JE/NEWS- "R&R"
Title: R&R
Universe: JE/ NewS ( Gov AU)
Theme/Topic: What agents do during their time off
Rating: PG
Character/Pairing/s: NewS (appearance by Tackey)
Warnings/Spoilers: Sap and stupid?
Word Count: 3,401
Summary: A little bit of healing.
Dedication: cynicalism’s request on my holiday request meme!
A/N: Ahaha I know, this is kind of quick and dirty, but it was honestly all I could think of. Maybe one day I will try JE+het or something, when I actually care enough to learn the names and personalities of the girls in Japanese entertainment.
Disclaimer: No harm or infringement intended.
“Take a couple of days off,” Tackey tells him Monday morning around nine-thirty, after Yamapi had fallen asleep face-down at the eight o’clock directors’ meeting two times in a row while Kame had been talking. “More specifically, take the rest of the week off; you need a vacation,” Tackey adds for clarification purposes, because as far as he can tell, Yamapi looks like he needs more than just a couple of days. He needs a month really, but for now, a week will have to do.
Yamapi blinks. “But…”
“Have your team take this week off too,” Tackey interrupts the young agent without missing a beat, because he already knows just by looking at him that “my team” had been the words that were right on the heels of Yamapi’s hesitant “But.”
Yamapi stares. “All of us? At the same time? The whole team?”
Tackey nods. “Yabu’s team can pick up some of the slack while you guys rest and recoup. They need more experience juggling multiple cases anyway. Can’t baby them forever, you know.”
“You want us to take five whole days? Really?” Yamapi breathes, and already doesn’t know what to do with it all. The last time he’d had five whole days off, he’d been shot first.
Tackey laughs gently and reaches out to squeeze his shoulder; he tells Yamapi that he’ll see him bright and early next Monday morning and not a moment before.
“Okay,” Yamapi breathes, and wonders what he’ll do with the freedom.
~~~~~
When Yamapi tells the rest of his team about having a week of vacation mandated to them by Administrator Takizawa, they know exactly what Yamapi should do with them.
Koyama tells him to go home and get some sleep.
Yamapi thinks it’s as good a place as any to start.
~~~~~
While Yamapi is sleeping, Massu spends the rest of the morning at the pool.
He knows there’s an Olympic sized swimming pool at the agency’s training facility that he can use free of charge at any time of the day or night that he wants, but when he specifically pays to go out to the public pool today it’s not about swimming at all.
For one thing, he doesn’t get in, instead opting to sit down at the edge of the water so he can dangle his feet into it and splash around for a little while, as he watches the families who come and go that afternoon, the young mothers with their young children who are here to take their first tentative swimming lessons today, or the old jiisans and baasans taking underwater aerobics classes to maintain their strength for years to come. There are high school girls trying on their new swimsuits for the first time in front of the boys they like and college students working hard as part-time lifeguards, trying to make enough money to save up for a bike or a car or that first trip to America with their friends next summer.
There’s a whole world right here in front of Massu just at this public pool, one beyond criminals and victims, beyond right and wrong and good and evil.
There are people and lives and lazy days just like this that Massu can remember from his own experiences in years gone by, back when he’d been in the same shoes as any one of the people here. Maybe he’d been ignorant to a lot of the world’s evils back then as well, but he’d been safe and happy all the same, because of the hard work a bunch of nameless, faceless strangers did for his sake-for everyone’s sake- without his knowing.
He knows about those people now of course, the ones who want to make lazy days like this possible for people who they will probably never know, who they’ll never see or speak with face to face.
He knows about those people now because now, he’s one of them.
Massu goes to the pool on his first day of vacation, and even though he can’t get into the water because of the sling holding his arm still and the clavicle he broke three weeks ago, he thinks that it’s okay; it’s still a nice day for a swim no matter how you look at it, whether he can do it or not.
And as he watches the young mothers with their small children in the water and the jiisans and the baasans working to stay strong in their aerobics class, he thinks that even if his injuries are kind of annoying and make it hard to eat or write or exercise or do much of anything right now, jumping in front of that car had been something he can’t ever regret.
