"The Lower Decks", Chapter Six
Title: The Lower Decks
Chapter: 6/??
Fandom: Arashi
Character, Pairing(s): Nino/Aiba, Nagase/the ladies
Rating: R
Warnings: Language, sexual humor
Summary: There's jobs in unfortunate places, jobs with unfortunate people, and jobs that are just plain unfortunate: then there is the Floating Sakura, which seems to be all of the above.
Notes: Apologies for how long it is taking us to write this fic- as of current, I'm working nights and it's throwing my schedule into the complete opposite of Jamie's, which means that our emailing and plotting time has been significantly, significantly lowered. It's taking us a long time to get things done now!
Ever since the incident in Nagase's room, Ryo had been keeping an annoyingly close eye on Nino, and it was making things difficult- since they still hadn't found Sadie, and things were starting to cross from Bad to Very Bad; Nino didn't think there was any coming back from Very Bad.
His boss- for all intents and purposes- caught him leaving Nagase's room with a giant bag filled with the rock star's 500 bagillion prescription pill bottles.
"Where are you going?" Ryo asked, and Nino wanted to knock the smug expression right off his face.
"Nagase is sun-bathing," he explained, as if to a child, as he shut the door behind him and pocketed the key in his jacket, "and it's time for his midday medications. I thought it was best not to disrupt his plans for the day, and to conduct this business out on the deck."
If Ryo wanted to comment on the sarcasm, he didn't show it. He just nodded and uncrossed his arms, looking slightly less stern than he had moments earlier. Nino just wanted him to leave- he didn't even care about getting on the man's good side anymore, just about getting out of his never-failing sight.
"You know, it's very important that Nagase leave here with good feelings towards the line," Ryo said. Like he thought this was all new information to Nino, or something, and wasn't something they mentioned at least five times during new employee orientation training. "If he has a great time, he'll tell other people about us. He could do wonders for our credibility."
"Yeah, or he could accidentally sink the whole ship," Nino grumbled under his breath. Ryo gave him a look and Nino straightened, clearing his throat. "Look, Taichi is going to call very soon to ask if Nagase's meds were administered on time, and I'd like to be able to report good things back."
"Fine," was all Ryo said, and when he left, Nino let out a long-suffering sigh of relief.
Plus, he'd been telling the truth. Mostly.
He found Nagase lying on the Adults-Only section of the Sun Deck, talking to two women in string bikinis and extra-large sunglasses.
"Hey, Cambodia!" Nagase shouted, and waved Nino over. He was drinking something fruity out of a drink with a little straw hat on it, and from the empty glasses littering the plastic table next to him, had started quite a few hours ago. Nino moved to Nagase's side and tried not to roll his eyes, though holding himself back was difficult. "These are my new friends."
"I'm sure they are," Nino said, and gave both women a strained smile. Honestly, their presence only got Nagase riled up, and the last thing Nino wanted to deal with was Nagase on the prowl. Again.
"Are you going to come into the hot tub with us?" one of them asked.
Nagase took a long drink out of his straw and sighed loudly and contentedly. "Yeah, definitely. I'll be there in a few, gotta take care of some stuff with my homey here."
Both ladies seemed pleased with the answer, and left with swishing of their hips. Nagase turned his grin on Nino, despite the fact that such a tactic never, ever worked. The man hadn't quite figured that out yet, it seemed.
"Say, can you help a fella out here? I need some of that there oily-crap rubbed on me, I'm getting a bit overheated."
Nino picked up the bottle and looked at it. "You realize this is tanning oil and not sunscreen, right?"
"My washboard abs look way hotter when I'm tanned," Nagase confided.
"I'm not touching your abs," Nino said, irritated, and set the bottle back on the table. "You can get that yourself. Anyway, it's medicine time."
Nagase just sort of waved his hand at him, which was his favorite form of dismissal. "Right, right. Say, I've been wanting to say hi to Sadie. I miss having her beneath my pillow at night. Think you could go and get her for me so she could lay out in the sun with me?"
Nino's breath caught in his throat, chest constricting tightly. For a very long moment, he just stared at his charge, trying furiously to come up with something to say. Unhelpfully, his brain just kept showing him all the different scenarios for how he could get fired, and how horrible going home would be knowing he couldn't even make three months on the Floating Sakura.
"Actually, I think you're right about those abs," Nino sputtered, grabbing for the oil again. "The tan would really help the definition in them. Here, turn over and I'll get your shoulders, too."
Nagase sputtered out something that might have been a protest, but Nino just sort of forcibly turned the man over and started lathering on the oily substance on his back.
"I could get you another drink, too," Nino continued, grimacing when Nagase made pleased sounding noises under the oil-rubbing ministrations and trying very, very hard not to think too hard about what he was doing. "What were you drinking?"
Nagase mumbled something that sounded like 'Sex on the Beach' into the deck chair.
Nino capped the oil again and tried to find a towel to wipe his hands off on. The only one nearby was the one Nagase was laying on, so he found a corner sticking out from beneath the man's mammothly hairy legs and swallowed down his annoyed groan. "Alright, now let's get you those meds so that Taichi doesn't spend the next thirty minutes chewing me out."
"And then you can go and get Sadie-" Nagase started, turning back over and sighing, throwing one arm over his eyes to shield the sunlight.
Nino's stomach twisted uncomfortably again, and his fingers shook while trying to get the lid off the pill bottles. "Right, sure, Sadie..."
He was going to hit panic mode very, very soon, and he could barely see straight as he shuffled through the massive pile of pill containers in the bag he had slung over one shoulder. He couldn't even remember which ones Nagase needed to take after lunch- something about colons and anxiety and cholesterol regulators, and then Nino came across the sleeping pills.
"I think she'd really love the deck air," Nagase was saying, apparently to Nino though Nino hadn't heard a word before then, "and it would be good for her to get out of the safe for awhile..."
Oh, he was violating just about every ethics code the ship had ever instilled upon his morality, and the truth was, Nino was past caring. He opened the bottle and shook out three of the round, non-descript pills- thank heaven for small favors, anyway- and let them fall into the rest of his handful. He didn't even feel all that bad holding the small smattering of medications out to Nagase.
"Here, just take these, and I'll go get... everything," he said.
Nagase took the handful without question, swallowing the lot down with the last of his drink.
Nino left his charge and made his way to the bar down the steps on the Lido Deck, and hoped he didn't look suspicious as he ordered a Sex on the Beach and drummed his fingers on the bar counter while waiting for it. At least the staff manning the post wasn't Ohno- Ohno could read Nino way too well for Nino's liking.
By the time Nino got back to the Adults-Only enclave with the new drink, Nagase was snoring loudly into the crook of his arm, and he could breathe a sigh of guilty, guilty relief.
Things were not going well.
And Nino had the horrible, sinking feeling that they were only going to get worse.
--
“Please don’t run!” he said in the jolliest voice he could manage, flapping the wings of the Eduardo Eagle costume. “This arcade is for good boys and girls!”
The boy in question, pockets overflowing with tickets from the skeeball area, proceeded to stomp on the foam talons on Aiba’s foot.
“Hey! Ouch!”
The kid ran off to meet some of his other little devil companions, leaving Aiba pretty damn sore. This was the fourth kid in half an hour who had stepped on his foot or kicked him in the ass, and he was just grateful nobody had tried to punch him in the beak yet. He was really regretting having agreed to cover an arcade shift to make up for Nagase’s giant giraffe - and Nino had never said anything about wearing stupid costumes!
