 'cause he looked like he was in a real hurry, but not like, the ‘I just got stabbed’ kind of hurry?” He doesn't wait for Ennoshita to answer, keeps talking while waving his fork around in the air to illustrate what he means, though Ennoshita finds himself unable to interpret the fork waving. Perhaps it has something to do with the difference between the victim’s brand of hurry and the haste usually associated with receiving an injury requiring medical attention. "He kept looking around? Like he thought there was someone following us or something.” 

"Mm," Ennoshita says, understanding that his conversational input has little to no significance at the moment.

Nishinoya taps his spoon against the edge of his glass and it rings like a bell. "And then someone came up behind me, like, they kind of sounded all crinkly, like plastic, and next thing I knew, I was kicking at his shins like a kid. You know, like when a relative you don't like holds you up in the air and you just want to get down." He shrugs. "I don't actually remember what happened after that, though. I was probably trying not to die. Guess I didn't do a very good job."

Ennoshita, having known for a very long time that there is rarely such thing as a right answer, doesn't try to find one. So he pushes another plate of pie towards Nishinoya, for lack of something, anything, to say.

A file folder sits on his desk, and Ennoshita flips it open, scans the documents and catalogues the details. The information released to the public had been straightforward enough; two victims dead on the street, but they hadn’t killed each other, and the perpetrator was still at large, unknown.

Neither of the bodies found at the scene had any marks of strangulation around their throats, but the autopsies had determined the cause of death to be asphyxiation, and not blood loss, in the case of the stab victim. Whoever the perpetrator was had killed them both the same way, presumably with something easily hidden like a plastic bag or something similarly airtight. 

Details about the procedure and investigation follow, along with a few notes in Daichi's writing. They're mostly numbers and names; contact information, in case Ennoshita might need to talk with any of the officials involved in the investigation. The coroner, the forensic specialist who'd participated in the investigation, and, strangely enough, the names of two separate police chiefs. One of them is Ushijima Wakatoshi, an exemplary example of the ideal police officer, with unparalleled performance in the field. The other – a rather round man with a very conspicuous toupee and an unpleasantly protuberant face. In the years following his appointment to chief, the number of arrests related to black market dealings and smuggling had gone down dramatically, apparently due to the enforcement of his new system or whatever the hell it was police chiefs had the authority to do.

There's a scribbled asterisk next to Ushijima’s name, and Ennoshita looks down at the bottom of the page, where Daichi had written, Ushijima was in charge of the investigation at first, but administration switched him out before they finished the search. Which was odd, considering Ushijima was and is widely regarded as the best when it comes to - anything to do with his job, really. Ennoshita files the information away for later, pushes the folder back a few inches, and starts thinking systematically.

It might be easier to begin with the classic question of motive, but his one clue to the killer's motives lies with Nishinoya, and it's unlikely that he'll remember anything more than what he'd told Ennoshita already. For now, he'll have to work with what he already has. 

Police hadn't been completely sure as to what Nishinoya had been doing in the middle of a street halfway across the town from where he lived himself. They'd noted the convenience store bag without drawing any real conclusion, seeing as its contents were untouched and the only fingerprints on the bag had belonged to Nishinoya and the cashier at the convenience store he'd been at previously. Having already investigated the cashier and confirming he'd been working his shift at the time of the murder with the store’s surveillance tapes, they'd ruled out a suspect, though not the murder weapon.

Nishinoya had lived alone, and nobody he knew had known what he'd been doing that night. In reality, Nishinoya had just taken pity on an injured someone who was also near-unconscious in an alleyway off the main streets. Things had been fine until they'd made it to a street that hadn’t been within view of eyewitnesses or any kind of surveillance.

So he'd still been en route to the hospital, but the murder had taken place immediately after they’d set foot on the street.

Which meant the murderer had been close by, waiting. The alternative was that the murderer had tailed them all the way from the alleyway where Nishinoya had found the victim, still alive, albeit suffering from a stab wound. Given Nishinoya’s testimony about his co-victim’s paranoia, the murderer tailing them to the scene of the crime seems the more likely case.

Ennoshita flips between papers, finds the standard procedural report the police had filed after an initial investigation. As far as homicides went, the case was relatively simple – an assailant had come up, done the deed, and then left, with no witnesses or evidence pointing the investigation any which way. Still – there had to be some clues, and there was no way a full forensic investigation would have turned up so little. There was no information about the type of weapon used in the stabbing, or the presence of foreign fibers on-scene, or – or anything that might be an identifying factor, really.

Ushijima taken off the case, botched reports, and general mystery – Ennoshita sets the case files down and tries hard not to consider higher-level corruption, willing himself not to turn into a conspiracy theorist.

It doesn’t work.

“I have no idea what’s really going on with this case,” Ennoshita says when he comes back down to the shop, where Nishinoya is busying himself finishing off an entire pie by himself. “Also, what are your thoughts on conspiracy theories?”

Nishinoya blinks at him. "They’re kinda cool sometimes, I guess. Why don't you just ask the other guy what happened?"

It takes a few moments for Ennoshita to understand what he’s talking about. "The coroner's office isn't exactly open to the general public," Ennoshita points out. "I'd have to get Daichi to go with me, and he's out of town on business right now."

"Huh," Nishinoya says, considering. "So we can't like, sneak in?"

There is no reason why Ennoshita shouldn't have expected that for an answer, but he finds himself mildly horrified anyway. "No, we cannot sneak into the coroner's office. What would we even do if we got caught?" 

“Run,” Nishinoya says, as if it is the only logical solution when facing arrest for breaking and entering. Ennoshita will admit it would be a good one, but only if outrunning cars were humanly possible, because borrowing Tanaka’s car to use as a getaway vehicle would perhaps be a bit of a faux pas.

“How about we don’t do that,” Ennoshita says. “Unless you’ve got some sort of Olympic medal in track you haven’t told me about?”

“Nah,” Nishinoya says, sticking a cherry-stained tongue out at him. “That’d be pretty cool, though, wouldn’t it?”

Ennoshita takes a good long look at Nishinoya’s toothy smile and irrepressibly jaunty attitude and deems it almost charming, albeit grudgingly. “Yeah,” he says, feeling suddenly that Nishinoya deserves a brighter place to stand than where he is now. “It would be.”

