JE/NEWS- "A Thousand Arms to Hold me Up"
Title: A Thousand Arms to Hold me Up
Universe: JE/ NewS ( Gov AU)
Theme/Topic: Kink Meme fic!
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: NEWS (Shige and Ryo focus)
Warnings/Spoilers: Bad police procedural as per usual.
Word Count: 3,270
Summary: Despite all the practice, they end up messing up anyway.
Dedication: imifumei’s thank you fic! Using (sort of) #19 and #25 from your kink list. I wrote this way too fast, so it probably doesn’t make sense. I’M SORRY. I wanted to finish all my debts before I left for RI for the week. >>
A/N: Inspired by the moment Ryo and Shige had on 05.01.2009 MS. I know, I know, it’s a stretch. But apparently the thousand-armed goddess they are emulating is Kannon, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy. Too good a link to pass up.
Disclaimer: No harm or infringement intended.
Today
Usually, six inches at several hundred feet is plenty of space. Six inches by six inches is even better-more than enough for a professional marksman- and on any given day you could cut that area in half and Ryo would still tell you he’ll hit the target right on the bullseye, within a millimeter left or right of center well inside the allotted timeframe.
Yesterday morning, he would have said exactly that without a shadow of a doubt in his mind. I can hit it, no problem.
Today Ryo isn’t so sure anymore.
He hates that feeling more than anything.
Even worse, he knows exactly why things have changed so drastically in the last twenty-four hours for him, why he’s peering anxiously through the scope of his rifle today and can feel the uncharacteristic dampness against his skin that means he’s got sweaty palms, the ache in the back of his throat that means it’s going dry for the first time before a hit since day one at the academy, when his drill sergeant had been breathing down his neck telling him to man up and pull the trigger already.
Ryo’s trigger finger feels stiff.
Down on the street below, he sees it when the black sedan they’ve been waiting for pulls up to the corner right on time, lurking dark and discreet in the shadows between a run down office building with a brightly colored graffiti mural of Kannon’s thirty-three forms on it and an old abandoned video game arcade advertising the release of Street Fighter II in its dusty windows. The car lingers just like that for a moment, still and seemingly innocuous as its inhabitants finish up whatever nasty dealings they’ve got going for them inside.
Ryo knows that his target is in there, moments away from death.
Maybe. Maybe not.
Because right now Ryo isn’t sure he can hit a mark inside of those six inches in the two to three seconds he’ll have the open shot.
His heart is thundering in his ears.
“Just like we practiced, Ryo-chan,” Yamapi’s voice tells him in his ear piece, soothing and methodical. “It’s just like we practiced, right?”
“Right,” Ryo answers, and swallows when the words crack and fade on his lips a little. “Just like practice. This dummy is just a little more animated than the other dummies.”
“They’re still talking, ne,” Tegoshi reports next, without the usual cheer or confidence in his tone that they’ve become accustomed to. “But I think they’ll be done soon, Nishikido-kun, are you ready?”
“Of course I’m ready, brat,” Ryo shoots back, and snaps at the hacker without meaning to. He wipes sweat from his brow, tells himself he’ll buy Tegoshi apology candy later or something.
Down below, the door to the sedan finally opens, and Ryo curses a little, because it’s the wrong side. Hadn’t they established that it would be driver’s side backseat? He fumbles to adjust his sights to the opposite side of the car, managing to make it just as a dark figure slides out of the seat and stands, tall and slim in the dim evening light. Ryo’s eyes catch the gleam of the buttons on the target’s suit jacket and he uses them to count up and find his bullseye.
Second button from the top, two inches to the right.
Aim for the heart.
“On my mark,” Yamapi breathes into their communication links a split second later, when all the pieces finally come into play.
It’s a druglord, it’s a serial killer, it’s a cannibal, Ryo tells himself in the back of his head in sequence, as he takes aim inside the small area on the person’s frame that is his real target. All he has to do is hit the six inches by six inches that he spent the last two weeks painstakingly taking aim at, time and time and time again in practice.
The one he could hit yesterday, but maybe not today.
“One…” Yamapi counts, as the door to the car closes behind the figure, the sound echoing through the alley like an explosion in Ryo’s ears.
The target starts to turn.
This is your job, Ryo thinks. You’re the best at what you do.
