End Game

It started on a moonless night and a solo mission. It had been Yohji's turn to go alone, and although he'd tried everything to get out of doing anything, eventually Omi had bullied him into it.

"You're so mean to me," he'd whined dramatically, but the little blond was as immobile as stone on the matter.

That was how he found himself sitting in a darkened car under a faulty street light, waiting for the target - a corrupt lawyer, according to the folder on the passenger seat beside him - to exit the building.

"Works late, goes in early, and has been embezzling money from clients and firm for nearly a decade," he said out loud, having memorized the notes. "Untraceable by police, spotless record, slithers out of lawsuits like a slug." He gave a gusty sigh, peering up at the light in the window that said the dark beast of the night was still hard at work, despite the lateness of the hour.

He was just getting ready to relax his seat and doze when a series of thumps along the back of his car launched him into adrenalin-fueled wakefulness. He took his gun - a beautiful Smith & Wesson double-action .45 ACP semi-automatic compact pistol - out of the holster at his ribs, and threw open his door, rolling out of the car and bringing it up quickly without bothering with the silencer. Someone had hit his car; he had a right to bear arms, especially in this part of the neighborhood.

A ghostly white form melted out of the darkness and into the flickering yellow beam of the street light overhead. Yohji's finger tightened against the trigger, taking aim at the one-eyed maniac who worked for the other team.

"Checkmate," he whispered. "I've taken care of Mister Lieger-" He tossed something metallic at the blond, who caught it automatically - it was a key - "and if you don't believe me, you can check."

"Check, then," Yohji said, drawing himself up without taking the barrel away from the Irishman's chest. "Not checkmate. I'll get one up on you next time."

His one fierce, yellow eye blinked slowly, and Yohji could see a feral grin stretch his lips. "Very well. The game continues next time."

He vanished as silently - almost - as he'd come, and Yohji replaced his pistol, realizing that the thumping on his car had been Farfarello's method of psychological warfare.

/Nice piece, Weiss./ A sinister chuckle echoed through his mind, and Yohji recognized the voice of the telepath. Had the whole of Schwarz come out to knock off one bastard lawyer?

/Just us, Kudo. What about the gun?/ He sounded - as always - amused, and Yohji scowled, wondering where they were.

Omi decided that when we go out alone, our normal method is too dangerous to risk. We've been going to the range every two days for the last month. As our own personal stalker, would have thought you'd know that already, Yohji thought, used enough to the mental sparring to know how loud was irritating to the telepath and making sure to think a little stronger.

/Cute. What model?/ The telepath was not amused by his tricks, but sounded genuinely curious, and so Yohji volunteered the information. It wasn't as though brand names would give the other team an advantage in any way.

Smith & Wesson double-action .45 ACP. Semi-automatic. And yours?

The smooth chuckle came again, and Yohji had the impression that gun conversations in the dead of night were some of the things that made Schuldig's life complete. /In one hand I've got a Walther PPK, and in the other an HK P8. Brad prefers the Browning Hi-power. What about you?/

I swear that since we've been fire-arm training, Omi sleeps with his Beretta. Ran favours the Glock, and Ken's unfailingly in love with his Colt Python .357 Magnum, but Ran makes him take the SIG P226. Happy now?

/Thrilled. Farfarello says to pass along the fact that your aim is terrible, and if you'd actually shot at him, he wouldn't have moved because moving would have been more dangerous than standing where he was./ The mental touch disconnected, and although he hadn't really been aware of the original connection, he felt it when it was gone. Unlike his team-mates, Yohji prided himself on his open-mindedness, and if that included civil conversations with 'their mortal enemies' at two thirty in the morning, he was willing to have civil conversations at two thirty in the morning.

Righting the key in his hand, he shoved it into the door and turned roughly, almost surprised when it unlocked. He shoved the door open, and left it cracked behind him, It took less time than he'd thought to reach the floor with the light on, and the mess left in the man's office made him glad he hadn't eaten recently.

