part 292: "Yoji, how *could* you?"
Previous installments are available in my Memories here. Please make sure the Memory page is set to sort by Description to get the entries in the closest-to-correct order. Or you can read it at its other home on Archive of Our Own.
"Glass Houses" part 292/?
By Viridian5
4/2003 - present
RATING: R. If m/m interaction bothers you, pass this by. AU.
SPOILERS: Glühen.
SUMMARY: After Aya's sister dies, Schwarz tries to save themselves and Aya from the mistakes of the Dramatic CDs and Glühen Schwarz tries to save him from himself--for their own reasons, of course--and neither they nor Weiß are ever the same again.
ARCHIVAL/DISTRIBUTION: No, not yet. This is a trial run of a piece of an unfinished fic.
DISCLAIMERS: All things Weiß Kreuz belong to Koyasu Takehito, Project Weiß, Polygram k.k., and Animate Film. No infringement intended.
NOTES: Thanks to rosaleendhu and red_squared for audiencing, typo-watch, and encouragement. Special thanks to red_squared for help going on. Thanks to 'nat for "puisín," which she says probably sounds like "pu-sheen." Inspirational music includes Covenant's United States of Mind, mayatawi's V Mix the Second CD (Jane Jensen, Kidneythieves, Poe's rock version of "Hello," Kristen Barry's "Ordinary Life," Lacuna Coil), Linkin Park's Meteora, A Perfect Circle's Thirteenth Step, Pigface's Easy Listening..., Shriekback's "The Bastard Sons of Enoch," Zeromancer's Eurotrash, and Neuroticfish's Les Chansons Neurotiques.
I am not responsible for any therapy bills incurred as a result of trauma from doing research on things mentioned in this story. If you look up, say, "butter dog porn" on your own, I refuse to take the blame. I've been told that it's a bad idea to eat soup or drink while reading "Glass Houses."
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"Glass Houses" part 292
By Viridian5
========================
“Thank you. Goodbye,” Mamoru said into his cell phone. How many emergency calls like it had he made today? He’d lost count. In the seat next to him, Katsura cast him a worried glance. Did he look as tired as he felt? Though maybe he didn’t have to look it, since she might be lightly monitoring his mind as well as shielding it from telepaths.
He wanted to kill Crawford so badly.
A mass slaughter job that had probably been less than half an hour of work for Schwarz had turned Tokyo’s underground and Kritiker upside-down, with effects that probably echoed throughout Japan. Gangs had broken up and reformed. Sting and undercover operations Kritiker agents had spent months on had exploded or died from the deaths of informants, middlemen, and connections. Agents and criminals alike scrambled to find new people to get them what they wanted. Groups desperately looked for psionic agents of their own to help them compete in the new arms race, which made Mamoru graduate some from his school in Okinawa earlier than he’d like.
The remnants of one of the gangs Schwarz had killed had contracted a telepath to help them take Schwarz down. A bloodbath at a hotel in a sketchy part of town may have resulted from one of their attempts. Something about the style of the mayhem said “Schwarz” to Mamoru.
The gang that had hired Schwarz found itself besieged from all sides from people out for vengeance and/or looking to take on the top surviving group and gain the title for themselves. Their client hadn’t fully thought out the consequences of what he’d asked them to do, and Schwarz hadn’t volunteered any advice, just taken the money and done the slaughter. The leader no doubt tried to contact Schwarz for help, but if he had the same experience Mamoru had the several times *he’d* tried he couldn’t get Schwarz to respond to calls, e-mails, or texts. What the hell were they doing?
Chaos and bloodshed reigned throughout the city, requiring Mamoru to make endless personal visits and phone calls to various organizations and parts of his own to try to calm things down. He’d reassigned various Kritiker teams. He hadn’t taken a real break that wasn’t actually him sitting in his car on his way to another meeting or eaten since early this morning.
Crawford had basically set several bags of shit on Mamoru’s doorstep, lit them on fire, then waltzed off laughing. It no doubt did his massive ego a lot of good to so quickly and easily upend everything in Tokyo.
Mamoru had left Weiß for last. Draco picked up his call after one ring, saying, “Sir, I’m so glad you called.”
“Have you been able to feel what’s going on?” he had to ask.
“I strengthened my shields because things have felt rougher today, if that’s what you’re asking, sir.”
So she hadn’t. A lot of the local telepaths had just strengthened their shields so they wouldn’t have to feel the chaos instead of investigated the cause. It had seemed to be almost instinctive to them, a protective measure.
Before he got into that, he asked, “Why did you want to hear from me, then?”
“Yoji had apparently been spending a lot of time around Schwarz in my absence, and when Ken confronted him about it Yoji blew up and took Sasha away with him, presumably Schwarz-ward. They’ve been gone for hours, with no word. If something horrible had happened to them I’d probably feel it, but.... I didn’t track them down because that’s something Eszett would do to us, keep us closely monitored all the time. However, if I had permission from his boss....”
Mamoru hadn’t thought he could get much angrier, but the rage flared above his exhaustion anyway. Yoji had exquisite timing as usual. And of course he’d dragged one of Weiß’s telepaths into it with him, the better to hide himself. “You have my full permission to track them down,” he said.
“Yes, sir.” She sounded almost maliciously happy. “I can’t find them--Sasha may have shielded them from being searched out--but I’m scanning for people around them and... uhm.”
“What? Is Yoji okay?”