“Eduardo!” the midway manager called out to him, looking away from the ring toss to scold him. “Don’t just flap your gums! Flap your wings, would ya?”
“My name’s not Eduardo,” Aiba grumbled, still limping off in the direction of the basketball game.
“What was that?”
“You got it, Mr. Matsuoka!” Aiba shouted, flapping his wings. And of course, Mr. Matsuoka couldn’t see Aiba’s middle finger inside the giant wing.
This was the longest shift ever. Aiba liked people. And he liked kids too! But apparently he didn’t like kids on cruise ships, specifically those between the ages of 9 and 13 who ran wild in the arcade away from their boozing parents. If he’d ever acted this way at that age, his mom would have grabbed him by the ear and tossed him overboard.
He was just too used to the quiet of the purser’s office. Aside from the past week from hell, his work was usually quiet. He just played his iPod and went through several games of Spider Solitaire whenever it was his usual shift. There’d be the occasional money changing or adding something to a safe, but it was very calm. And the people were nicer. In here there were blinking lights and screaming kids and popping balloons (which inevitably led to more screaming).
He made it all the way to the basketball game, but the arcade was noisy and crowded, and he still hadn’t spotted Nino. They were supposed to be working this shift together, and he was getting worried. How hard could it be to spot another person in an animal costume? Had something happened to him?
They had to talk about Nagase. They’d be docking and letting off the whole darn ship at Margaritaville in another day - if they could get Nagase off the ship completely, maybe they could do some better investigation of whoever had stolen Sadie. It had to be someone on the staff - someone who could mess with the video and break into their cabins to leave ransom scraps from the Led Zeppelin t-shirt. But where was Nino?
“Mister Eagle?”
Aiba looked down to see a snotty nosed little one tugging on the brown feathers at his hip. She couldn’t have been more than five or six years old. Oh no...
“Mister Eagle? Mister Eagle, I can’t find mommy!”
He crouched down, looking out at her through the open beak. “Mister Eagle’s here, okay? What’s your name, kiddo?”
“Heidi!”
“Okay, Heidi. Where did you last see your mommy?”
He really wasn’t supposed to deal with lost kids. As “arcade costumed staff” he was just supposed to keep kids from breaking the machines and pose for photos. There was a whole pen off by Matsuoka’s station to wrangle all the kids that got separated, but Heidi had little pigtails and cute overalls and she wasn’t stomping on his foot or tugging on his tail feathers. And besides, he’d really screwed up most aspects of his job this week - maybe doing a good deed would give him some karma back.
“She said she was having a date with Jack!”
“Is Jack your daddy?”
“Nope!”
“Who is Jack?”
“He is Jose’s friend! I think Jose was going to be there too! And Captain Morgan!”
“But Heidi, the captain of this ship is Captain...” Aiba paused, realization setting in. Heidi’s mommy sounded like a pretty big lush. Maybe she would have been good company for Mr. Kusanagi - maybe she could have helped him keep his damn clothes on.
And that was when Heidi wrapped herself around his yellow tights-covered leg and wouldn’t let go, blubbering in a rather adorable way. “Mister Eagle, where’s mommy?”
He needed to find Nino. He had things he was supposed to talk about with Nino, and now he had a kindergartner with an irresponsible parent snotting all over his tights. Aiba glanced over to the lost kids pen, seeing a bunch of little terrors kicking the fence that was keeping them in. He couldn’t just leave the girl there, but he couldn’t really wander around the ship in an eagle costume, could he?”
--
Ten minutes later, he was carrying the whimpering girl around the Midori deck in search of her horrible mother. In the eagle costume.
“Where ya going, Foghorn Leghorn?” a drunk college guy hollered at him. “I say, I say, where ya going?”
“Oh shut up,” he muttered, holding Heidi closer. At this point, going back to the arcade would just get him yelled at by Matsuoka. Maybe the guy would strap him to the inflate the balloon game and have a bunch of punk kids squirt the water in his face. Or have kids kick soccer balls at his nuts.
He finally found a woman sitting at Ohno’s bar, and from the way Heidi perked up, he’d probably hit the jackpot. Fortunately the woman was still sitting upright on the stool and was holding an animated, but not entirely slurred conversation with his friend.
Ohno stared at him for a few seconds, vodka overflowing into the shot glass he was preparing for a customer. “Masaki?” Ohno said as soon as he peeked through the beak.
He set Heidi down. “Excuse me, ma’am?”
The woman turned to look at him, blinking a few times. “Hey...Satoshi, how many have I had? There’s a bird talking to me now...”
He took the eagle head off and was just about to explain when Heidi let out a blood-curdling scream.
“MISTER EAGLE! YOUR HEAD CAME OFF!”
“What are you doing to my child?” the mother screamed, starting to beat him with her purse, and Ohno didn’t bother to help him. “Put the head on! Put it back on!”
“Stop...” Aiba squealed, feeling Louis Vuitton smacking him hard in the ribs and even through the costume, it hurt like a bitch. “Stop, please! I’ll put it back!”
“WHY DID YOUR HEAD COME OFF, MISTER EAGLE!? MOMMY!”
He shoved the head back on as quickly as he could with a woman purse-whipping him and a screaming child destroying his eardrums and a bar full of passengers staring. The mother abandoned her date with Jack and picked the little girl up.
“We are never traveling on this cruise line again!” she insisted before carrying the child out of the room. Not even a thank you for rescuing her very young child from the arcade. No apology for getting her drink on and letting a little girl wander around alone.
Ohno pushed a shot glass towards him, and Aiba could smell the vodka.
“Not on the job,” Aiba whined. “I have to find Nino!”
Ohno shoved the glass back at his feather-covered hand. “I think you could use it.”
“I”m not taking the head off again.”
“Masaki, take the shot and get out of here, okay?”
Ohno’s face was not unfriendly though. And he’d been so nice about this whole Sadie thing so far when he didn’t really HAVE to be involved. But he’d given advice and looked for the guitar strap even though he wasn’t even with Sho now, but they were still friends so he did so out of friendship...Satoshi was his friend. He had friends - real friends here on board.
“Are you...are you crying?” Satoshi asked, voice full of surprise as he tilted his head to look through the hole in the beak.
He waved his wing. “No. No, of course I’m not crying!” He grabbed the shot glass and held the beak open, pouring the liquor into his mouth. It burned. A lot. “I’m just remembering something though. I’m kind of bad with shots.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
He slammed the glass down on the bar top and waggled his eagle tail feathers. “Give me another one. You know. Just one more. For luck.”
--
Eleventy-five shots later (or whatever, who was counting?!) he wandered back in to the arcade in love with the world and everything about it. He flapped his eagle wings for anyone who looked at him funny.
“I love the Floating Sakura! I love being a part of the Floating Sakura!”
Matsuoka eyed him when he came back in. “Eduardo, where you been? The ticket counter at the redemption center broke down and some kid got his sticky hand stuck in the claw game!”
“I love you, Mr. Matsuoka!”
Matsuoka seemed kind of happy with that though, unable to complain or even chastize Aiba again as he danced around like the happiest eagle in the nest. “Uh, I love you too?”
