(no subject)
Present for: glasssubway
Type of present: Fanfiction
Title: Being Evil (on Christmas Eve)
Pairing: Shoichi/Spanner
Rating: PG-13
Notes: I'M SORRY THIS IS SO LATE. It was surprisingly difficult to get to the internet. And there are spoilers in the fic up to chapter 254.
Being Evil (on Christmas Eve)
"In Japan," Spanner said, "Christmas is mostly for lovers."
The commander of the seventh node of the tech department stood impassive behind him, watching his fingers dart over the keyboard. "In the Millefiore it's an opportunity to launch an unexpected attack. The others let their guard down."
"That's because you said this was the mandatory Christmas party."
A group of Millefiore employees should be far more paranoid than to put trust in something like that. He looked up to scan the workshop. A few members of the seventh node were still fighting the towering nu-mosca prototypes, crouched behind upturned desks. The mosca reacted fast to any attack, swivelling at their jointed waists to meet and return it.
"Naturally," said the commander. "It meant they didn't bring as many weapons as usual, and everything they've been working on was already packed away."
"But that's not my point, Shoichi," Spanner said, and turned down the volume of the carols piping from speakers in the ring of guard robots around them. "Are you lonely?"
A beat.
Another one, and another. The percussive thuds of the battle could've made a great industrial sound for a track.
He really should've been a rock star.
"That kind of comment is inappropriate between superior and subordinate," Shoichi said. Spanner turned on his swivel chair, eyebrows raised, and watched as Shoichi tilted his head in such a way that his glasses flashed reflectively to make his eyes blank and his bearing utterly remote. "If it continues you will have to be disciplined. Severely."
Spanner shot up from his chair and trotted over to peer avidly into Shoichi's face. "You got your glasses to make the same kind of reflection as an anime villain's! Did you practise it in a mirror?"
"How did you kn-?!"
Shit.
"No! Of course not!" Shoichi took a step back, feeling control slip away. That was started this damn mess with the Christmas party!
"What's this about?" he said coldly, rallying. He couldn't start shooting Spanner; it would be like shooting the socially stunted weirdo within every geek. It would also be like shooting Spanner.
Whose mind shifted gears. He turned and headed back for the control console they'd rigged up. There was a box under the desk, beside the chair, and Shoichi wished he had not been ingenuous enough to assume they held spare parts or lollipops. Spanner turned back, and his smile widened.
Shoichi narrowed his eyes, broadcasting 'suspicious' as loud and clear as he could. "What's in that box?" he asked in his best speaking-to-subordinates voice.
"A Christmas gift," said Spanner, and clarified. "Between friends. I thought I'd better help you with the more Western cultural traditions associated with the holiday."
Shoichi drew straight in a self-contained pose. He did that often, and his subordinates always reacted badly to the attempts at seeming in control; the Black Spell had laughed at him and growled among one other, and the White Spell had sneeringly and thoroughly ignored him.
He'd pretty much had to shoot them all with robots.
Even if it was only with glue guns - it was the effect of the thing that counted. He was pretty sure he could argue that with a straight face when Byakuran called about the news.
Shoichi opened his mouth to say, "We are not friends anymore: I was promoted to leader of this unit, and even before that I did nothing to encourage your impression that we were still friends. Personal attachments would only get in the way of my work."
Because personal attachments got in the way of his work, Shoichi actually said, "Seriously, Spanner?!" His hand reached up to dig through his hair, and he made a kind of low choke instead. (It looked better.) "I was out of Japan all through university. And you know I've been working here in Italy for all of this year!"
Spanner's eyes widened, and he readjusted the goggles habitually perched on his head. "All of university?" he said. "You never mentioned it."
He'd never been supposed to mention anything. He had to concentrate on working his way up the ranks of the Millefiore. This was ruining a good precedent. "Besides, it's not that hard to figure out!" Shoichi said, trying for dismissive. "Mistletoe, reindeer, Father Christmas, gifts, Christianity, family, midnight mass."
Spanner peered glumly at the box - a good-sized brown cardboard box. He crouched on his haunches, opened two flaps and wriggled out objects: a snow globe, a miniature reindeer, sprigs of holly and mistletoe, warmly coloured cards featuring artwork of families gathered around feasts or sleds, a packet of gingerbread men. All this was arranged on the ground.
"There are some other traditions," Spanner said, sounding disconsolate, and pulled out a giant log.
Shoichi's mind sped, ignoring the vicious Italian swearing and gunfire in the room and concentrating on the Christmas carols from the mosca's speakers. He'd scoured the internet for songs to download, and lots of the websites had had bits of history along with the compliments of the season.
"Yuletide!" he said triumphantly, and downplayed it with a wave of the hand. "The pagan roots of certain Christmas rituals, with regards to the celebration of rebirth, and summer in winter stuff. That's why an evergreen features prominently in the celebration."
Spanner sagged, yanked out a miniature tree in a spray of pine needles, and nodded. "Rituals brought in by the converted pagans, or even by the church to appease the converts." He sighed deeply and put the box down, straightening to look down at the array at his feet.
There weren't many changes between the man in front of him and the guy he'd hung out with during the week of the international high school robotics competition. Still brilliant, still ridiculous, still weirdly inoffensive in spite of his best unintended efforts. Spanner was taller, calmer but equally intense, and he was friendly. When they'd ended up in the tech department of the Millefiore together, Shoichi had made a point of not speaking to him and Spanner had not noticed, sending brilliant smiles his way on the rare occasions that he lifted his head from work and Shoichi happened to be overseeing in his section. It would probably have been as easy to steer his interest off in another direction as Shoichi had learnt it was in high school, a direction involving fun and talking a lot of random crap and one friend that wouldn't turn out to be the worst thing that ever happened to him. Probably.
