Shimazaki Ryou had never had a problem going where he wasn't wanted.

That was the beauty of teleporting. He could be anywhere in the world, within his range, in less than a second. There was a whole lot of world out there to explore and there was no way in hell he was avoiding any part of it. No, he was going to go wherever he wanted to go and he was going to do whatever he wanted to do.

And what he wanted to do, right now, was lay down in the living room and get his tattoos touched up.

"You're staying in the lines, right? You've got to stay in the lines." Said Shimazaki as Sho practically shredded his back. He had a new appreciation of Kai. He hoped that wherever he'd found himself in this world he was happy and healthy and had plenty of space to run around, sort of like a dog. Like a collie, he'd always wanted one…he hoped that there were collies in heavy. Or in Fiji. Whichever Kai had wound up…

It would have been nice to have left Shimazaki a forwarding address. As good as he hoped Sho was, and he had better have been good, he pressed way too hard!

"Yeah, I know how to stay in the lines. I'm not a baby." Said Sho as he did his best to keep everything where it was supposed to be. It was one thing to follow his own stencils, it was another to try and follow something that another person had drawn. If Sho had been the one who started this dragon he would have made it less stiff. It was supposed to look scary, like it was moving, but really it just looked like Shimazaki had rolled over on a lizard.

And killed it.

"Don't let Mukai here you say that." Said Shimazaki. He forced himself to relax, clenching up would only make it worse. He needed to get through this…he had forgotten how fucking painful this was. Well Kai had been a master of his craft, as his father had been and his father before him. There was something about it, maybe, who your parents were. Shimazaki was the son of a hitman's son, and he was pretty damn good at his job. Sho was the son of what was essentially the son of an oyaban so…did that make Sho a future oyaban?

He certainly didn't have a future as a tattoo artist.

"Mukai's taking a bath, and she can't hear anything. Besides, she knows that she can't color in the lines. No matter how many times I try and teach her she never learns…but it's ok, I mean, they're her coloring books." Said Sho. He wiped off some of Shimazaki's blood…maybe he should have seen Fukuda about that. Sho had made a pretty big cut and then made it worse when he tried to get rid of the blood…that was maybe going to scar…

Shimazaki was counting on him, he couldn't screw up.

"You're not going to let Mukai have a turn? It's not like she can do any worse." Said Minegishi, looking up over the top of their book. They were supposed to be watching Ryou. They didn't know why, he didn't think about Sho like that. Ryou didn't lie…the truth wasn't always what they wanted to hear, but he always told the truth. Ryou didn't need watching. If anything Sho was the one who needed the watching.

Unless singlehandedly keeping the first aid industry alive had been his secret plan this whole time.

"Hey! I'm doing a good job!" said Sho

"Yeah, he totally is…is he, Toshi?" asked Shimazaki. He tapped Toshi on the aura. They didn't do so much as look at him. They just stayed staring at their book…he focused on it. No matter how much he focused he couldn't tell what was written on the page…not that he would have known what any of the written characters meant.

Maybe Toshi could have explained it to him…read it to him even…but of course Toshi wasn't up for that right now.

"He's staying in the lines, that's all I'm going to say about that." Said Minegishi, making it a point to ignore Ryou. They felt his attention turning towards their book. They ignored him. They ignored everything in the world from the buzz of the tattoo gun to the smell of whatever was burning in the kitchen…though maybe they shouldn't have ignored that. It couldn't have been good…

And the subsequent localized earthquake couldn't have been, either.

"Sho, why don't you come and help me in the kitchen?" asked Shibata, trying his best not to make the house shake too badly. Not for Shimazaki's sake, no, he hoped whatever Sho was working out came out a disaster. He didn't want to disturb anyone else, literally anyone else in the house, even Minegishi…no, no, they were nice enough to watch Shimazaki around Sho…but they were still the ones who…

Dinner. He had to focus on dinner.

"I'm busy, have Big Sis help you." said Sho, looking up from what he was doing for less than a second…which was all it took….oh shit!

"Yeah, you can-fuck!" said Shimazaki as he felt Sho hit bone…and it had been bone. Sho had gone through the muscle to hit the bones of his spine…he could feel Toshi smiling at him. He knew what they were going to say next, something about how he was always so overly dramatic, and then he was going to say something about knowing his own bones and when they were hit, and then they would say something about how if it had actually been his spine that Sho had hit then he was lucky that he wasn't paralyzed right now…

That was what they should have said, anyway.

"Mob's at her own house trying to teach Serizawa how to brush his hair or something. She's busy, cook on your own. Ryou, stay there. Sho, get back to work. You'll never get better if you don't work at it." Said Minegishi. Ryou looked and felt disappointed….they had no idea why. Maybe he had finally realized how dramatic he could be. Really, his spine? He would have been lucky if he'd only gotten paralyzed.

"I actually do need a lot of help right now-" said Shibata

"I'm already really good, I'm the one who did the picture of the fighting dicks on Fukuda's back." Said Sho

"The what with the what now?" asked Shimazaki. He must have misheard that. There was no way in hell Sho had managed to get that onto him…not unless he had drugged Fukuda…could he even be drugged? He'd seen that guy drink ten glasses of champagne back to back at that one really great Christmas party….if Sho had found the secret to drugging Fukuda then he better have been ready to share with the rest of the class!

