Current mood:	accomplished
Current music:	time... goes so slow. Days... come and go
Entry tags:	series:the grey agency

[The Grey Agency] Sisters
Title: The Grey Agency, chapter seven: Sisters
Author: Icka! M. Chif
Word Count: 2,940
Author's Note: Working on TGA again in an attempt to try to get my own head straight. It's a good fic for that.
Summary: "Ya big baby! Sit still and behave or I'll hit you with a mop!"
Follows 'Down the Rabbit Hole'

---

Aoko debated pulling out her textbooks and studying. There was nothing going on and she was starting to get bored. But it was her first time filling in and she wanted to make a good impression. Perhaps she'd get a job out of it.

Then the door opened and blew that idea away. "Welcome!" She stood up and smiled at the people walking in the door. "What can we do to... Kaito?!"

Kaito, who was either not-quite leaning on Hakuba or Hakuba was being a giant fussy mother hen, looked up at her with an identical look of surprise. "A-Aoko?!"

"What are you..." Aoko trailed off as she realised that he was clutching his shoulder, red fluid leaking from under a cloth being pinned in place by his hand. "Right this way." She said instead, directing them back towards a room.

"Thanks." Hakuba said quietly. "He lost a fight with the house."

"I did not lose!" Kaito snapped sulkily as he followed her. "The panel is half off, so we both lost and won."

"House?" She sat him down on a table in one of the back rooms. "What house?"

"My current job." Kaito said between clenched teeth as he sat down, jostling the arm slightly. "I'm restoring a house of Koizumi's Great Aunts. We got into a fight about if I needed to remove a panel to replace the pipes."

"Nakamori?" Her temporary employer's voice echoed.

"In here, Araide-sensei!" She called back. The tall doctor walked in, looking concerned. Kaito waved with his good hand while Hakuba glared at him.

"Ah, what seems to be the problem here?" Araide-sensei said, calmly taking control of the situation. She breathed a sigh of relief, taking a step back.

"He lost a fight with the house." Hakuba repeated.

"I did not!" Kaito protested. "Aoko, smack him for me will you?"

Araide-sensei blinked. "You know Nakamori?"

"I'm her not-brother." Kaito responded glibly. "I'm her brother, only not."

"He was trying to remove a wall panel at the house and it fought back." Hakuba explained. "I stopped the bleeding, but it looked like it should been looked at by a professional."

"Probably a good idea." Araide-sensei agreed mildly, carefully removing Kaito's grasp from his arm and peeling the fabric back with a mild squelch. "Let's just take a look at it. Nakamori, if you could start our blond friend on some forms while I examine this."

"No problem!" She grabbed Hakuba's arm and pulled him out. "Come on, there's too many people in here." The blond hesitated, glancing back at Kaito. Kaito motioned for him to go, an amused but clearly affectionate look on his face. Hakuba nodded and followed.

"You're living together now?" She asked, walking to her station at the front of the clinic.

"No, I was just visiting. Hiding, actually." Hakuba pushed the glasses he was wearing higher on his face. "It's been... rather hectic since our return."

"I know, neither of you have visited me." She pulled the files she needed out of the filing cabinet and hit him in the arm with them. "Idiots."

"My apologies." He said quietly, taking the files. Aoko paused and looked at him. He looked like he hadn't been sleeping well recently.

"Anything I can do to help?" She asked, leaning against the wall.

"Not at the moment, no." He glanced over the papers. It was just the usual contact information, if Hakuba knew where Kaito was living he'd be fine. She could probably fill in some of the details he didn't know. He gave her a shy look. "But thank you for the offer."

"You're welcome." She smiled back. He fiddled with the papers for a moment.

"... You're a nurse?" He finally questioned.

"Not yet." Aoko admitted. "I'm still going to school, it'll be another year or so before I'm actually allowed to work at a hospital. It's a school not too far from here. I'm just filling in for a friend today, doing paper work and stuff."

He got a thoughtful look on his face, then nodded. "I think I know the place. Not a bad school, from what I understand."

A yowl from Kaito as Araide-sensei probably started stitching up his arm interrupted them. "Ya big baby!" Aoko shouted. "Sit still and behave or I'll hit you with a mop!"

Silence from room. Hakuba stared at her with slightly wide eyes. She shrugged. "So my bedside manner may need a little improvement. It works."

He nodded. "I am... going to fill these out now."

She smiled at him. Hakuba was such a nice polite boy.

+++

+++


The squealing, buzzing sound of many excited females caused Aoko to look up from her books. It was lunch time and she was trying to get ahead of her studies so that she might have sometime time off to go... Oh.

Then she saw the cause of her classmates excitement. There was a guy walking through the park by campus. Not just any guy, but a blond.

A blond whose bland expression melted into a pleased grin as he saw her and waved. She waved back, bookmarking her page and closing the book. "Aoko-chan!" Hakuba called as he strode towards her, oblivious or ignoring the comments around him.

