House of Cards - 4/5 (JE, Akame)
Jin recognized this routine; though the directions and address were different he was unsurprised to eventually find himself in Nerima, cutting through a park before arriving at Kame's new apartment. Well, probably not new-new, but new to Jin. Like the one he remembered, this place was a good distance from the headquarters in Shibuya and completely residential. Quiet, calm, even picturesque in a way that for some reason struck Jin as abnormally funny. It was nicer than the old place, so maybe CARD's pay scale had gotten more generous. Or maybe Kame was just good at saving. Probably the latter.
The name plate contained his real name, no false identities here, not even that of his other true face, the Ace of Spades. Here, this one room was for Kamenashi Kazuya only, still there beneath the many facades. He'd even changed clothes at the compound, no longer modeled in the designer labels of Takumi.
Jin had forgotten about this. He hadn't thought or remembered deeply enough. The twinge of guilt was soothed over with amazement, even a touch of smugness, because this-having a separate home, some independent space-had been his doing. So to speak. To give him credit for the idea was a bit much, maybe saying he was the cause was better. There had been a time when Kame didn't seem to have any breaks between assignments, shedding one persona only to assume another and managing to lead the team throughout. It had worn on him terribly in several ways, but Jin had been the first to break, mainly because work was monopolizing Kame and Jin simply wasn't going to stand for that. Place and privilege again.
So he entered Kame's new home with a deep-set sense of entitlement that bullied its way on top of reeling uncertainty and fragmented displacement. Falling backward onto a safety net was the opposite of progress, but he wrapped himself in the relief and familiarity with a stubbornness that got him what he wanted just as many as times as it did not.
The first thing he did was raid Kame's kitchen. It wasn't very well stocked considering how long he'd probably been away, but the refrigerator did yield a six-pack of Kirin.
"Should have stopped by the combini," Kame sighed after admitting defeat to the sad state of his pantry.
"Maybe," Jin agreed after discovering some sort of alien organism gestating in a Tupperware container. Horrifyingly fascinated, he peeled the lid back to get a better look at the remains and wondered if he could mail it to Josh. With a note: "Thanks for the cash, please accept this as repayment."
"Throw that out," Kame said snippily, face scrunched in disgust and shifty-eyed with embarrassment.
"Hey, it was grown in your fridge." Jin tossed the whole thing, container and all. Predictably, Kame bitched at him about recycling.
They managed to scrounge up a dusty, half-empty tube of Pringles, better than nothing. Armed with beer and chips, Jin parked himself in front of the TV, but of course Kame didn't get any good channels.
"Well, why pay for it when I'm hardly around?" Kame took a swig of beer and propped his feet up on the coffee table. He'd taken his socks off along with his shoes, and his toes were painted to match his fingernails. "Pick a DVD or something."
"What?" Jin dragged his gaze away from where Kame's ankles disappeared under the cuffs of what was clearly a favorite pair of well-worn jeans. Kame comfortable in his own skin was another thing that memory failed to do justice. Jin swallowed. "Oh. But I don't want to watch anything boring, or weepy chick flicks."
Kame twisted around slightly to kick at him. Jin was prepared for it, catching his leg and-didn't let go, not now that he had an excuse. He drew Kame's foot closer and pressed the curve of his knuckles to the sole, feeling Kame still. It wasn't that Kame was ticklish there, and it wasn't that Jin had a particular fetish, but the light contact was another privilege in itself. One that Jin wasn't certain he'd get away with after all, and he shrunk away from the very likely possibility that Kame didn't want him. His actions hadn't exactly been welcoming these past few days. These past few years if truth be told. Until now, maybe, but all of that was beside the point-no amount of reason could get Jin to keep his hands to himself.
He stroked from the ball of Kame's foot down to the heel, the lines of his fingers sliding over skin that was surprisingly soft to the touch. Though, maybe not so surprising given the pedicure, and Jin smiled to himself while his thumb skimmed along the stretch of delicate bones connecting to Kame's toes. His hand made an abrupt detour up to the ankle when Kame shifted his heel in Jin's lap, pressing firmly down and-
Oh. Um. The beginnings of a flush rose to Jin's skin, settling warm and not-quite-comfortable as Kame leaned the arch of his foot into the apex of Jin's thighs, making him squirm. "Pervert," he accused with a certain quality of heat. His fingers swept over the bump of Kame's ankle and snuck up under his pant cuff, tickling through the fine hairs of his leg.
"You're just easy," Kame drawled from where he now lounged lengthwise across the couch. His figure was as trim as it had ever been, the sharp jut of bones packed with lean muscle, always stronger than he looked. And he looked healthy these days, Jin observed with a weird and most likely presumptuous stirring of pride, but that steadily diminished in importance compared to a rather different kind of stirring under the pressure of Kame's foot.
