Just Add Alcohol

Just Add Alcohol

“Can I buy you a drink?”

Fuuchouin Kazuki squeezed his eyes shut and let out a long, drawn out sigh of frustration. It wasn’t the first time that night that somebody had asked him that question, and judging by the presence that had ghosted up behind him, this was also not the only time that somebody was going to try to grope his ass.

“Don’t. Even. Try,” he whispered threateningly one of his bells already poised between slender fingers.

“My, my,” said a smooth voice, from beside him now, even though Kazuki hadn’t sensed any movement. “I was just trying to be friendly.”

The Thread Master turned to see who it was.

“Oh,” he said a little apologetically, “Hello, Akabane-san.”

“Kazuki-kun.” The Transporter nodded his greeting as he settled himself onto the next barstool.

Kazuki replaced his bell, though considering that it was Dr. Jackal sitting beside him, that may not have been the wisest thing to do, for his safety or that of the other people at the bar. Then because he was who he was, which meant that he was generally nice, he said, “I’m sorry I was so rude. It hasn’t been a good night.” His tone suggested that that was no excuse, that however bad the night had been, he oughtn’t have been so ready to lash out.

“It really has been bad, neh?” replied Jackal his white-gloved fingers idly fiddling with a stray peanut on the countertop. “That makes two of us, Kazuki-kun. Fancy that.”
Quicker than Kazuki could see, Akabane produced a scalpel and made a series of vicious cuts at the peanut. When he was done, it no longer so much resembled a peanut as a small mound of brown powder.

“May I ask, Kazuki-kun,” he said, the smile on his face a little tight, “what went so wrong with your evening?”

Kazuki gave a small laugh and took a sip from his drink. “Some days, I hate being mistaken for a girl. All I want is a quiet drink, and people keep trying to buy me drinks, chat me up or worse, feel me up, look down the front of my shirt…” He waved his glass around vaguely. “Though it does amuse me when they try that and find out how wrong they are.”

“Keh. Amusement.” Dr. Jackal hissed the word through clenched teeth, making it sound like a curse. The expression on his face made the Thread Master unconsciously inch away from him, as much as was possible when perched on a barstool.

The bartender chose that instant to pay attention to the new customer.

“What’ll it be?” he asked Akabane, all the while keeping a wary eye on Kazuki. He had been privy to the Thread Master’s assertions of his possession of a Y chromosome.

“A vodka, please. Whatever you have.” Jackal fixed the man with a disconcerting look through the slit in the wide brim of his hat. “And another round for the gentleman.”

“Eh, Akabane-san, you don’t have to!”

“I insist.” The metallic glint at Jackal’s fingertips may or may not have been a scalpel.

“If you say so, Akabane-san.” Kazuki assayed a nervous grin at the Transporter, the large hypothetical sweat drop hovering near his head. Nothing quite took the fight out of you like Dr. Jackal in a foul mood.

The bartender, for his part, was merely happy that somebody had gotten it right about Kazuki, and was prepared to overlook the fact that the person who had was downright creepy. “White Russian again?” he asked, almost cheerfully.

“Yes, please. A little bit stronger than the last one.”

The man bustled off to fix their drinks.

“Thank you,” said Kazuki to Jackal, watching the bartender mix his cocktail. It worried him a little that he couldn’t remember exactly how many he had had already. “You really didn’t have to, you know.”

Akabane shrugged. “I asked if I could get you a drink. I just got paid for a job.”

“That’s nice,” ventured the Thread Master, bravely trying to make small talk. “How did it go, the job?”

“It was. Easy. Uneventful. Boring.” There was venom in those words. Dr. Jackal knocked back the drink that had been put in front of him, fast and violent. “The client lied to me. He said there’d be people after the package, maybe even the Get Backers.”

“It wasn’t them?”

“It wasn’t anybody. I sat in the passenger seat, the package sat in the back, and nothing happened. It didn’t even drizzle.”

For the first time, Kazuki noticed that the other man already smelt of alcohol, so much so that he was probably just a sip away from being falling-down drunk. Yet he still raised a white-gloved hand to signal for a refill. “I taught him, though. I showed him what it is to lie to Doctor Jackal.”

A sudden chill went through the Fuuchouin heir. “What – you killed - ?”

“You needn’t get your tender nerves worked up, Kazuki-kun. I didn’t kill the man. Just his bodyguards.” The smile under the hat became a little happier, though it would have been a stretch to say that it had warmed. “All twenty-one of them. One-handed. And not looking. After the job was done, of course. It would have been unprofessional if I had done otherwise. But you, Kazuki-kun,” the Transporter changed the subject as blithely as if he had been talking about the price of toothpaste. “You don’t strike me as a person who just finds himself in need of a quiet drink. What happened to you today?”

“It’s – “ Kazuki tried to fight the blush he felt rising in his cheeks that had almost nothing to do with the alcohol in his system. “It’s none of your business, Akabane-san. Nothing that should trouble you.”

