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The first time they meet does not even register for them.
Gero's main target is opening the bottle of whisky over dinner with his business partners, all of them accounted for to drop dead like flies by the end of the night, silently and painlessly as his contract demands. But he notices there's an additional person in the group.
He is paid per kill, and the Poison Clan is nothing but thorough, so he makes a show out of tripping and spilling the whole glass of tampered liquor on the blonde girl at the table as he passes by.
“I'm so sorry,” Gero makes a show of apologizing, cleaning up and handing napkins to the poor girl.
“It's fine, just an accident.” She says, and it sounds sweet and sincere despite the whiskey stains that are settling on her dress.
He makes awkward apologies and offers the girl more help, and gets dismissed for his efforts. He pays attention at the way she excuses herself, all bubbly as she tells them to continue without her and leaves for the bathroom.
By the time she comes back, his marks have already drank the poison, and he keeps an eye out in case she gets handed a glass, but she does not. By the end of the night, she leaves before everyone else and he waits patiently until he's sure the job is done.
The second time, they do make note of each other.
Kinosaki does notice the dark haired bartender putting something in the rim of the glass of his date, who is too busy mumbling nonsense praises on the shell of his ear, his hands wandering a little too comfortable around him to care about his drink. He catches the eye of the guy, and his gaze gets sharp for a second as he sizes Kinosaki up, a question on his eyes as he hands them their drinks.
They ordered different cocktails, served on different types of glasses, so he knows whatever he put on the glass is not meant for him. He does not care about the man beyond draining his bank account, so he toasts with him and lets him swallow around whatever he was given, and goes about his night.
Kinosaki doesn’t let him anywhere near his mouth the whole evening, and it's on their way to a hotel room when he starts coughing up in a way that unnerves him. He's glad that he managed to get his account security details before he dropped dead on the street.
He plays the part of confused and unassuming bystander well, and the police determine it was probably an allergic reaction. Kinosaki has no evidence besides his memory, but he knows the truth.
The third time they meet, they actually introduce themselves
Gero’s mark has the same blonde girl from the bar a few weeks ago against a wall, he seems angry and is yelling as he backs her into the corner, and by the stormy expression on her face she is looking for a way out of the situation. He usually doesn’t like to risk being seen, of having witnesses, but he knows the girl noticed last time and didn’t say anything, so he takes his chances and comes behind his mark, sticking a needle filled with an toxin that drops him to the floor before he can register the syringe on his neck.
The girl stands a little confused for a second, staring at the guy in the floor, and then notes Gero standing there, the needle on display and mask still on.
“Ah.” Kinosaki says. “Hello.”
Gero stays still and doesn’t say anything, waiting to see where this is going, if he’ll have to knock her out before finishing this job.
To his surprise, Kinosaki just crouches and pokes at the guy, as if that would prove he is really dead, before rummaging through his pockets and finding a wallet. He checks the whole thing and takes a bunch of cash from the inside.
Gero is stunned in place.
“What?” Kinosaki asks as he stands up, counting the bills quickly. “You just killed him, you don't get to judge.”
“I'm not…” Gero trails off, his mind still grappling with everything that just happened. “Did you know who that guy was?”
Kinosaki shrugs and pockets the money, unbothered for the most part.
“Beats me, to me he is just business.” Kinosaki stares at Gero, and looks him up and down, he suddenly looks much more alert than a second ago. “Are you going to kill me next?”
“No.”
“Good, then it's settled then.” Kinosaki fixes up his hair and makes a show out of brushing up his clothes. “If you'd be kind to not involve me in this whole thing I'd appreciate it. Don't really want to deal with the police.”
“I'm sorry,” Gero decides to stop Kinosaki before he has a chance to leave and give him more questions than answers. “Are you… is this… fine? to you?”
“I am! If anything I should be thanking you.” Kinosaki says, and brings out the same bills he just took and counts them. “You want half? You made me a favor after all.”
Gero rejects the cash on instinct and tries to reconcile, not for the first time, that his job is really fucking weird.
“Look,” Kinosaki tells him, crossing his arms “you make money killing people with fancy poisons or whatever you do, and I make money scamming rich old men. I am not saying anything if that's what worries you, this isn't my first gig involving Specialists.”
