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The Cabaret Grand Prix final was tight. No punches were pulled. Kiryu had had fights with entire yakuza clans that were less exhausting and tense than taking Four Shine to victory. And in the brief moments where he could lean against a wall to catch his breath, he didn’t know where to look.
On one side, Yuki laughing and charming guests and looking absolutely stunning. Kiryu wasn’t stupid, he knew she was beautiful, but she really was legendary as a hostess. Men just looked at her like they were seeing an actual goddess. Even Majima.
Then, on the other side there was Majima, playing it up and having a blast. It wasn’t surprising, some people were just made for the spotlight and Majima definitely was one of them, but there was this softness to his eye and his wide grin lacked that dagger sharpness it had too often. He looked good in that silly white suit, hamming it up like he was born on the stage. And looking at Yuki, the whole time.
He’d had no idea they knew each other. That was the kind of coincidence Kiryu could swear always happened when Majima was involved, as if their fates were tied in ways they were both too stupid to comprehend - and every time pieces fell together, it felt like he discovered a whole new side to him he didn’t know existed.
To be fair, there was still a lot he didn’t know of Majima. Hell, up until three hours ago he wasn’t sure Majima could actually wear a shirt. He frowned extra hard at his back until he turned and shot him one of those manic grins.
Then he was called to a table, and he lost that train of thought.
He got to flop down into a booth only when they’d won and the camera crews had moved out. The girls were still buzzing with adrenaline, popping champagne and shrieking with laughter, but he was just exhausted, heavy with that tiredness only working for something good and wholesome could give him. He looked up when a glass of whiskey was placed on the table, just in time to see Majima plop next to him with a squeak of leather couch.
“Thanks, niisan,” he said quietly. His throat was drier than a desert.
Majima loosened his brightly striped tie with a sigh. “Woo, those lights’re mad hot. Dunno how these presenters wear all these clothes under ‘em.” He unbuttoned the shirt deep enough a lick of black and a cherry petal peeked out, shiny with sweat. Kiryu didn’t stare.
They both drank their whiskey and watched the gaggle of happy, glowing young women cheer and raise their glasses. Aika yelled insistently about shots and Kiryu thought about saying something - but they deserved to party until they dropped. They’d all done so well. He smiled, feeling warm with pride. It was an odd feeling, but he could get used to it.
“Weren’t expecting ya to be so good at this, Kiryu-chan,” grinned Majima in his glass.
“Wasn’t expecting you to actually know so much about this,” he shot back.
Majima’s eye went weirdly soft again and Kiryu knew he was looking at Yuki. “It was a weird time of my life. But not all bad.”
Kiryu rubbed the indentations in the glass with his thumb. “So...you and Yuki, huh?”
Majima smiled, another one of those big sweet smiles, almost goofy with affection. Majima smiled at him almost like that sometimes, but never quite, never for long enough. “Yeah. She was my shinin’ diamond. Taught her all I knew...I’m glad to see she’s runnin’ the show now.”
Kiryu nodded. He wasn’t actually answering the question but he’d rather die than ask if they had...romantic history. It was none of his business anyway.
“And her top gal! That Koyuki sure is a sweet thing, ain’t she? She’s gonna go far, that’s fer sure.”
“Yeah. Yuki really cares for her a lot.”
Majima slowly rested his empty glass onto the table. “Does she, now.”
Kiryu tore his eyes from where Yuki was linking arms with Koyuki and downing a shot without either of them breaking eye contact, and looked at Majima. “Mmh. They’re pretty close. They even have a…” he smiled. “Some sort of weird dance routine, like magical girls. It’s really cute.”
Majima made a low sound in the back of his throat and kept staring at the girls. Then, in a blink, he was on his feet, mouth agape. “Kiryu-chan!” he stage-whispered. “You know what this means?”
“Uh….no?”
“She’s in love with her! She’s in love with Koyuki-chan!”
Kiryu frowned, looking back at the bar. Yuki and Koyuki were sitting with their shoulders pressed together, whispering in each other’s ears and giggling, cheeks flushed and eyes sparkling.
Majima dropped heavily back into the booth, a lot closer now. “She totally is! I always suspected she batted for the other team but it was a long time ago…I sure ain’t ever seen her smile like that…”
“I guess you could be right.” Kiryu had seen Yuki and Koyuki often come in together, or spend time alone in Yuki’s office. Yuki always asked for Koyuki’s opinion, sometimes seemed to even seek her validation. He hadn’t questioned it, but now that Majima pointed it out..he felt his cheeks warm up.
“Ya think Koyuki-chan knows?” asked Majima and then, without giving him the time to reply, “we have to do somethin’!”