He hopes that the young mother from that day is doing well today also, that maybe she and her baasan are out shopping together or that they’re at another pool just like this one, happy and safe and teaching that young son of hers, the one who had been taken hostage by some bad men that day, how to swim.
He hopes that the little boy doesn’t remember anything of what happened to him that day as well, and that grows up happy and healthy in world where he always feels safe and sound.
Massu smiles in the warmth of the afternoon sun and thinks that he’ll keep doing his best to make this that kind of world for every person in it, even if no one knows he’s doing it.
As it stands, days like these are all the thanks he needs.
~~~~~
While Massu is at the pool, Shige is at the library.
It feels like there are always a thousand novels he wants to read and not nearly enough time to read them all in, works of foreign literature and works of practical knowledge both equally enticing to his natural curiosity, both making him wish he had a hundred thousand hours to spend just flipping through them and learning.
He’s always wanted to read “War and Peace” in translation and then read several Russian learning books just so that he can go back and read it again in its original form; he thinks it would be great to be able to compare the two analytically, and to think about what translators do when they are in-between grammars, trying to change the language of a piece without changing the meaning as well.
He’s always wanted to read trashy romances as well, like the ones Koyama keeps hidden under his bed; he has always fancied the idea of checking them out by the armful from the library so that he can lazily peruse them all one day, just to see what it is about them that makes his best friend’s heart race, that makes him cry and love and hope and joy right alongside the characters despite the contrived words the authors use, the disgustingly saccharine sentiments they feel with.
Shige’s life is full of curiosity like that, full of a need to have answers to questions and then more sources from which to derive extra questions from so that he can search for those answers too.
Shige likes knowing things, interesting things, profound things. He loves undertaking the higher intellectual pursuits that his groupmates don’t understand or don’t care to.
He thinks it’s one of the things that sets him apart.
When he comes to the library today it is in search of all of those intellectual types of things; he is quickly tempted by Faulkner, nostalgic for Murakami, enticed by Dostoyevsky and probably more piqued than he should be by the Idiot’s Guide to Conversational English.
He has five days-seven counting this weekend- to make his way through as many of these books as possible. To enjoy himself as much as possible and read everything he’s always wanted in the time that he has.
The prospect alone is infinitely exciting, and as he wanders through the stacks pulling out anything that looks good, he can barely believe that he can devote an entire week to this, at his own leisure.
But then he suddenly stops short, when he sees a book entitled, “Judo for Beginners.”
He’s never really loved sports in practice; he appreciates the romance behind them and the artistry and the strategy, but in practice he’s never been particularly talented at them, despite knowing a lot of the basic theories behind the movements and the rules beforehand.
And yet.
The meeting last week with Tackey and Tsubasa suddenly comes to mind, in particular, the part of the meeting when the two administrators had doled out case summaries for non-priority investigations. There had been several such low profile cases in the portfolio, all of which had yet to be assigned to any unit properly, simply because they couldn’t be, at least not until one of the agency’s eligible teams had the time and resources to properly devote to a low priority mission.
Shige remembers one of those cases in particular; it had been about fixing professional judo matches for underground gambling purposes. More specifically, Shige remembers how Tackey had looked when he’d read it off, eyes sliding sideways towards Shige instead of Jin or Yuuto with each word he’d uttered (whether he’d meant to do it or not).
A tell. Everyone has a tell; he’s learned that in years of working undercover.
Shige’s hand hovers over the judo book for the moment, perhaps the only manuscript in this entire library that he has no actual interest in right now.
It’s not NEWS’s case. Not yet, and not officially. It probably won’t be either, considering how busy they are.
But it could be.
And if it does become theirs one day-next week or next month or next year- Shige thinks that something like “Judo for Beginners” and an extra few days of preparation could make all the difference in the world.
Eventually, Shige sighs to himself and pulls the book off of the shelf. He forces himself to forget Faulkner and Murakami and Dostoyevsky and even the stupid English guide for the time being, in the face of something else altogether.
