Gift Fic for satsumatsu
To: satsumatsu
From: m_nemonica
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
Title: santorini gold
Group/Pairings: arashi, matsumiya + slight ohmiya
Rating: light r
Warnings: the glittering generalizations of shounen manga, blocks of text, animal cruelty, Aiba as an unexplained deus ex machina
Notes: thanks to O for the beta. happy holidays, satsumatsu! not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for, but you like AUs and Tokyo, so here we go. hope you enjoy! <3
minor disclaimer: through writing this story, i am not in any way advocating dog fighting. it is a dangerous and cruel blood sport. i have kept explicit descriptions to a minimum. regardless, if you happen to like dogs a lot, you might not enjoy this story very much. don't say i didn't warn you. ):
Summary: The dog days are never over.
The truth I do not stretch or shove
When I state that the dog is full of love.
I've also found, by actual test,
A wet dog is the lovingest.
- "The Dog", by Odgen Nash
(spring)
The Gang of Six gave Jun three days for a decent head start, and in those first three days there was a lot of cold Caribbean coffee and sexy saxophone intros being played on the radio for a charge of four books on stripper culture plus two hundred times the price on Aiba's head. The sexy saxophone was George Michael, and Jun hated every moment of it. Pending the tenth hour of the second day, They sent him a tremendously tacky email with no postscript, probably a polite way of telling him to get the fuck off their turf or face the bloodlusty hounds of the Hokkaido Police, no pun intended, nevertheless the bulk of which he perceived to be a blaring neon sign disguised as a Herald of God perched on top of a moving aircraft flying right out from an over-pixelated videogame, ousting his regime from the Akita Prefecture and shoving him straight into the arms of Roppongi.
And fuck, wasn't Roppongi getting desperate.
Within a week of sleeping in every swanky elevator inside the Tokyo Tower, Ohno took pity on him and lent him the keys to his spare apartment. It was located in a back alley behind a karaoke diner and a dental office, and the nearest bar was a renovated gun museum three hundred meters across the street, plus you had to hop a fence. Ohno cited British daytime television and a book written by Carson McCullers. It became immediately perplexing, but he was thankful for a place to crash.
When he’d been brave enough to ask why, Ohno simply shrugged his shoulders. "I care about you, bro," was all he said, and he went back to reading his newspaper under the pagoda in the Aoyama Cemetary after that.
Coming home on the 8th.........be prepared for some FUCKING GOLD!!!
Another reason why Jun left Akita was because of Aiba. Aiba had written back two months ago about returning from his treasure hunt in Greece. He had mentioned something about seeing Yanni Live in Concert and eating tofu made from goat's blood. It was all very exotic and nonsensical, and not very much like it was written by someone who had spent the last three years in Santorini, so Jun was pretty sure Aiba had made most of it up. There were no embarrassing photographs of hookers, for one thing. Aiba loved that kind of thing. The letter also contained a lot of exclamation points and dramatic ellipses. Jun was properly suspicious.
(solstice)
The summer came by fast and without much warning, and before he could remember to say his prayers and count on his fingers the drinks he'd had via non-CocaCola vending machine, the dogs came. They were different sizes and all of them were growling, and the bars on the cage rattled. The delivery truck had grey stripes and the driver stamped his feet on the doormat before asking if he could come in for a beer.
"Did you hear?" He told Jun, "The Gang of Six is acting up again. Say they're looking around for a kid named Matsumoto. You heard of a Matsumoto?"
"I have not," said Jun.
"Good for you, then," said the driver. "Because you know I'd personally hate to be the snitch on that particular act. The G-Six! Those are some crazy motherfuckers, right there."
"Some crazy motherfuckers," Jun agreed.
He decided to open his business the week after, between lunch and the beginning of Happy Hour at the karaoke place. Before that, he read some Dickens and checked the airplane flights from Athens to Haneda. He told himself that he was a handsome, handsome man, and then he had sex with a girl from the bar three hundred meters across the street and over the fence. He put on expensive suits and acted silly in front of a department store for half an hour. He bought a feather boa for good measure. The dogs came after that, all of them whining for terrible action. He couldn't put it off for much longer.
It was still illegal in Tokyo, after all.
~
He had his first fight in the Roppongi Arena. The Roppongi Arena was a small vacant lot, dusty in the summers and shielded from the ordinary eye by a grove of urban aspen trees and three blocks of highly permeable concrete. In the back there was a standard fighting ring fashioned from a waist-high chicken wire fence, and in the front a young man with too much facial hair kept tabs and bets. He was barely legal and he had a habit of calling everyone 'aniki'. He thought it was very ironic and properly hilarious; nobody else did. He also sold beer and cigarettes but none of the boys bought any because it was distasteful to drink or smoke near the ring and everybody knew that.
Toward the second half of the tournament, Jun showed up with two of his best dogs in separate carriers. Their names were Rin and Yukio and they were his favorites. Rin had only half of one ear, the other half of which had gotten torn off his head three months ago from a brawl with a purebred Akita one year his junior. The asymmetry gave him imbalance, but there was also the aerodynamic factor. Rin had a very kamikaze style of fighting and it was troublesome sometimes to tear him off the other dogs. Yukio, other the other hand, was quite obedient. Yukio was a perfect fighter and terrifically smart, and Jun wouldn't even be surprised if Yukio ever learned how to clock and fire a gun with his bare paws.
At the table, he registered his first name and flashed the ID that Ohno had lent him, scratched the tip of his pen against the paper for ink and accidentally drew on his sleeve in the process. Then he told the young man with too much facial hair to save him a pack of king size Mild Sevens for later.
"You should pay me right now, or I won’t hold them for you, aniki," said the young man.
"I'll pay you when I win this round," said Jun. "When I win my match and you win your bet on my match, you can give me a pack of menthols and we'll call it even."
