Chapter Text
Majima was a ghost in his own life, an observer of the day-to-day. When the thoughts manifested, when he wasn’t overwhelmed, he recognized he wasn’t all there.
It had been Shimano himself that knelt at-level, with hard eyes following Majima’s own lolling one. He grabbed either shoulder to keep Majima upright. “They fucked you up bad, huh?” Shimano said through a laugh.
The realization that he was to be disposed of was a dull one. He was uncuffed, lifted and thrown over the shoulder of a large grunt Shimano had brought along. He was carried out into the hallway he’d only seen from the doorway, fascinating if only for a change of scenery.
It was night outside. He hadn't seen the moon for a year. He kept his eye trained on it as he slumped against the backseat window of a car he'd been forced in. They’d taken to the roads, then the freeway. They’d driven for so long the moon had dipped, the sun following in its wake. Majima lowered his gaze to the greenery and hillsides along the road.
He caught sight of an exit sign, wondering if that would be where they killed him, but they passed it. Another to consider, but they passed that, too, And so on. Would they drive to the end of the country to dump him into the ocean? Would they bring him to the most remote mountain or forest and leave him for dead?
After hours, when they finally turned onto an exit, one of Shimano’s grunts turned his head behind him to flash a mocking smile at Majima. “You’ll be in your new dog house soon.”
He was driven to a warehouse lot, empty that morning save for another vehicle and a man leaning on that vehicle with folded arms and a cigarette. He smiled when Shimano stepped out of the car, stepped up to greet him.
“It's been too long.” The man had taken his hand and gave a firm shake. He bowed afterward, briefly. “I missed you, bro.”
Shimano nodded, reciprocated the bow. He slapped a hand on the man’s bicep, which turned to a brief hug between the two. “Funny coming from someone who doesn’t answer my calls.”
The man looked over at Majima, being helped out of the car by the large grunt. His expression turned consideratory, but shifted back into a sleazy friendliness when addressing Shimano. “Answered this one, didn't I?”
“The one that counts.” Shimano took a step backward, gestured toward Majima. “Sagawa, Majima.” He gestured to Sagawa. “Majima, Sagawa.”
Sagawa bowed his head, his smile wooden. “It's a pleasure, Majima-chan. We're going to be the best of friends.”
When Majima's eye wandered over to Shimano, all he earned was a chuckle. “Sagawa will have you up to speed shortly, I assure you. You’re in good hands.”
The grunt handled Majima into the passenger seat of Sagawa's car. Sagawa and Shimano had exchanged a few words while Majima propped himself up on the window. He couldn't hear them, only watched their visible camaraderie. A mutual bow before departing and Sagawa stepping into the vehicle.
“Did he sell me?” The words bubbled up from the last measure held in place that utilized Majima's capability to reason.
Sagawa laughed. “No, the opposite. He had to pay me to take in your sorry ass.” He turned his head for a moment, gave Majima a once-over “Look at you. You look like a prisoner of war.”
Majima faced Sagawa. “Are you gonna kill me?”
“Not if you're good. Gonna get some food in you, get you re-adjusted and put you right to work.”
Majima stayed silent, so Sagawa continued speaking. “Shimano told me you're resourceful, but he may have been buttering me up to get me to take you in. I've got my own tests for you, when the time comes. Better hope you pass them, eh, tiger?”
He looked at Sagawa who flashed a lopsided grin, a disinterested mirth. He looked back outside, more taken by scenery of industry and commercial business he didn’t know he missed until seeing it again. He breathed out, an exhale deeper than he knew himself to be able to breathe. He made it out alive.
He leaned heavily on Sagawa heading up the stairs, but managed to walk more than he thought he could. He caught the mirror in Sagawa’s doorway, looked at his gray and gaunt self. He counted his blinks just to be sure it was the real thing he was looking at.
A stripped futon was laid out on the ground in the main room, where he'd been led down. So soft, the feeling of something yielding to his contours was lovely. He closed his eye, must have fallen asleep because when Sagawa returned, it was with a hot cup of noodles.
“Can you eat on your own?”
Majima nodded, took the cup and chopsticks. It tasted rich, it tasted salty, it tasted overwhelming. He'd mostly eaten rice or rice porridge in his time down. He finished the majority, left a quarter of it and was grateful when he hadn't been reprimanded for it. He was given water, afterward.
“Sleep if you're tired. I'll be around. We'll talk for real when you wake up.”
Upon closing his eye, sleep had taken him.
-
Majima's eye stayed closed when he first woke. He wanted to go back to sleep, but had to piss something fierce. He adjusted every which way to try and reduce the feeling.
Sagawa worked at the desk within the room, turned to Majima when he noticed the movement. “You awake?”
“Need a bathroom.”
“Ah.” Sagawa knelt down beside him, helping Majima to his feet.
