“I’m going to go visit Schuldig,” Yohji cheerfully announced at dinner. “You wanna come, Omittchi?”
“You’re what?” Omi asked, startled.
“Going. To go. Visit. My boyfriend.”
“I heard you,” Omi said. “I was just . . . oh, sure.”
“Hey, I’m not going to allow any snooty Chinese dickhead to tell me when I can and can’t see my boyfriend,” Yohji said. “Especially not when my boyfriend is bedridden and shot, and it’s all his fault.”
“Why don’t you just let me deal with the snooty Chinese guy?”
“Okay,” Yohji said agreeably. “I’m gonna change.” He went up to his room, leaving the others blinking around the dinner table.
“You just got played,” Ken stated, amused.
“I’m starting to realize that,” Omi said. “Don’t worry, I’ll get him back for it.”
“Please do,” Aya said. He hadn’t regained his sense of humor since his sister had been kidnapped. Omi didn’t really blame him, but it made him sort of hard to deal with at times.
Yohji came barreling down the stairs in a tight crop top shirt and loose black jeans. Omi looked him up and down. “I thought we were going to go visit your injured boyfriend, not clubbing to pick up women.”
“Yeah, but I’ve gotta torture him,” Yohji said.
“Really.”
“Yep.” Yohji fished out his keys and motioned for Omi to join him. “But hey,” he said, once they were in the car and safely out of earshot from Aya, “maybe now that Crawford’s back, they’ll be able to figure out what’s going on, and we’ll be able to get Aya’s sister back before he breaks something.”
“Yeah, that would be good,” Omi agreed. “Although I’m not sure we should be asking Crawford-san right this moment.”
Yohji laughed, but he definitely seemed to agree. He parked in one of the visitor spaces in the apartment parking lot and they went up to the apartment. He rang the bell and waited. Chien swung the door open and gave them a level glare. “What are you doing here?” he snarled.
“Aw, are visiting hours over already?” Yohji asked.
Chien leveled an even nastier look at them. “You shouldn’t even know where ‘here’ is.”
“But I do,” Yohji said. “Can I come in? Thanks.” He elbowed his way past Chien and into the apartment, kicking off his shoes. Omi, quite amused, walked in behind him.
“No one can do anything with Yohji-kun,” he said to Chien, with a slight shrug.
Schuldig’s bedroom door opened and Brad walked out. Despite the fact that it was nearly nine o’clock at night, he was still wearing most of his suit. Only the jacket had been put aside. He gave Omi a long, measuring glance, which Omi returned in kind. Then Omi gave a small bow, the kind offered to an equal. “Crawford-san, I presume.”
Brad returned the bow, then extended his hand. “And you must be Omi-san. Nagi talks about you quite a bit.”
“Really?” Omi asked, pleased, shaking Brad’s hand.
Chien cleared his throat. “They are not supposed to be here,” he snapped.
Omi turned to look at him. “Probably not, but that ship sailed a while ago. The damage has already been done.”
“Listen to him, he’s the smart one,” Yohji said, and made a beeline for Schuldig’s room. He dodged and shut the door firmly behind him.
Omi shrugged slightly.
Chien looked at Brad in disgust. “And here I thought you said you had control over your team.”
Brad just returned the look in kind. “And here I thought you said it wasn’t ‘my’ team anymore. Schuldig didn’t gave Yohji the address until after I had been removed, so you really can’t blame that one on me.”
“I could go into the larger subject of why they were allowed to associate with another team of assassins in the first place,” Chien pointed out.
Brad shrugged. “Esstet never said a word against it. I’m not a telepath, so I don’t know about it when I’m doing something they don’t like until they tell me.”
“Don’t play stupid,” Chien snarled. “You knew damn well that Esstet wouldn’t approve.”
Brad turned to Omi. “This might take some time,” he said, clearly amused. “Chien is rather long-winded once he’s going. Nagi’s room is the first door on the left, if you’d like to say hello.”
“Yes, thank you,” Omi said. “That would be nice. I’m sure you’ll be here when I get back.” With that, he walked down the hallway and into Nagi’s room. Nagi glanced up from where he was happily buried in computer parts. As usual, the casing for his computer was off and he was fiddling with something inside.
Nagi looked up sharply as Omi went in, then relaxed visibly. “Oh, it’s you.”
Omi nodded. “Yohji-kun decided to have absolutely no discretion whatsoever and I figured I would come to keep him out of trouble. Plus I got to come see you. What are you doing to Frankencomputer now?”
