Lira (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
catlarks) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
baseballstockings2017-12-24 11:53 pm
catlarks) wrote in baseballstockings2017-12-24 11:53 pm
Entry tags:
Gift for Jea!!
to: Jeanna (transmiyuki)
from: Lira (catlarks)
fandom: Daiya no Ace
ship: Miyuki Kazuya/Tanba Kouichirou
rating: PG-13
content tags and warnings: yakuza AU, mention of (unrequited) Chris/Tanba, implication of Chris/Ryousuke, Miyuki is trans (even if it maybe isn't obvious), catching up after years apart, discussion of child care, really nothing that would qualify as a warning these are all enticements
notes: I made you this gift that is just so laughably, stereotypically a me thing, because all I'd wanted was to write you miyutanba porn and then porn just wasn't happening. I hope that you will enjoy it even half as much as I enjoyed writing this mess of Tanba being Perpetually Done With Miyuki, Forever, because that is the best kind of Tanba. And probably, also, being infuriating is the best kind of Miyuki. Happy Christmas Jea, I love you!!
"Let me buy you a drink," Miyuki says. "For old time's sake."
Being offered alcohol, by Miyuki of all people, is the last thing Tanba wants. But what he says is, "You're already buying me lunch."
Miyuki assents to that with a slurp of his soup, sucking a mouthful of noodles up between his chopsticks. After he swallows, his tongue darts out to chase after the droplets of broth clinging to his lips, in an exaggerated gesture which has Tanba averting his eyes with embarrassment. Miyuki always has enjoyed putting on a performance.
"I wouldn't want you to think I'm stingy," Miyuki says, his point well punctuated by how he has directed Tanba's attention to his consumption of the food. "Ramen is cheap."
They are sitting at a ramen stall in the early afternoon, just long enough after anyone's lunch hour that the chef behind the counter is doing little business. He keeps himself busy all the same, head bowed, giving every impression of paying them no mind. Tanba feels at once confined and exposed, sandwiched between the stall's narrow counter and the fabric curtains at his back, like he's been hidden away even while plainly visible to anyone passing by who might choose to give him a proper look.
Miyuki makes him feel exposed, with his easy smile that never falters, the one which contrasts against the sharp look in his eyes that has always made Tanba believe he knows too much. But Miyuki is a reporter; knowing too much is in his job description. It wouldn't be a problem, if not for the puzzling fact of how Miyuki is determined to learn too much about him.
"I don't mind cheap," Tanba says. "In fact, maybe I prefer it."
"Prefer it?" Miyuki snorts, nodding his head toward the bowl before Tanba, a bowl that remains filled considerably higher than the rapidly dropping level of Miyuki's soup. "You're hardly eating it. Now if we'd gone somewhere on your dime... Would you treat me to wagyu beef, Tanba-san?"
"Don't do that," Tanba immediately says, on reflex.
"Don't do what?" Miyuki asks. "Call you by your name? I'm sure I could come up with all sorts of other things to call you, given the proper... Motivation."
"Miyuki..." Tanba says, warningly.
Miyuki only grins.
"I was only saying," he continues, circling back around to the empty subject of food and dining prospects, "that someone in your position ought to be able to eat well. And if you won't eat well, the least I can do is ensure that you drink well."
"I'm not in that position any more."
"Aren't you?" Miyuki asks. "You're back in Kabukicho."
"You weren't supposed to know that."
"Then you should have done better at hiding it! I do have my sources."
Tanba immediately thinks to which of his old associates he's managed to see in Tokyo, during the bare forty-eight hours that have passed since his plane touched down at the airport. He doesn't want to believe that any of them sold him out to Miyuki, but the danger of meeting with old yakuza friends is that there are always the young recruits underfoot, pouring them drinks, offering to light their cigarettes. And the young ones always had liked Miyuki, insufferable interloper that he was. Any one of them could have been the one to talk, given the merest of motivation.
"That is a nice face," Miyuki says, leaning in a little too close across the bench they are sitting on.
Tanba realizes he's scowling, as he fights the urge to retreat from Miyuki's invasion of his space, and only manages to scowl harder.
Miyuki laughs.
"What did you want, Miyuki?" Tanba asks.
It's all well and good if Miyuki wants to eat, and talk, and waste Tanba's time with inconsequential conversation about nothing, but Tanba has returned to Tokyo for a reason. He isn't entirely certain why he's chosen to spare some of his precious time as an offering to Miyuki. Maybe he feels like he owes him. Maybe he's afraid that if he didn't, Miyuki would continue to chase after him for the rest of his trip, tracking him down with his inscrutable ways and making a mess of Tanba's business. Maybe he just didn't think this all through in the first place.
"Can't one old friend catch up with another without wanting something?" Miyuki counters. He's walking it back before Tanba can find a dirty look to give him. "I thought that this might be interesting, that's all."
"You thought that I might have information to give."
"Don't you?" Miyuki asks. He's like a dog with a bone, unwilling and unable to give up. "You wouldn't be back in Tokyo unless something was going on."
"It's none of your business," Tanba says.
"But it is business."
