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sententiaTitle: End Of The World, Chapter 3
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 3: Fancy Meeting You In A Place Like This.
The holding area was a sterile place, with grey floors giving way to grey walls that were topped off creatively by a grey ceiling. Takei felt like an uninvited burst of colour, his green/pink shirt and faded jeans suddenly inappropriate for anything, ever.
(Shiba would say that there was never an appropriate time for this particular outfit, but Shiba’s opinion didn’t matter quite as much these days)
The grey (and the grey, and the grey) had a muting effect, and Takei found himself walking softly to maintain it. He wanted to apologise for breathing, however that would require speaking.
He was feeling just a little bit stupid. Takei self-consciously pulled down his shirt as he was shown through another door (grey, naturally) and into the cells. It was really only a corner of a room, with three cell doors occupying each wall.
The man accompanying him nodded towards the middle door and stepped backwards, leaving Takei to the cold judgement of the grey. Huh. Takei had forgotten to ask him his name, even though they’d just conquered the terrifying corridors together. That ... was unlike him.
Takei pressed his palm against the door (Shiba’s door) finding it cold to touch. He leaned his shoulder in against it, bracing himself there. There was no window, and he hadn’t been given a key. The only thing that gave away that there was an occupant behind the door at all was the crescent of light that crept out from beneath it.
Officially, Shiba was there as a Person of Interest.
Why was it so cold in here? The words (any words) froze before they could reach Takei’s lips, lodging in his throat and suffocating him.
“Hey,” he said finally, quietly. He kicked himself almost immediately, because there was a steel door separating them and Takei was practically whispering. What next, trying to communicate via sign language? There was a sudden screech from the other side of the door, taking Takei by surprise. Maybe the door wasn’t steel at all, just a cheaper tin that at least looked the part even while it was playing both sides?
He bit down hard on his bottom lip, angrily spilling blood. This was not the time.
“Takei?” Shiba’s disbelieving response came high pitched and strained, so pathetic that Takei barely recognised the man behind it. And, oh god. Takei squeezed his eyes shut as he dropped his forehead onto the not-steel door, the cold sending shivers of ice reverberating through his skull. He shifted more weight onto his shoulder, because his legs were doing shit-all to keep him upright.
He could barely breathe.
“Yeah,” he forced out, a bitter smile twisting his mouth into something ugly and horrid. “Thought I’d come and chit chat about the weather.”
Shiba’s hysterical laughter filtered through from under the door (because sound could take the same routes as light could, dumbass), before it abruptly cut off. The silence that remained was hard, inelegant.
Unforgiving.
Takei’s didn’t know how he could convince it to be otherwise.
“Do you remember when we were first assigned to each other?” Takei asked, and the memory brought back a flicker of warmth. “You insinuated that I have terrible taste in clothes.”
Shiba snorted. “I don’t remember any of this insinuating business. I flat out told you. We were going undercover at a bar, for crying out loud. A cool bar, one with lots of pretty girls. I just knew you were going to crimp my style.”
“’Crimp’, old man?” Takei mocked, although the humour felt flaky and superficial. The words and tone were familiar, but there was nothing but emptiness behind them. “I think your fashion sense is stuck in the same time warp as your totally radical pick up lines.”
“What shirt are you wearing?” Shiba demanded, some of the desperation shaken from his voice and a hint of actual, proper amusement colouring it. It was almost like they were collapsed on Takei’s couch, a couple of drinks between them and a movie in Takei’s zombie DVD player. Almost. “It’s that terrible yellow and pink one, isn’t it?”
Huh. There was no accounting for taste.
“Black, button down.” Which was close. There were buttons, and some of them were even located into the right holes. “If you ask me the colour of my underwear, I’m leaving.”
“I’m terrified, Takei.”
Shiba wasn’t talking about Takei’s underwear. The admission was more a confession, and one Takei felt wholly unqualified to be hearing. Takei could do banter about clothes and trips down fonder memory lanes, but this, this was too close.