"Don't tease," Jin whined, struck by the thought that Kame could keep this up and draw it out and probably even make him come with only this-and he wasn't yet at the point where he didn't care how embarrassing that would be. "Come here," he demanded instead, and there were two ways this could go. Either Kame would refuse and put Jin through his paces, or he'd let Jin get away with murder.
Eyes half-lidded and intent, Kame swung his legs around to slink over to Jin's side with an unspoken dare of, do you really want that?
Licks and curls of hunger flared to life in Jin's belly and a trembling need broke free. When the tips of Kame's fingers brushed his lips, tracing the swell and contours of his mouth, a swipe of Jin's tongue invited them in. He wanted; he really, really did.
♥ || ♠
There was a perfectly good bed not two meters away but that was two meters too far. It was a millimeter too far. The couch was where they stayed, Jin wedged up against the armrest with his legs open and one foot braced on the floor, Kame's hand moving inside the front of his pants. Rough strokes, messy, sofuckinggoodohgod-
He hadn't realized his mental babbling had spilled into verbal until Kame chuckled warm next to his ear. "You're going to traumatize the neighbors."
Probably a bunch of old people with delicate sensibilities, but who the hell cared. Jin showed just how many damns he gave by palming Kame through everyday cheap denim and squeezing. Kame sagged and undulated into the touch, teeth finding the column of Jin's neck.
Shot of adrenaline, euphoria, it always got Jin by. Easy, and he loved it when things were simple and easy. Missions always did this to him, the victories blasted him high and the failures crashed him after. PTS: Post Traumatic Sex. Never failed. Never fixed, either, not really. Jin had turned his back on it once, on the missions and CARD and Kame and the whole mess. At the time it had been the best decision of his life.
Here he was again.
"Oh, fuck," Jin hissed through clenched teeth, on his back being spread wide open. He'd forgotten how much this could hurt. Spasms lodged in his throat to block the self-mocking laugh; something about it always hurt, the part where he felt stabbed in the filthier recess of his heart and bled clean (or close to it).
Kame gripped Jin's leg where it was bent over his shoulder, short nails making indents in the flesh-covered muscle of his thigh. Kame's typical razor focus was flooded with desire, the snap of his hips less checked, and that was the part that made Jin's toes curl in heady satisfaction. He slipped a hand towards the heavy, full weight of his cock smearing wetness on his stomach, only for Kame to growl and catch his wrist.
"No," Jin whined, making noises of protest in lieu of logical articulation expounding on why that was un-fucking-fair. Kame had been indulging him completely to this point.
His complaints changed quality when Kame folded him and pressed closer. Less no, more yes, finally reduced to gasps against Kame's mouth, whimpers and moans exchanged in melting kisses. Stretched aching to the limit, compressed tight enough to explode.
Maybe he'd been wrong. It wouldn't be the first time.
Jin swallowed the shape of his name where it poured from Kame's mouth, claimed it, and clung to Kame's shuddering, breaking frame above him. He held onto Kame's shoulder, the back of his neck, finding some way to hold together in the midst of it all.
Maybe he could still live like this.
♥ || ♠
Jin showered, even shaved, while Kame went out to buy food for dinner. He also dipped into Kame's wardrobe because living in the same clothes for three days straight was starting to feel grungy even for him. He already knew from previous experience that in these instances Kame was not averse to sharing. "Where is it, where is it..." He rifled through a drawer. "Aha, score!" Jin withdrew an unopened package of Calvin Kleins. Trust Kame to have brand new extras. Next he threw on a faded Yomiuri Giant's t-shirt, and then for a moment he considered declaring it Pantless Tuesday rather than try to squeeze into any of Kame's jeans, before triumphantly emerging with a pair of drawstring pants.
He snagged a sparkly purple hair-tie to hold his damp hair back without thinking to question its presence the same way he didn't question the bottles of nail polish. There had also been a bottle of hair dye in the bathroom, inky black matching the locks that had been mussed by Jin's hands barely an hour ago. Jin wondered what color Kame's hair had been before.
Idleness led to boredom which led to snooping. At first entertaining thoughts of coming across a hidden porn stash, Jin was instead unfazed to discover a Kimber Eclipse .45 ACP in the sock drawer and a Kobun knife in an accessory box. The katana under the bed, however, was a more of a surprise.
When the door banged open upon Kame's return he was laden with bags of groceries after having evidently decided to go all out and stock up.
"Welcome back," Jin called from where he sprawled on the bed reading Kame's One Piece manga.
There was half a pause. Then the bags rustled and Kame said, "I'm back. Come help me with these."