Nagi grinned. “Crawford bought me two hundred fifty-six more megs of RAM as a present since we got him back safe. So I’m installing it.”
“Your computer really is going to take over the world,” Omi observed.
“With luck,” Nagi said, putting aside the parts.
“It’ll have to share with mine, you know,” Omi said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. He had never been in Nagi’s room before, and took this opportunity to look around. It was surprisingly bare; other than the furniture and the computer, the only things were some scattered books and manga. He made a mental note to get Nagi posters for Christmas.
“That’s okay,” Nagi said complacently. “How did High and Mighty react when you two showed up?”
“First he got into a snit that we had the address,” Omi said. “Then he proceeded to ignore me and start ragging on Crawford-san. Apparently I’m below his notice, which is convenient, because he’s certainly below mine.”
Nagi made a noncommittal noise and turned back to his computer. “He’s stupid and arrogant. Together, those can be a dangerous combination.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” Omi said. “His actions aren’t below my notice. But as an individual, he’s a slug.”
Nagi smiled slightly. “And what did you think of Crawford?”
“As a gut reaction, I kinda like him,” Omi admitted. “Though he also strikes me as very arrogant.”
“Yes, but unlike Chien, Crawford can back it up,” Nagi remarked.
“Well, when I left him, he was winning the argument.”
Nagi smiled. “And what did Crawford seem to think of you?” he asked curiously.
“Well, he bowed and offered to shake my hand, so he seems okay with me.”
Nagi paused, then said neutrally, “Well, he’s heard a lot about you, so he knows better to underestimate you like Chien does. He knows that you’re responsible for your team. And I think the time that you threatened to kill Schuldig and Schuldig actually believed you got back to him.”
Omi blinked. “What an odd way to receive a compliment.”
Nagi smiled shyly. “Well, as you said, he’s arrogant. So any time he notices someone, it’s a compliment.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Omi said. “Now are you going to keep ignoring me in favor of your computer or what?”
Nagi blushed and put the computer parts aside, sitting on the bed next to Omi. “Sorry. It’s been a long day. I worked for twelve hours and . . . there have been arguments and . . . not . . . prettiness. And Schuldig keeps whining for coffee and painkillers.”
“Maybe he’ll stop whining now that Yohji-kun’s in there to take care of him,” Omi said. “So what’s been happening? Or have Chien and Crawford-san been doing this all day? Because it seems like they’re just looking for an excuse, especially Chien.”
Nagi shrugged. “Chien is pissed because now that Crawford’s back, he’s lost control of the team and he knows it. Crawford was pissed because Chien didn’t want him to go to work with me.”
Omi frowned. “Wouldn’t it make sense that he would go with you, since one of your other team members was down?”
“Yes, but Crawford isn’t supposed to be an active member of our team. He’s on probation and he’s not allowed to have any say in what’s going on.”
“That just doesn’t make any sense,” Omi stated. “Your superiors are in a snit so they’re going to handicap your entire team, so you’re less effective.”
Nagi shrugged again. “The first time we annoyed them, they cut us off from all resources, so let’s just say there’s not much room for mistakes around here.”
“I don’t envy you at all,” Omi replied.
“Let’s talk about something else,” Nagi said. He decided to not mention the assassination attempt having been planned by Esstet, because he had a vague feeling that Omi might decide to act on his plan to try to ship them all out of the country.
“Okay,” Omi said. “What do you want to talk about?”
Nagi blinked. “Uhm . . .”
“Or we could just kiss,” Omi suggested, and promptly followed up on his own suggestion.
Nagi was perfectly all right with this suggestion. “I’m having such a strange week,” he said, when Omi finally pulled away.
“Really?” Omi asked.
“Well . . . yeah.” Nagi seemed to be having trouble thinking. “I mean . . . death . . . hospitals . . . standing up to Chien . . . and now kissing. Very strange week.”
“We could have more kissing,” Omi said, putting his hand on Nagi’s cheek and pulling him closer.
“Okay.”
^^^^
Luckily for Nagi, Schuldig was distracted at this point in time. He had been pleased beyond words when Yohji had casually strolled in and plopped into the chair that Brad had been occupying. “Those clothes. That’s mean. You’re gonna come down here and kiss me, right?”
“Of course,” Yohji said, leaning down and giving him a very sound kiss.