Because he knows there are other things he can use this time more productively for. Things that, in the long run, can mean the difference between life and death, depending on how diligent a study he is, and how often he braves going beyond theory into the frightening realm of actual practice.
That afternoon, he checks out the judo book and several others just like it; he tells himself that for the time being, he will have to leave his intellectual pursuits purely for the sake of intellectual pursuits behind.
Again.
As he leaves the library later that day, he only looks over his shoulder wistfully once; he smiles a little and thinks, “Maybe next time.”
~~~~~
While Shige is at the library, Koyama is at the hospital.
“Uchi,” he says, just like he always does every Monday afternoon, grabbing the grapes from the basket by the door to munch on while he talks. “Surprise!” he adds this time, and sounds ecstatic as he does, “I got the whole week off ne, so that’s why I’m here early today. It works really well because there’s so much to tell you about since I was last here, ne. Isn’t that lucky? Doesn’t it feel like fate?”
He takes Uchi’s hand in his own as he sits down-just like always-and even if he’s hours earlier than usual, even if it means one whole day of his vacation gone just like that, he doesn’t for a moment run out of things to say to his teammate the entire time he is there.
For Koyama, the most precious thing in this world has always been the people who live in it, the people he loves and the little moments he can spend with them at their sides doing everything or nothing at all.
To Koyama, life has always been about togetherness and the joy he gets from being around someone he cares about.
Whether that person knows he’s there or not.
Whether that person can hear him or not (though a part of him will always believe that Uchi does, that he hears and understands every single word).
And so, for the entirety of that Monday afternoon, Koyama squeezes Uchi’s hand in both of his and spends the day telling his young friend all about his week; it is in moments like these when Koyama remembers that the most important thing in the world is knowing that you never have to be alone in it.
No matter where you are or what you’re doing.
~~~~~
While Koyama holds Uchi’s hand, Tegoshi saves the world.
He and Ryo get out of the movie they went to see together a little before dinnertime and opt for a stroll through the park afterwards, while they decide on where they want to eat tonight (and how much Ryo is willing to spend treating Tegoshi). As they walk, Tegoshi babbles concernedly away to Ryo about the film they’d just watched, some sort of foreign documentary about the effects of global warming. In particular, Ryo remembers the part when there had been polar bears floating pathetically along the ocean, riding tiny shards of melted ice cap.
The whole idea of it gets Tegoshi up in arms, about recycling and littering and eco-bags and public transportation. “I like the world,” he murmurs sadly when he thinks about it, “it’s a nice place, despite all the bad things we see, ne.”
Ryo just mumbles in quiet agreement and hopes that Tegoshi will always be like just like this, that he will still think this world is a nice place even after he’s killed dozens of men with his own two hands, even after he’s seen all manner of crime and filth and squalor and naked, haunting evil.
“Yosh!” Tegoshi announces determinedly at one point, when they’re walking on a bridge over badly polluted water, “Instead of just protecting people, I want to protect the entire planet, ne. Saving people’s lives also means giving them a place that they can live happily in afterwards, doesn’t it?”
Ryo eyes at him in mild amusement and doesn’t say anything derisive, because sometimes, when he looks at Tegoshi’s face and sees the strange innocence still there that should have been gone many years ago, he really wants to believe that anything is possible if only you try hard enough.
In the meantime, when Tegoshi sees a group of irreputable looking guys throw a PET bottle onto the ground next to a waste bin further up the path, he gasps and immediately takes off after them. Maybe without thinking.
He does it because this is a world he loves, despite all of the horrible things he’s seen happen in it. It’s a world with his mother and father and grandparents in it, a world that still has Yamapi and Ryo and Koyama and Shige and Massu and Uchi and Kusano doing their best every day, to make a difference.
So despite all of the bad things the world has to offer, Tegoshi thinks that the mere presence of all the people who he loves in it will always make it a place worth saving.
It’s something he wants to protect with every bit of his heart.
