Chapter Text
They did not speak a whole lot in the airport and they spoke even less on the flight itself. Everything that they could have said had already been discussed, fought and yelled and screamed about, and both of them had cut lips and a handful of bruises and small wounds as souvenirs for it. It was plenty enough for the both of them to bring along – not that they weren’t already the sort of people to travel as lightly as they could.
Majima had smuggled his tanto through security, though.
Kiryu didn’t know how and he wasn’t going to ask about it either. He still felt the punch he had taken to his midriff and wasn’t interested in trying his luck with another one this soon. Maybe if he had noticed before they got on the plane, but he had been too late and they had already gotten seated near a family of four and next to an old guy who smelled obnoxious when Majima pulled out the sheath from his jacket to put the weapon in his bag. By then stirring something up would’ve caused more problems than it would’ve solved.
He had tried to sleep, and hadn’t been very successful. Everything around him had been too much and not quiet enough and the smell of the drinks Majima ordered mixed poorly with the old guy’s odor. A lesser man would’ve shed a tear, and Kiryu was getting dangerously close to that line with every passing day in recent memory.
At least Majima had had the courtesy to shut the fuck up for the three hours, which was the longest Kiryu had ever witnessed him being quiet. Majima wasn’t a quiet person, and it would’ve been unsettling under any other circumstances. Kiryu had been too tired to care that much about it, just this once.
And Majima didn’t speak to him directly until they had landed and made their way through security again and finally gotten on the monorail.
“Need a lighter shirt for this fuckass weather,” there was some kind of smirk on his lips. “Ya know where I could snatch one, Kiryu-chan?”
Kiryu did know and there was a part of him that wished that he didn’t.
***
Kiryu knew how to throw a mean punch, but his weakness was that god-forsaken kindness in his heart that gave in so much more easily than it should. He knew how to be stubborn, most certainly, but he could never allow it to take him so far as to push someone beyond their limits. And it kept biting him in the ass in novel and interesting ways, when it didn’t almost get him killed.
For as much as it bothered or, god forbid, worried Majima, he also didn’t mind all that much about taking advantage of it himself when the need arose. He didn’t know if Kiryu was aware of this and he didn’t care. Either way he knew how to play the game that was the Dragon of Dojima and he’d gotten pretty good at it by now.
And all it took was the same type of stupid fucking stubbornness that the man exhibited himself.
He hadn’t expected to fight Kiryu in the alley behind Serena and get an entire bike and then some thrown at him, but it wasn’t anything new. Neither was him punching the air out of the man’s lungs in retaliation and getting a nice cut on his bicep that must’ve hurt like a bitch. What was new was how easily Kiryu ended up giving in, accepting that no matter how hard he was going to beat Majima he wouldn’t be changing his mind. Majima didn’t like it, but he had brushed it up to the pressing circumstances. There was a lot on Kiryu’s plate and he needed to preserve himself for that plate.
Thus, blessed with nothing if not reluctance, Majima was allowed to come with to Okinawa. Tojo wouldn’t fall to pieces if he stepped away from it for a couple days, and if it did so anyway, it probably was about time to lay that beast to rest. Personally Majima couldn’t give a rat’s ass either way, the only reason he did get involved at all was because Kiryu had asked him so nicely. By beating the shit out of him.
Perhaps his priorities were skewed, but Majima was more than fine with such exchanges even if they came with the shittiest baggage known to man.
But he, too, dared to demand a real treat for himself sometimes. And he was going to take what he deserved, whether Kiryu wanted him to or not. A dog like him was only obedient to a certain degree and was bound to bite back eventually. The only difference with Kiryu was that he was too soft and kind to put him back in line, like other people had done in the past.
Majima wasn’t sure if he liked that or not, but he knew better than to complain about it.
He could save that for the humid weather of Okinawa that had begun digging into his skin the moment he had stepped out of the cool confines of the airport.
***
“You’re not usually that insistent.”
Majima finally noticed the tag on his shirt and pulled the tanto out to cut it loose.
“Ya just haven’t seen me when things don’t go my way,” he dismissed the claim. The floral pattern on the button-up was orange and it didn’t stick out enough from the gold to his liking, but maybe it was a good thing. He had yet to decide if aloha shirts were his thing, after all.
“So going back to Tojo –“
“Only because you asked me to, Kiryu-chan,” he emphasized the name, flashed his teeth through the grin. “Wouldn’t do that shit for anyone else.”
