Chapter Text
Kamurocho is awful in the rain.
The punks grovelling at his feet are well-pummelled and miserable, white jeans and puffer-jackets stained brown by puddles. One man in a white-turned-brown cap offers him shaky words and a Staminan in atonement, his knees somehow trembling where they rest in the muddy water of a newly forming pothole. Kiryu grabs it, giving the man a level look that has him quaking in his scuffed-up boots, and even with the distance between them Kiryu can smell him, scented with blood and Kamurocho’s signature grime. Kiryu cringes as he reaches for the Kotobuki Drugs bag he’d dumped aside before their bout, murky water with a rainbow-sheen of oil sticking to the outer side. The quivering man is gone long before Kiryu notices.
He frowns as he brushes at his blazer, the light from Beam’s gaudy lights illuminating the patchwork of marks-becoming-stains. There’s blood on the lapels, his or otherwise, and murky gunk that he’d rather not identify stains his cuffs unpleasantly. Kiryu lets himself look up to the rain, unsure if he’s doing it in resignation or prayer, and exhales. The rain is calmer than it was when he’d arrived in Kamurocho earlier, shopping list in one hand and phone in the other.
He finds himself more aware than usual of the filth of city-living, tamped down in cracks and crevices and clogged-up gutters that bubbles up to the surface in the rain. It’s not unique to Tokyo—he thinks of Sotenbori as he hops over the overflow of a drain on Nakamichi Alley, murky water flowing past a trail of plastic and cigarette butts. He remembers the brief rain that had passed while he’d waited for Oda, and the way the Sotenbori River had flowed with rubbish and grime.
He’d fished an eel out of there in 1988.
He’d eaten it.
Kiryu pushes the thought away before he can fully process it. Between the memory of his self-induced food poisoning and the scent of the city, he’s sure he’ll be nauseous if he dwells on it any longer, and his fingers curl around the plastic handles of the Kotobuki bag a little tighter with the thought. The memory of “fish” brings him back to the reason he’s even in Kamurocho—Haruka, shopping, the list—and he ducks underneath a convenient awning to shelter. He finds himself in front of a shuttered bar—Bar Makarone, it says—and he rubs the soles of his shoes against the red welcome mats at his feet as he fishes a scrap of paper from his jacket.
He quickly scans the bulleted list, most of it in his quick, unpolished script and already ticked off. Haruka’s writing is there, too, and it’s decidedly neater, each stroke intentional—pocket tissues, milk. Her personal request is right at the end of the list, the one item she asked for this week: salmon onigiri , with a smiley face right next to it, marked with a mop of black hair and a red hairpin.
The Poppo on East Shichifuku had been all out when he’d checked. He’d needed to stop at Kotobuki anyway—he’d nearly run through all their bandages after Majima had swiped at his ankle from underneath yet another suspiciously large traffic cone, and Haruka’s cold brought them down to their last cough drop the day before. Kiryu hadn’t even had the chance to glance at Nakamichi Alley before he’d been abruptly interrupted by a panicked cry down an alley, and with a hint of resignation his sense of duty obliged him to investigate it. Then he’d intervened, the greasy-faced kid being accosted had fled, and the street punks he’d interrupted decided that a fight with Kiryu was better than no fight at all.
He sighs as he tucks the list away, shaking his head as he looks up. The empty lot in front of him is downright filthy, half the patch of concrete converted to one giant puddle in the rain. Brown water sits pockmarked with cigarette butts and cans, and the piles of garbage bags look moist, which is not an adjective Kiryu wants to use to describe whatever their grim contents happen to be. He moves to leave, but something stops him, makes him focus on the garbage bags a little longer. On an ordinary day there’s nothing in the Nakamichi lot that calls to him—it’s just an empty lot, after all—but some deeper instinct or strange connection makes it so that Kiryu stares at the garbage for one second, two seconds, three, until he sees it:
Black and gold, and leather underneath them.