They both fall silent, and Tanba makes a point of returning his attention to his food. The ramen is passable -- nothing to write home about, but not worse than he might have expected from street food. The broth is a bit greasy, and the noodles a hair chewier than he would have preferred, and Tanba is definitely getting too old to be putting just anything in his body without regard for how it'll affect him once he's digested, but damned if he was going anywhere with Miyuki upscale enough to be serving kobe beef.
The last time Tanba had been out with Miyuki, they'd gone to a bar. More than anything, Tanba was not allowing himself to repeat that mistake, and he wasn't letting Miyuki buy him a drink of cheap sake from a ramen cart, either.
"You used to tell me things," Miyuki says.
His voice is softer than when he'd spoken before, almost wistful. He's gone and rested his chin on his hand, elbow propped against the wooden countertop and with his other arm curled in an arc around his ramen bowl. He's watching Tanba, and Tanba isn't fool enough to believe that the fondness in his expression is anything other than a tool in Miyuki's repertoire of tricks.
"I used to want for you to write things," Tanba says, reasoning that he owes Miyuki this much. "It was never out of altruism. Your articles served a purpose for us, too."
"And now you don't," Miyuki says.
He's taking a different tact now, Tanba can feel it. There lies the implication of, because it's business, and this isn't business you want word of out on the street, resting heavy in the air between them. But it remains unspoken, sealed behind Miyuki's lips in service to this new, gentle approach he's trying, this act like he's some sort of jilted lover.
That's another reason Tanba has avoided drinks, avoided bars, insisted on seeing Miyuki out by the full light of day. In those sorts of shady places, Tanba makes mistakes.
The sorts of mistakes that might let Miyuki believe they were ever lovers, or could be lovers still.
"I don't want to be in Kabukicho," Tanba says, with perhaps a hair more honesty than he'd meant to give. "I want to go home."
He isn't part of this life any more, and perhaps he was never meant to be. Tanba has always strived to be the epitome of the noble gangster, the sort of captain who served his patriarch well and led the men beneath them by example. He would have done anything for Chris, had Chris asked. Which may have been the problem. Chris never asked, and now there is nothing that Tanba can do for him.
(Or maybe there is, a traitorous, too-loyal part of him whispers, because if he hadn't believed he could make a difference, he never would have returned.)
"Home," Miyuki echoes, like he's tasting the word on his tongue. There's a funny expression on his face, one that Tanba doesn't know how to categorize. "Is that where you went?"
"Don't tell me you didn't know," Tanba says. "It wouldn't be the worst lie you've ever told, but it is an obvious one."
Miyuki shrugs, silently conceding the point. "I know where you were. I was only commenting on the phrasing."
Home.
Tanba has never thought on it too deeply -- on whether he really had felt out of place in Tokyo, when he was in the life; on whether these streets were his home, once. Maybe they were, but they weren't a home of choice. Life in Kabukicho has always felt like something thrust upon Tanba, something he fell into because he was young and restless and wanting to be more than the shrinking creature he'd embodied as a teen, not yet able to fill out his own skin. It was something he'd fallen into because Chris had been there, and the Tanba of the past would have followed him anywhere.
He'd had a sense of belonging, with the family. But only since leaving, since traveling miles away and building a life for himself where he was the gentle, final authority, has he felt like he's had something that is truly his.
"Is it true?" Miyuki asks, when Tanba is silent too long. "You're raising orphans?"
Tanba shifts uncomfortably on the bench; that isn't the phrasing he would have chosen, but he isn't... Certain what words he would have preferred. He would have preferred not to talk about the orphanage with Miyuki at all, but is aware that he is the one who has opened this door.
He squares his shoulders, makes himself say, "It's true."
"Huh," Miyuki says. He takes a moment to digest that, chewing on the news as he chews on the last of his cooling ramen noodles. Miyuki's bowl is empty; Tanba's is still half full. "I think I'd like to see that."
"See what?" Tanba asks, unable to stop, not certain he wants the answer.
"You," Miyuki says. "With kids."
Somehow, the first thing Tanba feels is offended.
"Easy now," Miyuki says, laughing and holding up his hands. The look in his eyes is far too amused; Tanba is feeling considerably less so. "I wasn't saying you'd be bad at it."
Tanba relaxes, and Miyuki smiles, a slow thing that curls at the corners of his mouth. His face takes on a faraway look, the very picture of someone who is looking inward, gazing upon a landscape that exists only in their imagination.
"Honestly," Miyuki says, softly. "I was thinking it must be cute."
Tanba thinks about the children back at the orphanage, with their host of unique and strongly-defined personalities. Each of them is a three-dimensional little person unto themselves, with their own wants and cares and worries. It's good work, rewarding work, to give those kids the support they may never otherwise have known, and to nurture their budding dreams just as they are blossoming into existence.
He does not tell Miyuki about the way the kids climb all over him, hanging off his shoulders and tugging on his arms, completely immune to the intimidation inherent to his height and his sternly-composed face. He's too soft with them for them to take it seriously. They have no fear of their uncle Tanba, who walks them to school and oversees their meals, who makes sure no one is left out of their games of amateur baseball and who tucks them in at night to ensure they get the sleep they need.
