Breakdown

Chapter 9: Abyssinian

The only thing saving Yohji Kudou's life at the moment was the fact that Ran was still too humiliated to return to the Koneko. Even after spending the afternoon visiting his comatose sister, Ran was still angry and embarrassed over what Yohji had done to him all day.

The visit with Aya had provided Ran with too much time for introspection. And not being one to ever share his feelings, even to unconscious family members, the redhead was fit to burst. He needed to find himself an outlet.

Normally Ran would have meditated or worked on his katas, but he knew that those two options were both out of the question this time. First of all, Ran didn't have his kattana and the maintenance workers at the hospital had not been willing to lend him a mop. Initially one worker had seemed overjoyed to loan him one if Ran would agree to mop an entire floor of the hospital. Ran had, of course, agreed, but unfortunately he had entirely missed the sarcasm, though he caught on a moment later when the man walked off, laughing raucously as he pushed his cart of cleaning supplies away.

Another man who had been watching the exchange, and who had come to the hospital to visit a loved one, had been in a generous mood and had offered Ran some money. When Ran had inquired as to the reason for his generosity, the man had given him a street name where he could find himself some cheap company, because apparently he thought Ran could do better than a mop.

It was then that Ran had decided to storm out of yet another building.

He'd gone to the park, but even the peaceful atmosphere hadn't helped. For the first time, Ran could not force the calm needed for meditation. The reason being was that every time he closed his eyes, he was plagued by the sight of green eyes staring back at him with some look he still couldn't understand. The eyes were attached to a lopsided grin and framed by a mop of wavy blond hair. Every time Ran saw that smiling face, he began to feel warm and his concentration was instantly broken, and he became angry because Yohji Kudou should not be having this effect on him, especially just the thought of him.

It wasn't bad enough that Yohji had invaded his personal space that day, but now he was oozing into a more private area, Ran's mind. It made the redhead want to wring the playboy's neck even more.

So after the failed meditation, Ran had decided that he was too antsy and had just started walking from that moment on, with no particular destination in mind. He crossed the park, strolled past high class business, walked by boutiques--stopped in front of one when a certain purple shirt with a diagonal zipper caught his eye—and continued on his way, refusing to look in anymore shop windows after that.

Before long, Ran found himself in the less peaceful and far less clean areas of the city. He didn't quite remember the journey there, but it was where his feet had decided to take him. He wasn't looking for cheap company as the man at the hospital had suggested, and he wasn't looking to drink.

Ran and alcohol just never fell in the same sentence. He and liqour had never gotten on well in the past so he avoided it like the plague. There was not one thing about it that Ran could find to like. Apart from it looking, tasting and burning ones throat like lighter fluid, it made one slow and clumsy. An assassin couldn't afford to be any of those things, even if Yohji liked to think otherwise.

So since he hadn't been looking to drink, Ran hadn't been looking for a bar, and yet he had somehow stumbled across one on his mindless walk and for reasons unknown to him, now found himself standing in the doorway of a haze-filled, dimly lit, hole-in-the-wall of a bar. He couldn't stop his lip from curling in disgust as he scanned the place.

The bar was teeming with the kinds of lowlifes that Ran was used to introducing himself to on regular basis with the wrong end of his kattana.

And then his gaze fell on a man wearing a pristinely clean white suit jacket, sitting in a darkened corner, fingering the rim of a glass filled with some dark amber liquid. The man's dark hair fell over the sides of his face as he leaned over the table to read something, a newspaper, Ran decided, though how the man could see it in the near dark was beyond him.

He growled. The Schwartz assassin stuck out like a sore thumb.

Ran avoided the interested and sometimes menacing stares of the patrons of the bar and stomped over to Crawford. He stopped beside his table with his arms folded, looking expectant.

Crawford turned the page of his newspaper and ignored him.

Ran narrowed his eyes and coughed to get the man's attention. When that did not work, he grabbed a section of Crawford's newspaper and growled the American's codename. "Oracle."

"You could have waited an extra minute for me to finish with that section, Abyssinian." Crawford looked up, mildly annoyed amber eyes meeting angry violet ones. He reached out for his paper but Ran would not give it to him.

"Very well," he sighed. "Keep it if you're so attached to it." He went back to reading what was left of his newspaper.

Ran snarled and tossed the paper back onto the table. This time when Crawford lifted his head, he looked more than a little aggravated.

"I came here for some measure of quiet, Abyssinian," he said darkly, "Not a confrontation. If you cannot sit quietly and have a drink, then I'll kindly ask you to go elsewhere."