“... Niisan?”
The journey back to Kiryu’s building is quick and disturbingly uneventful. The walk through Kamurocho is only slightly embarrassing, carrying Majima along on his back, but Kiryu is less focused on external perceptions and more on getting Majima to somewhere safe in as little time as possible. It’s the one week that Emoto’s shut up shop—to visit family, he’d said the week prior—and Kiryu knows a grand total of zero other people with any medical knowledge, so the Kiryu-Sawamura bathroom floor becomes the medical clinic of choice.
When he manages to cram them both into a taxi, there’s enough cash stuffed into Majima’s jacket pocket that the taxi driver asks no questions. Some cheesy pop oldie plays on the radio on the way that gets Majima’s eye cracking open, and even as he slumps over into Kiryu’s lap he hums along cheerily.
“I’m sorry, I just need to—” Kiryu says, once they’ve reached his building, because getting Majima out manages to be infinitely more difficult than getting him in. “Majima-no-niisan—” he says, asks, begs, because for all he wraps Majima’s arms around him he just won’t stay still. Kiryu almost forgets the Poppo bag as he sacrifices a small piece his dignity and Majima’s, hoisting him up by the backs of his knees so he stays put against Kiryu’s body. He thanks the taxi driver for his patience, proffers a few more bills to him in apology, and with the Poppo bag gripped tightly between his hand and Majima’s thigh, he turns towards the building.
It starts to rain by the time he shelters underneath the balcony of the second floor. He jostles Majima where he lies on him, asks “niisan?” quietly to see if he’ll wake. When he gets no response, he charges up, and two flights and three near-dropped-Majimas later Kiryu fumbles for his keys and opens the door to his apartment.
“Ah! Uncle—” Haruka starts, high and sweet. Then she sees him, or rather, who’s with him, or rather, who’s on him, and stops.
“Uncle Kaz.”
Haruka’s tone is pointed when she greets him, sprinkled with hints of suspicion. It’s not unexpected; snakeskin and leather are the first things she sees, draped along his torso and wrapped around his waist, and her first significant encounter with black and gold had left Majima on the receiving end of many a determined glare after the fact. Her reaction now—or what little he can see of it—is better than Kiryu expects; she’s at the kotatsu, clearly, and she’s leaning back, her head tilted curiously as she watches him in the genkan.
“Hello,” he greets, one heel against the other as he sets the Poppo bag down, slips off a shoe. His grip tightens around Majima as he kicks the door closed, jostling him slightly in his hold. It feels almost familiar—he’s carried Haruka like this a few times before, when they’ve walked home from evenings out with sleepingness gradually slowing her steps. Carrying Majima doesn’t come with the same brand of drowsy denials and gentle breaths, but the weight of him is almost normal where his head rests against Kiryu’s shoulder. It’s a thought that’s more disturbing than comforting; his stillness is unsettling, his silence even more so. He’s breathing, at least, but Kiryu isn’t sure if he’s unconscious, asleep, or intentionally mute.
“Majima-san is injured,” Kiryu says as he steps out of the genkan. He gets a closer look at Haruka as he moves—she’s carefully still where she sits at the kotatsu, one hand dipping a brush into nail polish and the other flat against the table’s surface. The look she gives him is bemused, almost mocking— no duh, her expression says, of course he is. She stands, looking even smaller than usual; she’s opted to stay in her pyjamas today, one of his T-shirts draping off her shoulders and flowing down to her knees.
She walks up to him then, her feet shuffling against the floor as she moves. She raises one hand to her lips and blows against it as she walks. A few nails on that hand are a brilliant, glittery red; they shine wet and glossy in the light. “Did he try to fight you?” Haruka asks, stopping in front of them. Her foot brushes against Kiryu’s own; she’s wearing her Christmas present, fuzzy pink socks with white toes and cat-like soles. Her eyes are trained on the back of Majima’s head, her gaze suspicious and her lip stiff where she bites into it.
