[KiyoharuxTora] "The Good Samaritan", 03/0?
"THE GOOD SAMARITAN", 03/0?
BANDS/ARTISTS: Kiyoharu, Alice Nine, SCREW, Kagrra,, Danger Gang
CHARACTERS: Kiyoharu, Tora, Shou, Byou, Nao (ex-Kagrra,), Rei (ex-Danger Gang)
PAIRINGS: KiyoharuxTora (not the focus, though; see genres)
RATING: PG13-15 for the entire series, may get higher in the later chapters
GENRE: AU, adventure, action, crime
WARNINGS: violence, language (the whole series)
DISCLAIMER: The author has no connections to the mentioned artists; this is a work of fiction.
A/N: I'm introducing briefly a new character! The plot is going somewhere -slowly, but steadily :D I'm guessing we'll have eight chapters, so we're almost half-way through. Enjoy♥
SUMMARY: The Good Samaritan saves Shou's life one night but little does Shou know about the not-so-biblical business that has employed his rescuer.
PREVIOUS: | 01|| 02|
Someone was breathing heavily in the dim room; the inhales and exhales came in swift, violent gasps that were accompanied with weak panting. Suddenly there was blood everywhere -the floor, Tora's clothes, my hands...
My fuzzy brain connected the dots slowly; I was listening to my own pained breathing, and the blood that shone in the dimness was the same blood that had stained the jacket I was still pressing against my abdomen. A memory of a car drive lingered in the near past but... I coughed and tried to concentrate again. Yes, Tora had somehow gotten us a taxi, or at least I assumed it had been one, and... Fuck, what next? There had been stairs, and... Why was it so hard to remember?
I didn't know where we were anymore. I had thought we had come to Tora's downtown apartment but the drive had been too short, plus the apartment was much smaller and had hardly any furniture in there, and... And... It was hard to focus. I was drifting further and further away from the situation where I was; the pain was ringing through my entire body, constantly messing up with my train of thought.
I curled tighter up on the floor.
"Hey, boy! Stay with me, okay?"
Tora was hovering near the door with his shirt's sleeves rolled up. He didn't seem to be especially distressed because of me; if the blood on his shirt and arms was excluded, and if he had fixed his slightly ruffled hair, he could've been in a normal everyday meeting discussing insurance markets instead of looking after a bleeding stranger.
Here I was, probably dying slowly, and all I did was imagine Tora typing up and printing documents. I had never thought about dying but now, as the said occasion was at hand, I realized I didn't really care whether I died by being cut half with a sword or by calmly sleeping away in my own bed. Not dying at all would've been nice but well, apparently it wasn't an option anymore...
And then I burst into a fit of giggles. It hurt like hell, and I could feel blood squirting from the wound under the drenched jacket but I couldn't stop laughing. Life was quite fun when you stopped to think about it.
Tora shot a sombre eyeful at me, probably thinking I had arrived at the gates of Hell already.
Knock knock.
At first I assumed the knocking was just my heart beats echoing oddly in my ears but as Tora strode to the door and opened it softly, I understood we had been expecting company. A figure clad in a yellow hoodie and well-fitting jeans slipped in. His face was hidden by the hood but I could see long, golden locks of hair flowing from under it. He didn't ask any unnecessary questions; he walked right past Tora to me and kneeled down. As he spoke, my fucked-up mind landed on a surprising conclusion: he was actually a she.
"Hi there. Hush hush, everything will be alright. You're safe here." I still couldn't see her face well; the shadows of the hoodie played on her face, revealing only plush lips and delicate chin. Her actions were gentle yet firm as she removed the jacket from atop the wound and gave me a quick examination. She brushed my cheek softly with her palm and continued in a reassuring voice: "Tora-baby here is going to give me a knife but don't worry, I'm not going to harm you. I have to cut the shirt, so be a good boy and stay still, okay? Good."
Her warm hand against my ice-cold skin felt like a touch of an angel; exhaustion, fear and uncertainty roared back into me as the weight of the previous days settled back onto my chest. She seemed like a nice, caring, lovable person; that kind of people really existed, I had to remind myself. Not everyone was heartless, aggressive or calculative bastards like that Byou guy, or Tora, for that matter.