Putting away the groceries was a clumsy affair because of the small kitchen, and cooking almost disastrous due to the same. Jin ended up banishing himself to the couch, happy enough to let Kame do the work. "Lazy," Kame accused with no bite, indulging him again.
"It's been a really long time since anyone cooked for me," Jin said in his defense, sitting with his arms crossed over the back of the couch and chin resting on top. He watched Kame chop vegetables and add them into a frying pan.
"Your girlfriend didn't?"
Jin snorted. "Nothing edible. And there was that time she set her place on fire."
Kame glanced up from the eggs he cracked into a bowl. "Seriously?"
"Seriously." Jin grinned at the memory. At the time it hadn't been funny at all of course. Fortunately Rosa hadn't been hurt-hadn't even been home when it happened because she had stepped out to do something and left the gas stove on, but he'd heard about the damage fees. She'd moved in with him after that, and when she left she'd left for good.
"This isn't working," she'd said, but failed to explain why in a way he understood. Something he'd done or hadn't done. Something about misaligned expectations. All he knew was that he disappointed her somehow, which wasn't even a habit anymore so much as an intrinsic character flaw. Jin was well-aware, and at this point he just accepted it.
"Hey," Jin began once they were seated in front of the TV again, chopsticks poised over a bowl of fried rice. The DVD menu for Moulin Rouge splashed across the screen, a movie selection that was gaudily over the top, spectacularly camp, and likely to reduce both of them to tragedy-stricken tears by the end. Plus, lots of scantily-clad cabaret girls.
"Hm?" Kame scrolled through the settings and hit play.
Would you hate me if...?
No, Jin wasn't ready to fuck all this up yet. He would later, inevitably, but not now. Not here. He started shoveling food into his mouth to decrease the chance of ruining everything. "This is good," he said in between bites, then added, "turn up the volume."
"We're really going to piss off my neighbors," Kame said, but complied so that by the time they'd finished off the Kirin both of them were dramatically singing along to the Elephant Love Medley.
♥ || ♠
Finding out CARD employed an in-house medical doctor (highly questionable though he may be) had been a surprise, but finding out they also employed an in-house psychologist didn't faze Jin at all. He even approved of this new addition-until Kame said Jin had an appointment with the guy.
"It's required at regular intervals or after every assignment."
"I'm not-but that was-"
Kame turned to him and the pity on his face gave Jin hope. "If you feel that strongly about it..."
"I DO."
"...then I can sit in with you. But you will have to speak for yourself."
What a patronizing asshole. "You are a patronizing asshole," Jin said in case Kame wasn't aware.
"Do you need me to hold your hand and walk you there?"
"NO. God, I'm an adult."
"It's good that you realize it."
Still, when Jin found himself standing alone in front of a door with a nameplate that read KOYAMA, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST, he seriously considered skipping out. No one would be the wiser. Okay, that was a lie, everyone would find out and then he'd have to deal with their bullshit and Kame might think-
"Let's get this over with," Jin said as soon as he opened the door. He came up short when he realized how tiny the room was, almost walking into the large armchair positioned at an angle to the desk behind which the psychologist sat. There was a bookcase packed with thick texts, a filing cabinet, and a potted plant in the corner. No windows of course. Everything, even the pot, was bolted to the floor.
"Akanishi-san?" Koyama greeted him with a smile that didn't really indicate he worked routinely with a bunch of criminal headcases. "You're early, but please have a seat and we can get started."
"Early again?" Jin checked his watch-oh, that's right, it was still set ahead. He wasn't sure how he felt about that. On one hand it was sort of nice to look respectable and timely, but he really wasn't a respectable and timely person. He supposed it wasn't hurting him, though. "So how does this work? I'm not so good at feely-sharey."
"There's no set schedule or anything. You can tell me anything-feelings, sure, how your assignment went, or what you had for breakfast this morning. Whatever you're comfortable with."
Jin fidgeted in the chair experimentally but there was no changing the fact that after yesterday he was pretty damn sore. "As far as comfort goes, I think you could use a footrest here."
"Not enough room, and it'd have to be connected to the chair or bolted down."
Jin eyed the firmly attached furniture. "Get a lot of violent visitors?"
"I used to have two plants."
"I see."
Koyama's chair seemed to be the only thing not stuck to the floor and he wheeled it backwards to open a drawer in his desk. "We don't have to talk if you don't want. I have some games as well..."
"Not cards," Jin groaned. "What is it with this place and cards? Strip poker's been ruined for me."
"Hmm. Chess?"
Jin crossed his arms. "Do I look like I play chess?"
"Then Go is probably out too, huh?"
"Give the man a prize."
"Candy Land?"
Don't be retarded, Jin wanted to say. Instead what came out was, "I call the red guy."