“...they’re at a club. Yoji and Prodigy are flirting with each other. I can’t read any deeper into Prodigy without breaking into his shields, which he and Guilty might notice so I’m forbearing, so there might be more going on, some detail I’m missing, but it does seem like they’re flirting. I’m sorry, sir. But Yoji flirts with *everything*: women, men, children, animals, and inanimate objects.”
But Yoji knew about Nagi and shouldn’t have been flirting with him, and definitely shouldn’t have continued flirting when Nagi was flirting back. Mamoru decided that he felt angrier at Yoji, who had more experience and knew better.
What was one more wound and betrayal after a day full of them? But this one hurt so much worse.... Mamoru could barely breathe.
“Takatori-sama,” Katsura said softly, offering a check on his wild storm of emotion, support, or a reminder of who he’d become. She’d replaced Nagi in his bodyguard role but in no other way.
“What should I do?” Draco asked.
Although Mamoru knew he should approach this in a clear-headed way, he couldn’t see how. “Send the club’s location to Katsura. If Balinese isn’t listening to his team members, *we’ll* personally retrieve him and Chinchilla.” He wanted to see Yoji and Nagi’s reactions firsthand and deserved to take some time off from his busy day to do something for himself, even if it would be painful. “Wait for further directions for Weiß from me, because I’ll need to do some reassignments since Schwarz did a mission today that blew apart almost everything Kritiker has been working on.”
“...Weiß could go in with you as backup, sir. I’m not certain of all the nuances of the situation, so you’d be going in nearly blind.”
Maybe she worried about what he’d do. For all he knew, she might be right, but he couldn’t confront Yoji and Nagi with such a large audience of people who knew all of them, not when he didn’t know exactly how he’d react when he saw them. “Unnecessary. Just send Katsura the location so she can tell our driver. My bodyguard should be sufficient company for this.”
“Understood,” Draco answered softly.
“Thank you. Goodbye.” Mamoru ended the call, sighed to try to return his breathing to normal, then said, “Katsura-san, keep me shielded and obscured to the eye the whole way through the club. I don’t want them to know I’ve arrived until I want them to know.”
“Yes, Takatori-sama.”
******************************************************
The club Yoji and Sasha brought Nagi to seemed like much less of a meat market than the one he’d visited with Yoji in Vienna. People here dressed more casually but still stylishly. Fortunately, Sasha’s casual semi-dishevelment looked like a punk fashion statement, Yoji had dressed to present himself to potential lovers even in knockabout work clothes, and Nagi always looked put-together when he left his home, even in his more goth moments.
Sometimes the three of them danced together, sometimes they danced with others, sometimes two of them paired up. The two blonds in Nagi’s group drew attention from across the room, so Nagi had a parade of picks, and most of those picks found him cute or attractive too. He noticed that no matter where Yoji went or who he went with, he’d occasionally look over to keep track of Nagi, which gave him a warm feeling. Clubs were definitely much more enjoyable if you went with someone or someones who could watch your back or be a fallback option if strangers stopped coming by, didn’t stay, or failed to entice.
No one caught Nagi’s interest enough for him to stick with them and all the dancing tired him out a bit, so he took a glass of ice water and a seat in a nearby booth to people watch. A married couple that had latched onto Sasha might be out for a threesome, but Yoji walked to Nagi’s table alone with a drink in hand and sat next to him, the “threads” of his small telekinesis flirting with Nagi’s telekinetic field, perhaps unconsciously, perhaps not.
“How are you doing?” Yoji asked. Sweet of him.
“I’m good. I wish Aya would’ve come with us.”
Yoji grinned. “Me too. Especially since he’s cute when he’s buzzed and sleepy.”
“No kidding.”
“But I didn’t bring you here so you could sit off somewhere by yourself.”
“I just needed a break.”
“Nobody’s ringing your bell?”
It took Nagi a moment to translate that before he answered, “I’m picky, plus there’s the whole telekinetic thing that happens if I lose control.”
“That’s no way to live.”
“Since the other option involves seriously accidentally hurting someone I’m being intimate with, there’s no other option. And before you say that you know I’m not a virgin so it can’t happen all the time, that was with people I knew and was comfortable with and people who know what I am, so there was far less stress.”
“People you knew who knew you, huh?”
“You’re fishing.”
“Heh. I don’t mean to.” Yoji looked somewhat embarrassed. “About earlier--”
“Now that you’re no longer thinking with your frustration and your dick you’ve remembered that doing anything sexual with me would feel like betraying Omi?” Nagi had wondered when that would rear its ugly head again.
“...yeah. Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t tease you on purpose.”
“I figured.” Why did Nagi have to be so much more mature than 99% of the adults around him? He should be too young to be so resigned.
“That doesn’t mean you and Sasha can’t do something together if you’re both still interested. He doesn’t have the ties to Omi that I do.”
“That’s sweet of you to offer someone else like that--”
“It’s not like that!”
“--but he looks pretty engrossed in the couple he’s with so I won’t rely on it.”
“I’ll figure *something* out for you.”
“Thanks.”
“Yoji,” a familiar but ravaged and hurt voice said nearby, Omi’s. Suddenly Omi, in a disheveled suit, and his new bodyguard appeared. “Yoji, how *could* you?” His personal kinetic field of emotion pulsed with darkness and whirled like a vortex.