“I know.” He had to force the words out, each one moving through him on separate shudders. The hand pressed against the door clenched into a fist, the cold of the steel first sending a flare of pain through his knuckles before giving way to numbness. He ground his teeth together. “What ... what are they planning to do?”
“Stupid and vain right up until the moment he slits your throat with a smile,” is how Shingo describes Takei’s new partner, although it’s said with a smile of his own.
He’s not far off.
“So you’re the latest of Shingo’s partners to not meet his high standards of awesomeness, huh?” Shiba says by way of introduction. He wears a hint of a smirk that is not entirely unsympathetic, but what is more enticing is that Shiba carries with him two beers instead of one. “Looks like you might need one of these. I take it you’re in mourning?” Shiba’s smirk takes on a particular shit-eating quality, and Takei quite thinks he’d like to punch him in the gut. “All the pretty ones do after they’ve been dumped by our resident heart breaker.”
“Do you use the same line when trying to pick up all of Shingo’s sloppy seconds?” Takei asks winningly with a flash of a smile.
“What are they planning to do? Shiba repeated. “Not enough.” He laughed again, coarse and low. “Apparently, my on-going assistance is likely to negate any potential prison time, although I’ll be on probation for about a year. After that-”
There was an afterwards? Takei was currently working at getting through seconds, minutes. The thought of thinking of life in years ...
“Yeah?”
“After that I can apply again to work in narcotics. But only then. What the fuck am I going to do, Takei? The department is all I’ve ever known.”
There were boxes in Takei’s head, and he dropped into each of them the thoughts he was not having.
“He’s not that great, you know.” They are only on their third round of drinks, and Shiba’s slurred commiseration has gone past the point of being churlish and annoying to darkly amusing. Takei’s learnt much more about Shingo than he has about Shiba in the last few hours.
Shingo goes through partners like some people go through lovers – and the two are sometimes interchangeable.
Shingo is great at looking good while his partners do all the hard work.
Shingo has not one but two apartments, not that Shiba is at all jealous. Na-uh.
In the past three years, Shingo has won four narcotics awards.
Shingo hates cats.
Most of it isn’t new – Shingo is one of those people you know of before you ever meet him, his reputation lining the path to his pleasure in gold. If any good qualities have accidently been left out, well Shingo’s the first to mention them.
Brilliant, people at the office say.
“Stagnated,” Shiba slurs. “Clever guy, awesome for a couple of drinks. But he’s trapped in his own halo. What’s left for him to do?“
All Takei has learnt about Shiba is that he can’t hold his liquor, and even that truth evaporates mere minutes later.
“See that guy in the black shirt, peach cufflinks?” Shiba leans forward, his voice low and commanding. Takei blinks back at him in surprise, before following his gaze and nodding. “He’s our target. Took the bastard long enough to show up.” Shiba smirks at him, suddenly all easy confidence and sharply perceptive. “Wanna bust some bad guys?”
“Takei, fuck. You should hate me.“
There was a fork, and it diverged off into two streams. One was lined with flowers and pubs and memories wearing rosy glasses. It was an uncomplicated path – too uncomplicated - but it buried all those nasty thoughts away beneath a shiny golden path. Takei knew that if he followed it that he would never have to walk alone. Yet, it still seemed like the world’s loneliest path.
There was a fork, and it diverged off into two streams. One was twisted and dank, and Takei could smell the fear and hostility of the path from the crossroads. There was only room on that path for one.
Takei could see how the second path swerved out of sight from is place at the fork, deeper into the darkness and with any end hidden from view. The first path opened immediately onto a wide, uncluttered horizon that stretched forever and ever and ever and ever-
Takei swayed, harshly rubbing his fingers down the bridge of his nose. His gaze narrowed into a tiny beam, one turned so far inwards that all he could see was some mocking caricature of his innards.