~~~~~
While Tegoshi is taking off after the group of littering thugs, Ryo doesn't notice until it's almost late; when he finally does notice, he has to shout and chase after him.
“Oi, where are you going all of a sudden, idiot!?” Ryo yells, and promptly loses sight of him in the stream of people walking home at the end of the work day and the plethora of couples picnicking along the hillside.
Ryo would make a derisive comment about how Tegoshi’s too short to see in a crowd, except that he’s on his toes too, trying to find him in it.
Luckily he manages to find the kid five minutes and three shakedowns later, surrounded by what Ryo can only assume are a group of younger yakuza, Tegoshi clearly too accustomed to watching these kinds of men from the point of view of God to be properly afraid of them in person anymore.
The only problem is, they don’t know he does it, or that if he had to, he could probably break one of their tree-trunk necks with his deceptively slim thighs. At least, before the rest of them piled on to him and beat the life out of him.
“And that’s why you shouldn’t litter, ne,” Tegoshi lectures in an unintentionally superior tone, as he picks up the discarded plastic bottle and hands it back to the perpetrator. “You have to throw it away properly-in the recycling- or what kind of world would this be?”
One of the yakuza in the background looks unimpressed; he absently stubs out his cigarette on the ground and leaves it there.
Tegoshi’s eyes widen when he sees. “You can’t just do that!” he exclaims heatedly. “That’s still littering!”
“Look, kid,” the biggest one starts, snarling through a curled lip at Tegoshi as he makes a fist with one of his plate-sized hands, “We don’t…”
From behind Tegoshi, Ryo casually pulls his badge out of his pocket and flips it open. Waves it in the air a little.
The big yakuza’s lip promptly uncurls. “…mind picking up after ourselves,” he finishes eventually, sounding lame.
“Yeah,” his companions agree, much to Tegoshi’s delight.
He looks at the smoker expectantly.
The smoker makes a face and bends down to pick up his cigarette butt.
Which he obediently deposits in the trash.
Tegoshi smiles and tells them that now that they know better, they’re all one step closer to a cleaner, happier world.
Ryo stands behind him and puts his badge away, kind of relieved that he didn’t actually have to pull his sidearm out of his shoulder holster (mostly because he isn’t technically supposed to have his sidearm with him right now).
When Tegoshi turns around a moment later and the yakuza take off in the opposite direction, he sees Ryo and beams, like he never realized he’d left Ryo behind at all. “See?” he exclaims in self-satisfaction, “We’re already making a difference.”
“One idiot at a time,” Ryo agrees enigmatically, and reaches out to yank Tegoshi back by his collar.
Tegoshi blinks. “Ryo-tan?”
Ryo just smiles, “Let’s grab dinner,” he says, and thinks that the world is lucky to have Tegoshi looking out for it.
Almost (but not quite) as lucky as Tegoshi is to have Ryo.
~~~~~
While Ryo buys Tegoshi ramen that night, Yamapi dreams.
About what no one knows, but the smile on his face as he does it suggests it’s something good, something that he will have to remember once he wakes up and has to go back to work on Monday morning, to start killing himself a little bit every day all over again, trying to make a difference.
Whether it’s ultimately worth it or not can only be decided by him.
But then again, the smile on his face as he sleeps suggests that he already knows the answer.
~~~~~
Everyone in NEWS knows that vacations like this one aren’t just for resting their bodies (as tired as those are) or relieving stress (despite how much of it they have); these days off are also about recuperating losses on something else altogether, something far more complicated and important.
Time off for themselves, to spend however they see fit, helps them remember why they do this at all in the first place, whether it’s because of an ideal they want to protect, or a higher level they personally want to reach, or a precious person they will never forget. It could be for the sake of something as profound as saving the world or as ridiculous as keeping your idiot friends out of trouble or even for something as simple and precious as a little well-deserved peace and quiet.
It is in moments like these that the six of them take the opportunity to remember what makes the work they do worth it in the end.
And while it may not seem like much in return for all the sacrifices they make, it’s ultimately all they need to keep them going from one day to the next.
