![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scriveynerTitle: I Don't Believe in the Sun [11]
Fandom: Samurai Flamenco
AU: Blind AU
Characters/Pairing: Gotou/Masayoshi
Rating: T
Length: 1991
Summary: "Gotou-san?"
Masayoshi held Gotou close, kept his arms tight over Gotou's shoulders. Gotou didn't make a sound, his breathing heavy and unsteady, erratic; hands tight in the back of Masayoshi's hooded tee shirt. He could feel Gotou's heartbreak like it was a physical thing, smothering him, making it difficult to breathe – but he couldn't let it overwhelm him. “Gotou-san,” he said softly, and Gotou made a soft, choked noise.
He slid out from under Gotou's hands as gently as he could. He felt Gotou's arms flop – it was like everything had been drained from him, and he squeezed Gotou's shoulder encouragingly as he rose slowly to his feet.
Sawada was still here, after all.
His wrist hurt like hell, he felt like he'd probably wrenched his entire arm, the pain throbbed all the way up to his shoulder. Masayoshi turned and reoriented himself in the kitchen, heard a barstool sqeak as Sawada either slid off it or simply readjusted.
“You hurt Gotou-san,” he said, and was surprised a little at how different his voice sounded when he spoke. What was also a bit of a surprise was the feeling that burned in his chest, this strange little ball of something – something heroes weren't supposed to let get the better of them, he knew, and yet....
It didn't matter that he had drugged Masayoshi's food, handcuffed him to his bed, whatever – he'd shattered Gotou's world, and Masayoshi couldn't stand this helpless feeling, knowing that Gotou was suffering but there was danger here, too. “Get out. Now. Before I change my mind.”
“You know, I had a glorious plan.” Sawada's voice didn't come from the same place it had before. Masayoshi's head tilted, tucked down, trying to figure out the way the sound moved in this part of his apartment. “I spent a long time on it. A longtime.” There was a strange quality to his voice, a note trembling on the edge. “I was going to help push Samurai Flamenco toward his final transformation!”
He was in the doorway of the bedroom. Masayoshi could hear the echo of his voice across two rooms. He didn't turn his head though, or give any indication of that. “And what transformation is that?”
“It hardly matters now, does it?” There was that note in his voice again. “For all intents and purposes Samurai Flamenco is dead.”
He was moving as he spoke, his voice changing subtly. “There were so many things, I worked so hard for – and yet your penchant for heroism is what managed to destroy everything I worked so hard to build.”
It was madness, that was the strange tick in his voice, Masayoshi had heard that vocal trait played a million times across every action show he'd ever watched. The genuine article was much more terrifying – if only because he was nothing but a voice, played against the eternal blackness of night. “You're insane.”
“No doubt about it.” From the right, now – back in the vicinity of the bar stools. “So I had to change my plan, take a step back, revise. I decided that if I couldn't be the trigger that incited the final evolution, then I would just have to become something else entirely, like you have.”
“I haven't changed,” Masayoshi said calmly. He swung his face in the direction that he last heart Sawada speak. “I'm still who I was before.”
“No,” Sawada's voice came from an entirely unexpected location – how was he moving around so quickly, so quietly, he was a goddamn cat. “You're not.”
It was luck and anticipation that Sawada would be so bold that made Masayoshi take a step back and duck at the right moment. He didn't know if Sawada had tried to attack him, or just thrown something, but he heard the bottle smash against the counter just a heartbeat away from where he'd been standing.
He heard the quick intake of breath from behind him, it was like the bottle smashing had woken Gotou out of his stupor. “I'll kill him,” Gotou said flatly, and Masayoshi reached out as he felt the air move around him, Gotou rising to his feet.
“Gotou-san,” he said, catching a sleeve, hanging on tight even as Gotou tried to wrench his arm away.
“I decided I would become the last protector of Samurai Flamenco instead, you see,” Sawada said, and Masayoshi had lost his orientation, lost his location. “I would eliminate everything that threatened him.”
