Big Trouble in Little Florists
“You must think that we’re stupid.” Yohji grinned, toothily, before lunging forward. Nagi tensed at once and raised his hand.
“Stop.”
The quiet tone was, as always, difficult to disobey. All eyes turned to Aya, who looked thoughtful. Omi could almost see the questions behind the blue, the wondering if Nagi had any humanity left to be rehabilitated, the possibility of violence and betrayal, the plans and contingencies. Aya’s internal world moved around some possibilities.
“Perhaps Nagi is telling the truth,” he finally said, crossing his arms, one hand twitching, making his loosely held sword tap, tap, tap against the wall.
“He blatantly isn’t!” Yohji snapped, “He’s here to wheedle himself into our confidence and then betray us. It’s fucking obvious.”
“Granted,” Aya nodded, “But if there is the tiniest chance that he truly wants to defect...imagine it, Yohji.”
Omi felt somewhat peeved that he evidently wasn’t expected to agree or disagree, that he wouldn’t be a part of this debate. Just because everyone thought that they knew what his opinion was, the inevitable Omi compassion, that he would want to give Nagi the benefit of the doubt. They all thought they knew Omi so well.
It was especially annoying because, yes, he did want to give Nagi a chance.
Yohji turned from Aya, to Nagi and then back again before declaring, “Well, he can’t stay here. We haven’t got the facilities to detain telekinetic psychos.”
Omi saw Nagi’s fingers curl into fists.
“He ought to stay here,” Omi blurted, trying to head off the flicker of panic in Nagi’s body. That flicker added to some other observations that Omi had made over the years and confirmed what he had always suspected. But Nagi regained control surprisingly quickly and proceeded to stare straight ahead as though engaging in some really irritating street theatre. “If we take him to Kritiker, they won’t be able to control him.”
“And we will?” Yohji sounded incredulous.
But Omi wasn’t finished, “If we take him to Kritiker they won’t be able to resist surrounding him with doctors, doing tests on him, trying to understand his abilities, and if that happens he will shut down completely and we’ll never learn anything from him, about Schwartz or anything else. We’ll just have a zombie in a hospital bed. Isn’t that right, Nagi?”
“Very likely,” Nagi’s tone was calm but the whites of his eyes showed a little too much.
Omi nodded to himself. Yes, doctors were decidedly not Nagi’s favourite people. Omi had always assumed that a telekinetic, encountering the scientists of Schwartz, might have had a horrific time of it. Schwartz didn’t exactly hold a gold medal in ethics. God knows what they had done to Nagi when they first got hold of him.
Not that God had anything to do with it.
“How do you know that?” Yohji demanded.
Omi shrugged, “I heard Schuldig refer to both of them as Schwartz Guinea Pigs once. And when a mission involves scientists or doctors Nagi is noticeably more insane than usual and you practically have to wade through the blood to get home. And we all know Schwartz’s passion for human experimentation.“ Omi looked at Nagi’s pale, immobile face and added softly, “I’ll bet they all but turned you inside out, didn’t they.”
Their eyes met.
Aya was nodding solemnly, “I had concluded the same, Omi.”
Yohji started grumbling under his breath about ridiculously clever and creepily observant freaks who never told him anything.
“Well, how do you suggest that we stop him killing us all in our sleep?” he grumped.
“I will not kill you.” Nagi’s unexpected voice made everyone but Aya jump. An atom bomb wouldn’t make Aya jump.
“Reassuring though that is,” Yohji began sarcastically, but Nagi cut him off.
“It would not be in my interests. If I am not truly defecting and this is all a ruse then I need you all alive so that I can get information from you, about Kritiker. If I killed you then you would merely be replaced by operatives that Schwartz do not know and could not find. They would have to start again. And if I really am defecting I need to prove my sincerity, preferably by not slaughtering you all at the first opportunity.”
For a split second Yohji was grinning but he covered it up quickly. “Wordy bastard.”
“But he makes a good point.” Aya told Yohji, “He must be guarded while he is here but I think that it is worth the risk.”
“How do you know that he isn’t completely crazy and likely to kill people for no reason?” Yohji insisted.
“How do we know that about any of us?”
Aya’s bleak expression made Yohji visibly tense.
“You’ll all be sorry tomorrow, when you wake up dead.” he growled.
“So, it’s settled then.” Omi said, somewhat optimistically, “He stays here while we try to decide which side he is on.”
Ken chose that moment to walk through the door. Omi sighed. He hated having arguments and now it looked like he was going to have this one twice.