Nagi jumped along with Yoji, as shocked and oblivious to their approach. Was Katsura that good, was he too distracted, or both?
“Omi, I didn’t do anything and I wasn’t *going* to do anything!” Yoji said. “My teke teacher, Nagi-sensei, has just had a bad day and--”
“He’s not alone in that,” Omi said darkly. “You picked a particularly *bad* day to abandon your team and cozy up to Schwarz, Yoji. You and Sasha are coming with me.”
“Omi, Nagi is your ex. You don’t get to say who he’s allowed to be friendly with.”
Wait. Was this really happening? Was he going to get cockblocked in everything every time no matter what he did, even when he wasn’t even about to have sex? Was Omi going to give him a dressing down once he finished with Yoji, even though he had no right to tell Nagi what he could do? Was Nagi allowed to have anyone, *anything*? Would it ever *end*? Why was everyone doing this? Almost everyone he knew.... No one had the right to do this to him! He had to make it *stop*!
“Are you. *Kidding* me?!” Nagi asked, his head pounding. When he put his hands down on the table, it rattled harder and made a crunching noise. His glass, Yoji’s, and every glass thing near them shattered, plunging their area and much of the club into darkness.
The screams and sudden dark brought Nagi back to himself a little. He needed to get out of here before he hurt everyone so he sent his telekinesis out like sonar to get an idea of where everything stood in the room before he busted out through a side wall to get out to the street. Feeling the power building up in him and wanting to explode out, he shot himself straight upward above the buildings, above the mountains, before he screamed out his rage and hurt and let it all go, surprised by the resulting *boom*.
Feeling somewhat tired and less likely to explode, he fell for a while before recovering himself about 50 stories above the street and landing lightly on a nearby rooftop. Breathing hard, he pounded the snowy roof with just his bare fist about five times, which hurt his hand and didn’t help him feel any better emotionally. At least he currently had less telekinetic power to back up his rage/depression and desires to kill and destroy. He started to shiver convulsively in the cold.
He knew of only one person and place he could go to.
******************************************************
Once his small telekinetic sense stopped ringing, Yoji allowed himself a moment to facepalm before he tried to face the world. The teen-sized hole in the wall didn’t let enough light come in to let him see Omi’s reaction, so he said, “Before you accuse him of running away instead of dealing with you, Omi, keep in mind that he just saved all of our lives by doing it. He’s a very upset teen alpha telekinetic, and I like myself and you too much to see either of us reduced to a thin paste on the floor or walls.”
Flashlights and people’s cell phones started to light the space back up, so Yoji *saw* Omi jump along with everyone else when the sound and force of that *boom* went off outside.
“...is he okay?” Omi asked softly, looking somewhat chastened. Yoji hoped it lasted long enough for him to tiptoe away without some kind of punishment, but he never had that kind of luck.
“Alive yeah,” Sasha answered, “‘okay’ not so much.”
Poor Nagi. The kid just wanted a healthy, happy relationship with someone who loved him back. And to get laid. It shouldn’t be too much to ask, yet it so often was.
Today had to end soon, right? Yoji didn’t think he could take much more.
******************************************************
Schuldig had been contentedly dozing in his tangle with Brad when *something* went off that shot him completely awake. Brad too, it looked like.
“Was that Nagi?” Brad asked.
“Yeah, but--”
An explosive sound outside somewhere above cut him off.
“Was *that* Nagi?” Brad asked forcefully.
“*Yeah*. I can tell he’s very upset, but he’s otherwise blocked himself off completely from me. He’s not letting me talk to him, and I currently can’t track his location. Aya’s also blocked off... and asleep but seemingly not in the same area. There’s a citywide ambiance of fear and uncertainty I have to deal with too, so I don’t know what’s going on. I’m scanning for--” Oh, shit. “It seems that Tokyo’s gone to hell in our absence a lot harder and faster than you expected. And Omi caught Yoji clubbing with Nagi, which is what detonated Nagi.” Usually Schuldig would’ve covered for Nagi, but here it was too involved in everything else to skip over.
“*What*?”
“Concentrate, Brad. Yoji is only a tiny part of things, so don’t let him distract you. Be patient. I’m still putting the pieces together.”
Brad untangled himself and got off the couch, definitely in work mode but still sexy. Plus, nude except for his glasses. “You do that. Meanwhile, I’ll be looking at the news and my e-mails and voice messages.”
******************************************************
With all the noise and clamor crashing about in Farfarello’s head and ears, waking him up, he briefly wondered if the Rapture had arrived. Before he could truly ponder it, the mindbreaker said, ~ Return to home base, Farf. Big things are going on, so we have to set some personal issues aside. ~
~ Mayhem. ~
~ In the future maybe. For now we have to circle the wagons and plan. ~
Far less fun, but if he showed steadiness in this it would have to accrue toward the team’s thoughts of him, *Aya’s* thoughts of him, and “circling the wagons” meant Schwarz would call his kitten back in. ~ I’m on my way. ~
******************************************************
Unable to return to sleep after the din, Aya just stared into the darkness toward the ceiling. Away from the whole team, having shut down all of his telepathic senses for a while, Aya couldn’t gather together enough power himself to ask Nagi if something had happened--something about the upset tasted of Nagi--but couldn’t bring himself to try to get the attention of the more telepathic Schuldig for a boost, which would feel like a betrayal of himself and Nagi. Then he felt Schuldig reaching for *him* but managed to block him out, using walls, clamps, and whatever other metaphorical tools he could think of.
