House of Cards: 6/??

[andrew_in_drag]

Title: House of Cards
Author: andrew_in_drag
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Kyo/Toshiya, Kaoru/Toshiya, Die/Shinya, Aoi/Uruha
General Warnings: AU, slash, violence, language, yakuza theme.
Chapter Warnings: slash
Previously: The Prodigy | The Rent Boy | The Escort | The Imposter | The Professional | The Shateigashira
Notes: this is the prequel to Protect Me. For the yakuza terminology and hierarchy that I'm working with, please see here.


When a young prostitute is found with blood on his hands, he catches the eye of the Inagawa clan's prodigy and quickly finds himself tangled up within Osaka's criminal underworld. Taken into a yakuza house and pimped by the mysterious shateigashira, he is desperate for any means of escape - but in a house of cards, can anybody really be trusted?

CHAPTER SIX: THE BARGAIN

“I like the best. I don't settle for anything else.”

Toshiya stepped into a paradise of colours.

The lush green leaves of exotic, glossy plants swooned against blinding white marble; silver shot a sweetness that hurt his teeth. There was a bed on a raised dais that was draped in coolly shining silks. All around was the sound of water, rushing and flowing on towards its goal: he stood transfixed in the middle of it all, a soft look on his face, as if he had woken up into a dream.

He closed his eyes gently.

I am dreaming, he told himself. I'm not here and this isn't happening. This is all in my head.

He smelled incense, a heady fragrance with a sharp smokiness underneath it; he opened his eyes to see Yoshimizu standing directly in front of him, one long-fingered hand stroking down the length of his thin black tie.

“What a lovely look you have on your face,” he commented gravely. He slipped his finger through the knot of Toshiya's tie and tugged it loose before slipping it over the younger man's head and letting it fall to the floor.

And then it happened. Like the sharpness of the smoke, like the cold of the marble, like the thorns on the plants; it was as if the clouds of incense billowed into a pair of lips that whispered the secret into Toshiya's ear: exactly what he had to do.

And then the scent was inside his head entirely, and he felt his own sweet lips curve into a smirk.

“You build this room for your wife,” he asked carelessly, “Or what?”

He shrugged off his jacket and tossed it to the ground, his grin widening. “Don't tell me it's just to entertain your whores,” he continued. “Some big seduction fantasy. You think if you can trap us in white marble, we'll stay forever, is that right?”

He tugged hard on his own shirt, ripping the buttons open so that several of them shot off across the room. “Do you think we all flirt with you? Sir?”

“You – you fucking—”

Toshiya laughed. He realised it had been a very, very long time since he had done that; in all those months, his laughter had changed. It had aged but also grown more sophisticated; it was the laugh of a man in furs or in feathers; a man wearing smoke.

Two words had sharpened out of the haze in his head: Beautiful. Cruel.

“Fucking what?” he teased. He placed a light hand on Yoshimizu's chest and pushed gently; a dizzy thrill of relief ran through him when the older man obediently stepped backwards, lowering himself onto the edge of the bed. Like a soft shadow Toshiya followed, pinning his client with his mere proximity. He knew, without a doubt, that he was not in charge.

But he also knew that he was doing a good enough job at pretending to be. He slid an unhurried hand between Yoshimizu's legs, rubbing hotly; it didn't surprise him that his client was already hard. He could feel his own frail aura billowing outwards like a cloud, smothering everything in sight: he imagined himself boiling the water, wilting the plants.

“Touch me,” he whispered, “If you think you can afford me.”

And he bit down, just lightly, on his client's earlobe.

“F-fuck!”

There was a sudden dampness against his palm and Toshiya didn't have to think about it before he smirked.

“So soon?” he mocked.

So soon? he taunted in his mind.

By the time his client's hands slid over his waist and started pulling off what remained of his clothes, he was gone. He could feel himself floating in another reality, where the air was clean: he could feel himself drifting.

I can do this.

If I really have to, I can do this.

Until the day I get away, it could be alright.

He paid no attention, after that, to what his body was doing or what his lips were saying: he didn't have to. He knew he was getting everything right.

Whilst in his head he stood at the crotch of a great, leafy tree, and with a sigh he curled himself up beneath its branches and went to sleep.

Die always loved listening to the radio when he drove. He set the station to play something rock and then let his foot gradually fall lower and lower on the accelerator; soon, all the roads ran into the same bleached grey blur, and the car might as well have grown wings.

