The Good, the Bad and the Sparkly (a Soba Western) part 2/4
*
Kame likes being Kousaku, too. Kousaku is hyper and crazy, and Kame feels like he can let go playing him. He also gets lots of free food, because there’s something in the way Kousaku eats that inspires people to feed him more.
Kousaku is waiting in the SuperBad when that adorable sheriff and his deputy walk in, the deputy trailing behind him with a comically morose face as he half-hides behind his boss. “Stop acting like a little girl, Jin,” Kousaku hears the sheriff hiss at his subordinate, and Kousaku thinks it might be almost affectionate, but those aren’t the sort of details Kousaku really pays attention to.
“I’m not acting like a girl,” Jin says with a pout. “I’m just scared. He was reaaaaaaallly angry yesterday.”
The sheriff rolls his eyes and drags the other man up to the bar, signalling the bartender.
“Yamashita!” The bartender, who is wearing a shirt unbuttoned all the way down to his navel, displaying formidable cleavage, turns with a frown.
“What can I get for you-- What does he want?” The bartender, Yamashita, Kousaku corrects himself, looks put out. “His new friend, that he likes better than me, is over there.” Yamashita points at Kousaku, and Kousaku feels all three sets of eyes land on him.
“Uh, hi?” Kousaku ventures, licking his lips and offering a sweet smile. The sheriff’s eyes widen.
“Shizuku?” he asks, but Kousaku can tell he’s not entirely sure.
“Sorry, you must have me mistaken for someone else,” Kousaku says. “Kousaku Hatanaka, at your service.”
“Uh,” the sheriff says. “Kousaku?” He leans closer, like he wants to study Kousaku’s face, but propriety grabs hold of him at the last minute and he rocks back on his heels. “Right. Jin told me about you.”
Kame relishes the look of confusion on Nakamaru’s face, his eyebrows gathering together cutely at the center of his forehead as he tries to piece together an idea that makes sense. Kame can tell the minute he gives up, too, just accepting that there are two people who look very alike wandering Johnnysville at the same time. Kame wants to smirk, but Kousaku doesn’t really have that expression, and right now, Kame has to be one-hundred percent Kousaku if he’s going to sell his fiction.
“Did he?” Kousaku asks brightly. “I just met him yesterday, and he very kindly asked me to go have tacos. I love eating, so I told him I thought it sounded awesome!”
“That taco place was our special place,” Yamashita hisses, and Kousaku blanches at the withering look Yamashita sends at Jin. “And Jin is a filthy traitor.”
“I was going to ask you to come, too,” Jin wails, slumping down on a bar stool and staring piteously at his irate friend. “Kousaku was just talking so much about the strict nun he travels with to fights that I wanted to help him eat some of the best food in town.”
“You and a nun?” the sheriff asks. “Where are you staying?”
“Over at the Countdown Inn,” Kousaku replies, scratching nervously at the tops of his thighs.
“There’s room there?” The sheriff rubs at the back of his neck. “I’d thought they’d be full with the acting troupe.”
“Acting troupe?” Kousaku frowns thoughtfully, even as Kame admires his own flawless planning. “We must have just missed them. There’s just the Sister and I at the inn right now.”
“Oh,” Nakamaru says, and Kame wonders if Nakamaru’s wistful expression is for Shizuku, the artful actor he may never meet again. “Okay, then.”
“Sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” Kousaku says, and Nakamaru jolts back to the conversation, eyes refocusing on Kousaku’s face and narrowing again on the perceived similarities between him and Shizuku. Kame makes sure Kousaku’s expression stays exceptionally vapid.
“Yuichi Nakamaru. I’m the town Sheriff,” he adds, and Kousaku beams at him.
“I know! Jin has told me about you too. I think he said your name was Nakamarad, or something, though.”
Jin chooses that moment to yell loudly, slamming his begrudgingly given beer-bottle down onto the counter. “Of course I love you best, don’t be ridiculous, Pi!”
“Then how could you volunteer to take a random guy you just met to our place?!” Yamashita rejoins, and Kousaku looks wryly at Nakamaru, whose expression is one of horrified fascination.
“A lovers’ spat?” Kousaku asks, cheerfully shoving handful after handful of peanuts into his mouth.
“Lovers?” Nakamaru says, and then he chuckles. “Oh no, they’re just friends.”
“Um,” Kousaku says, as Yamashita hollers things about ‘sleeping on the couch’ and ‘finding a new person who’ll try all those weird positions’. “If you say so.”
“Of course! I’d know if there were more going on than that. I’m the sheriff, it’s my job to keep an eye on the details.”
Kame’s glad he’s Kousaku right now, because Kame, or Shizuku for that matter, would have laughed aloud. It kind of makes him want to pat the sheriff’s shoulder, it’s almost unbelievable, how clueless Nakamaru can be. Kame guesses he’s lucky it makes him cuter. Kousaku settles for another blinding smile and the beginnings of a sentence that’s promptly cut as Yamashita grabs at the sheriff’s vest to drag him back into the argument.
“You! You solve this!” Yamashita says, and Nakamaru waves his hands placatingly in the air.
“Now, now, is it really that big of a deal--”
“Yes,” Yamashita says, and Jin whimpers, a little like a wounded animal. “It is.”
“I know!” Jin says, a devious glint in his eye. “Nakamaru could take Kousaku out for tacos.”
“I suppose that would be alright,” Yamashita says, thoughtfully pouting, his full lower lip jutting out. Jin casts an apologetic glance at Kousaku, who smiles encouragingly at him. Kame thinks this probably is the first good idea Jin has had since they met.
“Is that alright with you?” Jin asks him, and Kousaku nods enthusiastically.
“I understand that new acquaintances come second place to love,” Kousaku says sagely. “I once fought in a boxing title match for my true love!”
“Wow,” Jin says, and Yamashita huffs.
“Now that is romantic,” Yamashita says, and Kousaku grins at him winningly, and Yamashita looks charmed despite himself, which makes Jin sock him in the arm.
“Doesn’t anyone care if I have something to do?” Nakamaru asks, but the question is almost rhetorical, like he knows that no one does. Kousaku feels a little bad for the poor man; he seems to live a hard life. Kame sort of wants to make it harder. Kame usually indulges those whims when they come.
“I’d be ever so grateful if you would, Sheriff,” Kousaku says, and bats his eyelashes at the man playfully. Nakamaru flushes all the way down to the v-neck collar of his argyle sweater-vest, and Kame internally crows with triumph. “After all, the Sister is very, very strict with my diet. What if I waste away to nothing?”
Nakamaru shoves his hands into his pockets and frowns, taking a step back as if he’ll be suddenly less embarrassed if there’s more space between himself and Kousaku. “Fine,” Nakamaru says, and Jin cheers. “This is just because you helped me with the lipstick this morning, Jin,” and Nakamaru carefully looks anywhere but at Kousaku. “And because as sheriff, I have a responsibility to make visitors feel welcome.”
“What lipstick?” Yamashita asks, and Kame makes Kousaku lean forward to listen.
“Oh,” Jin says. “No big deal. Just knew something about lipstick today.”
“Actually, to my surprise, Jin was able accurately identify the type and quality of lipstick from just a smudge! I was awed,” Nakamaru says, like he still can’t believe it himself.
“That’s cause it’s the kind Tegoshi wears,” Jin says thoughtlessly. “Leaves stains on all my shirts when--” Jin stops in the middle of the sentence, but it’s too late. Yamashita’s eyes are sparkling dangerously.
“When what?” Yamashita asks, with the deadly calm of a serial killer, and Jin gulps.
“So,” Kousaku offers, eyes catching Nakamaru’s, as the sheriff looks around frantically for an escape. “Feel up to those tacos now?”
“Absolutely,” Nakamaru says, and they both run frantically for the saloon exit as if the place is on fire, Yamashita and Jin’s argument escalating as they tumble outside the double doors.
“Your deputy is a bit of a handful,” Kousaku offers, and Nakamaru rubs at his forehead with the air of a man who is used to headaches.
“You have no idea,” Nakamaru says, and strangely, when he smiles, it’s Kame who feels his heart skip a beat.
*
Nakamaru wonders how it is is possible for one person to be this cute eating tacos. Beef and sauce cover the area around Kousaku’s mouth, leaving a reddish stain on the skin, and the man’s cheeks are puffed out as he excitedly eats crispy shell after crispy shell.
“These are really good,” Kousaku says, and little pieces of meat fly out of his mouth and land on the table in front of Nakamaru.
Normally, Nakamaru would be disgusted, but somehow, unlike with Jin, Nakamaru finds his unbridled joy contagious instead of nauseating, and Nakamaru hopes that years of Akanishi exposure haven’t destroyed his faculties. “Jin is a connoisseur of foods,” Nakamaru admits, taking a bite of his own taco. It is rather delicious, he thinks, and takes another, larger, bite.
“Oh my goodness, it’s heavenly,” Kousaku says, then his eyes dart about suspiciously, and Nakamaru remembers that the other man travels with a nun. “Not that I mad any sort of reference to God or anything just now. Please don’t tell the Sister.”
“I won’t,” Nakamaru promises, and the smile that Kousaku gives him makes the tips of his toes tingle. It’s exactly the same feeling Nakamaru had when he talked with Shizuku, and he can’t figure out what, besides looks, the two have in common that can make his normally manageable hormones go haywire. Kousaku leans forward, and Nakamaru’s gaze pauses on the moles by his mouth, tiny little marks that show off the clearness of Kousaku’s skin rather than mar it.
“You’re a lifesaver,” Kousaku says, and winks, and Nakamaru almost forgets he’s supposed to keep chewing. “So what’s life like for the busy sheriff of a small town?”
“I don’t know,” Nakamaru replies with a forced laugh as Kousaku presses his palm to the back of Nakamaru’s hand. Has it always been this hot in here? Nakamaru figures it has been, since they’re in the middle of the desert, in a kitchen with a large fire cooking meet and corn tortillas, but metaphorically speaking, it seems like it is getting hotter. “What’s life like for a prize fighter?”
“Don’t turn the question around on me like that!” Kousaku says, and he shoves another taco halfway into his mouth, and damn if that doesn’t just drag Nakamaru’s attention back to his lips. Kousaku swallows, and then continues. “I asked first.”
“It’s pretty boring,” Nakamaru says. “Except we’ve had an interesting couple of cases, lately.”
“Oh?” Kousaku asks, gesturing to the cook for another order of twenty tacos, before returning his attention to Nakamaru. “Tell me more.”
“Oh, just some high-profile thefts,” Nakamaru says. “With an unusual criminal.”
“An unusual criminal?” Kousaku asks, licking his lips free of sauce with a slow, surprisingly seductive tongue, and making Nakamaru forget, for a moment, how to form words. “How so?”
“Well, most crimes around here are committed by Koki Tanaka,” Nakamaru says. “And they’re usually pretty stupid crimes.”
“But this thief is different?” Kousaku asks, withdrawing his hands to cradle his face between them, and the gesture makes Nakamaru blink twice as a blush creeps up his cheeks.
“Much,” Nakamaru says. “This thief is clever, and I can’t figure out the motives.”
“Hmmm,” Kousaku muses, catching his lower lip in his teeth. “But what’s the connection between the people who were robbed?”