“Oh? I’m sorry to pry.”

“Well, actually” – the words tumbled out before he could stop himself – “It’s – it’s Juubei.”

Akabane, busy with his second drink, quirked an inquiring eyebrow upwards.

Give an inch, give a mile, thought Kazuki. “He’s being so stubborn. You know how he was blinded when we retrieved I.L.”

His companion nodded, already starting on his third round. The bartender was beginning to eye him dubiously.

“It’s curable. I know it is. Maybe not by anything Gen-san can do, but Fuuchouin medicine – I’m sure it could. But Juubei’s taken it into his head that the blindness is punishment from heaven for attacking me. He won’t let me try anything, says he deserves it. I can’t talk the damn fool idea out of his head. He’s being so stupid.” Kazuki stopped, amazed at himself for telling that to Dr. Jackal, and incensed at the memory of Kakei Juubei bullishly refusing anything in the way of treatment.

Before he could say anything else, however (though he hadn’t yet decided whether to apologize for venting or to continue to vent), a large arm slipped itself around his slim shoulders, and a rough voice slurred in his ear, “What’s the matter, sweetheart, your man giving you trouble? What’s say you look for a replacement, eh, babe?”

“Who d’you think you’re calling ‘sweetheart,’ asshole?” The swearword surprised Kazuki. He supposed he had been spending too much time around Midou Ban.

“Now, honey, no need to get angry! Just trying to make you feel better.” And the offending hand slipped off Kazuki’s shoulder and slid lower, lower, until it finally took a firm hold of Kazuki’s buttocks.

And Fuuchouin Kazuki decided that he had had enough.

Fast, blindingly fast, he whipped a bell from his hair, not even bothering to use any special techniques.

“Firstly,” he said, and it was amazing how threatening that light voice could sound, “I cannot believe that you would treat a woman so brutishly. I will not allow this behavior to go unpunished.”

The man who had been copping a feel off Kazuki suddenly realized that he couldn’t move, held in place by innumerable strings. “You bitch!” he screamed.

Kazuki slipped off his seat to confront a gang of the man’s friends, draining his glass as he did so. “And secondly and more importantly – “

The men rushed Kazuki all at once.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said Jackal, more than a little amused at how the evening was progressing.

Kazuki made short work of his assailants, barely breaking a sweat as he tied all of them into place. It might have been an effect of the liquor, however, that he missed securing the one nearest to him, and so the man fell, unable to stop himself, but managing, somehow, to grab a handful of Kazuki’s shirt. The article of clothing ripped right down the front.

“Fucking Christ Jesus!” swore the man, looking up at Kazuki from the floor.

“Secondly and more importantly,” repeated Kazuki, drawing himself to his full height, his making no attempt to pull the pieces of his shirt closed lending him a sort of fierce dignity, “I’m a man.”

“Fag!” shouted the man who had first assaulted the Fuuchouin heir.

“There is a world of difference between being a fag and looking like a girl,” said Kazuki quietly. “And I am very sorry for the inconvenience,” he added to the bartender, who was in the act of getting his more expensive liquors away from the bar. He pulled some money from the pocket of his jeans and laid it down next to his empty glass. “If you’ll excuse me, Akabane-san.”

And he turned to leave, the roll of his hips as he walked maddeningly incongruous with his very male chest.

“I did warn you, you know,” said the Transporter as he finished up his vodka. He got up himself, handing the bartender a thick wad of bills – the job had, for all its being boring, paid very well. “Good evening, gentlemen.”

“And who do you think you are?” demanded the man who had torn Kazuki’s shirt as his fellows tried to help him out of the confining threads. “His pimp?”

Jackal stopped in mid-stride, looked over his shoulder. A less intoxicated man would have seen the murderous gleam in the purple eyes, the blood lust barely contained beneath the surface, and a wiser one would have started running.

“Excuse me,” he said, still smiling. “You’ll have to say that a little closer over here. What did you call me?”

“That damn fag’s fucking pimp!”

“I thought so.”

Kazuki looked back in time to see the flash of scalpels.

“Akabane-san, no - !”

*

“You know, Akabane-san, that was the first time I’ve been thrown out of a bar.”

“Keh. I still don’t understand why you didn’t let me have my fun.”

“Between the two of us, I think we scared them enough.”

The two men were some distance away from the bar and were making efforts to get even further. Kazuki had indeed been thrown out of the establishment, quite literally, and Jackal had followed him outside after making it very clear that he was leaving because he wanted to and not because anybody was kicking him out. There was the small comfort, of course, that the thugs who had caused, if not exactly started, the brawl had been made to leave too, some running for their lives, others heaved out of the door, and one in an ambulance. That had been the poor fool who had called Dr. Jackal a pimp.

