Yami No Matsuei Fan Fiction / Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Monozuki ❯ Yohji and Begonias ( Chapter 11 )

Monozuki - An Idle Curiosity

A Weiss Kreuz/Yami no Matsuei crossover.

 

Monozuki 11 - Yohji and Begonias

 

By Lisa

 

(Just a quick post before I hit the road again.)

 

***********

 

 

Ah, hung over and alone in bed… I had frittered away Sunday between sleeping and recovering from drinking, and here it was already Monday again. Is there any crueler way to wake up than that? I rubbed a hand over my eyes, and cast my mind back to the weekend, trying to pinpoint where it all had gone so terribly, terribly wrong. Was it when the pretty little bishounen danced out of my life Saturday night, or later, when Aya - Aya! Moody, broody, angsty, undeniably gorgeous Aya - told me to fuck off as he stormed out in a royal snit?

 

Um… It was a tough call. Personally, I was leaning a little toward the unknown beauty at the club, taken together with his equally tasty companion; Aya would still be around for me to annoy tomorrow and the next day, but I figured that I had had my one, lone chance at the pretty, pretty boy. The way my morning wood twitched sympathetically told me that all the votes were in, and the little bishie was the winner.

 

Damn, but I hated to lose on all fronts… Maybe I ought to go see if Aya was around? It was pushing the mid-day rush, and according to Ayan-Taisho, that meant all hands on deck. It might win me a few points if I turned up voluntarily, and saved him having to come drag me out of my lair.

 

Nah, why wreck a perfectly good streak? That red haired slave-driver could come get me himself.

 

But somehow, the temptation to go have a look at him just wouldn't go away. Maybe it was discovering that he liked to sleep in nothing but thread-bare old sweats? Now there was a vision that could make a hungry man weep: Aya bare-chested, tousled, and as mortal as the rest of us. And twice as appealing. Given the naughty thoughts that I had entertained about his icy, work-a-day persona, there was probably a demon warming up a special spot in Hell just for me now that I had seen this other side to him.

 

It would be worth it, too, if I could break down that infamous control and make him beg and scream. My cock twitched in eager agreement, and I was perfectly happy go along with the majority stock-holder… Stocks… That reminded me; Omittchi's school was off today, and he and Kenken were supposed to head for the mall to do a little sightseeing. If their recon went well, there was an even chance that we would all be doing a little overtime work tonight. I didn't have a problem with that per se, but going out on a Kritiker assignment had two bad consequences that I could see, right off. First, with Omi and Ken gone to scope out the target, Aya-sweetie had been manning the shop solo since the end of the before-school rush, making for a pissy kenkaku. And, second, it meant no going clubbing tonight, and I was not in the mood for a third lonesome night.

 

Crap. My happy morning mood was going right down the proverbial toilet. I didn't even feel like taking an edge off by engaging in a little personal quality time with my hard-on. And I was already too wide awake to just roll over, pretend none of it had happened, and go back to sleep. Might as well just get up and write the whole thing off as a loss.

 

I dragged on a pair of clean pants and snagged a short-sleeved, vee-necked pull-over in a nice shade of chocolate brown that always brought out the highlights in my autumn-leaf hair, making it look more gold than brown. Finger-comb back the hair itself, and use a hair-tie to hold all but a few artful strands that nicely framed my face, and voila, I was ready to slip on a pair of uwazouri and head for work. I snagged my shades off the top of my bureau, perched them on the end of my nose, and let the efficiency's door slam shut behind me. Elapsed time, five minutes, and I was already just about to the office. Best damned commute in Tokyo.

 

In addition to that speedy commute, there really were some advantages in privacy to our current set-up; tiny apartments on the third floor, communal living space on the second, shop and storeroom on the ground floor. Oh, and let's not forget assassins' central in the basement. When the weather was good, we could go up and spar on the roof, or, in Aya's case, practice those damned katas alone. I liked watching, but he alternated between cold indifference and livid hostility, and me, I didn't care to be chased down a flight of stairs by a homicidal maniac with a sword. Especially not when there was no telling if Ayan's sense of team spirit extended to holding back on the bodily damage, or not.