When Ken had stopped shouting and wildly gesticulating and trying to kill Nagi with a football boot Aya took their houseguest to the spare bedroom and looked him in. Fortunately the room was always ready for any eventuality. Weiss had entertained a lot of dubious people over the years. There was no window, no obvious weapons and the door locked from the outside.
Although it occurred to Omi that Nagi didn’t need weapons. He was the weapon.
Yohji took first watch, sitting with his back to the door, glaring balefully into the middle distance and muttering, “This is all a horrible idea.”
But it took only one look from Aya to shut Yohji up. Omi ached a little bit to see it. Yohji was prepared to do literally anything to make Aya happy and it never worked. Possibly because Aya simply wasn’t capable of being happy.
Aya headed to his bedroom and Omi followed, leaving Yohji to grumble dark predictions outside Nagi’s door.
Aya sat down at his desk to properly clean and put away his sword. Omi had noticed that Aya cleaned it every day whether he had used it or not. Maybe, to Aya, there was always blood on it.
“Much as it’s unhealthy for Yohji to be agreed with I suspect that we will have trouble with Nagi here.” Omi announced, assailed by doubts now that the decision was made.
“Very probably.” Aya sighed, leaning back in his chair, his posture uncharacteristically slouched and tired. “But the possibility that we have a genuine Schwartz turncoat is just too tempting to pass up.”
Omi tried to imagine Aya being tempted by anything. It wasn’t an easy picture to paint for a man so defined by practically and revenge. Aya’s focus was so total, so all consuming, that an angel with an offer of eternal life would probably just be told to get out of his way.
“One thing is for sure,” Omi leaned against the door and watched Aya, remembering how as a boy he had craved the red-head's approval so much that he had followed him round like a puppy, standing in this doorway waiting for an opportunity to prove himself as though said opportunity was going to fall through the skylight. “If Nagi really has defected, Schwartz will tear this city apart until they find him and turn him into cat food.”
“Of course,” Aya agreed, coolly, “He is an intolerable security threat to them now.”
“No, I mean, they won’t be able to stand losing control over him. They will be humiliated by it, enraged.” Omi crossed his arms. He was cold. Aya’s room tended to have that effect on people.
There was a brief silence as Aya cleaned and Omi contemplated the universe, until he found the nerve to ask, “Is that how Weiss would feel, how you would feel? If I ran off?”
‘Would you come after me with that terrifying calm, that relentless drive? Would you kill me if Kritiker asked you to?’ Omi thought.
Aya put his katana away and stood up. His clear, empty eyes were so bright and yet they never looked innocent.
“I would be happy for you.” Aya said.
Aya’s words unsettled Omi. He sat at his computer until the bin men started their rounds outside and tried to write his essay. But all he could think was, ‘If Aya and the others wouldn’t come after me, why am I staying here? How can I tell myself that I do what I do because I have no choice when I do have a choice?’
For the hundredth time that year Omi asked himself why he wasn’t capable of just walking away from his life.
But, deep down, he knew the answer. He stayed in Weiss, he carried on, because he didn’t deserve any better. It was too late for him to have a normal life now.
And he had nowhere else to go.
For the next week Weiss worked double shifts in the shop and in guard of Nagi. Omi felt permanently exhausted. At one point he potted a rose bush upside down and tried to sell it to a chair. That was the last straw for Yohji.
“Omi, for Christ’s sake, go and get some sleep!”
“I’m fine!” Omi insisted, trying to smile while rubbing his eyes, “You’re all OK. I don’t want special treatment.”
Ken staggered by under the largest bouquet that Omi had ever seen. “But we aren’t all wedging in seminars and lectures and essays as well as missions and the shop and Nagi!” Ken hissed while a worried looking man paid for the bouquet. They all waited until the customer had dragged the flower bomb out to his car. Then Ken smirked.
“His wife walked in on him with her sister, her best friend AND the babysitter. He genuinely seems to think that a giant bunch of flowers will make up for that.”
“That’s disgusting.” Omi yawned, thinking that he might just manage an hour’s sleep before his afternoon lecture. It was First World War English social history and Kagura was sat two seats ahead of him. He had spent the last three Thursdays staring at her hair so that now he irretrievably associated conscientious objectors and Lord Kitchener with the back of her head.
Then he noticed Yohji grinning.
“Stop it!” Omi ordered, “Stop admiring the dirty old bastard. Think of his poor wife.”
Omi simply couldn’t understand why men toyed with the affections of their wives. If someone loved him, if someone was Omi’s family, he would be so...terrified of losing them.
Yohji’s grin deepened. “Still,” he sighed, dreamily, “Got to respect the man’s work ethic.”
