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Jyuto hadn't slept, really slept, in a little over seventy hours. He'd managed to grab a couple power naps, but the past three days had otherwise been a blur of stakeouts, interrogations, and one completely unproductive shootout at the port. The only thing keeping him on his feet now was copious amounts of caffeine and nicotine.
In short, his brain wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders.
And his brain-to-mouth filter was basically fried.
He was also not in the best of moods.
The art theft case he had been working on was being passed over to a team from the FBI, as the art that had been thieved was now confirmed to be somewhere in the United States. That was rather embarrassing for the local art crimes department, who'd allowed the thieves to slip out of the country, but since Jyuto was only on loan to them, he didn't really give a damn. As far as he was concerned, this case couldn't be taken off their hands fast enough.
But since he was still a temporary member of the art crimes department, he had to haul himself back to the station to meet the FBI people, bow, shake hands, thank them profusely for their help, and blah blah blah. All the bureaucratic bullshit he would rather not bother with when all he wanted to do was crash into his excellent bed and fall into a light coma until he felt human again.
Thus, the bad mood.
That mood was not improved by the fact that the station was loud and bustling when he got back. The FBI guys were already there, it seemed. Some strangers were waiting in a conference room, a few rookies were running around frantically searching for their department chief, and one big guy—the biggest of the lot from the FBI, the type that looked like he'd been raised entirely on meat and potatoes—was standing around talking to Samatoki, who spoke the best English out of anyone in their department.
What did help Jyuto's mood, just a tiny bit, was the fact that one of their junior detectives was passing out coffee in the break area that sat just a bit past where Samatoki and the big FBI guy were talking.
Real coffee, from an actual coffee shop.
"I could kiss you, Yamada," Jyuto deadpanned as he dragged himself over to the life-saving nectar that would sustain him for at least another hour or so.
Ichiro laughed and glanced over at Samatoki as he poured Jyuto a cup. "Dunno if Samatoki-san would like that very much."
Judging by the way Samatoki discreetly flipped Jyuto off behind his back, while still carrying on a conversation with the FBI guy, he didn't like it very much at all.
Jyuto would have flipped him off right back, whether or not Samatoki was looking his way, if he weren't suddenly so busy giving Samatoki's conversational partner a slow, proper onceover.
He was… big. Massive, even. That was the only thought Jyuto had bothered to have, when he'd breezed past them on the way to coffee earlier.
But the guy was more than just big. He was downright stunning.
His suit was a boring gray color, but it fit him well. Every time he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, every time he changed the way he held his arms, the fabric shifted with him. Those layers seemed to almost taunt Jyuto with a promise of the muscles they were hiding. Muscles that were, in Jyuto's vivid imagination, nice and toned and… positively delectable.
The man had a handsome face as well, one that somehow managed to be just a touch pretty too. His short-cropped red hair looked soft and eminently grabbable, and his eyes were the worst part.
They were so warm, and kind.
Just like the small, polite smile he wore as he listened to Samatoki go on and on about… whatever it was he was saying, Jyuto couldn't care less.
The big, gorgeous FBI guy was, in a word, Jyuto's type.
Jyuto, with his brain-to-mouth filter still very much out of service, sighed into his cup once he'd drained the coffee in one go.
"Good lord," he muttered. Quietly, but not nearly as quietly as he thought. "That man could bend me over any surface and fuck me through my pants and I would say, 'Thank you, may I have some more?'"
Ichiro spewed out the ill-timed mouthful of coffee he'd been in the middle of gulping down. With the way he coughed and wheezed afterwards, some of it must have gone up his nose. Samatoki, being the doting senpai/boyfriend that he loved to pretend he wasn't, came rushing over to him to pat and soothe his back.
But, strangely enough, he didn't look like he was beside himself with worry. He looked almost… amused. Like he was trying very hard not to laugh.
Jyuto frowned.
There was simply no way Samatoki would laugh at his darling Ichiro, which meant…
"All good," Ichiro wheezed. His eyes were a little teary, but he was able to straighten up and smile, first at Samatoki, then at someone over Jyuto's shoulder. "Samatoki-san. Busujima-san. I'm okay."
Jyuto's hand spasmed around the paper cup he held.
Busu… jima…?
