Chapter 8: Midnight Damage Control

The bedside clock read eleven forty-six when Ren closed his eyes.

He'd handed the report to Sona at five fifty-eight, with exactly two minutes of margin and four pages that smelled like cold coffee and pure bureaucratic spite. Dinner had been a ramen that was technically just water with delusions of noodles, and now he was collapsed on the bed with his uniform pants still on because taking them off required energy he didn't have available. As a Balancer, his nature neutralized external forces no problem. The thing was, nobody had explained to him how to neutralize his own exhaustion after a night of hunting.

That should've been in the contract somewhere.

At twelve twelve, his right wrist burned.

It wasn't a vibration. It was a direct prick into the tendon, like someone had pressed something hot against the skin. The sensor flashed electric blue: an energy fluctuation concentrated in the forest park, near the steps of the abandoned Buddhist temple.

Ren stared at the ceiling.

"No," he said out loud.

The sensor flashed again.

"I said no."

It flashed a third time.

"Fantastic."

He sat up with the enthusiasm of someone seriously considering a career change. He fumbled around for a t-shirt on the floor, found two that weren't his and one that was, pulled on his dark jacket, checked that the cash was where it was supposed to be, and slipped out through the kitchen window into the back alley.

The night smelled like rain that still hadn't made up its mind to fall and like magic gone stale between the buildings.

"If it's the same bastard from this morning," he muttered as he crossed the alley, "I swear on my dinner there's gonna be no paperwork that saves him."

________________________________________

The park was genuinely dark, the kind of dark that has no bottom to it. The streetlights at the entrance flickered with an annoying hum, and fifty meters in the trees swallowed up what was left of the light. Ren moved along the dirt path without making a sound, guided by the intermittent pulse of the sensor. His Balancer essence worked like a ive cloak, erasing his footsteps from the area's mystic radar. An advantage he was especially grateful for on nights when he preferred to find the target before the target found him.

Thirty meters. Twenty.

The pulse stopped.

The source had gone still in the clearing, right at the foot of the old stone steps of the shrine. Ren pressed himself against the trunk of an oak and leaned his head out the bare minimum.

There was no rogue.

There was a woman with her back to him, standing under the gap of moonlight that managed to slip through the canopy.

It was Akeno Himejima.

Oh. No.

What she was wearing was a black silk nightgown so thin that the moon basically ed right through it, with slim straps that left her entire back bare. Her raven hair fell loose all the way to her waist without the schoolgirl ponytail, and her bare feet stepped on the wet grass like walking out into the woods at midnight in lingerie was a perfectly reasonable activity that anyone would do.

This woman is going to kill me before someone with actual intent gets the chance.

He took a step back, intending to retreat before his brain finished processing the full visual inventory, but a branch cracked under his boot at roughly the volume of a gunshot in the silence of the forest.

Akeno didn't startle. She tilted her head over her shoulder, letting a dark strand fall across her cheek, and found Ren's gaze in the gloom with a precision that had nothing accidental about it.

A slow smile spread across her lips.

"Well, well," she said quietly. "Look what the midnight tide dragged in."

"Himejima."

"Ren-kun."

"What are you doing out here?"

"Protecting the territory."

"In pajamas."

"Nightgown."

"At this hour the difference is philosophical."

Ren stepped out of the tree's shadow with the posture of someone who had definitely not just suffered a micro heart attack.

"I knew you'd take the bait," she said before he could go on. "If I tweaked the frequency in the sector a little, the park ranger would respond. And here you are."

"Hacking a Council sensor counts as sabotage."

"Sona-chan's asleep. Nobody's going to know."

"I know."

"You don't count. You're part of the operation."

"I'm not part of your operation, Himejima."

"Then why did you come?"

Ren didn't answer. She smiled a little wider.

"Besides," Akeno added, starting to walk toward him with the energy of someone in absolutely no hurry, "it isn't just bait. I really did detect something out here twenty minutes ago, but it spooked the moment I got close."

"And your first response was to come investigate alone?"

"With you on patrol I feel very protected."

"That's not a valid argument."

"It's a compliment."

"Still doesn't count as an argument."

