Fic: Bubblegum Fish
Title: Bubblegum Fish
Genre: Gokusen 2 verse
Word count: 7,000+
Rating: M
Summary: Ten years after and it was still complicated.
Disclaimer: The Gokusen enterprise and the characters of Gokusen 2 are owned by whoever owns it.
A/N: Un-betaed. This one's for watanabe_je and nanaenam who still kept in touch despite the long absence. It had been a while, folks. I hope you'd still enjoy.
Bubblegum Fish
The funny thing was, if anyone, Hayato would have been the least suspect. There was Take with his intricately pinned hairstyles or Tsucchi with his fan or even Hyuuga with his loud shirts. And, of course, Ryu whose perpetual bored look never wavered even when they talked about girls.
He, on the other hand, leader of Kurogin High class 3-D, lead the class from brawls to ogling the girls in the next school. He was the most excited when Kurogin High decided to go co-ed. No one would have suspected him. Not even himself.
It should have been a warning signal when his friends told him his reaction to Ryu bowing to those Ara High scums was over the top but he didn't take heed and didn't even notice when glaring at Ryu inside the classroom turned to longing glances. The first time he realized something was off was when it pissed him in a different way when Ryu tried to outdo him in their annual who-got-the-most chocolates-on-Valentine's Day competition.
The truth dawned on him when he got that call one night about Ryu being in deep shit somewhere. The feeling in his guts then was akin to that time he got that call from his father and told him that something was wrong with his mother.
Hayato thought things would have turned out differently if he could have run away from Ryu as far as he could when he realized there was something else beneath his excessive emotions over his best friend. But as it was, he couldn't run away from the truth dawning on him as much as they couldn't escape from that godforsaken warehouse.
~♥~
The door had barely closed behind the detective when Hayato snorted and said, “Like hell! He couldn't make me admit I'm Japanese.”
Ryu barely heard Hayato. Everything including his scalp hurt from the beating he got the night before and spending the rest of the night locked up inside a warehouse. Then they had to endure interrogation from that stupid cave man detective. The only thing that made bearable everything that happened in the last few hours was having Hayato beside him.
“Thanks, man.” He needn't had to say it but since the incident with the Ara High gang, he had been more cautious in dealing with Hayato. It was as if his and Hayato's friendship perpetually teetered towards dissolution. Or towards something else.
Hayato huffed out a chuckle. “Yeah, well, I couldn't possibly abandon one of my minions, could I?”
“Minion? What are we? Vampires?”
Hayato laughed then leaned towards Ryu. “Would you rather be my muse?”
The retort Ryu had got stuck in his mouth because when he turned he saw something beneath Hayato's teasing eyes and sly smile.
When the door flung open and the leather-clad detective strode in and, with a leer on his face, said, “You, girls, ready to talk?”, Ryu wasn't the least bit terrorized. He was too wrapped up with the realization that the incident with their rival gang from Ara High went beyond Hayato's hooligan pride and was, in fact, something more intimately personal.
~♥~
Hayato allowed himself maybe a few hours to be weighed down by his feelings for his best friend then decided he might just as well have fun with it.
He enjoyed watching Ryu from across the class room knowing that not a couple of hours before he jacked off thinking of Ryu dressing up for school. When he helped Ryu escape from being grounded at home, all the while he was thinking he was some kind of a knight in shining armor and Ryu was his ice prince in distress. When later he bowed down together with Ryu in front of Ryu's father, Hayato imagined he was asking for Ryu's hand in marriage.
He found perverse delight on secretly crushing on Ryu like it was a game where the only one who knew the rules was him. Until that night after their graduation ceremony, when his father pretended he didn't know there was underage drinking going on inside his eldest son's room, that Hayato was proven wrong.
Take had always been a light-weight. A couple of beers and he was out of it. The pins on his hair had gone askew and patches of his hair stood at odd angles. He giggled profusely over anything and nothing. On his third beer, he leaned towards Ryu and whisper shouted, “Wanna know a secret?”
“No,” Ryu answered. Despite his state of drunkenness, he fiercely guarded his personal space. He leaned away but Take moved with him and almost toppled on his lap.
“It wasn't so much that you bowed down to Ara High,” Take said then giggled. He shot a glance towards Hayato. Hayato raised a brow. “It was because you chose me over him,” Take said then sniggered like an imp.
Amidst the snickering of their friends, Hayato held Ryu's gaze. Well, hell, he wasn't the only one in on the game. Ryu smirked at him and, in turn, he leered.
