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Shima sees the red on the concrete before he sees anything else. The explanation of the officer on scene fades out as he pushes his way through the crowd, slow and without enough force at first, but soon he’s elbowing people and nearly running. The officer trails uselessly after him, trying to get him to stop, to slow down. Shima doesn’t listen. It’s Ibuki, kneeling there in the middle of the red on the concrete. His head hangs down and Shima can’t see his face, but he knows that’s his partner. That’s the plaid jacket he put on this morning as they left the station. That’s the shape of his shoulders, hunched and tense.
Ibuki ran off after the perp, and now here he was, bleeding onto the pavement.
Shima’s too far away, still. He’s moving too slow. He’s running, but he’s not there yet. His body can’t keep up with his heart, the way it's racing towards Ibuki. He wants to call out, to ask what happened, but his voice catches.
Ibuki doesn’t look up. Shima doesn’t know if that’s because he hasn’t noticed Shima running towards him or because he can’t look up. For a terrible moment, Shima thinks maybe he’s dead, stabbed through the chest, but his shoulders move, he’s breathing.
Shima’s finally there, finally in front of Ibuki. He’s dropping to his knees and all the words that caught in his throat are loosed in a confused flood as he hits the concrete. “Ibuki,” he’s saying, he’s pleading. Around all the nonsense and the attempts to ask what happened, it’s just “Ibuki” that comes out intelligible. “Ibuki,” and “please.”
Ibuki looks up at him, and it’s not pain on his face, but confusion. “Shima?”
“Ibuki.”
“Shima, what’s wrong?” Ibuki reaches up and takes a hold of Shima’s shoulders. “Hey, what’s going on? What happened?”
Shima grabs his arm. “No, I- Ibuki. Are you…” He sees it, then. There’s something between him and Ibuki, glinting in the midday sunlight and splattered with red. It’s a knife, and Ibuki’s got his blue gloves on and he’s not bleeding at all. He’s kneeling there on the sidewalk to look at a murder weapon. The blood isn’t his. The blood isn’t Ibuki’s. “Oh.”
“What?”
Shima shakes his head. “No, nothing. I thought you were chasing a shoplifter?”
Ibuki looks at him for a long moment, and Shima knows he’ll have to answer those unspoken questions later, but Ibuki spares him for the time being and says, “I caught him. But then this other guy decided, right there in front of my face, to stab a lady.”
“Oh.”
“They caught him too, obviously. And the victim’s probably fine.” Ibuki picks up the knife and puts it in an evidence bag. “I’m just getting this.”
“Oh.” That's all Shima can say. His heart’s still racing. He’s looking at Ibuki’s face with too much intensity, still convincing himself that nothing’s wrong.
Back in the van, the two of them are silent for a few minutes, Ibuki behind the wheel, taking them back to their normal patrol route. Shima looks out the window, ashamed of the tension still balled up between his shoulder blades and dreading the inevitable questions from everyone back at the office when they hear how he ran to Ibuki like an insane person.
When they come to a stop at a light, Ibuki asks, “Did something happen to you?”
“No,” Shima says, still not looking at him.
Ibuki taps his finger on the steering wheel, and Shima can practically hear the questions bubbling up in his head. The next one he asks is, “Did that officer say something?”
“Huh?”
“Like, did that officer say something crazy?” Ibuki eases the van forward as the light turns green. “And that’s why you ran over to me?”
“No.”
“Why, then?”
“Why what?” Though Shima knows.
Ibuki huffs. “Why’d you run at me like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you were scared,” Ibuki says. Shima looks at him. Worry’s etched in clear lines around his eyes. “Why were you scared?”
“I thought…” Shima trails off, looking at his hands. He takes a breath. “I thought that was your blood, Ibuki.” His voice is a broken whisper, something pathetic and fragile in the way it’s tender around Ibuki’s name. As though he really was hurt, there on the sidewalk. As though saying the words makes them real, somehow.
The car stops.
Shima looks up. They’re on the side of a quiet road, in front of an empty shop.
Before he can ask Ibuki what’s wrong, Ibuki leans over and wraps him in an awkward embrace. The console’s between them and Shima, caught off guard, finds himself with his arms pinned to his side. He huffs a little gasp, but otherwise is so overwhelmed by the gesture that he can’t begin to ask why Ibuki’s doing it or what it means.
“Shima,” Ibuki says into his shoulder.
Shima struggles a little against Ibuki’s hold. “What?”
“Thank you.”
The words fall soft and cold against Shima’s embarrassment, against his fear. He’s silent for a moment before he says, “You’re crushing me.”
Ibuki lets him go, face still serious.
“And you’re welcome.”