Demyx was almost shocked by the level of destruction Axel had managed to wreak upon the dissection lab. Almost, but not quite. After all, he’d practically lived with Axel for about a year, and saw firsthand what kind of crap he could do to his own room.

He was very glad he wasn’t Zexion in that moment, because the silver-haired doctor looked about ready to pass out onto the floor, and that didn’t seem wise given the circumstances. Demyx thought he might have seen blood somewhere among the unidentified fluids on the floor. The shattered glass might have had something to do with that.

“Whoa, man. Hang in there,” the blonde said with a grin and a steadying hand to the doctor’s back. “It’s not so bad, now, is it?”

There was a long silence, and they both looked over the damages. Demyx winced as he noticed that a fire in the back corner was still kind of burning, though thankfully Axel had been smart enough to burn his shit on the metal dissection tables instead of the wood ones. If he looked closely enough, he thought he might could see the remains of a twice-mangled and too-long-preserved shark.

“…Not so bad…” Zexion replied disbelievingly. “The dissection samples are either butchered or burned, at least one jar has been shattered, there’s formaldehyde all over the floor and this Axel has left a burning fire in the back corner.”

“He thought it’d be out by now. Too bad this stuff burns so long.”

Zexion fumbled around in the dark for the light switch, probably with the intention of better assessing the damage.

The back wall was relatively unharmed, if you didn’t count the splash of something that might have been battery fluid on the corner, but there was only a little of it, really. Barely noticeable. It would have been less noticeable if it hadn’t been really black, and really drippy. A shame, that.

But pieces of something – from the shape, possibly a brain – were dumped in a little funeral pyre in the middle of the floor, unburned as of yet but this was probably due to distraction rather than lack of desire. So the overall picture was one of chaos – but not ill-intentioned chaos. More like wild animals had gotten loose inside and just had to examine everything.

The doctor sighed from beside him, and he put an arm around the other man comfortingly.

“Hey, it’s ok. We’ll just get them to clean it up, ‘kay? And Axel can buy you a new shark.”

Zexion still looked petulant, and he refused to uncross his arms.

“And a new brain?” Demyx continued hopefully, giving him a wide-eyed puppy look with a sheepish, please-do-it-for-me grin.

Zexion finally turned back to him with a slightly accusing, slightly bewildered but mostly acquiescent look – success – and gave him a pathetic attempt at a smile. It was something, at least.

“Alright, fine. Your friend stays. But if this kind of disaster happens again – the cats or the med lab – then the redhead’s out.”

“Aw, thanks. You’re a lifesaver Zexy!”

And he gave the doctor a tight hug, then turned and left, leaving Zexion with the same look on his face as he’d been left with the last time Demyx had done this. Only a matter of time. Because Demyx, after all, wouldn’t ever make the first move; he just kept on doing his thing until the other guy couldn’t take it anymore and either broke and ran away or caved in.

His record was perfect, so far. He was just good like that.


*~*~*

Zexion felt a twinge of regret as he watched Demyx walk away – probably to set into motion more events that would mould the world the way he liked it. The doctor smiled almost imperceptibly as he watched the boy leave, then frowned as he realized that his arm was halfway extended. Maybe he’d intended to stop the kid, he wasn’t really sure.

Demyx’s feet were disappearing up the stairs, so if he wanted to make a move, he’d have to do it now. Dammit.

“Um, wait,” he said awkwardly, half-hoping both that the other had heard and that he hadn’t, for different reasons.

The blonde turned and was back down the stairs in a flash.

“Yes?” he asked expectantly.

“Uh…” Zexion wasn’t even quite sure why he’d called the boy back at all, but he needed a reason… “I was just thinking,” he said instinctively, “that you might like to get out of here for a day,” he said, arms crossed and looking away so that he didn’t have to meet the other’s gaze. “I mean, if you have nothing else going on, or…” He mentally slapped himself as he realized how stupid that sounded. Of course he had nothing else going on. This was an asylum. It’s not like they regularly held parties here.

He looked back surreptitiously to gauge the boy’s reaction, only to see Demyx’s eyes lit like he’d never quite seen them.

