Chapter Text
Ichiban had liked Zhao from the start. He’d been beat to hell at the time and Zhao had a gun, sure. Maybe he’d respected him from the start and liked him later, then. Ichi had been sure that he and the others were in deep shit standing in front of the Liumang boss’s restaurant all the way at the top of their turf. He’d been expecting yet another fight. Almost no Yakuza or gang members he’d ever met could just be talked into doing the sensible thing. Let alone the right thing. As a rule, they were too proud to change a course they’d chosen unless someone redirected them with their fists. He’d tried anyway and, despite having them all at his mercy, Zhao listened. He had actually listened to Ichiban. Even the people who cared about him rarely listened to him. He could respect that, even if Zhao hadn’t resisted firing off a few shots to make his point.
During the meeting with all of the Ijin Three at Heian Tower, Ichiban had meant to hear out Chairman Hoshino. He did, but he’d been curious about Zhao, the guy who was now calm, cool and not nearly the same hardass he’d been the first time. When he stepped down from the Liumang and wound up lending a hand to their misfit crew, Ichiban realized how much they had in common. Zhao had been at the top of the Liumang his entire life. He understood what it meant to grow up in the grey zones that Bleach Japan loved preaching about. He’d grown up playing the same video games as Ichiban. He knew good food and he could make it too. Ichiban liked having him around and had started drgging him along for karaoke on the weekends and a weird, old robot chef movie at the cinema that Ichi had struggled to stay awake through but Zhao had lost his shit over.
It was when they started chatting over drinks that the switch flipped. He’d been just staring without thinking, looking at Zhao’s hand wrapped around his glass of whiskey. He had a ring on every finger, which Ichiban couldn’t imagine being comfortable. They clinked against the edge of his glass every so often as Zhao moved. The sleeve of his jacket shifted up, exposing the bend in his wrist when he slid his fingers through his hair just above the line where it was shaved. Ichiban’s eyes had zoned out and, casual as trash floating down the river, one image slid through his head like it just belonged there—those fingers, and all the rings, in his hair.
Oh.
Everyone liked to joke about Ichiban having a thick skull, but it wasn’t that thick.
He was in deep shit after all
=================
Zhao tilted his glass left, then right, listening to the ice clink against the edges before taking another sip of whiskey. It barely bit. It was only his second—no, his third actually. When was the last time he’d eaten? That morning? It was just past ten now. Kasuga had strolled in on the hour, taking a set next to him almost without asking. Zhao liked that, the compliment of being picked out without Ichiban so much as wavering to decide who he’d sit next to. Saeko and Nanba occupied the piano and Adachi held down one half of a booth and Ichiban had waved the bartender down for a drink beside him immediately.
“When we’re out drinking like this it’s hard to imagine you being the leader of a gang,” Kasuga said, grinning into his own glass.
Calling him an open book would have been an understatement. He was an audio book without a pause button, treating anyone around with a narration of what was going on inside. It took getting used to, sure, but the confidence to just say whatever he thought was…well it was a couple things. Admirable was one. Seductive was the other. Zhao protested out of habit, but he could admit to himself that he enjoyed the times when that open commentary turned to him.
Everything about Kasuga was open. With his bar stool turned towards Zhao, his legs were spread wide open, one hand planted on his right knee and the other anchored to the bar by the hand holding his drink. Zhao flicked his eyes back to his own glass. He didn’t need to be noticing Kasugas hands. Or legs. Kasuga looked up from his glass, eyebrows raised over those thick eyelashes waiting for some kind of response. Godammit he should have grown out of getting hot under the collar for jocks half his life ago. No such luck, though. The eyelashes had done it this time and he could feel his neck getting warm. Zhao cleared his throat and dragged his attention back around to the conversation.
Hard to imagine him being a leader, huh? Yeah, even after a decade it was hard for Zhao to see himself as a leader. He could put on the face when he needed it but that’s all it was, a face that he wore for however many hours of the day it was required. He shrugged. “Well sure, everyone’s the same when you strip ‘em down. Rich or poor. Leader or follower. Whatever. It’s all the same underneath, isn’t it?”
Kasuga took that in, looking back to his own glass for a moment. His eyes shifted up, then down then narrowed, thinking. He turned back with one big, signature Kasuga grin on his face, his brows pointed down while the corners of his eyes wrinkled upward on top of those huge cheekbones. It was the look that made something start simmering in Zhao’s stomach without fail.
“You know, I’m a real sight to behold when I strip down. How about it? Wanna see?”
Yes, Zhao definitely did, which wasn’t what he could say out loud, he thought, the wheels in his brain burning rubber trying to find traction. Yes, right now. Yes, but I wouldn’t want to show you up. Yeah, but I want to do more than just see. Zhao swallowed them all as too forward, too risky, too open. Dancing around a guy like Kasuga was like peeling the shell off a boiled egg—satisfyingly easy if you got the first crack right and a frustrating mess if you didn’t. That damn grim was waiting. This wasn’t the right spot wedge his thumb under, he decided.
