Samurai Flamenco (Nightbreed) - Gifts & Curses [16] [Gotoyoshi]

[scriveyner]

Title: gifts & curses [16]
Fandom: Samurai Flamenco
AU: Nightbreed
Characters/Pairing: Gotou/Masayoshi, Keiko, Masanori
Rating: T
Length: 1984
Summary: Masanori was asleep on the couch.



Masanori was asleep on the couch, curled against the cushion, arms tucked against his chest and face relaxed. He was vulnerable here, and Gotou knew how trusting of him it was to sleep like this. There were weeks, months on end where he would check in on them and see empty beds and a pile of fur in the corner, tails over noses and eyes glinting in the dim light. That Masanori now slept in his human form, here in the open, in front of Gotou … that was a large measure of trust.

It was like working through a dream, a nightmare without end. Gotou had to shut down his emotions before they carried him away, rage and grief and fear, he had to depersonalize it, step away from it, treat this just like any other case brought to him at the police box. There would be time for emotions later, he had to get through this, first.

Gotou left a covered dish on the counter – dinner, or breakfast as the case may be, depending on how long Masanori slept. He left a note too, and all the same crouched beside the couch and watched Masanori sleep for a long while, inhale, exhale, live – and he thought of how sometimes, in the summer sun Masanori’s lighter hair almost matched Masayoshi’s for shade, thought that they could really pass as kin. Not father and son, not quite – Masayoshi was far too young for it, and he looked even younger than he was. Siblings. Brothers, almost.

He brushed his hand through Masanori’s hair, down his back, felt him stir. “You don’t have to wake up,” Gotou said. “I’m going out for a while, though. I’ll be back. There’s food.”

Masanori made a noise that might have been acknowledgment – but it also could have just been a sleep-noise, exhausted and ragged. Gotou hesitated, his hand still on Masanori’s back. The moment of indecision passed and Gotou rose to his feet, glancing around the small safe-house apartment, before heading out the front door and pulling it securely shut behind him.

He had things to do.

#

Akino said it, calm and plain as if it didn’t change everything. Masayoshi stared at her, slightly out of focus – he swallowed and tried to make sense of the words, hands curled into fists on his knees and aware from the periphery that the vampire had joined them as well.

“It’s not true,” he said.

“I know how hard this is,” Akino said softly. She reached out to touch his arm and Masayoshi yanked his body away without moving from his seated position, head down and staring at the dirty concrete floor between them. “Masayoshi-kun.”

“It’s not true,” he said, insistent, and the words choked up in his throat, clamped up tight. She didn’t reach out for him again, hands on her knees now, watching and waiting for the moment of acceptance. He hadn’t felt this much emotion when he first learned of his parents’ deaths overseas, the quiet unsolved murder of foreign travelers. “How … why…?”

“It took me a lot of time to track down,” Akino said simply. “Most of the clans – the different measures of night creatures, that is – prefer to stay out of the military, out of law enforcement. It was swept under the rug. But your mother, she was a werewolf. And they were both killed by vampires.”

Masayoshi took another deep breath, chasing the feeling from his lungs. His parents were important, they were people, they deserved to be remembered … but just like those years ago when he had first discovered the newspaper clippings in the box of memories his grandfather had left him, the emotion burned brightly hot like a dying star … and then withered into silence.

Did his grandfather know?

“I don’t believe you,” Masayoshi said instead.

Akino sat opposite him on the floor, on her knees, skirt smoothed out over her legs. She simply watched him, silently, as Masayoshi kept his head turned, eyes averted. “I don’t have any reason to lie,” Akino said softly. “It explains your resistance to the witch’s curse, how it didn’t claim you faster–”

“That has nothing to do with this!”

“It has everything to do with it, Masayoshi-kun.” She scooted closer, but didn’t touch him.

“If my mother was a werewolf,” Masayoshi said quietly, “why didn’t I change before now? Why did nothing come out until now? Himura-san told us that second-generation wolves can change whenever they want, they know….”

“You didn’t know,” she said. “How would you know what you could do if you didn’t even know it was possible?”

“I’ve been in worse danger,” he said. “Protecting people–”

“You thought you were normal, so you were normal,” Rian said, leaning back against a half-finished wall, cast in shadow away from the sunlight. “It’s not so uncommon.”

“Gotou-kun bit you, and you believed you were a werewolf, that the moon controlled the abilities that you had always had,” Akino said softly, kindly – and Masayoshi shook his head violently, one hand covering half his face. His heartbeat was too fast, he could feel the tingles starting down his back, down his limbs, and it was a struggle, to keep this form. He felt ethereal, mutable – he was a wolf, he had always been a wolf, even before he wore a costume, before Gotou-san, before any of it – and it just didn’t align in his mind.

