Chapter Text
The atmosphere tempered considerably after Majima’s confession of both his profession and status. They’d all been able to sit back down and start actually digging into the food in front of them, talking instead of brawling, much to his adrenaline’s dismay. Even now, his body was still stubbornly hanging on to his fight reaction and for each question tossed his way, he did his very best to navigate it without letting Tachibana drive him to stabbing.
It was a different kind of gauntlet, beginning with the topic of how he and Makoto met.
Thankfully, by the way Tachibana asked, it seemed some gracious god out there liked him enough that Makoto’s brother hadn’t found out about her being his botched hit.
“Met while I was runnin’ operations in Sotenbori at The Grand. We both got swept up in the Empty Lot business and ended up tryin’ t’pull ourselves outta it together.”
Not technically a lie.
“How did you manage that—your involvement, I mean.”
Tachibana prodded, digging for something to help sharpen the picture Majima was purposefully obfuscating.
“I understand you only recently came back into the fold. How did a Tojo man of such remarkable talent get so involved from within the Omi’s borders?”
So far, the only thing Majima liked about Tachibana was how direct he was.
Majima chin nodded at him and took a bite of chow mein.
“Ya said it yerself. I was former Tojo at the time,” he said, “Was tryin’ t’get back in and that meant catchin’ some favors for the Omi. It was some of theirs, a group different from the one I was workin’ with, that came barkin’ around the club, lookin’ for Makoto.”
“So you met at the club, then?” Tachibana asked.
“Ah, no.”
“Then where? It sounds like you’d met by the time the Omi started coming around.”
Majima could see wheels turning behind Tachibana’s calculating stare and he didn’t think he liked the direction they were going.
“That uh—that is t’say—”
“We met at the clinic,” Makoto piped up.
Both his and Tachibana’s heads swiveled in her direction. For her part, Makoto replenished the food on Majima’s plate and gave him a private look very clearly instructing him to shove all of it in his mouth. Now.
He did.
“Goro tends to remember his days more by which fights he gets into so the ‘when’ gets lost in the mix sometimes when they’re very similar.”
Majima quirked his brow at her tense smile that only grew more strained under his observation. In a smooth shift of her weight, she readjusted her sitting position and kicked him in the back of the calf, jolting his attention back to the fact that her brother was now staring at him.
He not-so-discreetly shoveled more food in his mouth and nodded emphatically, making various noises of agreement along with a murmured “that’s right, that’s right.”
Makoto went on, smiling and reaching over to top off Tachibana’s drink.
“He’d actually come to the parlor just before closing. It must’ve been a really rough day. I remember Goro was as stiff as a board that night—he even fell asleep on my massage table!”
Majima swallowed hard around the pork in his mouth. He didn’t need to look back up—he felt Tachibana’s eyes boring holes into the top of his head.
Fuck.
“My sister gave you a massage . . . and you were ‘stiff as a board?’” Tachibana asked the question at length, his voice nothing more than that pleasant, soft, feather-light tone accented with a touch of ‘I’ll be killing you very shortly, please hold.’
The color drained from Makoto’s face but was swiftly replace by a blazing blush that flooded into her cheeks.
“A-ah! It wasn’t anything like that!” Her words were tight and high and she was waving a hand in front of her as though she could erase the past minute of conversation in hopes of a do-over.
“He’d come in with a lot of pain and I didn’t want to make him wait because Lee-san had—”
Makoto’s explanation halted abruptly on a sharp inhale when the man’s name crossed her lips. The color from her cheeks faded again into something closer to her normal complexion and she drew in another breath, this one deep and shaky.
“He’d stepped out and left me alone.” Makoto’s eyes went distant, shining a little more than normal beneath the harsh fluorescents of the restaurant lights.
Majima’s hand slid over hers where she held her cloth napkin in a strangled grip. She jolted when his skin touched hers but didn’t pull away. Majima watched in real time as Makoto slowly reeled herself back in from wherever it was she’d gone until he felt her fist unclench and her hand turn in his, pressing their palms together. He threaded his fingers between hers, drew her knuckles to his lips, and gave them a soft kiss.
“Alright, Mako-chan?” he asked, only for her, and she gave him a watery little smile and nod.
It was only belatedly that Majima remembered there was more than just the pair of them at the dinner table.
The instinctual part of it came first, his hackles still up and his body tense with the readiness to spring and take out anything that was a threat to his quietly grieving mate. The rest of it came after that, along with his sense to disentangle their hands and get his lips away from her under the watchful gaze of Tachibana.
Majima slipped his hand away reluctantly and squared off expecting to meet a Tachibana waiting with building fury. What he found instead was one who was simply watching, sporting an expression he hadn’t seen from the man yet that night. Majima didn’t really know what to call it, exactly, but the harsh lines at the corners of his eyes had eased and his perpetually neutral smile shifted into something softer.
“I see now,” Tachibana said more quietly than he spoke before. “I’m very fortunate that someone such as yourself was able to intervene and keep her as safe as you did, Majima-san. I do, however, have something I’m very curious about—if you’ll indulge me.”
His brow furrowed.
“Yeah, sure,” he said. “S’what we’re here for, ain’t it?”
“You’d mentioned before that you were trying to rejoin the clan. Obviously, things have worked out quite well for you now, but if what my associates have told me is true, you—”
Tachibana paused to think about it then chuckled and shook his head.
“There’s no polite way to say it. During your involvement, you severely crippled the Nikkyo Consortium’s operations and nearly destroyed the Dojima family. My question is: for someone who wanted to get back into the good graces of the Tojo, how did you think nearly taking out their most favored family and their most prized task force would help you in this endeavor?”
It was a good question.
There were a lot of ways he could answer it, too. A lot of ways to spin it to make him seem smarter and more calculating than he was at the time.