His head seemed too quiet this way. He should laugh himself sick from the irony.
When the door to his hotel room opened, letting in light from the hallway for a moment, Aya instinctively reached beneath his pillow for a weapon but found nothing. He cursed himself for getting too complacent even as he prepared to use his own body as a weapon. Near total darkness fell again for a moment, before the overhead light switched on. Looking tired, lips nearly blue from the cold, shivering, Nagi stood near the door without his overcoat on. Looking closer, Aya saw tear streaks on his face. How badly wrong had things gone?
“I can’t be here, Aya,” he said softly. “Not here, anywhere but here. I want to kill almost everyone....”
Apparently *very* badly.
Aya wanted to get Nagi warmer before they went into detail. “My coat is in the closet to your right. Put it on and come over here.”
It looked almost adorably oversized on Nagi’s smaller, shorter frame, and from the way Nagi’s lip briefly curled he was well aware of it. When Nagi sat on the bed next to Aya, Aya wrapped the covers around the both of them so his body heat might help warm him up as well. Nagi’s skin was cold as ice and somewhat damp. Aya put his arm around him and let Nagi lean into him.
“What happened?” Aya asked.
“Apparently I hadn’t been screwed over by enough people today so Omi showed up at the club to castigate Yoji for flirting with me. Though he didn’t show up until after Yoji remembered that he couldn’t touch me because Omi’s his bro, so it wasn’t like Omi interrupted anything Omi might feel truly justified in interrupting.”
“Yoji’s bro?”
“Bros before hos.”
“Doesn’t he consider you a... bro too? You’re his telekinesis teacher, and he enjoys talking to you. You’re definitely not a ho.”
“Omi was his teammate, friend, and bro for far longer, so he’s more of a bro than I am.”
“Yoji was still flirting with you.”
“Yoji flirts with everyone and everything, you know that.”
“He flirts harder and more seriously with some people than others.”
“Like you, for an example. And are you saying Omi was justified in messing with my life just because we used to date? Whose side are you on?” Nagi sounded annoyed. At least his shivering had died down.
“No, and I’m on yours. Definitely yours.”
“Good answer. Omi showing up how he did was just the last straw. I’m not allowed to have *anything*. Everybody wants me to do things for them and takes me for granted, but I’m a person too and you’re the only one paying any attention to what *I* might want or need. I’m so sick of it! Schwarz and Kritiker can *blow* me. I need to get away from them for a while. If I don’t, I might lose my temper and break someone. Literally.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m skipping town. Hell, I’m getting out of Japan. It’s better for everyone’s health, and maybe they’ll appreciate me more if they don’t have me around for a while.” Nagi looked up at Aya, eyes wide and pleading. “Come with me? Please? It won’t be for forever. Hell, you know somebody, possibly *everybody*, we work with would try to hunt us down eventually, so I’m not talking about forever because it doesn’t seem feasible. Farfarello would still be around for you to have a verbal throwdown with when we get back, and maybe he’ll appreciate you more too if he’s cut off from you for a while and he gets to see what he’s risking. Please, Aya, I really need this, and I think you can use a break from being used too.”
“Earlier today it sounded like you were telling me to stay and stick it out with him.”
“I’m thinking our getaway would just be a few days.”
“We didn’t vacation well last time.”
“Thus it only being a short getaway, and this time it’d be up to you and me where we went and how long we stayed.”
It felt cowardly to run away from Farfarello instead of returning to confront and hash things out with him, but Nagi seemed to really need this and he rarely asked for things. For all his prickliness, Nagi didn’t do well when completely alone, and a big reason for this getaway was that so many people weren’t allowing him to have anyone of his own. This time he’d felt so pushed into a corner that he’d had to detonate his talent above Tokyo. Nagi *needed* him. *Someone* should be looking out for him.
It might also be good for *Aya* to see and experience who he was when he didn’t have Farfarello pushing, tugging, and leaning on him mentally and physically. He’d wanted more control and say over his circumstances....
“We have only the clothes we’re wearing--while you don’t even have a coat--and no weapons,” Aya said.
Nagi must have sensed Aya wavering, because he brightened as he answered, “For years I’ve been salting money away into accounts Crawford doesn’t know about so we can buy a lot of what we’d need, I don’t figure on us needing to attack and kill people, and I have *my* weapon with us: my computer. If we’re attacked I have a lot of power to protect us with, and it’s not like you’re helpless without your katana and guns.”
“Schuldig will try to track us down before we manage to leave. I’m blocking him out so far but don’t know how much longer it’ll hold.”
Nagi hugged him hard. “I didn’t know you could do that! That’s great! I’m sending him static back, which is what he sometimes gets from me when I’ve used so much telekinesis that I’m strung out, but there’s only so long he’ll accept that. I can buy our plane tickets online and get us out here fast. Don’t worry about what people will think of your lack of luggage, because in my experience if you have enough money behind you people can accept anything. We’re flying first class, and I can even get us passports fairly quickly. I have a go-bag packed with clothes and toiletries for myself that I can pick up. Sometime after we board the plane and are en-route I’ll e-mail Crawford to let him know that we’re okay and we’ll be back eventually. I can make it so he won’t be able to track our location from it.”
Although Aya worried about... everything, he also couldn’t help feeling a spark of anticipation and excitement too. After the last two days he could use a change of scene. “You already have a destination in mind.”