~♥~
“Normally, student teachers would go to their alma mater but you requested to be assigned to Akadou,” Sawatari said. There was that perpetual crease on Sawatari's brow.
“Excuse me?” Ryu wondered where his dorky former vice-principal was getting at.
“So, did you find anything?”
“I think being a teacher isn't too bad,” Ryu said.
“I see.” Sawatari's face lit up.
“Thank you very much.” Ryu bowed. He followed Principal Sawatari towards the edge of the roof and stood there side by side with him. He didn't think that five years after he graduated from high school he would find himself standing on a school roof deck side by side as colleagues with the bane of his high school life.
As they gazed at the horizon, he pondered on Sawatari's query. He wondered if he found what he was looking for training as a teacher in Akadou High School. Wondered what it was he was looking for.
~♥~
There was a stirring in Hayato's nether regions because the faint smell of soap wafting from across the room drilled in his brain.
“So what do you think?”
The question caught Hayato off guard because he hadn't been really listening. He was too busy envying the towel wrapped intimately around Ryu's lower body. “Well...” he drawled out, buying time to regroup.
Ryu clucked. “Can you please...”
Hayato broke into a wide smile, not the least bit chastised that Ryu had caught him. “You strut around me mostly naked and you expect me to have enough blood in my brain to think whether or not you should trade chalk and lesson plans for a Gloc and a badge?”
Ryu sighed and and stalked off the living room. “'Cause what's the difference?” he asked when he came out of his bedroom not a minute later wearing jeans and pulling on a shirt. “I'd be dealing with thugs and, at the end of the day, I'd write reports.”
Ryu had put on one of those nearly diaphanous T-shirts he was so fond of that didn't really keep Hayato from thinking about touching hard muscles beneath smooth cool skin. Not especially since Ryu had filled out real well. “There's a world of difference between high school delinquents and real criminals.”
“You watch too much TV,” Ryu said with a snort. “I'd probably end up in a kōban and assist tourists all day long.”
That led to Hayato conjuring up images of Ryu in a dark blue uniform, a new addition to his fodder of Ryu fantasies to jack off to. “I guess, that wouldn't be so bad.”
Ryu clucked and sighed again, catching on to Hayato's train of thought.
~♥~
Ryu's gaze followed the handcuffed kid who looked barely legal being escorted down the hall by two uniformed policemen with Detective Hirano right behind, looking like he had slept in his suit.
“Weeks of stake out and all we got was a snotty brat,” said the older detective when he stepped inside their work station. He stopped right beside Ryu's desk and glared at him.
Ryu had been in the force for five years and his colleagues never passed up a chance to bring up his checkered past especially when they arrest juvies. “I was never caught,” he said defensively.
That wasn't exactly true. He had been apprehended twice but he had been lucky. He had Yankumi to thank and, much as he hated to admit, his father.
His silver-haired, bespectacled superior, looking just as harried as Detective Hirano, stomped in and snarled, “You went to Kurogin High, didn't you?"
Ryu wanted to roll his eyes but Captain Nijima looked like he wanted to chew his head off so he merely nodded. Captain Nijima nodded his head towards the hall.
For a brief moment, Ryu thought maybe because he was reminded of his delinquent days that he was seeing Hayato that moment behind the glass wall and smiling stupid at him until Captain Nijima, in a gravelly voice, snapped, "Then fuckin deal with this.”
~♥~
“I like it better when you were in uniform. You look like a boring salary man now,” Hayato said as soon as Ryu stepped inside the interrogation room.
Ryu said nothing and simply sat down on the steel foldable chair across the table from him. He shook out a stick from a pack of Marlboro he took out from his coat pocket and, still without a word, lit it and took a deep drag.
“You know, there are better non-toxic things you can put in your mouth to blow,” Hayato quipped but Ryu remained silent, shoulders stiff and eyes stone cold. “Okay,” Hayato said, catching on that Ryu was seriously in his cop mode. “I swear to god, Odagiri, I didn't have anything to do with it. I don't do drugs. I'm not that stupid.”
“Apparently, you are. You couldn't get your mind out of the gutter long enough to think straight,” Ryu finally said.
“It's hard to think straight when you're not.” Hayato smiled, going for the sheepish and hoped it would be enough to placate Ryu. “He's just a nice piece of ass, that's all. And he's got nice cheekbones. That did me in.”
“Really, Yabuki? In a car in broad daylight?”
“I didn't notice his car wasn't tinted,” Hayato said and grinned.