Where was Nino? That was all Aiba was really thinking about. Sure, he had some deliciousness in his tummy, and he felt like a million bucks, but he had an obligation to Nino! It was his fault that Nino was so grumpy all the time, and Aiba didn’t want a grumpy Nino! Because Nino was cute when he was grumpy, sure, but he was far cuter when he was laughing, and Aiba couldn’t remember the last time Nino laughed.
He flitted around the arcade, finally reaching a part he hadn’t been to - the supply closet behind the ticket redemption counter. The first indication that Nino just might have been inside came when the guy at the counter complained about some “costumed idiot” not coming out for four hours.
“Heeeey Nino,” he slurred when he went in, closing the door behind him.
Nino was sitting on the floor, meerkat head beside him. He looked super cute in the remainder of the fuzzy meerkat costume though.
“Why didn’t you come out?”
Nino looked up and frowned. “Are you drunk?”
“I’m great!”
Nino sighed. “Yeah, you’re drunk.”
Aiba sat down, taking off his eagle head and holding it in his lap. “So why are you in here? Are you not up to the challenge of being Mabel Meerkat? Do you not want to be a girl meerkat?”
Nino didn’t want to look at him, that much was obvious. “It’s not that, although I don’t know why the meerkat has to be gender specific in the first place.”
He bopped the eagle’s head against Nino’s meerkat knee. “Well? You left me out there all by myself, and we’re both supposed to be on this shift! You know Matsuoka’s going to make us do something else to make up for the giraffe!”
“I’m sorry.”
Aiba leaned forward until he was nose to nose with the other man. “Hey, are you okay? What’s wrong? You can tell me. Eagles are very noble creatures and very trustworthy!”
“You say the stupidest shit, you know that?” Nino said, chuckling quietly. Well, whatever Nino said, at least Aiba had made him laugh a bit and that had to count for something.
“I’m in here because I’m not sure how much longer I can do this.”
Aiba looked at his wrist instinctively. “Well there’s only...well, I think there’s only half an hour left until the arcade shuts down for the night.”
“Not the shift, idiot. All of this. Dealing with Nagase, dealing with Nagase’s clinically insane manager and with bits of a Led Zeppelin shirt getting left behind like breadcrumbs! I had to drug Nagase today. Can you get that through your drunken head, Eagle Boy? I drugged the guy! I mean, not like I care about him or anything, but am I that terrible at my job that I have to drug the person I’m supposed to be helping?”
Aiba had had a few too many shots to give Nino a clear answer, and instead he picked up the meerkat head from the floor and gave it a kiss. The costume head tasted fuzzy.
“Feel better, Nino. We’ll get through this together!” He gave the meerkat head an affectionate pat before setting it back down, but then Nino caught him by the feathery wrist.
“I like you,” Nino blurted out.
“I like you too,” Aiba said automatically. “I like being part of the Floating Sakura!”
Nino’s grip tightened on him. “You are almost as dumb as Nagase. I said I LIKE you.”
He could see the slightest blush in Nino’s cheeks, and drunk or no, Aiba wasn’t actually as dumb as Nagase. He nearly jumped out of his feathers when he felt the meerkat costume paw on his cheek.
“You’re wasted, so do me a big favor and forget this, okay?” Nino said quietly before stealing his breath and kissing him.
Aiba knew almost instantly that kissing Nino was a really good thing. Nino might have been really skilled at moving his mouth to insult people, but he was even better at moving his mouth and saying nothing at all. It was really hot in the eagle costume though, and it was hard to sit cross-legged in it for very long so the kissing kind of got awkward. He ended up falling forward, landing on top of the even warmer to the touch meerkat costume (and obviously, the person inside it).
“Ow!” Nino complained as his back hit the supply closet floor. “Get off of me!”
But of course, this wasn’t really what Nino seemed to want since Aiba soon found two small, but possessive meerkat paws on his eagle butt.
“Margaritaville tomorrow!” he said once Nino let him breathe again.
“Turn the ship upside down,” Nino mumbled against his lips.
“You going with him?”
“Have to.”
“Okay.”
It was kind of awkward again. And even with eleventy-five shots, they were in the kids’ arcade supply closet in animal costumes. Nino finally seemed to realize this, and the paws at Aiba’s rear slipped away. He missed them immediately.
Aiba frowned. “Maybe we should...”
“You should forget this ever happened,” Nino said pointedly, wriggling his smaller body out from underneath him and picking up the meerkat head. “And sleep that...whatever you’ve been drinking off. I’m getting drunk just from making out with you.”
“I like making out with you,” he admitted.
Nino sighed. “Please god, let him forget this,” Aiba heard him mumble as he pushed past him and back out to the arcade floor.
He was still on a high from the drinks and the Nino kissing when he got back to the cabin. He was all set to admit what had happened to Sho and even though Sho would probably make faces and complain, he always listened (especially since Aiba always had to listen about how Jun had maybe-possibly-kinda-sorta winked at Sho in the hall that day blah blah).
But instead Sho had rather sobering news when Aiba entered their cabin.
His bunkmate held up another scrap of the Led Zeppelin shirt and a note.
“I can’t read right now. I’m drunk,” Aiba told him. He wasn’t really unable to read, but he didn’t want to see the words. Instead he shut his eyes, listening to Sho’s voice bounce off the cabin walls.
“Well it says ‘planning to waste away again in Margaritaville? Meet me by the Tiki Hut at Margaritaville at 9:30 PM and...’”
Aiba opened his eyes. “9:30?! But the ship leaves for open sea at...”
“...9:45 PM,” Sho finished. “Masaki, what are we going to do?”
--
"Oi, Klingon! You got my meds?" Nagase shouted from the bathroom, as Nino was busy stuffing pill bottles into the carrying bag he was going to take ashore with him. His phone on his hip was already buzzing- no doubt it was Taichi, meaning Nino was going to ignore as many of Nagase's manager's calls as humanly possible.
"Yes," Nino called back. He zipped up the pouch and glared balefully down at it. "Are you sure you need me to go with you?"
Nagase poked his head out of the bathroom, half his hair sticking up from a severe over application of hair gel. "I can't remember to take all that by myself. Now listen, I need some beer to pregame this. Margaritaville is a big deal."
"It's named after a Jimmy Buffett song," Nino muttered to himself, but fetched the requested alcohol anyway, handing one into Nagase in the bathroom without looking inside (he'd learned the hard way that Nagase did not often wear pants while in front of the mirror, even when he was just doing his hair).
He heard Nagase crack the can open and sat down on the edge of the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Nagase continued doing whatever it was he was doing in the bathroom for awhile, and then Nino heard his footsteps approach the mattress where he was doing his inanimate object impersonation.
"Yo, I'm probably going to lose you when you are wearing that shit," Nagase said. "Put this on- so I can identify you."
Nino grabbed the garment that was thrown (at his head). "No."
"What do you mean, no?"
"I mean I'm not wearing this," Nino said, clinging desperately to the shreds of his dignity he still had left. He tossed the offending article back at Nagase. "What part of 'no' is confusing?"
Nagase looked confused for a long moment- probably because Nino had never really snapped at him before, and he wasn't used to people actually denying him what he was asking of them. But Nino was not going to be caught dead outside at a major tourist trap in a bright pink and orange Hawaiian print jumpsuit. He didn't even want to know why Nagase owned such an article of clothing.
In fact, there was no way it would even fit him.
Nagase laughed heartily. "You're funny. But seriously, I won't know where you are, so put it on."
The garment landed back in Nino's lap.
