Chapter Text
There are some days even now when Maki really wishes she could have been the ultimate pilot, or janitor, or perfume-maker, or anything else.
Sure, the assassination business isn’t really interested in someone whose identity is so public; but that doesn’t mean her skills aren’t useful in the real world, the modern one, the one outside of all those stupid flashback lights they had so willingly stared into; and politically endangered children still need security that can transport them without traumatizing them, and she’s usually — usually — good at that part.
Not always. Never always.
Maki nearly collapses the second she throws the front door open, sweating, panting, crusted with blood.
“Oh, Maki Roll, long day at work?” Kaito calls down the hallway. Her chest clenches at just his voice, even out of sight, but when she kicks her shoes off and sweeps into the bathroom without a word she hears footsteps explode down the stairs, down the hallway towards her.
They know her so well now. She rarely even has to open her mouth for her feelings to be clear. She’d be very tender about it, if she weren’t staring at herself in the mirror, eyes wide, tears and more fresh blood running down her face. She pulls her shirt off and mops her face with it before throwing it down, and when she looks back at her reflection she’s still shaking and bleary-eyed, there’s still red smeared under her nose.
She kicks the stool into place under the shower handle and turns it on as hot as it’ll go. She watches her reflection fog as she strips the rest of the way, pulling her hair out of the heavy braided bun it’s supposed to be kept in all the time now. The clients worry about loose ends getting caught in doorways, or being played with by the children. The outer ring is crusty, stinks like rust.
The door creaks and Kaito slides in without knocking. He shuts it behind himself and hangs a towel over the back of the door, easing her hair over her shoulder as she rinses the blood out of it.
“Hey, Maki Roll. Long day?”
His voice is gentler as he repeats himself, crouching down behind her.
“It—It was hot and messy and there were kids, there were kids, there were kids—“
One of his thumbs presses into the tense strap muscles of her neck and he presses against her back with his bare chest as she collapses into his dutiful massaging grip. “Ahh — Kh — Kaito…”
But his hand is firm on her neck, the other insistent in freeing the showerhead from her grasp, leaning close over her back to turn the pressure down, the heat up, and circle the water flow over her chest as his other hand parts her thighs firmly.
“S’alright, Maki Roll. You’re home now, it’s over now.”
He cooes in her ear as he guides the stream down, arms strong on either side of her as her hips jolt and she leans her head into the crook of his neck. Kaito used to smell like engine oil and spent fuel under his body wash, but these days he mostly smells like the sourdough starters he’s taken to naming like children, like the spent wood from his carving tools, like the clean fresh green that comes from freshly trimmed houseplants.
He teases the stream from her inner thigh up, and then she’s gasping in his ear, her trembles are easier. “Shuichi’s filling the outdoor bath, if you want it.” He murmurs as he gently rinses her down. “You can go right to bed after if you want that, too, but I already started dinner.”
“N’not hungry.” She pouts a little as he massages under her breasts tenderly, fingers digging into her ribs each time she jerks under the hot water he’s directing over her pussy now. He used to be so overeager that even a short hum from her like this would have them both knocked onto the floor, but now his goatee scratches the side of her neck as he cradles her, like getting her off is only secondary to being close.
“Good.” He answers shortly, standing just as abruptly and returning the shower head to its holster as she splutters under the stream. “Doing a curry. Get cleaned up and come eat it and you’ll feel better before you fall asleep.”
He kisses the top of her head and disappears as quickly as he’d come, leaving her nerves alight and on edge, wiping water out of her eyes.
Asshole. He loves riling her up. Shuichi, too; he gets far too much pleasure out of leaving the both of them aroused and alone. She considers getting herself all the way off, cumming loud enough to make it echo down the hall while curling over the water stream and bucking her hips. He’d probably love that, actually. It’d be Shuichi who would sternly assert that it’s not fair of her to keep that to herself, he’d probably demand she share at least two more orgasms with them before he’s satisfied.
She hadn’t planned on shampooing her hair, but it doesn’t feel like it’s coming clean, and she doesn’t want to risk running the hot water dry, so she commits to scrubbing her scalp as quickly as the length of her hair allows. It nearly touches the floor, now; she worried that it would get in the way more often even outside of work, but both boys seem to do the opposite of complain. Even when she doesn’t want it pulled, they’re tender in stroking it out of the way, reverent nearly of the years that went into growing it.
She remembers those years as being full of pain and fear. What were they really like, she ponders, to have left her with hair so long? Was her family particularly religious? Did she even have a real family out there? They hadn’t come looking for her ever; Shuichi’s nor Kaito’s either; what if they were all orphans, what if they were somehow related?
The last thought almost makes her laugh as the water finally runs clear. Kaito and Kaede, maybe, with the same eyes, but certainly not the rest of them.
She swings a towel around herself as she cranks the water off, heedless of how she still drips as she opens the bathroom back up, traipses down the hall for the tatami room that opens into the courtyard.
It’s small, but the fence is high and the little garden pond is laid with nice big stones and a deer scare and when it’s warm the halfway feral cat that lives under the house lays out in the sun and lets her scratch under his chin. Right now, though, the stars twinkle in the dark sky and a layer of steam rolls off the square cedar outdoor bath that was the main reason they chose the house, dotted with a few pale pillar candles flickering in the chill night. It’s large enough to fit the three of them more than comfortably, the cedar is deeply insulated and keeps the water warm for hours, and Maki drops her towel directly to the stone pathway to sink into steaming water up to her shoulders.