“Mayor Matsumoto and President Sakurai? They were both in the same class in school,” Nakamaru offers. “And they’re both very important people in the town.”
“Tell me more about them?” Kousaku asks sweetly, and Nakamaru would probably do anything Kousaku asks as long as Kousaku keeps looking at him just like that.
The waiter brings over another giant mound of tacos, and Kousaku claps cheerfully before grabbing one in each hand.
“Sure,” Nakamaru says. “What do you want to know?”
“Well, have either of them acted suspiciously over the robberies?” Kousaku prods innocently, as he devours both tacos at the same time. “Like, are they hiding something?”
“Yes!” Nakamaru says. “In fact, they won’t even say what’s been stolen!” Nakamaru scratches frustratedly at his hair. “I mean, I know keys were taken from the bank, but keys to what? Ahhh! This is so dumb.” Nakamaru looks angrily at the pile of tacos and picks one up, stuffing the whole thing into his mouth. Kousaku watches him with a gentle smile, and when Nakamaru has chewed and swallowed, he frowns. “Sorry, you probably don’t want to hear about my job.”
“On the contrary,” Kousaku says, and for a moment, Nakamaru swears he sees a faint glint of smug amusement in Kousaku’s eyes, but he blinks and it’s gone, so he thinks he must have imagined it. “Being a sheriff seems really interesting!”
“I guess so,” Nakamaru says reluctantly, still thinking about the case. “I just don’t get why--”
“Hatanaka,” says a shrill voice, and both Nakamaru and his new friend turn toward it. Nakamaru watches as Kousaku shrinks into himself as the black and white habit-clad form shuffles over to them from the entrance, hands on stern hips. “What are you doing here?”
“I can explain!” Kousaku yelps, slipping from his chair and curling into the fetal position on the floor. “The tacos are so good, Sister! So good!”
“You know you aren’t allowed to eat stuff like this before fights! We’re leaving in the morning for the next town, and there will be a weigh in!”
“I’m so sorry, Sister!” Kousaku says, and Nakamaru swallows as the imposing nun turns to study him. “And you,” the nun says, and it’s only then that Nakamaru realizes the nun is about half a foot taller than him, and most undeniably a man, “aiding and abetting this little delinquent?!”
“It’s not his fault, Sister Shirota!” Kousaku cries from the floor. “I tricked him! He had no idea about my weigh in.”
“Alright then,” Sister Shirota says, and Nakamaru wonders if he’s actually living in the Twilight Zone, because the last week of his life has been batshit insane. Standing in front of him is a 190cm tall nun who’s, on top of that, the wrong gender, and in front of Nakamaru’s eyes, he, or she? pulls out a gun and levels it at Kousaku. “Get back to the inn.”
“Yes ma’am!” Kousaku says, low and whimpering. “Nice to meet you, Sheriff! And thanks for the tacos!”
When they’ve both left for the inn, Nakamaru is left sitting in front of a table with fifteen uneaten tacos and a head full of confusing thoughts about the Catholic church and about adorable men who look exactly like other adorable men.
At least, Nakamaru thinks, they’re good tacos, and as he thinks about Kousaku’s warm and delighted smiles as he inhaled the tasty meal, Nakamaru doesn’t even mind the massive bill.
*
Kame drops the act as soon as they’re beyond the walls of their room at the inn, and Shirota pushes back the headpiece of his habit with an annoyed huff.
“I can’t believe Ryo made me wear that. He reads too many stupid comics. Sister Angela, really.” Kame would agree, except that as long as Ryo’s not trying to pick on him he’s glad for the extra amusement. “Anyway. What was that with the sheriff?”
“What was what?”
“You were flirting with him.”
Kame raises an eyebrow at him. “I was getting information.”
“If that’s what you want to tell yourself...” Shirota looks amused for a moment and Kame considers making a remark about the nun habit just to annoy him, but then the man starts speaking again. “Anyway, Ryo said that you’re supposed to go for Satoshi Ohno now. You have to look for another set of papers, letters this time. There’re only three things left on the list, so cut it down with the sheriff, Kame. You can’t get caught now.”
“There’s no way Sheriff Nakamaru could get me; he’s totally clueless. He can’t even see who his deputy is sleeping with, even though it’s right under his nose.”
“Just be careful. Didn’t you say the deputy had been suspicious of Shizuku?”
“Akanishi is thought of as being completely incompetent, so no one believes him, even though he has these occasional moments of absolute brilliance. It’s actually simultaneously funny and alarming to watch.”
“I’ll bet,” Shirota says with a laugh. “Who are you going to play next?”
“Do I ever tell you?” Kame winks at Shirota, and the man laughs again.
“Are you flirting with me now, Kamenashi? I swear, you could flirt with a bicycle and make it fall in love with you.”
“I’d never dare to tempt a pure soul, Sister!” Shirota swats at Kame playfully, and Kame preens at softening the other man up. “Are we done here?”
“Yeah, I think that was all the relevant information,” Shirota says, and Kame’s amused at the way Shirota reaches into the folds of his habit and re-emerges with the gun. “But I’ve got my eyes on you, Kamenashi. Be careful not to get to wrapped up in that dorky little sheriff, and lose sight of your mission goals.”
“I’m the best at what I do,” Kame says sharply. “An absolute professional.”
“You are,” Shirota says. “But you’ve also got a weakness for teasing the shy, pent-up, awkward types. You know you do.”
“I’ll keep it under control,” Kame cooly says, tossing his hair back imperiously. “I’ll get the job done. You just keep your surveillance team on track, and I’ll handle my end of this.”
“Got it,” Shirota agrees. He hefts the gun up to his shoulder. “Now don’t you have some premises to map out?”
“I do,” Kame says, and exits out the door. He pauses on the stairs though, when he hears a loud, almost feminine voice downstairs. He signals for Shirota to stay silent and tiptoes carefully to get a better view of the inn’s dinner.
Mayor Matsumoto is sitting at a table with a man Kame recognizes as his next target. Even though the inn is empty, they’re both leaning toward the centre of the table, and Kame has to strain to hear them when Matsumoto lowers his voice.
“They’ve taken the key to Sakurai’s lockbox now,” he says, and looks around furtively. “I think whoever this thief is, they’re after the deeds. I don’t know how they found out about it, but we have to be careful now. Are the letters well hidden?”
Ohno nods lazily, looking around like he’s bored or distracted. Kame takes a few steps back so he won’t be visible from the dining area. “Yeah, they’re properly protected. My girls are always around the house too. It’d be difficult for anyone to sneak around between them.”
Matsumoto looks thoughtful for a moment, before finally conceding that the other man is right. “Anyway, be sure to be extra careful these days. Hire someone to guard your office at night, or something. We can’t afford this to be known, Ohno.”
Slowly, Kame retreats back into the room and smirks at Shirota.
“I’m going to need a nice dress,” he says. Kame knows who he’ll be playing next.
*
“So I’m going to need you to do your King a favor,” Mayor Matsumoto says, and Nakamaru contemplates the waste of air it would be to correct the poor man on this subject any more than he already has. “Just a little favor, you understand.”
“No,” Nakamaru says, without hesitation. “Whatever it is, it probably sucks, otherwise you wouldn’t have brought all these pastries.”
“But the pastries are super delish!” Jin exclaims. “Maybe even favor-worthy.”
Nakamaru eyes them suspiciously. “Are they poisoned?”
“I would never poison my sweet Jin,” Mayor Matsumoto says, insulted, before looking over at Jin and simpering. “Such a handsome man.”
“What?” Jin says, looking up with cream frosting smeared across his nose. And no, Nakamaru does not suddenly find it attractive, so maybe the last dregs of his sanity remain intact despite the way Kousaku made him question that Jin had destroyed them.
“Nothing, Jin,” Matsumoto says, and then he shuffles closer. “Lick that cream off your mouth. Slower... slower...”
“Why am I licking in slow motion?” Jin asks, and Nakamaru hates his life. He reaches for a pastry.
It’s amazing.
“Fine,” Nakamaru says. “What do you need?”
“I suspect that the serial thief’s next target will be Ohno.”
“Satoshi Ohno?” Nakamaru asks. “Who runs the cabaret? What could anyone possibly steal in a cabaret?”
“Maybe he’s a lingerie thief,” Jin supplies around a mouthful of pastry, and Nakamaru finds it wiser not to point out he has just implied that two of the most powerful men in town are potentially collectors of lingerie, because Mayor Matsumoto looks too busy trying to wipe more cream off Jin’s cheek with his own thumb to have noticed the comment.
“Anyway,” Nakamaru sighs, after a few moments pass and Jin’s safely hidden behind him. “What does Ohno want us to do?”
“You’re to keep watch over his office during the nights until we’re sure there’s no risk anymore. Of course, you’d have to do so incognito, or the whole plan would be ruined.”
“What exactly does that mean?” Nakamaru asks, and Matsumoto’s smile sends shivers down his spine.
“What kind of people would you not be surprised to see in a cabaret, Sheriff?”
“Girls!” Jin shouts, and Nakamaru wants to bash his head against his desk, but Jin looks actually proud at his deduction skills. Matsumoto smiles at him like one would smile at a kid learning to tie his shoes.
“Exactly, Jin. Here, have another pastry, I like my boys on the plump side.”
“Are you telling us to dress up as girls?” Nakamaru says a little incredulously when it seems like Jin’s not going to make the connection. “Jin, do you understand what this means?”
Jin shrugs. “I do that on the weekends, sometimes,” Jin says nonchalantly, and then his words catch up with him. “I mean--”
Mayor Matsumoto looks intrigued, but Nakamaru mostly prefers to ignore what Jin does on his free days because what he does on his working ones is already traumatic enough. Mayor Matsumoto gives Jin a last adoring look before heading to the door, though not without reminding the sheriff of their new job one last time.
“And don’t try to skip it,” he warns. “Because I’ll be coming to check up on you. Jin, dear, remember short skirts look better on you!”
Nakamaru finally gives in to the urge to smash his head against the desk, and the increasing pile of paperwork rising on it pillows the fall. “And where are we supposed to find dresses?”
Jin licks his fingers clean of cream with loud, obscene noises, and beams at his boss. “I know just the guy!”
*
Nakamaru half-fears Jin’s contact will be Koki Tanaka when Jin leads him to the outskirts of Johnnysville. He’s only momentarily relieved when they bypass the town’s resident delinquent’s hut, because the house Jin’s walking up to doesn’t look any better. Jin knocks furtively on the door, mutters a few words and then they’re being ushered in.
Nakamaru has a weird sense of déjà vu as he finds himself standing in the middle of a living room covered in too many feathers, sequins and pleather to belong to a decent person. For half a second, he wonders if Mayor Matsumoto keeps a covert lair outside town for secret rendezvouses, but Jin won’t voluntarily go near Mayor Matsumoto if he can help it.
“Boss, this is Yuya Tegoshi,” Jin says, and Nakamaru turns around look at the... kid? Jin’s pointing at.
“I prefer Your Grace, though,” Tegoshi chirps cheerfully, and Nakamaru considers hanging himself with one of the feathery boas covering the walls.
“Right,” he says instead. “And how’s your... friend,” or at least, that’s what Nakamaru hopes he is, “going to help us, Jin?”