"The fighting dicks on his back." Said Sho, this time louder. He might not have been able to hear right again after what had happened.

"Please mean ducks…" muttered Shibata, shaking his head.

"We both know he meant no such thing." Said Minegishi, licking their finger and turning the page.

"Dicks, ducks, dick ducks, it's all good and I have the highest confidence that Sho knows exactly what he's doing." Said Shimazaki. Sho had better have known what he was doing…of course he did. He had been told that Sho was an amazing artist, by Toshi no less, and he trusted Toshi totally and completely.

"Do you mean a dick made out of ducks or a giant duck's-" said Sho

"Sho! Can you please come and help me out in the kitchen? You get to use a torch." Said Shibata. Sho didn't even look his way.

"No thanks, you can torch stuff by yourself." Said Sho. A torch would have been cool but he had work to do. Shimazaki said that he liked getting as much done in one sitting as he could, that way he didn't have to deal with healing for a long time. He didn't mind, he wanted this done as soon as possible…and not just because he kept on messing up.

"You can use the knife, too, the big one." Said Shibata

"I have knives at home I can use…but don't tell Big Sis I was using the knives." Said Sho. He was thirteen but she still got nervous when he so much as picked up a butter knife. He didn't know what she was so scared of, Fukuda was right there. It wasn't like Sho was going to accidentally cut his own head off or something. That was the one thing that Fukuda couldn't fix….well he had tried it with worms and grasshoppers…which weren't people but Sho didn't think that it was THAT much different. He could have dropped a knife and gotten it stuck in his stomach or something…but Fukuda would have been able to fix that, too.

Big Sis treated him like such a baby even though they were nearly the same age, and even though she had told him that she would stop doing that.

"You can…you can play with the blender or the waffle maker or…or you can blend things to put in the waffle maker, whatever you want." Said Shibata. He did need the help, of course, but even if all Sho wanted to do was melt things in the waffle maker then he was alright with that, too. Anything to get him away from Shimazaki. He didn't care what Shimazaki had said about him and Sho, Shibata didn't trust a single word that came out of that bastard's mouth.

"How does any of that help you?" asked Sho, stopping what he was doing. No matter how much he thought about it…it just didn't make any sense. What if he decided to blend beer and cat food together? Was that what would be for dinner?

Sho decided to only use his powers for good.

"It just does." Said Shibata quickly. Minegishi scoffed at him and rolled their eyes.

"He thinks that Ryou's going to try and sleep with you and he's doing his best, amazingly enough that's his best, to get you away from him." Said Minegishi. Honestly, was a little honesty too much to ask for? They all knew what had happened, dancing around the issue didn't help anything, it just made the whole thing really damn annoying.

"What the fuck?!" asked Sho. Was that really how little everyone thought of him? Of fucking course he wasn't going to cheat on his boyfriend…the only person who knew he had a boyfriend in that room was Shimazaki…but still! It wasn't like he couldn't get a boyfriend if he wanted one and it wasn't like he would have cheated on that boyfriend with Shimazaki and, anyway, he didn't even like Shimazaki like that anymore and it wasn't anyone's business but his who he did and did not like and-and-and all of that stuff!

"Yeah, seriously, what the fuck? Why would I want to fuck Sho? He's practically my kid. You know something, Shibata, you thinking that I want to fuck Sho says a hell of a lot more about me than it does about you." said Shimazaki

"Good, I'm glad we're both on the same page with this." Said Shibata

"Wait, no, I take that back-" said Shimazaki

"You said what you said, Ryou, there's no way that you can take it back. Best just to live with it." Said Minegishi, mostly sarcastically. It did say a lot about Ryou that anyone would even have thought that he was capable of something like that, which he was, and it was no in way charming or adorable that he'd said….it had been a slip, that was all, a Freudian slip or whatever.

They wondered what good old Dr. Freud would have had to say about them.

"No, no, no. It says more about you than it does about me and you have to live with that. So start living…or carry on living, I guess." said Shimazaki. He could see Shibata's muscles crawling. He was itching for a fight….Shimazaki was going to have to pencil it in for later in the week. After he'd healed up, the natural way at least partially from Sho's handiwork.

"I want to kill you." said Shibata. He had never meant it before, not like that anyway. He wanted…he wanted Shimazaki Ryou dead. There was no way…how dare he even…Shibata sounded like an old person. How dare you this and how dare you that….he felt like an old person. He felt tired, heavy, but also…he skin was crawling. The seams of his sweater were starting to give….he had to keep everything under control.

Sho was in the room and Mukai was in the house. This was not the time or the place.

"Get in line." Said Shimazaki with a wave of his hand…one he regretted. His entire back…maybe he should have given Sho more time to practice. He must have looked as bad as he felt…and he was going to feel worse, too, if Shibata was serious about the whole 'wanting to kill him' thing…not that he couldn't have just teleported away…but this was his house and it would have been annoying to have to walk on eggshells and look over his shoulder for the rest of his life.