There was a fork in the road.
He swung a left.
“What good would that do either of us?” He murmured, locking everything else away in their boxes and choosing the road that had a destination he could live with. God knows he didn’t want to imagine his world without Shiba in it. His Shiba, the ridiculous, obnoxious, best friend who could reduce Takei to teary laughter with just a look.
The Shiba who was a traitorous, selfish prick of a bastard was placed in a box and pushed to the very back of Takei’s consciousness.
There was more than just a desperate, clingy sort of need to keep the most important person in his whole fucking universe back lit in a glow of positivity and satirical quips. Takei felt his friend’s despair, felt it radiate through the metal-slash-tin as it sunk through into Takei’s own skin and filled him with dread. It felt like lead, heavy and toxic, and it burned through him with a deep self-loathing that was not his own.
He ... he didn’t want Shiba to hurt any more, and what lay ahead of Shiba otherwise but a path that swung right, with none of the sunshine and roses of the path that had so easily snared Takei. The promises along Takei’s path might be wonderfully false, but they were still wonderful.
It was stupid and it was ridiculous and his heart was fucking breaking for his best friend who was a shitty friend when it came down to it but who was the fucking sun and how the hell was he going to save Shiba -
Takei thought he could do this.
Maybe.
“It’s not that simp-“
“We’re going out for drinks after you get released.” Takei’s words sliced through Shiba’s with a sharp smile. Drinks with ridiculous Shiba, obnoxious Shiba, friendly Shiba who needed a friend way more than he needed alcohol (Takei, on the other hand...). “And I am going to drink you under the table, because you suck.” An awkward silence followed as Shiba tries to rework his line of thought around Takei’s.
“Ok,” Shiba finally settled on, because right now he owed Takei at least this.
They could do this.
“It’s a date!” Takei replied brightly.
Maybe.
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.
The holding area was a sterile place, with grey floors giving way to grey walls that were topped off creatively by a grey ceiling. Takei felt like an uninvited burst of colour, his green/pink shirt and faded jeans suddenly inappropriate for anything, ever.
(Shiba would say that there was never an appropriate time for this particular outfit, but Shiba’s opinion didn’t matter quite as much these days)
The grey (and the grey, and the grey) had a muting effect, and Takei found himself walking softly to maintain it. He wanted to apologise for breathing, however that would require speaking.
He was feeling just a little bit stupid. Takei self-consciously pulled down his shirt as he was shown through another door (grey, naturally) and into the cells. It was really only a corner of a room, with three cell doors occupying each wall.
The man accompanying him nodded towards the middle door and stepped backwards, leaving Takei to the cold judgement of the grey. Huh. Takei had forgotten to ask him his name, even though they’d just conquered the terrifying corridors together. That ... was unlike him.
Takei pressed his palm against the door (Shiba’s door) finding it cold to touch. He leaned his shoulder in against it, bracing himself there. There was no window, and he hadn’t been given a key. The only thing that gave away that there was an occupant behind the door at all was the crescent of light that crept out from beneath it.
Officially, Shiba was there as a Person of Interest.
Why was it so cold in here? The words (any words) froze before they could reach Takei’s lips, lodging in his throat and suffocating him.
“Hey,” he said finally, quietly. He kicked himself almost immediately, because there was a steel door separating them and Takei was practically whispering. What next, trying to communicate via sign language? There was a sudden screech from the other side of the door, taking Takei by surprise. Maybe the door wasn’t steel at all, just a cheaper tin that at least looked the part even while it was playing both sides?
He bit down hard on his bottom lip, angrily spilling blood. This was not the time.
“Takei?” Shiba’s disbelieving response came high pitched and strained, so pathetic that Takei barely recognised the man behind it. And, oh god. Takei squeezed his eyes shut as he dropped his forehead onto the not-steel door, the cold sending shivers of ice reverberating through his skull. He shifted more weight onto his shoulder, because his legs were doing shit-all to keep him upright.