Nagi smiled, which made him look younger. “Yes! This will be great. Thank you so much!”
"Glass Houses" part 292/?
By Viridian5
4/2003 - present
RATING: R. If m/m interaction bothers you, pass this by. AU.
SPOILERS: Glühen.
SUMMARY: After Aya's sister dies, Schwarz tries to save themselves and Aya from the mistakes of the Dramatic CDs and Glühen Schwarz tries to save him from himself--for their own reasons, of course--and neither they nor Weiß are ever the same again.
ARCHIVAL/DISTRIBUTION: No, not yet. This is a trial run of a piece of an unfinished fic.
DISCLAIMERS: All things Weiß Kreuz belong to Koyasu Takehito, Project Weiß, Polygram k.k., and Animate Film. No infringement intended.
NOTES: Thanks to rosaleendhu and red_squared for audiencing, typo-watch, and encouragement. Special thanks to red_squared for help going on. Thanks to 'nat for "puisín," which she says probably sounds like "pu-sheen." Inspirational music includes Covenant's United States of Mind, mayatawi's V Mix the Second CD (Jane Jensen, Kidneythieves, Poe's rock version of "Hello," Kristen Barry's "Ordinary Life," Lacuna Coil), Linkin Park's Meteora, A Perfect Circle's Thirteenth Step, Pigface's Easy Listening..., Shriekback's "The Bastard Sons of Enoch," Zeromancer's Eurotrash, and Neuroticfish's Les Chansons Neurotiques.
I am not responsible for any therapy bills incurred as a result of trauma from doing research on things mentioned in this story. If you look up, say, "butter dog porn" on your own, I refuse to take the blame. I've been told that it's a bad idea to eat soup or drink while reading "Glass Houses."
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"Glass Houses" part 292
By Viridian5
========================
“Thank you. Goodbye,” Mamoru said into his cell phone. How many emergency calls like it had he made today? He’d lost count. In the seat next to him, Katsura cast him a worried glance. Did he look as tired as he felt? Though maybe he didn’t have to look it, since she might be lightly monitoring his mind as well as shielding it from telepaths.
He wanted to kill Crawford so badly.
A mass slaughter job that had probably been less than half an hour of work for Schwarz had turned Tokyo’s underground and Kritiker upside-down, with effects that probably echoed throughout Japan. Gangs had broken up and reformed. Sting and undercover operations Kritiker agents had spent months on had exploded or died from the deaths of informants, middlemen, and connections. Agents and criminals alike scrambled to find new people to get them what they wanted. Groups desperately looked for psionic agents of their own to help them compete in the new arms race, which made Mamoru graduate some from his school in Okinawa earlier than he’d like.
The remnants of one of the gangs Schwarz had killed had contracted a telepath to help them take Schwarz down. A bloodbath at a hotel in a sketchy part of town may have resulted from one of their attempts. Something about the style of the mayhem said “Schwarz” to Mamoru.
The gang that had hired Schwarz found itself besieged from all sides from people out for vengeance and/or looking to take on the top surviving group and gain the title for themselves. Their client hadn’t fully thought out the consequences of what he’d asked them to do, and Schwarz hadn’t volunteered any advice, just taken the money and done the slaughter. The leader no doubt tried to contact Schwarz for help, but if he had the same experience Mamoru had the several times *he’d* tried he couldn’t get Schwarz to respond to calls, e-mails, or texts. What the hell were they doing?
Chaos and bloodshed reigned throughout the city, requiring Mamoru to make endless personal visits and phone calls to various organizations and parts of his own to try to calm things down. He’d reassigned various Kritiker teams. He hadn’t taken a real break that wasn’t actually him sitting in his car on his way to another meeting or eaten since early this morning.
Crawford had basically set several bags of shit on Mamoru’s doorstep, lit them on fire, then waltzed off laughing. It no doubt did his massive ego a lot of good to so quickly and easily upend everything in Tokyo.
Mamoru had left Weiß for last. Draco picked up his call after one ring, saying, “Sir, I’m so glad you called.”
“Have you been able to feel what’s going on?” he had to ask.
“I strengthened my shields because things have felt rougher today, if that’s what you’re asking, sir.”
So she hadn’t. A lot of the local telepaths had just strengthened their shields so they wouldn’t have to feel the chaos instead of investigated the cause. It had seemed to be almost instinctive to them, a protective measure.
Before he got into that, he asked, “Why did you want to hear from me, then?”
“Yoji had apparently been spending a lot of time around Schwarz in my absence, and when Ken confronted him about it Yoji blew up and took Sasha away with him, presumably Schwarz-ward. They’ve been gone for hours, with no word. If something horrible had happened to them I’d probably feel it, but.... I didn’t track them down because that’s something Eszett would do to us, keep us closely monitored all the time. However, if I had permission from his boss....”
Mamoru hadn’t thought he could get much angrier, but the rage flared above his exhaustion anyway. Yoji had exquisite timing as usual. And of course he’d dragged one of Weiß’s telepaths into it with him, the better to hide himself. “You have my full permission to track them down,” he said.
“Yes, sir.” She sounded almost maliciously happy. “I can’t find them--Sasha may have shielded them from being searched out--but I’m scanning for people around them and... uhm.”
“What? Is Yoji okay?”