Nice job. Nut case. he commented to himself. Distant amusement trickling through his brain let him know that it wasn't a totally personal thought.

Feeling vaguely cheated, he left the room exactly as he found it, locking the door behind him again, and taking the key. On the passenger seat of his car was a chess piece - a pawn.

"Very funny!" he called, and chucked it into the glove box. He couldn't quite explain why he didn't throw it away, and on the official mission report, he left off all mention of Schwarz aside from, "Found target gutted and dismembered in office. Suspect is work of Farfarello." at the bottom of the forms.

---

Several weeks passed with only minimum contact between the two teams. Yohji actually went out and bought himself a chess-board, however, to facilitate the game in the way Farfarello had chosen that first night. He disliked having the madman call the shots, and in honour of the white piece Farfarello had left, he began using the black ones, going so far as to throw the white pieces that came with his board out.
As the days stretched into weeks that leaned into months, he began getting creative, going so far as to actually leave the piece in the car Schwarz had driven over - and hadn't that been a surprise? He'd always imagined that Schwarz turned themselves into bats and flew wherever they needed to go.

Soon, he had nearly the full collection of white from Farfarello, all lined up neatly on the board in his room. Ran - being the nosy busybody he was - had come in to get Yohji's laundry and had seen the board, but surprisingly, asked no questions.

He supposed that that was why he liked the swordsman so much. Ken wouldn't have understood at all, and who knew what Omi would have thought. Yohji privately decided that Omi would have one of two reactions: to go very Kritiker on him, and treat Yohji as a traitor, or to revert to the innocent, wide-eyed kid they were used to seeing, and ask stupid questions about why half his pieces were missing. And Ran - who surely knew where the pieces were alternately coming from and going - just accepted the board's presence and left it alone.

Both sides were down to the last piece - the king - and Yohji wondered which one of them would give it up first. In real chess, to lose your king meant losing the game, but he got the feeling that this game would be lost if you ended up with the last piece. He wracked his brain trying to think of ways to out-do the psychopathic Irishman, and finally came down to playing an actual game.

Having never before even touched a chess piece in his life, Yohji threw himself into studying the moves and pieces and rules.

It took him another week, but after extensive study and a practice match against a very confused Omi, he felt like he was up to the challenge. The only problem he could see left was getting Farfarello to agree.

Yohji spent the next week and a half searching for a good place to hold the game. He finally settled on an old abandoned warehouse down by the dock, and rented it. He'd even set up a table and two chairs, and dragged his board into the building.

As he was tightening the light bulb into the socket, a dull thud from the direction of the door alerted him to the presence of someone else in the building. He spun around, jerking the gun out of his jacket as he moved, and crouched, aiming towards the noise.

A person walked out of the gloom into the light, hands raised high in the traditional sign of peace. He stepped into the circle of yellow provided by the aging bulb, and Yohji realized that it was Farfarello.

"I hear you've got a challenge for me," he said. His voice sounded unusual, and a hard look at his face revealed that he was actually smiling. Yohji straightened and tucked the gun back into it's holster.

"Consider yourself challenged," he said cockily, and gestured the board. Farfarello plopped a bag down in the middle of it, and settled himself on the chair.

"What'll we play for?" the Irishman asked, pulling black pieces out of the bag and setting them up neatly along the board. Yohji shrugged, having planned for every contingency except that one. Farfarello shot him a glance that was almost coy. "Schuldig suggested sex," he offered quietly.

Yohji felt spit hit the back of his throat at the same time he tried to suck in a gasp of air and ended up choking and hacking in an effort to breathe.

Amazingly, Farfarello had doubled over with laughter across from him. Wiping his mouth, Yohji straightened, still wheezing. "Think that was funny, huh? What would you have done if I'd stopped breathing? You'd never get your game - or anything else," he added, scowling.

Farfarello stopped laughing, but was still grinning - and it held only the faintest touch of the usual madness Yohji was used to seeing in the scarred face. Somehow, the grin coupled with the utterly outlandish suggestion, were even more terrifying than his usual blood-lust. "I was CPR certified last year," he offered the blond. The assassin let that pass without comment for a few minutes, and then, surprising even himself, Yohji nodded. "Alright then; for sex."