That didn't sound like the name of a man who didn't speak Japanese.
And had… had Ichiro just spoken to him? In Japanese?
"This is Rio," Samatoki said, with a smirk growing on his smarmy face. "The translator we hired for today's meetings."
"Translator," Jyuto echoed.
"Mhm." Samatoki's face was looking more and more slappable. He probably knew that, because he was half-hiding behind Ichiro at this point. "The FBI people couldn't be fucked to bring their own."
"So…" The cup in Jyuto's hand was completely crumpled by now. He finally managed to unfreeze enough of his muscles to turn in place, to meet the gaze of the man who'd come to stand behind him.
The man named Rio, with the accursedly warm eyes, was even more handsome up close. He wore a sympathetic smile that made Jyuto want to disappear into the molten outer core of the earth.
Jyuto had to tip his head back to look the man in the eye. He was almost seized by the impulse to whip off his glasses and rub them like a cartoon character, because surely his own eyes were deceiving him.
No one could just look so… so good.
This man was a work of art. Jyuto wouldn't have been surprised if the gang of art thieves they were after had packed him up and made off with him.
Fortunately, Jyuto didn't say all of that out loud.
(Though, of course, he'd already said much worse.)
After a long beat of silence, he did manage to say, "You're… not American."
The sympathetic smile on this Rio man's face grew a little warmer.
"Only on my mother's side," he answered. In a deep, lovely voice. And in Japanese.
Very good Japanese.
And judging by the look of sympathy he still wore, he'd heard and understood exactly what Jyuto had said.
"But…" Jyuto whipped his head back to Samatoki. As shock started to wear off, mortification and a pebble of anger were starting to snowball in his chest. "You're the translator!"
"That's not even in my job description, the higher-ups just make me do it sometimes 'cause I happen to speak good English," Samatoki complained. "Besides, I don't know shit about all the art jargon they're gonna use in there. Rio's art-smart."
"Busujima-san typically works as a museum curator," Ichiro explained.
"So, we need him," Samatoki finished with a shrug. Then, with a renewed smirk crawling back onto his stupid face, he added, "Though it sounds like you've got a different sort of 'need' that he can—"
Jyuto whipped out his phone and started jabbing at the screen so furiously that Samatoki cut himself off in favor of nosily trying to get a look at what he was doing.
"What, you gonna report me to Internal Affairs?"
Jyuto scoffed. He trusted their Internal Affairs department as far as he could throw them, and Samatoki knew that; Samatoki even felt the same way. They had both been temporarily reassigned from their usual team due to some IA fuckery, after all.
Plus, Jyuto was no snitch.
"I am mapping a route to the nearest bridge I can throw myself off," he stated dryly. "Do not interrupt."
Samatoki dropped his head to Ichiro's shoulder and muffled a laugh against it. Ichiro started to whisper something to him, something about cutting Jyuto some slack, which was well-intentioned but completely unnecessary.
Jyuto did not need pity. What he needed was an escape route.
But before he could decide whether or not he could just walk out of the station, without apologizing or even saying another word, he froze up again.
Because a hand—one of Rio's hands, one of Rio's very large and very nice hands—came up and touched the back of his. Even through the gloves he always wore, Jyuto could feel the warmth radiating from that touch.
"If I may, Iruma-san," Rio said softly, in that deep voice of his that was as smooth as a glass of Jyuto's favorite liquor. "I just might have a better idea of what you could do with your phone."
"Do you," Jyuto breathed faintly.
Rio gave a small nod. The corners of his lips twitched with a smile that now spoke less of sympathy and more of… what looked almost like fondness?
He dropped his hand away from Jyuto's, which was almost enough to make Jyuto whine, but it was only to reach for his own phone. Once he had it out, screen unlocked, he lowered his head enough to whisper directly into Jyuto's ear.
"You could give me your contact information."
As if Jyuto hadn't already embarrassed himself enough, the exhaustion that had built up over the past seventy-some hours suddenly caught up to him all at once. It tangled and mixed with the shock and horror roiling through his stomach. Rio's voice only added a scorching hot splash of arousal to that already volatile cocktail of sensation, and as a result—
Jyuto passed out on the spot.
But he did wake up with a new contact in his phone.
So, all in all…
Maybe he didn't have to die of mortification just yet.