 

But God in Heaven, that boy had the moves.

 

I wondered if he knew how to dance. Vertical, or horizontal, I would love to see him put that supple body to good use.

 

Now, that was a question I was happy to spend some time contemplating. Omittchi, patron saint of the computer keyboard that the little guy was, had managed to hack some of the less sensitive of the files in Kritiker's possession, and as a result, we knew a little bit about the irascible redhead. For example, we knew that he had belonged to another team before landing his current gig with Weiss - something called `Crashers.' What precisely made the Crashers unit special was still something of a mystery, but thanks to the computer boy wonder, though, we had gotten our hands on a photo of Ayan wearing a long black coat with more buckles and zippers than a fetishist's wet dream.

 

I wondered where that coat was… I would definitely go into mourning if it had been destroyed. Maybe, just maybe, Aya had it hanging in the depths of his Spartan closet, neatly tucked into a garment bag? Maybe I could talk him into modeling it? Unconsciously, I snorted at that. Yeah, right… Time to check the temperature in Hell.

 

But still… I couldn't quite suppress the shivery little thrill that went straight to my groin at the thought of Aya, that black leather ensemble, and my own fingers undoing every fucking zipper. Slowly.

 

Damn. Some part of my thoughts must have been visible on my face, because Aya's lovely eyes widened and darkened the second I slouched in through the back door, into the shop proper. Then he was off the stool he had perched on in front of the battered work table, stalking past me, and slamming out through the door to the alley behind the shop.

 

Ouch. That was cold. Even for anti-social Ayan.

 

And belatedly, I realized that he had left me solely in charge of the shop. Bastard.

 

Well, if he was gone, at least he couldn't bitch at me about smoking, or guzzling all the coffee in the shop's pot. Shrugging, I snagged a cup of coffee and headed for the list of orders that my erstwhile teammate had abandoned on the table in his haste to escape. The good news was that there were only a couple of simple bouquets left to make up… and the bad news was that there were only a couple of simple bouquets left. There was nothing on there that I couldn't do in my sleep, and with my favorite swordsman gone from the premises, I would soon have nothing to keep me occupied. I was doomed to that fate worse than death: boredom.

 

So when the bell attached to the front door jangled, it was met with a Kudoh Extra Special Smile, sent winging on its way with a thankful prayer. Fortunately, the tall man dressed all in white who was the recipient didn't seem disturbed in the slightest, and that gave me hope that the day was still salvageable. “Irasshaimase!” I called cheerfully, abandoning the orders in my turn to come up to the front.

 

That Extra Special Smile faltered just a tiny bit, though, in the newcomer's presence. There was something subtly… terrifying… about the urbane smile, and the faintly mocking expression that he wore. I'm generally not intimidated by big people - Hell, I'm taller than the average, myself - but this man was nearly threatening, even with his aura of polished sophistication. Maybe it was the broad shoulders, clearly visible under the tailored white suit jacket, and the equally white coat that he wore open over top of that. Maybe it was the way his longish, snowy hair hung down so that only one chill gray eye was visible behind the glittering glass of wire-rimmed spectacles. I don't know. But my instincts were immediately screaming `Watch the fuck out!” and I had learned the hard way, as a PI, and later as a Hunter, to never, ever ignore those instincts.

 

Still, he was a customer, and he was in our shop. I took a deep breath and plastered that smile right back up where it belonged. “Welcome to the Koneko no Sume Ie. Is there something special we can help you with today?”

