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It's never quite the dead of night when Tadashi finds herself wrist deep in a dead man.

 

Ainosuke could never be restrained like that, after all. By time or by the perception that there’s a usual way things should be done. She loved to flout convention as much as she relied on it; hide blood in the maroon gash of her lipstick, let the long waves of her hair cover the dagger holstered on her shoulder, let people mistake her necklace for jewelry and not a weapon.

 

“Strangulation is so personal, Tadashi, don’t you think?” she says while Tadashi washes her hands in the bathroom; gristle gets into the cracks of her fingernails, and although she’d like to keep them short and clipped, Ainosuke claims it’s too obvious. Better to clean now than find an unfortunate surprise later.

 

It is personal, Tadashi realizes, patting her hands dry on a fluffy white towel. It’s also barely noon; Ainosuke had killed again just after a breakfast meeting. Her target had briefly left his desk and never returned. Ainosuke checked her face in a compact mirror and laughed, winningly, when his assistant asked if she’d seen him.

 

Tadashi, meanwhile, had to seek out the rare shadows of the high morning to carve the body into pieces and spirit them away. She’d cleared their afternoon of meetings to allow them the luxury of disposal and rest, and as payment for her crimes was granted the view of Ainosuke’s long body laid out on their bed, wrapped in a robe and little else, nails painted that daring shade of red.

 

“Well, puppy? What do you think?” she presses, the weight of her gaze on Tadashi. She can feel it travel down the soft curves of her face, to the lean and corded muscle along her shoulders and arms - the ones she hides away during the day - to the swell of her chest against the jersey tank top she threw on.

 

“You’re right, Ainosuke-sama,” she agrees. There was an intimacy to this kill, strangulation, and a declaration besides. You have to listen for the life to leave the body, watch for the eyes to grow dull, bear witness to death in a way that the abrupt assail of a bullet or a knife couldn’t offer. It pulls from a different sort of strength, too, a physical one that most men in their business would never think Ainosuke - who can fill her cheeks with blush on demand, and smiles prettily in pictures, and looks every inch the angel when her sharp cheekbones are cast in stunning relief - could manage.

 

For her, there’s a different sort of intimacy featured in knowing the way a body comes apart; pulling at joints and cutting at muscle with her practiced hands, calloused from the bonesaw. She’s never been as good a liar as Ainosuke whose lessons started in the cradle when she never cried, but she’s picked up a thing or two in her shadow. Can answer the front door with her eyes downcast and a shadow across her face, pass helpful notes to officers when they come too close to Ainosuke for comfort, plant the seed of a rumor that could root a man to jail.

 

She’s not sure why this one had to be personal, and when Ainosuke’s stare goes hard and distant - the faraway gleam in her eye that reminds Tadashi that even her master keeps secrets - she knows it’s a cue as much as a command.

 

Tadashi crawls onto the bed, lies on her side next to Ainosuke, and stretches her hand under the folds of her robes to touch the soft flesh of her belly; it’s warm, it’s weakness, it’s the reminder that beneath the stone of a killer there’s still a human beneath. She runs her hands along the soft hair by her belly button and keeps an eye on Ainosuke’s face; when she catches the first sign of a crack - a lowered eyelid - she tangles their legs together, draws in closer to Ainosuke’s warmth.

 

That’s when she’s granted this. Ainosuke’s arm around her strong shoulders, the ones that can drag a body to the silence of a forest in the middle of the night. Ainosuke’s lips pressed against her forehead, soothing the worried lines carved into her from watching bones burn to ash. Ainosuke’s nails clawing at her back, raising pink lines that are all her own. Ainosuke’s warmth wrapped around her fingers, the ones that place coins on the tongues of dead men to pay their toll.

 

The light gets soft in the early afternoon as they sleep wrapped up in each other, naked for all their faults and virtues. Tadashi’s hair is still tied back in a braid and Ainosuke’s is fanned out on the pillow below her. There are bruises on Tadashi’s thighs and a sore ache in her shoulders with different origins. Both are signs of her reverent prayers to a goddess; both give her the strength to carry on.