[fic] The Things We Can't Control - Chapter 102 ~How It Went Down~
Title: The Things We Can't Control
Author:
prettyorianna
Pairing: Akame. Others to be added later.
Rating: NC-17.
Genre: crime drama au
Beta by: my cat Gemma. okay, seriously, nobody
Disclaimer: I don't own KAT-TUN, any of its members, any other JE people. I write this for fun and for other fans of these fine folks. But don't steal my plots, mmkay? I put a great deal of time into them except for when I'm randomly spastically spitting words onto a page. But I value those too...
Summary: Two criminals with vastly different styles meet by chance one day. They immediately clash but is that all they'll ever be? How much is fate and how much choice? And how will their meeting change the world around them?
Author's Note: It's a new year so my resolution is to get this fic done before another year passes! There's so much left to it though. But I will do my absolute best!
BANNER BY DESHISORABA and it is pure awesomeness!! Deshisoraba is very talented.
Warning: This gets graphic often occasionally, containing at the very least foul language, character death, nefarious crimes, rape, etc etc.
The Master Posts:
On my journal - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the akame_ Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the akame_fanfics Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the je_kamenashi Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the kattun_fanfics Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the jin_fics Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
Chapter 102 ~How It Went Down~
The place was a known gang hideaway but even so the inside of Hanabira was even nicer than the outside. Apparently gangs were allowed to have good taste after all. It wasn’t as classy as the downstairs at The Club (or, well, as The Club used to be) but it was certainly nicer than the other two places Kame already checked.
He must not be the only one that thought so because the place was packed. At least, the downstairs was. There was a second floor that consisted of a balcony surrounding the whole place with the first floor as a sort of pit beneath it. The stairs up were cordoned off with a velvet rope and were guarded by another bouncer. It must be for only certain people. Maybe Yasu and his gang members.
It was a shame he couldn’t see who was up there from the first floor, even if he stood in the dead-center of the dance floor and looked up towards the balcony.
Well, it was probably okay. If he couldn’t get up there then Yurina and Shuta probably wouldn’t be up there either. Best to check the first floor thoroughly and only worry about the second floor if he couldn’t find them down on the dance floor or at the tables or bar. They had to be in there. The car was still out in the parking lot.
Assuming…
Assuming that Yasu hadn’t already found them and…
God, he couldn’t think it.
Damn it, Yurina! Why did she have to keep scaring him like this? She was a smart woman but sometimes she made really stupid decisions. Not that he hadn’t done the same at times. It was a lot easier to forgive after the fact than it was when people he cared about were in danger.
For half an hour, Kame wove his way through the crowd to no avail. They weren’t at the bar. They weren’t on the dance floor. They weren’t at a table. They weren’t in the men’s bathroom and the woman he bribed to check the women’s bathroom said she didn’t see either of them either but that if he was free then maybe he’d like to follow her somewhere a bit more private.
Considering his growing desperation to find his friends, he thought he was rather polite when he turned her down for sex or drugs or whatever the hell she was after.
She didn’t seem to agree but that wasn’t his problem.
He finally had to admit it: if they were in the club, they had to be upstairs. He had to find his way up there somehow.
If he acted like he belonged - like he was supposed to be up there - then maybe the guard would let him past. It was pretty much what he did with the bouncer at the front door. If he strolled up to the rope and reached for it and moved very naturally…
Hope plummeted when the guard stopped him. “Name?”
Should he lie? Well, it wasn’t like anyone was expecting him. Nobody had said to keep an eye out for a man with his name. Probably. If the guards had been warned against him, he shuddered to think what that meant for Shuta and Yurina. “Kamenashi.”
“You’re not on the list.”
Don’t act surprised. “Of course I’m not. But Yasu-san wants this stuff and…” because it had worked at the front door so it had to work again, right?
“Then give it to me and we’ll see that he gets it.”
“No, he’s… he’s expecting me.”
The man shook his head. “If that were true, you’d be on the list.”
Obviously his plan wasn’t working. Fine. Maybe if he told the truth, or at least a part of it, the man would let him past or at least could tell him if Yurina was up there. “Okay, you’re right. But I know my friends are here. Their car is in the parking lot. But they’re not down here. They have to be up there! Please, it’s important!”