Ryu squeezed his eyes and took a deep breath, his shoulders finally going slack. “You do realize you just sabotaged a drug bust my department had been working on for weeks?”
“Oh,” was all Hayato could say.
~♥~
Ryu turned on his side when Hayato stepped inside his bed room and he closed his eyes when he felt the bed dip. He was glad Hayato had enough sense not to press against him and play the “cop a feel and feel a cop” game he gleefully torment Ryu with.
“You still pissed at me?” Hayato asked.
Ryu grunted. He wasn't really.
He was relieved when Hayato was merely fined for indecent behavior but his colleagues had been giving him flak the whole week for being friends with the guy responsible for a couple of street cops inadvertently sabotaging the drug bust. Or possibly, for simply being friends with a gay guy. He wasn't sure and he didn't ask.
“Look, I'm really sorry, man. I just came here to say I'm gonna be out of your hair from now on. I finally decided to take up my dad's offer.”
Ryu propped himself up on his elbows and turned to look at Hayato. “What do you mean?”
Hayato chuckled. “Who would've thought, huh? After all those years defying our fathers, we still ended up doing what what they wanted,” Hayato said.
Ryu's heart pinched seeing Hayato's smile not quite reaching his eyes the way it usually did.
~♥~
“First rule, Hayato. Don't drink and drive!”
“I'm not drunk, Dad,” Hayato insisted but his father didn't look convinced. He wasn't drunk. He was when he stumbled home but that had been nine hours ago. He was just severely hung over. “And I'm not driving yet anyway, remember? I'd just be your co-pilot.”
Hayato's father stared him down then snorted when Hayato smiled. “You still hanging with that snooty rich kid? Oguri?”
“Odagiri,” Hayato corrected. Ten years and his father still couldn't get Ryu's name right yet continued to blame Ryu for his delinquent behavior. “He's a police officer now.”
A detective actually but Hayato didn't want to get into details. It was hard enough fighting off the roiling in his guts, both from his overindulgence the night before and the memory of finding himself inside an interrogation room ten years after the first and instead of being beside him, Ryu sat across from him. It broke his heart in many places but it was the proverbial kick the head he needed.
His father pursed his lips and, completely oblivious to his son's inner torment, asked, “Really? I thought he's gay.”
Hayato didn't know whether to laugh or strangle his father. “No, I wish he is but he's not. And what's your point?”
“I dunno. They don't accept fags in the force, right?”
Hayato winced at the slur and, just to get back at his old man, said, “Well, it's just my luck your company accepts fags.” He smirked at his father's glare.
“Rule number two, don't pick up strangers,” his father said and slid the cup of black coffee across the table towards Hayato.
~♥~
Being in the force had taught him to temper himself and not give in to the adrenaline rush. Any other time he would have waited for back up. He had always been careful, especially keen because it was not only his life but his partner's as well that was on the line.
There was just something that thrummed in his veins that night. Something that had been building up inside him for weeks.
Everything else receded and all he felt was the thirst for danger, the need for that rush in his blood. The coiling in his guts, the dryness in his throat, the throbbing in his temples, the static prickling in his skin and his heart thumping like mad in his chest. It had been years since he felt that.
He was out and rolling on the ground even before Detective Hirano stopped the car. He was like a mad man out to kill and die in the process as he aimed and took one shot after another.
The pain that ripped through him when the bullet hit should have distracted him but rather it made his blood simmer. When the force of the next shot knocked him down, he was certain it was his end. The worried face that loomed before him morphed from his partner's to Hayato's and he managed a smirk right before he passed out.
~♥~
Hayato almost slammed hard on the brakes but quickly realized he was driving a goddamn 10-wheeler container van and doing so would probably cause a massive and bloody pile up on the highway.
He didn't know how he managed to steer the humongous vehicle safely towards the nearest possible stop and when, at last, he pulled up at a gasoline station, he gulped much needed air lest he pass out. But the words he had always dreaded to hear kept bouncing in his head: Ryu had been shot.
Before his mind could even complete the thought of the worst possible scenario, Hayato shook his head. “No,” he said out loud. “There's no fucking way!” he shouted when the thought tried to insinuate itself in his head.
He didn't know how long he sat there trying to keep his mind blank and fighting off the vacuum growing in the pit of his stomach, threatening to engulf him from the inside. Until he was jolted by the ringing of his phone.
He stared at the device like it was some vicious animal. On the fifth ring, he took a deep breath and with shaking hands answered the call.
“You heard?” It was Take.
Hayato numbly nodded then realized Take couldn't see him. “Yeah. Hyuuga called. How--”
“The fucker's still alive, thank god.”