"Wow aniki, just who do you think you are?" the young man scoffed. "I've never even seen you around here before. Plus I've got to be a total moron to bet on you. You're bracketed against Ninomiya today, and that is just asking for trouble."
"Ninomiya, who's that?"
"Oh maaaan. You're really new here, aren't you? Ninomiya is awesome. We call him The Protagonist. He also bartends down at BLASTINGS, the gun museum bar. A killer trainer if I've ever seen one, and he recently signed with The G-Six."
Jun froze. "The Gang of Six? They're here?!"
The guy chuckled. "Not here. But they will be in a few days. Word's out they're on a manhunt. Now go and enjoy your fight, aniki. Look here, I'm gonna pity you and put one of my bets on Yukio-chan. How's that?"
~
The Gang of Six, inappropriately named, was actually a gang of four. They were an odd bunch of ruthless dog fighters who never adhered to the rules, and they used a Mysterious Connection With the Higher-Ups to enforce their personal codes of conduct. There were originally nine members in the group, but over the years there had been too many fights regarding the name of their gang, and the members left one by two by two, each time citing irreconcilable differences. The first guy who left started his own illegal ring in Hokkaido. The next two did time in jail for being dumb and getting caught with fighting dogs in the Ginza. The last two were the most prominent members of the G-Six, having finally decided on a name for the group before tossing it all behind their backs. When the two former leaders left they parted ways, one went down to Osaka and the other took off for St. Petersburg. The remaining four guys decided not to change their name to The Gang of Four because they didn't want to sound too communist.
(It made no logical sense to Jun, who liked his group of friends just fine, but The Gang of Six had practically made themselves famous by stirring up inter-group drama, so then again.)
Either way, they were Bad News. Currently, The G-Six lineup consisted of two pairs of fighters who found every excuse to pick on Jun after one of their most prized females lost a particularly gruesome battle to Yukio. They often harassed Jun with stupid emails. But only recently (and after the departure of the last two gang members), had they become quite violent and unpredictable in their patterns of attack. Ohno and Sakurai knew one of the guys in the group, and they both told Jun to leg it out of Akita before his apartment got trashed or burned or stuffed with shit.
And of course, Aiba was back in town. But that was a totally different problem.
~
The fight was on at the sound of the bell. The area around the ring was cleared save for Jun, the referee, and the guy named Ninomiya, and it was quiet until Rin and his opponent were let out of their holding cells. Rin growled, and he started off with a quick dart to his left. His half-ear flapped pathetically in the evening wind. The other dog caught on, and went for the right. She was female, her fur was cut short and from this angle Jun could see the tuft of her tail peeking over her head. Rin growled. Ninomiya was saying something to his dog, but Jun couldn’t hear it.
Another moment, and the two dogs hurtled themselves at each other, barking and nipping and flipping and clawing at each other's backs. Jun jumped up, satisfied. Rin was an utter devil in close combat. She was as good as dead.
"How do you like that," Jun mouthed at Ninomiya, and then he looked away, refocusing his energies on the action. From the corner of his eye, he could see his opponent looking wary. He was shorter than Jun, a little thinner, and only slightly less handsome, which bothered Jun a little.
One of the dogs was whining in a weird way. The tussling went on. Twenty minutes, twenty-five. Something strange was happening. The dogs weren't fighting too hard, only nipping at each other's ears. Rin looked like he was enjoying this more than he should have been. Jun tried to analyze the female's movements. Definitely strange. Ninomiya was frowning too.
...In another minute, it became clear. Fucking hell. He opened his mouth to call off the battle and save himself some pride, but it was too late. Rin’s ears were flat against his head, he was on his back now, and his tail was twitching between his legs. Ninomiya’s dog was on top. Rin’s tail twitched again. No, wait fuck, that wasn’t his tail...
The whistle came from the referee.
"MATCH OVER! The two dogs are copulating. Simultaneous loss for both Nino and Jun."
"Fucking hell," he heard Nino curse, and Jun couldn’t disagree. This was the worst.
It hadn't happened to him in honest to fuck three years, even if it might have been out of pure luck. It was like that time The Gang of Six kidnapped Yukio and made Jun jump off the third floor of a building to retrieve him. He'd been pegged an arsonist by the hounds of the Hokkaido Police within 36 hours, and it was complete bullshit. This was also complete bullshit. Jun swallowed hard and made his way to the gate.
Before he could take another step, he felt a hard tap on his shoulder. Snarling, he turned around, ready to bite the head off of whoever had dared to interrupt his pathetic moment of shame.
Aiba Masaki smiled back.
FUCKING GOLD, JUN-CHAN FUCKING GOLDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!
~
He entered BLASTINGS ready to get thoroughly and utterly pissed. Seated himself at the bar and remembered that annoying tune in his head, sexy saxophone and stripper cultures be damned. Aiba was next to him, jabbering away about some awful gold he'd fucked himself over in Greece, dancing on the tops of buildings and eating more of that nasty tofu made from goat's blood. Jun covered his face in his hands and ordered a beer. He cursed himself for not having the balls to pick up his menthols from the young man after the match. He motioned for a smoke, and Aiba dropped a box of Hopes into his lap.
"So you're new in town, aren't you?" he heard the bartender say, and when he looked up he swore he could feel his brain curl up into a small ball. Utter defeat.
"You’re N-Ninomiya."
"Call me Nino, everybody does," Ninomiya told him with a half smile. "Nice fight today. Yeah no I'm kidding that was pretty terrible."
"Yeah, really," said Jun, because that was all he could really say. And then the anger came back. “Not like you’d really care. You’ve already got your name made here.”
Nino set a glass of beer in front of him on the counter. "It was my first time witnessing this kind of shit, too, okay? I mean I just kind of stood there and watched while your stupid mutt defiled my poor Shiemi-chan, seriously why didn't you call it off? You knew it was going to happen. I saw your face and you knew."
Jun stiffened. "Fuck off," he growled. "Look, it’s been self-inflicted since June for me. And it's bad enough that it's illegal around here."