Five minutes later, Nino found himself in Nagase's bathroom glaring at his reflection in the large full-length mirror, jumpsuit securely on his body (belted because it was at least three sizes too large and nearly falling off of him). He dug his phone out of his pant pocket and dialed with trembling fingers.
"Whatever it is, my answer is no," Jun said immediately upon picking up.
"Please," Nino pleaded. "Please, you have to go ashore with me. I can't do this alone. He's insane. He's- whatever is beyond insane, he's that."
There was shuffling out past the closed door, and Nino looked fretfully back, afraid Nagase would simply burst into the bathroom without notice.
Jun sighed. "Why can't you ask Aiba? This is his problem."
Because I'm dressed in a hideous joke. Because this belt's buckle is a pair of copper breasts. Because I made out with him when he was drunk and I don't know if he remembers it. "I'll owe you, please just do it for me? Someone has to come with and go to the rendezvous point to get Sadie back."
Truth be told, Nino wasn't even sure Aiba was awake- he'd been so wasted the night before, he probably couldn't get out of bed. And Nino didn't want to call and check because that was just awkward, and he was already drowning in awkward that he couldn't avoid.
Jun hadn't said anything else, and Nino's desperation was growing. "Please?" he pleaded again. "Jun, please?"
"Fine," Jun growled. "But you owe me big time."
There was the angry click of the dial-tone, and Nino flipped his phone closed once more.
"Yo, Cadaver! Let's go, I wanna make sure I get there in time for happy hour!" Nagase called from the bedroom.
"Coming," Nino replied, heart in his stomach.
--
Aiba woke up wanting to throw up.
He spent the next thirty minutes wanting to throw up, too, even as he did so (several times) and shakily made his way out of the bathroom to collapse back onto his pillow once more, head throbbing and fingers trembling. He vaguely heard Sho exit and re-enter the room.
He was trying really hard to block out all noise, because everything made him nauseous all over again, but Sho seemed determined to speak to him.
"Are you dying?" his roommate asked.
"Yes," Aiba moaned into his pillowcase.
Sho made a 'tsk' noise, like he very much wanted to comment on "imbibing too much with alcohol" or one of his other lectures. Aiba wanted to avoid all of it. He braced himself for something and when nothing came, sighed a little.
"Remember that you have to go ashore and meet with the thief to get the strap back," Sho reminded him.
Aiba shot upright. "Shit!"
The movement sent all the blood rushing to his head. He groaned, grabbed his face, and fell back down again. "I can't, I can't, I'm dying."
"You aren't dying," Sho said, "you are just severely dehydrated."
"I can't go," Aiba ignored him. His temples were pounding something horrible. "I won't make it through the day."
Sho did something- sounded as if he was pulling his tie off, as he had probably just gotten off his shift at the desk- and Aiba shot one hand out to grab a hold of his sleeve.
"Hey!" Sho cried, trying to tug his arm free.
"You have to go for me," Aiba whined. He was aware that what he was doing was shameful. He didn't care. "Please, Sho. Please- I think I'm done for."
Sho continued trying to shake Aiba's fingers loose. "Aiba, no, there is no way-"
"Help me, Shobi-wan Kenobi," Aiba cried. "You're my only hope!"
His roommate stilled, and sighed longingly, and even though Aiba had his eyes tightly closed (because he didn't want to see Sho's face and the disapproval there, he didn't think he could handle it), he could still see Sho's pinched expression in his mind's eye. Then Sho's hand covered his own, and he gently pried Aiba's fingers from his arm. "Okay."
Aiba opened one eye. "Really?"
"Yes, really, but this is the last time," Sho told him, sounding stern.
"Yes! I understand!" Aiba said, and then sagged back against his pillow once more. "But I really do think that I'm dying."
Sho patted his head. "Well, just make sure that all dying happens in the bathroom, and not on the floor, okay?"
--
"I'm sorry, Taichi, but can you repeat that?" Nino shouted into his phone, one finger in his other ear in a fruitless attempt to drown out the noise. "It's really loud here, I can't hear anything you're saying."
He sincerely hoped it wasn't terribly important. "--make sure-- left -- him?"
"What?" Nino tried again.
He got even less the second time. All he could pick out was incoherent garbles between the screaming around him and the music being blasted far, far too loud (and if Nino never heard 'Cheeseburger in Paradise' again, it would be too soon).
"I'm sorry, Taichi, but I am not getting any of this," he said, giving up. "Listen, I've got to go- I think Nagase is ordering another round for the bar."
That was a lie. Nino could no longer see Nagase, and he was suddenly very nervous about said fact. He hung up without waiting to see if Taichi answered- not like he would have been able to understand it if he had, anyway. He scanned the crowd but found no sign of Nagase, and grabbed Jun's wrist as the other man moved by him.
"Where is he?" he asked.
Jun glared at him. "He's your charge, how did you lose him?"
"Last I saw, he was downing margaritas in a drinking contest with that old lady," Nino said. He continued looking over the tented deck- still no sign of the freakishly tall ex-rock star. "Now I can't find either of them!"
Jun made a disgusted face and sidestepped away from Nino. "Ew. Don't even ask me to go and find them if they are off somewhere doing... ew."
Nino's phone started buzzing again, and he hit ignore without looking down at the name on the screen. "Jun, I have to find him."
There was a large commotion coming from the direction of the water slide, and Nino's heart sank further. He suddenly had a very good idea where Nagase had disappeared to. He pushed his way through the bathing suit-clad patrons towards where the noise was coming from, stepping on a couple of old people who refused to get out of his way.
He was far, far too slow. He had only got halfway up the stairs before Nagase's swim trunks hit him in the face with a wet smack.
"Woohoo!" the man in question was shouting, drink raised into the air as he stood naked at the top of the slide. "Who wants me to go down without clothes on?!"
"Nagase!" Nino cried, looking down horrified at the garment in his hands. "Nagase, don't you even think about this-"
He lunged past the woman with the fake boobs and the too-small bikini top, past the old lady with the hair tinted blue, past the teenage girl trying to look like she was old enough to be drinking the cocktail in her manicured fingers. He fell past the throng and got his hands around Nagase's ankle just as the man jumped towards the rushing water.
And then was promptly pulled straight down the slide with him, face-first into the dips and turns.
By the time they hit the pool at the bottom, Nino was choking and coughing, and the subsequent fall into the deep end felt like a punch to the gut. He'd lost hold of Nagase's foot somewhere near the second twist and the giant belt buckle had caught on the side and torn clean off, so his jumpsuit was practically falling from his body.
All of this came rushing back as he sucked in air once he got himself clear of the water, and then he let himself sag back down into the pool again.
Large hands pulled him upwards, nearly dislodging the jumpsuit from his shoulders.
"Just let me drown," he moaned, spitting out water, hair sticking in his eyes.
"No way!" Nagase laughed, patting his back enthusiastically. "Did you hear those delighted screams? We gotta do this again!"
Nino didn't know where Jun was- but the coward had forsaken him, leaving him alone with this raging, drunken lunatic. He pulled himself out of the pool and landed hard on his phone in his pocket. With an exclamation, he tugged it out of his clothing.
Nothing. The thing wouldn't even turn on, displaying nothing but blankness.
Nino glared at it for a long second, and then promptly heaved it as far as he could down the beach line just past the fruity-colored umbrellas and deck chairs.
