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petroniaTitle: Traffic
Series:Viewfinder
Characters/Pairings: Asami x Takaba (Feilong in previous chapters)
Rating: PG13 for this part (R overall)
Disclaimer: Feilong, Tao, Takaba, Kou, Asami's goons and Asami himself were created by and belong to Yamane Ayano. All the rest are OCs.
Spoilers: Set some months before the Naked Truth arc, immediately before the New Year's Eve one-shot.
Notes: The structure is loosely inspired by the Soderbergh film Traffic, hence the title. It's basically a straight-up attempt to fill in the seinen gangland thriller lurking in the background of the manga, where the foreground is the Asami-Takaba-Feilong triangle.
This story is now complete in 7 parts. Thanks to my betas,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sub_divided and marej. ^_^ And thanks to everyone else who enjoyed this story!
Previous Chapters: Parts I-II | Parts III-IV | Part V | Part VI
***
Asami Ryuichi, age 35
President, Sion K.K., Tokyo
He texted Kou from the car. Got tossed fm club, going home. Good luck anyhow. Movie Tues w the guys?
Twenty minutes later he was facing a polished expanse of desk in a deserted study lined with mahogany cabinets, and the door was closing noiselessly behind the blond bodyguard. After a second he heard the key turn in the lock.
He hadn't gotten a good look at the rest of the apartment on the way in: too preoccupied with memorizing the route from Shinjuku so he could look it up afterward. Just an impression of clean modernist shapes, open space, and muted lighting, like a tasteful hotel lobby. All the curtains had been drawn closed.
He circled around the desk and pulled them aside with a clatter, uncovering a floor-to-ceiling expanse of window glass. The view was as gorgeous as one might have expected.
No computer on the desk, just a standard-issue office phone and a clean ashtray. No paperwork or notepads. Not even a ballpoint pen.
Check the drawers: locked.
Check the wall cabinets: locked too. Some were obviously vertical files, while others teased with rows of unmarked binders, displayed behind shadowed glass. The only one that opened turned out to contain cut-crystal carafes and an assortment of glasses: highballs, martinis, champagne flutes. The carafes held dark gold liquid. Takaba opened one and sniffed. Whisky.
"Fuck it," he said aloud, grabbed a highball and poured himself two fingers. It was sadly wasted on him, probably, but he counted that as a bonus after the night he'd had.
The taste was smoky, familiar.
He circled the study again, sipping. There was art on the walls, of all things – two prints of expressionistic splashes that could have been avant-garde calligraphy or a house painter's accident. Takaba would have bet his next cheque in the mail that Asami hadn't been the one to pick them out. He sat down in one of the visitor's armchairs, then stood back up again immediately and went to check behind the picture frames. Neither hid a wall safe. It was too obvious.
He sat down again, in the high-backed executive's chair behind the desk this time. His feet barely touched the floor, and he took an unwarranted pleasure in throwing the height adjustment lever and letting gravity bring the seat down gently to the lowest setting. He set the whisky glass at the centre of the desk, then retrieved Misato's pill from his back pocket and lined it up carefully alongside, as if arranging a photo shoot for a bus-shelter ad. The image spun out into brief fantasy, but he'd just bought a point-and-shoot to replace the last one, and his budget couldn't take another confiscation.
Boredom was eating at the edges, though. After a moment he lifted the phone receiver, hit outside line, then speed dial, more or less at random.
It was picked up halfway through the first ring.
"Here," said an unfamiliar male voice, simply. Takaba hung up on reflex, then for a moment just breathed, staring at the now-silent machine. He realized his heart was pounding.
"Idiot," he said. He leant back in the chair, deliberately stretching out his legs, and turned his head after a moment to press his cheek against the cool leather. Something familiar there as well, faint and pleasant. Slowly, he began to relax.
***
The next thing he knew he was startling awake. There had been noise. Conversation?
Whatever it was had come from outside. Irritation rose in Takaba like a flash flood. He got up and stalked toward the study door.