Hayato finally let go the breath he'd been holding. “Yeah, okay. That's good. I gotta go.” He didn't wait for Take's reply and immediately hung up before he slumped on the steering wheel and proceeded to cry.
~♥~
“He saved my life, Captain,” Detective Hirano interjected.
“He didn't have to if he hadn't been trigger happy,” Captain Nijima said.
Ryu simply watched the exchange since his colleagues seemed to have decided to ignore that he was awake. And anyway, he couldn't speak because he was still quite out of it with morphine coursing through his veins, making his brain foggy.
Detective Hirano and Captain Nijima went quiet and Ryu turned his head when the door to his hospital room opened. His lips involuntarily quirked into a lop-sided smile when Take walked in carrying a vase of multi-colored flowers, followed by Hyuuga bearing silly looking mini-balloons. But his heart clenched and his chest felt heavy when after Tsucchi stepped in the door closed. And remained closed no matter how many times he glanced at it that night.
~♥~
Ordinarily, Hayato would have passed out on the sofa the moment he stepped inside his apartment. It would take him a good solid five hours of deep sleep before he could muster enough energy to take a bath only to sleep another five hours after.
That night wasn't one of those because when he got home he found Ryu waiting outside his apartment. How Ryu got wind that he would be back that night, he didn't know. But he was fairly certain he knew why Ryu was there.
“So, how's your job going?” Ryu asked, following Hayato in the kitchen.
“Great.” Hayato handed Ryu a bottle of Asahi before opening his and taking a gulp. “Endless road. Diner food. Motel accommodations.” He smiled. “Nice piece of ass at every pit stop.”
He waited for the snorting and the eye-rolling but it didn't come. Ryu merely stood leaning against wall beside the dilapidated fridge drinking beer. Hayato hadn't failed to notice that Ryu's got eyebags the size of Mt. Fuji and had lost weight since Hayato had last seen him almost two months ago, a month before the shooting. The shooting.
“How's your job going? What's it like getting shot?” Hayato finally asked. They might as well get it over with.
Ryu smirked. “Didn't even hurt.”
“Bullshit. Bet you cried like a girl then fainted at the sight of blood.” It would have relieved Hayato when Ryu's laughter didn't sound so hollow. He pulled a deep breath and said, “Look, man, I'm sor--”
“Hey,” Ryu interrupted, straightening up. He placed his beer atop the fridge. “Wanna see my scars?” he asked, not unlike way back when they were in high school and they kept one-upping each other over who got the worse injuries after a fight.
Not really, Hayato wanted to say but instead said, “You just wanna take your shirt off in front of me. Fucking tease.”
Ryu chuckled as he started unbuttoning his shirt.
Hayato drank to quell the lump in his throat but there was no way he could restrain the stirring inside his pants. He hated that he was immensely enjoying watching Ryu undo one button after another of the plaid flannel shirt.
All his carnal thoughts vanished when he caught sight of the long diagonal scar on Ryu's torso, a hands width to the right of the navel. When Ryu slid his shirt off, Hayato's eyes strayed up and locked on the pinkish three-inch long distended patch of skin below Ryu's left shoulder and, for a moment, Hayato couldn't breathe.
He didn't know how he had gotten rid of the beer bottle he was holding but his hand was suddenly free and he was unable to stop himself from reaching out and have his fingertips trace the length of the stitched up skin. A few centimeters was all it could have taken and he would have lost Ryu forever.
There was no longer room for restraint and trepidation.
Hayato broke through Ryu's precious personal space, gripped Ryu's hip with his other hand and pressed his lips against the still fresh scar. He thanked whatever gods may be that he was standing there and he could feel Ryu's heart beating against his palm.
He hadn't realized Ryu had stood motionless through it all until Ryu moved to place warm hands on his hips. He squeezed his eyes shut to keep his tears at bay, feeling Ryu's breath hot against his neck. “I'm okay,” Ryu murmured.
He pressed further against Ryu wanting so bad to crawl beneath Ryu's skin. “Ryu,” was all Hayato could say. His hand glided down Ryu's torso, briefly touching the other scar before proceeding lower. It wasn't earthly desire that impelled Hayato but an aching need to be assured that Ryu was indeed there, warm and throbbing in his hand.
They stood in the darkened kitchen, a mirror image of each other except Hayato's right hand was beneath Ryu's jeans. It didn't take long before Ryu started to tremble. He buried his face in Hayato's neck as he shuddered with a muffled groan while he spilled himself in Hayato's hand.
