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sententiaTitle: End Of The World, Chapter 9
Author(s): Sententia
Artist(s): dragon_gypsy
Fandom(s): Switch
Type: (Gen, Het, Femmeslash or Slash) Gen
Rating: PG
Word Count: 34,000.
Characters/Pairings: Takei and Shiba.
Warnings/Spoilers: For the entire series and the official '5 years later' doujinshi done by Naked Ape.
Summary: It was the end of the world as Takei knew it, and he was feeling ... wait, how did the rest of the song go again? Takei returns to work after Shingo's betrayal, only to be hit be a far greater one. Both Shiba and Takei struggle with the consequences.
Author’s Notes: This is the longest thing I've written, and it really shows. When I planned it out it was only supposed to be 10,000 words (which is still huge for me), but it blossomed into something much longer. It's been a great growing process, and if I were to redo the story again with everything I'd learnt, it would probably be a completely different fic.
Chapter 9: Life goes on and better things happen. These two things are not necessarily related.
It was always amazing how quickly time flew in retrospect. When the past year and a half had presented itself as the actual, here and now present, Takei felt as though it had crept slowly around him, like a stream lazily snaking its way around a rock. Now? Takei had a sneaking suspicion that it could be summed up in a thousand words and stuck under a couple of meaningless subtitles.
He was maybe just a little nervous, but that was ok. Takei looked like a beacon of calm and serenity in comparison to Shiba, who was a mess of gloopy hair gel and wayward adrenalin.
“Do you think this shirt is appropriate?” Shiba twisted and turned in front of his mirror with a critical eye.
Takei bit back a grin and shot his friend a stern, disapproving look. “I thought we had this discussion last night,” Takei admonished. “Nothing shiny for your first day back at narcotics. Nothing tacky for your first day back at narcotics. And, most of all-“ Takei broke off encouragingly.
“Nothing with catchy phrases that might be misinterpreted as eye-roll worthy, racist, sexist, abusive, tacky, or just plain stupid,” Shiba completed obediently, however the pout remained. “Come on, though. I look hot in this shirt.”
“And that’s why you are allowed to wear it from tomorrow onwards,” Takei said, giving the shirt one more glance up and down. It was a typical Shiba shirt, loud and flashy and suiting him to a T, but just for today Shiba didn’t want to be typical. He wanted to be professional, alert, hungry. That Shiba was always all these things was something that time often forgot and loud shirts clouded.
Takei threw Shiba the shirt they had decided on last night and Shiba gave up with a groan, exchanging one shirt for the other in a flurry of arms, flesh, and filthy curses. Shiba stopped briefly with the shirt stuck halfway over his head when a loud car horn sounded from outside.
“I think that’s Shuuhei,” Takei said, admiring how is partner could get across his agitation so clearly with just one toot. “We have to get to work today as well, you know,” he reminded.
“It could be anyone,” Shiba argued, working now on his buttons. “Just because we’re running a little late-“
The burst of rapid toots that followed drowned out the rest of Shiba’s response.
“Yep, definitely sounds like Shuuhei.” A smile quirked at the corner of Takei’s mouth, and he leaned in conspiringly. “I don’t think my partner likes you,” Takei said, his smile widening as the horn tooted once more.
“What?!” Shiba protested, eyes wide in mock hurt. “Everyone loves me!”
Takei simply raised his eyebrows when the horn tooted one last time, looooong and loud.
“Your eyebrows are so obnoxious, you know?”
“I shall have a talk to them about that later,” Takei conceded, before shoving Shiba out the door. “Now, work. Remember? That thing that starts at a particular time? I’ve heard that they don’t like it if you are late, they do things like dock your pay.” Takei smirked, slinging his arm up around Shiba’s shoulders. “And you know what that means, don’t you?”
“Less beer money,” Shiba mourned, head dipped low and shoulders drooping. Right now, Shiba was the saddest panda who had ever panda’d.
“Less beer money,” Takei echoed, eyes narrowing seriously. “Need I remind you how much you owe me for alcohol alone?” Poor people made poor shouters.
They bound down the stairs two at a time, not because they were running late but because Shiba was operating on so much adrenaline that common sense had taken a hike and left behind a tangled knot of nerves.
“I think I owe you for more than that,” Shiba said when they bounced into their foyer. Takei growled low in his throat as Shiba reached up and ruffled his hair.
“Your shout. Tonight,” Takei reminded with a warm smile when he managed to detangle himself. “You better not forget your wallet.”