"I read the police report and the autopsies," Ennoshita says to Daichi, cradling the phone to his ear with his shoulder. He sifts through the file folder and fishes out the paper with Daichi's handwriting on it. "There's something missing, though, isn't there? Transferring the investigation from Ushijima?"

Tap goes the keyboard, clacking over the call as Daichi types something up. "It's definitely odd, and they didn't put Ushijima on another case after that, so it couldn't have been that they needed his help with something else. Pay the crime scene a visit, maybe?"

“Roped off,” Ennoshita says. “Or, uh. Taped off. I’m not sure it’d help all that much, honestly.” He grimaces, though Daichi can’t see it.

“Give me a little bit,” Daichi says. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Hey,” Nishinoya begins, the morning after Ennoshita’s phone call with Daichi.

“We are not sneaking into the coroner’s,” Ennoshita says.

“Okay, well, I wasn’t even going to say that,” Nishinoya says with a strange air of triumph. “So maybe you actually really want to sneak into the coroner’s office, like, unconsciously?”

“That’s not how it works,” Ennoshita says, exasperated, but there is a tiny bit of fondness with it, and for a very brief moment he entertains the idea of sneaking into the coroner’s office with Nishinoya. It begins with all-black clothing and ends with the two of them handcuffed in the back of a police car. There could be worse outcomes, and there could be better, but this is the most likely one, and so Ennoshita hopes they will never have to commit this particular type of felony. “Sorry. What were you saying?”

Nishinoya beams. “Are you free tomorrow?”

“Yes, but why,” Ennoshita says, still a little suspicious. 

Bright eyes, brighter smile. Sunglasses appear to be a necessary investment. “Teach me how to bake!”

Strictly speaking, Ennoshita is a pie maker, not an all-around pastry chef. Which isn’t to say that’s the only thing he can do: his part time job involves resurrecting the dead, but not permanently, most of the time, thank you very much. At any rate, despite his title as Pie Maker, Ennoshita is relatively well versed in the art of baked goods. So Nishinoya slaps his hands down on the countertop and says, “Let’s make a cake!”

The sun is a thin sliver of light behind the hills and the birds haven’t woken up yet and they’re not even open today. At this point, though, Ennoshita has accepted that days off do not exist for him any more. Nishinoya seems to function with the mindset that constant peace and quiet are for the weak and undisciplined. Besides, staying asleep when Nishinoya’s awake is more effort than it’s worth, which is counterproductive and therefore the least efficient option, strangely enough.

Ennoshita rubs the sleep out of his eyes with one hand and flips the light switch with the other. Everything loses its shadows and the light paints detail where the dark used to be and there’s Nishinoya, standing in the middle of the kitchen with a smile so bright it could shatter light bulbs.

Ennoshita almost glances up to make sure the ceiling lights are still the primary light source in the room.  “Good morning,” he says, because that’s what you say to people when you see them in the morning, even if it’s barely dawn. And then he says, “What kind?" 

“Strawberry,” Nishinoya decides, and that’s that.

“Pass me the bowl,” Ennoshita says ten minutes later, turning around. Nishinoya freezes with the bowl in his hands and the batter-covered spoon suspiciously close to his mouth. Ennoshita stares him down before smacking his hand with a spatula. “You already died once,” he scolds, scooping the bowl off the countertop and setting it in the sink to rinse. “How little self-preservation do you have?”

“It’s just cake batter,” Nishinoya says, and then he licks the spoon anyway, because Nishinoya fears nothing, not salmonella or God. Ennoshita frowns. Precautions against eating raw dough and batter are mostly to avoid legal action in the unlikely case of illness, though, and the hospital isn’t an option. It’s not much of a quandary. 

The cake pan goes in the oven. Nishinoya spends the next fifteen minutes bouncing around the kitchen and being of no help whatsoever while Ennoshita cleans up. 

“Smells good,” Nishinoya says after Ennoshita dries the last bowl, ducking down to peek through the oven door. “How much longer?”

The kitchen timer reads - “Ten minutes,” Ennoshita calls from the sink.

“You know what we should do with this cake,” Nishinoya says. 

Ennoshita glances at him. “Um. Eat it, maybe? Preferably before it gets stale or moldy?” 

“We should eat it with friends,” Nishinoya says, and Ennoshita coughs up the beginnings of a laugh, because, of course Nishinoya would say something like that. “Where does Ryuu work, again?”

The detective agency Tanaka works for sits on a street full of buildings that must have been majestic, once, if Ennoshita looks past the peeling paint and weatherworn wood on most of the suites. 

Nishinoya bounces right through the door, and Tanaka looks up from the coffee machine to catch him in a one-armed hug. The rest of the office watches them shout at each other with a kind of bemused acceptance.

"Settle down," Daichi says, though it is very clear that he does not actually expect them to do anything of the sort.

"Hello," Ennoshita says, knocking on the doorframe. He holds up the box of strawberry shortcake he and Nishinoya had baked earlier that morning. "We brought cake."

Yamaguchi blinks. "I didn't know you served cake."

"We don't," Ennoshita says with a wry smile, maneuvering himself between the desks and cubicles to the break room. "I hope you're in the mood for strawberry." 

"Tsukki - " Yamaguchi begins, but Tsukishima's already halfway to the break room, strolling as fast as possible while maintaining a look of distinct disinterest.

While most of the agency employees make a beeline for the cake, Daichi comes up to Ennoshita with a massive file folder with enough papers in it to wallpaper a room. They’re all things like highly confidential police reports and autopsy notes and the entire record of the investigation, no big deal.

Ennoshita looks up at Daichi. "I hope you don't mind my asking, but how'd you get this?" 

The slight grimace on Daichi's face is curiously aggrieved. "I know a guy," he says. A few seconds pass in silence where Ennoshita's just waiting for Daichi to say something else, something more informational than I know a guy, but he gets the feeling Daichi would rather not talk about said guy at the moment. In the name of relative decency, Ennoshita does not push the topic.

"Well, um, thank you," Ennoshita says. "I still have to talk to Ushijima, don't I?"

"He's not so bad, once you get down to it," Daichi says.

"I don't think I want to get down to it," Ennoshita says. "Oh. Also, would you mind taking me to the coroner's office? I need to get a look at the second victim."

Daichi makes a sort of half-pained ooh face, says, “Sorry. I would if I could, but they’ve blocked off access to everyone but a few top personnel from the police station. No clue why, though.” 

