Gift fic for arashijun
Gift fic for: arashijun
From: newsficcon
Title: Could Be Goodbye
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Shige/Ryo
Warnings: None
Summary: Shige condenses the truth from something equalling the length of a term paper to two words: “Nishikido’s missing.”
Notes: I hope you enjoy this, arashijun! The prompts were fun to work with. :)
The gunfire on the street has lessened from continuous to sporadic, but Shige knows to wait until the yelling’s stopped before he leaves the hotel. Miko has his arm firmly gripped in both hands and she won’t let go-she seems to have some bizarre notion that Shige’s eager to be where the action is, but she couldn’t be more wrong about that. He’d be sprinting in the other direction right now if he hadn’t promised himself he’d get her back to the club where she’ll be safe. She obviously hadn’t heard that this hotel was marked as an assassination spot, and he couldn’t ignore her sitting on the floor of the lobby, dazed, while gang members around her discarded their knives for heavier artillery.
“Why are you here?” From her tone, she must have repeated herself more than once. “Aren’t you too low for this kind of thing, Kato-kun?”
Shige condenses the truth from something equalling the length of a term paper to two words: “Nishikido’s missing.”
Shige knows Miko’s been in the sex industry long enough to know all the members of their gang, and judging by her quiet noise of concern, she has a soft spot for the younger ones--maybe even Ryo specifically.
He’s here because Ryo was supposed to accompany Maihara and Ogawa today for the latest in a series of executions that will almost definitely escalate things between their gang and the Kimoto clan into an all-out gang war, but Ryo never showed up at the meeting spot, so Ogawa called Shige instead. “You’re his kouhai,” Ogawa’d told him with a dangerous edge in his voice. “And ours.” Essentially, Fix his fuck-up or you’ll suffer.
Shige agreed and closed his phone.
Then he called Ryo, who picked up immediately. “Shige, I’m almost at your building,” he said, breathless.
“Ryo, what ha-”
Ryo hung up.
He waited for Ryo by the door and opened it as soon as he heard heavy footfalls on the stairs. Ryo squeezed in through the narrow space and hissed, “Close the door, now, lock it, now!”
Shige shut the door and bolted it. “Who’s following you?” he asked. “Why didn’t you make the meeting?”
Ryo shoved Shige against the wall, both hands in fists around Shige’s upper arms, and kissed him unevenly and too hard. He corrected the angle on the second go, and Shige’s hands wavered at Ryo’s waist for a long, sharp moment before he twisted away.
Ryo panted-from bolting up the stairs, probably, maybe-and turned to put the chain on the door as well. Then he grabbed Shige around the waist and held him, tense and cold and almost shivering. “I went to a company that erases people’s identities,” he whispered, harsh but quiet. Shige’s mind immediately went to the possibility that someone had bugged his apartment and he settled closer against Ryo’s body to hear him better. One of Ryo’s hands moved into his hair and squeezed, and the other tucked what sounded like a piece of paper into Shige’s back pocket. “That’s the company’s name. I’m leaving today, so go to the guy I wrote down and make him tell you where they’re sending me. He doesn’t want to-he says it’s against their company’s policy. But there’s another guy-his name’s there, too-and I think he might help if the first guy gives you problems.”
They’d talked about this several times, usually after the dismemberment of someone they knew well or whenever the police cracked down too close to their area. Shige wasn’t surprised that Ryo’d decided to do it now that they were on the brink of a gang war likely to rival any in the past century.
Shige fought with himself for a long moment over how to react and only when Ryo’s arms began to shift did he clutch the back of Ryo’s suit jacket in his fist and keep him close in an iron grip. He wanted to say, You should have done this sooner, you should have told me before you did it, you should have brought me with you, and he wanted to keep Ryo here because here felt safe, but it obviously wasn’t if Ryo was already tugging away from him, jumpy and anxious.
Shige didn’t let go, though, and as it sunk in that he had no idea when or if he’d be able to find Ryo again, he exhaled in one harsh gust and kissed Ryo without the reserve or caution that usually hindered him.
When he forced himself to stop, he mashed his cheek against Ryo’s and hoarsely asked, “Who’s following you?”
“No one,” Ryo said. “I don’t think anyone was following me. It’s just that-I was panicked when I went to the company and I did the whole process really hastily and, well, badly, so I didn’t think I’d have time to get here before-”
Shige said, “I get it, I understand,” and added, “I’m going in your place.”
Ryo didn’t seem to get it, and then he jolted out of Shige’s arms. His expression was tight. “You fucking idiot.” Then, before Shige could argue against that, he snapped, “Don’t go. Don’t-fuck it, come with me.”