Farfarello accepted this easily. "Winner tops."

"Freak."

"You started it."

"I did not!" Yohji started to rise angrily out of his seat, but was stopped by Farfarello's easy laughter. He'd never even thought the man could laugh, but finding it out wasn't any easier knowing the Irishman was laughing at him.

---

Three days later, they were nearing the end of the game. Both sides had taken heavy losses, but neither one was willing to back down. Yohji tucked his tongue between his teeth as he contemplated his next move.

"Hurry," Farfarello urged. Yohji looked up, a smirk flitting across his features.

"Tell me why I should."

Green eyes sparkled in the dim light, reflecting the yellowed bulb hanging between them.

"Because I have a knife, and you do not," came the soft, matter-of-fact rejoinder. His white hair glimmered gently, appearing blond in the low illumination.

"Like that's reason enough?" He stretched his impossibly long legs out under the table, brushing against the other's calf with his foot.

"I will make it reason enough. Move." His single eye glittered dangerously across the table at his partner.

The assassin studied the psychopath, and then turned his attention downward, staring unrepentently. "Make me," he said idly.

A knife buried itself in the wood next to his hand. "Move," he growled again, jerking his weapon out of the table. It left behind a deep notch in the grain, disprupting it.

"Rook to E-6. Checkmate." Suiting actions to words, he captured the king piece, tipping it over with one carefully manicured finger.

Farfarello bared his teeth, snarling silently for a moment. "Best two out of three," he said finally, and began resetting his pieces.

"Ah, ah, ahh," Yohji admonished quietly. "We had an agreement." Now that it was coming down to it, he was starting to feel cold feet coming on himself, but if the Irishman was going to argue the point, he was going to dig in his heels.

Besides, over the months, his game with Farfarello had shown him intriguing new ideas about the other team - the mad Irishman in particular. He wasn't as adverse to the idea of a night spent between the sheets with the scarred man, although on day two of their game, he'd been confronted by Ran and the details had been forced out of him.

From the man who'd once nearly disowned Omi simply by the bad luck of his bloodline, he'd been surprisingly receptive about the deal. They'd both agreed to keep the details of the game from their younger team-mates.

He pulled his attention back to the man before him, contemplating his looks. If you got past the scars and eye-patch, he wasn't too bad looking. Actually, if he was going to be completely honest, the scars and eye-patch only enhanced his natural good-looks. Anyone else wouldn't have been able to pull it off - Crawford was too refined, Schuldig too wild. Omi was too innocent, and even Ken was too wholesome. Not even Yohji himself would have been able to get away with scars like that, or an eyepatch, much less both together, but in the Irishman, it seemed natural.

"How did you lose your eye?" he asked suddenly, and was fixed by a baleful yellow glare.

"I didn't," the madman finally admitted. He removed the patch, and blinked rapidly. The skin beneath the leather was even paler than the rest of his white face, and there was a gentle indent where it normally sat, but both eyes were whole and in place.

"Then why the patch?" Yohji asked, wondering briefly if he was pouring gasoline onto a fire.

After a few more moments silence, Farfarello covered his good eye. "I had an accident when I was younger, and went blind in it. Rather than give people the surprise advantage of finding out I couldn't see on that side, I just covered it up and retained the shock value."

"So you can't see me right now?" Yohji asked, peering into the gentle yellow eye. He leaned to the left, and even knowing that the Irishman couldn't see him, was surprised when the eye continued looking straight ahead in a misty, faraway look. Farfarello replaced the eyepatch, and blinked again to readjust his vision.

"So what about you? Why wire?"