“Not this time,” Kiryu answers, tilting his head towards the genkan, to the Poppo bag at the entrance. Haruka’s expression softens, and her hand comes to rest at Kiryu’s wrist where it’s grasping Majima’s waist, squeezing gently. She steps around him, then, and as she moves Kiryu shifts Majima in his grip once more, barely raising him so his arm can hold him tighter. There’s a sharp intake of breath. At least he’s conscious.
Haruka’s hand squeezes at his wrist as she stands behind him. Kiryu knows she’s seen the pallor of Majima’s skin, the shallow cuts at his shoulder.
“Hiya, kiddo,” Majima says, his words dry.
There’s a brief pause. Then:
“I don’t know what you did,” Haruka says, and Kiryu tilts his head back to just barely catch the pointed look in her eyes, “but you deserve it.”
Majima’s chest vibrates against his, and he barks out something like a laugh that quickly devolves into wincing and coughs. “Ain’t that the truth,” he says, and though he can’t see the look on his face, Kiryu can imagine it: the sneer-turned-grin and the focus of his eye, tinged weaker by the state of him, by the sickly tint of his skin. “Yer nails are pretty. Nice colour.” Even with the strain of Majima’s voice as he speaks, Kiryu can hear a foreign sincerity in them. “Suits yer style.”
If Haruka acknowledges his words, Kiryu doesn’t hear it. He hears her footsteps behind him, padding away to the genkan—to pick up the shopping, he imagines.
“We’ll be in the bathroom,” Kiryu says, his free hand snaking in on top of the other, lifting Majima higher against his chest. Majima’s head shifts against his shoulder, his nose pressing into his neck. His hair rests against Kiryu's face, his neck stretching long; Kiruu can smell him, the scent of Kamurocho rain and grime and his own, usual scent, something crisp and hinting at citrus. His breath is dry where it hits Kiryu’s throat.
“The first-aid kit’s under the sink,” Haruka says, a little louder to compensate for the distance. Their apartment is small enough that with the door open Kiryu can hear the shifting plastic in the living room as Haruka opens the bag, the sound of cupboards opening as she puts things away.
Kiryu flips the light switch quickly, and he squints at the brightness as yellow light fills the room. The light flickers once, twice, then steadies, in tune with Majima’s breath against his neck. Their bathroom is cramped; the tub Kiryu’s dumped him in takes up a good third of the room, the rest of it stuffed full with the toilet, sink, and washing machine. Everything shows its age; the yellowed patches against the white of the vanity, the rusted patches on the tap. The grout on the tiles is stained dark-brown in its worst spots and a greying white in its best, and the white tiles in one corner are stained brown where a leak went unsealed before he left.
Majima lets himself be lowered into the tub with little fanfare. It’s as refreshing as it is unsettling, a sure sign that something’s off. Kiryu has a better view of him in the cramped space of the bathroom. Underneath the yellow light Kiryu can see the tangles in his hair where it's flattened against his head and the dark, crescent-shaped bags beneath his eyes. The tips of his nose and his ears are red—from the mild cold or illness or something else—and there’s something distant in his eye, like he won’t focus. “Sure like the look of the place, Kiryu-chan,” he says, his voice raspy and his eye glassy as his gaze shifts to the wall.
“Really,” Kiryu deadpans. He gets on his knees once Majima is settled, stretching the thin fabric of their lone bath mat as he shuffles towards the sink. He digs through the cupboard underneath the sink, shifting through the bleached scraps of cloth to set them on the tile floor. The first-aid kit finally manifests before him; the green fabric box is stained on the top, the white “plus” and logo coated brown where Kiryu has bled out before.
“Didn’t they give you a little somethin'? When you left?” Majima asks, in lieu of an actual response.
Kiryu sets out what he needs before him—the first-aid kit, the cloth scraps, their last bottle of saline—and he furrows his brows, because he’d forgotten that on the list, and now he’ll have to go to Kotobuki again tomorrow. He frowns. Where’s the bandage roll?