There was no way his day could possibly get any worse.
Chapter: 6/??
Fandom: Arashi
Character, Pairing(s): Nino/Aiba, Nagase/the ladies
Rating: R
Warnings: Language, sexual humor
Summary: There's jobs in unfortunate places, jobs with unfortunate people, and jobs that are just plain unfortunate: then there is the Floating Sakura, which seems to be all of the above.
Notes: Apologies for how long it is taking us to write this fic- as of current, I'm working nights and it's throwing my schedule into the complete opposite of Jamie's, which means that our emailing and plotting time has been significantly, significantly lowered. It's taking us a long time to get things done now!
Ever since the incident in Nagase's room, Ryo had been keeping an annoyingly close eye on Nino, and it was making things difficult- since they still hadn't found Sadie, and things were starting to cross from Bad to Very Bad; Nino didn't think there was any coming back from Very Bad.
His boss- for all intents and purposes- caught him leaving Nagase's room with a giant bag filled with the rock star's 500 bagillion prescription pill bottles.
"Where are you going?" Ryo asked, and Nino wanted to knock the smug expression right off his face.
"Nagase is sun-bathing," he explained, as if to a child, as he shut the door behind him and pocketed the key in his jacket, "and it's time for his midday medications. I thought it was best not to disrupt his plans for the day, and to conduct this business out on the deck."
If Ryo wanted to comment on the sarcasm, he didn't show it. He just nodded and uncrossed his arms, looking slightly less stern than he had moments earlier. Nino just wanted him to leave- he didn't even care about getting on the man's good side anymore, just about getting out of his never-failing sight.
"You know, it's very important that Nagase leave here with good feelings towards the line," Ryo said. Like he thought this was all new information to Nino, or something, and wasn't something they mentioned at least five times during new employee orientation training. "If he has a great time, he'll tell other people about us. He could do wonders for our credibility."
"Yeah, or he could accidentally sink the whole ship," Nino grumbled under his breath. Ryo gave him a look and Nino straightened, clearing his throat. "Look, Taichi is going to call very soon to ask if Nagase's meds were administered on time, and I'd like to be able to report good things back."
"Fine," was all Ryo said, and when he left, Nino let out a long-suffering sigh of relief.
Plus, he'd been telling the truth. Mostly.
He found Nagase lying on the Adults-Only section of the Sun Deck, talking to two women in string bikinis and extra-large sunglasses.
"Hey, Cambodia!" Nagase shouted, and waved Nino over. He was drinking something fruity out of a drink with a little straw hat on it, and from the empty glasses littering the plastic table next to him, had started quite a few hours ago. Nino moved to Nagase's side and tried not to roll his eyes, though holding himself back was difficult. "These are my new friends."
"I'm sure they are," Nino said, and gave both women a strained smile. Honestly, their presence only got Nagase riled up, and the last thing Nino wanted to deal with was Nagase on the prowl. Again.
"Are you going to come into the hot tub with us?" one of them asked.
Nagase took a long drink out of his straw and sighed loudly and contentedly. "Yeah, definitely. I'll be there in a few, gotta take care of some stuff with my homey here."
Both ladies seemed pleased with the answer, and left with swishing of their hips. Nagase turned his grin on Nino, despite the fact that such a tactic never, ever worked. The man hadn't quite figured that out yet, it seemed.
"Say, can you help a fella out here? I need some of that there oily-crap rubbed on me, I'm getting a bit overheated."
Nino picked up the bottle and looked at it. "You realize this is tanning oil and not sunscreen, right?"
"My washboard abs look way hotter when I'm tanned," Nagase confided.
"I'm not touching your abs," Nino said, irritated, and set the bottle back on the table. "You can get that yourself. Anyway, it's medicine time."
Nagase just sort of waved his hand at him, which was his favorite form of dismissal. "Right, right. Say, I've been wanting to say hi to Sadie. I miss having her beneath my pillow at night. Think you could go and get her for me so she could lay out in the sun with me?"
Nino's breath caught in his throat, chest constricting tightly. For a very long moment, he just stared at his charge, trying furiously to come up with something to say. Unhelpfully, his brain just kept showing him all the different scenarios for how he could get fired, and how horrible going home would be knowing he couldn't even make three months on the Floating Sakura.
"Actually, I think you're right about those abs," Nino sputtered, grabbing for the oil again. "The tan would really help the definition in them. Here, turn over and I'll get your shoulders, too."
Nagase sputtered out something that might have been a protest, but Nino just sort of forcibly turned the man over and started lathering on the oily substance on his back.
"I could get you another drink, too," Nino continued, grimacing when Nagase made pleased sounding noises under the oil-rubbing ministrations and trying very, very hard not to think too hard about what he was doing. "What were you drinking?"
Nagase mumbled something that sounded like 'Sex on the Beach' into the deck chair.
Nino capped the oil again and tried to find a towel to wipe his hands off on. The only one nearby was the one Nagase was laying on, so he found a corner sticking out from beneath the man's mammothly hairy legs and swallowed down his annoyed groan. "Alright, now let's get you those meds so that Taichi doesn't spend the next thirty minutes chewing me out."
"And then you can go and get Sadie-" Nagase started, turning back over and sighing, throwing one arm over his eyes to shield the sunlight.
Nino's stomach twisted uncomfortably again, and his fingers shook while trying to get the lid off the pill bottles. "Right, sure, Sadie..."
He was going to hit panic mode very, very soon, and he could barely see straight as he shuffled through the massive pile of pill containers in the bag he had slung over one shoulder. He couldn't even remember which ones Nagase needed to take after lunch- something about colons and anxiety and cholesterol regulators, and then Nino came across the sleeping pills.
"I think she'd really love the deck air," Nagase was saying, apparently to Nino though Nino hadn't heard a word before then, "and it would be good for her to get out of the safe for awhile..."
Oh, he was violating just about every ethics code the ship had ever instilled upon his morality, and the truth was, Nino was past caring. He opened the bottle and shook out three of the round, non-descript pills- thank heaven for small favors, anyway- and let them fall into the rest of his handful. He didn't even feel all that bad holding the small smattering of medications out to Nagase.
"Here, just take these, and I'll go get... everything," he said.
Nagase took the handful without question, swallowing the lot down with the last of his drink.
Nino left his charge and made his way to the bar down the steps on the Lido Deck, and hoped he didn't look suspicious as he ordered a Sex on the Beach and drummed his fingers on the bar counter while waiting for it. At least the staff manning the post wasn't Ohno- Ohno could read Nino way too well for Nino's liking.
By the time Nino got back to the Adults-Only enclave with the new drink, Nagase was snoring loudly into the crook of his arm, and he could breathe a sigh of guilty, guilty relief.
Things were not going well.
And Nino had the horrible, sinking feeling that they were only going to get worse.
--
“Please don’t run!” he said in the jolliest voice he could manage, flapping the wings of the Eduardo Eagle costume. “This arcade is for good boys and girls!”
The boy in question, pockets overflowing with tickets from the skeeball area, proceeded to stomp on the foam talons on Aiba’s foot.
“Hey! Ouch!”
The kid ran off to meet some of his other little devil companions, leaving Aiba pretty damn sore. This was the fourth kid in half an hour who had stepped on his foot or kicked him in the ass, and he was just grateful nobody had tried to punch him in the beak yet. He was really regretting having agreed to cover an arcade shift to make up for Nagase’s giant giraffe - and Nino had never said anything about wearing stupid costumes!