♥ || ♠
Jin wasn't sure what prompted him to broach the subject, maybe he was only waiting for an opportunity, and he was currently way ahead in the game. His character had lucked out and taken the Rainbow Trail right away, now he was rounding the bend towards Lollipop Woods while Koyama wasn't even at the Gumdrop Mountains yet. "So," he said, moving his red character piece onto a green square. "I'm thinking maybe I'll be this fucked up forever."
Koyama drew a card and moved his blue guy to the yellow square, missing the Gumdrop Pass. "Any particular reason why?"
"Well, I like normal, you know." His next draw only got him one space ahead, onto red. "But normal doesn't seem to like me. I might as well... well."
"Planning to do anything about it?"
"Maybe. I don't know... damnit." He threw down the blue card and put his character on the dot, stuck for who knew how long. "Maybe I'm just not cut out for normal. Even my ex noticed." Rosa hadn't held anything against him, or so it seemed at the time.
("Are you sure you don't want to go to the emergency room? You're bleeding, Christ." She pushed him into the bathroom and worked his shirt over his head, careful about brushing over the large, bloody abrasion all over his shoulder.
"Like I can afford that kind of bill-son of a bitch," Jin said, getting a look at the extreme road rash reflected in the mirror with a detached fascination. The cuts weren't deep and he didn't need stitches, but he was definitely missing layers of skin. He was still a little buzzed from the life-or-death edge of adrenaline and the pain wasn't registering as much as it would otherwise.
Rosa left and came back with a two-thirds-full bottle of vodka. "The mother could have paid for it. It's the least she could have done for saving her brat's life." She set a glass in front of him and poured him a shot.
Jin downed it and that just added to the giddy, light-headed high. "Whatever..." Skidding and rolling on asphalt wasn't his idea of a fun time but it was better than being splattered by a car. He still hissed and swore when the alcohol was poured over the wound, every scrape on fire, carrying a burn through his system to pound loud and fast where his heartbeat felt like it emanated from the back of his throat rather than in his chest. He could almost taste the warm-blooded pulse of it.
Rosa refilled his glass before capping the bottle, now almost empty and she told him he owed her more Svedka.
"Sure," Jin said, catching her wrist as she reached for the gauze and placing an intentioned, open-mouthed kiss to her palm.
Her fingers curled around his chin, a thoughtful smile touching her lips as she said wickedly, "I know it's not the cheap alcohol doing this. Let me guess..."
She never got to voice her theory and he never had to answer, pushing her against the sink and covering her lips with his own, her long nails raking through his hair. Rosa never minded when something-different-came up. She never questioned. She made it so easy. He could probably spend the rest of his life like this...)
"This is a stupid game," Jin announced when he drew for his third turn and still didn't come up with a blue card that would get him off the dotted square. He was going to be lost in Lollipop Woods forever and Koyama was catching up. "Is this all you do for these sessions, play board games? How does this help?"
"Generally, it's believed to open up conversation." Koyama drew a card and offered it to Jin. "You want this?"
Jin eyed the blue card and wondered if this was a test. "Are you going to tell on me if I cheat?"
"Patient confidentiality," Koyama promised with a solemn expression.
Jin crowed and finally drew for his turn, landing on a purple square. "I guess there are worse ways to spend an hour," he graciously conceded.
"Yes," Koyama said with a face that was all blank and unassuming neutrality. "This is pretty normal."
"Oh, hell, a pointed comment."
"Well, speaking as a professional-"
"I sure hope you're more certified than Tegoshi."
"I have a doctorate. Anyway, if I may be candid, every person in this organization is a bundle of twitchy neurosis in some shape or form. I was hired for a reason."
"Well... yeah." Jin leaned back, game forgotten. "So, what, I'm better off than most?"
"No more and no less, I'd say. Look, forget the normality thing. You're going to ask that for the rest of your life, and so is everyone else."
"Thanks, doc. So I belong here in this loony bin with all the other psychos." It wasn't exactly news to Jin.
"No, I didn't say that," Koyama said patiently. He opened a drawer in his desk and rummaged through it. "You're over-complicating things. Here." He slid something flat and round across the board.
It looked suspiciously like a girl's plastic compact case. Jin opened it and saw his own skeptical image mirrored inside the lid, the bottom only had an empty compartment for blush or eyeshadow or whatever. "Why do you even have this?"
"Self-reflection. Just focus on the guy you see in there for a while."
Jin wasn't a narcissist, his own face didn't appeal much to him. He closed the compact. "It's not like I have multiple personalities or anything. I just..."
"Might be having an identity crisis?" Koyama suggested.