“Two…” Yamapi continues, gravely.
The shadowy figure turns to face Ryo’s side of the street then-abruptly- and it’s faster than expected, happening before Yamapi can fully get to three.
“Now!” Yamapi hastily calls to adjust, and in that moment, Ryo’s trigger finger won’t move, feels oddly stuck. “Fire now, Ryo-chan!” Yamapi reiterates, “Or it’ll be too late.”
Ryo wants to close his eyes; he doesn’t want to fire.
A heartbeat later, he manages to force the shot anyway.
And he forces himself to keep his eyes open too, watching as an explosion of blood erupts from the target’s chest when the bullet hits him right in the heart; the force sends the figure hurtling facedown into the gutter, to die like trash.
The other men who are on the street with him shout in surprise and panic in the dark when it happens; they pull out their guns and start to fire blindly in return before jumping back into the sedan and peeling out.
Shige’s body is left in the street.
The blood starts to pool underneath him.
Ryo stares at it through his scope and forgets how to breathe.
~~~~~
Yesterday Morning
Ryo puts three bullets in the same hole, one after the other, after the other. Just to prove that he can. That he’s on top of this.
Yamapi whistles. “Ryo-chan’s right on target, ne.”
“I don’t think you need to do it like that three times in a row though,” Tegoshi feels the need to add after a beat, unintentionally superior as he does. “We don’t know if the patch will hold if it happens that many times in the same place, ne.”
Ryo scowls. “I’m not going to shoot him three times tomorrow,” he mutters, and pushes the button that will line up the next fresh target dummy for him.
Tegoshi blinks. “Then why are you practicing it that way?” he asks, oblivious to Ryo’s foul mood.
Ryo sighs when the kid makes sense. “No reason,” he tells him, and takes aim at the new target, at the six inch by six inch patch marked off in red electrical tape on its chest, over where a real person’s heart would be.
Ryo holds his breath and closes his eyes when he fires; he hits the target within the red electrical tape lines anyway.
He tells himself he can do this with his eyes closed, so why worry? There’s nothing to worry about.
Yamapi whistles again. “Ryo-chan is really the best, ne.”
Tegoshi seems thoughtful, slightly concerned. “Are you going to close your eyes like that when you do it too, Ryo-tan?”
Ryo glares at him. “No! Of course not, stupid. That’s dangerous.”
A moment. And then, because he doesn’t know when to shut up, the hacker coughs. “So then…why are you practicing it that way?” he asks, again. “It’s better to practice it the way you’re really going to do it, isn’t it?”
Ryo wants to scream.
Yamapi silently takes Tegoshi by the shoulder and pulls him out of the room.
~~~~~
Earlier Today
Time is ticking down; Ryo stares at the clock on the wall in the locker room as he suits up. It feels like it’s going too fast.
He thinks that today he feels different than he did yesterday.
Probably because even though he has to shoot a six inch by six inch area right over where a person’s heart will be just like he did yesterday, this time he can’t do it three times in a row just to prove to himself that he can, that he’s still the best. He can’t do it with his eyes closed either, because it’s not just a dummy anymore, and if he messes up, he can’t just push the button and get a fresh target to start all over with again.
Across from him, at his own locker, Koyama looks like Ryo feels.
When the explosives expert catches Ryo watching him, he offers a shaky smile. “It’ll all work out for the best,” he promises, and even as he says that, Ryo knows Koyama spent the entire morning with his head bent over his desk, praying to whatever gods or goddesses willing to listen that all of this will go smoothly today. They’ll get Shige out of there without any problems.
“Ryo-chan’s been practicing non-stop, right? Your timing is probably perfect, ne.” Pause. “I’m just… worried about Shige’s,” the older agent admits after a beat, with a horrible, nervous sounding laugh. “Shige’s timing is always weird, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Ryo tells him, and thinks about all the times he’d practiced wrong all of a sudden. Sometimes he hates it when Tegoshi is right.
Looking at Koyama makes him want to close his eyes again.
~~~~~
Earliest Today
Massu is the one who peeks in on him sometime after midnight, when Ryo is lost in a world of red electrical taped squares, firing into them over and over and over again despite having long since run out of the targets Tegoshi had taken aside and physically marked off for him. He can see those stupid red squares in the backs of his eyelids now anyway.