“Right, okay… Cool” Gero replies, and he has never felt more out of his depth during a job than this second. “I am Hikaru Gero.”
He doesn't know why he says it, why he feels the need to introduce himself to this stranger, but he does, and he's rewarded by a lovely smile that makes him self-conscious of every bone on his body.
“Mei Kinosaki.” He says, and he thinks that should be the end of it.
But they meet again, again and again. It reminds Gero of learning the meaning of a new word and seeing it everywhere from that moment forward, something that always was there but never registered because it was so far out of his periphery.
He is certainly aware now, with the amount of times Kinosaki finds himself in the middle of dangerous situations because of the people he spends time with.
“Please stop getting involved with my marks.” He begs him a bit resigned and tired after a particularly messy fight, in which he ended up having to protect Kinosaki from being involved with one of the main men of a mafia operation.
“How else will we meet if I don’t?” He bats his eyes at him, all pretty and playful, and it takes every nerve on Gero’s body to stop himself from blushing at the words. “And maybe if you stopped going after rich guys you wouldn't have to see me.”
At this point, Kinosaki is sure Gero knows what his business it’s all about, and he is pretty sure he knows Gero’s too. It was certainly a surprise when he learned he had become an acquaintance with the main heir of the Poison Clan of all people, but he wasn’t here to judge, specially when he had been very decent and polite all the times they had met before.
He likes Gero, his distant personality and the awkwardness he carries on him when he’s not in the middle of a job. Kinosaki doesn’t know him enough, but he gets the impression that he is not someone with many friends, so he makes a decision in that moment, after the dust had settled from the fight.
He takes out his phone and opens up his contacts, handing it to Gero.
“Tell you what, give me your number and you can tell me beforehand who you are targeting. Would that settle your nerves?” He is half-teasing, knows Gero is more concerned with the effort of wasting syringes and toxins than catching Kinosaki in the crossfire.
Gero takes the phone and his face goes through a million emotions before starting to type, slowly and controlled because his gloves make it hard to tap swiftly. He gives back the phone to Kinosaki silently, but he can see the tension on his jaw, the glimmer on his eyes that is a bit hopeful.
He texts him inmediately and smiles at the funny and high-pitched text sound Gero has.
“There! Now you have my number too.”
“Thanks.” Gero says, and the tiny smile he gives Kinosaki is a bit blinding.
“For what? Getting in the way? Just let me know who you are after so I don’t interrupt you.”
And he does.
At first their messages are stilled and filled with simple statements and replies, sometimes emojis to fill in when there’s nothing else to say, but slowly Kinosaki starts getting more than monosyllables out of Gero.
They do text about their work, with Kinosaki being more aware of who to be wary of and when to avoid them; it also makes it easier to know who Gero is after and move faster to scam them out before they die. Once or twice Gero asks him to be a distraction, a pretty decoy to lure them into a false sense of security.
But somewhere in the middle, their conversation shifts. Kinosaki takes pictures of the lavish dinners he gets invited to and gets witty and dry replies back about being mindful of possible poisoning.
Sometimes he gets badly shot pictures of random stuff, specially of diy candy kits that Kinosaki has found out are Gero's most fervent passion.
There are pictures of bugs that Gero holds gently on his palms that endear him and make him squeamish in equal meassure; before and after cleaning comparisons and plated dishes that always look homemade. Kinosaki doesn't tell him how much he appreciates the little glimpses of life that Gero shows him, because he didn’t even realize how much he was craving the mundane interactions until the moment he was showed what he was missing.
Kinosaki feels the shift, as he likes to call it on his mind and nowhere else, when he is on his way home from visiting Okuto and he gets a call from Gero. It is weird enough that he hesitates a second before answering, something akin to anxiety crawling up his throat as his minds jump to the worse possible outcome.
“Gero?” He asks as he picks up.
“Where are you going right now?” His voice is calm at the other side of the receiver, and that settles something on Kinosaki's mind
“Why do you ask?”
“You look dressed up.”
Kinosaki stops on his tracks and looks around him, but cannot spot Gero.
“You are a creep.” He says, but he is smiling and trying hard not to. “I was going home.”
