A/N: Slightly longer Sunday update!

I'm curious what you guys think of Akito after this chapter. He reveals a little more about himself.

Looking forward to reading your comments :)

***

“Suzuna, I need to know where Rein is!” Akito said again, clearly losing patience.

Kimiko could not believe how insensitive he was being, “Akito I-”

“I don’t know,” Suzuna cut her off. “there was shouting and gun shots, I wasn’t even fully conscious. Ni-San took me out of the house and gave me a note that said I would be safe with you, Amai-San. He sent his Korean men with me and they brought me here. He was really hurt, and I think he was captured. I don’t know where to find him! You have to help me, please.”

“We will, Suzuna.” Kimiko said, gritting her teeth, “We will have to.”

“I know where to start,” Akito typed away on his phone, “you stay here with Kimiko, take a shower. She will give you a change of clothes. Try to rest. Your brother is right, you are safe here.”

Kimiko grabbed his arm as he was about to leave, “Look, are you sure about this?” She had every intention to help Suzuna, but she did not want to let Akito go out on his own, no matter how brave and ballsy he thought he was. “This matter is clearly beyond us.”

Akito pulled his arm free with a withering look, “I know what I’m doing,” he stated, leaving no room for argument. That expression always made him look like someone else entirely, someone cruel, vicious. 

Kimiko didn’t say anything more, and the strain in their friendship creaked and twitched again.

He held Kimiko’s gaze for a beat, then his eyes drifted to Suzuna. 

“God…” he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, his appearance softening a thousand-fold like thawing frost, and his eyes shone like the Akito she knew and loved. He came up to the girl and bent down to kiss her head. “It will be okay. I will find him.”

Then Akito turned to Kimiko, placing a cold palm on her cheek. There was a complicated mess of emotions in his gaze. Eyes that she was never able to fully decipher. Slowly, he leaned in close, tilting her head slightly. 

Kimiko’s heart thundered in her chest, was he really? 

He was. After another pause, he placed a gentle, lingering kiss on her lips. Kimiko’s thoughts came to a screeching halt.

She stood there frozen when he pulled away and left, her face flaming hot.

***

Akito shrugged out of his suit in the back of the cab he was travelling in. This neighborhood was not one the best, and it wouldn’t do if he stood out like a nun at a death metal concert. 

He folded his suit jacked neatly, sad to take it off. Suzuna’s demeanor had worried him at first, but now that he had a chance to think it over, Akito was a lot calmer. Whatever trouble Rein had gotten himself in, Akito was certain he would be fine.

Rein loved seeing Akito in a suit. This one, a Tom Ford beauty that fit him like a dream. A very expensive, exquisitely crafted, high thread count dream. A little much for a small house party, but why lower himself to fit their pathetic standards? He did, however, forgo the tie and left a few buttons undone for a more casual look. And it was disappointing Rein would not get to see it.

The car stopped in front of an old house that to most people would look haunted. Akito went to the front door, jacket slung on his arm, feeling strangely anxious. He rang the bell eleven times before the temperamental former doctor opened the door, marking the wood with blood-soaked gloves.

“…Yes?”

“Ah…it’s Himura Akito,” he said, “I texted you? Then you called me?”

“You’re late.”

“What?”

“Late.”

Akito stared.

She stared back.

Akito blinked at her.

She raised an eyebrow.

Akito took two steps back. A breeze blew through, bringing dry leaves with it, and the wind chimes tinkled softly in the quiet night. “So, he’s—”

“Dead?”

“Dead…”

The wood beneath Akito’s feet creaked as he swayed slightly, his suit slipping slowly to the ground. Then he charged forward, shoving the woman out of the way. 

“Downstairs,” she called out.

The examination room he crashed into reeked of rust, metallic and foul. And the blood...he had never had the misfortune of seeing it in such quantity. In the middle, above a pile of torn and bloodied clothes, on a narrow metallic bed was a pale, almost entirely red and white body.

“No…no!”

Akito was right beside Rein, his hand a hair’s breadth away from his blood-streaked face. Akito was afraid of touching him, as if it would defile him somehow. He searched fervently for any signs of life in the lines of his body, the one he was more familiar with than his own. Instead, they found two, four, no five bullet wounds.

Oh my god his hand…

Akito refused to accept it. To acknowledge that he had been wasting his time with Kimiko when... Did you suffer Rein? While I was at that stupid party, completely oblivious. 

Akito cradled the cold face of the only person who ever knew him, and pressed their foreheads together, stinging eyes closed tight. His entire body shivered with the force of realization, the grief. Unbeknown to him, a sob escaped his teeth as his hands fisted in tangled black hair, “I’m sorry,” he whispered as his lips brushed against bruised ones, and he froze.

He could have imagined it.

Did he dare to hope? Akito’s fingers buried themselves in Rein’s neck, and he waited…

There. A pulse.

Faint, slow, but it was there!

“Well, that was interesting.”

Akito’s head whipped up towards the staircase where the Doctor was standing.

“What the hell kind of Doctor are you? He’s alive!” He snarled, “We must get him to the hospital! Do you not know how to check for a pulse you idiot?”

“Huh,” the Doctor leaned against the railing of the staircase casually, unimpressed with his tirade, “I knew he was alive.”

Akito’s brain refused to process that for a moment, “What?”

“I knew he was alive. I just wanted to know if you gave a shit about him,” she shrugged, “now I know, and so do you.”

He stared at her like she was out of her mind. Maybe she was. What was he doing talking to a crazy person? Take a deep breath Akito, he told himself, get your head on straight, planning calms you down, so do that. Plan how you are going to get Rein away from here.

“I have stabilized him and tried my best to tend to his wounds. But then he passed out from the pain. I can’t take him to a hospital, they’ll know I tried to…I can’t be seen being all mediciney without my license,” the Doctor said, as she came to stand on the other side of the table.

“I see,” Akito said, smoothing his hair and clothes back down, composing himself. He felt his face take on its usual expression of polite disinterest, sealing away all traces of any vulnerability he might have felt or showed. Even his own disapproval of his careless emotional display, disappeared like they had never been there at all, “That’s where I come in.”

“Precisely.”

 ***