Chapter Text
That dress. That gorgeous, shimmering violet dress. He's really got to stop staring at it. It's making him look like a complete pervert, which he knows because Yuki's told him so repeatedly. And despite his snapping about the contrary, he can't really blame her for thinking that. There aren't many other conclusions you can draw from seeing a man checking a lady out, not in this line of business, and Hibiki's certainly been giving him some looks of her own. But firstly, he'd like to think he's not that kind of guy, and secondly, he'd like to think he's not that kind of manager. Hopefully Hibiki will pick up on that, eventually.
The real reason he keeps looking, though… he doesn't know.
No, that's a bold-faced lie. He knows exactly why. It's just that verbalising it is like stepping into an active minefield, throwing the handful of good things he has going for him away, dousing everything he's built and worked for in gasoline and striking a match.
Splayed across the floor like a dying roach and invigorated by some cheap alcohol, he confesses it to the crumbling ceiling of his shitty apartment: "I don't wanna be a man." Then, slurred in rapid succession, "I'mnotaman".
The words tumble from his mouth like they'd forced themselves up his throat, desperate and followed by a wave of shock and nausea that leave him reeling. He draws in a shaky breath, feeling as if he's just vomited out an intestine. If he's not a man, then what is he? A woman? Something else entirely? Panic twists his gut into knots, makes his chest feel tight and his head spins.
He stares at the ugly beige void above for what feels like hours. A thousand unhelpful existential questions run through his head, disordered and incoherent in his state of intoxication. He vaguely recalls the shape of some words, the ones used for the girls at the telephone club who offered something a little different. The cold, clinical sound of them on the lips of disdaining passersby and the slimy, skin-crawling drawl they formed on the tongues of the kinds of handsy drunks the Lord of the Night regularly made a spectacle of.
Involuntarily, his shoulders hunch and his knees tuck into his chest, and he can feel his heart pounding, hear it synchronise with the buzzing of nearby street lights and thud of feet on concrete. The phantom sensation of grappling hands and leering eyes on his skin, the distant sound of his own crying in his ears makes him fight to halt his own breathing.
He remembers with disgusting vividness how Shimano had described that crying, how his voice seemed to thicken with predation, with intent that Majima doesn't want to give words to when he said he screamed like a girl. It'd become a favourite comment when he noticed how it made Majima squirm, and turn pale and rigid like something deep inside him had been irreversibly tainted. Sagawa had picked it up quickly as well. He'd made it his job to remark on every girl employed at The Grand, and had asked with that same suggestive intonation if Majima could see himself in that position. The emphasis placed on 'position'.
He finds the strength and coordination to stand, somehow, but not enough of either to keep from stumbling over and having to catch himself on the tiny counter of what passes for a kitchen in this shithole. Majima throws his head over the sink, feels his whole body heave and tremble, chokes and grips the cold metal tighter.
He can't lie to himself. He can picture so clearly how he'd look in that dress, how he'd be smiling so genuinely, the way he hardly does anymore. He closes his eye, imagines how nice it'd be to slip into it every day as casually as he puts on his suit, turn to face the mirror and really like the person he sees looking back at him. For him to go to work and have everything be normal, except he'd be addressed with different words. The girls would invite him to join in on the dressing room chatter, critique his dress sense the way he does theirs, bring him along on girls' nights - whatever those consist of. He could be one of them, no longer sitting with that nagging sense that the basic nature of his body is creating an impassable social wall between them. Men might treat him differently, too. Be a little more polite and hold doors open for him and pay for his drinks and shit. Not out of fear or discomfort like they already do, but out of actual kindness and the inclination to make life easier for a pretty lady. They could see him as a pretty lady.
God, what a concept. Strutting through Sotenbori with confidence - not in his night Lord status, but in himself, hardly recognisable to Sagawa's goons. He feels the phantom sensation of cool night air against his shoulders and silk draped along his body, the phantom weight of those fancy acrylic nails on his hand. He allows himself to linger on the details of how his hair would be done, what accessories might compliment one another, and wonder whether he'd embody grace and elegance or carefree, electric excitement.
He almost falls into a pleasant dream of nice clothes and freedom, before his situational awareness returns, the realisation that he's still slumped over a sink full of vomit and liquor nipping at its heels.
Majima picks himself up, careful not to bang his head on the tap, and catches a glimpse of his reflection in the dirty steel basin when he opens his eye. A ghostly pale, wretched-looking thing returns his gaze, its eyes simultaneously hollow and filled with agonising want; and the warmth twists itself into revulsion and leaves him cold and empty like it can't stand to live in this skin any more than he can.
He wearily crawls into bed, body heavy and throat burning, and waits for unconsciousness to hit.
His sleeping dreams are mercilessly void.
—
Hibiki's taking the day off to spend some time with her brother. No purple dress today.