“Any plans for tonight?” And he says it normally, friendly as Gero always is, but something gets caught on Kinosaki's throat all the same.
“Not really, just takeout, skincare and a dating show.” He’s still looking around, trying to catch Gero on the crowd that crawls around him at the rush hour.
“Wanna have dinner at mine?” Gero says right behind him, and Kinosaki startles with a gasp as he turns around.
Gero smiles, and Kinosaki knows he is doomed, so, so doomed right that second.
He ends up going to Gero's house, and eats the best katsudon of his life, he tells Gero that he is a guy and he feels the sweet taste on revenge when he startles more than he did on the street earlier at his sudden appearance.
It is a fun night out and he promises Gero to bring his best mud masks and jade rollers the next time, and doesn't realize the implications of “next time” until he's already back at his tiny apartment, in his pijamas and shaking from the amount of emotions he is feeling right then and there.
The world keeps spinning, Gero keeps calling him for mindless conversation and Kinosaki keeps falling down and down until he's pretty sure he's done for.
He also realizes how sad and pathetic it is, to finally get a real genuine friend and because he is so starved of affection and real human connections, he ends up taking it too far too fast.
Kinosaki is pretty sure he can handle it though, or he thought he could handle it.
Could being the key word.
“Are we friends?” Is the first thing that Gero asks him when he picks up the phone months later. He sounds out of breath and anxious, which confuses Kinosaki more than anything.
“Um, I would like to think so, yeah.”
“I need to ask a huge favor.” The way he says it rings every alarm bell on Kinosaki's mind, and he is already pausing the show he is watching and sitting upright.
“What is it?”
“It's a big ask… It's-” He swallows hard enough that Kinosaki hears it through the phone “It's a lot. Can I come see you? I think it's worse if I say it through the phone.”
He sends Gero his address, and puts on a hoodie on top of his pajamas so he looks a bit more decent. He thinks of cleaning up a bit but the idea feels silly to him, as if he is trying to impress Gero, so he just picks up a few scattered clothes from the chairs and throws them in the closet so at least there's a door separating the mess from his living space.
There's an urgent knock at his door so quick that Kinosaki wonders how close Gero was from the area, or if he actually ran here, and when he opens to a disheveled and panting Gero, he gets his answer
“Are you in danger?” Is the first thing he thinks to ask, he scans Gero's face and body for injuries, but there are none.
As he does, Gero opens and closes his mouth a few times, no sound besides heavy breaths, his expression conflicted and stuck in a weird place when he finally seems to find the words.
“Marry me.” He says, and Kinosaki has to stop himself from closing the door right on his face on instinct.
They both stare at each other, Kinosaki can feel his own face heating up and can see Gero's normally stoic face twisting itself in embarrassment, a dark red starting to crawl up his neck and face.
Hikaru Gero is blushing.
Kinosaki doesn’t know what to do still.
“Wait… Hold on, I didn’t-” Gero rambles, and Kinosaki can’t do anything but wait for an explanation because this is getting absurd.
Gero looks behind Kinosaki’s shoulder, to the inside of his apartment and something more clear goes through his expression. He grabs Kinosaki’s wrist and gestures to the hallway.
“Let’s talk somewhere else.”
Kinosaki doesn’t point out that Gero was the one to insist in coming over, or object that he is in his pajamas and grippy cat socks. His body is moving, being guided by Gero, but his mind is still caught on a loop of Gero asking to marry him in front of his apartment after running from god-knows-where to see him.
Gero leads them to the roof of his building, bare and plain. Just the grey flooring and them.
Gero looks around at the buildings around him, and the people passing by on the street from up above, and Kinosaki can’t stop staring at him.
“Hear me out.” He finally says, his face a more normal color, his voice more level.
“You need me to marry you… as a favor?” Kinosaki finally click the pieces on his mind, but they still make no sense.
“Ever since we came of age, our grandma has been pressuring my sister and me to get married… form a family, have children.” He takes a breath. “She wants us to continue the Gero clan, and we can only do that through blood.”
“We never paid much attention to her, of course. Akari had other things on her mind other than the clan, Teruaki was still young, and I never really gave much thought to relationships.” Gero swallows hard around the word, as if it pains him, but he continues. “But for a few months now she has been more insistent, more… demanding. I once told her I couldn't marry because I didn't have a partner, so she tried to set me up with someone I didn't know at all.”