Kiryu’s brow furrowed and he didn’t reply.
The sun was high and Majima felt it heating up his shirt and he wondered how Kiryu was still fine in that fucking suit of his. They had gotten off the monorail a while ago and the dirt road they were on just kept going and snaking through trees and vegetation with no neighborhood in sight. Majima could not remember the last time his shoes had seen that much dirt that wasn’t from some crude little plot in Kamurocho that hadn’t gotten soaked in concrete just yet.
Kiryu continued not saying anything for a while so they kept walking in silence. The sounds of traffic and civilization were left further and further behind with every step, the ocean slowly taking their place. And with every step Majima felt more and more restless in a way he couldn’t quite put into words. Like he was being removed from his element.
That he didn’t like.
“We’re the same, ya know,” he broke the silence without thinking. “You just do shit like that to just about anyone, ‘s all. Even if it ain’t any of your business.”
“I don’t,” Kiryu said. “I take responsibility for things I need to.”
“Tojo hasn’t been yer responsibility for years, fourth chairman.”
“My kids are.”
The ocean was getting closer and the air was salty and smelled nothing like the murk that was Kamurocho.
“How many ya got?” Majima changed the subject. He could’ve kept up the argument, but Kiryu had a point for this current mess and digging open old scars was a low blow, even for him.
“Eight, and Haruka,” Kiryu almost smiled. Majima saw that his eyes got soft at the thought of them and it made him want to hit him for some reason. “Izumi is eight, she’s the youngest, Ayako’s eleven – and Haruka’s twelve now, she hardly feels that young though… They’re a lot, but they’re good kids. They deserve to live honest lives away from… this. They shouldn’t need to worry about this.”
And ya love diggin’ yourself back into it anyway, Majima thought to himself, but had the courtesy to not voice it. Despite everything he wasn’t entirely sure if it would’ve set something off in Kiryu, and now was hardly the time to find out. The kids were a topic he wasn’t familiar with, and playing with fire had a tendency to be costly in some way.
There probably wasn’t enough time to smoke a cigarette before they got to the orphanage, but Majima found himself craving one anyway.
“Ya really like it here, huh?” he smirked through clenched teeth.
“It’s peaceful. Was, anyway. Until all of this.”
“Doesn’t suit you at all if ya ask me.”
“I’m not asking you.”
The road ran out of the woods and the small, positively quaint neighborhood by the sea was revealed. The water glittered in the sun and Majima was glad it was on his bad side, as hard as it was to avoid the sight completely. Stone fences gated the yards and gardens and in the midst of them stood one larger than the others, most of the estate taken up by the house in the middle that might as well have had a neon sign above it spelling “Kiryu-chan’s orphanage for too many damn kids.”
Majima supposed it was nice, though. It certainly could’ve been worse.
“Don’t talk shop to the kids,” Kiryu said. “If they overhear some, fine, they already have, but… I don’t want them in the game. I’m not even supposed to be in it anymore. So don’t get them excited about it. I’m not going to be the gateway for them and I’m not letting you be that either.”
“And if I do –“
“You won’t if you know what’s good for you.”
The tone in his voice went straight to Majima’s dick and he didn’t mind it at all.
“And be nice to them. They’re just kids. Don’t be… yourself,” Kiryu almost smiled. “Can you do that for me?”
“I crawled back to Tojo for ya, this is fuckin’ nothing to that,” Majima grinned at him. “I’m great with kids.”
Kiryu didn’t answer but the look in his eyes told Majima that he wanted to. He was being too nice to him. He was always too fucking nice to him.
There was a part of Majima that wanted to cave in his skull for it, had the kids not been waiting just around the corner.
***
He felt more kinship with the little dog that growled at him something fierce than the small crowd of over-excited kids and the local family members who looked at him with rightful suspicion. Like he was a mean stray Kiryu had picked up in Tokyo and brought home because it wouldn’t stop biting his legs when he tried to kick it away. Majima had nothing to contribute to the conversation and catching up they were doing and he was content staying on the sidelines. Not that he didn’t enjoy the limelight on occasion, but the stages he was most used to performing on weren’t peaceful seasides where the air was clean and easy to breathe and the people were pleasant and friendly. There was a layer of dirt and ash and pollution to him that didn’t mix with it well, a layer that the locals had taken note of and that he’d have to actively scrub off if he wanted to leave a positive impact on any of them.
Majima began to realize why Kiryu had been so apprehensive about him coming to Okinawa.