“Asked a question, Kiryu-chan,” Majima says.
His gaze shifts to Majima. The man’s eye is focused on him, now, though he squints with focus, and it somehow seems distant. His mouth hangs open to let him breathe a little harder, a little more, and his tongue swipes out to lick at a split lip.
“A little something?” Kiryu asks. His hands are on the first-aid kit, his thumb grazing over the fabric.
Majima stares at him. The rise and fall of his chest is rhythmic yet laboured; the corner of his mouth twitches on the inhale, and his eye widens slightly on the exhale. “Made ya…” He says, mouth hanging open as he pauses, “Fourth Chairman, didn’t they? Couldn’t give you a little somethin’? Get you a better place?”
Kiryu busies himself with more prep-work and places the scrap fabric into the sink. He scans the room for bandages as he moves. “Dojima-san offered,” he explains, resting the showerhead against Majima’s knee, “but I couldn’t accept.”
“Couldn’t?”
“I’m out of the clan, nii-san,” Kiryu says, moving back to kneel. “I don’t want anything to do it. And that includes the money.” He thinks about the money on bad nights, when he needs to stretch too little cash far too thin to cover their needs. It would make things easier, for sure. But it's dirty money, unearned money, and he refuses to let that part of his life follow him—and Haruka—any longer. He doesn't regret it.
Majima hums, and Kiryu realises he doesn’t know where the bandages are. His eyes fall to the cuts along Majima’s torso—three long slashes, with blood crusting along his belly, and a shorter one beneath his chest, just beneath his tattoo. The red patches on his stomach are flowering into bruises on his skin, so stark against the pale white. He’s assessing his injuries, he knows that, but something like guilt lingers in Kiryu’s throat when he looks at the jut of Majima’s collarbones, the swell of his Adam’s apple.
“Can you take off your jacket, niisan?”
Majima watches him, his eyebrow raising slowly. The corners of his lips twitch up as he leans forward, his eye wincing with the motion. “Haw?”
“Don’t—” Kiryu raises a hand to Majima’s shoulder, intent on keeping him still.
“Aw, Kiryu-chan, you didn' have to go through all that. If ya wanted to see me naked—”
“That’s not—stop it." Kiryu knows a goading Majima when he sees one, and the glint in the man's eye is downright sinister. His cheeks feel a little warmer, his words a little heavier in his throat. "Haven’t you ever done this before?”
"Stripped down for a beefcake?" There's a shit-eating grin on Majima's face, and in any other circumstance, in any other location, Kiryu is sure he would square up. "Couple'a times, here 'n there."
"No," Kiryu replies, ignoring Majima's words with pink ears and a narrowed gaze, "for your injuries." His eyes flit down to Majima's belly, to the three thin lines.
“What… all this shit for a few cuts?" Majima gestures to the items on the floor as he laughs drily. It makes Kiryu knit his brows a little deeper, watching the crusted blood along the other man's wounds.
“They can get infected," he says, because it's obvious.
"Pfft, please," Majima snorts, like it's ridiculous. "Don' need to worry about that.” He pauses for a minute, his head lolling to the side, and he presses his temple into the wall. “Lil' peroxide and you're right as rain."
The word peroxide has Kiryu thinking of Sunflower, of the awful, awful "nurse" in '79 that coated the most minor graze in white powder that left him and Nishiki reeling after what they'd referred to as The Cat Incident. Majima's next laugh is more of a cackle, weakened with his state, yet still impossibly nefarious.
"Thinkin' hard there, Kiryu-chan," Majima says, tongue darting out to lick his lips. Kiryu's gaze darts to his hand, which is still on Majima's shoulder, and he finds his grip has tightened slightly. "Don't you worry… about me.” He grins, even as his words are slurred and slow. "It'll take more than a little bacteria, to get rid of me, y'know." And yet Majima moves anyway, shifting beneath Kiryu's palm and wincing as he fumbles with his jacket's sleeves. Kiryu's fingers twitch, trapped between helping and doing nothing; he lets it slide off with the roll of Majima's shoulder, and once the jacket pools behind him in the tub Kiryu picks it up and sets it aside.
