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It’s only been four hours since they found Kambe's stupidly expensive suit jacket in a stairwell, covered in wine, dirt, and blood.
"Inspector Katou."
Three hours and forty-five minutes since Suzue Kambe called him with the tracking information for her brother’s whereabouts. Three hours since the emergency debrief, when Kambe’s location finally ended in the suspected rooftop penthouse of the drug lord they’d been investigating.
"Inspector."
Maybe, maybe twenty minutes since they bashed down the door—
"Haru."
The sound of his name falling off Kambe's lips finally jars Haru into motion, shaking him from his thoughts. A sharp retort sits on his tongue, ready to tell Kambe off for referring to him by his first name—but then Haru remembers where they are.
"Is there something wrong?" Kambe says, voice as low and aggravating as ever, as if Haru hasn't just tunnel-visioned at the sight of him in handcuffs, sitting on the floor. There’s a joke somewhere in his witty repertoire about Kambe not having his golden pillow to rest his royal ass upon, but it gets lost. If Haru had to guess where, probably somewhere between the disheveled quality of Kambe’s hair and the fact that his tie is gone, shirt enticingly opened at the first few buttons.
"I," Haru starts, stops, begins again, "Shouldn't I be asking you if you're okay?"
Mentally slapping himself, Haru crouches down before Kambe with the keys for the cuffs. Haru's hands jerk into motion, eyes focusing on the other man's elegant hands, at the dark brown of dried blood crusting at his wrists.
Kambe's smug smirk (it's a smile, but all smiles look like smirks when they come from him) triggers a flush across Haru's features, "I'm fine, I assure you."
"You're covered in blood," he coughs, swiftly unlocking Kambe's hands. It’s not that much blood, and none of it looks like it’s actually coming from Kambe himself but... Kambe rubs his wrists, light colored bruises already forming on his pale skin—Haru resists the urge to grab his hands, to catalogue each limb for injuries like it.
Daisuke Kambe smiling at him is enough to get his alarm bells ringing, but Daisuke Kambe smiling at him like they're sharing a secret?
Unfathomable.
Like Haru is somehow the one that got shoved down a stairwell and handcuffed to a goon riddled building, and Kambe is one of the first on the scene to come to his rescue. Playing back how they got to this mess in his head, his previous thoughts sounds ridiculous—Haru knows this.
"You're not squeamish at the sight of blood, Inspector Katou. Perhaps there is another reason for your discomfort." A dried streak of it lashes across Kambe’s cheek, dull, gross color marring Kambe's clear skin. Haru stifles the urge to wipe at it, if only to check if there’s a wound underneath that Kambe has neglected to tell him about.
There are times where Kambe Daisuke seems almost relatable; in the moments where he does not act like he drifts among the rest of them. Moments where he’s human. This is not one of them, Haru realizes, because the look in Kambe’s eyes is not the expression of someone that has been kidnapped.
He’s having fun.
"If it makes you feel better," Kambe murmurs, before his hand drifts innocently towards Haru for… comfort? To punch him? Haru isn't sure, only that he stays deathly still as Kambe's hand stretches across the scant distance between them.
Haru glances down at the hand, eyes almost hoping to see the telltale tremor of shock, to see that this has truly shaken Kambe. The adrenaline of nearly being killed is enough to traumatize anyone, even a rich bastard like Kambe, right? But Haru is both surprised and not surprised to see that Kambe's hand is as still and as steady as ever, like his eyes on Haru's face when he glances up. Kambe's elegant fingers curls around the lapel, into the old, sturdy material of his favorite coat and—
"None of the blood is mine," Kambe says, cold blue eyes staring straight through him in that infuriating, and somehow familiar way.
Haru’s mouth goes dry.
Before he can say anything to that, Daisuke Kambe plucks his sunglasses from the pocket of Haru's shirt. Haru blinks, having forgotten that he'd saved the broken specs from the shards of broken glass at the last site.
"I have plenty of these. You need not trouble yourself with salvaging them,” Kambe says, but the cutting comment about his wastefulness dies on Haru’s lips when Kambe doesn’t toss it to the side like Haru expects.
Instead, he tucks it into his own pocket, and there’s something being said here in a language Haru doesn’t understand. Kambe’s small, secretive smile sucks the air out of his lungs as it punches him in the gut, a double whammy of confusing hints—it’s as if Kambe is telling him something, something that Haru should know but doesn’t.
The spell is broken—as if Daisuke Kambe has a tightly held grip on Haru's words that he lets go, as if Daisuke Kambe allows the passage of his time to continue—and he's brought back to the real world, sirens blaring in the distance and assorted personnel running about. They aren’t alone, Haru remembers once again, even if Kambe’s eyes seem to not consider anyone else worthy of his gaze. Smoke, blood, gunpowder, the muted hint of his cologne all waft off of Kambe's dress shirt, and though Haru shouldn't worry about a man like Kambe, he finds that he does.
Worried for him, worried by him—
"—You should still get checked out by a medic," Haru chokes out, rising on creaking, tired knees to offer his hand down to the other man. Kambe tilts his head at him, and there’s a twinge of what looks like disappointment on the other’s face as he takes the proffered arm.
“If that’s what you’d like,” Kambe says.
Haru doesn’t know what Kambe means by that at all.