The local patriarch, Nakahara, glanced at him in a particular way that reeked of disapproval when his boys escorted him back to their van. Despite Kiryu’s brief introductions he didn’t seem convinced that Majima was any kind of upstanding patriarch, and Majima could hardly blame him for it. He tried to smile at the man, the most normal smile he could muster up in that moment, and if anything it made the old man’s brow furrow a tad deeper than before. Oh well – not like he was in Okinawa to make friends or some shit like that.
The van drove off and all that remained were Kiryu and the metric fuckton of kids surrounding him, jumping up at him like excited puppies, hugging him and asking him about Tokyo and god they were exhausting to be around. Most of them, anyway, only Haruka and some other girl with a sketchbook weren’t making a big show of things and Majima decided that whoever that other girl was she was his favorite of the new faces now. His hand fidgeted towards the pocket he had put his cigarettes in before he pulled it away. Normal, remember? He was supposed to be nice and normal. Smoking on the property in front of the kids didn’t seem like a nice thing to do, did it now?
When Kiryu turned to look at him the look on his face revealed that he’d almost forgotten that Majima was even present, and Majima could tell he was caught off-guard by it.
“...right,” he muttered, cleared his throat, turned to the kids. “Everyone, this is Majima-san. He came from Tokyo to help me out with a couple of things, and he’ll be staying with us for a bit. He’s our guest, so be nice to him, alright?”
There was something similar in the tone of his voice that had been there when he’d asked Majima to be nice to the kids and it felt condescending in a distinctly Kiryu-type of way.
The kids all addressed his request in some manner, before quickly resuming their excitement over his return and pestering him for more attention. Kiryu looked at Haruka, and the girl nodded, then walked up to Majima to grab his hand and pull him towards the house.
“Oi,” he arched an eyebrow.
“We gotta get you set up for the night, Majima-san,” Haruka explained with a strange smile. There was still a weird look in her eyes, a type of cunning maturity that did not suit a 12-year-old. “I’ll show you where you can leave your things.”
Unsurprisingly she showed him to “Uncle Kaz’s room,” and told him to settle in before scuttling off somewhere presumably in the search of a futon. The place was scarcely decorated and Majima felt like it suited Kiryu – he couldn’t have imagined the guy owning a whole lot of things or memorabilia. A small round table in the middle of the room, a desk with some assortment of papers and documents on it and an office chair that couldn’t possibly have been comfortable. A shelf with a handful of books and magazines, miscellaneous items that ranged from seashells to little crafts and must’ve been things the kids had given him. Futon rolled up in the corner of the room. A bad drawing of Kiryu on the wall.
Majima’s eye lingered on the framed photograph of a woman he recognized. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever gotten her name, but he did know that the photo ate at him in a way he did not like whatsoever.
He didn’t have time to go and tip the frame over before Haruka arrived once more with her arms wrapped around a futon.
“I dunno where you want to sleep, but I’m sure you and Uncle Kaz can figure that out,” she said. “I’ll leave this here for now. If you need me I’ll be in the kitchen!”
Majima stared at her and she lingered for a moment to return that gaze. Her eyes were bright and he found an accusatory tone in them that seemed more familiar than it did foreign. It was all he could parse before the girl took off again, to do more things that she shouldn’t have needed to do at her age.
He had never really met Kiryu’s old man, Kazama, before he’d passed. But Majima knew of him, the things he had done and the nature of the orphanage he had ran. Kiryu was no hitman and he was adamant on keeping the kids out of the yakuza, but he couldn’t erase the sense of gratitude the scamps held for him in their hearts.
Majima wondered if this was just another way those feelings got twisted into a disgusting manifestation.
“Niisan.”
He finally dropped his bag on the floor.
“You could have a penthouse in the middle of Kamurocho and this is what ya settle for,” Majima grinned at Kiryu. “Ya never cease to amaze me, Kiryu-chan.”
He saw the smile that tugged at the corner of Kiryu’s mouth and it was just about the best reward he could’ve been bestowed.
“I’m gonna spend some time with the kids,” Kiryu said. “Make yourself at home in the meantime.”
“You’re just gonna abandon your guest like that, huh?” Majima arched his brows theatrically. “That ain’t very hospitable of you.”
He saw Kiryu’s lips part before the man decided to not respond to him, after all. He turned back to the yard and walked up to some of his girls, leaving Majima indoors. A sneer twitched on Majima’s lips for a moment, and a voice in his head wanted him to lunge after Kiryu and bite and hit him until he got his attention again. He chose to snuff it out.