He could barely breathe.
“Yeah,” he forced out, a bitter smile twisting his mouth into something ugly and horrid. “Thought I’d come and chit chat about the weather.”
Shiba’s hysterical laughter filtered through from under the door (because sound could take the same routes as light could, dumbass), before it abruptly cut off. The silence that remained was hard, inelegant.
Unforgiving.
Takei’s didn’t know how he could convince it to be otherwise.
“Do you remember when we were first assigned to each other?” Takei asked, and the memory brought back a flicker of warmth. “You insinuated that I have terrible taste in clothes.”
Shiba snorted. “I don’t remember any of this insinuating business. I flat out told you. We were going undercover at a bar, for crying out loud. A cool bar, one with lots of pretty girls. I just knew you were going to crimp my style.”
“’Crimp’, old man?” Takei mocked, although the humour felt flaky and superficial. The words and tone were familiar, but there was nothing but emptiness behind them. “I think your fashion sense is stuck in the same time warp as your totally radical pick up lines.”
“What shirt are you wearing?” Shiba demanded, some of the desperation shaken from his voice and a hint of actual, proper amusement colouring it. It was almost like they were collapsed on Takei’s couch, a couple of drinks between them and a movie in Takei’s zombie DVD player. Almost. “It’s that terrible yellow and pink one, isn’t it?”
Huh. There was no accounting for taste.
“Black, button down.” Which was close. There were buttons, and some of them were even located into the right holes. “If you ask me the colour of my underwear, I’m leaving.”
“I’m terrified, Takei.”
Shiba wasn’t talking about Takei’s underwear. The admission was more a confession, and one Takei felt wholly unqualified to be hearing. Takei could do banter about clothes and trips down fonder memory lanes, but this, this was too close.
“I know.” He had to force the words out, each one moving through him on separate shudders. The hand pressed against the door clenched into a fist, the cold of the steel first sending a flare of pain through his knuckles before giving way to numbness. He ground his teeth together. “What ... what are they planning to do?”
“Stupid and vain right up until the moment he slits your throat with a smile,” is how Shingo describes Takei’s new partner, although it’s said with a smile of his own.
He’s not far off.
“So you’re the latest of Shingo’s partners to not meet his high standards of awesomeness, huh?” Shiba says by way of introduction. He wears a hint of a smirk that is not entirely unsympathetic, but what is more enticing is that Shiba carries with him two beers instead of one. “Looks like you might need one of these. I take it you’re in mourning?” Shiba’s smirk takes on a particular shit-eating quality, and Takei quite thinks he’d like to punch him in the gut. “All the pretty ones do after they’ve been dumped by our resident heart breaker.”
“Do you use the same line when trying to pick up all of Shingo’s sloppy seconds?” Takei asks winningly with a flash of a smile.
“What are they planning to do? Shiba repeated. “Not enough.” He laughed again, coarse and low. “Apparently, my on-going assistance is likely to negate any potential prison time, although I’ll be on probation for about a year. After that-”
There was an afterwards? Takei was currently working at getting through seconds, minutes. The thought of thinking of life in years ...
“Yeah?”
“After that I can apply again to work in narcotics. But only then. What the fuck am I going to do, Takei? The department is all I’ve ever known.”
There were boxes in Takei’s head, and he dropped into each of them the thoughts he was not having.
“He’s not that great, you know.” They are only on their third round of drinks, and Shiba’s slurred commiseration has gone past the point of being churlish and annoying to darkly amusing. Takei’s learnt much more about Shingo than he has about Shiba in the last few hours.
Shingo goes through partners like some people go through lovers – and the two are sometimes interchangeable.
Shingo is great at looking good while his partners do all the hard work.
Shingo has not one but two apartments, not that Shiba is at all jealous. Na-uh.
In the past three years, Shingo has won four narcotics awards.
Shingo hates cats.