“Yuya’s an excellent crossdresser,” Jin says. Yuya gives Nakamaru a snotty smile that would give Mayor Matsumoto a run for his money even in his ‘better’ moments. “I’m sure he could even make you look pretty.”
It takes Nakamaru’s glitter-blinded brain a moment to process the full meaning of that statement. He frowns at Jin and opens his mouth to protest.
“Yuya!” It comes as a loud, cranky whine, and Nakamaru promptly shuts his mouth. He looks at the young man that has just walked into the room, and involuntarily opens it again.
“Kyohei?” Yuya asks. “You’re up earlier than usual. You had such a late night, yesterday.”
“Stupid girls,” Kyohei mutters. “Always more interested in my face than in letting me do my job.”
“Um,” Nakamaru says. “Kousaku?”
Jin laughs. “No, his name is Kyohei,” Jin lectures, and the bitter taste of irony almost overcomes the confusion fogging Nakamaru’s mind. “Get people’s names right when you meet them.”
Nakamaru resists the urge of smacking his deputy on the head, because Jin already lacks enough brain cells as it is and a further lose could compromise the performance of vital functions. He sets for a kick to Jin’s ankles and watches Jin jump away with a yelp, probably to save his boots; they are an obnoxious neon pink today.
“Look at him, idiot. Doesn’t he look like Kousaku?”
Jin leans forward to catch a better sight of Kyohei, who’s looking at them like they’re crazy. “He does. But Kousaku also looked like Shitake and they weren’t the same person anyway. And this guy looks too grumpy to be Kousaku.” Jin pauses for a moment, scratches his hair with a single careful finger and turns to look at Nakamaru with wide eyes. “Maybe they’re some kind of sect made of evil twin brothers! Or clones!”
Nakamaru’s brain has by now developed a defensive mechanism that filters every word Jin says to save Nakamaru from most of the stupidities that leave his deputy’s mouth, so the sheriff simply turns toward Tegoshi again.
“Who’s this man?”
“Oh, this is Kyohei-kun! We went to school together, and he’s come to visit for a couple of days.”
“He’s really pretty,” Jin blurts out, and if glares could kill, Jin would have been dead yesterday. Nakamaru makes a mental note not to mention Kyohei’s appearance, though he does have to admit Jin is, for once, completely right. Kyohei looks like Kousaku, but at the same time he doesn’t. He looks more elegant, more refined somehow, even though Nakamaru is pretty sure he’s the same general build as Kousaku. It’s something in the way he carries himself, and even though Kousaku’s constant grin is replaced by a wary grumpiness, it only gives Kyohei a different kind of charm.
“What are you looking at?”
Nakamaru only realizes he has been staring when Kyohei snaps at him, brow furrowed. He mumbles an apology as he fights off an embarrassing reddening in his cheeks, and vaguely wonders what’s with the sudden stream of newcomers that make him blush into Johnnysville. Kyohei grunts something angrily and disappears into the back of the house with a slam of a door that makes all the sequins in the room rattle. Jin whistles.
“Your friend is quite a character.”
“He doesn’t take references to his appearance very well,” Tegoshi sighs, and suddenly perks up again. “Why are you two here? Is Sheriff Nakamaru going to help with this week’s performance too? Because if so, then it’s a good thing you brought him in early, I think he’s going to need quite a bit of work...”
Nakamaru’s too horrified to even feel offended. He lets his look of complete terror speak for him, though on second thought, maybe he shouldn’t have, because Jin takes his silence as a cue for him to take over.
“We need your help for a secret mission! We need to dress up as girls because...”
“Jin! Do you have any idea what secret mission means?”
Jin waves a hand dismissively at him. “Don’t worry, we can trust Yuya! Besides, he’s the only one who can help us now.” Jin leans in towards Tegoshi and adopts his best conspiring tone. “We need to disguise ourselves as girls to keep watch over at Ohno’s cabaret.”
Tegoshi’s eyes shine with an excited glow, and Nakamaru just knows this will be one of those traumatic episodes he’ll have to erase from his mind with copious amounts of Yamashita’s finest whiskey.
He can only hope he looks more like his sister, Yukiko, when he’s wearing a dress than he does in his usual attire.
*
“Are you sure this isn’t going to affect your long term assignment?” Kame asks, after the Nakamaru and his deputy are erstwhile occupied with the dubious task of removing Nakamaru’s leg hair. “Me being here, I mean.”
“Are you going to get caught?” Tegoshi asks, raising one eyebrow in a skeptical arch.
“Absolutely not,” Kame replies, almost insulted at the question. Kame is the best. The best don’t get caught.”
“Then why should I worry?” Tegoshi says nonchalantly, settling his hands on his hips and looking at Kame challengingly. “Or are you saying that you think I’m the one who’s going to give something away?”
“Not really,” Kame says. “I just know that it would cause a lot of trouble for you to get linked up with this whole job.”
“I’ve spent a lot of time building up this role,” Tegoshi replies. “Really, no one is going to suspect the eccentric, flamboyant crossdresser, who’s lived here for years, of doing a crime.” Tegoshi shakes his hair back, and Kame admires, for a moment, the effortless movement. Tegoshi has always been so good with his hair, and Kame should really find out what kind of treatments he’s using. “Honestly, with Akanishi on the case, as much as I adore the man, I’m surprised crime isn’t running rampant.”
Tegoshi is rooting through his closet now, pulling out numerous things in a deep red that Kame hopes are for Jin and not for Nakamaru, because the cuts of them are a little too flashy for the staid and conservative sheriff. Tegoshi seems to be delighting in his work-- the smile on his face is a teensy bit maniacal.
“The sheriff seems... something approaching competent,” Kame hedges, and for some reason, he feels the irrational urge to avert his eyes. Almost like he’s... But that’s stupid. Kame doesn’t let himself get attached to people on his jobs. That’s not why he’s here. “I mean, maybe it’s just in comparison.”
“No, no, Sheriff Nakamaru is smart. He’s just got his hands full, and he’s a bit naive... If he likes you, he wants to think the best of you. And he likes... well, pretty much everyone.”
Kame wonders, briefly, if Nakamaru would like Kame, and then he pushes the thought behind other, more important, ones, for later consideration.
“I see,” Kame says, and Tegoshi grins.
“So as you can see, I’ve got nothing to worry about. Just complete your mission, and I’ll keep on with mine,” Tegoshi says, dropping an armful of clothing into Kame’s waiting hands. “Now be a good boy and take those to the room next door, would you? I’ve got to find a longer skirt for the sheriff or he’s going to look absolutely scandalous.”
*
When Nakamaru was in primary school, he’d fallen from a horse and broken his leg. He’d been forced to limp around for upwards of a month, dealing with the pain of re-knitting bone and the frustration of it taking twice as long to get anywhere as it should.
Getting his legs waxed, Nakamaru thinks, isn’t as bad as that.
But it’s close.
When Kyohei walks in, carrying a bag of make-up and sporting an expression of grim determination, Nakamaru knows he’s in trouble. “Do you do this a lot?” Nakamaru asks, and Kyohei sighs.
“Far, far too often,” is the reply. “Now close your eyes, this is going to take some time.” Kyohei smells like fried things and like coffee, and it’s a weird smell, one that Nakamaru doesn’t know how to react to. But Kyohei’s proximity is making his stomach do all these weird flips, and it’s uncomfortable, because Nakamaru has gone years without being attracted to anyone, and now it seems like any stranger that crosses his path makes him feel almost shaky with attraction. Kyohei’s no different from Shizuku and Kousaku - Nakamaru can’t really understand why he wants to lean closer and memorize that smell, or why he wants to open his eyes and study the sharp line of his nose. “Don’t lick your lips.”
“Why?” Nakamaru starts to ask, but then there’s the smooth glide of wax across the slightly chapped skin there, and Nakamaru almost forgets that he’s being turned into a lady because the feeling is so weird and foreign. The side of Kyohei’s hand touches his cheek, and leaves a tingle in its wake, and Nakamaru swallows.
“All done,” Kyohei says, and Nakamaru releases the breath he’s been holding.
“Jealous,” Jin mumbles under his breath, and Nakamaru’s eyes flutter open (they feel heavy) to look at Jin, who’s lining his own eyes in the mirror with an expert hand. Then he spins on his heel and smirks at Nakamaru. “So how do I look?”
Kyohei laughs, and it sends a shiver down Nakamaru’s spine.
Nakamaru is not entirely sure that he’ll survive anything about today.
*
Kame has never minded dresses, but Kyohei hates them. Kyohei’s one of Kame’s most intricate characters, with all his complexes and his fears. They make him interesting to play, but difficult. Kame likes him because he’s a challenge, and Kame likes challenges that test his skills. Kyohei’s useful too, because he makes a girl who is as beautiful as he looks as a man.
Ohno falls for Kyohei the moment he sees him disguised in a kimono. Kyohei just grits his teeth and clenches his fists when Ohno touches him, but he’s granted access to the cabaret that very night.
The girls of the cabaret have the run of the whole manor, so Kame doesn’t even have to hide. After night falls and the rest of the girls go to sleep, Kame can walk through the corridors without worrying. Ohno’s office is easy to find because the sheriff and his deputy are standing in front of him, bickering loudly with each other. Kame takes a moment to observe them from a distance; Akanishi makes a beautiful woman and he moves in his dress with a natural elegance that Kame almost finds himself envying. Sheriff Nakamaru on the other hand looks uncomfortable and awkward and like he only wants to crawl out of his own skin, and Kame thinks it only makes him all the more endearing. Now he only needs to get them away from the door...
*
Satoshi Ohno, Nakamaru thinks, is kind of an unfortunate example of someone with too much time and money on his hands. He’s got this dreamy expression, eyes staring off completely unfocused into the distance, and a girl sits on each of his thighs. His arms are wrapped loosely around their waists, and Nakamaru tries not to think about the round-faced man having doped-out threesomes when the parties at the cabaret are over for the night.
“Mr. Ohno, sir,” Nakamaru says, and Ohno’s eyes flicker over to Nakamaru, focusing for half a moment on him before zoning out again. “We’ll do our best to protect... whatever it is we’re protecting, sir.”
“Great,” Ohno says. “Because Jun seems to think it’s important.”
“Don’t you think it’s important, too, sir?” Jin asks, tugging absentmindedly on his skirt, lined eyes studying the cabaret owner with confusion. Jin seriously looks like something out of a bordello, and Nakamaru kind of feels like Jin’s mom; he wants to wipe off the deep red lipstick off of Jin’s lips.
“Uh, sure,” Ohno replies, and then does a double-take, eyes lingering on Jin’s legs with active interest. “Who are you, again?”
“I’m Jin,” and there’s an all too natural toss of hair over Jin’s shoulder, “the deputy sheriff.”
“I think you should guard me,” Ohno says, shoving one of the girls off his lap. She squeaks as she hits the ground.
“Hey!” the girl says, but Ohno is eying Jin with more interest than Nakamaru has ever seen him devote to anything, and he ignores her. He pats his now unoccupied thigh.
“There’s a spot for you right here,” Ohno says dreamily, and Jin gulps uncomfortably, taking a barely noticeable step back and twirling a piece of hair around his index finger in nervousness.
