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meadowmines · 7 months

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OC-Tober/Tojoctober Day 13: Rival

[in which Yamaoka comes to harass Aoyagi at work]

"Hey, chief?" The dining room manager actually outranks Aoyagi in the family, but the boss has made it real clear that if you work in the cafe, as long as you're on the clock you answer to Aoyagi. "There's a customer asking for you."

Aoyagi takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose to ward off the impending headache. He just spent the last half hour in the back office trying to keep the boss from stealing his bro's dessert again. Before that, he had to ...handle a twelve-top of Junsei goons showing their whole asses right there in the dining room "Man, if it's not the boss it's the customers and vice-versa... awright, what's their problem?"

The dining room manager shrugs. "I don't think he's got a problem as such, but he's asking for you. Personally. By name." Uh oh. And just as Aoyagi starts to get an idea who that customer might be, the manager points at a corner booth occupied by a cocky-looking yakuza in a green suit, with a pretty gal tucked under each arm.

Sure. This might as well happen tonight.

Aoyagi grinds his teeth all the way to that corner booth and gives that cocky yakuza his best dead-eyed customer service smile. "Yamaoka-san," he says in his best eat-shit-and-die customer service voice.

Eiji Fucking Yamaoka. Nishikiyama Family lieutenant. World-class asshole. And the very picture, in Aoyagi's mind, of gender envy.

Yamaoka is tall and lanky, with big hands and big feet and legs forever and narrow hips and a flat chest. There's five-o'clock shadow on his chiseled jaw. He has sideburns. There's no question mark on the end when a stranger calls him sir. He's got no shortage of lady friends who either don't know what plumbing he was born with or don't care, and he makes a point of parading them around in front of Aoyagi on the regular.

"Aoyagi-kun!" he beams as Aoyagi grinds his teeth to fine powder behind that customer service smile. "Good to see you! Food's fantastic as always. I was just telling my girls here you've got the best cheesecake in town." He catches the eat shit component of that eat-shit-and-die customer service smile and laughs. "Aw, hell. Where are my manners? Here I am, hogging all the arm candy for myself when you've got nothing. You want blonde or brunette? Go ahead. Take your pick. Plenty more where they came from!"

Yamaoka's arm candy giggles agreeably. "Be nice," the brunette chides with a playful swat to Yamaoka's knee.

"Hey. C'mon. Have a seat, Aoyagi-kun. It won't kill you to take a little break, right?"

"Sorry, Yamaoka-san. I'm on the clock." Aoyagi cranks up the eat shit part of that smile. "And I just had dinner. With my boss."

Just for the barest fraction of a second, there's a crack in Yamaoka's cocky facade. It smooths back over almost before Aoyagi can register it, but just that teensy hairline fracture is enough to give Aoyagi a little bit of a warm fuzzy feeling. "That's a shame," Yamaoka says, all shits and grins again. "Yakuza like us are a rare breed. We gotta look out for each other. But you know Yamaoka-no-nii-san's got your back, little buddy. Even if you are one of the Mad Dog's little fleas."

"This isn't making me wanna hang out with you, Yamaoka-san." Aoyagi would sooner eat a bowl of broken glass than call this fucker nii-san and he knows it.

"I bet you wish you'd sworn up with us instead."

"Nope. Can't say I do."

"Hey." Yamaoka takes his hands off his girls long enough to shrug majestically. "I tried, right? Introduced you to the boss and everything. You could be making some real bank right now. But here you are. Running a cute little cafe for the family of last resort." His grin turns nasty, as it always does sooner or later. "You know that's what everyone says about Majima, right? Your outfit's nothing but every other family's rejects."

"Ever since I was a kid," Aoyagi starts, through his teeth, "all I ever wanted was to own my own restaurant. This is the closest to it I've ever come and for the first time in my life, I can see the finish line. I've got a family that has my back more than you ever will and the best brother anyone could ever ask for. I've got everything I ever wanted in my life thanks to him and if you think I care one damn bit what everyone says about that, then you don't know me." His eyes narrow. "But if you wanna play that game, we could talk about some of the shit everyone says about your boss--"

It's probably just as well that at that exact moment, a snakeskin-clad arm whips around Aoyagi's shoulders in something that could turn into a headlock real quick. Aoyagi isn't the one freaking out at this development, though. No, it's Yamaoka's face that's suddenly gone white as a sheet. Yeah. This one will talk a lot of shit behind someone's back, but put the subject right in front of him and...

"My ears were burnin," the boss says. "Oh? What do we have here?" The boss looks down and his face lights up in (possibly fake but who the fuck knows with him) delight. "Well, if it ain't Yamaoka-han! How's it goin', king shit? Koiboy treatin' ya all right?"

Yamaoka's eye twitches. "Fine. ...sir."

"Hey, A-kun." The boss gives Aoyagi a chummy squeeze. "Yamaoka-han's got a real good point."

"What," Aoyagi says.

"What," Yamaoka says.

"Yakuza like you two are a rare breed. Y'oughta get to know each other better, and I don't give a hot buttered shit whose colors he's flyin'--"

"Sir," Aoyagi grates out, "people are eating here."