"Hakuba-kun. Is everything all right?" For a second she was worried that something was wrong with Kaito and that he'd come to pick her up. Maybe Kaito’s injury wasn’t healing as well as it should be? She hadn’t heard anything from them since she’d seen him last week. Hopefully they would have contacted her before then.

"Aa. Yes. Have you eaten lunch yet?" He inquired. She shook her head and he set the bag he'd been carrying down on the bench. "Great. Then if you don't mind, you can be my guinea pig."

She watched in surprise as he lowered the sides of the bag and untied the stack of bento boxes, handing her the top one. "You cook?"

"I am... learning." His cheeks turned faintly pink in embarrassment. "Experimenting, really. I had extra food while making lunch for Kaito-kun and myself and thought you might like a change in variety."

"I..." She trailed off as he handed her a bento and she got a chance to look at the inside of the polished box. She'd seen rice that was red before, usually Omu-Rice, but never like this. "What is this?"

"Southwestern American food." Hakuba explained. "'TexMex' I believe it is called. That is Spanish Rice, you will probably need a fork instead of chopsticks, it refuses stick together easily, the not-quite sushi looking things are a bean and mince burrito. Although usually it is not cut up like that, normally it is left in a tube shape, like a handroll. I had some trouble finding tortillas, so it is not quite the same as we had when we were travelling in the States. If you do not like it, please do not hesitate to say so and I will feed it to Kaito's bottomless stomach."

Aoko gave him a questioning look, but picked up the fork and took a bite. The texture was a bit weird, but it had a pleasantly spicy taste. She tried the rice as well and found that it was also spicy. Not wasabi spicy, but enough of a bite that you could taste it. Hakuba said nothing, handing her a can of juice from the bag as well. "It's different." She finally commented. "Not bad, but different."

Hakuba nodded. "Yes. We got a taste for it after we were introduced to it by a short crazy redhead." That sounded like a story. He blushed slightly. "Uh... do not ask." He hastened to add.

She nodded back, deciding to take his word for it. "So what made you decide to learn how to cook?" Aoko asked instead.

"Kaito." He titled his head back, looking up at the sky. Aoko privately made a mental note at the dropped suffixes. She got the feeling that the lack of suffix wasn't an insult, quite the opposite. "The second time I stopped by the house he is working on, there was a huge explosion from the top floor. He shouted back that he was fine. There was a... slight pause, then he added that the beans were done."

"... Beans?"

"Evidently he had been heating up a can of beans with a blow torch. The can exploded."

Her eyes went wide. "Oh, dear."

Hakuba grimaced, as if recalling a particularly bad incident. "It was not nearly as messy as the make-shift can opener..."

"Eep." There really didn't seem to be much more she could say than that. She -knew- Kaito could get creative when there wasn't anything 'normal' for him to use at hand.

The blond nodded, closing his eyes. "Since chances are that both of us will be moving out of our parent's abodes within the foreseeable future, I decided it would be prudent to learn how to cook, aside from heating instant meals. I am currently attempting to convince Kaito to learn as well, but at the moment he is lacking in both the time and the patience to do so."

"Good luck convincing him." Aoko gave him a small salute, before grabbing another slice of the burrito and eating it. Conversation was good, but she still had to get back to class soon. "When we were younger, I couldn't get him to even set a table, he said it was 'girl's work'."

Hakuba made a rude sound and made a muttered comment about 'cross-dressing' that Aoko couldn't completely catch. She made a thoughtful noise in return, taking several more bites of food. It really wasn't all that bad, the unusual taste kind of grew on her. "So." She commented, fiddling with the rice a bit before scooping some up. "Are you and Kaito dating now?"

Hakuba's cheeks turned slightly pink as he suddenly found the trees on the other side of the grassy area highly interesting. "... Would you be angry if the answer is yes?" He asked tightly, not quite-avoiding the question.

"I would be angry if the answer you give me is not the truth." She said lightly. The two of them kept enough secrets from her, she'd like to think they could at least be honest about this with her.

Hakuba was silent for a moment. "Then...Yes." He said, releasing a small breath, like he was bracing himself for a confrontation. "Yes, we are."

"That wasn't so hard, was it?" Aoko smiled at him.

He shot her a dirty look. She reached over and patted his knee and he sighed. "It is... still new.” He said awkwardly. “We only started actually dating once we returned to Japan."

Less than a month, then. She supposed she could forgive them for not telling her yet. "I'm kind of surprised you didn't start before." She admitted. He all but stalked Kaito in High School, then dragged him to Britain, then across America. Nothing subtle about -that-. The fact that Kaito hadn't protested it said a lot as well.

"It is... complicated." Hakuba ran a hand down his face. He looked tired when he said that. "And not just the fact that we are both men. There were a lot of things going on at the time."

"And now?"

"There are still a lot of things going on." He closed his eyes. "But... not as life threatening anymore."

He fell silent and she mulled his words over as she ate. "Anything I can help with?" She finally asked.

Hakuba opened his eyes, blinking stupidly at her. "Aoko-chan?"

