[fic] The Things We Can't Control - Chapter 38 ~Life Continues On~
Title: The Things We Can't Control
Author:
prettyorianna
Pairing: Akame. Others to be added later.
Rating: NC-17.
Genre: crime drama au
Beta by: my cat Gemma. okay, seriously, nobody
Disclaimer: I don't own KAT-TUN, any of its members, any other JE people. I write this for fun and for other fans of these fine folks. But don't steal my plots, mmkay? I put a great deal of time into them except for when I'm randomly spastically spitting words onto a page. But I value those too...
Summary: Two criminals with vastly different styles meet by chance one day. Can they work together or will they end up destroying each other?
Author's Note: What do you know? Day earlier (ish).
BANNER BY DESHISORABA!!
Warning: This gets graphic often occasionally, containing at the very least foul language, character death, nefarious crimes, rape, etc etc.
The Master Posts:
On my journal - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the akame_ Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the akame_fanfics Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the je_kamenashi Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the kattun_fanfics Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
On the jin_fics Community - The Things We Can't Control Master Post
Chapter 38 ~Life Continues On~
“Oh, surely not! I’m wounded, really,” Kame said with a mock frown as he set the plate on the table. “I thought I was special. I thought you loved me.” He found he couldn’t hold the expression, though, and what followed was a small grin.
The man he was talking to, a regular named Inoue Shuuji, responded with, “Everyone loves you, Kame-chan. Maybe I should be the one pouting.”
“Can’t have that, can we?” Kame laughed, patting Shuuji’s cheek softly. “But I did make sure Subaru cooked this just the way you like it.”
Shuuji laughed as well, calling out to Aoi with, “Best move you ever made was hiring him. I don’t know how this place ever got on without him!”
Aoi, as usual, just smiled with a small nod and said nothing.
Great, now he was blushing. Sometimes they could lay it on pretty thickly though Kame supposed that was in response to the fact he did, too. But the truth of the matter was, just as he was learning the members, learning their names and preferences and lives and troubles, they were learning him to some degree.
Truthfully, he’d become somewhat of a legend at The Club. He was Kame-chan, the great untouchable pet of Aoi and Akira. Everyone knew him. It was almost like the whole club had adopted him, watching over him, which at first thought might seem weird at a BDSM club, but in practice was actually quite natural.
He did still get some staring from some of them when they thought he wasn’t looking even though he worked for almost five months on the evening shift. But nobody was pushy and if someone new said anything, Kame didn’t even have to decline the offer. The other members nearby would jump to his aid, explaining that nobody touches him.
Kame had decided to continue learning self defense so he joined a boxing gym and had actually gotten pretty good and a whole lot stronger. Life was going so well for him but he couldn’t take chances. He needed to be able to take care of himself. And it wasn’t like he lived in good neighborhood. It was within walking distance more or less from where Kame had slept around Pearl Street. Not to mention all the criminals who stopped by to sell cards or buy identities or forged papers (it had taken Kame a long time to get used to the sound of the bell from the stairwell door, though thankfully he had his own key and could just take the elevator whenever he came home).
Actually, he didn’t have much contact with the criminals. Akira always sent him to the bedroom whenever they were conducting illegal business with others. Kame knew the twins trusted him; really, it was more to assure their customers. You’d be surprised how paranoid people breaking the law could get. Even the twins weren’t immune, with their buzzer password and stairwell alarm system to weed out people who weren’t supposed to be there.
As the months went by, Kame also noticed he was getting more assertive. He was standing up for himself. He wasn’t afraid to disagree, not with the twins and not with the club members. He found he rather preferred it to that small, scared, submissive self he used to be. Oh, not that there was anything inherently wrong with submission. It was a perfectly valid choice; Aoi was proof of that. It’s just… with Kame, it hadn’t been a choice. He’d been forced to be that way. It was all he knew. Now that he could be who he wanted, he didn’t want to be that anymore. And it really seemed like he was getting his wish.
He’d commented on it to Akira but the only thing in earned him was a knowing smile.
More time passed. Another one of the members at the club, rather petite woman named Mari, taught him how to cheat at cards. Yassan the bartender, who had moved to the evening shift at the beginning of June, taught him how to mix some of the more common drinks that members ordered. Not that Kame would drink them. In his mind the taste of the alcohol was tied tightly to hounding for Ryuichi and he thought about that as little as possible.