This girl, I liked her. I didn't want her to leave me alone with Tora again but I didn't know how to voice it properly without sounding like a whiny brat.
"Tora, honey, I never thought of you as a man who'd take strays in," she chatted in a light manner as she began unpacking her bag.
"You get some, you give some, I guess." Tora crouched down too but didn't interfere with what she was doing.
"Has he seen him yet?"
Tora wrapped his arms around his knees and hummed. "He barged in this morning."
"I take it he wasn't all butterflies and flowers about finding a strange blond boy half his age there?"
"No, not really."
"Ah, I miss that old jealous geezer. Tell him I'll stop by after our job is finished."
"I will. He'll be delighted to see you too."
I probably passed out for a bit because the next thing I heard sounded like a part of a conversation that had started a good while earlier; a fucking huge needle going steadily in and out of my skin was also a hint I had missed out on something.
"Byou did this? He's become rash."
"He's always been rash."
"Nu-uh. I've treated Byou's victims before and I tell you, the way he uses katana, it's divine. Even the cuts are gracious. This? This is nasty. It is a flesh wound and it was probably meant as such but had it gone deeper, this poor boy would've had to take his bowels to a doctor in a cup. You should know, I stitched you up a couple of times back when you and Byou weren't in the friendliest possible terms."
"That was then, no need to dig up old stuff like that."
"Well, yes, he did give you a good beating, didn't he?" My head was heavier than ever, and painful drowsiness was weighing down my eyelids but still, I forced myself to look at the room. I could swear the girl was smiling within the shadows of the hood. Then, softly, her expression melt into a concerned one. "How's your back? I've told you, you can't do any heavy lifting. If it snaps and you get paralyzed, there's nothing I can do about it. I'm not a god you know."
Tora snorted. "I'm fine, I'm fine. You don't have to fuzz over me, you're starting to sound like..." The fatigue took me over; I couldn't hear how he finished the sentence. My eyelids fell shut, and I was drowned by calming, warm darkness once again.
I woke up almost twenty-four hours later: the sun was up and shining, gleefully throwing bright rays through the living-room's window onto my pale and swollen face. I was back on the couch in Tora's apartment. This time I had a proper bed with sheets, thick blankets and fluffy pillows; there was also a glass of water on the table and a whole mountain of painkillers next to it. I took a sip of the water and grimaced; I suspected it had been in the glass from the moment Tora had brought me back here, for that stuffy the lukewarm liquid tasted. Well, as the famous saying goes, it's the thought that counts; I downed the glass and fell back onto the couch.
"You're awake?"
Startled, I pushed myself back up to a sitting position; Tora was sitting at the kitchen table, flipping through some papers.
"You scared me," I muttered, embarrassed. As Tora didn't reply, I continued filling up the silence: "What time is it? Don't you have... work, or something?" I licked my dry lips and hoped I hadn't drank the water in such haste.
Tora piled up the papers. "It's three in the afternoon." That was all he saw fit to share with me. He took off his reading glasses and placed them atop the paper pile. "How are the bandages?"
Subconsciously, my hands flew down, followed quickly by my gaze; there where yesterday had been a burning and bleeding cut was now a thick layers of firmly tied gauze. It had been wrapped around my entire stomach, as if the one who had nursed me had wanted to be rather safe than sorry.
Tora sat down next to me and began unfolding the wraps. He glanced at the wound quickly, nodded and fastened the gauze again. "She did a good job. Don't worry, it looks worse than it really is. Take it easy for now and you'll be alright." He grabbed my glass and stood up. After re-filling it and returning it onto the table he went back to his work, ignoring me for the rest of the day. And, as I learned during the following days, his attitude was to be like that.
The next few weeks I stayed at Tora's. I didn't consider myself a prisoner; Tora never once told me not to leave the apartment. After a few days, when I was finally able to stand on my feet without his assistance, he even gave me a key and shortly advised me where to find the closest grocery store and a Chinese take-away restaurant. Soon I realized that I really didn't want to leave, either -it felt safe there. Time didn't seem to matter in that apartment. The couch became my fortress: sitting on it, I nursed my wounds, ate cup noodles and watched news. It was my area, a place in the world no one could take away from me, and it calmed me.
