What's this? More fic?
Title: 5 Mistakes Abe Takaya Didn't Actually Make (4/5)
Fandom: Oofuri
Characters: kind of one-sided Abe/Mihashi, almost the entire Nishiura baseball team, Kanou
Rating: R. Because Abe is naughty.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Notes: Still for shikishi. Still totally unbeta'd. :| I must warn you, everything I know about gangs in Japan, I learned from BL manga.
Abe had once thought there would be more debauchery involved and less crouching next to scared boys amidst the mess and stink of rotting garbage. He knows better now: he can feel Ren trembling next to him and sighs, grabs his hand to calm him down.
“You’re a good thief,” Abe says, and tries to look Ren in the eyes while he says it. It’s difficult; both of them are embarrassed and even if Abe could keep his gaze on Ren’s face, Ren’s eyes keep darting away.
“You’re a liar,” Ren says quietly, and Abe has to laugh, short and silent, because it’s true, deception is part of the whole criminal thing, but he’s not lying about Ren being a good thief, and says so.
“I know how hard you’ve worked,” Abe adds, and squeezes Ren’s hand tightly once before letting go. Ren takes one deep breath and then disappears into the building in front of them.
And Abe waits. His job right now is to serve as a lookout, but he gets edgy when Ren’s not in his sight, and the six minutes it takes for Ren to come back are impossibly long. He’s slow, still, but Abe knows he’s done the job perfectly, no triggered alarms and a smile of victory on his face. It’s worth it, every torturous second of waiting, for that smile.
It’s a far cry from the first time he’d seen Ren, soaked and too skinny and barely conscious in Momokan’s arms. It had been raining that day, the kind of hard steady rain that sounded like horses on the rooftop and Abe was glad to be out of.
“Look what I found,” Momokan had said, and then Ren had been one of them. It was later they found out that he could steal, that his name was Ren, that he didn’t want to talk about his past or his family. None of that mattered anyway; he’d been theirs the moment Momokan had stepped through their doorway with him, and all the rest was secondary.
She’d left him mostly in Abe’s care, even if his personality got on Abe’s nerves and Tajima was the one who understood best what he was trying to say through his stutter. Abe still doesn’t know why Momokan picked him, but he’s grateful now, because for all that Ren’s adoring gaze means responsibility and so much worrying that he’ll get himself caught, or hurt, or worse, it also means Abe gets to see Ren’s rare smiles more than anybody else. They’re dangerous, Ren’s smiles, more addictive than the drugs they steal and sell, and there’s no rehab for people like Abe, except for some places he’s heard of in America, but he figures it’s too late for him anyway.
Abe wonders, sometimes, about Momokan’s predilection for picking up strays. It’s why they call her Momokan-a joke that she had enough boys in her house for a baseball team. “No children of my own,” she’d told him once, but she’d only been twenty-three and even by then Abe’d had over a decade of experience recognizing lies. He doesn’t think it has to do with her being a gang leader either; all of Momokan’s boys end up in her gang, Nishiura, but she never asks them to. They all join on their own. They all want to be useful to her.
Abe is thinking about this as they return to the house, and with Ren quiet by his side he can do all the thinking he wants. It’s completely different in Momokan’s house; the second Abe opens the door it’s noise, noise, noise.
“How did it go? Did you get it?” Tajima runs up to them, all questions and energy and pouncing on Ren like an overgrown puppy, and Abe doesn’t miss the way Ren flinches at the contact, still, before nodding his head too many times and giving Abe all the credit when all he’d done was sit there.
Momokan walks out, then, and Ren extracts himself from Tajima’s clutches long enough to hand Momokan a slip of paper-it’s just information he’s stolen, this time-and Momokan looks at it and then calls Abe and Hanai into the kitchen to plan, which is how Abe knows it’s dangerous. The first thing he says is that they keep Ren out of it, and it’s almost pathetic, the way they don’t even bother giving him suspicious looks anymore, just act like it’s expected and move on. They decide to send Izumi because he’s their fastest and Suyama and Hanai because they’re the best shots they have, right after Tajima, and Tajima’s never seriously injured anybody and they’re not sure he can. The decision is Momokan’s, in the end, and she overrules Hanai and says that Tajima has to go.
That’s the end of it, and when they tell Tajima he runs around the house wreaking havoc in his excitement until it’s time for dinner, which diverts his attention to food. Dinner at the house is as noisy an affair as everything else is, and the table is a little too small for all the boys around it, but it’s nice, almost like having a family, even if they are a bunch of underage criminals. Momokan is probably the best thing that’s ever happened to any of them, and they know that without Nishiura they’d probably still be criminals, just dirtier, or in jail, or dead.
