Bend and Break(poly)(bxb)

Twenty-One

I slide into the backseat of the truck beside Kimori. His breathing has steadied, and his smile has returned. He's staring at me through clouded eyes, and I want to lean into him but we're both bloody and sweaty and gross. Thin layer of sin over sheer jubilation.

I speak to him as I undo the tight braids in my hair. They're giving me the kind of headache you can't just rub away. I work my fingers through both of them as the curls come loose to caress my face and shoulders. "I can't wait to go home and celebrate."

"Right, do you maybe wanna–" he cuts himself off with a wink and two slender fingers to his lips. The way he tilts his head back, the way the light slips through the dim car windows, there's a wet stripe of gold along his throat, along the bob of his Adam's Apple once he realizes I'm staring.

"Should we even celebrate this?" Von asks from the passenger seat. His broad back is to me, but I catch the way his blue eyes cut me through the mirror.

"Uh, yes. Cleo is dead and we're all still alive." I grimace at the dry blood I pull from my roots. "Barely injured and all together too."

"And we didn't kill any innocent people," Kimori adds.

"It's definitely worth celebrating." The red is under my nails now.

"They used us. Cleo used us. We came in dressed as a gang we ended up killing off in the end. Anyone else disturbed by how easy that was?"

"What?" I ask Von, too tired for his vagueness.

"You wanted it to be harder for us?" Romero asks, tightens his arms around his chest. He ditched his tie a while ago, and I don't know if the top few buttons tore from his shirt or if he just undid them himself. "Funny, Cleo doesn't like playing on easy mode either."

Von cocks his head to the side as he stares back at him. "What did you just say?"

I glance over Romero's squinted expression, messy tawny brown hair catching in the remaining street lights. I can't gauge how serious he is, and it's worrying me.

"I'm saying someone had to have made a deal with the TLs. You're the only one I've seen Cleo come to, not once, but twice and with two different arrangements."

"Cleo recognizes a leader when he sees one."

"He recognizes a traitor. Just tell us what he offered you to let him use us like that."

Von scoffs, turns back around.

Von can't be the spy. The TLs almost killed L and left him permanently injured. He would never work for them. Even if Cleo wasn't a member of the gang at the time, I refuse to believe Von would agree to work with a man like that. I refuse.

"I mean, I guess it was worth it. We got to keep Seven and Rosemary." Romero leans forward in his seat, a few inches from the back of Von's head. "Well, up until they practically killed her."

"She's gone now, so it doesn't matter– Ah, is that why you've been acting more annoying than usual lately?" Von asks, his eyes widen for a brief second as he turns to stare straight at Romero. "You want more of my attention, don't you?"

There's something extremely sexy about the way Von is talking to him, but I can't quite tell what it is. It's maybe the rasp of his voice at the end or the lowness at the beginning. The stir of the tattoos, of his neck, or the way he lets his black hair fall in his eyes like he just doesn't care at all.

We turn a corner, and all of our bodies shift the slightest bit in the large vehicle. The roads are clear. It's dawn but not morning. Too early for work alarms. Too soon for bird calls.