Chapter Text
A yakuza isn't afraid of needles.
A yakuza can't be afraid of needles. Not when he's cloaked in ink.
It's a challenge he sets himself: keep your eyes open, Toru. Keep your eyes open while the piercer methodically cleans the lobe with an antiseptic wipe, keep your eyes open while she closes one of hers and screws up her cute mouth into a thoughtful purse before making a dot with a pen a little higher up and a little further back than she'd have chosen herself, at his request, keep your eyes open while she holds up a hand mirror and politely asks is that what you're after?
Keep your eyes open, Toru.
It feels like a pinch, a millisecond of a white-hot burn that dissolves immediately into a dull ache, done in no time at all.
Higashi exhales the breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. Stares into the mirror the piercer hands over again, doesn't look away when she asks well? more softly and nervously this time as awareness dawns (too little, too late) and she realizes what sort of man through whom she's just punched a hole.
But he grins back at her, and she smiles, evidently recognizing the delight in his eyes, and maybe it doesn't matter what sort of man he is, after all, as long as she's done well and he's a satisfied customer.
Besides – it looks sick as hell.
–
He’s careful to turn his head in just the right way when he’s making his rounds at the clubs on Shichifuku – and regardless of whether or not a proprietor takes stock of the metal in his ear when they’re shakily handing over the family’s collection for the month, Higashi likes to imagine they’re a sliver more fearful. Especially for a yakuza, there’s a level of unspoken badassery that comes with a body modification, no matter how trivial that modification might be. Unlike the irezumi that lies beneath the starched fabric of his dress shirt, this is a modification he can show off directly, too.
It’s a small thing, but it’s a small thing of his own.
He hasn’t gotten to say that in some time – not since Red Nose.
After they wrap up their respective duties, Higashi and some other low-rank guys are shooting the shit at the office. Feels good. It is good. A good day. Looks boss, man, one of them says, gesturing to his lobe, hang on, is that the gay ear? They all laugh. (It's not.) It reminds him of what things were like when Kaito-aniki had been here – the playful ribbing, the camaraderie. He likes these guys and they like him back. A good day.
But when the door to the common room opens, it's like a bucket of ice water’s been dumped over Higashi’s head. He is a half-drowned sewer rat on its hind legs. He is an insect. The boys back away, creating a wide berth, fearful of being afflicted with whatever plague the hateful thing carries – untreatable, incurable, vile.
They know it's best not to touch the captain’s toys.
Straight backs, wide eyes. Deferential bows. On the other side of the room, Higashi joins them. The unadorned ear faces Hamura’s way. Too late, he wonders what reaction it will prompt; too late, he thinks he probably should have thought of this first.
“Boys.”
Higashi’s heart rate quickens with each of the captain’s slow paces into the room. It feels like the tick of a time bomb. It feels like he is drowning. But he stays rooted to the spot, well aware that a hasty exit would only draw the captain’s ire.
Hamura pauses to speak to a couple of the other men. What he says doesn't matter; Higashi can't hear it anyway through the ringing in his ears.
And then, long and drawn-out and deceptively casual in that rough growl of a voice: “Higashi.”
Higashi knows immediately that he was right to be concerned as he turns his head to meet the captain’s arctic eyes.
They sweep him completely from head to toe and fix on his new jewelry, drawn to the minutiae of him in a mockery of the way Higashi had wished his clients looked his way earlier. Such a small, inconsequential thing, after all, the stud in his earlobe. It means nothing, nothing, nothing; he meant nothing, nothing, nothing by it.
But Hamura’s eyebrows go up, up, up.
Higashi has spent time watching this hardened face for both indicators of wrath and signs of mercy. His expression now holds neither one. A mouth quirked in surprise. A sort of satisfaction in the curve of his upper lip that almost gives Higashi hope, a sputtered flame lighting hesitantly like a stove on its last legs. Click click click click click woosh.