Part 2
Genre: Gokusen 2 verse
Word count: 7,000+
Rating: M
Summary: Ten years after and it was still complicated.
Disclaimer: The Gokusen enterprise and the characters of Gokusen 2 are owned by whoever owns it.
A/N: Un-betaed. This one's for watanabe_je and nanaenam who still kept in touch despite the long absence. It had been a while, folks. I hope you'd still enjoy.
Bubblegum Fish
The funny thing was, if anyone, Hayato would have been the least suspect. There was Take with his intricately pinned hairstyles or Tsucchi with his fan or even Hyuuga with his loud shirts. And, of course, Ryu whose perpetual bored look never wavered even when they talked about girls.
He, on the other hand, leader of Kurogin High class 3-D, lead the class from brawls to ogling the girls in the next school. He was the most excited when Kurogin High decided to go co-ed. No one would have suspected him. Not even himself.
It should have been a warning signal when his friends told him his reaction to Ryu bowing to those Ara High scums was over the top but he didn't take heed and didn't even notice when glaring at Ryu inside the classroom turned to longing glances. The first time he realized something was off was when it pissed him in a different way when Ryu tried to outdo him in their annual who-got-the-most chocolates-on-Valentine's Day competition.
The truth dawned on him when he got that call one night about Ryu being in deep shit somewhere. The feeling in his guts then was akin to that time he got that call from his father and told him that something was wrong with his mother.
Hayato thought things would have turned out differently if he could have run away from Ryu as far as he could when he realized there was something else beneath his excessive emotions over his best friend. But as it was, he couldn't run away from the truth dawning on him as much as they couldn't escape from that godforsaken warehouse.
~♥~
The door had barely closed behind the detective when Hayato snorted and said, “Like hell! He couldn't make me admit I'm Japanese.”
Ryu barely heard Hayato. Everything including his scalp hurt from the beating he got the night before and spending the rest of the night locked up inside a warehouse. Then they had to endure interrogation from that stupid cave man detective. The only thing that made bearable everything that happened in the last few hours was having Hayato beside him.
“Thanks, man.” He needn't had to say it but since the incident with the Ara High gang, he had been more cautious in dealing with Hayato. It was as if his and Hayato's friendship perpetually teetered towards dissolution. Or towards something else.
Hayato huffed out a chuckle. “Yeah, well, I couldn't possibly abandon one of my minions, could I?”
“Minion? What are we? Vampires?”
Hayato laughed then leaned towards Ryu. “Would you rather be my muse?”
The retort Ryu had got stuck in his mouth because when he turned he saw something beneath Hayato's teasing eyes and sly smile.
When the door flung open and the leather-clad detective strode in and, with a leer on his face, said, “You, girls, ready to talk?”, Ryu wasn't the least bit terrorized. He was too wrapped up with the realization that the incident with their rival gang from Ara High went beyond Hayato's hooligan pride and was, in fact, something more intimately personal.
~♥~
Hayato allowed himself maybe a few hours to be weighed down by his feelings for his best friend then decided he might just as well have fun with it.
He enjoyed watching Ryu from across the class room knowing that not a couple of hours before he jacked off thinking of Ryu dressing up for school. When he helped Ryu escape from being grounded at home, all the while he was thinking he was some kind of a knight in shining armor and Ryu was his ice prince in distress. When later he bowed down together with Ryu in front of Ryu's father, Hayato imagined he was asking for Ryu's hand in marriage.
He found perverse delight on secretly crushing on Ryu like it was a game where the only one who knew the rules was him. Until that night after their graduation ceremony, when his father pretended he didn't know there was underage drinking going on inside his eldest son's room, that Hayato was proven wrong.
Take had always been a light-weight. A couple of beers and he was out of it. The pins on his hair had gone askew and patches of his hair stood at odd angles. He giggled profusely over anything and nothing. On his third beer, he leaned towards Ryu and whisper shouted, “Wanna know a secret?”
“No,” Ryu answered. Despite his state of drunkenness, he fiercely guarded his personal space. He leaned away but Take moved with him and almost toppled on his lap.
“It wasn't so much that you bowed down to Ara High,” Take said then giggled. He shot a glance towards Hayato. Hayato raised a brow. “It was because you chose me over him,” Take said then sniggered like an imp.
Amidst the snickering of their friends, Hayato held Ryu's gaze. Well, hell, he wasn't the only one in on the game. Ryu smirked at him and, in turn, he leered.