Most of it isn’t new – Shingo is one of those people you know of before you ever meet him, his reputation lining the path to his pleasure in gold. If any good qualities have accidently been left out, well Shingo’s the first to mention them.
Brilliant, people at the office say.
“Stagnated,” Shiba slurs. “Clever guy, awesome for a couple of drinks. But he’s trapped in his own halo. What’s left for him to do?“
All Takei has learnt about Shiba is that he can’t hold his liquor, and even that truth evaporates mere minutes later.
“See that guy in the black shirt, peach cufflinks?” Shiba leans forward, his voice low and commanding. Takei blinks back at him in surprise, before following his gaze and nodding. “He’s our target. Took the bastard long enough to show up.” Shiba smirks at him, suddenly all easy confidence and sharply perceptive. “Wanna bust some bad guys?”
“Takei, fuck. You should hate me.“
There was a fork, and it diverged off into two streams. One was lined with flowers and pubs and memories wearing rosy glasses. It was an uncomplicated path – too uncomplicated - but it buried all those nasty thoughts away beneath a shiny golden path. Takei knew that if he followed it that he would never have to walk alone. Yet, it still seemed like the world’s loneliest path.
There was a fork, and it diverged off into two streams. One was twisted and dank, and Takei could smell the fear and hostility of the path from the crossroads. There was only room on that path for one.
Takei could see how the second path swerved out of sight from is place at the fork, deeper into the darkness and with any end hidden from view. The first path opened immediately onto a wide, uncluttered horizon that stretched forever and ever and ever and ever-
Takei swayed, harshly rubbing his fingers down the bridge of his nose. His gaze narrowed into a tiny beam, one turned so far inwards that all he could see was some mocking caricature of his innards.
There was a fork in the road.
He swung a left.
“What good would that do either of us?” He murmured, locking everything else away in their boxes and choosing the road that had a destination he could live with. God knows he didn’t want to imagine his world without Shiba in it. His Shiba, the ridiculous, obnoxious, best friend who could reduce Takei to teary laughter with just a look.
The Shiba who was a traitorous, selfish prick of a bastard was placed in a box and pushed to the very back of Takei’s consciousness.
There was more than just a desperate, clingy sort of need to keep the most important person in his whole fucking universe back lit in a glow of positivity and satirical quips. Takei felt his friend’s despair, felt it radiate through the metal-slash-tin as it sunk through into Takei’s own skin and filled him with dread. It felt like lead, heavy and toxic, and it burned through him with a deep self-loathing that was not his own.
He ... he didn’t want Shiba to hurt any more, and what lay ahead of Shiba otherwise but a path that swung right, with none of the sunshine and roses of the path that had so easily snared Takei. The promises along Takei’s path might be wonderfully false, but they were still wonderful.
It was stupid and it was ridiculous and his heart was fucking breaking for his best friend who was a shitty friend when it came down to it but who was the fucking sun and how the hell was he going to save Shiba -
Takei thought he could do this.
Maybe.
“It’s not that simp-“
“We’re going out for drinks after you get released.” Takei’s words sliced through Shiba’s with a sharp smile. Drinks with ridiculous Shiba, obnoxious Shiba, friendly Shiba who needed a friend way more than he needed alcohol (Takei, on the other hand...). “And I am going to drink you under the table, because you suck.” An awkward silence followed as Shiba tries to rework his line of thought around Takei’s.
“Ok,” Shiba finally settled on, because right now he owed Takei at least this.
They could do this.
“It’s a date!” Takei replied brightly.
Maybe.
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Date: 2013-01-16 01:23 pm (UTC)- and now I'm picturing Shiba as a pirate, thanks to Shingo
- they really don't hit it off on their first meeting, do they? there's some lovely contrasts created by that, the way they were then, are now and have been in between
- boxes - because the place looks like a storage room? and Takei labeling Shiba as someone very much capable of betrayal and opting to ignore it in favor of happiness