“...they’re at a club. Yoji and Prodigy are flirting with each other. I can’t read any deeper into Prodigy without breaking into his shields, which he and Guilty might notice so I’m forbearing, so there might be more going on, some detail I’m missing, but it does seem like they’re flirting. I’m sorry, sir. But Yoji flirts with *everything*: women, men, children, animals, and inanimate objects.”
But Yoji knew about Nagi and shouldn’t have been flirting with him, and definitely shouldn’t have continued flirting when Nagi was flirting back. Mamoru decided that he felt angrier at Yoji, who had more experience and knew better.
What was one more wound and betrayal after a day full of them? But this one hurt so much worse.... Mamoru could barely breathe.
“Takatori-sama,” Katsura said softly, offering a check on his wild storm of emotion, support, or a reminder of who he’d become. She’d replaced Nagi in his bodyguard role but in no other way.
“What should I do?” Draco asked.
Although Mamoru knew he should approach this in a clear-headed way, he couldn’t see how. “Send the club’s location to Katsura. If Balinese isn’t listening to his team members, *we’ll* personally retrieve him and Chinchilla.” He wanted to see Yoji and Nagi’s reactions firsthand and deserved to take some time off from his busy day to do something for himself, even if it would be painful. “Wait for further directions for Weiß from me, because I’ll need to do some reassignments since Schwarz did a mission today that blew apart almost everything Kritiker has been working on.”
“...Weiß could go in with you as backup, sir. I’m not certain of all the nuances of the situation, so you’d be going in nearly blind.”
Maybe she worried about what he’d do. For all he knew, she might be right, but he couldn’t confront Yoji and Nagi with such a large audience of people who knew all of them, not when he didn’t know exactly how he’d react when he saw them. “Unnecessary. Just send Katsura the location so she can tell our driver. My bodyguard should be sufficient company for this.”
“Understood,” Draco answered softly.
“Thank you. Goodbye.” Mamoru ended the call, sighed to try to return his breathing to normal, then said, “Katsura-san, keep me shielded and obscured to the eye the whole way through the club. I don’t want them to know I’ve arrived until I want them to know.”
“Yes, Takatori-sama.”
******************************************************
The club Yoji and Sasha brought Nagi to seemed like much less of a meat market than the one he’d visited with Yoji in Vienna. People here dressed more casually but still stylishly. Fortunately, Sasha’s casual semi-dishevelment looked like a punk fashion statement, Yoji had dressed to present himself to potential lovers even in knockabout work clothes, and Nagi always looked put-together when he left his home, even in his more goth moments.
Sometimes the three of them danced together, sometimes they danced with others, sometimes two of them paired up. The two blonds in Nagi’s group drew attention from across the room, so Nagi had a parade of picks, and most of those picks found him cute or attractive too. He noticed that no matter where Yoji went or who he went with, he’d occasionally look over to keep track of Nagi, which gave him a warm feeling. Clubs were definitely much more enjoyable if you went with someone or someones who could watch your back or be a fallback option if strangers stopped coming by, didn’t stay, or failed to entice.
No one caught Nagi’s interest enough for him to stick with them and all the dancing tired him out a bit, so he took a glass of ice water and a seat in a nearby booth to people watch. A married couple that had latched onto Sasha might be out for a threesome, but Yoji walked to Nagi’s table alone with a drink in hand and sat next to him, the “threads” of his small telekinesis flirting with Nagi’s telekinetic field, perhaps unconsciously, perhaps not.
“How are you doing?” Yoji asked. Sweet of him.
“I’m good. I wish Aya would’ve come with us.”
Yoji grinned. “Me too. Especially since he’s cute when he’s buzzed and sleepy.”
“No kidding.”
“But I didn’t bring you here so you could sit off somewhere by yourself.”
“I just needed a break.”
“Nobody’s ringing your bell?”
It took Nagi a moment to translate that before he answered, “I’m picky, plus there’s the whole telekinetic thing that happens if I lose control.”
“That’s no way to live.”
“Since the other option involves seriously accidentally hurting someone I’m being intimate with, there’s no other option. And before you say that you know I’m not a virgin so it can’t happen all the time, that was with people I knew and was comfortable with and people who know what I am, so there was far less stress.”
“People you knew who knew you, huh?”
“You’re fishing.”
“Heh. I don’t mean to.” Yoji looked somewhat embarrassed. “About earlier--”
“Now that you’re no longer thinking with your frustration and your dick you’ve remembered that doing anything sexual with me would feel like betraying Omi?” Nagi had wondered when that would rear its ugly head again.
“...yeah. Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t tease you on purpose.”
“I figured.” Why did Nagi have to be so much more mature than 99% of the adults around him? He should be too young to be so resigned.
“That doesn’t mean you and Sasha can’t do something together if you’re both still interested. He doesn’t have the ties to Omi that I do.”
“That’s sweet of you to offer someone else like that--”
“It’s not like that!”
“--but he looks pretty engrossed in the couple he’s with so I won’t rely on it.”
“I’ll figure *something* out for you.”
“Thanks.”
“Yoji,” a familiar but ravaged and hurt voice said nearby, Omi’s. Suddenly Omi, in a disheveled suit, and his new bodyguard appeared. “Yoji, how *could* you?” His personal kinetic field of emotion pulsed with darkness and whirled like a vortex.
Nagi jumped along with Yoji, as shocked and oblivious to their approach. Was Katsura that good, was he too distracted, or both?