Shiba forgot his wallet. Takei made him stand outside the bar, singing uselessly until he gathered enough pity-change to buy the first round.
Shiba somehow slipped back into work like he hadn’t been gone for over a year, or at least that was the story he told Takei. It was a nice story with a happy ending and so Takei was more than willing to buy into it, especially as Shiba clearly loved being back. There was a different energy when they met up, a lightness that had returned to Shiba’s step. Besides, Takei was nervous enough for them both, laughing a little too loud at work and ending up on the receiving end of a couple too many glances from Shuuhei. Maybe Takei was wearing the gravity of the situation on Shiba’s behalf, which was cool. It was something that Shiba had done often enough in the past for him.
It would have been nice if someone had warned Takei that there would be side effects, ones that showed up at the most inappropriate of times. When Shiba talked about his new partner (Touma Wai, aged 30, clearly a hard-ass), Takei felt a pang of jealousy, which was stupid and pathetic because Takei was still way prettier. Shiba had had plenty of other partners before, so there was so reason for Takei to be so useless. He trusted Shiba, of course he did. He’d always trusted Shiba.
Ha. Yeah.
He was kind of stupid, in a way. Lots of ways, maybe. Ok. Totally stupid in a lot of ways, only a handful of which had anything to do with Shiba (the rest tended to come out when he was with Shiba, but that was because Shiba was the inspiration rather than the cause). So yeah, stupid in a lot of ways, but it was the kind of stupid that was now edged with suspicion. So he trusted Shiba here in the warmth of Shiba’s apartment, with his personality shouting from the loud furniture and waffling through the air on the power of his cologne, even though Shiba had stepped out to get pizza a good five minutes ago. It was whether Takei trusted himself which gnawed at him, tearing chunks from his usual self confidence and leaving behind jagged bite marks in his sanity.
His sanity was battered enough as it was. He wasn’t prepared to sacrifice any more of it right now; otherwise he was going to have nothing left to offer when he really needed to trade it away.
But this ...
Takei felt sick, his anxiety slowly morphing into a rich, fat panic. Something was constricting around his heart, squeezing it so hard that he could feel the blood as it pulsed erratically up through the veins in his chest, in his arms, tingling down his legs. A tick was forming in his thigh, and it was driving Takei nuts.
There were a couple of barely touched beers on Shiba’s shiny black coffee table. A stack of old records sat beside them, because music played any other way killed baby seals. And there, beside the beers and the records, the coasters placed optimistically on the glass but studiously ignored, sat Shiba’s work laptop. As Takei leaned forward and reached for it he caught his distorted reflection in the table surface. Twisted and grotesque, his face was charcoaled and melting, his skin sliding down in globs of black flesh. Amber eyes rolled in opposite directions, and his snarl was struck through by large, raging teeth.
Takei shrugged. It seemed about right.
He flipped open the lid of Shiba’s laptop, swallowing down the bile that rose up through his throat.
“Deep breaths, Takei,” he hissed beneath his breath. “Remember breathing? That thing you’ve managed to do well enough to get by these past 24 years? Time to do a little bit of that.”
It was easy enough to hack into Shiba’s laptop. Shiba had always used long, convoluted passwords (something got lost between the call for ‘complicated passwords’ and Shiba’s attempt at the longest novel written without any spaces). It was a novice’s mistake to assume that length equalled true complexity: it was always easier to win a game of hangman with an 8 letter word than one that had only three letters. Longer passwords revealed patterns and similarities much more easily, while shorter ones provided endless possibili-
Cat, Bat, Mat, Hat, Fat, Pat, Bet, Met, Pet, Let, Wet, Net, Set...
- and, gotcha.
Shiba had only been gone 10 minutes. It felt like a lifetime. Not Takei’s lifetime, which roared around way too fast and sometimes broke the law in little-white-lie ways that only counted if you used your fingers AND toes. This lifetime belonged to a glacier, steeped in ice and obnoxious in its management of time.
The files were stashed away in a hidden, encrypted folder, but these were even easier to access (maybe he had been hanging around Ibu for too long, it was a scary thought). Knowledge of commonalities and psychology, what else did a half decent hacker need (ok, Ibu would totally kill him if he ever said that out loud)?
(He wasn’t really thinking about Ibu)
Takei’s fingers flew across the keyboard, skimming over the titles of the files with a cold, professional gaze. It was just another routine check. Never mind that his hands were trembling again and he couldn’t get them to stop. He hit the keys harder, more hazardously, trying to beat his fingers into forgetting their stupid issues.