“You’re picturing scenes from that DVD you got last week, aren’t you?” Ken shook his head, despairingly, clearly feeling that Yohji was oversexed and should do more sport, “I bet it wasn’t like that. For all you know those three women looked like bison.”
There was a thoughtful moment as the three men imagined a ménage a bison.
Then something seemed to occur to Yohji, “Hey! You’ve been watching my DVDs!”
“Not my fault if you leave them in the player. I thought it was my Manchester United’s Greatest Games compilation. I got the shock of my life.”
Yohji gave Ken a funny look, “Yeah, because naked women and orgies are so terrible to look at. You know Ken, I really wonder about you sometimes.”
Omi shuddered. It was like listening to his parents discuss sex, or at least how he assumed that would feel. He gave in and decided to go to bed. He felt a thousand years old as he dragged himself up the steps. Once upstairs he could see Aya on guard in Nagi’s open doorway, cross-legged and attentive. Glancing cautiously through the door Omi watched Nagi reading. He lay in bed with the book held up in the air. Omi couldn’t help asking.
“How can you read, how can you concentrate with Aya sat watching you?” He wondered. It was as though a crippled mouse was sunning itself in full view of an intent tom cat.
Nagi turned his gaze, “Spend some time with Schuldig and you’ll get used to anything. I promise.”
Omi shivered. There was something behind Nagi’s eyes that made Omi’s blood creak. Something buried.
Maybe a lot of somethings.
A few days later Omi was on duty in Nagi’s doorway. The telekinetic was restless and Omi wasn’t surprised by that because Nagi had barely been out of his room in three weeks. The twenty four hour surveillance had to be getting to him too, much as he claimed otherwise. He had read everything they had, even Yohji’s porn, and was now sat on the edge of his bed tapping his foot on the floor in agitation.
“I would like to know one thing.” He remarked, “How long are you going to keep me in this room? Aren’t you interested in what I can do for you? Wouldn’t missions be easier with me around?”
Omi snorted, “How naive would we have to be to take you on a mission?”
Nagi audibly ground his teeth. Omi was interested to see the man show some emotion. He had rarely seen anything on Nagi’s face but that still death mask he always wore. The one that made him look like a reanimated corpse.
“I’ll make a deal with you.” Nagi grated, “If you let me into the living room to watch a film I will tell you exactly where the Minister of the Interior has hidden the bodies.”
Omi tried to hide his sudden interest. They had been after that politician for months, “You know where his off shore accounts are?” he asked, carefully.
Nagi rolled his eyes, “No, I wasn't speaking metaphorically, I meant the actual bodies. You didn’t think he was just money laundering did you? It’s so much more than that.”
Omi’s heart started to pound. He thought of all the frustrating gaps in his computer files, all the unanswered questions, all the murderers, criminals and perverted scientists that Kritiker only knew by vague rumour or the occasional surfacing of victims. He thought of the horrors locked up in Nagi’s head.
“There couldn’t be any harm in you checking the information. If what I tell you about him turns out to be true then maybe we can make it a regular deal. I know a lot of things that you can’t even imagine.” Nagi’s smile was feral; it looked creepy on his usually unexpressive mouth.
“Alright,” Omi said, digging his ever present shop notebook out of his back pocket and flicking past the orders for birthday bouquets until he found a blank page, “Tell me.”
Nagi promptly related a tale of murder and deceit that would have shocked a normal eighteen year old boy. But Omi, sadly, was used to this sort of thing. Unless someone was harvesting school girls’ organs or trying to gain immortality through transformation into a giant cockroach, Omi was not impressed.
When Nagi stopped talking Omi snapped shut the notebook. He was already considering how he could check this information. He was not going to take Nagi’s word for anything.
The internal shop door slammed and Aya appeared at the top of the stairs looking irritated. His apron was covered in dripping plant feed. Omi took the opportunity to acquaint Aya with his new information. Aya listened intently and approved the experiment.
“If it turns out to be true we will go after him.”
“What happened to you?” Omi asked, motioning to the gloop on Aya’s clothes.
Aya’s eyes darkened, “Yohji stumbled and threw plant feed everywhere. He was happy to let the fan girls mop him up but I...don’t like them touching me.”
Omi watched Aya disappear into his room to get changed and thought how Aya didn’t really like anyone touching him. Perhaps he was afraid that he would enjoy it.
“It’s Yohji turn to stand guard now,” Aya reminded Omi, before heading off down the stairs, “I’ll send him up.”
Five minutes later Aya could be heard shouting, “Buy something or leave!” which suggested that the fan girls had become over excited in his absence.
Omi got up, ready to leave.
“Well?” Nagi asked, eyes narrowed. “Will you tell Yohji that I can watch a film?”
