Twish's Note: Yes, I am back to writing... Yes, it is chapter 9... I am so sorry it tooks me soooooooooooo long to update, was busy for a long time travelling then I was stuck in a rut. Many thanks to my loyal, loyal readers who keep on sending messages in bottle to where i am mired in a deep writer's block, rut, whatever that we call that black hole where all the ideas go... To the media miners, shinobi and dear, dear friends (particularly ones like Tsuki-san who dearly love to e-kick my butt with well placed comments in their notes...)... thanks for the steady notes ;)
But i still love fan fiction!
Please, Please, Please, be of age, although there is more drama than lemons, the whole story is rather adult in content. ;)
PS. Again, If there is a similarity with other fanfictions, i deeply apologize.
Disclaimer: Rurouni Kenshin and all characters are never to be mine sob
Internal Affairs
Chapter 9 – Marriage Mart's Top Shelf
"I am not happy about the situation either." An intense golden gaze pierced through the thin waft of smoke coming from a lone cigarette.
"Yare yare, we make the best out of an old tradition no one thought would be put into effect." Okina Makimachi replied. He sighed the sigh of an old man, and prayed that his darling Misao would agree to this.
And pigs would sprout wings.
If only Haijime Saitou's asshole of a father didn't cock up his toes with a last wish of the old survival tradition of combining the last of the Japanese great families with marriage! And this is twenty first century America! Damn creepy bastard, and by all respects, his son was no comforting warm breeze either. Okina swallowed back a shudder as he studied the lean, tall man sitting across him with the aplomb of a general.
"Well? Done insulting me in your head, Makimachi?" Saitou asked abruptly, interpreting correctly Okina's thoughts.
Rude asshole. Okina shifted uncomfortably but held his prospective son-in-law's gaze and cocked an eyebrow. An uneasy tension hung over the intricate tea set that was the only barrier between them.
"I will let you know by morning. I have your card." Okina was no less abrupt in jumping nimbly to his feet and walking away from him.
Saitou smiled to himself for a while, admiring the very classy (and very graceful) cut direct that the Makimachi patriarch gave him. Old money, he thought to himself, will never fail to amuse me. With a final 'che' he stood to his feet and made his leave.
-o-
Aoshi groped with his eyes closed for a table that wasn't where it was supposed to be and fell off the bed. Rudely awakened by his hard landing, he opened his eyes to an unfamiliar room. It took several seconds before events of the past night came flooding back to him. Then he smiled, realizing that the sky must have fallen today.
He was actually absent on a weekday.
But who cares? He got the best lay of his life last night… with the woman he loved.
Whoa! Backtrack there for one minute…
Loved?
Who said anything about love? Obsessed, maybe. Addicted, possibly so. But L-O-V-E!
Better get up… you're losing it.
He shook his head free of his disturbing thoughts and made his way to the bathroom, whistling one of the many tunes of elevator music that was in the HS building.
-o-
Misao was happily making breakfast at 11am in the morning, and hearing Aoshi pad his way softly to the bathroom in her bedroom, she smiled. It was going to be a beautiful day.
Until it was rudely interrupted by the doorbell twenty minutes later.
Damn it! Can I at least have one day to myself after a decent multiple orgasm before someone rudely interrupts it! Her mind screamed, uncomfortably remembering the scenario in Aoshi's house just a little more than a week ago.
Slapping her kitchen towel on the counter and startling her cat out of its nap, she ran to the door, pulling on her ratty robe and the first pair of shorts that she found.
Her doorbell pealed the chimes of For Elise again irritably as she snagged her foot on the rug, and as she prepared to go postal on the unfortunate miscreant---
"Misao-chan! How nice of you to check up on you poor, aging grandfather every now and then…"
Misao looked up at her tall, elegant grandfather in his pink tie and settled for a sheepish grin.
"I'm very sorry, Jiya-san, but ah… er… I'm… company…"
Okina Makimachi smiled fondly at her and enfolded her in a big hug. And then swatted her behind.
"How could you let me worry like that! Didn't we agree that you were to check in with me every Monday night! And it's now Wednesday, of the second damn week you haven't CALLED me, for all I know, you could have been lying dead in a ditch somewhere, and how do you think that would make me feel, girly! I'm getting too old for this hide and seek games, damn it!"
Okina swept his way in without Misao coming up with a decent rebuttal and continued before she could catch her breath. Misao winced at the sharpness of her Jiya's words. She knew it was out of love and concern for her that made him so nagging, and she couldn't say anything about it.
"And here you are, cooking eggs and bacon panini without a care in the world---" Jiya stopped short as a glowering, shower damp Aoshi emerged out her bedroom ready to do battle with only a short wraparound towel around his waist.
"Aoshi! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING IN MY MISAO-ANGEL'S BEDROOM!"
The whole world stopped for a moment on those words.
Aoshi's icy string of words died without ever leaving his mouth. He knew very well who Okina was, and how things looked.
Fuck. Damn if my sex life isn't jinxed!
The frozen tableau was so comical, Misao had to laugh. And laugh hysterically she did, dropping to her ass and kicking her legs in the air.
"I fail to see what you are laughing about, Misao. This is no laughing matter." Okina said, his face going from angry to grave in a matter of seconds.
This had her sitting up in attention. She expected him to tar and feather Aoshi for being there because he was her grandfather, but to put on a serious mask like that? This could only mean one of two things— 1, family issues. 2, the Aoiya was in trouble. Personally, Misao preferred the second. Her grandfather could be the veriest bitch about family matters.
Meanwhile, Aoshi was still waiting for the third degree to rain upon him and his being around.