“Nishikido-kun,” Massu says, and has a brown paper bag in his hand as he approaches the sniper. “Do you want a sandwich?”
Ryo blinks and looks at his watch, realizes what time it is. “Why are you still here?” he asks.
Massu smiles. “Tegoshi and I are running equipment maintenance for tomorrow, ne. Shige’s doing a check from his end but this is the only time he’s been able to get away from his gang members.”
“Oh.”
Massu holds out the bag again. “Do you want a sandwich?” he repeats.
Ryo doesn’t feel hungry. Or tired. Or much of anything right now. He feels like a machine that only sees red six inch by six inch electrical taped squares over where a person’s heart should be.
But even still, Massu doesn’t look like he’s going to stop holding out the bag until Ryo takes it.
Ryo sighs and takes it.
“Thanks,” he says eventually, and puts his rifle down for a bit so he can stretch out his shoulder.
“You have to keep your strength up,” Massu tells him, knowingly.
Then the younger agent sits down nearby and looks expectantly at the bag, then at Ryo.
Ryo supposes it means that he won’t go away until the sandwich is eaten, either.
He grudgingly unwraps it. It’s enormous, with six inches of beef inside and smelling strongly of cheese, peppers, mushrooms, and onions.
The sniper looks skeptically at Massu, who just grins back. “It’s important that everyone is at their peak for tomorrow’s mission, ne.” He flexes one of his arms. “I ate two just now.”
Ryo grudgingly eats the sandwich, and when the weight of it settles heavily in his stomach some twenty minutes later, he feels his eyelids start to grow heavy too, and scowls sleepily at Massu. “Now I’ve got food coma,” he mutters. The sharpness of his words is dulled by the yawn he has to wrap them around.
“Then you should sleep,” Massu tells him, and starts to pick up the trash and napkins for his teammate. “So that tomorrow you’ll be well-rested.”
“I need to practice more.”
Massu smiles again, but this time it’s in a grim way, in the way the younger agent gets whenever he means business and doesn’t mind knocking heads to get that business done. “It’s important that when you shoot Shige tomorrow, you’re at your peak,” he says, and looks expectantly at the sniper again.
Ryo wordlessly packs up his gun.
He falls asleep on the couch in the conference room, while Tegoshi and Massu run their equipment checks nearby, all through the night.
He wakes up six hours later feeling like he didn’t rest a moment.
~~~~~
Now
Shige’s body is on the ground and it isn’t moving.
The tire marks on the street where the sedan peeled out are just a few feet away from his pale, still hand; the car is long gone and the Triads think Shige is dead.
It means Yamapi’s forcible extraction plan had been successful. The agency has its evidence and they got Shige out of a very dangerous place.
He can stand up now. Mission accomplished.
Except Shige doesn’t move. His chest is covered in blood and he’s still lying facedown in the gutter.
He’s out.
He’s alive, Ryo tells himself as he drops his gun and runs for the building’s fire escape once the coast is clear, even as Koyama and Massu explode into the street from the surveillance van around the corner. He’s alive. I didn’t miss. I only fired once this time. I didn’t close my eyes this time. I practiced and I ate and I slept just like I was supposed to so I’d be at my best today and there’s no one in the country who is better than me at this.
But Shige isn’t moving.
Somehow, Koyama is the one to get there first. It might be the one and only time in his life that he beats Massu’s foot speed.
Ryo thinks that the power of fear is amazing like that. He stumbles down the rickety fire-escape using the exact same fuel.
A breath later, Tegoshi radios in to all of them that the ambulance is on its way, before his voice abruptly cuts out and he and Yamapi are out on the streets as well, chasing after Koyama and Massu as the five of them gather together under the watchful eyes of Kannon in her mural, calling Shige’s name.
From far off in the city, Ryo can hear the sirens’ wails.
Shige’s body is covered in blood and isn’t moving.
~~~~~
Later Today
Two broken ribs.
Shige is in the hospital with two broken ribs and a mild concussion while Ryo is in the waiting room with the others looking miserable, because six inches is a huge portion of space and he’s not sure how he almost missed.
He’s supposed to be the best the agency has to offer.
Beside him, Koyama pats his shoulders while they wait for the doctor to tell them it’s okay to see Shige now.
