Vengeance (part 19)
“I’m sorry. It isn’t my place to be saying so, but sir,” Sergei stressed the word, as if trying to get across the absurdity of the situation, a situation that apparently, Takaba wasn’t quite seeing eye to eye with. He raised his hands then balled them up into fists when he couldn’t find his words and dropped his arms to his sides again, suddenly feeling exhausted. “You hired me,” he said and only received a raised eyebrow from Takaba. With an exasperated sigh, he added, “For protection.”
Takaba let out a long suffering breath and let his head drop back onto the back of the chair. “Look, it’s not a big deal.” Sergei seemed to be stressing himself over this far more than any man should, at least in Takaba’s opinion. “Twelve stitches, relatively speaking, is a scratch compared to what could have hypothetically happened, and I’ve had worse.”
It was probably true. When he had “agreed” to take the offer from Takaba, he had expected the man to keep him around for appearances, but it hadn’t been that way. There were times when he saw Takaba change his shirt in a hurry and glimpsed scars that looked far from benign accidents. “That seems like a bit of an understatement,” Sergei said, suppressing the curiosity that itched at the back of his mind, “considering you’ve left out the cast on your right wrist-”
“It’s a sprain - and a very light one at that - and the cast isn’t even a real one. Besides, it’ll be off completely in two weeks.”
“And the deep bruising on your chest.”
“If you’re worried about me firing you or something, I’m not going to, especially over something like this.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about, not that it wouldn’t be justified if you decided to. My point is, you hired me to be your bodyguard, not the other way around.”
“I just - look. I jumped up when I saw the knife. Reflex. It wasn’t like I was doing kamikaze or something.”
“Oh course, because jumping in front of a knife doesn’t at all resemble suicide.”
“Sergei.” Takaba stood up and Sergei saw the hidden wince split momentarily across the man’s face as the movement stretched the sutures just about the left hip where he knew Takaba had been slashed then walked toward the mini-bar. “I mean, Christ,” he ran his hand through his ruffled hair, “What do you want me to do?”
Sergei shook his head when he saw what Takaba was planning to do, “You’re not supposed to drink alcohol with medication.”
Takaba snorted, “What are you, my personal nurse?” he said while reaching for the cognac bottle.
“If Yoh were here, he’d probably agree with what I have to say.”
“Don’t bring Yoh into this. He’s got enough on his mind as it is.”
“Whoa,” Sergei said, walking over to the bar where Takaba was pouring two glasses. “Seriously, at least wait until some of the medication wears off.”
Takaba eyed him with exasperation, thrusting the glass at Sergei, “I’m not on any medication.”
It took a moment for that sink in.
“Wait.” Oh shit, he thought. “What?”
“Very articulate,” Takaba said after a grimacing sip, “It hurts like hell, but I just... hate how it makes you feel tired and... useless.” Which was, okay, Sergei had to admit, true. At the very least, alcohol lit some internal furnace if only temporarily. He was very familiar with the rainbow spectrum of pain killers that some of the doctors and surgeons tended to dole out after his “accident,” starting from the mild ibuprofen to the stronger codeine.
“So you never-”
“Not unless I’m screaming bloody murder or something. I take it before I sleep, because it doesn’t matter than, and if I were hit by a bullet, on the off chance it happens, maybe, but with this, a mild analgesic would suffice. It just,” he flailed his hands at an attempt to find the words then gave up, “never mind.” And Sergei had to nod because, yeah, he knew. He really did.
“So now you figure you’re going to get yourself drunk or something? Numb the pain?”
Takaba looked up, an almost-surprise expression on his face, “When have you ever seen me drunk?”
Well... now that he thought about it, never. Takaba never drank enough to get drunk, which raised questions of what exactly his tolerance levels were, but the man could hold on to the same glass all night long at a reception, taking tiny, tiny sips, just enough to make it look like he was drinking. He pretended to loosen up through the course of the night, pretended to feel the warm liquid sinking hot and warm at the base of his throat to the bottom of his gut, but as soon as he was back in the car, Sergei always saw the almost paranoid alertness return immediately as if he had been slapped awake from a false slumber.
Takaba smiled slightly and turned so that he was staring out the window, partly at their translucent reflections and partly at the city sixty floors below but focusing much attention on either of them. Sergei watched Takaba, and the Japanese man must have seen him observing him intently but he seemed somehow preoccupied at some other internal subject.
But his silence was a comfortable one, much unlike the ones that they had initially had. After he’d begun working for Takaba, it had taken months to break the ice with him. The first impression he had had of the Japanese man had been... distant. Distant, cold, polite (to some extent), and mostly strictly professional. He didn’t exactly project intelligence like an astrophysicist might, but it had been easy enough to see it lurking under the surface, carefully camouflaged under a tactical outer image. Takaba worked his own contract out with surprising efficiency and knowledge for someone supposedly a simple photography professor though he rarely spoke outside of what was necessary. The first time Sergei had seen anything resembling a real smile had been the time when they had rushed to the hospital.