“No, I need him to come with me,” Nakamaru says quickly, after a brief moment of consideration about whether or not to throw Jin to the wolves, taking pity on his deputy. “To guard the office.”
“Too bad,” Ohno says, and Jin sends him a look so grateful that Nakamaru almost forgets that Jin sucks at guarding and it probably doesn’t matter if he comes or not.
“Thanks, dude,” Jin says, as they walk away. “Something about the dress makes me feel more... exposed.”
Nakamaru side-eyes him. “Well,” Nakamaru says, pressing palms down to flatten any unintended wrinkles in his shirt. “I just didn’t want to hear you whining about his hands venturing up your skirt later.”
*
“Jin,” Nakamaru suddenly hisses, and Jin’s head snaps up.
“Not sleeping!” Jin’s words are slurred, though, which Nakamaru knows means he was, in fact, sleeping.
“What? Anyway, did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“I think I heard a shout over there...”
Just as Nakamaru’s speaking the noise comes again, a cross between a cry and a sob coming from a few corridors away. Jin looks at Nakamaru with wide eyes, and considering all the make up he’s wearing, the effect would had disturbed Nakamaru if the situation wasn’t so urgent.
“That was a girl.”
“Do you think it was in the girls’ bedroom? Maybe the thief...”
Jin nods, looking professional for once. “I’ll go check.”
*
By the time Akanishi leaves the door, Kame has left the corridor, silent like a shadow. Sheriff Nakamaru is standing nervously in front of the entry to the office, tugging at the skirts of his dress and adjusting the big wig on his head, and Kame has to repress the urge to laugh long and loud. He sobs again, and watches Nakamaru tense and look around a couple of times, hesitating about leaving his post, before he finally dares to move because someone could be in danger. Kame only has to hide in the shadows of an unlit and open room and wait for the sheriff to pass him.
The office is open too, and Kame’s almost incredulous at Ohno’s carelessness when he finds that not even the drawer with the letters expressing interest is locked. It’s all too easy and he lets his guard down for a moment and pulls the drawer open, and there’s a loud noise, an alarm of some kind. Kame freezes for a second, and then curses loudly, quickly grabbing the stack of papers and pushing them in the secret pockets between the folds of his kimono. The wooden planks outside the room are creaking with rushed steps and Kame barely has time to push the drawer shut again before the shadow of what can only be the sheriff appears at the door.
“Who are you?!” Nakamaru is panting, but he has moved into the room and he’s no longer blocking the door, so maybe Kame still has a chance to escape. He lowers his head and tries to walk past the sheriff, who grabs him by the arm and twists him around. “Wait! You’re... This is a kimono. You’re not one of his girls!” When Kame looks up, Nakamaru’s eyes are wide with realization. “You’re... The thief... You’re going to have to, er, come with me. To jail.”
Kame smiles despite the situation, because the sheriff is charming in his befuddlement, eyes brown and warm and soft, and entirely too easy to get lost in. Shirota’s warnings cross his mind for a half a second, and he bites his lip, but he can’t help himself. He brings his free hand up to stroke the sheriff’s cheek with teasing fingers, and Nakamaru freezes under his touch with a gasp. The crazy beating of his heart is so loud that Kame can almost hear it when he draws close enough that he’s breathing right over Nakamaru’s ear.
“Not today, Sheriff,” he whispers, and Nakamaru trembles against him with a little sigh and lets go of his arm. Kame presses and empty lipstick tube into Nakamaru’s palm, and closes his fingers around it.
When Kame’s mouth lands on Nakamaru’s cheek for a chaste kiss he can feel the heat of a deep flush on the sheriff’s skin, but he doesn’t understand why he’s blushing too. His lips leave a smudge of lipstick before he turns around and runs toward the window, leaping out it and down to the street below.
*
Nakamaru doesn’t remember how to move until Jin comes rushing into the office a few moments later.
“I heard the alarm!” Jin says. “I couldn’t find anyone screaming... Well, that’s not entirely true, but they didn’t look sad, if you know what I mean, and they certainly weren’t the person we heard...”
“Um,” Nakamaru says, and he brings a wavering hand up to touch his cheek, still feeling shocked. “The thief. Was here.”
“What’s that gross expression on your face?” Jin asks, peering closely at Nakamaru, leaning into his face and waving his fingers in front of Nakamaru’s eyes. “You look creepy.”
“The thief took something from that drawer,” Nakamaru answers vaguely. “I saw him.”
“Really?” Jin queries. “Well? Did the descriptions match? Did they?” Jin looks excited, and Nakamaru should be excited too--a first-hand glimpse of the criminal they’ve been chasing. But Nakamaru just feels vaguely uncomfortable, and embarrassed, and a little more like he’s been flirting than like he’s been crime-solving. “What happened to your face? Why are you touching it like that?”
Jin grabs Nakamaru’s wrist and drags it down, and then he gasps. “You’ve got lipstick on your cheek!”
“Good job, Sherlock,” Nakamaru snaps, finally returning to his senses.
“Getting kissed by thieves, are we?” Jin teases, eyes narrowing on the lip-print on Nakamaru’s skin. “Looks like he’s stealing more than just keys and papers.” Jin’s face is suggestive, and Nakamaru hates it. Jin’s still got a grip on his wrist, too.
“Jin, what are the rules about touching me?”
“Never to do it unless it’s an emergency,” Jin replies, dropping Nakamaru’s arm like it’s suddenly on fire.
“And what counts as an emergency?”
“If I’m in some way desperately in need of assistance, and in that case, I’m supposed to touch as little of you as possible, in case my stupidity is contagious,” Jin recites, and Nakamaru nods, satisfied that he’s regained the higher ground. “But Sheriff.”
“What is it?” Nakamaru is looking over at the window where the kimono clad thief had escaped, and he unconsciously licks his lips. The taste of wax is bitter on his tongue.
“There’s something strange about that lipstick,” Jin says distractedly. “It’s the same kind that was on President Sakurai’s shirt-sleeve!”
“Well, that makes sense,” Nakamaru muses. “Since it was the same criminal, after all.”
“Well, yes,” Jin says, and then he makes an ‘aha!’ sound that echoes through the office. “But it’s also the same lipstick that’s on your lips!”
“What?” Nakamaru says, furrowing his brow. He opens his palm and shows Jin. Jin smirks triumphantly and roots around in the cleavage of his dress, dislodging red sequins as he searches. When his hand emerges, he’s holding a single tube of lipstick.
“This lipstick,” he says. “It’s the the same as the tube Kyohei gave me.”
“So it’s a common type of lipstick, then,” Nakamaru says, and he’s a little disappointed, because the thief seems far from ordinary, in his opinion. There’s also the fact that that was really one of their better clues, although that seems to rate lower in Nakamaru’s mind right now.
“Wrong!” Jin shouts. “It’s a rare import brand. Tegoshi told me all about it!” Jin scratches quizzically at the side of his face. “I wonder how this thief happened to get the same brand of lipstick as Tegoshi. Unless the thief is Kyohei.”
“Tegoshi?” Nakamaru shudders at the thought, but he knows what he has to do. “I guess we need to go and ask him a few more questions, then, don’t we?”
“What about Kyohei?” Jin asks. “Don’t you think he’s suspicious?” Jin waggles his eyebrows. “I’d like to question him, if you know what I’m saying.”
“Jin, stop talking, it hurts me deep inside,” Nakamaru says resignedly. “Anyway, Kyohei isn’t suspicious, just like Shizuku and Kousaku weren’t suspicious. Just because people are new, doesn’t mean they are suspicious.”
“They were suspicious,” Jin insists. “They were all... secretive and stuff.”
“Jin, what’s thirteen plus forty?”
“Fifty?” Jin says, before he swears. “No, that’s not right... Damnit, you know I’m bad at math!”
“You’re bad at everything,” Nakamaru says. “Except, clearly, looking like a lady and identifying lipstick brands. Obviously, I’m not going to trust your instincts about suspects when you can’t add two-digit numbers.”
“I’m good at lots of things!” Jin says. “You shouldn’t write me off just because the things I’m good at aren’t the things you’re good at! That doesn’t make them less important!” Jin frowns, and Nakamaru’s not sure he’s ever seen that expression on Jin’s face. It looks almost angry, but Jin doesn’t get angry, so Nakamaru’s not sure. “I know I’m not as smart as you are,” Jin adds, defensively. “But that doesn’t mean that everything I say is worthless!”
“Jin-” Nakamaru starts to apologize, but then he’s interrupted by the sound of pounding footsteps in the hall.
Ohno bursts into the room, eyes frantically scanning for intruders before relaxing when he realizes that it’s just Nakamaru and Jin. “I heard the alarm!” Ohno says. “What happened?”
“That was minutes ago,” Jin responds, crossing his arms and frowning.
“Well I was BUSY,” Ohno says, slapping the ass of the girl standing next to him lasciviously. “Are my letters safe?”
“Letters?” Nakamaru whispers to himself. “Letters.” He clears his throat. “I’m afraid not, sir. It seems the thief has managed to get away with them. He was much more clever than we gave him credit for.”
Ohno slumps against the doorframe. “Ninomiya is going to kill me,” he says despairingly, and Jin walks over to him and awkwardly pats his shoulder.
“There, there,” Jin says. “It’ll be okay.” His corset is slipping down his ribcage, and Nakamaru fights the urge to tell him to hoist it back up.
“You could make me feel better about it?” Ohno suggests, and Jin rears back quickly.
“Sorry, I can’t,” Jin says. “I’ll be too busy drinking and trying to forget you suggested it.”
“Join the club,” Nakamaru mutters, before he crosses his arms. “So the stolen items were letters?” Nakamaru asks. “I think we need some answers from you, now. These things aren’t being stolen at random. This thief is after something.”
Ohno gulps. “I don’t know,” he says, and his eyes are fixed on the floor. They look focused, Nakamaru notes. Not dreamy at all, and that lets Nakamaru know that something serious is going on.
“I’m going to get to the bottom of this,” Nakamaru warns, and Jin, looking absolutely ridiculous, nods along with him, hands on his hips and arms akimbo, long white gloves slipping down from his elbows.
Nakamaru wants to know who this thief is, and what he wants. But mostly, he just wants to see him again, for reasons that have got almost nothing to do with his job.
Later, when they’re walking away from the cabaret, Jin is suspiciously silent. “I can’t wait to change out of these clothes,” Nakamaru says. “I feel dumb.”
Jin doesn’t answer, just keeps walking silently forward. Nakamaru wonders if he’s missing something. “Do you think we should go and question your weird little sparkly friend Tegoshi tomorrow?”
“Doesn’t matter what I think, does it?” Jin says, and Nakamaru can’t figure out the inflection in his voice. “I’m too stupid to have an opinion, right?”
“Jin,” Nakamaru says, and he knows he should apologize, but Nakamaru’s not actually that great at apologizing when he’s got fifty million other things on his mind. Anyway, Jin will get over it by tomorrow. “You know I don’t mean it.”
“Yes you do,” Jin says. “You actually think I’m that stupid.” Jin sighs. “It doesn’t matter. See you tomorrow.”
Nakamaru doesn’t know why, but that night as he goes to bed, he feels really, really guilty, and between thoughts of Jin’s grim face and the ephemeral press of the thief’s lipsticked mouth to his cheek, Nakamaru finds sleep quite elusive.