Omi snorted for the second time that day, “You don’t think that I’m going to pay you before I have checked your information do you?”
“But that could take days.” Nagi hissed, mouth tight with rage now, “I’m going insane in this room!”
“I can’t help that. You wanted asylum from Schwartz. We never promised that it wouldn’t be boring. You didn’t have to come here.”
“Of course I did.” Nagi snapped, “If I had gone anywhere else Schwartz would have killed me by now.”
Omi loathed himself for feeling sorry for Nagi but he couldn’t help it. What was it that Yohji called him...a sympathy junkie. It didn’t seem to make a difference that Nagi didn’t deserve Omi’s compassion.
Nagi took a deep, steadying breath and then a glint came into his eyes, “I will just have to make my own entertainment then.”
“Uh...good for you,” Omi told him vaguely, wondering what was keeping Yohji.
Nagi settled himself more comfortably on his bed, “You know, you and I should be friends.”
Omi nearly fell over backwards. Friends with Nagi! Ick.
“Schuldig used to say that you and I have a lot in common.” Nagi continued. He sounded almost breezy now and certainly as though he was enjoying himself, “We definitely have more in common with each other than with our colleagues.”
“Colleagues!” Omi exclaimed, “You make it sound like you worked in an office with normal people rather than with a bunch of psychos!”
“Pot, kettle, Omi.” Nagi sneered, “How sane are all of you? Aya clearly has a split personality. Yohji is strangling in unrequited love and Ken started to crack up a long time ago, when he had to kill Kase.”
Omi bit his lip to prevent an angry retort. He didn’t want Nagi to know that he was making him angry and he only had to hold out until Yohji arrived. Nagi wouldn’t bother to taunt Yohji. Yohji was untauntable.
Omi tried very hard not to think about putting a crossbow bolt into Nagi’s face.
“And you...” Nagi crowed, warming to his theme, “You have the tainted Takatori blood. They’re all as mad as a box of frogs from birth. And you haven’t fallen far from the tree have you? A multiple murderer by eighteen. Impressive. And how many of your victims were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, working for the wrong people? It’s not like criminals hire people from Evil Temps Are Us. The body guards, the lab technicians, the security guards; don’t you ever wonder if they had families. If they had any idea who they were working for? Before you killed them. Oh, and Schuldig assures me that you have sunk lower yourself than any of your victims, with a certain sister? What’s the word for that? Oh yes, incest...”
Omi saw stars and before he knew that he was moving he was already holding Nagi down on the bed with his hands around the cold throat, fingers tightening almost against his will. Omi watched himself from afar as Nagi struggled in vain, and wondered what it would mean to kill someone that Kritiker hadn’t told him to. Nagi’s frantic eyes searched the room for something to propel at Omi but Weiss had made sure that there was nothing. Nagi’s face started to go blue.
Then he smiled.
And arched his hips into Omi’s, rubbing as expertly as an elite lap dancer, bringing Omi’s body to involuntary and startling life. Omi’s fingers loosened a little in shock and Nagi leaned up and ran a hot tongue along Omi’s bottom lip.
Omi leapt off him with a disgusted cry and Nagi took several, gasping breaths, touching his reddened throat.
“It’s a good job that you are easy to distract,” Nagi sighed.
Omi stared at him in incomprehension. Already Nagi’s face was settling back into it’s accustomed zombie calm, as though nothing had happened. Omi’s heart was still pounding, he was blushing, his mouth tingled. How could Nagi look so self possessed after someone had just tried to kill him? Omi backed away and was incredibly grateful to hear Yohji coming up the stairs.
Before long Yohji was leaning against the door jamb and pushing his sunglasses onto his head. There were dark circles under his eyes.
“How is our prisoner?” Yohji enquired, “Quiet I hope, I’m hung-over.”
In the part of Omi’s brain not going over and over that moment on the bed, a thought popped up. ‘Yohji didn’t go out last night. But he’s hung-over. So, what, is he drinking alone now? Are things really that bad?’
Yohji saw Omi’s face and seemed to sense that he had given himself away somehow.
He grinned,
“Better go and study, kid. You can leave the freak to me.”
Omi glanced at Nagi only to see the boy lying in bed reading a book that he had already read, holding it above his head and looking as though he hadn’t moved in hours. It was unnerving.
Back in his room at his desk Omi tried to read but his body was hot and uncomfortable and Nagi’s words were burrowing into his brain, feeding parasitically on the things that Omi tried daily not to dwell on. As the lesser of two evils Omi made himself think about Nagi’s body, instead of Nagi’s words.
Once Kagura had accidentally collided with Omi in the canteen. He had thought that was the most erotic moment of his life.
