"Wait, you have friends?"

He laughed at my stupid question. No, not at it. He was in disbelief. He stared up at me as I dangled from a wire connected to my belt. Yuu was hidden beneath a layer of blue and his own goggles, but his lips were upturned in a smile. I glanced away from him to survey the area, occasionally magnifying the back area of the room.

"Of course I do," he said as he pulled open a security terminal, getting to work. Unlike me, he did not require a program such as Hyacinth, who was currently hijacking the cameras for fun. "Don't you?"
"Uh... apart from you and Cecil, I haven't had a friend since the eleventh grade."
"Well, that actually explains a lot." He muttered to himself, pressing enter on the keyboard. It flashed an 'access granted' upon the screen for a while.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing," he said quickly.
"I hate you sometimes," I mumbled, walking past him to a dimly lit showcasing shelf that contained a very pricey looking sculpture. An art museum. Never been quite fond of those damned places. Too pristine.

"You're too perfect. It's not fair," Yuu groaned. I looked up from my spot where I was creating a virus as a gift from me to the art museum. He was holding the sculpture in his hands, head leaning against a wall.

"No one is without flaws."

"Not even you?"

For some odd reason, his words made me think of my mother. How we had made a childish oath on her death bed that I would take care of myself no matter what. That I would always make her proud.
"No," I said quickly and calmly. I had shocked myself by how sure I truly was in my words. "Not even me."

You would think that an art heist would be something normal criminals do for money, right? Well, for us, it meant we had a two part job. Which meant money. The artist that sculpted the item we had hauled to the drop-off zone worked on it for three years.

So faking a suicide was easy.

It just took a long time. Five hours of waiting outside his loft, in fact. It was a day job turned afternoon job, so we had to finish our work ahead of time (difficult for me- easy for him.), and had gotten at least ten pictures taken of us as we waited in the lobby. Yuu had tried to break the tension coiling off of me by talking about his day, but I was too impatient to listen. He had taken note of that and shut up, looking at passing people (often gaping) with seeming disinterest.

Good boy.

When the city was covered in the golden light of the setting sun, the artist finally entered. Georgi, I believe was his name. We followed him to the elevator, having a fake argument about how we should approach 'Aunt Tina'. I snapped about how we shouldn't have waited so long to visit her. He had chided that I should have gone without him. We followed Georgi down the wide hall to his flat, where our voices faded to nothing. He unlocked his door with no attention to us, shuffling inside and setting a bag on the table. He seemed sad. Yuu and I knew why. We had stolen his prized possession. Of course he was distraught over the situation. Closing the door behind him, Yuu pressed a bottle into my palm. But his hand lingered. Only for a second- a little image of the want he held hostage in himself. Our relationship wasn't that of a normal couple's. We knew the other harbored feelings that went beyond friendship, but we never acted beyond one kiss. Because we were afraid. Yuu's reasoning I couldn't quite get the feel of, but mine was obvious. I didn't want it to end up like Cecil. I didn't want it to feel like Cecil.
But I knew I loved Yuu. That I wanted him like I wanted my mother back to guide me.

God. All that from a lingering touch.

Georgi had his back turned to me, but when he heard the door close, he whirled around with his mouth hanging open. I shoved a pill into his mouth and tackled him to the floor, seating myself on his chest easily, my feet holding his wrists to the floor.
"I feel like you've done this before," Yuu commented with unease as I watched my victim gurgle from the cyanide capsule. He seemed to plead for help.

Three charges of murder for each year he worked on the sculpture... child abuse four years prior..

"I have." I said calmly, never breaking eye contact with Georgi as he wordlessly pleaded and clawed at my leather covered ankles (I was wearing combat boots), until they fell limp to the floor, eyes dull. My gloved hand spilled the cyanide pills in his left hand, closing the bottle around his fingers.
"Ah, great, I'm in love with a man that can kill me in seventeen different ways." He was joking, obviously. He knew how to kill me in just as many ways.
But I knew more.

Yuu and I exited the building with ease, our steps quickening the moment we left the front doors. The bag Georgi had brought with him was in my right hand, and we threw it in a dumpster a few blocks down, or gloves returning to our pockets after that.
"I want to meet your friends," I blurted out as we walked down the sidewalk, shoulders touching.
"Sure," he said, no hesitation was within his voice. "Tomorrow?"
I was working at my cafe tomorrow. He had paused, lips pursing as I explained that to him.
"We can help you," he proposed, deciding their own fates. I laughed, pulling sunglasses off of my face as the sun vanished behind a skyscraper.
"I don't need help." My words weren't harsh, but he knew there was an edge to it. Although we were partners in crime, Yuu knew I hated working with him. Not because of his personality or who he was- no, I was fine with that. It was the mere prospect of having to change my work style and my routine to better fit that of another. That was why Hyacinth was given to me. So that I wouldn't have to work with another human being that could hinder me. That rule didn't apply to just the underground. It applied to my every day life, although easy to adjust. Yuu was a hindrance on my routine. But it was a good one. My routine was predictable. Now it was scattered.
"You just don't want help, right?" Yuu said as we continued walking. I tried responding, but he cut me off.

"So we'll give you no choice. Yuuichiro Amane and company is going to assist you, Mikaela Shindo, in running a coffee shop."

"That's treason against me," I scoffed, lips tightening. He turned to me, a fierce look in his eyes beneath those glasses of his.

"So be it. I'll be a renegade for as long as it takes for you to learn how to act like a normal person. Treason's only a price."

That time, I didn't answer him.