It’s enough.
END
Universe: JE/ NewS ( Gov AU)
Theme/Topic: What agents do during their time off
Rating: PG
Character/Pairing/s: NewS (appearance by Tackey)
Warnings/Spoilers: Sap and stupid?
Word Count: 3,401
Summary: A little bit of healing.
Dedication: cynicalism’s request on my holiday request meme!
A/N: Ahaha I know, this is kind of quick and dirty, but it was honestly all I could think of. Maybe one day I will try JE+het or something, when I actually care enough to learn the names and personalities of the girls in Japanese entertainment.
Disclaimer: No harm or infringement intended.
“Take a couple of days off,” Tackey tells him Monday morning around nine-thirty, after Yamapi had fallen asleep face-down at the eight o’clock directors’ meeting two times in a row while Kame had been talking. “More specifically, take the rest of the week off; you need a vacation,” Tackey adds for clarification purposes, because as far as he can tell, Yamapi looks like he needs more than just a couple of days. He needs a month really, but for now, a week will have to do.
Yamapi blinks. “But…”
“Have your team take this week off too,” Tackey interrupts the young agent without missing a beat, because he already knows just by looking at him that “my team” had been the words that were right on the heels of Yamapi’s hesitant “But.”
Yamapi stares. “All of us? At the same time? The whole team?”
Tackey nods. “Yabu’s team can pick up some of the slack while you guys rest and recoup. They need more experience juggling multiple cases anyway. Can’t baby them forever, you know.”
“You want us to take five whole days? Really?” Yamapi breathes, and already doesn’t know what to do with it all. The last time he’d had five whole days off, he’d been shot first.
Tackey laughs gently and reaches out to squeeze his shoulder; he tells Yamapi that he’ll see him bright and early next Monday morning and not a moment before.
“Okay,” Yamapi breathes, and wonders what he’ll do with the freedom.
~~~~~
When Yamapi tells the rest of his team about having a week of vacation mandated to them by Administrator Takizawa, they know exactly what Yamapi should do with them.
Koyama tells him to go home and get some sleep.
Yamapi thinks it’s as good a place as any to start.
~~~~~
While Yamapi is sleeping, Massu spends the rest of the morning at the pool.
He knows there’s an Olympic sized swimming pool at the agency’s training facility that he can use free of charge at any time of the day or night that he wants, but when he specifically pays to go out to the public pool today it’s not about swimming at all.
For one thing, he doesn’t get in, instead opting to sit down at the edge of the water so he can dangle his feet into it and splash around for a little while, as he watches the families who come and go that afternoon, the young mothers with their young children who are here to take their first tentative swimming lessons today, or the old jiisans and baasans taking underwater aerobics classes to maintain their strength for years to come. There are high school girls trying on their new swimsuits for the first time in front of the boys they like and college students working hard as part-time lifeguards, trying to make enough money to save up for a bike or a car or that first trip to America with their friends next summer.
There’s a whole world right here in front of Massu just at this public pool, one beyond criminals and victims, beyond right and wrong and good and evil.
There are people and lives and lazy days just like this that Massu can remember from his own experiences in years gone by, back when he’d been in the same shoes as any one of the people here. Maybe he’d been ignorant to a lot of the world’s evils back then as well, but he’d been safe and happy all the same, because of the hard work a bunch of nameless, faceless strangers did for his sake-for everyone’s sake- without his knowing.
He knows about those people now of course, the ones who want to make lazy days like this possible for people who they will probably never know, who they’ll never see or speak with face to face.
He knows about those people now because now, he’s one of them.
Massu goes to the pool on his first day of vacation, and even though he can’t get into the water because of the sling holding his arm still and the clavicle he broke three weeks ago, he thinks that it’s okay; it’s still a nice day for a swim no matter how you look at it, whether he can do it or not.
And as he watches the young mothers with their small children in the water and the jiisans and the baasans working to stay strong in their aerobics class, he thinks that even if his injuries are kind of annoying and make it hard to eat or write or exercise or do much of anything right now, jumping in front of that car had been something he can’t ever regret.