“I don’t care if you know every man up there including Yasu-san! You aren’t on the list and not a single one of them is standing here with you now. If your friends are actually up there, they’ll have to come down eventually.”
True… but not good enough. “No, you don’t understand. They… they’re… I have to find them. I can’t just wait for them and hope they’re okay.”
The man started to say something but Kame had enough. He had to get up there, even if it meant pushing past the guard and bolting up the stairs calling their names! And he was able to push past the guard if only because the man wasn’t expecting such a move from him. Kame knocked down the right post and actually made it up four or five steps… but the man grabbed him by the backpack he was wearing and pulled him down those few steps to land hard on his ass.
Then there were more hands on him, dragging him out while he shouted at them that they didn’t understand and that his friends were in danger. In short order he found himself thrown into the alley and the door shut behind him with a horribly final metal clang. And though he beat on the door till his fist were bloody, nobody would let him back in.
Kame circled back around to the main entrance but one look at the bouncer was enough to tell him he’d not be allowed back in again.
Thoroughly frustrated and scared for his friends, Kame trudged back to the parking lot…
Just in time to see the blue Taurus pull out with Shuta driving and Yurina in the back seat with a man and he just knew it had to be Yasu. He certainly matched the general description.
Oh, god.
Oh god oh god what now? He didn’t know where they were going! The only thing he could think (once he calmed himself down enough to think in the first place) was to go back to Yasu’s house. If that was their destination, they’d get there before him and he could only hope to get there before anything bad happened. If it wasn’t their destination…
He had no idea what to do then.
He sprinted to the bus stop. The wait for the next bus was downright interminable and the other people waiting gave him a wide berth, like they expected him to somehow explode. He supposed he couldn’t blame them; he’d be nervous as well if he saw someone pacing around like this. But the bus did eventually arrive and he made it back to Yasu’s house around one in the morning.
The car was parked a bit away from the house but at least it was there. He wasn’t sure that was necessarily a good thing but at least he had found them again.
And this time, he had the cover of darkness. Good, because he had no intention of knocking on the door this time. This time he’d sneak in.
Kame didn’t scale the fence to Yasu’s back yard first; instead he went a few houses down to a yard that was exactly between the street lights (meaning it was the furthest away from the one light he could go without getting too close to a second one). He hopped that fence instead and then crept carefully and quickly along the back fence until he reached another yard. Rinse and repeat until he was finally in Yasu’s yard with no one the wiser. Probably. Hopefully.
He was a bit torn on what to do next. There was a sliding glass door into a downstairs room that seemed to be a living room but the room was well-lit and even though he didn’t see anyone in there from where he was crouched in the back corner of the yard, he would be highly visible in there if anyone wandered in. There was a trellis with roses leading up to a tiny balcony on the second floor but he couldn’t tell if anyone was in there or not; the only things he knew for sure was that the light was on and the climb was thorny. Then there was the basement. The window was cracked but it was too small to fit through (at least, to fit through quickly and easily). There was a tiny staircase leading down to the basement door and the light was on in the basement.
Who leaves a light on in the basement unless they’re down there?
Oh, god… what if they were down there and dead and Yasu was burying them as he sat there wondering what to do? No, that… that wasn’t likely, he told himself. No smart man would bury the bodies in his own basement or yard, right? He wouldn’t so of course Yasu wouldn’t either… Right?
If he went in through either the second floor window or the basement, there was the chance he’d have to cross the whole house to find Yurina and Shuta. The glass door really was too risky and since he didn’t know what floor they were on, he might pick the wrong direction and have to cross the whole house anyway. The basement or second floor window seemed pretty much equally terrible choices for the most part but at least the basement door wasn’t covered in thorns.
Staying in the darkest shadows, Kame crept towards the open basement window. At least he could get a look in before trying the door. He had to practically lie on his stomach to see inside and despite the fact it was June the grass was cold but he immediately forgave both things when he saw what was going on in there.
Shuta was fighting and it was three against one. The body on the floor meant it had been four but Shuta had managed to take one down. He wasn’t doing so well against the other three, though. There was no sign of Yurina, either.