He was like a ghost: he came home, possibly took a shower, changed and left again. Sometimes he didn't come at all for several days but when he finally showed up, he was fresh and wearing clean clothes. He didn't dine at home; he never brought groceries there; he didn't watch TV. He slept there rarely, or so it seemed to me. Sometimes I woke up at the wee hours of the morning to a soft slam of the door as he arrived. Perhaps he spent more time there at nighttime than I knew, I wasn't sure. Most of the time he moved around so quietly that without taking a peek into his bedroom, it was hard too tell whether he was home or not.
Actually, I awaited mornings eagerly, just to see what he was wearing when he left. I still didn't know what his occupation was: most of the time he went out wearing one of his well-tailored gray suits, and usually, when he came back, he changed to a pair of jeans and a leather jacket. He was obviously a guy of good and strict taste; so why was it that that one morning I had seen him leaving wearing a shabby sweater, a pair of rugged trousers and boots, and although I hadn't heard him cough once, he had been hiding behind a mask?
So, in many aspects, he was a peculiar guy. In a way, I got used to him, to his sharp face and annoyed eyes. I began even distinguishing his expressions -yes, there was actually some variation on that invariably unimpressed, blasé face. When the hardly visible wrinkles appeared in the corners of his eyes, he was mulling over something in his mind. Those days it was better to leave him alone; unfortunate questions were answered with snappy retorts. A few times I had caught him smiling somehow triumphantly to himself. Occasionally, and this was rare, he was obviously exhausted -exhausted enough not to care to hide it from me. When he came back from a mysterious mission on one Saturday, he locked himself in the bedroom and stayed there for fourteen hours straight.
We never talked, except for the times when he inquired if my wounds were healing properly. Wednesday mornings he woke me up early and we went to run errands, or then he simply ushered me out and sternly warned me not to return before nightfall. One Tuesday night he told me to follow him. We went to Asakusa: there was another apartment, much similar to Tora's, and he simply left me there for the night. He didn't come to pick me up until Wednesday evening. He never explained, and I had accepted it. His world was absurd, like a quiet, dark version of Alice's Wonderland.
It was Friday when he changed his pattern. I was laying on the couch, dully watching some midnight suspense drama, when he burst into the apartment, a bit out of breath. Expecting him to ignore me in his normal way, I barely glanced at him and continued then with the television program. However, he walked straight to me and grabbed the remote from the small coffee table. "We have to go," he said shortly and turned the device off.
I pushed myself up to a sitting position. I gazed at him curiously. There was something... restless about him today. I had gotten used to being kicked out of the apartment every Wednesday; it was an inaudible part of our bargain. This felt different. "Are we going to be away for a long time?" I asked. I knew there was no point in asking such questions as, 'Why?' or, 'Where?'. To figure out what was going on, sheepishly adapting to his will was the quickest way.
"Two, maybe three days." His voice was hoarse. "Pack some clothes, I think he won't..." his voice trailed off, and then he began again, this time in a sharper tone: "Take enough clothes for a few days' stay, and whatever else you might need. When you're ready, come to the bookstore. I have a car parked there." And with that, he turned around and hurried away, leaving me baffled.
"O-kay," I muttered at the closing door and then, as there was nothing else I could do, I scuffed to the bedroom and started pulling garments out of Tora's dresser. He had a lot of clothes, and when I had realized he didn't really wear them, I had started feeling more comfortable using them. Now I picked a bunch of miscellaneous garments and stuffed them into one of the suitcases that Tora kept under his bed. We had, in some bizarre way, blended into one person. Perhaps I should've been afraid of him but I simply didn't know how to anymore. Wearing someone else's socks has that effect.
Mere ten minutes after Tora's appearance I was already marching down the street towards the bookstore. The streets were still busy although it was past midnight; it took some time to spot a familiar moody figure smoking beside a silver gray Toyota. I stopped next to him and obediently waited until he was finished.
"I wondered if you had found that," he said leisurely as he stubbed out the cigarette and nodded at the suitcase. "You've made yourself at home."
I shrugged and lifted the mentioned item on the backseat, choosing not to answer. "This is your car?" I asked instead and opened the front door.
Tora rounded the car to the driver's side. "Sort of," he replied and smiled. "Now, are you ready for a small trip to the countryside?"