Schuldig was more than happy to kiss back, hooking his fingers in Yohji’s shirt and trying to pull him down. Yohji allowed this for a few moments, then pulled away. “Now, now,” he teased. “Aren’t you an invalid?”
“I am not!” Schuldig protested. “Temporarily incapacitated! Invalid is a permanent condition, and let me tell you, I have no permanent conditions.”
Yohji snorted. “Sure, so you say. But you still have a big hole in your chest, so there will be no making out. How’re you feeling?”
“I’d be feeling better if we were making out.”
“I’m sure you would be,” Yohji said with a laugh.
“I’m okay. I’ve got painkillers. Brad is forcing me to stay in bed.”
“Good,” Yohji said, nodding his approval.
“Bad!” Schuldig protested. “Boring! I missed an eyewitness account of Brad and Chien arguing this morning! I had to hear it third hand! Well, second hand.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much,” Yohji said. “If the looks they were giving each other is any indication, they won’t be letting up on each other any time soon. In fact, they were arguing when I left.”
“Really? What over this time?” Schuldig tried to listen, but since Omi had departed for Nagi’s room, there were no ears that he could use.
“Us being here, of course.”
“Us?”
“Yeah, I towed Omi along with me to cheer up Nagi. That kid always needs cheering up for something.”
Schuldig poked his mind into Nagi’s room momentarily. “Oh, he’s being cheered up,” Schuldig said. “Any second now, Omi’s going to start kissing him, and then he’ll be very cheered up.”
Yohji grinned. “Those two are so cute, it’s sick.”
“Yeah, but Nagi could use some cute. And Omi is a bit . . . I don’t know. Too collected for a seventeen year old.”
“Well, that’s what happens when you’re the head of an assassin team.”
“How do you get to be the head of an assassin team when you’re that young?”
“I dunno. You start really young.”
“How early did he start?”
“I think when he was eleven? He doesn’t talk about it much.”
“Did he start training when he was that young, or did he start working?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Oh well,” Schuldig said peaceably. “Why are you way up there?”
Yohji rolled his eyes. “Because of a certain gunshot wound, perhaps?”
“It’s not like you were shot.”
“Well, not this time. But as I recall, we didn’t do any making out when I was the one lying around with a gut wound, either.”
“You never asked.”
^^^^
After three days, Schuldig came to the conclusion that Nagi was not sleeping. He understood that while everything had been going on, Nagi had been having trouble, but the dark circles under his eyes were only getting worse. “Okay, Nagichen,” he said, when the teenager brought him in dinner on his fourth day of bed rest, “What’s wrong?”
Nagi blinked at him. “Huh? Nothing. I mean, things are good. Better than they’ve been, anyway.”
“Okay,” Schuldig said. “I believe they’re better than they’ve been. But why do you look like you’re about to fall over and you’ve been punched in the face? When was the last time you slept? Sit down.”
Nagi glared at him slightly, but obeyed, plunking into the chair next to his bed. “I’m fine. I’ve just been having trouble sleeping, that’s all, but it’s no big deal.”
“You don’t usually have trouble sleeping.”
Nagi shrugged. “Bad dreams.”
“You usually don’t have dreams bad enough to make you lose sleep, do you? I haven’t noticed, and I’m not that inobservant.” He knew that Nagi did have bad dreams, but they seemed brief most of the time, and never plagued him for more than a few nights at a time.
“No, but . . . things have been tense lately, and I’ve been stressed. I figured that was all.”
Schuldig gave him a suspicious look. “Is that a normal stress reaction for you?”
Nagi shrugged. “I guess not. I’ve never really had dreams like this before. Usually I dream about stuff that’s happened, but in these . . . I keep dreaming about what could happen. And . . . it’s usually bad. That’s why I can’t sleep.”
Schuldig pondered this for a few long minutes. “Well, why don’t you go to bed tonight, and let me watch? Maybe I can block it or something.”
Nagi shrugged again. “If you want.”
“I’ll give it a go,” Schuldig said. “It can’t hurt.”
“Okay.” Nagi stood up and left the room. Schuldig spent most of the evening pondering this. He had a nasty suspicion that he might know the cause behind Nagi’s strange nightmares, but he wasn’t going to say anything until he knew for sure.
“Do precogs ever have secondary talents?” he asked Brad, as the older man got ready for bed.
“Sometimes. It’s rare. Why?”