It had been a... surreal experience. One moment they were driving to the inauguration dinner of a new contemporary museum and the next, Takaba had directed the driver to a private hospital, his muscles suddenly tense with trapped anticipation. At that time, Sergei had been working for Takaba for no more than three months and had yet to meet the yakuza boss, Yoh. It would be an unjust understatement to say that he had been a surprise to burst into the hospital room, tagging just behind Takaba to see the infamous man with an exhausted but elated expression. He standing beside a beautiful woman propped up by pillows on the bed, hair matted with sweat and holding a newborn child in her arms.
It had been even more of a shock to see Takaba smile, truly smile so that for that short moment, Sergei saw a glimpse of what Takaba might have been like before he was sucked into their treacherous world. He watched Takaba give Yoh an embrace that two blood brothers, or perhaps comrades in arms, might have shared. And given the slight bits and pieces of information he had scraped up by then, perhaps that was the most appropriate way to term the relationship between Takaba and Yoh. Comrades in arms. Battle-hardened soldiers in the streets that ran beneath the sun-lit road, the nocturnal crossroad of Tokyo warfare.
After that, things seemed to thaw out between them, probably a good thing, considering he was with the man nearly 24/7. There were a few exceptions, of course. He stopped by Yoh’s house from time to time and they would disappear into the study where the heavy doors would shut and Sergei would wait outside in the living room area for a while. He had gotten to know Keiko fairly well during these times. He would be reading a book when she would sit down across from him and have simple conversations that steered well clear of topics that were not to be discussed, childhood, adolescence, literature, music, and other such harmless area.
Takaba also asked him to keep a distance during his lectures. Sergei wasn’t sure why, maybe to avoid any unnecessary intimidation or paranoia on the students’ parts. Or maybe that was the one place he didn’t want to mar with the presence of someone like Sergei. And he understood. When everything, including your hands, got too bloody, there were sanctuaries. There were places of refuge, those illusory corners of Eden that were much too intimate to share. Those places where Takaba probably knew he no longer belonged but kept returning to, even when the guilt of it was sometimes so stifling. Sergei had a place like that, though he hadn’t been there for a long time.
For a very long time.
And maybe it was because he had been so lost in thought that he hadn’t realized the moment that they had turned outward into speech because he looked up from the glass and said something that he regretted two seconds after he’d said it, “You never seem to sleep with anyone either.”
Takaba looked up, not angry, not upset, just... surprised.
Sergei winced, “What I meant was...” what had he meant? “Um...”
But Takaba didn’t seem offended in the least. If anything, he looked... forlorn. He swirled his glass then said, “I’m not much for casual fucks,” and added, “I’m not much for trophy wives to hang off my elbow, and I’m not much for gold digging whores after my bank accounts either.”
“You could reserve a room.”
“And reduce myself to hotel fucks?” he asked, “No thanks.” It was true. Takaba didn’t really seem the sexually frustrated type. Sergei had seen sexually frustrated before, in the barracks when there was so much loose, rampant testosterone was in the air that it was stifling, to the point that privacy didn’t really matter in the communal showers and even straight men decided that equal opportunity wasn’t such a bad idea after all. It was just “helping each other out,” a temporary measure for desperate men and desperate times.
Takaba... well... either he was just asexual or he hid it very well. Or maybe he was just really good with his hands and...
An image of Takaba, arm propped up on the shower walls, forehead against his forearm while the other hand stroked his dick flashed across his mind and took Sergei by surprise. He frowned slightly.
That was definitely new.
Takaba didn’t seem to be aware of his momentary lapse, sipping the bitter liquid quietly, staring off at nowhere once again, and Sergei forced himself to look away from Takaba, feeling unexpectedly embarrassed and secretly guilty.
They lapsed into another companionable silence.
Takaba didn’t talk much, and Sergei had wondered if he had always been like so. If maybe the solemn silence that Takaba carried now had originated from a timid, shy kind of quiet isolation. It didn’t seem the case though, not by what Keiko had unexpectedly said to him one day.
She had said, “It’s rather curious, Sergei.” Sergei had felt compelled to asked what was so curious and her answer was, “Yoh has these strange moments when he talks about Takaba as if he’s a reckless child. As if he’s forgotten that Takaba is anything but.” And Sergei could only assume what Keiko had said told him indirectly, that Takaba had at one point been a child and that Takaba had at one point been reckless.
“Did you know,” Takaba said suddenly, “you would been working for me for a year exactly two days from now.”