A beat. Nino narrowed his eyes.
"I'm the only one who has the connections with the police around here," he said quietly. "Play nice, or you are gonna get busted so quick. So buck the fuck up."
"That is such a lie," Jun scoffed. He took a sip of his beer and tapped a Hope out from the box. He reached for his lighter and fumbled with the switch.
"I need to go have a wank in the bathroom," Aiba declared, but neither of them paid him any attention. He left the bar with a smirk on his face.
"It's the truth," Nino continued, and he leaned into the counter. "I'm the only one with any brains around here."
"You're a douche." Jun backed away, but only a little. He didn't want Nino to think he was intimidated or anything. Totally not. "You are such a douche."
"I'm only telling you the truth," Nino enunciated carefully. He was close enough that Jun could smell the mint chewing gum in his mouth. "Nothing but."
"And I'm only telling you that you are such a douche. Nothing but."
Nino bared his teeth. "No smoking in the bar," he said, and he brought his fingers close to Jun's lips, swiped the cigarette from Jun's mouth while the end was still wet from Jun's spit, stabbed the butt into the tray at his elbow. Ash trailed over the bar counter and he wicked his rag over the surface. He stuck out his palm. "Now pay for your drink."
(autumn)
Jun stopped by the bar on the weekends after that, and he spoke with Ninomiya more often than not. He drank beers and picked up girls, mostly, and he had a lot of sex in the shower. He really enjoyed the feeling of the water and a head between his legs and confessed this to Aiba sometime in August. Aiba struck him on the head and ordered Jun out of his life for the next three weeks. By September Jun had recovered from the Copulation Incident, and he went back to the dog fights and he won a lot of them by having Yukio target the tendons in the hind legs. Yukio was a remarkable dog, and Jun wouldn't even be surprised if he learned how to become a surgeon one day.
During this time, he met a girl named Akane. She was really pretty; her hair was a dark brown and she kept her nails painted green. She read Greek tragedies for a living and they dated for a while, sometimes he brought her to BLASTINGS to show her off to Nino. She could recite a lot of French poetry, and she could list all the prime numbers from 1 to 1000. She left late at nights and made him coffee early in the morning. She didn't ask him about the dog fighting; it was implied that she wanted to marry into a wealthy family and have children while wearing lipstick. Later she told him she was going to leave the country soon.
Like Aiba, she preferred to dance on top of the buildings.
~
In October he was at BLASTINGS again, but Nino wasn't there to talk dogs. Aiba was finally on speaking terms with him, and they had beers and toasted over neutral things like pantyhose and the color green before Aiba found a nice set of legs to ogle and an excuse to wander off. Jun rolled his eyes. He took out a box of menthols and headed for the washroom to smoke.
He was about to take a piss when heard rustling in the stall next to his urinal, and then a small stifled moan. Curious and feeling slightly sadistic, he zipped up his fly and tip-toed around the sink stall. This was gonna be so good. Was it Aiba? Aiba and some chick with a big booty, probably. He flung open the flimsy door of the bathroom stall.
...And there was Ninomiya, with Ohno, of all the fucking people in the world, locked in a heated embrace. They were kissing and groping each other, hands wandering around buttons and zippers and fabric. Ohno didn't notice Jun, not even for a second, but one of Nino's eyes was open and he was glaring at Jun, kind of frantic and kind of heated and kind of silly scared. Another moment, Ohno's biting down on Nino’s lips and he's moaning and okay, maybe Jun thought this was kind of hot.
He took another sneak peek before he turned around and ran out of there as fast as his legs could carry him.
~
Two weeks later, Rin was killed in the ring.
He had been clawing fiercely at his opponent, silver strings of saliva slathered across the ground and teeth at the belly and eyes flickering fire, and it was going to be a done deal until he'd missed the clump of dirt in the ground and the small bump in the fence at his back. His hind legs scrambled for purchase against the loose earth. The other dog took the advantage of the misstep, slid out from between Rin's paws and snapped his head up. He slammed Rin full-force into the fence and bit down on the exposed fur of his neck. There was a lot of blood. Jun shouted and cursed until he couldn't hear his own voice. The ref was a total fuck-up who obviously hadn't been paying attention properly and somebody in the ring had been smoking a clove cigarette, and Rin was sensitive to those, Jun could feel it.
He arrived at BLASTINGS in poor spirits, asked for shots of hard liquor and thought about existentialism and peacocks and drank some more, wouldn't look up until he was thoroughly suffering from an embarrassing Asian glow. He wasn't gonna cry, he was sure of that. Fifth shot. Tenth shot. Seventeent--
"OK that's it no more for you," Nino wrestled the glass and the bottle away from him. "You need some air. Or maybe you need to get laid. I dunno just get out of here before you die and yeah just so you know I do not want to be responsible for this shit so go and find a girl or something."
"H-Hey Neeeno," Jun slurred, because he was kind of drunk and this was so appropriate and he was just trying not to think about Rin and how much loose dirt there was on the ground. "........Why don't you get laid t-too?"
"I don't like girls," said Nino flatly. He curled his fingers around the neck of the bottle.
"Then...do it with me."
"You like girls," said Nino. His knuckles were white against the bottle. "And I have someone very nice already."
"You state it like it's fact," said Jun, and he leaned in closer. He could smell Nino. It was a nice smell. "And Ohno don't give a fuck. He never does."
"You are a total dog, Matsumoto. English, D-O-G."
"Well guess what, Ninomiya. In English, 'dog' spelled backwards is 'god'."
"So what are you trying to say?"
"That I am a god, of course. English, G-O-D."
"That is the lamest thing I have ever heard," Nino started, but before he could say anything else Jun was grabbing at his face with his stupid hands and kissing him until he couldn't breathe.