Schuldig explained what Nagi had said, and the way Chien had shown him the vision of Weiss’ messy end when Schuldig had asked how the mission would go. Brad listened to this, frowning. “It’s possible, I suppose,” he finally said. “A trace of telepathy is all he’d really need. Wouldn’t you know if he was a telepath, though?”
“Not really,” Schuldig said. “Unless I was really looking for him. I can’t read you or any precogs. It’s like . . . because everything they deal with is in the future, so they’re almost out of phase with the present.” He shrugged a little. “The better the precog, the less I can read them, because the further ahead they are. And you are a fucking blank slate.”
Brad laughed slightly. “Thank you for the compliment. How blank is Chien?”
“I get bits and pieces of him. He’s a precog, but he’s not a grand one. But he’s not the worst there is.”
“I find that . . . very interesting,” Brad said musingly.
“Why?” Schuldig asked. “You’ve got that look.”
“Why would Esstet send a precog who’s only second rate? I know they have others that are nearly as good, or as good, as I am. There must be a reason they picked Chien, and I can think of two possibilities, not necessarily exclusive.”
“He’s got a secondary talent that he can use against us,” Schuldig said. “And the other?”
“If he’s not as good, that means he’s expendable. They might have sent him because it’s no big tragedy if they lose him.”
“You mean if we finally lose our tempers and splatter him?” Schuldig asked.
“Precisely.”
“If he is messing with Nagi, though, when I’m done with him, he won’t.”
Brad smiled slightly. “Feel free.”
Schuldig watched closely as Nagi drifted off to sleep. It was only about an hour before the nightmares started, vivid images of the deaths of their team and Weiss’. Schuldig tried to track the dreams back to their source, but he couldn’t. It was as if they had been set up quite a while ago and now triggered themselves whenever Nagi fell asleep.
He took a few minutes to consider this. He couldn’t figure out where they were coming from, but as odd as it seemed, the dreams themselves did. When the next one started, he blocked it, reflecting it back at its source.
There were no more dreams that night.
“How’d you sleep?” he asked Nagi brightly, when Nagi brought him in a donut and coffee the next morning.
“Better,” Nagi said, and he did look better. “What’d you do?”
“Well, they weren’t your nightmares,” Schuldig explained -- sort of. “So I just sent them back home.”
There was a pause. “Whose nightmares were they?”
“We can’t prove it, but I think they were Chien’s. The little slimeball.”
Nagi just sighed. “Of course.”
“We suspect he might have a secondary talent.”
“Better and better. I’m going to work.”
“Good luck. Hope Daishi doesn’t bore you to death.”
Schuldig waited until Brad came in. “Should I say something to Chien?” he asked, after explaining what had happened. “I don’t have any concrete proof. I could get it if I tried hard enough, but . . .”
“I would let it go unless the nightmares come back,” Brad advised. “It’s probably his weird idea of disciplining Nagi for disobeying his orders after you were shot. We can’t really argue with his rationale, so it would be better to not bring it up at all.”
Schuldig sighed. “No fun, but okay.”
^^^^
By the time Schuldig could get out of bed, nearly everyone in the apartment was ready to throttle him. Schuldig was definitely not a fun person to deal with when he was bored; not only was he constantly whining to be let up, but he could do it even when you weren’t in the room with him.
On the morning of the eighth day, Schuldig got up without even waiting for Brad to tell him that it was all right, stepped over the man’s presumably sleeping form, and went into the kitchen. It was not precisely a mess, but no longer arranged the way he liked it. The others hadn’t been as careful as he would have liked about putting things where they belonged.
Whistling softly, he began to straighten up. Brad came out of the bedroom about fifteen minutes later, fully dressed. He had gotten a haircut, and looked back to his normal, charming self. The man nodded to Schuldig, got himself a cup of coffee, and sat down. He reached for the paper, and was very disconcerted to find that it was not in his normal place.
“Chien has it,” Schuldig told him, and stifled a chuckle at Brad’s annoyed look. “The man’s insidious, isn’t he? He somehow manages to disrupt every pattern we have.”
“Yes, it’s quite irritating,” Brad agreed. Although he never would have admitted it, he was rather at odds without his usual routine and duties. He even would have welcomed paperwork. “On the plus side, Nagi’s hardly terrified of me at all anymore.”
“You’re the lesser of two evils,” Schuldig pointed out, with a small laugh. “And you’ve never purposely tried to intimidate him either.”
“He also saw me with a beard and no glasses, which I think just about destroyed any authority I ever had,” Brad added, sounding amused.