“She's forcing you to marry?” Kinosaki asks, still wrapping his head around the whole thing.
“Not me. Akari, my little sister.” Gero's face hardens, his eyes more sure and determined than a second before. “I can't let that happen, alright? Akari has a girlfriend, she has a life beyond this. I cannot let our Grandmother marry her off, she'll be miserable.”
Kinosaki can feel the hurt on Gero, even though he's trying hard not to show it, and can't help but feel ridiculous, because he understands more than anything giving it all up for a sibling.
Kinosaki has always willed himself to think of Okuto and himself before everyone else, has taught himself how not to feel for others and worry only about himself. He has done the unspeakable, if that made sure he had enough to make Okuto live just a little better, just a little longer. And right now he can’t help but feel for Gero more than he has ever allowed himself to feel for somebody else.
“But if I get married Akari and Teruaki will be fine.” Gero says, and it is a bit pleading. “I know this is a lot, and I sound insane, but I don't know what else to do.”
Gero is standing a few meters away, but it feels like a whole world away from Kinosaki.
He wishes he could say this was the worse marriage proposal he has gotten, and the thought leaves him a bitter taste on his mouth. Kinosaki wishes Gero was uglier, maybe less respectful or someone he wouldn't mind getting disposed of in the future.
But he isn't, because Hikaru Gero is actually a pretty great guy. So he takes a deep breath, and he is selfless for maybe the first time ever.
“I can't do that, Gero, I'm sorry.”
Gero seems to deflate, the fight leaving him, and Kinosaki feels worse than he has any right to feel.
“Right… No, it's okay, I get it, it's a crazy plan.”
“Listen,” Kinosaki tries to clarify, wants to get close, to touch Gero and reassure him, but it feels like too much at the same time. “I think you are a great guy. You are… one of the best people I know. It's not that I don't want to help you, but I believe you deserve to marry someone you really like, someone you love.”
Gero frowns, and something passes through his eyes that makes his stare all the more intense.
“Are you?”
“What?”
“Waiting for someone special, someone you really like.”
Kinosaki laughs, an ugly and self-deprecating thing that is more mocking than he intends.
“C'mon Gero. Do I look like someone who wants to get married? Who's waiting out on love?”
“No, but do I?” He takes a step closer to Kinosaki, and not for the first time, he is reminded that Gero is someone who deals with murder. “Be honest.”
He refuses to answer, because the only reply he can come up with is an obvious and incredibly depressing one.
Besides himself, Gero only has two other friends he knows about. Two guys, older than him, and one of which is married and with children. As far as Kinosaki knows, Gero hasn't even had a first kiss, a kindergarten girlfriend or even a simple childhood friend.
Gero is a lonely soul, one that has wandered for years on his own until Kinosaki met him.
“No, you don't.” He finally replies, because Gero just stares at him, expecting an answer.
“So what should I be waiting for?” He doesn’t say it, but Kinosaki can hear it all the same
Should I wait for my sister to be married off and treated like an incubator?
“I can’t have children.” He reminds Gero, because it’s hard to find other reasons beyond the obvious.
“I’m not asking you for that… I’ll deal with it, with all of it, I promise. I’ll even pay you… Anything you need I’ll get it for you, you know money isn't an issue.” Gero steps even closer, and he grabs Kinosaki’s wrist on his hand, a touch so gentle that Kinosaki nearly shakes him off. “I know this is crazy, and we are friends, but I think that’s why I am asking you and not anyone else, because I can trust you. Please, marry me.”
And Kinosaki wishes Gero didn’t make it this hard. With his messy mop of hair, and his pretty eyes that look even better on the orange glow of the afternoon.
“God you look like a kicked puppy… Fine.” He says, looking away and praying to everything that he isn’t blushing. “I’ll marry you.”
“Really?” Gero asks, and he seems to be back to normal, more excited than a second ago.
“If you pay me and you are sure about this, why not?” He looks down, and wishes he didn’t because he is now self-conscious once again of his pajamas. “What do I need to do?”
They may be way too over their heads, but Kinosaki is willing to take the leap. For a friend, at least.