Tanba never expected to be a father, least of all because his background with the yakuza precluded his entering into a decent marriage. It's strange, that he's fallen into something similar purely by accident.
"Maybe, when this is over and you've gone away again, I'll have to come for a visit," Miyuki says.
"I haven't invited you," Tanba immediately objects.
"No," Miyuki says. "But since when has a lack of invitation stopped me?"
It strikes Tanba as more than an empty threat, taking him aback with the possibility that Miyuki will not leave him be after a singular lunch during his visit to Tokyo. The entire affair was meant to be a sacrifice to buy him later peace and solitude, but nothing with Miyuki is ever as simple as Tanba plans for.
Miyuki doesn't leave him much time to ruminate on it. "Of course, for now, this is business." He pauses, another of those too-knowing smiles spreading across his face. "Chris business?"
Tanba shrugs, helplessly. There's no point in denying it. For as long as Miyuki has known him, and with as much information as Miyuki has ferreted out of him over those years, the fact that he answers to Chris is but a single inconsequential detail in the grand scheme of things. A detail he hasn't yet attended to -- even with all the little meetings with old yakuza acquaintances that have been crammed into the day Tanba has already spent in Tokyo, he hasn't yet seen Chris.
"You haven't been to the Takigawa HQ yet, have you?" Miyuki asks, knowingly.
That earns him another shrug, delivered with a tighter, stiffer roll of Tanba's shoulders. He feels backed into a corner; it isn't that he's avoiding the family headquarters -- or he doesn't think that he is -- he simply... Has been taking his time in returning to that place. Some reunions merit a little working up of one's nerves.
Miyuki is watching him, eyes sharp, arms folded against the counter of the ramen cart. Tanba spares a moment for a pang of guilt over taking up seats better used by proper dining patrons, but he isn't so lucky as to suffer an interruption from a would-be customer ducking down to place an order. He is alone with Miyuki's scrutiny.
"You could try the mahjong parlor," Miyuki says.
"I don't play," Tanba protests, uncomprehending.
"I wasn't suggesting you deal in for a hand." Miyuki laughs, and shakes his head. "I meant, you might try visiting the proprietress."
Memory descends on Tanba, as abrupt as a dousing with a bucket of cold water, and nearly as chilling. He hadn't known Ryousuke was still running the games, but with the way Miyuki says "proprietress" he cannot imagine anyone else, the sharp knifeblade-sliver of her smile flashing bright inside his mind. With Ryousuke running the parlor, there wasn't a customer in Kabukicho who would consider cheating.
A fine state of affairs, when the parlor was a yakuza front all along.
"I doubt she wants to see me," Tanba says.
It's Miyuki's turn to shrug. "She's in business of her own, it's hardly a matter of what anyone wants, when catering to customers."
Tanba suspects that when Miyuki says "business," he doesn't solely mean the gambling. While the yakuza as an organization has always been somewhat of a boy's club by definition, Ryousuke never was one to simply accept the status quo without objection. Her services to the family may be as different from Tanba's as night is to day, but she's always been just as deep in the life as he is.
And she is the sort of woman who takes a secret to the grave.
"Even so," Tanba says, shifting uncomfortably. "I'd rather not."
"You'd rather not," Miyuki says, and seems to leave it at that.
The silence leaves Tanba wanting to speak, to make his excuses, explain himself. It isn't that he's avoiding Ryousuke, exactly, with her sharp words and quick hands and fingers that have been so gentle on his face, gentle over his ribs that time when she bandaged him up, in her back office at an hour so late that even her parlor was empty. Of everything Tanba misses in Kabukicho, few though those things might be, he suspects he may miss Ryousuke the most.
But he missed her even before he left, mourning the place in his heart he'd pushed her out of, when grieving the living proved simpler than making amends. She'd smiled when she told him she was sorry, plainly enough to prove she meant it. But there was never anything Ryousuke ought to feel sorry for; Tanba is the one who is too soft inside, too tender and raw for the life he'd chosen.
Tanba is the one who doesn't want to face Chris, least of all in Ryousuke's mahjong parlor, where he will be doubly out of his depth.
"Won't go to Takigawa HQ and won't go to Kominato-san's mahjong parlor," Miyuki muses, calling Tanba's attention back to the present. "That isn't very good for business, is it, Tanba-san? Is there anywhere you are willing to go?"
Tanba doesn't know. If anything, lunch with Miyuki has left him feeling more restless than before, itchy inside his skin and borderline longing for a fight, loathe though he'd always been to use violence any more than necessary. Anything to forestall his return to HQ, and his offering of his final service to the family, a sacrifice laid bare at Chris' feet. If Miyuki weren't a civilian... But no, even if he'd been in the family, Miyuki is someone Tanba cannot say he'd like to see standing across from him in the ring. Not for a bout just to blow off steam, and not for anything else, either.
He needs to get away from the ramen cart, to go for a walk, to get out from underneath Miyuki's thumb. He needs to get a drink.