"Let me out, you overgrown excuse for a—"
He'd meant to rattle the door handle, but it was unlocked and he nearly fell through. Asami looked up. He was standing in the vestibule, at the far side of the living room space, and was in the process of stripping off his gloves. His hair was in very slight disarray, strands falling loose as if he'd been out in the wind. He still had his overcoat on. Takaba stared.
"Um..."
Asami moved, dropping the gloves onto a side table. The overcoat went next, tossed carelessly over the back of a love seat. Then the suit jacket. Takaba caught a lingering tingle of cold air and cigarettes as Asami brushed past – brushed past! – and was abruptly seized with unwanted memory. When he'd been a kid there had been evenings when everything had seemed normal and quiet; not like waiting at all. Then there'd be bags by the front door, all of a sudden, objects in chrome and black die-cast metal he wasn't supposed to play with. An electricity in the air. Something back that had never been consciously missing.
His mother had never waited. Good thing too: pretty soon there had been nothing left to wait for.
Asami's steps had stopped. Takaba turned, leaning against the open study door.
"How's the situation down in Yokohama?" he asked. "Handled to your satisfaction?"
He'd heard about the shootouts, even before Douchehead had run his mouth off. But it was a punt in the dark, and he wasn't really expecting an answer. Asami gazed at the tableau on his desk for a moment longer, then reached down and picked up the whisky glass. The contents were still mostly intact.
"You wouldn't have doctored this, would you," he said, his voice very dry.
Takaba's face must have given away the extent to which the idea had never crossed his mind what the fuck, because Asami followed that with a smirk, then raised the glass and tossed the whisky back neatly.
Takaba watched the curve of his throat move, the clean line of it. He forgot to get out of the way when Asami set the glass back down. Before he knew it Asami was in front of him and leaning in, an arm to either side of Takaba's head, effectively pinning him against the door without even touching him.
"I hear you got into a fight tonight," he said.
Takaba lifted his chin. "I beat up a drug dealer. The kind of guy who doesn't give a damn about anyone else, as long as he can score tail and feel like a big man at the end of the night. That sort of thing bugs the shit out of me, I'm not sure why."
Asami laughed, softly, which was not the expected reaction. He was different tonight, Takaba realized: something coursing through his eyes and the taut closed loop of his arms that – if not unleashed – was at least out in the open rather than carefully banked and hidden. He wondered suddenly how long it had been since Asami had slept.
It didn't make him seem less dangerous. Younger, yes.
"You're quite the hero," Asami said. "A defender of justice. Did you enjoy yourself?"
"Sure," Takaba said. "How about you? Do you enjoy being the final boss at the end of the dungeon?" He paused, but Asami didn't rise to the bait. Possibly the cultural reference was beyond him. "What really happened in Yokohama?"
"Yokohama," Asami said, "is no longer an outstanding issue."
Can I attribute that, Takaba almost shot back, but didn't. Instead he said, "Meaning there's nothing left to see, go home, playtime's over?"
"That would only add incentive for you."
"I'm not going to stop looking into it anyway."
"I don't care if you look into it," said Asami. "Let me make myself clear: you and I do not operate on a level playing field. But while you entertain yourself with point-scoring, anyone offering you value for your exposés – whether it be the police, the broadsheets, or other organizations – will not do so for the satisfaction of proving themselves in the right. If I need to take that into account, I will."
That last was pitched lower, closer to Takaba's ear. The words smelled like whisky and cigarettes and expensive aftershave.
Another intrusion of memory: the night Asami had shown up, unexpected, on his apartment doorstep. There had been raindrops beading the tips of his hair, glistening in the sodium yellow of the emergency lamp. Cool wetness against Takaba's fingertips, afterward.
He must have dismissed the car at the front gate and taken the outside stairs without an umbrella. One at a time, not letting himself hurry – even to get in out of the rain.
(Someone else's line in the sand.)
He needed to think about that. But Takaba had done his thinking in the car, and he was tired of it now.