Jin stared. He'd never thought about the issue in exact terms, and it sounded so pretentiously official and clinically detached that way. "So what am I supposed to do?"
"Look in the mirror. Think about what you want. Make some decisions."
That was when Jin decided Koyama's fancy degree didn't make him any less of a quack than Tegoshi. Worst shrink ever.
♥ || ♠
"What were you thinking? Crazy bitch!"
A pair of hands clamped over Raimu's ears, muffling the yelling going on over her head. She leaned back into the folds of a long skirt as the man in front advanced, and more words flew that she wasn't supposed to be hearing. A shadow fell across her face as a hand was raised, and she flinched, but there was no smack of flesh and no unsteady rocking of the foundation at her back. One of the woman's hands was gone from the side of her head.
Raimu clearly heard the man's pained little yelps, "ah-ah-ah!" before he stumbled back and cradled his wrist.
"You know better than to raise your hand against me," spoke the woman, more amused than offended. Her touch returned to smooth the neatly-plaited French braids dangling past Raimu's shoulders. "I only took her out for some fresh air. Who can stand this smell all the time?"
Raimu hoped that didn't mean going back into the basement where it always reeked with the pungent smell of pickles, both the storage room for the Korean restaurant downstairs and the other room that the man and woman called the lab. The lab was set up like something out of a scary bedtime story, a long table piled with burners and noxious-smelling cooking pots, only there was no mad scientist lurking on the scene. Instead there were other boys and girls, older than her though not by much, measuring little piles of white powder and packaging them in plastic bags.
"Hell," the man spat-literally, a glob of spit landing on the floorboards, and that made Raimu's eyes go wide and scandalized when the bad words had hardly fazed her. "Tell me again where the payoff is? We didn't get the money, we're not putting her to work. Hey, we're not playing house here, get it?"
"You're right," the woman said in her smiling voice, still petting Raimu's hair in thoughtful strokes. "I'm about done playing."
♥ || ♠
"You took my Item Box!" Dry Bones was eating King Boo's dust in Bowser's Castle.
"I didn't see your name on it," Jin said, grinning with the tip of his tongue sticking out-at least until King Boo got fried by a fireball. "Aw, crap."
"Karma, bitch!" Koki cackled as his stupid skeleton drove by on a Quacker of all the ridiculous things.
King Boo touched down on the track again and Jin was ready for revenge when he got blasted away by a Bullet. "UNFAIR," he screeched at the screen.
"Nooo!" Koki desperately unleashed the item he just got, but all that did was loose a single, dinky banana behind his bike before he too was wiped out.
Birdo zoomed up from ninth place to third, accelerating off a ramp and doing a trick in mid-air. "Too easy," Taguchi said.
"Fuck Birdo." Jin scowled. "Am I right?"
"Right-HEY." Dry Bones got knocked into lava by King Boo in his Offroader.
Birdo made it to second and was closing in on Yoshi. "I'm coming for you, Kame-chan!"
Kame's brow was furrowed in concentration as Yoshi swerved to avoid lava geysers. He tapped a button to use his Mushroom, completing the second circuit and starting on the final lap.
Jin crashed into a wall because he was watching the wrong screen.
"Guys!" Nakamaru threw open the door of the suite.
"YES," Koki triumphed as lightning flashed and everyone else shrunk to miniature.
"Guys-"
Birdo launched a Shell. Yoshi fired one in reverse to intercept it and kept his lead.
"HA." Jin's eyes lit up as he got a Star. He squeezed the button, intent on glory (or failing that, at least ruining someone else), when the TV went black and dead silence filled the room.
"Guys," Nakamaru said again, calmly putting the remote control down. "We've located Raimu-chan."
♥ || ♠
Jin checked how much time he had left and picked up speed as he ran down the corridor, cursing the layout of the compound. He was going to have to haul ass all the way to the garage after this, but with his luck he'd get lost and wind up stuck in a maze of doors and twisty hallways. His watch said he had a few minutes to spare even taking into account it was set ahead. The weird sense of his personal time being off set loose yet another butterfly into the swarm fluttering around in his stomach, and Jin determined to correct it. But later, when the minutes weren't ticking louder than usual.
He skidded to a halt in front of the double doors of the infirmary, sneaking a look through the window first before slipping inside. No sign of Tegoshi, maybe luck was with Jin after all. He hoped it lasted.
Only one of the beds was still occupied, the boy in it fast asleep. They'd found out with the help of the other children that he was Thai and his name was Kiet. He was around nine, making him the oldest of the bunch they rescued, and he knew some broken Japanese but as of yet hadn't been in any shape to converse. The bullet had gone through his upper right arm near the shoulder, enough to the side to avoid vital arteries and the scapula but fracturing the humerus bone. Healing would be slow, and a shoulder spica cast enveloped his whole arm and part of his torso, but he'd survive.
