Yohji wormed his way between two groups of people standing at the bar and slid into a seat. He pantomimed drinking a beer to the woman behind the counter; the loud music made even attempting to make himself heard over the bar futile. She nodded her understanding and returned a minute later with a plastic cup nearly brimming over with the golden drink. He blinked at the cup, wondering why it wasn't in the bottle before he remembered; he'd been told the last time he came here that at the last big concert they had (which he had missed, thanks to a last minute mission), they'd had to deal with a lot of broken glass on and around the stage. Hence, the plastic cup.
He shrugged as he took a drink. It didn't matter, you got the drink either way. Although somehow, the bottle just seemed so much cooler.
Cup in hand, Yohji swiveled his seat around to face the floor. It couldn't really be called a dance floor, as no one was really dancing. This wasn't that type of club. It wasn't somewhere you went to be noticed, one of those places people only went to show off their 'moves'. No, this place was nothing like that. This was a place people came for the music. This was made evident by the crowd of people on the floor cheering on the band, which had just finished a cover of a rather popular rock ballad. It had gone over surprisingly well in such a notoriously hard-core place.
Yohji didn't necessarily prefer this kind of music, the kind dominated by guitar and bass so loud that you could barely hear the singer, and what little you could hear was generally incoherent screaming. However, in a place like this, it was hard not to appreciate the steady rhythm as it pumped out through a sound system loudly enough to rattle your clothes against your body even when you were seated away from the stage.
It was nice to come here, where the pounding music and flashing lights could make you forget everything. It was especially nice on nights like tonight, after a gruesome mission, the kind that left a bitter taste in his mouth and nightmares in his mind for several days afterward.
Yohji was taking another drink of his beer, his eyes instinctively scanning the crowd over the edge of the cup, when he spotted a familiar face lurking near the entrance. Scratch that – the face was too far away to be deemed familiar. What was familiar was the red hair that could be seen even through the haze of smoke at such a distance. Yohji, not knowing if Aya was here to see him (although he could think of no other reason for him to be here), decided not to wave him down. This was Aya – if he wanted to find him, then find him he would.
Sure enough, Yohji had barely finished the thought when the red-haired man began making his way to the bar. He couldn't help but smirk as the group pf people to his right edged away when Aya drew near, leaving the next seat over open for him. Aya seemed to have that effect on people. Aya sat down and ordered (by way of pointing at the sink behind the bar) a water. When it became evident that Aya was not going to speak first, Yohji rolled his eyes and yelled over the music.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, making sure to enunciate and mouth the words clearly. This particular song had an even stronger bass line than usual, making it nearly impossible to understand what was being said. Aya, however, seemed to understand perfectly.
"I followed you," he replied, somehow managing to answer without really answering at all. Yohji growled, even though he knew the other man would not hear it.
"Why?" he said, but the word was drowned out by the resounding thrum of a nearby bass speaker. Aya frowned and shook his head, gesturing toward the stage, effectively communicating that he was not going to even attempt to hold a conversation over the noise. Yohji huffed and snatched up his cup, motioning for Aya to follow him. He led him down a short flight of stairs down into the second stage area, which was currently deserted for the most part. The bad that had played down there earlier had just packed up the last of their gear, and the only other people down there was a group of teenagers finishing up a game of pool, and some businessmen playing on the Xbox in the corner.
"What do you want?" Yohji asked as they sat at a table. Aya shrugged, somehow managing to make even that small gesture seem elegant.
"I followed you," he repeated as if that explained everything.
"Yes," Yohji said with more patience than he felt, "You've said that already. But why?" Aya remained silent long enough for Yohji to begin wondering if he was even going to answer. However, he finally spoke, taking Yohji by surprise with his words.
"I wanted to see where you go all these nights, when you leave and don't come back until early morning. I must admit that I was surprised to see you come here. I expected you to head somewhere more. . . upbeat. This place doesn't seem trendy enough for your tastes." Yohji blinked. It was rare enough to get four words strung together out of Aya, much less four sentences. He briefly considered writing this event down on the calendar back at the shop.
"So what is it?" Aya asked, breaking into his thoughts. "What is it about this place that brings you here instead of going to bed? I would think that after such a mission as tonight's you'd be tired."
Yohji frowned at the mention of the mission. "Yeah, as if I could get any peaceful sleep after that," he muttered. "How do you do that?" he asked suddenly. "How do you go home and just sleep after something like that?"
"They were evil," Aya replied, frowning at him. "The loss of life could be considered regrettable, I suppose, but these people were past redemption. No amount of good they could have done in the future could have outweighed the amount of bad they have done in the past. The things they were doing were unforgivable. I cannot allow myself to lose sleep over their deaths. They deserved to die, several times over."
Yohji stared at Aya, trying to absorb the cold words. "But what about their families?" he demanded. "Those people were someone's children, spouses, parents. As evil as they were, someone, somewhere, for some reason, loved them. And we took that away," he ground out, consciously loosening his grip on the plastic cup before it cracked.