"I don't need protection," he said. "From you, maybe, but not by you."
Asami registered that, he saw, but whether as accusation or admission he didn't know. It didn't matter. His eyes were bright, like those of a great cat in the darkness, and Takaba had time to think How dare he be happy, the bastard before Asami's mouth came down on his and all that had gone unsaid was deferred.
***
Later that night – early the next morning – Asami sat at his desk, turning the little pink pill over between his fingers.
It was uncoated, the factory stamp blurred by time spent in Takaba's pocket, and left a powdery residue on his fingers that iridesced under lamplight. He'd recognized the chemical as soon as he'd touched it to his tongue, but – he thought – Takaba had not. Or he would not have brought it to Asami.
It was a message. A warning, or an opening salvo.
After a moment he picked up the phone and hit speed dial. His secretary answered immediately: it was working hours for both of them, though by policy the man was never more than two rings away, notwithstanding time of day or night.
"Put me in contact with Yoh, in Hong Kong," he said. "We have to solve this at the root."
Series:Viewfinder
Characters/Pairings: Asami x Takaba (Feilong in previous chapters)
Rating: PG13 for this part (R overall)
Disclaimer: Feilong, Tao, Takaba, Kou, Asami's goons and Asami himself were created by and belong to Yamane Ayano. All the rest are OCs.
Spoilers: Set some months before the Naked Truth arc, immediately before the New Year's Eve one-shot.
Notes: The structure is loosely inspired by the Soderbergh film Traffic, hence the title. It's basically a straight-up attempt to fill in the seinen gangland thriller lurking in the background of the manga, where the foreground is the Asami-Takaba-Feilong triangle.
This story is now complete in 7 parts. Thanks to my betas,
sub_divided and marej. ^_^ And thanks to everyone else who enjoyed this story!Previous Chapters: Parts I-II | Parts III-IV | Part V | Part VI
Asami Ryuichi, age 35
President, Sion K.K., Tokyo
He texted Kou from the car. Got tossed fm club, going home. Good luck anyhow. Movie Tues w the guys?
Twenty minutes later he was facing a polished expanse of desk in a deserted study lined with mahogany cabinets, and the door was closing noiselessly behind the blond bodyguard. After a second he heard the key turn in the lock.
He hadn't gotten a good look at the rest of the apartment on the way in: too preoccupied with memorizing the route from Shinjuku so he could look it up afterward. Just an impression of clean modernist shapes, open space, and muted lighting, like a tasteful hotel lobby. All the curtains had been drawn closed.
He circled around the desk and pulled them aside with a clatter, uncovering a floor-to-ceiling expanse of window glass. The view was as gorgeous as one might have expected.
No computer on the desk, just a standard-issue office phone and a clean ashtray. No paperwork or notepads. Not even a ballpoint pen.
Check the drawers: locked.
Check the wall cabinets: locked too. Some were obviously vertical files, while others teased with rows of unmarked binders, displayed behind shadowed glass. The only one that opened turned out to contain cut-crystal carafes and an assortment of glasses: highballs, martinis, champagne flutes. The carafes held dark gold liquid. Takaba opened one and sniffed. Whisky.
"Fuck it," he said aloud, grabbed a highball and poured himself two fingers. It was sadly wasted on him, probably, but he counted that as a bonus after the night he'd had.
The taste was smoky, familiar.
He circled the study again, sipping. There was art on the walls, of all things – two prints of expressionistic splashes that could have been avant-garde calligraphy or a house painter's accident. Takaba would have bet his next cheque in the mail that Asami hadn't been the one to pick them out. He sat down in one of the visitor's armchairs, then stood back up again immediately and went to check behind the picture frames. Neither hid a wall safe. It was too obvious.