But the lion advances on him all the same, high-end loafers clicking slowly and rhythmically on the chipped tile, dark gaze drawing slowly toward his face, and he has nowhere to run.
He should have known.
Now he does.
The aforementioned plague, after all, is keptness. A small thing of his own means less than nothing when he's caught in an eternal foothold trap, locked in and bleeding out so slowly, so painfully, where there's no one else for a thousand miles, except for –
“How about that?” Hamura drawls, long and low. “Looking sharp, Higashi.” He stops finally, standing far too close, and taps at Higashi’s newly-impaled lobe with a thick digit, nail trimmed cleanly as always. The still-tender flesh throbs dully, worse by miles than a sharper pain.
Higashi can almost hear his pathetic flame of hope fizzle out, caught and pinched between those fingers that hover too close to his neck. How vulnerable he is. How vulnerable he will always be.
He should have known.
“Think you're missing something, though.”
In hope’s place now sputters dread. It prickles along the back of Higashi’s neck and creeps up his jaw as an unbearable heat, worms its way between his lips and fills his mouth with a sour tang, warning and wet. Higashi swallows it back messily like a pill that's too big. He feels it in his ears before it hits the back of his throat, muscles thick and gooey and sick as they work up and down in weak acceptance.
The captain’s next words are as sure as Higashi’s next heartbeats, however uneven, pulse woven through with sticky fear, and oh, how thoroughly Higashi knows he’s lost, as if there were ever a chance at a victory when he’s so far beneath Hamura’s heel.
“Is there someone you forgot to ask?”
Better to ask forgiveness than permission, some might say. But that’s bullshit when the big hand around one’s throat is barely capable of giveth and frighteningly adept at taketh away.
He won't forget again.
“I –”
How quickly he loses his spine alongside his words, gaping soundlessly at the angel of death all in spotless white, come to collect a fool.
The bell tolls for thee, says Hamura’s phony smile. His eyes crinkle at the corners, tinged pink with the irony of an emotion that could have been. “You what?”
“I didn't think –”
The captain tuts his next interruption immediately, disappointed and unsettlingly calm – it’s futile for Higashi to try when self-defense only serves to make the situation worse. “No,” he sighs. Runs his tongue along the back of his top teeth, now more snarl than anything else, in direct and malicious contrast to the low volume of his words. “You didn't fucking think at all.”
It’s now that Higashi realizes there is no one else left in the room. Smart boys, having vacated the premises as soon as possible on an order that probably went unspoken, signaled by the errant wave of a heavy hand –
– a heavy hand which belies a blinding backhand. It cracks against Higashi’s cheek and he cries out, barely managing to catch himself with his palms against the cold tile as he crumples to the floor.
“But I got good news for you, Higashi.”
And of course it isn’t good news. How could it be? Still he answers, quietly and dazedly, face hot with pain, stars and faded spots winking at the corners of his downcast eyes: “What’s that, Captain?”
A man more naive than he would insist Hamura’s voice carries a glimmer of earnestness. A man much, much smarter would have cut his losses and skipped town months ago.
“You can make it up to me. Won’t make it right, but it’ll help.”
Vision still swimming from the impact to his cheek, Higashi watches the big man’s alligator-leather shoes travel the rest of the way to the sofa in the corner – a distance requiring five steps for himself but only three and a half for the captain and his long strides. The furniture creaks as he settles into the cushions.
“Come.”
And Higashi does, rising slowly to his feet and padding over, dizzily eclipsed by dulling pain and silence pounding in his ears. It’s a funhouse full of mirrors where Hamura’s just over his shoulder and just out of reach, invisible every time he turns around save for the smirk that never quite reaches his cold eyes. What happened to you? is a question no one will ever voice aloud, though it lives eternally partially-formed in the recesses of Higashi’s mind, a larval thought that squirms and wriggles when he lies in the dark at night, wrapped in a fleeting kakefuton cocoon of not-quite solitude.
What was it that made a sadist of you, Captain?