It was raining that morning; warm rain that gave off the smell of baked asphalt. Die sat in silence with Toshiya in the passenger seat. He was unsure of what to say. He had collected the younger man with no trouble, and accepted an envelope containing Yoshimizu's payment. He'd heard about the wager, and it made his hands feel shaky on the wheel. Every crack and bump of the road seemed to rattle his teeth together.

“You look tired,” he said finally, slowing for a red light. The sound of his wipers was like a metronome, a rhythmic tick-swoosh; Toshiya had seemed mesmerised by them, but now he smiled wryly.

“I was getting fucked all night,” he said. He sounded exhausted.

“Right,” Die agreed nervously. “Did it...did it go okay?”

Toshiya snorted a laugh and didn't answer. He wore the jacket of his suit over a bare chest; his shirt had been shredded into makeshift rope.

“He doesn't like Kyo,” Toshiya said suddenly.

“Huh?”

“Yoshimizu. He doesn't like Kyo.” He shrugged. “I think he really hates him, actually.”

“Lots of them do,” Die said wisely, and caught Toshiya's questioning look. He sighed and flicked his turn signal. “A lot of the older ones. Ky— the boss, he's too young. They think. They expect him to be looking to them for help and guidance, but he has his own way of doing things.”

“Such as?”

“Er,” Die rolled his eyes, “Such as you. You should be sitting here dead. By doing what he did, he put a massive target on his back. And yours,” he considered.

Toshiya sighed.

“How come you don't call him Kyo?” he asked sleepily.

“Wouldn't be right. I'm not his superior, I'm just – I'm his assistant. And his friend.”

Toshiya smiled to himself.

“His friend?”

“That's right.”

“You really think so?”

“Why not?” Die sped up, frowning. “We are friends.”

“Jesus Christ, Die. You ignorant fuck. Kyo's only friend is Kyo. And even then they're not close. He doesn't like anyone. People to him, they just have their uses; he doesn't care. He doesn't care about you. He tolerates you because you do a job, and when you stop doing that job, he'll get rid of you. He won't even lose sleep over it.”

Die was quiet. Toshiya wrapped his jacket tighter around himself, cold in spite of the hot, muggy air.

“He likes some people,” Die said at last, quietly. “He likes you.”

But by the time he said it, Toshiya was fast asleep, and Die snapped off the radio and drove on in silence.

Toshiya slept for the rest of the morning. It had become an easy routine; the vice grip on his arm as he walked up the stairs, the cuff around his wrist as he curled himself into a ball. The ancient bamboo blind cut out all daylight apart from a shining, white-hot border. Toshiya looked at it until his eyes glazed over and he blinked blue, and then fell asleep almost instantly. He had no dreams.

He didn't know why he had been so cruel to Die. When he thought about it, the red-haired man had only been kind to him; still, that made Die an easy target. Being mean to him made Toshiya feel better, and besides, Die had something so soft about him; he was warm, but he was easily wounded. It was irresistible.

Sometimes Toshiya felt like all the worry within him, and all the torn-up, flown-apart feelings of panic, and all the bruises and the cuts were turning into a kind of thick, acidic bile inside of him, and the only way to get rid of it was to let it out by being mean.

The things he had said to Yoshimizu had helped. He had meant them; it was just his good luck that the older man had happened to get off on it.

Still, he remembered a time when he had been a good person. That first, young Toshiya made him feel somehow angry, and a little sad.

“I've got an idea,” Die said, and spun the ignition on his lighter so that his shadow jumped over the walls.

The rain had forced his lesson with Shinya inside, into the attic. Neither of them could stand up in there, and the light was poor, but it was the only place where they wouldn't be disturbed.

Shinya inclined his head slightly, tell me. The wire was taped more firmly to his chest this time, and although he wasn't comfortable he felt better. The sound of the rain on the roof directly above him was soothing; it made him think of all the nights his mother had gone out and left him alone, and the house would be quiet and dark and his.

“So I'll ask a question,” Die said bossily, “And you answer it in sign language. And I'll try to guess what your answer was.”

Shinya smiled ruefully. He should have been getting answers from Die; not the other way around. Somehow he felt like if he could force his tongue to make the words, Die might tell him everything, and then he could complete his assignment in a day; he could go home. He could start hacking again but do it better, more secretly, and for money, and with that money he'd buy a house of his own.

The idea soothed him. It was a foolish daydream, but one he indulged in often. He imagined the blueprints of that house, mapping themselves out methodically in his mind in a series of light green lines. He wanted to crawl in between them like the lines of a fence; he wanted to slip into that house and sleep.