Akeno stopped less than a meter away and the scent of roses and clean skin reached him before anything else. Ren's brain, which had been running on pure inertia for hours, decided at that precise moment that it was a great time to start failing at its basic functions.

"It's really hot in my room," she said, as if that explained everything. "Don't you like how it looks on me?"

"It's a security risk."

"The nightgown?"

"The amount of fabric."

"How specific."

"I'm a professional."

Akeno brushed the tips of her fingers along the collar of his jacket, slowly, and leaned forward just enough that Ren had to take a step back. His back hit the trunk of the oak.

Trapped.

She rested a hand on the bark right next to his ear and looked up at him with an expression that had nothing innocent and everything deliberate about it.

"You're very tense, Ren-kun," she murmured. "Your heart's beating really fast."

"I just crossed the park on foot."

"Walking."

"It's thirty meters uphill."

"Is it because of the danger in the woods," she asked, closing the gap until the heat of her body started to filter through the jacket, "or because of me?"

"It's the pending paperwork."

"Lie."

"The cold ramen from earlier."

"Also a lie."

"Himejima."

"Ren-kun."

"This qualifies as obstruction of patrol."

"Is there a form for that?"

"Three pages, probably."

Akeno laughed quietly and tangled her fingers in his hair, pulling down slowly with a firmness that closed the last few centimeters between their mouths.

"Try me, then," she whispered. "Let me see what you do when you don't have forms to hide behind."

Screw the forms.

Ren moved his left hand before his common sense could veto the decision. He caught her wrist in a grip firm enough to pull a real gasp out of her and, at the same time, slid his right hand around her waist and yanked her toward him with a roughness that wasn't in any organization's protocol manual. He used the rotation of his shoulders and slammed her back against the oak, flipping the position in one motion.

Akeno's smile froze.

Her violet eyes widened, and for the first time since Ren had known her, the expression that crossed her face wasn't calculated. It was genuine surprise, the kind that doesn't get rehearsed and doesn't get controlled.

"I like honesty," Ren said, his voice low and rough against her cheek. "What I don't like is people using my downtime to play games. If you're gonna trip an alarm to drag me into the woods at midnight, you'd better be ready for what shows up when the guard answers."

Akeno was looking at him. Her chest rising and falling fast, her back pinned against the rough bark, her body with no way out.

Then the surprise vanished.

And what came in its place was something completely different.

A dark spark lit her eyes. She let her whole body go loose, letting her torso press against his in a way that was anything but accidental, and her free hand traveled slowly up Ren's chest until it tangled in his hair again, pulling down.

"Claws," she murmured, with a smile that was half surrender and half pure challenge. "You've been hiding claws under that boring uniform. How much more are you hiding, Ren-kun?"

"Himejima."

"Mm?"

"Shut up."

"Or what?"

Ren leaned in toward her. Lips a centimeter from hers, waiting.

Crack.

Heavy footsteps, less than fifteen meters away, moving through the underbrush of the upper trail with a methodical cadence that wasn't an animal's or a student walking home late.

The sensor vibrated three times in quick succession. Confirmed level two alert.

Ren's reaction was automatic. Instead of pulling back and giving away the position with any sudden movement, he pressed his body even harder against Akeno's, pinning her to the tree and sinking both of them into the densest shadow of the oak. He covered her mouth with his left palm before she could say anything and steadied her by the thigh with his right hand, holding her completely still.

Akeno tensed. Her eyes flew wide open, now for entirely different reasons.

The position was what it was. The nightgown had ridden up with the movement and her thigh was completely exposed under Ren's hand, the heat of both of them blending into a proximity that had nothing tactical and everything circumstantial about it. His Balancer condition activated on its own, like a reflex: a thin layer of silver energy covered them both, absorbing Akeno's demonic aura before it could leak out and give the amulet anything to track.

Up on the trail, a silhouette in a trench coat walked slowly. The amulet in his hand glowed a faint crimson, hunting for the fluctuation Akeno had triggered.

House Vaal.

Ren didn't breathe. His eyes were fixed on the trail, calculating distance and response angle if the subject turned. Akeno's lips breathed against his palm and her heartbeat hammered directly against his chest.