There's a clearer picture of Majima's state in the sight of his whole upper body, uncovered. Kiryu has seen Majima's tattoo before, but never like this, when he's calm and still; he traces his gaze from quarter-sleeve to shoulder to where it dips below his hips, from petal to petal to Hannya's open maw. He has a full view of the cuts, too, where they start and end, from the dips in either side of his waist and straight across. Kiryu is struck by how unhealthy he looks—the dark circles beneath his eyes, the unhealthy sheen of his skin. His hair is greasy and slightly tangled, and the sides of his torso are littered with scar after scar, dipping behind to his back.
Within him a new desire bubbles up—to touch for the sake of touch, not to hurt, not to heal. Something selfish. There are selfish questions flitting through Kiryu’s mind, too, as he watches him. How, he wants to ask, who, he wants to pry, when, why, where have you been, what have you been doing, it’s been months. As he picks up the cloth and runs it under the tap, Kiryu knows he will voice exactly none of them, and the knowledge of what he will leave unsaid brings him grounds him in what little normalcy he can find, given the situation. Lines have been crossed today. Majima did not ask for help—he offered it. Majima did not enter their apartment—he brought him in. Kiryu has been selfish today, he thinks, wringing out the cloth, and he does not intend to beg for any more.
He attempts to make quick work of his task. He’s hyper-aware of Majima’s eye on him as he works, and he keeps his eyes trained on his stomach as he wipes away at crusted blood, allowing Majima the dignity of not being watched for every wince. As he moves, he thinks of Yumi and Sunflower, of him and Nishiki running back with scraped-up knees and the way he’d bite his lip to not whine when Yumi dabbed at each cut. He remembers Yumi showing him how to do it, one afternoon, teaching him the right pressure to apply with too-rough tissues while Nishiki winced through the pain.
“Kiryu-chan.”
Kiryu pauses, wiping dried blood away from the longest cut before he looks up to Majima’s face. Majima looks down at him, his brows drawn down and his lips parting with every breath. “Niisan,” he says expectantly.
“What’re you doin’ all this shit for?”
Kiryu frowns. Hadn’t they gone over this? “I told you. They can get infected.”
“That ain’t what I meant,” Majima says, scowling, “and you know it.” He narrows his eye as he shifts in the tub, pressing one foot against the wall. “I was doing fine.”
“Niisan, you were passed out in garbage.”
“Ain’t what I meant either, jackass.” There’s no humour in Majima’s voice when he says it, his gaze fixed to the tile wall before him. “Stop doing that shit.”
“Doing what?” Kiryu runs the cloth under the tap again, his gaze in the bowl of the sink. He hears Majima huff.
“Yer whole obtuse shtick.” When Kiryu turns back to the tub, Majima’s arms are crossed in front of his torso, obscuring Kiryu’s view of his injuries. “Why the hell did you bring me here?”
Wringing out the still-dripping cloth, Kiryu furrows his brow. “The only clinic I know that would take you is closed.” He moves a hand to bat at Majima’s crossed arms. Majima’s hand darts out to grasp his wrist instead, squeezing.
“Why’d you take me at all?” There’s anger in Majima’s voice, hoarse as it is, and he leans forward with his words, drawing Kiryu’s hand in until it rests against his chest. His eye is red with tiredness in a way that makes his simmering rage feel all the more present, and he stares Kiryu dead-on.
Kiryu stares right back. He feels like he’s missed something important. His thoughts move together like gears spinning in his head, processing at a speed that only seems to make Majima angrier. With his face like this, pinched and fuming, with the angry flash of his teeth as he sneers, Majima looks even more out of place—a greasy, bleeding, beat-up man in Kiryu’s quaint little tub in his quaint little apartment. In lieu of elaborating any further, Majima hits Kiryu’s shoulder with his knee and glares.