He sat down again, in the high-backed executive's chair behind the desk this time. His feet barely touched the floor, and he took an unwarranted pleasure in throwing the height adjustment lever and letting gravity bring the seat down gently to the lowest setting. He set the whisky glass at the centre of the desk, then retrieved Misato's pill from his back pocket and lined it up carefully alongside, as if arranging a photo shoot for a bus-shelter ad. The image spun out into brief fantasy, but he'd just bought a point-and-shoot to replace the last one, and his budget couldn't take another confiscation.
Boredom was eating at the edges, though. After a moment he lifted the phone receiver, hit outside line, then speed dial, more or less at random.
It was picked up halfway through the first ring.
"Here," said an unfamiliar male voice, simply. Takaba hung up on reflex, then for a moment just breathed, staring at the now-silent machine. He realized his heart was pounding.
"Idiot," he said. He leant back in the chair, deliberately stretching out his legs, and turned his head after a moment to press his cheek against the cool leather. Something familiar there as well, faint and pleasant. Slowly, he began to relax.
The next thing he knew he was startling awake. There had been noise. Conversation?
Whatever it was had come from outside. Irritation rose in Takaba like a flash flood. He got up and stalked toward the study door.
"Let me out, you overgrown excuse for a—"
He'd meant to rattle the door handle, but it was unlocked and he nearly fell through. Asami looked up. He was standing in the vestibule, at the far side of the living room space, and was in the process of stripping off his gloves. His hair was in very slight disarray, strands falling loose as if he'd been out in the wind. He still had his overcoat on. Takaba stared.
"Um..."
Asami moved, dropping the gloves onto a side table. The overcoat went next, tossed carelessly over the back of a love seat. Then the suit jacket. Takaba caught a lingering tingle of cold air and cigarettes as Asami brushed past – brushed past! – and was abruptly seized with unwanted memory. When he'd been a kid there had been evenings when everything had seemed normal and quiet; not like waiting at all. Then there'd be bags by the front door, all of a sudden, objects in chrome and black die-cast metal he wasn't supposed to play with. An electricity in the air. Something back that had never been consciously missing.
His mother had never waited. Good thing too: pretty soon there had been nothing left to wait for.
Asami's steps had stopped. Takaba turned, leaning against the open study door.
"How's the situation down in Yokohama?" he asked. "Handled to your satisfaction?"
He'd heard about the shootouts, even before Douchehead had run his mouth off. But it was a punt in the dark, and he wasn't really expecting an answer. Asami gazed at the tableau on his desk for a moment longer, then reached down and picked up the whisky glass. The contents were still mostly intact.
"You wouldn't have doctored this, would you," he said, his voice very dry.
Takaba's face must have given away the extent to which the idea had never crossed his mind what the fuck, because Asami followed that with a smirk, then raised the glass and tossed the whisky back neatly.
Takaba watched the curve of his throat move, the clean line of it. He forgot to get out of the way when Asami set the glass back down. Before he knew it Asami was in front of him and leaning in, an arm to either side of Takaba's head, effectively pinning him against the door without even touching him.
"I hear you got into a fight tonight," he said.
Takaba lifted his chin. "I beat up a drug dealer. The kind of guy who doesn't give a damn about anyone else, as long as he can score tail and feel like a big man at the end of the night. That sort of thing bugs the shit out of me, I'm not sure why."
Asami laughed, softly, which was not the expected reaction. He was different tonight, Takaba realized: something coursing through his eyes and the taut closed loop of his arms that – if not unleashed – was at least out in the open rather than carefully banked and hidden. He wondered suddenly how long it had been since Asami had slept.
It didn't make him seem less dangerous. Younger, yes.
"You're quite the hero," Asami said. "A defender of justice. Did you enjoy yourself?"
"Sure," Takaba said. "How about you? Do you enjoy being the final boss at the end of the dungeon?" He paused, but Asami didn't rise to the bait. Possibly the cultural reference was beyond him. "What really happened in Yokohama?"
"Yokohama," Asami said, "is no longer an outstanding issue."
Can I attribute that, Takaba almost shot back, but didn't. Instead he said, "Meaning there's nothing left to see, go home, playtime's over?"