“Eduardo!” the midway manager called out to him, looking away from the ring toss to scold him. “Don’t just flap your gums! Flap your wings, would ya?”
“My name’s not Eduardo,” Aiba grumbled, still limping off in the direction of the basketball game.
“What was that?”
“You got it, Mr. Matsuoka!” Aiba shouted, flapping his wings. And of course, Mr. Matsuoka couldn’t see Aiba’s middle finger inside the giant wing.
This was the longest shift ever. Aiba liked people. And he liked kids too! But apparently he didn’t like kids on cruise ships, specifically those between the ages of 9 and 13 who ran wild in the arcade away from their boozing parents. If he’d ever acted this way at that age, his mom would have grabbed him by the ear and tossed him overboard.
He was just too used to the quiet of the purser’s office. Aside from the past week from hell, his work was usually quiet. He just played his iPod and went through several games of Spider Solitaire whenever it was his usual shift. There’d be the occasional money changing or adding something to a safe, but it was very calm. And the people were nicer. In here there were blinking lights and screaming kids and popping balloons (which inevitably led to more screaming).
He made it all the way to the basketball game, but the arcade was noisy and crowded, and he still hadn’t spotted Nino. They were supposed to be working this shift together, and he was getting worried. How hard could it be to spot another person in an animal costume? Had something happened to him?
They had to talk about Nagase. They’d be docking and letting off the whole darn ship at Margaritaville in another day - if they could get Nagase off the ship completely, maybe they could do some better investigation of whoever had stolen Sadie. It had to be someone on the staff - someone who could mess with the video and break into their cabins to leave ransom scraps from the Led Zeppelin t-shirt. But where was Nino?
“Mister Eagle?”
Aiba looked down to see a snotty nosed little one tugging on the brown feathers at his hip. She couldn’t have been more than five or six years old. Oh no...
“Mister Eagle? Mister Eagle, I can’t find mommy!”
He crouched down, looking out at her through the open beak. “Mister Eagle’s here, okay? What’s your name, kiddo?”
“Heidi!”
“Okay, Heidi. Where did you last see your mommy?”
He really wasn’t supposed to deal with lost kids. As “arcade costumed staff” he was just supposed to keep kids from breaking the machines and pose for photos. There was a whole pen off by Matsuoka’s station to wrangle all the kids that got separated, but Heidi had little pigtails and cute overalls and she wasn’t stomping on his foot or tugging on his tail feathers. And besides, he’d really screwed up most aspects of his job this week - maybe doing a good deed would give him some karma back.
“She said she was having a date with Jack!”
“Is Jack your daddy?”
“Nope!”
“Who is Jack?”
“He is Jose’s friend! I think Jose was going to be there too! And Captain Morgan!”
“But Heidi, the captain of this ship is Captain...” Aiba paused, realization setting in. Heidi’s mommy sounded like a pretty big lush. Maybe she would have been good company for Mr. Kusanagi - maybe she could have helped him keep his damn clothes on.
And that was when Heidi wrapped herself around his yellow tights-covered leg and wouldn’t let go, blubbering in a rather adorable way. “Mister Eagle, where’s mommy?”
He needed to find Nino. He had things he was supposed to talk about with Nino, and now he had a kindergartner with an irresponsible parent snotting all over his tights. Aiba glanced over to the lost kids pen, seeing a bunch of little terrors kicking the fence that was keeping them in. He couldn’t just leave the girl there, but he couldn’t really wander around the ship in an eagle costume, could he?”
--
Ten minutes later, he was carrying the whimpering girl around the Midori deck in search of her horrible mother. In the eagle costume.
“Where ya going, Foghorn Leghorn?” a drunk college guy hollered at him. “I say, I say, where ya going?”
“Oh shut up,” he muttered, holding Heidi closer. At this point, going back to the arcade would just get him yelled at by Matsuoka. Maybe the guy would strap him to the inflate the balloon game and have a bunch of punk kids squirt the water in his face. Or have kids kick soccer balls at his nuts.
He finally found a woman sitting at Ohno’s bar, and from the way Heidi perked up, he’d probably hit the jackpot. Fortunately the woman was still sitting upright on the stool and was holding an animated, but not entirely slurred conversation with his friend.
Ohno stared at him for a few seconds, vodka overflowing into the shot glass he was preparing for a customer. “Masaki?” Ohno said as soon as he peeked through the beak.
He set Heidi down. “Excuse me, ma’am?”
The woman turned to look at him, blinking a few times. “Hey...Satoshi, how many have I had? There’s a bird talking to me now...”
He took the eagle head off and was just about to explain when Heidi let out a blood-curdling scream.
“MISTER EAGLE! YOUR HEAD CAME OFF!”
“What are you doing to my child?” the mother screamed, starting to beat him with her purse, and Ohno didn’t bother to help him. “Put the head on! Put it back on!”
“Stop...” Aiba squealed, feeling Louis Vuitton smacking him hard in the ribs and even through the costume, it hurt like a bitch. “Stop, please! I’ll put it back!”
“WHY DID YOUR HEAD COME OFF, MISTER EAGLE!? MOMMY!”
He shoved the head back on as quickly as he could with a woman purse-whipping him and a screaming child destroying his eardrums and a bar full of passengers staring. The mother abandoned her date with Jack and picked the little girl up.
“We are never traveling on this cruise line again!” she insisted before carrying the child out of the room. Not even a thank you for rescuing her very young child from the arcade. No apology for getting her drink on and letting a little girl wander around alone.
Ohno pushed a shot glass towards him, and Aiba could smell the vodka.
“Not on the job,” Aiba whined. “I have to find Nino!”
Ohno shoved the glass back at his feather-covered hand. “I think you could use it.”
“I”m not taking the head off again.”
“Masaki, take the shot and get out of here, okay?”
Ohno’s face was not unfriendly though. And he’d been so nice about this whole Sadie thing so far when he didn’t really HAVE to be involved. But he’d given advice and looked for the guitar strap even though he wasn’t even with Sho now, but they were still friends so he did so out of friendship...Satoshi was his friend. He had friends - real friends here on board.
“Are you...are you crying?” Satoshi asked, voice full of surprise as he tilted his head to look through the hole in the beak.
He waved his wing. “No. No, of course I’m not crying!” He grabbed the shot glass and held the beak open, pouring the liquor into his mouth. It burned. A lot. “I’m just remembering something though. I’m kind of bad with shots.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
He slammed the glass down on the bar top and waggled his eagle tail feathers. “Give me another one. You know. Just one more. For luck.”
--
Eleventy-five shots later (or whatever, who was counting?!) he wandered back in to the arcade in love with the world and everything about it. He flapped his eagle wings for anyone who looked at him funny.
“I love the Floating Sakura! I love being a part of the Floating Sakura!”
Matsuoka eyed him when he came back in. “Eduardo, where you been? The ticket counter at the redemption center broke down and some kid got his sticky hand stuck in the claw game!”
“I love you, Mr. Matsuoka!”
Matsuoka seemed kind of happy with that though, unable to complain or even chastize Aiba again as he danced around like the happiest eagle in the nest. “Uh, I love you too?”