But it looked like he was wrong about that.
“Stop.”
The quiet tone was, as always, difficult to disobey. All eyes turned to Aya, who looked thoughtful. Omi could almost see the questions behind the blue, the wondering if Nagi had any humanity left to be rehabilitated, the possibility of violence and betrayal, the plans and contingencies. Aya’s internal world moved around some possibilities.
“Perhaps Nagi is telling the truth,” he finally said, crossing his arms, one hand twitching, making his loosely held sword tap, tap, tap against the wall.
“He blatantly isn’t!” Yohji snapped, “He’s here to wheedle himself into our confidence and then betray us. It’s fucking obvious.”
“Granted,” Aya nodded, “But if there is the tiniest chance that he truly wants to defect...imagine it, Yohji.”
Omi felt somewhat peeved that he evidently wasn’t expected to agree or disagree, that he wouldn’t be a part of this debate. Just because everyone thought that they knew what his opinion was, the inevitable Omi compassion, that he would want to give Nagi the benefit of the doubt. They all thought they knew Omi so well.
It was especially annoying because, yes, he did want to give Nagi a chance.
Yohji turned from Aya, to Nagi and then back again before declaring, “Well, he can’t stay here. We haven’t got the facilities to detain telekinetic psychos.”
Omi saw Nagi’s fingers curl into fists.
“He ought to stay here,” Omi blurted, trying to head off the flicker of panic in Nagi’s body. That flicker added to some other observations that Omi had made over the years and confirmed what he had always suspected. But Nagi regained control surprisingly quickly and proceeded to stare straight ahead as though engaging in some really irritating street theatre. “If we take him to Kritiker, they won’t be able to control him.”
“And we will?” Yohji sounded incredulous.
But Omi wasn’t finished, “If we take him to Kritiker they won’t be able to resist surrounding him with doctors, doing tests on him, trying to understand his abilities, and if that happens he will shut down completely and we’ll never learn anything from him, about Schwartz or anything else. We’ll just have a zombie in a hospital bed. Isn’t that right, Nagi?”
“Very likely,” Nagi’s tone was calm but the whites of his eyes showed a little too much.
Omi nodded to himself. Yes, doctors were decidedly not Nagi’s favourite people. Omi had always assumed that a telekinetic, encountering the scientists of Schwartz, might have had a horrific time of it. Schwartz didn’t exactly hold a gold medal in ethics. God knows what they had done to Nagi when they first got hold of him.
Not that God had anything to do with it.
“How do you know that?” Yohji demanded.
Omi shrugged, “I heard Schuldig refer to both of them as Schwartz Guinea Pigs once. And when a mission involves scientists or doctors Nagi is noticeably more insane than usual and you practically have to wade through the blood to get home. And we all know Schwartz’s passion for human experimentation.“ Omi looked at Nagi’s pale, immobile face and added softly, “I’ll bet they all but turned you inside out, didn’t they.”
Their eyes met.
Aya was nodding solemnly, “I had concluded the same, Omi.”
Yohji started grumbling under his breath about ridiculously clever and creepily observant freaks who never told him anything.
“Well, how do you suggest that we stop him killing us all in our sleep?” he grumped.
“I will not kill you.” Nagi’s unexpected voice made everyone but Aya jump. An atom bomb wouldn’t make Aya jump.
“Reassuring though that is,” Yohji began sarcastically, but Nagi cut him off.
“It would not be in my interests. If I am not truly defecting and this is all a ruse then I need you all alive so that I can get information from you, about Kritiker. If I killed you then you would merely be replaced by operatives that Schwartz do not know and could not find. They would have to start again. And if I really am defecting I need to prove my sincerity, preferably by not slaughtering you all at the first opportunity.”
For a split second Yohji was grinning but he covered it up quickly. “Wordy bastard.”
“But he makes a good point.” Aya told Yohji, “He must be guarded while he is here but I think that it is worth the risk.”
“How do you know that he isn’t completely crazy and likely to kill people for no reason?” Yohji insisted.
“How do we know that about any of us?”
Aya’s bleak expression made Yohji visibly tense.
“You’ll all be sorry tomorrow, when you wake up dead.” he growled.
“So, it’s settled then.” Omi said, somewhat optimistically, “He stays here while we try to decide which side he is on.”
Ken chose that moment to walk through the door. Omi sighed. He hated having arguments and now it looked like he was going to have this one twice.
When Ken had stopped shouting and wildly gesticulating and trying to kill Nagi with a football boot Aya took their houseguest to the spare bedroom and looked him in. Fortunately the room was always ready for any eventuality. Weiss had entertained a lot of dubious people over the years. There was no window, no obvious weapons and the door locked from the outside.