~
"So I was a stray once. I got in a fight with some other dogs and licked my wounds away while hiding in a cardboard box. I ate raindrops for breakfast for two days before a lovely lady picked me up. She dragged me up to her apartment and she fed me a delicious bowl of soup and I pledged my allegiance to her. She called me 'Momo' and she combed my hair for me. My hair is always so messy, you know. I began to love her a lot and so I asked her if I could stay. I even kissed her once. No wait actually I kissed her twice, and only the first time was accidental. She got a boyfriend after that and he was a total douchebag but I was better than him anyway. Because I was her pet. I was domestic. I was really fucking domestic like seriously fucking domestic like you've never seen, and besides I cared about her too much. Plus I can dance. I have sexy hips. She let me dance. She was cool like that. But you know what was so special about her? You know what was so special about her. She cared about me. She really cared about me. She honest to god cared about me and she didn't try for one fucking day t--"
"Yeah okay, that’s enough," Nino interrupted him, "Go home. And for dog's sake please stop before you spoil me all 14 volumes of Kimi wa Petto."
~
They slept together three times that week. The first time, it was music and a coffee from Starbucks after, and Jun left the door open and took the keys from the ring while Nino was taking a shower. He didn't have any shampoo, so he used Ivory soap instead. The second time it was 2am after work, and neither of them had the time or patience for small talk in the afterglow. They smoked cigarettes instead, and Jun talked about the first time he met Rin and Yukio. The third time, Jun's nipples were harder than Nino's and Nino's cock was harder than Jun's. They called it quits after the third time, and Jun returned the keys to the ring and closed the door while Nino took his shower. The following week, he did the laundry in his apartment and packed his bags.
And perhaps at one point it may have been on the tip of his tongue, but he never once told Nino that he had maybe fallen in love.
~
("So, this."
"This what?"
"This...whatever this is," said Nino, and he held his breath.
"This isn't a relationship."
"I-It's not. It's not? Right, it's not."
"Nope," said Jun, and he smiled with his teeth. "I'm a dog, remember?"
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"I'm a dog. You know how animals are. A dog gets all hot and bothered during mating season and then some beautiful bitch shows up and it's the most glorious thing in the world, right? And then sex happens. None of that let's-share-a-piece-of-spaghetti, Lady and the Tramp bullshit. We cut right to the bananas and the peaches and we have a ton of fun romping around our respective kennels and then, then we become mates. Or bros for life. Whichever one works better for you."
"I-I'm not sure I follow," said Nino.
Jun sighed. "It's just the alternate," he said. "Makes romantic interest almost zero. Makes my life easier, too. So how about becoming a bro for life?")
*
The city is made out of balloons, he thinks, while he is at the crosswalk. Between the daylight and the loud sounds in the streets and the parked cars with its wheels in the sidewalks, he can hear the sound of exhalation, exertion, expiration. The sky is a perfect shade of grey and he sees pocket smart phones in the place of pocket umbrellas. An old man walks up behind him and coughs. The traffic lights don't change for five minutes, and more pedestrians gather around the other side of the crosswalk. Nobody is looking at each other or thinking about looking at each other or thinking about thinking about looking at each other, the girl sitting on the fire hydrant is texting her boyfriend and the old lady with the groceries she won from her latest supermarket brawl is busy checking her bags for her receipt and the 20%-off deal she got with the pre-made bento. The city is made out of balloons, he thinks, and in that moment the lights shift, and the sidewalk bursts.
*
Aiba doesn't spare him any sympathy. "Talk to him again."
"..."
"Please."
"To who?"
"You know exactly who."
"No, I don't. Either way, I think Ohno knows who."
"Ohno doesn't give a fuck about you and him."
"I never said anything about me and him."
"I swear to dog, Matsumoto Jun!!!!!! If you don't fucking talk to that stupid dog fighter buddy of yours at BLASTINGS I am going to make Sho-chan sic The Gang of Six on you. And they are going to be so happy to have you don't you even know? They are absolutely itching to get their hands on you. They know that you've lost one of your ace dogs and they are not fucking scared of you and they are going to do all sorts of nasty things to you I just know it do not even deny it I know you are terrified so just go and talk to Nino because it isn't just about you OK some of us miss him too seriously why the fuck do you have to be so self-absorbed all the time it pisses me off so much I could shit goat's blood DOGDAMMIT JUN."
Jun shook him off. "I'll try, OK? No guarantees. Just don't bring that stupid gang into this, seriously. Look after Yukio for a while." And he left Aiba there to stew.
~
It's like, super FUCKING REAL GOLD, Jun, the REAL STUFF!!!! You only find it once and it only happens to you once in a lifetime...........don't lose it ever!!! You can't ever lose it.
(winter)
"Not my problem."
"Sure it isn't."
"I told you, not my fucking problem."
"It is so your fucking problem."
"Shut up."
"No."
"Kiss me, then."
"Okay."
"...Okay."
"Here?"
"Here."
"Really?"
"Are you done being a prude?"
"...Yeah?"
"Yeah."
~
They share a quiet kiss two hours after the last round, behind the sticky counter of the bar and the absinthe collection, in between the eco-friendly coasters and flickering lights of the battling cage that crawl over Jun's face. Nino backs him up against the stools, one hand on his back and the other cupping his chin. He murmurs something impolite and smiles into Jun's mouth. One of the bottles of absinthe tips over and rolls across the length of the bar.
"Way to go, dumbass."
"Your fault, not mine."
"Screw that. Who's the animal now?"
Nino ignores the jibe and leans in further. Their foreheads touch. "Hey hey Matsumoto, let's buy a Greek theater."
"Good idea. After that let's buy a Roman amphitheater."
"Aww, that'd be awesome. After that let's buy three Empire State Buildings."
"And it'll be just for the dogs?"
"It'll be just for the dogs."