Almost reflexively, Ennoshita glances back at Nishinoya, half-expecting a let’s break into the coroner’s office, even though Nishinoya isn’t doing anything but being himself, albeit in coexistence with Tanaka. “All right. Thanks.”

“Good luck with the rest of it,” Daichi says, almost wry, as if he can tell: Ennoshita is going to need it.

If the police station had, say, a most important employee award, Ushijima Wakatoshi would be The Winner. Not the same kind of winner with a lowercase w other award-winners would be categorized as, but The Winner, like a book title, or like being The Winner of an award was an award in itself.

He stares down at Ennoshita with a face both unreadable and terrifying. "You have business with me, I take it." 

"Um," Ennoshita says. He'd thought he'd planned out what to say, or at least some semblance thereof, but all previous preparation vanishes in front of Ushijima and his stern eyebrows and his intimidatingly impressive track record. What, exactly, is someone of relatively regular accomplishment supposed to say to this man? "Yes, I do. I'm Ennoshita. I work with detective Sawamura and his agency. I'm here to ask you about the double homicide that happened about a week and a half ago."

“Ah,” Ushijima says. “Yes, that. My orders are to not talk about it.” 

“Well, about the other victim, then,” Ennoshita says, a little surprised. “Will they be holding his funeral soon?”

“He’s still in the morgue,” Ushijima informs him.

“It’s been a week,” Ennoshita says, stunned.

“I’ve been told they are very good at what they do,” Ushijima says. 

“Um,” Ennoshita says, not entirely sure what to do with that information. “That’s, uh. Great. Would you happen to know why you got switched off the case?” 

"We tend not to make arrests related to drugs," Ushijima says stolidly. It’s probably a little too close to revealing classified information, though Ushijima shows no fear of possible unemployment. Ennoshita gets the feeling that Ushijima perhaps is not too skilled in the art of subtlety. 

"Is that so," Ennoshita says, his thoughts running around in circles until they settle into order. “I – uh, thank you for helping – I mean, answering my questions.”

Ushijima’s eyebrows look slightly less stern, but it’s entirely possible it’s just a figment of Ennoshita’s imagination. “You’re welcome.”

As soon as Ennoshita’s a safe distance from the police station, he pulls out his phone and hits number five on speed dial. It rings twice. “Hi, Ennoshita,” Akaashi says.

“Hey, Akaashi,” Ennoshita says. He takes a breath. “How do you feel about a secret investigation that probably won’t end well for anyone?” 

“I feel like you’re about to ask me to investigate someone that shouldn’t be investigated,” Akaashi says, tone drier than drought.

Ennoshita coughs, sheepish. “Well,” he says. “You’re not wrong there. So how about it?”

"Do you ever think about touching me," Nishinoya says one afternoon when the shop is empty and Kinoshita and Narita are in the kitchen. 

"Um," Ennoshita says.

"Like, hugging and stuff," Nishinoya presses on, as if do you ever think about touching me is a perfectly valid, everyday question to ask, which it’s not, because who asks something like that out of the blue --

The granite countertop is suddenly the most fascinating thing Ennoshita has ever come across and he focuses his attention on it accordingly. "Yeah." 

"Really," Nishinoya says, leaning towards him. Ennoshita flinches back out of reflex, draws himself a little ways away to keep a safe distance between them. 

"Really," he says, measuring the inches between them with a wary eye. Is this a confession? Oh my god, what am I supposed to say?"Not all the time, I just - it's the little things, you know."

Nishinoya stares at him with that wide eyed look of inquisition Ennoshita's gotten used to, over the months. "Nah," he says, face softening somewhat. "I don't know. Because," he grins, and then all the sharp is back, there in his mouth, at the edges of his teeth, and isn't it a good thing Ennoshita can't find out for himself, isn't it better that he can't cut himself on that smile? But he kind of wants to, and maybe that's why it hurts, in all the ways he's never been sure about. "I always want to touch you." He raises a hand, stops it inches from Ennoshita's face. "See if you've got soft cheeks, 'cause you look like you do. And, and, I want to hold your hand, I can do that with anybody except you, but that's the problem, right there, 'cause you're the one I really wanna hold hands with." He drops his hand, but he doesn't take it back. Frustration lends a rough edge to his voice, now, like it's responding to the funny little twinge in Ennoshita's chest that's getting less funny and more awful by the moment. "And I want to kiss you a lot, like, all the damn time, and not in a make-out kind of way, just - "

"I know," Ennoshita says. He almost wants to laugh, but only the kind he wouldn't mean. And then he says, without thinking: "Me, too."

Want, want, want - Ennoshita has never considered himself a particularly needy person, but lately, it seems like he only ever wants the things he can't have.

A few days later, Ennoshita is no closer to solving the murders, despite his continued efforts to do so.

"You know what you need," Tanaka says, advancing on him in a way that sets Ennoshita suspicious immediately. "You need - "

"No," Ennoshita says, in a futile effort to avoid the inevitable. Perhaps in some other life his attempt to fight the indomitable might have succeeded, but in this one, Tanaka is about as stoppable as a natural disaster. 

"You need a hug," Tanaka says, undeterred, opening his arms wide enough to fit not only Ennoshita but also Narita, who makes as if to escape into the kitchen. Ennoshita shoots him a don't you dare look and Narita sets the plate in his hands down with a wistful sigh right before Tanaka closes in with a massive bear hug and lifts the two of them right off the floor. Breathing becomes markedly more difficult, squashed up as they are, but Tanaka is warm and solid and even the bony dig of Narita's elbows against his ribs is comforting, somehow. 

And it's nice, the kind of nice Ennoshita hasn't had in a while. By the door, Nishinoya turns to Kinoshita, says, hey, hey, do I get a hug, too, and Kinoshita laughs, says, sure, and lets Nishinoya throw his arms around his waist.

“Loosen up,” Tanaka says against Ennoshita’s shoulder. “You don’t always have to be so responsible.”

Ennoshita lets out a deep breath, lets himself relax, too. Want, need, have. “I guess,” he says. 

Tanaka grins. “Yeah?” 

“Yeah,” Ennoshita says.

In a momentary lapse of judgment (desperation-induced, of course), Ennoshita sits down across from Nishinoya in a booth the next day and says, “Let’s sneak into the coroner’s office.”