The door slides open nearly as soon as she settles, and Shuichi places a small wooden stool near her discarded towel, humming placidly as he folds it and uses it as a cushion to sit on the stool.
“Hot enough?” He asks softly. His voice has deepened and relaxed, some, the success of his cold case reopenings no doubt influencing his confidence.
She nods and leans back as he leans forward, meeting in the middle to let his lips trail down the side of her neck.
“Missed you today.” He whispers in her ear, smiling against its shell when it elicits a shiver. He pulls her long hair out of the water, wringing it out before laying it across the ledge of the tub.
“Missed you too.” She mumbles. He makes it so easy for her to say what she feels, almost like he can prompt her subconsciously. He suckles lightly on her earlobe, using her gasping arching response to slide his hand over her chest and under the water. She relishes in the way he feels on her unmarked skin — she used to wonder how she made it through training with so few scars, a thought she rolls her eyes at now — and turns to meet Shuichi’s lips with her own. He massages her gently, kneading at the red marks from the weight of her bust pressing her bra against her ribs all day, and when her mouth falls open to sigh he drags his tongue sinfully quickly past her lower lip.
The hem of his short sleeve is already wet when his touch drifts from cupping the undersides of her breasts to part her thighs gently and play with the curls there.
“Hnn—Shu—“
“S’alright, honey.” He whispers, and slides two fingers into her with almost no resistance.
Maki chokes, splashing water as she shoves her knuckles in her mouth before the entire neighborhood hears her cry. It’s Shuichi’s fault, she thinks even as he sucks in an aroused breath in her ear when her hips jolt up, cant back down; he’s always been absolutely showstopping with his fingers. He twists slowly as he curls them quickly, smiling against the side of her head when it makes her shudder soundlessly into her clenched fist.
“You have no idea the ways I dreamed of this. The ways I imagined what you might sound like, like this. How long I had to work to find the courage to do what I did to both of you.”
Maki’s cheeks burn. They never really talked about that night again, after it happened; first there wasn’t any time, now there’s not any reason.
“You’re right. I had no idea.”
His two fingers press up firmly as he drags them down and Maki jolts with a choked shriek before he clasps a hand over her mouth himself with a gentle hush in her ear. Their neighbors are farther away than most, but still only just down the road.
“Sorry.” She gasps as the deer scare tinkles again.
“No.” Shuichi orders before his voice softens. He gets so overeager about her pleasure, she can reliably get him erect just by whimpering in his ear.
“God, please don’t be. I’ll just wait until we get you inside. Do you want me to bring anything out for you?”
She whines as his fingers slip out, leaving her aching beneath the steamy surface of the water.
“Something to wear when I get out?”
“Yes, of course, sweetheart.”
“I’m not—“
“—I know your heart better than very nearly everyone else in this world and I love every pump that bleeds from it. I’ll bring you something to wear when you get out, sweetheart.”
He says it again more firmly, kissing her temple as he stands. The door behind her slides open, clicks shut, and she’s left alone in their little courtyard again, this time panting lightly.
She thinks of the first real memory she can say they shared.
After they had pulled Himiko from the rubble Shuichi had taken her by the front of her seifuku and kissed her fiercely, and the adrenaline must have overridden the shock because she had circled her arms around his shoulders and kissed back, feeling the dust settle over them as Himiko cheered at the sunlight.
But then as the reality of what they’d learned settled, they had parted and stared at one another with horror.
“We’re — we’re really not who we remember being, are we?”
And then another figure rose out of the rubble below them and they had watched in shrieking delight as Tenko sprinted out of the thrown-open door of what looked like an emergency release hatch where the courtyard used to be, leaping up the rubble to nearly take Himiko to the ground, followed by almost every other person that have quickly become the only real people Maki has ever known.
But then Kaede was helping Kaito stay standing, taking up the rear of the group, and Shuichi was screaming, she was sliding down the piles of rubble heedlessly of how her tights were shredding against the rocks, even as some old man she would later learn was a director chased her, shouting curses for ruining the show permanently.
Turns out Tsumugi was the first accidental filming death in fifty-three seasons, and everything else was supposed to be television magic.
All except for the part where they were unable to ultimately revert any of them to their original personalities, what with the flashback light generator being buried under the remains of what was merely a television set, leaving only their faces as record of the people they were before filming.
The door slides open again and Shuichi huffs as he comes back out. He’s stripped his wet shirt, and his pale chest rises and falls briskly.
“It’s going to get colder tonight.” He notes in that methodical decisive way he does most things, setting something down on the stool outside the bath. Maki folds a wet arm over the side of the tub and sure enough, the wind that wicks past is frigid.
“I won’t stay out here much longer.” She promises.
“Stay as long as you like.” Shuichi pulls a long lock of her hair out of the water where it had slipped back in. “Try not to get your hair too wet, though, you’ll freeze while it dries.”
Maki rolls her eyes. It’s always boys who’ve never had hair past their ears that worry about hers.
Shuichi smiles wryly, tugs the lock of hair in his hand loosely, and then he’s gone again.
She rolls over to settle her arms on the ledge of the tub more properly and looks down at what Shuichi left on the stool. Next to the towel he’d neatly folded is a pair of underwear Kaito had brought home on a whim for her, sheer and black and loose at each leg and with a waist so high it almost resembles a perverse miniskirt; and atop it, a black leather blindfold.
Maki swallows heavily. It’s not unfamiliar to her, but she’s far more accustomed to affixing it over Kaito’s lovely lavender eyes herself at Shuichi’s dictation.
So that’s how it’s going to be, then. They have no intention of letting her sit with her thoughts once she goes in.