Then his fingers just ... they stopped. No more rapid movement. No more nervy, embarrassing tremors. The glare of the screen smeared the files into one, ungodly mess.
One more click.
One more click, and then what?
He almost wished his fingers would start trembling again, because at least then they would be doing something. Anything had to be preferable to this ... this stupid fucking state of permanent suspension that never seemed to end-
Screw that.
Takei slammed the lid shut. Funny, how the breath that got stuck in his throat sounded almost like half a sob. Really, really funny. He wasn’t sure if the not-sob was one of relief or fear.
He felt weird. Odd. Not himself, and why not? He’d just put a stop to the person he’d been for months now, and it left him disorientated and unbalanced. Takei rose stiltedly to his feet, letting the laptop slide down onto the plush rug and just sort of ... he didn’t know what he wanted, but Shiba’s lounge was suddenly way too cluttered with Shiba. The couch that held his scent, the coffee table covered with his music tastes, the floor spilt across with Shiba’s favourite brand of beer (oops). The bedroom would be even worse, and all that passed as a kitchen in Shiba’s tiny flat was an optimistic unit jammed near the front door.
He needed space.
Shiba found him twenty minutes later, in the one place in the apartment that was easiest to de-Shibafy.
“How long have you been in here?” Shiba asked from the bathroom doorway. He shot a dry look back over his shoulders. “And is there a reason why my toiletries are in my kitchen sink?”
“Long enough.” Takei paused as he processed the second half of Shiba’s question. “And, no.”
“What are you doing?”
“Thinking,” Takei said calmly.
Shiba nodded. “Ah,” he said, because it made sense. “In my bathtub.”
Takei thought about that for a moment before shrugging. It was more of an up-and-down sort of shrug, because the tub wasn’t particularly wide. “It’s more comfortable than your toilet seat.”
Shiba’s gaze moved reflectively from the tiny, squished-in-the-corner toilet to the bath.
“That is true,” Shiba agreed thoughtfully. “In fact, many a time I have wondered if toilets would benefit from a redesign that was more reflective of the features of a bath.” Takei stared at him blankly. Clearly, his best friend was insane. “Don’t diss the idea until you’ve had time to think it over,” Shiba accused.
“A bath shaped toilet?” Takei asked dubiously.
“Maybe a little out there,” Shiba admitted, before eying up the bathtub once more. “Shove your legs up,” Shiba commanded, dropping the pizza box and the beer onto the toilet seat, where it was close enough to Takei’s head that the smell slowly started to unravel some of Takei’s hunger. It was-
What the hell?!
Takei swore as Shiba dropped himself down into the other end of the bath, his legs getting caught up with Takei’s. Takei grabbed onto the rim of the bathtub and dragged himself back up from where he had been whooshed so ungainfully downwards, kicking Shiba rightfully in the shins. It was a good kick, but it received none of the kudos it deserved as Shiba simply reached over him and grabbed a slab of pizza.
“You’re right,” Shiba mumbled happily around the pizza. “The bath is way more comfortable. I don’t know why I never thought about doing this before.”
“You, sir, are a moron.” Ha. This time his kick got a response, and Shiba scrunched his face up in pain. It bought Takei another few precious centimetres as well, and Takei was all about small victories right now.
“So,” Shiba said, making eyes at Takei until he gave in and chucked a beer at him. Not that Shiba deserved it, oh no. But no-one should be deprived beer. Takei made sure to give it just a bit of a shake before he let it go, because the commandments didn’t say anything about GOOD beer. “Are we going to talk about why we’re in the bathtub?”
“Nope,” Takei replied easily, reaching for his own bottle. Who would have thought? Beer did taste better when drunken in a bath with no water in it, fully clothed. “I don’t remember inviting you to join me, so you can leave at any time ...”
Shiba looked affronted, his eyebrows shooting up.
“It is my bathtub, you know. I’m allowed to enter and exit it whenever I like.” Shiba grimaced, wiggling his bottom from side to side as he tried to readjust. Takei yelped as his totally disregard for anyone else in the bath threatened to send Takei sliding down under him. ”You couldn’t maybe have put a towel down first? The bottom is still a bit wet.”
“Only at that end,” Takei supplied helpfully, and his smile finally touched his eyes. He could feel the ice dropping off of him in big, hunking sheets, and the numbness was starting to give way to that uneasy, pins-and-needles ouch-ouch-ouch-ooh reality that had a habit of following.
“Figures,” Shiba said. “You know, my new partner would totally disapprove of this kind of thing.”