"That would only add incentive for you."
"I'm not going to stop looking into it anyway."
"I don't care if you look into it," said Asami. "Let me make myself clear: you and I do not operate on a level playing field. But while you entertain yourself with point-scoring, anyone offering you value for your exposés – whether it be the police, the broadsheets, or other organizations – will not do so for the satisfaction of proving themselves in the right. If I need to take that into account, I will."
That last was pitched lower, closer to Takaba's ear. The words smelled like whisky and cigarettes and expensive aftershave.
Another intrusion of memory: the night Asami had shown up, unexpected, on his apartment doorstep. There had been raindrops beading the tips of his hair, glistening in the sodium yellow of the emergency lamp. Cool wetness against Takaba's fingertips, afterward.
He must have dismissed the car at the front gate and taken the outside stairs without an umbrella. One at a time, not letting himself hurry – even to get in out of the rain.
(Someone else's line in the sand.)
He needed to think about that. But Takaba had done his thinking in the car, and he was tired of it now.
"I don't need protection," he said. "From you, maybe, but not by you."
Asami registered that, he saw, but whether as accusation or admission he didn't know. It didn't matter. His eyes were bright, like those of a great cat in the darkness, and Takaba had time to think How dare he be happy, the bastard before Asami's mouth came down on his and all that had gone unsaid was deferred.
Later that night – early the next morning – Asami sat at his desk, turning the little pink pill over between his fingers.
It was uncoated, the factory stamp blurred by time spent in Takaba's pocket, and left a powdery residue on his fingers that iridesced under lamplight. He'd recognized the chemical as soon as he'd touched it to his tongue, but – he thought – Takaba had not. Or he would not have brought it to Asami.
It was a message. A warning, or an opening salvo.
After a moment he picked up the phone and hit speed dial. His secretary answered immediately: it was working hours for both of them, though by policy the man was never more than two rings away, notwithstanding time of day or night.
"Put me in contact with Yoh, in Hong Kong," he said. "We have to solve this at the root."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-12-10 12:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-11 06:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-10 01:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-10 01:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-10 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-11 06:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-10 09:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-10 09:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-11 06:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-10 01:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-11 06:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-10 04:39 pm (UTC)The fade-to-black sex scene is also very classy.
But while you entertain yourself with point-scoring, anyone offering you value for your exposés – whether it be the police, the broadsheets, or other organizations – will not do so for the satisfaction of proving themselves in the right.
Really like this fix. Gets at Takaba's simultaneously lofty (not profit-driven) and petty (proving a point) motivations for exposing Asami. XD
no subject
Date: 2009-12-10 11:42 pm (UTC)Thanks again for pointing that bit out, you are much better with teh logick sometimes. XD
** Fic idea for another day: Asami Is Missing One Credit To Graduate - The Corporate Ethics Prerequisite
no subject
Date: 2009-12-10 11:11 pm (UTC)One thing I didn't quite get - did Takaba purposefully bring the pill to Asami? I'm reading it as he did, and casts their relationship in this story in a very interesting light.
I really want to watch the movie now.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-11 06:00 am (UTC)Glad you enjoyed! ^^
no subject
Date: 2009-12-11 08:12 am (UTC)Not that you'd probably tell me anyway, if you knew.
...I'm not actually certain that question makes sense.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-10 11:28 pm (UTC)Please, write more Viewfinder.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-11 06:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-11 02:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-11 06:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-11 03:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-11 06:37 am (UTC)I don't know if you've read the author's notes (http://petronia.livejournal.com/647261.html) but I keep adding shiz to it. XD;;
no subject
Date: 2009-12-12 12:20 am (UTC)Also I missed this the first time around but Takaba thinking Asami brushed past – brushed past! – and was probably one of my favorite bits. BRUSHED PAST!! He's so conscious of Asami's presence, it's amazing that you can do that in so few words.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-30 04:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-26 02:34 pm (UTC)