“Really?!” he asked jubilantly, “That would be amazing. Can you really do that?!” He looked like he was trying not to bounce up and down, maybe for Zexion’s sake. Heh. Dumb kid. That didn’t bother him.

“Yeah… I can organize an outing. But we don’t – you don’t – have to go with the other inmates if you want,” he said, gaining confidence from his obvious excitement.

“Can we go now?” he asked.

“I have to organize the papers, and…”

“Please?” he asked again, before Zexion could finish his sentence.

There was a silence as the doctor tried to cover up the outward signs of his caving will with a look of intense concentration.

“…Fine,” he said at length. “I’m sure I can figure something out.”

“Oh, thank you so much!” Demyx responded, evidently unable to restrain himself any longer, and so he burst into another hug, this one directed straight at the doctor’s midsection. He wasn’t exactly shocked by it, this time, but still was slow reciprocating, and even when he did it was tentative at best.

“Alright, then,” he said, trying to change the track of the conversation, though he didn’t exactly know why or to what, “if we want to be able to go anywhere before it gets inordinately late – it’s already six…” He drifted off, hoping Demyx would get the hint. There was a silence.

“What?” he responded wide-eyed. Clearly he did not get it.

“…You’re going to have to let go of me,” he said, resigned, though it occurred to him that that was about the last thing he wanted.

*~*~*

Saïx wondered how long it would take to wear a groove in these floors with one’s feet – they were cheap, so probably not long, and with all the pacing he had been doing for the past several hours, he was well on his way to forging a path from his living room back to his bedroom. The source of his agitation was obvious enough – confusion, a bit of anger, and a relentless attraction to a man who really didn’t deserve it at all.

He didn’t really know what to think about these recent developments. Under normal circumstances, Demyx might be providing his insight, looked-for or not; but neither the blonde nor anyone else could enter his room without prior permission from the Superior, and the inmate seriously doubted that Xemnas would allow the boy in to see him. So, he was left with only his own interpretation of the situation.

And his interpretation that had been working so well had suddenly dropped him halfway between nowhere and somewhere, leaving Saïx rather frustrated in several senses.

The man was bewildering, to say the very least. It was as if he couldn’t make up his mind whether he could tolerate Saïx or not. Due to the most recent development, Saïx could assume that he was not only tolerated, but appreciated. That he was an object of interest.

He wondered if he should confront the other man about it, bring it up again, or if he should wait and see what Xemnas did on his own. That might be a better indicator of his interest level. But, at the same time…

Saïx grinned slowly as an idea finally struck. It had been years since he’d used them, but he’d managed to get a set of bobby pins snuck into him for the purpose of picking locks. And he could figure out where the central office was quickly enough.

Time to see what the man looks like on his own territory.


*~*~*


It had been less than a day before Sora got confirmation back that a warrant had been issued to gather information on Kairi’s boss. That was quick for bureaucrats; astonishingly quick, actually. Riku was personally of the opinion that Cloud and Sephiroth were screwing each other, but he wasn’t going to voice that. It was a little too close to illegal for his comfort – conflict of interests and all that – and probably wasn’t anything he needed to stick his nose into anyway.

And so, he and Sora were in street clothes despite the fact that they were on duty, and wandering as inconspicuously as they could down the sidewalk that led to the Hollow Bastion Correctional Facility.

“So, how exactly do you plan to set up all that without someone taking notice? I’m willing to bet that this guy has up cameras of his own all over the place,” Riku asked casually, hands in his pockets. They both were carrying small book-bags over their shoulders filled with all kinds of surveillance equipment that they hadn’t gotten the chance to examine yet.

“Um, I’ll figure that out when we get there,” Sora responded. “But before we do that… I have a perfect plan that will require next to no effort!” he said excitedly. Riku groaned internally – he could just sense something coming that he wasn’t necessarily going to like. He sighed in relief as the object in question turned out to be only a pen – then realized that a pen was probably high on the list of things that couldn’t be included in a plan without the plan being utterly retarded.