Although it occurred to Omi that Nagi didn’t need weapons. He was the weapon.
Yohji took first watch, sitting with his back to the door, glaring balefully into the middle distance and muttering, “This is all a horrible idea.”
But it took only one look from Aya to shut Yohji up. Omi ached a little bit to see it. Yohji was prepared to do literally anything to make Aya happy and it never worked. Possibly because Aya simply wasn’t capable of being happy.
Aya headed to his bedroom and Omi followed, leaving Yohji to grumble dark predictions outside Nagi’s door.
Aya sat down at his desk to properly clean and put away his sword. Omi had noticed that Aya cleaned it every day whether he had used it or not. Maybe, to Aya, there was always blood on it.
“Much as it’s unhealthy for Yohji to be agreed with I suspect that we will have trouble with Nagi here.” Omi announced, assailed by doubts now that the decision was made.
“Very probably.” Aya sighed, leaning back in his chair, his posture uncharacteristically slouched and tired. “But the possibility that we have a genuine Schwartz turncoat is just too tempting to pass up.”
Omi tried to imagine Aya being tempted by anything. It wasn’t an easy picture to paint for a man so defined by practically and revenge. Aya’s focus was so total, so all consuming, that an angel with an offer of eternal life would probably just be told to get out of his way.
“One thing is for sure,” Omi leaned against the door and watched Aya, remembering how as a boy he had craved the red-head's approval so much that he had followed him round like a puppy, standing in this doorway waiting for an opportunity to prove himself as though said opportunity was going to fall through the skylight. “If Nagi really has defected, Schwartz will tear this city apart until they find him and turn him into cat food.”
“Of course,” Aya agreed, coolly, “He is an intolerable security threat to them now.”
“No, I mean, they won’t be able to stand losing control over him. They will be humiliated by it, enraged.” Omi crossed his arms. He was cold. Aya’s room tended to have that effect on people.
There was a brief silence as Aya cleaned and Omi contemplated the universe, until he found the nerve to ask, “Is that how Weiss would feel, how you would feel? If I ran off?”
‘Would you come after me with that terrifying calm, that relentless drive? Would you kill me if Kritiker asked you to?’ Omi thought.
Aya put his katana away and stood up. His clear, empty eyes were so bright and yet they never looked innocent.
“I would be happy for you.” Aya said.
Aya’s words unsettled Omi. He sat at his computer until the bin men started their rounds outside and tried to write his essay. But all he could think was, ‘If Aya and the others wouldn’t come after me, why am I staying here? How can I tell myself that I do what I do because I have no choice when I do have a choice?’
For the hundredth time that year Omi asked himself why he wasn’t capable of just walking away from his life.
But, deep down, he knew the answer. He stayed in Weiss, he carried on, because he didn’t deserve any better. It was too late for him to have a normal life now.
And he had nowhere else to go.
For the next week Weiss worked double shifts in the shop and in guard of Nagi. Omi felt permanently exhausted. At one point he potted a rose bush upside down and tried to sell it to a chair. That was the last straw for Yohji.
“Omi, for Christ’s sake, go and get some sleep!”
“I’m fine!” Omi insisted, trying to smile while rubbing his eyes, “You’re all OK. I don’t want special treatment.”
Ken staggered by under the largest bouquet that Omi had ever seen. “But we aren’t all wedging in seminars and lectures and essays as well as missions and the shop and Nagi!” Ken hissed while a worried looking man paid for the bouquet. They all waited until the customer had dragged the flower bomb out to his car. Then Ken smirked.
“His wife walked in on him with her sister, her best friend AND the babysitter. He genuinely seems to think that a giant bunch of flowers will make up for that.”
“That’s disgusting.” Omi yawned, thinking that he might just manage an hour’s sleep before his afternoon lecture. It was First World War English social history and Kagura was sat two seats ahead of him. He had spent the last three Thursdays staring at her hair so that now he irretrievably associated conscientious objectors and Lord Kitchener with the back of her head.
Then he noticed Yohji grinning.
“Stop it!” Omi ordered, “Stop admiring the dirty old bastard. Think of his poor wife.”
Omi simply couldn’t understand why men toyed with the affections of their wives. If someone loved him, if someone was Omi’s family, he would be so...terrified of losing them.
Yohji’s grin deepened. “Still,” he sighed, dreamily, “Got to respect the man’s work ethic.”
“You’re picturing scenes from that DVD you got last week, aren’t you?” Ken shook his head, despairingly, clearly feeling that Yohji was oversexed and should do more sport, “I bet it wasn’t like that. For all you know those three women looked like bison.”
