Chapter Text
It was a rare occasion that Genma had a day when he had to do absolutely nothing. Nada. Zilch.
Every other day, he would get up with his girlfriend when her alarm blared from her phone. Today, he got a kiss on his forehead and a loving ruffle of his hair before he traveled back to the land of dreams, which was nice until an obnoxious noise woke him out of a weird dream where he was trying to balance a giant needle on his tongue. Even years after he quit, Shizune’s rant about how there isn’t much difference between a cigarette and sticking a needle in your mouth had stuck in his mind.
He rolled over in the large bed, borrowing Shizune’s pillow to drown out the noise. It was a regular occurrence that his elderly neighbor began vacuuming or redecorating the room before eight o’clock. The few times she had knocked on their door, holding cookies she had baked herself and to hold a friendly chat with them, the neighbor never failed to give him homesickness and cure it at the same time.
A bonk louder than the neighbor had ever produced cut through his last remains of sleep. It was not dissimilar to the sound of a cat having misjudged a jump and landing on Shizune’s plants (or having judged their jump with accuracy and precision because those cats hated her plants). Genma would recognize that sound anywhere because, unfortunately, this wasn’t his first rodeo nor would it be his last.
This meant that Genma would have to get up if he wanted to be a good boyfriend.
Genma wasn’t ready to come face to face with the likely newest and chunkiest addition to the cat family their neighbor was insistent on expanding.
Thump.
He half-rolled, half-fell out of the bed and made a noise that would have had Shizune roll her eyes at him for.
(It was a groan made up of an endless stream of variants of the word fuck.)
(A stream that became more enunciated when he stubbed his toe on the door frame. Today was not his day.)
Genma shoved open the glass door with more force than was necessary and looked at the mess at their balcony.
The good news: the cat hadn’t landed on or pushed over Shizune’s plants. All were still in pristine condition.
The bad news.
The orange hair he saw did not belong to a cat.
“What the fuck are you doing on my balcony?!”
Having flashes of his dream, he wished he had a needle to spit at the dude chilling on his balcony.
“Please,” the orange wheezed, “I don’t want to cause any trouble—I mean any more trouble.”
Genma pinched the bridge of his nose. If it weren’t for the pain throbbing his pinkie toe, he would have known he were sleeping. If Shizune were here, she would have known how to make sense of the orange’s words.
After all, she dealt with mini-humans that were still learning words and how to put them together.
Shizune would have had the tact to get at the heart of the situation with words.
“I’m…pain,” the guy wheezed.
“Who the fuck calls himself “Pain”?” Genma couldn’t believe this was happening to him! He just wanted a morning to sleep until late and wake up to eat breakfast at lunch time. Was that too much to ask?
“No… in pain.”
“What are you—wait, how are you handcuffed to my balcony?”
“Please,” the man said again, as if that would tell Genma all he wanted to know.
Genma just sighed. As if the police didn’t already have a note with “slightly insane” next to his number for how many situations he had to call about, now was the time for them to whip out more empty post-its to fill.
If Genma had the tools or the skills to free someone from a handcuff without needing the keys only the police had, he would have picked it in a heartbeat. Sure, he would have complained loudly about it while sawing through the chain. Sure, he would have felt silly while using one of Shizune’s bobby pins to unlock the cuffs.
If he had just gone to the store for that saw or immersed himself in YouTube tutorials, he wouldn’t have had to do… this.
“Hello, this is Shiranui Genma speaking. I have found a person handcuffed to my balcony.”
“Sir, we are a police station. Please keep the things you do in the bedroom to yourself.”
Genma sighed. The police officer on the other side sighed. The only person who didn’t was the man Genma wouldn’t even want in his bedroom.
Even with his budding reputation, he never got the nice officers on the phone.
“This is not some kinky shit. There is a man handcuffed to my balcony with police issued handcuffs.”
Could he hear an eye-roll through the phone? Because Genma was sure he just did.
It was his free day, damn it!
“Do I have to point out that it is your duty to take any report seriously, officer, or do I have to call my colleagues at the law firm?”
It was with his lawyer composure that he didn’t threaten them with all he got.
(In reality, his toe shot pain through his foot and he had to stop talking so he could keep his composure.)
“My apologies, Mr. Shiranui,” they said in an immediately faker voice. “If you give me the address, I will make sure two officers will make their way to you.”
After rattling the address, Genma hung up.