Abe remembers his last gang, and Haruna-san, and bruises, all over, always. House rules at Momokan’s say the boys aren’t allowed to beat each other up, but Abe still dreams of Haruna-san sometimes, knows that the other boys have seen him flinching in his sleep; he’s always meaner the day after a Haruna dream, not on purpose, but because part of him feels he needs to make up for it.
That night, though, Abe dreams of someone else.
Ren’s eyes are wide, wide, and focused entirely on Abe.
“I told you that I hate thieves who steal things from me.”
“I would n-never take anything from Abe-kun!”
“You did. You stole my heart.” Even unconscious, Abe knows it’s stupid.
It’s enough to wake him and he gets up and jerks off in the bathroom, and when he walks back into the shared bedroom he thinks he sees eyes gleaming at him in the dark. Tajima’s, from the location, and so Abe doesn’t care, because Tajima has no right to judge. Then he looks at Ren, in the futon next to his, curled defensively even asleep, and Abe feels like a pervert.
He doesn’t fall asleep again for hours.
The next night, Hanai and Izumi have to help a limping Tajima into the house, Suyama trailing behind them holding a cloth to his arm, all four of them looking sheepish.
“We have the drugs, at least,” Tajima starts, but Momokan cuts him off, caring more about the fact that two of her boys were shot than anything else. She calls their doctor, Shiga-sensei, who isn’t really a doctor, but knows enough and doesn’t ask questions and that’s what matters.
When she calls Hanai and Abe into the kitchen, Hanai doesn’t say anything about being right about Tajima. “It was Mihoshi,” he tells her instead, and Momokan’s expression is strange when she hears. It’s almost a smile, but Abe doesn’t really think there’s anything to smile about. Then he realizes she means revenge, and Abe knows Nishiura is going to take over the city one day, because too many people think Momokan is soft because she’s a woman, and that is an enormous, enormous mistake.
“Abe and Hanai, you’re going. Take Ren and Mizutani with you.” Abe wants to protest but Momokan continues before he can. “Mihoshi gets support from the Mihashi family. I want you to break into old man Mihashi’s house and steal something. I don’t care what it is, as long as it’s valuable. You’ll go tomorrow.” That’s that, and if they’re going to steal something, they’re going to need Ren anyway.
Breaking in is surprisingly easy; it doesn’t even take Ren ten seconds to get them past the security system. Abe is confused, because the night before Ren had been more nervous than usual, so pale Abe had worried Ren would faint, and completely uncommunicative. Ren leads them down hallway after hallway and Abe wonders how nervous he must have been, to have studied the layout of this place enough to navigate without thinking.
Then footsteps come, and Abe is wondering which room is safest to duck into when Ren says, “In here,” and tugs Abe into what looks like someone’s bedroom. There’s a portrait on the wall and Abe understands suddenly why Ren never told them his family name, why Ren was nervous about this particular assignment.
It doesn’t take long for Hanai and Mizutani to notice.
“Ren,” Mizutani starts, “is that you?”
It’s a family portrait, and there’s a boy in the picture. He’s young and in formal clothing, and he’s also clearly Ren.
The real Ren is shaking, and pale, and looks like he’s about to cry.
“My name is Mihashi Ren,” he says quietly, and then he does cry, silent tears that Abe only knows about because of the jerking of his shoulders and the spots forming on the carpet, because Ren won’t look at any of them.
Abe wants more than anything to fix this, but they don’t have time and the footsteps sound like they’re going away, which means this is their chance to grab something and leave.
“What are we taking?” he asks Ren, which is the best reassurance Abe can give right now; he’s close to wishing Tajima were around to help, but Ren looks at him, finally, before grabbing a vase off the nightstand and heading for the window.
“I w-want to leave now,” Ren says, his voice barely a whisper, and none of them argue.
They go back to Momokan’s in silence, and when they give her the vase, Abe realizes she’s known all along. He’s not sure he wants to think about it, but soon everybody else knows, because Mizutani tells them all, and then Abe can’t think about anything else.
It explains so much, but not enough. Now Abe looks at Ren’s delicate bone structure and he thinks young master, but then he sees the way Ren cowers when people make sudden movements, remembers that Ren was alone in the rain and that doesn’t fit at all.
Unsurprisingly, it’s Tajima who does the tactless thing and asks. “If you have a family, why are you here with us?”
It takes a while for Ren to answer, but they’re all used to that.