“You hit the target, ne,” Koyama tells Ryo over and over again. “You hit the target.”
“Barely,” Ryo mutters, and fights the urge to shrug off Koyama’s hand and go punch something alone in the bathroom.
When he closes his eyes he can see the surprise and pain on Shige’s face all over again, as the bullet hits him, as the blood explodes from his chest from a six inch by six inch area right over his heart.
The sniper knows none of that pain or surprise had been an act on Shige’s part even if everything else had been, from the bag of pig’s blood under his jacket to the six inch by six inch square of bullet-proof gel underneath the blood pouch taped to Shige’s chest. Everything had been fake in that scenario except for Shige’s pain.
That, Ryo realizes, had been very, very real.
Shige has two broken ribs because Ryo’s angle was shitty, because he didn’t hit the center, because he hesitated and threw their timing off.
He thinks he’s lucky he hit the target at all, that he hadn’t ended up really shooting Shige and puncturing a lung.
When the doctor comes out a few minutes later and tells the team that Agent Kato is ready for visitors, the rest of NEWS all silently turn to look at Ryo.
Ryo sighs. “Right,” he mutters, and stands alone. “I’ll be right back.”
Koyama gives the sniper one last comforting pat on the arm before he goes to face the teammate he’d shot today.
~~~~~
A Moment
“I’m sorry,” are the first words out of both of their mouths, just as Ryo closes the door behind him.
The older agent blinks. “What now?” For a second he worries that maybe Shige hit his head harder on the pavement than the doctors said he did.
From the bed, Shige looks sheepish and a little pale. The kind of pale that comes from being in pain. Ryo can’t help it when he stares at the bandages around the younger agent’s head and chest, at the sling holding his arm still.
Shige averts his eyes first, turns them down to the bed sheets.
He smiles self-deprecatingly. “I moved too soon. I heard the count in my Bluetooth but I jumped the gun before Yamapi got to three.” Scowl. “I was counting so carefully in my head, too, because I couldn’t see any of your faces.”
They look at each other again then, and Ryo is the one who turns away first this time.
“I hesitated,” he admits, after a moment. “After Yamapi’s cue I stopped for just a second.”
Silence.
Then, “It was my fault,” they each say, in perfect tandem.
Both agents blink. “No, it’s definitely my fault,” they say together, again.
Shige laughs. Then stops, because it hurts when he does.
Something about the two of them talking like that drains some of the tension from the room.
“It figures that in my dramatic death scene, I end up ruining it by knocking myself unconscious on the curb,” the undercover agent mutters sheepishly after a moment, when he thinks that maybe they need a change in subject. He relaxes back against his pillows a little more.
“Yeah, and you really scared the shit out of me for a second there,” Ryo replies waspishly, feeling his insides twist instinctively at the memory of the undercover agent unmoving and unresponsive to Koyama’s desperate shouts.
Shige looks touched. “I’m okay,” he says.
“I was terrified that I’d missed,” Ryo hastily amends in embarrassment, though Shige just gives him a look that means he knows the sniper’s lying.
The undercover agent smiles and says, with confidence, “That’s stupid.”
Ryo scowls. “I almost did miss, asshole!”
Shige doesn’t look convinced. “But you never do. You’re the best.”
Eventually Ryo gives up and plops down in the chair at Shige’s side exhaustedly. “Whatever. The two of us really need to work on our timing.”
“Next time we’ll do better,” Shige assures him.
“Next time do it yourself, asshole,” Ryo grunts back, and thinks it’s too soon to even consider taking on the burden of shooting one of his teammates again. He’s not ready for it right now.
Shige sees the expression on the sniper’s face and looks like he wants to laugh some more at how serious it all is, except that he has to stop and say “Ow,” instead, when he ends up jostling his broken ribs the wrong way.
Ryo feels his muscles in his back and neck finally start to relax at the sound of it, at all the signs that tell him Shige is alive and forgiving and that by some divine luck or power, their team managed to make it out of today’s ordeal only a little battered at worst.
Seconds later, Ryo feels his eyes start to flutter shut without meaning to.
~~~~~
On the Cusp of Tomorrow
When the rest of the team filters into the room a little while later, Ryo is already fast asleep in the chair at Shige’s bedside.
In his dreams, he sees NEWS with a thousand invincible arms.