There was a thoughtful moment as the three men imagined a ménage a bison.
Then something seemed to occur to Yohji, “Hey! You’ve been watching my DVDs!”
“Not my fault if you leave them in the player. I thought it was my Manchester United’s Greatest Games compilation. I got the shock of my life.”
Yohji gave Ken a funny look, “Yeah, because naked women and orgies are so terrible to look at. You know Ken, I really wonder about you sometimes.”
Omi shuddered. It was like listening to his parents discuss sex, or at least how he assumed that would feel. He gave in and decided to go to bed. He felt a thousand years old as he dragged himself up the steps. Once upstairs he could see Aya on guard in Nagi’s open doorway, cross-legged and attentive. Glancing cautiously through the door Omi watched Nagi reading. He lay in bed with the book held up in the air. Omi couldn’t help asking.
“How can you read, how can you concentrate with Aya sat watching you?” He wondered. It was as though a crippled mouse was sunning itself in full view of an intent tom cat.
Nagi turned his gaze, “Spend some time with Schuldig and you’ll get used to anything. I promise.”
Omi shivered. There was something behind Nagi’s eyes that made Omi’s blood creak. Something buried.
Maybe a lot of somethings.
A few days later Omi was on duty in Nagi’s doorway. The telekinetic was restless and Omi wasn’t surprised by that because Nagi had barely been out of his room in three weeks. The twenty four hour surveillance had to be getting to him too, much as he claimed otherwise. He had read everything they had, even Yohji’s porn, and was now sat on the edge of his bed tapping his foot on the floor in agitation.
“I would like to know one thing.” He remarked, “How long are you going to keep me in this room? Aren’t you interested in what I can do for you? Wouldn’t missions be easier with me around?”
Omi snorted, “How naive would we have to be to take you on a mission?”
Nagi audibly ground his teeth. Omi was interested to see the man show some emotion. He had rarely seen anything on Nagi’s face but that still death mask he always wore. The one that made him look like a reanimated corpse.
“I’ll make a deal with you.” Nagi grated, “If you let me into the living room to watch a film I will tell you exactly where the Minister of the Interior has hidden the bodies.”
Omi tried to hide his sudden interest. They had been after that politician for months, “You know where his off shore accounts are?” he asked, carefully.
Nagi rolled his eyes, “No, I wasn't speaking metaphorically, I meant the actual bodies. You didn’t think he was just money laundering did you? It’s so much more than that.”
Omi’s heart started to pound. He thought of all the frustrating gaps in his computer files, all the unanswered questions, all the murderers, criminals and perverted scientists that Kritiker only knew by vague rumour or the occasional surfacing of victims. He thought of the horrors locked up in Nagi’s head.
“There couldn’t be any harm in you checking the information. If what I tell you about him turns out to be true then maybe we can make it a regular deal. I know a lot of things that you can’t even imagine.” Nagi’s smile was feral; it looked creepy on his usually unexpressive mouth.
“Alright,” Omi said, digging his ever present shop notebook out of his back pocket and flicking past the orders for birthday bouquets until he found a blank page, “Tell me.”
Nagi promptly related a tale of murder and deceit that would have shocked a normal eighteen year old boy. But Omi, sadly, was used to this sort of thing. Unless someone was harvesting school girls’ organs or trying to gain immortality through transformation into a giant cockroach, Omi was not impressed.
When Nagi stopped talking Omi snapped shut the notebook. He was already considering how he could check this information. He was not going to take Nagi’s word for anything.
The internal shop door slammed and Aya appeared at the top of the stairs looking irritated. His apron was covered in dripping plant feed. Omi took the opportunity to acquaint Aya with his new information. Aya listened intently and approved the experiment.
“If it turns out to be true we will go after him.”
“What happened to you?” Omi asked, motioning to the gloop on Aya’s clothes.
Aya’s eyes darkened, “Yohji stumbled and threw plant feed everywhere. He was happy to let the fan girls mop him up but I...don’t like them touching me.”
Omi watched Aya disappear into his room to get changed and thought how Aya didn’t really like anyone touching him. Perhaps he was afraid that he would enjoy it.
“It’s Yohji turn to stand guard now,” Aya reminded Omi, before heading off down the stairs, “I’ll send him up.”
Five minutes later Aya could be heard shouting, “Buy something or leave!” which suggested that the fan girls had become over excited in his absence.
Omi got up, ready to leave.
“Well?” Nagi asked, eyes narrowed. “Will you tell Yohji that I can watch a film?”
Omi snorted for the second time that day, “You don’t think that I’m going to pay you before I have checked your information do you?”