“Do we?”
“Yes! I know Yuki, she’s awkward as all hell when it comes to love stuff, no way she’s gonna get that pretty girl all on her own!!” He leaned in conspiratorially, cupping his hands around Kiryu’s ear. Kiryu’s cheeks got even warmer. “And if we don’t get ‘em together some borin’ old dude is gonna snatch Koyuki-chan right up!”
Kiryu doubted any dude, boring or otherwise, could snatch Koyuki up. He’d seen the sheer amount of pictures of Yuki on her phone. But now there was a slight manic curl in Majima’s grin, and Kiryu knew that one didn’t get to say no to this Majima.
“What are you thinking of?”
“I say the classics ain’t ever wrong - a good ol’ kidnapping!”
“What is it with you and kidnapping?”
“It gets the blood pumpin’! It adds drama!” Kiryu could swear drama and blood were the only thing sustaining Majima, sometimes. “Can’t go wrong with that!”
“We are not kidnapping Yuki.”
“Lord, of course we ain’t. She’d never let me live that down, ‘specially after that time we forgot her on the roof,” Kiryu decided it was better if he didn’t ask. “Yuki’s the knight in shinin’ armor who’s gonna rescue her princess!”
Kiryu glared. “We are not kidnapping Koyuki.” The girls of Four Shine were his responsibility, and he was not going to betray their trust like this.
Majima huffed, squirming into the seat like a despondent ferret. “We’re not kidnappin’ her for real! Just takin’ her out for a nice dinner and makin’ Yuki think she’s in mortal danger. Is that good enough for ya, mister goody-two-shoes?”
Kiryu mulled it over, eyebrows tightly knit together. On one hand it was still a breach of the trust Yuki and the girls had put in him. On the other, nobody got hurt, and his job as a manager was basically over, and…
He glanced up at Majima, who was practically vibrating with excitement, all teeth and manic energy.
...it was really hard to say no to him.
“Fine,” he finally conceded. “But if anything goes wrong, it was entirely your idea.”
“Deal!”
If nothing else, it was going to be different, being on this side of one of Majima’s harebrained schemes.
***
Majima weaved through the maze of alleys and blazing neon as if he had mapped every step, every hidden staircase between looming wooden buildings. Kiryu still got lost in Sotenbori every three steps, and he already had one too many celebratory shots before they closed up Four Shine; too busy not losing the flash of white through the crowd, he gave up knowing where he was being led.
Majima took him down on a winding passage Kiryu must have passed a hundred times and never noticed, down cracked concrete steps and along the lower footpath. The glossy water of the canal lapped lazily at the sickly grey grass as Majima hesitated, just for a breath, tall and still and severe in a way Kiryu had never seen him before. He had time to dizzily wish he knew more about him, more about this, before Majima was in motion again, zipping between overflowing trash cans and dodging drunks and making kissy noises at stray cats regarding him with boredom.
“Ah, I knew it. It couldn’t have gone outta business all the way,” he grinned, coming to a stop so suddenly Kiryu bumped against his back slightly. He didn’t bother stumbling back. Majima’s back was warm in the chilly Osaka night, and a curl of ink and a glint of gold peeked back at Kiryu when he looked down the loosened collar of his shirt.
The bar was almost elegant, a much quieter place than the kind Kiryu imagined Majima would enjoy. He felt at ease immediately, and the excellent 30-year whisky helped considerably. He was swaying a little when Majima dragged him up for darts.
Majima’s aim was impeccable, as if he hadn’t been matching every one of Kiryu’s drinks for the past three hours.
“So,” muttered Kiryu, lodging a dart into a pretty lame 18-point. “When did you meet Yuki?”
“Eighty-eight,” said Majima absently, hitting the bullseye for the second time in a row. The darts stuck out of the center like little frayed flags. “And no, we ain’t ever fucked, so you can stop tryin’ to suss that out like you’ve been doin’ all night, junior detective.”
“I wasn’t asking that.” He honestly wasn’t, but a cool sense of relief settled in his stomach, and he was too drunk to figure out why.
“‘S okay, it’s a reasonable question. She is stunnin’.” Another bullseye, and the darts clacked together. There was no more space in the center, and Majima walked over to pull the darts out. “But I was her boss. And I ain’t that kinda scumbag.”
“Didn’t think you were.” A much better 40-pointer. He didn’t think he was, but he was relieved to know he was right.
“‘Sides, she’s like..family, ya know? Even if I skipped town and never let her know.”
“Family is family,” said Kiryu quietly, and the dart kh-thunked easily into the center of the board. “Even if you can’t be together.”
