Volume Control
Hyata Luxury Apartments was a small complex; fit with five or six large, Western style flats and a view of the city that topped the view from some skyscrapers, the hilltop building sat precariously near the edge of Yokohama City. It was close enough to Port Mafia's headquarters that Chuuya could drive to and from fairly quickly, yet far enough away to be a nice, quiet place to retreat to whenever he found the time to unwind. Or at least, that's what it was supposed to be.
For some reason absolutely fucking beyond him, his landlord had accepted a new tenant with absolutely zero concept of volume control, because the apartment right across from his had had music blaring out from it from the very moment he got home from his last…business trip. At first, he hadn't really minded—his neighbor had exceptionally good taste in tunes—but then he tried to take a nap. And it was then that he realized how abysmally loud and bombastic his neighbor's music was. Fast paced, upbeat…and hard as fuck to sleep through.
He had tried, at first, being stubborn as he was, and for about fifteen minutes he found himself getting progressively angrier as one loud song bled into another loud song. He was nearly at his breaking point when finally a melody traveled into his living area that was soft and gentle…for about one minute. And once the song broke into full blast, Chuuya cracked.
"That's fucking it!" He roared as he sprang from his couch and stomped to his front door, not even bothering with shoes on the way out. He crossed the hall in a matter of seconds and pounded on the door violently. "Turn down your fucking music!" He bellowed at the door, and in a matter of seconds, the music stopped entirely. He paused a mere moment before letting out a short huff of approval and turning back to his open door. But after two steps back across the hall, he heard the door to his neighbor's apartment swing open, and he turned to look at them almost instinctively.
And that was when he locked eyes with her—the source of his grief that afternoon, and he was…honestly surprised. If he didn't know any better, he might have thought she was a high schooler, but then, he somewhat doubted that she would be home at this hour on a Monday if she were a student. Her dark brown eyes seemed to be studying him curiously, while her short brown hair fell a little into her face and suggested that she had burst towards her door at an alarming speed. He frowned in the few seconds she took to examine him, the silence awkwardly stagnating between them until her expression transformed into one of…enthusiastic delight.
"YOU'RE BACK!" she exclaimed as she pounced towards him, wrapping her arms around him as if he were a long lost friend. "From…!" she hesitated a moment, her arms loosening slightly while Chuuya's gaze traveled down to her in bewilderment. "You know I probably should have listened when my uncle told me where you'd gone," she murmured before squeezing him again, "BUT YOU'RE BACK!"
"Uh…kid I think you have the wron—" Chuuya was cut off as the young woman yanked him into her apartment, closing the door behind him and practically skipping into the living room as she beckoned him to join her.
"I've been really excited about meeting you, Uncle always talks about you so fondly, of course that might have to do with the bonus you add to your rent, but he also said your job was pretty cool," the girl pointed behind herself for a moment, "by the way, the kitchen's over this way, feel free to sit down and make yourself at home, I'm gonna go start some tea!"
Chuuya blinked as the girl trotted gleefully towards the room to his left, and despite not really understanding what had just happened, he found himself stepping farther into the woman's apartment and studying its furnishings. Much like his apartment, the style was very Western, albeit a more contemporary look compared to the more Victorian style that his flat had. He shuffled over to her squashy leather sofa and sat down, still a little too bewildered to just stand up and walk back out of her apartment. And to add to that, her sofa was a little more comfortable.
Chuuya continued looking around the flat awkwardly, noting that unlike his apartment, hers hadn't included a stairway before the landlord turned the building into a complex, and as a result she had a spiral staircase poking a hole in the left side of her living room ceiling. The space was fairly clean, and minus a small stack of cardboard boxes near the door, he saw almost no evidence that she'd moved in recently, but then, he had been away for over a week, so that wasn't too surprising. Chuuya scowled slightly and tapped his foot with a mixture of impatience and indecision. For one, he had no reason to stick around in this woman's living area, it wasn't as if she'd introduced herself or even formally invited him in, but on the other, if he had wanted tea she was certainly taking her damn time getting back with it.
"Sorry to keep you waiting!"
Chuuya glanced to his left as his new neighbor hopped over the edge of the couch with a tray of cookies balanced in one hand.
"Originally I was going to make daifuku, but they had a really good sale on sugar cookie dough at the local corner store so I caved. Ah right and I put the kettle on the stove did I remember to turn the stove on though?" she placed the tray in her hand smartly on the coffee table and brought her hand to her chin, and Chuuya gave the woman a hard stare as he began wondering how long he'd be able to handle living next door to her. "Yes. I did," she confirmed to herself before turning towards him and holding out her hand, "hi! I'm Hyata Kiyo, your new neighbor!"
Chuuya looked between her and her hand before hesitantly shaking it. "Nakahara Chuuya," he answered shortly.
"Mhm!" Kiyo replied gleefully, "Uncle Jun told me so! Kinda surprised that I remembered though I'm usually awful with names…so where are you getting back from?"
"…Kyoto…"
"Cool! You know I've never been to Kyoto! Kinda funny if you think about it. I've been to New York and Italy, but never Kyoto. Usually it's the reverse!"
"You've been to New York?"
"Yeah! Just got back actually. And then I did spend a year and a half abroad from New York in Italy. Though I guess I was already studying abroad in New York…what would that make Italy?" Kiyo tilted her head thoughtfully before answering herself with something he only half understood. "Kaigai-ception."*
"What in the world is that?"