“They didn’t like me in Mihoshi,” Ren says finally, quietly, and he’s not even stuttering, just looking more hopeless than Abe’s ever seen him. It makes Abe uncomfortable, and he wants it to stop, but Ren’s not done talking. “I wasn’t any good at anything, but they had to take me with them because of my grandfather. I ruined a lot of jobs.” He crouches down, puts his arms over his head, like he thinks everyone in Nishiura is going to start telling him he’s no-good now, and Abe has the sudden and very intense urge to cause pain to everyone who ever made Ren think he was worthless.
Instead he tells Ren to steal Hanai’s wallet, and Ren does it, easy, even with Hanai expecting it, and Ren’s not looking so hopeless anymore, just looking at Abe like he’s the answer to everything, and it’s good but it’s heavy, and Abe’s trying to figure out what to do that doesn’t involve hugging Ren like Tajima or something when they hear the knocking at the door.
“You’re the asshole who shot Suyama!” Abe hears, and when he goes to look, there’s a guy with his hands in the air, peering into the house. Instead of Hanai or Izumi, who’d actually been there, he’s focused on Ren. Abe doesn’t like it. There’s recognition on Ren’s face, and Abe likes it even less.
“K-kanou-kun,” Ren stutters. “What are you doing here?”
“Mihashi,” Kanou-says, smiling, and Abe really, really doesn’t like him. “I saw you yesterday leaving your grandfather’s house. Don’t worry-I didn’t tell anyone or anything. I just want to talk to you.”
“O-okay,” Ren says, and they go into the backyard. Because most Nishiura gang members like to sometimes pretend they’re decent people despite the whole criminal thing, Tajima is the only one who eavesdrops.
“He wants Ren to go back to Mihoshi!” Tajima yells, and that’s when Hanai drags him away.
And Abe feels sudden panic, upsetting his stomach and squeezing his chest, and he wants so badly to run outside and shake Ren and make him say that he belongs with Nishiura now, with Abe, who understands that Ren’s worth something, and Abe hopes, hard, that Ren understands that now, too, that he won’t go back with people who don’t, that he won’t leave them-
And then the front door opens.
It’s Ren, alone.
He doesn’t say, “I am worthwhile,” but he does say, “I want to stay with you.”
He’s still too thin. He still shakes, still has that scared look in his too-large eyes. But he says it again: “I want to stay with you.”
It’s good enough.
Fandom: Oofuri
Characters: kind of one-sided Abe/Mihashi, almost the entire Nishiura baseball team, Kanou
Rating: R. Because Abe is naughty.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Notes: Still for shikishi. Still totally unbeta'd. :| I must warn you, everything I know about gangs in Japan, I learned from BL manga.
Abe had once thought there would be more debauchery involved and less crouching next to scared boys amidst the mess and stink of rotting garbage. He knows better now: he can feel Ren trembling next to him and sighs, grabs his hand to calm him down.
“You’re a good thief,” Abe says, and tries to look Ren in the eyes while he says it. It’s difficult; both of them are embarrassed and even if Abe could keep his gaze on Ren’s face, Ren’s eyes keep darting away.
“You’re a liar,” Ren says quietly, and Abe has to laugh, short and silent, because it’s true, deception is part of the whole criminal thing, but he’s not lying about Ren being a good thief, and says so.
“I know how hard you’ve worked,” Abe adds, and squeezes Ren’s hand tightly once before letting go. Ren takes one deep breath and then disappears into the building in front of them.
And Abe waits. His job right now is to serve as a lookout, but he gets edgy when Ren’s not in his sight, and the six minutes it takes for Ren to come back are impossibly long. He’s slow, still, but Abe knows he’s done the job perfectly, no triggered alarms and a smile of victory on his face. It’s worth it, every torturous second of waiting, for that smile.
It’s a far cry from the first time he’d seen Ren, soaked and too skinny and barely conscious in Momokan’s arms. It had been raining that day, the kind of hard steady rain that sounded like horses on the rooftop and Abe was glad to be out of.
“Look what I found,” Momokan had said, and then Ren had been one of them. It was later they found out that he could steal, that his name was Ren, that he didn’t want to talk about his past or his family. None of that mattered anyway; he’d been theirs the moment Momokan had stepped through their doorway with him, and all the rest was secondary.
She’d left him mostly in Abe’s care, even if his personality got on Abe’s nerves and Tajima was the one who understood best what he was trying to say through his stutter. Abe still doesn’t know why Momokan picked him, but he’s grateful now, because for all that Ren’s adoring gaze means responsibility and so much worrying that he’ll get himself caught, or hurt, or worse, it also means Abe gets to see Ren’s rare smiles more than anybody else. They’re dangerous, Ren’s smiles, more addictive than the drugs they steal and sell, and there’s no rehab for people like Abe, except for some places he’s heard of in America, but he figures it’s too late for him anyway.