~♥~
“Normally, student teachers would go to their alma mater but you requested to be assigned to Akadou,” Sawatari said. There was that perpetual crease on Sawatari's brow.
“Excuse me?” Ryu wondered where his dorky former vice-principal was getting at.
“So, did you find anything?”
“I think being a teacher isn't too bad,” Ryu said.
“I see.” Sawatari's face lit up.
“Thank you very much.” Ryu bowed. He followed Principal Sawatari towards the edge of the roof and stood there side by side with him. He didn't think that five years after he graduated from high school he would find himself standing on a school roof deck side by side as colleagues with the bane of his high school life.
As they gazed at the horizon, he pondered on Sawatari's query. He wondered if he found what he was looking for training as a teacher in Akadou High School. Wondered what it was he was looking for.
~♥~
There was a stirring in Hayato's nether regions because the faint smell of soap wafting from across the room drilled in his brain.
“So what do you think?”
The question caught Hayato off guard because he hadn't been really listening. He was too busy envying the towel wrapped intimately around Ryu's lower body. “Well...” he drawled out, buying time to regroup.
Ryu clucked. “Can you please...”
Hayato broke into a wide smile, not the least bit chastised that Ryu had caught him. “You strut around me mostly naked and you expect me to have enough blood in my brain to think whether or not you should trade chalk and lesson plans for a Gloc and a badge?”
Ryu sighed and and stalked off the living room. “'Cause what's the difference?” he asked when he came out of his bedroom not a minute later wearing jeans and pulling on a shirt. “I'd be dealing with thugs and, at the end of the day, I'd write reports.”
Ryu had put on one of those nearly diaphanous T-shirts he was so fond of that didn't really keep Hayato from thinking about touching hard muscles beneath smooth cool skin. Not especially since Ryu had filled out real well. “There's a world of difference between high school delinquents and real criminals.”
“You watch too much TV,” Ryu said with a snort. “I'd probably end up in a kōban and assist tourists all day long.”
That led to Hayato conjuring up images of Ryu in a dark blue uniform, a new addition to his fodder of Ryu fantasies to jack off to. “I guess, that wouldn't be so bad.”
Ryu clucked and sighed again, catching on to Hayato's train of thought.
~♥~
Ryu's gaze followed the handcuffed kid who looked barely legal being escorted down the hall by two uniformed policemen with Detective Hirano right behind, looking like he had slept in his suit.
“Weeks of stake out and all we got was a snotty brat,” said the older detective when he stepped inside their work station. He stopped right beside Ryu's desk and glared at him.
Ryu had been in the force for five years and his colleagues never passed up a chance to bring up his checkered past especially when they arrest juvies. “I was never caught,” he said defensively.
That wasn't exactly true. He had been apprehended twice but he had been lucky. He had Yankumi to thank and, much as he hated to admit, his father.
His silver-haired, bespectacled superior, looking just as harried as Detective Hirano, stomped in and snarled, “You went to Kurogin High, didn't you?"
Ryu wanted to roll his eyes but Captain Nijima looked like he wanted to chew his head off so he merely nodded. Captain Nijima nodded his head towards the hall.
For a brief moment, Ryu thought maybe because he was reminded of his delinquent days that he was seeing Hayato that moment behind the glass wall and smiling stupid at him until Captain Nijima, in a gravelly voice, snapped, "Then fuckin deal with this.”
~♥~
“I like it better when you were in uniform. You look like a boring salary man now,” Hayato said as soon as Ryu stepped inside the interrogation room.
Ryu said nothing and simply sat down on the steel foldable chair across the table from him. He shook out a stick from a pack of Marlboro he took out from his coat pocket and, still without a word, lit it and took a deep drag.
“You know, there are better non-toxic things you can put in your mouth to blow,” Hayato quipped but Ryu remained silent, shoulders stiff and eyes stone cold. “Okay,” Hayato said, catching on that Ryu was seriously in his cop mode. “I swear to god, Odagiri, I didn't have anything to do with it. I don't do drugs. I'm not that stupid.”
“Apparently, you are. You couldn't get your mind out of the gutter long enough to think straight,” Ryu finally said.
“It's hard to think straight when you're not.” Hayato smiled, going for the sheepish and hoped it would be enough to placate Ryu. “He's just a nice piece of ass, that's all. And he's got nice cheekbones. That did me in.”
“Really, Yabuki? In a car in broad daylight?”
“I didn't notice his car wasn't tinted,” Hayato said and grinned.
Ryu squeezed his eyes and took a deep breath, his shoulders finally going slack. “You do realize you just sabotaged a drug bust my department had been working on for weeks?”