“It’s a recording pen, see? We just stick it in his pen-holder, turn it on, and it’ll send recordings of his conversations directly to us! Cool, huh?”

Yes, except for the obvious failing that it was rather hard not to notice the holes through which the microphone recorded sounds. He stared disbelievingly as his lover.

“…A spy-pen. You’re going to give Xemnas a spy-pen.”

“Yeah!”

Riku stared at him in dumbfounded silence. He didn’t really know what to say, at all; which was a rarity for the man. He kept trying to tell himself that it wasn’t cute. Really.

“…Sora, that could totally blow the plan out of the water,” he said in a tone of disbelief. “It’s really easy to notice, plus it’s cliché like none other. And you know that normally, they’re used by the cop so that they don’t get found out?”

Sora pouted a little, playing with his pen absently.

“Yeah… but it would be cool!”

“…Sora. No,” Riku said determinedly, giving his hair a quick toss.

“Aww, fine…” the other said, resigned, and re-pocketed the pen.

There was a silence for a moment as Riku battled his curiosity. He didn’t really want to encourage Sora, but at the same time, he was vaguely curious where someone would come upon something like a spy-pen.

“…Where did you get that, anyway?” he asked eventually, not looking at Sora.

“I ordered it from a magazine – it’s called Gadget-Collector. You should totally come look at it with me sometime. I have a whole collection of these things, just in case we ever need them!”

And Riku couldn’t help but chuckle at that, then laugh, ignoring Sora’s bewildered expression.

“You…” he said with a grin. He found himself unable to quite finish that sentence, so he turned to Sora and kissed him instead. To make him be quiet, of course, and not at all because he thought it was cute, or adorable, or any other number of adjectives that were not going through his head at the moment.

What’s the rush, anyway? They had at least a couple of hours before the facility closed. And those hours could definitely be put to better use.

*~*~*

It had taken Saïx maybe five minutes to find his improvised lockpicks and to get out of his room. It felt amazing – better than he could explain – to be free again, finally; and he wondered momentarily at the wisdom of releasing himself from that place, considering that he would just have to go back. And that one taste of freedom would make his incarceration that much more unbearable.

But for now, he savored the feeling, loping easily down the hallways in the way he had mastered years ago, arms swinging freely, and full with a burning that told him he would succeed, that he was powerful. And he liked that feeling; he was hooked on that feeling.

It didn’t take him long to reach the room where the former facility-head’s office had been, and surely enough, the room was labeled “The Superior,” which almost made Saïx laugh at the arrogance of it all, but not quite. He hesitated for a moment outside of the door with a hand up, on the verge of not knocking and just entering. He gave the door a soft rap, in light of one of his and Xemnas’s early conversations, and opened the door quietly, determined to be polite.

“Yes?” came Xemnas’s voice from behind his desk. The man’s room was curiously undecorated, although diplomas and awards hung from the walls to assuage the emptiness. A small bookshelf stood in the corner, with one tiny potted plant – so green that Saïx highly suspected it was a fake – and about thirty classics. He noted with interest that Xemnas appeared to be halfway through a sparkling-new copy of Paradise Lost. An interesting choice – he’d finished that not too long ago himself.

“Xemnas,” he said stepping into the room, unaware of how badly his hair clashed with the faintly orange surroundings, “I believe you do not quite understand how cowardly it was of you to leave before we had finished our exchange.”

His eyes betrayed surprised for just a moment, widening them and then blinking before returning, almost forcibly it seemed, his expression back to normal.

“…You have exited your quarters,” he said. It was a statement, but at the same time he asked how exactly the other man had done it.

“Not any of your business how, let me assure you.”

“It most certainly is,” he responded, forehead creased. He didn’t seem particularly happy about that, but then Saïx hadn’t expected him to be.

“What’s important for now is that I’m here, you’re here, and I’m demanding a reason for what you did.”

Xemnas seemed content, for the moment, to drop their earlier course of conversation and continue along this new one.

“It is as you said. The feeling of domination over someone such as yourself is… intoxicating, at the very least.”

Saïx paused for a moment; he wasn’t particularly thrilled that Xemnas was interested in domination, but realized that saying as much would make a hypocrite of him, considering everything.