~
when the dog began to sing
the people ran amok
a man shinned up a flagpole
a woman chewed her sock
children danced the drainpipe
a policeman robbed a bank
the mayor and all the councillors
fired doughnuts from a tank
- "the singing dog", by Rg Gregory
>>
(the end)
>>
From: m_nemonica
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
Title: santorini gold
Group/Pairings: arashi, matsumiya + slight ohmiya
Rating: light r
Warnings: the glittering generalizations of shounen manga, blocks of text, animal cruelty, Aiba as an unexplained deus ex machina
Notes: thanks to O for the beta. happy holidays, satsumatsu! not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for, but you like AUs and Tokyo, so here we go. hope you enjoy! <3
minor disclaimer: through writing this story, i am not in any way advocating dog fighting. it is a dangerous and cruel blood sport. i have kept explicit descriptions to a minimum. regardless, if you happen to like dogs a lot, you might not enjoy this story very much. don't say i didn't warn you. ):
Summary: The dog days are never over.
The truth I do not stretch or shove
When I state that the dog is full of love.
I've also found, by actual test,
A wet dog is the lovingest.
- "The Dog", by Odgen Nash
(spring)
The Gang of Six gave Jun three days for a decent head start, and in those first three days there was a lot of cold Caribbean coffee and sexy saxophone intros being played on the radio for a charge of four books on stripper culture plus two hundred times the price on Aiba's head. The sexy saxophone was George Michael, and Jun hated every moment of it. Pending the tenth hour of the second day, They sent him a tremendously tacky email with no postscript, probably a polite way of telling him to get the fuck off their turf or face the bloodlusty hounds of the Hokkaido Police, no pun intended, nevertheless the bulk of which he perceived to be a blaring neon sign disguised as a Herald of God perched on top of a moving aircraft flying right out from an over-pixelated videogame, ousting his regime from the Akita Prefecture and shoving him straight into the arms of Roppongi.
And fuck, wasn't Roppongi getting desperate.
Within a week of sleeping in every swanky elevator inside the Tokyo Tower, Ohno took pity on him and lent him the keys to his spare apartment. It was located in a back alley behind a karaoke diner and a dental office, and the nearest bar was a renovated gun museum three hundred meters across the street, plus you had to hop a fence. Ohno cited British daytime television and a book written by Carson McCullers. It became immediately perplexing, but he was thankful for a place to crash.
When he’d been brave enough to ask why, Ohno simply shrugged his shoulders. "I care about you, bro," was all he said, and he went back to reading his newspaper under the pagoda in the Aoyama Cemetary after that.
Coming home on the 8th.........be prepared for some FUCKING GOLD!!!
Another reason why Jun left Akita was because of Aiba. Aiba had written back two months ago about returning from his treasure hunt in Greece. He had mentioned something about seeing Yanni Live in Concert and eating tofu made from goat's blood. It was all very exotic and nonsensical, and not very much like it was written by someone who had spent the last three years in Santorini, so Jun was pretty sure Aiba had made most of it up. There were no embarrassing photographs of hookers, for one thing. Aiba loved that kind of thing. The letter also contained a lot of exclamation points and dramatic ellipses. Jun was properly suspicious.
(solstice)
The summer came by fast and without much warning, and before he could remember to say his prayers and count on his fingers the drinks he'd had via non-CocaCola vending machine, the dogs came. They were different sizes and all of them were growling, and the bars on the cage rattled. The delivery truck had grey stripes and the driver stamped his feet on the doormat before asking if he could come in for a beer.
"Did you hear?" He told Jun, "The Gang of Six is acting up again. Say they're looking around for a kid named Matsumoto. You heard of a Matsumoto?"
"I have not," said Jun.
"Good for you, then," said the driver. "Because you know I'd personally hate to be the snitch on that particular act. The G-Six! Those are some crazy motherfuckers, right there."
"Some crazy motherfuckers," Jun agreed.
He decided to open his business the week after, between lunch and the beginning of Happy Hour at the karaoke place. Before that, he read some Dickens and checked the airplane flights from Athens to Haneda. He told himself that he was a handsome, handsome man, and then he had sex with a girl from the bar three hundred meters across the street and over the fence. He put on expensive suits and acted silly in front of a department store for half an hour. He bought a feather boa for good measure. The dogs came after that, all of them whining for terrible action. He couldn't put it off for much longer.
It was still illegal in Tokyo, after all.
~
He had his first fight in the Roppongi Arena. The Roppongi Arena was a small vacant lot, dusty in the summers and shielded from the ordinary eye by a grove of urban aspen trees and three blocks of highly permeable concrete. In the back there was a standard fighting ring fashioned from a waist-high chicken wire fence, and in the front a young man with too much facial hair kept tabs and bets. He was barely legal and he had a habit of calling everyone 'aniki'. He thought it was very ironic and properly hilarious; nobody else did. He also sold beer and cigarettes but none of the boys bought any because it was distasteful to drink or smoke near the ring and everybody knew that.
Toward the second half of the tournament, Jun showed up with two of his best dogs in separate carriers. Their names were Rin and Yukio and they were his favorites. Rin had only half of one ear, the other half of which had gotten torn off his head three months ago from a brawl with a purebred Akita one year his junior. The asymmetry gave him imbalance, but there was also the aerodynamic factor. Rin had a very kamikaze style of fighting and it was troublesome sometimes to tear him off the other dogs. Yukio, other the other hand, was quite obedient. Yukio was a perfect fighter and terrifically smart, and Jun wouldn't even be surprised if Yukio ever learned how to clock and fire a gun with his bare paws.
At the table, he registered his first name and flashed the ID that Ohno had lent him, scratched the tip of his pen against the paper for ink and accidentally drew on his sleeve in the process. Then he told the young man with too much facial hair to save him a pack of king size Mild Sevens for later.
"You should pay me right now, or I won’t hold them for you, aniki," said the young man.
"I'll pay you when I win this round," said Jun. "When I win my match and you win your bet on my match, you can give me a pack of menthols and we'll call it even."
"Wow aniki, just who do you think you are?" the young man scoffed. "I've never even seen you around here before. Plus I've got to be a total moron to bet on you. You're bracketed against Ninomiya today, and that is just asking for trouble."