He remains rooted to his seat, Miyuki close enough beside him that the edges of their thighs press together, chin propped on his hand and a calm, appraising look worn across his face.
"I did offer," Miyuki says, and Tanba wonders for one horrifying moment whether Miyuki can read his mind.
Miyuki stands up, careful as he swings his leg over the bench before parting the curtains behind them with one hand. His face is briefly cast in shadow, the look in his eyes soft, dark, completely unreadable. Then he jerks his head, beckoning for Tanba to follow him.
"Come on," he says. "A man about to return to a life of crime ought to have something to fortify himself with. It's like I said. Someone in your position should eat well, drink well, and spend his money as he pleases -- and now that we've had lunch, you're just in time for the bars to start opening! It's serendipitous, don't you think?"
As far as Tanba is concerned, the situation is anything but. It's yet another instance of his giving Miyuki an inch only for the man to take a mile, an exchange rate which has formed the basis for their entire working relationship. That doesn't stop Tanba from rising as well, pushing aside the fabric and stepping back onto the street.
"I'm not going to a bar with you," Tanba says, because he has learned that it is best to state his objections up front.
"A club, then," Miyuki says, no more willing to be deterred than he's ever been. "I know just the place."
"Oh no," Tanba says, memory once again flooding his senses. "That club is no different from a bar."
Miyuki flashes him a grin, sharp and bright enough to do Ryousuke proud. "Oh yes," he says. "For old time's sake."
The music is loud in the club Miyuki picks, a wash of sound that swallows them up in a pulsing, thrumming beat that is felt more than it is heard. It wasn't Tanba's scene when Miyuki brought him there years before and it isn't Tanba's scene now, bass vibrating in his ears like the beating of his own heart. But the crowd is thin with it only afternoon, and Miyuki easily buys him that drink from the bar.
It is a moment straight out of the past, right down to the colorful umbrella dropped in Tanba's glass before the bartender hands it over. He takes a sip from his drink, letting the fruity liqueur wash over his tongue and warm the back of his throat. It isn't at all what he would have bought for himself, tasting like Miyuki's tongue poured into his mouth in a booth at the back of the room, with him cornered against the sticky vinyl and overheating with the press of another body held too close to his own.
But the lights are higher this time, the room clearer, and Tanba more in control of the procession of his thoughts. Maybe it was inevitable, that he revisit his past -- all of his past -- upon his return to Tokyo. Maybe he doesn't need to make the same decisions he made before.
At the very least, he isn't taking a booth.
"Not a lot has changed," Miyuki says, back to the bartop and legs dangling from the stool where he's seated himself. "Nothing, and everything. Don't you think?"
Kabukicho is much as Tanba remembers it: the people, the places, even the smell of the air on the streets. The young recruits in his old friends' offices tell the same stories, the street vendors sell the same food, and Miyuki's favorite club is still here, serving him the same sweet liqueur that isn't the whisky Tanba wants. Nothing has changed -- and everything, because he is a very different man than he was before, and through him, nothing appears the same.
Miyuki can be awfully astute, when he wants to be. Comes with the territory of being a reporter.
"He'll let you do it," Miyuki adds. "Chris, I mean. He'll let you make the grand sacrifice you came back to perform, and then he'll let you leave again, just as before."
"If you've known what I'm doing here all along, what did you need to buy me lunch for?"
"I don't." Miyuki shrugs. "But I know how to tell a story."
"I'm not going to tell you what we're doing. And it's my choice, where I go when this is all through."
His choice -- Not Chris', not Ryousuke's, and certainly not Miyuki's. He is more than a pawn in the yakuza's plans, no matter how Miyuki likes to paint the picture. Maybe he was, once, when he was young and had so much to prove. Now he's found himself a place that fits, and he'll protect that place with his own two hands.
"And if someone did ask you to stay?" Miyuki asks.
"It would still be my decision," Tanba says. "I always planned to... to go back home."
Miyuki's mouth twists, turning up at the corners into a crooked little smile. "And what if I did come for a visit? You never said I couldn't, only that I needed an invitation."
Tanba rolls his eyes, because Miyuki is like a dog with a bone, unwilling and unable to give up, even on the smallest of battles. Especially on the smallest of battles. Miyuki isn't the only stubborn one; more than anything else Tanba has mastered over the years, determination is something he's grown right into his bones.
But Miyuki is asking, when no one else has. Tanba has never done anything for Miyuki without thinking of the family first, without putting the family first. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, if Tanba does this.
"Ask me again when this is all over," is what Tanba says.
"Maybe I will," Miyuki says, and smiles. "I told you that this would be interesting."
Miyuki doesn't know the half of it, the politics, the back-room negotiations, the bits of Tanba's past he's ready to trade in as favors. He knocks back the last of his drink, for old time's sake. The Takigawa headquarters can see him in the morning.