Now that Majima's head was clear and stomach was full, keeping his balance was easier. Still weak with slow steps, still kept upright with Sagawa’s help, but he foresaw a return to his former stamina.
He focused on aiming, managed well by not leaking on the rim and was led back out into the main room and sat up on his futon.
“You alive now?”
“Yeah.”
Sagawa picked a file folder up off the desk and dropped it into Majima’s lap. “Thumb through it. Ask questions after.”
Majima nodded. Flipped through, page by page. There were pictures of the exterior of a cabaret club, then the interior. The pictures were dated from previous months or previous years when it was active. The newer pictures showed the place bare, stripped and under construction.
When he’d seen everything, he closed the file and looked at Sagawa. “It’s a cabaret club.”
“It’s in the middle of a remodel right now. Got any idea why I’m showing you this?”
“Am I going to be bouncer?”
“Heard you were one hell of a fighter, but no. Think outside the box. The answer’s not obvious.”
“I don’t know.” Majima blinked, imagined himself in the seats of the pictures he saw, fawning over rich, powerful men. “Am I going to be a host?”
Sagawa chuckled, shaking his head at that one. “Take a good look at these pictures. Familiarize yourself. You’ll be managing the place when the remodel’s done.”
“Manager?” He flipped through a few pages within the file again, sent an exasperated stare Sagawa’s way when the reasoning for it hadn’t clicked. “This is a mistake. I can’t do that.”
He placed a hand on Majima’s shoulder an squeezed hard. “I’ve got no interest in what you think it is you can or can’t do, tiger. You’ve been brought here to manage the place. I reckon you’ll show me a little of that resourcefulness Shimano says you have.”
“And if I don’t?”
The squeeze let up a bit into a reassuring pat. “Don’t you worry that little head of yours. You’re young. I’m sure I’ll find something you can do to make me money.”
A chill went down Majima’s mind, an eager twitch tugged his cock. He nodded, only nodded, and went through the file again in its entirety silently.
-
Leg strength was regained slowly from floor exercises and laps made around the room. Occasionally, Sagawa watched him, always with that smile on his lips that had Majima likening the man to a snake.
He’d been given clothes. Plain clothes, t-shirts and briefs that didn’t fit him, but also wouldn’t have fit Sagawa. He’d been given a hair tie to tie back his hair, even an eyepatch, not that Majima really cared to wear it, but Sagawa suggested getting used to it if he ever wanted to enter polite society.
When he was able to walk with a steady gait, Sagawa brought him out to the streets of Sotenbori, dressed in a loaner suit.
“A little loose.” Sagawa tugged on loose fabric below his his ass. “We’ll get it tailored for you.”
It seemed generous, but Majima knew better than to liken generosity to man with a snake’s smile. It was a practical expense, working toward making Majima presentable again. Grooming him, showing him around, teaching him to be a real man about town.
They’d stopped in on a cabaret club, a place without an ounce of the opulence of The Grand. A small floorspace, girls a little on the older side, where the clients wore unfitted suits and drank cheap.
Sagawa called it training, but what he was training for, he wasn’t sure. He kept his eye peeled and tried to keep his drinking to a minimum. It was hard to engage with the environment with Sagawa watching him like a hawk. Even the girls seemed unnerved, looking to each other repeatedly when their conversation had gotten lost to Majima’s nerves and Sagawa’s watchfulness.
If he was supposed to learn, he wasn’t so sure why Sagawa was so keen on refilling his drinks. At one point, the man even pushed back a girl’s hand to pour a glass himself.
“Drink up, Majima-chan,” he encouraged. When Sagawa sounded particularly cheerful, that meant it was a command, not a suggestion.
He’d barely eaten. Only a few drinks was enough to get him proper drunk, and that was when the night started slipping from him. He let out loose-lipped questions, questions that worried the girls. Questions that made Sagawa laugh, though he couldn’t remember a single one of them.
He leaned heavily on Sagawa on their way back. Cold had sobered him some, but he could barely keep his vision in line with his footsteps. “You passed your first test,” Sagawa said to him.
“Passed?” He blearily remembered the conversation, the tail end of drunkenness before he retched out into the river on their walk back.
“Wanted to see if you’d be tempted by the girls. Prodded you a little bit. You never even laid a hand on them.”
“They’re working,” Majima said as if it was obvious.
“Good answer.” Sagawa patted him on the shoulder and helped him upstairs, propped him up in the bathroom with a trash bin in his lap. “I’ll get you water.”
He retched again, just before Sagawa returned with a glass of water. “I won’t make you drink like that again. That was just for tonight.”
“I feel like shit.”
“Smell like it too. Let’s get you in the shower.”
Sagawa stuck around when he undressed, looked on sometimes with interest, looked on sometimes with indifference, leaving Majima unsure of his own wariness. He felt it again, the eager stir of his cock, tampered by exhaustion and nausea. He couldn’t get hard if he tried, and that was enough to relax him while Sagawa remained to ensure Majima didn’t slip and crack his head open in the shower.