He went for the truth.
“I didn’t.”
“What?” Tachibana quirked a brow.
“Think,” he clarified. “Well . . . that ain’t all true. I did think. I thought a lot sittin’ in that hospital hallway. Sittin’ on that bench. Watchin’ the clock. I had hours t’think—some of the longest fuckin’ hours of my entire life.”
Majima remembered the sound of the seconds ticking away while the doctor operated on her.
He remembered knowing that, to step foot into Dojima HQ with murder in his heart would mean that there was no coming back from it. He’d known that if he made it out alive, he’d have to find Saejima on his own, and he sure as shit wouldn’t expect the whole of the clan to welcome him back with open arms after destroying one of their largest pillars.
Now, as he thought about the choice he’d made, he could hear the sound of her breath rattling from her chest in apology. He could smell the metallic scent of blood in the air, so much and so strong that he still recalled the iron tang of it on the back of his tongue.
Majima vividly remembered what her dying felt like while having to watch Sohei Dojima and that steaming pile of shit assassin take off from the tower and, at the end of it all, he came to the exact same conclusion as he did in that silent, sterile hallway months ago.
“It didn’t matter,” he said, reaching to brush a little fringe of hair out of Makoto’s face. When she smiled and leaned into his hand, he left it there, smiling back.
When he spoke again it was for her and if it didn’t answer Tachibana’s question, he didn’t much give a fuck.
He didn’t care because she was looking at him the way she did—those big, dark eyes so sweet and taking him all in, not cringing away or looking for things to throw back, so fucking happy to see him, happy to have him.
“Kept comin’ back to the same answer, again and again. Didn’t matter. Didn’t know if ya were ever gonna come back to me, but if ya did, Dojima, his lieutenants, Lao Gui—shit, boss Shimano himself—they’d never be in any position t’hurt ya ever again. S’long as I was still alive and kickin’, maybe even after that, nobody would get to ya without goin’ through me.”
Makoto’s chin started to wobble and she brought both hands over the one he held on her cheek.
“Goro . . .”
He smirked at her and used his thumb to brush away one of the tears gathering at the corner of her eye before it had the chance to fall.
“I guess lucky fer them ya woke up, otherwise nothin’ Sera coulda said to me woulda kept all the damn houses from comin’ down.”
Makoto laughed and with tears rolling down her cheeks, she lunged forward to wrap her arms around his neck. With a single rough tug, she pulled his face to hers to give him an urgent, insistent kiss. He hadn’t expected it and stumbled in his seat, barely catching himself with a bracing arm on the table beside them. Her mouth caught more of the scruff of his days old stubble than his lips and their teeth clicked together at the fumbled kiss.
Majima chuckled at their combined clumsiness before pulling away, if only to try it again, properly this time.
With one hand at her cheek and the other slipping down to rest over the spot where the bullet wound in her side lay scarred and puckered, he leaned back in, lips slanting over hers in the gentlest way he could muster. He didn’t taste the tang of iron anymore, only sugary hints of plum sauce with traces of tea and her favorite honey-sweet lip gloss.
Mostly, she tasted like home.
After floating in his own darkness and guilt and disgrace for so many months and days, this was where he belonged: to her—with her—carving out some kind of future for the both of them. For all the terrible shit he’d done, all he still had yet to do, something out there put her in his path and he wasn’t going to turn his back on that.
In his arms, against his lips, Makoto let out the softest sigh that he basked in as she gingerly peeled herself away only to press their foreheads together.
“I love you,” she said, just a whisper between them. “It doesn’t matter what Tetsu or anyone else thinks, I’m not going anywhere. And if anyone has a problem with it, they’ll have to do the job right next time or we’ll take them down together.”
The hardened steel in her tone sent a chill through him, both scary and exhilarating.
It was the same as he’d heard from her earlier; the same sort of thing that sent her walking into the lion’s den alone those months ago; the same thing that would undoubtedly boost Makoto to the top of the food chain as she climbed the ranks at his side.
He kissed her again, breaking it to murmur a gravelly, “I love you, too” before just taking a second to breathe in the air between them. There was no blood anymore, just the scent of soap and shampoo and his living, breathing Makoto.
She’d be giving Yayoi Dojima a run for her money soon when it came time for him to come asking her brother for a different kind of blessing.
. . . her brother.
Her brother.
Tachibana.
Tachibana who he’d left sitting, waiting, watching this all play out from across the table a scant arm’s length away.
“Fuck!” Majima pulled his face away from Makoto’s and whirled to face her brother.
Except that when he did, he found he wasn’t there.
The seat Tachibana was occupying however many minutes ago was now pulled out and vacant and Majima had no earthly clue where he’d disappeared to, or when.
“O-oi! Makoto, yer brother—”
Makoto blinked at the empty spot, too, and started scanning the restaurant. She was about to shake her head, having nothing of his whereabouts to offer either, when she spotted him near the front chatting politely with the old woman at the register.
Who was handing him the bill.
“GORO!” She yelled, her fingers suddenly digging into the tops of his shoulders in a death grip. “Goro, he’s gone for the check! GO!”
“Haw?!” Now that she’d pointed him out, Majima zeroed in on his sleek figure, shmoozing with what looked like one of the owners. “That sneaky sonofa—”
He was tripping over his own feet while fumbling with fishing his wallet from his pocket when a lightbulb went off and Majima screeched to a halt, eye wide in shock.
"Makoto, ya think this means he—”
"YES!” She flailed and shoved him in the direction of the register. “Now get that fucking check or he might change his mind!”
“RIGHT!” He turned back with new resolve.
With a fat stack of bills in hand and a ferocious snarl on his face, Majima set off for his last big battle of the night.
“Oi! Tachibana! We invited ya out, ya fuck! It’s our fuckin’ treat!”