Kingdom Hearts fic: Long-Term Contract

[mistressofmuses]

Summary: After Riku successfully protected Kairi (and Sora) from the assassination attempt at a political gala, Kairi wants to hire him for ongoing protection. Clearly, there's more going on than a simple political grudge.
Sora has known Kairi for a long time, so it was natural that she asked him for help when she wanted to learn more about her birth family. Unfortunately, it seems like their attempts to find out more about her identity may have triggered the attempts on her life.

Day 24 of AU-gust: Private Detectives AU
And this is the first of my AUgust fics to be a sequel to another AUgust fic! This is a sequel to the Bodyguard AU fic "Professional Interest," and that one should definitely be read before this one. This one is set up even more to probably need at least one additional fic to conclude this story (and hit the OT3, finally), though timeline for that is definitely TBD.

---

They met back up at Riku’s office, the tiny pair of rooms he rented as a place to meet clients. Riku hadn’t intended for them to meet there; Sora and Kairi were simply waiting for him.

He shook his head as he unlocked the door. He said nothing as he sat on his side of the desk, folded his hands, and stared at them.

“I kept my promise,” Kairi said, sitting in the chair across from his desk and grinning.

He did not let his mouth twitch into an echo of that smile.

“You misled me,” he said instead.

She held her hand out, wobbling it from side to side. “I hired you to protect me. And you did protect me. Seems just about as straightforward as you’d asked, really.”

“You clearly knew that you were being targeted. Why didn’t you tell me that, if nothing else?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t know for sure, or at least not that it would happen there.”

“Well, despite the fact I feel I was not adequately informed, I’m glad the job was successfully completed.” Keep it impersonal. Business has been concluded.

“That’s what I’m here about…” she said.

He knew what was coming, but couldn’t say anything to head it off…

“I want to hire you again,” she finished.

Riku pressed his lips together. The job had been successful, yes, but he did not like that so much had been hidden from him. Both Kairi and Sora had clearly known that Kairi was being targeted, to the point that a broken window had correctly tipped them off that it was an assassination attempt. Luring away guards, sneaking into areas they weren’t allowed in, creating additional distractions… It all went a bit beyond the scope of being a bodyguard.

His first inclination was to say no. But… he couldn’t say it hadn’t been interesting. Or that he wasn’t drawn to both Sora and Kairi. But that was a dangerous train of thought to indulge.

“Why?” he asked.

“I need someone that I can trust to protect me. And to protect Sora,” she answered.

“Your would-be attackers are gone. You took one of them down.” Riku had taken down the man with the gun, but before Riku could get to the second attacker, Kairi had thrown and incapacitated him.

“I said I needed a bodyguard, not that I was helpless. But unfortunately, I’m fairly certain it’s not going to stop with three.”

Right, he reminded himself. Someone had tried to kill her before.

“I know now that you’re good at what you do. I trust you. So can I hire you again?”

All the reasons to refuse ran through his mind again, but… this was different than some very minor celebrity wanting to make sure a fan didn’t get handsy at a club. If he didn’t want to work with them again, he knew that they had other options. For Kairi this could be life and death. And he didn’t know if someone else could protect her the way he could.

“You say you trust me. Then tell me everything that might be relevant.”

---

Sora worried at his lip as they waited in the car. They needed to get into the records office, in hope of finding a physical file that could be taken, since apparently none of these records had been digitized.

But sneaking in would have to wait until the office was empty.

Riku sighed from the back seat.

“Impatient already?” Sora asked.

This was the first part of Riku’s new longer-term contract with Kairi, and by extension, Sora. Whoever was after them was clearly after Kairi, but that didn’t mean that Sora couldn’t be a target as well.

“I’m plenty patient,” Riku said. “Have you ever dealt with hearing the exact same story told to sixteen different girls as your client tries and fails to hit on them?”

Sora stifled a snort. “Can’t say I have. I have waited all night for someone to show up where they were supposed to.”

“How did you start working for Kairi? That part wasn’t clear when she explained things earlier.”

“I’ve known Kairi for a long time. Longer than I’ve been a detective.”

Riku snorted. “I can’t believe you were telling me the truth when you told me that.”

“Hey,” Sora protested. “Is it that hard to believe?”

He glanced in the rearview mirror to look at Riku, and noticed a hint of pink in his cheeks. Sora wondered if he was thinking of what had happened right before Sora had told him that… About the kiss to provide a plausible excuse for them being in an area not open to guests.

“I hadn’t expected it,” Riku answered primly, and Sora wondered again if he meant Sora being a detective, or the kiss.

Sora took pity on him and didn’t mention it. “Kairi and I were friends, and she knew that I was a detective, so she asked me for help.”

“Finding her birth family?”

Sora nodded. Kairi had been adopted very young, but not in infancy. Her adoptive parents were very much her real family, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t curious about the family that gave birth to her. Unfortunately, it had been a completely closed adoption, and even her father’s political sway couldn’t change that.