They use every single one to hold each other up.
END
EDITS SO RUSHED.
Universe: JE/ NewS ( Gov AU)
Theme/Topic: Kink Meme fic!
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: NEWS (Shige and Ryo focus)
Warnings/Spoilers: Bad police procedural as per usual.
Word Count: 3,270
Summary: Despite all the practice, they end up messing up anyway.
Dedication: imifumei’s thank you fic! Using (sort of) #19 and #25 from your kink list. I wrote this way too fast, so it probably doesn’t make sense. I’M SORRY. I wanted to finish all my debts before I left for RI for the week. >>
A/N: Inspired by the moment Ryo and Shige had on 05.01.2009 MS. I know, I know, it’s a stretch. But apparently the thousand-armed goddess they are emulating is Kannon, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy. Too good a link to pass up.
Disclaimer: No harm or infringement intended.
Today
Usually, six inches at several hundred feet is plenty of space. Six inches by six inches is even better-more than enough for a professional marksman- and on any given day you could cut that area in half and Ryo would still tell you he’ll hit the target right on the bullseye, within a millimeter left or right of center well inside the allotted timeframe.
Yesterday morning, he would have said exactly that without a shadow of a doubt in his mind. I can hit it, no problem.
Today Ryo isn’t so sure anymore.
He hates that feeling more than anything.
Even worse, he knows exactly why things have changed so drastically in the last twenty-four hours for him, why he’s peering anxiously through the scope of his rifle today and can feel the uncharacteristic dampness against his skin that means he’s got sweaty palms, the ache in the back of his throat that means it’s going dry for the first time before a hit since day one at the academy, when his drill sergeant had been breathing down his neck telling him to man up and pull the trigger already.
Ryo’s trigger finger feels stiff.
Down on the street below, he sees it when the black sedan they’ve been waiting for pulls up to the corner right on time, lurking dark and discreet in the shadows between a run down office building with a brightly colored graffiti mural of Kannon’s thirty-three forms on it and an old abandoned video game arcade advertising the release of Street Fighter II in its dusty windows. The car lingers just like that for a moment, still and seemingly innocuous as its inhabitants finish up whatever nasty dealings they’ve got going for them inside.
Ryo knows that his target is in there, moments away from death.
Maybe. Maybe not.
Because right now Ryo isn’t sure he can hit a mark inside of those six inches in the two to three seconds he’ll have the open shot.
His heart is thundering in his ears.
“Just like we practiced, Ryo-chan,” Yamapi’s voice tells him in his ear piece, soothing and methodical. “It’s just like we practiced, right?”
“Right,” Ryo answers, and swallows when the words crack and fade on his lips a little. “Just like practice. This dummy is just a little more animated than the other dummies.”
“They’re still talking, ne,” Tegoshi reports next, without the usual cheer or confidence in his tone that they’ve become accustomed to. “But I think they’ll be done soon, Nishikido-kun, are you ready?”
“Of course I’m ready, brat,” Ryo shoots back, and snaps at the hacker without meaning to. He wipes sweat from his brow, tells himself he’ll buy Tegoshi apology candy later or something.
Down below, the door to the sedan finally opens, and Ryo curses a little, because it’s the wrong side. Hadn’t they established that it would be driver’s side backseat? He fumbles to adjust his sights to the opposite side of the car, managing to make it just as a dark figure slides out of the seat and stands, tall and slim in the dim evening light. Ryo’s eyes catch the gleam of the buttons on the target’s suit jacket and he uses them to count up and find his bullseye.
Second button from the top, two inches to the right.
Aim for the heart.
“On my mark,” Yamapi breathes into their communication links a split second later, when all the pieces finally come into play.
It’s a druglord, it’s a serial killer, it’s a cannibal, Ryo tells himself in the back of his head in sequence, as he takes aim inside the small area on the person’s frame that is his real target. All he has to do is hit the six inches by six inches that he spent the last two weeks painstakingly taking aim at, time and time and time again in practice.
The one he could hit yesterday, but maybe not today.
“One…” Yamapi counts, as the door to the car closes behind the figure, the sound echoing through the alley like an explosion in Ryo’s ears.
The target starts to turn.
This is your job, Ryo thinks. You’re the best at what you do.
“Two…” Yamapi continues, gravely.