"A meme," she responded blankly just as a whistle went off in the kitchen. "Oh! That's the tea! Hold on!" Kiyo climbed over the back of the couch again and jogged back into the kitchen, leaving Chuuya to perk an eyebrow and wonder if she walked around her furniture like a normal person. Jumping over the back of the couch was pretty fun though, he noted with an impish smirk. He let out a soft yawn just as he heard her trotting back from the kitchen. "I don't know what your preference is on tea so I just brought out everything…I suppose I could have asked but I didn't want to be too loud…"
Chuuya let out a soft chuckle at that. "You didn't seem to mind being loud a few minutes ago."
She flustered severely at the casual comment, and after placing the tray of tea down on the coffee table, he found himself dumbfounded again as she bowed deeply. "Please forgive my rudeness! I didn't realize that you'd come home already!"
"…It's fine…but can I go back to my apartment now?"
"Huh?"
"I was trying to take a nap," Chuuya stated bluntly as Kiyo glanced up at him in utter confusion. It took a moment for her to come to recognition of what he meant, but as it clicked, she flustered even more.
"I…did I forget to actually invite you over…?"
"Yes, you did," Chuuya replied, and a soft smirk graced his features as she turned away from him and muttered what sounded like an English swear word.
"I'm…jeez, I'm really sorry, I have this bad habit of being aggressively friendly and I'm pretty sure living in New York and Italy actually made it worse. Americans and Europeans are very emotional people…if you want I can still make some tea for you, I do have jasmine or chamomile and if you want you can take the mug over with you I mean it's the least I could do…"
Chuuya considered the offer for a moment returning his gaze to the ever expectant woman. "Do you have anything a little stronger?"
"Stronger?"
"Liquor?"
Kiyo blinked, hesitating only a moment before sprinting back into her kitchen. Chuuya shrugged at the woman's speed, wondering briefly if she'd studied abroad for athletics, but after recognizing what seemed to be a cello case and a violin case out of the corner of his eye, he came to the conclusion that he was probably wrong. He let out a soft sigh as he heard Kiyo's footsteps returning from the kitchen, and he lifted himself off the couch in time to see her approaching him with a glass bottle of amber colored liquid and two shot glasses. "My best friend in the States gave this to me as a going away gift. She insisted that I needed to use it to make up for all the parties we didn't go to. Wanna crack it open?"
"Brandy?" Chuuya inquired as he read the bottle's label. "You sure you don't wanna save this for a more festive occasion?"
"Well, on one hand, finally meeting the elusive Nakahara Chuuya that Uncle Jun's been telling me about is pretty damn festive to me…"
"I wasn't aware that I had such a legacy," he interjected wryly.
"And on the other, the only people I could invite to a party would be you, who's going to take a nap, our neighbors, who are still at work, my Uncle, and any of the high school friends that I had that I still know through Facebook. That still live here. And between you and me…I don't want any of them to know I'm back in Japan. So…should we crack a bottle or…?"
"If you insist…" Chuuya smirked as he took a shot glass from Kiyo and waited patiently as she twisted open the bottle and poured the brandy. She placed the bottle down on the front table only a few paces away before returning back to in front of him.
"…To being neighbors?"
"You expect me to toast to that after the commotion you made?" Chuuya grinned as he watched the heat rise in her face.
"I-I apologized, okay? I didn't know…"
"Oh I know you apologized, you're just never gonna live it down," Chuuya threw back the glass of brandy, his face scrunching up slightly as the hard liquor scorched its was down his throat. "Good stuff…" he glanced back up at Kiyo and snorted a bit as he saw her pouty expression, which only served to exaggerate her look before she too downed her glass of brandy, doubling over a second later at the taste.
"You don't have to be mean about it," she coughed as he started for the door.
"And you didn't have to play your music that loudly," Chuuya retorted with a grin as he opened the front door to her apartment and realized that he'd never closed his. "If any of my shit is missing, you're paying for it."
"I suppose that's fair…ah, uh…Chuuya-san!"
"Yeah?"
"If you want, you're welcome to come back over after your nap."
Chuuya hesitated as he stepped back into his apartment and grabbed the door. After a moment more, he smiled at the offer. "I'll think about it."
oooOOOooo
asterisks:
*kaigai-ception: prior to this word Kiyo is simply speaking fluent Japanese, but here she slipped into English for half a word to make an inception joke about studying abroad while she was studying abroad (kaigai being the Japanese word for "abroad")
oooOOOooo
Soooo…hi. Welcome to Neighbors, a written study into what Chuuya would do if his neighbor was part puppy. So as may be expected, this fic is going to focus mostly on Chuuya and Kiyo getting to know each other through various events that happen during the sporadic days that he's actually home, but in the case of requests or any opportunity I give myself, I can expand on that. So…disclaimers…
1. I do not own Bungou Stray Dogs or any of its characters or world, I only own my OCs
2. Given that I am not Japanese, not a musician, and not multilingual, most of what I will be writing (especially in the case of Kiyo) will be researched, but that does not mean that I will get everything right. Feel free to politely point out anything that I messed up—I stress pointing it out politely.
3. The canon plot to Bungou Stray Dogs will most likely not be touched on in this, whether or not this is pre-canon, canon-divergent, post-canon, or in between canon is something that will likely be left to interpretation. If all else fails though, just imagine that it's Yokohama City whenever things have not gone to shit.
4. Is this a ship fic? Quite possibly. Am I going to 100% definitely make it a romantic ship? Dunno.
5. This fic may or may not end up coming hand in hand with a comic, I'm still trying to decide. If it does it'll most likely be snippets from the chapters and small scenes that happen outside the chapters, as opposed to a comic book version of this.
So fave follow and review if you liked it, and I'll make an update as soon as I can!