"True," Aya agreed softly after a full minute of silence. "But think about all the people they hurt and killed. All those people had others who loved them, too." Yohji was silent for a moment before he spoke again.
"That's why I come here. To forget all this shit. I don't want to have to see their faces and hear their screams." He smiled wryly. "Cause you have to admit, this music can drown out anything." He took another drink of his rapidly disappearing beer before continuing. "It helps to come out here, where there's no such thing as 'normal'," he explained. He gestured around to the people in the room. "There's such a mix here, no one stands out. Not even a killer." Aya shook his head.
"No, you're wrong. We're always going to be different, whether these people here realize it or not. The only reason we don't stand out is because they don't know. If they knew what we did for a living, they would be just as disgusted with us as we are with ourselves," he asserted sternly, the fierceness in his words reflected in flashing violet eyes. Yohji scowled at the truth in his words and yanked out his pack of cigarettes. He hoped the nicotine would soothe his nerves enough to keep him from socking Aya.
"What do you want, huh?" Yohji asked angrily as he pulled out his lighter. "I was doing just fine here until you came along and had to start poking holes in what used to be my escape. I can't just kill people and then go home to sleep like the rest of you evidently can. Is it so bad to want to get away from the killing every once in a while?"
"Damn it, Yohji, you make it sound like we enjoy killing people," Aya shot back, becoming a bit careless with his voice level. "Believe it or not, we hate it every bit as much as you. You want to know what Omi's doing right now?" Yohji stared down at the burning end of his cigarette, not replying. "He's sitting in front of that computer of his, typing up a report, trying to use objective words to describe how we killed the target, a man who was as human as us, who pleaded and begged for his life before we took it from him anyway. Then he's going to go into his room and cry. He does that after every mission. Sometimes Ken goes to comfort him, but other times Ken is too torn up himself to be of any help." Aya paused, waiting for Yohji to raise his eyes to meet his before he continued. "I have to lay in bed and listen to him cry. I've listened to he and Ken cry together in there. It's not as easy for us as you seem to think it is."
"What about you?" Yohji asked after a lengthy pause. Aya looked up at him with a shocked look on his face before retreating once again behind that cold mask of his. "Ken and Omi comfort each other, and you and I both know its in more ways than just crying together. I come here to lose myself in music and beer. What about you? What do you do to get their screams out of your head?" The question was asked harshly, almost maliciously, but with a blatant curiosity underlying the words. There was a long silence, long enough for Yohji to wonder if Aya had even heard the question, of if perhaps he was simply going to ignore it.
"Nothing," finally came his answer. "Nothing I do can make them go away. I try to lose myself in work at the flower shop, but that does no good. I visit Aya, but then I feel nothing but guilt when I hold her hand. . . for touching her with hands stained with blood, so much blood. . ." Yohji took this in with widened eyes and a slightly slack jaw. Aya was here, at a club of all places – opening up. To Yohji.
Yohji dropped his eyes to the table with the intent of reaching for his cup of beer, but instead his gaze fell upon Aya's hands, which were clenched so tightly that Yohji suddenly worried that he would draw blood with his nails. Without thinking, Yohji's hand moved to reach for Aya's clenched fists instead of his beer.
Aya visibly jumped at the contact and immediately tried to pull away, but for reasons unknown even to him, Yohji held his hand firm over Aya's. When Aya finally raised a questioning gaze to Yohji's face, he said the first thing that came to mind.
"These hands are as stained with blood as yours. You have no excuse to feel guilt and pull away from this touch." Several seconds of shocked silence followed, a silence filled with tension enough for Yohji to spare a split-second thought for the location of Aya's katana. Knowing Aya, the assumption that he could not have gotten his weapon past security was a dangerous one, especially considering their current positions.
After several seconds of no response from the other man, Yohji dropped his eyes to their hands. It was a rather awkward arrangement, Yohji's hand pressed around Aya's clenched fist. The position soon changed, however, as Aya slowly, hesitantly, turned his hand over, fingers splayed out in a surrender of control.
For one breathless second, their hands laid flat, palms and fingers aligned nearly perfectly. In that one second, one man had surrendered control, had somehow forced himself to accept the comfort of another human's touch, a luxury he had denied himself for years, and another man sat in stunned disbelief that such an event had happened, and to him of all people.
Yohji, the first to break out of that elongated second, turned his hand just slightly enough to twine his fingers between Aya's with a comforting and slightly possessive grip. Their eyes held each other as surely as their hands did, promises of comfort, protection, and perhaps something more passing between them without any words being said. They stayed like that for close to a minute, long enough for the band to finish the song that they were currently playing. As the last of the bass line died away, leaving nearly everything in the club faintly vibrating, Aya said simply, "Let's go home." Yohji nodded his agreement as they stood to leave, their hands not breaking apart as Yohji led the way through the crowd towards the exit.