“Seems to me like you just threw a bottle at the person you said you're going to protect,” Masayoshi muttered, hands twisted in Gotou's shirt.
“Sometimes you have to roll with it,” Sawada said flippantly.
“Masayoshi,” Gotou said. “Let me go.”
“No,” Masayoshi said, even as Gotou tried to pull himself free. “I won't let you do that, Gotou-san.”
“He-”
There was a hitch in Gotou's voice and Masayoshi took advantage of it, steamrollered right over it. “So he told me your big secret, so what? I would have learned about it eventually, right?” He ignored the heavy silence that fell from Gotou, and kept going. “It doesn't change anything, Gotou-san.”
“It changes everything, Masayoshi.” His tone was flat and featureless and Masayoshi forced himself to ignore the concern.
“We can talk about all that in depth later,” he said. “Can we deal with this guy first, though?”
“I'll kill him,” Gotou said again, but some of the venom had drained out of his voice now – he just sounded tired.
“Don't kill him.” Masayoshi gripped Gotou's shirt tighter, he leaned his forehead against Gotou's back, felt him jerk in surprise. “But you can rough him up, if that makes you feel better.”
“Wait, what?” Sawada's voice took on an edge of panic.
“Okay,” Gotou said. After a long moment Masayoshi let him go, and he stepped out into the darkness beyond what Masayoshi could sense.
#
Ishihara arrived not long after the police, and found both Gotou and Masayoshi sitting side-by-side in the back of an open ambulance parked in the delivery area beside the apartment. They were arguing – well, Gotou was mostly very calmly listing the reasons that yes, Masayoshi, you do need to go to the emergency room for that, there could be nerve damage done to your hand and are you a fucking idiot – and he looked up and stopped talking when he saw Ishihara approaching them.
He looked away, refusing to meet her eye. That was weird, she thought – but they had had a pretty bad fight, and she figured he was trying to avoid being lit into for leaving Masayoshi alone in the first place. “What the hell,” Ishihara said, and saw Masayoshi react to her voice almost comically, sitting all the way up, shoulders back. “Happened?”
“The guy you sent to help me turned out to be a real jerk,” Masayoshi said. Gotou lifted his head and looked at Masayoshi, then to Ishihara before looking away again.
“That wasn't the guy I sent,” she said. “The guy I sent reported back that there was already someone there who said you were sleeping and shouldn't be disturbed, and didn't think it weird enough to tell me until just a little while ago!” She seethed a moment, then zeroed in on the bandages on Masayoshi's wrist. “What is that?”
“What is what?” Masayoshi turned his head to Gotou, and Gotou sighed.
“She means your wrist, idiot.”
“Oh!” Masayoshi held up his wrist. “Sawada-kun handcuffed me to my bed, but I got out of them.”
“Which was very stupid of him,” Gotou added. “He could have really fucked up his wrist, I don't know what he was thinking.”
“I was thinking that you could be in danger, Gotou-san!” Masayoshi said indignantly. “And you were!”
“I can see I'm not going to get the whole story right now,” Ishihara said with a sigh and a slight smile. “Are you okay, Masayoshi-kun? Outside of your wrist.”
“Well,” Masayoshi made a great show of screwing up his face and thinking. “I think there might be something wrong with my eyes.”
Ishihara made a face and looked at Gotou. “Would you smack him?” she asked, and Gotou shoved Masayoshi in the shoulder.
Masayoshi yelped a little, and clutched his shoulder for dramatic effect. “You'd hit a disabled person? Gotou-san, how can you call yourself an officer of the law!”
“If anything, the most disabled part of you is your brain.” Gotou breathed. He looked up at Ishihara and quirked a weird smile. “Your manager is rolling her eyes at us.”
“Ishihara-san,” Masayoshi said. “Gotou-san is mean to me!”
“Good,” Ishihara said, but she was smiling. “Take good care of him for me, Gotou-san. I have to go do some damage control.”