“Hey, same here,” Zhao went with, because as deflection went, facetious bragging was easiest. “But we’d get our naked asses thrown out if we did that.”
Kasuga considered his drink and then knocked it back all at once. The ice in his glass rattled as it hit the bar top. “Gettin’ warm in here anyway,” he said. “Take a smoke around the block?”
Zhao fought against the thinking scowl that his face wanted to pull, staying firmly neutral. A line like that and then asking to have him alone? He knew what it sounded like. He still didn’t want to trust it. It was a classic misunderstanding. I’m alright, I’ll just wait here, he thought. No need to set himself up for disappointment. He’d stay here, inevitably stewing over it through another drink, either worse for the wear by the time Kasuga got back or conspicuously absent if he escaped. Dammit. It would be something or it would be nothing, but he was above sulking like a teenager over it.
“Sure,” Zhao said, killing the rest of his own drink. It would keep him just warm enough for a walk past the river.
Outside, Zhao barely had the tip of a smoke between his lips before a flame waited for him. Kasuga’s hands cupped a lighter, flicked on just a hand length from the end. Zhao hadn’t kept the surprise entirely off his face, he realized, when Kasuga’s lips quirked in an apologetic smile.
“Habit, sorry,” he admitted. Zhao inhaled the flame and a breath of smoke together, nodding a thanks while Ichiban lit his own. Case in point, Zhao thought. You’d never know, looking at the two of them next to one another, that Zhao had grown up on top and that Ichiban had spent his life on the bottom. He entertained the obvious, lewd suggestion about trading places that immediately jumped to mind. Never thought I’d be beneath a guy like you, Kasuga-kun. Or maybe, you started at the bottom but I like you better on top. Too sleazy. He threw it on the back burner and tried to turn the heat down.
“My point was, you can’t tell if someone’s a big shot just from looking at ‘em,” he said, picking up where he’d meant to go inside. They walked down the bar district’s main drag while that third drink kept Zhao’s face warm. He ended up saying a bit more than he meant to about how he’d wound up taking over the Liumang, made easier with the drinks and the walk and the overeager ear beside him.
“Then it was ‘no ambition’ this and ‘weak ass bitch’ that,” he moaned. “Sounds like a fun job, eh?”
Kasuga chuckled, a full, deep sound with the smoke in the back of his throat. “Looks like you’re finally starting to show your true colors, Zhao” he said. His voice resonated, making it seem as if Zhao could feel the vibration hitting his skin. Beneath his sleeves a chill ran down his arms. He’d gotten to that point of no return infatuation, he realized. You could get to thinking about a person enough that everything became a physical sensation. Making eye contact was a lump in the back of your throat. Their laugh would squeeze your chest. Your own name, in their voice, was a pot boiling over in your stomach.
Zhao scoffed in answer. “We can’t all wear everything on our sleeve, Kasuga-kun,” Yeah, he’d reached the dangerous edge, where denying a feeling only intensified it and the only two ways out were recklessly forward or a full retreat out of their life. Zhao wasn’t in the position to ditch Kasuga and the others, wrapped up as they all were in Ijincho’s future. He wasn’t a recklessly forward type either though.
Kasuga hmmed quietly, steering them into the park beside Survive where they’d nearly come full circle around the perimeter of the bar district. He pitched the smoldering end of his smoke on top of the trashcan by the lone bench up against the wall of the bar. “You’re right, I don’t have nearly as many layers as you,” he said while Zhao pitched his own smoke and leaned against the stone wall just outside the reach of the street light in the corner. “Glasses, rings, leather jacket, two pairs of pants,” Kasuga counted off, his eyes following his words down Zhao’s body. “Is there more?”
Zhao crossed his arms and planted one foot on the wall behind him, determined to be casual instead of preening. Play it cool you dork, he reminded himself. Despite that, his body reacted to Kasuga sizing him up. Goosebumps trickled down his arms and his lower back. He wasn’t above fishing for more attention, not when getting it went down smoother than a fourth drink would have.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” he shot back, fully expecting to get slack on the other end of that line.
“I would,” Kasuga agreed, his lips parting to show just a flash of teeth at the edge of his mouth.
Every clever remark waiting in Zhao’s head spilled on the ground like a split bag of rice, impossible to pick up and put back where they belonged. Not a single thing he’d been thinking, not one safe, evasive turn of phrase, was an answer to that. He was looking at Kasuga, or looking through him maybe, someplace between his chin and his shoulder, away from those eyes. They were two meters apart at least, plenty of space so that he couldn’t possibly hear his heart hammering at the inside of his chest but close enough that whatever face he was making was on display. Kasuga stood there underneath the light, totally unashamed, waiting.
Whatever breath Zhao had been holding came out in a single, wry sound. There was no fucking way. Well, he guessed this was a good a place as any to try and peel that egg shell off. Here’s hoping he’d get a good chunk and not fingers covered in a useless, shattered mess.