"Ninomiya, who's that?"
"Oh maaaan. You're really new here, aren't you? Ninomiya is awesome. We call him The Protagonist. He also bartends down at BLASTINGS, the gun museum bar. A killer trainer if I've ever seen one, and he recently signed with The G-Six."
Jun froze. "The Gang of Six? They're here?!"
The guy chuckled. "Not here. But they will be in a few days. Word's out they're on a manhunt. Now go and enjoy your fight, aniki. Look here, I'm gonna pity you and put one of my bets on Yukio-chan. How's that?"
~
The Gang of Six, inappropriately named, was actually a gang of four. They were an odd bunch of ruthless dog fighters who never adhered to the rules, and they used a Mysterious Connection With the Higher-Ups to enforce their personal codes of conduct. There were originally nine members in the group, but over the years there had been too many fights regarding the name of their gang, and the members left one by two by two, each time citing irreconcilable differences. The first guy who left started his own illegal ring in Hokkaido. The next two did time in jail for being dumb and getting caught with fighting dogs in the Ginza. The last two were the most prominent members of the G-Six, having finally decided on a name for the group before tossing it all behind their backs. When the two former leaders left they parted ways, one went down to Osaka and the other took off for St. Petersburg. The remaining four guys decided not to change their name to The Gang of Four because they didn't want to sound too communist.
(It made no logical sense to Jun, who liked his group of friends just fine, but The Gang of Six had practically made themselves famous by stirring up inter-group drama, so then again.)
Either way, they were Bad News. Currently, The G-Six lineup consisted of two pairs of fighters who found every excuse to pick on Jun after one of their most prized females lost a particularly gruesome battle to Yukio. They often harassed Jun with stupid emails. But only recently (and after the departure of the last two gang members), had they become quite violent and unpredictable in their patterns of attack. Ohno and Sakurai knew one of the guys in the group, and they both told Jun to leg it out of Akita before his apartment got trashed or burned or stuffed with shit.
And of course, Aiba was back in town. But that was a totally different problem.
~
The fight was on at the sound of the bell. The area around the ring was cleared save for Jun, the referee, and the guy named Ninomiya, and it was quiet until Rin and his opponent were let out of their holding cells. Rin growled, and he started off with a quick dart to his left. His half-ear flapped pathetically in the evening wind. The other dog caught on, and went for the right. She was female, her fur was cut short and from this angle Jun could see the tuft of her tail peeking over her head. Rin growled. Ninomiya was saying something to his dog, but Jun couldn’t hear it.
Another moment, and the two dogs hurtled themselves at each other, barking and nipping and flipping and clawing at each other's backs. Jun jumped up, satisfied. Rin was an utter devil in close combat. She was as good as dead.
"How do you like that," Jun mouthed at Ninomiya, and then he looked away, refocusing his energies on the action. From the corner of his eye, he could see his opponent looking wary. He was shorter than Jun, a little thinner, and only slightly less handsome, which bothered Jun a little.
One of the dogs was whining in a weird way. The tussling went on. Twenty minutes, twenty-five. Something strange was happening. The dogs weren't fighting too hard, only nipping at each other's ears. Rin looked like he was enjoying this more than he should have been. Jun tried to analyze the female's movements. Definitely strange. Ninomiya was frowning too.
...In another minute, it became clear. Fucking hell. He opened his mouth to call off the battle and save himself some pride, but it was too late. Rin’s ears were flat against his head, he was on his back now, and his tail was twitching between his legs. Ninomiya’s dog was on top. Rin’s tail twitched again. No, wait fuck, that wasn’t his tail...
The whistle came from the referee.
"MATCH OVER! The two dogs are copulating. Simultaneous loss for both Nino and Jun."
"Fucking hell," he heard Nino curse, and Jun couldn’t disagree. This was the worst.
It hadn't happened to him in honest to fuck three years, even if it might have been out of pure luck. It was like that time The Gang of Six kidnapped Yukio and made Jun jump off the third floor of a building to retrieve him. He'd been pegged an arsonist by the hounds of the Hokkaido Police within 36 hours, and it was complete bullshit. This was also complete bullshit. Jun swallowed hard and made his way to the gate.
Before he could take another step, he felt a hard tap on his shoulder. Snarling, he turned around, ready to bite the head off of whoever had dared to interrupt his pathetic moment of shame.
Aiba Masaki smiled back.
FUCKING GOLD, JUN-CHAN FUCKING GOLDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!
~
He entered BLASTINGS ready to get thoroughly and utterly pissed. Seated himself at the bar and remembered that annoying tune in his head, sexy saxophone and stripper cultures be damned. Aiba was next to him, jabbering away about some awful gold he'd fucked himself over in Greece, dancing on the tops of buildings and eating more of that nasty tofu made from goat's blood. Jun covered his face in his hands and ordered a beer. He cursed himself for not having the balls to pick up his menthols from the young man after the match. He motioned for a smoke, and Aiba dropped a box of Hopes into his lap.
"So you're new in town, aren't you?" he heard the bartender say, and when he looked up he swore he could feel his brain curl up into a small ball. Utter defeat.
"You’re N-Ninomiya."
"Call me Nino, everybody does," Ninomiya told him with a half smile. "Nice fight today. Yeah no I'm kidding that was pretty terrible."
"Yeah, really," said Jun, because that was all he could really say. And then the anger came back. “Not like you’d really care. You’ve already got your name made here.”
Nino set a glass of beer in front of him on the counter. "It was my first time witnessing this kind of shit, too, okay? I mean I just kind of stood there and watched while your stupid mutt defiled my poor Shiemi-chan, seriously why didn't you call it off? You knew it was going to happen. I saw your face and you knew."
Jun stiffened. "Fuck off," he growled. "Look, it’s been self-inflicted since June for me. And it's bad enough that it's illegal around here."