Jin raised a hand to the solid lump of metal concealed inside the holster vest he wore, specially outfitted by Ueda. The Px4 Storm was fully loaded with a thirteen round magazine and he had extra ammo in the other pocket. He also had the Recon Tanto in its usual place. The whole gang was gearing up for this one; Ace, Red King, Queen, and Joker loaded for bear with Black King and Jack providing technical support.
He was a bit thrilled and bit sickened at the same time, and as Jin looked down at Kiet's thin, fragile frame he pressed his hand more firmly over the gun that was burning a hole through the leather. He blinked and pictured himself back in the warehouse three years ago, sighting down a barrel and squeezing off the one round needed to exchange someone's life, weighing what it was worth and passing judgment. Afterwards, weighing the regret.
Standing here now kept adding more to the pile. He wasn't sure to which side, but the one thing he knew was that either part of the scale tipping would break something in him, and it wouldn't heal the way bones did.
As he ghosted out of the infirmary another set of footsteps fell in just a little behind him, measured and unobtrusive from a respectful distance. The tightness in Jin's shoulders eased with recognition; they were less of a sound and more of a presence accompanying him through the passages.
He figured he was nearing the garage when the back of his neck prickled. Half-turning, Jin raised a hand to automatically catch the compact leather case that flew by his ear. The feel of it told him instantly what it was and he flicked open the snap-over flap to verify the standard lock pick set. Five picks, two tension tools. Stainless steel, quality manufacturer logo printed on the case. A dull, angry buzz made itself known in the back of Jin's mind, never entirely forgotten, merely ignored for a while.
"You know the plan, right?" Kame hooked his thumbs in his belt loops, glancing once into Jin's eyes before falling away.
"Obviously," Jin said with a bite that had been long in coming. "It's the only thing I'm good at and you wouldn't bother with useless baggage." This wasn't that small apartment space of neutral ground. Rules and consequences still applied. He shoved the case into the inside pocket of his vest with the extra magazine and quickened his pace down the hall. The set was a sight better than the makeshift crap he used last time, but still a far cry from his personalized tools. He wasn't about to thank Kame for his consideration.
"Jin."
"What?" He spun around.
Kame pointed down the left branch of the hall. "Garage is this way."
This place needed signs or something. Face burning, Jin shoved his hands into his pockets and made sure to crash his shoulder against Kame's when he passed. He half-expected retaliation, even if only in the form of a bitten-off sigh or click of tongue against teeth, but this time when Kame followed he was absolutely silent. Jin stared straight ahead hard enough for strain to build behind his eyes.
♥ || ♠
"This is criminally unfair. I want barbeque!"
"They don't serve barbeque there."
"I still want some."
Jin focused on shoveling more glass noodles in his mouth so he wouldn't rip the tiny earpiece out and crush it beneath his heel. If he'd known he was going to be subject to this kind of inane babble he'd have sooner shoved the device up Taguchi's nose than accept it. He didn't need anyone telling him what to do, anyway.
"Is he still stuffing his face? Akanishi, get moving!"
He propped his elbow up on the table and put his chin in his hand, hissing into the microphone in his pinky ring, "Shut up. Just shut the fuck up." He straightened and sat back when the waitress came by to refill his glass of water. Toyed with the idea of ordering another dish else out of spite.
"Akanishi, go."
Yeah, yeah. Jin pushed his chair back-not because Kame told him to, but because Raimu was waiting. He caught the waitress watching him as he got up, hopefully just making sure he wasn't going to skip out on the check and not, say, planning to have him knocked out, dumped in a bag, and tossed into the bay. He never knew with this kind of assignment.
"Toilet," he said to her, though so far no one working in the restaurant had spoken a word of Japanese. The menu was in both hangul and katakana, so whatever. He made his way to the back, passing the kitchen and having to flatten against the wall to avoid wearing a dish of kimchi. The server snapped at him in Korean but otherwise continued bustling on his way. "Friendly people here," Jin muttered, and once the coast was clear he disappeared through a door that was marked in a way that surpassed language barriers: Employees Only.
He surmised that unless someone was sitting quiet in the dark there was no one else around. Jin flipped a switch and a couple of interspersed naked bulbs lit the way down a wooden staircase. The space at the bottom was small, mostly crowded with shelves full of crates and boxes.
"Anything?" This time Kame's voice was licked by static. Interference from being underground, maybe.
"Let me check the cold storage." A hard yank was required to pull open the heavy door and cool air wafted out as Jin stuck his head through the plastic strip curtain. His nose was immediately assaulted by the reek of fermented vegetables. Lifetime supply of kimchi, check. He took one of the plastic containers and wedged it in the doorway to keep it from locking shut as he explored further. The problems you could avoid, you did.