It used to make him nervous to go upstairs to drop off food or drink. He hadn’t really had to do it when he worked the morning shift; they usually ordered and then went upstairs carrying it with them. Not so with the evening shift. And it was pretty much a given that the people upstairs would be in various states of undress doing god only knows what. It was always embarrassing to bring drinks up there. But he got over it eventually. Or, rather, he learned how to be selectively blind. Maybe that was a bit closer to the truth.
Maybe that wasn’t the best way to handle his discomfort over the upstairs rooms, though…
…because it left him to be completely blindsided one September evening.
Komatsu-san had been a member for about three months. That was long enough to have figured out Kame wasn’t interested. Kame had no reason to be suspicious of the man nor of bringing a beer upstairs for him. Even if Kame was suspicious of the man, he had the entire club keeping an eye on him, right?
The sound of the door closing behind him made Kame jump (and nearly drop the beer as he went to set it on the table). When he turned to leave, he found his way blocked.
“Komatsu-san?” But the man didn’t move or say anything. Confused, Kame tried again, “Komatsu-san? Please, I need to get past you.”
Komatsu took a step towards him and then another one. Kame didn’t like that. He backed away with, “What are you doing?”
“Don’t tell me you don’t know. We’ve been dancing around this for months.” Another step forward.
Kame didn’t like the sound of that. But if he could get Komatsu a bit further from the door, he’d be able to push past him. He wasn’t terribly worried. It wasn’t like he was still that weak boy he used to be. “What are you talking about?” he asked as he took another step backwards in response.
Komatsu took yet another step towards Kame, which got him far enough away from the door that Kame would be able to push past and then pull it open. It even seemed like it was going to work; he got around the man and turned the knob. But Komatsu grabbed his arm and was a lot stronger than Kame was expecting him to be based on how he looked.
“Let go of me!” Kame shrieked indignantly, trying to get out of the man’s grasp. But Komatsu kept pulling Kame towards the wall. “Stop! I don’t consent! Stop! What the hell are you doing?”
“Shh… you’ll like it, I promise,” Komatsu said as he shoved Kame against the wall. Despite not having much room to maneuver, Kame tried to hit the man. Unfortunately it didn’t connect because the man grabbed his wrist right before his blow would have landed.
He was scared, but more than that, he was angry. Everyone knew not to touch him! Akira and Aoi made it quite clear and he’d been working there long enough for everyone to have figured it out anyway. It’s not like it was the man’s first night there. He knew better!
But it didn’t stop him. Komatsu pressed himself hard against Kame, hard enough for the wall to leave bruises on his back…
Kame didn’t know if anyone would hear him or not but the reality was that he was losing and needed help. “AKIRA! AOI! ANYBODY!”
Komatsu’s second hand joined his first where he had Kame’s wrist pinned against the wall and suddenly there was the feel of cold metal and oh, god, that… that was a handcuff or close enough anyway and the man got it snapped around his wrist and he just couldn’t breathe. The room disappeared and the man was gone and all Kame could see and feel and hear was the monster who hurt him. How had he even found him?! Oh, god… oh god… No, not again…
He had… he had to get free. He had… He started pulling, fighting as hard as he could to pull his wrist out of the cuff, crying and screaming for anybody to help him. He was hyperventilating and no matter how much he pulled, his wrist wouldn’t come out and then he had blood running down his arm.
Kame felt a hand near his free wrist and he couldn’t… he couldn’t let the man lock his other… no, no, nononono… but then he had his knife out and he was still screaming and trying his hardest to pull his shackled wrist free…
He didn’t stab the guy exactly but he did cut a deep line across part of the man’s arm and his side.
The man jumped away, outraged. He backhanded Kame and, grabbing the wrist again, slammed it hard against the wall a few times so that Kame dropped his knife.
Kame barely noticed either the backhand or the fact he’d been disarmed. He just couldn’t breathe! Why couldn’t he get his wrist free? He pulled and pulled and pulled! It… god, he was dizzy. Even as he jerked his wrist free from the man’s grasp and started yanking his shackled arm with his other hand, he couldn’t get it free.