"I would like to hear all the explanations in the world as to why you're sleeping with Misao, Shinomori, but for the moment, put on some clothes and join us in the living room. You just may have cost me my life." Okina said to Aoshi wearily, seeing things ominously knowing that now there was somebody else involved. And Okina was very fond of Aoshi, and would like nothing more than to see the two of them together. That was why he allowed Himura to hire Misao in for Aoshi in secret in the first place. On Kenshin's part, he was at the end of his wits because of the endless line of secretaries that Aoshi had fired, and for Okina, because he knew that his granddaughter just may be the one to break the icy façade he gave the world.
Damn the Saitous to hell!
-o-
"WHHHHHHAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTT!"
Misao's cry of anguish reverberated in the small living room.
"God or whoever is out there in the great divide seemed to have a never ending store of tragedies set for me, didn't he! Now I have to marry Haijime Saitou! He gives me the creeps! Not to mention, he IS a creep…"
Okina sighed. He knew Misao would be this way. He didn't like any of the Saitou's himself. But they were incremental to his great success when he moved to the United States with nearly nothing in his pocket.
"I know. It's hard, but I would have to ask both of you to stop seeing each other starting tomorrow. On the plus side, as far as the marriage market is concerned, he's deemed as verry top shelf!" Okina shouted through the raging diatribe of a nearly incoherent genki.
"Well, so's Aoshi! What's wrong with him!"
"So has he proposed to you!"
"No, but it's not anyone's business!"
The self-diatribe started again which promptly had him shouting in return.
Finally, Aoshi's non-involvement rule snapped.
"I'm afraid I can't do that." Aoshi's soft voice cut through the war of voices between grandfather and granddaughter.
Misao looked at him, frozen in mid sentence with a desperate sort of hurt look that had him grinding his teeth on the edge for what he was about to do.
How could he resist those big beautiful sad eyes?
Easy as pie, just don't look into them, you've done it before.
Right, and just where were you when I was waking up in the sidewalk of bars last week over just losing her wonderful self in my bed?
You really don't have to marry her, you know.
Yeah, and Okina will happily pick up a carving knife and cut me in two!
Fuck this. I'm jumping in.
Damn complicated.
Damn right it is, I'm starting to have an interesting conversation with myself!
Okina broke Aoshi's reverie as he sighed again. "I'm afraid there is no way out of it, Aoshi, I like you and respect you--- you have proved to me time and time again that your potential is stupendous and nothing would make this old man happier than seeing the two of you together--- I do presume you are together?" The old man gave him such a frigid stare that Aoshi was sure far icier than any he had given. Such was family.
"Yes, sir. In fact, we had just gotten back together."
Okina saw the deep meaningful glance the two shared and winced. It was going to be harder than he thought… he walked in on a reunion, it seemed. Ah to be young! But surely, they would get over it in time. Family name and honor was, after all, such a prized commodity.
"Hmm. I see I'm not getting through any of you today. Well, let's put it this way. If the Saitou will not stop this engagement, I cannot break out of it. Such is my word to a man who called it in for a last dying wish. If the two of you will still continue, there will be casualties on all sides. Haijime will call in his goons and gun for all our heads, I, of course, will fight to the bitter end, and I'm pretty sure my granddaughter will not back down, I call in my ties to the Yakuza and all the other multicultural gangs that have plenty to ride on my businesses, and I assume, so will you. So we have a huge war and lose all the businesses we spent our lives building, not to mention see friends and family die. Then what? To make it short, if you still continue, which looks inevitable, then we are all fucked." Okinasaid bluntly, laying all his cards on the table, desperate to make them see the light.
Misao's mouth formed an 'o' during this confession. "You really have ties to the Yakuza?" she asked softly.
"Yes, Misao-love, I always have. It is beneficial for a back-up plan. But are you really planning to for all of us to die just for love?"
She started crying softly.
Aoshi got pissed. He hated her crying.
Okina looked from one to the other. He could see his Misao giving up, which nearly broke his composure, but for all their sakes, he had to be strong. The Makimachis should never break down. Aoshi, on the other hand was a whole kettle of fish altogether. He could practically see the cogs whirring in the young man's brain.
"Misao, stop that yapping, it's pissing me off." Aoshi stood up suddenly, and started pacing the room, muttering to himself.
There should be a way…
Okina looked at them impassively, then stood up also, his age very apparent in every creaking move. Suddenly, he felt all of his 78 years of life grinding slowly towards the end. He really hated seeing his granddaughter like this.
Misao stopped crying, although she was still sniffling. There was still some hope, after all.
Aoshi cut his walking around in midstep and turned to Okina just as he was reaching for the door knob.
"And what would you, do, if I found a way around the engagement that didn't involve any bloodshed?" He asked Okina.
"Then I wish you luck, son. I'm getting old and sentimental, and I do treat you and Himura like one of my own… I would be extremely happy to see love win in the end, like it did with Kenshin. I do see marriage in the future if this ends up your way, I expect?" Okina asked with a cocked eyebrow.
"Of course." Aoshi answered formally with a short bow. Manipulative son-of-a…
Misao stared at him, her aqua eyes huge as saucers at his answer.
Marriage! Did I hear MARRIAGE! O HOLY JOY!
This was definitely red letter day for her!
Okina chuckled at his granddaughters expression. "Misao, I expect you in the manor at 4 in the afternoon tomorrow for the mandatory courting period. I know you don't like it, but…" and gave a very gallic shrug as he kissed her on the forehead.
"She is so very young, isn't she? Don't let any of us down, Aoshi." was his parting statement to Aoshi.
Aoshi stared at him in confusion.
Now, what the fuck did that mean!