BANDS/ARTISTS: Kiyoharu, Alice Nine, SCREW, Kagrra,, Danger Gang
CHARACTERS: Kiyoharu, Tora, Shou, Byou, Nao (ex-Kagrra,), Rei (ex-Danger Gang)
PAIRINGS: KiyoharuxTora (not the focus, though; see genres)
RATING: PG13-15 for the entire series, may get higher in the later chapters
GENRE: AU, adventure, action, crime
WARNINGS: violence, language (the whole series)
DISCLAIMER: The author has no connections to the mentioned artists; this is a work of fiction.
A/N: I'm introducing briefly a new character! The plot is going somewhere -slowly, but steadily :D I'm guessing we'll have eight chapters, so we're almost half-way through. Enjoy♥
SUMMARY: The Good Samaritan saves Shou's life one night but little does Shou know about the not-so-biblical business that has employed his rescuer.
PREVIOUS: | 01|| 02|
Someone was breathing heavily in the dim room; the inhales and exhales came in swift, violent gasps that were accompanied with weak panting. Suddenly there was blood everywhere -the floor, Tora's clothes, my hands...
My fuzzy brain connected the dots slowly; I was listening to my own pained breathing, and the blood that shone in the dimness was the same blood that had stained the jacket I was still pressing against my abdomen. A memory of a car drive lingered in the near past but... I coughed and tried to concentrate again. Yes, Tora had somehow gotten us a taxi, or at least I assumed it had been one, and... Fuck, what next? There had been stairs, and... Why was it so hard to remember?
I didn't know where we were anymore. I had thought we had come to Tora's downtown apartment but the drive had been too short, plus the apartment was much smaller and had hardly any furniture in there, and... And... It was hard to focus. I was drifting further and further away from the situation where I was; the pain was ringing through my entire body, constantly messing up with my train of thought.
I curled tighter up on the floor.
"Hey, boy! Stay with me, okay?"
Tora was hovering near the door with his shirt's sleeves rolled up. He didn't seem to be especially distressed because of me; if the blood on his shirt and arms was excluded, and if he had fixed his slightly ruffled hair, he could've been in a normal everyday meeting discussing insurance markets instead of looking after a bleeding stranger.
Here I was, probably dying slowly, and all I did was imagine Tora typing up and printing documents. I had never thought about dying but now, as the said occasion was at hand, I realized I didn't really care whether I died by being cut half with a sword or by calmly sleeping away in my own bed. Not dying at all would've been nice but well, apparently it wasn't an option anymore...
And then I burst into a fit of giggles. It hurt like hell, and I could feel blood squirting from the wound under the drenched jacket but I couldn't stop laughing. Life was quite fun when you stopped to think about it.
Tora shot a sombre eyeful at me, probably thinking I had arrived at the gates of Hell already.
Knock knock.
At first I assumed the knocking was just my heart beats echoing oddly in my ears but as Tora strode to the door and opened it softly, I understood we had been expecting company. A figure clad in a yellow hoodie and well-fitting jeans slipped in. His face was hidden by the hood but I could see long, golden locks of hair flowing from under it. He didn't ask any unnecessary questions; he walked right past Tora to me and kneeled down. As he spoke, my fucked-up mind landed on a surprising conclusion: he was actually a she.
"Hi there. Hush hush, everything will be alright. You're safe here." I still couldn't see her face well; the shadows of the hoodie played on her face, revealing only plush lips and delicate chin. Her actions were gentle yet firm as she removed the jacket from atop the wound and gave me a quick examination. She brushed my cheek softly with her palm and continued in a reassuring voice: "Tora-baby here is going to give me a knife but don't worry, I'm not going to harm you. I have to cut the shirt, so be a good boy and stay still, okay? Good."
Her warm hand against my ice-cold skin felt like a touch of an angel; exhaustion, fear and uncertainty roared back into me as the weight of the previous days settled back onto my chest. She seemed like a nice, caring, lovable person; that kind of people really existed, I had to remind myself. Not everyone was heartless, aggressive or calculative bastards like that Byou guy, or Tora, for that matter.