Hamura’s easy, lopsided smirk-snarl weighs Higashi down slowly like an anchor tied to his neck, sinking down down down to the ocean floor. The nearly-tangible heft of it pulls at the top of his spine until he hunches over and drops his eyes to the sofa seat beneath Hamura’s spread thighs.
Gentle at first, like a humiliating taunt spoken lightly, cajoling.
It’s a presence heavier than even the hot, thick fingers Higashi can still feel curled around his own clammy ones to clutch at the grip of a pistol, one probing into the space behind the trigger guard to guide the slow bend of his straight to hell.
A hiss; a cruel grin right next to his ear. Three shots fired, marrying tissue and organ and meat with lead and steel, emptying a body of its blood.
When he was a child, barely old enough to understand right from wrong, his mother taught him to ride a tricycle. When he was an idiot chinpira – so recently, intimately familiar with wrongness – someone far worse taught him to kill a man.
Higashi’s knees hit the floor.
It hasn't been gentle since.
“Really does look nice. Wouldn't lie to you.” Hamura reaches forward to thumb over the titanium stud at his lobe, more firmly than necessary. “Tell you what, Higashi – let’s pretend you thought of me. Wanted to look tough for your captain, like that dumbshit Kengo.”
In no way does Higashi admire Kengo. Big, stupid mule, here for no other reason than to plod dumbly after Hamura and punch whomever he’s told to punch. It’s an unflattering comparison; not like Higashi’s any better, only keeping his hands from shaking and his knees from buckling by the grace of the numbness that blankets him.
Hamura does him a solid and unbuckles his own belt, unzips his own fly. Hooks his thumbs in the elastic waistband of high-end black silk and tucks it underneath his half-chubbed cock and heavy balls, fat and full and mouthwatering in the same way as precedes a bout of retching.
“Problem is, numbskull, there’s not a thing you could do to change what’s underneath.”
No tears prick at Higashi’s eyes – not yet, at least – and any tightness in his throat is only to his credit as he takes Hamura’s cock in his mouth, feeds it to himself until the head, now firm and exposed, hits wet muscle and he gags.
Routine, at this point. There was never any ceremony to this; it’s always been an exchange. Loyalty for silence. And silence is golden. He wishes for it now, forced instead to listen to the damp, muffled sounds of his own making ringing in his ears.
“Think you look best like this, Higashi. Being on your knees always suits you.” He pushes his pelvis minutely upward to elicit another gag, Higashi’s nose forced deep into the thick thatch of wiry hair at the base of his dick. “Whether you got metal in your face or not.”
It’s said with weight and heat, as if appraising a concubine nakedly knelt before him. And, in truth, Higashi feels like one sometimes – Hamura holds himself like an ancient Roman emperor, the weight and regality of his posture unmistakeable. He ought to be wearing a crown of laurels and an artfully draped sheet of white, equally undefiled and immaculate as the suit he sports in reality.
“But maybe you really did think of me, huh?” His big hand is in the hair at the back of Higashi’s head now, holding him in a place he knows well; Higashi squeezes his eyes shut and wills himself not to choke, breathing steadily through his nose. “Bought yourself some new jewelry to catch somebody’s eye. Little whore, greedy for attention.”
The captain’s always getting off on his own words. Higashi may not be known around the family for his quick wit, but even he can follow the timing of the pre leaking onto his tongue.
“How generous of me to be the one to oblige you, hmm?”
Yes, Captain. Thank you, Captain. Higashi lets compliance seep into his core as if there were any alternative. This is not difficult. It is his duty to let the fetid stream of barbarous sleaze Hamura spews wash over him and taint his skin and sink into his bones. It is his duty to stay loyal, or he and everyone he’s ever presumed to care about suffer a fate as terrible as the captain finds appropriate. It is not his duty to enjoy it, though it’s best if he lets his mind wander within safe bounds, imagines the hand on the back of his skull and the cruel smile above him are made of kinder stuff, slips away as he thinks aniki, aniki so wishfully and stiffens up just enough in his pants for it to feel a little bit closer to real.