And Takei was interested, really, but it was pretty damn difficult to hear Shiba talk about his partner when that partner happened to be someone that wasn’t him. It was a gut reaction, and Takei knew intellectually that it had been over a year and that he should get over it, already. Still, something petty rippled through him, and he had to take a big old bite out of his pizza to choke it down.
“A jacuzzi? Now that he’d probably be happier in, especially if there was a wine cooler. He tends to prefer some of the finer things in life.”
Ah, a classy partner. Takei could totally do that. He’d just need a top hat and cane. And maybe a moustache. Moustaches seemed like something classy people had.
Shiba grinned a little, his features softening as he nudged Takei sheepishly with his foot. “He’s not you, though.”
It helped, hearing his own thoughts expressed out loud in Shiba’s deep, gravely voice, a confession for the ages. Takei felt his heart skip a beat, and it was really only at that moment that he realised just how much he needed Shiba to find this transition just as difficult as Takei had been. In some ways, Takei was not a good friend. Shiba hesitated then, which interesting. Takei dipped his head to the side and waited, more than a little curious.
“It feels like I’m cheating on you,” Shiba finally confided, having the good grace to at least look like the embarrassment was killing him a bit inside.
Now THAT was something Takei could relate to.
Takei snorted, relaxing back with one arm draped over the rim of the tub. “Tell me about it. I’m not even sure if I’m allowed to like them. It’s not that they’re not nice-” He drifted off, because really. There wasn’t any way to finish that without sounding like a dork.
“Yeah,” Shiba agreed, taking a swig of his beer. “Exactly.”
“Exactly,” Takei agreed with a grin.
“Are you just the tiniest bit jealous?” Shiba asked hopefully.
“Not at all,” Takei lied through his teeth, and Shiba – the bastard – smirked knowingly, taking another sip of his beer. “What’s his hair like?” Takei asked suspiciously, his eyes narrowing.
“Oh, greasy as hell,” Shiba answered automatically. “You could never run your fingers through it, they’d slide right off.” Shiba pulled a particularly disgusted face while wiggling his fingers, and Takei nodded in approval.
“Where as Shuuhei is nice enough, really. But? Fat fingers. And rings. Cool rings,” Takei conceded, and ha! Shiba didn’t like that, a scowl uglying up his face. “Seriously, though. They’d get caught in someone’s hair if he even tried to pat them on the head.” Takei shuddered. “Can you imagine having to detangle yourself from your partner’s jewellery?”
“There really is an art to it,” Shiba said sagely. “It’s not something you can just decide on over night. It requires time, commitment.” Shiba rolled his shoulders, getting into a more comfortable position. He shot Takei a grin. “You know, we really should meet up like this more often.”
“I only have a shower cubicle,” Takei reminded him. “It would be a bit of a crush.”
Shiba smirked, before leaning forward with a dangerous glint in his eye.
“Oh, hey! Want to see something cool?” Takei was used to Shiba changing topics with the same casual disregard as a speeding driver changed lanes. “I had it installed with my first pay check, and it is the most awesome thing that ever awesome’d.”
“Convince me,” Takei said, doubtfully. Shiba’s idea of cool was often awesome, sometimes dangerous, likely totally ridiculous. Shiba grinned, and then with exaggerated slowness, clapped his hands.
The lights went off.
“Oh, god.” Takei moaned, dropping his head backwards with a thump. “You think this new little feature is going to get you laid, don’t you?”
“Oh, come on!” Shiba protested earnestly, totally not getting that he had stolen his grand scheme from the 90’s. “Even you want me a little bit right now, right?”
Takei cracked up, bending over at the waist and wrapping his arms around his waist. God, it hurt, but it was the right kind of hurt-
“Takei, you bastard! It’s not that funny. Takei!”
***
Soma Shuuhei, partner number 7. Aged 28, owner of the curliest, blondest hair that Takei had ever seen. Not that he was jealous (he was bitterly jealous, where the hell did he get such shiny hair dye?!). Thought sushi should only ever be eaten off attractive women’s stomachs and had little time for video games that marketed themselves as something they weren’t. He never pretended to be one of those kinds of experts, but that was cool because he didn’t expect Takei to be anything in particular, either.
He made Takei smile. And Takei, well Takei was trying.
It wasn’t that Takei didn’t like Shuuhei (because he was all sorts of cool), and it wasn’t that Shuuhei didn’t know what he was doing. It was just that sometimes, when they were in a middle of a stakeout and there was nothing to do but ramble mindlessly for hours, Takei didn’t even think of Shiba at all.