“Omi, I didn’t do anything and I wasn’t *going* to do anything!” Yoji said. “My teke teacher, Nagi-sensei, has just had a bad day and--”
“He’s not alone in that,” Omi said darkly. “You picked a particularly *bad* day to abandon your team and cozy up to Schwarz, Yoji. You and Sasha are coming with me.”
“Omi, Nagi is your ex. You don’t get to say who he’s allowed to be friendly with.”
Wait. Was this really happening? Was he going to get cockblocked in everything every time no matter what he did, even when he wasn’t even about to have sex? Was Omi going to give him a dressing down once he finished with Yoji, even though he had no right to tell Nagi what he could do? Was Nagi allowed to have anyone, *anything*? Would it ever *end*? Why was everyone doing this? Almost everyone he knew.... No one had the right to do this to him! He had to make it *stop*!
“Are you. *Kidding* me?!” Nagi asked, his head pounding. When he put his hands down on the table, it rattled harder and made a crunching noise. His glass, Yoji’s, and every glass thing near them shattered, plunging their area and much of the club into darkness.
The screams and sudden dark brought Nagi back to himself a little. He needed to get out of here before he hurt everyone so he sent his telekinesis out like sonar to get an idea of where everything stood in the room before he busted out through a side wall to get out to the street. Feeling the power building up in him and wanting to explode out, he shot himself straight upward above the buildings, above the mountains, before he screamed out his rage and hurt and let it all go, surprised by the resulting *boom*.
Feeling somewhat tired and less likely to explode, he fell for a while before recovering himself about 50 stories above the street and landing lightly on a nearby rooftop. Breathing hard, he pounded the snowy roof with just his bare fist about five times, which hurt his hand and didn’t help him feel any better emotionally. At least he currently had less telekinetic power to back up his rage/depression and desires to kill and destroy. He started to shiver convulsively in the cold.
He knew of only one person and place he could go to.
******************************************************
Once his small telekinetic sense stopped ringing, Yoji allowed himself a moment to facepalm before he tried to face the world. The teen-sized hole in the wall didn’t let enough light come in to let him see Omi’s reaction, so he said, “Before you accuse him of running away instead of dealing with you, Omi, keep in mind that he just saved all of our lives by doing it. He’s a very upset teen alpha telekinetic, and I like myself and you too much to see either of us reduced to a thin paste on the floor or walls.”
Flashlights and people’s cell phones started to light the space back up, so Yoji *saw* Omi jump along with everyone else when the sound and force of that *boom* went off outside.
“...is he okay?” Omi asked softly, looking somewhat chastened. Yoji hoped it lasted long enough for him to tiptoe away without some kind of punishment, but he never had that kind of luck.
“Alive yeah,” Sasha answered, “‘okay’ not so much.”
Poor Nagi. The kid just wanted a healthy, happy relationship with someone who loved him back. And to get laid. It shouldn’t be too much to ask, yet it so often was.
Today had to end soon, right? Yoji didn’t think he could take much more.
******************************************************
Schuldig had been contentedly dozing in his tangle with Brad when *something* went off that shot him completely awake. Brad too, it looked like.
“Was that Nagi?” Brad asked.
“Yeah, but--”
An explosive sound outside somewhere above cut him off.
“Was *that* Nagi?” Brad asked forcefully.
“*Yeah*. I can tell he’s very upset, but he’s otherwise blocked himself off completely from me. He’s not letting me talk to him, and I currently can’t track his location. Aya’s also blocked off... and asleep but seemingly not in the same area. There’s a citywide ambiance of fear and uncertainty I have to deal with too, so I don’t know what’s going on. I’m scanning for--” Oh, shit. “It seems that Tokyo’s gone to hell in our absence a lot harder and faster than you expected. And Omi caught Yoji clubbing with Nagi, which is what detonated Nagi.” Usually Schuldig would’ve covered for Nagi, but here it was too involved in everything else to skip over.
“*What*?”
“Concentrate, Brad. Yoji is only a tiny part of things, so don’t let him distract you. Be patient. I’m still putting the pieces together.”
Brad untangled himself and got off the couch, definitely in work mode but still sexy. Plus, nude except for his glasses. “You do that. Meanwhile, I’ll be looking at the news and my e-mails and voice messages.”
******************************************************
With all the noise and clamor crashing about in Farfarello’s head and ears, waking him up, he briefly wondered if the Rapture had arrived. Before he could truly ponder it, the mindbreaker said, ~ Return to home base, Farf. Big things are going on, so we have to set some personal issues aside. ~
~ Mayhem. ~
~ In the future maybe. For now we have to circle the wagons and plan. ~
Far less fun, but if he showed steadiness in this it would have to accrue toward the team’s thoughts of him, *Aya’s* thoughts of him, and “circling the wagons” meant Schwarz would call his kitten back in. ~ I’m on my way. ~
******************************************************
Unable to return to sleep after the din, Aya just stared into the darkness toward the ceiling. Away from the whole team, having shut down all of his telepathic senses for a while, Aya couldn’t gather together enough power himself to ask Nagi if something had happened--something about the upset tasted of Nagi--but couldn’t bring himself to try to get the attention of the more telepathic Schuldig for a boost, which would feel like a betrayal of himself and Nagi. Then he felt Schuldig reaching for *him* but managed to block him out, using walls, clamps, and whatever other metaphorical tools he could think of.
His head seemed too quiet this way. He should laugh himself sick from the irony.