Yohji was startled; he hadn't meant anything by his off-hand question, and wasn't expecting anything further. Farfarello sounded genuinely interested, however, and he found himself giving real thought to the answer. "I used to be a whiz with a yo-yo as a kid," he started. Farfarello snorted in amusement. "After Asuka... died... I tried different guns, knives, even a sword, like Ran, but... nothing felt right. Then I found the first garrote watch in a specialty store, picked it up out of curiousity, and never looked back."

"Yet you carry a gun now," Farfarello pointed out. Yohji pulled back his sleeve, revealing the functional watch that contained hundreds of yards of lethal wire.

"Only when I'm alone," he said. "And I've always got my watch. But if I'm not wearing gloves, and someone sneaks up behind me, it's a lot faster and safer for me to pull out a gun than it is to get my gloves on, unlock the watch, pull the wire out, and then strangle him, especially if he's got a gun, too. You use knives, but you've carried guns before. You shot the Takatori girl."

A brief expression flickered over Farfarello's face and was gone again as quickly as it had come. "You remember that." It wasn't a question.

"Omi still visits her grave every year."

They sat in relative silence for a long moment. Finally, Yohji broke the tension with levity. "Your place or mine?"

Farfarello looked almost startled for a moment. "Mine. Your team-mates would knock the door down. Mine would lock it behind us."

Yohji assimilated this, and then roared with laughter. After a moment, he realized that Farfarello was laughing too, and decided that it wasn't such a suicidal mission as he'd thought in the beginning. Hell, he might even enjoy it.

They had gathered everything up, and closed down the warehouse. Yohji even went so far as to lock it behind him, much to Farfarello's quiet amusement.

"If there's anything in there worth stealing, let them at it," he said. Yohji scowled.

"It's my warehouse! I don't want ruffians running around in there when I'm not there." he said defensively.

Farfarello stopped and rounded on him. "So it's alright for ruffians to run around in there while you're present?"

"Isn't that what's been going on the last few days?" Yohji asked, and found the end of his question swallowed in a sudden kiss.

Far from being the icy, rough thing he'd always expected, it was slow and meltingly warm. Arms snaked around his shoulders, and he found himself with an armful of Irishman and it was good.

All too soon, they were separating. "Did you bring a car?" he asked huskily, and the look in Farfarello's eyes was at once condescending and heated.

"No," he answered, with a quick shake of his head.

That threw the mood off for a moment. "How'd you get out here, then?"
Farfarello slid his slender white fingers up Yohji's chest, over his shoulders, down his back, and had almost reached his behind. "Walked," he said simply, and the implication - a simple explanation - turned to eroticism as Yohji connected that energy and stamina to what they were preparing to do.

"Get in, then. I'm sure as hell not walking all the way back." He didn't even bother with the door, and instead he reached up, grabbed the roof and flung himself into the low-slung vehicle. Farfarello merely arched an eyebrow and pulled the door open. Yohji laughed quietly while he was belting himself in.

"Didn't think you'd be the type for things like seatbelts," he commented. Farfarello smirked.

"Clearly, you've never seen Schuldig drive. Even Crawford holds on when Schuldig's behind the wheel." He said it so matter-of-factly that it set Yohji off again, and he laughed most of the way back to Farfarello's apartment.

When they arrived, Farfarello unlocked the door after producing a key seemingly from nowhere. One minute he was empty-handed, and the next he was holding the key. Yohji tucked it away to be interested in later when he wasn't about to enter the lair of the men who'd been his enemies for so long.

In a surprising gesture of familiarity, Farfarello took his hand and led him inside. They paused to take their shoes off in the genkan; Yohji neatly toed his off and arranged them, while Farfarello just yanked his boots off without bothering to untie them and left them in a loose jumble against the wall. Yohji, ever the detective, took note of the house shoes neatly arranged for wearing, and the fact that the shoes displayed weren't what he was accustomed to seeing. He was pretty sure they'd all worn dress shoes or at least nice boots whenever he'd seen them on missions, but the only shoes visible were three sets of sneakers, in three different sizes, and then two pairs of Farfarello's boots - the pair he'd taken off, and another pair covered in buckles.