A cog turns in Kiryu’s head. “Did you want me to leave you there?” He asks, his grip firm on the rag in his hand. With Kiryu’s words, Majima’s simmering rage dissipates like a doused-out fire, like he’s pieced something together, something clicking in his head. Kiryu wants to ask what it is. He knows he won’t.
Majima shoves Kiryu’s arm away, hissing as the movement pulls at one of his injuries. The fire isn’t gone completely—he folds his arms across his chest, kicks the heel of his foot into the tile wall. He reminds Kiryu of Nishiki post-tantrum at Sunflower, when some shame would start to settle in and he’d kick at the furniture to try to get his anger flowing. “Whatever,” Majima huffs. He looks tired.
He’s more obstinate in unfolding his hands this time around. Kiryu gives into his goading—he threatens him with a beatdown that Majima promptly calls a “good time”, and the older man cackles as he folds his arms behind his head, stretching his legs long and wide as Kiryu swipes the cloth along his belly.
“Used to have a girl do this for me, y’know.”
Majima says it as he’s cleaning the crust off the last cut, the shorter line beneath the snake’s tail along his pecs. His breath is even, his chest rising and falling beneath Kiryu’s hands. If he presses down a little and applies some pressure, he can feel Majima’s heartbeat beneath his fingers, running at a mile a minute. “Did you,” Kiryu says, passing the cloth along.
“Don’t sound too jealous, now, Kiryu-chan,” Majima says, and Kiryu doesn’t have to look to know that he’s grinning. “You sounded like her earlier.”
“Did I?” Kiryu can believe it. He’s sure he’s not the first to scold him for a lack of basic self-preservation.
“Mm.” He hums. “But you don’ have the bite she did. Goro, ya stupid lug, you'll get sepsis and die. ” His voice enters his Goromi-esque falsetto and cracks as he speaks, and when Kiryu looks to his face his lips are pursed in an exaggerated pout.
“She wasn’t wrong,” Kiryu says, thumb swiping over the corner of the wound, the last fleck of crusted blood gone. His finger brushes the edge of a petal on Majima’s chest. “I had a girl that did this for me, too.”
“Ooh,” Majima coos, sounding all-too delighted. “Kiryu-chan’s got a lady friend touchin’ him up , has he?” He’s goading, clearly, but for once the thought of Yumi doesn’t make a ball of complicated feelings settle in Kiryu’s stomach; the pain is there, but it’s wrapped in something warm, and something about the situation gets him talking.
“Haruka’s mother,” Kiryu replies. He moves swiftly, dumping the first cloth into the bin and coating the second with saline. “Yumi. She did this for us all the time, growing up.”
Majima turns his head to press his ear against the tiled wall. His eyes are on Kiryu’s hands as he coats the fabric. “You get in a lotta fights, growin’ up?” He asks, like it isn’t obvious. When Kiryu moves forward to touch the cuts with saline, Majima stays still.
“I didn’t start them.”
“Mm. Dunno if I believe that one.”
Kiryu can feel himself pouting. It’s beneath him, but Majima grins.
“Ever the saint, eh?” He laughs. “Did’ja have that mean a mug in junior high, too?”
“Nishiki used to say I looked constipated. He made me self conscious.” Majima cackles again, and though it sounds a little weaker, Kiryu can feel the corners of his lips twitching up in spite of himself. He can feel Majima’s ribs beneath his hands; they stick out underneath his skin with every breath he takes. “I never looked for trouble. It just… came to me. But if I saw something that didn’t look right, I’d intervene.”