 

That dangerous smile widened into a smirk - and not the fun kind, either. This was more the sort of smile a shark would give, assuming sharks were built like that and preferred dry land. He tilted his head slightly, examining me with cold silver as if his gaze was a scalpel, and I was a homicide victim requiring an autopsy. There was no controlling the shiver that rolled down my spine, and it was all I could do to not join Aya where ever he might be hiding. Fuck me, but this guy was scary. And worse, he seemed very aware of the effect he was having on me. It didn't help that he had one of the sexiest voices I have ever heard: lower even than Aya's, and rich like honey mixed with cream. Tall, white and handsome drawled, “Hm… Normally, I would take a dozen of your best, long-stemmed red roses, but I've been a bit too busy lately to attend to the one that those are best suited for. I think, perhaps, today I would like a bouquet of croceum lilies and mock orange blossoms.”

 

I almost - almost - opened my mouth to argue with him, to point out that his choices signified hatred and deceit in the language of flowers. But something in that knowing gaze stopped me cold. What the Hell? We had the flowers in stock, oddly enough, and a sale was a sale. It's not as if this job was my life's work, anyway. I fetched the stalks of orange lilies from the big cooler, and had them tied up with a spray of the sweet-scented white blossoms with their glossy green foliage in a jiffy. The effect was a bit odd, but that might just be because I was used to using the mock orange in Western-style wedding arrangements, and not with the fiery lilies. My surreal customer took the paper-wrapped bouquet and paid his yen without uttering another word, which was just as well considering that by this time I was beyond shaken. Where the Hell was Aya, anyway? I couldn't believe that the bastard hadn't come back yet, even though, realistically, it had been less than ten minutes since he had marched past me and out the door.

 

Fuck. I didn't just need a cigarette, I needed a drink. Think fast, Kudoh, I told myself. In something like twenty minutes, we would be up to our you-know-whats in giggling, squealing, underage girls, not a one of whom was suitable for anything more than a tiny bit of ego stroking. I hadn't heard the tell-tale sounds of the shop's delivery van out back yet, which meant that Kenken and Omittchi were probably stuck in traffic somewhere. And Aya would never condone closing the shop for the day unless we were actively on a mission, or too many of us were too badly injured to operate the place without attracting the wrong sorts of attention. Having the girls fawn over us when we were all healthy was bad enough, but they always gave the impression that something as trivial as a hangnail was a life or death matter.

 

Still, if I didn't get a quick break in now, it would be at least an hour, more like two, until I would get another chance. Decision made, I flipped the deadbolt on the front door, and set the `be back in ten' sign in the window sill. Breathing a sigh of relief, I trotted for the back door, and headed for our shared kitchen. There was a bottle of vodka in the freezer, and a shot of that would work wonders for my nerves.

 

Now, Aya despises vodka. I've seen him drink enough sake that he shouldn't have been conscious, let alone capable of swinging that katana of his, and he can name the different grades just by the smell of the stuff alone, but he claims that vodka is suitable only for use as an antifreeze. Maybe it's one of those rare things that he gets Japanese about? Who knows? And right at the moment, who cares?

 

Really good vodka deserved to be drunk right, and that meant straight up, not mixed with tonic, or over ice. Normally, I would put the shot glass in the freezer along side of the bottle for at least an hour, but that wasn't going to work if I intended to open the front door in time for the fangirl invasion.

 

The sacrifices we make.

 

Still, it was a bottle of very good vodka. This cold, it was viscous, with a creamy-blue tint to it, and it flowed into the glass like frozen tears. I cradled the glass in my hand just long enough to take the worst of the chill off of it, so that it wouldn't freeze my taste buds. I wanted to enjoy the smooth sweetness as the shot went down, because this wasn't the cheap, caustic stuff that some of the local bars stocked, but premium grade.

 

Even so, I shuddered when the icy liquid hit the bottom of my empty stomach. With nothing else in there except for a slurp of morning coffee, I figured I would be feeling no pain before I had to unlock that door. But just to be on the safe side, I poured another half portion, and this time took a bit of it on my tongue to savor. The trick was to let it rest on the palate while exhaling through the nose, to get a better feel for the aroma. This bottle had a fine, sweet grain scent, not a nasty medicinal one, and I blessed the impulse that had made me spend the extra yen on it. As I tossed back the rest of the shot to join the paradoxical cold/hot sensation spreading from my belly, I mourned briefly that I didn't have the proper foods to go with the drink; ideally some sturdy Russian bread, potatoes, and maybe some poached salmon.