“If you want it so fucking bad –” Hamura grits his teeth when Higashi hollows his cheeks – “ahh, shit – all you’ve got to do is ask.”
Higashi almost laughs. The only boons Hamura would deign to grant him are those that would serve the man’s own interests. He pulls away from Hamura’s dick and runs his open mouth and tongue up the length of him, chancing a glance upward. His captain is hungry, glinting, wild. Fixated.
“I’ve got a guy who’ll put a hole right through that tongue for you,” he says low and throaty, and oh, that’s not what Higashi was prepared for him to say. A damp sheen of sweat starts to shimmer at the hollow of Hamura’s throat as he continues. “He’ll do your pretty pink nipples, too; put glitzy little barbells in there for you to play with when you’re alone.”
And perhaps Higashi’s already thought about that last one, but most certainly not under the same circumstances. This is new territory. He does not want to be here, but Hamura was right and he did something foolish; objectification is a better outcome than what Could Be.
“You ever fuck a girl with nipple piercings, Higashi? Put one in your mouth and they squeal as loud as –” Hamura makes an abrupt noise somewhere between a growl and a huff as he tilts his head back – “you.”
Higashi wishes he would stop talking. He quickens his pace, fist moving schlick schlick schlick nearly in time with his rapid heartbeat. The abused inside of his mouth is salty and wet, saliva thickly dripping down Hamura's shaft and over Higashi's white-knuckled fingers.
“Is that the sound you made when you had this done? Did you – ahh – fucking squeal?”
There may as well be singe marks on Hamura’s white suit pants for how furiously Higashi casts his gaze downward, avoiding having to watch the captain’s thick-fingered hand come up to caress the outer shell of his ear. Light as a feather, the touch starts at the top of its curve and slithers down to gently pinch the metal bar and stud between thumb and forefinger – not hard enough even to hurt, only to secure. “I bet you did.”
And that thought seems to be enough for him, regardless of the validity of his assertion. He lets his hand fall away and doesn't say another word, which Higashi is ultimately grateful for.
The big man’s release is usually accompanied by a long, low groan, befitting of his stature. Exactly what you'd expect. It's a recipe simple enough for Higashi to follow; gets him the same predictable result every time. The act of repetition in itself can be a mercy and he'll take what he can get.
But this time, when the gently sagging skin of the scrotum under Higashi’s fingers tightens with its approaching climax, he hears the click of Hamura’s teeth above him as the captain clenches his jaw. Regret burns in his chest when he dares to look up again: cold, clear eyes greedily devour the shape of his mouth wrapped around its girthy purchase, drag over to the hot line of his cheek – still reddened from the backhand earlier – up and back one last time to the stud in his earlobe. Hamura shudders hot into Higashi’s throat.
Then, a jerk of his hips; a nauseating, viscous, bitter heat on Higashi’s tongue; a voiceless sigh. Higashi gulps it all down and puts out his tongue the way he knows Hamura likes. Nothing left.
Drawn-out, low, rotten: “That’s good.”
For one of them, at least, innately satisfied by this same old sick song-and-dance.
Nothing has changed. Nothing will change, until the moment of one of their deaths; the stakes are too high. He’d like to think that the captain’s fixation on him will wane with time, but he knows he’s not that lucky. Gives him yet another reason to envy his aniki.
Kaito would’ve known what to do, months ago. Kaito would’ve never let himself be put into this position in the first place.
Hamura breathes in and out heavily, sated, sinking a few inches deeper into the cushion underneath him and grinning lazily down at Higashi. “Hell, Higashi, you’re a great little cocksleeve. Mouth and pussy, two top-notch holes.”
Yes, Captain. Thank you, Captain. Higashi says nothing and still earns a foot between his knees, firmly nudging them apart so Higashi is forced a few inches lower. He is closer to eye-level with Hamura’s cock, still twitching with the last dregs of release even mostly-flaccid and enveloped once more by thick foreskin. It lies wetly against the white fabric of his thigh like an overripe fruit, wrinkled and soft. Hamura doesn't put it away. Might as well be a threat.