It was maybe the healthiest Takei had been in a while.
And it terrified him.
Author(s): Sententia
Artist(s): dragon_gypsy
Fandom(s): Switch
Type: (Gen, Het, Femmeslash or Slash) Gen
Rating: PG
Word Count: 34,000.
Characters/Pairings: Takei and Shiba.
Warnings/Spoilers: For the entire series and the official '5 years later' doujinshi done by Naked Ape.
Summary: It was the end of the world as Takei knew it, and he was feeling ... wait, how did the rest of the song go again? Takei returns to work after Shingo's betrayal, only to be hit be a far greater one. Both Shiba and Takei struggle with the consequences.
Author’s Notes: This is the longest thing I've written, and it really shows. When I planned it out it was only supposed to be 10,000 words (which is still huge for me), but it blossomed into something much longer. It's been a great growing process, and if I were to redo the story again with everything I'd learnt, it would probably be a completely different fic.
It was always amazing how quickly time flew in retrospect. When the past year and a half had presented itself as the actual, here and now present, Takei felt as though it had crept slowly around him, like a stream lazily snaking its way around a rock. Now? Takei had a sneaking suspicion that it could be summed up in a thousand words and stuck under a couple of meaningless subtitles.
He was maybe just a little nervous, but that was ok. Takei looked like a beacon of calm and serenity in comparison to Shiba, who was a mess of gloopy hair gel and wayward adrenalin.
“Do you think this shirt is appropriate?” Shiba twisted and turned in front of his mirror with a critical eye.
Takei bit back a grin and shot his friend a stern, disapproving look. “I thought we had this discussion last night,” Takei admonished. “Nothing shiny for your first day back at narcotics. Nothing tacky for your first day back at narcotics. And, most of all-“ Takei broke off encouragingly.
“Nothing with catchy phrases that might be misinterpreted as eye-roll worthy, racist, sexist, abusive, tacky, or just plain stupid,” Shiba completed obediently, however the pout remained. “Come on, though. I look hot in this shirt.”
“And that’s why you are allowed to wear it from tomorrow onwards,” Takei said, giving the shirt one more glance up and down. It was a typical Shiba shirt, loud and flashy and suiting him to a T, but just for today Shiba didn’t want to be typical. He wanted to be professional, alert, hungry. That Shiba was always all these things was something that time often forgot and loud shirts clouded.
Takei threw Shiba the shirt they had decided on last night and Shiba gave up with a groan, exchanging one shirt for the other in a flurry of arms, flesh, and filthy curses. Shiba stopped briefly with the shirt stuck halfway over his head when a loud car horn sounded from outside.
“I think that’s Shuuhei,” Takei said, admiring how is partner could get across his agitation so clearly with just one toot. “We have to get to work today as well, you know,” he reminded.
“It could be anyone,” Shiba argued, working now on his buttons. “Just because we’re running a little late-“
The burst of rapid toots that followed drowned out the rest of Shiba’s response.
“Yep, definitely sounds like Shuuhei.” A smile quirked at the corner of Takei’s mouth, and he leaned in conspiringly. “I don’t think my partner likes you,” Takei said, his smile widening as the horn tooted once more.
“What?!” Shiba protested, eyes wide in mock hurt. “Everyone loves me!”
Takei simply raised his eyebrows when the horn tooted one last time, looooong and loud.
“Your eyebrows are so obnoxious, you know?”
“I shall have a talk to them about that later,” Takei conceded, before shoving Shiba out the door. “Now, work. Remember? That thing that starts at a particular time? I’ve heard that they don’t like it if you are late, they do things like dock your pay.” Takei smirked, slinging his arm up around Shiba’s shoulders. “And you know what that means, don’t you?”
“Less beer money,” Shiba mourned, head dipped low and shoulders drooping. Right now, Shiba was the saddest panda who had ever panda’d.
“Less beer money,” Takei echoed, eyes narrowing seriously. “Need I remind you how much you owe me for alcohol alone?” Poor people made poor shouters.
They bound down the stairs two at a time, not because they were running late but because Shiba was operating on so much adrenaline that common sense had taken a hike and left behind a tangled knot of nerves.
“I think I owe you for more than that,” Shiba said when they bounced into their foyer. Takei growled low in his throat as Shiba reached up and ruffled his hair.
“Your shout. Tonight,” Takei reminded with a warm smile when he managed to detangle himself. “You better not forget your wallet.”
Shiba forgot his wallet. Takei made him stand outside the bar, singing uselessly until he gathered enough pity-change to buy the first round.
