Chapter Text
In hindsight, the Patron should have have been a dead give away.
“Gran Burdeos?” Obi sniffs, shaking his head like that might help clear the pressure building up in his sinuses. This might almost make up for him being sent home like a naughty dog, with explicit and fervent orders to rest. “Anejo? Isn’t this the stuff grown in that special hill in Mexico? Aged in barrels from chateau Bordeaux?”
Mitsuhide shifts in the hall, his shoulders taking up almost the whole of the jamb. “It is.”
His fingers are numb around the glass neck. “The kind that’s five hundred bucks, wholesale?”
Big guy coughs. “Yes.”
Six years ago, the only thing he’d ever held that was worth that much money was the TV he was stealing.
“Mister,” Obi purrs, leaning his hip seductively against the door, “if you wanted my pants off, all you had to do was a–”
“Just let me in already.” Mitsuhide shoulders past him into the penthouse, unbuttoning his suit jacket. Obi’s is already slung over the back of a bar stool, the first casualty of his arrival home, his shoes scattered haphazardly beneath it. “You reprobate.”
“Aw.” Obi slams the door behind him jauntily. “You really have missed me.”
“The view is nice here,” Mitsuhide observes, standing between a soft leather couch and one of Miss’s more picturesque cacti. Plate glass windows wrap around a wall and a half – a feature Obi protested when Boss showed it to him, for safety reasons, but it wasn’t like their other one had been much better, years ago – and from that spot is the perfect view of the LA skyline at sunset.
Almost. “Not as nice as our old one,” Obi says archly, pouring out a finger into the fluted glasses. Mitsuhide has the grace to blush.
“We didn’t –”
“Of course not.” Obi grins, pouring out another finger into both. “Congratulations again, by the way.”
“You were there,” Mitsuhide reminds him, “in case you don’t remember. You drank a lot of –”
“Dalmore, aged thirty years,” he hums happily. Any night with an open bar was a good memory in the making, especially with this crowd. “How could I forget?”
“It’s more impressive that you remember,” Mitsuhide mutters, winding his way back to the kitchen. “You know you told –”
“ANYWAY.” Obi lifts his glass in a salute. “Down the hatch!”
“It’s for sipping –”
“Damn,” he sighs, licking his lips. “That’s smooth. I can taste the wind from Jalisco. It’s like I’m there.”
Mitsuhide stares at him like he just jumped the velvet ropes at the Louvre. “You’re supposed to savor it.”
He grins, sliding the man his glass as he refills his own. “You know what this would go great with?”
Mitsuhide eyes him warily, glass perched at the edge of his lips. “What?”
He waits for the big guy to take a sip. “Pizza.”
Five hundred dollar tequila sprays across his kitchen island. “Pizza?”
“Aw, look,” Obi sing-songs, “you’re wasting it.”
“We are not drinking this with pizza.”
He waggles a finger. “Now, now, big guy. The only question left is Domino’s or Papa John’s.”
“Okay, you were right.” Obi groans, slumping back into the couch. He throws his chicken bones onto the foil, blinding grabbing for another wing. House of Wings containers litter the coffee table, enough to feed a small army. “Not pizza.”
“Oh god, how can you –” Mitsuhide downs his tequila, hand waving in front of his mouth – “How can you even feel your mouth?”
“Ahhh.” He pulls in a long breath through his nose. “I can finally breathe.”
Both their button downs are long forgotten, balled up on the floor as the apartment’s temperature steadily rose. They’re both down to undershirts – classic T-shirt for big guy, and a tank for himself, showing off all his impressive, illegally acquired scars – and black suit pants, bare feet kicked up on the coffee table.
“Do you even taste anything anymore?” Mitsuhide pulls a wing from the tray of honey barbecue. “I can’t even feel my face.”
“I know, isn’t it great?”
“No.”
He flicks on the TV with a snort, reruns of How It’s Made adding a pleasant layer of white noise to the background. “They’re called Danger for a reason, big guy.”
“You said I’d like them.”
“Ah, you’re right, sorry.” He grins. “I meant I’d like watching you try to eat them.”
“Obi –”
They get into a rousing argument about, of all things, the flesh-toned crayola crayon – the real danger of watching How It’s Made while getting gentle blitzed on good tequila – and it’s while he’s navigating to the crayola wiki – because of course, of course there’s a wiki – that Mitsuhide sees his home screen.
“Tinder?” He raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t realize you were, uh, dating.”
Obi waggles his eyebrows. “Jealous, big guy?”
“Obi!”
“It’s all right, Kiki need never know about our love –”
Mitsuhide’s mouth pulls tight in a grimace. “Don’t think I don’t see you dodging the question. I didn’t think you’d be doing all that, with uh…” His hands flail uselessly in front of him. “…Circumstances.”