If he sweeps that amulet east I've got exactly three seconds.

The scout stopped at the edge of the clearing. He swept the area with the amulet for five seconds that lasted considerably longer than that, the crystal flickering without picking up anything concrete. Then, with the quiet disappointment of someone who isn't getting what he came for, he kept moving down the hill and faded into the fog of the forest.

The sensor went back to ive blue.

Ren let the air out very slowly and lowered his hand from her mouth. He didn't let go of her thigh right away. Their faces were still centimeters apart, both of their breathing still uneven from the mix of adrenaline and everything else going on at that oak.

"House Vaal," Ren said quietly.

"I know."

"Active patrols at this hour."

"I know."

"If you'd used magic, it would've canceled my camouflage."

"I wasn't going to use magic."

"Good."

Pause.

"Ren-kun."

"What."

"The hand."

"Yeah."

"It's still on my thigh."

"Yeah."

Ren let go. He took a step back toward the trail and shoved his hands in his pockets with a calm that cost more than it looked from the outside. Akeno stayed leaning against the tree, her eyes still glowing in a way that had nothing to do with tactical adrenaline.

She ran her tongue slowly along her lower lip, where his palm had been pressing, without breaking eye .

"This method of yours for neutralizing energy," she said, her voice still in that low , "is incredibly effective."

"Himejima."

"We should practice it more often."

"Go back to the club."

"That's all?"

"And put on real clothes."

"What counts as real clothes for you?"

"More fabric than this."

"How much more?"

"Himejima."

"Ren-kun."

"Goodnight."

He turned around and started walking back through the brush without looking back, his heart still at a rhythm that had nothing to do with physical exertion and everything to do with the last twenty minutes of his life.

"You're giving Rias the summary tomorrow," Akeno called after him, the laugh slipping in between the words. "You including this part too?"

"The summary is only about House Vaal."

"How professional of you."

"It's my job."

"And the other part?"

"Emergency camouflage."

"Is that in the Balancer manual?"

"It's in common sense."

"Very creative of you to call it that."

Ren kept walking without turning his head.

"Put some shoes on for the walk back," he said. "The ground's wet."

A brief pause behind him.

"Are you worried about me, Ren-kun?"

"I'm worried about you slipping and triggering another alert at two in the morning."

"How romantic."

"Goodnight, Himejima."

Akeno's laugh floated between the trees behind him, soft and unhurried, like the whole forest was a private joke only she fully understood.

________________________________________

The back alley of the building was empty. Ren came in through the kitchen window, crossed the dark apartment, and collapsed onto the bed exactly the same way as before: on his back, clothes on, ceiling above.

The sensor: ive blue. All clear.

All clear, he repeated mentally.

He ran a hand over his face. House Vaal was a real problem with real steps: report, patrol pattern tracking, cross referencing with the activity logs Sona had been keeping since the previous month. Concrete work, defined structure, four extra pages of paperwork that were going to smell exactly the same tomorrow as they did today. He could handle it.

The other thing didn't have structure.

The other thing had violet eyes and a habit of showing up in midnight lingerie in active operation zones, smiling like the whole world was a board she'd already won in advance. The other thing ran her fingers along the collar of his jacket with a completely deliberate slowness and then had the nerve to ask if he was tense.

A risk management problem, neatly catalogued and filed in the appropriate folder. He told himself the next item on the agenda was eight hours of sleep and pretending none of this had happened.

He closed his eyes.

He thought about the House Vaal report for about forty seconds. Then he stopped thinking about the report and started thinking about things he technically didn't have time to think about, like the exact temperature of Akeno's hip under the silk and the way genuine surprise had crossed her face when he flipped the position, that brief second when she stopped being the character she always played and was just someone who hadn't seen it coming.

Risk management, he insisted.

His right hand still burned faintly, and it wasn't the sensor. It was the palm.

At one oh four he stopped trying to catalogue anything and just fell asleep, the scent of roses floating somewhere in the back of his memory and the quiet certainty that Thursday was going to be a very, very long day for both of them.