Masayoshi took a deep, steadying breath, dragging it in and holding it, sunlight and dust and neglect – and he thought of the dreams he’d been having.

“Masayoshi-kun?” Akino said. “I can suppress the change for you, I don’t know if I can tie it to the moon-cycle yet–….”

“No,” Masayoshi said, eyes closed tight, focused inwards. “I can control it.”

Rian scoffed, and Masayoshi did not open his eyes to face him. “If you could control it I wouldn’t have to keep you here,” he snorted. “Look, I don’t get paid for being his babysitter, so just get on with suppressing him so I can get back to what I’m supposed to be doing.”

“Which is what, exactly?” Masayoshi asked, eyes still closed. “Why are you doing this, why are you helping me if you hate werewolves so much, if this is such an inconvenience?” His eyes opened now, Masayoshi half-turned, a hand on the ground to brace himself, looking into the shadows to find Rian there, arms crossed and face turned away.

“That’s none of your concern,” he said. “You either need to be suppressed or learn how to control-”

“I can control it,” Masayoshi said.

“Bullshit.”

Akino stood up, brushing her hands over her skirt to check for dirt. “He can,” she said, simply, and stepped away as Masayoshi rose to his feet as well.

They glared at each other a moment – and then Rian was moving, fingers extended like claws, fangs bared, coming at Masayoshi faster than he thought possible. He didn’t move, didn’t blink, as Rian drew his hand back, claws flashing toward his face.

Masayoshi caught his extended arm, eyes open wide, heat pulsing in his veins.

“Oh,” Rian said calmly, before Masayoshi threw him through the partition. “Shit.”

#

Pedestrian foot traffic was not as busy in this portion of the city. Keiko had no idea where she was, or where she was being led to – she’d long since gotten disoriented and turned around. Kaoru would glance over at her and smile reassuringly, and she gave him a lukewarm smile in return, one hand holding the strap of the bag he wore on his back.

His scent was strangely comforting. He didn’t smell like Masanori, they weren’t kin like Masanori but he smelled like her, not the strange mishmash of smells that the werewolves put off. It was nice.

Then the scent grew stronger, as they turned down an alley near an intersection. Keiko stiffened, stopped at the mouth – but Kaoru’s kind expression didn’t change. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re not in danger.”

There were about a half-dozen of them in the dead-end alley – an assortment of kids her own age. They all smelled like her, they were all like her. It would be amazing, if her danger sense wasn’t working on overdrive.

“Yo, Kaoru-chan,” a tall boy with close-cropped dark hair said, sitting on a closed dumpster. “Didn’t think you were gonna show today.” He eyed Keiko, leaning forward. “Who’s the bitch?”

The girl seated next to him on the dumpster slammed her elbow into his midsection, and he doubled over, wheezing. “Don’t mind him, little sister,” she said, and winked.

“This is my pack,” Kaoru said to Keiko. “They’re all wolves, like us. Guys, this is Keiko-chan. She’s run away from her caretaker.”

“Wow, you ran away?” another female said, rising from a crouch. She had dark hair like Keiko’s, but worn longer, in pigtails. “Keiko-chan, that’s dangerous! What if they catch you?”

“What…?” Keiko couldn’t follow, this was all too much – the last time she had been around so many wolves had been in the fire, in the before-time that she blocked out. “No, I ran away from-” What were Hazama and Gotou, anyway, but caretakers? They weren’t her parents. She nodded her head a little, accepting the terminology. “Y-yeah, my caretakers.”

She looked around at them, and for the first time noticed that aside from wearing the same school uniform, there was a dark band just under the collar of their shirts, like their neck was cast in unusual shadow. Keiko swallowed, felt a little nervous, and was glad for the high-collared windbreaker she had zipped up. “So, I’m not gonna be hanging around for the usual pissing and moaning,” Kaoru said to the assorted teenagers. “We’re going to my folks’ place to eat – no, Toshio, you are not coming, you ate all the meat the last time I invited you over –”

There was a low groan of disappointment from one of the boys.

“We’ll see you tomorrow, right Kaoru-chan?” the girl sitting on the dumpster said.

“Definitely,” Kaoru agreed. He inclined his head toward the alley’s exit and after a moment’s hesitation Keiko followed him. When they were far enough away that the new wolves’ scents had faded into the breeze, Keiko touched her covered throat with her free hand, and swallowed again.

They had all been wearing collars.