“Yes,” Nishinoya says, grinning. “Knew you wanted to.”

“For the record,” Ennoshita says, feeling it necessary to defend his integrity as an upstanding citizen, “I don’t want to sneak in, I’ll have you know.”

“Mmhm,” Nishinoya hums, raising a meaningful eyebrow. “When are we going?”

Ennoshita thinks it would not hurt Nishinoya to be a little more wary about the possibility of committing a felony. “Tonight.”

When Ennoshita and Nishinoya edge towards the coroner’s office from around the street, it is nine at night and the streetlight glow on the pavement is in danger of the night swallowing it whole. Besides the two of them skulking in shadows and wherever else darkness might be fond of dwelling, the street is empty and quiet.

Nishinoya leans towards him. Ennoshita leans away, though more for the sake of Nishinoya’s well-being than any ill will. Nishinoya does not seem to mind. “So how are we getting in?”

“I maybe got a little help,” Ennoshita says. When Nishinoya gives him a what does that mean look, Ennoshita returns the favor with a vague shrug and holds up a set of keys that most decidedly do not belong to either of them. Ennoshita, however, has very good reason to believe they belong in the lock to the coroner's office door. "What is it that people always say in these situations? I know a guy. Who knows a guy, who knows a guy, and so on? Or something like that?" Indirectly, Ennoshita probably knows the entirety of the Tokyo MPD, or, a fortunate happenstance key to his obtaining access to the coroner’s office.

"That's like, kind of cool, even though it probably shouldn't be," Nishinoya decides, leaning closer to the window. His breath fogs up the night-chilled glass and he doodles something in the condensation before it fades. 

It's the character for victory, which strikes Ennoshita as both endearing and slightly incongruous. He slaps himself mentally. "Well, here's hoping we don't get arrested tonight," Ennoshita says, and slides out of the car.

The keys work, the alarm system is nonexistent, and Ennoshita feels the level of security in the county morgue is really too low, even if they are one of those quaint little rural-esque towns murders usually don't happen in. It takes minimal navigating to get to the area Kinoshita sometimes refers to as "the corpse fridge", which is terrible and morbid but also kind of funny, if Ennoshita allows himself some moral leeway.

There is one body currently in the refrigerated units, which seems convenient for his purposes. He pulls it out, opens up the clock option on his phone, and reaches for the corpse, who bears a particularly nasty series of stab wounds. 

“Oh,” the man says, squinting at Nishinoya. His eyebrows rather remind Ennoshita of miniature avocados. “You're that kid from the street.”

“Hiya,” Nishinoya says, quite agreeably.

Ennoshita cuts in, keeping an eye on his cell phone’s stopwatch. “I don’t mean to be rude,” he says, because he doesn’t, he really doesn't, “but who stabbed you?”

"Fucking hell," he says, looking down at the stab wounds in question. "Shouldn't have trusted that toupee asshole." 

"I'm sorry," Ennoshita says, blinking, "Did you say 'toupee'?" Don't be a conspiracy theorist, don't be a conspiracy theorist - 

"Yeah, that one cop with the fake hair? Chief or something."

"Oh, my God," Ennoshita says without thinking.

Noya throws him a quizzical look. "Chikara?"

"It's nothing," Ennoshita says, but in reality, he's thinking,the conspiracy theory is true, I am a conspiracy theorist now - "So why'd he stab you?"

"Who the fuck knows," Stab Victim says, eyebrows furrowed in disgust. Ennoshita fears they might leap off the face they are attached to and eat him whole. "Probably thought I was going to leak or something. Like I'd want to get arrested for coordinating drug stashes with a district police chief. He's probably trying to cover up, since he left it all in the same storage unit."

"Would you happen to know which one," Ennoshita says, hoping for a miracle.

"By the hospital," Avocado Eyebrows says, with visible disdain.

"Good god," Ennoshita says. "Uh, thanks for your - time, and input, really - " He cuts himself off and swats in the general vicinity of the gargantuan eyebrows, wincing when the body falls back with a thump.  

Nishinoya covers the body with the sheet. "Find something out?" 

"Yeah," Ennoshita says. "You could say that."

            To: Akaashi Keiji 

           toupee + police commissioner + drug stashes from drug busts / lack thereof + self-storage unit by the hospital near crime scene?

           From: Akaashi Keiji

          how did you even find that out? i'll look into it. kenma's got full access to the archive and kuroo's very good at getting search warrants. i'll keep you updated.

Two days later, Ennoshita's bussing tables and baking pies, per usual, when Tanaka comes in and takes his usual seat.

"I heard strawberry rhubarb was the special today, so here I am," Tanaka says. He grins, brash and genuine, and a wave of fondness hits Ennoshita like high tide on a windy day.

"Here you are." Ennoshita sets a slice of pie in front of Tanaka, taps the fork on the edge of the plate before handing it to him. "Have I told you lately that you're a good friend?" 

"Aren't I," Tanaka says, laughing. He helps himself to heaping forkful of pie, chews like he's grinding metal between his teeth instead of pastry.

"You are, really," Ennoshita says, resting his chin on his palm and his elbow on the counter. Tanaka swallows down what's in his mouth before he looks up, and Ennoshita gives him a wry, wrung-out smile. "I never say it, but it means a lot to me. Thanks."

A few seconds pass where Tanaka's mouth is just - hanging open, like he'd heard perfectly well, what Ennoshita had said, but hadn't figured out how to process it yet. Ennoshita shrugs, lets the smile on his face soften into something a little less weary and a little more fond, and Tanaka closes his mouth, opens it again. "Yeah. You - yeah, I -  " he cuts himself off to swear before saying, "Fuck, you're never easy to deal with, you know that?" In the end, he won't say you're welcome, he'll sayno problem instead, because for him, it isn't; never was, never will be.

"I don't want to hear that from you," Ennoshita tells him, and he laughs when Tanaka drops his fork and says, what, I thought we were having a moment –

Ennoshita’s phone vibrates with an incoming text, and he gives it a perfunctory glance. It’s from Akaashi, which merits a second glance, and then a third, and then a fourth, because –

            From: Akaashi Keiji

           kenma recovered the original case files – your police chief’s been sloppy about covering up, and we caught him at the storage unit trying to move his drug stashes. evidence under                  review at tokyo mpd right now - the case is more or less closed, though.