But he just… he couldn’t stop… he had to… free… god…
And he was still crying for help but he barely registered it and he’d even forgotten the man in there trying rape him. All he could see and feel was that cold metal around his wrist and the face of the sadistic customer his dad sold him to.
And there were sudden voices but they didn’t matter much to him. He heard them but the meaning didn’t sink in. He had more important things to worry about! He… he had to get free. He had to. He couldn’t… couldn’t… not again… WHY COULDN’T HE GET HIS WRIST FREE!?
Someone was shouting. “I’m the one that’s been wronged here! Look what he did to me! I’m going to need stitches! He could have gutted me! He propositioned me only to do this!”
Akira’s voice, “Is that true, Kame?” but Kame couldn’t answer him. He was far too busy.
But when Akira saw him trying desperately trying to pull his wrist free from the cuff, the blood running down his arm from his wrist, and his hysterical crying, he didn’t wait for Kame to reply. Instead, while Aoi crossed the room to undo the cuff, Akira rounded on the guy that had attacked Kame and said in a very, very angry voice, “If I ever catch you anywhere near this building again, you will not survive it. Am I in any way unclear? Do you understand me?”
The man started stammering something about being innocent but Akira would have none of it. “DO YOU UNDERSTAND?” Kame had never heard Akira yell before and it seemed neither had anyone else in the crowd that had gathered around the door.
But Kame didn’t hear the man’s answer because Aoi finally got the cuff opened. Kame sank down to the ground and Aoi went with him, holding him protectively as he sobbed.
Security had by then snapped out of the shock that everyone seemed to have entered at the notion of Akira yelling and they dragged the man away, presumably down the stairs and out of the building. But Kame just couldn’t stop sobbing.
Aoi spoke softly right in his ear, “It’s okay, Kame-chan. Just cry it out for now and we’ll deal with it later. You’re safe. It wasn’t him, Kame. It wasn’t him.”
And if the group gathered had been surprised to hear Akira yelling, hearing Aoi speak (even if it was so softly) really shocked them. Murmurs of, “Aoi talked?” rippled through the crowd.
Akira straightened abruptly and said, “I heard nothing.” He left the room, closing the door behind him to give Kame and Aoi some privacy.
When Kame finally calmed down, he felt silly for freaking out so much. If he’d kept his cool, he’d have realized how unlikely it was that monster tracked him down and suddenly appeared. Oh, he’d been in a bad spot and he’d have still needed the rescue, but the guy that attacked him was just Komatsu and not some demon from his past.
Kame didn’t want to face the rest of the club so he had Aoi take him home. He took the next two days off but after that, Akira told him if he wanted to keep the job he had to start going to work like he was supposed to. But he wasn’t trying to be mean and he had a good point. Kame couldn’t just shut back down. Nothing really happened. Was it traumatic? Definitely. Was it the end of the world? Not hardly.
(Okay, there might be a little truth to the fact that it was more embarrassment over having freaked out that made him hesitant to go back to work… but he’d never admit that. Not out loud, at any rate. He suspected Akira and Aoi had figured it out, though).
When he went back to work, though, he never would have guessed at the reception he got. Nobody seemed to think he embarrassed himself. Instead, the Legend of Kame-chan expanded. Not only was he the untouchable pet of Aoi and Akira. Now he was the single person capable of making Akira yell on his behalf or able to get Aoi to talk.
At least the event hadn’t restarted his nightmares. Well, the first night, he’d had one. But he’d faced it, moved on… He recovered from the whole thing a lot faster than he’d have expected. Of course it helped that it didn’t get that far like all of the stuff in his past had. Maybe that’s why it was easier to get over it.
So life continued on.
Life always continues on, for good or for bad.
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The story continues:
Chapter 39 ~Now What~
A/N: Geez, people need to just keep their hands off of Kame. You know, he'd have been fine if the guy hadn't tried to chain him to the wall. At least the guy got kicked out and he'd have to be pretty freaking stupid to come back to that place. Though Aoi's pretty smart, figuring out that the reason Kame's freaking out so much is because he's seeing the guy from his past and not the man that's actually there.