He was followed back to his futon where he laid himself down. Sagawa sat at the desk beside him and flipped through channels on the quieted television, occasionally sparing a glance over at Majima.
Sagawa hadn't even gotten undressed, Majima noted. He loosened his tie, popped off the top button of his collar. Majima saw a peak of tattoo creep over the barely exposed chest. More clearly, Majima saw the man looked to be in shape for his age.
He couldn’t stay awake if he tried. When he woke, he found a glass of water and pain relievers set beside him, took both immediately and found his way into the bathroom to piss where in the slightly separated room over, Sagawa was in the shower.
He listened in on intermittent humming, cut off when the range had seemed to go beyond what Sagawa was comfortable with.
He wondered what Sagawa looked like naked. He wondered who the briefs he was wearing originally belonged to. He wondered if he’d end up the same, taking liberties with the thoughts of what that could mean. He’d be aroused if it wasn’t for feeling like he took a wrecking ball to the head.
-
It wasn't that Majima didn't understand the appeal of cabaret clubs. He liked women. He liked good looking women. He liked good looking women pretending they were interested in what he had to say, putting forth a practiced, bright-eyed effort.
His problem was an immersion problem. It was hard to take it all seriously.
Sagawa blew smoke, the final drag on his cigarette before grinding the butt into the ashtray. “It's a good sign, you know. I don't want you to get lost in it. I want you to see it for what it is.”
“All I see is an easy way for well-off men to make sure time with good looking women.”
“That's a good start.” He pointed to another table, where a client discreetly wrote his phone number on a napkin and the hostess accepted it slyly. He was not a handsome man, though his suit was remarkably expensive. “Why do you suppose she accepted his number?”
“To go on a date.”
“Majima-chan,” Sagawa tsked and shook his head. “That woman's a light 8. That man's a 5, if I'm being generous. Besides, he's wearing a wedding ring.”
“Not a real date, I know he’s not looking to romance her. He’s scouting a mistress.”
“Bingo. How would you take care of it?”
Majima considered it for a moment. “Interfere. Discipline her. Threaten the client.’
“If you threaten the client, hey may not return,” Sagawa pointed out.
Majima shrugged. “He's circumventing the business by buying her directly. He's got no reason to come here when he can have her when he wants. She's got no reason to compel him to come in if he's paying her on the side. What they've done interferes with business.”
It wasn't often he saw Sagawa look impressed. Majima almost felt proud of himself. “Atta boy.” When Sagawa pet his head, the pride boiled away into annoyance.
The floor manager had introduced their two girls, who had only just freed up from another table. Sagawa was in one of his friendlier moods, laughing openly and remaining flirtatious. He had no expectation for Majima to perform, so Majima continued on with his disinterest. He must've been particularly disinterested that night, as the girl by his side had teasingly called him out on it.
“You're so cold, Majima-San.” Her and her coworker both giggled at the tease. She placed her fingers on his wrist. “Why don't you smile?”
“She's got a point there, Majima-chan. Smile for the ladies,” Sagawa prompted.
He didn't know what it was about a direct command that compelled him. He smiled, figuring he looked wooden and forced, but his party seemed sated.
“He's awfully shy, you know,” Sagawa went on afterward.
“Aw, we can break you out of your shell,” the girl beside him said through another round of giggles.
The humiliation of it was more obnoxious than infuriating. He looked among the three with compounded disinterest. “How about we just order our drinks?”
That was enough for the girls to bust out the menu and test the waters with something relatively expensive. Sagawa laughed pretending to be pressed before giving the go ahead on one of the more expensive bottles.
Maybe it was the looks of them, but the girls never asked what kind of work they did, leaving Majima to wonder if that was something of an unspoken rule with yakuza.
The seal on the bottle was broken, and they toasted to something inane. Warmed inside out by the alcohol, talking got a little easier.
“Majima-san, have you ever had a girlfriend before?”
He took half a drink at that, smacked his lips. “Not in a long while.”
“You looking for one?” His girl leaned in, faked looking hopeful well.
He noticed both Sagawa and his girl also listening to the exchange. “I’m looking for lots of things.”
“Ooh, mysterious.” The way she said it sounded like an insult.
“What about you, Sagawa-san?” Sagawa’s girl tilted her head toward him. Majima noticed she kept hovering a hand on his wrist, where he favored wearing the only obvious tip off of his wealth. Majima had never noticed before, but when her hand shifted off enough, he managed to see the Rolex logo. “Are you a married man?”
He laughed, splayed the fingers of both his hands on the table. “You see a ring?”
“How do I know you didn’t hide it in your pocket before you came in?”