"Ah," Ennoshita says, in slight disbelief. "I think we solved it. I mean, we already kind of solved it, but I think we have proof?"

There’s a moment of silence before Tanaka's got him in a headlock probably meant to be friendly, saying, "Seriously?"

In between prying at Tanaka's arms around his neck and scrabbling to call Daichi, Ennoshita manages to say, "You don't think I'd joke about this, do you - " 

Tanaka answers with a loud whoop in Ennoshita’s ear without the slightest concern for hearing safety. “Hell yeah,” he says.

“Yeah,” Ennoshita agrees, laughing. “Same.”

"Ongoing investigation of the double homicide case revealed political corruption at the provincial level," the evening news anchorwoman says.  

The truth had been this: The toupee-wearing police chief had been covering up a ring of illegal smuggling from which he had directly been profiting from, albeit not very well. 

"It was a widespread operation," Akaashi says in an interview on the TV. Ennoshita reminds himself to thank him later.

 Slightly blurry footage shows a round man in a toupee being handcuffed by someone that looks a lot like Ushijima. Ennoshita can vaguely make out a Daichi-looking figure nearby.

“So,” Ennoshita says, turning off the television. “I guess we solved it?” 

“Yeah,” Nishinoya says. “What now?”

Ennoshita exhales, remembering the morning paper. “I’ve got a funeral to go to, I guess.”  

Nishinoya levels a look at him. “What are you going to do?”

It’s not a demanding question, and there’s really not much for Ennoshita to do, truth be told. “Apologize, I guess. Come back every now and then and leave flowers on their grave.” He gives Nishinoya a half-smile, faint as a ghost. “I still don’t really know what to do, honestly. I’m working on it, though.” 

At the funeral, Ennoshita only says one thing to the body lying in the casket: I’m sorry.

Everything else crumbles to excuses in his mouth: there is nothing else to say.

"You still feel bad about it," Nishinoya says a week later, using a fork to crimp the edges of a pie crust with deft, repetitive presses into the pastry. It's the unconscious efficiency, so ingrained into his nature that Nishinoya never seems to think much about it. "Not me. I mean, you feel bad about that, too, but it's not the same thing, is it?"

The oven finishes preheating with a beep and Ennoshita dusts extra flour off his hands, takes a few more breaths to word his answer. "Maybe not," he says, knowing it's less of a maybe and more of a definitely. "It took a long time before I stopped being scared, and then it was too late to do anything. And it's mostly me, isn't that - "

Isn't that how it is, with so many things, now? He'd only had a minute before it was too late; he'd only ever had a minute, and sixty seconds has never seemed a more arbitrary way to measure mortality. 

"I'm always going to feel bad about it," Ennoshita says at last. "But that doesn't matter now."

The thing about Ennoshita is this: he's got ghosts on his back, haunting him like he's the buildings they died in, like his guilt marks them better than their graves.

You still feel bad about it, Nishinoya had said, and he hadn't meant any more than what he'd said, but Ennoshita heard himself, so many years ago, whispering in the dark, did you regret it, did you think things would be okay, did you want them to be okay? 

He exhales. 

I don’t know.

“I kind of hope it’ll be a while before the next case,” Ennoshita says one morning during prep work. He sets two cartons of strawberries on the countertop and digs around for a sieve to drain after washing.

Nishinoya scoots over to the far side of the island in the middle of the kitchen floor. “Why’s that? You’re pretty good at being a detective.”

Under the tap the strawberries go, and Ennoshita takes a second to think before he answers. “I only really help out if it’s a case they can’t solve without information only the victim could give. And the victim’s usually dead, and if they’re murder victims, it’s like, if they wake up, sometimes they run for it? Or maybe things go wrong, and what do I do then?” He swishes the strawberries around. “There aren’t exactly help books out there, like, Reanimation for Dummies or something, you know?”

“So you don’t normally bring people back to life unless you have to,” Nishinoya says. “I mean, you don’t have to, but it’s helpful. Also you don’t usually let them live longer than a minute, right?” 

"Well," he says, tossing a strawberry at Nishinoya, who catches it in his mouth with an easy ker-plunk. Ennoshita is simultaneously baffled and impressed. "You were an accident."

One of his cheeks is puffed out, presumably due to the strawberry. He looks like a lopsided chipmunk, trying to talk around what's in his mouth. "Funny, that's what my mom said."

"Oh," Ennoshita says, not quite sure how to proceed.

Nishinoya sticks out his tongue. "Kidding."

"Honestly," Ennoshita says. He's about to flick Nishinoya's forehead, but there's some not-so-fine print in clause 46 of bringing people back to life regarding touching and death. So he winces, pulls his hand back to do something safe and not life threatening with it.

Nishinoya starts to move, stops himself and teeters on his toes for a second. "So, hey, if you could go back in time - "

"There's probably someone out there who can do that," Ennoshita says, setting the next box of strawberries in the sink and switching the tap on.

"Okay, maybe, but you can't do that, you just bring dead people back to life," Nishinoya points out. "Which is cool, too, but not the same thing."

Ennoshita sets the strawberries aside to drain. The question Nishinoya is two seconds away from asking is one Ennoshita would rather not answer, and if he makes a break for it now, he can probably avoid it for at least a few hours. "Would I let you go back to being dead, you mean?"

Nishinoya leans on the counter, doesn't try to play the question off as casual. "Yeah."

Yeah, he says, and Ennoshita hears, did you regret it, do you regret it, do you -- "I wouldn't want to," he says, not sure how to organize what he means into words. "It's a hypothetical situation, but I don't - "

He falters. Would, wouldn't, do, don't; what, exactly, is he trying to say? And Nishinoya's still watching him, with that unsettling solemnity pressed rare in the bend of his lips. 

"You don't," Nishinoya prompts.

"If I could go back in time," Ennoshita says, picking his answer with slow honesty, "I'd do my best to save you the night you died."

The weight in the said and unsaid words, then, are almost enough - Ennoshita sees recognition and a flicker of understanding in the gold of Nishinoya's eyes. "Really," he says. 

Another question, loaded invisible and unknowing - and yet, Ennoshita feels no hesitation now. "Yeah," he says. "Or maybe I wouldn't change anything? Mostly I just want you to be okay. I mean, ideally, I'd also want to keep this," a vague gesture at the two of them, "but I mean, I don't know, it gets kind of complicated. Because if I went back in time to save you, I could also save other people, right? But maybe I shouldn't do that, maybe that's messing with things more than I already am, with the whole reanimation thing, so - "

"Yeah," Nishinoya says.