He was going to be nice and normal and not himself. Just this once. Just for a few days.
***
Kiryu talked to the kids and played with them and worried for them and went the extra mile to make them all happy. He brought one a manga from Tokyo and told his girls all about the city and arranged a silly wrestling match with one of the local guys whose name Majima forgot just for them. The sun made his skin look better and younger and his body was fatter and fuller than Majima remembered it being. The greys in his hair that had been noticeable in Tokyo were gone in the Okinawa sun, the bags under his eyes were less oppressive now.
He looked happy.
It made Majima’s jaw clench.
***
He was sat on the beach while the family was enjoying their lovingly-crafted concoction of curry.
The sun was beginning to set and it colored the sky warm and pink and made the water glimmer that much harder in the light. Majima kept staring at the horizon where the sea met the sky, and he wasn’t blinking very much and it was starting to make his eye hurt. But he kept it fixed. Even when he finally took out the cigarettes he’d been ravenous for the whole afternoon. Smoke danced up into the air around him and the drags he took were deep and savoring ones.
There was no traffic to be heard nor any type of general commotion, the chatter of crowds and the sirens of ambulances and cop cars. No hollering or aggression or the electric air of the city that he’d gotten used to. He couldn’t smell the suffocating stench of the smog nor someone’s piss in a forgotten alleyway nor the shitty food stands and their back alley garbage cans.
The air was clear and salty and warm on his skin. And the peaceful silence was only broken by seabirds and the waves hitting the shore in front of him. If he focused, he could hear the distant chatter from the orphanage, the sounds of the kids for the most part. If he didn’t, they blended into the background of nothingness. The breeze was gentle and loving and it wrapped around his exposed arms like a silken veil.
The water was deep and blue and through it the white sand at the bottom was visible, illuminated by the sun.
Majima wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen such clear water in his life.
He moved his foot and the sensation of the sand brushing against his skin broke him back to where he was. A sneer crept on his lips, danced around for a while, before dissolving again.
The ocean was vast and the horizon unreachable. He didn’t have to climb up to the roof of Millenium Tower to maybe catch a glimpse of them from beyond the lights of the city. They were right here. Within his reach. Not walled off by buildings and concrete that went on for miles. He was facing them right now, staring at them and staring and staring, as if they’d disappear if he took his eye off of them. They were here and they were real whether he wanted it or not.
Majima wanted to miss the murk and grime of Tokyo, and was afraid when he almost didn’t. He shoved the remains of his first cigarette back into the pack and lit up a second one.
***
By the time he went back to the house the dinner had been long since finished and the kids were scuttling around again as they seemed to have the habit of doing. Majima scraped together leftovers in the kitchen and ate them unceremoniously by the fridge while two of the kids, the girl with a ponytail and the boy with a green polo shirt, busied themselves with the dishes. He noticed them glancing at him from time to time and whispering something to one another and he could tell they were far from comfortable in his presence.
It was a good thing. They were smart kids.
He did not eat his fill before he decided to leave the children to their own devices.
***
Kiryu had missed the sunsets. They never looked so vibrant and clear in Tokyo and most of the time he barely even noticed them there when the blaring neon and light pollution so often obscured the nightfall anyway. But here? The sky got to wrap itself in pink and gold and red and take the sun in its arms and fall asleep, before making room for the thousands upon thousands of stars that lit up in the darkness of the night.
To be able to watch the sky like this from his own porch wasn’t something he had ever expected to be able to do in his life.
He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and a smile spread on his lips as he listened to the kids play with the dog. Wind brushed against his button-up and he was glad he had taken his jacket off and rolled up the sleeves. He couldn’t wait for the moment he could change back to the aloha shirt, wrapping himself up into a floral pattern that signaled that it was finally over. That everything was back to normal and he didn’t have to be the Dragon of Dojima any longer. That he could sink back to the life he had built himself here, with his kids, a life of normalcy away from Tojo and everything it brought upon him whenever he returned to it.
It was a little terrifying how easily he had been able to almost slip away from everything already, in such a short period of time. Forget about his responsibilities and the promises he needed to keep.
The sound of someone walking up to him and sitting down snapped Kiryu out of his head. Majima hadn’t said a word, again exhibiting the sort of quietness that was unfitting for him in every possible way.
