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akane, kougami, & makishima | zero-sum study pt. 1
Kougami finds Makishima after disabling the virus’s spread (handy, those Public Safety Bureau grenades) in the heart of the university-turned-agricultural-facility. At first glance, he sees only Makishima’s long, white hair; his fine smile; but as Kougami follows Makishima’s arm to the knife in his hand and the flesh pressed against its blade, Kougami finds Akane, too. He notices her hand gripping Makishima’s forearm; the expression on her face, at turns disgusted, angry, and pleading; her free arm outstretched in Kougami’s direction, finger on the Dominator’s trigger. Kougami looks her in the eye. He points his pistol at Makishima’s head near-automatically.
“I know well enough you wouldn’t hesitate to shoot,” Makishima says, “and you know well enough that the moment you do is the moment I slit her throat and she paralyzes you, so in your case, I wonder.... Can you suppress your urge to kill me for the sake of conversation?”
Kougami smells a set-up.
Play along, please, he hears Akane say.
But neither of them -- Makishima, Kougami, Akane -- count on another bullet, from another hand, upsetting their balance.
akane & makishima | arranged marriage au
Thirty years ago, a team of Japanese cognitive scientists and psychologists debuted the Anteros Oracle: An algorithm by which an individual’s personality, interests, abilities, and sexual preferences are compiled, interpreted, and matched with compatible persons. The problems that motivated its creation -- and what prompted many governments, including Japan’s, to make it a mandatory institution -- were a worldwide decrease in the number and quality of intimate relationships, rising divorce rates, and widespread disillusionment with marriage and the traditional nuclear family.
Today, Tsunemori Akane -- an exceptional case; twenty years old -- meets with one of her potential partners for the first time -- a similarly exceptional case; twenty-nine years old.
“Makishima Shougo-san?”
“A pleasure, Tsunemori-san.” He smiles and offers her his hand, which she takes and holds -- light touches; quick reads -- as he leads them to a small table at the back of the café patio. They sit. She clutches her bag and peers at the menu with determined curiosity.
“To be fair, I’m not a fan of protocol, either.” Makishima's smile widens as Akane looks up, relaxes her shoulders. “So let’s get straight to the point: Though you were compatible with many, many fine men -- economists, politicians, detectives -- you chose me because you saw that I was the only one for whom you were the sole contender. No one else fit my profile. ‘He’s a man only I could love,’ you thought to yourself -- and so arranged to meet me here. Correct?”
Akane’s blush delights Makishima.
“What do you think that says about us?”
akane & kougami | tending to old scars, aka zero-sum study pt. 2
“I didn’t tell him,” she begins through bit lips. “I couldn’t.”
Had a glass wall not separated them; had he not felt consumed by bitterness and an emotion somewhere between apathy and exhaustion; yes, had he not been heart-weary, Kougami would have held Akane’s hand.
“He thought it would have spared you,” she continues. “He had no idea about my deal. None of them did. I should have....”
Kougami watches Akane tense; the hand he might have held loses itself in her bangs, supports her forehead.
It’s unfortunate that the fault will be hers to bear once Kougami’s gone -- executed in the same manner, same room as Ginoza -- but it’s the natural order of things in his experience: The curse of getting left behind.
yayoi & shion | off-screen relationship
“Don’t get the wrong idea,” Shion says. She reaches for a cigarette -- her lingerie’s strap slips off her shoulder; she lets it be -- and Yayoi stares at the lighter’s flame, the tendril of smoke that replaces it seconds later. Her hands are cupped on her stomach.
“About?”
“.... Why do you play music with other people?”
Shion watches Yayoi consider it.
“It’s a way of getting to know them better, I guess,” Yayoi says. “You learn a lot about another person from how they play what they play, and you learn a lot about yourself and your relationship to that person by seeing how you both handle a performance.”
Shion smiles, places her free hand on Yayoi’s.
“That’s it, isn’t it? There’s no difference between music, conversation, and sex in that respect. And one more, of course.”
“Of course,” Yayoi echoes, twining their fingers. “I wouldn’t be here with you if I hadn’t known it.”
ginoza & masaoka | zero-sum study pt. 3
“Give me the pistol,” Ginoza snarls. “This is an order from your superior, so don’t you dare make some well-meant ‘fatherly’ excuse for refusing me a weapon you shouldn’t even have.”
“Calm down and listen to reason,” Masaoka tries. “There must be another explanation for why Makishima Shougo has Inspector Tsunemori -- ”
Ginoza takes a shaking step forward.
“Save your breath,” he says, “and give me the damn pistol. Do you honestly think we have time to stand around recounting what we’ve just seen when she -- ”
“Ginoza,” Masaoka sighs. He clenches his metal hand, starts before he can convince himself otherwise: “If you’re so hell-bent on intervening, at least let me -- ”
“Kill him? No,” Ginoza says. “I’ve had enough of getting played by my job, by my partner, by my father -- if it’s getting done, I’m doing it.”