This time, the bar behind him, drink in hand, Miyuki flashing him the white gleam of his teeth, Tanba doesn't believe he's made a mistake.
transmiyuki)from: Lira (
catlarks)fandom: Daiya no Ace
ship: Miyuki Kazuya/Tanba Kouichirou
rating: PG-13
content tags and warnings: yakuza AU, mention of (unrequited) Chris/Tanba, implication of Chris/Ryousuke, Miyuki is trans (even if it maybe isn't obvious), catching up after years apart, discussion of child care, really nothing that would qualify as a warning these are all enticements
notes: I made you this gift that is just so laughably, stereotypically a me thing, because all I'd wanted was to write you miyutanba porn and then porn just wasn't happening. I hope that you will enjoy it even half as much as I enjoyed writing this mess of Tanba being Perpetually Done With Miyuki, Forever, because that is the best kind of Tanba. And probably, also, being infuriating is the best kind of Miyuki. Happy Christmas Jea, I love you!!
"Let me buy you a drink," Miyuki says. "For old time's sake."
Being offered alcohol, by Miyuki of all people, is the last thing Tanba wants. But what he says is, "You're already buying me lunch."
Miyuki assents to that with a slurp of his soup, sucking a mouthful of noodles up between his chopsticks. After he swallows, his tongue darts out to chase after the droplets of broth clinging to his lips, in an exaggerated gesture which has Tanba averting his eyes with embarrassment. Miyuki always has enjoyed putting on a performance.
"I wouldn't want you to think I'm stingy," Miyuki says, his point well punctuated by how he has directed Tanba's attention to his consumption of the food. "Ramen is cheap."
They are sitting at a ramen stall in the early afternoon, just long enough after anyone's lunch hour that the chef behind the counter is doing little business. He keeps himself busy all the same, head bowed, giving every impression of paying them no mind. Tanba feels at once confined and exposed, sandwiched between the stall's narrow counter and the fabric curtains at his back, like he's been hidden away even while plainly visible to anyone passing by who might choose to give him a proper look.
Miyuki makes him feel exposed, with his easy smile that never falters, the one which contrasts against the sharp look in his eyes that has always made Tanba believe he knows too much. But Miyuki is a reporter; knowing too much is in his job description. It wouldn't be a problem, if not for the puzzling fact of how Miyuki is determined to learn too much about him.
"I don't mind cheap," Tanba says. "In fact, maybe I prefer it."
"Prefer it?" Miyuki snorts, nodding his head toward the bowl before Tanba, a bowl that remains filled considerably higher than the rapidly dropping level of Miyuki's soup. "You're hardly eating it. Now if we'd gone somewhere on your dime... Would you treat me to wagyu beef, Tanba-san?"
"Don't do that," Tanba immediately says, on reflex.
"Don't do what?" Miyuki asks. "Call you by your name? I'm sure I could come up with all sorts of other things to call you, given the proper... Motivation."
"Miyuki..." Tanba says, warningly.
Miyuki only grins.
"I was only saying," he continues, circling back around to the empty subject of food and dining prospects, "that someone in your position ought to be able to eat well. And if you won't eat well, the least I can do is ensure that you drink well."
"I'm not in that position any more."
"Aren't you?" Miyuki asks. "You're back in Kabukicho."
"You weren't supposed to know that."
"Then you should have done better at hiding it! I do have my sources."
Tanba immediately thinks to which of his old associates he's managed to see in Tokyo, during the bare forty-eight hours that have passed since his plane touched down at the airport. He doesn't want to believe that any of them sold him out to Miyuki, but the danger of meeting with old yakuza friends is that there are always the young recruits underfoot, pouring them drinks, offering to light their cigarettes. And the young ones always had liked Miyuki, insufferable interloper that he was. Any one of them could have been the one to talk, given the merest of motivation.
"That is a nice face," Miyuki says, leaning in a little too close across the bench they are sitting on.
Tanba realizes he's scowling, as he fights the urge to retreat from Miyuki's invasion of his space, and only manages to scowl harder.
Miyuki laughs.
"What did you want, Miyuki?" Tanba asks.
It's all well and good if Miyuki wants to eat, and talk, and waste Tanba's time with inconsequential conversation about nothing, but Tanba has returned to Tokyo for a reason. He isn't entirely certain why he's chosen to spare some of his precious time as an offering to Miyuki. Maybe he feels like he owes him. Maybe he's afraid that if he didn't, Miyuki would continue to chase after him for the rest of his trip, tracking him down with his inscrutable ways and making a mess of Tanba's business. Maybe he just didn't think this all through in the first place.
"Can't one old friend catch up with another without wanting something?" Miyuki counters. He's walking it back before Tanba can find a dirty look to give him. "I thought that this might be interesting, that's all."
"You thought that I might have information to give."
"Don't you?" Miyuki asks. He's like a dog with a bone, unwilling and unable to give up. "You wouldn't be back in Tokyo unless something was going on."
"It's none of your business," Tanba says.
"But it is business."
They both fall silent, and Tanba makes a point of returning his attention to his food. The ramen is passable -- nothing to write home about, but not worse than he might have expected from street food. The broth is a bit greasy, and the noodles a hair chewier than he would have preferred, and Tanba is definitely getting too old to be putting just anything in his body without regard for how it'll affect him once he's digested, but damned if he was going anywhere with Miyuki upscale enough to be serving kobe beef.