For a minute he looked at the beach, the corner of his eye narrowing a tad.
“So what do ya do around here for fun?” he asked.
Kiryu blinked. Considered his answer for a moment. Majima had a very different idea of “fun” than most people did, did he not?
“I play with the kids,” he mused after a bit. “Sometimes go downtown for mahjong. There are some guys here who play it too, though.” Pause. “And cards. I’m worse at those.” Another pause. “I fish too.”
“Mahjong and cards and fishing,” Majima smacked his lips. “How fuckin’ old are you again?”
“They pass time. They’re nice things.”
Majima didn’t say anything and Kiryu looked at him again. He was still focusing at the beach, and he lingered on it for almost long enough to make Kiryu uncomfortable before he let out a scoff.
“I ain’t playing mahjong with ya,” he then said. “What else have ya got?”
Majima finally looked at him properly and there was a spark in his eye, a devious type of excitement that faded when it saw Kiryu’s face. Kiryu didn’t know why and he wasn’t all that worried about it, either.
“...there’s a cabaret club downtown,” he gestured something dismissive with his hand. “Some bars, karaoke, the usual. Take your pick.”
“You ain’t going?”
“I’m…” he hesitated for a bit, before accepting defeat. “I’m too old for that.”
The laugh that replied sounded like something between a howl and a scoff.
“Barely in your forties and already saying that shit,” Majima shook his head. “What a fuckin’ killjoy.”
He got up from the porch, looking over to the road.
“They got cigarettes downtown too?” he asked.
“There’s a corner store near the station, they should have some,” Kiryu said.
“Where’s that?”
“Bit to the north, if you follow the road and…” he sighed and shook his head. “I’ll just show you.”
“Finally some real hospitality, eh?” a grin replied to him. Majima offered his hand to pull him up and for a moment Kiryu debated whether to take it. He took it in the end, regardless of the conclusion he reached.
***
The store was in a different neighborhood altogether, one that was right by the monorail station and buzzed with marginally more life than Kiryu’s community did. There was still an abundance of greenery and flora and bugs around the place and the smell of the sea hadn’t gone anywhere, but at least there were some people walking outside, and a car or two drove by on occasion. Streetlamps illuminated the few paved roads on the way and it didn’t feel like it was enough against the rapidly approaching night. None of it made Majima feel any more at ease than he did by the beach.
“That big-shot politician still hasn’t called ya yet?” he made small-talk to break the uneasy silence.
“He will tomorrow. Maybe the day after,” Kiryu shrugged. “Toma’s in some type of meeting that’ll last for a while. No one’s going to go after him there.”
“That’s hardly Okinawa-exclusive business, dontcha think?”
“...meaning?”
“Your little tantrum at Serena made it seem like it was.”
“This is still about Morning Glory,” Kiryu huffed. “It’s not about Tojo or anything else. I’m protecting my kids here.”
“And that can’t involve me or your detective friend because…?”
He didn’t get an answer and it brought a sick little smirk onto his lips, a sense of satisfaction in his heart over making his way under someone’s skin. Pushing Kiryu’s buttons had no right to be so fun to him.
“Get your cigarettes,” Kiryu’s reply dragged down his high when he gestured at the worn-down corner store with an ancient sign above the door that had become illegible by now. He leaned against the wall and folded his arms, and Majima felt his eyes follow him as he walked inside.
He kept rolling around thoughts in his head as he navigated through the metal shelves stocking drivel from sunglasses to condoms and some estimation of groceries. Thoughts about how Kiryu cared too fucking much and still not enough. About how he was too soft in the wrong ways. He was going to get himself killed one of these days and that made Majima’s blood boil in a way that it hadn’t for a long time. When even was the last time any single person had pissed him off like this? Had anyone done that before?
He thought about the beach and the orphanage and Kiryu playing mahjong with old guys and rotting away. He thought about Kiryu slamming him against the cage of the coliseum and grabbing his wrist so hard he had felt his bones popping and grinding and twisting in his grasp. He thought about the way his eyes had burned with fire when they looked into his in the middle of a brawl and how soft they got when he talked about his kids. He remembered what Kiryu had looked like four years ago and how much happier and fatter he was now and it made his lips turn into a twitching sneer that didn’t want to go away.
They stocked alcohol in a gross fridge at the back of the store. None of it was good, but Majima grabbed a non-specific gin that seemed passable and almost slammed it on the register with the cigarettes that were not his brand. The clerk behind the counter was younger than him and looked at him with the same kind of suspicion Majima remembered the family patriarch having in his eyes earlier that day.