Shiba somehow slipped back into work like he hadn’t been gone for over a year, or at least that was the story he told Takei. It was a nice story with a happy ending and so Takei was more than willing to buy into it, especially as Shiba clearly loved being back. There was a different energy when they met up, a lightness that had returned to Shiba’s step. Besides, Takei was nervous enough for them both, laughing a little too loud at work and ending up on the receiving end of a couple too many glances from Shuuhei. Maybe Takei was wearing the gravity of the situation on Shiba’s behalf, which was cool. It was something that Shiba had done often enough in the past for him.
It would have been nice if someone had warned Takei that there would be side effects, ones that showed up at the most inappropriate of times. When Shiba talked about his new partner (Touma Wai, aged 30, clearly a hard-ass), Takei felt a pang of jealousy, which was stupid and pathetic because Takei was still way prettier. Shiba had had plenty of other partners before, so there was so reason for Takei to be so useless. He trusted Shiba, of course he did. He’d always trusted Shiba.
Ha. Yeah.
He was kind of stupid, in a way. Lots of ways, maybe. Ok. Totally stupid in a lot of ways, only a handful of which had anything to do with Shiba (the rest tended to come out when he was with Shiba, but that was because Shiba was the inspiration rather than the cause). So yeah, stupid in a lot of ways, but it was the kind of stupid that was now edged with suspicion. So he trusted Shiba here in the warmth of Shiba’s apartment, with his personality shouting from the loud furniture and waffling through the air on the power of his cologne, even though Shiba had stepped out to get pizza a good five minutes ago. It was whether Takei trusted himself which gnawed at him, tearing chunks from his usual self confidence and leaving behind jagged bite marks in his sanity.
His sanity was battered enough as it was. He wasn’t prepared to sacrifice any more of it right now; otherwise he was going to have nothing left to offer when he really needed to trade it away.
But this ...
Takei felt sick, his anxiety slowly morphing into a rich, fat panic. Something was constricting around his heart, squeezing it so hard that he could feel the blood as it pulsed erratically up through the veins in his chest, in his arms, tingling down his legs. A tick was forming in his thigh, and it was driving Takei nuts.
There were a couple of barely touched beers on Shiba’s shiny black coffee table. A stack of old records sat beside them, because music played any other way killed baby seals. And there, beside the beers and the records, the coasters placed optimistically on the glass but studiously ignored, sat Shiba’s work laptop. As Takei leaned forward and reached for it he caught his distorted reflection in the table surface. Twisted and grotesque, his face was charcoaled and melting, his skin sliding down in globs of black flesh. Amber eyes rolled in opposite directions, and his snarl was struck through by large, raging teeth.
Takei shrugged. It seemed about right.
He flipped open the lid of Shiba’s laptop, swallowing down the bile that rose up through his throat.
“Deep breaths, Takei,” he hissed beneath his breath. “Remember breathing? That thing you’ve managed to do well enough to get by these past 24 years? Time to do a little bit of that.”
It was easy enough to hack into Shiba’s laptop. Shiba had always used long, convoluted passwords (something got lost between the call for ‘complicated passwords’ and Shiba’s attempt at the longest novel written without any spaces). It was a novice’s mistake to assume that length equalled true complexity: it was always easier to win a game of hangman with an 8 letter word than one that had only three letters. Longer passwords revealed patterns and similarities much more easily, while shorter ones provided endless possibili-
Cat, Bat, Mat, Hat, Fat, Pat, Bet, Met, Pet, Let, Wet, Net, Set...
- and, gotcha.
Shiba had only been gone 10 minutes. It felt like a lifetime. Not Takei’s lifetime, which roared around way too fast and sometimes broke the law in little-white-lie ways that only counted if you used your fingers AND toes. This lifetime belonged to a glacier, steeped in ice and obnoxious in its management of time.
The files were stashed away in a hidden, encrypted folder, but these were even easier to access (maybe he had been hanging around Ibu for too long, it was a scary thought). Knowledge of commonalities and psychology, what else did a half decent hacker need (ok, Ibu would totally kill him if he ever said that out loud)?
(He wasn’t really thinking about Ibu)
Takei’s fingers flew across the keyboard, skimming over the titles of the files with a cold, professional gaze. It was just another routine check. Never mind that his hands were trembling again and he couldn’t get them to stop. He hit the keys harder, more hazardously, trying to beat his fingers into forgetting their stupid issues.
Then his fingers just ... they stopped. No more rapid movement. No more nervy, embarrassing tremors. The glare of the screen smeared the files into one, ungodly mess.