Shige said, “No,” and at the time he thought it was because he had, in a way, given his word that he’d go. But now, huddled in the lobby of a love hotel with a frightened prostitute clutching his arm, he thinks he might have just said it because he was angry.
There’s silence on the street for a long moment, then Maihara shouts, “Where the fuck-Kato! The fuck did you go?”
Shige tells Miko, “It’s okay now,” and leads the way into the aftermath. Their target is dead, blood from his neck and forehead pooling underneath him, and two of his bodyguards are lying prone several feet away in either direction of the body. Miko doesn’t react, which either means she’s in shock or she’s seen this before.
Maihara gives Shige a look of pure contempt. “Where the fuck were you?” he snaps.
Shige dropped his gun when one of the bodyguards punched him in the throat. “Miko-chan was going to get hurt if I didn’t help her,” he says, which is probably true.
“Heroic,” Ogawa says, dry. “Let’s get out of here.”
Pedestrians are inching out of hiding, and there are three distinct sirens in the distance getting louder.
Maihara deals Shige a hard slap to the back of his head that makes his teeth clap together. “Not your day, huh, Kato?” he says with a low chuckle. “You make sure you kick Nishikido’s ass before I find him, ‘cos there won’t be much feeling left in him after I get through with him.”
Shige says, “I will,” and Miko shoots him an unreadable look.
They pack into Ogawa’s car and veer off down side streets until they reach the club. Miko jumps out almost before the car’s stopped, slams the door behind her, and dashes through the alley doors.
“Shame for you, brat,” Maihara says. “Some women don’t know how to pay back a man’s kindness anymore.”
Shige’s mind is half on maintaining a mildly disappointed mask while the other half is on the piece of paper in his pocket. On wherever Ryo is. If they’ve sent him off yet.
Maihara drags Shige off to a different club and shoves two half-wasted girls into his lap. They don’t seem aware that he’s not kissing them back, that he’s not hard-they mouth at his jaw and unbutton his white shirt completely and one girl rakes her nails down his chest so raggedly it hurts. Maihara nags at him for being shy for about thirty seconds until he finds a girl even farther gone than the two with Shige and he disappears into the VIP lounge.
As soon as he’s gone, Shige collects his jacket off the table and runs, only tripping twice, for the exit.
When he arrives at Ryo’s apartment, his key doesn’t fit into the lock. He climbs onto the stairway’s partition and leans over the stairwell to look through the bedroom window. One glance and he knows it’s all empty, not just the bedroom. The floor’s even been waxed. Ryo’s name has been removed from beside the door and his mailbox downstairs, and his spare key on top of the water heater outside his door is gone.
His car’s not in the garage, either.
Yamashita’s is. In Ryo’s parking space.
Yamashita’s standing next to the car, his expression blank. “Hey, Shige.”
Shige walks slower.
Yamashita nods, apparently gauging Shige’s reaction. “Do you know where he is?” he asks.
Shige says, “No,” and stops short several feet away from Yamashita’s car. Belatedly, he adds, “Do you?”
Yamashita purses his lips. “Shige, you know,” he says, sounding petulant.
All at once, the tension between them dissipates.
Shige says, “I really don’t. He didn’t tell me. He just left.”
“Why didn’t he take you?”
Shige blinks. “Um. We’re, uh. Not-”
Yamashita lifts both eyebrows in a clear “yeah, the fuck you’re not” expression.
So Shige just says, “I’m leaving too.”
Yamashita says, “Yeah,” quietly, like he expected that but hoped Shige wouldn’t say it. “Want me to drive you…anywhere? You don’t have a car, right?”
He gives Yamashita the address Ryo wrote down and after a few missed turns and a long stretch of uncomfortable silence, they arrive in a demure parking lot across from a squat gray commercial building.
Yamashita says, “So, um. This company…I might. Uh. I’ve been talking to Jin and Shirota and Toma recently and I think I can get them to do the same thing. So, um. Maybe we’ll see each other on the same dairy farm in Hokkaido, yeah?” He smiles, lopsided, and Shige hears the steering wheel creek under his white fingers.
“Yeah,” Shige says, quietly. “Thanks, Yamashita-kun.”
“Stay safe, Shige.”
Shige goes straight into the office without looking back, even when he hears Yamashita gun the engine and tear out of the parking lot. The first guy Ryo talked about gives Shige a plastic mask of apology and explains their company policy to him.
Shige asks for the second guy, voice thin with anger, and the second guy talks things out with enough emphasis on certain words to get the first guy to cooperate.
“Are you willing to erase yourself entirely?” the guy asks him.
“You fucking idiot. Don’t go. Don’t-fuck it, come with me.”