The last time Tanba had been out with Miyuki, they'd gone to a bar. More than anything, Tanba was not allowing himself to repeat that mistake, and he wasn't letting Miyuki buy him a drink of cheap sake from a ramen cart, either.
"You used to tell me things," Miyuki says.
His voice is softer than when he'd spoken before, almost wistful. He's gone and rested his chin on his hand, elbow propped against the wooden countertop and with his other arm curled in an arc around his ramen bowl. He's watching Tanba, and Tanba isn't fool enough to believe that the fondness in his expression is anything other than a tool in Miyuki's repertoire of tricks.
"I used to want for you to write things," Tanba says, reasoning that he owes Miyuki this much. "It was never out of altruism. Your articles served a purpose for us, too."
"And now you don't," Miyuki says.
He's taking a different tact now, Tanba can feel it. There lies the implication of, because it's business, and this isn't business you want word of out on the street, resting heavy in the air between them. But it remains unspoken, sealed behind Miyuki's lips in service to this new, gentle approach he's trying, this act like he's some sort of jilted lover.
That's another reason Tanba has avoided drinks, avoided bars, insisted on seeing Miyuki out by the full light of day. In those sorts of shady places, Tanba makes mistakes.
The sorts of mistakes that might let Miyuki believe they were ever lovers, or could be lovers still.
"I don't want to be in Kabukicho," Tanba says, with perhaps a hair more honesty than he'd meant to give. "I want to go home."
He isn't part of this life any more, and perhaps he was never meant to be. Tanba has always strived to be the epitome of the noble gangster, the sort of captain who served his patriarch well and led the men beneath them by example. He would have done anything for Chris, had Chris asked. Which may have been the problem. Chris never asked, and now there is nothing that Tanba can do for him.
(Or maybe there is, a traitorous, too-loyal part of him whispers, because if he hadn't believed he could make a difference, he never would have returned.)
"Home," Miyuki echoes, like he's tasting the word on his tongue. There's a funny expression on his face, one that Tanba doesn't know how to categorize. "Is that where you went?"
"Don't tell me you didn't know," Tanba says. "It wouldn't be the worst lie you've ever told, but it is an obvious one."
Miyuki shrugs, silently conceding the point. "I know where you were. I was only commenting on the phrasing."
Home.
Tanba has never thought on it too deeply -- on whether he really had felt out of place in Tokyo, when he was in the life; on whether these streets were his home, once. Maybe they were, but they weren't a home of choice. Life in Kabukicho has always felt like something thrust upon Tanba, something he fell into because he was young and restless and wanting to be more than the shrinking creature he'd embodied as a teen, not yet able to fill out his own skin. It was something he'd fallen into because Chris had been there, and the Tanba of the past would have followed him anywhere.
He'd had a sense of belonging, with the family. But only since leaving, since traveling miles away and building a life for himself where he was the gentle, final authority, has he felt like he's had something that is truly his.
"Is it true?" Miyuki asks, when Tanba is silent too long. "You're raising orphans?"
Tanba shifts uncomfortably on the bench; that isn't the phrasing he would have chosen, but he isn't... Certain what words he would have preferred. He would have preferred not to talk about the orphanage with Miyuki at all, but is aware that he is the one who has opened this door.
He squares his shoulders, makes himself say, "It's true."
"Huh," Miyuki says. He takes a moment to digest that, chewing on the news as he chews on the last of his cooling ramen noodles. Miyuki's bowl is empty; Tanba's is still half full. "I think I'd like to see that."
"See what?" Tanba asks, unable to stop, not certain he wants the answer.
"You," Miyuki says. "With kids."
Somehow, the first thing Tanba feels is offended.
"Easy now," Miyuki says, laughing and holding up his hands. The look in his eyes is far too amused; Tanba is feeling considerably less so. "I wasn't saying you'd be bad at it."
Tanba relaxes, and Miyuki smiles, a slow thing that curls at the corners of his mouth. His face takes on a faraway look, the very picture of someone who is looking inward, gazing upon a landscape that exists only in their imagination.
"Honestly," Miyuki says, softly. "I was thinking it must be cute."
Tanba thinks about the children back at the orphanage, with their host of unique and strongly-defined personalities. Each of them is a three-dimensional little person unto themselves, with their own wants and cares and worries. It's good work, rewarding work, to give those kids the support they may never otherwise have known, and to nurture their budding dreams just as they are blossoming into existence.
He does not tell Miyuki about the way the kids climb all over him, hanging off his shoulders and tugging on his arms, completely immune to the intimidation inherent to his height and his sternly-composed face. He's too soft with them for them to take it seriously. They have no fear of their uncle Tanba, who walks them to school and oversees their meals, who makes sure no one is left out of their games of amateur baseball and who tucks them in at night to ensure they get the sleep they need.
Tanba never expected to be a father, least of all because his background with the yakuza precluded his entering into a decent marriage. It's strange, that he's fallen into something similar purely by accident.
"Maybe, when this is over and you've gone away again, I'll have to come for a visit," Miyuki says.