Abe wonders, sometimes, about Momokan’s predilection for picking up strays. It’s why they call her Momokan-a joke that she had enough boys in her house for a baseball team. “No children of my own,” she’d told him once, but she’d only been twenty-three and even by then Abe’d had over a decade of experience recognizing lies. He doesn’t think it has to do with her being a gang leader either; all of Momokan’s boys end up in her gang, Nishiura, but she never asks them to. They all join on their own. They all want to be useful to her.
Abe is thinking about this as they return to the house, and with Ren quiet by his side he can do all the thinking he wants. It’s completely different in Momokan’s house; the second Abe opens the door it’s noise, noise, noise.
“How did it go? Did you get it?” Tajima runs up to them, all questions and energy and pouncing on Ren like an overgrown puppy, and Abe doesn’t miss the way Ren flinches at the contact, still, before nodding his head too many times and giving Abe all the credit when all he’d done was sit there.
Momokan walks out, then, and Ren extracts himself from Tajima’s clutches long enough to hand Momokan a slip of paper-it’s just information he’s stolen, this time-and Momokan looks at it and then calls Abe and Hanai into the kitchen to plan, which is how Abe knows it’s dangerous. The first thing he says is that they keep Ren out of it, and it’s almost pathetic, the way they don’t even bother giving him suspicious looks anymore, just act like it’s expected and move on. They decide to send Izumi because he’s their fastest and Suyama and Hanai because they’re the best shots they have, right after Tajima, and Tajima’s never seriously injured anybody and they’re not sure he can. The decision is Momokan’s, in the end, and she overrules Hanai and says that Tajima has to go.
That’s the end of it, and when they tell Tajima he runs around the house wreaking havoc in his excitement until it’s time for dinner, which diverts his attention to food. Dinner at the house is as noisy an affair as everything else is, and the table is a little too small for all the boys around it, but it’s nice, almost like having a family, even if they are a bunch of underage criminals. Momokan is probably the best thing that’s ever happened to any of them, and they know that without Nishiura they’d probably still be criminals, just dirtier, or in jail, or dead.
Abe remembers his last gang, and Haruna-san, and bruises, all over, always. House rules at Momokan’s say the boys aren’t allowed to beat each other up, but Abe still dreams of Haruna-san sometimes, knows that the other boys have seen him flinching in his sleep; he’s always meaner the day after a Haruna dream, not on purpose, but because part of him feels he needs to make up for it.
That night, though, Abe dreams of someone else.
Ren’s eyes are wide, wide, and focused entirely on Abe.
“I told you that I hate thieves who steal things from me.”
“I would n-never take anything from Abe-kun!”
“You did. You stole my heart.” Even unconscious, Abe knows it’s stupid.
It’s enough to wake him and he gets up and jerks off in the bathroom, and when he walks back into the shared bedroom he thinks he sees eyes gleaming at him in the dark. Tajima’s, from the location, and so Abe doesn’t care, because Tajima has no right to judge. Then he looks at Ren, in the futon next to his, curled defensively even asleep, and Abe feels like a pervert.
He doesn’t fall asleep again for hours.
The next night, Hanai and Izumi have to help a limping Tajima into the house, Suyama trailing behind them holding a cloth to his arm, all four of them looking sheepish.
“We have the drugs, at least,” Tajima starts, but Momokan cuts him off, caring more about the fact that two of her boys were shot than anything else. She calls their doctor, Shiga-sensei, who isn’t really a doctor, but knows enough and doesn’t ask questions and that’s what matters.
When she calls Hanai and Abe into the kitchen, Hanai doesn’t say anything about being right about Tajima. “It was Mihoshi,” he tells her instead, and Momokan’s expression is strange when she hears. It’s almost a smile, but Abe doesn’t really think there’s anything to smile about. Then he realizes she means revenge, and Abe knows Nishiura is going to take over the city one day, because too many people think Momokan is soft because she’s a woman, and that is an enormous, enormous mistake.
“Abe and Hanai, you’re going. Take Ren and Mizutani with you.” Abe wants to protest but Momokan continues before he can. “Mihoshi gets support from the Mihashi family. I want you to break into old man Mihashi’s house and steal something. I don’t care what it is, as long as it’s valuable. You’ll go tomorrow.” That’s that, and if they’re going to steal something, they’re going to need Ren anyway.