Individual freezers were packed with raw meat and seafood. Nothing suspicious or horrific like body parts mixed in, and the restaurant seemed like it would pass a sanitation inspection which was more than he could say about other places he'd explored. All looked normal and unassuming until the fourth freezer down which was empty, its insides smooth rather than ice-encrusted. Even the shelves had been taken out.
That was something he might be able to work with, and Jin was a born snooper. He stepped back to examine the boxy outside. All the units were large, but they were also on wheels. Taking hold of the empty one he found it easy to pull away from the wall. There wasn't enough room for him to back it out all the way, he had to switch to the side to drag it completely free and then push it in front of another freezer, but the effort paid off. In the new block of space there was another door, and the dust on the ground in front of it was disturbed in the shape of footprints.
A shiver that had nothing to do with temperature tingled across his nerves. Jin's new tools made quick work of the lock. "Got something," he said into the microphone as the door eased open. A narrow staircase was faintly illuminated by a line of light arrowing down the passage.
"Wait a moment. Don't. You. Move."
"Hell, no, I'm moving."
"Jin-"
Jin pried the earpiece loose, and with epic restraint he held back from smashing it for his own satisfaction. It went into his pocket instead. The Court should know better anyway-when the King of Hearts took point nothing ever went as planned and the associated name of Suicide King was both earned and deserved.
These stairs were more modern than the rickety steps connecting above and went down much deeper. Jin made the descent carefully and quietly, leaving behind the soft, constant hum of refrigeration. When he reached the bottom he might have been three levels belowground, and Jin muffled a groan when he saw the length of a corridor branching off into several more. Just like CARD headquarters, but even more claustrophobic, darker, and altogether unpleasant.
There was one bright side, and that was the glow of light that snaked along the ceiling. It wasn't part of the architecture-actually it looked like a decorative fluorescent rope light, or rather dozens of them trailing after one another. They lit a path through the maze that Jin dutifully followed, coming to a panel of wall with a wheel in the center. An oversized deadbolt mechanism, all he had to do was turn the wheel to unlock it. He pushed the door open a crack, then withdrew his gun but didn't switch the safety off. Not yet.
Silence and stillness had never come easily to Jin, they were qualities born only of necessity in certain situations. Patience fell into the same category. The loudest sound down here was his heart pounding, an anxious and almost lunatic insistence of GO, GO, GO, GO, and he couldn't tell if it meant charging in or fleeing back. He was balanced on a razor's edge, and somewhere some part of him liked every insanity-spiked second where nothing else mattered.
Except one thing did matter, and Jin clung onto it the way he should have clung to Raimu that day in Disneyland. He was so paranoid, yet not paranoid enough. Three years running and avoiding the exact sort of mess he was in now with blood on his hands and what-if's buzzing in his head. He couldn't save everyone. He knew that. There was nothing anyone could do about the way the cards fell. But if he was going to admit to his addictions, and he knew he had a few, all he could do was keep playing until he won, hoping that when it happened he'd stop before he had nothing else to lose.
The safety made an audible click as it was switched off. Jin swung the door the rest of the way open.
The room was huge and dark like the rest of the place, but for two overhanging lamps strung above a table piled with all the paraphernalia of a clandestine lab. The stringent scent in the air this time wasn't kimchi, but judging by the still-prevalent odor of pickles... acetic anhydride, a key chemical in heroin synthesis.
Jin stepped inside, scanning what lay beyond the bright pools of light. The room had the appearance of a warehouse, shelves piled with boxes, and that was when he clued in to what this place was. One of the underground shelters supposedly maintained by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, stocked with emergency supplies-although Jin was willing to bet there was more than blankets and candles stored here. Bricks of morphine smuggled from overseas, innocuous boxes of sodium carbonate, tablets of activated charcoal for purification.
There only thing moving in the shadows was Jin himself as he drew nearer to the table. The burners were off, enamel cooking pots empty but coated in residue, cool to the touch and dry.
The implication set off bursts of firework despair. Damnit, no! Forgetting stealth, Jin paced through the rest of the warehouse, hauling open more panel doors and using the display light of his phone to navigate dark hallways. There was a room filled with piles of blankets, rank with the odor of packed bodies but lacking physical sources. He found another staircase and heard the rumble of a train nearby, but didn't bother following it up to the station.
"Fuck me, they're gone," he said into the microphone, belatedly remembering to retrieve the earpiece from his pocket. "What?" He could barely make out what Kame was saying through the crackle and cuts of the transmission.
"-upstairs..."