"I'll answer your questions tomorrow," Farfarello promised, catching the inquisitive look Yohji was giving the footwear. The sheer horror of what he was about to do nearly caught up with him then, but he squashed it before it had a chance to do more than bubble a little bit. Clutching at his hand again, Farfarello lead him through the front hallway into a nicely decorated living room, complete with large entertainment center, huge flat-screen television, and more movies than he'd seen even in rental stores. He suddenly became frighteningly aware of the other two occupants of the living room as Schuldig lifted a hand in greeting, and Crawford lifted himself up off of Schuldig's lap to glare at them. His hair was loose around his face, and he wasn't wearing glasses, and Yohji was most startled by the fact that he was apparently in a tee shirt and then he started to worry about what they might have walked in on. Crawford looked incredibly grumpy - had they interrupted-

/He was sleeping, and the sound of Farfarello's boots hitting the wall woke him up./ Schuldig offered. They looked incredibly relaxed, and Yohji quickly re-evaluated their terror-factor. It was hard to be afraid of someone who grumped when he was woken up, and napped in peoples laps. Farfarello was tugging at his hand, and he tucked the mental image into his mental filing cabinet for later inspection.

"Keep it down, kids! Nagi's got a test tomorrow." Schuldig turned the television up just a tiny bit, and whispered something to Crawford, and then they were turning a corner into another hallway. There were six doors - two of which were open, leading into a bathroom and what looked like an office.

"When they started sleeping together, Schuldig moved into Crawford's room and they converted the empty bedroom into his office," Farfarello explained, and pushed open one of the doors. It gave the blond pause, and he peered into the office for a moment longer.

Yohji entered the bedroom, expecting to see a steel bed bolted to the concrete floor, with chains and ropes hanging from the ceiling, and instead got a glimpse of a relatively normal, carpeted bedroom. There was a dresser, a hamper, and a stereo on a desk beside a large-for-one-person bed and a small, indistinct lamp. He shouldn't have felt surprised by the presence of a book on the nightstand, but it still managed to take him off guard.

Farfarello tugged his shirt up from the bottom, hauling it off of his body in one smooth motion. Yohji's eyes lingered a moment to long, and Farfarello smirked. "Feel free to leave your clothes anywhere - if they're in the hamper, Crawford may wash them, though."

"...Hamper?" Yohji asked, glancing around at it. He belatedly realized that he was just standing there stupidly, and yanked his shirt off. Farfarello was already working on his trousers. It was odd enough that it caught at Yohji's attention and held it.

"Are you planning on keeping your pants on?" Farfarello asked pointedly, aware of the blond man's stare. Yohji started, and then hurriedly pulled his boxers and jeans off in one motion. Farfarello flicked the light off, and suddenly they were standing nude in the dark, the only light filtered in from a street lamp. A car turned the corner outside, and the headlights flung themselves across the ceiling, illuminating the room briefly. Yohji, already trying to see, caught a glimpse of Farfarello, poised almost elegantly on the balls of his feet, completely naked and covered in scars. They bisected his muscles and crossed his skin, covering nearly every free inch, but stopped a short way onto his thighs.
They stood in silence for several minutes, and then Yohji moved forward, kissing his soon to be lover. Farfarello responded quickly, leaning against him. The kiss quickly moved beyond chaste, as fingers began to find skin and explored. Yohji pushed gently, maneuvering them towards the bed. The backs of Farfarello's knees hit the mattress, and he collapsed backwards, tugging Yohji down on top of him. They took a moment apart to rearrange themselves on the bed before resuming the mutual exploration.

"Can I take this off?" Yohji murmured, fingering the leather eye patch. By way of answer, Farfarello reached up, and tugged it off, launching it in the direction of the night stand. The blond detective placed a kiss on the exposed eyelid, garnering a shudder from the Irishman beneath him, and then let his fingers wander southward.

---

Yohji woke slowly, languorously stretching out. His body felt sore in ways he hadn't felt in a long time, and he was momentarily disoriented by his surroundings.