“You wanna get yourself off now, honey?” he drawls, all knife’s edge-ice and mocking indifference. He pulls his cigarettes from the inner pocket of his jacket and extracts one from the carton with his teeth. “I'll help you.”
He doesn't often bother to let Higashi come – but Higashi prefers it that way. He has little enthusiasm for being granted permission. He has little enthusiasm for being owned.
Alas.
The click of his lighter and the upward press of his shiny black shoe into Higashi’s goddamn taint are synchronous. He wonders if the captain will let him close his eyes.
“Go ahead.”
He's hard enough that it feels good physically, if not mentally, to spread his knees further and bear down and rock forward into the arch of the captain’s ankle. Hisses a breath through his teeth; tries to stay so silent. Wants to give Hamura nothing more to take.
And yet, as the man above him continues, as Higashi starts to ride the stiff alligator leather between his legs, the scraps of dignity he clings to flee from him just like his fellow family men.
(Hateful insect. Worm. Keep your eyes closed, Toru.)
“I bet you’re thinking about it now. Thinking about showing off for Kaito; pretty Higashi, decorated in thoughtful gifts from his captain.”
It hadn’t taken long for Hamura to bring Kaito’s name into the game, of course. He’d had all of the information from the getgo, forced it out of Higashi at gunpoint. Every day since had been a bad fucking day to be Higashi Toru – the most loyal boy in town, proving it again and again to the wrong master he never wanted to know the way he does now.
“Aren’t you, you little queer?” Higashi’s heard this address a hundred times the same way. The irony, too, remains the same. “Wouldn’t that be nice? Put out your tongue again.”
He does, and Hamura leans forward to grab it. For a painful moment Higashi fears the extinguishing of the cigarette will happen on the surface he's offered, but Hamura keeps his smoke pinched between his lips. Thumb and forefinger grip him similarly to the way they'd pressed at his earlobe a few moments ago, but more firmly; harder, harsher. Saliva slowly pools in Higashi’s mouth underneath.
“You’ll let me choose, next time.”
By this he could mean many, many things. Higashi does not want to consider any of them.
Like a needle but with none of the precaution or gentleness of a piercer, Hamura digs his thumbnail suddenly into the meat of Higashi’s tongue. Three things are ripped from him at once: a choked, gasping, abrupt little moan around Hamura’s fingers; the accumulated spit dribbling messily from his mouth onto the captain’s knee, the white linen finally marred by something vile; and Higashi’s orgasm spilling weak and hot and miserable into his briefs, utterly unwanted but for the fact that it means this interaction can finally end.
When Higashi was a child, his mother taught him to ride a tricycle. The man who pulls his fingers from Higashi’s throbbing tongue could have been a parental figure to him, if he'd wanted to be. He wipes the residue on the lapel of Higashi’s suit jacket before settling back into the cushions and finally putting his dick away.
“Go home, Higashi.”
Perhaps the mercy Higashi seeks is found in the fact that the captain lets him leave unseen by the others.
Perhaps that's the best he can hope for.
–
six weeks later
The fact that the gift comes is a surprise until Higashi opens it. It’s a black spinel stud, set in brushed platinum. Simultaneously tasteful and luxurious, as expected from a man like the captain. Visually inconspicuous, yet as unobtrusive to Higashi as a collar and a leash. There is no note, but who else would give him a gift like this?
Who else would give him a gift at all?
The reminder is clear: their business is not yet concluded, and will not be for some time.
Higashi sighs and pulls his lobe's current adornment from its hole. The little box’s velvet-covered foam inlay gives way beneath his fingers as he pinches the stone with thumb and forefinger on one hand and wrests it from its cushy home – it’s heavy, as is Higashi’s heart.
He fastens it into place.