Noiz usually wasn't a visitor at a bar. For one, he was still underage, so drinking was pretty much out of the question for him, and for another he was not the type to like hanging out with other people very much. But today had been one of these randomly weird days in his life where doing things outside of his usual behaviour just kind of happened. It all had started when he had bumped into a pretty sullen hairstylist down on the streets of Midorijima.

Koujaku was usually none of his concern, but ever since shit had gone down in Platinum Jail, that had resulted into Aoba leaving the country afterwards to go on a journey to God knew where to, Koujaku had become slightly unstable in the way he behaved. On the outside he was still the flirtatious hairstylist pretty much every woman in Midorijima seemed to want to get laid with. But when the sun began to set and Koujaku closed up shop and had no company for the night, he often got into the mood of randomly beating up people these days - Rhymers in particular. He would not get up to them and hit them in the face, at least not as the first thing to do, but he would provoke them until they would feel the need to defend themselves and Koujaku being an experienced Ribster and a pretty good swordsman on top of his fist fighting skills, the battle was easily decided in his favour most of the time. He hadn't killed anybody so far, but even the sheath of his sword could leave some broken bones at the very least. Noiz only knew of those things because rumours spread around in his network of Rhyme players fast and being on the top of news concerning the scene was practically his job.

So today it would be his turn to be beaten up by the older man over there, Noiz guessed by how aggressively Koujaku tried to mock him and rolled up his sleeves to fight him almost immediately as soon as he had spotted him in a backstreet. He babbled something about Rhyme players getting too high and mighty nowadays and about having to pick a bone with Noiz for ages now. Noiz didn't care about something like this. He wondered if he should try to run or to allow Koujaku to beat him black and blue. It wouldn't matter much to him to get beaten up, since pain didn't belong to the palette of sensations he could discern anyway. But it irked Noiz to serve as Koujaku's punching bag without actually understanding what the hell the reason of Koujaku acting like that was. Not that he cared much about the other in particular, but if he was about to go down in a fight he wanted to know why at least. Not that he wouldn't try to win in the first place, though, so he put his knuckles on and took on a fighting stance.

"Tell me old man, what are you fretting about so much, lately?"
He avoided a punch coming at him from the right and tried to hit Koujaku with his left fist - the other dodged him.

"What? Suddenly trying to psychoanalyze me or something, beansprout?"
He swung at Noiz with his other hand and grazed the young man's cheek.

Noiz made a step backwards and tried to estimate where Koujaku would aim at next.
"If there was enough brain inside of your head I would make an attempt at it, but it seems it's even less intact these days as before all of this shit with Toue went down. I was just wondering why that is."

"None of your business!"
Koujaku roared and tried to land a hit again, but Noiz ducked and tried for a foot sweep, which Koujaku avoided just barely.

Noiz was astonished that Koujaku hadn't even bothered to deny him belittling his intellect this time. He guessed he must have hit a sore spot with his argument. Considering the things that had changed since Toue had tried to mass-brainwash the whole island, the most significant difference for Koujaku was probably the fact that Aoba was no longer inhabiting Midorijima now. The swordsman had always doted on the blue-haired guy, displaying some odd kind of affection towards him that Noiz couldn't really pinpoint between being friends with Aoba and more than just that. His knowledge on how other people's relationships worked was a bit limited in that direction.

"Uryah!"
Koujaku yelled again as he swung his fists at him and this time he hit Noiz' jaw just fine, since the young man was thinking too much and not concentrating enough on an opponent infused by rage, that made him more unpredictable in his movements. The impact threw Noiz against the nearest wall and Koujaku grabbed him by the collar and was about to throw another punch at him, but Noiz could react fast enough this time and drew up his knee, hitting Koujaku's stomach pretty hard and made him topple over and his sword slide out of its sheath as he hit the ground.

Spitting out blood from a cut wound inside of his mouth and kicking Koujaku's blade out of his reach, Noiz cracked his knuckles as he stood in front of his opponent.
"You know what, old man? I'm all for playing around with you a little, but I'd like to know why you are so set on beating the shit out of me at least, aside from you being a total jerk that is."