"It's a long line." Said Minegishi looking back down at their book. Ryou was looking at them again, they could feel it. They were probably right, he was wondering if they were on that list, and in fact the were so reassured of their rightness that they could ignore him totally and completely. Sometimes they were in that line, and sometimes they weren't, it changed from day to day. Right now they weren't.

They didn't know how they'd feel tomorrow but for now…for now they weren't.

"I've got time…no, I don't. Sho, are you sure that you don't want to help me?" asked Shibata

"No, I don't, and I'm not in love with Shimazaki, either. So stop thinking that. You're being like Fukuda, he's always accusing people of doing it, too, and Big Sis doesn't like it. That's a big reason why they stopped being friends. You don't want Big Sis to stop being your friend, do you?" asked Sho. He knew that it was kind of low, and also that Big Sis never stopped being friends with anyone unless they did something big like pull a Tsuchiya, but right now he didn't mind being low. He had to finish this. He had to prove that he wasn't screwing up…he wasn't. He was a good artist, he knew every kind of art, and this was a kind of art so…so he could do this. He was good at this. He was the best at this. He was better at this than Hatori was!

Not that he was in competition with Hatori or anything like that.

He would have been with his brother but Hatori wasn't even his brother. It was like Fukuda had said, Dad had only adopted him, and adopted kids weren't the same as real kids. Dad didn't care or whatever because he wasn't half of Dad or whatever and…and out of everyone in the world Dad had picked Hatori to be his son and….and it wasn't like Sho had picked Dad, either, so be…to really they even to be honest but…but maybe that wasn't honest and they would never be even and Sho was just…nobody wanted him to be their son and they never would and-and…and…

…and he had a lot of work to do.

"I-I'm nothing like Fukuda!" said Shibata

"That's exactly what someone who was just like Fukuda would say." Said Minegishi knowing fully well that they were fanning the flames of whatever this was.

"I-I-I'm nothing like-" said Shibata

"You're just as annoying as Fukuda, and this is coming from me." said Shimazaki. They were a lot alike, actually. Both of them sure did love to walk around with their noses in the air, acting like they were better than everyone else. This was Claw, everyone's hands were dirty, and none of them were anything even close to normal. Shimazaki knew for a fact that Claw hadn't been Shibata's first stop in the underworld. He didn't get to be holier than thee…though…whatever. He didn't get to look down on Shimazaki…and also he and Mob were broken up now, probably, so what in the hell was he still pissed off about!?

"To be fair you think that pudding cans are annoying." Said Minegishi, trying and failing not to smile…goddamn it….

"To be fair, Toshi, the rings come off way too easily." Said Shimazaki

"Why not just a can opener?" asked Minegishi

"See? That's annoying. I don't want to do two things, I barely want to do the one thing." Said Shimazaki. Toshi was smiling…success! Not that he had set out to make Toshi smile, or maybe he had. Maybe that was just his subconscious goal all along…of course it was. What could have been better than the feeling of Toshi smiling?

He couldn't think of anything so it must not have existed.

"How about you get up and leave. That's one thing." Said Shibata through clenched teeth.

"First of all, that's two things, and second of all, I'm not allowed to get out of this hoop, remember?" asked Shimazaki

"You-you-you-" said Shibata

"You've got him there, Ryou, now leave it there." Said Minegishi. They made aural contact with Ryou. He lit up like the ending of a summer festival. One of those picture perfect ones from those manga Mob, and most certainly only Mob, read all the time. Minegishi looked away. He was still glowing maroon and crimson.

"Hey, I'm not the one making all kinds of wild accusations…I mean, really! What do I have to do, get 'I don't want to fuck Suzuki Sho tattooed across my back?" asked Shimazaki

"There isn't enough room on your back, but there is on your leg." Said Sho. Words were easier than coloring in a million and one dragon scales. Seriously. This dragon had too many scales, and it was hard following someone else's work, but words…words that he was doing all by himself? Words were easy.

He could maybe even sneak a dick in there, it wasn't like Shimazaki would notice.

"Well, come on, get to it then!" said Shimazaki. Partially he wanted to get Sho away from his beyond overworked back and partially he did was getting tired of explaining this to people. As far as he knew everyone knew how to read so, really, the only thing better would have been business cards…but business cards were boring as fuck.

And he didn't so boring.

Which was how he'd gotten here in the first place. He had things to do, from what he'd heard there were murmurings about Suzuki getting weak and slow so he was going to have a lot of dissent to put down, but this was something that he wanted to do. Work was boring, Sho was fun, and it had been forever since they'd hung out. Apparently Sho hadn't full outgrown him after all….he had never been this happy to have had his skin shredded off in his life….he was glad. Not for the cuts, no, but for the fact that he and Sho were friends again just like old times. Good times, these were going to be good times, he was going to make sure of it.

So, yes, he was going to go where he wasn't wanted and if anyone had a problem with it, well, they could look at whatever the hell Sho was writing on his leg…was that a dick?