“Yeah well, the scruffy half blind look doesn’t suit you very well.” Schuldig poked his head into one of the cupboards. “And Chien,” he said, somehow making the name sound like a vile obscenity, “has used my favorite coffee mug. I’m going to have to bleach it.”
At this mention of Chien, Brad sobered up. “Actually, I’m sort of worried about what will happen the first time he tries to give you a mission. And a real one, not like that crack one to kill Weiss.”
“Why?” Schuldig asked. “We get the mission, you check things over behind his back, we go and clean house.”
“And if I see something that makes me want to contradict his orders?”
“We figure out a way to fix the problem.” Schuldig sounded very much like he believed that now that Brad was back, nothing could possibly go wrong. “I told Daeja rather pointedly that I didn’t care who spoke to Chien about our safety, or what they said to him. I wasn’t going to trust him at all.”
Brad gave him a dry smile. “That’s why I’m worried.”
“You lost me,” Schuldig said, turning to the coffee maker. Brad had finished it with his mug.
“If I see something, you’re going to do something rash and idiotic again.” Brad sounded an odd combination of amused and concerned.
“What I did was rash,” Schuldig agreed, “But it wasn’t idiotic. And I don’t see how compensating for Chien’s many and large deficiencies is idiotic.”
“True, but they’ve also made it clear that I do not have any authority,” Brad said, not sounding altogether too pleased about this.
“Well, you don’t get to decide on the missions,” Schuldig conceded, feeling a bit sorry for Brad. He knew that not being in charge was going to drive the precognitive crazy. “As long as Esset and their little puppet is still in control then I don’t see how the job gets done really matters. As long as it gets done.”
“I hope they agree, but it will also be a test of how much you and Nagi are capable of listening to Chien,” Brad pointed out. He watched Schuldig make coffee, his eyes lingering a little more than he usually allowed them to. Although he would have died before admitting it, he had missed the entire team, but particularly Schuldig, during his captivity.
He was also used to having the newspaper to hide behind, but Chien had taken that option away quite efficiently.
“I told them that I wouldn’t trust the man,” Schuldig said patiently, as if he were spelling this out to a small child. “They must have known Nagi-chen and I would be checking things with you.”
“Probably,” Brad agreed, trying to not take offense at Schuldig’s tone. “But they already tried to test your loyalty once, with the mission to kill Weiss, so I’m just worried, that’s all.”
Schuldig blinked at him. “My loyalty isn’t in question. They aren’t watching me anymore. They’re watching you.” He paused, remembering some of Daeja’s parting comments. “Sure, they’re watching to make sure I don’t do anything to really piss them off or botch their goals, but they know which way I’ll jump. They know my loyalty isn’t to them nor will it ever be. You’re the wild card now. They’re watching you more than me.”
“True, I suppose,” Brad conceded, after a few moments of thought. “But that doesn’t precisely make it easier on me.” He wondered vaguely if he was being surreptitious at all about watching Schuldig. Probably not.
“My point is that they know you’re going to be double checking the missions,” Schuldig said, giving Brad the casual eye and wondering why the man was paying so much more attention to him than usual. “It must have been worth the risk to them to keep me alive.”
Brad sighed. “Now if only I could figure that out.”
“What? What makes me so God-damned valuable?” Watching Brad out of the corner of his eye, Schuldig stretched, trying to loosen all his stiff muscles and see how Brad would react.
“Yes, precisely that.” Brad’s eyes dropped unceremoniously down so he was staring into his coffee mug.
“Is Daeja really their highest level telepath?” Schuldig found the fact that Brad was watching him both strange and flattering. As such, he didn’t really know how to react to it. Given Brad’s annoyance whenever someone called attention to something they weren’t supposed to notice, he decided it would be better to not say anything at all.
“She’s one of their best, rumored to be their best. Of course,” Brad added with a dry smile, “I always knew that wasn’t true.”
“Did they know it wasn’t true? ‘Cause I could have squashed her.” Schuldig poured himself a mug of the newly made coffee and plopped into the chair across from Brad.
“I imagine they checked her future rather carefully before sending her,” Brad replied, amused.
Schuldig slumped. “I don’t get it. What makes me so valuable? I’m stronger than her, but a lot less stable and with no education.”
“But you can do things that other telepaths can’t,” Brad pointed out. He had been giving the matter a lot of serious thought lately (given that there wasn’t much else to do during his captivity), and now frowned. “Like get through their shielded rooms.”