“Oh,” was all Hayato could say.
~♥~
Ryu turned on his side when Hayato stepped inside his bed room and he closed his eyes when he felt the bed dip. He was glad Hayato had enough sense not to press against him and play the “cop a feel and feel a cop” game he gleefully torment Ryu with.
“You still pissed at me?” Hayato asked.
Ryu grunted. He wasn't really.
He was relieved when Hayato was merely fined for indecent behavior but his colleagues had been giving him flak the whole week for being friends with the guy responsible for a couple of street cops inadvertently sabotaging the drug bust. Or possibly, for simply being friends with a gay guy. He wasn't sure and he didn't ask.
“Look, I'm really sorry, man. I just came here to say I'm gonna be out of your hair from now on. I finally decided to take up my dad's offer.”
Ryu propped himself up on his elbows and turned to look at Hayato. “What do you mean?”
Hayato chuckled. “Who would've thought, huh? After all those years defying our fathers, we still ended up doing what what they wanted,” Hayato said.
Ryu's heart pinched seeing Hayato's smile not quite reaching his eyes the way it usually did.
~♥~
“First rule, Hayato. Don't drink and drive!”
“I'm not drunk, Dad,” Hayato insisted but his father didn't look convinced. He wasn't drunk. He was when he stumbled home but that had been nine hours ago. He was just severely hung over. “And I'm not driving yet anyway, remember? I'd just be your co-pilot.”
Hayato's father stared him down then snorted when Hayato smiled. “You still hanging with that snooty rich kid? Oguri?”
“Odagiri,” Hayato corrected. Ten years and his father still couldn't get Ryu's name right yet continued to blame Ryu for his delinquent behavior. “He's a police officer now.”
A detective actually but Hayato didn't want to get into details. It was hard enough fighting off the roiling in his guts, both from his overindulgence the night before and the memory of finding himself inside an interrogation room ten years after the first and instead of being beside him, Ryu sat across from him. It broke his heart in many places but it was the proverbial kick the head he needed.
His father pursed his lips and, completely oblivious to his son's inner torment, asked, “Really? I thought he's gay.”
Hayato didn't know whether to laugh or strangle his father. “No, I wish he is but he's not. And what's your point?”
“I dunno. They don't accept fags in the force, right?”
Hayato winced at the slur and, just to get back at his old man, said, “Well, it's just my luck your company accepts fags.” He smirked at his father's glare.
“Rule number two, don't pick up strangers,” his father said and slid the cup of black coffee across the table towards Hayato.
~♥~
Being in the force had taught him to temper himself and not give in to the adrenaline rush. Any other time he would have waited for back up. He had always been careful, especially keen because it was not only his life but his partner's as well that was on the line.
There was just something that thrummed in his veins that night. Something that had been building up inside him for weeks.
Everything else receded and all he felt was the thirst for danger, the need for that rush in his blood. The coiling in his guts, the dryness in his throat, the throbbing in his temples, the static prickling in his skin and his heart thumping like mad in his chest. It had been years since he felt that.
He was out and rolling on the ground even before Detective Hirano stopped the car. He was like a mad man out to kill and die in the process as he aimed and took one shot after another.
The pain that ripped through him when the bullet hit should have distracted him but rather it made his blood simmer. When the force of the next shot knocked him down, he was certain it was his end. The worried face that loomed before him morphed from his partner's to Hayato's and he managed a smirk right before he passed out.
~♥~
Hayato almost slammed hard on the brakes but quickly realized he was driving a goddamn 10-wheeler container van and doing so would probably cause a massive and bloody pile up on the highway.
He didn't know how he managed to steer the humongous vehicle safely towards the nearest possible stop and when, at last, he pulled up at a gasoline station, he gulped much needed air lest he pass out. But the words he had always dreaded to hear kept bouncing in his head: Ryu had been shot.
Before his mind could even complete the thought of the worst possible scenario, Hayato shook his head. “No,” he said out loud. “There's no fucking way!” he shouted when the thought tried to insinuate itself in his head.
He didn't know how long he sat there trying to keep his mind blank and fighting off the vacuum growing in the pit of his stomach, threatening to engulf him from the inside. Until he was jolted by the ringing of his phone.
He stared at the device like it was some vicious animal. On the fifth ring, he took a deep breath and with shaking hands answered the call.
“You heard?” It was Take.
Hayato numbly nodded then realized Take couldn't see him. “Yeah. Hyuuga called. How--”
“The fucker's still alive, thank god.”