Nishiki was still family. Yumi was still family. Kazama...was still family.
He wouldn’t have wanted Shimano to know about Yuki’s existence, either.
Majima slotted his dart right next to Kiryu’s. His sharp profile had that severe tilt to it again, and Kiryu forgot it was his turn until his eye trailed up to him. “We both found weird family that year, didn’t we.”
They’d never talked about what happened in ‘88. They’d never talked about Makoto, or Tachibana, or the razorblade wires that tangled them together without letting them meet until it was too late, pulled by men so much more powerful than them and yet so, so small. All those men were gone now, and they were somewhat still alive, and they didn’t need to talk about it anymore, never did.
“Yeah,” agreed Kiryu, and hit the bull with a dissonant scrape of metal on metal. “We’re good at finding unlikely family.”
Majima smiled at him, and it was almost the same tender smile he had for Yuki that night, and Kiryu felt a little less hollow and brittle, for a little bit.
***
In the morning, the only thing that could penetrate the haze of Kiryu’s hangover was the sheer contempt in Sayama’s voice as she coldly told him she was going to handle the investigation on her own, since he clearly wasn’t capable of taking things seriously. Kiryu fell back into a nauseous slumber a split second after the door had slammed closed, feeling even worse for letting her down.
He woke up well past noon with a splitting headache, a full bladder, and some barely awake texts from Majima that took some deciphering before he could figure out where they were meeting and when.
Two hot buns and a Staminan Royale later, Kiryu felt human enough to meet up with Majima by the gaudy arched entrance of the Cabaret Grand. He could see him from a distance, back in his normal leather and snakeskin getup and yet not quite looking like Kiryu was used to. He looked a bit washed out in this gray daylight, nothing like the bright colorful tornado he was at the construction site. The golden spotlights on the wall highlighting the top hostesses cut deep shadows on his sharp face.
“Niisan,” he said when he joined him, and Majima glanced over at him and then back to the front of the Cabaret.
He took a long drag of his cigarette while Kiryu lit one of his own.
“Fuckin’ hate this trash heap.”
Kiryu looked up at the ornate marble columns. “You’ve...been here?” it seemed, let’s say, a little upscale for Majima.
“Been here?” he snorted smoke out of his nose. “This shithole would be a konbini today without me.”
Kiryu’s sluggish brain finally made the connection. “You managed the Grand?”
“Not voluntarily, that’s fer fuckin’ sure.” He flicked the cigarette across the street to bounce on the overly polished steps. And then when he turned, his manic grin was plastered back on and the glint was back in his eye. “Anyway. Enough bummer talk. Let’s go kidnap ourselves a pretty gal, shall we?”
Kiryu had still so many questions but as he’d been learning for the past year, Majima answered only questions you never thought of asking, at the weirdest possible moment, and you had to be ready for it. He tucked away the new nugget of Majima Knowledge away, and braced himself for whatever tidal wave was going to hit him today.
***
It actually was not hard at all to get Koyuki to come out with them. The promise of Korean BBQto celebrate the win was enough, but Majima sweetened the deal with a special Yuki Bonus he wouldn’t let her see yet. And it made Kiryu extremely curious.
“A Yuki Bonus, huh?” said Kiryu, sipping his beer at the counter of the KBBQ restaurant where they waited for the Cabaret Grand Prix’s Best Hostess.
Majima grinned, pulling a small envelope out of his pocket and holding it up with two fingers. “I got Nishida to toss my apartment inside out last night and scan it for me. Printed it at the Poppo while I was waiting for yer slow ass to show up.”
Kiryu snatched the envelope and opened it, revealing a glossy print of a somewhat faded, ear-cornered picture of what was very obviously the front of 4 Shine, but….
The sign said SUNSHINE and the girls striking all sorts of victory poses in front were different, apart from…
“That’s...Yuki, isn’t it?” said Kiryu, pointing at the stunning young girl in a slinky golden dress, beaming and raising dual victory signs.
“Sharp-eyed as always, Kiryu-chan! That’s Sunshine in ‘88, when she became a legend. Cute, ain’t she? I’m sure Koyuki-chan will love to add this to her lil collection.”
Kiryu glanced back at the picture. It was odd, seeing Yuki so young. And next to her, Youda - who somehow still looked the same. And…another young man, tall, dark hair, a lopsided smile on his face and…
...an eyepatch.
“Wait.”
Majima laughed.
“That’s you?”
“Took ya long enough! Yeah. Looked like a right douchebag, didn’t I?”