There was a pause. Schuldig just blinked at him. “They don’t teach the others how to do that?” he asked hesitantly. “I mean, it’s a useful talent. Great for all sorts of stuff.”
Brad raised an eyebrow. “Why would they teach their telepaths to be stronger than them? That’s bad planning.”
“Well, it’s not like it would give us all a way to get into their heads,” Schuldig countered. “I can’t read any precog with a talent strong enough to be useful. And poking at the other two just seems like a bad idea.”
“In all honesty, it seems that you’re the only person who can do it, regardless of why.” Brad shrugged, trying to process this information. Until his captivity, he hadn’t known that Schuldig could reach through those shields, nor had he known exactly how far in distance Schuldig could reach. Had his captivity been designed to wake those talents within Schuldig, or had they always been there, and just needed to be called to someone’s attention?
He shook his head, frustrated. As usual, he didn’t have enough information to make an informed decision.
Schuldig ignored Brad’s obvious annoyance, since there wasn’t any way he could help it. “I don’t know. It’s not like it was hard.”
“No, I suppose not,” Brad said, with a slight smile. The kitten wandered into the room, gnawed momentarily on Schuldig’s ankle, and then jumped up into Brad’s lap. Brad surreptitiously scratched her behind the ears, while she purred contently.
“She missed you, too,” Schuldig said with a grin.
“Too?” Brad glared at Schuldig. “That implies that I missed this little monster.”
Schuldig’s grin widened. A chance to tease Brad, one of his favorite pastimes, was not going to be passed up. “You think she’s cute, otherwise you wouldn’t have brought her hone for me.”
“I thought that you would think she was cute.”
“Well, I did. Still do.” Schuldig gave this serious thought for a few moments, considering some of Brad’s recent actions. He wondered if there was any polite way to ask about them, then wondered if he cared about being polite. Nah. “You know she likes the fact that you’re staying in my room, right?”
Brad frowned. “How do you mean?”
“She likes all of her favorite things in one place,” Schuldig declared with his usual wiseass grin. Brad just rolled his eyes, so Schuldig decided to plunge onwards. “Speaking of you sharing my room, why are you still sleeping on the floor?”
Brad blinked at him, caught momentarily off guard. Schuldig just grinned lazily, enjoying the precognitive’s discomfiture, since catching him off guard was so abominably hard to do. Brad recovered quickly. “Is there somewhere else I should be?”
“Well, we would both fit on the bed,” Schuldig pointed out.
“You know, it sounds like you’re coming on to me.” Brad’s tone was nonchalant and amused, but there was a hint of strain underneath it. Unfortunately for him, he was with the only person on earth who would have noticed.
“You do have a body to absolutely die for now,” Schuldig said. His tone was joking, but he was testing the waters, seeing how much Brad would let him get away with and how he would react.
Brad rolled his eyes. “It was all the pushups.”
“They didn’t go to waste,” Schuldig told him. “So now that we’ve covered why I’ve been known to watch you, why have you been watching me? I haven’t been doing anything impressive like pushups.” The joking note was still in his voice, but he was tense now. He knew that he was taking a chance calling Brad on his behavior.
“How do you know it’s something new?” Brad asked coolly. “Maybe you just haven’t been as observant before.”
Schuldig blinked at him. He had expected Brad to give some answer in which he attempted to write it off as something casual, not the exact opposite. He chose his next words carefully, because he didn’t want to let the topic go just yet. “If I haven’t noticed before, I’d really like an answer.”
Brad shrugged. He had already known there was no point in trying to write it off as something casual; Schuldig was annoying perceptive and tenacious about things like this. “Usually I had the newspaper, so you didn’t notice me. That’s all.”
“How long have you been watching me like that?” Schuldig asked, wondering if feeling utterly stupid was the correct emotional response in a situation like this.
“I didn’t really keep track,” Brad said, sounding amused. “There’s nothing wrong with watching someone, is there?”
“Well, no,” Schuldig said. This conversation was getting weirder by the minute. He didn’t regret starting it, but it was very unnerving to have absolutely no idea what to say. He decided that it was in part because he couldn’t read Brad; he relied on his telepathy a great deal in day to day conversation. He realized that he had to say something else and added hurriedly, confusedly, “It just never occurred to me that you were interested.”