The slightest hint of a snore from behind him reminded him where he was and what he'd done the night before. Holding himself up on one elbow, he peered down at the white-haired man as he slept.

He's either exhausted, or extremely trusting, Yohji thought to himself, and slowly eased himself off the bed. Farfarello was still sleeping behind him, as improbable as it seemed, and he tugged his pants over his legs, intending to find a bathroom and shower.

Schuldig met him in the hallway, a smug, sleepy look on his face. "You really did a number on him. He's usually a light sleeper, and awake before any of us, too." The telepath shoved a towel into Yohji's chest, and turned back towards the living room. "Use whatever you want except the blue bottles. And there's coffee in the kitchen when you're done."

It was surprisingly home-like. The bathroom was extravagent, which wasn't surprising for some reason, and included a massive bathtub with jets and numerous buttons with labels that didn't make any sense. The shower was large as well, set off to the side behind glass doors. Yohji settled the towel on the toilet, and made sure that the door was locked - not that it would have stopped a really determined Farfarello, or even a mildly bored Nagi - but it made him feel better nonetheless.

He showered quickly, careful to avoid the blue bottles as Schuldig had suggested, and toweled himself dry. He pulled his jeans back on, feeling vaguely dirty wearing his old clothes after he'd just got clean, and stepped out into the hallway.

There was no one in sight, so he found his way into the kitchen - Schuldig was sitting at the table drinking coffee, and Crawford was standing at the stove, cooking something that smelled delicious.

"You're welcome to some when it's done," Crawford said, not turning around, and Schuldig got up and handed him a cup.

"Sugar, cream, milk," he pointed out. "Coffee pot." Yohji murmured his thanks, and poured a cup, leaving it black.

"Freak," Schuldig murmured. Yohji leaned over and peered into his cup. It was nearly white with milk, and reeked of sugar.

"Like a little coffee with your milk, do you?" Yohji asked, seating himself at the table. From behind them, Crawford chuckled.

"I've been telling him that it's going to rot his teeth right out of his mouth for years, but he hasn't listened yet." The prescient turned to give Schuldig a pointed look, but the German simply looked away and let it bounce off the back of his head.

"Guys, why is Farfarello still-" Nagi stopped dead in the center of the kitchen door, staring at Yohji as though he'd grown an extra head. With a vaguely terrified look, he fled back the way he'd come to Schuldig's accompanying laughter.

Yohji sipped at his coffee, watching the homey scene silently.

"Not so scary when he comes at you in pajamas, is he?" Schuldig asked, still chuckling to himself. Yohji shrugged.

"Why the -" he gestured to imitate Nagi's almost-entrance and sudden flight.

"He wasn't expecting to see you there, and he realized he wasn't wearing clothes," Crawford answered, and settled a plate of sausage and pancakes down in front of Schuldig. Yohji made a face at it, and hoped briefly that that wasn't what he was going to eat, too, when another plate descended in front of him. It contained bacon, which was a considerable improvement.

"Thank you," he said, geniunely relieved. Crawford nodded, and settled with his own plate. Yohji noted with amusement that the sausages had been for Schuldig alone. "So, he looked clothed to me," he said, carrying on the conversation.

"He was in his jammies," Schuldig said, and snickered. "He was raised prim-and-proper, and thinks that showing up in front of guests wearing pajamas is the height of scandal." Schuldig's sausages lifted themselves up off his plate, and zipped over to the sink, while the faucet came on at the same time as the garbage disposal.

"Don't think I won't, Schuldig," Nagi threatened from the doorway. Schuldig launched himself out of his chair and made a grab for the bangers.

"Don't! They're the last ones!" he yelped, and lunged after them as they whizzed around the room.

Yohji gave up trying to keep it inside, and set his fork down, covered his face, and gave in to his laughter.

Across from him, Crawford sipped calmly at his coffee, treating the mayhem as though it were entirely normal. When the chase moved into the living room, he set his cup down. "How is your bacon?"

Yohji just shook his head, unable to talk.

-end-