Something nagged at the back of his mind, something that said what was happening was a bit strange but he pushed those thoughts down. Kame would worry about that after he helped Shuta.
The basement door was locked but it wasn’t complicated. It took almost no time to pick it though it felt like forever because his heart was pounding so hard and he was in such a hurry to get in there! He grabbed the small coal shovel leaning against the wall right inside the room and swung it at the heads of the two men standing between him and a very battered and bloody Shuta.
They both went down instantly. The third, quite shocked at the turn of events, hesitated one second too long and Shuta (who was by then barely standing) slugged him hard enough to knock him out, too, before sinking to the ground himself.
“Help her…” and Shuta’s voice was raspy and he spit blood onto the floor. “Please… Kame…”
Shuta didn’t pass out but it was clear he was down for the rest of this. “Tie these men up before you faint and stay quiet! I’ll find her. How many more men?”
And he would find her. He would find her and he’d save her only this time he’d get there soon enough. He’d keep anything bad from happening and he’d take the two of them home and he’d be so pissed at them both but happy because this was the worst of it. This had to be the worst. It just… it had to be.
Please, make it so!
“Just… the man from… the bar…” Shuta coughed hard. “I think… Upstairs…”
But Kame slipped out of the basement carefully, not really listening to Shuta anymore. He moved carefully and quietly, going slowly even though Shuta said there was only the one guy - presumably Yasu himself - left. He made it down the hall with the horribly tacky carpet, all the way to the stairs and then up to the second floor without running into trouble.
Drawing his knife, he flipped it open and made his way towards the low hum of voices. It wasn’t until he was closer to the door that he was able to confirm it was Yurina’s voice and one other, a man. It had to be Yasu. He dropped the backpack on the floor so it couldn’t restrict his movements in what was to follow.
The door was pushed to but not closed completely so he was able to slowly guide it open a bit wider so he could see inside and also make out their words.
It looked like some kind of entertainment room, with a huge wrap-around couch and a big-screen television. Yurina was on the couch with Yasu and Kame had done enough hounding of his own to recognize what was going on. Yasu’s hand travelled down to her stomach to slide under her shirt and she tensed. She must be expecting Shuta and wondering why he hadn’t made his move yet.
Yasu seemed to pick up on her tension and quickly said, “Maybe something to set the mood?” He grabbed a remote off the couch and pushed a button. Kame froze as the screen lit up and Yurina’s own voice came from the speakers, weak and begging.
Yasu had a copy of the tape.
The tape Yurina believed to be destroyed.
“What’s the matter, dear? Losing interest? I think you’d like me better than them.” Yasu’s voice was cold. “Oh, and I wouldn’t expect your friend to show up any time soon. He’s a bit busy at the moment. You’ll have to kill me all by yourself, I’m afraid.”
Yurina pushed Yasu away forcefully and Kame could see how she was shaking. That more than anything else snapped Kame out of his shock.
Yasu apparently noticed it as well. “Oh, relax. I’m not going to rape you. I’m not those men. But I have absolutely no problem killing you if you…”
Kame had stopped listening to the words by this point. With Yasu’s attention so clearly focused on Yurina, it was his best chance to slip in there and end this. He slid silently through the cracked door, pushing it to behind him and, hugging the wall, circled around the room until he was behind Yasu.
Yurina’s eyes darted to him for the briefest moment and he could see she was terrified and angry as well. Even in her fear she still had her fire and he’d appreciate that fact as soon as this was over but for now, he nodded at her - a sign that he was about to make his move so she could get out of the way - and dove straight at Yasu’s back.
She slipped away just in time for him to pin Yasu face down on the couch, one arm across the back of his neck and the other hand holding the tip of the knife to his ribs. To Yurina he said, “Basement,” and she gratefully fled the room.
“Now that it’s just the two of us, we should talk.”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The story continues:
Chapter 103 ~Waiting For the Other Shoe~
A/N: Well, there you go. Actually, it was also supposed to include the talk, then some stuff with Yurina and Shuta and Kame but I'm tired and my fingers are cold and don't want to behave due to that so I decided that stuff shall be Chapter 104. I hope you're not mad.