Majima told him to keep the change and walked out with his cigarettes and gin.
***
Kiryu glanced at the bottle in Majima’s hand from time to time on the way back, like it would’ve disappeared or turned into something else had he not kept his eyes on it. He hadn’t brought it up and wasn’t about to, because Majima was an adult who knew what Kiryu expected of him and Kiryu expected him to not go on a bender at his home in front of his kids. Reiterating the point would’ve been condescending at best and he wasn’t in the mindset to be like that.
But there was a spark in Majima’s eye that was needlessly familiar, a spark Kiryu didn’t like because they were in Okinawa and not in some grimy alleyway in the heart of Kamurocho. And it flickered when Majima spoke, like the flame of a candle underneath a curtain ready to catch fire. It made Kiryu’s lips dry up in anticipation of something, and he tried to ignore it, and it was harder than he wanted it to be. To put aside the default response that he thought he had shed a long while ago. The feeling that always seeped into his arms first.
He couldn’t tell if Majima was aware of what he was doing, and Kiryu decided that it would’ve been nicer if he wasn’t, so he chose to believe that.
***
It was late when they returned and night had finally fallen, the stars had come out and painted the sky with their constellations, and Majima could not remember the last time he had seen so many stars so clearly. Like everything else about Okinawa it felt foreign and made him antsy and irritated and largely unable to appreciate the beauty of it. When they walked to the courtyard of the orphanage, he stayed out by the stone fence when Kiryu walked inside, leaning on it as he opened the pack of smokes. Kept looking out to the sea while burning through a cigarette, or two, or more. It didn’t make him feel any better and the sky refused to dim and the ocean stayed exactly where it had always been. Nicotine coursed through his veins and the taste in his mouth was disgusting and the oppressive irritation remained, fermented inside his head and behind his eye.
“Hey.”
Majima looked back at the orphanage, at Kiryu standing on the porch.
“Your futon’s in the dining room when you’re ready for bed,” he said. “Kids have school in the morning so they’ll be up and about, just so you know.”
“Gotcha,” Majima gestured back with his hand, cigarette between his fingers. It was immediately brought back to his lips for another drag that tasted like shit and made him fight back a cough. Cigarettes hadn’t done that to him in years and it, too, irritated him.
He heard Kiryu shuffling on the porch, and then the sound of his loafers brushing against the sand. He didn’t know how he felt about the man approaching him and added it to the pile of shit that was pissing him off in the current moment. When Kiryu got to him, stood by him with his hands in his pockets, he didn’t say anything. He wasn’t a very worldly man for the most part and the talking Majima did know him for had a tendency to occur through the use of his fists. The silence shouldn’t have been unexpected – they had done this before, though typically both of them were smoking to at least have something to do with their hands. But this time was in Okinawa.
They didn’t have feral dogs in Okinawa. Let alone ones that still adorned their old collars.
Kiryu looked at the pack of smokes in Majima’s hand. Majima said nothing and put them in the breast pocket of his goofy floral shirt that he had decided that he wasn’t all that fond of after all.
“...you don’t like this,” Kiryu said, and his voice was as stilted as the sentence.
“I don’t like a lot of things,” Majima said and felt the corner of his mouth curl upwards.
Kiryu didn’t say anything for a minute. It felt maddening.
“You… don’t have to be here,” he then said, and the tone of his voice gave away how carefully he had been choosing the words. “I told you the Ryudo family has my back.”
“I’m not leaving.” Majima felt his own voice get just a tad softer than he liked it. Kiryu was looking at him and when he glanced back he saw his soft, brown eyes that looked old and reminded him of a dog’s.
“You’re sure?” There was a sincerity in his voice that made Majima want to snap.
“Yeah,” he let the sneer creep on his lips. “You can stop talkin’ to me like one of yer kids now.”
Kiryu’s brow rose before he looked away in a hurry. Majima wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t noticed the tone of his voice. For all of the details the man was able to catch despite his looks, he was but an open book to those around him. Hearts on sleeves or whatever.
