Special Guest Villains (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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loligiary2020-02-24 12:24 pm
specialguestvillains) wrote in loligiary2020-02-24 12:24 pm
Sashiko: The Darkest Timeline
Jigen's right arm ached, and that meant the weather was about to go sour.
Granted, it always ached, but it was aching in a very specific way right now, and also it was January in Paris so the weather was going to get fucked eventually. Everyone gave charitably around Christmas, but as soon as it flipped around to January 2 all that goodwill towards men dried up and the weather was even colder than before.
Jigen took up his usual position near the cafe and watched the patrons stroll by, eying them up to see who looked like a big spender. Men with dates sometimes liked to impress their girls, as did bachelorette parties. People on the way back from soccer matches were charitable, but only if their team won, and if they hadn't they had the risk of being mean drunks. Sometimes they'd be mean drunks anyway.
Okay, guy in a blue blazer, looked like a tourist from the back.
"Hey, buddy. Spare some change?" he mumbled, the phrase coming more naturally than most of his French. He said it enough these days for it to be nearly rote. The man turned and Jigen found himself unable to look the man in the face. Something about his pose said horror, maybe even disgust. He didn't have the energy to deal with that bullshit today.
"Don't worry about it," he said before the tourist could even speak, and turned around to trod off again. The battered hat he'd been using as a money bucket went back on his head. Behind him, he heard the man slowly back away. By the time Jigen looked at him again, the man in blue had run off into the crowd.
Granted, it always ached, but it was aching in a very specific way right now, and also it was January in Paris so the weather was going to get fucked eventually. Everyone gave charitably around Christmas, but as soon as it flipped around to January 2 all that goodwill towards men dried up and the weather was even colder than before.
Jigen took up his usual position near the cafe and watched the patrons stroll by, eying them up to see who looked like a big spender. Men with dates sometimes liked to impress their girls, as did bachelorette parties. People on the way back from soccer matches were charitable, but only if their team won, and if they hadn't they had the risk of being mean drunks. Sometimes they'd be mean drunks anyway.
Okay, guy in a blue blazer, looked like a tourist from the back.
"Hey, buddy. Spare some change?" he mumbled, the phrase coming more naturally than most of his French. He said it enough these days for it to be nearly rote. The man turned and Jigen found himself unable to look the man in the face. Something about his pose said horror, maybe even disgust. He didn't have the energy to deal with that bullshit today.
"Don't worry about it," he said before the tourist could even speak, and turned around to trod off again. The battered hat he'd been using as a money bucket went back on his head. Behind him, he heard the man slowly back away. By the time Jigen looked at him again, the man in blue had run off into the crowd.
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"Wouldn't mind a shower, actually," Jigen grunts, abruptly painfully aware of exactly how filthy he is now that he's surrounded by clean, civilized things. He does take his own belongings into the bathroom with him, along with a randomly chosen set of clothes, locking the door that he knows Zenigata could break down without flinching.
Then he strips, gets under the hot water, and just melts. It feels like heaven on his cold, raw skin. Jigen runs his hand through matted hair and beard, taking his leisurely time as he indulges. Water pools and runs in rivers through the gnarled scar tissue of his right arm but he barely worries about it, nearly brought to tears just by the sensation of warmth on him.
By the time he comes out he looks half-asleep but more alive, greyish skin now a soft pink from the heat. "Hot water's run out," he mumbles, quite aware of whose fault that is.
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He'll let the mean gauge hot much he needs. After all, this isn't the first time he's been at the homeless care rodeo.
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Oh god, he does. Jigen descends on the food like a hungry locust, uncaring of what it might do to his stomach. He barely breathes except to eat more, until his plate's empty and he's drinking down another glass of water.
"Don't suppose you got beer?" he asks hopefully.
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Look he likes the tastes of home.
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Eh. It's booze. Jigen goes through the first bottle in nothing flat, and only seems to grow self-conscious halfway through the second one. He offers a bottle to Zenigata from the sixpack as if it's not Zenigata's to begin with.
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"So I know you may come and go, but I've done this before and this is my home and my rules. There aren't many, and they're for safety, mostly."
He lets that sink in. "If you're using, don't do it here. If you're doing sex work, don't do it here. Don't bring people back-- it's a great way to put us both in danger. If you're stealing, stop. I'll supply your basic needs. If you want something, ask, I'll see what I can do."
Deep breath: "I'm not going to sleep with you, or touch you without your permission. I ask you do the same."
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Jigen snickered at some of those rules. If Pops thought that anyone would be sleeping with him unless he was the one ponying up for it, the guy was both blind and had no sense of smell. But he shrugged and raised his bottle to toast the proposal. "I don't have much that I need. When it's not too cold anymore, I'll get out of your hair."
The food and the warmth were starting to wake up bits of his brain that had been numbed for months. Not pleasantly numbed, just inaccessible because his only concerns had been food, shelter, and alcohol. Jigen swirled his beer bottle and considered the matter again. "I"m not the first couch-surfer you've had, am I?"
That wasn't a talk you gave a grubby man in his 40s. It was a talk you gave a street kid.
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Very terse about that. Just straight forward and simple. He got up to take care of his plate at the sink.
"I would appreciate it if you'd clean up after yourself. There's stretches where I get messy, but I want to keep it to contained chaos."
Dishes were washed, things tided, some booze bottles in the recycling bin. But the place was lived in. Not perfect.
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'My son'. And where was the son, if the man still had his clothes but lived alone?
"Fine," Jigen said, finishing the beer and throwing it back. He kept looking around the room, checking for...what, cameras? Guns? What the hell was the threat here?
(Because it was good, and nothing good could come without being a threat.)
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There was another futon in the bedroom, and a proper desk and boxes taking up most of the wall.
However, there is one tiny bookshelf with little knickknacks, and on top of it was the answer to an unspoken question: a tiny family shrine, with pictures of parents. Next to them if the photo of a young man in a police uniform, clearly not Japanese.
All of them are bracketed with black ribbon.
Zenigata did the dishes in silence.
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It was hard to miss, given it was the only thing here that seemed well-attended but untouched. His own home had something similar when he'd been growing up...probably the entire place had been torn down by now, shrine and all, if it hadn't burned to the ground. Jigen ran a finger over one of the ribbons, until his shaking right hand dropped down to his side again.
"This your son?" he called to the man in the other room.
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Poor, lost lamb Oscar. Zenigata doesn't stop what he's doing, he just continued the rote motion of dishes.
"You have family in France?"
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Because that kid didn't look much like Zenigata...but that was a cop uniform. Quite a few photos of cops here, actually.
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There are a lot of cops on that shrine. You could call it a family business.
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Jigen paced slower now, tracing the lines of the apartment, looking for hidden weaponry and paperwork. "She a cop too?" he asked, casually.
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"Oh, no no no. Toshiko? Never. Never in a million years." He shook his head, smiling despite the sting. "The Zenigata family tradition in law enforcement ends with me. We're, ah, kind of famous in Chiyoda City."
He gestures to the sparse art on his walls. "My daughter paints."
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The dishes done, he dries his hands and then finished off his beer. "I would much rather be home, but here I am."
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The names picked at his memory, in ways that Jigen couldn't quite fathom. Maybe they were in the business too? Maybe he'd worked with them....who the fuck knew.
"And where's home?" he asked, still slouched.
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He shrugged. He'd made that choice a long time ago. There didn't need to be yet another Zenigata Heiji. Zenigata Koichi had it hard enough living up to the family name without keeping that one going.