“Okay?”

Shinya nodded. He closed his eyes for a long blink and saw his own feet passing silent over the floorboards, up the staircase; from a deep room, his dog would bark a welcome. It was a happy sound.

“Okay.” Die thought for a second, pressing his hands together. “So...where are you from?”

Shinya shrugged awkwardly. Suburbs, he signed. Die was watching him very intently, and it made him feel embarrassed. It was a strange feeling. He'd always felt so sensitive to the stares of other people; it could be a good or a bad feeling, but it was always uncomfortable.

“I bet you're from somewhere quiet,” Die said, thinking aloud. “Around here, though. You have the same accent as the people here – I think.” He grinned, “I haven't heard a lot of your voice.”

He hesitated for a moment. “Is your hair always like that?”

“Like...?” Shinya cleared his throat, “Like what?”

Without answering, Die carefully raised a hand to touch it. He took a bleached blond lock of hair between his fingers and rubbed it experimentally.

“Soft like that. Ah, I know it is,” he said, satisfied, “You've just washed it.”

“Suburbs,” Shinya blurted. “I'm from a suburb of Osaka.”

Die just smiled, and Shinya started to fidget.

“What's so funny?” he asked at last, agitated. Die shrugged.

“Seven words,” he said simply.

“Seven...?”

“Seven whole words. In a row.” Die let go of Shinya's hair and smoothed it back into place shyly.

“Right,” the imposter said breathlessly. “Seven words.”

His hands wanted to move. “New record,” he whispered.

He wondered how Die could possibly manage to be smiling so widely. The house in his head was neat and clean and silence collected like darkness in its corners. The only sounds were his own steady heartbeat; his own steady breaths.

He focused on that: the in, the out.

The rainy sky was beginning to darken. That, Kyo thought, must be his favourite thing in the world to see. It was like trying to watch the hour hand of a clock move; the progress so noticeable but the mechanism so hidden. The clouds turned from the flat grey of oyster shells to a richer, burgeoning blue, and finally to a bruised purple, and then to an orange-tinted black. Light pollution.

The envelope in his pocket itched like a phantom limb.

I don't want to kill him. That was the strongest thought.

And then: why don't I want to kill him?

Because he is interesting to me.

Why?

Because he's not upset anymore, Kyo argued against himself. He could see his own misty reflection in the black window, staring back at him. He's stronger now than he was before.

Carefully, Kyo reached into the pocket of his suit coat and set the envelope on the windowsill before him. It was marked with his name in Yoshimizu's impeccable script. Kyo studied it: the single character. The thick ink strokes looked defiant on the paper, and lonely.

Slowly, as if there was somebody watching him and he had to convince them that the contents of the envelope were very, very normal, Kyo ran his finger under flap, breaking the adhesive bonds. They stretched, gluey. He felt thin rice paper, Yoshimizu's signature stationery. He was one for flair. All decoration, no substance.

Kyo despised him.

He pulled out the rice paper sheet and flattened it before him with carefully steady fingers. The number he had slipped into Toshiya's pocket had been a boldly printed five, followed by four wide-mouthed zeroes. Biro barbed, like rabbit snares. Fifty thousand.

What were his chances of winning?

Like trying to shoot a soccer ball into a net the size of a hockey puck; like yelling I've got it, I've got it, as a baseball went sailing over the hands and out of the stadium.

Toshiya, it said, is the property of this family.

I am not paying for something I already own.

I would like to see him every week.

For a moment, Kyo's knees threatened to buckle beneath him. He swallowed to wet his dry throat; he clasped his hands into fists.

But it was just for a moment, and the moment passed.

Because he is interesting to me.

Kyo tucked the note back into the envelope, smoothed the lines of his suit and went to tell Toshiya the news.

A/N: Hi everyone. Sorry this chapter took a while, and thanks a bundle for all of your lovely comments. There is progress! My exams are over, but now of course, people are starting to leave. This has been my final semester abroad. I've met such wonderful people here. Today, my best friend left – he is the only one who, like me, was here for the full year. We are from very different countries, so this is truly the end of an era. At the beginning of the year, I never could have guessed he'd come to mean so much to me! He was so different to me and yet a real kindred spirit.

As always, Plath says it best:

We should meet in another life, we should meet in air,

You and me.

So I am sad today, but happy because I had such a special friend in my life.