When he notifies the other girls, he doesn't miss the conspiratorial look that Yuki shoots Ai, and the mock-pouting face she makes in response. He's going to pretend not to get the joke. Saves him the trouble of gritting his teeth through the follow-ups and eventual interrogation, from snapping at a girl for asking questions anyone in her position would rightly want to ask. Though he knows realistically it won't be long until that happens anyway.
He wastes no time stepping out of the dressing room and scanning the club's interior, checking that everything is in its right place and order. It's a very futile attempt to keep himself occupied with something other than anxiety. Despite his best efforts, he can hear the chattering coming from behind the door, and is acutely attuned to each pause and giggle and whisper. He's aware that he's sometimes the subject of gossip, obviously. A couple of the girls have asked if maybe he's interested in them, bickered about what they think he likes in a lady, all with their own stories to exchange. It's cute and trivial and ultimately harmless - and a little flattering sometimes, if he's honest. But now that he's caught on to the source of his own unshakable weirdness, the paranoia that others might do the same has made a home for itself in the forefront of his mind.
He exhales. He hadn't noticed he was holding his breath.
Drinking on the job is highly unprofessional. However, sitting down at the minibar and wishing you were drinking on the job isn't. Mostly because that's an incredibly pathetic, plainly stupid and embarrassing thing to do and a professional individual is probably not inclined towards it. But that's beside the point.
He manages to secure himself roughly 3 minutes of silence before he's unpleasantly reminded where he is by Yuki's distinctive chirping.
"Missing your favourite girl, Majima?"
He raises his eyebrows, widening his eyes like he's saying ' you got me!' before giving an irritated snort that he hopes will satisfy her need for a reaction. It doesn't.
"Ai's got some nice purple decor lying around, wanted to see how it looks in the club, but I thought it'd make you too sad…" she continues, an edge of pride in her voice for her ability to get on his nerves. "So I suggested we start meowing like Hibiki, because it'd annoy you, but she said it'd annoy everyone as well."
"Sure would." Majima tries to keep things as light as possible to counteract the thick self-loathing building up in his throat.
It's not Yuki's fault, not Ai's fault, not anyone's. Except his own for not averting his eyes quick enough and for being a shit liar, both things a criminal shouldn't have an issue with but that somehow he consistently does. Yuki's mouth is still moving, but he's not absorbing any of what she's saying. God, why'd he ever put himself in charge of the dressing-up here? Was he asking for everything to blow up in his face? He'd let the girls at The Grand handle themselves for the most part, a decision he made with Sagawa's half-lidded, leering eyes burning holes into his back and the echo of his 'teasing' keeping him in line.
"And then I was like, wait, we should ask who tailored that one dress! Because if you like it so much, then you could give us your measurements and-"
"Shut up."
He flinches at the sound of his own voice. He didn't mean to say that, definitely didn't mean to say it with that amount of venom. It's different enough from the usual tone of their banter that it seems to have knocked Yuki off-balance.
There's a horrible pause before she re-centres herself and responds.
"I was kidding, you know? I'm always kidding." She sounds a little confused; surprised, maybe. But then, like she's reminding herself she can bite slightly harder than that, "Who pissed in your cereal?"
Majima grumbles. "Sorry, had a real shitty night."
Lots of shitty nights, he thinks. They've all been shit, recently. "Didn't mean to take it out on ya."
Yuki purses her lips like a concerned older sister and crosses her arms as she leans over the counter, putting any lingering shock or hurt to the side.
"You wanna talk about it? Or do you just wanna sulk and make the whole club feel like a funeral home." Yuki asks, although she intones the second option like it's a statement rather than a question; a forgone conclusion. Majima makes a noise that's as close to a dry laugh as he can get right now, and Yuki appears visibly alarmed by its proximity to the sound of a dying cat.
"I dunno, Yuki - maybe 'funeral home' is the hot new theme leaving planets in the dust," he offers as a complete non-answer. "Or six-feet-under. I shoulda said that. Pretend I did."
Lying to Yuki doesn't sit right with Majima, even if he knows she knows him too well to fall for any of it. He just hopes the bit of guilt she feels is enough to keep her from pushing the subject.
"Oh sure, that'd be great for you," Yuki deadpans with a roll of her eyes. "It'd compliment whatever goth phase you're going through."
There's a lingering edge of doubt in her voice, and her eyes are narrowed slightly as if she's scanning his face for a betrayal of emotion. She punctuates its unsuccessful end with a sigh. If she has anything more to say, she doesn't get to say it before-
"We're about to open!" Youda yells.
Majima internally breathes a sigh of relief. It's shallow, because he's not stupid enough to believe Yuki won't remember this interaction, but he hopes anyway that she does. She'll get caught up in some other petty thing or find a different topic to tease him about and he won't need to explain things.