Where was Nino? That was all Aiba was really thinking about. Sure, he had some deliciousness in his tummy, and he felt like a million bucks, but he had an obligation to Nino! It was his fault that Nino was so grumpy all the time, and Aiba didn’t want a grumpy Nino! Because Nino was cute when he was grumpy, sure, but he was far cuter when he was laughing, and Aiba couldn’t remember the last time Nino laughed.
He flitted around the arcade, finally reaching a part he hadn’t been to - the supply closet behind the ticket redemption counter. The first indication that Nino just might have been inside came when the guy at the counter complained about some “costumed idiot” not coming out for four hours.
“Heeeey Nino,” he slurred when he went in, closing the door behind him.
Nino was sitting on the floor, meerkat head beside him. He looked super cute in the remainder of the fuzzy meerkat costume though.
“Why didn’t you come out?”
Nino looked up and frowned. “Are you drunk?”
“I’m great!”
Nino sighed. “Yeah, you’re drunk.”
Aiba sat down, taking off his eagle head and holding it in his lap. “So why are you in here? Are you not up to the challenge of being Mabel Meerkat? Do you not want to be a girl meerkat?”
Nino didn’t want to look at him, that much was obvious. “It’s not that, although I don’t know why the meerkat has to be gender specific in the first place.”
He bopped the eagle’s head against Nino’s meerkat knee. “Well? You left me out there all by myself, and we’re both supposed to be on this shift! You know Matsuoka’s going to make us do something else to make up for the giraffe!”
“I’m sorry.”
Aiba leaned forward until he was nose to nose with the other man. “Hey, are you okay? What’s wrong? You can tell me. Eagles are very noble creatures and very trustworthy!”
“You say the stupidest shit, you know that?” Nino said, chuckling quietly. Well, whatever Nino said, at least Aiba had made him laugh a bit and that had to count for something.
“I’m in here because I’m not sure how much longer I can do this.”
Aiba looked at his wrist instinctively. “Well there’s only...well, I think there’s only half an hour left until the arcade shuts down for the night.”
“Not the shift, idiot. All of this. Dealing with Nagase, dealing with Nagase’s clinically insane manager and with bits of a Led Zeppelin shirt getting left behind like breadcrumbs! I had to drug Nagase today. Can you get that through your drunken head, Eagle Boy? I drugged the guy! I mean, not like I care about him or anything, but am I that terrible at my job that I have to drug the person I’m supposed to be helping?”
Aiba had had a few too many shots to give Nino a clear answer, and instead he picked up the meerkat head from the floor and gave it a kiss. The costume head tasted fuzzy.
“Feel better, Nino. We’ll get through this together!” He gave the meerkat head an affectionate pat before setting it back down, but then Nino caught him by the feathery wrist.
“I like you,” Nino blurted out.
“I like you too,” Aiba said automatically. “I like being part of the Floating Sakura!”
Nino’s grip tightened on him. “You are almost as dumb as Nagase. I said I LIKE you.”
He could see the slightest blush in Nino’s cheeks, and drunk or no, Aiba wasn’t actually as dumb as Nagase. He nearly jumped out of his feathers when he felt the meerkat costume paw on his cheek.
“You’re wasted, so do me a big favor and forget this, okay?” Nino said quietly before stealing his breath and kissing him.
Aiba knew almost instantly that kissing Nino was a really good thing. Nino might have been really skilled at moving his mouth to insult people, but he was even better at moving his mouth and saying nothing at all. It was really hot in the eagle costume though, and it was hard to sit cross-legged in it for very long so the kissing kind of got awkward. He ended up falling forward, landing on top of the even warmer to the touch meerkat costume (and obviously, the person inside it).
“Ow!” Nino complained as his back hit the supply closet floor. “Get off of me!”
But of course, this wasn’t really what Nino seemed to want since Aiba soon found two small, but possessive meerkat paws on his eagle butt.
“Margaritaville tomorrow!” he said once Nino let him breathe again.
“Turn the ship upside down,” Nino mumbled against his lips.
“You going with him?”
“Have to.”
“Okay.”
It was kind of awkward again. And even with eleventy-five shots, they were in the kids’ arcade supply closet in animal costumes. Nino finally seemed to realize this, and the paws at Aiba’s rear slipped away. He missed them immediately.
Aiba frowned. “Maybe we should...”
“You should forget this ever happened,” Nino said pointedly, wriggling his smaller body out from underneath him and picking up the meerkat head. “And sleep that...whatever you’ve been drinking off. I’m getting drunk just from making out with you.”
“I like making out with you,” he admitted.
Nino sighed. “Please god, let him forget this,” Aiba heard him mumble as he pushed past him and back out to the arcade floor.
He was still on a high from the drinks and the Nino kissing when he got back to the cabin. He was all set to admit what had happened to Sho and even though Sho would probably make faces and complain, he always listened (especially since Aiba always had to listen about how Jun had maybe-possibly-kinda-sorta winked at Sho in the hall that day blah blah).
But instead Sho had rather sobering news when Aiba entered their cabin.
His bunkmate held up another scrap of the Led Zeppelin shirt and a note.
“I can’t read right now. I’m drunk,” Aiba told him. He wasn’t really unable to read, but he didn’t want to see the words. Instead he shut his eyes, listening to Sho’s voice bounce off the cabin walls.
“Well it says ‘planning to waste away again in Margaritaville? Meet me by the Tiki Hut at Margaritaville at 9:30 PM and...’”
Aiba opened his eyes. “9:30?! But the ship leaves for open sea at...”
“...9:45 PM,” Sho finished. “Masaki, what are we going to do?”
--
"Oi, Klingon! You got my meds?" Nagase shouted from the bathroom, as Nino was busy stuffing pill bottles into the carrying bag he was going to take ashore with him. His phone on his hip was already buzzing- no doubt it was Taichi, meaning Nino was going to ignore as many of Nagase's manager's calls as humanly possible.
"Yes," Nino called back. He zipped up the pouch and glared balefully down at it. "Are you sure you need me to go with you?"
Nagase poked his head out of the bathroom, half his hair sticking up from a severe over application of hair gel. "I can't remember to take all that by myself. Now listen, I need some beer to pregame this. Margaritaville is a big deal."
"It's named after a Jimmy Buffett song," Nino muttered to himself, but fetched the requested alcohol anyway, handing one into Nagase in the bathroom without looking inside (he'd learned the hard way that Nagase did not often wear pants while in front of the mirror, even when he was just doing his hair).
He heard Nagase crack the can open and sat down on the edge of the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Nagase continued doing whatever it was he was doing in the bathroom for awhile, and then Nino heard his footsteps approach the mattress where he was doing his inanimate object impersonation.
"Yo, I'm probably going to lose you when you are wearing that shit," Nagase said. "Put this on- so I can identify you."
Nino grabbed the garment that was thrown (at his head). "No."
"What do you mean, no?"
"I mean I'm not wearing this," Nino said, clinging desperately to the shreds of his dignity he still had left. He tossed the offending article back at Nagase. "What part of 'no' is confusing?"
Nagase looked confused for a long moment- probably because Nino had never really snapped at him before, and he wasn't used to people actually denying him what he was asking of them. But Nino was not going to be caught dead outside at a major tourist trap in a bright pink and orange Hawaiian print jumpsuit. He didn't even want to know why Nagase owned such an article of clothing.
In fact, there was no way it would even fit him.
Nagase laughed heartily. "You're funny. But seriously, I won't know where you are, so put it on."
The garment landed back in Nino's lap.