♥ || ♠
The compact room above the restaurant still held the aroma of Korean cuisine, as well as cheap perfume. Sparsely-furnished but wholly feminine, there was a makeup mirror on the table along with a hairbrush that retained several strands of dark, fine hair in the bristles. Koki dropped it in a plastic bag for forensics to test, commenting, "From the looks of things everyone pulled out fast. This is messy. Bet we'll find the drugs still downstairs, too."
Kame pulled a shoebox from the closet, empty save for the tissue paper. "Children's size 12," he read from the label. "Nothing else in here." The laundry rack was also bare.
Jin straddled a chair with his arms resting on the back, facing the corner where the futon was neatly folded. On top of it was a large plush doll. Daisy Duck sat propped up against the wall, her big felt eyes oblivious to Jin's efforts to burn a hole into her head with his stare.
He'd already told the guys about the woman called Mizuki, about his first encounter with Kiet and how everything started. He'd described her as best as he could remember, but it wasn't much. Attractive but not stunning, older than she had claimed to be but she could have lied, and who knew how different she might appear wearing more makeup and entirely different clothes.
Mizuki, Mizuki, Mizuki. He bounced the name around in his mind but no matter how he thought about it, there was nothing else he could come up with regarding the woman. Nothing especially odd about her manner or appearance at the time. Just a normal stranger. Maybe Kiet would be able to tell them something new about that day.
"Should we take this, too?" Koki plucked up the doll by the bow and gave it a jaunty shake.
Jin's gaze dropped to the vacant spot on top of the futon and felt his mouth go dry at what he saw.
He dove for the card, knocking the chair over in the process and shoving Koki out of the way.
"Hey, what-"
Kame's card. And if the King of Hearts was also the Suicide King, then the Ace of Spades was the Death Card. Jin brandished the symbol for all to see. "Paranoid, am I? What's this supposed to mean?"
"Bag it," Kame said offhandedly, dropping his gaze. "We'll run it for prints at the lab like the others."
"And probably come up with nothing like the others." Koki made a grab for the card but Jin snatched his hand away.
He twisted and tore through the thin cardboard, into halves and then quarters and crumpling them tightly in a fist, willing in vain for them to disappear along with the panicked fury eating away at his restraint. Kame studiously ignored his theatrics while Koki looked back and forth between the two of them. The nonchalance was too much and Jin felt something in him snap.
He marched forward and invaded Kame's space, knowing by the way Kame went even more rigid that this wouldn't be ignored. Not this time. "What aren't you telling me?"
"A lot of things." Kame's tone was calm and even. "You're not a permanent member of this team. You don't need to know."
"Stop it. Just-stop. Quit saying that shit, it's not the point." A new vein of anger opened up and joined the other one, outrage overpowering the icy fear.
"Let it go, Jin. You know you should."
Jin laughed aloud at that, and kept laughing at the guarded expression drawing shut over Kame's face. Of course he knew. He'd only been thinking about it constantly for the past several years, arguing for and against from every possible angle with a diligence that no one would have given him credit for. It was just that, no matter what conclusion he came up with, in the end he only did whatever he felt he needed to do at the given time. Quitting the game. Re-entering. Upping the ante. The truth was that "should" had very little to do with the reality.
"I'm thinking maybe I'll be this fucked up forever."
At the very least he could come to terms with it.
"Jesus," Koki was muttering. He picked up the pieces of the card and zipped them into another plastic bag. "We should get out of here."
"Jin, get it together." Kame's professionalism was wearing thin, showing in the tightness around his mouth as he took his own advice and clutched at his seams. The sight of Kame trying so hard made Jin throw up his hands.
"Hey, I think I told you this before, but fuck you and the horse you rode in on." Jin twisted the ring off his pinky and tossed it aside, letting it bounce and roll across the floor. Next was the earpiece, and this time he indulged himself in crushing it beneath his heel. It was probably an expensive bit of equipment too. But what was CARD going to do, sue him? Fuck them, too.
"Jin," Kame warned, but all that did was make Jin step out of swinging range.
"No, you know what? You can shut up and leave me alone. Stop making my decisions for me." Jin turned, catching sight of his face as he passed the mirror, reminding him of Koyama's dubious counsel. Well, here he was, putting himself first. "The only person who can decide what's best for me is me. Not Kamenashi, not the Ace, not CARD. Me." He yanked the door open and was primed to slam it as he walked out when Kame spoke up.
"The blood was yours. On your card."
Jin paused, absorbing the information. His system was already on overdrive and he barely registered the shock. He waited for questioning, calmly sorted through his prepared I-don't-know's, but the inquisition never came. "That's it, no third degree?"
"Be careful," was all Kame said after a heartbeat, letting him go. Inexplicably, that only made Jin angrier.
Part 5