When the door to his hotel room opened, letting in light from the hallway for a moment, Aya instinctively reached beneath his pillow for a weapon but found nothing. He cursed himself for getting too complacent even as he prepared to use his own body as a weapon. Near total darkness fell again for a moment, before the overhead light switched on. Looking tired, lips nearly blue from the cold, shivering, Nagi stood near the door without his overcoat on. Looking closer, Aya saw tear streaks on his face. How badly wrong had things gone?
“I can’t be here, Aya,” he said softly. “Not here, anywhere but here. I want to kill almost everyone....”
Apparently *very* badly.
Aya wanted to get Nagi warmer before they went into detail. “My coat is in the closet to your right. Put it on and come over here.”
It looked almost adorably oversized on Nagi’s smaller, shorter frame, and from the way Nagi’s lip briefly curled he was well aware of it. When Nagi sat on the bed next to Aya, Aya wrapped the covers around the both of them so his body heat might help warm him up as well. Nagi’s skin was cold as ice and somewhat damp. Aya put his arm around him and let Nagi lean into him.
“What happened?” Aya asked.
“Apparently I hadn’t been screwed over by enough people today so Omi showed up at the club to castigate Yoji for flirting with me. Though he didn’t show up until after Yoji remembered that he couldn’t touch me because Omi’s his bro, so it wasn’t like Omi interrupted anything Omi might feel truly justified in interrupting.”
“Yoji’s bro?”
“Bros before hos.”
“Doesn’t he consider you a... bro too? You’re his telekinesis teacher, and he enjoys talking to you. You’re definitely not a ho.”
“Omi was his teammate, friend, and bro for far longer, so he’s more of a bro than I am.”
“Yoji was still flirting with you.”
“Yoji flirts with everyone and everything, you know that.”
“He flirts harder and more seriously with some people than others.”
“Like you, for an example. And are you saying Omi was justified in messing with my life just because we used to date? Whose side are you on?” Nagi sounded annoyed. At least his shivering had died down.
“No, and I’m on yours. Definitely yours.”
“Good answer. Omi showing up how he did was just the last straw. I’m not allowed to have *anything*. Everybody wants me to do things for them and takes me for granted, but I’m a person too and you’re the only one paying any attention to what *I* might want or need. I’m so sick of it! Schwarz and Kritiker can *blow* me. I need to get away from them for a while. If I don’t, I might lose my temper and break someone. Literally.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m skipping town. Hell, I’m getting out of Japan. It’s better for everyone’s health, and maybe they’ll appreciate me more if they don’t have me around for a while.” Nagi looked up at Aya, eyes wide and pleading. “Come with me? Please? It won’t be for forever. Hell, you know somebody, possibly *everybody*, we work with would try to hunt us down eventually, so I’m not talking about forever because it doesn’t seem feasible. Farfarello would still be around for you to have a verbal throwdown with when we get back, and maybe he’ll appreciate you more too if he’s cut off from you for a while and he gets to see what he’s risking. Please, Aya, I really need this, and I think you can use a break from being used too.”
“Earlier today it sounded like you were telling me to stay and stick it out with him.”
“I’m thinking our getaway would just be a few days.”
“We didn’t vacation well last time.”
“Thus it only being a short getaway, and this time it’d be up to you and me where we went and how long we stayed.”
It felt cowardly to run away from Farfarello instead of returning to confront and hash things out with him, but Nagi seemed to really need this and he rarely asked for things. For all his prickliness, Nagi didn’t do well when completely alone, and a big reason for this getaway was that so many people weren’t allowing him to have anyone of his own. This time he’d felt so pushed into a corner that he’d had to detonate his talent above Tokyo. Nagi *needed* him. *Someone* should be looking out for him.
It might also be good for *Aya* to see and experience who he was when he didn’t have Farfarello pushing, tugging, and leaning on him mentally and physically. He’d wanted more control and say over his circumstances....
“We have only the clothes we’re wearing--while you don’t even have a coat--and no weapons,” Aya said.
Nagi must have sensed Aya wavering, because he brightened as he answered, “For years I’ve been salting money away into accounts Crawford doesn’t know about so we can buy a lot of what we’d need, I don’t figure on us needing to attack and kill people, and I have *my* weapon with us: my computer. If we’re attacked I have a lot of power to protect us with, and it’s not like you’re helpless without your katana and guns.”
“Schuldig will try to track us down before we manage to leave. I’m blocking him out so far but don’t know how much longer it’ll hold.”
Nagi hugged him hard. “I didn’t know you could do that! That’s great! I’m sending him static back, which is what he sometimes gets from me when I’ve used so much telekinesis that I’m strung out, but there’s only so long he’ll accept that. I can buy our plane tickets online and get us out here fast. Don’t worry about what people will think of your lack of luggage, because in my experience if you have enough money behind you people can accept anything. We’re flying first class, and I can even get us passports fairly quickly. I have a go-bag packed with clothes and toiletries for myself that I can pick up. Sometime after we board the plane and are en-route I’ll e-mail Crawford to let him know that we’re okay and we’ll be back eventually. I can make it so he won’t be able to track our location from it.”
Although Aya worried about... everything, he also couldn’t help feeling a spark of anticipation and excitement too. After the last two days he could use a change of scene. “You already have a destination in mind.”
Nagi smiled, which made him look younger. “Yes! This will be great. Thank you so much!”