 

Omi's left over onigiri just weren't going to cut it.

 

Ah, well. Maybe I would shock my teammates later by cooking. It would be worth the effort to see the contained suspicion on Ayan's face, and both Kenken and Omittchi would give me some enthusiastic praise. The littlest bishounen especially could use some feeding up if he was ever to get some height on him. The brat had hardly grown in the years I'd know him, still looking like a twelve-year-old, even though he had to be pushing seventeen by now. Grinning, equilibrium of the universe restored, I tucked the vodka back into the freezer and turned to set my glass in the sink for washing later.

 

And stopped dead.

 

What the fuck? I have no idea why the scent hadn't registered on me sooner; that cloying mix of copper and warm sweetness, tainted by citrus… And it was damned careless of me to have let my guard down, even if this was our home. Especially because this was our home. But it was the visual that really toasted my brain cells and made the higher functions shut down.

 

Brilliantly orange lilies, together with smaller, snow-white flowers with a little cluster of yellow stamen in the center of each, and green, green leaves were lovingly arranged in a circle around the eviscerated body of a very dead tabby cat. The stretched out corpse lay in the middle of a pattern drawn in red and rust, colors that an objective observer in the corner of my brain promptly identified as blood, and not the cheesy fake stuff that comes from a joke shop, either. This was the real McCoy, glistening shiny wet in places, dull and drying in others, and it was painted across the entire top of our old kitchen table in a pattern of complex swirls and characters.

 

The shot glass dropped from my suddenly lax fingers, bounced once, miraculously didn't shatter, and promptly rolled under the table. Where it could stay, as far as I was concerned, because there was no way that I was getting any closer to that abomination than I had to. In fact, I backed up until the corner of the counter caught me painfully in the butt, putting a halt to the increasingly frantic retreat. That little jab of pain, however, kicked the Kudoh intellect back into gear.

 

How the Hell had someone managed to do all this, without Aya or I noticing?

 

Okay, first off, I recognized those flowers; I had just sold them to that customer less than ten minutes earlier. For him to have gotten around to the alley, through the door, and into the kitchen was not impossible, just freaky. It was daylight, and the alarms on the doors were silenced so that we wouldn't constantly be setting them off, ourselves, as we ran in and out. Judging by the condition of the non-floral part of the decorations, odds were that he had laid out the dead animal and done his calligraphy before purchasing the bouquet. That suggested a cool character, with nerves of steel, and a Hell of a lot of faith in himself.

 

I could do `nerves of steel,' too. Especially now that the urge to scream for Aya the way Omi occasionally did, when a particularly bad nightmare hit, had passed.

 

The choice of flowers had to be a deliberate warning that someone had taken offense over us, or our actions. Kritiker's network wasn't quite what it had been before the events of recent months - both Takatori and Esstet related - but they still had the manpower to take care of the legwork to track down our mysterious visitor. He was distinctive enough, with his nearly albino looks, that surely someone would know who he was. Once we found the connection to Weiss and unraveled it, it wouldn't be that hard to neutralize the threat.

 

Or so I fervently hoped, as a secondary message contained in the gory tableau occurred to me:

 

Mock orange is a deadly poison for kitties.

 

 

*************

 

Begonia - Be wary.

Mock Orange and its uses: www. floralartmall. com/ philadelphys. html

Vodka and way more than you ever wanted to know about how to consume it: www. vodkaphiles. com/ howto. cfm

uwazouri - indoor sandals

irasshaimase - welcome (in shops etc.)

No set bibliography for flowers in general. There are a couple of books and several websites that we've been using for the flower meanings in these chapters. Often they give conflicting meanings, so we use whichever one suited us best. (One site went so far as to claim that `reversing' a flower gave it the opposite meaning. Now, I know that works for tarot cards, but I'm a little confused as to how you can do that in a bouquet without it looking completely idiotic. Hopefully, we won't have to resort to that!)