“Sorry to doubt you, Kasuga, but you don’t mean that—”
“That I’ll take you upstairs right now,” Kasuga said, interrupting and nodding to the room he’d been crashing in above the bar. “And not give a shit who’s downstairs while we have sex.”
Zhao’s head was a stove stuck on light. He click click clicked, desperately trying to fire up when the gas finally turned on. His whole face burned while Kasuga didn’t move a goddamn muscle, hands in his pockets and shoulders relaxed, just waiting with that sly look that turned Zhao’s stomach upside down.
“The fuck, Kasuga,” he spluttered, planting both feet on the ground because pretending to be unaffected was out the window now. “You can’t just say ‘have sex’ to someone’s face like that. Use a goddamn metaphor or innuendo or something.”
Ksuga laughed, at that, deep and easy, his shoulders shaking with it. “Sorry, sorry. I figured direct was better.” He tilted his head just slightly, making eye contact as if it were effortless. His eyelashes came down to a suggestive half mast but he never looked away.
Zhao’s gears spun while Kasuga waited. The silence was drawing out, he knew, but the right words were lodged in his throat. What were the right words? You offered to strip. Do it. Too forceful. Lead the way. Too blasé. He’d fully expected to approach this like a can opener, one sharp cut and then a lot of cranking. Then Kasuga opted for a crowbar instead.
Did he even want time? He’d been working himself up over Kasuga all night, for days, weeks even. This was exactly what he’d talking himself down from hoping for and it just dropped in his lap anyway.
“C’mere,” Zhao finally said, nodding to the space just in front of him. The corner of Kasuga’s lip turned up as he pulled his hands out of his pockets and closed the distance between them in two long, slow strides. Zhao could see the shape of his legs through his pants, flexing and relaxing as he stepped up toe to toe. He was nearly head and shoulders above Zhao’s eyes at that distance.
Kasuga kept his hands to himself, but the quick glances into his eyes that Zhao managed to steal said he didn’t want to. So don’t, Zhao begged silently. The bigger man managed not to seem as if he was looming, giving Zhao his space despite there being so tantalizingly little of it between them. This was what Zhao had wanted, he realized. He wanted to marinate in this moment, the one right before the action. It was a blistering hot pan of oil and the first thing that fell in would erupt with a dangerously hot sizzle.
His arms had become a dead weight, almost impossible to move, until Zhao finally managed to lift his right hand, reaching for—he hadn’t decided yet. Kasuga’s chest, peeking through his undone collar, or maybe his jaw to touch the line of hair framing his face, or the mane of a perm sticking out of his head. Before Zhao could decide, Kasuga caught his wrist, holding it firm without squeezing. The leather of Zhao’s sleeve creaked beneath the fingers wrapped entirely around his forearm. He held Zhao’s arm steady in the air between them, which was when Zhao realized this was the first time Kasuga had touched him, casually or otherwise.
“What do you want, Zhao?” Kasuga asked, saying his name in that low, heavy voice that rumbled down his spine. Zhao could feel it behind his ears, he throat, shooting down his stomach, dumping whatever blood was supposed to power his brain down between his legs instead.
“Not everything has to be said out loud, Kasuga,” he managed to force out. He’d told this truck of a man the same thing weeks ago in very different circumstances, getting much the same response.
“This does,” he insisted. What Zhao wouldn’t give to feel so much as a finger brush the inside of his wrist, but Kasuga clearly didn’t plan to move.
Zhao hadn’t ever lacked for confidence, not on most things. It was easy to say what you wanted and hold your ground when you didn’t actually give a shit how things turned out, which was most things for him. He absolutely gave a shit how this turned out, but he couldn’t open his mouth to make it happen with his jaw frozen like stone.
What did he want? Zhao choked on the words before he could even try to open his mouth. He froze beneath that goddamn confident, shameless grin. His chest heaved with two strangled breaths before he managed to get his lungs back under control. His wrist tingled, somehow both overly sensitive and numb where Kasuga held him.
What did he want? Right now he wanted soak in the possibility of this one moment, draw out the feeling of his back against the stone wall behind him and the wall of chest in front of him. He wanted Kasuga to lean into him, holding his arm, both of them, against the wall. He wanted to struggle, just a little, arching his back to push their bodies together while that ridiculous, out of style chin strap scraped against his neck.
How the hell was he supposed to say any of that?
“Maybe next time then,” Kasuga said, releasing Zhao’s wrist and stepping back without a falter in that grin. In seconds he was gone, returning to the bar and leaving a space in front of Zhao that seemed bigger and emptier than the man who’d been standing in it.
Zhao sat on that park bench for half an hour, pretending for no one’s sake but his own that he was scrolling through his phone. He was staring through it, in reality, trying to focus on not loosing the feeling of Kasuga’s fingers wrapped around his wrist.