One more click.
One more click, and then what?
He almost wished his fingers would start trembling again, because at least then they would be doing something. Anything had to be preferable to this ... this stupid fucking state of permanent suspension that never seemed to end-
Screw that.
Takei slammed the lid shut. Funny, how the breath that got stuck in his throat sounded almost like half a sob. Really, really funny. He wasn’t sure if the not-sob was one of relief or fear.
He felt weird. Odd. Not himself, and why not? He’d just put a stop to the person he’d been for months now, and it left him disorientated and unbalanced. Takei rose stiltedly to his feet, letting the laptop slide down onto the plush rug and just sort of ... he didn’t know what he wanted, but Shiba’s lounge was suddenly way too cluttered with Shiba. The couch that held his scent, the coffee table covered with his music tastes, the floor spilt across with Shiba’s favourite brand of beer (oops). The bedroom would be even worse, and all that passed as a kitchen in Shiba’s tiny flat was an optimistic unit jammed near the front door.
He needed space.
Shiba found him twenty minutes later, in the one place in the apartment that was easiest to de-Shibafy.
“How long have you been in here?” Shiba asked from the bathroom doorway. He shot a dry look back over his shoulders. “And is there a reason why my toiletries are in my kitchen sink?”
“Long enough.” Takei paused as he processed the second half of Shiba’s question. “And, no.”
“What are you doing?”
“Thinking,” Takei said calmly.
Shiba nodded. “Ah,” he said, because it made sense. “In my bathtub.”
Takei thought about that for a moment before shrugging. It was more of an up-and-down sort of shrug, because the tub wasn’t particularly wide. “It’s more comfortable than your toilet seat.”
Shiba’s gaze moved reflectively from the tiny, squished-in-the-corner toilet to the bath.
“That is true,” Shiba agreed thoughtfully. “In fact, many a time I have wondered if toilets would benefit from a redesign that was more reflective of the features of a bath.” Takei stared at him blankly. Clearly, his best friend was insane. “Don’t diss the idea until you’ve had time to think it over,” Shiba accused.
“A bath shaped toilet?” Takei asked dubiously.
“Maybe a little out there,” Shiba admitted, before eying up the bathtub once more. “Shove your legs up,” Shiba commanded, dropping the pizza box and the beer onto the toilet seat, where it was close enough to Takei’s head that the smell slowly started to unravel some of Takei’s hunger. It was-
What the hell?!
Takei swore as Shiba dropped himself down into the other end of the bath, his legs getting caught up with Takei’s. Takei grabbed onto the rim of the bathtub and dragged himself back up from where he had been whooshed so ungainfully downwards, kicking Shiba rightfully in the shins. It was a good kick, but it received none of the kudos it deserved as Shiba simply reached over him and grabbed a slab of pizza.
“You’re right,” Shiba mumbled happily around the pizza. “The bath is way more comfortable. I don’t know why I never thought about doing this before.”
“You, sir, are a moron.” Ha. This time his kick got a response, and Shiba scrunched his face up in pain. It bought Takei another few precious centimetres as well, and Takei was all about small victories right now.
“So,” Shiba said, making eyes at Takei until he gave in and chucked a beer at him. Not that Shiba deserved it, oh no. But no-one should be deprived beer. Takei made sure to give it just a bit of a shake before he let it go, because the commandments didn’t say anything about GOOD beer. “Are we going to talk about why we’re in the bathtub?”
“Nope,” Takei replied easily, reaching for his own bottle. Who would have thought? Beer did taste better when drunken in a bath with no water in it, fully clothed. “I don’t remember inviting you to join me, so you can leave at any time ...”
Shiba looked affronted, his eyebrows shooting up.
“It is my bathtub, you know. I’m allowed to enter and exit it whenever I like.” Shiba grimaced, wiggling his bottom from side to side as he tried to readjust. Takei yelped as his totally disregard for anyone else in the bath threatened to send Takei sliding down under him. ”You couldn’t maybe have put a towel down first? The bottom is still a bit wet.”
“Only at that end,” Takei supplied helpfully, and his smile finally touched his eyes. He could feel the ice dropping off of him in big, hunking sheets, and the numbness was starting to give way to that uneasy, pins-and-needles ouch-ouch-ouch-ooh reality that had a habit of following.
“Figures,” Shiba said. “You know, my new partner would totally disapprove of this kind of thing.”
