Work Text:
“Do you remember how to use a gun?”
Amane blinks, and for a second Kiyomi wants to hit herself for asking — because Amane looks so soft in low light, so unassumingly pretty, every bit the rising pop star she’s meant to be — but when she tilts her chin up her eyes glint dark.
“I’ve never held one in my life,” she answers.
She isn’t looking at the gun in the holster slung on Kiyomi’s waist. She’s looking up at Kiyomi’s face, expression open, so inexplicably, blissfully unaware of the danger Kiyomi poses to her that the only explanation is that she is perfectly aware.
“If you had,” Kiyomi says, careful, “do you think you’d be good at it?”
“Which part?” Amane asks. Tilts her head. Her pigtails bounce, one brushing against her cheek. “The loading? The aiming? The shooting?”
She makes a finger-gun with her left hand and points it at Kiyomi’s heart. Mimics firing. Pew.
“The shooting,” Kiyomi says.
“Oh, I’d be great at that.” Amane readjusts to stand straight again. “Aiming, not so much. What’s the matter, Kiyo, want some advice?”
Kiyomi stiffens. Yes. “I don’t need advice.”
“Yeah, alright,” Amane says, grinning. “I’ll tell you a secret instead.”
Despite herself, Kiyomi steps forward. “What is it?”
Amane’s irises are a light brown, transparent, almost liquid. Her pupils are dilated. Because of the wine, surely.
“When you’ve been a model for long enough,” Amane says, voice as sweet as the alcohol on her breath, “you figure out that it’s kind of like sculpting. Right? The clothes they make me wear, they wouldn’t actually look good on anyone else. That’s not the point. The point is making me look good, so they can show me off.”
If Kiyomi were in her right mind, she would tell her she’s not interested in Amane’s job. At least not her current one. But she’s not thinking about that; she’s looking down at Amane’s devil’s smile and remembering, manually, how to breathe.
“I’m meat to them,” Amane says. She takes Kiyomi’s wrist, wraps her fingers around her pulse point. Kiyomi feels it stutter as Amane presses her thumb in, hard. “A slab of meat they can carve and dress up. Yeah?”
“I’m following,” Kiyomi says. She only barely resists the urge to break eye contact and look down at where Amane is holding her, where Amane is tracing out a pattern on her skin, slow, leaving a trail of heat in her wake.
“So, y’know, after a while in this industry you realize that everyone is that way.” Amane’s grip on her arm tightens. “We’re all meat. The only difference is that some of us look better than the others.
“But you knew that already, didn’t you, Kiyo-chan?”
She bats her eyelashes, the picture of innocence. Kiyomi swallows. Something in her wants to eat Amane whole.
“That’s your secret?” she asks, finally.
Amane lets go of her. Kiyomi’s arm drops to her side. Her hand feels numb, bloodless, as though it were someone else’s flesh.
They’re still close enough that Kiyomi could count Amane’s eyelashes, if she wanted to. It’s the wine making her dizzy.
“You wanted to know how to shoot better.”
“I never said that.”
“Well,” Amane says, teeth glinting, “that’s how I’d shoot. If I knew how.”
Every monster whose head Kiyomi ‘Sharpshooter’ Takada has blown clean off their shoulders — their blood always gets into her clothes. Her hair, if she’s unlucky. She wastes hours washing it off afterwards, scrubbing frantically, trying not to remember their faces.
She doesn’t want to use this gun on Amane. She wants to strangle her. She wants to see the light leave her eyes, feel the tension leave her muscle, watch Amane really, truly become the piece of meat she idolizes so much. She wants to lay her out like a butcher and run her hands over the contours of her sinew and —
“So,” Amane says. “Are you done?”
“Yes.”
Amane grins, mean. “Was I any help?”
“Not at all,” Kiyomi says, and turns and walks away.