The shadowy figure turns to face Ryo’s side of the street then-abruptly- and it’s faster than expected, happening before Yamapi can fully get to three.
“Now!” Yamapi hastily calls to adjust, and in that moment, Ryo’s trigger finger won’t move, feels oddly stuck. “Fire now, Ryo-chan!” Yamapi reiterates, “Or it’ll be too late.”
Ryo wants to close his eyes; he doesn’t want to fire.
A heartbeat later, he manages to force the shot anyway.
And he forces himself to keep his eyes open too, watching as an explosion of blood erupts from the target’s chest when the bullet hits him right in the heart; the force sends the figure hurtling facedown into the gutter, to die like trash.
The other men who are on the street with him shout in surprise and panic in the dark when it happens; they pull out their guns and start to fire blindly in return before jumping back into the sedan and peeling out.
Shige’s body is left in the street.
The blood starts to pool underneath him.
Ryo stares at it through his scope and forgets how to breathe.
~~~~~
Yesterday Morning
Ryo puts three bullets in the same hole, one after the other, after the other. Just to prove that he can. That he’s on top of this.
Yamapi whistles. “Ryo-chan’s right on target, ne.”
“I don’t think you need to do it like that three times in a row though,” Tegoshi feels the need to add after a beat, unintentionally superior as he does. “We don’t know if the patch will hold if it happens that many times in the same place, ne.”
Ryo scowls. “I’m not going to shoot him three times tomorrow,” he mutters, and pushes the button that will line up the next fresh target dummy for him.
Tegoshi blinks. “Then why are you practicing it that way?” he asks, oblivious to Ryo’s foul mood.
Ryo sighs when the kid makes sense. “No reason,” he tells him, and takes aim at the new target, at the six inch by six inch patch marked off in red electrical tape on its chest, over where a real person’s heart would be.
Ryo holds his breath and closes his eyes when he fires; he hits the target within the red electrical tape lines anyway.
He tells himself he can do this with his eyes closed, so why worry? There’s nothing to worry about.
Yamapi whistles again. “Ryo-chan is really the best, ne.”
Tegoshi seems thoughtful, slightly concerned. “Are you going to close your eyes like that when you do it too, Ryo-tan?”
Ryo glares at him. “No! Of course not, stupid. That’s dangerous.”
A moment. And then, because he doesn’t know when to shut up, the hacker coughs. “So then…why are you practicing it that way?” he asks, again. “It’s better to practice it the way you’re really going to do it, isn’t it?”
Ryo wants to scream.
Yamapi silently takes Tegoshi by the shoulder and pulls him out of the room.
~~~~~
Earlier Today
Time is ticking down; Ryo stares at the clock on the wall in the locker room as he suits up. It feels like it’s going too fast.
He thinks that today he feels different than he did yesterday.
Probably because even though he has to shoot a six inch by six inch area right over where a person’s heart will be just like he did yesterday, this time he can’t do it three times in a row just to prove to himself that he can, that he’s still the best. He can’t do it with his eyes closed either, because it’s not just a dummy anymore, and if he messes up, he can’t just push the button and get a fresh target to start all over with again.
Across from him, at his own locker, Koyama looks like Ryo feels.
When the explosives expert catches Ryo watching him, he offers a shaky smile. “It’ll all work out for the best,” he promises, and even as he says that, Ryo knows Koyama spent the entire morning with his head bent over his desk, praying to whatever gods or goddesses willing to listen that all of this will go smoothly today. They’ll get Shige out of there without any problems.
“Ryo-chan’s been practicing non-stop, right? Your timing is probably perfect, ne.” Pause. “I’m just… worried about Shige’s,” the older agent admits after a beat, with a horrible, nervous sounding laugh. “Shige’s timing is always weird, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Ryo tells him, and thinks about all the times he’d practiced wrong all of a sudden. Sometimes he hates it when Tegoshi is right.
Looking at Koyama makes him want to close his eyes again.
~~~~~
Earliest Today
Massu is the one who peeks in on him sometime after midnight, when Ryo is lost in a world of red electrical taped squares, firing into them over and over and over again despite having long since run out of the targets Tegoshi had taken aside and physically marked off for him. He can see those stupid red squares in the backs of his eyelids now anyway.