And Takei was interested, really, but it was pretty damn difficult to hear Shiba talk about his partner when that partner happened to be someone that wasn’t him. It was a gut reaction, and Takei knew intellectually that it had been over a year and that he should get over it, already. Still, something petty rippled through him, and he had to take a big old bite out of his pizza to choke it down.
“A jacuzzi? Now that he’d probably be happier in, especially if there was a wine cooler. He tends to prefer some of the finer things in life.”
Ah, a classy partner. Takei could totally do that. He’d just need a top hat and cane. And maybe a moustache. Moustaches seemed like something classy people had.
Shiba grinned a little, his features softening as he nudged Takei sheepishly with his foot. “He’s not you, though.”
It helped, hearing his own thoughts expressed out loud in Shiba’s deep, gravely voice, a confession for the ages. Takei felt his heart skip a beat, and it was really only at that moment that he realised just how much he needed Shiba to find this transition just as difficult as Takei had been. In some ways, Takei was not a good friend. Shiba hesitated then, which interesting. Takei dipped his head to the side and waited, more than a little curious.
“It feels like I’m cheating on you,” Shiba finally confided, having the good grace to at least look like the embarrassment was killing him a bit inside.
Now THAT was something Takei could relate to.
Takei snorted, relaxing back with one arm draped over the rim of the tub. “Tell me about it. I’m not even sure if I’m allowed to like them. It’s not that they’re not nice-” He drifted off, because really. There wasn’t any way to finish that without sounding like a dork.
“Yeah,” Shiba agreed, taking a swig of his beer. “Exactly.”
“Exactly,” Takei agreed with a grin.
“Are you just the tiniest bit jealous?” Shiba asked hopefully.
“Not at all,” Takei lied through his teeth, and Shiba – the bastard – smirked knowingly, taking another sip of his beer. “What’s his hair like?” Takei asked suspiciously, his eyes narrowing.
“Oh, greasy as hell,” Shiba answered automatically. “You could never run your fingers through it, they’d slide right off.” Shiba pulled a particularly disgusted face while wiggling his fingers, and Takei nodded in approval.
“Where as Shuuhei is nice enough, really. But? Fat fingers. And rings. Cool rings,” Takei conceded, and ha! Shiba didn’t like that, a scowl uglying up his face. “Seriously, though. They’d get caught in someone’s hair if he even tried to pat them on the head.” Takei shuddered. “Can you imagine having to detangle yourself from your partner’s jewellery?”
“There really is an art to it,” Shiba said sagely. “It’s not something you can just decide on over night. It requires time, commitment.” Shiba rolled his shoulders, getting into a more comfortable position. He shot Takei a grin. “You know, we really should meet up like this more often.”
“I only have a shower cubicle,” Takei reminded him. “It would be a bit of a crush.”
Shiba smirked, before leaning forward with a dangerous glint in his eye.
“Oh, hey! Want to see something cool?” Takei was used to Shiba changing topics with the same casual disregard as a speeding driver changed lanes. “I had it installed with my first pay check, and it is the most awesome thing that ever awesome’d.”
“Convince me,” Takei said, doubtfully. Shiba’s idea of cool was often awesome, sometimes dangerous, likely totally ridiculous. Shiba grinned, and then with exaggerated slowness, clapped his hands.
The lights went off.
“Oh, god.” Takei moaned, dropping his head backwards with a thump. “You think this new little feature is going to get you laid, don’t you?”
“Oh, come on!” Shiba protested earnestly, totally not getting that he had stolen his grand scheme from the 90’s. “Even you want me a little bit right now, right?”
Takei cracked up, bending over at the waist and wrapping his arms around his waist. God, it hurt, but it was the right kind of hurt-
“Takei, you bastard! It’s not that funny. Takei!”
Soma Shuuhei, partner number 7. Aged 28, owner of the curliest, blondest hair that Takei had ever seen. Not that he was jealous (he was bitterly jealous, where the hell did he get such shiny hair dye?!). Thought sushi should only ever be eaten off attractive women’s stomachs and had little time for video games that marketed themselves as something they weren’t. He never pretended to be one of those kinds of experts, but that was cool because he didn’t expect Takei to be anything in particular, either.
He made Takei smile. And Takei, well Takei was trying.
It wasn’t that Takei didn’t like Shuuhei (because he was all sorts of cool), and it wasn’t that Shuuhei didn’t know what he was doing. It was just that sometimes, when they were in a middle of a stakeout and there was nothing to do but ramble mindlessly for hours, Takei didn’t even think of Shiba at all.
It was maybe the healthiest Takei had been in a while.
And it terrified him.