Part 3
Kame likes being Kousaku, too. Kousaku is hyper and crazy, and Kame feels like he can let go playing him. He also gets lots of free food, because there’s something in the way Kousaku eats that inspires people to feed him more.
Kousaku is waiting in the SuperBad when that adorable sheriff and his deputy walk in, the deputy trailing behind him with a comically morose face as he half-hides behind his boss. “Stop acting like a little girl, Jin,” Kousaku hears the sheriff hiss at his subordinate, and Kousaku thinks it might be almost affectionate, but those aren’t the sort of details Kousaku really pays attention to.
“I’m not acting like a girl,” Jin says with a pout. “I’m just scared. He was reaaaaaaallly angry yesterday.”
The sheriff rolls his eyes and drags the other man up to the bar, signalling the bartender.
“Yamashita!” The bartender, who is wearing a shirt unbuttoned all the way down to his navel, displaying formidable cleavage, turns with a frown.
“What can I get for you-- What does he want?” The bartender, Yamashita, Kousaku corrects himself, looks put out. “His new friend, that he likes better than me, is over there.” Yamashita points at Kousaku, and Kousaku feels all three sets of eyes land on him.
“Uh, hi?” Kousaku ventures, licking his lips and offering a sweet smile. The sheriff’s eyes widen.
“Shizuku?” he asks, but Kousaku can tell he’s not entirely sure.
“Sorry, you must have me mistaken for someone else,” Kousaku says. “Kousaku Hatanaka, at your service.”
“Uh,” the sheriff says. “Kousaku?” He leans closer, like he wants to study Kousaku’s face, but propriety grabs hold of him at the last minute and he rocks back on his heels. “Right. Jin told me about you.”
Kame relishes the look of confusion on Nakamaru’s face, his eyebrows gathering together cutely at the center of his forehead as he tries to piece together an idea that makes sense. Kame can tell the minute he gives up, too, just accepting that there are two people who look very alike wandering Johnnysville at the same time. Kame wants to smirk, but Kousaku doesn’t really have that expression, and right now, Kame has to be one-hundred percent Kousaku if he’s going to sell his fiction.
“Did he?” Kousaku asks brightly. “I just met him yesterday, and he very kindly asked me to go have tacos. I love eating, so I told him I thought it sounded awesome!”
“That taco place was our special place,” Yamashita hisses, and Kousaku blanches at the withering look Yamashita sends at Jin. “And Jin is a filthy traitor.”
“I was going to ask you to come, too,” Jin wails, slumping down on a bar stool and staring piteously at his irate friend. “Kousaku was just talking so much about the strict nun he travels with to fights that I wanted to help him eat some of the best food in town.”
“You and a nun?” the sheriff asks. “Where are you staying?”
“Over at the Countdown Inn,” Kousaku replies, scratching nervously at the tops of his thighs.
“There’s room there?” The sheriff rubs at the back of his neck. “I’d thought they’d be full with the acting troupe.”
“Acting troupe?” Kousaku frowns thoughtfully, even as Kame admires his own flawless planning. “We must have just missed them. There’s just the Sister and I at the inn right now.”
“Oh,” Nakamaru says, and Kame wonders if Nakamaru’s wistful expression is for Shizuku, the artful actor he may never meet again. “Okay, then.”
“Sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” Kousaku says, and Nakamaru jolts back to the conversation, eyes refocusing on Kousaku’s face and narrowing again on the perceived similarities between him and Shizuku. Kame makes sure Kousaku’s expression stays exceptionally vapid.
“Yuichi Nakamaru. I’m the town Sheriff,” he adds, and Kousaku beams at him.
“I know! Jin has told me about you too. I think he said your name was Nakamarad, or something, though.”
Jin chooses that moment to yell loudly, slamming his begrudgingly given beer-bottle down onto the counter. “Of course I love you best, don’t be ridiculous, Pi!”
“Then how could you volunteer to take a random guy you just met to our place?!” Yamashita rejoins, and Kousaku looks wryly at Nakamaru, whose expression is one of horrified fascination.
“A lovers’ spat?” Kousaku asks, cheerfully shoving handful after handful of peanuts into his mouth.
“Lovers?” Nakamaru says, and then he chuckles. “Oh no, they’re just friends.”
“Um,” Kousaku says, as Yamashita hollers things about ‘sleeping on the couch’ and ‘finding a new person who’ll try all those weird positions’. “If you say so.”
“Of course! I’d know if there were more going on than that. I’m the sheriff, it’s my job to keep an eye on the details.”
Kame’s glad he’s Kousaku right now, because Kame, or Shizuku for that matter, would have laughed aloud. It kind of makes him want to pat the sheriff’s shoulder, it’s almost unbelievable, how clueless Nakamaru can be. Kame guesses he’s lucky it makes him cuter. Kousaku settles for another blinding smile and the beginnings of a sentence that’s promptly cut as Yamashita grabs at the sheriff’s vest to drag him back into the argument.
“You! You solve this!” Yamashita says, and Nakamaru waves his hands placatingly in the air.
“Now, now, is it really that big of a deal--”
“Yes,” Yamashita says, and Jin whimpers, a little like a wounded animal. “It is.”
“I know!” Jin says, a devious glint in his eye. “Nakamaru could take Kousaku out for tacos.”
“I suppose that would be alright,” Yamashita says, thoughtfully pouting, his full lower lip jutting out. Jin casts an apologetic glance at Kousaku, who smiles encouragingly at him. Kame thinks this probably is the first good idea Jin has had since they met.
“Is that alright with you?” Jin asks him, and Kousaku nods enthusiastically.
“I understand that new acquaintances come second place to love,” Kousaku says sagely. “I once fought in a boxing title match for my true love!”
“Wow,” Jin says, and Yamashita huffs.
“Now that is romantic,” Yamashita says, and Kousaku grins at him winningly, and Yamashita looks charmed despite himself, which makes Jin sock him in the arm.
“Doesn’t anyone care if I have something to do?” Nakamaru asks, but the question is almost rhetorical, like he knows that no one does. Kousaku feels a little bad for the poor man; he seems to live a hard life. Kame sort of wants to make it harder. Kame usually indulges those whims when they come.
“I’d be ever so grateful if you would, Sheriff,” Kousaku says, and bats his eyelashes at the man playfully. Nakamaru flushes all the way down to the v-neck collar of his argyle sweater-vest, and Kame internally crows with triumph. “After all, the Sister is very, very strict with my diet. What if I waste away to nothing?”
Nakamaru shoves his hands into his pockets and frowns, taking a step back as if he’ll be suddenly less embarrassed if there’s more space between himself and Kousaku. “Fine,” Nakamaru says, and Jin cheers. “This is just because you helped me with the lipstick this morning, Jin,” and Nakamaru carefully looks anywhere but at Kousaku. “And because as sheriff, I have a responsibility to make visitors feel welcome.”
“What lipstick?” Yamashita asks, and Kame makes Kousaku lean forward to listen.
“Oh,” Jin says. “No big deal. Just knew something about lipstick today.”
“Actually, to my surprise, Jin was able accurately identify the type and quality of lipstick from just a smudge! I was awed,” Nakamaru says, like he still can’t believe it himself.
“That’s cause it’s the kind Tegoshi wears,” Jin says thoughtlessly. “Leaves stains on all my shirts when--” Jin stops in the middle of the sentence, but it’s too late. Yamashita’s eyes are sparkling dangerously.
“When what?” Yamashita asks, with the deadly calm of a serial killer, and Jin gulps.
“So,” Kousaku offers, eyes catching Nakamaru’s, as the sheriff looks around frantically for an escape. “Feel up to those tacos now?”
“Absolutely,” Nakamaru says, and they both run frantically for the saloon exit as if the place is on fire, Yamashita and Jin’s argument escalating as they tumble outside the double doors.
“Your deputy is a bit of a handful,” Kousaku offers, and Nakamaru rubs at his forehead with the air of a man who is used to headaches.
“You have no idea,” Nakamaru says, and strangely, when he smiles, it’s Kame who feels his heart skip a beat.
*
Nakamaru wonders how it is is possible for one person to be this cute eating tacos. Beef and sauce cover the area around Kousaku’s mouth, leaving a reddish stain on the skin, and the man’s cheeks are puffed out as he excitedly eats crispy shell after crispy shell.
“These are really good,” Kousaku says, and little pieces of meat fly out of his mouth and land on the table in front of Nakamaru.
Normally, Nakamaru would be disgusted, but somehow, unlike with Jin, Nakamaru finds his unbridled joy contagious instead of nauseating, and Nakamaru hopes that years of Akanishi exposure haven’t destroyed his faculties. “Jin is a connoisseur of foods,” Nakamaru admits, taking a bite of his own taco. It is rather delicious, he thinks, and takes another, larger, bite.
“Oh my goodness, it’s heavenly,” Kousaku says, then his eyes dart about suspiciously, and Nakamaru remembers that the other man travels with a nun. “Not that I mad any sort of reference to God or anything just now. Please don’t tell the Sister.”
“I won’t,” Nakamaru promises, and the smile that Kousaku gives him makes the tips of his toes tingle. It’s exactly the same feeling Nakamaru had when he talked with Shizuku, and he can’t figure out what, besides looks, the two have in common that can make his normally manageable hormones go haywire. Kousaku leans forward, and Nakamaru’s gaze pauses on the moles by his mouth, tiny little marks that show off the clearness of Kousaku’s skin rather than mar it.
“You’re a lifesaver,” Kousaku says, and winks, and Nakamaru almost forgets he’s supposed to keep chewing. “So what’s life like for the busy sheriff of a small town?”
“I don’t know,” Nakamaru replies with a forced laugh as Kousaku presses his palm to the back of Nakamaru’s hand. Has it always been this hot in here? Nakamaru figures it has been, since they’re in the middle of the desert, in a kitchen with a large fire cooking meet and corn tortillas, but metaphorically speaking, it seems like it is getting hotter. “What’s life like for a prize fighter?”
“Don’t turn the question around on me like that!” Kousaku says, and he shoves another taco halfway into his mouth, and damn if that doesn’t just drag Nakamaru’s attention back to his lips. Kousaku swallows, and then continues. “I asked first.”
“It’s pretty boring,” Nakamaru says. “Except we’ve had an interesting couple of cases, lately.”
“Oh?” Kousaku asks, gesturing to the cook for another order of twenty tacos, before returning his attention to Nakamaru. “Tell me more.”
“Oh, just some high-profile thefts,” Nakamaru says. “With an unusual criminal.”
“An unusual criminal?” Kousaku asks, licking his lips free of sauce with a slow, surprisingly seductive tongue, and making Nakamaru forget, for a moment, how to form words. “How so?”
“Well, most crimes around here are committed by Koki Tanaka,” Nakamaru says. “And they’re usually pretty stupid crimes.”
“But this thief is different?” Kousaku asks, withdrawing his hands to cradle his face between them, and the gesture makes Nakamaru blink twice as a blush creeps up his cheeks.
“Much,” Nakamaru says. “This thief is clever, and I can’t figure out the motives.”
“Hmmm,” Kousaku muses, catching his lower lip in his teeth. “But what’s the connection between the people who were robbed?”