That said, Noiz straddled Koujaku to strike at his face, but the other wasn't done yet and pulled Noiz down with him until they rolled on the pavement and struggled who would come out on top, with their fists flying at each other.

It took a while, because both of them were stubborn as a mule and had no intention to give in. The whole debacle ended in a draw, though. But Noiz had a feeling that Koujaku simply might have given up after a while of venting his anger at him. Maybe he didn't hate Noiz as much as he proclaimed on every occasion he got, or maybe he simply had let out enough steam for the day.
Whatever the reason was, after he had gathered up his energy from fighting Noiz again, Koujaku got up on his feet, roughly dusted himself off and even had the nerve to offer Noiz a hand to get up, too. Noiz had slapped it away of course and had gotten up on his own.

As far as cuts and bruises went down, the most visible thing on Noiz' face was his swollen cheek from getting hit by Koujaku, and for the other to end up with a black eye, which was nicely hidden by the streaks always covering the right side of his face, though. As for the rest of their bodies, Koujaku hissed and swore now and then at certain movements, his stomach probably still hurt form Noiz' kick earlier. Noiz didn't flinch at the pain in his body, since he couldn't recognize any of it. He just hoped he had no broken bones, but he could move his limbs just fine and he didn't spot any bones poking out from his skin so he figured he was fine more or less. He had no trouble breathing either, so his ribs must have held on, too, he guessed.

So that was that then, Noiz presumed and was about to leave the scene, when Koujaku grabbed him by the shoulder and asked him if he wanted to come with him for a drink, as if to offer his apologies for what had happened. He called it acknowledging each other's strength, since none of them had won the fight, or something.
Noiz couldn't believe it. But on the other hand maybe the stupid old man would finally spill the beans about what was bugging him and stop randomly roughing up people on the streets. Not that Noiz cared that much about him, he didn't even list Koujaku as a friend or anything. But the possible prospect of a repetition of this day annoyed him to no ends and to be frank he was kind of interested in his reasons. Maybe that was his information broker sense tingling or something like that. Honestly, it was laughable, but he still agreed to accompany Koujaku.

They ended up in the Black Needle, a tattoo parlour with a bar included. It was run by one of Koujaku's friends and leader of the Ribsteez team Dry Juice, Mizuki. It was the same Mizuki they had encountered while rescuing Aoba's grandmother, Noiz silently remarked to himself. That being the fact, he was also a friend of Aoba's, or he had been a friend of his before the blue mullet had decided to leave the island. For all of these reasons he wondered if he was really welcome at his bar. Noiz was a member of a Rhyme team, after all and they weren't exactly on good terms with Ribsters. But whether it was because he was here with Koujaku, or because Mizuki was not one to kick out a paying, behaving customer, he was accepted - or rather tolerated - at his bar it seemed.

Noiz sipped at his second nonalcoholic cocktail while he listened in on the conversation between Mizuki and Koujaku, that had practically started the moment they had entered the room. Mizuki had shouted at Koujaku that he looked like shit in a kind of disturbingly friendly way - at least from Noiz' point of view. Then Koujaku had briefly addressed the matter that he had been in a fight with Noiz and brought him here to make it up to him.
Was that so?
Noiz couldn't remember that to be the case, but wouldn't deny Koujaku's argument either.
The conversation grew more and more disinteresting for Noiz the longer it went on, though. Koujaku would only babble about trivial things and meander around the topic of why he was behaving like the last asshole whenever Mizuki tried to get near it.
Noiz sighed and put his empty glass down, the ice cubes in it clinking at the thud.
This was going to lead nowhere it seemed. Noiz was already fed up with it and entertained the thought of leaving the bar, when Koujaku grabbed his sleeve and mumbled at him through a haze of drunkenness.

"Leaving already?"