Kiryu frowned at the image. It was hard to piece together that lanky manager in a tuxedo with the Majima he’d always experienced, yet the faded descriptions he’d gotten from Nishiki and Makoto definitely fit the bill.
“You were...very handsome.”
Majima froze, whatever self-deprecating comment stuck on his lips. It was only a second, though. “What, ya saying I ain’t handsome now?”
Kiryu rolled his eyes, and returned the picture. That tired looking young man was burned in his brain forever, he felt like. “With the way you always try to avoid talking about that time, I wasn’t expecting you to keep a picture of it.”
Majima slipped the photo back into the envelope and into his pocket. “I try not to talk about it because it’s a huge bummer, alright? I wasn’t myself. Shit happened. But...they made it almost tolerable.”
Kiryu smiled. That was the kind of Majima Breakthrough that always felt like a sweet, precious little victory. His hand was already halfway to touching his shoulder when the bells above the door rang cheerfully and their “mark” stepped into the restaurant with a cheerful greeting.
He hoped there would be time for a little more of...whatever this was, before Majima had to go back to Tokyo.
***
Yuki’s heart thundered in her ears as she ran down the steps to the lower footpath two-by-two, phone clutched in her hand. She hadn’t stopped to even think since getting that menacing text.
And that picture. Koyuki with her arms bound. Tape over her mouth. She knew their adversaries were going to be sore losers, but this was going too far. If they’d harmed a single hair on Koyuki’s head, she’d...she’d…..
She came to an abrupt stop just outside one of the darkest side alleys, Koyuki illuminated by a weak streetlight, just within reach, hands still bound but mouth free.
“Yuki! You came!”
“Of course I came,” she panted, noticing the hulking figures just behind Koyuki, hidden in the darkness. She wished she’d brought her knife. Or at least her glasses. “You! I don’t know what you want, but…”
A large hand gripped Koyuki’s arm, and she startled. “Yuki…”
Yuki felt as if her whole body was on fire. It didn’t matter if she didn’t have a weapon. Suddenly all the dirty self-defense tricks Majima had taught her two decades ago were fresh in her muscle memory. Feet planted into the dirt, she roared. “Take your hands off my wife, you piece of shit!”
“If ya want yer…” said a deep voice with a heavily fake kansai accent. “Wait, wife?”
Yuki was ready to charge and start throwing hands when her favorite sound in the whole world stopped her in her tracks.
Koyuki giggled, ropes falling off from her unmarked wrists as she hid her face in her hands. “Aww, honey. I feel like a damsel getting rescued by a prince. My heart’s beating so fast!”
“Koyuki. Care to explain.”
“Wellll...you see....”
She didn’t need to. Yuki was faster to step past her and grab at the right height into the darkness and twist on an ear she knew too well. “You.”
Majima screeched in pain, dragged into the light. “Okay okay ya win! Ya win!”
“I can’t believe you’d do this to me! And to her!” She pointed at the other indistinct shadow cowering behind Koyuki. “And I can’t believe you’d get Kiryu-san involved in your stupid schemes! How are you even real!”
“We just wanted to get you two together!”
“We are together! You dumbass! I married Koyuki six months ago!”
“Married…”
Yuki let go of Majima’s ear, that glowed red even in the dim lights. “We had a ceremony in Four Shine and everything, and, and we've been trying to buy a house, and Saki was my best man because, because I didn’t even know - “ her breath hitched. Oh no, she was going to cry, wasn’t she. “I didn’t even know you were alive! I would have given anything for you to be at my side that day! You asshole!”
She didn’t get to say any more incredibly embarrassing stuff because suddenly she was wrapped tight in a hug and she was clinging to Majima’s neck and sobbing into that stupid snakeskin jacket and there was a whisper of an apology in her ear and...God. She’d missed him so much.
“Kiryu-san?” said Koyuki.
“Um. We’re very sorry?”
“No, no. I just wanted to thank you. For finally bringing him back into her life.” She chuckled. “Although I think you owe us quite a few drinks tonight to make up for this.”
“Yare yare….”
Yuki nodded, but didn’t quite let go. Just another minute and then she was gonna be ready to tear Majima a new one, she was sure…
***
“I can’t believe you’d let yourself get dragged into one of his schemes, Kiryu-san.”
Koyuki giggled. “I thought you got yourself dragged in Majima-san’s schemes a lot when you were younger?”
Yuki slammed her empty beer glass on the table. “Yes but I thought Kiryu-san was smarter!”
“When have I ever gave you that impression? I couldn’t even tell you…” he felt his cheeks burn and it wasn’t just the beer. “I couldn’t tell you were married.”