#
Gotou waited until Ishihara was out of sight, amid the bustle of officers and a small bit of press. Then he sighed deeply, and looked at his lap. He couldn't even begin to explain where his mind was at, or his emotions. He had a lot to process.
“I'll understand,” Masayoshi said suddenly, startling him. “If you don't want to be my friend any longer, Gotou-san.”
Gotou lifted his head and squinted, then gave Masayoshi a withering look. After a moment he remembered that of course Masayoshi wasn't going to respond that and instead chose to make a noise of disgust. “Who said anything about us not being friends?”
Masayoshi's head was angled downward, it looked like he was staring at his hands in his lap. “I don't understand love,” he said thoughtfully. “I've never even had a crush.”
“I don't know how else you'd describe your attraction to Red Axe.” Gotou's words were half under his breath, and Masayoshi picked them up anyway.
“I'm not in love with Red Axe! That's admiration, Gotou-san!”
Gotou smiled, and realized he was thinking about how cute it was when Masayoshi was so innocently earnest and coughed, cleared his throat. “Yeah, it's something, that's for sure.”
“And I admire you too, Gotou-san! You have a great dedication to justice, with your career as a police officer, and-” Masayoshi's next few words were mumbled through Gotou's hand, clamped over his mouth.
“Do you mind not shouting whatever it is you're about to say? We're not exactly alone out here.”
“Oh.” Masayoshi's mouth emerged from behind Gotou's hand, and his face was strangely flushed red. “Sorry.” He tilted his head down again. “I care about you a lot,” he said finally.
Gotou closed his eyes, pleased at least that Masayoshi couldn't see the faint blush that was making his face burn hot. “Yeah, I care about you a lot too, Masayoshi.”
Masayoshi took a big, excited breath and Gotou nudged him. “Don't get too excited about that, I just mean you're an important friend.”
Masayoshi didn't deflate, and his grin was big enough to light up the world, as far as Gotou was concerned. “No, but it's a start!”
Fandom: Samurai Flamenco
AU: Blind AU
Characters/Pairing: Gotou/Masayoshi
Rating: T
Length: 1991
Summary: "Gotou-san?"
Masayoshi held Gotou close, kept his arms tight over Gotou's shoulders. Gotou didn't make a sound, his breathing heavy and unsteady, erratic; hands tight in the back of Masayoshi's hooded tee shirt. He could feel Gotou's heartbreak like it was a physical thing, smothering him, making it difficult to breathe – but he couldn't let it overwhelm him. “Gotou-san,” he said softly, and Gotou made a soft, choked noise.
He slid out from under Gotou's hands as gently as he could. He felt Gotou's arms flop – it was like everything had been drained from him, and he squeezed Gotou's shoulder encouragingly as he rose slowly to his feet.
Sawada was still here, after all.
His wrist hurt like hell, he felt like he'd probably wrenched his entire arm, the pain throbbed all the way up to his shoulder. Masayoshi turned and reoriented himself in the kitchen, heard a barstool sqeak as Sawada either slid off it or simply readjusted.
“You hurt Gotou-san,” he said, and was surprised a little at how different his voice sounded when he spoke. What was also a bit of a surprise was the feeling that burned in his chest, this strange little ball of something – something heroes weren't supposed to let get the better of them, he knew, and yet....
It didn't matter that he had drugged Masayoshi's food, handcuffed him to his bed, whatever – he'd shattered Gotou's world, and Masayoshi couldn't stand this helpless feeling, knowing that Gotou was suffering but there was danger here, too. “Get out. Now. Before I change my mind.”
“You know, I had a glorious plan.” Sawada's voice didn't come from the same place it had before. Masayoshi's head tilted, tucked down, trying to figure out the way the sound moved in this part of his apartment. “I spent a long time on it. A longtime.” There was a strange quality to his voice, a note trembling on the edge. “I was going to help push Samurai Flamenco toward his final transformation!”
