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Tachihara is wearing that stupid bandaid on his nose again when he stops by. Gin has always thought it made him look like a posturing fool, and more than once, she’s entertained the idea of tearing it off. He would probably cry out in indignation and challenge her to a fight right there if she did.
At least, that’s how the Tachihara she knew would have reacted. But the one standing before her, expression shuttered and tension bleeding out of every movement, is a stranger wearing the face of an old comrade. Quiet, where the other was loud. Reserved, where the other was arrogant and rash.
He leans against the doorway of the breakroom as he looks in her general direction, without looking at her.
“You got a minute?” he asks, and she would have given him grief for his meekness if they still shared anything other than severed ties.
Taking her silence as an agreement, he turns and exits the breakroom. She follows after him down the hall, into one of the many empty conference rooms lined up in a row.
He’s back in his V-neck and green jacket, as if that will cover up the stench of mutt on him. Then again, he’s said to have renounced his ties to the Hunting Dogs, so maybe he’s seeking out comfort in the familiar. She supposes they’re all clinging to normalcy right now, after the nightmare of the past few months.
Memories of that time are hazy, buried beneath the brambles of ink black depths and an insatiable, all-consuming hunger. If Dazai hadn’t nullified Stoker’s ability, Gin would have continued to wander the very bottom of that abyss, a prisoner in her own body. The thought of it makes her stomach turn.
“Look, you’ve got every right to be pissed off,” Tachihara eventually says, when the silence becomes too much for him to bear. “After what I did to you and Hirotsu-jii-san…”
Pissed off would be an understatement. The disorientation and paralyzing fear of your own hands moving against your will, driving a blade through your chest—would he have understood those feelings if he hadn’t also fallen victim to the vampirification?
Gin has fought all her life to be able to keep up with her brother, to protect her place in this world, but she is reminded, time and time again, that she is nothing more than a fly in the face of an ability user. To think that she had fought side by side with Tachihara, clawed her way through the ranks with him, shed blood and sweat and tears, while finding comfort in the idea that at least he was the same, and he had been an ability user all along.
To think that he had been playing them for fools all along.
She lets him know as much by pressing her knife to his throat. To his credit, he doesn’t flinch, though his posture stiffens slightly as the blade nicks the skin of his neck.
“Yeah, I figured,” he sighs, shoulders slumping. In what? Defeat? Or, laughable as it is, guilt? “Go ahead then. That way we’ll be even.”
Her fingers tighten around the hilt of her knife, hard enough to bruise. Slitting the throats of traitors has become second nature to her by now, but he is no longer a traitor to the organization. The Boss has already forgiven him, even welcoming him back into their ranks. Then what is the reason for this dissatisfaction broiling within her?
As if he can read the hesitation in her blade, Tachihara frowns. “I never took ya for a coward.”
By the time the roaring in her ears has subsided, her left fist stings with pain, and Tachihara’s gaze is cast downwards as he holds a hand to his bruised cheek. Her breath comes out in short, angry bursts. Compared to her brother, her rage has always run cold. But if there’s one thing Tachihara is good at, it’s getting underneath her skin.
Seeing that humorless smile of his, she understands at once what has her so unsettled.
The Port Mafia has never been a home to her, merely a means of survival. Her loyalties have always lied with people—with the brother she would give her life to protect, with teammates she has begrudgingly come to trust. It is not Tachihara’s betrayal of the organization that twists like a blade in her gut.
She is only disappointed that the closest thing she had to a friend had been a fabrication all along.
Exchanging death threats like greetings, turning every little task into a competition to see who was better, hiding from Chuuya’s wrath when their squabbles got out of hand—how much of that had been an act?
She grabs a fistful of his shirt, forcing him to look at her, demanding an explanation with the heat of her glare. Tachihara stares back as if debating what to say, before he lets his hand fall to his side with a relenting exhale.
“You don’t have to believe me, but I liked fighting with you and Jii-san, y'know? That part wasn’t fake.” His lips pull up in a wry imitation of a smile. “Not like I could’ve faked how much I hated your guts, at any rate.”
Unamused, she smacks him on the forehead with the end of her hilt. The wounded dog look he gives her would have been funny any other time, but right now, it feels far too subdued.
“Okay, this is probably gonna sound cheesy as fuck, but I felt like I could be myself here,” he admits, rubbing his forehead. “I wasn’t the less talented little brother, or the failure of a second child. I was just me. Just the Port Mafia’s Tachihara Michizou. And all those fights I picked with you—none of that was for some grand old mission. Not for the Hunting Dogs, or for my revenge. I just did it cause I felt like it, cause you were so fucking annoying. You could say that was one of the few parts of me that wasn’t influenced by my brother.” He rubs his neck, brows furrowed as if he isn’t sure how to word the next part properly. “So in a way, I owe you. Thanks, Gin.”
Her grip around his shirt loosens, not quite yet letting go. Gin. For once, it’s not you bastard, or creepy asshole. Just Gin. In all her life, this is the first time she has been thanked for getting on someone’s nerves. She releases him, slipping her knife back into her sleeve.
If her brother had died that night while pursuing those smugglers…there’s no doubt in her mind that she would have killed all of them herself, or at least taken as many of them down with her as she could. She would gladly have let revenge consume her, the way Tachihara had, if it meant having something, someone, to direct that overwhelming rage and sense of loss towards.
And that’s just it, isn’t it?
