Valentine Drabble post
tatoeba has the best ideas--in this case, Valentine Drabbles. You know how I love to drabble ♥♥♥
Fandoms I'm willing to drabble in: Inception, Merlin, J2, Generation Kill, JE, Gundam Wing, the odd Jdrama maybe.
Pairings I'm willing to drabble on: you know I'm a pairing whore. I'll do my best.
For best results, leave me a pairing and prompt.
want to ( Read more... )
Fandoms I'm willing to drabble in: Inception, Merlin, J2, Generation Kill, JE, Gundam Wing, the odd Jdrama maybe.
Pairings I'm willing to drabble on: you know I'm a pairing whore. I'll do my best.
For best results, leave me a pairing and prompt.
want to ( Read more... )
Arthur's not nearly done. The paper target at the opposite end of the range doesn't have more than a handful of precise holes clustered around the head and heart of the dark silhouette. Arthur pulls off his ear muffs and suppresses a sigh. Tanaka wouldn't interrupt unless it was important.
"Yes?"
"It's the Boss," Tanaka says. "He's calling for you."
"Thank you, Tanaka," Arthur says, neatly disassembling his gun and leaving it on the table in the range. Tanaka pulls a quick bow, head bowed, hands on his knees, as Arthur passes.
Arthur picks up his actual piece just outside the shooting range door; it never hurts to be armed. Dad doesn't call unless it's an emergency.
*
"Excuse me?" Arthur asks, and he hates it, repeating himself, being caught off guard like this, but he just. He needs to hear it again to make sure. Just this one time.
Arthur's father sighs. "This is Eames. You'll be working together, closely. Effective immediately, he's your second."
"Yes, sir," Arthur says, and there's nothing 'yakuza-lackey' about his intonation. He's old-blood, Edo-era yakuza family; Arthur's family line has been controlling the underground drug market east of the mountains since Tokugawa. He doesn't need to sound like he just rolled out of the dirty in Osaka to do that. He doesn't even have the rough-edged sound of an Edokko. He's smooth, hard, dangerous, but there's nothing crude about him.
He doesn't ask for an explanation, because his father's the boss. The boss doesn't owe explanations to anyone. He gives him one anyway.
"It's a favour. His father saved my life, saved your mother's life before you were ever born. You wouldn't be here without him. He got out of the business when the bubble burst, but Eames, he wants to keep on. I told him his son would always have a place in our family. Show your gratitude."
"Yes, sir. Of course," Arthur bows low, sitting seiza. Eames, two feet to the left on the tatami, sits agura but keeps his arms in close. He manages to look sprawled and reckless, even though he's not--kind of casual and open-ended. Gaijin.
"Mr. Eames," says Arthur's father, in English. "This is Arthur, my son. He will be your partner here. Report to him only."
Arthur turns slightly on his knees, angling himself towards Eames. "I am honoured," Arthur says, also in English, bowing slightly.
"Thank you for your hospitality," Eames says, bowing back, not quite low enough. His spread palms are on his knees, and for a moment, he actually looks like he could be truly dangerous. A slip. Arthur files that away. "Yoroshiku onegai shimasu," Eames says then, the Japanese awkward on his tongue, the cadences in the wrong places, but passable.
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Eames picks up the Japanese quick. Arthur makes a note of that too. It could come in handy. As Arthur's second, Eames somewhere around fourth in command in the hierarchy, under Arthur and then his father's right hand man: and then there's Eames. A stranger. An outsider.
Arthur isn't trusting, and Eames hasn't had a chance to prove himself.
The boys below aren't happy. They've been working and waiting. Eames doesn't have any ties to them.
The boys have been loyal, and loyalty is rewarded by moving up. You do your duty, and you do it well, and you get taken up in the ranks. Given more responsibility. Given more stake in the family business.
They're yakuza, not Honda Kabushiki Gaisha. They don't bring foreign CEOs in over people's heads. They don't need help running their business, and not just because they're better at tax fraud.
Arthur lets Eames fight his own fights--fists, and sometimes knives--and he proves that he is dangerous. Arthur puts a stop to things after a few weeks. Eames has carved himself a place; Arthur doesn't need [fukushuu] threatening the integrity of the family. No one is going to go through the boss's son to get a chance for Eames to beat them a second time. Maybe no one's sworn themselves to Eames yet, but they've all sworn to Arthur, Eames included.
Arthur just needs to make sure Eames really knows what that means.
*
"I thought you said if we left them alone, they'd leave us alone. This does not look like Matsuba-kai leaving us alone." Eames still speaks in English if he can help it. Arthur doesn't discourage it. It makes eavesdropping harder.
Arthur looks through the window in the intensive care unit. Three of his lieutenants taken out in Matsuba-kai territory. They'd taken Katsunagi's hand. None of his men were conscious yet; they hadn't been able to identify their attackers, according to the report, but Arthur hasn't had a chance yet to find out if that's just the cover for the police investigation or the truth.
There will be a police investigation. There's no way to avoid it with so vicious an attack in public. There's no way they can keep this quiet.
They'd had an arrangement with Matsuba-kai. Arthur's men would have had their guards down in their territory.
"Looks like Matsuba-kai is having a change in leadership," Arthur replies in Japanese. It doesn't matter who hears this. No one in this room will talk.
Arthur stops when he passes the first of the men standing on either side of the door to the ICU. "Get me if they wake up," he tells them. Eames trails him out. There's a car waiting for them out front.
*
It didn't always used to be drugs. It used to be mostly extortion and prostitution, but there's only so much money to be made in that. And drugs are, in many ways, neater than human trafficking. Arthur's not sorry they've changed business approaches. They do still have fingers in big business and the government.
Now it's meth smuggled in through Hawaii; guns smuggled back in their place. Better than buying girls in China and telling them they should be grateful. Now it's selling ecstasy to rich kids in clubs, and cocaine to their politician parents.
Now it's longer prison terms if they're caught, but more money to make everything look clean. Now there are no small fish.
*
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