He hopes that the young mother from that day is doing well today also, that maybe she and her baasan are out shopping together or that they’re at another pool just like this one, happy and safe and teaching that young son of hers, the one who had been taken hostage by some bad men that day, how to swim.
He hopes that the little boy doesn’t remember anything of what happened to him that day as well, and that grows up happy and healthy in world where he always feels safe and sound.
Massu smiles in the warmth of the afternoon sun and thinks that he’ll keep doing his best to make this that kind of world for every person in it, even if no one knows he’s doing it.
As it stands, days like these are all the thanks he needs.
~~~~~
While Massu is at the pool, Shige is at the library.
It feels like there are always a thousand novels he wants to read and not nearly enough time to read them all in, works of foreign literature and works of practical knowledge both equally enticing to his natural curiosity, both making him wish he had a hundred thousand hours to spend just flipping through them and learning.
He’s always wanted to read “War and Peace” in translation and then read several Russian learning books just so that he can go back and read it again in its original form; he thinks it would be great to be able to compare the two analytically, and to think about what translators do when they are in-between grammars, trying to change the language of a piece without changing the meaning as well.
He’s always wanted to read trashy romances as well, like the ones Koyama keeps hidden under his bed; he has always fancied the idea of checking them out by the armful from the library so that he can lazily peruse them all one day, just to see what it is about them that makes his best friend’s heart race, that makes him cry and love and hope and joy right alongside the characters despite the contrived words the authors use, the disgustingly saccharine sentiments they feel with.
Shige’s life is full of curiosity like that, full of a need to have answers to questions and then more sources from which to derive extra questions from so that he can search for those answers too.
Shige likes knowing things, interesting things, profound things. He loves undertaking the higher intellectual pursuits that his groupmates don’t understand or don’t care to.
He thinks it’s one of the things that sets him apart.
When he comes to the library today it is in search of all of those intellectual types of things; he is quickly tempted by Faulkner, nostalgic for Murakami, enticed by Dostoyevsky and probably more piqued than he should be by the Idiot’s Guide to Conversational English.
He has five days-seven counting this weekend- to make his way through as many of these books as possible. To enjoy himself as much as possible and read everything he’s always wanted in the time that he has.
The prospect alone is infinitely exciting, and as he wanders through the stacks pulling out anything that looks good, he can barely believe that he can devote an entire week to this, at his own leisure.
But then he suddenly stops short, when he sees a book entitled, “Judo for Beginners.”
He’s never really loved sports in practice; he appreciates the romance behind them and the artistry and the strategy, but in practice he’s never been particularly talented at them, despite knowing a lot of the basic theories behind the movements and the rules beforehand.
And yet.
The meeting last week with Tackey and Tsubasa suddenly comes to mind, in particular, the part of the meeting when the two administrators had doled out case summaries for non-priority investigations. There had been several such low profile cases in the portfolio, all of which had yet to be assigned to any unit properly, simply because they couldn’t be, at least not until one of the agency’s eligible teams had the time and resources to properly devote to a low priority mission.
Shige remembers one of those cases in particular; it had been about fixing professional judo matches for underground gambling purposes. More specifically, Shige remembers how Tackey had looked when he’d read it off, eyes sliding sideways towards Shige instead of Jin or Yuuto with each word he’d uttered (whether he’d meant to do it or not).
A tell. Everyone has a tell; he’s learned that in years of working undercover.
Shige’s hand hovers over the judo book for the moment, perhaps the only manuscript in this entire library that he has no actual interest in right now.
It’s not NEWS’s case. Not yet, and not officially. It probably won’t be either, considering how busy they are.
But it could be.
And if it does become theirs one day-next week or next month or next year- Shige thinks that something like “Judo for Beginners” and an extra few days of preparation could make all the difference in the world.
Eventually, Shige sighs to himself and pulls the book off of the shelf. He forces himself to forget Faulkner and Murakami and Dostoyevsky and even the stupid English guide for the time being, in the face of something else altogether.