As much as she wants to throttle Tachihara, she can’t say she wouldn’t have done the same thing he did. For her brother’s sake, she would betray the Port Mafia in a heartbeat. Even if it meant being hunted for the rest of her life.
Her loyalties have always lied with people, but so have Tachihara’s.
“You aren’t the only one who was hiding something,” she finally says, reaching up to tug off her mask.
With her other hand, she undoes her hair tie. Her hair falls loose against her back, and then she is standing before him bare-faced, without the comforting lies. Just Gin.
Tachihara stares. And stares. He stares for so long without blinking that one has to wonder if he’s been replaced by a statue.
Brokenly, he drops his head into his hands and utters a strangled, “Holy shit.”
Gin has a feeling he’s recalling a lot of unfortunate things right now. Like the time he suggested they both strip to see who had better abs. Or the time he found a pad she’d dropped and was shocked that they sold bandaids that large. Or the time—
“Oh my god, the porn mag…” His face is paler than it was that time he accidentally shot a bullet through Chuuya’s hat, and she has to bite back a snicker. “I am so sorry.”
She shakes her head. “It’s fine. I do have to say though, I really question your taste in women.”
“Hey, what about the one you pick—” His indignant retort is cut short by the realization of what they’re arguing about, and he turns an even deeper shade of red than his hair. Letting out a groan, he takes a closer look at her. “So you’re really…”
No doubt he’s wondering why he didn’t notice all the signs sooner, like the simpleton that he is. As if a shorter stature or a slighter frame are conclusive evidence of anything.
“Female? I suppose I am. Does that change anything?” She narrows her eyes, daring him to answer otherwise. Because if he does, her opinion of him will drop lower than it already has.
Tachihara blinks at her sudden hostility, then lets out a breathless scoff. “I guess not. You’re still the same gloomy bastard you’ve always been.”
“And you’re still a brainless idiot.”
Her knife flies up to his neck at the same time a gun barrel is pressed into her abdomen. In any other situation, this might have been the precursor to a messy workplace dispute. But for the two of them, it’s simply routine. A small comfort, even. They hold their glares for five, six seconds, before cracking tiny smiles.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve coming here,” Gin says, pulling away to slip her mask back on. “Were you really planning to let me kill you?”
“I mean, I was kinda banking on you not doing it, but I couldn’t know for sure. So yes?”
A reckless answer from an equally reckless person. That part of him, at least, hasn’t changed.
She ties her hair up, completing her disguise. “Well, I won’t. You won’t get off the hook that easily.”
“Whatcha need me to do then?” he asks, more curious than apprehensive.
Her eyes travel up to the bandaid on his nose. The placement is a little lopsided, like he was in a rush to put it on and couldn’t be bothered to fix it. It was like that on their first assignment together too, when he challenged her to a knife fight and got his ass handed to him. In hindsight, he could have won easily if he’d used his ability.
Before she can change her mind, she reaches over and tears off the bandaid. Tachihara lets out a sound somewhere between a yelp of pain and an affronted squawk. Pressing his hand to his face, he shoots her a questioning look.
She smirks, sure that he can see it behind her mask. “Show me the real Tachihara Michizou.”
She might forgive him in a week, or a month, or never. Time will decide. Until then, maybe she can get to know him again.
***
If Gin had known she would end up running into Tachihara at the mall, she would have prepared a camera to film his reaction in real time. She’s tempted to do just that with her phone, but her brother would surely question her actions, and then she would have to explain why she needs footage of Tachihara mentally praying for his life for thirty minutes.
And everyone knows jokes, once explained, are no longer funny.
Speaking of her brother, he’s currently pushing around pieces of his opera cake while not actually eating any of it. It’s a terrible habit of his to only eat the two things he actually likes, but they didn’t come all the way to this cafe’s grand opening for him to order shiruko again.
He seems relaxed at least, which is more than Gin can say for Tachihara. Their unplanned plus-one has been glancing between her and Ryuunosuke like a broken fan for the past ten minutes, his crème brûlée sitting untouched on his plate.
Gin is sure he has questions—like why is she out and about with their fearsome leader on her day off?—but she’ll let him marinate a little longer in the wild theories. His wordless panic makes a great accompaniment for her matcha mont blanc.
“This tea is passable,” Ryuunosuke comments, having moved on from dismantling his cake to sampling their pot of hōjicha.
Coming from him, that’s basically a glowing review.
“Let’s buy a box to take home,” Gin suggests, and she doesn’t miss the way Tachihara’s eyebrows shoot up at that statement. His mind seems to be racing furiously, so she decides to add some more kindling to the fire. “We can brew some for when Atsushi-san comes over for our slumber party.”
Ryuunosuke scoffs, the end of his exhale tapering into a cough. “Stop phrasing it like that. It’s merely a strategic meeting to discuss leads on the remnants of the Decay of Angels.”
“The last strategic meeting ended with all of us falling asleep on the couch. Atsushi-san technically stayed the night, so technically it was a slumber party.”
“You and your technicalities…”
Tachihara clears his throat, having finally found his voice. Expressly avoiding eye contact with Ryuunosuke, he gestures vaguely between the two of them. “So, uh, you two are…”
And there’s her cue.
Gin makes a show of peering disinterestedly into her cup. “My full name—” She pauses to take a sip of her tea, letting the silence drag out for maximum effect. “—is Akutagawa Gin.”
The sound of Tachihara falling out of his chair is sweeter than any apology she could have received.