“Mayor Matsumoto and President Sakurai? They were both in the same class in school,” Nakamaru offers. “And they’re both very important people in the town.”
“Tell me more about them?” Kousaku asks sweetly, and Nakamaru would probably do anything Kousaku asks as long as Kousaku keeps looking at him just like that.
The waiter brings over another giant mound of tacos, and Kousaku claps cheerfully before grabbing one in each hand.
“Sure,” Nakamaru says. “What do you want to know?”
“Well, have either of them acted suspiciously over the robberies?” Kousaku prods innocently, as he devours both tacos at the same time. “Like, are they hiding something?”
“Yes!” Nakamaru says. “In fact, they won’t even say what’s been stolen!” Nakamaru scratches frustratedly at his hair. “I mean, I know keys were taken from the bank, but keys to what? Ahhh! This is so dumb.” Nakamaru looks angrily at the pile of tacos and picks one up, stuffing the whole thing into his mouth. Kousaku watches him with a gentle smile, and when Nakamaru has chewed and swallowed, he frowns. “Sorry, you probably don’t want to hear about my job.”
“On the contrary,” Kousaku says, and for a moment, Nakamaru swears he sees a faint glint of smug amusement in Kousaku’s eyes, but he blinks and it’s gone, so he thinks he must have imagined it. “Being a sheriff seems really interesting!”
“I guess so,” Nakamaru says reluctantly, still thinking about the case. “I just don’t get why--”
“Hatanaka,” says a shrill voice, and both Nakamaru and his new friend turn toward it. Nakamaru watches as Kousaku shrinks into himself as the black and white habit-clad form shuffles over to them from the entrance, hands on stern hips. “What are you doing here?”
“I can explain!” Kousaku yelps, slipping from his chair and curling into the fetal position on the floor. “The tacos are so good, Sister! So good!”
“You know you aren’t allowed to eat stuff like this before fights! We’re leaving in the morning for the next town, and there will be a weigh in!”
“I’m so sorry, Sister!” Kousaku says, and Nakamaru swallows as the imposing nun turns to study him. “And you,” the nun says, and it’s only then that Nakamaru realizes the nun is about half a foot taller than him, and most undeniably a man, “aiding and abetting this little delinquent?!”
“It’s not his fault, Sister Shirota!” Kousaku cries from the floor. “I tricked him! He had no idea about my weigh in.”
“Alright then,” Sister Shirota says, and Nakamaru wonders if he’s actually living in the Twilight Zone, because the last week of his life has been batshit insane. Standing in front of him is a 190cm tall nun who’s, on top of that, the wrong gender, and in front of Nakamaru’s eyes, he, or she? pulls out a gun and levels it at Kousaku. “Get back to the inn.”
“Yes ma’am!” Kousaku says, low and whimpering. “Nice to meet you, Sheriff! And thanks for the tacos!”
When they’ve both left for the inn, Nakamaru is left sitting in front of a table with fifteen uneaten tacos and a head full of confusing thoughts about the Catholic church and about adorable men who look exactly like other adorable men.
At least, Nakamaru thinks, they’re good tacos, and as he thinks about Kousaku’s warm and delighted smiles as he inhaled the tasty meal, Nakamaru doesn’t even mind the massive bill.
*
Kame drops the act as soon as they’re beyond the walls of their room at the inn, and Shirota pushes back the headpiece of his habit with an annoyed huff.
“I can’t believe Ryo made me wear that. He reads too many stupid comics. Sister Angela, really.” Kame would agree, except that as long as Ryo’s not trying to pick on him he’s glad for the extra amusement. “Anyway. What was that with the sheriff?”
“What was what?”
“You were flirting with him.”
Kame raises an eyebrow at him. “I was getting information.”
“If that’s what you want to tell yourself...” Shirota looks amused for a moment and Kame considers making a remark about the nun habit just to annoy him, but then the man starts speaking again. “Anyway, Ryo said that you’re supposed to go for Satoshi Ohno now. You have to look for another set of papers, letters this time. There’re only three things left on the list, so cut it down with the sheriff, Kame. You can’t get caught now.”
“There’s no way Sheriff Nakamaru could get me; he’s totally clueless. He can’t even see who his deputy is sleeping with, even though it’s right under his nose.”
“Just be careful. Didn’t you say the deputy had been suspicious of Shizuku?”
“Akanishi is thought of as being completely incompetent, so no one believes him, even though he has these occasional moments of absolute brilliance. It’s actually simultaneously funny and alarming to watch.”
“I’ll bet,” Shirota says with a laugh. “Who are you going to play next?”
“Do I ever tell you?” Kame winks at Shirota, and the man laughs again.
“Are you flirting with me now, Kamenashi? I swear, you could flirt with a bicycle and make it fall in love with you.”
“I’d never dare to tempt a pure soul, Sister!” Shirota swats at Kame playfully, and Kame preens at softening the other man up. “Are we done here?”
“Yeah, I think that was all the relevant information,” Shirota says, and Kame’s amused at the way Shirota reaches into the folds of his habit and re-emerges with the gun. “But I’ve got my eyes on you, Kamenashi. Be careful not to get to wrapped up in that dorky little sheriff, and lose sight of your mission goals.”
“I’m the best at what I do,” Kame says sharply. “An absolute professional.”
“You are,” Shirota says. “But you’ve also got a weakness for teasing the shy, pent-up, awkward types. You know you do.”
“I’ll keep it under control,” Kame cooly says, tossing his hair back imperiously. “I’ll get the job done. You just keep your surveillance team on track, and I’ll handle my end of this.”
“Got it,” Shirota agrees. He hefts the gun up to his shoulder. “Now don’t you have some premises to map out?”
“I do,” Kame says, and exits out the door. He pauses on the stairs though, when he hears a loud, almost feminine voice downstairs. He signals for Shirota to stay silent and tiptoes carefully to get a better view of the inn’s dinner.
Mayor Matsumoto is sitting at a table with a man Kame recognizes as his next target. Even though the inn is empty, they’re both leaning toward the centre of the table, and Kame has to strain to hear them when Matsumoto lowers his voice.
“They’ve taken the key to Sakurai’s lockbox now,” he says, and looks around furtively. “I think whoever this thief is, they’re after the deeds. I don’t know how they found out about it, but we have to be careful now. Are the letters well hidden?”
Ohno nods lazily, looking around like he’s bored or distracted. Kame takes a few steps back so he won’t be visible from the dining area. “Yeah, they’re properly protected. My girls are always around the house too. It’d be difficult for anyone to sneak around between them.”
Matsumoto looks thoughtful for a moment, before finally conceding that the other man is right. “Anyway, be sure to be extra careful these days. Hire someone to guard your office at night, or something. We can’t afford this to be known, Ohno.”
Slowly, Kame retreats back into the room and smirks at Shirota.
“I’m going to need a nice dress,” he says. Kame knows who he’ll be playing next.
*
“So I’m going to need you to do your King a favor,” Mayor Matsumoto says, and Nakamaru contemplates the waste of air it would be to correct the poor man on this subject any more than he already has. “Just a little favor, you understand.”
“No,” Nakamaru says, without hesitation. “Whatever it is, it probably sucks, otherwise you wouldn’t have brought all these pastries.”
“But the pastries are super delish!” Jin exclaims. “Maybe even favor-worthy.”
Nakamaru eyes them suspiciously. “Are they poisoned?”
“I would never poison my sweet Jin,” Mayor Matsumoto says, insulted, before looking over at Jin and simpering. “Such a handsome man.”
“What?” Jin says, looking up with cream frosting smeared across his nose. And no, Nakamaru does not suddenly find it attractive, so maybe the last dregs of his sanity remain intact despite the way Kousaku made him question that Jin had destroyed them.
“Nothing, Jin,” Matsumoto says, and then he shuffles closer. “Lick that cream off your mouth. Slower... slower...”
“Why am I licking in slow motion?” Jin asks, and Nakamaru hates his life. He reaches for a pastry.
It’s amazing.
“Fine,” Nakamaru says. “What do you need?”
“I suspect that the serial thief’s next target will be Ohno.”
“Satoshi Ohno?” Nakamaru asks. “Who runs the cabaret? What could anyone possibly steal in a cabaret?”
“Maybe he’s a lingerie thief,” Jin supplies around a mouthful of pastry, and Nakamaru finds it wiser not to point out he has just implied that two of the most powerful men in town are potentially collectors of lingerie, because Mayor Matsumoto looks too busy trying to wipe more cream off Jin’s cheek with his own thumb to have noticed the comment.
“Anyway,” Nakamaru sighs, after a few moments pass and Jin’s safely hidden behind him. “What does Ohno want us to do?”
“You’re to keep watch over his office during the nights until we’re sure there’s no risk anymore. Of course, you’d have to do so incognito, or the whole plan would be ruined.”
“What exactly does that mean?” Nakamaru asks, and Matsumoto’s smile sends shivers down his spine.
“What kind of people would you not be surprised to see in a cabaret, Sheriff?”
“Girls!” Jin shouts, and Nakamaru wants to bash his head against his desk, but Jin looks actually proud at his deduction skills. Matsumoto smiles at him like one would smile at a kid learning to tie his shoes.
“Exactly, Jin. Here, have another pastry, I like my boys on the plump side.”
“Are you telling us to dress up as girls?” Nakamaru says a little incredulously when it seems like Jin’s not going to make the connection. “Jin, do you understand what this means?”
Jin shrugs. “I do that on the weekends, sometimes,” Jin says nonchalantly, and then his words catch up with him. “I mean--”
Mayor Matsumoto looks intrigued, but Nakamaru mostly prefers to ignore what Jin does on his free days because what he does on his working ones is already traumatic enough. Mayor Matsumoto gives Jin a last adoring look before heading to the door, though not without reminding the sheriff of their new job one last time.
“And don’t try to skip it,” he warns. “Because I’ll be coming to check up on you. Jin, dear, remember short skirts look better on you!”
Nakamaru finally gives in to the urge to smash his head against the desk, and the increasing pile of paperwork rising on it pillows the fall. “And where are we supposed to find dresses?”
Jin licks his fingers clean of cream with loud, obscene noises, and beams at his boss. “I know just the guy!”
*
Nakamaru half-fears Jin’s contact will be Koki Tanaka when Jin leads him to the outskirts of Johnnysville. He’s only momentarily relieved when they bypass the town’s resident delinquent’s hut, because the house Jin’s walking up to doesn’t look any better. Jin knocks furtively on the door, mutters a few words and then they’re being ushered in.
Nakamaru has a weird sense of déjà vu as he finds himself standing in the middle of a living room covered in too many feathers, sequins and pleather to belong to a decent person. For half a second, he wonders if Mayor Matsumoto keeps a covert lair outside town for secret rendezvouses, but Jin won’t voluntarily go near Mayor Matsumoto if he can help it.
“Boss, this is Yuya Tegoshi,” Jin says, and Nakamaru turns around look at the... kid? Jin’s pointing at.
“I prefer Your Grace, though,” Tegoshi chirps cheerfully, and Nakamaru considers hanging himself with one of the feathery boas covering the walls.
“Right,” he says instead. “And how’s your... friend,” or at least, that’s what Nakamaru hopes he is, “going to help us, Jin?”