Because he knows there are other things he can use this time more productively for. Things that, in the long run, can mean the difference between life and death, depending on how diligent a study he is, and how often he braves going beyond theory into the frightening realm of actual practice.
That afternoon, he checks out the judo book and several others just like it; he tells himself that for the time being, he will have to leave his intellectual pursuits purely for the sake of intellectual pursuits behind.
Again.
As he leaves the library later that day, he only looks over his shoulder wistfully once; he smiles a little and thinks, “Maybe next time.”
~~~~~
While Shige is at the library, Koyama is at the hospital.
“Uchi,” he says, just like he always does every Monday afternoon, grabbing the grapes from the basket by the door to munch on while he talks. “Surprise!” he adds this time, and sounds ecstatic as he does, “I got the whole week off ne, so that’s why I’m here early today. It works really well because there’s so much to tell you about since I was last here, ne. Isn’t that lucky? Doesn’t it feel like fate?”
He takes Uchi’s hand in his own as he sits down-just like always-and even if he’s hours earlier than usual, even if it means one whole day of his vacation gone just like that, he doesn’t for a moment run out of things to say to his teammate the entire time he is there.
For Koyama, the most precious thing in this world has always been the people who live in it, the people he loves and the little moments he can spend with them at their sides doing everything or nothing at all.
To Koyama, life has always been about togetherness and the joy he gets from being around someone he cares about.
Whether that person knows he’s there or not.
Whether that person can hear him or not (though a part of him will always believe that Uchi does, that he hears and understands every single word).
And so, for the entirety of that Monday afternoon, Koyama squeezes Uchi’s hand in both of his and spends the day telling his young friend all about his week; it is in moments like these when Koyama remembers that the most important thing in the world is knowing that you never have to be alone in it.
No matter where you are or what you’re doing.
~~~~~
While Koyama holds Uchi’s hand, Tegoshi saves the world.
He and Ryo get out of the movie they went to see together a little before dinnertime and opt for a stroll through the park afterwards, while they decide on where they want to eat tonight (and how much Ryo is willing to spend treating Tegoshi). As they walk, Tegoshi babbles concernedly away to Ryo about the film they’d just watched, some sort of foreign documentary about the effects of global warming. In particular, Ryo remembers the part when there had been polar bears floating pathetically along the ocean, riding tiny shards of melted ice cap.
The whole idea of it gets Tegoshi up in arms, about recycling and littering and eco-bags and public transportation. “I like the world,” he murmurs sadly when he thinks about it, “it’s a nice place, despite all the bad things we see, ne.”
Ryo just mumbles in quiet agreement and hopes that Tegoshi will always be like just like this, that he will still think this world is a nice place even after he’s killed dozens of men with his own two hands, even after he’s seen all manner of crime and filth and squalor and naked, haunting evil.
“Yosh!” Tegoshi announces determinedly at one point, when they’re walking on a bridge over badly polluted water, “Instead of just protecting people, I want to protect the entire planet, ne. Saving people’s lives also means giving them a place that they can live happily in afterwards, doesn’t it?”
Ryo eyes at him in mild amusement and doesn’t say anything derisive, because sometimes, when he looks at Tegoshi’s face and sees the strange innocence still there that should have been gone many years ago, he really wants to believe that anything is possible if only you try hard enough.
In the meantime, when Tegoshi sees a group of irreputable looking guys throw a PET bottle onto the ground next to a waste bin further up the path, he gasps and immediately takes off after them. Maybe without thinking.
He does it because this is a world he loves, despite all of the horrible things he’s seen happen in it. It’s a world with his mother and father and grandparents in it, a world that still has Yamapi and Ryo and Koyama and Shige and Massu and Uchi and Kusano doing their best every day, to make a difference.
So despite all of the bad things the world has to offer, Tegoshi thinks that the mere presence of all the people who he loves in it will always make it a place worth saving.
It’s something he wants to protect with every bit of his heart.