Breaking in is surprisingly easy; it doesn’t even take Ren ten seconds to get them past the security system. Abe is confused, because the night before Ren had been more nervous than usual, so pale Abe had worried Ren would faint, and completely uncommunicative. Ren leads them down hallway after hallway and Abe wonders how nervous he must have been, to have studied the layout of this place enough to navigate without thinking.
Then footsteps come, and Abe is wondering which room is safest to duck into when Ren says, “In here,” and tugs Abe into what looks like someone’s bedroom. There’s a portrait on the wall and Abe understands suddenly why Ren never told them his family name, why Ren was nervous about this particular assignment.
It doesn’t take long for Hanai and Mizutani to notice.
“Ren,” Mizutani starts, “is that you?”
It’s a family portrait, and there’s a boy in the picture. He’s young and in formal clothing, and he’s also clearly Ren.
The real Ren is shaking, and pale, and looks like he’s about to cry.
“My name is Mihashi Ren,” he says quietly, and then he does cry, silent tears that Abe only knows about because of the jerking of his shoulders and the spots forming on the carpet, because Ren won’t look at any of them.
Abe wants more than anything to fix this, but they don’t have time and the footsteps sound like they’re going away, which means this is their chance to grab something and leave.
“What are we taking?” he asks Ren, which is the best reassurance Abe can give right now; he’s close to wishing Tajima were around to help, but Ren looks at him, finally, before grabbing a vase off the nightstand and heading for the window.
“I w-want to leave now,” Ren says, his voice barely a whisper, and none of them argue.
They go back to Momokan’s in silence, and when they give her the vase, Abe realizes she’s known all along. He’s not sure he wants to think about it, but soon everybody else knows, because Mizutani tells them all, and then Abe can’t think about anything else.
It explains so much, but not enough. Now Abe looks at Ren’s delicate bone structure and he thinks young master, but then he sees the way Ren cowers when people make sudden movements, remembers that Ren was alone in the rain and that doesn’t fit at all.
Unsurprisingly, it’s Tajima who does the tactless thing and asks. “If you have a family, why are you here with us?”
It takes a while for Ren to answer, but they’re all used to that.
“They didn’t like me in Mihoshi,” Ren says finally, quietly, and he’s not even stuttering, just looking more hopeless than Abe’s ever seen him. It makes Abe uncomfortable, and he wants it to stop, but Ren’s not done talking. “I wasn’t any good at anything, but they had to take me with them because of my grandfather. I ruined a lot of jobs.” He crouches down, puts his arms over his head, like he thinks everyone in Nishiura is going to start telling him he’s no-good now, and Abe has the sudden and very intense urge to cause pain to everyone who ever made Ren think he was worthless.
Instead he tells Ren to steal Hanai’s wallet, and Ren does it, easy, even with Hanai expecting it, and Ren’s not looking so hopeless anymore, just looking at Abe like he’s the answer to everything, and it’s good but it’s heavy, and Abe’s trying to figure out what to do that doesn’t involve hugging Ren like Tajima or something when they hear the knocking at the door.
“You’re the asshole who shot Suyama!” Abe hears, and when he goes to look, there’s a guy with his hands in the air, peering into the house. Instead of Hanai or Izumi, who’d actually been there, he’s focused on Ren. Abe doesn’t like it. There’s recognition on Ren’s face, and Abe likes it even less.
“K-kanou-kun,” Ren stutters. “What are you doing here?”
“Mihashi,” Kanou-says, smiling, and Abe really, really doesn’t like him. “I saw you yesterday leaving your grandfather’s house. Don’t worry-I didn’t tell anyone or anything. I just want to talk to you.”
“O-okay,” Ren says, and they go into the backyard. Because most Nishiura gang members like to sometimes pretend they’re decent people despite the whole criminal thing, Tajima is the only one who eavesdrops.
“He wants Ren to go back to Mihoshi!” Tajima yells, and that’s when Hanai drags him away.
And Abe feels sudden panic, upsetting his stomach and squeezing his chest, and he wants so badly to run outside and shake Ren and make him say that he belongs with Nishiura now, with Abe, who understands that Ren’s worth something, and Abe hopes, hard, that Ren understands that now, too, that he won’t go back with people who don’t, that he won’t leave them-
And then the front door opens.
It’s Ren, alone.
He doesn’t say, “I am worthwhile,” but he does say, “I want to stay with you.”
He’s still too thin. He still shakes, still has that scared look in his too-large eyes. But he says it again: “I want to stay with you.”
It’s good enough.