A beat. Nino narrowed his eyes.
"I'm the only one who has the connections with the police around here," he said quietly. "Play nice, or you are gonna get busted so quick. So buck the fuck up."
"That is such a lie," Jun scoffed. He took a sip of his beer and tapped a Hope out from the box. He reached for his lighter and fumbled with the switch.
"I need to go have a wank in the bathroom," Aiba declared, but neither of them paid him any attention. He left the bar with a smirk on his face.
"It's the truth," Nino continued, and he leaned into the counter. "I'm the only one with any brains around here."
"You're a douche." Jun backed away, but only a little. He didn't want Nino to think he was intimidated or anything. Totally not. "You are such a douche."
"I'm only telling you the truth," Nino enunciated carefully. He was close enough that Jun could smell the mint chewing gum in his mouth. "Nothing but."
"And I'm only telling you that you are such a douche. Nothing but."
Nino bared his teeth. "No smoking in the bar," he said, and he brought his fingers close to Jun's lips, swiped the cigarette from Jun's mouth while the end was still wet from Jun's spit, stabbed the butt into the tray at his elbow. Ash trailed over the bar counter and he wicked his rag over the surface. He stuck out his palm. "Now pay for your drink."
(autumn)
Jun stopped by the bar on the weekends after that, and he spoke with Ninomiya more often than not. He drank beers and picked up girls, mostly, and he had a lot of sex in the shower. He really enjoyed the feeling of the water and a head between his legs and confessed this to Aiba sometime in August. Aiba struck him on the head and ordered Jun out of his life for the next three weeks. By September Jun had recovered from the Copulation Incident, and he went back to the dog fights and he won a lot of them by having Yukio target the tendons in the hind legs. Yukio was a remarkable dog, and Jun wouldn't even be surprised if he learned how to become a surgeon one day.
During this time, he met a girl named Akane. She was really pretty; her hair was a dark brown and she kept her nails painted green. She read Greek tragedies for a living and they dated for a while, sometimes he brought her to BLASTINGS to show her off to Nino. She could recite a lot of French poetry, and she could list all the prime numbers from 1 to 1000. She left late at nights and made him coffee early in the morning. She didn't ask him about the dog fighting; it was implied that she wanted to marry into a wealthy family and have children while wearing lipstick. Later she told him she was going to leave the country soon.
Like Aiba, she preferred to dance on top of the buildings.
~
In October he was at BLASTINGS again, but Nino wasn't there to talk dogs. Aiba was finally on speaking terms with him, and they had beers and toasted over neutral things like pantyhose and the color green before Aiba found a nice set of legs to ogle and an excuse to wander off. Jun rolled his eyes. He took out a box of menthols and headed for the washroom to smoke.
He was about to take a piss when heard rustling in the stall next to his urinal, and then a small stifled moan. Curious and feeling slightly sadistic, he zipped up his fly and tip-toed around the sink stall. This was gonna be so good. Was it Aiba? Aiba and some chick with a big booty, probably. He flung open the flimsy door of the bathroom stall.
...And there was Ninomiya, with Ohno, of all the fucking people in the world, locked in a heated embrace. They were kissing and groping each other, hands wandering around buttons and zippers and fabric. Ohno didn't notice Jun, not even for a second, but one of Nino's eyes was open and he was glaring at Jun, kind of frantic and kind of heated and kind of silly scared. Another moment, Ohno's biting down on Nino’s lips and he's moaning and okay, maybe Jun thought this was kind of hot.
He took another sneak peek before he turned around and ran out of there as fast as his legs could carry him.
~
Two weeks later, Rin was killed in the ring.
He had been clawing fiercely at his opponent, silver strings of saliva slathered across the ground and teeth at the belly and eyes flickering fire, and it was going to be a done deal until he'd missed the clump of dirt in the ground and the small bump in the fence at his back. His hind legs scrambled for purchase against the loose earth. The other dog took the advantage of the misstep, slid out from between Rin's paws and snapped his head up. He slammed Rin full-force into the fence and bit down on the exposed fur of his neck. There was a lot of blood. Jun shouted and cursed until he couldn't hear his own voice. The ref was a total fuck-up who obviously hadn't been paying attention properly and somebody in the ring had been smoking a clove cigarette, and Rin was sensitive to those, Jun could feel it.
He arrived at BLASTINGS in poor spirits, asked for shots of hard liquor and thought about existentialism and peacocks and drank some more, wouldn't look up until he was thoroughly suffering from an embarrassing Asian glow. He wasn't gonna cry, he was sure of that. Fifth shot. Tenth shot. Seventeent--
"OK that's it no more for you," Nino wrestled the glass and the bottle away from him. "You need some air. Or maybe you need to get laid. I dunno just get out of here before you die and yeah just so you know I do not want to be responsible for this shit so go and find a girl or something."
"H-Hey Neeeno," Jun slurred, because he was kind of drunk and this was so appropriate and he was just trying not to think about Rin and how much loose dirt there was on the ground. "........Why don't you get laid t-too?"
"I don't like girls," said Nino flatly. He curled his fingers around the neck of the bottle.
"Then...do it with me."
"You like girls," said Nino. His knuckles were white against the bottle. "And I have someone very nice already."
"You state it like it's fact," said Jun, and he leaned in closer. He could smell Nino. It was a nice smell. "And Ohno don't give a fuck. He never does."
"You are a total dog, Matsumoto. English, D-O-G."
"Well guess what, Ninomiya. In English, 'dog' spelled backwards is 'god'."
"So what are you trying to say?"
"That I am a god, of course. English, G-O-D."
"That is the lamest thing I have ever heard," Nino started, but before he could say anything else Jun was grabbing at his face with his stupid hands and kissing him until he couldn't breathe.