Because you’re in love with her is what he isn’t saying. Obi’s grits down on a grin.
“Don’t you worry, mister,” he says brightly. “It’s not my profile. It’s Miss’s.”
Some of the tequila misses Mitsuhide’s mouth.
“Wasteful,” Obi clucks.
“You have Shirayuki’s profile?”
He has a moment – a moment he has entirely too often, especially now that he’s met Miss – where he realizes he is going to have to explain a joke that, even at the time it was made, defies explanation. To Mitsuhide, who almost certainly expects a coherent answer, not it was funny at the time.
“She started it,” he blurts out. “She said I needed to date and just…made me one.”
Of course, only after he’d said something like, that sort of thing shouldn’t be left up to me, Miss, I have terrible taste.
“And you just…made her one too?” He’s not sure what that tone of mister’s is, but it’s not…pleased.
“It was funnier at the time, I promise.” He scratches at his shoulder, tilting his head back. “She deleted mine right after.”
“And you…didn’t?”
He huffs out a laugh. “Oh, of course not. I like fucking with people who send me dick pics.”
“You use it?”
“Well, she sure isn’t.”
Mitsuhide frowns. “Isn’t that…catfishing?”
He rolls his eyes. “Well, you can make anything illegal if you say it in that tone and make it about money.”
“Obi!”
“C’mon, big guy.” He waggles his eyebrows, tapping open the app. “Wanna swipe left on some losers?”
“Naoki?” Mitsuhide blinks at the screen. “Just what age do you have this set to?”
“Twenty-five to thirty-five,” Obi tells him, taking another sip.
“Then how did Naoki Ito get in here?” The big guy stares. “He’s the President of his own corporation. And he’s eighty, at least.”
“Hmm.” Obi glances down. “Says he’s thirty-three.”
“Left. Swipe left.”
“Are you sure? I mean he’ll probably kick it soon, and the financial security –”
“Swipe. Left.”
“Oops, left on this one!” Obi laughs, putting his glass down to swipe at the screen.
“Hey, this one isn’t so bad!” Mitsuhide protests, knocking away his hand. “Yori, thirty, head of his own Silicon Valley start-up? He’s not bad looking either.”
“Oh, yeah, Yori’s a babe,” he agrees, swallowing down a snicker. “But you haven’t been reading the news, have you, big guy?”
“I mean, not – not religiously.”
“Google him.”
“Silicon Valley CEO suspected of suffocating wife?”
“You know,” Obi slurs; the tequila must be catching up with him. “I heard suffocation is the most personal kind of murder.”
“Oh god, you would have heard of something like that.”
“Hey.” He presses a hand to his chest, swaying. “I’m a professional.”
“How does he even still have a profile? He must have – he must have just made it!”
“What, like Tinder checks?” Big guy grimaces. “Aww, come on, mister. Even murderers need love.”
“Ugh.”
“That’s why they have conjugal visits.”
Mitsuhide squints up at the ceiling, pained. “Why are you like this?”
“How about this guy?”
Obi perks up from the fridge, where he’s digging out two Coronas from underneath a mound of fresh produce. All the Patron bottle is good for now is a very fancy, very expensive paperweight, and the night’s still young. “Who now?”
“Rikuto, age twenty-seven.”
Obi squints, trying to get his sluggish brain to pull out the information niggling at the back of his memory. “Just sold his social media platform to…what? Google?”
“Yeah, looks like.”
“Dead.”
“What?” Mistuhide stares at the phone like he might catch it. “How?”
“Sold his social media platform to google.” Obi grins. “Spent all the money on hookers and blow. Cheaped out on the blow.”
Mitsuhide groans. “All right. Next.”
“Swipe left?”
“Wha – yes!”
“Hey, no judgement here, your kink is not my ki–”
“Left, Obi.”
“Satomi?” Mitsuhide blinks. “That has to be some sort of mistake.”
“What’s the problem, big guy?” Obi bites down on a grin. “Not into silky black hair? Bottomless dark eyes? Luscious curves?”
“N-no, it’s just –”
“Ah, more of a blonde fellow, huh? Shirayuki, too –”
“No!” He grits out, exasperated. “It’s a woman!”
Obi stares. “And…?”
“Well, that’s not – Shirayuki’s not –”
He arches an eloquent brow. “Big guy. Come on.”
He can see Mitsuhide working through it: Shirayuki blushing when Kiki calls her beautiful, the way she chokes and stutters when Kiki dresses up in her elegant backless gowns, how disappointed she was when Torou hadn’t chosen to flirt with her all those years ago, back in Tanbarun…
He leans over Obi’s shoulder, squinting at the CFO of Fresh Face PR Management. “Swipe right, I think.”
“Oh yeah,” he agrees enthusiastically, “swipe right.”
“Is there a reason all of these people make seven figures? At minimum?”