When he stared at the man handcuffed to the fucking balcony housing most of Shizune’s plants, Genma felt pity for the first time that morning.
There wasn’t enough pity for Genma to offer the man coffee, but he could grant the man the same courtesy Shizune lent to the other inhabitants of the balcony.
Water.
That was as far as Genma was willing to go on his day off.
Something in him, however, saw an opportunity to get more info on what the hell was happening to Genma that, on a daily basis, a supposed criminal got dropped at his feet. His eyes were burning and his mind was not set for any conversation, but he would beat himself up later if he didn’t even try.
“So, how did you end up here?”
“Please, I don’t want any trouble.”
His day off was supposed to be a day free of lawyer stuff. Nonetheless, the words found their way out of his head. “The police can’t arrest you unless they have a good reason to. Just because someone handcuffed you doesn’t mean the police can throw you in jail.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. If they have nothing else to pin you on, I bet you’ll be free by the end of the day at the latest.” This conversation would be going so much easier if he could offer the guy a smoke. Nothing puts people more at ease than a shared smoking break between two fellas.
Shizune would argue there are tons of better things, but she isn’t here at the moment.
“So, who did this to you?”
“They were shadows.” The man shuddered and gulped down half his water. “Animals.”
He wanted to say, “Animals don’t have opposable thumbs,” but instead he simply repeated the word.
“Masks. Everything was black except their animal masks.”
“How many people did you see?”
The orange was as silent as the fruit was, so Genma decided the nickname fit him well.
It was just as he turned to lie down on the sofa that the man mumbled, “Two,” and made sure to keep away from eye-contact.
Two vigilantes. Genma knew there were at least three, all dressed in black. He hadn’t seen their faces, but he had seen a glimpse of red on their feet. It wasn’t enough to figure out the identities, but he was closer now to figuring out whose ass he would have to kick for ruining his week.
For ruining his reputation.
For ruining Shizune’s potted plants.
(Although Genma would only get to add that to the list long after the orange had left the building.)
And worst of all, for ruining his day off, starting with his well deserved nap.
With no further conversation in sight, Genma got stuck in a cycle of staring at the simple clock on the wall and looking at every other part of the room.
The large arrow of the clock crept past number after number with no sign of the police arriving. The closer the arrow came to the five, the more Genma started pacing in his own home.
(The arrow got a personal record when it hit the number eight when it shouldn’t have gotten past the five.)
The doorbell rang. Genma swung open the door with more force than needed. He said, “Finally,” with more force than needed.
“We came here like a bat out of hell, man.”
It was too early in the morning for idioms he had never heard before and the second officer had a smirk plastered on his face that he didn’t trust for one second.
Even if the cops were acting professionally and the orange was freed swiftly, Genma’s mood turned foul when he saw the cop scribbled in his notebook after Genma told him his name. It was too unclear to make out, but the first name was too long to really be Genma. It wouldn’t surprise him if it was once again Vigilante Complex.
Just as Genma was prying into their personal items, the officers did the same. “You’ve got a lot of plants here.”
“Yeah.”
Undeterred by his short answer, the one with the notebook asked far too casually, “Is there any poison ivy?”
“Why are you asking?”
“Curiosity.” The smile on the officer’s face practically split his face. “Aren’t you curious too, Officer Gordon?”
Genma had read enough comic books to catch on to what was happening. The bat comment. The poison ivy. An officer coincidentally named Gordon. Vigilante Complex. He pinched the bridge of his nose to keep from making an outburst, but that only seemed to fuel the officers even more.
“Are you like this with everybody that has a smile on their face? People’d think you can’t take a joke, sir.”
This was not happening. Did a police officer just butcher his pronunciation of “Sir” to make a Joker pun? Genma had standards. These police officers didn’t meet any of them.
(The police officers came to regret their bad puns, but for some reason it was kept off any records so Genma was unable to share his narration of it for us.)
(The reason isn’t Genma. It’s difficult lawyer stuff. Genma smacked down the law in a way that words can’t do justice, so you will have to take our word for it that was epic.)
With the police officers and the orange out of his house, Genma put his head on the balcony’s railing and looked to the sides.
“Why me?” he asked Shizune’s plants.
Genma was reminded not to ask questions he didn’t want an answer to, because a cat promptly crashed into one of Shizune’s potted holly plants.
He called it a win that no second cat fell out of the skies after he again muttered, “Why me.”