“Someone obviously knows,” Sora said. “The first attempt on her was days after I started looking.”

Riku frowned, leaning farther back into the seat. “Unless it’s a coincidence. Someone angry about something her father—her adoptive one—did?”

“I don’t think so. I think someone knows who her birth parents were, and wants to make sure that she doesn’t find out. They somehow got tipped off when I started looking. And since I haven’t found anything remotely…”

“We’re here,” Riku finished.

‘Here’ was the agency that had facilitated the adoption. They claimed not to keep any records on closed adoptions after they were finalized, but Sora didn’t believe it. But he did believe that they’d never kept digital records.

Sora would have said more, but then a man left through the office’s side door, locking it behind him. Sora watched him surreptitiously, until the man got into his car and had driven away.

---

Riku played lookout while Sora picked the lock.

“You realize breaking and entering isn’t legal,” Riku said, voice terse.

Sora adjusted the tension on the first pick until the second finally rotated the mechanism sideways. “Neither is attempted murder. And we are only doing one of those things, and I feel like it’s not the serious one.”

The lock clicked, and they were both able to slide in, the door closing softly behind them.

“Can you be quieter here than you were in the mansion?” Sora asked, barely louder than a breath. “I don’t think anyone here would believe we were just looking for a spot to make out.”

Riku ignored the second part, and said, “You said this place was empty now.”

“It should be.”

Sora crept down the hallway, in case there was someone still inside. Riku was actually a bit quieter behind him than he’d been in the mansion, though maybe it was just because this was cheap industrial carpet over concrete.

The lights were off, which was a good sign that no one else was there. The dim light reflecting down the hallway from the windows elsewhere was enough to judge what was behind each door. After passing the bathroom, a private office, and a copy room, they found a room full of file boxes.

“Keep an eye out,” said Sora. “I’ll start looking through these.”

Riku took up a position in the doorway, out of easy sight, but where he could still glance into the hallway.

Digging through the files wasn’t fun work, but definitely supported Sora’s belief that they did not destroy as many records as they claimed. Several of the files he found were stamped in red with CLOSED. It was just that none of them belonged to Kairi. It was difficult to find any real rhyme or reason to it, with the files not organized by name or date.

He pulled out the next box, working his way down the bottom shelf. Flipping through the folders, looking at the labeled tabs, his heart skipped a beat when he saw one labeled Uchida, Kairi.

The folder was empty. “Shit.”

Riku glanced back over his shoulder.

“The file was here, but it’s not anymore,” Sora explained. “It’s empty.”

“Shit,” Riku agreed. “Now what?”

“Now I have to figure out whether someone took it through official channels, or snuck it out like I was planning to. And who beat me to it.”

That was when things started to go wrong.

There was a sound in the hallway. Not of a door opening and closing, or a person walking down the hall as normal. It was a soft, furtive sound. Someone sneaking.

Sora’s eyes widened, and he nodded toward the doorway. Riku heard it, too. He ducked down, and Sora pressed against the wall.

Sora knew some basic self-defense, learned primarily at Kairi’s insistence. She was better at it, though. And Riku was better than either of them probably ever could be. Sora didn’t want to get in the way.

Riku crouched down, giving himself a brief opportunity to surprise the person sneaking through the hallway.

And surprise him Riku did, lunging up in a way that reminded Sora of a cat, all muscle and precision. The other man was knocked off balance, and Riku was on top of him before he had a chance to recover.

“Look out!” Sora half-yelled as he caught sight of the man’s knife. Any relief that he could have felt at the final confirmation that this was not simply a random employee they’d just assaulted was outweighed by the potential that Riku was in danger.

Riku grabbed the man’s wrist as he tried to slash at Riku’s shoulder, slamming the man’s hand into the ground. When he didn’t loose his grip, Riku repeated the motion with bruising force, until the knife skittered across the cheap carpet out of sight past the doorframe.

Riku forced his own forearm against the man’s throat, using the rest of his body to hold the man down.

Choking someone to unconsciousness took a lot longer than Sora had realized it would, but eventually the man’s struggles ceased.

“Do we turn him in?” Riku asked. “Or leave him?”

“Leave him,” said Sora. “We couldn’t explain what we’re doing here, and I don’t know that the authorities are trustworthy.”

Riku nodded. He picked up the knife, and gestured for Sora to follow him.

They both ran the rest of the way down the hall, abandoning their attempts at subtlety in favor of getting out of there as fast as possible.

At the car, Sora pulled Riku into a quick hug. “Thank you. I’m glad you were with me.”

Riku awkwardly patted him on the back. “Me too.”

He was flushed again, and Sora didn’t push it as he got the door open.

They both left, by prior agreement heading to Riku’s office as neutral territory. Sora wasn’t sure there was much of a point; whoever their enemy was, they’d obviously realized that Sora was involved, and almost certainly Riku, too.

Now he just had to figure out their next move.