“If you change your mind –“
“I won’t. Stop fussin’.” He wished he wasn’t so beat up from yesterday and the morning and all the goddamn walking in Okinawa. He wanted to rile Kiryu up. He wanted something, anything, to break the idyll around him and ground him in something familiar that he knew how to deal with. He didn’t know how to deal with this soft and domesticated version of Kiryu that showed genuine and sincere concern over his well-being. He didn’t know how to deal with the silence and lack of stimuli on his senses. And the exhaustion was really starting to eat away at his ability to figure out solutions to these problems, but he would’ve rather snorted a Tauriner than give in. Give in to what? The peaceful Okinawan sea that stared him down from just past the road? Something to that effect.
Majima pulled the cigarette in for another drag and realized it was almost burnt to the filter, again.
“...sleep well, when you do,” Kiryu said, and he looked at Majima as he turned around to head back to the house and his eyes were still terribly soft despite his resting scowl. Majima didn’t know if he had noticed, if he was aware of what he was doing, and chose to believe that he was not. He usually wasn’t. It would’ve be more upsetting if he was.
***
The buzz of alcohol in his head was a familiar one and it had started a lot quicker than he figured it should have, but then again he hadn’t really eaten much that day and could only blame himself for the current lack of tolerance. The gin tasted like shit and it reminded him of some unspecific period of time between his later twenties and early thirties when he had discovered that so long as he drank himself to a blackout he would on top of not remembering the previous night also not remember what the fuck he had dreamed about most of the time. And it had been great, until it wasn’t. A lot of things from around that time had been great until they hadn’t been all that great, after all. Booze was one of the few of those things that had stuck around, because everyone who was in the game drank for both pleasure and business and for a lieutenant of the goddamn Tojo clan to swear himself sober would’ve been un-fucking-heard of.
And Majima liked alcohol. It tasted great. When it wasn’t shitty corner store gin.
He didn’t know how late it had gotten but the sun wasn’t up and warming Kiryu’s porch yet and that was good enough for him. His head was spinning and he was hunched over leaning his elbows on his knees because it felt good and he saw less of the ocean that way. His mouth felt dry, but he was still “there” enough to know that drinking more wasn’t going to help with that, unless he got up and walked to the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water, which he wasn’t going to do. And he didn’t intend to keep drinking until he sobered up at least a little bit, because he was supposed to be nice right now and it wasn’t very nice to drink yourself into a blackout when you shared a house with a bunch of kids.So he sat still and stared into nowhere in particular and let his thoughts wander as they pleased. Listened to the buzz in his head and felt how it swam around. Like you would in an ocean, if you didn’t drown in it first.
Majima raised his head to look up at the sky and the stars, and tried to not let the alcohol make him feel small in the face of it. He wasn’t small. He had made it to the fucking top of Tojo clan. Could’ve wrapped Daigo around his little finger and controlled everything, had he been a worse man. He had hundreds – no, thousands of men under his control, ready to do anything and everything he asked of them. Majima Goro wasn’t a small man by a long shot. And he really didn’t want to think about shit like the incomprehensible scale of the universe right now and how fucking meaningless and small all of this was in comparison. Maybe the sea was a better thing to look at; it was marginally less incomprehensible in size, and it was right here instead of vaguely out there somewhere. The sea was right by Kiryu’s cute little orphanage on the cute little island he lived on with his cute little kids and cute little life.
Cute little things had no room for the likes of Majima Goro. But he wasn’t able to stop the ugly and disgusting idea, a sick and repulsive thought, from entering his head.
What if there was room, after all?
He felt his mouth doing something, smiling or grinning or sneering – fuck if he knew right now – as the concept began to spiral out of his control. What if he did stay in Okinawa, not just for this little while? What if he was good with kids, so good the kids liked his company and begged for him to stay even? What if he did like the serenity and peace and the sound of the waves hitting the shore? What if the discomfort was denial? Majima started chuckling. What if he liked this? What if this is what he wanted? What if he wanted to feel this way? To go mad from the lack of stimuli? Strip down everything about himself and become a facsimile of what was normal? Domesticate himself? Domesticate himself. Domesticate himself. And become nice. Palatable. And good and undamaged and pleasant and something that wasn’t himself in a novel way that looked like he was normal again. And everyone would like him better for it.
His head was spinning and he felt sick.
A deep breath killed the quiet chuckling and he ran his hands along his face. Grounded himself, a little. Still couldn’t think clearly, but what he could muster was enough to redirect his focus. His eye found the ocean again, waves calm and merciful. It was a beautiful night. There probably were only beautiful nights in Okinawa. Majima’s hand reached for the bottle of gin and he snorted when he couldn’t immediately figure out how much was left in it.