~
"So I was a stray once. I got in a fight with some other dogs and licked my wounds away while hiding in a cardboard box. I ate raindrops for breakfast for two days before a lovely lady picked me up. She dragged me up to her apartment and she fed me a delicious bowl of soup and I pledged my allegiance to her. She called me 'Momo' and she combed my hair for me. My hair is always so messy, you know. I began to love her a lot and so I asked her if I could stay. I even kissed her once. No wait actually I kissed her twice, and only the first time was accidental. She got a boyfriend after that and he was a total douchebag but I was better than him anyway. Because I was her pet. I was domestic. I was really fucking domestic like seriously fucking domestic like you've never seen, and besides I cared about her too much. Plus I can dance. I have sexy hips. She let me dance. She was cool like that. But you know what was so special about her? You know what was so special about her. She cared about me. She really cared about me. She honest to god cared about me and she didn't try for one fucking day t--"
"Yeah okay, that’s enough," Nino interrupted him, "Go home. And for dog's sake please stop before you spoil me all 14 volumes of Kimi wa Petto."
~
They slept together three times that week. The first time, it was music and a coffee from Starbucks after, and Jun left the door open and took the keys from the ring while Nino was taking a shower. He didn't have any shampoo, so he used Ivory soap instead. The second time it was 2am after work, and neither of them had the time or patience for small talk in the afterglow. They smoked cigarettes instead, and Jun talked about the first time he met Rin and Yukio. The third time, Jun's nipples were harder than Nino's and Nino's cock was harder than Jun's. They called it quits after the third time, and Jun returned the keys to the ring and closed the door while Nino took his shower. The following week, he did the laundry in his apartment and packed his bags.
And perhaps at one point it may have been on the tip of his tongue, but he never once told Nino that he had maybe fallen in love.
~
("So, this."
"This what?"
"This...whatever this is," said Nino, and he held his breath.
"This isn't a relationship."
"I-It's not. It's not? Right, it's not."
"Nope," said Jun, and he smiled with his teeth. "I'm a dog, remember?"
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"I'm a dog. You know how animals are. A dog gets all hot and bothered during mating season and then some beautiful bitch shows up and it's the most glorious thing in the world, right? And then sex happens. None of that let's-share-a-piece-of-spaghetti, Lady and the Tramp bullshit. We cut right to the bananas and the peaches and we have a ton of fun romping around our respective kennels and then, then we become mates. Or bros for life. Whichever one works better for you."
"I-I'm not sure I follow," said Nino.
Jun sighed. "It's just the alternate," he said. "Makes romantic interest almost zero. Makes my life easier, too. So how about becoming a bro for life?")
*
The city is made out of balloons, he thinks, while he is at the crosswalk. Between the daylight and the loud sounds in the streets and the parked cars with its wheels in the sidewalks, he can hear the sound of exhalation, exertion, expiration. The sky is a perfect shade of grey and he sees pocket smart phones in the place of pocket umbrellas. An old man walks up behind him and coughs. The traffic lights don't change for five minutes, and more pedestrians gather around the other side of the crosswalk. Nobody is looking at each other or thinking about looking at each other or thinking about thinking about looking at each other, the girl sitting on the fire hydrant is texting her boyfriend and the old lady with the groceries she won from her latest supermarket brawl is busy checking her bags for her receipt and the 20%-off deal she got with the pre-made bento. The city is made out of balloons, he thinks, and in that moment the lights shift, and the sidewalk bursts.
*
Aiba doesn't spare him any sympathy. "Talk to him again."
"..."
"Please."
"To who?"
"You know exactly who."
"No, I don't. Either way, I think Ohno knows who."
"Ohno doesn't give a fuck about you and him."
"I never said anything about me and him."
"I swear to dog, Matsumoto Jun!!!!!! If you don't fucking talk to that stupid dog fighter buddy of yours at BLASTINGS I am going to make Sho-chan sic The Gang of Six on you. And they are going to be so happy to have you don't you even know? They are absolutely itching to get their hands on you. They know that you've lost one of your ace dogs and they are not fucking scared of you and they are going to do all sorts of nasty things to you I just know it do not even deny it I know you are terrified so just go and talk to Nino because it isn't just about you OK some of us miss him too seriously why the fuck do you have to be so self-absorbed all the time it pisses me off so much I could shit goat's blood DOGDAMMIT JUN."
Jun shook him off. "I'll try, OK? No guarantees. Just don't bring that stupid gang into this, seriously. Look after Yukio for a while." And he left Aiba there to stew.
~
It's like, super FUCKING REAL GOLD, Jun, the REAL STUFF!!!! You only find it once and it only happens to you once in a lifetime...........don't lose it ever!!! You can't ever lose it.
(winter)
"Not my problem."
"Sure it isn't."
"I told you, not my fucking problem."
"It is so your fucking problem."
"Shut up."
"No."
"Kiss me, then."
"Okay."
"...Okay."
"Here?"
"Here."
"Really?"
"Are you done being a prude?"
"...Yeah?"
"Yeah."
~
They share a quiet kiss two hours after the last round, behind the sticky counter of the bar and the absinthe collection, in between the eco-friendly coasters and flickering lights of the battling cage that crawl over Jun's face. Nino backs him up against the stools, one hand on his back and the other cupping his chin. He murmurs something impolite and smiles into Jun's mouth. One of the bottles of absinthe tips over and rolls across the length of the bar.
"Way to go, dumbass."
"Your fault, not mine."
"Screw that. Who's the animal now?"
Nino ignores the jibe and leans in further. Their foreheads touch. "Hey hey Matsumoto, let's buy a Greek theater."
"Good idea. After that let's buy a Roman amphitheater."
"Aww, that'd be awesome. After that let's buy three Empire State Buildings."
"And it'll be just for the dogs?"
"It'll be just for the dogs."
~
when the dog began to sing
the people ran amok
a man shinned up a flagpole
a woman chewed her sock
children danced the drainpipe
a policeman robbed a bank
the mayor and all the councillors
fired doughnuts from a tank
- "the singing dog", by Rg Gregory
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(the end)
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