“Yer a busybody, is what you are, Kiryu-chan,” Majima says. He clears his throat before opening his mouth to spit, landing it between his legs in the tub. “You can't… stick yer nose in everybody’s business, y’know. Not yer job. ‘s not anybody’s job but the cops, and they don’t even do a good job of it.” Majima snorts. “They oughta give you some of that taxpayer money instead. Least yer doing somethin’.”
“I don’t see it as my job.” Kiryu touches the cloth to the second gash at Majima’s middle, feels the flex of his abs beneath his fingers. “It just happens. I go about my day, and things find me. And I figure—I’m there, I can help. Why not?”
Majima snorts again, but it’s kind. It reminds him of Nishiki. “That’ll get ya killed one day, I tell ya." The corners of his lips twitch into a frown. "You ain’ that old a dog that you can’t still change your ways, y’know," he says, his gaze falling to his lap. “Learn a new trick. The art of mindin’ your own business.”
“I can learn lots of new tricks, nii-san,” Kiryu says, giving the second slash a final wipe, “but I don’t think I’ll ever pick up that one.” As he moves on to the third cut, folding the cloth over, he settles into the brief quiet. When he looks up to check on Majima, the corners of his mouth are turned up, lips closed, no teeth on show. He’s smiling.
It’s a good look.
“Get the feeling you won’t believe me,” Majima says suddenly, looking away, “but I used to be like you, y’know. Back in the day.”
“Like me?” Kiryu can’t help the disbelief in his voice.
“Got dragged into… anything and everything. Everybody’s problems. You’d think the eyepatch’d get everybody off my case, y’know? But it just made it worse. I was a magnet for everybody’s trouble.” Majima turns his gaze to the ceiling, looking almost nostalgic. He clears his throat once, twice, and coughs for good measure. “Helped a lotta people, sure. Lotsa lessons learned. But I’ll tell ya, most people, helping’s just more trouble than it’s worth. And some were just on some of the weirdest shit. I ever tell ya some kid tried to steal my pants?”
“Your pants?”
“Real shit.”
Kiryu makes quick work of the rest of it as Majima talks, regaling him with the tale of hulking blond sixth grader that tried to yank his pants in the street. It’s outlandish and exaggerated in a way that Kiryu is sure it’s fake, but Majima speaks with such incredulity and conviction that at least some of it must be true. At very least, he’s a good storyteller.
As Majima trails off, Kiryu dumps the saline cloth, tinted pink with fresh bloodflow, and grabs another to pat his stomach dry. The silence stretches into minutes, and left alone with his thoughts Kiryu thinks again: what happened, exactly? Where have you been? He thinks he’s channeling Yumi with his actions, and now his words will him to do as much, too. She got a lot out of them in those late night sessions of patching-up and fussing—quiet confessions, whispered secrets. Nishiki used to call her nosy. Kiryu thinks he understands it.
“‘M thirsty,” Majima says suddenly. When Kiryu looks at him, he’s struck by the fact that he looks sick , the way a man like Majima ought not to. Sitting here with him, talking with him, patching him up—it feels too personal, humanising and domestic in a way that gets an uncomfortable knot settling in Kiryu's chest.
But—he’s thirsty. Kiryu can handle thirsty. “I’ll get you water,” he says, hands gripping the tub as he moves to get up.
“Think the girlie’s got what I need, Kiryu-chan,” Majima says, his voice hoarse. His gloved hand comes to rest on one of Kiryu’s on the ceramic. “Right?”
Kiryu turns his head where he half-kneels. Haruka stands in the doorway, her gaze entirely on Majima. Even in one of his shirts-turned-nightgown and fuzzy pink socks, she looks strong. He can see a little less of her lip where she worries it between her teeth, and her hands are clasped behind her. She sways, one foot to another, and the crinkle of plastic tells him it’s the Poppo bag before he sees it swinging behind her. He wonders how long she’s been there.
“Is everything alright?” Kiryu asks, moving to stand. She moves forward, one purposeful step, and pushes down on his shoulder, keeping him there.