"I haven't invited you," Tanba immediately objects.
"No," Miyuki says. "But since when has a lack of invitation stopped me?"
It strikes Tanba as more than an empty threat, taking him aback with the possibility that Miyuki will not leave him be after a singular lunch during his visit to Tokyo. The entire affair was meant to be a sacrifice to buy him later peace and solitude, but nothing with Miyuki is ever as simple as Tanba plans for.
Miyuki doesn't leave him much time to ruminate on it. "Of course, for now, this is business." He pauses, another of those too-knowing smiles spreading across his face. "Chris business?"
Tanba shrugs, helplessly. There's no point in denying it. For as long as Miyuki has known him, and with as much information as Miyuki has ferreted out of him over those years, the fact that he answers to Chris is but a single inconsequential detail in the grand scheme of things. A detail he hasn't yet attended to -- even with all the little meetings with old yakuza acquaintances that have been crammed into the day Tanba has already spent in Tokyo, he hasn't yet seen Chris.
"You haven't been to the Takigawa HQ yet, have you?" Miyuki asks, knowingly.
That earns him another shrug, delivered with a tighter, stiffer roll of Tanba's shoulders. He feels backed into a corner; it isn't that he's avoiding the family headquarters -- or he doesn't think that he is -- he simply... Has been taking his time in returning to that place. Some reunions merit a little working up of one's nerves.
Miyuki is watching him, eyes sharp, arms folded against the counter of the ramen cart. Tanba spares a moment for a pang of guilt over taking up seats better used by proper dining patrons, but he isn't so lucky as to suffer an interruption from a would-be customer ducking down to place an order. He is alone with Miyuki's scrutiny.
"You could try the mahjong parlor," Miyuki says.
"I don't play," Tanba protests, uncomprehending.
"I wasn't suggesting you deal in for a hand." Miyuki laughs, and shakes his head. "I meant, you might try visiting the proprietress."
Memory descends on Tanba, as abrupt as a dousing with a bucket of cold water, and nearly as chilling. He hadn't known Ryousuke was still running the games, but with the way Miyuki says "proprietress" he cannot imagine anyone else, the sharp knifeblade-sliver of her smile flashing bright inside his mind. With Ryousuke running the parlor, there wasn't a customer in Kabukicho who would consider cheating.
A fine state of affairs, when the parlor was a yakuza front all along.
"I doubt she wants to see me," Tanba says.
It's Miyuki's turn to shrug. "She's in business of her own, it's hardly a matter of what anyone wants, when catering to customers."
Tanba suspects that when Miyuki says "business," he doesn't solely mean the gambling. While the yakuza as an organization has always been somewhat of a boy's club by definition, Ryousuke never was one to simply accept the status quo without objection. Her services to the family may be as different from Tanba's as night is to day, but she's always been just as deep in the life as he is.
And she is the sort of woman who takes a secret to the grave.
"Even so," Tanba says, shifting uncomfortably. "I'd rather not."
"You'd rather not," Miyuki says, and seems to leave it at that.
The silence leaves Tanba wanting to speak, to make his excuses, explain himself. It isn't that he's avoiding Ryousuke, exactly, with her sharp words and quick hands and fingers that have been so gentle on his face, gentle over his ribs that time when she bandaged him up, in her back office at an hour so late that even her parlor was empty. Of everything Tanba misses in Kabukicho, few though those things might be, he suspects he may miss Ryousuke the most.
But he missed her even before he left, mourning the place in his heart he'd pushed her out of, when grieving the living proved simpler than making amends. She'd smiled when she told him she was sorry, plainly enough to prove she meant it. But there was never anything Ryousuke ought to feel sorry for; Tanba is the one who is too soft inside, too tender and raw for the life he'd chosen.
Tanba is the one who doesn't want to face Chris, least of all in Ryousuke's mahjong parlor, where he will be doubly out of his depth.
"Won't go to Takigawa HQ and won't go to Kominato-san's mahjong parlor," Miyuki muses, calling Tanba's attention back to the present. "That isn't very good for business, is it, Tanba-san? Is there anywhere you are willing to go?"
Tanba doesn't know. If anything, lunch with Miyuki has left him feeling more restless than before, itchy inside his skin and borderline longing for a fight, loathe though he'd always been to use violence any more than necessary. Anything to forestall his return to HQ, and his offering of his final service to the family, a sacrifice laid bare at Chris' feet. If Miyuki weren't a civilian... But no, even if he'd been in the family, Miyuki is someone Tanba cannot say he'd like to see standing across from him in the ring. Not for a bout just to blow off steam, and not for anything else, either.
He needs to get away from the ramen cart, to go for a walk, to get out from underneath Miyuki's thumb. He needs to get a drink.
He remains rooted to his seat, Miyuki close enough beside him that the edges of their thighs press together, chin propped on his hand and a calm, appraising look worn across his face.
"I did offer," Miyuki says, and Tanba wonders for one horrifying moment whether Miyuki can read his mind.