Shige says, “Yes.”
From: newsficcon
Title: Could Be Goodbye
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Shige/Ryo
Warnings: None
Summary: Shige condenses the truth from something equalling the length of a term paper to two words: “Nishikido’s missing.”
Notes: I hope you enjoy this, arashijun! The prompts were fun to work with. :)
The gunfire on the street has lessened from continuous to sporadic, but Shige knows to wait until the yelling’s stopped before he leaves the hotel. Miko has his arm firmly gripped in both hands and she won’t let go-she seems to have some bizarre notion that Shige’s eager to be where the action is, but she couldn’t be more wrong about that. He’d be sprinting in the other direction right now if he hadn’t promised himself he’d get her back to the club where she’ll be safe. She obviously hadn’t heard that this hotel was marked as an assassination spot, and he couldn’t ignore her sitting on the floor of the lobby, dazed, while gang members around her discarded their knives for heavier artillery.
“Why are you here?” From her tone, she must have repeated herself more than once. “Aren’t you too low for this kind of thing, Kato-kun?”
Shige condenses the truth from something equalling the length of a term paper to two words: “Nishikido’s missing.”
Shige knows Miko’s been in the sex industry long enough to know all the members of their gang, and judging by her quiet noise of concern, she has a soft spot for the younger ones--maybe even Ryo specifically.
He’s here because Ryo was supposed to accompany Maihara and Ogawa today for the latest in a series of executions that will almost definitely escalate things between their gang and the Kimoto clan into an all-out gang war, but Ryo never showed up at the meeting spot, so Ogawa called Shige instead. “You’re his kouhai,” Ogawa’d told him with a dangerous edge in his voice. “And ours.” Essentially, Fix his fuck-up or you’ll suffer.
Shige agreed and closed his phone.
Then he called Ryo, who picked up immediately. “Shige, I’m almost at your building,” he said, breathless.
“Ryo, what ha-”
Ryo hung up.
He waited for Ryo by the door and opened it as soon as he heard heavy footfalls on the stairs. Ryo squeezed in through the narrow space and hissed, “Close the door, now, lock it, now!”
Shige shut the door and bolted it. “Who’s following you?” he asked. “Why didn’t you make the meeting?”
Ryo shoved Shige against the wall, both hands in fists around Shige’s upper arms, and kissed him unevenly and too hard. He corrected the angle on the second go, and Shige’s hands wavered at Ryo’s waist for a long, sharp moment before he twisted away.
Ryo panted-from bolting up the stairs, probably, maybe-and turned to put the chain on the door as well. Then he grabbed Shige around the waist and held him, tense and cold and almost shivering. “I went to a company that erases people’s identities,” he whispered, harsh but quiet. Shige’s mind immediately went to the possibility that someone had bugged his apartment and he settled closer against Ryo’s body to hear him better. One of Ryo’s hands moved into his hair and squeezed, and the other tucked what sounded like a piece of paper into Shige’s back pocket. “That’s the company’s name. I’m leaving today, so go to the guy I wrote down and make him tell you where they’re sending me. He doesn’t want to-he says it’s against their company’s policy. But there’s another guy-his name’s there, too-and I think he might help if the first guy gives you problems.”
They’d talked about this several times, usually after the dismemberment of someone they knew well or whenever the police cracked down too close to their area. Shige wasn’t surprised that Ryo’d decided to do it now that they were on the brink of a gang war likely to rival any in the past century.
Shige fought with himself for a long moment over how to react and only when Ryo’s arms began to shift did he clutch the back of Ryo’s suit jacket in his fist and keep him close in an iron grip. He wanted to say, You should have done this sooner, you should have told me before you did it, you should have brought me with you, and he wanted to keep Ryo here because here felt safe, but it obviously wasn’t if Ryo was already tugging away from him, jumpy and anxious.
Shige didn’t let go, though, and as it sunk in that he had no idea when or if he’d be able to find Ryo again, he exhaled in one harsh gust and kissed Ryo without the reserve or caution that usually hindered him.
When he forced himself to stop, he mashed his cheek against Ryo’s and hoarsely asked, “Who’s following you?”
“No one,” Ryo said. “I don’t think anyone was following me. It’s just that-I was panicked when I went to the company and I did the whole process really hastily and, well, badly, so I didn’t think I’d have time to get here before-”
Shige said, “I get it, I understand,” and added, “I’m going in your place.”
Ryo didn’t seem to get it, and then he jolted out of Shige’s arms. His expression was tight. “You fucking idiot.” Then, before Shige could argue against that, he snapped, “Don’t go. Don’t-fuck it, come with me.”