This girl, I liked her. I didn't want her to leave me alone with Tora again but I didn't know how to voice it properly without sounding like a whiny brat.
"Tora, honey, I never thought of you as a man who'd take strays in," she chatted in a light manner as she began unpacking her bag.
"You get some, you give some, I guess." Tora crouched down too but didn't interfere with what she was doing.
"Has he seen him yet?"
Tora wrapped his arms around his knees and hummed. "He barged in this morning."
"I take it he wasn't all butterflies and flowers about finding a strange blond boy half his age there?"
"No, not really."
"Ah, I miss that old jealous geezer. Tell him I'll stop by after our job is finished."
"I will. He'll be delighted to see you too."
I probably passed out for a bit because the next thing I heard sounded like a part of a conversation that had started a good while earlier; a fucking huge needle going steadily in and out of my skin was also a hint I had missed out on something.
"Byou did this? He's become rash."
"He's always been rash."
"Nu-uh. I've treated Byou's victims before and I tell you, the way he uses katana, it's divine. Even the cuts are gracious. This? This is nasty. It is a flesh wound and it was probably meant as such but had it gone deeper, this poor boy would've had to take his bowels to a doctor in a cup. You should know, I stitched you up a couple of times back when you and Byou weren't in the friendliest possible terms."
"That was then, no need to dig up old stuff like that."
"Well, yes, he did give you a good beating, didn't he?" My head was heavier than ever, and painful drowsiness was weighing down my eyelids but still, I forced myself to look at the room. I could swear the girl was smiling within the shadows of the hood. Then, softly, her expression melt into a concerned one. "How's your back? I've told you, you can't do any heavy lifting. If it snaps and you get paralyzed, there's nothing I can do about it. I'm not a god you know."
Tora snorted. "I'm fine, I'm fine. You don't have to fuzz over me, you're starting to sound like..." The fatigue took me over; I couldn't hear how he finished the sentence. My eyelids fell shut, and I was drowned by calming, warm darkness once again.
I woke up almost twenty-four hours later: the sun was up and shining, gleefully throwing bright rays through the living-room's window onto my pale and swollen face. I was back on the couch in Tora's apartment. This time I had a proper bed with sheets, thick blankets and fluffy pillows; there was also a glass of water on the table and a whole mountain of painkillers next to it. I took a sip of the water and grimaced; I suspected it had been in the glass from the moment Tora had brought me back here, for that stuffy the lukewarm liquid tasted. Well, as the famous saying goes, it's the thought that counts; I downed the glass and fell back onto the couch.
"You're awake?"
Startled, I pushed myself back up to a sitting position; Tora was sitting at the kitchen table, flipping through some papers.
"You scared me," I muttered, embarrassed. As Tora didn't reply, I continued filling up the silence: "What time is it? Don't you have... work, or something?" I licked my dry lips and hoped I hadn't drank the water in such haste.
Tora piled up the papers. "It's three in the afternoon." That was all he saw fit to share with me. He took off his reading glasses and placed them atop the paper pile. "How are the bandages?"
Subconsciously, my hands flew down, followed quickly by my gaze; there where yesterday had been a burning and bleeding cut was now a thick layers of firmly tied gauze. It had been wrapped around my entire stomach, as if the one who had nursed me had wanted to be rather safe than sorry.
Tora sat down next to me and began unfolding the wraps. He glanced at the wound quickly, nodded and fastened the gauze again. "She did a good job. Don't worry, it looks worse than it really is. Take it easy for now and you'll be alright." He grabbed my glass and stood up. After re-filling it and returning it onto the table he went back to his work, ignoring me for the rest of the day. And, as I learned during the following days, his attitude was to be like that.
The next few weeks I stayed at Tora's. I didn't consider myself a prisoner; Tora never once told me not to leave the apartment. After a few days, when I was finally able to stand on my feet without his assistance, he even gave me a key and shortly advised me where to find the closest grocery store and a Chinese take-away restaurant. Soon I realized that I really didn't want to leave, either -it felt safe there. Time didn't seem to matter in that apartment. The couch became my fortress: sitting on it, I nursed my wounds, ate cup noodles and watched news. It was my area, a place in the world no one could take away from me, and it calmed me.