“Then why did you leave?”

“I thought I explained that to you.”

He thought for a moment in silence, before realizing that Xemnas’s way of dominating, of course, wouldn’t simply involve physical domination. Controlling what he thought or felt by carefully chosen actions – those would be more along the line of his preferences. He would have to be sure not to allow that to happen.

After a while, he finally spoke.

“Ah, I see.” Another pause. “I will have to remember that, then. Your interests lie in mental domination.”

“Are you expecting to need this information?” Xemnas asked with a look that told Saïx he knew exactly what he’s doing.

“Yes, I am.”

“In what way do you expect to use it?” he responded. Saïx scowled – this was the other’s version of flirting, goddamn him, but he was being such a fucking tease.

He didn’t respond, but instead, he slowly began to advance on the other man, expression not changing except for a look of victory that began to glimmer in his eyes. Xemnas didn’t move – maybe he was curious, maybe he didn’t understand what the other man was about to do. He seemed to be paralyzed, immobile either by design or with shock, until Saïx’s fangs met with his neck, marking him there, blood running in tiny rivulets out of the mark. His mark.

Xemnas put a hand up to his neck to stop the bleeding, but the look in his eyes was dark; and Saïx met his eyes with a smile, a smirk, a grin – and he licked the blood off the corners of his mouth, savoring it.

“I think that perhaps you have misunderstood. It is not you who should be marking the other.”

And Saïx smiled as he watched Xemnas stand, because this was a game he could keep playing. A game that, maybe, he could never win; but part of the fun was that he would never want to.

Where’s the fun in winning when winning stops the game?

*~*~*

Zexion was contemplating vaguely the wisdom of his idea as Demyx dragged him wholeheartedly out into the bright orange sunlight of the early evening. Some of the nurses had given him strange – even downright evil – looks upon his departure, and was quite sure that they’d written something down on those ominous little clipboards they liked to carry around so much.

So he was going to get in trouble over it eventually; soon eventually. But that wasn’t now, and another glimpse of the look of pure elation on Demyx’s face was enough to make Zexion decide to put thoughts of possible punishment away for now.

“So, what would you like to do first?” he asked quietly, not really wanting to interrupt the sounds of the outside. God knows he didn’t get out that often either.

“That’s a park, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I kind of want to go there. Is that ok?”

“Yeah. There’s a zoo there too, if you want,” he said cautiously, hoping the question wouldn’t make it seem like he thought Demyx childish. The last thing he wanted to do was offend the boy, but his social skills were almost nonexistent.

“Oh, that would be amazing. I haven’t been to a zoo in years!”

Zexion gave him a small smile that he probably didn’t see as he dragged the doctor in through the tall wrought-iron gate. It was early summer, so the trees were a dark and verdant green, and the birds were chirping quite contentedly from the upper branches.

The children’s playground ahead of them wasn’t quite empty, despite the fact that it was getting on in the evening; a few kids of different ages roamed the equipment that must have been brightly colored at one point. It was chipped and dirty now, but happily so, from the work of many thousands of kids over years.

It occurred to the doctor suddenly why he kept away from these places when he saw one of them – a short brown-haired boy with an expression of mischief – point in his direction with a giggle. He sighed in resignation – this seemed to happen every time children saw him. His hair color was odd enough that they singled him out as the object of their thankfully short-lived interest as soon as he walked into their line of sight.

“Hey, mister! What’s wrong with your hair?” the kid asked, running up quickly so as to have a better view of the strange man’s hair, and followed by a horde of other curious children.

He heard Demyx giggle from beside him and had to resist the urge to give the other man a glare.

“There’s nothing wrong with my hair,” he said shortly. “It’s just a different color than yours.”

“It’s a funny color. And it sticks up all weird. What do you do to it? Mommy says that if you go swimming too much without washing your hair it’ll turn blue,” he informed the doctor, with the air of someone who feels they’ve just given out some very important advice.

“Thank you, I’ll keep that in mind.”

There was another chortle from beside him, and finally Demyx let go of Zexion’s hand – he hadn’t even realized the patient had been holding it – and squatted down so as to be at eye-level with the kids.