Five minutes later, Nino found himself in Nagase's bathroom glaring at his reflection in the large full-length mirror, jumpsuit securely on his body (belted because it was at least three sizes too large and nearly falling off of him). He dug his phone out of his pant pocket and dialed with trembling fingers.
"Whatever it is, my answer is no," Jun said immediately upon picking up.
"Please," Nino pleaded. "Please, you have to go ashore with me. I can't do this alone. He's insane. He's- whatever is beyond insane, he's that."
There was shuffling out past the closed door, and Nino looked fretfully back, afraid Nagase would simply burst into the bathroom without notice.
Jun sighed. "Why can't you ask Aiba? This is his problem."
Because I'm dressed in a hideous joke. Because this belt's buckle is a pair of copper breasts. Because I made out with him when he was drunk and I don't know if he remembers it. "I'll owe you, please just do it for me? Someone has to come with and go to the rendezvous point to get Sadie back."
Truth be told, Nino wasn't even sure Aiba was awake- he'd been so wasted the night before, he probably couldn't get out of bed. And Nino didn't want to call and check because that was just awkward, and he was already drowning in awkward that he couldn't avoid.
Jun hadn't said anything else, and Nino's desperation was growing. "Please?" he pleaded again. "Jun, please?"
"Fine," Jun growled. "But you owe me big time."
There was the angry click of the dial-tone, and Nino flipped his phone closed once more.
"Yo, Cadaver! Let's go, I wanna make sure I get there in time for happy hour!" Nagase called from the bedroom.
"Coming," Nino replied, heart in his stomach.
--
Aiba woke up wanting to throw up.
He spent the next thirty minutes wanting to throw up, too, even as he did so (several times) and shakily made his way out of the bathroom to collapse back onto his pillow once more, head throbbing and fingers trembling. He vaguely heard Sho exit and re-enter the room.
He was trying really hard to block out all noise, because everything made him nauseous all over again, but Sho seemed determined to speak to him.
"Are you dying?" his roommate asked.
"Yes," Aiba moaned into his pillowcase.
Sho made a 'tsk' noise, like he very much wanted to comment on "imbibing too much with alcohol" or one of his other lectures. Aiba wanted to avoid all of it. He braced himself for something and when nothing came, sighed a little.
"Remember that you have to go ashore and meet with the thief to get the strap back," Sho reminded him.
Aiba shot upright. "Shit!"
The movement sent all the blood rushing to his head. He groaned, grabbed his face, and fell back down again. "I can't, I can't, I'm dying."
"You aren't dying," Sho said, "you are just severely dehydrated."
"I can't go," Aiba ignored him. His temples were pounding something horrible. "I won't make it through the day."
Sho did something- sounded as if he was pulling his tie off, as he had probably just gotten off his shift at the desk- and Aiba shot one hand out to grab a hold of his sleeve.
"Hey!" Sho cried, trying to tug his arm free.
"You have to go for me," Aiba whined. He was aware that what he was doing was shameful. He didn't care. "Please, Sho. Please- I think I'm done for."
Sho continued trying to shake Aiba's fingers loose. "Aiba, no, there is no way-"
"Help me, Shobi-wan Kenobi," Aiba cried. "You're my only hope!"
His roommate stilled, and sighed longingly, and even though Aiba had his eyes tightly closed (because he didn't want to see Sho's face and the disapproval there, he didn't think he could handle it), he could still see Sho's pinched expression in his mind's eye. Then Sho's hand covered his own, and he gently pried Aiba's fingers from his arm. "Okay."
Aiba opened one eye. "Really?"
"Yes, really, but this is the last time," Sho told him, sounding stern.
"Yes! I understand!" Aiba said, and then sagged back against his pillow once more. "But I really do think that I'm dying."
Sho patted his head. "Well, just make sure that all dying happens in the bathroom, and not on the floor, okay?"
--
"I'm sorry, Taichi, but can you repeat that?" Nino shouted into his phone, one finger in his other ear in a fruitless attempt to drown out the noise. "It's really loud here, I can't hear anything you're saying."
He sincerely hoped it wasn't terribly important. "--make sure-- left -- him?"
"What?" Nino tried again.
He got even less the second time. All he could pick out was incoherent garbles between the screaming around him and the music being blasted far, far too loud (and if Nino never heard 'Cheeseburger in Paradise' again, it would be too soon).
"I'm sorry, Taichi, but I am not getting any of this," he said, giving up. "Listen, I've got to go- I think Nagase is ordering another round for the bar."
That was a lie. Nino could no longer see Nagase, and he was suddenly very nervous about said fact. He hung up without waiting to see if Taichi answered- not like he would have been able to understand it if he had, anyway. He scanned the crowd but found no sign of Nagase, and grabbed Jun's wrist as the other man moved by him.
"Where is he?" he asked.
Jun glared at him. "He's your charge, how did you lose him?"
"Last I saw, he was downing margaritas in a drinking contest with that old lady," Nino said. He continued looking over the tented deck- still no sign of the freakishly tall ex-rock star. "Now I can't find either of them!"
Jun made a disgusted face and sidestepped away from Nino. "Ew. Don't even ask me to go and find them if they are off somewhere doing... ew."
Nino's phone started buzzing again, and he hit ignore without looking down at the name on the screen. "Jun, I have to find him."
There was a large commotion coming from the direction of the water slide, and Nino's heart sank further. He suddenly had a very good idea where Nagase had disappeared to. He pushed his way through the bathing suit-clad patrons towards where the noise was coming from, stepping on a couple of old people who refused to get out of his way.
He was far, far too slow. He had only got halfway up the stairs before Nagase's swim trunks hit him in the face with a wet smack.
"Woohoo!" the man in question was shouting, drink raised into the air as he stood naked at the top of the slide. "Who wants me to go down without clothes on?!"
"Nagase!" Nino cried, looking down horrified at the garment in his hands. "Nagase, don't you even think about this-"
He lunged past the woman with the fake boobs and the too-small bikini top, past the old lady with the hair tinted blue, past the teenage girl trying to look like she was old enough to be drinking the cocktail in her manicured fingers. He fell past the throng and got his hands around Nagase's ankle just as the man jumped towards the rushing water.
And then was promptly pulled straight down the slide with him, face-first into the dips and turns.
By the time they hit the pool at the bottom, Nino was choking and coughing, and the subsequent fall into the deep end felt like a punch to the gut. He'd lost hold of Nagase's foot somewhere near the second twist and the giant belt buckle had caught on the side and torn clean off, so his jumpsuit was practically falling from his body.
All of this came rushing back as he sucked in air once he got himself clear of the water, and then he let himself sag back down into the pool again.
Large hands pulled him upwards, nearly dislodging the jumpsuit from his shoulders.
"Just let me drown," he moaned, spitting out water, hair sticking in his eyes.
"No way!" Nagase laughed, patting his back enthusiastically. "Did you hear those delighted screams? We gotta do this again!"
Nino didn't know where Jun was- but the coward had forsaken him, leaving him alone with this raging, drunken lunatic. He pulled himself out of the pool and landed hard on his phone in his pocket. With an exclamation, he tugged it out of his clothing.
Nothing. The thing wouldn't even turn on, displaying nothing but blankness.
Nino glared at it for a long second, and then promptly heaved it as far as he could down the beach line just past the fruity-colored umbrellas and deck chairs.
There was no way his day could possibly get any worse.