She sets the bag on the toilet seat and begins to rifle through, setting objects on the sink—first a water bottle, then the new roll of bandages, then what Kiryu knows is a steamed bun. Then he remembers.
“They didn’t have the onigiri,” he says, guilt settling in his chest. Haruka doesn’t ask for much. “I meant to check the other Poppo—”
“It’s okay,” Haruka interrupts. Her gaze still lingers on Majima. He stares right back.
“Had it on his list and everything, you know,” Majima says, holding a crumpled piece of paper in his hand. Kiryu pats down the breast pocket of his jacket and finds it lacking the crinkle of his shopping list. When did he get that? “I must’a interrupted him. Yer uncle doesn’t forget things like that, does he?”
To Kiryu’s surprise, Haruka nods. “Sometimes he doesn’t get things or do things,” she says, picking up the water bottle, “because he helps people when they need help, and he gets busy.” She steps around Kiryu’s calves and the toilet so she can stand next to the tub, proffering the Suntory bottle to Majima. “Right, uncle Kaz?”
“Why thank you, lil’ miss,” Majima says, bowing his head in reverent thanks. Kiryu hears the way Haruka snickers. He watches as Majima opens the bottle and tips it up to his lips, letting the water flow. As he watches him drink, more questions that Kiryu won’t ask fill his head. Instead of speaking, Kiryu nods, bringing his free hand up to rest on Haruka’s shoulder. Majima’s thumb brushes against the knuckles of Kiryu’s other hand and he stiffens. He’d forgotten it was even there.
“I don’t mind it,” Haruka continues, “because I know whenever it happens, it’s because he’s helping people.” She’s speaking to Majima, but Kiryu knows the words are for him, too. “And that’s really cool.”
Majima moves the bottle away from his lips to laugh. He looks a little better, Kiryu thinks, now that he’s hydrated. His eye is less glazed over. “Sure is.”
“Plus, when it’s just us, he does whatever I want. Even if it’s weird.”
Majima’s eyebrow raises curiously. “Weird?”
“Some guy in the ramen shop was talking about Baccarat, and I really wanted to see someone play it, so I got Uncle Kaz to go to the shady casino and win a bunch of points even if he’d never played.” Haruka sounds proud as she speaks, but having the events explained so frankly feels a little embarrassing.
“It took hours,” Kiryu says, reminiscing.
“It’s ‘cause I told him I’d give him a shiny rock.”
Majima blinks once, twice, then looks at Kiryu; he knows this because he catches Majima’s gaze at the same moment he finds something interesting on the ceiling. “A… rock?”
“It wasn’t a rock,” Kiryu says quickly, squinting up at the ceiling. “It was a jewel. And it’d make me win at roulette.”
“What, you had some special pass or somethin’? You rig the roulette with the dealer?” Majima sounds incredulous.
“No, the jewel did it.”
“The jewel?”
“You wouldn’t get it.”
Kiryu has exactly five seconds to regret his words and perceive the wrinkling on Majima’s face before the other man starts to downright wheeze, lifting his hand to smack against the ceramic. Haruka laughs, too, high and bubbly, though she squeaks when Majima’s cackle shifts to an exaggerated groan after he reaches a bit too high and stretches his wounds. That gets Kiryu scowling at him, his lips pressing in a thin line, and he rests a hand on Majima’s shoulder again to keep him still as he and Haruka come down from their giggling fit.
“He’s a good man, yer uncle,” Majima says, shoulders still shaking with laughter where he lies in the tub. Kiryu squeezes his shoulder where he holds him, and Majima’s eye moves to his hand. He’s staring.
Without any warning, there’s something on Kiryu’s head. When he looks to the side, Haruka is reaching over him, one hand patting at his hair. “Yeah,” she agrees, her fingers ruffling his hair slightly. A few strands fall in front of his forehead. He thinks of Yumi, fussing over the two of them after a day out to the park, telling Nishiki off when he shoved Kiryu just for the hell of it. “He’s the best.”