“Nishikido-kun,” Massu says, and has a brown paper bag in his hand as he approaches the sniper. “Do you want a sandwich?”
Ryo blinks and looks at his watch, realizes what time it is. “Why are you still here?” he asks.
Massu smiles. “Tegoshi and I are running equipment maintenance for tomorrow, ne. Shige’s doing a check from his end but this is the only time he’s been able to get away from his gang members.”
“Oh.”
Massu holds out the bag again. “Do you want a sandwich?” he repeats.
Ryo doesn’t feel hungry. Or tired. Or much of anything right now. He feels like a machine that only sees red six inch by six inch electrical taped squares over where a person’s heart should be.
But even still, Massu doesn’t look like he’s going to stop holding out the bag until Ryo takes it.
Ryo sighs and takes it.
“Thanks,” he says eventually, and puts his rifle down for a bit so he can stretch out his shoulder.
“You have to keep your strength up,” Massu tells him, knowingly.
Then the younger agent sits down nearby and looks expectantly at the bag, then at Ryo.
Ryo supposes it means that he won’t go away until the sandwich is eaten, either.
He grudgingly unwraps it. It’s enormous, with six inches of beef inside and smelling strongly of cheese, peppers, mushrooms, and onions.
The sniper looks skeptically at Massu, who just grins back. “It’s important that everyone is at their peak for tomorrow’s mission, ne.” He flexes one of his arms. “I ate two just now.”
Ryo grudgingly eats the sandwich, and when the weight of it settles heavily in his stomach some twenty minutes later, he feels his eyelids start to grow heavy too, and scowls sleepily at Massu. “Now I’ve got food coma,” he mutters. The sharpness of his words is dulled by the yawn he has to wrap them around.
“Then you should sleep,” Massu tells him, and starts to pick up the trash and napkins for his teammate. “So that tomorrow you’ll be well-rested.”
“I need to practice more.”
Massu smiles again, but this time it’s in a grim way, in the way the younger agent gets whenever he means business and doesn’t mind knocking heads to get that business done. “It’s important that when you shoot Shige tomorrow, you’re at your peak,” he says, and looks expectantly at the sniper again.
Ryo wordlessly packs up his gun.
He falls asleep on the couch in the conference room, while Tegoshi and Massu run their equipment checks nearby, all through the night.
He wakes up six hours later feeling like he didn’t rest a moment.
~~~~~
Now
Shige’s body is on the ground and it isn’t moving.
The tire marks on the street where the sedan peeled out are just a few feet away from his pale, still hand; the car is long gone and the Triads think Shige is dead.
It means Yamapi’s forcible extraction plan had been successful. The agency has its evidence and they got Shige out of a very dangerous place.
He can stand up now. Mission accomplished.
Except Shige doesn’t move. His chest is covered in blood and he’s still lying facedown in the gutter.
He’s out.
He’s alive, Ryo tells himself as he drops his gun and runs for the building’s fire escape once the coast is clear, even as Koyama and Massu explode into the street from the surveillance van around the corner. He’s alive. I didn’t miss. I only fired once this time. I didn’t close my eyes this time. I practiced and I ate and I slept just like I was supposed to so I’d be at my best today and there’s no one in the country who is better than me at this.
But Shige isn’t moving.
Somehow, Koyama is the one to get there first. It might be the one and only time in his life that he beats Massu’s foot speed.
Ryo thinks that the power of fear is amazing like that. He stumbles down the rickety fire-escape using the exact same fuel.
A breath later, Tegoshi radios in to all of them that the ambulance is on its way, before his voice abruptly cuts out and he and Yamapi are out on the streets as well, chasing after Koyama and Massu as the five of them gather together under the watchful eyes of Kannon in her mural, calling Shige’s name.
From far off in the city, Ryo can hear the sirens’ wails.
Shige’s body is covered in blood and isn’t moving.
~~~~~
Later Today
Two broken ribs.
Shige is in the hospital with two broken ribs and a mild concussion while Ryo is in the waiting room with the others looking miserable, because six inches is a huge portion of space and he’s not sure how he almost missed.
He’s supposed to be the best the agency has to offer.
Beside him, Koyama pats his shoulders while they wait for the doctor to tell them it’s okay to see Shige now.
“You hit the target, ne,” Koyama tells Ryo over and over again. “You hit the target.”