“Yuya’s an excellent crossdresser,” Jin says. Yuya gives Nakamaru a snotty smile that would give Mayor Matsumoto a run for his money even in his ‘better’ moments. “I’m sure he could even make you look pretty.”
It takes Nakamaru’s glitter-blinded brain a moment to process the full meaning of that statement. He frowns at Jin and opens his mouth to protest.
“Yuya!” It comes as a loud, cranky whine, and Nakamaru promptly shuts his mouth. He looks at the young man that has just walked into the room, and involuntarily opens it again.
“Kyohei?” Yuya asks. “You’re up earlier than usual. You had such a late night, yesterday.”
“Stupid girls,” Kyohei mutters. “Always more interested in my face than in letting me do my job.”
“Um,” Nakamaru says. “Kousaku?”
Jin laughs. “No, his name is Kyohei,” Jin lectures, and the bitter taste of irony almost overcomes the confusion fogging Nakamaru’s mind. “Get people’s names right when you meet them.”
Nakamaru resists the urge of smacking his deputy on the head, because Jin already lacks enough brain cells as it is and a further lose could compromise the performance of vital functions. He sets for a kick to Jin’s ankles and watches Jin jump away with a yelp, probably to save his boots; they are an obnoxious neon pink today.
“Look at him, idiot. Doesn’t he look like Kousaku?”
Jin leans forward to catch a better sight of Kyohei, who’s looking at them like they’re crazy. “He does. But Kousaku also looked like Shitake and they weren’t the same person anyway. And this guy looks too grumpy to be Kousaku.” Jin pauses for a moment, scratches his hair with a single careful finger and turns to look at Nakamaru with wide eyes. “Maybe they’re some kind of sect made of evil twin brothers! Or clones!”
Nakamaru’s brain has by now developed a defensive mechanism that filters every word Jin says to save Nakamaru from most of the stupidities that leave his deputy’s mouth, so the sheriff simply turns toward Tegoshi again.
“Who’s this man?”
“Oh, this is Kyohei-kun! We went to school together, and he’s come to visit for a couple of days.”
“He’s really pretty,” Jin blurts out, and if glares could kill, Jin would have been dead yesterday. Nakamaru makes a mental note not to mention Kyohei’s appearance, though he does have to admit Jin is, for once, completely right. Kyohei looks like Kousaku, but at the same time he doesn’t. He looks more elegant, more refined somehow, even though Nakamaru is pretty sure he’s the same general build as Kousaku. It’s something in the way he carries himself, and even though Kousaku’s constant grin is replaced by a wary grumpiness, it only gives Kyohei a different kind of charm.
“What are you looking at?”
Nakamaru only realizes he has been staring when Kyohei snaps at him, brow furrowed. He mumbles an apology as he fights off an embarrassing reddening in his cheeks, and vaguely wonders what’s with the sudden stream of newcomers that make him blush into Johnnysville. Kyohei grunts something angrily and disappears into the back of the house with a slam of a door that makes all the sequins in the room rattle. Jin whistles.
“Your friend is quite a character.”
“He doesn’t take references to his appearance very well,” Tegoshi sighs, and suddenly perks up again. “Why are you two here? Is Sheriff Nakamaru going to help with this week’s performance too? Because if so, then it’s a good thing you brought him in early, I think he’s going to need quite a bit of work...”
Nakamaru’s too horrified to even feel offended. He lets his look of complete terror speak for him, though on second thought, maybe he shouldn’t have, because Jin takes his silence as a cue for him to take over.
“We need your help for a secret mission! We need to dress up as girls because...”
“Jin! Do you have any idea what secret mission means?”
Jin waves a hand dismissively at him. “Don’t worry, we can trust Yuya! Besides, he’s the only one who can help us now.” Jin leans in towards Tegoshi and adopts his best conspiring tone. “We need to disguise ourselves as girls to keep watch over at Ohno’s cabaret.”
Tegoshi’s eyes shine with an excited glow, and Nakamaru just knows this will be one of those traumatic episodes he’ll have to erase from his mind with copious amounts of Yamashita’s finest whiskey.
He can only hope he looks more like his sister, Yukiko, when he’s wearing a dress than he does in his usual attire.
*
“Are you sure this isn’t going to affect your long term assignment?” Kame asks, after the Nakamaru and his deputy are erstwhile occupied with the dubious task of removing Nakamaru’s leg hair. “Me being here, I mean.”
“Are you going to get caught?” Tegoshi asks, raising one eyebrow in a skeptical arch.
“Absolutely not,” Kame replies, almost insulted at the question. Kame is the best. The best don’t get caught.”
“Then why should I worry?” Tegoshi says nonchalantly, settling his hands on his hips and looking at Kame challengingly. “Or are you saying that you think I’m the one who’s going to give something away?”
“Not really,” Kame says. “I just know that it would cause a lot of trouble for you to get linked up with this whole job.”
“I’ve spent a lot of time building up this role,” Tegoshi replies. “Really, no one is going to suspect the eccentric, flamboyant crossdresser, who’s lived here for years, of doing a crime.” Tegoshi shakes his hair back, and Kame admires, for a moment, the effortless movement. Tegoshi has always been so good with his hair, and Kame should really find out what kind of treatments he’s using. “Honestly, with Akanishi on the case, as much as I adore the man, I’m surprised crime isn’t running rampant.”
Tegoshi is rooting through his closet now, pulling out numerous things in a deep red that Kame hopes are for Jin and not for Nakamaru, because the cuts of them are a little too flashy for the staid and conservative sheriff. Tegoshi seems to be delighting in his work-- the smile on his face is a teensy bit maniacal.
“The sheriff seems... something approaching competent,” Kame hedges, and for some reason, he feels the irrational urge to avert his eyes. Almost like he’s... But that’s stupid. Kame doesn’t let himself get attached to people on his jobs. That’s not why he’s here. “I mean, maybe it’s just in comparison.”
“No, no, Sheriff Nakamaru is smart. He’s just got his hands full, and he’s a bit naive... If he likes you, he wants to think the best of you. And he likes... well, pretty much everyone.”
Kame wonders, briefly, if Nakamaru would like Kame, and then he pushes the thought behind other, more important, ones, for later consideration.
“I see,” Kame says, and Tegoshi grins.
“So as you can see, I’ve got nothing to worry about. Just complete your mission, and I’ll keep on with mine,” Tegoshi says, dropping an armful of clothing into Kame’s waiting hands. “Now be a good boy and take those to the room next door, would you? I’ve got to find a longer skirt for the sheriff or he’s going to look absolutely scandalous.”
*
When Nakamaru was in primary school, he’d fallen from a horse and broken his leg. He’d been forced to limp around for upwards of a month, dealing with the pain of re-knitting bone and the frustration of it taking twice as long to get anywhere as it should.
Getting his legs waxed, Nakamaru thinks, isn’t as bad as that.
But it’s close.
When Kyohei walks in, carrying a bag of make-up and sporting an expression of grim determination, Nakamaru knows he’s in trouble. “Do you do this a lot?” Nakamaru asks, and Kyohei sighs.
“Far, far too often,” is the reply. “Now close your eyes, this is going to take some time.” Kyohei smells like fried things and like coffee, and it’s a weird smell, one that Nakamaru doesn’t know how to react to. But Kyohei’s proximity is making his stomach do all these weird flips, and it’s uncomfortable, because Nakamaru has gone years without being attracted to anyone, and now it seems like any stranger that crosses his path makes him feel almost shaky with attraction. Kyohei’s no different from Shizuku and Kousaku - Nakamaru can’t really understand why he wants to lean closer and memorize that smell, or why he wants to open his eyes and study the sharp line of his nose. “Don’t lick your lips.”
“Why?” Nakamaru starts to ask, but then there’s the smooth glide of wax across the slightly chapped skin there, and Nakamaru almost forgets that he’s being turned into a lady because the feeling is so weird and foreign. The side of Kyohei’s hand touches his cheek, and leaves a tingle in its wake, and Nakamaru swallows.
“All done,” Kyohei says, and Nakamaru releases the breath he’s been holding.
“Jealous,” Jin mumbles under his breath, and Nakamaru’s eyes flutter open (they feel heavy) to look at Jin, who’s lining his own eyes in the mirror with an expert hand. Then he spins on his heel and smirks at Nakamaru. “So how do I look?”
Kyohei laughs, and it sends a shiver down Nakamaru’s spine.
Nakamaru is not entirely sure that he’ll survive anything about today.
*
Kame has never minded dresses, but Kyohei hates them. Kyohei’s one of Kame’s most intricate characters, with all his complexes and his fears. They make him interesting to play, but difficult. Kame likes him because he’s a challenge, and Kame likes challenges that test his skills. Kyohei’s useful too, because he makes a girl who is as beautiful as he looks as a man.
Ohno falls for Kyohei the moment he sees him disguised in a kimono. Kyohei just grits his teeth and clenches his fists when Ohno touches him, but he’s granted access to the cabaret that very night.
The girls of the cabaret have the run of the whole manor, so Kame doesn’t even have to hide. After night falls and the rest of the girls go to sleep, Kame can walk through the corridors without worrying. Ohno’s office is easy to find because the sheriff and his deputy are standing in front of him, bickering loudly with each other. Kame takes a moment to observe them from a distance; Akanishi makes a beautiful woman and he moves in his dress with a natural elegance that Kame almost finds himself envying. Sheriff Nakamaru on the other hand looks uncomfortable and awkward and like he only wants to crawl out of his own skin, and Kame thinks it only makes him all the more endearing. Now he only needs to get them away from the door...
*
Satoshi Ohno, Nakamaru thinks, is kind of an unfortunate example of someone with too much time and money on his hands. He’s got this dreamy expression, eyes staring off completely unfocused into the distance, and a girl sits on each of his thighs. His arms are wrapped loosely around their waists, and Nakamaru tries not to think about the round-faced man having doped-out threesomes when the parties at the cabaret are over for the night.
“Mr. Ohno, sir,” Nakamaru says, and Ohno’s eyes flicker over to Nakamaru, focusing for half a moment on him before zoning out again. “We’ll do our best to protect... whatever it is we’re protecting, sir.”
“Great,” Ohno says. “Because Jun seems to think it’s important.”
“Don’t you think it’s important, too, sir?” Jin asks, tugging absentmindedly on his skirt, lined eyes studying the cabaret owner with confusion. Jin seriously looks like something out of a bordello, and Nakamaru kind of feels like Jin’s mom; he wants to wipe off the deep red lipstick off of Jin’s lips.
“Uh, sure,” Ohno replies, and then does a double-take, eyes lingering on Jin’s legs with active interest. “Who are you, again?”
“I’m Jin,” and there’s an all too natural toss of hair over Jin’s shoulder, “the deputy sheriff.”
“I think you should guard me,” Ohno says, shoving one of the girls off his lap. She squeaks as she hits the ground.
“Hey!” the girl says, but Ohno is eying Jin with more interest than Nakamaru has ever seen him devote to anything, and he ignores her. He pats his now unoccupied thigh.
“There’s a spot for you right here,” Ohno says dreamily, and Jin gulps uncomfortably, taking a barely noticeable step back and twirling a piece of hair around his index finger in nervousness.
“No, I need him to come with me,” Nakamaru says quickly, after a brief moment of consideration about whether or not to throw Jin to the wolves, taking pity on his deputy. “To guard the office.”