He was like a ghost: he came home, possibly took a shower, changed and left again. Sometimes he didn't come at all for several days but when he finally showed up, he was fresh and wearing clean clothes. He didn't dine at home; he never brought groceries there; he didn't watch TV. He slept there rarely, or so it seemed to me. Sometimes I woke up at the wee hours of the morning to a soft slam of the door as he arrived. Perhaps he spent more time there at nighttime than I knew, I wasn't sure. Most of the time he moved around so quietly that without taking a peek into his bedroom, it was hard too tell whether he was home or not.
Actually, I awaited mornings eagerly, just to see what he was wearing when he left. I still didn't know what his occupation was: most of the time he went out wearing one of his well-tailored gray suits, and usually, when he came back, he changed to a pair of jeans and a leather jacket. He was obviously a guy of good and strict taste; so why was it that that one morning I had seen him leaving wearing a shabby sweater, a pair of rugged trousers and boots, and although I hadn't heard him cough once, he had been hiding behind a mask?
So, in many aspects, he was a peculiar guy. In a way, I got used to him, to his sharp face and annoyed eyes. I began even distinguishing his expressions -yes, there was actually some variation on that invariably unimpressed, blasé face. When the hardly visible wrinkles appeared in the corners of his eyes, he was mulling over something in his mind. Those days it was better to leave him alone; unfortunate questions were answered with snappy retorts. A few times I had caught him smiling somehow triumphantly to himself. Occasionally, and this was rare, he was obviously exhausted -exhausted enough not to care to hide it from me. When he came back from a mysterious mission on one Saturday, he locked himself in the bedroom and stayed there for fourteen hours straight.
We never talked, except for the times when he inquired if my wounds were healing properly. Wednesday mornings he woke me up early and we went to run errands, or then he simply ushered me out and sternly warned me not to return before nightfall. One Tuesday night he told me to follow him. We went to Asakusa: there was another apartment, much similar to Tora's, and he simply left me there for the night. He didn't come to pick me up until Wednesday evening. He never explained, and I had accepted it. His world was absurd, like a quiet, dark version of Alice's Wonderland.
It was Friday when he changed his pattern. I was laying on the couch, dully watching some midnight suspense drama, when he burst into the apartment, a bit out of breath. Expecting him to ignore me in his normal way, I barely glanced at him and continued then with the television program. However, he walked straight to me and grabbed the remote from the small coffee table. "We have to go," he said shortly and turned the device off.
I pushed myself up to a sitting position. I gazed at him curiously. There was something... restless about him today. I had gotten used to being kicked out of the apartment every Wednesday; it was an inaudible part of our bargain. This felt different. "Are we going to be away for a long time?" I asked. I knew there was no point in asking such questions as, 'Why?' or, 'Where?'. To figure out what was going on, sheepishly adapting to his will was the quickest way.
"Two, maybe three days." His voice was hoarse. "Pack some clothes, I think he won't..." his voice trailed off, and then he began again, this time in a sharper tone: "Take enough clothes for a few days' stay, and whatever else you might need. When you're ready, come to the bookstore. I have a car parked there." And with that, he turned around and hurried away, leaving me baffled.
"O-kay," I muttered at the closing door and then, as there was nothing else I could do, I scuffed to the bedroom and started pulling garments out of Tora's dresser. He had a lot of clothes, and when I had realized he didn't really wear them, I had started feeling more comfortable using them. Now I picked a bunch of miscellaneous garments and stuffed them into one of the suitcases that Tora kept under his bed. We had, in some bizarre way, blended into one person. Perhaps I should've been afraid of him but I simply didn't know how to anymore. Wearing someone else's socks has that effect.
Mere ten minutes after Tora's appearance I was already marching down the street towards the bookstore. The streets were still busy although it was past midnight; it took some time to spot a familiar moody figure smoking beside a silver gray Toyota. I stopped next to him and obediently waited until he was finished.
"I wondered if you had found that," he said leisurely as he stubbed out the cigarette and nodded at the suitcase. "You've made yourself at home."
I shrugged and lifted the mentioned item on the backseat, choosing not to answer. "This is your car?" I asked instead and opened the front door.
Tora rounded the car to the driver's side. "Sort of," he replied and smiled. "Now, are you ready for a small trip to the countryside?"