"I don't know," Ennoshita says again, feeling more bamboozled than he'd ever thought himself capable of. "So I guess I shouldn't - wouldn't change anything. I mean, this is how things turned out, and – thinking about would-haves or should-haves won’t help, and I just – I’m okay with how things are. I mean, that’s probably awful of me to say, all things considered, but – I’ll figure things out. I have to figure things out." He’s almost out of breath by the time he shuts his mouth and stops talking. Somehow, he gets the feeling he hadn’t exactly been talking solely about Nishinoya.

Nishinoya is quiet. Ennoshita stays still but not out of fear of saying the wrong thing – he’d only said exactly what he thought, and that was all he could really give; that was all Nishinoya could really ask for. A long few seconds pass before Nishinoya looks up, face clear. “Hey, Chikara,” he says.

Ennoshita feels his mouth soften into a slight smile. “Yeah?”

“Thanks,” Nishinoya says, and then he steals a full handful of strawberries from the colander and stuffs them all in his mouth.

“You are not welcome,” Ennoshita says, hiding another smile in the turn of his back, before heading back to the fridge for another carton.

Somehow or another, December blurs by until it’s Christmas night and the entire detective agency is waiting outside his door.

"Merry Christmas," Tanaka crows, holding up a bottle of -- alcohol, probably. The rest of the detective agency crowds behind him, holding various boxes and containers of food and presents.

"Couldn't we have done this at the agency," Ennoshita says, counting heads and wondering what the maximum capacity of his apartment is. 

"Ukai would have yelled at us, though Takeda said he just wanted us to be responsible," Tanaka says, already making his way into the hallway. "Besides, you need to live a little. Or a lot. Live a lot."

“Trashing my apartment on Christmas is not really how I want to do it,” Ennoshita says, but then there are people in his apartment and the situation had never been in his hands in the first place so what was the point? And Nishinoya and Tanaka are clearly prepared to drink themselves into unconsciousness so all Ennoshita can really do is set out the water bottles and accept the inevitable.

In between Hinata accidentally dropping his cake on Kageyama’s head and Yamaguchi trying to take photos of the party that don’t make it look like a crime scene, Ennoshita is feeling more than a little stressed by the time his phone rings a few hours into the night.

“Hello,” Ennoshita says, not entirely confident he’ll be able to hear whoever it is respond.

"Hi, it’s me," Akaashi says over the phone. It's a little hard to hear him over the racket on his end, too, though it does seem to be fading. Akaashi is presumably also walking away from a Christmas party.

"Akaashi," Ennoshita says, slipping out into the hallway. The walls do not do nearly an adequate enough job at muffling the ongoing party in Ennoshita's apartment, and he hopes very fervently that his neighbors won't hate him. "Merry Christmas. Squad party?" 

"For solving the case, and Christmas, too," Akaashi says. "Bokuto's idea, really, but then Konoha and Komi brought enough alcohol to open a bar, and now the office looks more like a night club than the Tokyo MPD." In the distance, there is a muffled hey, Akaashi, where'd you go, and Akaashi sighs. "Sorry. I'll have to head back in a bit."

"It's fine, really. Thanks for helping out with the case," Ennoshita says. "Let me treat you to lunch if we're ever in the same area?"

There's a smile in Akaashi's voice when he says, "Sounds good. Merry Christmas, Ennoshita."

“You too,” Ennoshita says, and hangs up.

"And the toupee," Daichi's mumbling, when Ennoshita gets back to the party, “It flew - "

Ennoshita blinks. "The… toupee?" From what he can see, Daichi, having downed a few too many shots, has slipped past the line between tipsy and drunk, and is now acting like a contrary toddler.

Suga looks up from next to Daichi with a dauntless smile. "The perp was wearing a toupee, and when Ushijima was making the arrest, everything kind of - well, the toupee fell off and landed on Daichi's head." Lowering his voice, he adds, "I think Daichi still has nightmares about it some nights."

"That's," Ennoshita starts, "that's, uh. Wow. I’m sorry. I guess they decided not to put that on the news?”

"But the memory will live forever in Daichi's dreams," Suga says, sounding a good deal more solemn than he looks. In the background, Nishinoya is pouring Yamaguchi more alcohol than is probably necessary or healthy while Tsukishima is away, and Tanaka is chugging a bottle of beer. Ennoshita looks away and reasons that if he hadn’t witnessed it then could he really be held responsible for anything?

"No, it won't," Daichi says stubbornly, before passing the fuck out. His body shifts down and to the side like gravity catching a landslide.

"Oh, there he goes," Suga says, before taking another sip of his drink. "Merry Christmas, Ennoshita."

"Merry Christmas," Ennoshita says, right before a loud bang comes from his kitchen, and an argument between Kageyama and Hinata starts up in response.

“I told you not to touch that,” Kageyama says. “What if you broke it?” 

“Oh, relax,” Hinata says. “It’s like, plastic, right? It’ll be fine, you need to relax, this is a Christmas party and where’s your Christmas spirit, Kageyama -”

The sound of impact thumps against something wooden, probably a cabinet, amidst Hinata squawking, “That’s not very Christmas-y of you!”

Kinoshita disappears into the kitchen for a few seconds before coming back out looking both amused and slightly grim. “So if they had life insurance for apartments, would you invest in it? Asking for a friend.”

“Is that friend me,” Ennoshita says. Somewhere in the kitchen a dish breaks, and Kageyama says, look what you did and Hinata protests, well, maybe you shouldn’t have shoved me, huh – “The friend you’re asking for is me, isn’t it?”

“Hey now, I’m the one asking the questions here,” Kinoshita says.

Ennoshita eyes his drink and mentally calculates how many more he’d need to drink before reaching the point of total inebriation and bliss by oblivion. “Ideally, yes, probably? I don’t think they’d sell it to me, though. You know how it’s hard to get insurance if you seem like you’re going to actually need it?" 

