Chapter Text
“I shoulda gotten that haircut.”
Makoto slid the back of her fingers along the underside of his ponytail before smoothing them over the spot between his shoulder blades where it fell.
“I like it,” she said. “I think it suits you like this.”
Majima suppressed the decidedly not unpleasant shiver at her touch and reached over to take her hand and give it a squeeze.
Stay focused.
“He’s gonna think I’m some kinda cheap thug,” he groused.
“You are a thug,” Makoto beamed and squeezed back. “A high-level thug.”
Majima shot her a look to which she shrugged.
“Aren’t you proud of where you are?” she asked.
“Well, yeah, but—”
“I am too,” she said interweaving their fingers together. “I have . . . opinions about your boss, none of them kind, but if this is what makes you happy, I’m happy for you. If I weren’t, I wouldn’t be here and we wouldn’t be going to meet my brother together.”
Majima harrumphed at her logic. The heavy weight of guilt still pressed on him whenever Makoto insisted she was alright with this life. He’d told her everything that’d happened at Dojima HQ once she’d been coherent enough again and on the mend. He also told her about Shimano, about the things his boss had said, the fool he played him for, and how, if she stayed with him, they’d have every road to walk except for the easy one.
He’d given her every opportunity to run, full-bodied and screaming in the other direction with the promise never to bid her to look back and never to go looking himself. But she hadn’t.
She’d called him an idiot—which was true—and said as long as they were together, then it was okay.
Inexplicably, she chose him.
Makoto chose to stay.
With him.
Ain’t that some shit?
After all that she’d been through so far and all they’d yet to get through in the days—years, he hoped—ahead, she deserved this one thing he could exert any amount of control over to go right. And, hell, he’d already dropped at least a hundred guys in her name—at this point he was ready for anything.
So why the fuck was this soon-to-be meeting with her brother so goddamned terrifying?
“. . . and besides, he won’t care about that. He employed Kiryu-san before he rejoined the Tojo Clan and still thinks the world of him.”
Kiryu.
That name snapped him out of his head.
Makoto had mentioned him before and he’d read the name on a business card back when he was still trying to get her back, but had yet to meet the guy. He didn’t know much about him, just that he was a rough handful of years younger than himself and had already made quite a stir throughout all of the Tojo. The only bit he really cared about, though, was the part where him and that Dojima pretty boy, Nishikiyama, lost her when they were so focused on tending to her brother.
On the one hand, it meant Makoto got her brother back after all those years of searching. Having him back made her happy and a happy Makoto meant he had one less reason to go out hunting for heads.
On the other, it meant they let her go off, partially blind and fully bloodthirsty with a half-cocked plan for revenge.
. . . although, upon further reflection, he supposed he couldn’t throw stones about that one. Glass houses and all.
Still, he got the idea that Kiryu was a whole different breed and if that’s what her brother was expecting, well, there’d be more than a little problem.
Majima came to a halt in the middle of Nakamichi street, earning him a surprised squeak from Makoto when he tripped her up and she went falling. He caught her mid-stumble, set her back on her feet, and laid a heavy hand on either of her shoulders.
“Makoto. Ya realize just how different this Kiryu guy is from me, right? There’s gossip about him at the office but from what ya told me, fella sounds like a big softy.”
Makoto narrowed her eyes and in the next moment all Majima knew in life was the sharp, searing pain radiating from the back of his hand where her delicately manicured nails pinched up a bit of the thin layer of skin there and twisted agony into existence. Majima shrieked and flailed and batted her hand away, rubbing at the tender patch of skin as she sniffed and continued on towards their destination.
“Don’t be patronizing, Goro,” she said. “Kiryu-san did just as much fighting as you to keep me safe.”
“That’s statistically untrue,” he scoffed and with a whine, added, “Shit! Makoto, that really hurt!”
She hummed and reached back to grab the hand she pinched, placing a soft kiss to the spot now blooming into a lovely shade of red. Makoto smiled when he caught up with her with a single long-legged half-step and they fell back into a comfortable stride once more.
“Lookit that, it’s gettin’ all ugly. Always with the pinchin’ an’ smackin’ an bitin’. I’m gonna start callin’ abuse on you. Maybe this Kiryu guy can come be my hero, too,” he said. "Get me outta this unscathed."
It was Makoto’s turn to stop them then.
She slowed her step and turned back around to face him. Taking both of his hands in her own, she tilted her head until she could get a good, solid lock on his single eye, squeezing his fingers in a bid for his attention.
“Goro, look at me.” She waited until he did. “You don’t need to worry.”
“‘m not worried,” he grumbled.
She squeezed his hands again ignoring the menacing grimace plastered all over his face.
“My brother is going to love you. Just as much as I do.” Makoto tilted her head thoughtfully, adding, “Alright, not as much as I do, but everything will still be fine. Okay?”
When he peered down at her and into those big dark eyes staring back he wanted to lose himself in them for forever.
Still too fresh and raw was the memory of them fluttering shut on that rooftop, the both of them covered in a growing pool of her blood. The deafening fear that he’d never get to see them open and looking his way again still hadn’t left him—he wasn’t sure if it ever would. When she looked at him the way she did now, with such eagerness and adoration, his desire to give her all the reasons in the world to keep looking at him like that drowned it out.
“Okay,” he said at last.
Makoto smiled up at him and his own curled his lips at the sight of it. Seemingly satisfied, she tugged one of their still clasped hands up between them and tapped her lips with a finger.
His eyebrow ticked up at the gesture.
“Haw? Propositionin’ me now, too, huh?”
“I’m fairly positive I can’t proposition you to me if we’re already together,” Makoto said. She freed her hands from his and slipped them up along the flat of his lapels until they came to rest at the back of his neck. “Now shut up and kiss me.”
He grinned, already leaning in when he said, “Well, since ya asked so nice.”
His hands found the dip of her waist easily beneath the neatly fitted blazer and blouse she chose to wear on their outing. It was lightweight and airy but still far too many layers for his tastes. The only thing he did like about her layers was the promise of peeling them off once they got back to their apartment after this was all said and done.
Makoto had her head tilted up, lips pursed slightly in waiting, but she was short enough that he had to tug her closer to his front to reach.
It was a terrible, arduous task that was expected of him, but it had to be done.
And so it was with his hands having migrated a smidge lower, his fingers curled just so around her rear, her hips held flush to his, and his mouth hovering a hairsbreadth away from her lips that a very loud, very disgruntled throat clearing froze him in his tracks.
He opened his eye and peered over the top of Makoto’s head only to meet another pair of eyes that were very dark and very familiar, very much Makoto’s . . . except not.
Majima blinked once, looked up at the restaurant sign—Beijing Chinese Eatery—and back down to the man standing outside with his long-ish slicked back black hair, clad in a three-piece suit that looked so custom that the silk was probably spun specifically for it.
No.
No, it couldn’t be.
His expression was as sharp and severe as the cut of his suit with those Makoto-like eyes completely devoid of the affection hers always held for him.
Completely devoid of it.
And, at the moment, they were scanning a scathing path between where his hands were resting on Makoto’s skirt-covered bottom and his lips were puckered for a kiss.
If there’s any kinda God out there, just don’t let it be—
“Onii-chan! You’re early!”
Makoto, who had finally checked to see why Majima had stopped moving, whirled away from him so fast it almost hurt his feelings.
By the looks of it, his feelings weren’t the only things about to get hurt.
Well, ain’t that just a kick in the dick.