"I can't afford this," Shoichi told Spanner. "There are-" He focused on the ring of robots around them and then the lab beyond. "...People to shoot."
Spanner went back to his chair and pulled up the security camera footage on his laptop; Shoichi went to peer over his shoulder. "They've been taken out," Spanner said. "It was a good idea to scramble communications in the area. Nobody's been able to get back-up."
The seventh node was pasted to the walls, floor, and furniture with the pink gunk the mosca had been firing, most knocked out in the course of the fight, and the rest whose mouths weren't gummed up still swearing revenge and swearing in general.
"I hope this does amuse Byakuran-san enough to promote me again," Shoichi said vaguely, blinking as if he'd just woken up and couldn't find his glasses. "Or else they'll take every opportunity to skin me alive."
"Very ambitious of you, Shoichi." Spanner propped his elbow on the console and tapped out a couple of commands on the keyboard.
"I'll see to it that you get transferred to a different department too, of course. Your help ensured this went off so smoothly."
Spanner had started playing Solitaire.
"A-alongside me. You ... should ... be transferred alongside me. It ... it could be dangerous otherwise. The rest of seventh node might get friends in the other tech departments to take care of you."
"Shoichi?" Spanner swivelled. He sat and stared. Then, having considered, he smiled. "I thought it might be something like that, when you asked."
"I was supposed to leave you behind," Shoichi said, and in the part of his mind not dedicated to holding back a gibbering meltdown, he reflected that he was the worst spy ever. Once he started talking it was impossible to shut up. "It would have shown that I was prepared to do what it took to get ahead. It's the mafia, damn it, it's supposed to be a cutthroat business. This would have proved that I was ruthless enough to get rid of people useless to me. If the seventh node wouldn't listen, I couldn't use them, and it was that simple. That was the plan."
Spanner reflected. "If you..."
It was quiet between them, though all around the music rang out.
"You could!" Spanner said, smile steadily growing bigger. "If you had a voice synthesiser you could sound really tough."
Shoichi stared at him. Shoichi blinked. "Would that work...?"
"Easily! I could make it small enough to fit directly on your vocal chords."
"It would work," Shoichi said, the realisation dawning no matter how hard he fought it. "It definitely would. Byakuran-san would love it ... he'd laugh himself sick."
Spanner switched his lollipop from one side of his mouth to the other. "I was thinking about making it impressive."
Shoichi barely heard him, leaned over with his arm clamped over the stabbing pain in his midsection. "Damn it, it would work! This is insane! What kind of job is this?"
"It is interesting," Spanner offered.
Shoichi lifted his head to glare at him.
"Like you keep saying, Byakuran-san values innovation. We wouldn't have got to test these mosca so thoroughly otherwise."
"By shooting our colleagues!"
"Weird," Spanner agreed. "But interesting. And we only used hypoallergenic glue."
"And why the hell aren't you mad at me?"
Spanner shrugged and readjusted his goggles again. "You changed your initial plan. You always get carried away in the planning stages when you get determined."
Shoichi straightened and staggered over to Spanner, almost grabbing him by the shirtfront, and then put his hands on the box beside Spanner instead. "Isn't drinking part of traditional Western Christmases?"
"Eggnog."
"How strong is that?"
"I've got plum sake at my flat," Spanner said, and in spite of himself, Shoichi felt his expression clear.
"I'd actually ... really like some. I've never had."
"You've never had?"
"Yeah, Spanner, that can happen even to Japanese people."
At some point that evening, the 'Christmas is for lovers' thing started to seem really attractive.
Of course, he was the only one who was drunk - Spanner liked the sake but preferred green tea - so he was the only one with ideas about ill-advised liasons with colleagues.
"Practically also a tradition," Spanner said, because Shoichi was still bad at shutting up. He hooked a companionable arm around Shoichi's neck.
Shoichi took a deep breath. "Bad idea, bad idea. Hand over more of those gingerbread men."
"I've got ramen."
"I said gingerbread," said Shoichi, mostly fond rather than snappish. It was bad enough the way they were sitting together on the couch, ignoring The Sound of Music on Spanner's laptop in favour of talking about roughly everything, like they hadn't stopped talking since high school. It was bad enough that he knew he wouldn't let Spanner out of his reach within the Millefiore from now on. He owed Spanner. He could use Spanner. He was going to keep him safe.
They couldn't afford to be together much, after this. Spanner could not be an obvious part of the plans Shoichi was still pulling together; the more obvious any of it was, the easier it would be to stop.
"Thank you for your help," Shoichi said, concentrating not to slur.
"It's what friends are for." Spanner sounded firm about it. "I'm glad we got to meet again, Shoichi. It's the best piece of luck I've ever had."
Shoichi gulped, relieved and guilty in equally overwhelming parts. "Spanner..."
"And auld lang syne."
Shoichi stared. Shoichi blinked. That reaction happened a lot around Spanner. "What the hell?"
"A tradition for later," said Spanner, and grinned at him.
It was a comforting thought to indulge in. Shoichi sighed deeply and sank back into his corner of the couch, relaxing for what felt like the first time in years. "Sure," he promised himself. It was the time of year for sentimentality. "Tell me later."