Yuki blushed. “To be fair we try not to...be too overt about it. I am technically her boss.”
“Didn’t we do it in your office that time while Kiryu-san was just outs-”
“Anyway!” Yuki cut her off, and Koyuki dissolved into giggles against an increasingly more embarrassed Kiryu. “What matters is that nobody actually kidnapped my wife and nobody got hurt despite somebody playing with fire.”
Majima didn’t even bother talking back to that. He’d been sitting there nursing his whiskey and the biggest, dumbest smile for the past hour.
“What!”
“I just can’t believe it, is all. My lil gal, married. Married!! To a stunner like Koyuki-chan! To think in the eighties ya were still daydreamin’ about a fairytale prince…”
“Oh my god how do you remember that?”
Majima tapped the side of his head. “I ain’t ever forget a thing, ya know that.”
“Then you’ll remember to call me every once in a while? So I don’t worry that somebody shot you or something?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on him,” chimed in Kiryu.
“Will you, now.”
“I’ll have ya know Kiryu-chan an’ I got real good at lookin’ out for each other, haven’t we?”
Kiryu smiled into his almost empty glass. “Yeah. Pretty good.”
Yuki sprung to her feet. “Well! If that isn’t our cue to head home, I don’t know what is.”
“Whaaat? But Yuuuki, we just had a couple beers…” whatever Koyuki was going to complain about, one glance from Yuki was enough to shut her up with a giggle. She wobbled to her feet and linked her arm with Yuki’s “Yeah. Let’s go home, my dashing fairytale princess.”
“Oh, and Majima-san?” Yuki leaned over to whisper something in Majima’s ear that made his eye go very wide and then they were gone with a wink and a flutter of Koyuki’s dress.
“What did she tell you?” asked Kiryu when Majima didn’t appear to reboot on his own.
“Kiryu-chan,” he said, his voice oddly serious. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand, shall we?”
Kiryu followed him out. Somewhere between the doors and the wooden steps of the riverside walkways, Majima gripped his wrist, firmly but not roughly. He wasn’t wearing his gloves. His hand was warm. Sotenbori was glittering on the river and shimmering on the damp boards thumping under their feet. Majima was frowning as he walked, as if he was looking for a special spot that wasn’t there anymore.
“Niisan?”
Majima finally stopped, and looked at Kiryu, and let go of his hand. Kiryu was a little sad about that.
“What did Yuki tell you?”
Majima raised his hands to cup Kiryu’s face, and he was smiling in that mysterious way, and then there were lips on Kiryu’s lips, soft smoky breath mingling with his breath, beard tickling beard.
“She told me to stop running an’ let ya catch me already,” he breathed on Kiryu’s mouth. “I been running for so long I didn’t know I was allowed to stop.”
Kiryu slid his hands under snakeskin, palming the line between warm leather and cool, clammy skin. “Caught you,” he murmured, and Majima kissed him again. Deeper, tasting each other, fingers digging into his scalp, Majima’s slender body pressed against his.
“Okay? This okay? Do ya want this?” he stammered when they parted, eye huge in the neon blur around them.
Kiryu kissed him. They stumbled, bounced off the railing and careened against the opposite wall. Kiryu put his hands between the wall and Majima’s back. There was a lot of scars there, but right now all he could think of were those dimples he knew were just under the Hannya’s fangs. Majima made a sound in his mouth when he touched them he wanted to hear all the time.
“Niisan,” he panted, painfully aware of how much he wanted Majima and also how incredibly out of his depth he was. Where were they going to...? Did they need…? Would Sayama hate him if he didn’t come back tonight?
“W-when you come back,” gasped Majima, as if reading his mind, or maybe just as scared as Kiryu was. “Get yer shit sorted and come to Purgatory. I’ll be there. I ain’t running anymore.”
Kiryu took a deep breath and a step back. Rested his forehead against Majima’s, feeling the strap of his eyepatch pressing on his skin. He slid his hands out from under his jacket and found Majima’s hands, and linked their fingers together, and felt...almost whole, for the first time in so, so long. “Wait for me,” he said, meaning it.
“Till the end of time, if I gotta.”
Kiryu smiled. “I’ll try to be a little quicker than that.”
Majima laughed, and squeezed Kiryu’s hands, and gave him a last, soft kiss on the lips before stepping back.
“Figures,” he said and there was a playful light in his eye that made Kiryu want to kiss him again and again and again. “Tried playin’ matchmaker and got my match made.”
And if somebody that night wondered what two grizzled old ex-yakuza were doing, holding hands and laughing under a bridge like teenagers on their first date, they sure as hell didn’t bother checking it out.