“As if scaring them was the point at all,” spat the Transporter. He shrugged off his great overcoat and handed it to Kazuki, who looked at it as if he didn’t quite understand what it was for. Akabane gave it an impatient shake.

Kazuki took the coat nervously, eyeing Jackal suspiciously as he did. It occurred to him that he hadn’t ever seen the man without his coat before, and it was a little strange seeing him in just a white shirt. It wasn’t that he had given much time to contemplating what was underneath the article of clothing that was as much a trademark as the scalpels or the black hat, but it had seemed such an inseparable part of Dr. Jackal, that, like a snake shedding its skin, there would always be another coat underneath if the top one came off. He draped it about his shoulders (it was much too big for him to put on properly), surprised at how heavy it was. From the way Jackal moved, it seemed as if the thing weighed nothing at all, like moonshadows or the night…

The Thread Master gave himself a mental shake for having weird thoughts.

He really should have turned down that last drink. Jackal was saying something. He struggled to focus his attention where it was needed.

“Sorry?”

“I was saying, Kazuki-kun, that I do not appreciate it when people get in the way of my entertainment.” Akabane toyed briefly with the idea of taking the time to explain to Kazuki the need, the almost animal craving, for blood, for violence that had hardly been satiated by the client’s bodyguards he hadn’t even caught unawares (for he had warned them, just for the sake of having to dodge at least one bullet), and would barely have been satisfied if he had been allowed to take care of the rabble at the bar.

“They weren’t worth it.”

“Precisely. They are ill-behaved, crude, uneducated, a drain on the city’s resources who probably produce even more waste in the form of beer bottles, condoms and ramen cups, and the world would be a better place if we could talk about them in the past tense. We would even have helped decrease the surplus population.”

“Even so – “

“Even so, your pretty little ass,” Jackal snarled, springing at Kazuki, taking the smaller man by surprise and pinning him to the nearest wall by the throat. “I have been spoiling for a real fight for weeks now. I have even gone so far as to consider scouring Shinjuku for Midou-kun’s precious Subaru so that I can smash its headlights so that Midou-kun will come at me. And you won’t even let me finish the one bar fight I land myself in.”

All the Thread Master could do in answer was to give a choked burble and thrash his feet uselessly: the Transporter was holding him at least a foot off the ground. Akabane seemed to suddenly realize this, and let go of him, carefully so that Kazuki didn’t fall in a heap.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It hasn’t been a good night.”

Kazuki was taking time to regain his bearings: he sagged against the wall, feeling his neck as if to make sure it was still intact. “It really has been bad,” he quipped shakily. “Neh?”

Akabane began to chuckle, a polite little sound starting at the back of his throat. In spite of himself, Kazuki could feel the laughter welling up inside of him as well, bubbling over like a bottle of inexpertly opened champagne, until he found himself laughing with the infamous Dr. Jackal. Damned if he could tell what they both found so funny, but damned if he could stop, and he’d bet any amount of money that the Transporter – who had gone beyond his polite little chuckle and was making great, hiccupping whoops of laughter – was as stumped as he was.

“I c’n fight you, you know,” said Kazuki, when he had calmed down a bit. “If you want.”

“Keh. I won’t deny that I’ve been curious about you, Kazuki-kun.” Akabane, his smile still wider than usual, straightened his hat. “One of the four Emperors of the Volts, leader of Fuuga, and the last surviving member of the Fuuchouin main house. Very intriguing, yes, though I have only seen you in the company of Midou-kun and Ginji-kun, and I must admit that I am infinitely more interested in those two. I wonder how string would stand against scalpels.” The purple eyes narrowed, as if savoring the prospect of violence. Then he laughed again, though this time the sound was lacking considerably in mirth. “But, to fight you now, Kazuki-kun, would be no fun at all. Intoxicated as you are, I would probably skewer you in mere seconds. No, no fun at all.”

“You underestimate me, Doctor Jackal.”

Akabane leaned forward suddenly, one arm outstretched, palm resting on the wall beside Kazuki’s head. “My dear Kazuki-kun, you mistake me. I have no doubt that you are a formidable opponent, if less promising than Midou-kun. Only it would be a great waste of talent if we were to face each other here and now, because I doubt I will go easy on you and” – he bent so that his eyes were level with the Thread Master’s – “you are so drunk that, here and now, you would barely be a challenge.”

“As if you aren’t, Akabane-san.” Kazuki stuck to his guns, despite the fact that what he had said and to whom he had said it was beginning to dawn on him, as well as the enormity of it all. Offering to fight Dr. Jackal…just how many drinks did he have?

“Well, we can’t deny that, can we?”

Their faces were so close – Kazuki could see the eyelashes surrounding Akabane’s eyes, and it was so strange, he had never thought about Akabane, Dr. Jackal, having eyelashes – Akabane could smell the light, oh so very light, clean scent of soap on Kazuki beneath the cloying smell of alcohol. And their faces moved closer and closer until…