“Barely,” Ryo mutters, and fights the urge to shrug off Koyama’s hand and go punch something alone in the bathroom.
When he closes his eyes he can see the surprise and pain on Shige’s face all over again, as the bullet hits him, as the blood explodes from his chest from a six inch by six inch area right over his heart.
The sniper knows none of that pain or surprise had been an act on Shige’s part even if everything else had been, from the bag of pig’s blood under his jacket to the six inch by six inch square of bullet-proof gel underneath the blood pouch taped to Shige’s chest. Everything had been fake in that scenario except for Shige’s pain.
That, Ryo realizes, had been very, very real.
Shige has two broken ribs because Ryo’s angle was shitty, because he didn’t hit the center, because he hesitated and threw their timing off.
He thinks he’s lucky he hit the target at all, that he hadn’t ended up really shooting Shige and puncturing a lung.
When the doctor comes out a few minutes later and tells the team that Agent Kato is ready for visitors, the rest of NEWS all silently turn to look at Ryo.
Ryo sighs. “Right,” he mutters, and stands alone. “I’ll be right back.”
Koyama gives the sniper one last comforting pat on the arm before he goes to face the teammate he’d shot today.
~~~~~
A Moment
“I’m sorry,” are the first words out of both of their mouths, just as Ryo closes the door behind him.
The older agent blinks. “What now?” For a second he worries that maybe Shige hit his head harder on the pavement than the doctors said he did.
From the bed, Shige looks sheepish and a little pale. The kind of pale that comes from being in pain. Ryo can’t help it when he stares at the bandages around the younger agent’s head and chest, at the sling holding his arm still.
Shige averts his eyes first, turns them down to the bed sheets.
He smiles self-deprecatingly. “I moved too soon. I heard the count in my Bluetooth but I jumped the gun before Yamapi got to three.” Scowl. “I was counting so carefully in my head, too, because I couldn’t see any of your faces.”
They look at each other again then, and Ryo is the one who turns away first this time.
“I hesitated,” he admits, after a moment. “After Yamapi’s cue I stopped for just a second.”
Silence.
Then, “It was my fault,” they each say, in perfect tandem.
Both agents blink. “No, it’s definitely my fault,” they say together, again.
Shige laughs. Then stops, because it hurts when he does.
Something about the two of them talking like that drains some of the tension from the room.
“It figures that in my dramatic death scene, I end up ruining it by knocking myself unconscious on the curb,” the undercover agent mutters sheepishly after a moment, when he thinks that maybe they need a change in subject. He relaxes back against his pillows a little more.
“Yeah, and you really scared the shit out of me for a second there,” Ryo replies waspishly, feeling his insides twist instinctively at the memory of the undercover agent unmoving and unresponsive to Koyama’s desperate shouts.
Shige looks touched. “I’m okay,” he says.
“I was terrified that I’d missed,” Ryo hastily amends in embarrassment, though Shige just gives him a look that means he knows the sniper’s lying.
The undercover agent smiles and says, with confidence, “That’s stupid.”
Ryo scowls. “I almost did miss, asshole!”
Shige doesn’t look convinced. “But you never do. You’re the best.”
Eventually Ryo gives up and plops down in the chair at Shige’s side exhaustedly. “Whatever. The two of us really need to work on our timing.”
“Next time we’ll do better,” Shige assures him.
“Next time do it yourself, asshole,” Ryo grunts back, and thinks it’s too soon to even consider taking on the burden of shooting one of his teammates again. He’s not ready for it right now.
Shige sees the expression on the sniper’s face and looks like he wants to laugh some more at how serious it all is, except that he has to stop and say “Ow,” instead, when he ends up jostling his broken ribs the wrong way.
Ryo feels his muscles in his back and neck finally start to relax at the sound of it, at all the signs that tell him Shige is alive and forgiving and that by some divine luck or power, their team managed to make it out of today’s ordeal only a little battered at worst.
Seconds later, Ryo feels his eyes start to flutter shut without meaning to.
~~~~~
On the Cusp of Tomorrow
When the rest of the team filters into the room a little while later, Ryo is already fast asleep in the chair at Shige’s bedside.
In his dreams, he sees NEWS with a thousand invincible arms.
They use every single one to hold each other up.
END
EDITS SO RUSHED.