“I watch all of you, actually. You just never really noticed.” Brad redirected his gaze to his coffee, profoundly uncomfortable with the topic at hand. He would have been perfectly content – or so he had always tried to convince himself – if Schuldig had never realized any of this.
“I don’t think you watch Nagi the same way you were watching me,” Schuldig said dryly.
“That is a perfectly accurate statement.”
Schuldig sighed and decided to go for a more direct route, since beating around the bush was only making Brad more annoying. “If you were interested, why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“Hold on, I still haven’t admitted to being interested in anything,” Brad said, clearly amused.
Schuldig gave him a look. “Oh, give me some credit,” he said irritably. “I do know you reasonably well. You never pay attention to anyone or anything unless you are interested.”
“Perhaps we should define ‘interested’ before this conversation goes any further.”
“Okay,” Schuldig said, then added brightly, “You watch me the same way Yohji does.”
Brad nearly choked on his coffee. He managed, with a great amount of effort, to retain his composure. “Do I, now.”
“I thought maybe I was just seeing things, but no,” Schuldig said confidently. “You were watching me the same way Yohji does. I know that look.”
There was a long pause. Brad wanted to ask exactly what Schuldig thought that look entailed, but resisted. It was altogether too possible that Schuldig might answer him, and then he would have to run screaming. “I see,” he said, sipping his coffee. He had a mental image of what Yohji looking at Schuldig that way would look like, and what would follow the look. It took a lot of effort for his burning jealousy to not show on his face.
“So why didn’t you ever say anything?” Schuldig asked again.
Brad gave up the ghost. He shrugged and said, “Because it wouldn’t have worked, and since you seemed to never notice, I didn’t really see the point.”
“You didn’t want me to notice,” Schuldig corrected. “And you are one of the few people around that can actually hide things from me.”
“As I said. It wouldn’t have worked.” Brad delivered this statement with confidence.
“Why not? Did you actually look?”
“I don’t tend to use the precognition for my personal life, Schuldig,” Brad said, back to sounding faintly amused. He found that it was a good cover for a lot of other things he didn’t want to sound. “It was a matter of common sense. You looked up to me as a protector, nothing more. I didn’t delude myself into thinking otherwise.”
“Being one thing doesn’t preclude the other,” Schuldig said, bordering on feeling miffed.
Brad shrugged. “Tell me I’m wrong, and mean it.”
Schuldig looked at him squarely. “One doesn’t have to preclude the other,” he stated firmly. “I don’t know that it would have worked. But you don’t know that it wouldn’t have.”
“No, I suppose not.” Having admitted this, Brad was apparently done with the conversation. He went back to sipping his coffee and staring out into space.
“Did you want to be something more than my protector?” Schuldig asked.
“I don’t really know,” Brad said quietly.
There was a long pause while Schuldig tried to figure out what he could possibly say, his emotions all conflicting with one another. “What would you do if the opportunity presented itself?” he finally asked.
“Given that you’re dating Yohji, it wasn’t a question that I’ve been pondering much lately,” Brad said dryly.
“Nothing is ever easy, is it,” Schuldig said with a sigh.
“No. It really isn’t.”
“You are the only person that has ever been able to confuse me this much.” Schuldig shook his head, and tried to not sound as upset as he felt. It wasn’t working very well. “I wish you had said something before I met Yohji.”
Brad rubbed his temples, not wanting Schuldig to realize that this conversation wasn’t easy on him, either. “And then what would have happened when I had been taken away? Don’t you think I’ve thought about this, Schuldig? It wouldn’t have worked . . . and I didn’t want to let it not work. I wanted to keep what we had rather than losing even more.”
Schuldig blinked at him, not used to hearing the normally taciturn precognitive show so much emotion in a single set of statements. “You say that like you could get rid of me.”
Brad sighed. “What’s done is done. Do we need to discuss this?”
“Maybe not right now, but . . .” Schuldig’s voice trailed off, then he added almost timidly, “we can’t just leave things like this.”
There was a long pause. “I know,” Brad finally said, and stood up to leave the kitchen, his coffee mug in one hand. Schuldig just pillowed his head on his arms and wondered what the hell was happening to his life. Brad slowed in the doorway, and turned to look at him. “I’m sorry . . . if I made you unhappy. I knew that . . .” Brad looked away, seemingly unable to finish the sentence.
“You knew what?” Schuldig prompted.
“I just knew that I would, no matter what I did. When I looked, that’s all I ever saw.” There was a long pause, then Brad added quietly, “That’s all.”