Sergei raised an eyebrow, “You actually remembered the date?”
“The day after Valentines,” he answered, and Sergei might have said that Takaba was making a joke, except for how quickly his face changed as he whispered, to himself more than Sergei, “Besides, it’s a difficult one to forget.”
Takaba let out a long suffering breath and let his head drop back onto the back of the chair. “Look, it’s not a big deal.” Sergei seemed to be stressing himself over this far more than any man should, at least in Takaba’s opinion. “Twelve stitches, relatively speaking, is a scratch compared to what could have hypothetically happened, and I’ve had worse.”
It was probably true. When he had “agreed” to take the offer from Takaba, he had expected the man to keep him around for appearances, but it hadn’t been that way. There were times when he saw Takaba change his shirt in a hurry and glimpsed scars that looked far from benign accidents. “That seems like a bit of an understatement,” Sergei said, suppressing the curiosity that itched at the back of his mind, “considering you’ve left out the cast on your right wrist-”
“It’s a sprain - and a very light one at that - and the cast isn’t even a real one. Besides, it’ll be off completely in two weeks.”
“And the deep bruising on your chest.”
“If you’re worried about me firing you or something, I’m not going to, especially over something like this.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about, not that it wouldn’t be justified if you decided to. My point is, you hired me to be your bodyguard, not the other way around.”
“I just - look. I jumped up when I saw the knife. Reflex. It wasn’t like I was doing kamikaze or something.”
“Oh course, because jumping in front of a knife doesn’t at all resemble suicide.”
“Sergei.” Takaba stood up and Sergei saw the hidden wince split momentarily across the man’s face as the movement stretched the sutures just about the left hip where he knew Takaba had been slashed then walked toward the mini-bar. “I mean, Christ,” he ran his hand through his ruffled hair, “What do you want me to do?”
Sergei shook his head when he saw what Takaba was planning to do, “You’re not supposed to drink alcohol with medication.”
Takaba snorted, “What are you, my personal nurse?” he said while reaching for the cognac bottle.
“If Yoh were here, he’d probably agree with what I have to say.”
“Don’t bring Yoh into this. He’s got enough on his mind as it is.”
“Whoa,” Sergei said, walking over to the bar where Takaba was pouring two glasses. “Seriously, at least wait until some of the medication wears off.”
Takaba eyed him with exasperation, thrusting the glass at Sergei, “I’m not on any medication.”
It took a moment for that sink in.
“Wait.” Oh shit, he thought. “What?”
“Very articulate,” Takaba said after a grimacing sip, “It hurts like hell, but I just... hate how it makes you feel tired and... useless.” Which was, okay, Sergei had to admit, true. At the very least, alcohol lit some internal furnace if only temporarily. He was very familiar with the rainbow spectrum of pain killers that some of the doctors and surgeons tended to dole out after his “accident,” starting from the mild ibuprofen to the stronger codeine.
“So you never-”
“Not unless I’m screaming bloody murder or something. I take it before I sleep, because it doesn’t matter than, and if I were hit by a bullet, on the off chance it happens, maybe, but with this, a mild analgesic would suffice. It just,” he flailed his hands at an attempt to find the words then gave up, “never mind.” And Sergei had to nod because, yeah, he knew. He really did.
“So now you figure you’re going to get yourself drunk or something? Numb the pain?”
Takaba looked up, an almost-surprise expression on his face, “When have you ever seen me drunk?”
Well... now that he thought about it, never. Takaba never drank enough to get drunk, which raised questions of what exactly his tolerance levels were, but the man could hold on to the same glass all night long at a reception, taking tiny, tiny sips, just enough to make it look like he was drinking. He pretended to loosen up through the course of the night, pretended to feel the warm liquid sinking hot and warm at the base of his throat to the bottom of his gut, but as soon as he was back in the car, Sergei always saw the almost paranoid alertness return immediately as if he had been slapped awake from a false slumber.
Takaba smiled slightly and turned so that he was staring out the window, partly at their translucent reflections and partly at the city sixty floors below but focusing much attention on either of them. Sergei watched Takaba, and the Japanese man must have seen him observing him intently but he seemed somehow preoccupied at some other internal subject.
But his silence was a comfortable one, much unlike the ones that they had initially had. After he’d begun working for Takaba, it had taken months to break the ice with him. The first impression he had had of the Japanese man had been... distant. Distant, cold, polite (to some extent), and mostly strictly professional. He didn’t exactly project intelligence like an astrophysicist might, but it had been easy enough to see it lurking under the surface, carefully camouflaged under a tactical outer image. Takaba worked his own contract out with surprising efficiency and knowledge for someone supposedly a simple photography professor though he rarely spoke outside of what was necessary. The first time Sergei had seen anything resembling a real smile had been the time when they had rushed to the hospital.