He was in the doorway of the bedroom. Masayoshi could hear the echo of his voice across two rooms. He didn't turn his head though, or give any indication of that. “And what transformation is that?”
“It hardly matters now, does it?” There was that note in his voice again. “For all intents and purposes Samurai Flamenco is dead.”
He was moving as he spoke, his voice changing subtly. “There were so many things, I worked so hard for – and yet your penchant for heroism is what managed to destroy everything I worked so hard to build.”
It was madness, that was the strange tick in his voice, Masayoshi had heard that vocal trait played a million times across every action show he'd ever watched. The genuine article was much more terrifying – if only because he was nothing but a voice, played against the eternal blackness of night. “You're insane.”
“No doubt about it.” From the right, now – back in the vicinity of the bar stools. “So I had to change my plan, take a step back, revise. I decided that if I couldn't be the trigger that incited the final evolution, then I would just have to become something else entirely, like you have.”
“I haven't changed,” Masayoshi said calmly. He swung his face in the direction that he last heart Sawada speak. “I'm still who I was before.”
“No,” Sawada's voice came from an entirely unexpected location – how was he moving around so quickly, so quietly, he was a goddamn cat. “You're not.”
It was luck and anticipation that Sawada would be so bold that made Masayoshi take a step back and duck at the right moment. He didn't know if Sawada had tried to attack him, or just thrown something, but he heard the bottle smash against the counter just a heartbeat away from where he'd been standing.
He heard the quick intake of breath from behind him, it was like the bottle smashing had woken Gotou out of his stupor. “I'll kill him,” Gotou said flatly, and Masayoshi reached out as he felt the air move around him, Gotou rising to his feet.
“Gotou-san,” he said, catching a sleeve, hanging on tight even as Gotou tried to wrench his arm away.
“I decided I would become the last protector of Samurai Flamenco instead, you see,” Sawada said, and Masayoshi had lost his orientation, lost his location. “I would eliminate everything that threatened him.”
“Seems to me like you just threw a bottle at the person you said you're going to protect,” Masayoshi muttered, hands twisted in Gotou's shirt.
“Sometimes you have to roll with it,” Sawada said flippantly.
“Masayoshi,” Gotou said. “Let me go.”
“No,” Masayoshi said, even as Gotou tried to pull himself free. “I won't let you do that, Gotou-san.”
“He-”
There was a hitch in Gotou's voice and Masayoshi took advantage of it, steamrollered right over it. “So he told me your big secret, so what? I would have learned about it eventually, right?” He ignored the heavy silence that fell from Gotou, and kept going. “It doesn't change anything, Gotou-san.”
“It changes everything, Masayoshi.” His tone was flat and featureless and Masayoshi forced himself to ignore the concern.
“We can talk about all that in depth later,” he said. “Can we deal with this guy first, though?”
“I'll kill him,” Gotou said again, but some of the venom had drained out of his voice now – he just sounded tired.
“Don't kill him.” Masayoshi gripped Gotou's shirt tighter, he leaned his forehead against Gotou's back, felt him jerk in surprise. “But you can rough him up, if that makes you feel better.”
“Wait, what?” Sawada's voice took on an edge of panic.
“Okay,” Gotou said. After a long moment Masayoshi let him go, and he stepped out into the darkness beyond what Masayoshi could sense.
Ishihara arrived not long after the police, and found both Gotou and Masayoshi sitting side-by-side in the back of an open ambulance parked in the delivery area beside the apartment. They were arguing – well, Gotou was mostly very calmly listing the reasons that yes, Masayoshi, you do need to go to the emergency room for that, there could be nerve damage done to your hand and are you a fucking idiot – and he looked up and stopped talking when he saw Ishihara approaching them.
He looked away, refusing to meet her eye. That was weird, she thought – but they had had a pretty bad fight, and she figured he was trying to avoid being lit into for leaving Masayoshi alone in the first place. “What the hell,” Ishihara said, and saw Masayoshi react to her voice almost comically, sitting all the way up, shoulders back. “Happened?”