"Aoko." She corrected. "And I'll call you Saguru." If Kaito was her ‘Not-Brother’, that sort of made Haku... Saguru her ‘Not-Brother-In-Law’, didn't it? Or something. They had known each other for several years now; it seemed silly to keep calling him by his family name if they were friends. Or not-relatives. What ever. Kaito always bent the social norms.

He looked at her for several moments, then nodded shyly. "Aoko." He agreed.

She grinned back. "So is there anything I can help you with, Saguru-kun?" It was hard to drop the habit of calling him 'Hakuba', but it was worth the warm look on his face when she said his name.

"Not really." He admitted, but his expression was lighter than it had been. "It is just... I turn twenty this year."

So did she and Kaito. "And?" She asked in confusion.

"And I have a choice to make." His eyes narrowed slightly behind his glasses. "Japan does not allow for dual citizenships. So the choice is for me to remain in Japan or move to Britain and take on my Uncle's title."

"I thought you were already a Be... Fi... Vi..." What was that word?

"Viscount." Saguru said, making it sound wonderfully foreign and British. "And no, not officially until my twenty-first. And logically, I cannot be a British Viscount, much less an Earl, if I am not a British citizen."

She nodded. That did make sense. "If you do move to Britain, you can still come to visit, can't you?"

"Yes." He admitted. "But... I have always considered Japan to be my home."

"Oh." Yeah, she could see how this could be a problem. "What does Kaito say about this? Have you talked to him about it?"

"I have." Saguru got a very particular look on his face, like he couldn't be sure if he was annoyed or not. "He said not to factor himself into the equation."

"Eeh." Aoko stabbed at one of the burrito slices. "Kaito's an idiot sometimes. Talk to him about stuff that doesn't matter and he can go on and on, but as soon as it's personal...."

"What he says is usually very short and tactless." Saguru finished, an amused twist to his lips. "Yes, I have noticed."

She smiled back. "He does mean well." Kaito would probably be very annoyed with Saguru if the detective decided to stay in Japan because that's where Kaito was. Aoko silently agreed with that, had she been the one stuck in Kaito's position.

"Yes." Saguru agreed mildly. Aoko finished off the burrito and started poking at the rice again. "...There are... options." Saguru finally ventured. "For Kaito. If he wants. If I decide to live in Britain, instead of Japan. But..."

"...You need to make a decision first." She filled in.

Saguru nodded. "I need to make a decision first." He echoed tiredly. "Most couples who date at our age do not actually end up staying together-"

"Saguru-kun?" She cut him off.

"Yes?"

"Don't talk yourself out of this."

He blinked, looking startled. That was something she had noticed about people who were above average intelligence, they had a habit of often over-analysing things and managing to talk themselves out of what they wanted. Oftentimes things were simpler than most people realised.

It took a moment, and then he smiled at her. Not a polite smile, like he usually had in public, but a shy one that was quietly grateful. "Thank you, Aoko."

"You're welcome." She smiled back, and then found herself blushing. She covered it up by quickly taking a few bites of rice. He really was handsome sometimes.

They sat in silence again, Saguru tilting his face up towards the sun again, closing his eyes.

"If... if you ever need to talk..." Aoko offered. "You do know you can talk to me, right?" Kaito seemed to be able to talk to Saguru about things that he couldn't, or wouldn't talk to her about. That was one of the reasons why she'd been trying to get them to become friends to start with. But she got the feeling that Saguru didn't have many people to talk to.

He gave her a slightly surprised look. She smiled back and shrugged. "Well... we're practically family now, aren't we?"

To her surprise, he started laughing at that. She tilted her head to the side, confused by his reaction. "I think..." Saguru chortled "I am getting the better end of the deal with that."

"... Oh?"

A fond grin spread across Saguru's face. "I get you, Jii-chan, Kaito's Mum and Aunty Kitty. Kaito gets a bunch of blood-thirsty crooks."

"That's a terrible thing to say about your family." Aoko scolded him. "And besides, if you've got me, you get my father too."

Saguru paled. "... Thank you, Aoko." He said dryly, his polite face back on.

"You're welcome." She sparkled back. He continued to look slightly pained as she finished off the last of the rice, cleaning the plastic obento box of the last scraps of food. "And thank you for the food."

"Thank you for being my test subject." He took the empty box and put it on the bottom of the stack of obento.

"Any time." She patted his arm. "And I do mean that, Saguru-kun."

"Thank you." He collected his bag and rose. "In the meantime, I shall leave you to finish your reading." He leaned down, took her hand and kissed the back of it.

Girls squeaked in the background.

Saguru winked, then turned and walked off. She blushed slightly, picking up her books again, flipping to where she had been reading. So maybe she wasn't going to leave early today after all, but it had been worth it.

"Aoko!" Saguru paused about halfway out of the grassy area and waved. "Same time, next week?"

She waved back. "It's a Date!"

Girls squealed in the background.

He nodded and disappeared as she smugly returned to her books.

That was rather satisfying. No wonder Kaito pulled stuff like that all the time.

-fin-