“Why, what are you trying to suggest, mister?” Obi smiles, so innocent. “I’m very good at search filters.”
“Is there even a field to sort for that?”
“Oh, mister,” he drawls, swiping left on a man with a wedding ring. “A gentleman never tells his secrets.”
“I’m just saying, if Miss is gonna leave the Boss,” Obi says loftily, angling his shoulders so Mitsuhide can’t see the screen, “it’s gotta be for someone who can keep her in the way she’s become accustomed.”
Big guy sputters at that. “So millionaires only, that’s what you’re saying.”
“Please, you date up. Billionaires only.”
“This guy looks so fuckin –” Mitsuhide stops himself, staring at his beer like it had answers for him. “He looks really familiar.”
Obi squints at the screen. “Oh, yeah, Tarou. He’s some…board member of his family trust or something. Hideo Vitsjo’s son.”
“Oh, shi –” The big guys swallows, rubbing a hand over his T-shirt. “Wow. I mean…wow. That’s not so bad right?”
“We met him while we were doing fundraising back east. Nice guy, overall.” Obi puts his finger down on the screen and purposefully swipes left.
Mitsuhide stares. “Didn’t you just say ‘nice guy?’“
“Yeah, but his brother is an asshole.” At his questioning look, Obi adds, “Asshole looking to be an only child. While we were there, someone tampered with the breaklines on Tarou’s car.”
“Jesus.” Mitsuhide takes a sip. “Jesus.”
“Tell me about it.”
If Obi neglects to mention Shirayuki was in it at the time, well, it all worked out in the end anyway. No use making the mother hen fret.
“You’re so smart, Obi.”
He rolls his head to look at Mistuhide, the room swimming wildly even when he stops. There is nothing about his level of drunkeness that feels smart.
“Yeah, I fuckin’ am.” he agrees anyway, because like, ninety percent of the time, he isn’t drunk now. Easy. Maybe even ninety-five. Miss has access to some very convincing livers when it comes to excess drinking. “But I think you are fucking wasted.”
“Nah,” Mitsuhide hums, slumping on the couch by his legs. “Naaah.”
“Yeah, you are.” He grins down at him fondly. “You’re like, blasted. Shwasted.”
“That isn’t even – is that a word?”
“If you weren’t drunk you’d already know.”
There’s no rebuttal to that besides a long, low groan. Obi tips his bottle in a salute. “Told ya.”
“Hey, Obi.” The words are slurred, but his tone is so earnest that Obi stares down, meeting the endless dark of his eyes. “Thanks. I…needed this.”
“No problem, big guy.” He clears his throat, looking away. “What brings to my neck of the woods anyway? Meetings with the Big Boss not going well?”
He’s silent so long, Obi checks if he’s passed out. He’s not, but his face is grim, lips pulled tight.
“Don’t…” He licks his lips. “Don’t delete that app.”
He blinks. “Mister?”
And of course, of course, that’s when he does pass out, legs hanging over the arm of the sofa and snoring loud enough to wake the dead.
“Oh, just –” Obi shakes his head. “Just fucking great. Your wife better not come looking for you.”
Shirayuki stumbles in well after two o’clock, dog tired. The other attending had gotten stuck in concert traffic somewhere in the city – god knows where, there’s only a dozen venues, and every one of them on the route to the hospital – and hadn’t made it in until three hours after start-of-shift. By the time she arrived, Shirayuki had been mid-emergency C-section, and after that she still had all of her end-of-shift paperwork to complete, and file, and –
And she just wants to fall into bed. Any bed. God, even the floor would do.
It’s not until she’s bent down, taking off her heels that she hears it. The drone.
She freezes. Obi doesn’t – he doesn’t make noise, even when he sleeps, just the soft in-out of his breath and, in more rare circumstances, deep, stifled groans. But this…this is definitely someone snoring.
Obi’s name sticks in her throat, choking her, and she feels for the switch –
Oh, just – Jesus Christ on the Cross. “Are you kidding me?”
She surveys the state of the penthouse – empty Coronas litter the counter tops, and the living area looks like House of Wings tried to invade rather than deliver and –
And there’s two drunk idiots sprawled out on her couch. It looks like one of them tried to move the other one before passing out on the floor.
Her lips pull flat, and she leans over, meaning to wake up the clear instigator –
Only to knock over an empty bottle that is not beer. Not unless beer is five hundred dollars a bottle and was made from tequila.
She pulls back. There’s no way Obi would spend that much money on liquor. He balks at spending more that twenty for a twelve-pack, never mind that. Which means –
The other idiot started it.
A quick text to Kiki tells her, he’s your problem until a more reasonable hour.
With a sigh, she treks to the linen closet, bringing out and armful of blankets. If she has anything to say about it, they won’t be two sick idiots, at least.