Miyuki stands up, careful as he swings his leg over the bench before parting the curtains behind them with one hand. His face is briefly cast in shadow, the look in his eyes soft, dark, completely unreadable. Then he jerks his head, beckoning for Tanba to follow him.
"Come on," he says. "A man about to return to a life of crime ought to have something to fortify himself with. It's like I said. Someone in your position should eat well, drink well, and spend his money as he pleases -- and now that we've had lunch, you're just in time for the bars to start opening! It's serendipitous, don't you think?"
As far as Tanba is concerned, the situation is anything but. It's yet another instance of his giving Miyuki an inch only for the man to take a mile, an exchange rate which has formed the basis for their entire working relationship. That doesn't stop Tanba from rising as well, pushing aside the fabric and stepping back onto the street.
"I'm not going to a bar with you," Tanba says, because he has learned that it is best to state his objections up front.
"A club, then," Miyuki says, no more willing to be deterred than he's ever been. "I know just the place."
"Oh no," Tanba says, memory once again flooding his senses. "That club is no different from a bar."
Miyuki flashes him a grin, sharp and bright enough to do Ryousuke proud. "Oh yes," he says. "For old time's sake."
The music is loud in the club Miyuki picks, a wash of sound that swallows them up in a pulsing, thrumming beat that is felt more than it is heard. It wasn't Tanba's scene when Miyuki brought him there years before and it isn't Tanba's scene now, bass vibrating in his ears like the beating of his own heart. But the crowd is thin with it only afternoon, and Miyuki easily buys him that drink from the bar.
It is a moment straight out of the past, right down to the colorful umbrella dropped in Tanba's glass before the bartender hands it over. He takes a sip from his drink, letting the fruity liqueur wash over his tongue and warm the back of his throat. It isn't at all what he would have bought for himself, tasting like Miyuki's tongue poured into his mouth in a booth at the back of the room, with him cornered against the sticky vinyl and overheating with the press of another body held too close to his own.
But the lights are higher this time, the room clearer, and Tanba more in control of the procession of his thoughts. Maybe it was inevitable, that he revisit his past -- all of his past -- upon his return to Tokyo. Maybe he doesn't need to make the same decisions he made before.
At the very least, he isn't taking a booth.
"Not a lot has changed," Miyuki says, back to the bartop and legs dangling from the stool where he's seated himself. "Nothing, and everything. Don't you think?"
Kabukicho is much as Tanba remembers it: the people, the places, even the smell of the air on the streets. The young recruits in his old friends' offices tell the same stories, the street vendors sell the same food, and Miyuki's favorite club is still here, serving him the same sweet liqueur that isn't the whisky Tanba wants. Nothing has changed -- and everything, because he is a very different man than he was before, and through him, nothing appears the same.
Miyuki can be awfully astute, when he wants to be. Comes with the territory of being a reporter.
"He'll let you do it," Miyuki adds. "Chris, I mean. He'll let you make the grand sacrifice you came back to perform, and then he'll let you leave again, just as before."
"If you've known what I'm doing here all along, what did you need to buy me lunch for?"
"I don't." Miyuki shrugs. "But I know how to tell a story."
"I'm not going to tell you what we're doing. And it's my choice, where I go when this is all through."
His choice -- Not Chris', not Ryousuke's, and certainly not Miyuki's. He is more than a pawn in the yakuza's plans, no matter how Miyuki likes to paint the picture. Maybe he was, once, when he was young and had so much to prove. Now he's found himself a place that fits, and he'll protect that place with his own two hands.
"And if someone did ask you to stay?" Miyuki asks.
"It would still be my decision," Tanba says. "I always planned to... to go back home."
Miyuki's mouth twists, turning up at the corners into a crooked little smile. "And what if I did come for a visit? You never said I couldn't, only that I needed an invitation."
Tanba rolls his eyes, because Miyuki is like a dog with a bone, unwilling and unable to give up, even on the smallest of battles. Especially on the smallest of battles. Miyuki isn't the only stubborn one; more than anything else Tanba has mastered over the years, determination is something he's grown right into his bones.
But Miyuki is asking, when no one else has. Tanba has never done anything for Miyuki without thinking of the family first, without putting the family first. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, if Tanba does this.
"Ask me again when this is all over," is what Tanba says.
"Maybe I will," Miyuki says, and smiles. "I told you that this would be interesting."
Miyuki doesn't know the half of it, the politics, the back-room negotiations, the bits of Tanba's past he's ready to trade in as favors. He knocks back the last of his drink, for old time's sake. The Takigawa headquarters can see him in the morning.
This time, the bar behind him, drink in hand, Miyuki flashing him the white gleam of his teeth, Tanba doesn't believe he's made a mistake.
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Lira I’ve never played a lick of Yakuza but isn't Tanba working at an orphanage an extremely Yakuza thing. 👀 Children climbing over uncle Tanba with the stern face is such an endearing image aaa
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i know i already squealed over text abt this but I keep rereading it and just Sighing Happily so I wanted to comment. I love everything about this, I love Uncle Tanba's Orphanage and Miyuki's Incorrigible Everything. Thank you for a wonderful gift :')