-
The ensuing shift goes on the way it always does, a rhythm so familiar that its corresponding choreography is practically burned into the floor. Customers come in, customers sit down, customers ask for a type or a specific girl, customers talk and talk and ask for this and that and talk and talk again. Etcetera. Majima usually falls into it with ease, settling comfortably behind a service smile and reciting the same old script. And he does that tonight as well, only without the ease.
The fear that Yuki might be catching on lingers, as do all the hypothetical reactions Majima's brain is creating for her. They're a mix of disgust and mockery, mostly, and they make him feel very small. Cold. Restless, like an animal thrashing wildly against a hunter's net. He paces the floor faster and with a certain rigidity, no real sense of direction or purpose contextualising either.
She'll just think ya got offended, like any decent man would when gettin' accused of being a perv. He tells himself, and it sounds believable. Nothing more.
-
After he's sure the last customers have left and the girls have gone home, Majima makes a decision that swiftly obliterates his chances of relying on such an excuse. As the dressing room light flickers on, he holds his breath to listen out for any sound like a door creaking back open, or the frantic shuffling of someone who's just remembered they forgot something. Kind of funny , he muses, to own a place and then feel like yer breakin' the law by being inside of the same damn room you've been in a hundred times before.
He walks briskly toward the dress rack and flips through it in search of Hibiki's, the vivid material impossible not to spot once unobscured.
He lifts it off, holding it out in front of him. The dress looks stiff, almost plastic from a distance, and feels cool to the touch of his hands. If it wasn't obvious before, the wire within the cups shows it was clearly built with a different body in mind - one that's smaller, curvier… bustier. He doesn't think he has much hope of fitting into it, not a shot in hell. Still, he unbuckles the belt and examines its notches like he just needs to make sure. There are very few, an experimental tug to the waist reveals it has even less give than a cursory glance would tell. He might as well be considering worming his way into a straightjacket - an all too apt comparison , he thinks.
The warm glow from the mirror lights dances across the creases and dips of the dress like moonlight on ocean waves, just as mesmerising and twice as certain to slip through his fingers, forever unattainable. He wants to swim out, to step into the centre and yank it up and just see if it will change and transform itself around the shape of him like a mahou shoujo disguise. But he'd never be able to explain away the damage… so he settles for something easier to chalk up to negligence.
He sits down in front of one of the mirrors, an array of fancy makeup neatly arranged before it. Residual stings of paranoia keep him from rifling through them too fast as he searches for the colours he's fantasised about wearing; all vibrant pink and deep crimson and luxurious purple. Such pretty words seem strange when related to him, and he hesitates, hand hovering above a stack of palettes. The memory of eyes, hands, and searing pain come back for a split second like a warning, like the initial shrill stab of pain in the hand of a child trying to steal sparkling honey off a burning stove. But selfishly and oh-so indulgently, he allows himself to think in those flowery terms.
His hands are shaky as he applies. He's not used to doing this to his own face, and that brings with it both the pleasant and unpleasant kind of nerves.
As the woman in the mirror begins to take shape, he wonders what kind of woman he's looking at. He narrows her eye and tilts her head slightly, her posture shifting under his evaluation as if she's challenging him, dissecting him in return. Hmph. Looking at the way she holds herself and the scrutiny with which she meets his gaze, he gets the sense she's bold. Sassy, witty, the type of girl who could carry a cabaret on her back. One who doesn't give two shits what other people think, and whose deep crimson lips and sharp-as-hell eyeliner say 'I know what I'm worth' . He smiles at her, and she smiles back with a friendly flash of teeth.
His eye moves to her tight ponytail, lingers a moment, then returns to her. There's a longing glint in her eye that's half distantly wistful, half desperately urging him to get the hell on with it . She starts to chew her bottom lip before remembering all the work that's gone into painting it - he notes her impatience. Her assertiveness.
He reaches to untie it, seeing her wince at the change in pressure in his peripheral vision. The way her hair falls and cascades over her shoulders makes his heart catch in his throat, and the woman's eye widens in a way that is distinctly his own.
She's beautiful. She's Majima. She's both of these things, somehow, and he feels as if he might cry at the sight of her. Her eye sparkles and lip quivers, and Majima lets out a high-pitched giggle of delight.
She stands with energy she hasn't had in a long time, sweeping her hair over her shoulder in one quick, self-assured motion and admiring her reflection in full. Emboldened by whatever adrenaline rush this has given her, she twirls around, gives the mirror a little bow as if it's a guest she's welcoming at the front door.
Then, there's a tiny sneeze from somewhere in the room that makes Majima jump out of her skin. The silence following it is deafening, punctuated by the occasional shallow intake of air and her own internal chant of Shit. Shit, shit, shit shit shit. It takes a second for her to notice that her whole body is shaking and her pulse is racing.
The slow, sharp screech of the dressing room curtains being hesitantly drawn back rips away at the quiet, and Yuki is staring right at Majima.