"You can't tell me what to do," Ran growled, obviously unaware of the fact that he was pouting slightly.

Crawford smiled sardonically and inclined his head towards the red-headed assassin. "Ah, well spoken. And which five-year-old did you nip that bit of logic from?"

Ran continued to scowl, on edge, watching the Schwartz leader warily as he lifted his glass to his lips to take a sip of his drink. His eyes followed Crawford's every move until he'd set the glass down and began to neatly fold his newspaper.

"If you are staying, put away the death glare. Sit down and have a drink."

Ran only frowned at the order and Crawford sighed when he didn't make a move in any direction.

"If it helps you at all, think of my words as a request more than an order. I don't like you hovering around my table, Abyssinian. You're not dressed up in your tight little leathers and stylish trench coat, so you aren't on duty and therefore not here to kill me. Or am I wrong in assuming that Krittiker didn't send you? Are you under cover?"

Ran shook his head, feeling confident enough to answer his question. Crawford nodded once and Ran assumed that he must have been pleased that his assumption had been correct. Though the American was most likely wondering as to the real reason why he was in a seedy bar.

Ran was wondering the same thing about Crawford. The dark-haired man seemed to have too much class to be caught dead in a place like this. It was more to the taste of the annoying redheaded member of Schwartz, Ran decided. He was sure that the talkative German would have felt right at home here.

"I'm not going anywhere," Ran decided that he'd point out the obvious.

Crawford looked to the heavens and leaned back in the booth before he looked at Ran. "So… you want ME to leave."

Ran didn't say anything, but he knew that Crawford would surmise from his silence that he was answering in the affirmative.

The Oracle sighed. "Unless you manage this bar or know the manager personally, I'm afraid that I will be childish as well and point out the fact that I was here first."

"You saw me coming here." Ran instantly accused him.

Crawford raised an eyebrow, looking amused. "Did I? You're certain of that?"

A nod.

"Really? Are you precognitive as well? Or are you just guessing?"

"Why else would you be here?" Ran asked abrasively.

"For a drink and some quiet. I thought I made that perfectly clear before."

"I don't believe you."

"Well obviously, otherwise you wouldn't still be making stupid accusations." Crawford sighed loudly and pulled off his glasses, wiping the lenses on a handkerchief that he'd pulled from his pocket. He didn't so much as glance up at Ran, as if the act of making eye contact with the red-head would be a waste of his time. "You're a tiny spec in the cosmos Abyssinian. Do not flatter yourself by thinking that anything you do merits my having a vision about it, and at that, my acting on it. We have a history, true, but I do not see everything, least of all what you do with your mundane existence when Schwartz and Weiss are not fighting. You're not so utterly important that I would wait for you in a smoke-filled bar on my time off."

"And what if you did?"

Crawford raised a quizzical eyebrow.

"Have a vision of this?" Ran clarified, watching the dark-haired assassin steadily.

The edges of Crawford's mouth lifted as he raised his glass and took a sip. "Although it's a change of pace, I am not certain that being glared at is better than being leered at all day." He replaced the glass on the table, allowing his smile to show. "Though admittedly, your pout is cuter than Mastermind's."

Ran's face reddened, not only out of anger but out of humiliation. A comment like that was that last thing he would have expected to hear from Schwartz's leader. Maybe Mastermind, but certainly not from Oracle.

Ran tried to glare through his embarrassment, but Crawford had stopped paying attention to him. He was surprised to see the dark-haired man's smile suddenly morph into a grimace of pain as he grabbed his forehead and winced loudly, gritting his teeth. Ran could see a thin stream of blood trickling from his nose.

Ran wondered if that was the side effect of him having a vision. And at that, he was very curious as to what he had seen.

It took a while for Crawford to get over the "attack," as Ran had decided to call it, and when Crawford did drop his hand and wipe the blood from his nose, he sat back and looked at Ran with a dangerous calm.

"I need a drinking partner," Crawford said simply, his tone somewhat clipped. "You look as if you could use one too." He motioned to the seat across from him. "Sit."

Remarkably…Ran sat.

If thoughts of Yohji had brought him to this place, then perhaps he'd take a page from the blonde's own book and say fuck it and have a drink…or twenty.

However long it took for the bar to run dry.

Crawford called for the first round and lifted his glass once it was refilled. Ran carefully picked up his own drink and sniffed it, grimacing only slightly.

Crawford smiled. "Cheers."

Ran watched him skull his drink and decided to do likewise. After a coughing fit and the world turning faster than it should, Ran concluded that he felt a little better and happily accepted another drink.

The world didn't look quite so bad through the bottom of a glass…