Koujaku spoke in a slurred voice and Noiz knit his eye brows as he cast a view over the empty glasses of alcohol he had consumed.
It had been too many shots in too short an amount of time, even though Noiz had sipped on his drinks very, very slowly. But you could do a lot of damage with the right amount of alcohol concentration, even if the amount of alcohol in the glass was not that much. Noiz glared at Mizuki, who sighed and stroke his back of the neck. He appeared to have given in too willingly into allowing Koujaku to get wasted. Maybe he had hoped the alcohol would loosen his friend's tongue, too. But now he shook him by the shoulder to get his attention.

"It's enough for today, Koujaku. Go home now."

"Another glass...!", he mumbled and rose an empty glass at Mizuki, who took it to put it aside.

"Not for you and not today, Koujaku. Get out. Now."
His unusually stern voice seemed to irritated Koujaku, but if anything, he looked like he was sulking now as he got up from his chair and tried to make his way towards the door.

The way Koujaku staggered worried the bartender quite a bit, Noiz guessed by how Mizuki cursed under his breath and got out from behind the counter to support his friend to escort him over to the door. Noiz followed suit and then two pairs of light green eyes met each other, a silent pleading tugging at Mizuki's gaze accompanied by the hesitation to ask Noiz of all people for a favour.
Noiz let out a loud sigh through his nose and decided to spare Mizuki the trouble by motioning for him to pretty much hand over the half-dead body that was Koujaku to him and promised him to bring him home.
Mizuki looked at him more than thankfully and gave Koujaku a light slap on the cheek.

"Hey, Koujaku, miracles just happen here and you're trying to sleep through it? Noiz just promised me to take you home and you better be good and stay there once you get there, okay? I'll visit you tomorrow, so we can talk again, you hear me?"

Koujaku managed to lift his head enough to look at him and seemed to try getting out of this hazy feeling swirling around in his head and to make sense of the words thrown at him right now. In the end he just grumbled and waved a hand at his friend and Mizuki gave Noiz a nod before he vanished back inside the Black Needle.

Noiz tried to readjust their position, since Koujaku hung at his side like a sack of potatoes and it would be hard to walk like that.
"Hey, old man, get your marbles back together! Where are we going? I don't know where you live."

Koujaku grunted, blinked several times and was stared at by angry, green eyes. Something seemed to have hit him just then and he shoved Noiz away and straightened himself back up halfway.
"I can walk alone just fine...! Don't need your help.", he mumbled and turned around on his heels.

A dull sound and a hissed curse later Koujaku had made the rather hurtful acquaintance of a pole standing its ground against his head, and was suddenly more than willing to allow Noiz to support him and to accompany him home without further bickering.

Noiz couldn't hold back a chuckle.

"Get out, get out, get out, get out!"

Was that a way to greet somebody you woke up next to? Well, as far as Noiz' relationship with Koujaku went - mostly the part that they were far from lovers, but had ended up naked in bed together nonetheless - this reaction might have been appropriate, Noiz guessed. Still, Koujaku's hungover and almost scared shitless face was hilarious to him.

"Do you remember anything from last night?", he asked flatly while Koujaku's eyes darted around the room in a panic and he grabbed at his throbbing head.

"Why are you in my bed?", the older man complained instead of answering him.
"What the fuck even happened?"

"I'm guessing this was a one time thing then?"
Noiz shot another question at Koujaku and by the look on his face, he had sunken the rest of Koujaku's pride together with his attempt at making sense out of the whole situation with that.
He couldn't help himself to add oil to the fire, though, this was the most entertaining thing for him to do for ages now. And he kind of felt like he could pay back Koujaku for starting a fight with him yesterday by this, too.
"I'd offer to make you breakfast, but I guess I'm too sore to move."

Did the brat just offer to make him breakfast in his own home?!
Koujaku felt a certain kind of fury rising within himself, but then he froze when something else hit him.
Too sore... to move?
Now that he had mentioned it...!
Koujaku's eyes widened further. Was he feeling a certain throbbing from the lower regions of his abdomen right now? He couldn't really pinpoint where the pain was coming from. His whole body seemed to hurt.
He flushed up to his ears and gave Noiz a look as a silent scream lingered behind his opened mouth.
"Who topped?"