The rueful smile on Ginoza’s face takes all the tension out of Masaoka’s fist.
“It’s too late for me, anyway.”
“Nobu -- ”
“Yayoi.”
Years later, a part of Masaoka is still suspended somewhere in that half-second of hesitation before Yayoi obliges, and wrenches the pistol from his flesh hand.
makishima & choe | happy (au)
“What did she say?”
“What was reasonable,” Makishima answers, pouring Choe another glass. “She admitted she neither has the experience nor the imagination to judge those she’s just met with any accuracy.”
He observes Choe nurse his wine, brings his own to his lips. Their comfortable silence is broken only by the crackle of the fireplace in Makishima’s living room and the birds heralding evening in his garden.
“Perhaps Anteros follows the old adage ‘opposites attract,’” Makishima murmurs over the rim.
“Clearly.” Choe smirks. “If it were otherwise, your match would have been me.”
ginoza & kougami | zero-sum study pt. 4
“I didn’t tell her,” Kougami says. “I couldn’t.”
He breathes deeply. His next thought comes before he can censor it for bearing too strong a similarity to the man responsible for Kougami’s execution in this small, white room: It’s like something out of an old novel. Koestler’s Darkness at Noon. But rather than a bullet to the back of the head while walking down a dim, nondescript corridor, Kougami waits for an odorless, colorless gas.
“She thought it would have spared you,” he continues, converses with memory. “She had no idea they stuck us in the same cell before they....”
Kougami closes his eyes, smiles.
“Yeah,” he sighs. “It’s not your fault. We were all doing what we figured was best. But....”
Kougami looks up. “Maybe he was onto something with his last words, Makishima Shougo. If you and I had just talked long before Tsunemo -- ”
akane, kougami, makishima (and ginoza) | inspector makishima
Once was surprising. Twice was impressive. Three times, however, was enough.
“I don’t think either of you realize how much of Division One’s budget you’ve squandered on buying replacements for the equipment you both destroy whenever -- ”
“My bad, Gino,” Kougami says, massaging the bruise beneath his chin. Masochistically, Akane thinks. “But put yourselves in our position. The drones are too easy, so -- ”
“You race to see which one of you ruins the most and then fistfight until you’re both injured to the point of hospitalization?!”
Kougami and Makishima share a look.
“Sounds about right.”
Ginoza turns to Makishima, engrossed in massaging his left arm. “And you’re alright with this?!”
“You don’t need a detective’s intuition to know the answer to that, Inspector.” Makishima smiles sweetly. Sadistically, Akane shudders, as Makishima addresses her: “There’s no problem here, is there, partner?”
ginoza & akane | zero-sum study pt. 5
When they finally speak -- on the morning of Ginoza’s execution, across the glass -- they do so simultaneously.
akane & kougami | cuddling & happy au
After giving up on Makishima, the economist, and the politician, Akane -- to appease her parents, to prove to them that their worry re: a potential spouse is unfounded and she’d simply been the victim of horrible luck -- tries the detective.
Now long used to protocol, she sips an iced tea and carries their conversation as if neither of them were testing Anteros, nor running out of prospects and -- in Kougami’s case -- time. He, too, is twenty-nine.
“What’s it like, Kougami-san?”
“Working on cases?” He finishes his coffee, thinks. “Challenging. Rewarding. Like... oh, holding a girl half your size with enough strength that she understands how you feel about her, but not so tightly that she shatters in your arms.”
Akane’s blush delights Kougami.
“If you follow me.”
kagari | “write a drabble purely in the passive voice” was a challenge potentialfossil gave me
Persona was the video game Kagari was playing instead of writing the report Inspector Ginoza had asked him to start fifteen minutes ago. Magazines about guitars and gorgeous rocker babes were what Yayoi was sifting through instead of crime statistics. Nobubu was what gramps was thinking about instead of petty thefts and murders: “Will I ever actually become a grandfather?” was just one of the things he wondered. Akane-chan was who our resident hottie -- our other resident hottie, that is -- was watching instead of Makishima “Visual Kei Hair” Shougo (for once), and vice versa: If Akane-chan was guilty of watching anybody, it was Kougami “Hardboiled As Shit” Shinya. Shion was who we needed right now to defuse the situation, but cigarettes were what she was smoking in the comfort of her lab instead of dealing with her coworkers or camera loops. What I’m trying to say is that, basically, procrastination was taking place at Division One headqua --
“Are you making fun of the way I write case briefs, Kagari?”
“Hell no, Inspector Ginoza! Why would I ever do that?”