“Too bad,” Ohno says, and Jin sends him a look so grateful that Nakamaru almost forgets that Jin sucks at guarding and it probably doesn’t matter if he comes or not.
“Thanks, dude,” Jin says, as they walk away. “Something about the dress makes me feel more... exposed.”
Nakamaru side-eyes him. “Well,” Nakamaru says, pressing palms down to flatten any unintended wrinkles in his shirt. “I just didn’t want to hear you whining about his hands venturing up your skirt later.”
*
“Jin,” Nakamaru suddenly hisses, and Jin’s head snaps up.
“Not sleeping!” Jin’s words are slurred, though, which Nakamaru knows means he was, in fact, sleeping.
“What? Anyway, did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“I think I heard a shout over there...”
Just as Nakamaru’s speaking the noise comes again, a cross between a cry and a sob coming from a few corridors away. Jin looks at Nakamaru with wide eyes, and considering all the make up he’s wearing, the effect would had disturbed Nakamaru if the situation wasn’t so urgent.
“That was a girl.”
“Do you think it was in the girls’ bedroom? Maybe the thief...”
Jin nods, looking professional for once. “I’ll go check.”
*
By the time Akanishi leaves the door, Kame has left the corridor, silent like a shadow. Sheriff Nakamaru is standing nervously in front of the entry to the office, tugging at the skirts of his dress and adjusting the big wig on his head, and Kame has to repress the urge to laugh long and loud. He sobs again, and watches Nakamaru tense and look around a couple of times, hesitating about leaving his post, before he finally dares to move because someone could be in danger. Kame only has to hide in the shadows of an unlit and open room and wait for the sheriff to pass him.
The office is open too, and Kame’s almost incredulous at Ohno’s carelessness when he finds that not even the drawer with the letters expressing interest is locked. It’s all too easy and he lets his guard down for a moment and pulls the drawer open, and there’s a loud noise, an alarm of some kind. Kame freezes for a second, and then curses loudly, quickly grabbing the stack of papers and pushing them in the secret pockets between the folds of his kimono. The wooden planks outside the room are creaking with rushed steps and Kame barely has time to push the drawer shut again before the shadow of what can only be the sheriff appears at the door.
“Who are you?!” Nakamaru is panting, but he has moved into the room and he’s no longer blocking the door, so maybe Kame still has a chance to escape. He lowers his head and tries to walk past the sheriff, who grabs him by the arm and twists him around. “Wait! You’re... This is a kimono. You’re not one of his girls!” When Kame looks up, Nakamaru’s eyes are wide with realization. “You’re... The thief... You’re going to have to, er, come with me. To jail.”
Kame smiles despite the situation, because the sheriff is charming in his befuddlement, eyes brown and warm and soft, and entirely too easy to get lost in. Shirota’s warnings cross his mind for a half a second, and he bites his lip, but he can’t help himself. He brings his free hand up to stroke the sheriff’s cheek with teasing fingers, and Nakamaru freezes under his touch with a gasp. The crazy beating of his heart is so loud that Kame can almost hear it when he draws close enough that he’s breathing right over Nakamaru’s ear.
“Not today, Sheriff,” he whispers, and Nakamaru trembles against him with a little sigh and lets go of his arm. Kame presses and empty lipstick tube into Nakamaru’s palm, and closes his fingers around it.
When Kame’s mouth lands on Nakamaru’s cheek for a chaste kiss he can feel the heat of a deep flush on the sheriff’s skin, but he doesn’t understand why he’s blushing too. His lips leave a smudge of lipstick before he turns around and runs toward the window, leaping out it and down to the street below.
*
Nakamaru doesn’t remember how to move until Jin comes rushing into the office a few moments later.
“I heard the alarm!” Jin says. “I couldn’t find anyone screaming... Well, that’s not entirely true, but they didn’t look sad, if you know what I mean, and they certainly weren’t the person we heard...”
“Um,” Nakamaru says, and he brings a wavering hand up to touch his cheek, still feeling shocked. “The thief. Was here.”
“What’s that gross expression on your face?” Jin asks, peering closely at Nakamaru, leaning into his face and waving his fingers in front of Nakamaru’s eyes. “You look creepy.”
“The thief took something from that drawer,” Nakamaru answers vaguely. “I saw him.”
“Really?” Jin queries. “Well? Did the descriptions match? Did they?” Jin looks excited, and Nakamaru should be excited too--a first-hand glimpse of the criminal they’ve been chasing. But Nakamaru just feels vaguely uncomfortable, and embarrassed, and a little more like he’s been flirting than like he’s been crime-solving. “What happened to your face? Why are you touching it like that?”
Jin grabs Nakamaru’s wrist and drags it down, and then he gasps. “You’ve got lipstick on your cheek!”
“Good job, Sherlock,” Nakamaru snaps, finally returning to his senses.
“Getting kissed by thieves, are we?” Jin teases, eyes narrowing on the lip-print on Nakamaru’s skin. “Looks like he’s stealing more than just keys and papers.” Jin’s face is suggestive, and Nakamaru hates it. Jin’s still got a grip on his wrist, too.
“Jin, what are the rules about touching me?”
“Never to do it unless it’s an emergency,” Jin replies, dropping Nakamaru’s arm like it’s suddenly on fire.
“And what counts as an emergency?”
“If I’m in some way desperately in need of assistance, and in that case, I’m supposed to touch as little of you as possible, in case my stupidity is contagious,” Jin recites, and Nakamaru nods, satisfied that he’s regained the higher ground. “But Sheriff.”
“What is it?” Nakamaru is looking over at the window where the kimono clad thief had escaped, and he unconsciously licks his lips. The taste of wax is bitter on his tongue.
“There’s something strange about that lipstick,” Jin says distractedly. “It’s the same kind that was on President Sakurai’s shirt-sleeve!”
“Well, that makes sense,” Nakamaru muses. “Since it was the same criminal, after all.”
“Well, yes,” Jin says, and then he makes an ‘aha!’ sound that echoes through the office. “But it’s also the same lipstick that’s on your lips!”
“What?” Nakamaru says, furrowing his brow. He opens his palm and shows Jin. Jin smirks triumphantly and roots around in the cleavage of his dress, dislodging red sequins as he searches. When his hand emerges, he’s holding a single tube of lipstick.
“This lipstick,” he says. “It’s the the same as the tube Kyohei gave me.”
“So it’s a common type of lipstick, then,” Nakamaru says, and he’s a little disappointed, because the thief seems far from ordinary, in his opinion. There’s also the fact that that was really one of their better clues, although that seems to rate lower in Nakamaru’s mind right now.
“Wrong!” Jin shouts. “It’s a rare import brand. Tegoshi told me all about it!” Jin scratches quizzically at the side of his face. “I wonder how this thief happened to get the same brand of lipstick as Tegoshi. Unless the thief is Kyohei.”
“Tegoshi?” Nakamaru shudders at the thought, but he knows what he has to do. “I guess we need to go and ask him a few more questions, then, don’t we?”
“What about Kyohei?” Jin asks. “Don’t you think he’s suspicious?” Jin waggles his eyebrows. “I’d like to question him, if you know what I’m saying.”
“Jin, stop talking, it hurts me deep inside,” Nakamaru says resignedly. “Anyway, Kyohei isn’t suspicious, just like Shizuku and Kousaku weren’t suspicious. Just because people are new, doesn’t mean they are suspicious.”
“They were suspicious,” Jin insists. “They were all... secretive and stuff.”
“Jin, what’s thirteen plus forty?”
“Fifty?” Jin says, before he swears. “No, that’s not right... Damnit, you know I’m bad at math!”
“You’re bad at everything,” Nakamaru says. “Except, clearly, looking like a lady and identifying lipstick brands. Obviously, I’m not going to trust your instincts about suspects when you can’t add two-digit numbers.”
“I’m good at lots of things!” Jin says. “You shouldn’t write me off just because the things I’m good at aren’t the things you’re good at! That doesn’t make them less important!” Jin frowns, and Nakamaru’s not sure he’s ever seen that expression on Jin’s face. It looks almost angry, but Jin doesn’t get angry, so Nakamaru’s not sure. “I know I’m not as smart as you are,” Jin adds, defensively. “But that doesn’t mean that everything I say is worthless!”
“Jin-” Nakamaru starts to apologize, but then he’s interrupted by the sound of pounding footsteps in the hall.
Ohno bursts into the room, eyes frantically scanning for intruders before relaxing when he realizes that it’s just Nakamaru and Jin. “I heard the alarm!” Ohno says. “What happened?”
“That was minutes ago,” Jin responds, crossing his arms and frowning.
“Well I was BUSY,” Ohno says, slapping the ass of the girl standing next to him lasciviously. “Are my letters safe?”
“Letters?” Nakamaru whispers to himself. “Letters.” He clears his throat. “I’m afraid not, sir. It seems the thief has managed to get away with them. He was much more clever than we gave him credit for.”
Ohno slumps against the doorframe. “Ninomiya is going to kill me,” he says despairingly, and Jin walks over to him and awkwardly pats his shoulder.
“There, there,” Jin says. “It’ll be okay.” His corset is slipping down his ribcage, and Nakamaru fights the urge to tell him to hoist it back up.
“You could make me feel better about it?” Ohno suggests, and Jin rears back quickly.
“Sorry, I can’t,” Jin says. “I’ll be too busy drinking and trying to forget you suggested it.”
“Join the club,” Nakamaru mutters, before he crosses his arms. “So the stolen items were letters?” Nakamaru asks. “I think we need some answers from you, now. These things aren’t being stolen at random. This thief is after something.”
Ohno gulps. “I don’t know,” he says, and his eyes are fixed on the floor. They look focused, Nakamaru notes. Not dreamy at all, and that lets Nakamaru know that something serious is going on.
“I’m going to get to the bottom of this,” Nakamaru warns, and Jin, looking absolutely ridiculous, nods along with him, hands on his hips and arms akimbo, long white gloves slipping down from his elbows.
Nakamaru wants to know who this thief is, and what he wants. But mostly, he just wants to see him again, for reasons that have got almost nothing to do with his job.
Later, when they’re walking away from the cabaret, Jin is suspiciously silent. “I can’t wait to change out of these clothes,” Nakamaru says. “I feel dumb.”
Jin doesn’t answer, just keeps walking silently forward. Nakamaru wonders if he’s missing something. “Do you think we should go and question your weird little sparkly friend Tegoshi tomorrow?”
“Doesn’t matter what I think, does it?” Jin says, and Nakamaru can’t figure out the inflection in his voice. “I’m too stupid to have an opinion, right?”
“Jin,” Nakamaru says, and he knows he should apologize, but Nakamaru’s not actually that great at apologizing when he’s got fifty million other things on his mind. Anyway, Jin will get over it by tomorrow. “You know I don’t mean it.”
“Yes you do,” Jin says. “You actually think I’m that stupid.” Jin sighs. “It doesn’t matter. See you tomorrow.”
Nakamaru doesn’t know why, but that night as he goes to bed, he feels really, really guilty, and between thoughts of Jin’s grim face and the ephemeral press of the thief’s lipsticked mouth to his cheek, Nakamaru finds sleep quite elusive.
Part 3