“But that could take days.” Nagi hissed, mouth tight with rage now, “I’m going insane in this room!”
“I can’t help that. You wanted asylum from Schwartz. We never promised that it wouldn’t be boring. You didn’t have to come here.”
“Of course I did.” Nagi snapped, “If I had gone anywhere else Schwartz would have killed me by now.”
Omi loathed himself for feeling sorry for Nagi but he couldn’t help it. What was it that Yohji called him...a sympathy junkie. It didn’t seem to make a difference that Nagi didn’t deserve Omi’s compassion.
Nagi took a deep, steadying breath and then a glint came into his eyes, “I will just have to make my own entertainment then.”
“Uh...good for you,” Omi told him vaguely, wondering what was keeping Yohji.
Nagi settled himself more comfortably on his bed, “You know, you and I should be friends.”
Omi nearly fell over backwards. Friends with Nagi! Ick.
“Schuldig used to say that you and I have a lot in common.” Nagi continued. He sounded almost breezy now and certainly as though he was enjoying himself, “We definitely have more in common with each other than with our colleagues.”
“Colleagues!” Omi exclaimed, “You make it sound like you worked in an office with normal people rather than with a bunch of psychos!”
“Pot, kettle, Omi.” Nagi sneered, “How sane are all of you? Aya clearly has a split personality. Yohji is strangling in unrequited love and Ken started to crack up a long time ago, when he had to kill Kase.”
Omi bit his lip to prevent an angry retort. He didn’t want Nagi to know that he was making him angry and he only had to hold out until Yohji arrived. Nagi wouldn’t bother to taunt Yohji. Yohji was untauntable.
Omi tried very hard not to think about putting a crossbow bolt into Nagi’s face.
“And you...” Nagi crowed, warming to his theme, “You have the tainted Takatori blood. They’re all as mad as a box of frogs from birth. And you haven’t fallen far from the tree have you? A multiple murderer by eighteen. Impressive. And how many of your victims were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, working for the wrong people? It’s not like criminals hire people from Evil Temps Are Us. The body guards, the lab technicians, the security guards; don’t you ever wonder if they had families. If they had any idea who they were working for? Before you killed them. Oh, and Schuldig assures me that you have sunk lower yourself than any of your victims, with a certain sister? What’s the word for that? Oh yes, incest...”
Omi saw stars and before he knew that he was moving he was already holding Nagi down on the bed with his hands around the cold throat, fingers tightening almost against his will. Omi watched himself from afar as Nagi struggled in vain, and wondered what it would mean to kill someone that Kritiker hadn’t told him to. Nagi’s frantic eyes searched the room for something to propel at Omi but Weiss had made sure that there was nothing. Nagi’s face started to go blue.
Then he smiled.
And arched his hips into Omi’s, rubbing as expertly as an elite lap dancer, bringing Omi’s body to involuntary and startling life. Omi’s fingers loosened a little in shock and Nagi leaned up and ran a hot tongue along Omi’s bottom lip.
Omi leapt off him with a disgusted cry and Nagi took several, gasping breaths, touching his reddened throat.
“It’s a good job that you are easy to distract,” Nagi sighed.
Omi stared at him in incomprehension. Already Nagi’s face was settling back into it’s accustomed zombie calm, as though nothing had happened. Omi’s heart was still pounding, he was blushing, his mouth tingled. How could Nagi look so self possessed after someone had just tried to kill him? Omi backed away and was incredibly grateful to hear Yohji coming up the stairs.
Before long Yohji was leaning against the door jamb and pushing his sunglasses onto his head. There were dark circles under his eyes.
“How is our prisoner?” Yohji enquired, “Quiet I hope, I’m hung-over.”
In the part of Omi’s brain not going over and over that moment on the bed, a thought popped up. ‘Yohji didn’t go out last night. But he’s hung-over. So, what, is he drinking alone now? Are things really that bad?’
Yohji saw Omi’s face and seemed to sense that he had given himself away somehow.
He grinned,
“Better go and study, kid. You can leave the freak to me.”
Omi glanced at Nagi only to see the boy lying in bed reading a book that he had already read, holding it above his head and looking as though he hadn’t moved in hours. It was unnerving.
Back in his room at his desk Omi tried to read but his body was hot and uncomfortable and Nagi’s words were burrowing into his brain, feeding parasitically on the things that Omi tried daily not to dwell on. As the lesser of two evils Omi made himself think about Nagi’s body, instead of Nagi’s words.
Once Kagura had accidentally collided with Omi in the canteen. He had thought that was the most erotic moment of his life.
But it looked like he was wrong about that.