Hayato finally let go the breath he'd been holding. “Yeah, okay. That's good. I gotta go.” He didn't wait for Take's reply and immediately hung up before he slumped on the steering wheel and proceeded to cry.
~♥~
“He saved my life, Captain,” Detective Hirano interjected.
“He didn't have to if he hadn't been trigger happy,” Captain Nijima said.
Ryu simply watched the exchange since his colleagues seemed to have decided to ignore that he was awake. And anyway, he couldn't speak because he was still quite out of it with morphine coursing through his veins, making his brain foggy.
Detective Hirano and Captain Nijima went quiet and Ryu turned his head when the door to his hospital room opened. His lips involuntarily quirked into a lop-sided smile when Take walked in carrying a vase of multi-colored flowers, followed by Hyuuga bearing silly looking mini-balloons. But his heart clenched and his chest felt heavy when after Tsucchi stepped in the door closed. And remained closed no matter how many times he glanced at it that night.
~♥~
Ordinarily, Hayato would have passed out on the sofa the moment he stepped inside his apartment. It would take him a good solid five hours of deep sleep before he could muster enough energy to take a bath only to sleep another five hours after.
That night wasn't one of those because when he got home he found Ryu waiting outside his apartment. How Ryu got wind that he would be back that night, he didn't know. But he was fairly certain he knew why Ryu was there.
“So, how's your job going?” Ryu asked, following Hayato in the kitchen.
“Great.” Hayato handed Ryu a bottle of Asahi before opening his and taking a gulp. “Endless road. Diner food. Motel accommodations.” He smiled. “Nice piece of ass at every pit stop.”
He waited for the snorting and the eye-rolling but it didn't come. Ryu merely stood leaning against wall beside the dilapidated fridge drinking beer. Hayato hadn't failed to notice that Ryu's got eyebags the size of Mt. Fuji and had lost weight since Hayato had last seen him almost two months ago, a month before the shooting. The shooting.
“How's your job going? What's it like getting shot?” Hayato finally asked. They might as well get it over with.
Ryu smirked. “Didn't even hurt.”
“Bullshit. Bet you cried like a girl then fainted at the sight of blood.” It would have relieved Hayato when Ryu's laughter didn't sound so hollow. He pulled a deep breath and said, “Look, man, I'm sor--”
“Hey,” Ryu interrupted, straightening up. He placed his beer atop the fridge. “Wanna see my scars?” he asked, not unlike way back when they were in high school and they kept one-upping each other over who got the worse injuries after a fight.
Not really, Hayato wanted to say but instead said, “You just wanna take your shirt off in front of me. Fucking tease.”
Ryu chuckled as he started unbuttoning his shirt.
Hayato drank to quell the lump in his throat but there was no way he could restrain the stirring inside his pants. He hated that he was immensely enjoying watching Ryu undo one button after another of the plaid flannel shirt.
All his carnal thoughts vanished when he caught sight of the long diagonal scar on Ryu's torso, a hands width to the right of the navel. When Ryu slid his shirt off, Hayato's eyes strayed up and locked on the pinkish three-inch long distended patch of skin below Ryu's left shoulder and, for a moment, Hayato couldn't breathe.
He didn't know how he had gotten rid of the beer bottle he was holding but his hand was suddenly free and he was unable to stop himself from reaching out and have his fingertips trace the length of the stitched up skin. A few centimeters was all it could have taken and he would have lost Ryu forever.
There was no longer room for restraint and trepidation.
Hayato broke through Ryu's precious personal space, gripped Ryu's hip with his other hand and pressed his lips against the still fresh scar. He thanked whatever gods may be that he was standing there and he could feel Ryu's heart beating against his palm.
He hadn't realized Ryu had stood motionless through it all until Ryu moved to place warm hands on his hips. He squeezed his eyes shut to keep his tears at bay, feeling Ryu's breath hot against his neck. “I'm okay,” Ryu murmured.
He pressed further against Ryu wanting so bad to crawl beneath Ryu's skin. “Ryu,” was all Hayato could say. His hand glided down Ryu's torso, briefly touching the other scar before proceeding lower. It wasn't earthly desire that impelled Hayato but an aching need to be assured that Ryu was indeed there, warm and throbbing in his hand.
They stood in the darkened kitchen, a mirror image of each other except Hayato's right hand was beneath Ryu's jeans. It didn't take long before Ryu started to tremble. He buried his face in Hayato's neck as he shuddered with a muffled groan while he spilled himself in Hayato's hand.
Part 2