Noiz just smirked at him and decided to let him burn. It sure did have its advantages to not being allowed to consume alcohol, but to deal with a drunken person after they got wasted.

Koujaku's fingers grabbed at the sheets to a point that his hands shivered from the strain he put on his muscles. Looking down he suddenly noticed some love bruises, bite marks and other blue and black areas decorating his body. How rough exactly had they been with each other the night before? No, this couldn't all be from just having sex, could it?
Having sex...
With Noiz...
Bottoming for Noiz...
If he could just remember something!
He swallowed hard and hadn't the courage to look at Noiz' face as he asked another question with a shivering voice.
"So... Was it good?"

Noiz didn't respond to him, so Koujaku finally looked up to make eye contact again. The young man next to him appeared to be as unfazed as ever at first, but then grinned at him and bent forwards, whispering into his ear with his dry voice.
"I should go now."
Then he swung his legs out of bed and began collecting his clothes strewn about on the floor.
"I know how this goes after all. I'll just grab my clothes and get out of here."
He dressed in the clothes he picked up from the ground one by one, leaving Koujaku hanging on an explanation out of sheer wickedness.
"To be honest, I thought I'd be gone by the time you woke up, but I couldn't help myself to stay a little bit longer."

Koujaku still gave off the look of a person having gotten clobbered with a very heavy object and doused in ice-could water afterwards.
"This didn't mean anything."
Noiz heard the man mumble from his bed in a shaky voice, before he cupped his face with both hands and groaned.
"We shouldn't have done this..."

"Don't worry.", Noiz grinned at him and gave him a suggestive look.
"This stays between us."

Then the doorbell rang and a very friendly person asked for entrance.
"Mizuki...!", Koujaku uttered in a pressed voice and looked back to Noiz in horror.
"Holy shit! He CANNOT see you!"

"Aww, why not? He knows I brought you home after all.", Noiz teased and was nearly done dressing.

"Do you have any idea how wrong this was?"
Koujaku finally seemed to have found the energy to pull away the blanket covering him and got on his feet - only to realise that sudden movements were a bad idea right now and sunk back to the floor.

"Want some Aspirin?", came the mocking question from the young man tying his tie and grinning at him like a fox. He was clearly not sympathetic in the least for what Koujaku went through right now.

Then he headed towards the front door, when the bell rang again and Koujaku held out a hand towards him and shouted "Don't answer it!", but it was too late already, and Noiz greeted a pretty astonished Mizuki by opening the door.

Koujaku couldn't hear anything but exchanges of greetings and inconsequential small talk and then Noiz finally seemed to have left his house and Mizuki stood in the doorframe of his bedroom.

"Wow, this really must have been a rough night, huh?"
Mizuki commented on Koujaku, kneeling beside his bed, the blanket having been pulled down halfway and Koujaku's clothes still being scattered all over the floor.

Koujaku groaned as he slapped a hand in front of his face.
"Don't say anything, just... don't..."

"Oh, by the way."
Noiz suddenly popped his head back into the bedroom again.
"Do you wanna do this again sometime, maybe?"

This was the final straw and Koujaku grabbed for the nearest thing, namely a pillow, to throw it towards Noiz, who dodged it easily.
"GET OUT!"

"Hahahaha!"
Noiz cackled and got on his way back home.

This had been fun in the end. Messing with the old man was always worth it after all.
He wondered if he ever should tell him what had really happened that night.
But just listening to an old man ranting about having been left by the so called love of his life for some ex-convict, even if he had never dared to come out to him and then falling asleep like a baby right next to the person who had endured his sobbing all the while, was just not half as good as Koujaku thinking that they had done it with each other.
And now that Noiz remembered the cute face Koujaku had made when he had assumed to have been topped as well, he couldn't help himself but to wonder if he should try to make serious advances on the older man. Something that included more than leaving a few bite marks and love bruises on the other's skin to prank him for getting on his nerves all day long.
Maybe someday... Maybe.