In the not-so-far distance, Tanaka and Nishinoya appear to have started a dance competition on top of the dining table Tsukishima and Yamaguchi are sitting at. Tanaka whips off his shirt, which promptly smacks Tsukishima’s glasses clean off and onto Yamaguchi’s lap. The expression on Tsukishima’s face (an ambiguous mix between disdain and horror and all around offense) is indescribably hilarious all of a sudden, and Ennoshita nearly chokes on his drink laughing. Narita gives him a look that’s maybe forty-five percent concern and fifty-five percent why hire a stripper when you have Tanaka, probably. Ennoshita doesn’t really know at this point. Ennoshita will probably not know at any point in any given time, and he resigns himself to a very long night.

The day after Christmas is oddly quiet; Ennoshita wakes up in the morning to the sound of silence in his apartment, much like he would have done if someone had cut the past month out of his life. Which is to say, he very briefly wonders if Nishinoya had disappeared, or if he was still passed out on the couch after one too many alcoholic beverages. And he'd told Tanaka not to get Nishinoya drunk, because Nishinoya is small and an absolute lightweight. But Tanaka had probably been drunk, too, thereby hindering his higher cognitive functions and also the ability to feel shame. Everyone else had gone home. Tsukishima, Asahi, Narita and Yachi had been the designated drivers, so hopefully they'd all gotten back without injury.

Why did it have to be his apartment? Ennoshita covers his face with the crook of his elbow to block out the cold light coming through the window. 

There's rustling just outside his door, and Ennoshita sits up, squints in the general direction of the noise with a bleary-eyed confusion. It’s Nishinoya, who peeks in without knocking before coming in his room.

"Happy birthday," Nishinoya says, holding out a package in his hands, and then, thinking better of it, sets it at the foot of Ennoshita's bed. "Also, merry Christmas, 'cause I think maybe I was too drunk to say that last night? Mostly happy birthday, though."

"Thanks," Ennoshita says, too befuddled to process properly, and then: "Don't you have a hangover?" 

"Yeah, I feel like my head's about to crack open," Nishinoya says. The feeling of a potential cranial split is, to Nishinoya, evidently not worth noting. "That's not the important thing here, though, because it's your birthday and you know, you didn't even tell me when it was.”

"Sorry," Ennoshita says. "I guess it kind of slipped my mind? I mean, Christmas is kind of a big deal, right?" 

“So’s your birthday,” Nishinoya insists, nudging the package.

Taking this as an indicator to open the package, Ennoshita reaches over and unwraps it, raising an eyebrow at the contents. "Gloves?"

Nishinoya brandishes a pair of gloves in his own hands. "I got us matching ones! You know, you get cold really easily, but you also like, never wear gloves when you go out? I mean, cold hands are supposed to mean a warm heart and everything, but Suga says that’s just bad circulation." 

"So I’ve heard," Ennoshita says, still bemused. There's something tugging at the corners of his mouth and he doesn't recognize it as a smile until Nishinoya’s face softens into something a little like sunlight, except more of a hazard to Ennoshita’s health, and Ennoshita resists the urge to utilize his pillow as a shielding device. "I - Thanks." 

"You're welcome!" Nishinoya beams. Per usual, there is absolutely no seguing into his next sentence. "So, hey, you wanna go on a date today?"

"I just woke up," Ennoshita protests. The protest lasts all of two seconds before he relents, and wasn’t that new - had he always been so easily swayed? "Okay. Do I have time to get dressed first?"

Cold sunrise, frost-edged windows, and then Nishinoya, standing just under the warm light from the hallway, saying, “Well, yeah, no rush, right,” another one of those terrible golden smiles that Ennoshita wants to meet with his own, so badly, “I’d wait forever for you, you know?”

Blindsided yet again! How had he ever had the audacity to consider himself anything other than a boy in love?

When Ennoshita recovers, Nishinoya’s still standing there with a quizzical sort of look on his face, and Ennoshita buries his face in his hands with a muffled oh my god he hopes Nishinoya doesn’t hear. “I know,” he says, the words slipping like traitors between his palms, “Me, too. Please let me pretend I’m an actual person, now?”

There is a certain modicum of mercy in the closing of the door, and Ennoshita is not strong enough to be ungrateful; hasn’t been, for a very long time.

The streets still wear Christmas like a party dress they hadn't yet taken off, all strung lights and wreaths and snow-tipped trees. This early, the neighborhood is the kind of quiet that comes with too-early weekend mornings and post-celebration drowse. Ennoshita follows Nishinoya out into the street, snow crunching underfoot in an offbeat rhythm to his breathing. Nishinoya turns to him in his zipped-up hoodie, like below-zero temperatures weren't of any particular concern, and Ennoshita retreats further back into his giant parka, feeling even chillier. 

"Hey,” Nishinoya says with easy peace.

“Hey,” Ennoshita says after a beat, feeling rather as if he’d barely avoided a strike by lightning.

Nishinoya scrunches his nose. It is terribly endearing and Ennoshita doesn’t even have it in him to hate himself for thinking that. “You look kinda cold. Maybe you should put on another jacket?”

The only reason Ennoshita hadn't done just that was because he valued his mobility in the case of an emergency that might require swift and immediate action. "No, I'm good. Looking at you is what's making me cold, anyway." 

Nishinoya wiggles his gloved fingers. "I get that a lot. Also, hey," the wiggling continues, "Since we're wearing these, wanna hold hands?"

Yes, one part of Ennoshita (the one who doesn’t hate happiness, probably) thinks; yes, I do. The other part of him, the one drenched in fear and anxiety and the overriding thought I don’t want to kill him says: no, no, no, no, no, this is a thing we most definitely should not be doing what if there are holes in these gloves what if what if what if --

"Here," Ennoshita says after several moments of deliberation, holding out his hand. His heart goes thump thump thump in his chest, a nervous bird beating its wings at the cage of his ribs. This proximity to Nishinoya still sets alarm bells off in his head, the fear of contact damnation in his skin, but Ennoshita ignores it all, tells himself, things will be okay. 

Nishinoya smiles wide and bright and altogether more detrimental to Ennoshita's vision than any kind of snow blindness could ever hope to inflict. He grabs Ennoshita's hand with his own, swings their hands down with a terrible awestruck sort of wonder. "We're holding hands," he marvels, so surprised at the simplicity of it all - one palm against another, fingers fitting together snug and right. "Chikara, we're holding hands." 

"We are," Ennoshita says, a rush of sudden silly happiness bubbling up. "And you're not dead yet, thank God."