"Hey, I'm serious! It's good for a man to hang out with someone who really gets him." Another chummy squeeze. "Ya feel me?"

The delivery on that last bit is... different. Like a little wink-wink that's only meant for Aoyagi's ears. "I... feel ya, sir," he says, carefully, not really sure he wants to know where this is going but too curious to leave it alone.

"Then that's that about that!" The boss lets go of Aoyagi and claps his hands together, rubbing them with glee. "Yer money's no good here tonight, Yamaoka-han!"

"H-hey!" Aoyagi splutters, knowing full well he's going to get the third degree from the boss himself later about why this expensive table got comped.

"And after yer done stuffin' yer faces," the boss goes on, oblivious, "I'll take all of ya out on the town. My treat. Whaddya say?"

In a rare, fleeting moment of the kind of solidarity only ever felt by two people who have no idea what the fuck is going on between Goro Majima's ears and aren't sure they want to know, Aoyagi and Yamaoka trade a wary glance across the table. "Question," Aoyagi says, the verbal equivalent of poking a half-buried landmine with a stick, "what's my brother doing while you're taking me and Yamaoka-san and the girls out on the town?"

"Ehhh..." The boss clears his throat. "...this n' that."

"You're gonna work him half to death, ya mean."

"Hey, don't worry about him! He'll be fine!" That arm whips back around Aoyagi's shoulders and the boss whispers directly into his ear: "You wanna take this cocky buttball down a peg or nah?"

Aoyagi swallows hard. "I... I would like that very much, sir," he whispers back, and the boss just beams.

#oc-tober #tojoctober #yakuza #yakuza oc #aoyagi saga

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meadowmines · 7 months

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OC-Tober Day 6: Reflection

[yeah I'm just gonna straight up spoil the aftermath of the penultimate boss fight but look if you've played any Yakuza at all you know how these things go. two guys beat the shit out of each other and bond about it. it happens. it's a thing.]

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"I was seventeen," Yamaoka says.

Aoyagi does the math. That long ago. That young. In Japan. He thinks about the fallout he caught when he finally put a name on it, the fallout that did its damndest to kill him, and doesn't want to think about how much harder it would have tried to kill Yamaoka.

"I got expelled for it. Well. Not that, but..." Yamaoka holds up his right hand. There's blood on his knuckles, and some of it is Aoyagi's, and under it there's a web of scars. Old. Faint. But the kind of scars that can only come from a very short list of things. "I dunno, maybe they really would have let me off easier if I'd punched a flesh-and-blood girl instead of the one in the mirror. Bullying a classmate was no big, but destruction of school property? Ooh. Ten thousand years in the dungeon for you, buddy."

Aoyagi thinks back on the shit he put up with during his own high school years--both of them--and thinks that sounds about right.

"How old were you?" Yamaoka asks him then. "When you figured out the girl in the mirror wasn't you?"

Aoyagi shrugs. "Thirty. I mean. That's when I actually said it. I always knew something was off, but..."

"God." Yamaoka almost sounds horrified. "You spent thirty years living someone else's life and you're still here. You really are too fucking stubborn to die, huh?"

Aoyagi puffs out a dry laugh. "I've been told."

They sit there for a while in silence, both of them scuffed up and bloody and exhausted. Aoyagi's dagger, back in its scabbard, sits on the ground at his hip. One of Yamaoka's pistols lies on the blacktop far out of reach. The other is probably at the bottom of the bay by now. Yamaoka pats his pockets for a cigarette. Aoyagi pats his for a lighter, like a reflex. "Don't," Yamaoka says. "Shit. You don't even smoke. Put it away."

"Yeah, fine." Aoyagi tucks his lighter away. "If I'm bein' honest... I don't think I ever saw a girl in the mirror."

"Huh. What'd you see?"

"A potato in drag."

It's the first time he's ever heard Yamaoka laugh like this, and the man's genuine laughter is contagious, and he can't help joining in even if his busted lip has some complaints about it. "I wish we'd met different," Aoyagi says, and he means it.

"Yeah," Yamaoka says. He opens his mouth like there's more he wants to add. Closes it. Sighs out what might as well be fuck it in so many words. "I wish I'd sworn up with Majima instead. Being a flea doesn't sound so bad lately."

"It ain't too late. I can put in a good word for ya."

Yamaoka's jaw clenches. "You'd do that?"

"You said it yourself. Yakuza like us are a rare breed. We gotta stick together." He glances over, catches Yamaoka's rapidly blackening eye. "Yamaoka-no-nii-san."

Yamaoka swallows hard. "Get out of here," he says. "Go do what you came here to do. I'll buy you as much time as I can." He snorts. "I could buy you more but someone had to haul off and throw one of my pieces in the fuckin' bay."

"It was for yer own good," Aoyagi says, staggering upright and tucking his dagger back under his jacket. "Don't fuckin' die."

"The whole world's been trying to kill me for thirty-six years," Yamaoka snorts back. "It's gonna have to step its game up if it wants me dead tonight."

They both know what Yamaoka's boss does when his men fail him, and Aoyagi tries like hell to put that out of his head as he dashes off into the night.

#oc-tober #yakuza #yakuza oc #aoyagi saga

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