Sagawa lifted a hand, gesturing for her to wait a moment. Slipped his hand into his pocket, raised his brows. For a moment, Majima really thought he was about to pull a ring from there, but the man pulled out his wallet and slipped a bill on the table. “For you, for making me laugh.” He pulled out another, sliding it toward Majima’s girl. “And another for putting up with him.”
Once that flash of cash took place, those girls were all over Sagawa. Fine with Majima, he was starting to grow weary of it. It was far more entertaining watching Sagawa shift into a personality of charismatic womanizer than pretending he had any charisma of his own. It was far more interesting seeing him lean in, whisper something to his girl out of earshot, seeing her go red and start giggling wildly.
He didn’t know what Sagawa told her, but Majima felt his groin well with interest imagining it. He took a shot to shake himself out of it, keep himself from getting hard at a table with women. He didn’t need anything else to be humiliated over.
-
Sagawa seemed to tread a line between serious and comic, leaving Majima confused on exactly how many of his threats were said in jest and how many were to be taken at face-value. A little of both, Majima told himself for good measure.
Thirty-sixty-ninety plans. Expense reports. Taxes. Audits. Inventory. Filing. Just listening to the deluge of shit expected of him had his eyelids feeling heavy. It was completely humorless that, overwhelmed, he remarked, “This really is a punishment.”
Sagawa lit another cigarette. “Was wondering how long it’d be until you wisened up to it.”
“What’s the expectation, then? What do I have to do to get out of here?”
“Make money.”
“How much?”
“Let’s say a hundred million, but that’s Shimano’s call, not mine. I’m just here to keep you in line and maybe put in a word here or there if you’re good.”
There was something about the word good that caused a shiver in his shoulders. Months in the hole had corrupted its meaning, he couldn’t help but look down at Sagawa’s lap, back up to his eyes. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, head cocked toward Sagawa. “Those clothes you gave me, they were another man’s, weren’t they?”
Sagawa regarded him for a moment, kept his smirk even. “I’ve got a lot of good friends. Your point?”
Majima hesitated. “Was he good?”
“Oh yeah.” Sagawa’s smirk started showing teeth. “He was real good.”
“I can be real good,” Majima offered. The hand overhanging his knee extended, pointer finger brushing Sagawa’s knee.
“I like a good bitch, Majima, but before you offer up your sorry ass to me, don’t think for a fucking second that you’ll ever get me stupid enough to run to Shimano singing your praises.”
Deflated, he sagged a bit before regaining his posture. He thought of withdrawing his hand, stare turning hard and hateful thinking about his new prison, his new punishment, his new warden.
Sagawa spoke before Majima made up his mind on how to proceed. “You an honest-to-God cocksucker or are you an opportunist?”
“Doesn’t matter, does it?” He went by instinct and proceeded for the moment. Hand slid forward further, three other fingers following to take a place on Sagawa’s knee. “It ends the same way.”
“Sure it matters. An opportunist doesn’t have obedience. A dog oughta have obedience.”
The fingers moved up as Majima moved closer. “I’m not averse to it, then.”
He remembered that peek of chest he’d seen. He thought back to the image every now and then. He wasn't too sure if he found Sagawa outright attractive, but the mystery of the body underneath fostered the growth of his imagination.
“I don’t have time for games, Majima. If you want me to have my way with you, you beg for it.”
It felt familiar, sliding onto the floor, knees on hard ground, looking up at a man from below. His gaze met Sagawa’s, the other with a raised, expectant brow as he waited. “Let me suck your cock. I want it. Please.” The words were thick in his mouth, sounded dirtier than it did in his head. Majima was hard just from hearing himself say it.
Sagawa patted his head. “Atta boy.” He undid his belt, then sat back with either arm on the armrest, daring Majima to continue on his own.
The only thing out of place was the ease in unzipping a fly. It was so much easier with un-cuffed arms. He raised up on his knees, Sagawa accommodating a bit by moving forward for him. Sagawa was mostly soft still, Majima could make quick work of it. Groped a bit over the man’s briefs until he could get a real hold. He pulled back the waistband, Sagawa’s cock hot in hand.
He looked up a final time to see Sagawa was no longer smiling, only assessing him. He leaned forward and closed his mouth shallow around the head. That earned a real response, Sagawa soon completely hard and settling into the feeling with an audible sigh.
Majima dipped his head down, took Sagawa fully in his mouth, held for a time, breathed slow out his nose before lifting up and off, back to the tip where he tongued the head.
As he went down, Sagawa’s hand came up to the back of his head and pushed him down. His gag reflex kicked up in quick protest, but Majima had long since learned to suppress it, only swallowed a bit around dick nestled deep in his gullet.
Sagawa came deep, Majima swallowing down quickly as it had withdrawn soon after.
“If the management thing doesn’t work out, at least we know there’s an alternative for you.”
Majima’s arousal had him convinced that having Sagawa as his pimp was preferable.