“Hey, how about this. You leave Zexion alone, and I’ll come play with you for a little while, ok?”

They seemed thrilled by this idea, and almost instantly dragged him away to the playground, on which he looked strangely comfortable. They started a game of tag quickly enough, with Demyx apparently as the one doing the tagging – but it was only minutes before he started getting glances from the mothers that said that they were not comfortable with a strange man playing with their children. It wouldn’t be long before they realized he was a mental patient, and probably called the cops on them.

“Demyx,” he called, “We have to go.”

“Why? I’m having fun!”

“Just come on. I’ll buy you something if you come now.”

“…Ice cream?” he said, glancing over towards an ice-cream cart on the pavilion to the side of the playground.

“Yes. Ice-cream.”

And he was down in a flash at the mention of iced-cream. Of course he would be; he didn’t get that sort of thing very often.

It only took them a few minutes to walk over to the cart and pick out the bars they wanted – Demyx had convinced him to get one of his own – and to be off down the gravel pathway, hands barely touching in the way of people who weren’t sure whether the other wanted to. But they hadn’t made it very far down the path before Zexion felt a start from beside him, and turned to see Demyx staring with astonishment at something down the road.

He followed the other’s gaze, only to find a blonde girl at the other end of it – almost a woman, really – dressed in black leather and chains, sprawled over the park bench and smoking as if she weren’t less than a minute from a children’s playground. She was pretty in her own way, if you liked vipers, and she gave off the impression of being coiled for a strike she could unleash at any moment.

“Larxene?!” came the boy’s voice from beside him, with too much shock in it for Zexion to really tell whether it was a good shock or a bad shock.

*~*~*

“Oh, it’s you, dumbass. Took you long enough to get out of there. What, you make a break for it too?” she asked, with a slow smirk that had always made Demyx nervous. He didn’t really like it at all.

“Uh, no…” came the bewildered response from beside him. “So you made a jailbreak?! Shouldn’t they all be out looking for you now?” He didn’t seem to be reacting too well to finding his bandmate looking like she’d slept on a park bench for a night and using cancer-sticks at the same time.

“Eh. I’ve got some friends in high places. Anyway, who’s this dick?” she asked with a toss of her head towards Zexion. The doctor tensed a little – he was probably insulted. She was kind of insulting sometimes.

“This is Zexion, and he’s not a dick,” he responded defensively, unable to come up with a better comeback in her presence. He never had been able to.

“O-ho, he hasn’t got one? Why do you hang out with him, then? I had been under the impression you went for men,” she said with a grin that he could have sworn showed her forked tongue.

Demyx made a little choking noise, and he was sure he had turned at least five different colors before making some kind of response. There was no movement from his side, and he wouldn’t turn his head to see how the other was responding.

“What?! I mean… Larxene! How can you say things like that?”

“Call it like I see it, babe,” she said, moving smoothly into a sitting position, then tossing her cigarette into the grass and standing.

“Well you always see it in the most insulting possible way for the rest of us.”

“Not my fault the rest of you guys are retarded. Speaking of retards, where’s Axel?”

“Um, he’s… Well he’s in the asylum with me.”

“What the hell?” she said with a raised eyebrow. “Did he plead insanity to an arson charge or something?”

“No… I mean, he’s not really in there.”

“What the hell do you mean by that? You say he is, then say he isn’t, make up your goddamn mind.”

“He’s not a patient there. He’s just… in there.”

He felt Zexion shift from beside him, then clear his throat, and he felt a wave of gratitude for the doctor’s intervention – she usually wasn’t this bad, but it was like after not seeing each other for months, either she was making up for lost time with extra bitchiness or he’d forgotten how to deal with it.

“Sorry… Larxene, was it?” he interrupted determinedly, “but Demyx has to be getting back, now, and it’s past visitor’s hours at the facility. I highly suggest that you find somewhere to sleep,” he said with an amused look at her park bench, “and please do not follow us back. We don’t have room to keep people who just don’t have a place to sleep.”