It had been a... surreal experience. One moment they were driving to the inauguration dinner of a new contemporary museum and the next, Takaba had directed the driver to a private hospital, his muscles suddenly tense with trapped anticipation. At that time, Sergei had been working for Takaba for no more than three months and had yet to meet the yakuza boss, Yoh. It would be an unjust understatement to say that he had been a surprise to burst into the hospital room, tagging just behind Takaba to see the infamous man with an exhausted but elated expression. He standing beside a beautiful woman propped up by pillows on the bed, hair matted with sweat and holding a newborn child in her arms.
It had been even more of a shock to see Takaba smile, truly smile so that for that short moment, Sergei saw a glimpse of what Takaba might have been like before he was sucked into their treacherous world. He watched Takaba give Yoh an embrace that two blood brothers, or perhaps comrades in arms, might have shared. And given the slight bits and pieces of information he had scraped up by then, perhaps that was the most appropriate way to term the relationship between Takaba and Yoh. Comrades in arms. Battle-hardened soldiers in the streets that ran beneath the sun-lit road, the nocturnal crossroad of Tokyo warfare.
After that, things seemed to thaw out between them, probably a good thing, considering he was with the man nearly 24/7. There were a few exceptions, of course. He stopped by Yoh’s house from time to time and they would disappear into the study where the heavy doors would shut and Sergei would wait outside in the living room area for a while. He had gotten to know Keiko fairly well during these times. He would be reading a book when she would sit down across from him and have simple conversations that steered well clear of topics that were not to be discussed, childhood, adolescence, literature, music, and other such harmless area.
Takaba also asked him to keep a distance during his lectures. Sergei wasn’t sure why, maybe to avoid any unnecessary intimidation or paranoia on the students’ parts. Or maybe that was the one place he didn’t want to mar with the presence of someone like Sergei. And he understood. When everything, including your hands, got too bloody, there were sanctuaries. There were places of refuge, those illusory corners of Eden that were much too intimate to share. Those places where Takaba probably knew he no longer belonged but kept returning to, even when the guilt of it was sometimes so stifling. Sergei had a place like that, though he hadn’t been there for a long time.
For a very long time.
And maybe it was because he had been so lost in thought that he hadn’t realized the moment that they had turned outward into speech because he looked up from the glass and said something that he regretted two seconds after he’d said it, “You never seem to sleep with anyone either.”
Takaba looked up, not angry, not upset, just... surprised.
Sergei winced, “What I meant was...” what had he meant? “Um...”
But Takaba didn’t seem offended in the least. If anything, he looked... forlorn. He swirled his glass then said, “I’m not much for casual fucks,” and added, “I’m not much for trophy wives to hang off my elbow, and I’m not much for gold digging whores after my bank accounts either.”
“You could reserve a room.”
“And reduce myself to hotel fucks?” he asked, “No thanks.” It was true. Takaba didn’t really seem the sexually frustrated type. Sergei had seen sexually frustrated before, in the barracks when there was so much loose, rampant testosterone was in the air that it was stifling, to the point that privacy didn’t really matter in the communal showers and even straight men decided that equal opportunity wasn’t such a bad idea after all. It was just “helping each other out,” a temporary measure for desperate men and desperate times.
Takaba... well... either he was just asexual or he hid it very well. Or maybe he was just really good with his hands and...
An image of Takaba, arm propped up on the shower walls, forehead against his forearm while the other hand stroked his dick flashed across his mind and took Sergei by surprise. He frowned slightly.
That was definitely new.
Takaba didn’t seem to be aware of his momentary lapse, sipping the bitter liquid quietly, staring off at nowhere once again, and Sergei forced himself to look away from Takaba, feeling unexpectedly embarrassed and secretly guilty.
They lapsed into another companionable silence.
Takaba didn’t talk much, and Sergei had wondered if he had always been like so. If maybe the solemn silence that Takaba carried now had originated from a timid, shy kind of quiet isolation. It didn’t seem the case though, not by what Keiko had unexpectedly said to him one day.
She had said, “It’s rather curious, Sergei.” Sergei had felt compelled to asked what was so curious and her answer was, “Yoh has these strange moments when he talks about Takaba as if he’s a reckless child. As if he’s forgotten that Takaba is anything but.” And Sergei could only assume what Keiko had said told him indirectly, that Takaba had at one point been a child and that Takaba had at one point been reckless.
“Did you know,” Takaba said suddenly, “you would been working for me for a year exactly two days from now.”
Sergei raised an eyebrow, “You actually remembered the date?”
“The day after Valentines,” he answered, and Sergei might have said that Takaba was making a joke, except for how quickly his face changed as he whispered, to himself more than Sergei, “Besides, it’s a difficult one to forget.”