~~~~~
While Tegoshi is taking off after the group of littering thugs, Ryo doesn't notice until it's almost late; when he finally does notice, he has to shout and chase after him.
“Oi, where are you going all of a sudden, idiot!?” Ryo yells, and promptly loses sight of him in the stream of people walking home at the end of the work day and the plethora of couples picnicking along the hillside.
Ryo would make a derisive comment about how Tegoshi’s too short to see in a crowd, except that he’s on his toes too, trying to find him in it.
Luckily he manages to find the kid five minutes and three shakedowns later, surrounded by what Ryo can only assume are a group of younger yakuza, Tegoshi clearly too accustomed to watching these kinds of men from the point of view of God to be properly afraid of them in person anymore.
The only problem is, they don’t know he does it, or that if he had to, he could probably break one of their tree-trunk necks with his deceptively slim thighs. At least, before the rest of them piled on to him and beat the life out of him.
“And that’s why you shouldn’t litter, ne,” Tegoshi lectures in an unintentionally superior tone, as he picks up the discarded plastic bottle and hands it back to the perpetrator. “You have to throw it away properly-in the recycling- or what kind of world would this be?”
One of the yakuza in the background looks unimpressed; he absently stubs out his cigarette on the ground and leaves it there.
Tegoshi’s eyes widen when he sees. “You can’t just do that!” he exclaims heatedly. “That’s still littering!”
“Look, kid,” the biggest one starts, snarling through a curled lip at Tegoshi as he makes a fist with one of his plate-sized hands, “We don’t…”
From behind Tegoshi, Ryo casually pulls his badge out of his pocket and flips it open. Waves it in the air a little.
The big yakuza’s lip promptly uncurls. “…mind picking up after ourselves,” he finishes eventually, sounding lame.
“Yeah,” his companions agree, much to Tegoshi’s delight.
He looks at the smoker expectantly.
The smoker makes a face and bends down to pick up his cigarette butt.
Which he obediently deposits in the trash.
Tegoshi smiles and tells them that now that they know better, they’re all one step closer to a cleaner, happier world.
Ryo stands behind him and puts his badge away, kind of relieved that he didn’t actually have to pull his sidearm out of his shoulder holster (mostly because he isn’t technically supposed to have his sidearm with him right now).
When Tegoshi turns around a moment later and the yakuza take off in the opposite direction, he sees Ryo and beams, like he never realized he’d left Ryo behind at all. “See?” he exclaims in self-satisfaction, “We’re already making a difference.”
“One idiot at a time,” Ryo agrees enigmatically, and reaches out to yank Tegoshi back by his collar.
Tegoshi blinks. “Ryo-tan?”
Ryo just smiles, “Let’s grab dinner,” he says, and thinks that the world is lucky to have Tegoshi looking out for it.
Almost (but not quite) as lucky as Tegoshi is to have Ryo.
~~~~~
While Ryo buys Tegoshi ramen that night, Yamapi dreams.
About what no one knows, but the smile on his face as he does it suggests it’s something good, something that he will have to remember once he wakes up and has to go back to work on Monday morning, to start killing himself a little bit every day all over again, trying to make a difference.
Whether it’s ultimately worth it or not can only be decided by him.
But then again, the smile on his face as he sleeps suggests that he already knows the answer.
~~~~~
Everyone in NEWS knows that vacations like this one aren’t just for resting their bodies (as tired as those are) or relieving stress (despite how much of it they have); these days off are also about recuperating losses on something else altogether, something far more complicated and important.
Time off for themselves, to spend however they see fit, helps them remember why they do this at all in the first place, whether it’s because of an ideal they want to protect, or a higher level they personally want to reach, or a precious person they will never forget. It could be for the sake of something as profound as saving the world or as ridiculous as keeping your idiot friends out of trouble or even for something as simple and precious as a little well-deserved peace and quiet.
It is in moments like these that the six of them take the opportunity to remember what makes the work they do worth it in the end.
And while it may not seem like much in return for all the sacrifices they make, it’s ultimately all they need to keep them going from one day to the next.
It’s enough.
END