She gave him an irritable glare and a frown, then crossed her arms.

“Fine then. Kick me out. Demyx, see you, you fuckin’ idiot,” she said, with a two-fingered wave over her shoulder as she turned away from them. “But don’t think this means you’ve gotten rid of me. I’ll show up soon enough, and we’re starting up the goddamn band again, you hear me?”

He was fairly sure he squeaked out a nervous “Yes ma’am” – that tended to be his response to a lot of things Larxene said – before taking Zexion by the shoulders and turning them back around and walking speedily towards the facility.

After all, he didn’t really want her to see where they were going. Her evil laugh would haunt his nightmares for years.

*~*~*

“Y’know, it probably wasn’t very smart of them to let us both down here without supervision. Again,” Axel said with a lazy grin and a sweeping hand motion across the devastated room. He was quite proud of his handiwork, really. He wondered if anyone had noticed their names melted – subtly, of course – into the dissection tables. Probably not.

Stupid of them, to let someone into an insane asylum with a lighter; but their loss, right?

“Yeah, well. They haven’t proven themselves to be the smartest guys, have they?” he responded with a matching smirk. They were both down here to clean up the mess, technically – but that also gave them the opportunity to finish switching the containers that all of the preserved samples were in. They had stopped when they found the cats, lying on top of each other, looking so sad and alone.

Axel had always had a soft spot for cats.

They had returned the kitties into their little fridges, and Axel had left a preserved little mouse in with them on a whim. Just like the ancient Egyptians, or some crap like that.

They both set to work cleaning up the mess, Axel setting afire the brain-pyre while Roxas scrubbed battery acid off the walls. He watched the fire with interest for a while, rather than doing any actual cleaning, but was soon mesmerized by the movement of Roxas’s extremely attractive ass rather than even the diminishing fire. It was like a magnet, or some shit, and he found his hand magnetically attracted in that direction.

But he wouldn’t take advantage of Roxas. He wouldn’t, goddammit.

“It’d all be clean if I just burned the whole damn place,” he suggested lightly as a change of topic, absently switching his lighter on and off.

“Yeah,” the other responded, “but then you’d be in jail for arson, and we wouldn’t have a chance to raise hell together anymore.”

There was a pause, as he turned and looked at Axel, bright blue eyes boring into the redheads in a way that was perfectly, amazingly natural.

“I really had fun today,” he said with a half-smile. “Really.” He paused again, then continued before Axel could interrupt. “You kind of creeped me out at first. I mean, imagine not knowing anyone in the world and then suddenly having this guy launch himself at you like that… I mean, it was kind of disorienting.” He gave another smile, a bigger one this time.

“But now I get that we were friends, right? Best friends. And I just wanted to say thanks, for never giving up on me, even though I left, didn’t I? Thanks for not forgetting about me.”

And Axel gave him the biggest smile of his life.

“ ‘Course not, dumbass. I could never forget about you. Swear to god. You’re like… I dunno.”

Roxas raised an eyebrow and the redhead flushed a little and laughed at his incoherency.

“I mean, you’re like a part of my life, you know? I couldn’t just leave you behind.”

“I was that important to you, huh?”

“Yeah, you were.”

And they shared a smile that was half-awkward, half-understanding, then turned back to their work, wondering exactly what had transpired between them, and what it meant. But Axel could feel himself glowing a little – this was a feeling he hadn’t had for years.

And god-damn, Roxas was back.


*~*~*


It had been almost fifteen minutes since Saïx had entered Xemnas’s office when the doctor finally appeared to remember something. His eyes widened, and he pushed himself off of Saïx, pretending that he wasn’t admiring the other’s shirtless glory. Saïx sat up in a vague confusion as Xemnas ran a hand over his hair to smooth it, and then gave the other a dark look.

“Get out,” Xemnas said with a toss of his head, putting his hair back in place again.

“What?” was Saïx’s halfway incoherent response.

“You have been out of your room for probably twenty-five minutes. I require you to return.”

He gave Xemnas a halfhearted glare; he knew he had lost, already. They wouldn’t continue after this.

“Seems like a pretty bad time for you to remember this,” he responded bitingly.