"Yeah, me dying on you in the middle of the street on your birthday would've killed the mood a bit, I think," Nishinoya says. 

"Just a little," Ennoshita agrees, tightening his hand in Nishinoya’s. "Happy birthday to me?"

"Happy birthday," Nishinoya says with another one of those stunning skylight smiles, and squeezes his hand back.

After that, early mornings come and go the way they always have, except with Nishinoya in his life instead of not, and a great deal more gloved handholding. At seven-thirty on a Tuesday morning, Nishinoya asks: "Is it always going to be like this?" 

The question is unexpected, though not surprising. For security, Ennoshita asks, "Like what?"

There is a slight thump as Nishinoya hauls a bag of flour onto the counter with an oomph and a brief flurry of flour grains. "You, me, baking pies, you trying not to touch me, me also trying not to touch you," he says. "Solving murders? Are things going to stay the same?" 

"Only if you want them to," Ennoshita says after a moment. Before he can stop himself, he adds, "I mean, we can work something out, let you live a normal life." He frowns, considering. "Though maybe I'd have to find someone with underworld connections to forge you new identification and papers? So you can, you know, exist in the eyes of the government and whatnot." The idea of seeking out someone with underworld connections is not the most appealing, but Ennoshita is not entirely sure how a dead person might be able to do things like tax returns and send in passport applications without someone raising an eyebrow.

Nishinoya is quiet as he dumps enough flour on the countertop to make a new pie entirely. "No," he says, patting the flour down into a uniform inch-thick layer. "I don't know. I guess, I guess I never really minded, right, but now it's like," the patting intensifies in both speed and force, sending little puffs of flour every which way, "Now I kind of want to spend the rest of my life with you?"

"Uh," Ennoshita says, in yet another stunning display of eloquence. His ears feel hot, and then his face does, too, and damn Nishinoya for being able to say things like that with absolute certainty. It has become increasingly apparent to Ennoshita that he does not, in fact, have an answer to anything, much less everything, when it comes to Nishinoya. 

'Uh' is evidently not enough of a reply for Nishinoya, who, still thumping the flat of his palm against the flour, looks up at him and says, "What about you?"

It takes perhaps three seconds longer than strictly necessary for Ennoshita to collect his wits enough to say something back. "I - yeah, I don't - I don't mind." He winces, because what the hell kind of answer is that? "I mean," maybe if he digs himself deep enough he will emerge victorious on the other side, "I can't really imagine my life without you any more."

There hadn't been as much salvation in that sentence as Ennoshita had hoped to find. He looks away, face feeling rather as if someone had held a torch too close for too long. Nishinoya is still silent. Ennoshita closes his eyes and prays for the earth to open up beneath his feet and swallow him and his regrets whole.

"Chikara," Nishinoya says at last. Ennoshita takes this opportunity to stare at a fixed point that is not at Nishinoya and notes that the flour uprising has stopped.

"Yes," Ennoshita says after a pause, contemplating his chances of escape. They are low, because Nishinoya is much faster than him, and also alarmingly good at leaping over countertops. 

"I really want to kiss you right now," Nishinoya says. 

Ennoshita would very much like for Nishinoya to kiss him, except if he did then Nishinoya would die, which is not particularly high on his agenda. So he swallows both his shame and self-consciousness, settles for: "If it wouldn't kill you, I'd kiss you back."

"That's so romantic," Nishinoya says, propping his chin on his hands and his elbows on the counter with an irrepressible sort of smile that is both impossible not to look at and blinding at the same time. Flour smudges his chin dusty and Ennoshita has a nonsensical kind of thought, then (the kind he has been prone to having lately, and often), that maybe he ought to see about finding a way to convert Nishinoya’s mega-watt smile into renewable energy, and also that a sunglasses investment would be a good one to make.

"I'm glad you see it that way, though now I’m concerned about your past romantic experiences," Ennoshita says. And then, because the shop opens in an hour and they’re running low on pies and only a little bit because his face is getting too hot, he says, “Can we maybe get back to making pies, now?”

“Okay,” Nishinoya says, and they do. By now, Ennoshita is honest enough to admit that the heat in his cheeks has little to do with the 375-degree ovens and a lot to do with Nishinoya’s existence, as a concept. He keeps it to himself, though. There are only so many confessions he can make in a single day, and he is only so brave.

So the days go by. 

Over the months, Ennoshita has learned this: Nishinoya has a lot of ideas and sometimes they’re good and sometimes they’re terrible. He spends a little while deliberating over which of the two his current one is and comes out without an answer to anything in life, anything at all.

“I don’t know,” he says, eyeing the sheet of plastic wrap with equal parts trepidation and disbelief. “It seems kind of easy to suffocate someone like that. Isn’t that how you died, anyway?”

"Less death talk, more smooching," Nishinoya says, waving aside trivial concerns like air supply and its assumed necessity.

"You're not very good at wooing people," Ennoshita says, taking the plastic wrap in his hands, still wary. Granted, his chances of asphyxiation are unlikely if he's careful about it, and he's a careful kind of person, for the most part. "Shouldn't you take me out for dinner beforehand?"

Nishinoya blinks, as if seriously considering it. He's as straightforward as a gunshot and more obvious about it than a fireworks display. "Do you want me to? We can do that, if you want."

And Ennoshita's so terribly fond of him that it's almost awful, the way he wants to run his fingers through Nishinoya's hair, or touch their foreheads together, or anything, just to do it. "Later," Ennoshita says, and he brings the plastic wrap between their faces, kisses Nishinoya slow, right above the translated warmth of his lips. It's a strange thing to do and his only consolation is that it's not the strangest thing he's done, which is in itself somewhat alarming. So he pulls away after a few seconds, makes sure they're both breathing at the very least, if not properly. "Unless you'd rather go now?"

There is a beat of temporary stillness, until Nishinoya's eyes go huge and the smile surfaces wide on his face like sunlight, all warm and gold like a late summer afternoon. "Nah," he says, sounding as stupid happy as Ennoshita feels, "Later's good."

"I'll hold you to that," Ennoshita says, and he leans down again for another plastic wrap kiss. Under normal circumstances (what, exactly, constitutes normal at this point?) Ennoshita would probably throw himself into a controlled panic for fear of someone walking in on them kissing through plastic wrap. This entire situation has been nothing but ridiculous, start to finish. But that's okay, because things are: going to be all right, like this.