“The guy you sent to help me turned out to be a real jerk,” Masayoshi said. Gotou lifted his head and looked at Masayoshi, then to Ishihara before looking away again.
“That wasn't the guy I sent,” she said. “The guy I sent reported back that there was already someone there who said you were sleeping and shouldn't be disturbed, and didn't think it weird enough to tell me until just a little while ago!” She seethed a moment, then zeroed in on the bandages on Masayoshi's wrist. “What is that?”
“What is what?” Masayoshi turned his head to Gotou, and Gotou sighed.
“She means your wrist, idiot.”
“Oh!” Masayoshi held up his wrist. “Sawada-kun handcuffed me to my bed, but I got out of them.”
“Which was very stupid of him,” Gotou added. “He could have really fucked up his wrist, I don't know what he was thinking.”
“I was thinking that you could be in danger, Gotou-san!” Masayoshi said indignantly. “And you were!”
“I can see I'm not going to get the whole story right now,” Ishihara said with a sigh and a slight smile. “Are you okay, Masayoshi-kun? Outside of your wrist.”
“Well,” Masayoshi made a great show of screwing up his face and thinking. “I think there might be something wrong with my eyes.”
Ishihara made a face and looked at Gotou. “Would you smack him?” she asked, and Gotou shoved Masayoshi in the shoulder.
Masayoshi yelped a little, and clutched his shoulder for dramatic effect. “You'd hit a disabled person? Gotou-san, how can you call yourself an officer of the law!”
“If anything, the most disabled part of you is your brain.” Gotou breathed. He looked up at Ishihara and quirked a weird smile. “Your manager is rolling her eyes at us.”
“Ishihara-san,” Masayoshi said. “Gotou-san is mean to me!”
“Good,” Ishihara said, but she was smiling. “Take good care of him for me, Gotou-san. I have to go do some damage control.”
Gotou waited until Ishihara was out of sight, amid the bustle of officers and a small bit of press. Then he sighed deeply, and looked at his lap. He couldn't even begin to explain where his mind was at, or his emotions. He had a lot to process.
“I'll understand,” Masayoshi said suddenly, startling him. “If you don't want to be my friend any longer, Gotou-san.”
Gotou lifted his head and squinted, then gave Masayoshi a withering look. After a moment he remembered that of course Masayoshi wasn't going to respond that and instead chose to make a noise of disgust. “Who said anything about us not being friends?”
Masayoshi's head was angled downward, it looked like he was staring at his hands in his lap. “I don't understand love,” he said thoughtfully. “I've never even had a crush.”
“I don't know how else you'd describe your attraction to Red Axe.” Gotou's words were half under his breath, and Masayoshi picked them up anyway.
“I'm not in love with Red Axe! That's admiration, Gotou-san!”
Gotou smiled, and realized he was thinking about how cute it was when Masayoshi was so innocently earnest and coughed, cleared his throat. “Yeah, it's something, that's for sure.”
“And I admire you too, Gotou-san! You have a great dedication to justice, with your career as a police officer, and-” Masayoshi's next few words were mumbled through Gotou's hand, clamped over his mouth.
“Do you mind not shouting whatever it is you're about to say? We're not exactly alone out here.”
“Oh.” Masayoshi's mouth emerged from behind Gotou's hand, and his face was strangely flushed red. “Sorry.” He tilted his head down again. “I care about you a lot,” he said finally.
Gotou closed his eyes, pleased at least that Masayoshi couldn't see the faint blush that was making his face burn hot. “Yeah, I care about you a lot too, Masayoshi.”
Masayoshi took a big, excited breath and Gotou nudged him. “Don't get too excited about that, I just mean you're an important friend.”
Masayoshi didn't deflate, and his grin was big enough to light up the world, as far as Gotou was concerned. “No, but it's a start!”