“Perhaps. Or the best time.”

“Fuck you.”

“I believe you have that backwards,” he said with as tiny a change of inflection as he could possibly manage.

“Yeah, well.”

And with that, Saïx stood and walked towards the door, not looking back towards the other man.

“I believe you are forgetting your shirt,” came the voice from behind him.

“Keep it. As a souvenir, if you’d like.”

And he walked straight out the door, shirtless, hair disheveled and asylum-issue pants hanging loosely off one hip. He arrived at the door just in time to brush by an astonished Vexen.

“I’m sorry… was I interrupting something?” he said, regaining his coherency for just long enough to quirk an eyebrow suggestively.

“You would have been if you got here five minutes earlier.”

“…then should I wait for the Superior to become… decent?”

“No, he should be fine by now,” he said with a smirk, knowing that he probably wasn’t. And he didn’t give Vexen another look as he walked back down the hallway. Because he didn’t really give a damn if anyone knew what was going on between him and Xemnas, but he knew the other man would. So, for every time the doctor was an asshole, now Saïx had some way to get him back.

It was something of a bonus that little Naminé passed out as he went by, too.


*~*~*


“Aw, shoot,” exclaimed Sora loudly as he, once again, slammed his thumb with the hammer he had been using to nail in the flat camera.

“Careful up there,” came Riku’s amused voice from down below, and the brunette cursed his inborn clumsiness, but was rather grateful that his lover found it cute rather than annoying.

They had no idea how they’d managed to get into Patient 36’s room without him being there – according to Kairi, he wasn’t allowed out of his room for now, so they must have miraculously gotten here during one of his medical check-ups.

Once the cameras were set up, Sora dropped down – albeit clumsily – from the ladder Kairi had provided them with, slipping awkwardly on the tile as he tried to stand up again.

“Seriously, Sora, how you ever passed the exam to be on the squad I’ll never know,” he teased, helping the other up as they attached the remaining equipment to their belts.

“I don’t know either. Maybe they give you extra points for effort?” he said cheerily.

Riku laughed at that.

“If people get points for effort – or enthusiasm – you’d get into any program in the world, baby.”

Sora was about to respond, but before he could speak, they heard some clicking noises of metal on metal, and then the door to the hallway opened, framing a blue-haired man – the inmate, most likely – standing there, shirtless.

“Um… hi?” said Sora awkwardly, trying to hide his hammer and nails.

“What are you doing in my room?” asked the man in the doorway.

“Um, we’re…”

“Checking for contraband,” Riku interrupted smoothly, putting his arm tightly around Sora’s shoulders as if to will him away from looking at the other man’s perfectly toned chest. The brunette smiled a little – why would he want to look at anyone else when he had Riku whenever he wanted?

“…Is that so?” said the inmate with a look that turned from mildly annoyed to thunderous in an instant. “Would you be so kind as to leave and tell the Superior that he will never distract me in such a way again.”

And having finished their work, they both left as quickly as they could without seeming nervous, entirely forgetting the ladder they had been using.

“…What’s up with him, I wonder?” Sora asked as soon as they were out of hearing range from that particular room.

Riku didn’t respond, so he looked up to his lover’s face, only to see him trying to hold in his laughter.

“What?” he asked in confusion. He didn’t see what was so funny.

“Well,” said Riku with another chuckle, “he was probably gone because he was screwing the boss, to be quite frank.”

Sora blinked.

“Riku! Don’t be rude.” He paused, thinking about it. “Anyway, what makes you say that?”

“Well, he was shirtless, for starters. I heard him pick the lock of the room so he obviously wasn’t let out, and he seemed so angry when we implied that we were there under the Superior’s orders that they were probably having a little fun right about then.”

“…Huh. Then… maybe the patient isn’t as offended about all of this as we had thought?”

“We’ll see,” responded Riku with a smile.

But the blood suddenly drained from Sora’s face as he realized the implications of all this; if they were… um, sleeping together, and they had cameras set up in both of the patient’s rooms…

Suddenly he didn’t want to be the one checking the camera footage anymore.