Shige said, “No,” and at the time he thought it was because he had, in a way, given his word that he’d go. But now, huddled in the lobby of a love hotel with a frightened prostitute clutching his arm, he thinks he might have just said it because he was angry.
There’s silence on the street for a long moment, then Maihara shouts, “Where the fuck-Kato! The fuck did you go?”
Shige tells Miko, “It’s okay now,” and leads the way into the aftermath. Their target is dead, blood from his neck and forehead pooling underneath him, and two of his bodyguards are lying prone several feet away in either direction of the body. Miko doesn’t react, which either means she’s in shock or she’s seen this before.
Maihara gives Shige a look of pure contempt. “Where the fuck were you?” he snaps.
Shige dropped his gun when one of the bodyguards punched him in the throat. “Miko-chan was going to get hurt if I didn’t help her,” he says, which is probably true.
“Heroic,” Ogawa says, dry. “Let’s get out of here.”
Pedestrians are inching out of hiding, and there are three distinct sirens in the distance getting louder.
Maihara deals Shige a hard slap to the back of his head that makes his teeth clap together. “Not your day, huh, Kato?” he says with a low chuckle. “You make sure you kick Nishikido’s ass before I find him, ‘cos there won’t be much feeling left in him after I get through with him.”
Shige says, “I will,” and Miko shoots him an unreadable look.
They pack into Ogawa’s car and veer off down side streets until they reach the club. Miko jumps out almost before the car’s stopped, slams the door behind her, and dashes through the alley doors.
“Shame for you, brat,” Maihara says. “Some women don’t know how to pay back a man’s kindness anymore.”
Shige’s mind is half on maintaining a mildly disappointed mask while the other half is on the piece of paper in his pocket. On wherever Ryo is. If they’ve sent him off yet.
Maihara drags Shige off to a different club and shoves two half-wasted girls into his lap. They don’t seem aware that he’s not kissing them back, that he’s not hard-they mouth at his jaw and unbutton his white shirt completely and one girl rakes her nails down his chest so raggedly it hurts. Maihara nags at him for being shy for about thirty seconds until he finds a girl even farther gone than the two with Shige and he disappears into the VIP lounge.
As soon as he’s gone, Shige collects his jacket off the table and runs, only tripping twice, for the exit.
When he arrives at Ryo’s apartment, his key doesn’t fit into the lock. He climbs onto the stairway’s partition and leans over the stairwell to look through the bedroom window. One glance and he knows it’s all empty, not just the bedroom. The floor’s even been waxed. Ryo’s name has been removed from beside the door and his mailbox downstairs, and his spare key on top of the water heater outside his door is gone.
His car’s not in the garage, either.
Yamashita’s is. In Ryo’s parking space.
Yamashita’s standing next to the car, his expression blank. “Hey, Shige.”
Shige walks slower.
Yamashita nods, apparently gauging Shige’s reaction. “Do you know where he is?” he asks.
Shige says, “No,” and stops short several feet away from Yamashita’s car. Belatedly, he adds, “Do you?”
Yamashita purses his lips. “Shige, you know,” he says, sounding petulant.
All at once, the tension between them dissipates.
Shige says, “I really don’t. He didn’t tell me. He just left.”
“Why didn’t he take you?”
Shige blinks. “Um. We’re, uh. Not-”
Yamashita lifts both eyebrows in a clear “yeah, the fuck you’re not” expression.
So Shige just says, “I’m leaving too.”
Yamashita says, “Yeah,” quietly, like he expected that but hoped Shige wouldn’t say it. “Want me to drive you…anywhere? You don’t have a car, right?”
He gives Yamashita the address Ryo wrote down and after a few missed turns and a long stretch of uncomfortable silence, they arrive in a demure parking lot across from a squat gray commercial building.
Yamashita says, “So, um. This company…I might. Uh. I’ve been talking to Jin and Shirota and Toma recently and I think I can get them to do the same thing. So, um. Maybe we’ll see each other on the same dairy farm in Hokkaido, yeah?” He smiles, lopsided, and Shige hears the steering wheel creek under his white fingers.
“Yeah,” Shige says, quietly. “Thanks, Yamashita-kun.”
“Stay safe, Shige.”
Shige goes straight into the office without looking back, even when he hears Yamashita gun the engine and tear out of the parking lot. The first guy Ryo talked about gives Shige a plastic mask of apology and explains their company policy to him.
Shige asks for the second guy, voice thin with anger, and the second guy talks things out with enough emphasis on certain words to get the first guy to cooperate.
“Are you willing to erase yourself entirely?” the guy asks him.
“You fucking idiot. Don’t go. Don’t-fuck it, come with me.”
Shige says, “Yes.”